Chapter 124 - The Escape

A split second after Zagreus dashes through the doorway, the door slams shut and the surroundings quake with his Father's booming voice transmitted through his Authority, "BOY! WHERE DO YOU THINK YOU'RE GOING?!"

Zagreus smiles with excitement, but replies sarcastically, "On a nice little beach vacation, where else would I go in Hell?"

"WHAT..? Nobody gets out of here alive or dead, stupid boy. Though I suppose you'll have to learn it for yourself." says Hades in a calmer tone, before letting go of his full Authority over the room, signified by the way the walls and embers in the air stopped glowing, meaning he was no longer paying attention.

'Huh? What did Father mean by that? With his Authority, I should be able to go anywhere as long as he doesn't impede me.'

Zagreus turns around and sees the well constructed entry area for the House. The river of the Styx's bloody waters flow by surrounding the entirely closed off area of the House like a moat. Zagreus makes his way across a stone bridge over the river and enters an area with a high density of shades. He does not stick around to talk. He rushes through them and even does a dash attack accidentally out of excitement, which makes them poof away, returning them to the Styx.

"Oops, sorry."

The other shades slowly float away from him, but otherwise, it seems they are used to this sort of treatment. He shrugs and continues.

Reaching the end of the House of Hades' equivalent of a driveway, he touches the door and usurps his Father's Authority again. The door opens and he dashes through as it closes behind him.

He's now entering Tartarus, the lowest layer of Hell, a labyrinthian biome. This is the roaming grounds of the Furies. He can actually see Tartarus from the balcony of his training room, but he never had any desire to go here before. As far as tourism goes, the only sights and sounds to see here are shades being tortured and their ghastly wails.

'This place could use an interior designer. Absolutely dreary.'

He walks past a few tiny jail cells that look more like coffins with bars on them. Most of the cells are filled with shades reaching their hands out at him. Zagreus ignores them. 'Not my business. If you're here, you probably deserve it.'

Halfway through the chamber, he spots a ritual circle appear and light up. He backs away, raising his sword and his vigilance. He vaguely senses the Authority in the room infused into the ritual circle, spawning a monstrous-looking shade with a spiked club that looks like a hulking orange goon. It spots him and floats over, raising its club, making it painfully obvious what its intention is.

'Seems this shade has almost zero intelligence. Heh, Father must be lacking in manpower if he can only bring idiots of this level to stop me.'

Dashing through the goony shade's club swing, Zagreus ends up behind it and swings his sword, damaging the shade slightly. It's not down for the count so he combos the shade, interrupting its follow up attacks by making sure it keeps flinching to his attacks. Soon he smashes his sword down, knocking it into the wall where he can have the shade easily combo-locked and pinned. It dies a few seconds later and returns to the Styx. 'Heh! In your face, old man. I'll take on any of the goons you send my way.'

He continues to the end of the chamber and opens the door to the next area. Here, he sees two ritual circles pop up. 'Oh, so that's how you're playing. Guess it'll get harder going forward.'

"Go to Hell, fiends!" he shouts, not quite fully aware of the irony. He lunges at the two orange goony shades before they even get the chance to unfreeze from the summoning process. He combos one of them, but then he remembers to split his attention to the other shade just as it swings its club down. Dashing out of the way at the last second, he retreats enough so that both stupid shades are mindlessly following him. Now he can swing his sword horizontally and hit both of them at once. 'Heh, I guess I finally get to employ those war strategies that Achilles taught me.'

Finishing them off without any trouble, he finds something floating over the corpse of the final shade. It reminds him of the jewels his Moth.. well.. presumably Foster Mother wears. He grabs the Darkness and pockets it, hoping to bring it to her as a gift if he sees her again. Even though she deceived him for so long, he still loves her for all the affection she has shown to him. Maybe he can find some shiny stuff for Nuwa to play with too.

~ ~ ~

[Earlier]

None of the residents of the House of Hades actually need sleep other than Nuwa and Hypnos. Zagreus has outgrown the need for sleep entirely now that he has reached adulthood. In general though, they work quietly during Nuwa's bedtime. Megaera likes to lie in bed with Zagreus pretending to be asleep, but this time she's actually asleep. Zagreus is asleep due to the Nectar.

A projection of Nyx surfaces on the full-body mirror in Zagreus and Nuwa's shared room. The true name of this mirror is the Mirror of Night and it is a powerful Artifact. Nyx uses this Artifact to temporarily keep Megaera asleep and permanently shroud the Fated List that her daughters, the Fates, gave her from being visible to anyone but Zagreus going forward. Her projection exits the Mirror, walks into the training room, and unlocks the formation on the Stygian Blade before fading away. Hades made her vow not to tell him of his birth mother, but what if he found out on his own?

Dusa sweeps up in the lounge and picks up pieces of cake on the floor while quietly muttering to herself about why they let things get so out of hand. She remembers the contraband and blushes deeply in shame. She refused to partake in the drinking since that would be against her maidly ways. However, she wouldn't dare snitch on the Prince to the Master or Mistress. It is not her place!

A quake and a booming voice thunders through the entire House. Hypnos jumps up out of fright from his floating loveseat and fumbles with his lists due to automatically assuming he got caught sleeping on the job again. Dusa jumps as well, only to hide herself under a table. Megaera and Nuwa both awaken.

