Hey y'all! Happy Thursday! 

This chapter is in Hades' POV but during Sam's timeline. We'll get into why that's important later, but for now just know that their dialogue will be in English for efficacy purposes. They don't understand one another, but I don't know Greek, especially ancient Greek, so I'll be doing English while emulating a language barrier. 

Anyway, I hope you guys like this chapter and enjoy seeing Sam through past Hades' eyes!

P.S. This is irrelevant but I took a midterm today and I just want to pat myself on the back for being able to write this without dying, lol! 

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Hades (Samantha's timeline)

Five times I was called upon.

The soft utterance of my name breached the chassis of Gaea, descending to the solitude of my silent chambers as a song of mellow nature. Seldom I am summoned, far in between the instances my name is enunciated as anything but whispered curses or a plea for wealth.  

Though its intonation was scarcely an exhale, its sound dulcet, it was an oddity nevertheless. My breastbone faltered for but a trice, the accursed aurelian within my vessels yielding to the image of locks of effulgent gold and irises much too lively to behold. Certainly a sight far more enchanting than merited her abductor. 

My suspicion was risen, more so was it heightened when she called upon me, sudden ire enfolding my stillness when her robber bridegroom held her to himself. My fingertips drew liquid golden from my palms at the sight, but I held still, for so have decreed the Fates that chthonic beings can not intervene with that which is alive. That is entitlement privy only to the Allotter. 

For days, against my better judgment as is expected from a prudent king, I sought out her thread in undisclosed pursuit. My attempts were futile, even Thanatos himself failed to come upon it when her impending nuptials demanded her liveliness be entwined to her husband's. If Death can not detect life, it does not exist. 

If seldom I am summoned, my name uttered with such agonized longing with even less frequency, and the enrapturing voice belongs to no particular thread, then something within the bounds of the cosmos is amiss. 

In days ensuing, I was led to the pleasing voice upon the surface-- my body and Alastór a mere extension of my will and grim interest. Uncertainty anchored my bones, apprehension my veins as one of my arrows brushed first her arm and then her larynx, eliciting forth golden vitality. 

Surely an absent thread and divine lifeline were cause for alarm, further inciting my hesitation was her knowledge of my name. Her beauty too, evoked dubiety. 

Nay, her loveliness most of all was to be held in aversion. 

Now, regret consumes me as my kindness is repaid with violence. Fate did not foresee endless anguish within the gut of Kronos for me to discount the presence of evil's stain within my home. My infancy and adolescence have not been mangled by Corruption himself for my being to forgo all its senses and my judgment to eschew the truth. It is as if my very conscious can sense Evil, he has made himself known and mocks my govern. 

 Proof of his presence lies scattered about the woman's unsettled state and her explorations within the realm of Hypnos. Kronos is acquainted not with folly, he was aware Hypnos was predisposed to happen upon him within his rounds of the realm of slumber. And chance upon him he did, reporting to me his affairs. 

That which is amiss within the cosmos is akin to his apparition. 

"Are you in collaborations with Kronos!?" 

My voice is tense, tarnished by fear and memories the river Lethe itself could not erase. My sword is positioned upon her neck, its apex gleaming in yearning for the saccharine taste of primrose aurelian.  

Tears overflow her eyes, glazing her irises with films of sorrow as her lips curl in wistful echo. 

"You know what's funny?"

Her lower lip quivers.

"I still don't understand a single thing you say, but you can continue yelling at me. I don't mind. So long as I can hear your voice again."

Stillness overcomes her, leaving me to ponder her lips' utterance. For days she has been here, and for days we've not come to understand one another. Without an instance's reasoning, I hesitate. 

Certainly, an individual, even one of divine origin, would borrow a moment's latitude to contemplate final words if they were certain they would be subject to interminable pain. What does she wish to tell me? Why have her eyes been overtaken by sheets of melancholy?

Any such person in her position should desire to overcome their adversary, why does she agonize? 

Searing patterns of pain stitch the underside of my wrist in my brief reluctance, shifting forth my attention from my reflections. The woman's fingers are coiled about my hands, dissolving skin and tissue beneath the pressure of her fingertips, eliciting grunts of distress from my lips. Her touch rivals the scorch of Tartarus.

Her countenance is fixed, her eyes alit by the perils of the Fields of Punishment. The brazen hue of her cerulean irises are tarnished by burnished titian, overcome by a nature beyond her own command. Within her taken state, she is aware of the pain her power subjects her to, for as her palms rupture into embers, so does her aspect contort into one of torment.

