She snorts!

"Thank you for your faith in me. I still need time to figure it out. I definitely did for my arbitrary god physics."

"Chaos may be able to help. They seem to have more knowledge than they should about pretty much everything."

“I guess I could go ask! … but I didn’t leave any part of me in Chaos’s domain, so I’d have to find it again. Oops.”

"They like showing themself to me reasonably often. I think they find the change of pace I provide, what shall we call it, 'entertaining'."

"So continue being your loyal snarky shoulder buddy, that was the plan anyway but it's nice to have that reaffirmed!"

"Happy to be of service as your ride."

Onwards. Nyx has managed to sneak the gods' presence even into here, somehow, and Zagreus gets a little something from Ares to upgrade his magical spinny blade disc (and as an interesting side effect when he's upgrading it Yvette can sneak into it to add her gravity warp effect) and an amazing blessing from Athena that shields him whenever he's running fast enough. He also finds another Centaur Heart that Thanatos must have hidden somewhere here (Zag grumbles about how literally everyone but him seems to just have free access to everywhere in the Underworld), and collects loot.

He gets better, too, at avoiding poison, at avoiding the rats. It's a matter of learning how they move, of understanding the terrain better, and Achilles has always said he was a quick study. At least when it comes to combat, he is. But learning requires practice, and practice requires getting stabbed and poisoned and laser-blasted and exploded at. It takes its toll.

And it's not fast enough.

Zagreus is not fast enough, not a fast enough learner, not fast enough on his feet, not after battling through all of Tartarus and Asphodel and Elysium, not after beating a Fury and the Bone Hydra and the Champions. He is not a fast enough learner to survive this. He tries, he's always trying his best, but despite everything...

...his death comes without fanfare. He's beaten and bloody, he's dripping and sooty, but the thing that kills him is the poison. He's on his way to the antidote fountain, he's on his way to a cure, but what's a cure when the next stiff breeze was about to kill him anyway? His death comes without fanfare, he falls to his knees before the antidote fountain, then to his hands, then to his stomach. His breathing is ragged, and he coughs some blood onto the floor. Tries to get up again—fails—and waits.

“Zagreus,” murmurs Yvette, reforming her body beside him to hold his hand. She has half a mind to drag him the rest of the distance to the fountain, maybe dump his face into it, but. But. It’s too late, he’s already dying. “I’m so sorry I couldn’t help more, I. You’ll get out, okay?”

He laughs then winces and coughs some more blood. "I know I will. Just... not this time."

Sniffle.

“I’m so sorry,” she repeats, squeezing his hand.

"Don't be. Just a failed run, that's all."

One more time coughing up blood... and the river Styx takes him.

She could try to get out of here on her own. But there was a reason he did most of the fighting even as he was slowly being cut (and burned and poisoned and whatever else) to pieces. She’s actually just much worse at this than he is. Good at buying him extra space to breathe, good at distracting enemies for him or blasting them when they’re distracted by him, but. Not actually very good at being the sole object of attention. But she could try anyway, either see if Cerberus lets her fulfill Zagreus’s deal or sneak past him by herself. Except, no. No, she’d rather not.

The river Styx takes him, and she follows. It’s not the same for her, but it’s easy enough to just keep hold of him and let herself be tugged after him. No dying involved.

It takes a few minutes for him to reform, for his godly essence to regain its shape and for him to recover consciousness. When he does, he's back at the House, emerging from the same pool the regular shades do whenever they seek an audience with his lord father.

He walks up the steps out of said pool, the blood-red water of the river of the dead sliding off his body and clothes unnaturally quickly, and spots the god of sleep immediately.

Said god of sleep should have been keeping track of all the new arrivals and all the shades that want to speak with Hades. What he is doing instead is napping. Or was, until he was woken up by the sounds of Zagreus's steps.

Hypnos lifts his sleep mask off his eyes and opens them to blink up blearily at the godling, floating lazily in the air and bundled up in a thick red blanket. He stares for a second, then looks down at a list he carries inside his blankets and whistles when he finds Zag's cause of death. "Satyr rat poison, in the Temple of Styx? Hey, that's a new record! Maybe next time try not getting poisoned, though?"

"I didn't think of that!" Zag says lightly. "I'll keep it in mind."

She's mildly tempted to hide in the pool forever, because she feels very dumb for doing this. Bright side; no one has noticed her yet. They could just keep doing that, possibly forever! That'd be nice. Except then Zagreus might be gone by the time she gets bored enough to get out on her own, and that sounds even worse. It's probably fine? She's about to experience some major social anxiety, going from just interacting with three talking people at most to a whole.... hall of people. But. It's fine.

Yvette rises from the pool, steps carefully and quietly up the stairs and out of it, and pretends to be very busy getting all of the Styx water out of her hair. Mhm. Yes. That's what she's doing, there is no social anxiety to speak of.

Zagreus hears her and, since most shades don't bother with forms that make noises, looks around to see the source. He blinks in surprise. "Oh, hey, you came too."

That surprises Hypnos, though, and he looks through the deceptively numerous pages of his list before looking up at Yvette. "You're not on my list," he says, sounding more curious than anything else.

"Um, yeah. I didn't have to, but." She shrugs, looking away. "... Hi. I'm Yvette."

"Ebuette," Hypnos tries. "Nice to meet you, Ebuette! I'm Hypnos."

"... Uh. No, that's not how you pronounce... okay, hi. Nice to meet you, too."

"So if you didn't die, how are you here?"

"I, er. Followed Zagreus back." Fidget fidget can she go back to being a shoulder buddy she misses that very much. "I guess I could have tried to leave on my own, but that seemed unlikely to work and kind of rude and, um." Fidget fidget.

She'd have felt bad.

Zagreus himself does not seem like he'd have blamed her.

"Well, welcome ot the House of Hades, presided over by my delightful father. He will have questions now that you are definitely here and definitely not shieldable by Nyx."

"Yaaaaaaaay," she says, completely without any enthusiasm.