When everyone present hears Hades transmit his booming voice through his Authority, "BOY, WHERE DO YOU THINK YOU'RE GOING?" they all quiet down. Achilles smiles subtly and internally narrates, 'So you have begun your own epic, Prince Zagreus.'

Nyx is impassive as usual, so Hades does not suspect her for the time being. The walls dim when Hades stops exercising his Authority, but even though he pretended to be calm with his last statement to Zagreus, "-..you'll have to learn it for yourself." he's still ranting to Nyx, "He thinks he can walk out of here now that he's of age? Not until he has manned a desk for a hundred years! These shades will give him plenty of trouble, heheh."

His eyes light up at the thought of having an excuse for others to beat his son up, since Nyx will not let him do it himself in the House. Of course, he cannot go himself. Zagreus is too weak for him to have to take the initiative to go after him. He's happy to wait for Zagreus to get destroyed by the waves of weaklings that he plants summoning nodes for in his path. After all, his son gets his power from the Underworld as much as he does. Neither of them have passive healing outside the walls of this House, where the River Styx is most concentrated.

Megaera wakes up confused about why she fell asleep in the first place. Then she hears the words of Hades and goes red with rage. 'Zag left?! That idiot.. Always opposing Lord Hades! If he makes it to the Surface and learns of his true parentage..' she shudders and hardens her eyes, 'No, absolutely not. I have to stop him!'

She jumps out of bed and goes straight to Hades' desk. Meanwhile Nuwa is shellshocked. She cannot imagine her Big Bro Zag would leave for the outside world against the orders of their Father. Even though she knows about her other brothers and sisters leaving for work, her Big Bro Zag had always been around her throughout her entire life. She curls up in the fetal position and starts crying.

Megaera kneels in front of Hades and states, "Requesting permission to retrieve Prince Zagreus, my Lord."

Hades, quite pleased with the dutiful Fury standing by his side despite the obvious affection she has for his son, accepts her request. This proves that work trumps love in his mind. He prepares for a longer distance teleportation circle pre-prepared to send her to the last chamber of Tartarus if his son survives all the way until then, which is highly unlikely given his current battle experience and the shades that he places in his escape path.

Cerberus' master is Hades, but his favorite person is Zagreus, since he always pets him and calls him "good boy". In the three-headed giant doggo's head, he thought something bad was going to happen to Zagreus, so he wanted to find him, protect him, and maybe egg him into giving some pets. Unfortunately, he is not able to find Zagreus anywhere. Panicking just like Nuwa that his favorite petter had left, Cerberus goes berserk.

He runs around wantonly, smashing up everything in the House in his confusion. To the horror of Hades, he entirely breaks down the wall leading to the lounge and destroys most of the furniture before Hypnos can fling enough spells at the crazed doggy to make him fall asleep.

"Damned overgrown mutt! The boy will pay for your damages too!" curses Hades.

Hades doesn't have non-lethal takedown options in his attack repertoire and Cerberus is too loyal to Hades for him to attack directly, even if he is strong enough to take a beating.

Hypnos brushes some stray splinters out of his hair and cape, then pats his own back. "Good thing I wasn't sleeping on the job!"

Emerging from some debris, Dusa looks around in horror. Although she likes cleaning a lot, she hates messes. It will take her days only to scrub away the dust and debris! She's not responsible for the remodeling that will have to be done. Lord Hades will have to hire some shades specializing in home renovation to repaint, add new furniture, and redo the flooring and walls. She can't imagine the number of gems it will cost to return it to the way it was before.

~ ~ ~

Zagreus now knows why his Father was so sure that he would fail. He does not recover from damage in the Underworld like he would in the House of Hades! Achilles would be able to kill him in two hits out here! Of course, these shades are nowhere near as powerful as Achilles, but each stray hit that he takes adds up. He finds himself clutching his chest in pain. He has bite marks throughout his body, charred flesh from lasers, and numbness from magical blasts.

The bite come from floating orange skulls, lasers from floating crystals, and the magical blasts from wretched witches who are the only shades so far that can intelligently avoid his attempts to lure them together.

'I cannot take much more of this. Ugh.. maybe I was a little impulsive. In any case, there's no turning back now.' Zagreus hardens his eyes and enters the next chamber.

He spots two Skeletal Figures coming out of larger than usual summoning circles. He dashes over, but they jump out of the way before he can dash-attack them. The skeletons' eyes glow with an eerie light signifying they have some intelligence. They wear large spiked helmets and lug around big sacks on their backs filled with orange objects. Each of them toss a glowing orange object over at him, so he dashes away.

Nothing happens. 'Eh? Nothing happened. Why is it glowing and flashing?'

*BOOM BOOM*

They explode 1m (3 ft) away from the unsuspecting young Zagreus, who does not know to dash far enough away. These guys are actually called inferno-bombers since their only method of attack is chucking grenades. The first one takes him down to near death, ripping his arm and leg off, while the second one kills him instantly. The moment he dies, the River Styx materializes under his body to reclaim him and his flesh by sucking him into a pool of blood, which disappears from the mini-boss chamber seconds later.

(A/N: RIP owo)

(A/N: https://discord.gg/VD3C2BFPAu)