Godslayer's Legend

"Isn’t that right, Lady Persephone?"

The moment Arthur spoke those words, the entire world around them froze.

Literally.

Every single living being across the entire planet froze where they were.

Every moving thing across the planet stopped in place.

Flower petals drifting through the wind froze in mid-air. Grains of sand blowing through the streets stopped completely. The flowing water of the fountain became motionless. Even the flames of the lanterns hanging around the square stood still.

And in that same instant, the expression of the woman in Arthur’s arms changed completely.

The bright and cheerful look vanished, replaced by something dark and cold.

"Since when did you realise?" she asked.

Arthur maintained the same smile he’d worn earlier as he replied, "From the start."

He snapped his fingers, and the world around them immediately resumed moving again, eliciting a reaction of faint surprise from Persephone.

’He overrode my Authority...’

The music resumed, the dancers continued moving, and the cheers of the crowd returned.

Arthur guided her body back into the rhythm of the dance as though nothing had happened, then spoke.

"You Olympians may call me fancy titles like Child of Prophecy and Child of Destruction, but there’s one title that’s the best you could possibly refer to me by."

His eyes met hers as the two of them continued moving through the crowded festival square beneath the lights and drifting flower petals.

"The Progenitor godslayer."

A firework exploded high above the city, blooming into another massive flower of light across the night sky.

"For a being prophesied to bring an end to gods, don’t you think it’s only natural that I’d come equipped with the facilities to detect members of the god race?"

"I suppose that makes perfect sense," Persephone responded.

"One of the abilities I possess is resistance against things done by possessors of the divine factor," Arthur continued, explaining. "For example, if a god were to cast a spell that obscured my recognition of their face, it wouldn’t work unless the gap in strength between us spanned at least three or four Existence Realms."

Hearing this, Persephone’s brow twitched lightly before she asked,

"So you mean to say that you’ve been able to see what I truly look like from the beginning?"

"Indeed," Arthur answered. "Why do you think I agreed with your earlier statement about the crowd liking pretty faces?"

Persephone exhaled softly at his answer and lightly shook her head.

"If you could see through everything from the start, then why bother going along with this entire farce?"

Arthur responded almost immediately.

"For the same reason you started it. I wanted to get to know you, Persephone. I wanted to get to know the woman who is... legally married to my father."

The music around them continued flowing through the square while the two of them moved together through the dance beneath the hanging lights and drifting flower petals.

"And I suppose the same applies to you," Arthur continued. "You wanted to know the son of the woman your husband slept with."

Persephone didn’t answer his words, but that silence itself was an answer.

"The last time I danced with an older woman, it ended with her trying to peer into my memories."

Persephone blinked in surprise at Arthur’s sudden words, then shook her head and remarked.

"That must have been a rather unpleasant experience."

"Indeed," Arthur replied. "It was very unpleasant."

"And now," he continued, "I find myself in the middle of a festival held in honour of the Lady of Spring, dancing with the Lady of Spring herself."

The two of them spun together with the flow of the dance as the music changed once more.

"And there’s a question I’d like answered," Arthur added, "one that’ll determine whether this experience becomes as unpleasant as the last one."

The tempo of the music slowed slightly, and Arthur looked into the eyes of the goddess before him.

"Do you hold any feelings of hatred toward me, Persephone?"

The question caused Persephone’s expression to become slightly confused.

"Hatred?" she repeated.

"Yes," Arthur answered. "Hatred.

Putting aside the fact that I’m the first member of a race literally handcrafted by the Cosmos to reduce the number of gods like you, I’m also the son of the woman your husband cheated on you with. It wouldn’t exactly be strange if you held some kind of resentment toward me."

Hearing that explanation, Persephone nodded lightly as understanding appeared in her eyes.

"I do not hold any ill feelings toward you," she replied. "I’m not like Hera."

Arthur chuckled lightly at the subtle jab at the end of her statement.

"All you did was be born," Persephone continued. "You are entirely blameless. The fault lies with your parents."

After saying that, she met his eyes and asked, "Does that answer satisfy you?"

"Yeah. It does," Arthur replied with a nod. "It also makes me believe this meeting wouldn’t become an unpleasant one."

Suddenly, the flower carriers arrived around them once more, and the crowd surrounding the square erupted into cheers again.

Arthur glanced around for a moment before saying,

"The Lady of Spring herself becoming the Princess of the Festival of Flowers held in her honour feels a bit like cheating."

Persephone chuckled dryly at his words before replying,

"Oh, please. It’s my festival anyway. I can do whatever I want."

"How arrogant," Arthur remarked.

"I’m the Queen of the Underworld," Persephone replied as she took the flower crown from the hands of the bag carriers and spun it around on her finger before tossing it onto her head.

