Hades

Author's note: This is my own retelling of a very common story, that of Hades and Persephone. This is my most favorite mythological love story. I've always identified with the transformation from innocent girl, Kore, to dark queen of the underworld, Persephone, and Hades is the ultimate strong male-love that. It's more about passionate burning love than sex, though I plan on inserting more erotica into any further installments if there is an interest. Please feel free to let me know what you think...I always appreciate hearing from readers. Hope you enjoy it and thank you...

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Despite all of the power he possessed, he was the lord over the blackness of nothing.

His self loathing infected his fortress, the great halls, and even the sacred fields he created as the resting place for the heroes. It poisoned everything and every being around him.

This was a time of hate... most definitely of hate, and it had begun to destroy him and the kingdom he built.

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In the grips of a private unshakeable rage, he pounded his fists and cracked the whip commanding the gray steeds before him to thunder. Air swirled through his dark hair and blew up stale earth that stuck to his skin and made it's way into his gritted teeth. In the wake of his chariot, the dust clouded the passage and the ground rumbled above.

He could have flown to his secret place above ground in an instant, but he loved the violence of the journey. He reveled in it. The anticipation he felt just before breaking free of the earth was an exquisitely painful release from the prison of his underworld.

These trips were becoming more frequent. He had grown to crave the warmth of the sun. The land above was the complete antithesis to his netherworld, a place he had begun to hate with the fury that pressed him to the wheat fields and sunshine in the mortal's realm.

His horses were first to notice the scent of warm grass coming from the crevasse where the underworld met the golden fields, the olive trees and the hot sun. It spurred the horses to quicken their pace to frantic proportions, snorting and kicking up clods of rock and dirt as they pulled their master to the place where the earth was ripped open. When they burst out of the caverns, god and beast inhaled the summer heat and simultaneously winced and reared as their pupils dilated from the sudden change from shades of gray to the bright light outside.

In the meadow, a flock of sheep charged. The dogs and the shepherd chased the animals up into the surrounding hills, then scattered out of sight. And the warblers bolted from the trees, darting into the horizon. As was only natural, most living things ran from him.

A moment later, everything quieted around the dark figure that had come out of the ground. A still serenity, a warmth, bathed him in calmness. He was surrounded by the total opposition to the existence he knew. Life and light were all around him.

He settled the horses and loosed them to run free in the field. Some of them found the shade under the trees more familiar and rested there. The others played and pranced like young colts, as if they were not the enchanted beasts of the dark angel of death, Hades. They found a stream to drink from and the god's eyes traced the path of water around the rim of meadow. His eyes followed the water as it descended into a small valley of trees. Miles beyond the trees, the stream widened. Rocks and descending land transformed the bubbling water into rushing torrents. Farther west, this same stream would meet his brother's ocean in a clash of sweet water meeting salty, foaming brine. Hades could see all of this in one sweep of his immortal eyes.

From a slope below the place where Hades stood and breathed, marveling at the beauty of Zeus' earth so brimming with life, he noticed five figures in the distance but only one came into focus. It blurred out the nature surrounding him. A girl, only just a maiden, and her playmates approached, unaware of him.

The girl bent down, finding flowers to pick among the weeds and he watched her move. He intently focused on her every gesture. It was as if she moved in water, graceful and fluid and sun beams showered her with light making her long black hair sparkle. He could smell her. It was a clean scent he could only compare to innocence.

She was purity personified and achingly, beautifully so.

Something, not long ago, had shifted in him. Utter discontent, an uneasiness, settled into him. He spent millennia searching the souls under his charge for an extraordinary being, but hadn't found one person or entity capable of explaining how to create the balance he searched for. The balance he was incapable of conjuring himself. His brother Zeus was flawed in ways Hades didn't have patience to examine in depth and Poseidon was merely a ruler, not a creator. Finding solace or advice from one of his brothers was a moot point.

All splintered under the gravity of Hades glare and razor sharp inquisitions. Heroes and peasants alike, even most immortals, all would dissolve into the sum of their misdeeds, their vices, their inadequacies, begging and weeping for mercy, though contrition was not required of them. He had no issue with the sinful or the debauched, or the virtuous, and equally welcomed them all into his domain. He provided an appropriate place for all the dead who entered. Good and evil and all those in between, each to his own designated home for eternity. He was a fair and just god.

His eyes could see a mortal life lived in it's entirety. Pleasures, goodness and, of course, there would be at least a sprinkling of evil in even the most puritanical subjects. Why couldn't any being embrace it all as a whole with pride, sans apologies? It all was evidence of a life well lived, as he viewed it. He could not understand the shame they felt as their lives were laid bare before him.

