10 - Honest Intentions

"This is insane!" Hades was yelling at both a fluttering Hermes and the sedentary body of King Minos, over the sound of the Minotaur's endless roaring. "Where's your damn warrant, huh?! Where does Zeus get off, thinking he can just go locking poor, innocent kids in mazes?! I feel like I'm taking crazy pills, here! Is nobody else seeing this?!" The air shook as the shut doors bellowed.

It should never have gotten to the entrance. The deafening sound had King Minos gripping to his throne, fear warping his features into an even more unpleasant caricature. Hermes, spluttering in response, struggled to think over the noise as his discomfort became stress, and his stress rose up into a very real fear.

"Not now, obviously!" Red flames leapt up along Hades' shoulders as he roared back, "But I need that stupid cup!"

Hermes cast a glance at the doors, and tried to tell himself that the boy was a member of a hostile army and had picked his loyalties. Hades rounded on Minos in a whirl of fire, who recoiled in his chair.

The flames burned higher as Hades' snarling, wide-eyed figure started to darken to black. Movement caught his eyes as their emotion drained down to a cold, predatory loathing, and he snapped around to whatever crawled at his feet. Pain and Panic bounced over to him.

"WHAT'RE YOU WAITING FOR?!" Hades thrust a claw at Hermes, his voice slicing like a knife through all the blunt, brute-force thunder, "Get RID of him!!"

The imps turned on a dime and flung themselves forward, transforming into slit-eyed, leering reptiles. Hermes let out a shriek as two giant snakes sprang for him with fangs already heaving down from open jaws. He shot for the window and they gave chase, ripping like ribbons through the air. Though the Labyrinth continued to shake and scream, Hades leant against the king's throne and took a steadying breath. He ran his hand over his head, forced down his blood-pressure, and the flames returned to blue.

"So..." he cast a glance at the statues casting malformed shapes around them. "I take it you're a fan of making deals?"

Ganymede's hands clamped over his mouth as he shrank down against the door. The sliver of red light crawling beneath him picked out fur and muscle from the black void, in a heaving, monochromatic vision of Hell.

Each hoof could have crushed his skull like an egg, the lifelong weight of the unnatural beast causing the keratin to spread and crack into saw-toothed edges. As breath and spittle rained down on his head, they brought with them the stench of an unkept stable and human grease, trapped in fur for decades. As he dared to raise his chin, the light did not reach high enough to illuminate any of the beast's head - all he could see were two flat, red discs of reflected light.

Something sharp punctured the stone, missing his flinching feet by an inch. The minotaur's thick, nearly-human hands gripped on tight to its latest trophy - the shepherd's crook, creaking under the beast's weight. Ganymede hissed noiselessly through his teeth.

Voices floated from the crack beneath the door. The fear dragged any attempt at hope down to the bottom of his chest, but still he dared to feel something when he heard Hades' wheedling.

"Hey, I'm just saying - you don't wanna babysit that oversized dairy cow forever, right? Maybe if you agree to open those doors - after Bessie in there loses interest, obviously - we can discuss taking the guy off your hands, ah?"

Minos' rich voice replied with such impertinence that even Ganymede's toes curled. "Ha! And hand over a weapon of war? For the glorious price of displeasing Zeus? I am no fool, Lord Hades!"

Hades drifted in a slow circle around the seated form of Minos. Heat hung around his upper lip and the repetitive red drapery was burning holes in his corneas - it was hot, claustrophobic, and the constant crawling down his spine was beginning to give him a headache. As he ran the numbers, as he followed every potential plan down to its logical end, he kept hitting dead ends - he kept hitting a grisly end for both him and the kid. He had nothing to offer, he had no power, no time, but salvation was so close.

Fine, he thought. If he didn't have anything he could use, perhaps Minos had something he could. That unpleasant smell caught his nose and his eyes lingered on the king's ridiculous, golden throne. He stifled a sudden breath. Bingo.

He whirled a lazy finger towards the distorted figures in the dark. "What about displeasing these guys?" Minos' eyes twitched up in lop-sided alarm.

"'Gods'? Is that what they're calling themselves these days?" Hades glanced to the nearest one; another half-bull creature, but with four arms contorted into tantric shapes and a horrible symbol carved into its forehead. His lip curled at it before turning back to the king.

Drawing the smile back onto his face and resting the tips of his fingers together, he began his pitch. "Let's say I offer you a sacrifice... a really, really big sacrifice... and let's say you turn it down because you've gotten your bloomers in a twist over-" he put on the dullest impression of King Minos that he could muster, "'the king of the gods'." Leering down at the self-important little man, his grin spread wide. His body arched over him, blocking out the scarlet candlelight in dense, black shadow -

Ganymede closed his hands around the staff. The minotaur had begin swinging its head back and forth, spraying those crouched beneath it with phlegm and moisture, hearing new, alien sounds and searching for the creature it had hounded all the way here. Holding his breath and clenching shut his teeth, he tightened his grip.

