Mousai's POV
It's been so long since I've dreamt. It's been so long since I've slept.
Even if I was knocked out...please let it last a little longer. Let this solemnness swallow me whole even be it death. For I can no longer stand the voices that whisper within my head.
"MOUSAI!" An unpleasant scream alerts me, forcing my body to become alert.
My eyes open to a world of chiselled white and gold. A place where the sun and moon merge into one and white hair weaves like webs. "MOUSAI!" I hear the man scream once again.
His figure in the distance running to me with an urgent pacing. "DON'T L-" He continues screaming but I step back, not wanting anymore pain inflicted upon me.
But as I take my comfort step, I find myself on the edge of a pit. One that almost makes me stumble into the abyss. "PLEASE DON'T L-" His words feeling like they're intentionally being cut off by something else.
I...stare down. My body shaking as if I'm about to commit a sin.
Down. My eyes watering like I know this is a mistake.
Down. My nails drilling into my flesh as I try to wake myself up before I commit another mistake.
Until I freeze. The spirals of gold that put the sun to shame. A frenzied spin that waltz along my soul with ease. "STOP LOOKING MOUSAI!" Oracion's voice finally reaches me as I can feel him not too far away from me now.
"I...can't-" I feel a tear slide down my cheek as my soul begins to burn.
This whole time I was blaming Oracion for dreaming of me...when in fact he isn't intentionally doing it...is he? I can't see the body...I can't see what's under that sheet of darkness. But what I do know. Is that those eyes want to be freed, unchained...let loose.
"What if they were brok-" Just one of the thousands of hairs snaps like a feather's fall from grace. The Beasts teeth beginning to show as a gargantuan smile is plastered upon its face.
"MOUSAI PLEASE-" Oracion comes up behind me, covering my eyes and whispering into my ears. "Wake up...please wake up. You can't be here. I shouldn't be here. But we can't do anything anymore...please leave me here and let Persephone kill me. Whatever's down there can't get out if I'm dead, so don't give it what it wants. But more importantly, YOU NEED TO WAKE UP!" He screams into my head.
Shaking me violently until I'm forced awake in the...walls? Of the palace is what I would of liked to say. But instead I remain sat within a chair surrounded by rubble, 6inch deep thorns drilled within my body and flames seared across my body from what feels like a concentrated sun.
"Zagreus..." I call out.
But nobody responds.
With each thrusting movement the vines find themselves deeper within my flesh. The concentrated light that bounces around the underworld, now specifically aiming itself right at my feet as if to intentionally keep me in place for some reason. The light that was meant for Persephone...light that Hades stole in order to bring her a garden she could flourish within.
'Decay' I think to myself, watching as the vines helplessly blacken into dust and fall off my body.
"Persephone? Hades?" I continue to call, blocking the light from my face so that I can finally enable myself to see.
With nothing to go on-I head to the tower across the way, one that holds a large glass dish that bounces the light all the way from the surface. My clothes torn and my feet barren once again. I hold myself, hoping some sort of contact will warm me from this soulless world Hades thrives within.
Rubble upon rubble. Blood upon blood. The thick dust has yet to falter from whatever originated within this place, "Where is the palace I had finally made my way to?" I whisper as I slide my hand across the tower now in front of me, a place untouched by whatever means necessary by all evidence.
Through the walls I notice gilded gold, lining it up and down with symbols that mimic the sun. A place of light...worship or maybe even sacrifice? Nothing within the underworld is new...everything that finds itself here is a copy or reused from elsewhere, from the stone to the water, even the souls themselves were once living.
All of a sudden the gilded lines course with energy, shining bright but only for a second.
"Hmmmhmmm" Someone hums from the top, causing it to occur again and again.
"Ugly, bitter, sour, disgusting. That's what that was" Her feminine voice being made clearer to me as she audibly spits off the tower.
"Beautiful, one of a kind, unrivalled...queen" She giggles to herself like a child as I ascend the final staircase. "Challenged, difficult, misunderstood?" She continues.
I cover my eyes from the blinding light of the giant dish that continues to reflect the light, trying to make my way behind it without falling off of the edgeless tower. "Oh?" She chimes.
"Well would you look at that. A monster. Eeek?" She egotistically remarks before distracting herself from my existence.
Her appearance nothing less of radiance, godly, golden. One could even call her the Sun. Amaterasu, goddess of the sun...here, within this dead cold world devoid of light. "You're probably wondering why I'm here?" She questions without facing me, instead looking at what's within her lap.
"I was." I answer truthfully.
"Darling even the sun can cast its shadows. This space in particular lacks ever lumen, one where my beauty can shine evermore. I pay this place a visit every now and again without Hades' knowledge, charity work, you know?" She compliments herself.
She rubs her face and fixing her hair as I attempt to walk around her and stare at her face, but she covers it, disallowing me from trying anything such as that. "Careful! You almost got blinded by my looks!" She cackles, lifting the thing within her lap up to her face. Falsely revealing her face to me but it's not like she can truthfully look at me, not like that sounds ideal at the moment.
"Could you stare at me so we could talk properly?" I ask.
She tilts the mirror a little more in order to see me better within the full space of the glass, "Ugly, grotesque, plastic." She chimes out whilst kicking her feet up in the air with a child's mannerisms.
"Excuse me?" I comment.
