Underworld

ten : where all the dead things go

One word: foreshadowing. Keep your heads up high and your wits even higher.

~Autumn.

FOR THE VERY FIRST TIME IN HER long, long immortality, the great Goddess of Wisdom felt...confused. Something was terribly wrong, and Athena could feel it in her ancient bones.

But her visionary of the city named exactly after her confirmed all of her suspicions, the great olive tree she won in a battle to take Athens from Poseidon littered with crippling leaves of the deepest browns, yellows and oranges. Athena even spotted a speckle of purple falling from the branch like a far cry for help. Heart pumping, she tried to maintain her lowkey cover as she took in her beautiful city - now falling to shambles because of something that was absolutely uncontrollable to her people; the plummeting temperature that brought a relentless chill to hang over the atmosphere in all of it's icy fury.

Yes. Everything was wrong now and the sense of this once warm golden planet was coming to an end. And as Athens' goddess, answers were being screamed from her many temples because the woman with an answer always seemed to have one - only in this situation she did not. Embarrassment bloomed in her cheeks, a harsh scarlet fury that burned from her cheeks all the way to her long neck. All that she held morally be damned, because this was the first time the deity was underwater. In fact, she was sunken so deep into the wave pools that her immortal breath threatened to give out.

Golden hair flashing Helios in the skies, the mighty footsteps behind her signaled another golden deity - in fact the one that she loathed the most. Except right now Athena didn't possess the energy to react to the Sea God, the gears in her head churning until bolts collided with bolts. She could taste the answer, could feel it deeper than anything she has ever believed - but it was so far away that right now the prescense looming over her was causing the most annoying distraction.

"My sea creatures are dying." Athena could hear the fallen passion in her uncle's voice. "The oceans are getting colder by the minute. They aren't able to travel fast enough."

She wouldn't arise some spiteful comment now, because in times of death she would yearn for the translator. Poseidon was everything that she hated in this world. Selfish, arrogant and too lustful for his good - but once marrying Amphitrite she noticed he had put some of his unruly behavior on hold. Except now they were in the same boat: two Olympians losing the lives of the people they loved, only too desperate to find an answer.

"And the crops here are wilting. If this continues than the outcome could be catastrophic." Anybody could guess the last mention. "Has Rhode reported any casualties?"

Despite Athena finding the parentage of the Goddess Rhode unpleasant, their daughter was one of the most phenomenal young women Athena has ever crossed in her lifetime. At only seventeen years old Rhode has embarked on a journey of becoming queen of an entire island, entire stature ultimately leading to the steady foundation of her name amongst the gods. It wasn't because of Poseidon or Aphrodite that this stature lived on, instead because of hard work.

"Five deaths amongst her people and twenty sea creature saw their demise from the rising temperatures. In only a week." Athena's leaf-green eyes found Poseidon's sky blue. Such disbelief in those eyes. He leaned against the olive tree to look towards the horizon. "We need to call a meeting with Zeus. This is affecting all parts of the earth."

"Amazing job of calling off the obvious." The smirk that cracked upon her thin lips was nothing short of unentertaining to the God of the Sea.

"And to believe we were doing so well together for what? About three minutes?" A bulky hand came up to spark a touch at a reachable orange leaf, his eyebrows coming closer and closer together at the foreign produce of Mother Nature. Even his reaction mirrored hers, the disbelief intermingling with the frustration to create unfortunate anger. Athena was never one to listen to her heart, but she understood deep down any sensible person would be afraid of these times, and despite her hatred with the majority of the gods, she knew that her family was digging for a cure that wouldn't be found.