The minotaur's fist swung into the air. Ganymede scream followed him up as the beast flung him high above its head. The bellow hit him as if it were a tangible wall of force, pushing him even higher. His eardrums bent with the pressure, the air shook, and all the world became a buffeting cyclone of sound, force and spinning gravity.

This time, he twisted his legs. Vaulting from the crook, he leapt for the beast's horns and slung his arms around its neck. They barely circled halfway around it.

"Wait!" he cried, and to his astonishment he saw one bovine ear flick towards him. Still, it reared back - so far back that for one stomach-icing moment he thought it would fall back and crush him beneath its shoulder-blades. He grabbed onto all the fur he could gather and tried to catch enough breath to keep shouting. "I can get you out!" The minotaur reared again, whirling to the side, flinging the crook away so that it could reach back over its head. Ganymede scurried his feet up as high as they could go, simultaneously ducking as low as possible to avoid its grasping fists. "You!" He tried simpler. "Go outside!" The minotaur swung itself in the opposite direction, sending his vertigo with it. "You stupid animal!" he snapped, "I'm trying to help you!"

Another world-shattering roar almost popped his ears, but now his fear had been eaten by sheer, maddened frustration. As he clambered over the writhing mountain of fur like a cat trying to avoid a bath, he filled his lungs and roared back. It sounded like a cub trying to out-roar a lion, but even so it seared his throat as it split from him. The minotaur struggled backwards, and then he realised; it wanted to crush him against the wall. "No-no-no!" The fear returned. "Wait!"

He dug his heels into whatever flesh they found and propelled himself upwards. He grabbed at anything he could in the roiling, red chaos, whether it was snout, flank or horn. He grabbed and twisted to get out of reach, until his fingers clamped around the monster's leaf-shaped ear.

All movement ceased. His sense of gravity sloshed forwards as the minotaur bent towards his hand. Both of them hung in suspended confusion. Still tangled all around its neck, his sandals looped around its chin, Ganymede considered his options, then with an annoyed twist of his mouth he gave the fur behind its ear a hard scrub.

The minotaur dropped to the ground. It pressed its head into his hand. Clinging on tight to the back of its neck, he didn't dare to stop. "Yeah..." he spoke with annoyance even as relief flooded his body, "Who's a good boy?"

The doors opened with a loud, low groan. Ganymede's pupils shrank to pinpricks in the sudden flash of light, but as the minotaur jerked up its head he ran a hand down its snout. "Eaaasy there, big fella. What you're hearing is good news."

Hades' silhouette came to focus in the blood-red doorway, his glowing eyes the only relief from the thick ambience of the crimson throne room. His smug smile broke into panic when he saw the titanic half-bull sat on the ground.

"Holy Toledo, kid!" He jumped back in a furl of smoke, "That thing outta be on a leash!" At his command, a spiked collar formed around the minotaur's neck and a long chain built itself, link-by-link, until it reached his hand.

Minos rolled forward in his throne and cried out from across the room. "My minotaur was never part of the deal, Hades!" Hades licked his lips with displeasure and turned back to face him. Ganymede's blond head stormed past him, dishevelled and covered in streaks of dirt, and so furious that even Hades pulled back.

"That's Lord Hades to you, you gross little toad-man!" Ganymede barked, his sandals slapping against the marble floor. "We're not taking your precious minotaur because of some stupid deal!" He stabbed a finger at the King of Crete. "We're taking your minotaur because we want your minotaur!"

The minotaur lifted its head to sniff the thickening incense and flared its nostrils in displeasure at the sound of the king's baffled stammering. Ganymede's sandals slapped back again as he marched to the doors of the Labyrinth and picked up his shepherd's crook.

He took a breath, rested his hand on his stomach, and let the rage pass. Then he turned to Hades and gave him the pantomime of a professional bow. "Glad to see you again, boss," he said with a lop-sided smirk.

"Hey, I'm nothing if not faithful," Hades replied. Their voices and the scrape of the Minotaur's chain echoed off the tiles as they made their way to the exit. He glanced to Ganymede's satchel. "You get the thing?"

"Oh, I got the thing." The doors opened to the yellowish light of the outside world as Hades clapped him on the back.

Ganymede resisted the urge to smile, knowing that the words were nothing more than an off-handed attempt to manipulate him, but they were still comforting in their familiarity. Hades was still comforting in his familiarity.

Zeus' shadow loomed over Hermes as he stood, helmet in hand, before him. Fiddling with the rim, he winced and flinched against every spat consonant booming over his head.