"Hideous, outrageous, cretin." She continues.
I go to touch her shoulder but quickly fling my hand back as an audible sizzle rings out from my singed flesh. "Thanks, I'm going to have to burn these clothes after now." She sighs.
"So why say those things!?" I shout but she puts the mirror up again, placing a finger on her lips to signify me shutting up.
"I didn't, the mirror did." She glides her hand along the edges, its uniquely plated design with orange and green gilded all across the back as she spins it between her fingers like a game. "A friend gifted this to me. An object that serves as a constant reminder of the pedestal that I am." She charms herself, placing the mirror back to her face.
Upon doing this I instantly notice the problem. Her lips within the reflection begin to move, but her actual physical body does no such thing. "Desirable, uncontested, beauty...mother-" She flicks the mirror with two of her fingers, causing the reflection to flinch back in pain. "I'm not sure what that last one was, but I had better not hear it again." Her literal radiance dims as her once impossibly golden shadow dulls to grey, one that I could of sworn I had noticed eyes within. "How dare you in fact call me that?" Her façade falls.
Or rather, her true nature is becoming more and more apparent to me. "No because what did you mean by that?" She places the mirror down, threatening to stomp upon it whilst the reflection of her face covers itself, bracing for an impact that it seems all too used to.
"Wait!" I call out to stop her.
The glass dish next to us sways a little bit as if the light somehow begins to weigh it down, "HOW DARE YOU TELL ME TO DO ANYTHING!?" She stomps over and over again, barely missing the mirror on the floor each time. "DO YOU KNOW HOW FUCKING PRETTY I AM!?" She still refuses to stare at me.
"YOU! THE UGLY BEAST THAT DESTROYED THE PALACE WITHIN MERE MOMENTS! CALLING ME UGLY!?" She screeches.
"I didn-"
"I HEARD IT! YOU THINK I'M DISGUSTING! VILE! UNLOVEABLE!" She scowls from the depths of her throat as cinders from her clothing begin to fly around us. Her black hair begins to alight with whipping flames that leave scorch marks along the stone. "YOU SAID IT! NOBODY WOULD WANT YOU! NOBODY CAN HEAR YOU! NOBODY! NOT ANYONE! NOT ANYTHING! YOUR VOICE IS THE SAME AS HERS!" She belts at the top of her lungs, gradually melting the floor from where she stands.
"I'M POWERFUL! I'M PRETTY! I'M WANTED! I'M NEEDED!" She reaffirms herself. "ALL THESE GODS WORSHIP HER LIKE I'M NOT RIGHT THERE!?" WHAT'S THERE TOO LOOK AT!?" SHE'S PALE! SHE'S UNEXPRESSIVE! IS THAT WHAT PEOPLE WANT!?" She screams and she screams, slowly disfiguring her own body as rage consumes her.
"I didn't destro-the palace?" I look down at the ruins of dust and death that I had walked through as the thick cloud on it has finally relaxed.
'Zagreus' I think to myself, still not fully understanding what had happened.
Staring at my hands I can't help but shake. Staring at the wounds and bruises on my hands as if I'm the victim here. "What have I done." I coddle myself.
"What have I done." I repeat, falling to my knees and covering my face.
Cinders flicker onto my shoulder, signifying Amaterasu's attention being placed on me once more. "MAKING THIS AB-" She attempts to justify this anger.
"Be silent." I stare at her flamed form through a gap in my hands. "I am no moon goddess, I am no sun goddess. But by the gods will I truly show you what little your power means to me at the moment."
She scoffs, spitting up flaming mucous before coughing it out and off the tower. An unsightly sight for one such as her. The silence that's leftover somehow burning me up more than standing next to the sun. "Speak" I command her to fill the quiet air.
"They're not dead." She answers.
"What?" I feel my eye twitch.
"They left before you did anything to them. Your body was still active but ultimately the gods of the underworld are stronger here than they would be anywhere else. You were subdued, left alone and only then did something emerge from you." She answers truthfully.
"And where did they go?" I question.
"Ask the mirror, borrow it as an apology. It can show you the truth of what you want to know, whether you want to know it or not." She lowers her head in shame, releasing the flames and showing off her pure nude body. Her eye filled shadow suddenly turning into gold once more before she makes her way to the front of the light filled dish.
She finally faces me through the light, leaving her facial details still unseeable but nonetheless she turned to me. "I haven't always been like this." She whimpers a little, reaching her hand out and becoming one with the light, presumably making her way back to the surface.
Standing back on my two feet I walk towards the mirror. A reflection I haven't seen more, staring blankly back at me. Her translucent eyes peering back at me like a ghost, staring right through me as if to spite that I'm the original.
"You know what I want." I speak to it.
The reflection changes to express a level of sadness I hadn't seen before, shocking me a little bit but nonetheless it shows me what I desire. "Hades' knew of your encounter with the wolves. He intends to help you and himself by retrieving Hel's body that has continued through the river, making her way towards the domain of dreams, where the body will without a doubt end up as it continues to cycle through the underworld." I feel myself express shock a little bit as the mirror's voice sounds oddly neutral as it sways between a deeper and lighter pitch.
"Have I done something wrong?" It asks me after noticing this.
"Nothing at all. Thank you." I comment, holding it by my side as I now make my way to a place I've been trying to avoid all this time...alone once again.