“‘Dear father,' he said, ‘please do not kill me. I am your son! Your son, father, not the son
of Eurystheus! It is not his son you are going to kill!'

But, Herakles merely turned his wild, monstrous gaze at him and, since the boy was too
close for him to use the bow and arrow, he raised his huge club above his head and, like a
blacksmith hammers his hot iron, brought the club down hard upon the boy's blond head
and smashed his skull.”

Heracles. Of all the mortal heroes, perhaps the one who less resembled a mortal. Achilles
was an incredible fighter, Perseus was quick and deadly, Odysseus nimble and clever, but
Heracles...he was just as strong as a god, perhaps even more than one.
If strength were the only quality needed to obtain Lucifer's seat, he would win without a
doubt.
He who bore the pillar of Heaven over his shoulders, he who killed that which was not
meant to ever know death, he who could sack a city and kill an army alone, he has always
been and always will be unrivaled for his brute force among mortals and demigods.

Unrivaled his feats and unrivaled his sin.
Sent into a frenzy by Hera, Heracles slaughtered his own sons in front of the haunted
eyes of his wife, Megara, and then, killed her too, as if she were nothing but one of the
many beasts he had slain before.

She forgave him. They all did. Yet he could not forgive himself.
Lucifer's power wanes. Heracles can finally cross the borders between Hell and the
Nether.
He will be the ruler of Hell, and with his new powers over the cosmos, he will free his
family from the grayness of the Nether, and free himself from the burden of his sin.

And Hera? What will the goddess do? She is a being too proud and powerful to admit it,
but I believe her hatred has slowly become remorse...will “Heracles” be finally “blessed by
Hera”, as his name says?

Life

Son of Zeus and Alcmene, and therefore great-grandson of Perseus from his mother's
side, Heracles's life was portentous from the very beginning. Hera hated him, as she hated
every illicit offspring of her unfaithful husband Zeus, yet, tricked by Athena, breastfed
him until his mother Alcmene took him back.
Nursed by a goddess and fathered by the strongest of the gods, Heracles was incredibly
powerful even as a baby, so much so that he effortlessly strangled the great serpents sent
by Hera to kill him in his cob. It is said that he was found happily playing with them as if
they were nothing more than little toys.

Many were the portents in his youth too, but Heracles' greatest feats are those he made to
atone for his horrible sin. The oracle of Delfi foretold he would be cleansed only if he
accomplished twelve tasks given to him by his most despised foe, king Eurystheus.

They were meant to be impossible tasks. They were meant to be unaccomplishable.
Yet he was Heracles.
Among the many things he did, I feel it is right to mention that he averted the course of
two rivers, shot an arrow at the sun, and wrestled, winning, the three-headed Cerberus.
The last one he did barehanded, after which he pulled the growling beast out of Hell and
led it to Eurystheus' palace.

I wonder what he could do, if he truly were to be imbued with Lucifer's powers. I
wonder, yet the thought terrifies me.

Regalia

The lion skin that covers Heracles' mighty shoulders is of no common animal. No, the
hero fought and killed the Nemean lion, a giant beast descending from Echidna, the
mother of monsters, and raised by none other than the goddess Hera.
While its claws were sharper than swords, its pelt was its most distinctive feature, and the
one that has been most useful to Heracles: it is completely impervious to any form of
damage.
It was not a problem for our hero at the time. He simply strangled the beast.

His club, too, accompanies him even in the afterlife. Made from an olive tree that
Heracles unrooted with his bare hands, it is heavier than many men, and only someone as
strong as Zeus' son could wield it.