Bonus Content - Hekate POV

Hey everyone!

I'm back with a new round of POV bonus contents. As ever, Hekate is first in the lineup, and since you all wanted her perspective on a scene from the game, I figured I'd use the new one I'm working on, featuring her, Hades, and an academically-inclined Persephone (she/they this time).

I hope you like it; the scene this is from will be out with this month's BIP!

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“You think you’ve perfected the formula?” Hades obligingly continues to feed a trickle of his magic into the cauldron as Hekate handles everything else. This one’s proving finicky, in a certain sense common to alchemy. It’s about order and timing, not just what’s in it.

“Well, I don’t know about ‘perfected,’ she replies, a trace of amusement in her tone. “But I think this one will work passably well, if we can execute it just right. Thinnest possible thread of your magic, please.”

The trickle tapers off even further; she does have to admire the precision with which he can direct it. For a god that can’t stop himself from leaking magic, he actually has quite impressive control of it otherwise, and she hasn’t always thought so.

“Ah,” he murmurs. “I do believe you’re about to have company.”

Hekate gets the Alert from Erebus when Persephone enters the library, but for now she ignores it. It will take them a while to get all the way back here, and this part really does require her concentration, as she rapidly adds her pre-measured ingredients, glass and ceramic containers orbiting her like she’s a star and they her satellites.

A strange kind of astronomy, she makes.

Persehpnoe does eventually make her way back to where they are, and Hekate can almost sense their hesitation. To be fair, it probably does look like she and Hades are too busy to entertain, but fortunately, the other deity has come at just the right time.

"Persephone, would you find the dried witch hazel in the cabinet to my left?" she inquires, eyes still fixed on her project, which is currently stirring itself. She just needs to wait for the slight color change.

"Sure! Just a second." Persephone moves over the outer line of the magic circle easily enough, opening the cabinet specified. There's nothing but jars of various plants in it, most of them dried, but others preserved in with various magical and alchemical means. Presumably she’ll be able to recognize witch hazel, given her facility with botany.

"Your assistance is much appreciated," Hekate replies. "We have arrived at a crucial juncture in the process."

It takes them a bit of looking to find the witch hazel, but once they have the jar, they unscrew the lid and move over towards her. "How much do you need?"

"Just one of the stalks," she says. "Crush it in your palm and then drop it right in, please."

Persephone looks a tad uncertain, but she follows the directions anyway, removing one stalk with its flowers from the jar and crushing it in her fist before dropping it into the cauldron.

The water scythes the ingredients into tiny pieces, which then become part of the smooth blend of the slightly thickened, bubbling liquid instead. And finally, the color change Hekate is looking for.

The young deity sets their book down, looking around a bit until Hekate nods at the nearby washbasin. They clean their hand, returning as Hades inspects the bound volume they’ve left.

"How are you finding that?" he asks, dipping his chin in the book’s general direction.

"I quite enjoyed the read, actually." She smiles a bit; though small, the expression reaches her eyes.

Hades huffs softly at this, his eyes moving to Hekate, still mostly paying attention to her work but also following their words. "See? I did tell you your prose was remarkable."

She hums, skeptical.

"Wait… are you saying you wrote this, Hekate?" She wouldn’t call their tone disbelieving, as such, but they do sound surprised. That’s not itself shocking, of course; the subject matter is not one popularly associated with the Underworld or anyone in it.

"Well, yes," she replies, a faint smile playing at her lips. "Believe it or not, healing is possible even with Chthonic magic. Or at least, I can do it. It's not a common ability in general, mind."

Persephone nods, expression thoughtful.

Hekate snaps her fingers, and all magic around or moving into the cauldron stops. She exhales a breath, then coats the whole thing in a layer of ice, for rapid cooling. Hades, meanwhile, calls over the wrought-iron magic circle. Rather than engraving the circle into something else, she’d drawn the design and had it made of iron itself. It should last longer that way, before it needs replacement.

"This must seem rather odd, but we're actually working on the prototype for a new infrastructure enchantment.” Hades explains to their visitor. “This one is for the cooling of individual rooms. Hekate thought it might be a good solution for food preservation, and I'm inclined to agree, if we can get it to function stably, and to be easy for spirits to use."

