Getting There
600 BCE – 1230 CE
Gods aren’t born, they’re made.
The Titans, per the stories, appeared out of Chaos, brimming with power. Hadrian wasn’t entirely sure how accurate that was, but he’d never gotten the chance to ask.
The original 6 Olympians, born of the Titans, had also been born with power. But that wasn’t entirely accurate, was it?
They were certainly powerful, in the same way a child born with Magic was powerful. They had certain leanings; Poseidon had an elemental alignment to the water while Demeter’s was to the earth.
But their mythic power didn’t come until they were worshipped.
It wasn’t until the people of Greece built temples and burnt offerings that Zeus became the King of Gods, that a home’s central hearth became an ode to Hestia.
Death was similar.
Hadrian Ignotus Peverell, born to an ordinary man named Achille and an ordinary woman named Estelle, was not born a god.
He was born with power, certainly, but that power was not mythic, it was not earth-shattering, it was not all-encompassing.
But as tales of his skills and feats spread across Southern Europe, his name became synonymous with Death.
The story of Death stretches to the very beginning of humanity. Humans, by nature, want to understand. They tell fables and create mythology in order to explain this world they call home.
Why does the sun rise each morning and set each day? Is it because a young god named Apollo drives his chariot across the sky or because a god named Ra travelled the same path in a solar boat during the day then ventured into the underworld each night, conquering the serpent Apep each and every time, ensuring the sun’s rebirth the next morning.
Where does lightning come from? Does the god Zeus throw his bolts from atop a mountain and send his eagle Aquila to fetch them? Or does Thor strike his hammer Mjölnir?
Death, more than most anything, was a question that humans wanted answered.
Where do we go from here? What comes next? Does my life here and now mean anything? Is it all there is or is it a preparation for whatever comes after?
The Egyptians settled on the Duat. An underworld ruled by Osiris, the God of the Underworld, where souls went to be judged by a court of the dead.
Anubis, the god of funerary rites, protector of graves, and guide to the underworld, was often depicted as a canine or a man with a canine head.
The Greeks named Hades as King of the Underworld. A world divided into sections. Tartarus, Asphodel, and Elysium. Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven. Torture, Limbo, and Paradise.
It’s possible Dante walked side-by-side with a Psychopomp. It’s equally as likely that he took the stories he’d heard and did what humans have been doing for centuries; he re-told the myths from his point of view. He put it into words that he was able to rationalize.
Hadrian Ignotus Peverell became one of these explanations.
And as the practice of worship flourished across the Greek Empire, Hadrian’s power grew.
When he reached the natural end of his life it just … didn’t end.
He saw what came next, he saw the faces of his parents, his wife, and his second son. But he couldn’t stay there.
It was ages before he learned to split his consciousness. He ran himself ragged collecting souls and sending them on.
He was both surrounded by souls and deeply lonely.
He could visit his family, he found joy in helping people greet Death, but there was something missing.
For over a thousand years, he merely did his job. He watched his eldest son’s family die out, he watched his youngest son’s family grow, but he was something akin to apathetic.
That was until he saw three brothers. Three boys who reminded him so viscerally of his own sons. Each powerful in their own right but the youngest had that little something extra.
Death, for it had been a long time since he thought of himself as Hadrian, felt true sorrow for the first time in a very, very long while as he collected the soul of Cadmus’ wife.
He was deeply grateful that Cadmus’ story had diverged from Felix’s in a small way. Though Cadmus’ wife had died in childbirth, his son had survived.
Then, Death watched as the brothers plotted to evade him. He watched as the eldest chose raw power as his means and as the middle brother thought he’d defy Death by resurrecting a soul. The youngest brother, though, didn’t seek to overpower or defy, only to find a way to live a long life, to watch his children and grandchildren grow until he met Death as an old friend.
Ignotus, more than his older brothers, understood that, while Death was unavoidable, it was not the end.
Death thought it might be time to intervene.