Work Text:
Deep down, beneath the surface of the earth, lower than even Tartarus, was the closest anyone could get to end of everything. Chaos.
At the very edge, was an elegant being with flowing hair like moving water. She wore a dark silk dress that melted seamlessly into the nature of Chaos. Her poise was calm and still, but her eyes were the darkest night, brimming completely with constant hatred that was always there, at the corner of every thought, underneath skin, buzzing faintly in bones, trapped in a throat.
Mortals could not survive being so close to nothing. Their lives were already fragile and fleeting as it was; any contact with Chaos’s bristling, silent void would be sure to consume them whole. Gods dared not venture so far either. Their essences were supported by mortal worship and even that was like a delicate thread, threatening to snap in Chaos. To be near Chaos was to be near everyone’s end, not just your own. To be near Chaos was to face absence. Even mortal souls that went to the Fields of Punishment could experience pain for the rest of eternity. To be nothing was the worst fate there could be for a deity.
Styx hovered near the edge. Unlike gods who had their ties in forces of nature or in mortal practices, hatred had been around for as long as anything could feel. A flash of hatred could shatter years of love. Hatred bursting out in a desperate moment could push to noblest of men into doing the unthinkable. Deep, burning hatred could swallow every other emotion like a starving beast who could never be satisfied.
Hatred was rarely temporary. Anger could be temporary and when it wasn’t it sank into the very soul and grew with its rotten, shriveled yet unbreakable roots into hatred.
As the goddess of hatred, Styx knew that better than most. There was nearly nowhere she could not go through unscathed and nearly nowhere she was welcome. Only purposefully diving into Chaos might be a danger to her and even then, Chaos would have to slowly chip away at the bits making up hatred.
And there was her river, now so dirty. Broken dreams. Broken hopes. Broken oaths. Broken promises. All that misery bundled up into one river. Styx did not have misery in her domain, but wherever hatred was, misery was soon to follow or linger. It was an upsetting spiral doomed never to end. It made one wonder if there was a point in it at all.
The river which gods took oaths, the god king promised, a high honor. Olympians were wary of her and they still only operated under the pretense that their oaths mattered. Solemn promises, turned into conditions to be exploited and loopholes to find. As meaningless as a ‘pinky-promise’, whatever that was. Few truly cared about the sincerity of their oaths. Powerful gods still did not have the power to abstain from breaking their mutual promises. Styx sneered though there was no one to see.
They thought they were powerful enough to skip out the consequences. While they did not have to endure the typical exile, their foolishness in breaking an oath casually was enough to cause punishment upon themselves. The maker of their own downfall.
The most recent example: Apollo.
Her newest oath-breaker. Compared the some of the other oaths broken on her ruined river, it had been careless. Part of the dramatics of a whining ex-god. Never to shoot and arrow or make music. Giving up his two biggest strengths so unthinkingly. On a quest as dangerous as his, he would pay for that carelessness in blood.
She had expected the moment it broke to have been in some quiet evening, when fingers became restless and Apollo would’ve reached for an instrument or bow and arrow to release that restlessness simply by a force of habit. An anticlimactic reason, perhaps. It was the same reason his father had broken his oath of no demigod children.
A quiet evening. Walking among mortals, a rare happenstance for the god king (she suspected some part of him was waiting to break the oath), his eyes wandered. A beautiful woman, though likely any one would’ve been able to catch his eye. A quick word or two, though likely it would not have changed the god king’s intentions. Styx scowled at the memory. She was aware of every time her oaths were broken, and she had not been pleased to see the mortal woman’s daughter being born. It was another oath broken with the rest.
When the sun god turned mortal broke the oath to save a young girl, daughter of Demeter, Styx felt as shift. There was still carelessness there, yes, and the sun god of truth had always never been quite sincere with his words even before he turned mortal, but the moment made something in her twitch. She had smirked sardonically, knowing it wouldn’t be the last time.
Apollo would suffer. Whatever in him that caused him to make the oath would hinder his journey and bring misfortune with him and to his companions, but Styx knew. This one. This one would learn.
Gods rarely learned, especially not one as powerful as an Olympian. Minor deities and anything below that had not the nerve to break her promises, even when they did not mean the oath in the first place. Apollo, currently a mortal, had made an oath he clearly would not be able to keep.
For the rest of his journey, Styx watched. Promises after promises. Any other kind, and it would’ve enraged her. These ones did not. They were not sworn on her river. They were not sworn by gods who claimed to have honor. All they were, were promises made from mortal hearts on the true intention of wanting to keep it. That was what made them more important and lasting than any meaningless oath that could be babbled and broken.
Apollo would be battling python by now. By prophecy, he was decreed to fall, which meant they would be meeting soon.
The sun would fall and Styx would see if he had learned.