💀 Denizens of the Great Below
6LS8: It's hard to be king when your subordinates are some of the most notorious monsters in the Cosmos.
For y’all on Halloweenie, Day of the Dead, and All Souls.
👻🎃💀🎃👻
Previously on 6 LITTLE SEEDS:
Since the barrier separating the Upper and Lower Realms was impassable to all who crossed into the Lands of the Dead, including—no, especially their lord, Haides had developed clandestine ways of surveying the homelands of his youth. There were breaches. There were obscure fissures, if one knew where to look. Scarcely any who resided in the Great Below knew as many as he did. It was, after all, his divine duty to discover such rifts and close them.
Or use them, as was his prerogative.
As it so happened, Demeter’s Protected Grove possessed a pool fed by a natural spring. The basin of that pool cut deep into the bedrock. Uncommonly deep. The Lord of the Underworld had secretly named the spring Euphoria, because a minuscule amount of its water seeped downward through a hairline fracture, as if knowing (no matter what the rest of the water thought) where it belonged.
Where she belonged.
Would she hate him too, if she knew what he was doing?
—Start at the beginning
—Mature Content Warnings for this series
Also. Nobody calls Persephone by her true name. They call her KORE, “the Maiden,” and it’s pronounced like “ko-ray” or “kora” not like “core of the planet.” KLYMENOS is one of Haides’ gazillion epitaphs. It means “illustrious” (or depending on who’s grumbling it, “notorious.”)
HAIDES, LORD OF THE UNDERWORLD, KING OF THE DEAD
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The vision of Kore’s blazing pool melted back into shadow-dappled sunlight. The ash fell around her once more, and with it, her satisfied sigh across the water. The sound caressed his skin and lingered upon the surface of the lake, then dissipated. He sighed, too. More like a relieved groan. His hand lingered between his legs as he tipped his head back with a sloppy, hazy grin. The water lapped at his thighs, shuddered, spasmed.
His head snapped downward and he stared, then glared. The Akherousian Mere was losing a mighty battle to keep from going choppy with sniggers.
The dread king’s eyes flicked back up. He dropped his still-hard pole and swatted his pleated apron over it, thus shutting the drapes upon the most irritating of his one-eyed monsters.
Crossing his arms, Haides severed the connection to Kore with a hard exhalation out through his nose.
Kerberos didn’t bother fighting his urge to chortle. As usual, the oversized mutt couldn’t keep his triple-traps shut. He had slunk down to the edge of the riverbank from his post where he guarded the Gate of Shades against escape attempts. All three of the hound’s heads chuffed amusement.
Haides thrust out his forefinger. “Mm! Kerb…” The finger made a sharp wag of warning. “Bad.”
One of the hound’s mouths blew out a drooly, derisive whuff. A splotchy white spot decorated that head’s right eye—the only patch of light amidst otherwise black fur. It was the eye Kerberos always winked. Today it gave a defiant squint. Then all three tongues lolled from all three snouts as his chortles rolled across the Mere. Kerb’s mane of blackish-green snakes reared up, bursting into a chorus of snickering hisses.
That broke Akheron’s composure. The upstart river god burst into chuckles that rocked the water into waves against Haides’ legs.
The unamused Lord of the Underworld flattened his lips into a thin line, wishing to all that was sacred and profane that his erection would stop pitching his apron into a pavilion. No doubt Akheron had the full view, straight up the stake.
At least the newest four hundred milling ghosts were too occupied with their transit to notice why Kerberos was guffawing instead of growling. They congregated along the putrid banks, awaiting their turn on the ferry.
That fucking ferry.
Out on the Mere, the ferryman poled his barge in stooped silhouette, looming closer and closer with every second. Once that old coot arrived and learned what the others were laughing about, then it would really start, so Haides headed for shore.
Unfortunately, Kerberos’ three tongues waggled to the marsh reeds, who promptly sang to some passing insects, and the second those buzzing bastards got ahold of any juicy gossip, it never took long before the whole Underworld was infested with hilarity.
