Someone is curled up asleep in the temple in the floating starscape that normally holds Chaos. She's nestled in a blanket made of a different set of stars, looking as still and peaceful as death is supposed to be, for people that actually find that debilitating or something. Her hair is long and loose and a brilliant (and somewhat unnatural) shade of red, and she's almost unnaturally beautiful. Not quite up to Aphrodite levels of impossible, overwhelming beauty, but the sort of thing that would put paintings to shame. If a little inhuman, and not in the ways the denizens of the Underworld usually are.

And with little warning, a peculiar young man arrives. The sclera of his right eye are as pitch-black as his hair, and his right iris glows red. He wears laurels of red and orange, flickering leaves floating away like embers from a bonfire. His feet are bare, and one could be excused if they believed they were made of molten magma, although the effect fades to normal (if somewhat more faded than usual) skin up his ankles, which are mostly hidden by iron shinguards topped by an iron skull at the knee level. A long piece of cloth, blood-red and dark grey, is carefully wrapped around his torso in a chiton, attached to his body by a belt of skulls and a similarly macabre shoulderpad. He has a red, faintly glowing sword attached to his hip, and his gait as he regains his composure after whatever event transported him there belies intimate familiarity with the weapon.

He takes a couple of steps towards the sleeping figure before he notices her and stops in his tracks as soon as he does. "Well, you're new," he says, furrowing his eyebrows. "Uh, in the name of Hades, who... are you?"

A single white-gold eye opens on the blanket, to look at him. Then the blanket flits away into nothingness beneath the woman like a shadow confronted with light, and she opens her eyes and sits up. Her eyes are a much more ordinary hazel, though still subtly more inhuman than the recently dead, or someone from Elysium.

"Hello. I'm Yvette." She tilts her head and looks at him. "You're not of this place, you're... from further up."

"I... suppose you could put it that way. My name is Zagreus."

"Well, it's nice to meet you. How did you get here? I highly doubt it was the way I got here." She looks around, and spots the portal. "Oh, I see. That hadn't been there earlier. .... Why is it so sharp."

He looks up at where she's staring then back at her, blinking. "It looks pretty round from where I'm standing."

"No, I mean, it bites. It doesn't even need to! Someone just made it that way because they could! That's very rude."

"Oh, yeah. That would be Chaos. I believe the little trinket they gave me would let me bypass that inconvenience."

“Biting should be opt-in, not opt-out,” she sniffs. “That’s how consent works, Chaos!”

He laughs. "I opted in when I decided to step through the portal."

Her eyes flash the same white-gold of the earlier eye on the blanket. “Yes, but you’ve done this before. Did Chaos explain the mechanism of the portal biting before the very first time you hopped into it?”

"Well... no, but somehow I knew anyway," says Zagreus, furrowing his eyebrows again.

She considers this, looking a bit petulant. Then she crosses her arms and huffs a sigh.

“... Fine. I guess that counts as informed consent. I apologize for my incorrect assumption, and I’m sorry for raising my voice.”

She gets the understanding that she is forgiven, with a slight undertone (that would be amusement if amusement were the kind of thing Chaos was wont to express) that it's harder to offend them than calling their portals "nonconsensually sharp".

And from Zagreus's snicker he received the same memo.

“Well even if I didn’t offend you I was due to give an apology anyway. Out of principle.”

No response seems forthcoming this time.

"It is probably a good idea to err on the side of being too polite when dealing with gods," Zagreus says, nodding. "Even when one is themself a god...?" he adds, tilting his head in Yvette's direction.

She furrows her brows.

“Do I seem like a god? Well. I suppose I might be. I don’t know. I’m not the same kind as you, though.”

"More like Chaos? Or the Titans?"

“... Closer, but I’m still not like them. I’m not from your world at all. And most of me isn’t even here. Not that I’d come, the place above seems so sticky.”

"Sticky."

“It’s not nice to poke fun at people who need more practice at talking,” she sniffs. “Yes. Sticky. It doesn’t want to let anything go.”

"That it doesn't. He... doesn't... Anyway."

“You sound aggravated. Are you trying to get out?” She squints at him, her eyes flashing gold again. “Oh, no wonder, that’s offensive. You were just born here!”

"—I apologise? Erm, offensive how, exactly?"

"Not you. The thing keeping you. It's offensive, I'm offended. Can I just....? Oh, no. The only way out is through. Damn."

"My Father? I suppose he is pretty offensive as a person."

"You're not wrong, but you're also not right, either."

"I seem to be that pretty often in this conversation," he comments, smiling.

"I'm really out of practice at talking, sorry."

"You're doing fine! All your words even have meanings, which is more than I can say for some people."

“I don’t have the context to understand the implication there. Why wouldn’t my words have meanings? That is what words are for.”

"I should introduce you to Charon sometime."

“I assume that will make more sense if I do meet him.”

"He usually communicates by grunts that I have yet to find out how to decipher."

“Oh, I see. Well, now I’m curious, so I suppose I’ll have to meet him.”

"Father must be able to talk to him, I think."

"Or they have worked out an elaborate sign language. Which seems the obvious thing to do if one can only grunt."

"That... is a possibility I hadn't considered, yes!"

"Or a chalkboard. Actually, have you mentioned that you can't understand him and tried to work around it?"

"Well, I've mentioned it, but I haven't really... had much time to chat, whenever I ran into him."

"Oh. Okay. Well, I can make you a chalkboard if you want one. Or at least, something that functions like one, anyway."

"I might take you up on that, if I run into you again. But I neglected to include chalkboard-sized pockets in this garb," he says, motioning down at his chiton.

"I could tie it to a string, or maybe on the end of a necklace. Though that would be very unwieldy. Hmm. Expandable, maybe...? Oh, you probably have access to the thing that makes chalkboards without me, I'm likely devoting too much thought to this."

"The thing that makes chalkboards being?"

"..... S...late...? I'm guessing, I don't know."

"I think I shall just ask Father. Once he's gotten used to the idea that I'm not staying down here forever."

"Or you could play an elaborate game of charades with.... Charon, was it? Hm. Ferryman of the Underworld?"

"The one and only, yes. Are you acquainted?"

"Not... in so many words, no. Who's your father?"

"Hades, Lord of the Underworld and god of the dead."

".... Huh. And there's a Zeus and an Aphrodite and other assorted Greek gods? ... Who's your mom, the flower goddess whose kidnapping explains the seasons?"

"Yes wait the what?"

“... Which part of that was questionable, because we’re at the limit of my accrued history channel binge knowledge.”

"My... mother is Persephone, who has not as far as I know been kidnapped although that would explain where she has been over the past years that is not here. I do not know what seasons are."

