#(guy who has never read past hoo voice) i dont know what happens during trials of apollo and i dont want to know :)

[boom-bada-boom]

of the stone (and of the blood)

pjo and hades crossover :]

very, very slowly, rumors began to spread of a cursed mountain. the mountain itself was a deadly thing, always freezing cold with steep cliffs and sharp stone and a sort of impossible-to-navigate confusion to it that was only possible through the gods. but for the few that managed to make it far enough in, and managed to come back out, they often spoke of a figure. bloodied, stumbling, yet undeniably divine. with feet aflame, and always armed with some sort of weapon—a weapon that in and of itself extruded a feeling of bloody hunger. everything about him was bloody. one eye glowing red, like fire, like blood; one eye glowing green, like poison, like verdant life. most of all, they spoke of how he died, every time. he would stumble through the snowy wood, looking upon the world like he had never seen it, then wince, and grimace, and collapse to the ground. and the ground would suddenly begin bleeding too, crimson liquid pulling up from the ground to swallow the body whole. and yet the next person would see him again, just the same.

there was a mortal who heard these stories. of a god who bled and died and lived again—a being that so clearly belonged to the underworld and yet escaped it again and again and again. he wanted to do the same. he searched far and wide for a way to use the god’s power for himself, and found it in a sorceress, a witch. “this,” she spoke, holding a gemstone the length of a palm, diamond shaped and completely clear, “will hold anything. it will use its own strength against it to power itself. the gem itself shall not shatter until its wielder allows it to. just know—the longer your god is within, the more his power shall show itself outside the gem.” the mortal man did not listen too much to her warnings. what care did he have if the god’s power showed? so, he took the gem and paid the sorceress’s price: when he died and stayed dead, he would belong to her, not the underworld. he accepted, of course. the god never dies and stays dead and so he will not either; he’ll never have to pay the price.

there once was a prince of the underworld, and his father, and his mother, and his other mother, and his two lovers, and his house and everyone within. then there was no longer a prince of the underworld. hades came back, pulling himself from the styx with something like pride glimmering in his eyes. “he is growing stronger,” he tells his wife as they wait for their son to return in the privacy of the gardens, “he relies less and less upon the boons from the olympians.” and they talk, and talk, and wait, and wait. and the prince does not come back.

after the frantic worry passes, they search, of course. even the gods of above are called upon for help, though it isn’t hades who asks directly. the underworld is scoured through, and there are dozens of eyes searching the surface. “you cannot sense him?” the queen asks nyx for the nth time. “no,” the primordial goddess responds, patient with the frantic mother, “he is as hidden from my senses as he was from the olympians when this had all began. i cannot undo the cloak of darkness that veils him.” (nyx asks chaos why she cannot undo this power over zagreus. “he lives not just because of the parents that birthed him,” her own parent says, “he lives because of you, as well. because you stitched him back to life with your own power. those stitches remain. he is as much your child as theirs. then he must have inherited your darkness as much as you gifted him it—the power is his, now.”)

eventually, as the centuries pass, they slowly lose hope, and slowly give up. clearly, then, the prince had escaped and stayed escaped. clearly, then, he is out wandering the world without a second look back. that must be all there is to it. that has to be all there is to it.

(eventually, the underworld falls apart. sort of. it can’t really fall apart, because it is an undeniable piece of the universe, but it collapses, changes. something entirely vital and necessary to the underworld was buried in the fragments that made up the prince, and without him nothing could be the same. tartarus crumbles deeper down, closer to chaos than the surface now. the souls once there are relocated to the fields of punishment. in asphodel, the phlegethon’s banks die down—there is simply less fire to them now. similarly, the styx loses some of its color, perhaps because the prince no longer bleeds into it or bleeds it; it still carries them, but it can’t make it all the way home anymore. the house crumbles down to the tartarus below, or maybe it just fell apart into pieces—the castle built to replace it never feels quite the same. things change with the passing time.)

there once was a mortal man who could not die. he had a peculiar stone set within a necklace, blood-red and shaped like a diamond, about the length of a palm. (sometimes when his hand touched the stone, it came away bloody. he called it a bloodstone and did not ever realize the irony of it.) the man became a king, because how do you stop a man that stands up after you gut him clean?

there was once another mortal man, this one blessed with the gift of thievery. in the night, entranced by the gleaming red gem and the gold it lay in, he crept into the king’s chambers and stole the necklace right off his neck. the very next day, the king-who-could-not-die died (and paid the price for his deal). the man realized then that this necklace must have been more than just a pretty thing.

and so it went on: a man steals from another man; a man cuts the stone from his enemy’s neck and takes it; the gold chain falls apart but the gem stays exactly the same, perfect in every way. blood always followed it. and then petals. and then flowers. when it was near, there were strange shadows of three headed dogs and figures wielding weapons, bows and swords and spears and shields and more. rivers ran red nearby it (red as the styx had not been in centuries) before the color faded away once it was too far.

(sometimes, those of the underworld heard vague rumors of these things. demigods, they thought, bitter now at the thought of the prince they had not seen in eons and who had left them behind to wither away without him. the only spirit who could tell them the truth swore himself over to somewhere they could not reach—that first mortal man, so long ago.)

eventually, there was a sort-of legend about the cursed bloodstone. you would not die as you wielded it, until it inevitably left you behind to die without it.

eventually, there was a battle where mortals did not know the gem within their midst. in the aftermath, a prince-son buried a blood-red gem from the battlefield within his king-father’s tomb (poetic; the fates have always loved irony). in the aftermath, the tomb became something cursed and horrifying. (the more his power shall show itself outside the gem, a sorceress spoke eons ago. bloody rivers and white flowers and chilling darkness and burning light and the endless cycle of living and dying and living again. there were monsters in the tomb, but they were ghosts of things from a time frozen in history, blood and shadows and eyes aglow with verdant, life-green.)

it is here the story goes on into the present. the world had changed much since the days of a prince of the underworld, since the days of blood following stone, since the days of a son burying a father with something impossibly powerful for mortal beings. a demigod son of poseidon saved olympus, and then he and six others saved the world. they were all grown tired of prophecy and quest, and thus it was not well received when the oracle delivered another.

still, fate waits for no one, and so it is the son of poseidon, son of jupiter, and son of hades that set out on a quest to find a stone that history had largely forgotten. in the camp they left behind, demigods of all sorts try to figure out where the story had been told and what the story tells. (a centaur older than a young god does not quite remember a stone, and he never really knew of the world below. a god who once felt young and limitless with ardor recalls that once, long and long ago, there had been a prince he had liked and laughed with.)

it is here that a quest is taken and a journey began. they manage to meet the sorceress and the spirit she chained to herself. they trek into the underworld to figure out if they know anything because, hey, “underground royalty” the prophecy said. ares actually manages to be helpful for a demigod quest without annoying ulterior motives for once because he notices when bloody deaths seem to move in a pattern. the hunters and artemis appear for a short time. other stuff definitely occurs, including a few monster attacks.

(persephone grew bitter of children of hades for a reason.)

.

.

.

find the crimson pitfall in a cage of stone,

the missing piece of a place named home,

a god long unnamed and a song long unplayed,

underground royalty from a time long rearranged.

earth, air, and sea learn how to die,

and a child of death finally sees the falling sky.