Sorry for being an ass. I hope you like your new place, and the stuff you're doing to Asphodel is awesome.

—Zag

Sorry for being jumpy and flighty and enigmatic. I hope your escape attempts are going well, and I do absolutely still mean to help you get out of here, just. Feelings are hard. Being a person is hard. It's much easier to just ruthlessly overhaul Asphodel until it's better than Elysium and its stupid fake heroes with their stupid fake smiles.

But yeah, it's pretty cool, isn't it? Your dad's even paying me for it.

And of course I like my room(s), I helped design it, silly.

- Yvette

You got my father to pay you for it? You are a force of nature.

Well, the parts up to the Coliseum are going fine, especially with so much less magma, but I haven't managed to get past Theseus and Asterius again yet. And Theseus keeps teasing me and saying I only did it that one time because of your help so I do still want to beat him to the ground without you, but if you wanna watch I bet that would be fun.

—Zag

Sure, that sounds fun. Though I will be very tempted to blast him from the stands if I see his stupid face, so. Maybe not for the first time you beat him.

- Yvette

That would be funny, he doesn't say. He in fact doesn't write his reply quite yet; he's not patient for a god, but he's still a god and written correspondence can well take a day or twenty to be properly formulated. In the meantime he has some more killing to do.

    "Hey boyo! Ready to rumble?" asks Skelly, waiting for him in his training yard as usual.

"I always am."

...but he's struck by something like inspiration.

He hums as he walks over to his weapons, floating lazily next to one side of the railings, godly power flowing through them. His godly power, for Yvette was right when she speculated that the thing he'd been calling "Darkness", the "energy" he "collects" on his runs, is nothing more than a way his—mind, his soul, his godhood found to conceptualise it. The power was within him all along, or something. Would that he could just coax it all out into the open, like, you know, it's his power, why is it so reluctant to hurry up and be useful?

Some nonsense about how he has to "learn about himself" and "grow into his own potential" to get power. Bullshit if you ask him, but you didn't.

Maybe not bullshit, though, given that this is the... third time he goes for Aegis, the Shield of Chaos but the first time he really means it. It's not like him, to wield a shield. Or it wasn't. Too slow, too defensive, too patient.

Maybe slow is what he needs.

It's a funny weapon, a shield. Funny, that most people would not really consider it a weapon. Zagreus thinks it's a lack of creativity or something. Or maybe his magic shield from literally the dawn of time is special, who knows.

And it is slow, much slower than Zag's usual. Sure, he can still dodge and dash, the short distance teleportation not really holding much of a candle to Thanatos's ability to phase all over Creation but nevertheless pretty useful in combat. That doesn't mean that's what he should be doing, not most of the time.

(He may have grown up enough to finally see potential, real potential, in the shield, but that doesn't mean he likes playing it slow.)

Like his other weapons, this shield is indestructible. This proves to be quite the boon as he learns to not dodge, to hold his ground and weather the onslaught, to bide his time while he waits for an opening. To use the opening, in ways these shades are certainly not expecting. To bull rush into a group, using his power and speed to become like an incoming comet. To use the rather sharp edges of it.

His father, whatever his other faults, reached through time into the river of souls to bring the Greatest of the Greeks to train him. Achilles was (will be?) mortal, but Zagreus suspects even Lord Ares was impressed and awed by his ferocity and skill in life. He says he grew out of it, that he'd rather not think much on his reckless youth (and how painful that must be, Zagreus now thinks with the added context of Patroclus), but skill is skill and Zag is a good study. He doesn't have a fighting style; he has all of them, and soon enough the shield is as deadly in his hands as the sword.

Deadlier.

When he reaches the Elysian gardens, he's... fine. He's hardly broken a sweat, really. Tartarus's wretches and the formerly flooded Asphodel Meadows no longer really hold any danger to him, and with something like Aegis in his hands, he slowly but surely ascends, not even sporting the usual cuts and bruises that typically mar his figure by then.

The garden he gets to next is quiet. A kind of quiet he's learned to anticipate, to cherish, because it means that...

"Death approaches," says the god of death, after the death knell that always precedes him.

"Than!" Zagreus says, running up to his cousin with a face-splitting grin. He's worked out, by now, that the reason why he always gets a little reprieve from his harassment when Thanatos decides to show up is that his cousin is bending the rules a little bit and lending him some of his time. Another piece of the puzzle that is their relationship that didn't really click until just recently.

"Miss me, Zagreus?"

"Of course I did! It's been weeks—months, probably—I'm really happy to see you."

...he drops onto his feet with a furrow to his brows. "You really mean it. Blood and darkness, Zag, you're so..."

"Let's kill stuff and chat later, I don't want to strain your time too much."

Another little note of discordance, there, even though he sounds just as impatient as usual...

Thanatos notices the shield.

And floats back up while he releases his hold on time to permit the great shades of Elysium that Lord Hades has encouraged to stop his son to arrive.

Zag wins, again. Thanatos wasn't even holding back that much, but a few months of extra training have definitely sharpened the god and... he still fights like a man in love.

It's thoroughly distracting. He drops to his feet once more and extends his hand to offer Zag the Centaur Heart. "You've improved."

"I wanted to impress you," he replies, accepting the heart.

"Is my grandparent's shield also meant to impress me? You're less hurt than usual. I can't say I disapprove."

"...no, it's not, but I'm glad you like it."

"You always mean everything you say, don't you." It's not really a question. "Aletheia must be really fond of you."

Shrug. "I think I'm a pretty straightforward person."

Thanatos folds his arms and looks away. "I don't know what to do with you."

"You could kiss me."

"I—I don't—"