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The Underworld is Hades's realm, hiding beneath the secret places of the world. There are few ways into the Underworld, and almost no ways out...

Charon waits in his boat to ferry the newly dead across the mingled waters of Acheron and Cocytus. Cerberus guards the gate on the opposite bank, permitting all souls to enter through, but none to return back the way they came...

The three judges weigh the souls of the dead on the other side of the gate. The sentence of the wicked is everlasting torment, but the good are permitted to enter the blessed Elysian Fields...

But such is not the destination of those who seek Hades. His vast palace lies deep in the cradle of the Underworld, surrounded by cold wastelands and meadows filled with the pale, ghost flowers named the asphodel. Hades's palace is a place of shifting shadows, many-gated and forever crowded by the shadowfolk made guests in their master's home...

Here Hades sits upon his throne. His wife, Persephone, the goddess of the Spring made queen of the Underworld when the world above lies sleeping, waits with him. Both know the age that has come to pass, both know the decisions that have long since been made...

"So you have," Hades said, meeting Jet's gaze without moving from his throne. "Tell me, Lord Jet, what do you think of my realm?"
Persephone, still glowing with the vivacity of Spring, stared at Jet with sad eyes. Neither god was robed in the armaments of war. They sat as King and Queen, poised before Jet as though before an honored guest.

"You flatter me, Lord Jet," said Persephone, her face lightening into a sad smile. She and Hades exchanged a nod, and she rose from her seat and moved toward Jet. Her movements were gentle and beautiful, and with her flowed the sweet scent of flowers and rain. She put her hand softly on Jet's shoulder, her shimmering eyes looking into his.
"You and my husband are very much alike, Lord Jet," she said through lips pink like young roses. "Both of you are strong, and all that you have you have earned through strength and conquest. I pray, for the sake of those who love you, that this strength will not consume you."
With that, Persephone lightly kissed Jet's forehead and stepped back from him, her eyes still filled with a foreshadowing sadness. She bowed to him and then turned and bowed to her husband before exiting the throne room, leaving nothing behind her but the soft, sweet smell of flower petals and dew.

"You are too hasty, Lord Jet," said Hades, slowly rising from his throne. He no longer moved with the vigor of a young god. He was like an old man, his face tired and his movements slow.
"Why should I fight you, Lord Jet?" Hades asked. "I won the battle the moment you walked through that door. You are dead, and the dead must bow to me."
Hades moved over to Jet. He towered over Jet in stature, but it was clear that Jet was the younger and more ambitious of the two.
"History is an infinite loop, is it not, Lord Jet?" Hades asked. "You and your friends hunt the gods as we did the Titans when the universe was young. We were young then, too, infinately so. But the age of gods is coming to an end. Our temples have long since been abandoned, treated as relics of history. Songs are no longer sung of beautiful Persephone and fearful but just Hades. We are no longer needed."
Hades moved past Jet, turning to stand before a vast window below which the gently swaying fields of the ghostly asphodel whispered to the Underworld. On the outskirts of the meadows, the flowers were beginning to wilt and fade.
"The door through which you entered my realm was the last," Hades said. "I have locked all of the doors and withdrawn my influence. The Underworld is dead."
Hades reached into his robe, his hand delving so deep he seemed to be reaching into his own body. Slowly, he withdrew a key, ornate and worn, and extended it outward toward Jet.
"I did not invite you here to battle, Lord Jet," Hades said. "The other gods will struggle as did the Titans. And, like the Titans, they will fall. But I am a proud god, and such a fate will not befall me and my love. This is the key to the Underworld, and in it lies all my power."

Hades chuckled.
"Before entering my realm, Orpheus had to relinquish his death," Hades said. "It was a decision that proved quite foolish for him, in the end, though it was his father that ultimately payed the price."
Hades shook his head.
"But that is not what you have come to discuss, is it?" he said. "Lord Jet, do you honestly think I have shown you this key as a taunt? It is yours to take--I am god of this land no more."
Hades removed his hand from below the key, leaving it suspended, twirling slightly as though hanging from an invisible thread. He took a few steps back, apparently preparing to leave, before thinking better of the action.
"I should warn you, Lord Jet," he said. "This is not a gift. If you want my power you must take my place. There must be an Underworld, for there would be no Life were it not for Death. You will suffer much, Lord Jet, and you will lose much. Power is not all there is to be had in this world."
With that, Hades turned away from Jet and began to go, his steps seeming to become older and more feeble as his distance from the key increased. When he looked back at Jet, it was through the wrinkled, sunken sockets of an old man.
"My wife was more subtle than I," he said. "She left her power in the palace itself. It will continue to exist after I have gone, but once it is drained of her essence it too will disappear."
Hades coughed a throaty cough, his back beginning to stoop before Jet's eyes.
"Persephone has gone ahead of me," he said. "We will be born into the realm of mortals, our old natures lost to us. Perhaps, if the new gods of this void are kind, we will meet again as strangers. Though that is not likely."
And now Hades paused, and looked up at Jet with a smile breaking through his drooping skin.
"Your wife is with child, is she not, Lord Jet?" he said. "How marvelous it would be..."
But Hades trailed off. He turned away from Jet and continued his old, slow shuffle out of the room until the darkness of the hall had eaten his form completely...