And then there were the mortals that were thoroughly rotten. The murderers, liars, rapists and worse, they would often enter there to preen before him. They flaunted their adventures in depravity. In death, those that so relished their own evil life, would eventually fall to their knees in supplication. Then it was too late for rehabilitation. Hades could look upon a killer and see when they were an innocent babe in their mother's arms. He could see this in them, but couldn't find it in himself. Those souls would go to their deserved torment irregardless of their screams or cries. He was a fair and just god. His purpose was not to forgive. Those mortals were the quickest to be dispatched to their place in the underworld, a waste of his attention. No lessons or epiphanies would be discovered in the most evil souls and those were the least likely to impress him.

He respected both sides of this nature of the universe. But, he had a special attraction to purity. He would find his extraordinary soul among the innocent, because it was everything he was not. The purest mortals proved to be the most fascinating souls because they were so often unaware of their own short comings. And inevitably, they too would admit to things done in their lifetimes that they regretted, no matter how minute.

He pitied them all for what he thought was their ignorance and inability to see all facets of existence with pure honesty and clarity as he did. Good and evil balanced the scales of humanity and the immortals, a necessary tension, push and pull.

For time immeasurable, he waved through countless souls and now he used the brothers, Hypos and Pathos, to do this work of sorting and measuring the lives of the dead. Only the most valuable ghosts were to be brought before him.

Now, with this unknown girl approaching him, he felt he was in the presence of a truly exceptional being. More than any other immortal. More than any other creature he had ever seen, living or dead... and he knew this without having spoken a single word to her. He watched her and lost himself in the simple breathtaking beauty of her. All of his rage, self hatred, even the furrow in his brow and a cleave in his cheek slipped away releasing him. He was left paralyzed in his awe of her.

Pleasures of the flesh had always been just that, physical, though he enjoyed them with abandon. Sirens, sorceresses, and the likenesses there of, had served as vessels, but nothing more. His brother, Zeus, on the other hand, had created the mortals, it seemed, as fodder for his own romantic proclivities. The fascination Zeus had with the human women disgusted Hades. What challenge or thrill could be had from preying on the defenseless? Some of those women would find themselves in the underworld shortly after their encounters with Zeus. For others, the strain of birthing a half-immortal child was too much for their bodies to bear and they would succumb during childbirth. Was Zeus a celestial father, lover, or torturer? Hades never considered a human for the very fact that his depth of character might crush a mortal woman's psyche. Physically, he was far more dense than a man. He would never impose himself on a being so incapable of defending themselves against him and especially one that had caused him no harm. He was a warrior and a king by choice, as well as destiny, but, he was no murderer.

His eyes shifted to the sky where a peregrine falcon circled and broke the trance he'd fallen into. Moving quickly so that she wouldn't see him, he donned his war helmet, rendering himself and everything of his invisible to her. He stood still as she approached. The energy that he contained within his immortal body drew her to him and so he watched her and waited. As she walked closer to him, he felt his own body lean forward and he struggled to remain still. Like a force from the opposite side of his dark spectrum, she exhibited the same powerful pull on him. He was shocked by how much energy it took for him to maintain his footing.

Her eyes saw nothing but the peaceful meadow before her. She had no idea that she was standing face to face with the god of the underworld, Hades. He looked down into her honey colored eyes, unable to focus on anything else. The way the light illuminated her eyes dazzled him. She might as well have had candle flames for eyes for all their brilliance. She stood no taller than the top of the breast plate he wore on his chest and for the first time in his long life, he felt small. His brows knitted together and he unitentionally let out a slow breath to release some of the tension he felt in his chest. He blew cool air into her face and it pushed back her wavy hair from her shoulders. It soothed away the heat of the sun beating down on her and she smiled. Much like the waters of the stream and the ocean, his cool and her warmth clashed in this secret meeting of opposites.

He thought, for a second, that he'd made a childish mistake. He almost revealed his presence to her. What a silly thing to do. He could have ruined the shear bliss of this stolen moment. Had she actually made him nervous?

He made her smile. In such close proximity to him that he might have given up anything to have that intimacy forever in his memory. For the first time in his life he wished to be human, for her and her alone. He wanted to be a boy that could make her laugh or a man that could make her love him. But, who he was would forever stand in the way of that ever happening. This realization, instantly restored the all too familiar fury she had just released him from. His self loathing only deepened into regret for what he would never have... the love of this innocent girl. And his eyes spilled tears that streaked his dirty face.

