Master, Why?

Even after all those centuries, the river had always looked the same.

Its waters, black as the space between stars and heavier than any mortal sea, rolled endlessly through the caverns of the Underworld, bearing their silent cargo toward the gates over which I kept watch. Charon’s boat glided across its surface with the same mournful steadiness it had possessed since the first soul had ever crossed, and each time it neared the shore, another procession of the dead emerged into the dim, ember-lit stillness of my Master’s realm. Some arrived in stunned silence, their ghostly faces still carrying the vacant disbelief of those who had not yet understood that life had already slipped from them. Others came weeping, clutching at memories they could no longer return to. Some wandered as though half-asleep, unable to remember how death had found them at all.

I had often wondered whether I should have grown numb to it by then.

Surely, after centuries beyond counting, I should have watched them as one watched falling ash or drifting mist, without thought, without feeling, without the ache that still rose in my chest each time another frightened spirit stepped from Charon’s boat and looked upon the gates with dread.

And yet I never had.

It had always hurt.

Most of them noticed me only after their first trembling steps onto the shore, and the moment they did, whatever thoughts had consumed them before were abruptly replaced by fear. Their eyes widened, their pale forms recoiled, and for a brief instant they forgot their grief entirely, because whatever mortal sorrows had followed them into death could not compete with the sight of Cerberus, hound of Hades.

I could not blame them.

To stand before me was to stand before nightmare itself: three massive heads crowned with a writhing mane of serpents, eyes burning with the glow of Tartarus, teeth large enough to shear through bronze and bone alike, claws that had once gouged furrows into the hides of Titans. Even as spirits, they feared me, because fear was instinctive, and I had been made to inspire it.

Still, I had tried, over the years, to soften what little I could.

I lowered myself to the ground when they approached. I let my tails sweep gently across the stone. Sometimes I panted as mortal hounds did, lolling my tongues in what Persephone had once laughingly informed me was an expression mortals found “friendly.” It did not always help, but now and then it eased their terror enough to let them pass through the gates with something resembling peace.

On that day, as Charon’s boat scraped against the shore, a woman stepped onto the stone holding the hand of a little boy.

She was thin, her spirit still bearing the shadow of her death. One hand remained pressed instinctively against her abdomen, where a dark stain spread across her dress like ink in water. A knife wound, I guessed. Her face was pale with shock, yet she held herself upright for the sake of the child beside her.

The boy was crying so hard that his entire body shook with it.

His tiny fingers clung desperately to hers as he stared at the ground, his sobs breaking through the silence of the cavern like cracks through ice.

“Why?” he had whispered through his tears. “Why did Father hate us so much?”

The words struck harder than most blades ever had.

The woman knelt before him at once, brushing damp curls from his forehead with a gentleness that seemed almost impossible in a place such as that. Though grief had hollowed her features, her smile was soft and warm enough to make even the darkness around us seem to retreat.

“My love,” she had murmured, kissing his brow, “none of this was your fault. And I will never let anyone hurt you again.”

The Underworld was not a place where warmth belonged, and yet somehow she had carried it there with her.

Mortals had always bewildered me.

They could be monstrous enough to slaughter those they claimed to love, and yet capable of tenderness so pure that it made the black stones beneath my paws feel less cold.

The boy’s sobbing gradually slowed, and then, as children often did, curiosity overtook grief.

He looked up and saw me.

His tear-bright eyes widened as they traced the vastness of my frame, the shifting serpents, the glow behind my eyes.

For a brief moment, I had forgotten how terrifying I usually seem to humans.

His mother followed his gaze and stiffened immediately, both hands flying protectively to his shoulders. Fear flashed across her face.

I reacted without thinking.

Lowering all three heads, I carefully let my tongues loll out in what I hoped resembled foolish friendliness, only to notice too late that my serpents had risen and were hissing softly above me.

Ah.

The serpents.

Embarrassment, an emotion I rarely admitted to possessing, prickled through me. I gave a low chuff, and they obediently settled flat against my neck like an ordinary mane. Then I lowered myself fully to the ground, flattening my ears and tucking my limbs beneath me to appear as small and harmless as possible.