"The second part is the hard one," Hekate adds. The use case. Always more of a challenge than the concept.

Persephone thinks about this for a moment, studying the circle. "Could we use it to heat rooms also?"

Hekate has to admit she’s a bit impressed. Those two functions are in essence the same, with magic, though they may not seem that way at first, and not everyone can do both equally well. It takes both knowledge and practical experience with magic to draw such a conclusion.

"I'd use a different circle for that," she says. "You're getting at something that's true, but I've built an 'acceptable range' into the language of this circle, as a safety measure because it's for the use of people who don't have magic themselves and might accidentally make errors, and I didn't want those errors to freeze them to the bone."

"That… makes sense." Persephone lets out a little breath on the end of the phrase that much be a touch of sheepishness. Perhaps amusement? She’s not actually sure.

"I have found," Hades says, "that infrastructure is as much about the people who will use it as the function it needs to perform. Thinking about those two things together can be challenging, but I do find it rewarding. It's always nice to be able to help Hekate with one of her projects."

"More like my wild hairs," she says with a soft laugh. "Sometimes I hear about a problem and the only thing I can think about is 'how can I fix this?' Often enough the solution turns out to be mundane and I just hand it off to someone else… but sometimes I get to see it through to the end."

"Yes, well, even if you consider it a 'wild hair,' those tend to benefit everyone here quite a lot. The staff in the kitchens, and people in their homes, will have a much easier time of it if their food is preserved longer. That is worth whatever you need to accomplish it. You have done a great deal of good for the Underworld, my friend."

"Oh please.” Hekate resists the urge to roll her eyes, if only playfully. He’s always too quick to praise others, and never quick enough to take any credit. Even now, he’s acting like a simple assistant, when the truth is something much more layered. “The only reason I can do any of this is because of you. I certainly wasn't inventing much of anything when all I was doing was surviving."

"What do you mean 'all you were doing was surviving'?" Persephone looks between the two of them with obvious curiosity.

Hekate blinks, tilting her head and catching their eyes with her own dark ones. It’s not her favorite topic area, but she’s not the kind to stymie curiosity unless she absolutely must. She can handle a version of the answer to this question. "Well, frankly, the Underworld wasn't always like this. And I wasn't always as powerful as I am today. Once, I was one of its more powerless denizens, and at the feet of those with more power than me, my only goal was to survive."

She taps the side of her thumb against the iron frame. "It wasn't an especially pleasant time, but it changed, and now I don't have to worry about it anymore, so I don't."

"What other sorts of infrastructure projects have you done?" Persephone seems happy enough to leave it there for now, and her second choice of topic is much more welcome, so Hekate does the same.

"Oh, all sorts." She shrugs. "We're always doing maintenance on the plumbing system, because it's one of the biggest. The magelight grid was the first major thing we managed; enchanted lights in every building in this city, and all the others. Very helpful, especially in the days where it was cloudy-midnight-dark all the time."

Hades clears his throat, lifting a hand to the nape of his neck. "Well… yes. I do still feel bad about that, though. I can't imagine the spirits felt much comfort, living in darkness they could hardly penetrate."

"Oh, relax. It's not like it did any permanent harm."

The conversation continues as they finish work on the prototype, and Persephone is certainly quite willing to help whenever asked. It’s interesting, how fully someone who has never known any of this seems to be embracing what is so new to her. Hekate isn’t certain she would be able to do the same, if she suddenly found herself on Olympus.

And yet they do. It’s an intriguing little bit of information about their character, and by the end of the whole thing, she finds herself in the rare position of wanting to know much more about a personthan she already does.

“...I like her,” she says, long after the young deity has departed.

Hades lifts an eyebrow, just slightly. “A most auspicious occurrence,” he teases. “I should check to see if I’m doing anything that requires good luck today.”

Hekate rolls her eyes. “It’s not that unusual for me to like people,” she replies.

“No, but it is unusual for you to be much interested in any of them.”

Maybe he’s got a point.