“Oh, no, uh. Kidnapped in the other direction. To be Hades’s wife. But if she’s not splitting the year in half on a timeshare between Hades and, uh, her... mom....? I don’t know what to tell you.”

"My father does not allow anyone to speak her name. Until recently I thought Nyx was my mother, and only found out otherwise by accident. And that is why I'm trying to leave."

Well, that is some of the reason, at least.

"Okay. Well. This is very like some mythology from my home, back when I was human, but. I never knew it very well, it's been a while, and demonstrably it's not necessarily very accurate. Does Zeus uh, have sex with anything vaguely female shaped without any care for the word 'no,' can that be inaccurate?"

"I think his preference for females is not strict."

"That is not the direction I wanted confirmation in. Ugh." She makes a face, then her entire body turns to a starscape and promptly liquidates into a dark puddle on the floor.

"This is probably ultimately a good thing, because I'm probably close to home if the myths are at all similar," grumbles the puddle of stars on the ground, "but ugh, I am going to spend a lot of my free time here being an unappealing puddle."

The puddle bubbles. Grumpily.

"I think I am missing quite a lot of context, here."

"I do not want to pick a fight with a whole pantheon of gods just because one of them gets a boner for me because I'm female shaped. So. I am a puddle. I think it's a very tidy solution, personally."

"I admire your creativity," he says, eventually. "I do not think he reaches this far down, anyway."

"It's not even just him!! This is just a thing that happens!! So I'm a puddle and I'm not coming out and you can't make me."

"I would not dream of it."

"That was more of a strongly worded emotional expression than an actual expectation that you'd try." The puddle blurbles with the word 'expression,' as if to add some sort of body language to. Being a puddle. "I don't even see how trying would work."

"I could try to be very persuasive about the benefits of having a body."

“I can have a body elsewhere. Being a puddle here doesn’t mean I have to be a puddle everywhere, and most of me isn’t even here.”

"Where is most of you, then?"

“You ask that like I’ve given names to all of the places I’ve been. Mostly they’ve been empty and sad and not worth the trouble. Most of me’s not in this world, anyway.”

"Well, it's news to me that there are more worlds," he says, shrugging a bit and stretching his neck. "Anyway, I should probably move on ahead before Father notices where I ran off to."

“Yes, don’t let me keep you. Actually, can I help you escape?”

"Well, only you can answer that, I think. I would not refuse an offer."

“Well the obvious thing to do would be to just follow you around as an eldritch puddle on the floor and directly help with problems as you encounter them. Maybe add some sarcastic commentary along the way. Oh, but that’s not how everyone else is helping you, is it. Hm. I think I can probably give you a blessing like the others you have.”

"Or both, I would not object to both."

"You may have both," says the Yvette-puddle, bubbling a little with amusement. "Hm. Let me give you options, that seems to be the way things are done here."

There's a pause, then: he is offered some options! He may have one of three choices. His teleport/dash can leave a ghostly after-image that will briefly trick enemies into thinking he'd never left, his sword can draw enemies towards him when he does this specific special action, or his blood magic cast can take on a slow moving, gravity warping effect that draws enemies towards the center.

"I think I can only do one for now, unless you have any spare stars available for me to eat."

"I think I'll what do you mean any spare stars?"

".... It's not as bad as it sounds. When I'm actually eating them, I only pick the ones with dead systems. Usually the unstable ones that were going to explode anyway, since I don't even know what I'd do with a whole star's mass. And most of the time I just siphon off what the star's already giving off. Basically soaking up sunlight? Except also heat and radiation."

"I think my mostly theoretical knowledge of stars is not up to par so instead I will just pick the gravity effect."

"Here you go." Gravity effect! "And the stars that I ate were giant balls of super-hot plasma, not, uh, whatever thing may be going on in this world with them. It's fine, really!"

"My thanks, Lady Yvette."

And three round holes open up on the floor of the temple floating in the middle of the starry void, smoky darkness leaking from each of them.

"You're welcome. And thank you for the doors that don't bite, Chaos!"

Well, she has no idea which door is the one Zagreus wants, so she'll just bundle up her puddle into a starry blob, and hop onto his shoulder. The one with the skulls. Actually, she can just go into the skulls to hang out, and be nice and unobtrusive. Maybe this is a bit gross, but her sense of what is and isn't gross is incredibly skewed, since she spent a lot of her early time as whatever-she-is throwing up and bleeding starscapes out from underneath her fingernails. And she can clean them of any leftover organic bits if they're not clean. But they're fine, right, he wouldn't be wearing really gross skulls on his shoulder everywhere he goes, right? ... Right?

No organic bits on or in the skulls, no, sir.

Zagreus looks at the three portals and decides on one of them seemingly at random, then in he goes.

They travel through a quick void, and Zagreus lands on one knee in a dark chamber of stone sectioned off from what appears to be moving darkness, with pinpricks of light from small crude buildings visible in the distance. Pillars of stone and various vases adorn the place, but it's eerily empty.

Until bells like death knolls start sounding.

Which causes Zagreus to immediately perk up and get to his feet.

She has no idea what that means! That's a bit intimidating, she's glad she decided to tuck herself away in the skulls on his shoulder. She reminds herself that she is a scary eldritch abomination from beyond the veil of the world, and there is no reason at all for her to be intimidated by some bells. Mhm. No reason at all. Also she's not hiding, she's neatly tucked away. Yes. That is what's happening here.

After a couple of seconds, another young man appears. His hair is silver and his eyes are gold, but the most notable thing about him is the enormous scythe he has attached to his back. His chiton is dark purple, held in place by various skull—and wings-themed pieces of jewellery, and has a hood which he has pulled up above his head. Despite this, his right pec, shoulder, and arm are left uncovered. He has leg guards similar to Zagreus's, and is also barefoot, although his feet do not look like they are made of lava.

"Than!"

"Hello, Zagreus," says the young man. Then he fixes his gaze onto Zagreus's shoulder. "And who's that with you?"

"Yvette, hi," says the blob of night tucked away on his shoulder, poking a little bit of starscape out from the skulls. "Nice to meet you," she adds, a little shyly. Look, she's intimidated, okay, he has a large scythe and his arrival is announced by a doom bell, he is intimidating.

"I am Thanatos," he says, simply. "A pleasure to meet you," although it sure doesn't sound it, with the monotone he uses to talk.

She doesn't particularly mind the monotone, actually. Thanatos, Thanatos, she has no idea what he's the Greek deity of, but the name sounds ominous? Actually maybe she should just look at him instead of being a blob of starscape.

