Oleander made it only a few paces towards the platform before Thanatos spied him. Immediately a swarm of butterflies descended on him, hazing the air with their scales. In a movement surprisingly swift for an old molt, Thanatos blocked off both sides of the path with his long body and pinned Oleander to the wall. A bit overkill, Oleander thought, for someone frail and heavily pregnant with nowhere to run anyways.

“How are you awake?” Thanatos demanded.
Styx and the Golians approached to peer curiously at the former prince. Oleander wondered if they had ever seen him before. Had Thanatos shown his unconscious body to his acolytes? 

“Force of will.” Oleander lied, trying his hardest to stifle the tremble in his voice.

“You intended to run away from me?” 

“No.” It wasn’t a full lie, Oleander hadn’t truly had any idea of what he intended to do. “You tried to put me out before I was ready. I’m tired of being kept in the dark.”

“You could have hurt yourself. You could have fallen. I care for you, Oleander.” Thanatos said, swapping vinegar for honey. The haze surrounding him thickened bluer, the effect of the herb would not afford him immunity much longer. He had to be decisive. 

“You said my brothers were seen near here.”

“Let us worry about them. It will only trouble you to stay awake.” 

With all the confidence he could muster and loud enough for all to hear, Oleander said, “I can help you find them.” 

On some unspoken command from Thanatos, the butterflies dispersed and the haze dissipated. The great hollow head of the possessed centipede husk bent closer to Oleander.

“You are in no state to do that.” He said, but he allowed space for Oleander to elaborate. 

“I know them better than you, and they’d want to see me. If they knew I was looking for them, they would find their way to me.” At least, he hoped they would. A slim hope, considering how he hadn’t once tried to rejoin them since he abandoned them over a decade ago.

Only the pause before Thanatos’s response indicated his consideration of the proposal. His thin film of a face did not allow for expression. “And you would bring them to me?” 

“Would you keep them safe?” 

“Oleander, in my care, nothing in all Goddess’s creation could harm them. I may be fallen, but I am still a god. But how do I know you will bring them back to me?”

“Send someone with me. They serve you, don’t they?” Oleander gestured to the gathered acolytes, “Send them with me and they will bring me back with my brothers. You know I would be helpless to run, anyways.”

At least one of these arguments proved at least a little convincing to Thanatos, who turned to the cloaked human. “Styx, what do you think of this proposal?” 

Styx, a gaunt human with burnt orange hair and dark skin smeared with blue glow the same as the dark of the ravine, unblemished by sun or sag. Their apparent youthfulness continued to puzzle Oleander. He suspected magic. Some Monster using arcane arts to disguise itself, the kingdom had possessed plenty of tales of such things. Perhaps this monster did not know that the youthfulness of its mask gave away their forgery. Still, one would have to be heroically ignorant to not know that humanity had long ago run out of youth. And why would they wear a disguise among their allies in the depths? Oleander concluded that, somehow, he was eyeing and being eyed by a legitimate human being. Yet despite their humanity, they blended in with this place and its residents perfectly. The human was at ease among the bugs. Styx brought a hand over their mouth, letting just the very tips of their fingers kiss their face, like the delicate pose of insect legs. The careful composure of their posture, the control over their expression, only in these aspects could the traces of more advanced age be found. Oleander did not appreciate such a probing gaze on his naked body, but then he was not in any position to complain.

“Its not a bad idea. If they really are in the borderlands, our meager numbers are not going to find them before the Queendom, or those half-breeds. But with this one we might have an advantage. I could smuggle him into Gol, disseminate a message along our networks, get them to come out of their hiding spots and come to us. It's no garuntee, but in my view its the best option available."

At this, one of the Golian acolytes stepped beside Styx into the spotlight of Thanatos’s attention. Oleander had never been as attentive to the details of small creatures like his immediately younger brother, but the from the fine charcoal fuzz sprouting all over the face, the enormous onyx orb eyes, and the cordlike antenna swept back in seeming imitation of human hair, he guessed this individual to be the Golian form of a moth. The Golians' uncanny imitation of humankind had never sat right with him, not since he’d met Aster’s beetle prince and nearly fainted at the sight. The moth also spoke with an androgynous voice, though perhaps more for its inhuman humming aspect. “My lord, perhaps this task is better entrusted to us native Golians. Capable as Styx is, you would be entrusting possession of the all-important princes to a human.”
If the moth had more to say, he did not get to say it. Styx cut him off with a severity. “Our lord does not need to be reminded of my blood, Atropos. Nor does he need reminding, I’m sure, of my loyalty, of what I have accomplished for our cause.” 

“Enough.” The command came calmly from Thanatos. Both Styx and the moth named Atropos bowed deeply. “I have not decided anything yet. Oleander.” Oleander could only look up and try to look less helpless than he was, like he had an actual hand to play here. “Let’s speak in private.” 