A far-off, “Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha-har-har-har!” shot across the water, proof of the pests’ efficiency. The ferryman doubled over, rocking his empty barge as he held his gut in uproarious laughter. Then he poled himself across the Mere double-time.
The King of Shades glowered. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen the gnarly old daimon work so hard. Blasted Kharon and thrice-blasted Kerberos.
Haides’ best friend and his trusty dog.
Cankerous, red-eyed ass-sores, the both of them.
Not that an Olympian like Haides could ever acquire sores, ass-nettling or otherwise. Impossible, no matter that he was bound to the Underworld. But daimons like Kharon, belched from the blackest deeps of Darkness and Night? The ferryman was rife with sores. It didn’t seem to bother him.
But he bothered Haides, particularly when he got close enough for those flame-filled eyes to squint as he hunted down evidence of his lord’s lingering…
Issue.
“You can all fuck yourselves straight into the pit,” Haides snapped. “Like I’ve never caught every one of you on my rounds. Shaving staves. Humping the Pyriphlegethon or those very mouth-holes.” His forefinger thrust toward the collection of polished, white skulls that formed the Gate of Shades’ archway, their jaws all open in eternally silent screams. “Vulgar desecrators.”
The laughter only intensified, pelting him from every side, overhead, and below.
Haides stepped onto the reeking mud of the bank, vaporizing the wetness from his legs and apron, which at least helped alleviate how closely the spidersilk clung to him. He ran his hands down the front of the cloth to smooth the pleats back into perfection (while trying to stuff the remains of his infernal arousal between his legs). He considered vaporizing himself and transpiring anywhere else, but that would look like fleeing, and if there was one thing that Olympian-born lords did not do, it was flee in their own realms.
Especially this one.
Pack of slavering jackals.
At least it wasn’t petty, bickering Olympos.
Thankfully, the beast of his libido had been tossed its bone, so he could finally wrangle it back into its cage for a little while longer. What else could he do about it down here? Grab every river-nymph and daimon who propositioned him by their nasty hair? Thrust his face between their legs until they converted his name into a benediction, then stuff his irate phallus in and out of them until it was slaked? That sated his divine vitality, his reputation, and his nuts, but not him. Sometimes that left him more pissed off than centuries of giving it a quick tug himself, then getting back to work.
Except when nothing would do but a proper hate-fuck. Plenty of bitches in the River Styx who glutted themselves on that. Those who dwelled in the River of Hate needed it for their own vitality.
And I live to serve.
Haides surveyed the cacophonous mirth of his realm. Every rock in sight vibrated with sniggers. Kerberos was still whuffing it up with the reeds, the winds, and Akheron. The river god burbled something not quite intelligible, confirming the view he’d gotten straight up Haides’ cloth.
“Plug your mouth, you infested quag,” the King of the Dead snarled, “lest I dam it for you. And you…” He grabbed the nearest of Kerberos’ necks in the crook of his elbow, leaped up to catch the center head between his legs, and wrestled his pet monster to the ground. “You know better.”
Kerb snorted with his un-occupied head—the spot-eyed, snarky one. The hound’s mane of snakes all reared and hissed, striking at Haides’ limbs, while the serpent-headed tail launched at the god’s shoulder. But his armor materialized through the shadows. A myriad fangs clanged and dinged against the adamantine plates. The mutt’s tail gave one more whipping strike, then coiled back with a sullen hiss.
Haides grinned in triumph. “You’ve all got smart mouths down here. Good thing I’ve the proper remedy for you.”
“Then it would seem,” Akheron babbled over his stones, “that our Chthonic King is in good company, considering what spews so smartly from his own mouth—or was that something else spewing this eve?”
“Whuff-whuff-whuff-whuff…” Kerberos’ spotty-head chomped down on Haides’ armored shin and refused to let go.
