Chapter Text
As the young prince of the underworld emerges once more from the sanguine pools of the River Styx, his body shattered and broken by the spear of the hero Theseus and the axe of the mighty Minotaur, he begins to question even the very possibility of escape from the wretched domain of his father, the Lord Hades, and whether it is determination or simple madness that drives him ever onward, despite his innumerable failures…
“That’s quite enough out of you, narrator,” Prince Zagreus remarked as he strode into the great hall of the House of Hades, the blood of Charon’s countless clientele still dripping from his scarlet-tinted robes. “Besides, I think I gave that blowhard Theseus just as good as I got.”
Despite his recent death, the Prince’s excursion had not been altogether fruitless, as evidenced by the freshly-bottled flask of Ambrosia he now carried, still clasped in the vice of the once-king Theseus’ severed left hand.
“If only it weren’t for that Minotaur, I’d already be back in Greece by now, on my way to see Mother.”
The Prince sorely overstates his ability, even as the limitations of his feeble reach are plainly displayed to all others inside the House.
“Yeah, that Asterius really musta got you good, huh?” observed flighty Hypnos, waiting as always at the entrance to the great hall. Under the God of Sleep’s inattentive gaze, fresh shades were processed and sent out again to their preassigned corners of the underworld, though how they ever made it anywhere under his lack-of-guidance was beyond Zagreus. “Hey, maybe next time you could try, I don’t know, talking to him? He always seemed like such a nice guy.”
“Thanks for the advice, mate,” said the Prince. “I’ll try to remember that the next time he tries to cave my head in.”
Making his way (as discreetly as was possible for a god) past the sleeping Cerberus and the brooding Ruler of the Dead, Prince Zagreus flew from Lord Hades’ reception desk and disappeared into the comparatively jovial atmosphere of the lounge, hoping to find a familiar face with which to share in a bit of revelry.
As he entered the newly-renovated lounge, the Prince couldn’t help but remark upon its remarkably improved state. “Wow, Dusa’s really knocked this place into top shape. You'd hardly be able to tell that Cerberus had destroyed it.”
It conveniently slips the mind of the young Prince that it was his attempt at escape which elicited the Hellhound’s wrothful outburst to begin with.
Spotting a familiar face in the milling crowd of deities and shades, the Prince approached the only patron who was sitting alone, the blue-haired Fury who had seemingly taken a whole table to herself.
“Hey there Meg, fancy a chat?” The Prince slammed the flask of Ambrosia down on the table in front of her, causing the bronze-toned hand of Theseus to fall to the floor. “And maybe a drink as well?”
“Oh, it’s you,” Megaera answered in her usual standoffish way. Her tone was even more derogatory than usual of late. “For a second I thought I heard the voice of Prince Zagreus. Turns out it’s just the sound of a child too angry and arrogant to take any responsibility for the consequences of his actions.”
“Oh, come on, Meg, don’t be like that. Is this because I killed you out there again?”
The Fury Sister stood up with a clamor, sending her cushioned seat clattering out from under her. “I know you might think this is just a game, Zagreus, but not all of us get the privileges that come with being Lord Hades’ son. I’m up for review, thanks to you, and if Hades finds my service wanting, unlike you, I can be replaced. Think about that, before you go off on another one of your so-called excursions.”
Cold and yet somehow still fuming, the Fury stormed off, the nearby shades scattering for cover in her wake.
The Prince let out a sigh. Meg was right, he realized, at least to a point. He could hardly make merry with his friends here in the House when his attempts at escape were actively causing those same folks to suffer under the heel of his father. He had to do something nice for them , not just for himself. And who knew just where to begin.
Prince Zagreus scanned the busy lounge for any sign of her: the one being in the House who could never afford to slow down or take a break for anything, not even when ordered to by the gods themselves. Soon enough, he saw her, the little Gorgon-head zipping about the rafters of the lounge, feather-duster in hand—snake, hair… thing—busily collecting up every last atom of detritus from within the House’s decrepit ceilings.
The Prince waved at the Gorgon maidservant from his seat at Meg’s abandoned table, and Dusa cheerily waved back, snaking a path through the dusty, moldering rafters and over to Zagreus. Within moments she had found seating alongside the Prince—or rather, had found a fitting space to hover over the table, which served as the approximate equivalent of sitting when one was only a head.