"Hades beat you to it?! I send you all the way to the furthest reaches of Greece and Hades beat you to my cup?!"

"I'm sorry, Zeus! Y-your highness!" Hermes' wings beat with growing distress. This great man had been his friend for centuries, and in all that time he had never once had this rage directed at him. Rubbing one hand up and down the band-aids covering snakebites on his arms, he added, "There were some complications! It was those two little guys of his - you know the ones - "

"Of course I know the ones!" Zeus threw his arms wide, sending the pink clouds surrounding them into disarray. Hermes wasn't sure where the other gods were right now. "Those little devils tried to kill my son!" Hermes cringed, his shoulders rising like a beat dog. "And now thanks to you, Hades has both the boy and the cup!"

"Me?!" Hermes' cheeks flushed pink as his toga bristled. He shoved his helmet back onto his head. "Now - now come on, Zeus! That's not fair!"

To his credit, Zeus didn't thrust a lightning bolt in his direction. Instead, he gave a noble sigh, his body seemed to deflate, and he cast him an apologetic smile. "Ohh, you're right, Hermes. I suppose I have been a little wrapped up in the details."

Hermes let out a little laugh, so pleased that the wrath had passed that the relief took his anger with it. "Well, pobody's nerfect."

"Uh, can I ask a question?" Hermes could feel the jitters again, much though relief was also doing a good job of making his hands wobble. "What's even the big deal, anyway? I- I mean!" He zipped up into the air. "If the kid's happy down there-" Didn't Zeus tell him to lock him in the Labyrinth? "- and if Hades has the cup in the Underworld, where no mortals can find it... isn't that kinda..." Zeus' good humour was fading again, and the pink flush in the clouds behind him had begun to fade to black. Hermes sank back down the the ground as his voice rose to a squeak, "a 'two birds, one stone' thing?"

"Hermes..." Zeus' voice lowered. It didn't lose its paternal warmth, but his eyes had begun to lose their spark of humour. "Have you forgotten who's in charge around here?"

A gentle strip of silk and willow stepped into the empty plaza. Zeus span to face the intruder, his eyes like thunder, but then all anger vanished. A smile blossomed across his beard and he spread his palms in welcome.

"I saw the cold front roll in," she replied, raising a finger to the covered sky. "It seemed only right to investigate." Hermes snapped to attention, as rigid as a Spartan soldier as she approached and laid her hands on Zeus' bicep. Giving him a peck on each cheek, she asked, "You boys aren't fighting, are you?"

Hermes let out a nervous chuckle. Zeus cast him a private glance, and its weight bore down on him until he replied, "I-I've just been a little highly-strung since that whole attempted-coup thing."

Hera touched her hand to her lips, displaying the perfectly appropriate level of concern - worried enough to justify Zeus' distress, but not enough that he might feel like a poor protector. "That's a good point, my dear, " she said, turning large and mournful eyes to Zeus, "have we settled on a battle plan?"

Zeus smiled and brought his hands to rest over her bare arms. "We're still working on it, sweetness, but don't you worry yourself." With another jovial laugh, he thumped a fist hard against his chest. "It's my top priority! But you see, if anything does happen to my brother, I'm going to need to find myself a new god of the dead!" Hermes bit his lip, wondering if he could leave yet.

"Hermes!" Zeus continued to boom. Hermes fumbled his helmet. It clattered over the ground, sending shocks through the back of their teeth. Zeus rose above it. "Come and see me later! Right now, I think our meeting can be adjourned!"

"Y-yes sir!" he scurried after his helmet, accidentally kicking it on with the toe of his sandal. Stumbling into his growing stress, his stooped head and reaching fingers met the hem of Hera's dress. The shadow of bare ankles passed behind the gauze before she crouched down to his height, took up the helmet, and held it out for him to take. He cupped his hands to the metal and rose his gaze to meet her gentle smile. What few pink clouds remained glowed behind her, the frizz of her hair glowing with them.

"Thank you, Hermes," she said, and though he had known her for as far back as he could remember, his nerves were so badly frayed that for a moment he really noticed how the world seemed to slow, settle and make sense when she passed through it. She continued, as the wings on his heels fluttered, "For keeping an eye on my husband for me." She released her hold and he shoved the helmet back on his head. It tilted over his eye as he gave a sharp salute.

"H-happy to help!" he declared blindly. Zeus' laughter filled the Olympian air as he gave Hermes a hard clap on the back.

"It's true! You're always keeping me out of trouble! Now off with you!" He folded his arms around his wife and thrust her against his chest. "Hera and I must discuss other matters!"

Hermes prepared to get as far away as possible, suddenly very uncomfortable, until Zeus plucked him from the sky and dragged him back just enough to mutter out the corner of his mouth, "Remember, Hermes. Later."