Greek Times for a Future Girl

The Underworld Takeover

It was a normal Friday afternoon. I was in the Underworld after a day at school, the souls were coming in, Hades was at his weekly meeting on Olympus, and everything was seemingly normal. Pain, Panic, and I were hanging out in the throne room. I was sitting on the floor on one side of the room, going over my cooking notes for a Home Greconomics test the following Tuesday, while the boys were playing ping-pong on the map. Their score was 5-10, with Panic in the lead.

"You sure you don't wanna play, Aria? I need to be avenged." Pain asked me as he was getting the eyeball after another loss.

I looked up from my cooking notes for a brief moment to answer his question. "No thanks, bud. I don't touch a dead guy's eye when I play ping-pong."

Pain shrugged "Suit yourself."

"C'mon, hurry up! I wanna keep playing till the boss comes back!" Panic complained.

"He's not gonna be home for hours, bud. We got all the time in the world." I reminded.

"She's got ya there." Pain snickered, tossing the eyeball back to Panic.

I watched the two imps continue their match, which ended in ten seconds flat having Panic win again. I knew this because the teal imp was leaning against the table in victory and Pain missed his shot. The eyeball rolled off the table and fell to the floor. But just before Pain could retrieve the eye, someone beat him to it.

"Nice shot." a feminine voice purred, nearly scaring the daylights out of the magenta imp.

I looked and saw a woman had found her way into the Underworld. She was thin, wore a short-sleeved blue dress which came up to her knees in the front and flowed behind her like a cape, a blue crown sat upon her forehead causing her dark hair to give off a floating look -it looked dumb to me honestly, her eyes were dark and gave a mysterious look, she was floating several inches off the ground, and her mischievous -yet strangely familiar- grin was enough to make my skin crawl.

She had to be a goddess from that last description only, that and no mortal except for me could make it past Cerberus. I noticed behind her were a pair of very large and very scary gray wolves with giant dark eagle wings. I think the proper term for those creatures were either chamrosh or empusa, I forgot which.

"Hecate, what a surprise." Panic laughed nervously before he lost balance and fell to the floor. 

Holy crap, I almost forgot about her!

Hecate was the goddess of magic and witchcraft, the Queen of the Night if I remember correctly. In this universe, she was envious of Hades ruling the whole Underworld and plotted against him a few times, and I think she went as far as to try to kill him. I've only seen her once, but I remember her distinctly. How could I forget that creepy smile? I knew what she was here for. My notes would have to wait for me to deal with this unwanted trespasser.

I helped Panic back onto his feet as Pain rushed back towards us to talk to Hecate. "Hades is not presently in, now."

"What a shame." she sighed, but still had her grin, as her wolves came up behind her -one of them flying on top of the map.

"Bad timing." the wolf on the map said with his teeth barred with a creepy smile.

"And timing is everything." the other one added with a matching smile.

It took her a minute, but when Hecate did notice me, she floated to me and gave me a look. Inspecting me like a vulture circling its meal.

"I presume you're -what- Hades' daughter?" she addressed me.

My eyes widened in shock. Okay, that was a new one I certainly never heard before. I look nothing like Hades to be considered his daughter, other than my eyes and maybe my ears but that's just coincidental.