A white-gold iris forms and glows from within one of the skulls' eye sockets on Zagreus's shoulder, and looks at Thanatos.

"Oh. The god of death," she says, thoughtfully. "Though more of a merciful relocation to the Underworld than just making them stop. You must be very busy."

"Yes, particularly with the war the mortals seem to be having at the moment. Not that any of this ever occurred to a certain cousin of mine."

"Hey, come on, Than..."

“Is it just you? For all mortals, everywhere in the world? Oh it is, that’s terrible. What happens when an industrial revolution hits. What if you want a vacation! Do you just leave everybody awkwardly in agonizing mid death limbo whenever you go on a water break?!”

"Time tends to be on my side," he replies, cryptically enough.

"Wait, I don't suppose I could get in on that? That would make these escape attempts way easier."

"No."

“It is probably rude to ask someone with a very busy job that requires the bending of time and probably also space to accomplish to give you freebies,” says Yvette, in a stage-whisper. “Especially when you’re asking him to bend time and probably also space to help you break a fundamental rule of part of the foundation of the world. That he is extremely connected to. I’m not saying it’s not a dumb rule that doesn’t need it, just. I don’t think death-as-it-exists-in-this-world is the thing to hit it with. I think if he can’t do his job very bad things happen for everybody.”

Pout.

"Well, how about we stop wasting time and get going, then, shall we?"

And as he says that a number of glowing circles of light of various sizes start appearing on the floor around the chamber.

Naturally, she peers at the glowing circles of light with her eye!

“Oh. They’re not going to calmly negotiate about the way the Underworld should be arranged and who should be forcibly kept inside it, are they.”

"Nope," says Zagreus, popping the 'p'. He grabs the sword from his hip and stretches a bit. "Come at me."

Various creatures emerge from the circles. Specifically, a couple of floating torsos and floating skulls, as well as two piles of non-floating but still yellow-with-glowing-red-eyes skulls.

The god of death grabs his own weapon of choice and gestures at one of the skulls.

The smoky, glowing purple scythe that appears above said skull is probably indicative of something, but Zagreus dashes at approximately the speed of sound towards it and a single slice from his sword is enough to break it to pieces.

"Showoff," says Thanatos in a volume probably too soft for Zag himself to hear.

“For the record,” says Yvette in a loud voice from Zagreus’s shoulder, “This is a dumb and inefficient way of working out domestic disputes!”

... but it is admittedly pretty nice to watch two pretty boys kill things with great efficiency. Fortunately for her, she’s a starry blob, so no one can tell what she’s thinking.

If they have anything to say to that, they are both too busy slaying things to do so.

Thanatos's way of dealing with the wretches is slow but extremely efficient; anything that's still up by the time his mark goes off will no longer be.

But Zagreus definitely takes a more hands-on approach. He takes a couple of tries to get the hang of the gravity gift Yvette bestowed upon him but once he has he uses it to great effect. The great effect is often dragging wretches out of Thanatos's reach so that Zag can get the kill rather than Than, which obviously makes the whole thing take way longer than it needs to, but it works anyway.

The first time this happens:

"Are you kill stealing. Are you using my blessing to kill steal. That's so rude!"

No words, only death.

Death has words, though: "I have never known Zag to play fair, and would be surprised to see him start now," he drawls.

"Next time I'm helping Thanatos," sniffs the blob of stars from Zagreus's shoulder, loftily. "Because I know what sportsmanship is."

"As if Thanatos played fair, either!"

Oh now he can talk.

"You're just mad because you like my gravity warping effect and you're going to pout when I give it to someone else!"

"He's the god of death he doesn't need more advantages!"

"You're the god of life, do you?"

At that point wretches stop appearing.

"I think he's admitting that he does," she conspires, amused.

"'Course I do," he says, shrugging and relaxing his posture. "And I'm not god of anything. Twenty-five," he adds.

"Eleven," sighs the god of death.

"It was not a fair contest so I, as the unaffiliated and unbiased third party, do not declare a winner."

"He can kill these things with a look! I have to actually break a sweat."

"It doesn't matter," says Thanatos, floating over to where Zagreus is, his feet not touching the ground. "Here. Have this," he says, offering a heart-shaped jewel the size of a football also floating above his hands.

"Oh. Thank you, Than," he says, meaning it. When he extends his hands to accept the heart, it floats towards him and disappears into his chest.

This is all very interesting to look at! Huh. What a charming and efficient way to transfer power. Also, cute. Does it need to be heart shaped? Aw, are the gods of death and life boyfriends, because that would be adorable!

"What would have happened if Thanatos won?" she wonders, curiously.

"I wouldn't have given him the Centaur Heart."

"Is your love that conditional, Than?"

Probably most people who received a look this withering from the god of death would be significantly more scared than Zagreus seems to be.

"Are we done here?"

Okay, so they’re totally boyfriends. Cute!

“Do you want company while you’re at work? It seems like it might get kind of lonely, especially if there’s time warping going on. I can tag along with two people at once.”

"Do what you will."

"Hey, how come she gets to tag along and I don't?"

Withering look.

“Oh, that’s true. Technically you’d be getting me out of the Underworld if I went with you. I wouldn’t want to get you in trouble. I could send a very small piece of me and hand you a binding to it, and you can kill it and send it back to the Underworld if I try to run? I realize you have ultimate job security but your entire pantheon is really touchy.”

"I feel like it would not be a problem either way, but thank you."

“Well, you have my permission to kill the part of me tagging along with you if it looks like I’m doing anything sketchy. I won’t, but I understand incentives.”

A tiny mote of starscape separates itself from the greater whole to go float out in front of him where he can grab it! It is very small, and neatly self contained, and ridiculously easy for him to extinguish.

Sure he can grab that.

"You might want to learn a thing or two from this new friend of yours, Zagreus," he says, before disappearing in a flash of darkness.

Sigh.

“I’m sorry,” murmurs Yvette, from his shoulder. “To be fair, I also don’t think he can just drag you out. The part of me with him is very small, and you can’t separate like I do, and I don’t think it’d be the thing you want if you’re stuck following him instead of going where you want under your own power. But I think he’d pull you out if he could, and that he’s doing everything he can to help.”

"Would that he'd say that."

“... Yeah. But I think he is. Do you want a hug, I’ll even go human shaped for it.”

"Uh, why?"

“... be...cause you’re sad and physical comfort helps with that? It is also fine if you’d rather not?”

"I—don't think anyone's ever offered, before, is all. I think it would be nice?"

“Yeah. I probably need one too, anyway.”

The blob of stars drips out of his set of skulls to form another puddle on the floor in front of him. Out of the puddle rises Yvette, who offers a tentative little smile and two open arms.

