Oceanus descends into a realm of absolute negation. Here, in the abyssal plains where sunlight is a forgotten myth, the water is black and heavy, a liquid void that presses in on all sides with the weight of entire oceans. This is the throne room of the primordial sea, a place where the very concept of light is devoured. He is alone, a king humbled before the source of his domain.
"Lord Pontus!" Oceanus's voice is swallowed by the immense silence, leaving only a psychic imprint of his presence. "I have come, as you requested."
The darkness before him does not move; it stirs. A consciousness as vast as the seabed itself shifts from its eons-long slumber. A sound echoes through the abyss, a low, tectonic rumble that vibrates in Oceanus's very bones.
"Hmm… Umm…"
Oceanus feels his divine essence tighten. 'He is here. All around me. No…I am inside him.'
Two points of deep blue light ignite in the endless black and abyssal whirlpools. Their gaze falls upon Oceanus, and the pressure multiplies, a physical weight of ages that seeks to grind him into sediment.
"Oceanus…" the voice is the groaning of continental shelves, each word a monumental effort. "You know… the chasm."
"I do, my Lord," Oceanus replies, his mind flashing back to the day of his coronation, to the terrifying, glorious glimpse of the vertical wound in reality. "You showed me."
"I have… guarded it… sealed it with my essence… for eons." The words are heavy with an exhaustion that is cosmic in scale. "It drains me… I am… empty. My slumber… comes. This old soul… asks a favor."
"There is no need for favors. Your will is my command," Oceanus answers, the perfect picture of a loyal steward.
The primordial gaze seems to see through him, to the ambition that has festered for millennia. "I have known you… Oceanus. You are strong. Smart. A fitting… successor. The guardian's role… passes to you."
A thrill of triumph, sharp and cold, shoots through Oceanus, perfectly masked by his reverent tone. "It is the highest honor to carry your burden and walk in the legacy you had forged."
The deep blue eyes hold his for an eternity in a single second. "See that… you do." Then, the presence vanishes. With a sudden, profound absence, as if a fundamental force of the universe has just been switched off.
Breath out~
Oceanus lets out a breath he doesn't realize he is holding.He swims swiftly to a nearby fissure, a cave that leads to the heart of the abyss. At its end, the space is torn open. A vertical sheet of impossible calm, a mirror that reflects nothing but the pure potential of the void. The Giant Chasm.
A slow, triumphant smile spreads across Oceanus's face. 'Soon, you will be mine. I remember the vision you showed me, that radiant trident, its power so immense that its power can be felt from the chasm.'
He moves closer, his own regal reflection appearing on the chasm's shimmering surface. 'Once Pontus sleeps, nothing will stand between me and the throne of true power. Not just the sea, but all that this chasm promises. I have waited millions of years. A few more years are nothing. Until then… I will be the good and peaceful king the world believes me to be.' With one last, longing look, he turns and leaves, the guardian of a secret he has every intention of exploiting.
---
Hades, still veiled in perfect invisibility, halts his flight. Before him, the air itself is sick, swirling with a dense, unnatural mist that defies the ocean winds.
'Found it,' he thinks, diving in. For several minutes, he flies through a formless grey, getting nowhere. The spell is working as intended a perfect, endless loop.
He stops, his form shimmering back into visibility. "A pointless exercise," he murmurs. He raises a wing, and a pulse of pure, dark energy with the essence of revelation and washes out from him in a silent wave. The mist recoils and dissolves, but what it reveals is not an island. It is a tapestry of woven stars and fractured time, a dense, dark blue field of distorted space. A labyrinth of the void itself.
"Space-time distortion. Mother's strongest barrier," Hades acknowledges, a flicker of respect in his gaze. "Impressive. But all constructions have an end."
"Wifey, lend me your strength," he whispers to the air.
'Silver Flame.'
The air around him freezes. A serene, terrifying silver fire erupts from his phoenix form. This is not a flame of heat, but of extinction the embodiment of the Underworld's final, absolute judgment on all that exists.
He dives forward and passes through them.
The barrier reacts. Warped stars hurtle toward him, and loops of time seek to trap him in infinite yesterday. They crash against the Silver Flame but are all unmade. They are erased, their existence negated upon contact with the concept of ultimate endings.
The barrier falls apart and reveals the jagged, mist-shrouded island that has been hidden at its core. Hades descends, his form shifting back to his humanoid form as his feet touch the stone. His Secret Divinity has already mapped every inch of this place. He walks directly to the mountain face and, without hesitation, steps through the solid rock as if it is a curtain of water.
Inside the hidden dungeon with multiple caves and mazes, he moves on paths without any hesitation as he already knows the blueprint of this dungeon. At the cavern's end hangs a magnificent golden spear with a blade of blue crystal. He takes it, feels its weight "a perfect, useless replica."
With a sharp, deliberate motion, he brings the spear down across his knee. It snaps like a dry twig, hollow and worthless. He stomps the broken haft on the ground repeatedly until, with a clink, a luminous Sky Pearl rolls out.
"Clever, mother. Hiding a treasure within a decoy. But this is not what I came for." He pockets the pearl. Then, he turns to the wall from which the spear had hung and drives his fist into the stone.
RUMBLE!
The mountain trembles. Cracks spiderweb out from the point of impact, and a section of the wall crumbles away, revealing a hidden passage. He walks into the new path.
At its end rests a small, unadorned box of black wood. He opens it. Inside, four velvet indentations hold only three vials. Each is a sphere of glass containing a miniature, swirling vortex of energy one blue, one green, one violet and all pulsing with forbidden power. But the fourth spot is empty.
"Four potions from the Giant Chasm itself," Hades whispers, a rare note of grim awe in his voice. "Each is capable of magnifying power fivefold. She used one to defy Father for Poseidon's sake." He closes the box, the weight of its contents and their history settling upon him, and stores it away. The last piece of his mother's legacy is now in his hands.
Transforming back into the black phoenix, he shoots into the sky, his next destination clear: the North Pole.
He arrives at the roof of the world in a heartbeat. It is a vast, desolate expanse of shifting ice under a pale, sickly sky. Jagged ridges of blue ice carve through the landscape, a continent of utter stillness and cold.
He flies to the highest peak, where the river of lamentation is frozen in the form of its guardian. There coils Cocytus, a monstrous dragon. Its body is a rugged landscape of jagged, crystalline spikes and armored plates of frozen misery. Its wings are tattered sheets of permafrost, and its tail ends in a blade of soul-rending cold. An aura of profound grief and fury precedes it.
As Hades approaches, one piercing blue eye, a frozen star of hatred, slides open. Then the other. Its head lifts, and the glacial silence of the pole shatters with a roar that can be heard from a 1000km radius.
"ROAARRR!!!"
Without warning, it unleashes its frost breath. Hades meets the attack with an exhalation of his own. A beam of dark blue flame shoots forth from his beak. Where the two forces collide, the world breaks. The air itself crystallizes and then explodes, shards of frozen reality and supercooled fire raining down upon the ice fields below.
The battle between Dragon and Phoenix begins.