“Hey, Dusa? Congratulations on completing your assignment with the lounge. Just look at this place!” he swept his hands about the room, allowing the compliment to sink in. “It’s better than ever. All thanks to your effort and dedication. Here, this is for you.” He gingerly gifted the flask to one of her many snake-hair-tendrils. “Something special for the occasion.”
“ Whoa , I, this, this is Ambrosia , Prince! But this is for gods …! This isn’t for… someone like me. I’m truly speechless, Prince, I’m just… I just really don’t know what to say.”
Despite her protestations, Dusa was never actually speechless, though that was just one of the many reasons that the Prince so thoroughly enjoyed her company.
“Ambrosia isn’t only for the gods, you know, Dusa. It’s for anyone we really care about. So, please, enjoy it, or… just add it to the lounge’s stash. Whatever suits you.”
“ Oh , I, but, you… really mean that, huh…? But, you’re the Prince himself, and I’m just…” Dusa’s big eyes looked to the ground, as if she were suddenly ashamed of herself. “Look, we both know I am just a floating monster head. I just don’t understand. Why keep on being nice to me, like this? When I first got this job, I thought you’d never even talk to me…”
The Prince had never seen Dusa quite like this, not even back when Nyx had threatened to have her fired for working too hard. “Dusa, no. You’re so much more than that. The way you liven up this whole miserable House, the way you affect the people around you. I wish you could see that. If only everybody in this House had your spirit.”
“Aww. If only everybody in this House had yours, Prince Zagreus. You’ve been so kind to me, and I’m glad we’ve had a chance to get to know each other more. It’s really nice, sometimes… knowing somebody really cares about me here.”
“It should be more than sometimes that you feel that way, as far as I’m concerned. I just… I’ve never met anybody like you before. My father always told me not to smile quite so much, but… you’re like me. You just can’t help it. I think that might be why…why I like you so much, Dusa.”
“What, because I smile?” Dusa laughed at that, that infectious little bubbling giggle that the Prince found so utterly irresistible. “Smiling’s just a little something that I like to do to deal with the day! Though, oh… that’s what you meant, I… oh, I see, I, uh, look, this is kind of a lot, I, I had better go… I’ll cherish the Ambrosia, though, okay?”
And with that, the moment was over. Dusa fluttered off, quick as a Fury’s whip, before Zagreus could even utter a parting word.
“Well, Zag, you blew that one,” the Prince muttered to himself. “I just hope I didn’t make things too weird between us.”
Things are most definitely now ‘weird’ between the ever-dying Prince and the Gorgon maidservant of the House.
Feeling suddenly more defeated than he had after being vanquished by Asterius back in Elysium, Zagreus decided to retire to his room for the remainder of the night—day—whatever time it happened to be in this wretched House. As he entered into his lavish room, standing astride the only bed he’d ever known, he felt somehow prompted by the intrusion of a single, oft-repeated query.
Rest? His old bed seemed to ask.
“I’m not even slightly tired.” Prince Zagreus glanced about the room, searching for something with which to occupy him: from his weights, to his harp, then back to his bed.
“Though I guess it couldn’t hurt to kill some time.”
***
Following a preordained duration of time, the flighty Gorgon servant timidly approaches the Prince’s private quarters, in pursuit of an audience with the ever-withdrawn Prince of the underworld…
“Um, hi there, Prince Zagreus? So so sorry to intrude on you like this, but, I, uh, I just thought we should talk, y’know? I feel terrible about earlier, and I…”
But the Prince did not hear her, and as she rounded the corner and down the darkened violet hall that led to Zagreus’ private bedchamber, Dusa found the Prince to be alone, sprawled atop his bed. His eyes were closed, but he was not asleep, for his divine member was on proud display, standing as tall and as regal as one of the pillars of Hercules. With every mighty stroke, the Prince’s member seemed to grow bigger and bigger, the power within its ashen flesh straining within the confines of its turgid form. A groan escaped his lips as the Prince approached his limit, while a drop of godly precum gleamed, more brilliant than gold, atop the summit of the Prince’s cock.
“It’s just… so big…”
The Prince’s eyes shot open, one verdant green, the other infernally black, and hit his climax just as the first of the Gorgon’s words hit his ears. A stream of golden emissions erupted from deep within his ashen cock, painting his robes, his nethers, and much of his room with the godling’s smoldering seed.
“Oh my! Prince Zagreus, are you okay?” Dusa inquired, seemingly heedless of the Prince’s compromised position. “Your sperm, it’s burning! Is… is it normal for it to do that?”