Her eyes succumb to closure, her lips to twisted grimace.

Her cries of agony permeate the contours of her chambers, tainting the atmosphere with her presence as her palms of unrelenting potential enclose my own, encasing them in blistering fire. My awareness wavers beneath her when she lunges forth, plunging us to solid, algid grounds-- my body too overcome by the vitality residing within her vessels. 

Tautening her grip on my hands, she entwines her legs about my waist, engulfing us both within cloaks of unabated pyre.

The pain summoned by her flames is unbearable, my consciousness threatens to vanish and make known to me torturous solitude as my very eyes behold my skin yield to the might of her palms. My muscles and bones weep of imminent erosion, my skin of proximal vanish. 

Her grievances meld with my own, her power incensed further by her growing angst. Tendrils of gilt admit to twines of carmine and copper as she begins to cry out, "Stop it! Stop! Please, just stop!"

Her words befall deaf ears as Kronos emerges to the forefront of my thought.

Darkness and acidic streams akin to that which she has subjected me to are reminiscent of his innards... the time spent within his bowels parallels her scorch.

 Had the Fates held not my thread in disdain, had I not been acquainted with the bitterness of the primordial titan, perhaps her stroke of fortune would have bested me. But, the sour savor of war spurs forth the cunning element inherited as Krono's eldest...

In a lapse of cognizance, I am transported to the times of the Great War and the suffering caused to us. Swiftly, as my consciousness wavers once again, I summon my weapon and veer my muscles onward, exchanging my position on solid grounds for the woman's.

Her lips continue to spill forth cries of misery, but her fingers fail to relinquish their possession of my wrists. 

Despite the stinging torment and my quickly withering skin, I will myself to tilt my sword to her breastbone, praying to the Fates I may pierce her heart and compel her to stillness. The task proves itself laborious as quantities of my ichor, peeling skin and sudor collect upon my sword's grip and glide my hold upon it-- preventing sturdy control.

The woman's utterances hush for an instance as her flames diminish and she's appraised of my weapon's vertex atop her breastbone. Her eyes open haltingly, her lashes' flutter so gentle I question if perhaps our embroilment was a confabulation of my own. It would have seemed impossible had my sword been elsewhere but her chest and her burn impressed not upon my wrists.

Blaze collects still the corners of her shadows, but her fingers begin to cede their wield as fire's medium, spasming atop mine. Poseidon's waters glimmer in apprehension as two stone sapphires beneath Helios' muted caress-- watching me. 

Her eyes remain recognizable against skin yielding to hardened obsidian. Fair radiance is replaced by cooling material, abrasive and grainy. Films of substance overwhelm her eyes, spilling from their corners and below her temples to dissolve on the floor. 

Her mouth trembles as she understands my intentions.

"Why do the Fates keep doing this to us?"

Her voice is a mangled whisper, gnawed about by her pain and very power.

My gaze is adhered to her dying embers and thickened, charcoal skin, searching about her to find indication of her meaning. She speaks a language even Death can not comprehend, yet she bleeds golden.

Her eyes spill more tears, but mercy is far from me. Compassion is only soiled within the hands of Kronos and the fool-hearted whom ally with him. Accommodating my palm's cradle, I ignore my muscle's protests and lean forward, falling upon my sword and piercing through the beginnings of charcoal, skin and bone.

The woman gasps, her rose lips parted in silent woe as I wrench and hollow the brand within her. Her eyes level my own as cartilage caves to pressure and ruptures... grinding beneath keen steel and impassive scrutiny. Sounds of splatter and shifting drenched carbon harass my ears, disrupted only by the sound of troubled, slight chokes.

"Mmm-mma-"

Golden floods her lips and seeps past my blade, saturating her charred toga.

"L-l-l-vvv-"

Ichor stains my fingertips, a suffusing of hers and mine upon my sword's grip. Basins of azure glaze over with far-flung ache as gentle fingertips startle me, sweeping feebly across my cheek-- faint and uncertain.

"M-m-mou-" she gasps, pronouncing the hollow of her throat and the suture of my doing, coercing fore a sensation foreign in my gut.

 "l-l-lat-trévo..." 

My fingers still. It can not be. A sensation akin to panic begins to course my vessels as shaking fingers scarcely enclose mine. Her eyes fasten to me, looking upon my countenance as recognition blooms within my gaze for the first time at her lip's utterance. 

My adored.