Mousai's POV
"The river of Styx acts as a form of transport throughout the underworld, connecting each and every vein to each other that under normal circumstances...Charon would be the only way to traverse it." Persephone explains as she tries to shake Hel awake. Climbing on top of her as she did to Zagreus and slapping her face whilst continuing eye contact with me. "Zagreus show her." She orders him.
With a saddened look he continues doing as she commands, giving no room for us to even properly greet each other still. I grit my teeth, shutting myself up before I say something that I'll regret.
He peels down a deep grove of vines that glow a luminescent blue as they absorb the water from the Styx, an infinitely cascading waterfall that goes on and on into an endless abyss, filled by only the elevated mist from the water seemingly hitting something at the end. "And this was meant to take us back to the surface? It's flowing down." I ask with a scrunched brow.
"It doesn't matter if it's down or up, swim." She explains, climbing off of Hel before making her way next to me and reaching out to the water. "And before you say it's going to kill us." She swipes her hand through, splashing it back at us with reassurance. "While the Styx carries souls of the damned, my plants carry the souls that reside within the Elysian fields, the two interact and become...this." She cups her hands together to catch some, bringing it to her lips and drinking with a satisfying gasp. "Ah, nothing like some dead human water. Anyways, up we go?" She gestures.
"And what about Hel?" I try to pick her arm up and place it around my neck but Persephone slaps it off me.
"No she's definitely dead" She makes her way to her legs, pulling them gradually towards the edge of the wall. "It's only fair we dispose of it the best way we can." Persephone wipes away a forced tear, rubbing her hands off on her dress as if she's appalled by having to touch Hel more than she needs to. "It's just going to be so hard...being the only goddess in the Underworld...me and her were so close...like sis-" She kicks her into the pit. "So we're going up?" She interrupts herself.
"I-don't-" The words won't leave my mouth, I'm not sure what I expected but it wasn't that.
"Come you two!" She pulls me and Zagreus along, jumping into the crashing water and effortlessly floating upward. "WOOOOO!" I hear her gurgled scream through the water as we flow higher and higher into darkness.
She had described it as a connection within the layers of the underworld, something that I haven't laid my eyes on before. But now that I'm inside of it, living and nearly melting inside this water. I can't help but notice the slight shimmers appearing throughout the pitch black walls. 'A connection that shouldn't be made...a connection that couldn't be made.' I think to myself as the iridescent colours try to crack through the walls, eerily feeling like those same bright pink eyes are being pressed against the back of my neck as it did back then with Oracion. Watching me from a place incomprehensible to our own thoughts, a world in between we ones we know.
She swims to one of the sides, putting her head out of the water to enable her to speak, "We're almost there, look up!" She points to the icy blue mist above us, instantly covering our skin in a brief chill as we're shoved past it.
At this point we had made two mistakes. Our first was leaving Hel, our second was proceeding into that exact same woman's domain without her presence. The place one could call closest to the murmur due to her blood relations. These all hit us at once as what I could only describe as the weight of the world itself having fallen upon me.
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"DOWN! GO DOWN!" Persephone shouts as she desperately tries to fall out of the water to avoid whatever it is above her. "HEL WASN'T GOING TO MENTION THEM!?" She screams in rage.
Zagreus quickly heeds her warning as he tries to do the same, all but me.
The eyes, the two sets of pure gold that are watching me from a place I have yet to reach. "MOUSAI!" Zagreus screams as they both fall past me and attempt to reach one of my hands but as if something else took command, I tuck them back into myself.
Something's telling me to go to them, to talk to them. 'Faster' I think to myself, hoping that I can see their faces sooner. Bit by bit they become more visible to me almost as quick as my brain had began to match the description I had been told many many years ago. Two gods with the bodies of animals, their eyes as gold as the sun but their flesh covered by fur. Snouts made to hunt and teeth made to eat, watching me as they stand tall and proud on two hind legs. The ones labelled as, "Wolf."
A wolf of white and a wolf of black, each with their own minimal differences but nearly the spitting image of each other. Their grins grow as I become within reaching distance, grabbing one of my legs and hanging me upside down. Ripping me out of the water and sniffing me vigorously as the white one licks my face with a gargantuan tongue.
It's said long ago that the gods were forced to take the guise of humans as a form of punishment...something that was said to limit them psychologically so they don't act upon their true nature. So why is it that these two, these two beings the size of a home are able to keep their birthed form some may ask.
"Mousai, right?" The one in black questions with fluency to his animalistic tongue.
I remain silent as the answer finally comes to me, "Skoll." I respond, earning a large grin in response. And to the one in white, "Hati." I watch as his ears perk up. The sons of Fenrir.
"You smell a bit like that old beast, not the Zs of course. But the thing they used to be." Skoll puts his snout to my stomach once more as he continues taking in whiffs.
Hati pulls me from Skoll's two finger grasp, placing me on the floor in front of him before pushing against my chest with a singular finger. "You're all so small, don't you feel weak? Surely you do!" He continuously pokes me. His face leans in with each individual word, opening far too wide for my liking as he could swallow me whole.
"Stop poking her and maybe she'll answer." Skoll pulls his brother's finger away from me.
Hati laughs a little before standing to his full height, "And if I don't?" he stares into Skoll's eyes as a thick silence is placed upon us both, a state of life that I thought only my Grace could allow.
I feel my words being robbed from me as I look around desperately trying to find my way out of this scenario, 'Oracion' I think to myself.
Feeling the very temple itself rock as I suddenly find myself within one of Hati's fists, holding me up as the brothers look toward a poorly lit space within the corner. Their bickering stopped as they find a mutual target to direct themselves toward.
Skoll approaches it slowly, "It was only for a second."
Hati follows him, "But we both heard it." his grasp clenches, causing me to let out a little wheeze and remind him that I exist. "Did you?" He shakes me violently until Skoll stops him.
"Hea-r...what?" I ask, partly wondering if I'm just going to be killed as an accident.
"A call." They both sync their deep pitches as Hati loses his playfulness for a second.
"I do-n't unders-tand" I barely squeeze out my breaths.
Skoll takes me from Hati's hand, "Where's Hel?" Walking back to the waterfall's hole before placing me down for both their faces to lean in front of me once again.
"I..." My eyes look down at the pit, being able to take a wild guess as to what I'm going to have to do.
"Persephone?" He asks.
"Yes." I sigh.
"Find Hel in Tartarus and bring her back up here. If you come back and she's not here...I can't say for certain that you'll be leaving this place in the same way." He gently threatens.
Hati inhales, blowing a large gust with a smirk along his face. Forcing the gales to push me further and further to the edge until one of my shoes finally slip.
My last glimpse of their figures leave my head stinging with a thought, one created from the pain they briefly inflicted on me, one created from the powerless stature they forced me to sit in.
"I want to control them."