“Normal for me, at least, though, I’d always suspected…Wait, Dusa, don’t come in here!”
The godling’s clothes had already begun smoking and singeing wherever his seed had found purchase, and Dusa, studious as ever, had rushed inside the Prince’s private abode to try and mitigate the damage.
“No time for that now, I gotta clean it all up! Oh, your poor robes…!”
The Prince tried in vain to shoo the workaholic Gorgon away from his exposed nethers, but the surprisingly-forward Dusa was having none of it. “Really, Miss Dusa, I’m fine.”
“No, Prince Zagreus, with all due respect, as the custodian of this House, this is kinda my job, and all. So please…”
Pushing the still-exposed Prince back into bed with a nudge of her hair-tendrils, the studious Gorgon quickly began to collect the burning embers of the Prince’s godseed, lapping up each and every detectable deposit with the tendrils of her serpentine hair.
The Prince squirmed in his bed, desperately refraining from becoming aroused in spite of himself. “Do you really have to use so much tongue while you’re doing that, Dusa?”
“I hate to break it to you, Prince, but all of my fingers are basically tongues. Or are my tongues more like fingers? Either way, we’re still talking about my hair, which just makes things that much more confusing. Personally, I stopped worrying about all those silly distinctions ages ago.”
Satisfied by her own answer, Dusa continued collecting the samples of sperm with the tongues of her snake-hair, oblivious of her encroaching vicinity to the Prince’s genitalia.
“Dusa, while I appreciate your desire to help, I’m not quite sure that I’m entirely, uh , ~comfortable~ with this arrangement.” The Prince winced, shivering from head-to-toe, though whether it was from discomfiture or pleasure even he couldn’t tell.
“Oh nonsense, Prince! It’s the least I can do for you. After all, you’ve already done so much more for me. Just… think of it like I’m returning the favor, okay?”
Reluctantly, Prince Zagreus closed his eyes, succumbing to the scenario and allowing Dusa the simple satisfaction of ‘returning the favor.’ Even if, as far as Zagreus was concerned, she didn’t owe him a thing.
Still, he had to admit, Dusa was incredibly gifted with the applications of her many mouths. Every ginger kiss, every loving stroke and careful caress of his toned pelvis brought the Prince’s member dangerously close to hardening, while each slight brush across his nethers, intentional or not, threatened to launch Zagreus into a Bacchanalian revelry not unlike the one that had gotten him into this situation in the first place. My, how a part of him wished to undo all of that hard work across her pretty face…
After a minute or so had passed, Zagreus opened his eyes to find that both his robes and his nethers had been thoroughly cleaned, though the greedy Gorgon seemed to show little sign of stopping.
”Um, Dusa?” No answer. “Dusa, I think I’m clean. You can stop now, if you want.”
Now the Prince was almost worried “Dusa? Dusa!” Zagreus grabbed her near where her shoulders should have been, and the Prince’s touch snapped her out of the trance in which she had been enthralled.
“Oh, Prince…” Dusa’s head drooped, as if she were about to faint.
“Dusa, are you okay?” the Prince caught her in his hands as she fell. Her eyes were hazy, and the rest of her was blushing a prominent shade of red. “Your face…”
“Not just my face, it’s like everything’s on fire. Which I guess for me is mostly just my face, but, well… you know what I’m trying to say, right?”
“I think so, but… are you sure you’re okay with this, Dusa? I’ve never seen you behave like this before.”
She laughed again, that same infectious giggle, though given the current context all it did was make the Prince even harder. “Must have been that Ambrosia… which, thanks again for that. But, oh , I knew there was something funny about that stuff…”
“Dusa, did you really drink that whole thing? Already? No wonder you’re out of sorts.” The Prince rose to get help, but Dusa grabbed him by the wrist and held him there, next to her.
“Please, Prince Zagreus. I really, really wanna do this for you. It’s just… it’s been so hard, trying to process my feelings for you, and then, with what you said today…”
Zagreus could see that she was becoming flustered, and so sat down beside her, reaching around to cradle her in his warmth. “I’ve never really been too good with words, Prince. But, after all of this, I think I finally know how I can show you what it is I’m feeling.”
Turning around to face the sitting Prince, Dusa lowered herself to crotch level, looking up at him with those big expressive golden eyes of hers, and opened her mouth, seductively stroking her tongue across the roof of her mouth.
