**CURRENTLY ON HIATUS UNTIL SEPTEMBER**
In this reimagining of the Myth of Sisyphus, the King of the Underworld is trapped in the mortal realm, leaving the world in an unprecedented predicament; only his queen will do whatever it takes to free him f...
Beware of two perverts with terrible mouth manners, but don't worry—they will pay a heavy price for it!
The sky was a field of dust without a ray of light, where all the dead walked on hunched back. They all carried their lives' burden, a load as huge as themselves, but their demons weren't inert beasts. Strangling them, they oppressed their hosts. Stabbed on them, they sucked all their hopes out with their claws covering their faces into an ugly helmet, and this was also Hades' state of mind.
He had never forgiven himself for having left Persephone behind.
On this day, when he came back to his realm, Hades donned this fearful armour to never remove it again. The well-known and dreaded ruler was back to his old ways: blessing the wretched and punishing the wrongdoers, until he got wind of some of the most distressing rumours, brought to him by a dead mortal soul.
Two men going by the names of Theseus and Pirithous, famous for abducting young women, were now after Persephone.
Masked behind a motionless face, adrenaline rushed through Hades' veins, but it was only when he heard it for the umpteenth time that rage pounded louder in his ears. It expanded into a rotating cloud of smoke surrounding the heavy weight of his guilty heart. Strong winds ruled his mind, blowing anticlockwise and going downdraught.
Down to where he could no longer contain it.
Once alone, Hades burst into the loudest scream of fury with his shaking hands, writing the most courteous letter inviting Theseus and Pirithous to his own palace. To make sure they would be there, he even included in his note a hand-drawn map of Erebus' entrance by the cave of Laconian Taenarum before ordering Askalaphos to take the message to their recipients without fail.
Upon reading the divine invitation, the two princes hasted their way to the underworld, where a shadow was waiting for them beside the river Cocytus. It possessed a segmented curved tail on his back with a mixture of dark gas emanating from his head, the icy breeze that had the smell of fear wrapped all around it. Pulling tears out of the eyes, it burned on their skin, and yet when it came closer, it was just a man in their likeness—Hades.
He was taller than them, paler, with flowing, long, wavy dark hair that created the waves of mysterious fumes that they spotted from afar. "Theseus, Pirithous, I'm glad you accepted my kind invitation."
They winced back at first, muttering stupidities between them, before Pirithous drew nearer. Doubts grew as he circled Hades again, sniffing and examining every piece of armour. "Are you really Hades, the hospitaler of the deceased, the God of the Wealth, King of the Underworld?"
With his eyebrows furrowed across his forehead, Theseus also chimed in, "Besides, wasn't Hades supposed to be hideous?"
Clenching his jaw in annoyance at his guest, Hades spread out immense black wings from his back. "If I were a simple mortal man in disguise, would I be able to do this?"
Pirithous and Theseus shrugged their shoulders in answer, causing the headache on Hades to hurt even more. Without a warning, he seized them both by the throat within each of his hands and flew them into one of the many chambers of his palace.
The one they were in was adorned in gold from the floor to the never-ending ceiling, with a gargoyle-sculpted fireplace at the end, hidden behind the most opulent of all the cypress tree tables. Two massive roasted chickens, accompanied by an ever-flowing red wine in drinking horns, and finally one pomegranate, composed the dinner that Hades offered them.
Turning around, Hades held one of his long arms out at this feast. "Please be seated on your thrones, my friends."
As he spoke, gilded chairs suddenly appeared from the ground while his guests, who had landed on their stomachs, stood up and dusted themselves out before sitting at the table. Whistling, hands rubbing, and eyes sparkling with joy, Theseus and Pirithous thought they were in heaven and hurried to devour their meals, while Hades only pursed his mouth at their hungers. He moved to rest one of his shoulders against the wall, standing by the fireplace with his pomegranate.
Curiosity took over Pirithous when his mouth was full of juicy meat. "We heard how you abducted Persephone; what an exquisite work of art!" He paused for a sip of wine. "You dragged her down with so much devotion from the highest of heaven to the deepest of hell that I had to ask. Is it true that you chained her to your bed and raped her until she couldn't no longer cry?"
In a nonchalant attitude, Hades leaned back and crossing his arms, wondering out loud, "So this is what mortal men are dreaming of—the way I can torture a goddess?"
After a bite of meat, Theseus also asked, "Did she scream when you profaned her maidenhood?"
With a pinched expression, Pirithous nudged at his friend's elbow. "She must have; only beautiful women deserve such punishment. Was Persephone truly worthy of the offence, Hades?"
"She is the most beautiful of all that I have ever seen in my entire deathless life."
On this answer, Hades opened a window behind them, and his orchard came into sight with an innocent Persephone there. Lips smiling wholeheartedly, her arms twisted around her flowery swing, with her skirt getting shorter as she pushed forward to the sky, only holding back to the ground by her trim ankles.
The obscene eyes of the guests wandered along the body of Persephone. They licked over her light tummy to her round bosom, with her small nipples only veiled by her own long ginger hair.
However, the object of their attention wasn't the lust over her flesh. An uncontrollable desire consumed them both to sully her childlike face, bringing tears to her deep grey eyes, and to stuff that annoying laughing mouth of hers once and for all.
Pirithous was the first to stand up, trying to reach out to the forbidden goddess, but as he moved, his whole body became stuck to his throne as if it had melted to it. Theseus suffered from the same treatment; then the gold faded to a dirty grey wall, the wine was foetid human waste, and the meats were merely dead rats, still in their fur. The room had now turned gruesome with the disgusted two princes, trying in vain to vomit out whatever they just swallowed down.
Looming over his targets, Hades snorted. "And you thought that simple heedless mortals can just come to my realm and abduct my one true love!" His tone came out dead as Theseus and Pirithous now faced the real Hades. Grunting from his now helmeted voice, he continued, "Couldn't you understand that love is pure?"
And just like this, he threw the both of them out of his palace with their seats.
They fell down into the orchard, where Hades joined them and made the sky rain giant rocks over their snared bodies. A smile cracked on his lips until a maddening laughter seized his whole being. Hades couldn't stop the hilarity of the situation until Theseus and Pirithous were completely buried in his unforgiving blue eyes.
Then Hades walked away from them, eating his pomegranate—the only edible food discarded by his guests. On his way back to his palace, he lifted his chin, only to spot a red shooting star in the sky.
Red for danger, and no one to challenge its power. Red for anger, that they all ignored the passion. Red as in love, the brutal rage of courage. Red for the wine, and her rosy cheeks, To the intense colour of her hair, But also red as the blood. An almighty royal red, That lived and ruled in all the underworld's sky.
They were all blind to the new red in the sky, but only Hades feared it, as he knew this could only be Persephone.
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