"The fuck you mean i'm dead?!" The man said to the cloaked woman as he look around in bewilderment. There were large towering skyscrapers that look decrepit and yet had bright neon lights. It was like something out of a comic book.
Mori sighed, she lost count of how many times she had to explain this concept to the newly deceased.
"I'm tired, look when my half-sister lobbed that grenade into your car, it exploded and you died." Mori simply explained as she pulled out a flask from her cloak and took a long swig.
The man looked troubled, Mori couldn't blame him, hell she felt sorry for the bastard. It wasn't easy coming to terms that your life have been terminated, all your dreams dashed within a instant.
"Is this hell?" He asked softly, tears streaming down his face.
"Uhhh not really, i mean i guess you can consider this hell if you really wanted to go back to the earth you're from but this is the Underworld. Enjoy your stay!" Mori said happily as the former gangster looked around in disbelief.
"Wait that Alice bitch is your half-sister?" He asked angrily. Suddenly remembering what Mori said.
"Yeah we all have the same mother, You may or may not saw her on your way down here, Thermes, the Goddess of Death? I used to babysit Alice and our two brothers Damien and Peter. She was a little troublemaker even back then." Mori recalled fondly as she blocked a punch from the former gangster with her left hand.
"Is he giving you trouble?" A voice said from behind her. Mori's face lit up like a Christmas tree on fire. She tossed the gangster twenty feet away from her, he landed in a flaming dumpster. She ran and hugged her mom tightly.
"Woah, i missed you too!" Winfrey said happily as she hugged her daughter, they broke out of the hug and got a look at each other.
Mori was the splitting image of Winfrey at first glance, from her short ruby red hair that blended into a different color at the bottom. Her casual demeanor despite the powerful position she held. Her approachableness even though she a guide of the dead. But on closer inspections, the traits of her other mother Thermes screamed out. Like her black eyes with white pupils, the color that her hair blended into at the bottom was the same color of Thermes's hair. A pitch black.
Mori looked at her mother, she wasn't wearing her usually toga outfit, She was wearing a simple light blue hoodie and some sweatpants. She also had her scythe that seemed brand new.
"My scythe! Tell Malakai i said thank you!" Mori gleamed as her mom handed her favorite weapon. She swung it around like a expert, laughing while doing so. The sight brought a smile to the Goddess of Wine's face.
"I will, Malakai upgraded it, so it a lot stronger and durable than before." Winfrey explained to Mori who nodded.
"So how are you doing?" Winfrey asked of Mori who simply shrugs.
"Can't complain too much, probably going to take a break and go upside. See some friends, check in on my siblings. Go to the club, maybe get into a fight or two if i really feel like it." Mori said happily. Winfrey grinned at her daughter.
"Well you sound excited!" Winfrey commented.
"You bet, also have you talk to mom?"
"Oh of course, we had a nice little chat about what happened at Honey Dogs." Winfrey said.
Winfrey recounted the events to her daughter. Leaving out the whole mind fuckery with Swano. Mori was laughing at the end.
"Mom only you can go clubbing and turn it into a whole ass adventure!" Mori said, chuckling.
Winfrey shrugged and gave a "what can you do?" expression.
"So what are you doing down here?" Mori asked of her mother.
"I came to see you silly! If you have the time to hang out that is?"
Mori smiled.
"Of course. Not like i'm doing anything important anyways." Mori told her as she stretch her arms and cracked her knuckles.
"Um excuse me where the hell am i-" A female gangbanger who was wearing white had a brochure shoved in her face by Mori.
"Please pass it to the next person who come down here and tell the person the same thing i told you." Mori politely explained as the female gangbanger nodded and then promptly freaked the hell out when she found out she was dead. It said so right on the first page. "So you're dead, well that sucks."
Winfrey and Mori sat on a bench located in Slim stone Park, bundles upon bundles of Chrysanthemums grew in the area in place of grass. The air was cool, there was a orc getting into a argument with a tiger about the lore of a book they were both invested in. Slim stone park was another area of the underworld that was eerily quiet saved from the conversations of the inhabitants.
Winfrey took a long sip of her Vodka Cranberry Milkshake, a personal invention of hers. There was silence between the mother and daughter, not that Winfrey minded it. Well there was a time where just the thought of sitting down and not doing anything got her anxious. If the Goddess of Wine wasn't preoccupied with something, that when those memories start to creep in. But being here with her daughter put those intrusive thoughts at bay, at least for a little while.
Mori chugged her second beer and toss it into the garbage can without looking.
"Nice." Winfrey complimented.
Mori smiled uneasily, something was clearly bothering her mother but was now the appropriate time to bring it up? She decided to ease in to it.
"Hey mom, is everything cool?" She asked.
Winfrey knew where this was going. There was no point in deflecting.
"Honestly? Not really, but I'm still standing so..."