He embraced the darkness so long ago. Perhaps to such a degree that he no longer held the converse. Any visible light in his own character had long since been extinguished by the steely coldness in the realm of his own creation. Neglecting to infuse his world with light to correspond with his darkness, as his brother had done for the mortals above him was his own fault. He should have been able to see that balance was essential. Now that this glaring mistake was all too evident, he was unable to recreate what he so badly needed... a world with light and life as well as death and darkness.

There in lay the further insult to him. These mortals were given the benefit of dwelling above his empire. And for what did they deserve that entitlement? Mortals were a nuisance to Hades. When they arrived at his feet newly dead and shaking, frightened and lacking any self control, it was his responsibility to house the spirits out of sight of the living. For whom did this whole process benefit?

Many times he had pondered the deliciousness of breaking out the ceilings of his underworld to let in the light, crumbling the vibrant world above, extinguishing all life and releasing the beings he lorded over in an orgasm of chaos the gods would marvel at. And who could stop him? And what of it? If he destroyed this forsaken place he created to house the dead...what of it? His brother would undoubtedly declare war against Hades, but it would be too late to save Zeus' beloved mortals, who, as a species, were little more than play things to him. And Poseidon? He would scarcely notice or care. Poseidon would only seek to keep the peace between his two younger brothers.

Hades longed to be done with this for centuries. Now, with this girl before him he thought, what a pity it would have been had he acted on his urge to rid the world of the mortals, destroying her in the chaos and death that would ensue. What a pity it might have been to have never seen this girl and her smile, just for him.

He knew the tittering balance and order in the kingdoms of the three brothers', Zeus' sky and earth, Poseidon's ocean, and his very own disastrous failure in the underworld, must remain if only to protect the girl that had unknowingly smiled at him and touched him as no other ever had.

One of the girl's friends called to her from the valley below, "Kore! Come, we must go! The festival is about to begin."

"Yes," she answered in a whisper, absently, and only loud enough for Hades to hear. And Hades continued to look into her eyes, only breaking his focus on her as she turned to go. She looked over her shoulder and surveyed the meadow once more before running off. She wondered what it was in the meadow that had lulled her into a world of her own.

"Wait for me!" she yelled to her friends that were now running to the trees. She laughed as she caught up with the smallest boy in the group and bumped him with her hip, knocking him off balance and he tumbled face first into the grass laughing.

"Kore," said Hades aloud, over and over as he watched her disappear into the thick of trees.

He could have taken her to be his at any moment, but he couldn't summon the will to hurt her. It would have been like a giant plucking a flower and crushing it in the process, for no other reason than to possess it.

If he took her, it might kill her... and she had smiled for him.

He remained in the meadow until the sun went down in the sky and night surrounded him. Even in the night sky, there were stars and the moon that kept watch over the earth until the time when the sun flooded the world with light again in the morning. The same births and deaths that the mortals experienced, were echoed in the sky with the rising and setting of the sun and moon every day and night. He watched all of this with the same intent focus that he had given to the girl, Kore.

There would be no births in his domain. He felt out of touch with his world and this mortal world confused him only more.

And that was precisely what he now searched for. Something, some being to match the passion and depth he possessed. He thirsted for a worthy adversary or companion. To him they might be one in the same. Someone or thing powerful enough to serve as a challenge to him in any way shape or form, for his world was dead in every way imaginable.

The darkness in the underworld was unbearable to the other immortals, and now to him as well. The imbalance of negative to positive energy offended their senses and they soon halted all but the most necessary trips to the realm of the dead. He now understood why. Most gods were used to imbibing in the greater pleasures of supernatural existence, intermingling with the mortals at will and they could not comprehend the obsession Hades seemed to have with the melancholy. This girl had given him a taste of a sublime light in the universe that he was never aware even existed until that very moment. He had learned to want the sun for some time now, but this was something altogether more powerful and monumental. Was this what love could be like?

Riduculous! He was designed to withstand anything... he was a god! He was an all powerful being, perhaps more resilient than even Zues. Was this love?

In his throne hall, Hades sat quietly contemplating why Kore had so impressed him. Perhaps, this was the first time that he had ever been the inspiration of anyone's smile. But, that couldn't be true.

What was the nature of this smile? It was the rarest of things, an honest reaction from an honest girl. She didn't know that he was there with her in the field. She was enjoying her own private moment in which Hades was fortunate to have taken part. Had he actually allowed himself to fall in love with this girl in that instant?

Further still, he wondered if he had not been in that field with her, might she have smiled in that way or even at that precise moment? Could it be that she had felt the same love being born between them?

His mind was filled with endless examinations of this tiny, yet all consuming matter; Kore's enigmatic smile, and the girl herself.