3 - Honest Intentions

It was with great and oozing misery that Hades stood from his throne, stretched out his back, and waved his hand before him. Jumping to life at his command, a full-length mirror constructed itself out of rock from bottom to top, groaning in protest as wrought iron pulled itself into a frame and a sheet of black glass un-shattered itself into place. He clicked his finger and the mirror flashed white, then with a zap of noise Zeus' scowling face appeared on the surface - far too close, and from an unflatteringly low angle.

"Woah!" Hades winced and waved his arms, "Too close, Zeus! Back it up! Heyyy-" Zeus drew back from his own mirror (built from fluffy clouds and gently-lancing lightning) as Hades pulled on the sweetest, most loving smile he was capable of. "How long has it been, huh? A couple months? Too long, if you ask me - you know, we outta get together some time, go bowling, really make the most of our free time these days-"

"It's been two weeks, Hades," Zeus said with thunderous certainty. "Two weeks! And you think that's long enough for me to wave my hand and consider it all water under the bridge?"

"Well..."

"You attacked us! You unleashed the Titans!" He threw up his hands, causing his mirror to shake. "After a lifetime of fraternal love-!" Hades rolled his eyes, "after all we've been through together!" Then, with more viciousness, "After all I've done for you!" That tone caused Hades to recoil. There was something of Cronus, their father, in it. "I could overlook your petty attitude-"

"Woah now-"

"I even ignored all those times you snubbed our party invitations, despite how much that upset Hera! After all, you are my little brother!"

"Actually, before that whole business with the baby-swallowing, I was the eldest - doesn't matter, go on-"

"But to attack my own son! To lay siege to Olympus! I mean-" Zeus gave an expansive, righteous sound of pain, "What am I supposed to do about all this?!"

"To forgive is a mitzvah?" Hades cringed, but ran long streams of mental math at the same time. Zeus couldn't kill him - immortality was a bitch - and if he booted him from the Underworld he would have to give his rotten job to some other poor schmuck. However, if anyone could figure out a fate worse than death or redundancy, it was Zeus, and he didn't fancy being the latest guy on the receiving end of Mt. Olympus' creative disciplinary solutions. "What about a truce? Ah?" His hopeful grin looked almost exactly like rigor mortis. "You said it yourself - brotherly love, family, it's all in short supply these days..."

"No, Hades." Zeus' countenance darkened. Olympus' happy flush faded behind him, darkening to a rumbling grey. "Not anymore. I would be a fool to-"

"Woah! Sorry Zeus!" Hades grabbed hold of his mirror and gave it a shake. "I think you're breaking up! I'll call you back when I find better reception!"

"Don't you dare, Hades!" Zeus thundered.

"Tunnel! Can't hear you!"

"HADES!"

Hades cut the feed. Falling back into his throne, he groaned into his cupped hands and braced against the painful clarity of his options running out. There was no plan. He had no power. This throne room had never felt more like the walls of an unjust asylum.

That bitter little castrato had better come up with something good.

Pain, Panic and Ganymede mounted the crest of the hill once more. Slinking behind a crumbling wall, the arbitrary dividing line between this spit of civilisation and the wilderness beyond, their three heads rose up like a row of vases on a potter's bench.

"You know," Pain said to Ganymede, ignoring the way his eyes glared straight ahead, "You could have gotten a chihuahua."

Panic tittered and elbowed Pain in the ribs, "Maybe he was compensating for something."

At the end of the village, a one-roomed shack leaned away from the moonlight. The lights from the others left it politely alone, and where their windows still shone with the lamps lit inside, this one stared out of empty eye sockets towards the infertile dirt at its foundation. A cluster of peasants stood in the rough yard, the flames of their torches licking dangerously at the wet hay falling over the doorframe.

The hingeless front door had been shoved into the frame to keep the wind out - no more than a few planks of wood hammered together. The head of the party took hold of the board and pulled it away, revealing the black interior as if revealing the entrance to a mineshaft. Ganymede darted forward until the two children grabbed him by his one remaining arm and dragged him back.

"What're you doing?!" Pain hissed.

"That's my house!"

"So what? You're dead!"

"You're absolutely certain you heard something?" One of the men asked. The woman beside him tugged her cloak tighter around herself.

"There was a light moving about inside. Better we waste our time searching than let a thief roam free."

Pain and Panic watched them peek through the windows as Ganymede - muttering curses once again - edged his way around the dividing wall, and tiptoed around to the back. Pain tugged at Panic's tunic, thumbed in his direction, and they soon followed behind.

They dashed past the open gate, their strange shadows flickering to life for an instant across the gap. Panic cast a glance at the tumbledown building as it rotated slowly in their view. "What's the plan for getting past those bozos?"

Ganymede crouched at the back wall and listened to the villagers murmuring voices. His eyes scanned the grass in front of them as he tried to work out the next stage of the plan. Pain and Panic fidgeted and twitched their fingers, their big eyes boggling in the light of the moon.

When the silence began to expand, the two imps exchanged a glance. Panic gave a sage nod, and Pain inched his way forward. "So..." the boy began, "This might be a bad time, but we've been wondering..." Ganymede's eyes locked onto him. Pain smiled up at him with big, innocent eyes. "What made you decide to get the snip?"

Pain was flung over the wall. Hearing his yell, the men and women spun around with their torches high above their heads. "Who goes there?" One of them stepped forward.