The woman watched, her fear did not vanish, but after a long moment, her grip loosened.

The boy stared another heartbeat before wonder overtook caution. “Big puppy,” he had breathed.

He stepped towards me. My tails had betrayed me instantly, sweeping against the stone.

The boy reached out with trembling fingers and placed his hand against the nearest of my muzzles.

It was warm. So impossibly warm.

The touch had reminded me of Persephone, whose visits to the gates had always brightened that endless twilight. She is a rarity among the gods, last time she scratched behind my ears and laughed when all three heads leaned shamelessly into her touch.

Closing my eyes, I had leaned into the boy’s hand for the briefest moment, and as I had done so, the question that had haunted me for centuries had risen once more.

Master, why had you chosen me for this?

I had understood battle. I had understood guarding the gates.

I had understood tearing intruders apart, driving back monsters and gods alike.

But this, this endless witnessing of grief, this silent watching as soul after soul crossed into death carrying all the pain of the world with them, this was a burden I had never learned how to bear.

And as always, no answer came.

What came instead after they left was the unmistakable sensation of three living presences descending the winding path from the world above, and the moment their nearness brushed against my senses, every muscle in my body had tightened instinctively. I had known their nature before I ever saw them, for divinity possessed a scent unlike anything else in existence: Athena carried the sharp, cold clarity of polished bronze and thought honed to a blade’s edge; Hermes smelled of movement, restless and elusive as wind; and beneath both of them lingered one fiercer and charged with a violence that reminded me of storms splitting ancient oaks in two, the unmistakable blood of Zeus.

At once I had risen to my full height, my three heads lifting as one while a growl deep enough to tremble through the cavern floor rolled from my throats. Dust drifted from the ceiling. The serpents crowning my necks writhed and hissed. Yet before I could advance, the shadows shifted strangely, and Athena and Hermes were simply gone, their forms dissolving back into darkness as though they had never stood there at all, leaving only the third figure behind.

He stepped forward into the red glow cast by the riverfire, and I studied him carefully. He was broad-shouldered and powerfully built, though younger than I would have expected of one who carried himself with such unnatural certainty. Draped across his body was the hide of the Nemean Lion, its golden mane darkened by soot and old blood, while battered bronze armor clung to him beneath it, marked by the scars of battles that should have killed any ordinary man many times over.

What puzzled me most was that he carried no weapon.

When he spoke, his voice was steady, though tension coiled tightly beneath it. “Cerberus,” he had said, almost conversationally, “you probably haven’t heard of me.”

I tilted one head, watching him.

A grim smile touched his lips. “Heracles.”

The name had meant little to me then. It was simply another sound, another mortal name attached to yet another would-be intruder, and the warning growl that escaped my throats had been born from confusion and challenge.

He had drawn a slow breath and muttered, almost apologetically, “Nothing personal.”

Then he moved.

No gathering of strength and no telltale shift of posture had prepared me for the speed with which he crossed the distance between us. One instant he had stood still; the next he had become a blur of bronze and lion-hide surging toward me with impossible force. Instinct overtook thought. Flames erupted from all three of my jaws in a torrent so fierce that the obsidian floor softened and ran like wax beneath its heat.

Yet he burst through the inferno.

The lion’s hide shielded him.

Before I could recoil, his fist drove upward into my chest with such force that agony tore through my body like a bolt of divine lightning. I was hurled backward into the cavern wall hard enough to crack the stone, and the impact sent fractures racing outward in jagged webs. Shards of obsidian had barely begun to fall before fury overrode pain and I launched myself at him.

If fire could not stop him, my jaws would.

All three heads struck at once, each aimed for throat and shoulders with enough force to tear apart creatures far greater than men. Yet at the final instant he wrapped the lion’s hide around himself, and when my teeth slammed shut they found no flesh to pierce.

The failure stunned me.

For the briefest heartbeat, disbelief eclipsed everything else. Then rage followed.