"I can be as arrogant as I want and no one dares say anything," she added with a smug smile.

Arthur laughed softly and lowered his head for the flower carriers to place the flower crown on him. The flower carriers then guided them toward the centre of the city square as more flowers were thrown over them, and the surrounding crowd cheered even louder.

"I’m curious about the truth of the story," Arthur suddenly said.

"What story?"

"The one about how you became Queen of the Underworld."

Arthur’s words made the bright smile she wore while waving at the crowd almost crack, and she glanced at him from the corner of her eye for a moment.

Exhaling softly, she snapped her fingers, and a pillar of flowers erupted upward from the ground around them, rising high into the sky before flowers began raining down over the city below.

By the time the pillar vanished, both she and Arthur were already gone.

◇　◇　◇

Arthur teleported himself and Persephone to the desert planet where he’d killed Pheldir, and upon arriving there, Persephone looked around and shook her head.

"Poor planet."

She crouched down, grabbing a fistful of sand before muttering, "It has had almost all the life sucked out of it."

Her words implied that this planet wasn’t originally like this, and Arthur tapped the ground, using his temporal powers to view the past of the land.

’It’s been abandoned for a thousand years now,’ he thought, concluding based on what he’d seen.

Just then, divinity flowed from Persephone’s body and into the land, and the sandy ground glowed faintly.

When the light faded, the desert around Arthur had become a field of flowers that stretched as far as the eye could see.

"The goddess of Spring, huh?" he muttered.

"Many say my power doesn’t suit my position," Persephone said. "A goddess with the power to give life, even if limited, reigning as Queen over the Underworld, which is the domain of death."

"Life and death are two sides of the same coin," Arthur replied with a shrug. "I don’t see any problems with that."

Persephone didn’t respond to his words. She only silently exhaled before sitting down on the field of flowers.

"You said you wanted to know about how I became the Underworld’s Queen, didn’t you? Aren’t the stories rather common knowledge in other universes by now?"

"I’d like to hear the originals, and not the tales that’ve been embellished over millennia."

Arthur sat down with his back to her after responding, and hearing his words, Persephone laughed depreciatingly.

"The tales you’ve heard are not so far from the so-called originals. The man whom I call my husband was simply a fool who tricked me and was manipulated by his brother."

Even though she was insulting Hades, Arthur couldn’t pick up on any note of derisiveness in her tone.

"After the Giant War, the Underworld needed a Queen," Persephone began. "Not for romance or sentiment, but for stability. The balance between the three great powers of Olympus had to be maintained.

Central Olympus, Atlantis, and the Underworld controlled billions of gods beneath them, and without balance, everything would eventually descend into chaos."

She plucked one of the flowers beside her and rolled its stem between her fingers as she continued.

"But no goddess wanted to become Queen of the Underworld. Some feared Hades because of his brutality in battle, while others simply despised the position itself. The Underworld was feared, disliked, and avoided by most gods."

Arthur listened silently as Persephone continued speaking.

"Zeus suggested that Hades simply take a queen by force, but Hades refused. So Zeus decided to interfere personally instead."

Her expression darkened faintly, but she still went on.

"He chose someone with enough standing to be worthy of the position, but not enough to grant Hades any significant political influence or military power, then manipulated events so that Hades would believe their meeting was natural rather than orchestrated."

"And that person was you," Arthur concluded.

Persephone nodded lightly.

"I was Demeter’s beloved daughter. Sheltered, protected, and isolated from most of Olympus.

Unlike the others, I didn’t grow up fearing Hades because my mother kept me far away from matters involving war and politics. I wasn’t a battle goddess, and I never participated in the war against the Giants or any that came before."

"The perfect target," Arthur muttered, shaking his head lightly.

"Exactly." Persephone laughed softly, though there was little amusement in it. "While I was in one of my mother’s gardens, playing with her nymphs, Zeus distracted my mother and temporarily connected that garden to another similar looking one he had already told Hades to visit beforehand."

Her eyes drifted upward toward the sky above the flower field.

"That was how we met."

"And you fell for him."

"I did," Persephone admitted without hesitation. "The man is quite the looker, after all. It could never occur to me that he was the same dark, brooding, and gloomy King of the Underworld everyone feared.

I thought our meeting was fate. I had no idea Zeus had orchestrated the entire thing from the beginning."

Arthur remained silent while she continued.

"He eventually revealed his identity when he realised I truly didn’t know he was the ’Hades’, and he brought me to the Underworld as well.

I was running around curiously, my eyes filled with wonder at that strange dimension so different from the bright and sunny places I’d known all my life, and while I was there, he offered me a pomegranate, which I ate without understanding the consequences."

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