Mori remembered what Winfrey told Thermes after Thermes managed to drink a shot of tequila without throwing it up afterwards.
"Any victory, no matter how small is still a victory?" Mori finished for her.
"Damn it been a minute since i said that, But yeah." Winfrey agreed.
Some more silence pass between the mother and daughter.
"Hey Mori? Do you like me?" Winfrey asked uneasily.
"What kinda freaking question is that?! You're my mother!" Mori asked, bewildered.
"I-I know. But do you like me as a person?" She clarified.
"What happened at Honey Dogs? Because something happen to you and now you're having a existential crisis." Mori asked warily. Whatever her mother was going through, she was going to help her get through it.
Winfrey adjusted herself on the bench to the point where her legs were up in the air and she was upside down.
"Damn i was that obvious huh?"
"Subtlety has never been your strong suit, mom." Mori said, earning a bitter laugh from the Goddess of Wine.
"No it is not. Well i don't know where to start." Winfrey admitted honestly, she feared that her daughter might thinks she a piece of shit if she explain in full. She didn't want to lose her respect or love.
"You can start at any point, as long as you get it out there. You feel less like shit afterwards, trust me on this." Mori said as she opened another beer.
Winfrey thought upon this for a moment, feelings conflicted in her psyche. The proudness she felt for her daughter wage war with the anxiety of how Mori's perspective on her mother might change. She decided to go for it.
The Goddess of Wine explained the situation she got into with Swano and how her and Malakai was thrown into their mind palaces and assaulted with their insecurities and regrets.
"I don't know why i took her wanting her father to quit drinking as a betrayal to me, But i was being selfish. This was my lover, the one who confided in me when things were tough, the one who on those lonely nights caressed me and told me everything was going to be alright. I killed her. And i have to live with that. Just like i have to live with all the other deaths i caused by my actions, whether it be intentional or not. I-" The Goddess stopped for a moment.
"I don't know how I'm going to fix things, i know all i can do is move forward and be less of a piece of shit yet somehow that not good enough for me." Winfrey finished, not looking at her daughter and keeping her eyes to the ground.
Mori placed a hand on her mother's hand. Winfrey look at her daughter, uncertain. Her daughter smiling at her made her felt a pang of guilt, she deserved somebody as wonderful as Mori in her life.
"Wow mom, that really fucked up." Mori told Winfrey who was a little shocked (She didn't know why because she inherited her bluntness from Thermes.) But it was a perfectly reasonable reaction, that much Winfrey knew. Somehow hearing her daughter say those words simultaneously made her feel a lot better and like a complete piece of shit. Which she was, in the drunk Goddess's mind at least.
"Which part?" Winfrey had to ask.
"All of it." Mori clarified.
"Figures."
"So what are you going to do? You can't wallow in self-pity and hatred forever. From what you told me, even Malakai is slowly realizing that." Mori told her mother, she knew about Malakai as she saw him with her step-father Cheelege. She never seen someone who needed a hug more than him.
Winfrey stood up.
"I honestly don't know but that what make it exciting, right?" Winfrey said, she had a far-away look in her eyes. She turn to Mori and smiles wistfully.
"Mori i just want you to know that i love you, alright?"
"Mom, i love you too. Seriously don't do something drastic because i'm starting to get nervous." Mori advised, worried about her mother's mental state.
Winfrey chuckled and hugged Mori, lifting her off the ground and spinning her around.
"Me? Do something drastic? Never!" Winfrey lightly joked before setting her down.
"Trust me Mori, i taking a break from getting into crazy hijinks." Winfrey told her as Garwik The God of War and Terra The Goddess of the Earth walked behind her along with a woman they didn't know.
Mori and Winfrey look at the two Gods and the human woman.
"Welp, i have to go! Tell me if you need anything." Winfrey said before kissing her on the head and getting the hell out of there. She could sense the bullshit. She just had a crazy adventure and that was freaking meaningful but traumatizing she doesn't need another one thank you very much.
EARILER....
Thermes watched her son Peter's performance as the Clown of 56th Ave on a sleek black tablet. She watched with interest as Peter flew and twisted through the air as he caught on to another ring that was suspended high above the stadium. Even though he was the most difficult birth she had ever went through (She still have some of the now grown cats that she vomited up when she was pregnant with him.) she would do it all again, not that she would tell Peter that. She leaned back in her throne and sighed. She wonders how her son other Damien is doing? She knew her daughter Alice was doing just fine as she just sent a man down here.
This wasn't the first person her daughter had killed, she recalled with great humor how there was a abusive school teacher who came here with a broken neck complaining about some girl who pushed him over the railing.
Her vision was obscured by two hands.
"Guess whoooo?" The Goddess of Wine questioned her little queen of darkness.
"Your hands smell like nacho cheese." Thermes commented, suppressing a smile.
"And you love it!" Winfrey happily said as she flipped over and landed in front of Thermes.