O...kay. He's not sure how this goes exactly with the armour but he can probably step forward and hug?

Hug!

She is quite snuggly, and not apparently made out of goop at all.

Okay! This is... nice. It's nice. He rests his chin on the top of her head and shuts his eyes for a second.

"Tell me if my armour is uncomfortable."

“It’s fine,” hums a very happy Yvette, nestling against him. Snuggles! Snuuuuuuggles! She’s so happy.

Yeah. Yeah, okay, this is. Nice.

"—I should probably move on ahead though," he says after a while.

“Okay,” she agrees, just a trace sadly. She gives him a little squeeze. “But you can ask later if you’d like a hug, okay?”

"Yeah, okay."

She pulls away from the hug to look at him, “And, hey. I’m going to do my best to get you out too, okay? Within reason. I don’t want to break the Underworld completely open and let all of the dead and imprisoned dangers cause mayhem in the mortal realm, but. I thought about it. I will definitely yell at your dad and maybe literally fight him about it. Okay?”

He laughs.

"Alright. Onwards."

“Onwards!”

She melts back into a puddle of darkness and stars, and then hops back onto his shoulder. In the skulls.

Thanatos's first destination is a war camp on a plain, hidden by rocks. There are tents strewn about, with soldiers standing at attention at the edges of the encampment. He appears right in the middle of the encampment, and starts floating towards a specific tent. Despite his towering, ominous appearance, no one seems to notice him, even when he floats right by their faces.

Medical tent, probably. That'd be the obvious first destination for the personification of death. What she'd like to do is figure out a way to heal everybody in it and put Thanatos out of a job, but actually she doesn't... have the knowledge or the power to do that. Yet. And besides;

"They just go right back to killing each other if they recover from their injuries, don't they," she sighs.

"Such is the condition of mortals."

"What a damned waste. Thank you, for this. I know it probably sucks. Though, to be fair, the minute I figure out how, I'd like to put you out of a job."

"Death is inescapable."

He floats over to what does, indeed, seem to be the medical tent, larger than most others, and ducks his head to get in. Inside, various beds with patients in conditions of varied severity await, with medics flitting this way and that to take care of them, or writing documents, or just resting.

"Fine, then I'd like to make your job cushy and boring and meant only for extremely old people after long, fulfilling lives who want to move on to hanging out in the Underworld with all of the cool people," she sniffs.

Thanatos doesn't reply. Instead, he floats to one of the beds, where a particularly pale young man lies asleep. Although he is covered by a blanket, the volume of his body under it betrays the loss of one leg. His sickly visage seems like it would be sleeping fitfully if it had the energy for fits, but as it is he merely waits.

Thanatos lowers to the ground, dropping to one knee, and puts a hand on the boy's forehead. "It is time," he says, and the death knoll rings, disturbing none but the dead himself, whose eyes open suddenly.

    "Lord Thanatos?" asks the shade.

"You have fought well, and now you shall take your leave."

Yvette has the good grace and sense to not interrupt. Her tiny little mote of night just stays nestled on the top of his head, hidden by his hood and hair. Warm and small and hopefully some measure of comforting, for the one guy that has to watch every single mortal in the world die.

He offers the shade his hand, then stands up, pulling the man to his feet as well. "Hermes will be here soon."

The shade nods, trembling a bit, and Thanatos turns to leave.

Thanatos's head is very snuggled by this tiny warm mote of darkness.

"He doesn't tend to slack on the job, does he...?" murmurs Yvette, a little concerned for lost souls wandering around in the world.

Thanatos looks over his shoulder and nods in the direction of the shade to show that he is already gone.

"Oh, good." Head snug!

"Would you like conversation, music, or companionable silence?"

"I don't have much to talk about."

There's a frame skip and they are elsewhere. A small village, in front of a stone house.

"And I'm atrociously out of practice! But I can probably still chatter at you, if it wouldn't get on your nerves."

"I do not have nerves."

He floats up to the door and opens it, and the noises become sharper and resolve into a woman moaning loudly in pain.

Yvette thinks that statement is bullshit, but it's probably not productive to say so, so she doesn't.

"Hmm. I suppose you must have a high tolerance for things," she agrees.

For some reason, listening to someone moaning in pain sort of distracts from her ability to chatter.

    They move to a back room where a woman is in a bathtub, being helped by two other women. "Push harder," one of the women says, "I can almost see his head!"

"This might get uncomfortable," says Thanatos in his usual monotonic drawl. "She is not going to deliver the baby. I am meant to take both."

“Oh, fuck pre-industrial standards of medical care and child mortality rates,” she swears fiercely. She opens an eye to peer more closely at the scene before them. Is whatever’s going to go wrong obvious, and possible to maybe fix on a shoestring budget?

It's not obvious at first, but given that Thanatos probably did not take them to an hour before the actual deaths—and there it is, the first thing the woman manages to push out is not the baby's head. Or feet. Or anything else; it seems to be the umbilical cord.

That is not fixable on a shoestring budget. Not at all.

“Does the Underworld have good systems for childcare?” she wonders, softly.

"We try to keep babies with their mothers when we can."

“Thank you.”

Sad hair nestle. Okay, so break out of the Underworld with Zag and then go shove some industrialization down the throats of humanity, that sounds like a plan.

It does not take long for the baby to die after the compressions cut off its oxygen. Thanatos lays a hand on top of the pregnant woman's belly, and then he's cradling the baby in his arms. "I'm sorry, little girl," he tells the baby. It's a very small baby, and clearly a newborn despite the lack of the telltale blood that a recent birth would have.

Yvette slides out of Thanatos’s hair, hops down his arm, and scoots over on his hand to croon a little lullaby to the recently deceased baby.

The woman still doesn't know her baby won't come out, but her pushes are growing fainter. The compressions ruptured the umbilical cord, and now she is bleeding rather a lot. "Just another moment and you will meet your mum," he murmurs to the conspicuously silent baby. "They don't cry when they die here," he explains, probably to Yvette. "They don't feel any pain."

She gives a little affirmative hum against his hand, nuzzling it a little, but yep. She’s still going to keep gently singing to the little baby. It helps drown out the sounds of a woman dying in childbirth, anyway.

It only takes a minute before the death knell, and Thanatos looks at the woman again to offer her his hand. He takes hers and pulls her to her feet, then offers her the baby. "It's a beautiful baby girl," he says, softly.

    "—oh. She's... I'm..."

"Yes."

There’s no real comfort Yvette can offer here, as a tiny mote of stars. She’ll just quietly slide back up to return to her nesting spot in Thanatos’s hair. With proper medical attention they both could have been fine, it’s so incredibly unfair and she hates it so much. She was already working on how to transfer power to herself through the fabric of this very structured world with its powerful barriers, but now she’s working on it with great prejudice.

