I. Lucian, Dialogue of the Gods: XXIV / II. Mitski on Working for the Knife / III. Donte Collins, Grief, Again / IV. Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Orpheus Leading Eurydice From the Underworld / V. Hadestown, Wait For Me (Reprise) / VI. Ruth Krauss and Remy Charlip, A Moon or a Button / VII. The Magnus Archives #159, The Last
Kitay Tsai has always walked a fragile line between two worlds.
This is not such an unusual thing for a half-blood to do. To be born half-human and half-god means you will never have a choice to do anything but walk a fragile line between two worlds. It means you are born on a tightrope strung by the Fates and to be too human or too god is to teeter off the edge to an untimely demise. (There's a reason most half-bloods don't live to see twenty, after all.)
But the line between boyhood and godhood is not the only fragile line that Kitay has learned to walk. He's something of an expert in navigating the in-between of everywhere, everything—a consequence of his mortal mother's ever-expanding underground criminal empire and his godly father's fickle, fleeting nature. Children of Hermes are known for many things courtesy of their father: sly smiles and swift feet; petty thefts and practical jokes; quick wit and even quicker fingers. They are mischief-makers, rabble-rousers, nothing but trouble—this is the legacy that belongs to Hermes's progeny; the carefully crafted illusion that serves as his children's inheritance. It is a legacy that Kitay carries well. (Too well, some might say—but that's a matter for another time.) It is easy for people to think of children of Hermes as only these things. Easier for people to forget the rest.
Kitay only wishes that he could forget too.
(The problem is this: They will not let him.)
What many people fail to remember about Hermes (not just a thief and a trader and a trickster, but a shepherd to flocks and herds and people) is that his divine duty does not stop once the thread of fate has been cut. The dead need guidance too and it is Hermes who is tasked with escorting them to their final resting place in Hades' halls. (The irony of this is not lost on Kitay: that his father is the patron god of lost souls, yet all Kitay has ever been is lost.) No good can come from letting the dead linger where they do not belong; restless remnants of grief and loss that bring with them boundless misery. But Hermes (not just thief / trader / trickster / shepherd but messenger / herald / jack of all trades; always in motion, never at rest—) cannot tend to them all. And if these shades cannot find Hermes to take them to their afterlife, they will find other means to make it there.
Who better to answer for the failings of a father than his child?
Who better to toe the boundary between the living and the dead than Kitay, who has always walked the fragile lines between worlds?
And, when his half-brother decides to enact vengeance against the gods for abandoning their children, who better to lead demigods away from Camp Half-Blood to the Titan army than Kitay, who has already led countless souls down the road to Hell? The destinations aren't so different in the end...
Except.
Except it is different when the fighting begins and the souls you're escorting to the Underworld are people you once knew; people who you steered down a road they never should have walked, earning them an early one-way-ticket to Hades and robbing them of the future that could have been theirs—robbing them of the chance at rebirth or eternal rest in Elysium. Revenge against Olympus no longer seems as sweet as it once did. Instead, Kitay just wants to make things right.
The Fates are rarely ever kind, but in allowing his path to cross with Nico di Angelo's, Kitay thinks they might have made an exception.
Because who better to recruit into an effort to cheat the rules of the Underworld than a son of Hades himself?
as described / KITAY TSAI,
CHILD OF HERMES.
ÆGISTHUS: You'd rather be with the dead?
ELECTRA: A hundred times over. Buried even.
Li Bingbing / XIAOWEN TSAI,
RENOWNED THIEF ... CRIME BOSS ... MAGIC ITEM COLLECTOR.
&&&
THE LADIES of the ARTEMISIA
Ming-Na Wen MEILIN HUANG
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Jessica Chastain SIOBHÁN FLYNN
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Tracy Ifeachor NIKITA SARGENT
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Ayça Aysin Turan CEMILE EREN
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Claudia Doumit ILANA EL KHOURY
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Mj Rodriguez SABINE SALAS
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Henry Golding / HERMES,
GOD OF THIEVES ... TRAVELERS ... HERDS ... TRICKSTERS ... MESSENGERS ... YOU GET THE IDEA.
Choi Yi-Hyun / ÁINE CROSS,
DAUGHTER OF HADES.
Fala Chen / SUYIN TSAI †,
DAUGHTER OF MORPHEUS.
&&&
THE LOST ONES
Danny Griffin LUKE CASTELLAN †
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Mackenyu Arata ETHAN NAKAMURA †
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Aubri Ibrag SILENA BEAUREGARD †
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Karan Brar JAI PAREKH †
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Sadie Sink CASSANDRA FLINT †
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Jonathan Daviss LEVI BAILEY †
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
SCAN CODE IN SPOTIFY TO LISTEN.