"Do you always have to be so extravagant?" The Goddess of the Underworld questioned as she arose from her chair. This comment caught The Party Goddess off guard, a feeling that Winfrey have long since forgotten until recently bubbled up into the surface of her mind.
Shame.
"I'm trying to work on that." Winfrey said quietly as she look to the ground. Thermes was taken aback by the sudden mood change of the Party Goddess.
"Um i just came by to check on you and see how you were doing." Winfrey asked, a somber expression on her face. It actually disturbed her. Thermes was used to seeing a happy Winfrey, the only times where she didn't have a smile on her face was....
Thermes didn't want to dwell on the past, the look of pain and rage across Winfrey's face as she charges at her, Thermes barely dodging her drunken fist. The tears that flowed freely from the drunk Goddess face as she lost the battle and couldn't bring back her lover from the clutch of Thermes.
"DAMN YOU!!!" She screamed out in a guttural rage as she leaped into the air and tried to kick Thermes's head clean off.
Winfrey grabbed hold of the death Goddess's hand, breaking Thermes from the chains of memories.
"My apologies, Winfrey. I'm doing fine, just watching over my son performance as all." She told her. The Goddess of Wine could only nod, there was a lot she wanted to say but for some reason it never came out the way she wanted to.
She took out a small bottle of Pleasure mind rot, a vodka and Absinthe mixture with sugar to make it go down easier and drunk the whole thing. She felt like there was a million worms in her brain but it didn't feel bad at all, like her brain was getting massage into a pulpy slime. This concoction was created by her to lure information out of the more iron-liver enemies that she would sometimes come across.
Winfrey wipes her mouth.
"I'm sorry for everything i did in the past, i was just awful. There was no excuse for how i acted towards you, using you as a replacement for...her when we started dating. You deserve better than that. I don't expect you to forgive me, i wouldn't forgive my dumb ass too." She told Thermes seriously.
The Goddess of Death didn't respond, she just hugged Winfrey who was surprised at the sudden turn of events.
"Listen Winfrey, It ok." Thermes said to her, rubbing her hair. Winfrey didn't understand, how could it be ok? She was so awful to Thermes all because of her petty decision. All the fights they had, which eventually came to just talking which led to them hanging out. That culminated in a relationship that resulted in Mori being born.
"It wasn't so bad, i genuinely had a good time being with you. You were going through a lot of things, most of which was your fault because you were a short-sighted idiot." Winfrey nodded, completely agreeing with Thermes.
"But we got our beautiful daughter out of this whole ordeal. So let leave it at that. Make peace within yourself and let go of the self-hatred." She told her gently. Winfrey understood but she didn't feel right leaving it like that.
"Slap me." Winfrey told her seriously.
Thermes slapped Winfrey without hesitation and she went flying. She hit the marble wall with a yelp and slowly slid to the floor.
"Damn, no hesitation? I was expecting at least for you to deny me at first." Winfrey said, cracking her jaw back into place. The Goddess of Death could only shrugs.
"Like you would have taken no for a answer." Thermes noted.
The Goddess of Wine smiled.
"You're right, good call!" Winfrey said happily as she got up and dusted herself off.
Winfrey thought of something, it was a question that been rooted into her brain ever since the mind palace experience at Honey Dogs by the sexy and equally cowardly Swano.
"Thermes if i may? Can i ask you a question?"
"Of course you can and no you may not take a sample of the river of sorrow to make a new drink." Thermes told her simply.
"Oh no i wasn't going to do that, but that would be a interesting experiment. It was more about what happened back at Honey Dogs. As I'm sure you aware because Cheelege probably told you-"
"I did." Cheelege responded from seemingly nowhere.
Winfrey look around and figured he was probably talking from a portal.
"Well um... there no other way to say this so i just going to speak the truth. I saw Sephia again. But it was like it was actually her and not a twisted figment of my imagination designed to make me hate myself. It was actually helping me. Can a spirit of a long lost loved one come back to help their lover?" Winfrey asked hesitantly.
Thermes was surprised at what she heard.
"Me and Aphros had many debates on this topic and did some experiments. But we came to the conclusion that if the person love is strong enough, then they can come back albeit in small ways. Whether it be giving their spouse or family member good luck. Protecting them from malicious sprits. Visiting them in dreams. But since you're a Goddess you were able to bring back Sephia temporary so she could help you escape that pit of self-hatred you call your mind." Thermes explained to the Goddess of Wine.
"Malakai and Winfrey have more in common than it would appear." Thermes thought to herself amused.
Winfrey nodded, a smile on her face. She wasn't sure if she totally resolved all her problems and truly redeemed herself. But she know that it was a start and knowing that Sephia didn't hate her surprised the hell of her and yet brought her some comfort and closure.
She knows she has to be better, she owed it to Sephia and her daughter Mori. She walks away, feeling a lot more stable than she had been in what? Two centuries?