Chapter Text
Sing through me, Muse, and tell me the story of creation.
In the beginning, there was nothing. And then, in a manner so whimsically sudden and arbitrary it would become their hallmark, there was Chaos .
And in Chaos, there eventually swelled into being a number of gods and creatures as they dipped their finger into the wonder of creation: the earth and the skies, the glorious day and the mysterious night. Probably some other things, too, we’d wager. Chaos was not famous for signing their work, nor keeping track of it once it had been penned. There was however, up, and then down.
Time arose among Chaos’s creations above , and his name was Chronos . Tyrant. Filial murderer. He had sons, and his brother Heaven had daughters. It was said that they would be his undoing and so in paranoia he consumed them whole. This did not stop them from tearing him to pieces with the oldest weapons in existence.
When Chronos was cut down into bloody chunks with his own scythe, the children looked to one another, puzzled at what to do with the pieces. Zeus , the youngest, took note. ‘We have not destroyed him utterly. Our father’s parts tend to link together the closer they are in proximity to one another. He could rise again if we do not act.’
Poseidon , the second son, agreed with his brother. ‘A property of divinity I look forward to, then!’ He then elbowed his younger brother. ‘We ought to cast them as far flung as parts can get. One on every island in our domain! In the world! In the cosmos!’
Hades , his eldest, warily cast his gaze down towards his father’s mutilated body. He had been trapped first, and had no warning the way his brothers had. His rage had been tempered during his imprisonment, coming to a fine spearpoint of blazing fire during the heat of combat, hardening back into sensible steel now that the thrill of patricide had subsided. ‘Perhaps we should construct a prison for each piece, guarded by the finest warriors and strongest powers we have at our disposal.’
The eldest of the sisters nodded in agreement. Demeter she was, Hyperion’s traitorous daughter. Her frigid hands have scarcely broken a sweat inside the gauntlets that still dripped with Chronos’s ichor. ‘But where? Clearly only a primordial force is capable of doing much of anything to your father Time. Our weapons precede us, and only once wielded were we able to accomplish much of anything.’
Hera , the second, wore the heart-seeking bow on her shoulder. ‘Perhaps your father has other siblings we could appeal to for aid, as he appealed to our father.’
Hestia , the lovely youngest of Hyperion, did not hold the adamant rail, casting it beside the fire she stoked as though it were itself made of flame. ‘Exegryph told me of another plane, one below Olympus and ruled by dark gods. It was trying to caution me against it, I think. One of Chronos’s allies slumbers below, and if these elder weapons can tear him asunder, what would stop another elder being from knitting him back together?’
Zeus was troubled by this assessment. ‘We shall keep his pieces above, then. The stars in the firmament should be far-flung enough to keep him held.’
And so, no further discussion was to be had about the thing that dwelt below. Not when the gods drew lots for their domains, and certainly no time since.
Zeus took his place above in the heavens, perching atop Mount Olympus to keep a watchful eye on the stars. Hera took his side as his wife, and the two held dominion over the mortals as king and queen as they created the first divine dynasty. Poseidon and Hestia took their places beneath Zeus, terrorizing the new island-dwelling mortals and offering them a line of prayer in alleviation through libation. Hades and Demeter, eldest and wisest, took their places among the mortals, sowing prosperity and reaping it in equal measures.
•••
All the while, the Abyss flickered into being below, and his name was Erebus . The seething nothingness at the end of Time. Wild. Unconquerable. Under the mother Night’s veil, he turned over in his crypt, roiling and wild. Every mortal consumed by time would eventually end up feeding him, in the end, wandering in the darkness until they came across the fields in which they would eventually spend the rest of their days.
Mother Night, or Nyx as her children called her, turned out to be an ally in the gods after all, though quiet was her preferred sort of influence. She had children for nearly every nightmare incarnate, many of whom literally were the stars in the sky that viciously guarded Chronos’s fragments at the behest of the the gods of Mount Olympus. As mothers tend to desire, many of her children broke free of her shroud to live as they saw fit, but all paid homage to their mother in the end.
At the gullet of Erebus inside the innermost center of his domain, she constructed a House to organize her brood, whose lives grew ever busier as mortals proved just how adept at death they really were.
Not every one of her children were fit to live under the same roof. Some were simply too volatile, as Eris would continuously create discord and Nemesis would continuously seek to punish her for it, slaves to their natures. Others, who had come into being before there were mortals at all, had no need for play-acting mortal lives, under a mortal-styled roof—created by Nyx's own being or no.
But her two youngest sons, Hypnos and Thanatos, were born to serve mortality. There was simply no way around the fact that their natures, from their creation, would be inextricably linked to the needs of the only beings that could sleep, dream, and eventually die.
A life fending for themselves in the abyss was no place for two such as these. A life forever staving off Erebus...
It was unthinkable. Out of the question.
And besides, perhaps the natures of Death and Sleep Incarnate could be precisely what she needs to give them the mortal upbringing they so demanded.
•••
Living among the gods Chthonic is their queen, a newcomer, an outsider. She’s run from her mother, and while she, like the many shades, shapes little of the ultimate mechanics of the Underworld, they love her all the same. Her restless nature, her zest for novelty, originality, new beginnings and new springs have changed the atmosphere of the gloomy underworld, where the Abyss slumbers, and dreams of eating his fill.