Butterflies again dropped from their clinging spots on the stone to swarm, though this time they did not cloud the air with sleeping poison. They gathered into a tight fluttering mass of wings, a hypnotic conglomeration of flashing blue that hovered right at the precipitous edge of the path where Oleander stood. A platform, he realized. Oleander took one look down into the hungry depths of the crevice, where line of sight failed before a bottom appeared, and decided he preferred the solid stone beneath his feet to the flower petal wings of insects.

“Is there another way?” He asked.

“Oleander, how can I trust you, if you will not trust me? I will not let any harm come to you.”  This response did little to quell his nerves, but this was no time to show any falter in his mettle. Oleander clutched his belly with clammy palms as he extended first his toes, then slowly one foot onto the mass of flying bugs. Of course, he expected his leg to plunge right through. And of course, it did not. His sole found the strange sensation of magical support, a shifting support, like standing on gently flowing water without sinking, but enough to carry his weight. This did nothing to mitigate the vertigo that comes from fully stepping of the edge of a cliff onto the backs of butterflies. He forced himself to do it, because Thanatos was watching closely and he found that the possibility of seeing his brothers again was proving to be a stronger motivation the closer he got to its possibility. 

“May I sit down?” He said once he’d stepped entirely off the ravine wall.

“Of course.” 

He sat, a slightly difficult task for a pregnant person on a magic bed of butterflies to accomplish while also trying not to glance down. The butterflies, at least, were cool to the touch against his skin, like a shady patch of clover. Then Thanatos withdrew deeper into the ravine and the butterflies sank down after him, carrying Oleander with them. 

Styx, Adropos, and the other moth acolytes gathered at the edge to watch from above as he slid out of sight into the darkness below. There it was only him and Thanatos in the gentle blue radiance of the butterflies. The intimacy of it almost counterbalanced the terror of private audience with a fallen god while hovering on a thin-winged carpet above oblivion, an intimacy helped by the way Thanatos voice softened to a whisper that traveled from his mouthless body to Olender’s head and skipped the air between. “Did you intend to run from me?”

“I’m… not sure.” It was the truth. “I just want to see them. That’s all.”

Thanatos coiled around him, creating a loose dome of molt out of his endlessly long body, his head wound inward to face Oleander. Perhaps it was meant as a kind of embrace. “Oleander. How would you have found them? How would you have survived out there?”

“I don’t know. But I don’t want to be kept asleep forever. You gave me no choice!”

“You welcomed my sleep when I first offered it.” 

“I did. I was a child.”

“In many ways you remain one.” 

Oleander felt a throb of revolt at that. “So are you only humoring me? Will you put me back to sleep for another couple of decades now?”

“You are peaceful when you sleep. I like to see you at peace.” The butterfly carpet on which Oleander floated now drifted close to Thanatos’s head, bringing him within kissing distance of his hollow mandibles. “I cannot leave this place. I can’t protect you if you go looking for your brothers.”

“Can’t your… followers up there? The human seems capable.” Maybe he said this because he sensed capability, or maybe just because if there was any chance Thanatos would let him go, he would prefer to be chaperoned by his own species rather than a bug. 

“If I let you go, will you come back to me?” Somehow, despite the fact that Thanatos was some form of god and Oleander was a mere naked human held helpless in the air by his magic, the god’s voice sounded vulnerable. Like a hurt lover.

“Where else could I go?”

“Not the kingdom. It’s desolate now.”

“Like I said.”

“It’s a dangerous forest out there. Powerful servants of the Goddess covet you, your brothers too. Only I can provide safe haven. Bring them to me and I will not only set you free from all threats of mortal life, I will not only set you free from all threats to your mortal life, I will free you from mortality itself. I am going to deliver us all.” Oleander watched the blue glow behind the centipede husk’s eye like a distant lantern shrouded in fog. One of Thanatos’s antenna drooped to stroke his hair in a queerly human fashion. “Can you understand that?” He asked.

“Yes.”

“Don’t lie to me Oleander. Of course you cannot. But it’s alright, I only need your trust. Do you trust me?” 

“I… want to.” 

“Good enough. I want to trust you too. Can I?”

“Please.” In the end, honest desperation was the card he played.

Thanatos uncoiled, his refuse body dancing through the  air like a ribbon, like the weightless thing it was. “I will send you with Styx. They are my best. Preparations and planning will take some time to make. If we do this, we cannot afford to fail. It will not be an easy task. You are in no state to travel, it will be hard on you. You have known only dream for so long, the waking world is not so gentle.”

Oleander only nodded, afraid to speak lest he shatter this precious opportunity. Thanatos descended and the butterfly carpet followed him, bringing Oleander down deeper than perhaps he had ever been. He turned his eyes upward, not only to distract from the nauseating depths but also to watch the hairline crack of surface light fade. He would be out there again soon. Thanatos had said preparations would take time but how could they possibly compare to fifteen years buried under earth and the veil of sleep? His imagination teemed with fears of what he would find beyond Thanatos’s shelter. For a moment the fears got the best of him and he reconsidered leaving at all. It was the memory of the faces of Aster, Cedar, and Fern, and their alarming fadedness, that compelled him on.