“Rot ‘n’ roast, the both of you,” Haides grunted, getting a better hold on the hound’s meaty neck. The mane of snakes hadn’t given up attempting to bite, while the tail decided to try its coils at strangulation, so Haides rolled his weight higher onto the beast’s wriggling, thrashing body. The spotty-head got smashed into the mud, which limited Kerb’s capacity to produce laughter of any breed.
But Kharon had made it to shore. “Hey, Helmet!” he called in his grating nasal tone. Even though the ferryman jabbed his long guiding stick into the mud and leaned on it, he jeered, “Seen my pole around?” His scabby hand made slow, seemingly innocuous strokes up and down the length. “I think I lost it someplace—oh! There it is, ya thievin’ bastard. Har-har-har-har…”
Haides remained occupied with being strangled, squishing Kerberos into the ground, and desperately wishing he could stop eating the mutt’s raking claws. Since he couldn’t muster up a quick enough reply, all the rest laid in.
“My Shadow-Lurking Lord, you seem a bit…strained this eve.” (Akheron.) “Displaying a touch of rigor mortis? Perhaps our king could use a break from all the dead.”
“Yeah, ye’re not only startin’ to smell like all those stiffs, but now ya sorta look like ‘em. Har-har-har-har…” (Kharon again.)
“Yes, lord. Yesssss…” (The wiseass winds.) “Perhaps His Majesty needs a vacation. His job is ssssso hard, yesssss…”
Kerb’s tail hissed in snide agreement. Haides risked losing his grip on the mutt’s neck to smash a quick fist into that serpentine face. That loosened its stranglehold and shut it up.
But not Akheron’s fuck-hole reeds. They whistled and sang in an off-key chorus. “We thought the King of Evil Soul-Flailing could only take ease in the River of Wailing.”
Oh, now that was just hitting under the apron.
So naturally Akheron sputtered up a fountain as he choked on his waves.
“Whufff-snuff-snuff-snortle-guffaw!”
“Bwa-har-har-har!”
“Fuck. OFF.” Haides cinched his arms and legs more tightly around Kerb’s throats while arching his back harder to return that smart mouth to the muck.
“Snuff-burble-gurgle-glub…”
When all the hissing snakes finally started to wilt, the Lord of the Underworld released his monster. (The three-headed canine one.) Kerberos slumped into the slick of the bank. That didn’t stop him from wheezing out a few more chuckles.
Neither did it plug Akheron’s hole. “I, too, always thought the River Kokytos offered His Majesty the most delectable delights, but it would seem Our Illustrious Lord has acquired more…lofty tastes while wading in my waters.”
The dread king sprang to his feet. “Those are my waters, river-scum.”
And of course, at long last (yet never long enough), the all-too-expected voice finally clanged out from the shadows beyond the Gate of Shades. Her tone bit hard, lacking any hint of play. “Too bad the girl’s loftier father would laugh himself even sillier at the notion. Too bad her mother uses your name as her most volatile curse-word. And poor Klymenos can’t do one little thing about it. He’s as impotent as all the useless little swimmers in his ball-sack.”
Haides’ spine went spear-straight.
The chorus of har-har, whuff-whuff, and hissing sniggers cut silent. The Mere went as smooth as an obsidian fracture. Before Haides could respond, Akheron made himself scarce, no doubt retreating up to his headwaters. Although the river god ribbed mercilessly, even he knew which lines not to cross.
They all knew.
Including the only individual down here who would risk dipping so much as a pinky toe into those perilous waters. Nobody else would dare sneer that moniker to Haides’ face either.
His head slowly craned around until he met eyes even blacker than his own. Silver-skinned Styx lay stretched out, lounging upon the points of five stalagmites in all her lithe, seething allure. Her night-hued lips drew a smile as victorious as it was vicious.
Haides answered with a compressed sigh through his nostrils. It wasn’t quite a growl, because he wasn’t quite irate with her. Styx hadn’t said those things because she was angry. It wasn’t even because she despised him. She despised everybody. It was her nature.