"It's just a boy!"

"You're out late, son."

Ganymede grabbed Panic and the two of them dove in through the window. Panic's blond head popped up on the windowsill.

A dead hearth sat open-jawed in the centre of the far wall, surrounded by a couple of dented pots and carefully stacked, if chipped, pottery. The stool and low table, shrouded in a thick layer of dust, held themselves together with gravity and bent nails. The hay-stuffed mattress in the corner had been neatly made, but the bed frame around it lay disassembled at the joints, and in some places cracked in half.

Panic dissolved his human form and skittered like an iguana over the furniture. Poking his beak into knotholes and gaps, plucking a tangle of sheep's wool from a splinter in the hacked wood, he gave the table a shake before asking, "DIY not your strong suit, huh?"

"Shh!"

A shepherd's crook held silent vigil by the open doorway. Its shadow fell across the silver ground, dividing the lop-sided furniture in two, and as Pain's stammering excuses travelled through the now-open archway, Ganymede crept over the dirt floor towards it. Panic rifled through the dishes by the fireplace. "At least they kept it neat," he said.

"At least who kept it neat?" Ganymede whispered, his fingers closing around the crook and lifting it from its position.

"The guys!" Panic perked upright with a nervous flap. "The-the-the guys who offered you to Hades! You know, these death-cults don't normally make the bed." He ran his claw across the mantle, checking for dust. "Very respectful."

"Will-you-keep-it-down?"

Something shifted behind them. Spinning on their heels, back the way they came, it took their eyes a moment to adjust to the moonlight streaming in through the window. Panic grabbed a dish for a shield, Ganymede slapped himself against the wall as tight as he could go.

Ganymede's disembodied arm gave a hopeful wave from the sill. His body deflating with relief, he crossed the dirt, snatched it up, and shoved it back into the open hole at his shoulder. He sniffed his wrist, then gagged. "Stinks of dog." He wheeled his shoulder to ease the joint, and Panic missed the flicker of grief that passed behind his eyes.

The imp's beak followed him as he crouched beside the bed and shoved his hand beneath the mattress. Skittering over, his head curling around the young man's wrist, he asked, "You hid something that could blackmail the king of the gods... under your bed?"

"No," Ganymede drawled, "I hid it in a magical treasure chest, guarded by two sphynx." He wrinkled his nose in a mean grin. "One of them speaks truth, the other only lies."

Panic crossed his arms. "Psh. Judging by your carpentry, that'd be one lousy chest."

"I don't have access to magical wards," Ganymede dropped the act as he stretched further under the bed. "Burying it was the best I could-" His hand hit something. He lurched upright with a thin shout.

Forgetting the men outside, he grabbed the mattress and tossed it aside. Hay scattered everywhere, Panic skittered back and forth with fright as the voices faltered outside. The debris settled. Beneath the mattress a perfect, square hole had been removed from the earth, a terribly-made box lay open in the dirt, and there was no cup anywhere in sight.

"We've got bad news, Zeus-y!" Hermes streamed across the sky until his wings lowered him to a perfect stop beside the king of Olympus. The king of the gods already had his throne in an iron grip, his shoulders rounding in growing anger, but when his messenger appeared he straightened himself up.

"Hermes!" he gave him his usual jolly greeting. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, the cup wasn't there, sir!" Hermes said, bopping up and down with agitation. He expected some grandiose, paternal sigh, perhaps a kindly lecture on punctuality, but down came Zeus' fist on the arm of his throne. He jumped as lightning darted through the clouds around them. "M-my bad, your highness!"

"That little toe-rag must have gotten to it first!"

"I'm... sorry?"

Zeus seemed to realise that he was still there, because he turned his head towards him as if seeing him for the first time. He smiled at him, though his eyes were no longer in it. "Sorry, lad. The pressure's been getting to me lately, what with my brother and all-"

"Hey, say no more, sir. It happens to the best of us." Still, Hermes gave him a few more inches of space and eyed the electricity jolting through the sky with newfound caution.

A sigh lowered Zeus' haunches and his giant hand came up to stroke his beard. His voice low, his manner weary, he spoke to Hermes as if he were a mirror. "I know the gods have been talking - they want war, for what Hades did to us." Ice sank down the back of Hermes' spine.

"What? But... we won!"

"They've been saying I've been 'going easy on him'. Fraternity, they say! Ha!" He reared up with his great jaw held high, his eyes fixed on some point on the horizon - covered though it was by Olympus' cloudbank. "A strong leader would already be marching on the gates of the Underworld! I know what they've been gossiping about."

"Sh- should I get out of here? I feel like this is kind of a private thing you're going through."

"Well I don't see any of them volunteering for Hades' job. Bunch of selfish, lazy, no-good-"

"Zeus? Sir?"

Zeus blinked, and finally turned to look at him. That anger switched to welcome. "Ah! Of course, I can always count on you, Hermes!" He gave him a friendly gesture of dismissal. "You did your best, after all! Why don't you take the rest of the day off?"

Hermes' laugh came out in a thin trill, drunk with relief, and already he'd begun to drift like a hummingbird for the exit. "You're too kind, sir! Just... don't work too hard, okay?" Zeus had already returned to his thoughts, but with a grunt replied,

"Oh, sure, sure. Of course."

Hermes tried to tell himself he wasn't fleeing as he zipped through a break in the clouds.