"The Lover... I could see that. Well. We may as well go ahead and take the pebble, hmm?"

"Yes, sir."

He walks over to the pebble and grabs it and the air—

—shifts.

There is a weight, a presence. Something like being close to Hades himself, except Hades usually does not bring his full might to bear. The air becomes heavy, almost charged, and if Agatinos's shade form has any hairs on the back of his hands they will be standing on edge.

And the voice of the Pallas echoes, coming from everywhere and nowhere at the same time: "Hail, mighty cousin. I see you've got company. Who is this? Another soul that seems to have been tested in the forges, I can see. Just like yours, if not by as much.

"Godsspeed, cousin, and may these blessings aid you in your quest."

Agatinos shivers all over. "Hail," he murmurs faintly.

Zagreus's eyes go unfocused while he stares at the pebble but he says, "She can't hear you. You need some godly oomph to get a message from here all the way up there. I could send one for you, if you want, but by default. Oh her dash boon, that's good. I'll take that." He squeezes the pebble and his eyes focus on the here and now again, and the presence is gone from the air. And it's back to just the two of them.

"I think on reflection I'm glad that she can't hear me," Agatinos says. "I'd really have no idea what to say."

"Just be deferential and polite, that's how it always goes with Olympians."

"Well. I suppose you'd have more experience with it."

"They don't expect much deference from me, I'm a god, but... Well, it's like I said, Olympians don't really deal with mortals very much. They don't have to." He makes a face.

"Perhaps that's something that can change. I can imagine you hosting visitors when you get to Olympus."

"Not planning to." Pause. "Don't let them know that. But no, I don't want to stay in Olympus. That's just... a convenient excuse Nyx came up with. I will visit, sure, but..."

"Huh. Where, then?" He pauses. "That's probably an incredibly personal question. You don't need to answer it."

"...my mother. Queen... Queen Persephone. May be before your time. But Nyx is not my mother, Persephone is. Goddess of verdure, daughter of Lady Demeter with a mortal man."

"I know of her. She - you... wow."

"It's no wonder I like you," he decides.

"—oh? Care to elaborate?"

"I'm a nymph. We're... not of Persephone, in the way the naiads are of the Tideking or the aurae are of the Thunderer? But we have a certain connection to her. Or at least I do."

"Ha. That makes sense. Well, I've never... met her. Nyx wouldn't explain why she left, said mother should be the one to do it. But she—her—being missing. It's why winters have been so long, so unforgiving. Why summers have been short. Up on the surface, or so I hear. Lady Demeter... grandmother... misses her daughter."

"...I'd heard. About the winter."

Agatinos clenches his teeth for a moment. "I think if she were here I'd have some words for her."

His grimace deepens. "She's an Olympian," is all he says.

"I know."

He flexes his fingers on the hilts of his blades. "Let's move on. I feel unaccountably violent."

"Let's kill some wretches hellbent on killing us, then."

Which they can just proceed to do. The environs of the House do not contain the most martially accomplished souls in the Underworld but they make up for it in numbers and sheer viciousness.

To wit: floating hands, floating skulls, witches, huge legless torsos, and whole skeletons are amongst the wretches wishing to stop them.

Agatinos fights.

It's something he did in life, but not as a calling - he just needed to know how. In death, it became a pursuit, something that distracted him from the unending nightmare of his half-existence, until it didn't anymore. But the skills don't fade, not really. They gather dust, perhaps. But dust blows away.

So they go through the local shades easily and quickly enough. It's always really just a matter of how many shades Hades can get to converge on Zagreus and how long they take to get to him, so he usually gets some breathing room because he is better at killing them than shades are at... walking.

He starts looking around for spoils, ransacking really, breaking vases and the like.

"...do the vases often have anything interesting in them? I thought they were decorative."