Day 9 : Hadestopia
We got around the campfire, as Apollo kids were playing music instruments and Mr D. boasted about his prowess to the girls. Annabeth and I were already still tired and we just would rather go sleep already, after all yesterday we prevented World War III, but being the center of attention, campers didn’t stop asking us for our stories.
Groover, on the other hand, was having a blast. Running around with his fellow satyrs, flashing his new searcher’s license to everyone.
All of the sudden, everyone got seated and quiet around the campfire: Argus is gonna tell one of his horror stories.
Being a giant has its perks too, especially when it comes to having a lot of stories, old ones. Argus closed most of his eyes -he has a lot and it’s rude to stare, hard not to though- as he collects his thoughts. Something tells me this one is really good.
He cleared his throat and said in his raspy, makes-you-question-your-sexuality, voice
“ What if I told you that the God of Death, Hades, reigned over Olympus?”
A gloomy and chilly air went down as everyone heard His name. I guess you could say, Argus did kill the vibe
“ This happened millenia ago after Zeus rebeled against his father, Kronos, Titan of Time. We all know that Zeus, Poseidon and Hades divided the loot : Zeus was given domain over the sky and the air, and was recognized as overlord. Poseidon was given the sea and all the waters, whereas Hades was given the Underworld. But the actual story is that Hades was first given the domain over the sky, and that caused chaos and destruction all over the globe, and that’s why that part was omitted.
What happened is Hades, being the God of sky and the king of Olympus, did want to be the God of the dead too, so in a way, he merged the unmergeable world’s, the world of the dead and the world of living. This is the real reason why he got fired from Olympus, only to visit it on winter solstice every year.
Imagine your world overrun by the dead, that’s how the world was like under Hades. The cheesy apocalyptic movies from the 80s were a reality. The undead roamed everywhere, the four horsemen of apocalypse played tag everywhere, the humanity suffered, greatly.
Hades’ aura did infect everyone’s hearts. Murder, robberies, kidnappings became usual news very fast. Fear, paranoia, hatred, anger.. I guess you could say that it was equivalent to opening twelve Pandora’s boxes or something.
Weirdly enough, in the middle of all of this pandemonium, a very peculiar order was reigning. There were very strict and odd rules, for example, people were given exactly 8 hours of sleeping hours and they had to work every waking hour, either building statutes to their worshipper, or just to mine for precious metals, for Hades have been the God of wealth.
Soon enough, people were divided into builders and miners: builders were more knowledgeable and buff than miners, they were in a sense men of God, or for instance, men of Hades and they kinda got the better side of the supreme ruler, so in a way, they had it easy on the torture part.
Builders have not only been building statues, temples and all of that brainy stuff for Hades but they also did venerate the monsters, Echidna and the kindly Ones for the most part, which wasn’t something Hades was happy about, but then again, he had a lot on his plate already.
Miners on the others hand were his favorite since they created richness and fortune. They had created commerce and economical schemes akin to capitalism, but more or so very crooked. Miners who were very close to the God had more or less an easy life, with Cerberus feeders and the fanners ( those who fan Him ) in the very top of the pyramide.
The two sections didn’t get along and as the world got more chaotic, bloody wars occurred more often. At a certain point, a cataclysmic war happened between builders, who allied with Echidna and every other eldritch monster against Hades and miners. Zeus, hearing that the whole cataclysm might bring about the unleashing of much horrifying terrors, Kronos for instance who have been imprisoned in the deepest point of Tartarus, finally intervened. With all his might, he called for Gaïa and asked her to erase humanity, so he could reunite with his brothers again and do another draw, to see which domain goes to whom.
The draw finally decided that Zeus took the domain of the sky, Poseidon the domain of Sea and Hades the domain of the dead, to which he didn’t protest.
And that’s how we end up having the world we already know, and in a way, many of the scourges that we see worldwide are for the most part, Hades influence from the other side. We don’t necessarily live the best version of reality, that’s for sure, but I would never wish that we have it otherwise.
So in a way, we dodged a bullet thanks to Mr Jackson here, so everyone let’s raise a cup to Percy"
Everyone raised a cup to my glory, which made me very bashful. The story he had just told is something I would just hear about. It may as well be a fake story, but knowing Argus, he doesn’t do imaginative tales. Thinking about his story made me remember the Underworld, and the horrors and for a second, I started ventilating and panicking . It’s only when Annabeth hugged me that I regained my composure.