DISCLAIMER
this is a work of fanfiction made purely for entertainment purposes. all rights belong to the original creators. that being said: please do not plagiarize any original ideas or repost to other sites!
TRIGGER WARNINGS
your mental health should always be your number one priority. please do not read this book if you are uncomfortable with themes including but not limited to:
depictions of violence, character death, adult language, complicated family dynamics, internalized homophobia, gender dysphoria, discussions / portrayals of complex mental health issues, romanticization of death / suicide, mentions of eating disorders / self-harming behaviors.
any additional warnings will be added if needed!
author's note: this is about to be a LONG author's note so i apologize in advance but buckle up besties ❗️
1) did i come up with this entire plot just so i could write a fic where nico and zagreus meet? perhaps. but anyways... welcome to laurel hell. this fic is 1000% inspired by the video game hades which—for those of you who have not played—follows the story of minor god zagreus (son of hades + persephone) as he tries to fight his way out of the underworld to reunite with his mom and fix his parents' marriage. i will be borrowing quite a bit of lore from that game regarding the underworld so if things don't quite match up to the way you remember them being in canon, that is why. you absolutely do not have to play hades to make sense of this book since everything that's not from pjo will be explained, but it's a very fun game and touches on a lot of characters / myths that i love, so i highly recommend it to any #gamers out there.
2) elements of this fic have also been inspired by the the raven boys / the dream thieves book series, the video game spiritfarer, and the musical hadestown.
3) as indicated in the summary: my oc is a child of hermes. in creating kitay's character, i wanted to focus less on hermes's more obvious traits (thievery, trickery, speed—although there will be plenty of that in this book too) and explore his role as a psychopomp / soul guide for the dead. even though this isn't something we ever see in the pjo books, i thought it could be interesting to explore how this ability could pass on to hermes's kids. just like how some demigods have rare / uncommon abilities (leo + his fire, hazel + her jewels, etc.), psychopomp abilities are not common and only affect some children of hermes.
4) on a more serious note: even though this is labeled as a nico fic, this book will primarily feature a platonic relationship between the characters until much later in the story as nico and kitay are both quite young at the start of this book. that being said: i have noticed a trend in media, especially media pertaining to young lgbtq+ people, where people will fetishize or hypersexualize the characters, even when the characters are minors. this is incredibly inappropriate and something i have zero tolerance for. do not engage in any of that behavior on this book or you will be muted.
5) kitay is transmasc and uses he/him pronouns, so please be respectful of that. if you have any issue with kitay being trans, this book is not for you; nor are any of my other works.
6) regarding the list of trigger warnings: nico is a complex character with a lot of heavy / dark themes tied to him which is why this book has different triggers compared to some of my others. nico struggles tremendously with grief, mental health issues, internalized homophobia, chronic pain and fatigue, behavior tied to eating disorders and self-harm, and other heavy themes. this book also deals a lot with death, dying, and the afterlife. i don't intend to overly romanticize or exploit those topics in this book, but they will be addressed and touched upon. certain things from the series's canon (i.e. nico's traumatic outing) may be excluded or wholly rewritten. i don't intend to make any of these themes the main focus of the book. rather, this book will mostly touch on these things through a lens of healing and recovery.
7) there will be an extended cast section featured in the next chapter. for the gods / underworld characters. as the gods can change their appearance at will, the faceclaims for them are not necessarily how they will always appear in this story or other stories. if you picture a character looking differently or prefer a version of them from something else, feel free to imagine whoever you'd like!
8) the timeline for this book covers from around battle of the labyrinth / the last olympian through trials of apollo. however, this is more of an alternate universe fic than one that follows the exact sequence of events in canon and as a result the timeline will likely change. also: i am aware that there is a spin-off nico / will novel in the works that is supposed to be specifically focused on the underworld and / or tartarus, so... we shall see what the future holds as far as that is concerned.
9) last but NEVER ever least: it's been a hot minute but me and my beloved medusatruther are #back in the crossover business 😁😁 so make sure you check out noa's percy fic asystole featuring áine cross ❤️🔥❤️🔥 also ty to noa for letting me ramble about this story and for allowing me to use inspo from their layout for this summary + for making the cover for this book 🫶
phew! if you made it all the way to here then give yourself a pat on the back. not sure if you could tell from my rambling, but i am very excited for this fic. we've got a lot of fun stuff planned and i am so looking forward to sharing it with all of you—especially any fellow hades enjoyers. thanks for reading! 🫶
PUBLISHED: 09.02.22
FINISHED: —/—/—