“You have no idea how badly I’ve wanted this,” the Prince remarked, but Dusa just giggled as she fully opened her mouth to reveal her long, prehensile tongue. “Woah,” Zagreus mouthed, as Dusa proceeded to twine her tongue around the Prince’s hardening pole like a veritable Gordian Knot of slobber and muscle.
Gingerly, gleefully, greedily, she began to stroke the Prince’s heavenly cock, moving up and down with her vice-grip tongue while simultaneously lapping and teasing at the head of his divine member, overwhelming the Prince with a two-pronged assault of oral stimuli. Not content to let their chief mouth have all the fun, two of Dusa’s hair-tendrils began to caress the Prince’s sack, their swirling tongues adding their own voices to the chorus of pleasure.
But despite his more tenuous position, Zagreus still possessed the stamina of a god, and soon enough, it was Dusa herself who was in danger of being overwhelmed by the sheer pleasure of their oral contest. Eventually, she yielded, relinquishing her position with a quick, full-frontal embrace of the Prince’s member. Her tongue lolled out of her head, eyes crossed, as saliva and precum dripped from her serpentine maw, even as the Prince’s length pressed against her face.
“Oh my gods,” Zagreus groaned. “Dusa, I’m putting it in you.” Placing the head of his divine cock between her lips, the Prince waited for Dusa to take the initiative, which she greedily did, sliding her head up and down the Princely penis with reckless abandon.
It was like nothing the Prince had ever felt before. Even the familiar grip of his own hand paled in comparison to the Gorgon’s subtle ministrations, her prehensile tongue stroking his member like the fabled fingering of Orpheus, while her lips and throat performed a heavenly tune on his divine flute.
Zagreus was close now. He could feel the tingling build up, moving from the tip of his balls to the base of his shaft, as his golden seed cried for release. Unable to control himself now, he grabbed Dusa by the back of her head, finding purchase within her soft hair-tendrils, and thrust her down to the very base of his ashen pole.
Doubled-over in a twisted mass of toned muscles and slapping flesh, Prince Zagreus threatened to envelop Dusa like a cocoon, his cock lodged inescapably down her throat as the powerful orgasm wracked its way through his body, his hips rocking in unison with each release of his golden seed.
Unhinging her jaw in order to overcome her natural gag reflex, Dusa greedily drank up every last blistering drop of the Prince’s seed, and began to tremble uncontrollably as she too found herself swept up by the wave of their mutual climax.
Now both sweaty and exhausted, the lovers collapsed back into bed, thankful at once for the intimacy granted to them by the Prince’s private quarters, as well as for the nearly sound-proof construction of the House’s walls.
“Remind me to thank the House Contractor later… for the insulated chambers I mean,” Dusa gasped, as if reading the Prince’s mind, though still recovering from her own climax.
That got Zagreus thinking. “Dusa, were you able to have an orgasm just now?”
“What do you think, stud?” the Gorgon purred.
“Odd of you to call me ‘stud,’ but I won’t say I hate it.”
“You don’t think it's too weird?” Dusa asked.
“Not the pet name so much as the whole situation. Wait, no.” Prince Zagreus turned on his side to get a better look at his newfound lover, intent on not losing his question in the tide of pillowtalk. “While I appreciate this more assertive side of you, Dusa, what I actually mean is, how is that possible? Can you feel anything, down there , I mean, without your body?”
“Oh, that.” Dusa propped herself on her hair like it was the crook of an elbow, now able to look Prince Zagreus in the eye. ”Ya see, most immortals can still feel their bodies, even after they’ve been separated for a really, really long time. Even when we’re apart, we have a special sort of connection, my old body and me. How else do you think I’d be able to talk right now, without lungs to push air out of my mouth? Magic? I mean, come on, Prince Zagreus!”
“You’ve definitely got me there,” the Prince admitted. Then, as they laid together in silent, post-coital bliss, another peculiar thought began to take form in the Prince’s mind.
“Dusa…”
“Hm…?” she sounded like she was on the verge of falling asleep.
“Just where exactly is your body?”
“Oh, May? She’s up on the surface, back in Greece, though, come to think of it, she’s probably already turned to stone by now.”
“Hm. I see. And what would happen if we returned you to your body—sorry, to May, back on the surface?”