She shook out her midnight-blue locks like a flow of the river that bore her name, then ran her gaze down the length of Haides’ form. She stopped on his crotch, licked her caustic lips. Their eyes locked again and she winked. “Nice pavilion stake. If you were that desperate, you should have pounded it into me. She says it’s even more magnificent in action. Well, except when you’re too much in the wrong head to get it up.”
“Styx,” Haides growled. His finger pointed at her cliffside grotto. “Run off. Now.”
“Oooh, needles-in-the-nads, you’re easy tonight. Must be a touchy subject.” Sniggering, she seeped down the upthrust rocks and began trickling into the cracks. That didn’t stop her from taking one last swipe. “No wonder you have to settle for nymphs and daimons. For a goddess to get stuck with a vile thing like you? May as well imprison her in Tartaros. Helmet.” Her laughter bounced off the crags and boulders. Job done, she returned to her home: the River of Hate.
And Haides did.
He hated that Styx didn’t even have to say the name to hammer home her point.
She…
Minthe was the most frequent alleviator of Haides’ lust. Powerful, playful, crafty and stunning, she was fearless in the face of his kingship and completely devoted to him. She was the best he could find around here for relief and—well, he wouldn’t say the warmth of touch. Hers was searingly cold, like her ice-choked home. Exhilarating on overheated flesh. Not so good for anything deeper than skin. Besides, she was only a river-nymph, and therefore unfit to be elevated to Queen. Half the time, Haides couldn’t stand her anyway. Minthe was as scornful as she was beautiful.
Pretty much the standard for this place.
A goddess like Styx would be even worse. At least she knew it, didn’t want it, and for that, he relied on her like few others. The Goddess of Hate and Oath Swearing was an essential member of his administrative and jailing staff. Besides, she didn’t deserve his wrath, no matter how cruel her jibes were. Styx could not be anything but Styx.
Even so, the Underworld held its breath as Haides vaporized the mucky mess from his form once more. He did not, however, return his visage to the casual apron and loose hair he had come down here in. He kept his armor on and adjusted his helmet lower over his brow. It was only the battle helm, not the one that rendered him invisible. Unfortunate, for he could feel his cheeks blazing. Adamantine was no match for Styx’s fangs. They had sunk in more deeply than he wanted to admit.
Kerberos sidled closer, panting through all three mouths. The big, mournful eyes in his snuggliest head brimmed over with pity and, “Let me lick it better.”
Fuck that.
Haides turned his back on the sappy monster. “I’m getting some supper,” he snapped, striding down the embankment. He paused at the edge of the water long enough to snarl, “Then I’ll be back.”
He could tell by the hush that answered—everyone knew what that meant. The Akherousian Mere remained motionless, a blessedly silent surface for him to march across toward his palace. He hoped he didn’t look as ridiculous as he felt, for Styx’s words could only wound like that because every one of them burned with deepest, purest truth.
Naturally. It was upon her waters that immortals swore their most solemn oaths. To foreswear it earned the transgressor a year pinned to her rocky banks without breath, ambrosia or nectar, and nine more years exiled from all Olympos.
Not like that last sounded like a punishment.
Even so. The echo of Styx’s laughter burned like bile. Haides snarled and strode harder. She’s right, like always. I am the biggest infatuated fool in the Cosmos, and there is only one remedy for that.
A good, stiff slurp from the River of Forgetting, a nice sprawling feast with a measured dose of blood-nectar, and a night back to work.
As Haides passed his best friend, Kharon’s fiery eyes pulsed under the shade of his big hat. The old daimon leaned on his pole to edge closer. “Helmet—”
“That needs to be handled.” Haides jutted an armor-clad finger in the direction of the rubble that his orgasmic bellow had brought down amidst the wandering ghosts. Anything he could do to keep everybody busy, instead of being busy-bodies in his wake.
After a long moment, Kharon dipped his head. “M’lord.”
The King of Shades vanished.
Up Next: GILDED TONGUES & STARRY EYES - in which Demeter tells us how Apollo fared in his efforts to woo her daughter into marrying him.
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