"Hermes will be with you, for your next abode. I'm sorry it had to be this way."

And he turns to leave. Hermes takes the shade before they can notice.

“It doesn’t, actually,” she says. “Have to be this way. Forever, I mean, there’s not much to be done about it now. If we come across someone I think I can save, may I try?”

"...you may, but the Fates might not agree with your choice. Then again, it might be Fated that you would intervene."

Oh, fuck the Fates, she doesn’t say, but thinks, very loudly.

“Thank you. Is there a way I could know their ruling beforehand?”

"My sisters are not known to take kindly to visitors. There have been situations when they chose to disclose their designs, but they have all been at their own discretion."

“Well, then I suppose I’ll just have to act as I think is best, and apologize to them if I have upset any of their plans.”

"As do we all." Teleport now they're in a big city. "I believe they gave Zagreus access to a few prophecies in which he personally takes part."

"Huh! How does he feel about that?"

"You would have to ask him."

"I will, whenever we're done hanging out in the time weirdness and I can talk to myself again. This is a little weird to experience, it's not at all like the time relativity I'm used to working with. Kinda neat, though."

"It's the only one I know."

Here's the house of a rich guy who's in bed surrounded by loved ones in his last moments.

Oh, that's a nice way to go. Good for the rich guy, probably.

"Well, from my perspective it's kind of like most of my mind is opaque to the part of me that's thinking for this little mote, and vice versa. Usually it's more like, uh, some of me has more time to think in than others, but I can see it all at the same time, and the differences in speed aren't very large anyway unless part of me's going much faster than others. And here I'm just neatly cut off from myself. I might be able to fight the thing doing this and have my mind be perfectly interconnected again, but that seems like the sort of dumb thing that will not do anything useful at all, get me into at least one big fight, and maybe drive me insane while I'm at it. So. I haven't done that and don't plan to."

"Sensible."

The old guy doesn't have many objections to being taken, and clearly had made his peace with death a while ago.

After he's gone, Thanatos stops for a while, closes his eyes, and takes a deep breath.

Yvette gives a little comforting hum from her nest in his hair. Probably what's going to happen next is going to suck, isn't it. He seems like he thinks it's going to suck, he doesn't seem like the type to just take a break between easy jobs.

They teleport to a battlefield, so the probable answer is "yes".

If the time shenanigans from before were more of the time travel flavour, now the world is decidedly in slow motion. The battle is happening before their eyes, but they can catch the trajectory of each arrow as it flies, see each blow just as it's about to land.

Thanatos has his work cut out for him.

That he does. Wow. Intellectually, she always knew war was Hell, but, well. Yep. This is definitely more Hell-flavored than the literal Underworld part of her's trapped in, isn't it.

She cannot interfere in a way that makes this all stop. Saving someone's life in one moment does not actually get them out of the danger and horrors of war, or even guarantee they'll last the day. Maybe she'll have an opening or two to stabilize someone that's on the edge of bleeding out, but, well. Probably most of what she could potentially do here is actually going to be a major waste of power and attention that could be used elsewhere more efficiently. And looking around with her extra vision - there are other powers at play here. Gods, and powerful ones. She doesn't particularly want to get their attention, or get in the middle of a divine spat. Probably best to just be Thanatos's little mote companion and little else.

Definitely other powers, yes, with Ares and Athena being the most prominent ones. They're both present in small quantities everywhere, but if one pays sufficient attention they will notice they seem to be favouring opposing sides.

This might explain why the battle is less one-sided than these things often are.

The Greek pantheon is such bullshit in so many ways. Who makes two gods of war, of course they're going to fight each other, that's just obvious!

"So," she says, sounding a bit more clinical than usual, "music? I've got some options."

"Do as you will." He has a job to perform, and he will begin with this poor sod who turned around at the wrong moment and caught an arrow to his carotid.

"Give a hum if you approve and a grunt if you don't, then."

And then she slides down to perch beside his ear and starts playing him music. Unfortunately for him, she's only got remembered piano music and some more esoteric instrumental pieces written by Yvette herself. Without any real education or theory in musical composition, she thinks they're passable and interesting, but not actually as good. But hey, those piano lessons in middle school sure keep paying off in unexpected ways, don't they.

He neither hums nor grunts, just moves from one soul to the next: a missed parry here, an arrow to the back there, a sword to the gut elsewhere, two men trampled by their own horses...

War is such Hell!! Such Hell!! Such pointless, stupid Hell!!! Why are there two gods of it and why are they fighting each other with mortals as their playing pieces!! It's not right, it's not fair, and it's completely horrifying on all levels, what the fuck, Olympians! What the fuck!!

She continues playing music, though. Partly for Thanatos, and partly as something to focus on besides unfathomable rage at the injustice of the universe and the petty, cruel gods that toy with it.

Thanatos goes at this with practised ease, as befits someone who has been doing this for centuries, maybe even millennia. His face is stone cold, an impassive mask reaping the souls of all the departed, for as long as the battle lasts. Even his kind words are fewer and farther between, here, and with the number of shades being taken Yvette might even catch a glimpse or two of Hermes escorting them to the boatman.

She's mostly not looking. Zoning out and focusing on musical arrangement seems like the choice that will end with less horrible pointless trauma. She'll notice the lulls in soul reaping, but she's just going to let all of the details slide right by. Thanatos isn't the only one here that can go into a flow state.

Downswing from his sword and he's damaged the hydra's skull enough that it finally cracks, and its last head crumbles to pieces. "Asphodel done," he says, mostly to himself, as he watches the bone pieces dissolve into red mist.

"Oh, good, I suppose that means we leave the tiring and cliche lava level. Why is there so much lava here, anyway? This can't be good for Underworld efficiency. Your feet are constantly on fire and you're uncomfortable standing in it!"

"I think it is technically not actually lava, it's just how the Phlegethon river is."

"Well it wouldn't be lava anyway since we're underground, it'd be magma, but regardless you see my point, yes?"

"Yeah." He shrugs. "I hear it didn't use to be like this, but the river overflowed before I was born, so I don't know."

"Bah. The Underworld's infrastructure must be in shambles, no wonder you're leaving." Her puddle of night flickers over to the boat, and she goes through the trouble of putting her body back together just for the joy of getting to make actual emotes. Being a puddle of starry darkness is fun and all, but it's terrible for facial expressions. Or body language! Like this; she crosses her arms.

"So what's the next place like? Is it the ice level, please tell me it's not the ice level."

