A Queen

Persephone winks goodbye to her mother's garden, as she makes her way towards the entrance to the underworld. Once her husband and mother had somewhat reconciled, she managed to convince them to install one somewhat nearby. Though she enjoyed her time at the surface, the underworld is still her favourite place to be. Less work, less annoyance and weirdly less drama. Turns out once people die, they tend to loosen up.

Still, she wasn’t down yet, she still had to walk quite the way until she would arrive in the underworld proper. The entrance looks insignificant at first glance, just a small insignificant cave in a small insignificant rock formation. Once she turns the first corner though, the walls and ceilings expand outwards leaving her in a large cavern .At first the tock layers around her still seem to follow the normal geological rules, but after getting down to bedrock the cave stops changing or getting warmer. Instead, it remains at the temperature of a cool autumn night.

Soon enough, the private path spills into a much larger cavern, making the previous section of path look tiny by comparison. There souls of the dead walk ever downwards on their final journey. After a few hours of walking, she arrives at the river. Next to her plenty of souls are sitting on the beaches. She gives out a few coins to those who weren’t given any by their relatives, before sitting down herself and waiting for Chiron.

Once the ferryman arrives, she pays her due and sits down on the bench for the final leg of her journey. At first the boatride is familiar from years of traveling back and forth and she can see the palace in the distance already. Then, suddenly, the boat is gripped by a current and pulled downstream away from the nearby docks and towards the unexplored portions of the river. Chiron tries to get the boat under control, but it is completely unaffected by the ferryman’s efforts and drifts towards a set of rapids.

As the boat closes in on the rapids white foam forms on top of the river and Persephone makes out shapes of white amongst the dark water. Then the foam seems to form letters and eventually these letters align themselves into the word Φρόντις. Before she can ponder what is happening, she is thrown off the boat by a particularly rough turn. She braces herself for the cold of the water, but instead she feels herself impact onto rough sand.

“Last, but not least, it’s Persephone, daughter of Demeter, wife of Hades, Queen of the Underworld. “ An old man yells into a set of empty stands.

“You brought her? This will piss off three gods at once. Why do you want to kill me?” A man sitting in a chair says. Around him there’s two other mortals and three of her godly relatives.

“Please control yourself.” And old man says, before turning to her. “My apologies, he is afraid, even though he really has no reason to be. With that being said, for the last time, welcome to Harem Hotel, where you will compete against the other contestants in this arena to earn the master’s and the audience’s favour and win a favourable spot in the titular Harem. Now please introduce yourself to the audience.”

Persephone looks at the man confused, before a painful headache shoots through her head. “Alright, alright. I am Persephone, also sometimes known as Kore. I am the goddess of fertility and spring and I have only ever been with my dear Husband Hades. Due to that marriage, I am also the Queen of the Underworld.”

Chris is stunned. The Queen of the Underworld did not look like a Greek goddess. Spiky black hair with bright red tips crowns a smooth face with black eyes. She is wearing a dark leather jacket over a graphic tee and blue jeans. All in all she looks more like some of his senior students than any of the other gods.

“Uhm,..if you don’t mind me asking… why are you dressed…modern?” he finally stammers out.

“So, you are supposed to be the master?”, she asks critically, “the others will eat you alive, poor thing. But to answer your question, these three”, she points to the other gods”, Are ignorant, self-absorbed and haven’t interacted with humans for the last 1500 years and these two” she points at Patroklos and Helen. “Well, you know about them. But the gods of the underworld don’t have the luxury of distancing themselves from humans unless humans's manage to stop dying at some point. But until then we are a bit more up to date with current events than our cousins on the surface.”

“Makes sense, I guess. I have been told the no harm being done to me magic ends at my ****. Can you please put in a good word for me with your husband? I don’t think he’ll like me very much once we are through with this show.”

“Well he doesn’t usually involve himself in the day to day of judging souls. In fact I don’t think he’s allowed to take **** or give out favours. Some ancient contract between him, Zeus and Poseidon. But yeah, this is not…. This show is a cruelty especially to you mortals. Your entire life has been forfeit for the entertainment of others.”

“Oh boohoo”, Dionysos interrupts, “This guy has to endure the horrible fate of six hotties trying to jump his dick and the other two get to life the rest of their lives with four gods. They’ll be fine.”

“No, they won’t be. I wish I could say I am disappointed in you, but this is very much in character for you.”Persephone gives a stern look at the god and is about to continue, When Aphrodite interrupts her:

“But he’s right, most mortals wouldn’t dare dream of spending a single day being equal in standing to a god. Helen and Patroklos here, get to spend their entire life being equal to all four of us and Chris over here gets to even be above us, technically. This is a boon for them, not a curse.”

“I think we can speak for ourselves” Helen says, “This is a disadvantageous marriage. Without wanting to offend, our master does not seem affluent or politically influential. I could have married a king or at least a very wealthy noble. Being stuck with some Barbarian is quite a bad outlook by comparison

“Aphrodite doesn’t know what she is talking about, but you don’t seem to grasp the severity of the issue either."Persephone says trying to gain control of the conversation" None of you have interacted once with a dead soul. Spending all their lives in a magical harem is the type of life that leads to unfulfilled and regretful souls. None of us gods can imagine what it is like to have a very limited lifespan. But this is about a lot more than your marriage prospects. You also won’t get a good chance to get into Ἠλύσιον, if that is what it takes to make you understand just how bad this is. And lastly, Athena ,I am disappointed in you. You are meant to be smarter than this. You are meant to figure out a winning strategy the second you step into a room. Instead you ended up reliant on our kidnapper to get to speak”

“Hey”, Chris jumps in,” These people are clearly more powerful than any of you. I don’t think Athena could have done anything.”

“Chris, I like you, but Athena is the goddess of strategy. This is pathetic. Even against a stronger opponent she should have a better strategy.”

Homer snaps his fingers to interrupt the conversation. Suddenly the stands around them are filled with semi transparent spirits, cheering and jeering at the contestants. “As much as I appreciate the early season Drama, let’s delay that until after we all know the rules.”