Death God Alliance

Chapter 3

Hades was not a happy god.

Hades was never a happy god, but now he was more pissed off than usual. His only son going missing, and all signs showing that he'd been abducted by the thrice damned House of Life had a tendency to get on his nerves like nothing else had managed to in the past two millennia.

"There will be blood!" Hades roared when he found that he was being blocked out of his son's mind by an alien power, which confirmed his suspicions that Nico had been kidnapped.

It had started when he found Cerberus chewing on a jackal.

Jackals weren't very common in Hades' realm. Not normal jackals and not magical jackals either. They were associated with death, yes, but not really part of any Greek lore. So finding a giant jackal that was obviously the familiar of some upstart House of Life magician was the first sign that something strange was afoot.

After a short but undignified tug of war match with his three headed guard dog, Hades managed to obtain the mangled jackal. It was a sorry sight, but there were still a few clues that it could reveal to him. The hieroglyphics that were inscribed beneath its skin let Hades know exactly who the mangy beast belonged to, much more efficiently than one of those modern day computer chips that pet owners used to track errant animals. Hades could have sent the jackal familiar back to its owner with no more effort than it took to snap his fingers, if he'd a mind to. Which he didn't. He'd never been a very charitable god, and more than that, he found something else of interest on the jackal, or rather around it.

His son's signature magic was distinct. All of Hades' children had their own variations of his magic. He could tell each one apart even more easily than he could by their faces. Nico's had actually been the hardest for him to pin down. It was annoying because even after several years of being able to recognize it, he couldn't tell whether his son's power was strong or weak. The first dozen or so times he'd felt his son's powers, they'd felt subpar. Weak and sluggish. And so he'd assumed that Nico was weak and sluggish as well as small of stature, dim witted, and naïve. Then Nico went and dug a hole in one of Persephone's flower beds, used his magic and blasted through every one of the many iron clad wards that Hades had erected around the area of his domain that housed his deceased family and all memories and magic relating to them. That was something that even Zeus would have barely been able to manage, and Hades had to wonder if his son had been deliberately holding back his powers all this time, tricking everyone, including his own father into underestimating him, and playing up the illusion of frailty that his body presented.

Hades still didn't know whether Nico was weak or strong, but he'd begun to suspect it was actually the latter. The trace magic that he left behind every time he used his powers deteriorated fast, so anyone looking at his handiwork would think he was weak and impotent, but now Hades realized that could have been deliberate. But whichever it was, he could see that Nico's residual power clung to the jackal and let him know that his son had been responsible for the mangy beast's impromptu trip to Hades.

Unlike the majority of Hades' children, Nico was actually quite sane. More than that though, he took after his mother. He was polite and decent and much too sincere for his own good. The sort of hero who the world could look at and admire, if not for the fact that he called up the dead, which all mortals considered a turn off. But that aside, Nico was a good boy, and further away from being cruel than any of Hades' other sons. (who usually tended to go off on the deep end) Nico didn't torture small animals or pull the wings off of flies. On the contrary, he seemed to actually like animals, especially cute furry ones. (though he tried to hide this fact from his father) He wouldn't have sent a magician's jackal familiar to get chewed up by Cerberus for his own amusement. He would have only sent it to Hades' realm if it had attacked him.