"The fields of Elysium. It's beautiful, and all the great souls go there."

He hops onto the little fireproof raft and on it sails.

"Hm. That'll be nice, I guess, but then it just makes me more annoyed that all of the Underworld isn't beautiful. I'm going to eat some not-lava as we go, since it's unwanted flooding anyway. Maybe I can use it to power another proper blessing for you."

And with that, she sits down on the boat and dangles her feet in the not-actually-lava to start siphoning some of it up.

"You're eating it with your feet," Zagreus observes after a couple of heartbeats.

“My entire body is a decorative construct with added sensations to mimic when I was human, and is therefore arbitrarily shaped at all times. Technically speaking, I don’t have feet right now, because the fire river would melt my construct and I don’t want to bother to figure out how to make it heat resistant. So, yes, but also no.”

"The type of god you are sounds very handy."

“Yes. Though to be fair, I have mostly worked around a lot of the unpleasant parts! I used to have a book that hid behind my eyelids, I hated it.”

"A book?"

"Mhm. Fancy blue and gold book that looked like it was made of the night sky and sunlight. None of the words were written in a language I would have understood as a human, and there wasn't really.... words at all in there. But I understood what was on the pages anyway. And then once I figured out how to get rid of it, I copied all of the information held within and destroyed that fucking thing."

Her voice is calm and matter-of-fact, right up until the end, which she says with some amount of emotion and relish.

"Was it... a very terrible book?" he asks, trying not to sound too obtuse.

"Yes. It appeared behind my eyelids when I closed my eyes for too long and hung there. Touching it at the library was the thing that transported me away from my home and dumped me alone in the middle of nowhere with nothing but a basic instruction manual for how to remake myself and a lot of questions. I do not know where my home is, or how to get to it, and have been searching for literal years now, and I have a family who loves me and I get to spend every single minute I'm away aware that they think I'm dead and don't know where I am. So. Yes. It was a very terrible book." Pause. "... The content was fine, I suppose."

...okay. He is going to use the new thing he's just learnt about, here. "Do you want a hug?"

She turns her head to look at him, surprised.

“Yes,” she says immediately, anyway.

Okay he can—well, she's sitting down, so he sits, too, and hugs her.

Yvette leans into him, snuggling up and then clinging. Then she gives a little sniffle, and promptly starts crying onto the nearest available shoulder. ... The tears are black and fit her theme of starscapes.

He can't see them, as they're on his shoulder, but he would find this appropriately aesthetic. He has the instinct to pat her on the back, and the second instinct that this sounds kind of idiotic and he should just hug her.

Huuuuuugs! Hugs hugs hugs hugs hugs!

“The irony of a god trying to escape his home meeting a person trying to get home wasn’t obvious to me until now,” she sniffles. “I’d say trade you, but.”

"I don't think you would like my home very much," he says, ruefully.

“I also don’t think you’d actually like to cut yourself off from everyone you know without any ability to communicate or visit!” Sniff, sniff. “Thanatos would be heartbroken.”

"He has made his opinion about my leaving without telling him first very clear, yes."

“Oh, is that why he was so mad at you!” She snickers a little, then nuzzles into his shoulder. “I’m sorry. You must want out of here so badly.”

"It's been a couple of centuries. I suppose I'm stir crazy. I wonder how Father's direct employees aren't."

“Do they not get vacations, or is he just that bad of a boss?”

"...vacations?"

“I suppose that answers my question, doesn’t it. Uh, designated time for not working and just being able to. Go and do what you like. Travel, spend time with family, lock yourself in your house to not talk to anyone for a week. The use of it varies.”

"Er, no, no I do not think Father's employees have that."

Sigh. “Never mind, I want to swap so I can shove employee benefits and the benefits of not overworking your employees down your dad’s throat,” she deadpans.

"I'm sure the shades would appreciate it."

“And I bet Hades would have more employees to handle infrastructure problems if they got nice perks for working for him! Funny how that works.”

"Maybe!"

Snuuuuuggle. Even though she’s apparently cheered up a bit, she’s still very snuggly.

“Thanks,” she says, softly. Still leaning into him.

"No problem." He looks up ahead as the raft moves of its own accord. "There we go, Lethe."

And indeed, up ahead there is the view of a more distant river that seems to be made of clouds. Closer than that there is another shore which turns from Asphodel's parched land into green grass, with a large gold and iron gate serving as the only visible entrance to a spiked fence that seems to extend to both sides for miles.

"A river made of clouds. Huh. All right. .... Is it terrible that I want to eat that too, just out of curiosity?"

"When the dead drink from it, they forget. That's what it's for. I... don't know what happens to gods. Or to you."

“Oh. Well in that case, nevermind, I’m not touching it.”

"You can touch it, just don't drink from it. And here we are," he says just as the raft slows to stop at the shore.

“I meant more that I wouldn’t absorb it in any form,” she points out, wryly. Then she gives him a squeeze and disintegrates back to a starscape, returning to the skulls on his shoulder. “Shall we be off, then? Let’s go break the pretty place into pretty pieces.”

"Sadly the pieces all reform after a few seconds," he says, mock disappointed. He hops off the raft and walks over to the gate to push it open, then climbs up the stairs behind it all the way to a temple up a hill. He opens those doors, too, and the inside of the new temple is quite unlike the previous rooms.

The walls and floors are all metal, and there are large bronze cogs jutting out of holes on the ground, slowly rotating. The room they're in is not large, but it's largely empty, except for a few peculiar items by the right wall: a decorative fountain about as tall as Zagreus is, with blood-red water pouring down from one cup to another; a wide, shallow stone basin on top of a stone pedestal filled with a faintly glowing purple liquid; a large glass case with what looks to be a collection of curious trinkets on display; and another fountain made up of a single basin on the ground filled with clear water.

".... Huh!" she says, golden eyes looking at the array of items before them. "How adorably tidy. I'm rather charmed. Oh, look, the glass case changes for whoever opens it! That's so clever."

"Oh, does it? I ordered it from the contractor a while ago, it comes in handy."

Zagreus walks over to the clear water fountain, kneels by it, and cups his hands to collect and drink some water from it. Its effects are immediately felt, many of the bruises and cuts he's suffered from the shades his father sent to stop him in Asphodel healing up and even some of the dirt on his skin and clothes disappearing.

"Did you not know the details of what it did? Huh. Well I think it's brilliant, it must be marvelously convenient for anyone transporting tools for construction work or something." Her eyes turn towards the fountain he drank from. "And, aw. You tired it out. I think it's supposed to refresh shades, not gods, Zagreus," she teases.