My claws raked downward while the serpents darting from my neck lunged hungrily for any exposed flesh. The claws found their target, carving bloody furrows across his side, but before the serpents could strike, his fist crashed into my abdomen and sent me skidding across the stone hard enough to gouge trenches in the cavern floor.

I recovered instantly, unleashing another torrent of flame that washed over him, yet still he advanced through it, bleeding now, breathing harder, his body trembling faintly with strain.

Good.

He was hurt.

I charged again, this time feinting sharply to the left before pivoting with all my weight against the stone and lunging from the right. The maneuver caught him off guard. My jaws closed around his arm, flank, and thigh all at once, and blood flooded my mouths. hot, metallic and gloriously real.

Triumph surged through me.

With a savage wrench I hurled him sideways, and he crashed into the cavern floor with enough force to shatter stone beneath him.

Yet somehow, impossibly, he rose again.

I remember the disbelief that had flashed through me then, almost stronger than my fury. How was he still standing?

I lunged once more, determined to end it before his unnatural resilience could carry him further, but this time he moved with perfect precision. Dropping low, he planted both hands against the ground and drove both feet upward into my chest.

The impact flipped me entirely.

Before I could recover, the lion’s hide whipped around my throats like chains.

It tightened with crushing force.

I thrashed violently, my claws carving deep furrows through obsidian as I fought to tear free. My serpents struck again and again in frantic desperation until at last one sank its fangs deep into his wrist, delivering enough venom to kill any ordinary demigod many times over.

Heracles roared.

His muscles trembled.

But instead of loosening his hold, he pulled tighter.

Darkness crept inward at the edges of my vision. My limbs weakened. Panic rose cold through me.

And through that narrowing haze, I saw him.

Hades.

He stood motionless at the edge of the cavern, his expression unreadable as he watched.

Relief had struck me so suddenly it nearly drowned the panic.

My Master had come, surely he would stop this. Surely he would not let this continue.

A desperate whine escaped all three of my throats as I looked to him, pleading silently for intervention.

He did not move. His face did not change.

And in that terrible instant, confusion struck.

Was this a test? A punishment? Had I failed him?

Master, why?

Darkness took me before there could be any answer, it came fragmented and broken: chains of ancient magic coiling around my throats, dragging me upward; the sensation of being pulled through worlds I could not see; the distant echo of voices I could not yet understand. I remembered glimpses of stone floors beneath a mortal palace, the frozen fear of a king as something vast was dragged through his halls and a single word spoken in trembling disbelief:

“Hercules…”

Then nothing.

When consciousness returned, it came slowly, through silver light and the deep ache of wounded pride. Restorative magic hummed thickly around me, and when I forced my eyes open I found the pale, ghostly faces of Hecate hovering above, her fingers moving gently through my fur.

“Poor creature,” one of her voices murmured.

I had leaned instinctively into the touch.

“He does not need pity.” Hades’ voice froze me at once.

Shame flooded through me as I forced myself upright and lowered all three heads. I had lost. I had failed. Surely he had come to judge me for my weakness.

Yet when I crept toward him, he did not rebuke me.

“Hades, this is not how you treat those who are loyal to you… there is always another way,” Hecate said calmly, rising as her ghostly eyes turned toward both of us, studying me and him at the same time.

A tremor passed through me when Hades’ hand settled gently on my back, his fingers moving slowly through my fur. I looked up and I saw that his gaze had softened slightly. He was not angry with me.

Then he turned his attention back to Hecate, ignoring her words completely.

“You smell of Asteria again, Hecate… what soul, or souls, are you hiding this time from my brother?” his voice was edged, faintly sharp.

One of Hecate’s faces smiled. “Wouldn’t you Olympians like to know everything?” she replied lightly. “I came to visit Persephone… so do ignore me.”

And with that, she vanished.

Silence reclaimed the chamber and I lowered myself at his feet while his hand continued its slow, absent strokes through my fur.

Heracles had taken me because my Master had allowed it.

Of that I had never doubted.

Why, I would likely never know.

And as I rested my heads upon his feet and closed my eyes beneath the steady rhythm of his hand, the question remained within me, soft and unresolved as the endless song of the river.

Would I ever truly understand him?