Dusa’s sleepy face lit up, her large eyes nearly bulging from her head. “Oh, Prince, you can’t actually , be serious, can you? Or… are you? I mean, I couldn’t leave the house now, what with there still being so much left to do, and Miss Nyx, and your father, and, oh, I already have so much work to catch up on, and what if someone where to find out—”
“—Dusa.” The Prince stopped her in her tracks, placing a reassuring hand on either side of her full, squashable cheeks. “You’ve already given so much to this place. It’s never looked better, thanks to you. More importantly, I don’t know how else I could ever repay you, what with how much more friendly and liveable you’ve made this otherwise dreary place for me.”
Zagreus leaned in close, nearly bringing his face to touch her own, and Dusa began to feel butterflies in her distant stomach. “If there’s a way I can do this for you, Dusa, I sorely wish you’d tell me how.”
“Okay, okay, Prince. I trust you. I… I think I even love you.” Now it was Zagreus' turn to get butterflies, and he turned his eyes down in embarrassment as Dusa’s happy visage took on a rare, more determined countenance. “Just help me get me back to my body, Pr—Zagreus, and I’ll do the rest from there.”
It had been a long time since Zagreus had shared such genuine feelings with anyone, and the thought of going into Tartarus with Dusa by side was enough to make him feel giddy. “Alright. Let’s see this through.”
“Great! Though you should probably put some new clothes on first.” Dusa pointed to the Prince’s now-thoroughly tattered robes, which left him nearly as naked as an Athenian athlete. “You know,” she added with a furtive glance at the Prince’s now-flaccid member. “I once heard from Achilles that the heroes of Sparta would wear enchanted armor that could… oh, how did he put it… play with them, like, all of the time? I guess it was supposed to make them fight better, or something?”
Zagreus had been unusually blessed to have seen so many new sides to Dusa on this Fated evening, and each new surprise from the unsuspecting Gorgon only seemed to stoke the young Prince further. “Dusa, I’m really sorry about this, but…”
The sensuous Gorgon’s heartfelt confession and surprisingly debauched remarks have aroused the Prince to action yet again, and in more ways than just one.
“Say no more, Prince! And, um, narrator, I guess? Since I already know I can trust you to do your job, then you can just trust me to do mine!”
Without another word, the determined lovers burst out of the rear entrance of the Prince’s bedroom, entering the House’s courtyard where Tartarus loomed just beyond. Muscles trained by routine as much as by memory, Prince Zagreus grabbed his trusty Stygian Blade from among his collection of weapons, heading for the exit just as the House’s self-appointed punching bag appeared behind him. Without turning around, Prince Zagreus could already tell by the rattle of old bones and the scent of old nectar that it was Skelly who approached him.
“Hey there, old buddy boy, ya ready to clap this bony behind with that great big Stygian blade of yours? I’m just bustin’ for a beatin’.”
“Maybe another time, mate,” Zagreus answered, turning around to reveal Dusa, who had made herself comfortable between the Prince’s legs, and was already busy at work on his reinvigorated member.
Skelly did a double-take, understandably caught unawares. “Woah, I see you’re already busy there, pally, so, uh, I’ll just come by some other time, yeah? Yeah.”
“Wha wa hi owwa?” What was his problem? Dusa muttered between cockstrokes.
“You can never really know with Skelly,” said Zagreus. Then, with a flash of his godly might and a flourish of her peerless tongue, the star-crossed lovers entered into the lowest pits of the realm of death, intent on defying the will of Lord Hades once more.
Then, upon the worn and tattered pages of the Fated List of Minor Prophecies, which lies deep within a forgotten corner of the Prince’s private room, a new prediction surreptitiously appears: “The prince of the underworld shall one day escape from the realm of his birth, with a chthonic cocksleeve at his side.”
***
High above, within the realm of the Olympians, the goddess Aphrodite guided the steps of the witless lovers with a sort of practiced carelessness, honed through such manipulations and dalliances the likes of which she’d been conducting since time immemorial.
“Why, our sweet little godling has finally found himself a lover,” the goddess observed, as if remarking aloofly upon the affairs of lesser men, and not looking with a touch of pride upon her own carefully-woven handiwork. “Still, the Fates were kind. Were it not for that gift of Ambrosia which I bestowed to Theseus, I very much doubt that the little monstress would have gone for it.”
Aphrodite carefully observed the godling and his Gorgon enter into the labyrinths of Tartarus, bidding Hermes send a boon to aid them as they went. “For if the Fates do guide them, and the little monstress truly receives her body anew, why… just imagine what fun we could have!”
TO BE CONTINUED…