"I'm sure it will restore itself in no time," he says, shrugging and walking over to the purple basin. He looks into the water and his eyes unfocus, as if he's looking at something beyond its bottom.

“It will, the structure is completely fine. It’s just empty of healing energy and needs time to refill. And the one you’re looking at is a... shop? A very small one.”

"Yep," he says, reaching into a small pouch attached to his belt for a few coins. He drops them into the purple liquid and they dissolve into nothing, and then a vial tinted blue and red floats up to the surface from nowhere. He grabs it. "Centaur's soul, painfully useful."

“Like the little heart Thanatos gave you! Aw, but his was better.”

"His was better," Zagreus agrees, looking away from the pool and blinking to refocus. He thumbs the vial open and drinks its misty contents, and then the vial itself fades away. And now over to the glass case.

She of course can’t see any of the contents of his glass case, but she does gaze with fascination at it anyway. It’s so neat! She wants to try to figure out how to make something like it.

After some humming he unclips a little rose-shaped pin from one of the folds of his chiton and grabs a small vial filled with what looks like blood. It's attached to a string, which Zagreus wears like a necklace. "Alright, we're good."

"Okay! That's to get Ares's attention, right? And the flower was for Aphrodite."

"Yup. They feel flattered if I wear their trinkets, although uh not if I wear more than one at once." He winces a bit when he says that.

"... Ah. Yeah. Jealous gods, aren't they. Well if I give you a trinket that will help me more easily find you, I will not be offended if it's not the only one. ... I guess they might be though. If they see it. Which they might."

"Probably better not to risk it," he agrees.

She gives a heavy sigh, but does not mention that she may or may not eat like half of the Olympic pantheon if she gets the chance.

The minor god walks along to the other entrance to the temple, and when he pushes the doors open the sight that welcomes them is a lush and verdant garden with a snaking path amidst the greenery. The river of forgetfulness follows lazily beneath the trees, and there are stone benches here and there for one to sit at and enjoy the breeze.

"Oh, it is very pretty. ... Why isn't the entire Underworld this pretty."

"Only the greatest souls come to the Gardens of Elysium," Zagreus recites.

"... So??? It doesn't diminish the coolness of their VIP lounge for other places to also be pretty. They can be pretty in different ways, even, this is not the only way something can be pretty."

Shrug. "I think the Asphodel Meadows used to be rather pleasant before the flood."

"R̗̞̣̟͈̘͘ͅṛ̠̩͔͕̖̀r̞̮͈r̮̹͉̦̕rr̜̙̪r͏̦̻͓̖̦̻͔r̴̦̰̞̙̣̼̺g͙̺h҉͙͇͖͇," she growls, annoyed. It is... not a sort of growl that gods, shades, or mortals can make, though it certainly resembles it enough to be intelligible.

"I'm helping you get out first, but then I might come back and personally fix it."

...she's a puddle in his shoulder skulls, how in Hades's name did that manage to sound hot.

Whatever. "I'm sure the shades of Asphodel will be very grateful."

"They will be once I'm done with it, because I will in fact take their opinions into account and take requests!"

"Careful, you might end up making Asphodel more pleasant than Elysium."

"Oh no, the horror? Can they not decide to leave Elysium and live in Asphodel, the fancy VIP lounge should not be a prison, that seems very dumb?"

"I am pretty sure they cannot," he replies, folding his arms behind his back and taking in the scenery. A blue butterfly that reflects the light a little bit weirdly, as if it's made of gemstones, lands on one of the broken stone statues up ahead, making the god smile. "That the barriers that surround the realms of the dead are impassable is the whole premise I am challenging, here, isn't it."

“True! Just. Ugh. What a shitty VIP lounge, a home shouldn’t be a prison. That’s not how homes work.”

"I think the idea is more that Elysium is a home... realm... I mean, while they're alive it's not like they can leave Greece, right? There's nothing else, there's nowhere else to go. Well, Olympus, and here, but you know."

“Mrrrrh,” she grumbles. “I think I want to better understand the constraints here so I can implement better fixes.”

"Father would... well, no, Father would not, Nyx would say that Elysium needs to be better than Asphodel and Asphodel better than Tartarus so that mortals have something to aspire to to not make their lives miserable to each other."

“But better is such a relative term! It varies for different people. Yes, broadly speaking Elysium can be better and more impressive and have more cool people to talk to and be more as an incentive for people to be better in life, I guess. It’s kind of comparatively easy for it to be better anyway, since it sounds like there’s much less people. But what about the ‘great’ people that want a quiet retirement with their family and loved ones?”

"I think the term is usually only applied to heroes and the like. Kings."

“Do their loved ones come with them to Elysium?”

"I... think arrangements can be made, but not by default, no."

“What excellent motivation to be great, never see anyone you love ever again if they were not also great, surely this is an excellent reward that mortals should aspire to in order to be better.”

"Theseus did not seem to mind," he grumbles.

“Who?”

"Old king of Athens, great warrior, killed the Bull of Minos to get something or other from the king of Minos, and now they're boyfriends."

“Oh. ... Wait, did the princess of said kingdom give him some yarn to find the Minotaur, and then did he ditch her on an island the minute everything was solved? I suppose being gay is a decent enough explanation for not being interested, but the most I remember from that myth is how much of an ungrateful asshole the hero was.” Pause. “And also that the queen had sex with a bull in a bull costume. That was also pretty memorable.”

"I... suppose you will have to ask him about the details. The yarn seems plausible, though I am not sure what that... word... 'gay', that sounds like Greek but I don't think I know that word."

“Preferring the same sex in a carnal fashion. Instead of preferring the opposite sex, being unconcerned with the whole premise, or somewhere in between all three.”

"Oh. Is that... a thing mortals do?"

“Yep! Lots of variance of preference, lack of preference, and libidos.”

"Huh. Wait, is that also why they do the thing where they only have one partner forever?"

“... no not quite, monogamy versus polygamy are related, but different. But we’re reaching the limits of my ability to educate you on these topics. I was in my mid-teens when I was eaten by my book, so, like. I was just starting to pay attention to things of this nature.”

Blink. "Mid teens, isn't that when mortals are about to get married or something?"

“Oh, ew, no. I mean, yes, probably, in your Greece. But in my world, that’s waaaaaay too young to be permanently tied to someone. And. Trying to have kids. Ick. No, it was like, experimental awkward dating phase where nobody knows how it works but they’re all pretending at each other.”

"You're an interesting mortal-turned-god, you know."

“Thanks. Though it’d be kind of impressive if I could somehow manage to be boring, being a mortal-turned-whatever-I-am from another world that’s similar but much more technologically advanced and with an entirely different culture. Because, uh, how.”

"Fair point!" And there's the other end of the little passage they've been following, a great marble wall with two passages sealed by what look to be giant circular bronze shields half buried in the ground. "Let's see, right or left?"

“I don’t know. How do you usually choose?”

"Randomly!" he says brightly.

“And that works for you and doesn’t get you running in circles? Uh, okay. Left, then.”

"Sometimes there's a circle or two but no, the local geography always gets you where you want to go even if Father tries to make it a little bit harder for that to happen for me than other people."

He raises a hand in the direction of the left shield, palm forward, and the shield glows then sinks down into the earth. In he goes.

“That’s... not how geography works in. Any of the other places I’ve been. But. Okay. Sure.”

"Achilles mentioned that it made him pretty confused at first but he got used to it."

On the other side of the short tunnel they find themselves in a beautiful walled garden, decorated with bronze statues and vases, the walls covered in decorative carvings and peppered with vines. There are a couple of blueish human-looking people standing at attention, holding spears, here and there, and they immediately notice Zagreus and start sprinting towards him. The entrance he came from is immediately closed shut by another huge bronze shield. "Time to play," he says, drawing his sword and dashing forward faster than he has any rights to.

“Yaaaaaay,” drawls Yvette. Okay, so mostly this is a Zagreus show, because it’s surprisingly difficult to just blast dead things with star plasma until they die, but she can manage to shove them around a bit. She mostly uses this to foil attacks against Zagreus.

But she can take advantage of all of this sprinting to trip one of the spear guys with a little mote of sticky night! Hi spear guy, enjoy crashing face first into this nice lush green ground, isn’t it such a lovely ground to faceplant into.

These were the great people of Greece, so after only falling on their faces a couple of times they learn to watch for it.

When Zagreus kills his first spear-wielding shade, it turns into a floating black-and-purple flame with an eye, and drops a spectral spear where it was killed. The flame stands there, motionless, doing nothing, but Zagreus nevertheless makes for it and starts hacking at it with a vengeance.

Well, he's the expert here. If he needs to kill the flame thing as soon as possible, she'll try to give him time to do it. One moment to build up some mass and power and then - boop! Wave of night at the spear guys trying to stab Zagreus in the back while he's busy, knocking them back and buying him time.

It dissipates into nothing after relatively few hacks, and he's back at the shades with actual limbs.

Well, then they can just continue this system of theirs until all of the shades that are trying to kill Zagreus are themselves killed. She still can't manage to directly make much of a dent in these jerks, but she's going to get very good at giving Zagreus openings and covering his back while he's busy.

"This is substantially easier when I don't have to spend half my awareness worried about being stabbed in the back, you know," he says as he deals the killing blow on the last shade.

"What, is the lack of challenge boring, should I stop?" she teases.

"No, there will be challenge enough later," he says. He looks around for further enemies and, finding none, cracks his neck and starts looking for useful loot.

"Ominous. There's going to be another boss fight at the exit, isn't there."

"...boss fight? Uh, I don't know that Theseus and Asterius are anyone's bosses..."

"It's a, a reference to a sort of game, don't worry about it. Enemies that are greater in power than ordinary foes, and that are often hard to defeat. So is it just one after the other or is it both of them at the same time...?"

"Both at the same time. They share the title of Champions of Elysium, and I think Father is making sure I'll run into their coliseum whenever I get as far as here."

"The boyfriends who slay together stay together," she mutters. "Ugh, two on one though, that's so unfair. I'm kind of glad I'm here to even things up a bit more now, just out of principle."

"You know, that's exactly what I told them, but Theseus still managed to be a self-righteous prick about it."

"Lovely. Self-righteous pricks, my favorite. I'm going to hate him, aren't I."

"I don't know, Asterius seems fine but somehow likes him anyway."

"Is he some combination of extremely cliché, prone to saying lots of words that don't amount to anything, not particularly thoughtful or empathetic towards others, or infuriatingly dimwitted?"

"Who, Theseus? He likes to declaim everything loudly to the audience and declare with very precise consonants that I am a fiend from hell he shall exterminate with the gods' blessings."

"Is he particularly charming about it?"

"No. He is particularly self-righteous about it. Aha!" he exclaims suddenly, reaching into a bush and grabbing a round red fruit like a pomegranate.

"I will probably hate him. Oo, what's that?" She peers at it in lieu of waiting for an answer. "Oooooo, nice. A pomegranate that strengthens abilities, it matches the aesthetic very well."

"You mean there are pomegranates that don't do that?"

He straightens up and resumes his search around the garden while he squeezes the fruit open to start eating it.

"Yes. Yours are magic Underworld pomegranates. Normal pomegranates are just delicious. I hear. I haven't eaten one."

"Huh. Well these are pretty nice if you want to try some." He doesn't quite raise the fruit up to his shoulder but the aborted motion was definitely that.

"In mythology eating food from the Underworld is the sort of thing that would tie me to it forever! ... I have no idea if that's accurate or not. But probably best to let you have it, since you're the one with the god-slaying weapon and I'm unarmed."

"That sounds like a very strange thing to tie you to the Underworld forever but if it's true I'm in for a rude awakening when I get out, aren't I."

Not finding anything else of note, he walks over to the bronze-shield-door-thing that will take him to the next place. This time there's only one, and rather than a tunnel behind it there's a hedge "maze" that only goes as high as his knees and that is decorated with hedge statues and fountains here and there, as well as the occasional shade admiring it all.

"Well, I hope you're not. And if your mother disappeared that implies that this isn't a thing, because if she had all the time to go and have a kid before she left, she probably ate something. Not to mention these are myths from another world that have already proven to be inaccurate in major ways, so. Eh."

"Oh yeah that is a good point, my mother did stay here a while."

“Yep. Still going to avoid eating any pomegranates, though, because I will be so annoyed with myself if I fail to follow a very basic premise like that.”

"Sensible."

Zagreus strolls through the hedge maze towards the next potential destination, and there they have it, another walled garden that traps them as soon as he walks in. In this one, the bronze statues of archers start shooting ethereal arrows at him. All in a day's work.

Huh. Well, if the arrows are predictable she expects Zagreus can avoid them on his own, but if it looks like he's about to get skewered by one she can try to deflect one for him.

"Are traps common here?" she wonders, thinking of possible ways to use this.

"Fairly." Another summoning circle of light shows up and a pink sphere surrounded by pink butterflies emerges. "Oh, one of those," Zagreus groans.

“I’m going to try shoving it in the trap,” declares Yvette, who emerges from her perch on his shoulder to night-tackle the butterfly ball into some traps.

"Deeply appreciated!" says the godling, parrying a sword-wielding shade.