Lucius of Sparta

Lucius, commonly remembered as Lucius Firespawn of Sparta, is regarded as one of the greatest heroes of Greek Mythology. He was a son of Ares, the Greek God of War, and was most famous for killing Cerberus, the Three-Headed Dog.

Birth and training
Lucius was the product of when Ares the God of War sired a child Lady Synthia of Sparta, a daughter of Hades the God of the Underworld. Hades became so enraged at this that, instead of personally taking his rage out on Ares and risking an Olympian war, had the Furies take Synthia and throw her into a volcano where she and her child would burn. However, Lucius survived since Ares cleverly bestowed upon him immunity to fire and heat, and he was carried from the inferno by a vulture. Because of the circumstances of his birth, Lucius would be nicknamed Firespawn by the people of Sparta.

There are several stories as to how Lucius was brought up as a child - one of these stories is that he was raised by a bull, who taught him to fight and to overpower any obstacle he could, whilst the vulture taught him to flee and to lead when he had to. Lucius personally negates these stories, laughing them as being ridiculous and melodramatic in comparison to the truth. The truth was that he was raised by a group of soldiers who taught him to fight in a bullying and tormenting way, one that taught him to be a loner and an individual warrior. He proved, at the age of ten, to be an extremely formidable warrior, with incredible instincts and reflexes that eclipsed and surpassed even the most seasoned of swordsmen in the group.

He soon learns that his mother had previously had three other children - Draco, Solon and Ixas respectively - and that they had been trapped in the Underworld by Hades following him murdering Lucius's mother. Enraged by this, Lucius spent the next five years training as a monster-hunter and mercenary, travelling all of Greece and toppling a series of powerful and dangerous beasts, including Scylla herself when he was only seventeen. He finally trained to the pinnacle of the human condition and the absolute limit of a warrior's training, where he finally decided to venture into the Underworld.

Battle with Cerberus
He journeyed personally to the Underworld using guidance from Nereus, the Old Man of the Sea, and confessed later that he was terrified by what he experienced there in the Underworld, and the possibilities that tormented him throughout his time there. He finally came across Cerberus, the Three-Headed Dog that guarded the Underworld, who was pitted by Hades against the Greek warrior. A spectacular battle erupted between the man and beast, which sent hundreds of the Underworld residents scattering in terror at the combat that took place there, until Lucius finally managed to kill Cerberus. Taking the jaws of Cerberus as a trophy, he ventured into the Fields of Punishment, where Hades had pinned his brothers out of bias for being children of Lady Synthia, and dragged them out of the Underworld.

Marriage and Tragedy
Soon after killing Cerberus, he fought during the Trojan War and won a series of battles with minimum casualties, preferring to take prisoners and seal treaties with the opponent over such prisoners as opposed to committing worthless massacres. This earned him immense respect among his men, and even the people of Troy who viewed him as an extremely honourable enemy in a war awash with traitors and brutes. During one battle, he was struck by a poisoned arrow to the leg and this forced him to be removed from the conflict, where he was nursed back to health by a woman named Bernea, and the two of them fell in love. Six months later, they married and had three children - Milo, Haley and Pythos.

He briefly left the military to live with his family, and he trained his children to be peaceful and benevolent, and to not follow violence the way their father had to. However, he spent the entirety of his marriage in paranoia, since he was suspicious that Hades would come for his family and do something terrible to them for simply being connected to him. Such terror soon came to him when he was eight years into his marriage, and Hades killed his family by sending the Furies to his house. At the time, Lucius was in a tavern gambling and drinking, his brothers looking after his family (His wife was expecting a fourth child), and when he returned to his home he found the Furies attacking his wife and children in his house. He ran to fight the Furies and killed two of them, but not before they dismembered his children, poisoned his brothers with venomous bites and killed his wife by strangling her cooperatively with their whips. The last Fury, after killing Haley, angrily bit him on the shoulder during the fight and poisoned him, but he survived at the expense of his eyes turning orange. Exhausted and drunk, he collapsed, weeping with the dismembered bodies of his dead family at his feet.

He honourably had the bodies of his wife, children and siblings cremated in the town square, where he vowed on the River Styx that he would repent himself for failing to protect his own family. Lucius consequently condemned himself to a life of danger, agony and terror which would cling on to him until the day that he died.

Quests
Lucius partook in a series of quests throughout his life:
 * He embarked on a quest for the Crimson Babe, a stolen child which was bathed in the River Styx by Hades in order to defeat Lucius. He retrieved the baby and bathed it in the waters of Atlantis, where Poseidon personally revoked the Curse. It was named the Crimson Babe because bathing in the River Styx turned its skin sickly red.
 * He overthrew Magnus, the son of Hyperion who was hell bent on becoming the supreme ruler of Sparta undemocratically. When Magnus engulfed Lucius in a firestorm, Lucius was unaffected and managed to behead him before he ordered that non-believers be executed.
 * Lucius was asked by Hermes to recover his stolen Caduceus, which resulted in him crossing paths with Hercules and battling him to a stalemate.
 * Lucius was also hired by Hephaestus to return his stolen hammer. Lucius entered the Sea of Monsters alone to retrieve it and survived unscathed, despite run-ins with Medea and Charybdis, and when he discovered the Hammer he was able to wield it because of his immunity to fire, when Scylla appeared and attacked him and he killed her a second time with the Hammer's pyrokinetic powers.
 * He was also tasked with obtaining the Moon Wolf, the silver wolf of Artemis. This caused him to cross paths with Artemis and her Hunters. He fought through the Hunters and personally duelled with Artemis for the Wolf, defeating her eventually but refusing to kill or harm her. Artemis allowed him, as the victor, to take it, but the Hunters were less compliant with such a wish and pursued him across Greece until he arrived at the Athena Parthenos, where they retreated so as not to dishonour the temple with blood.
 * He was also tasked with rescuing Khione from the prison of Hyperion in a volcano. He ventured into the volcano alone and encountered Hyperion himself there. Hyperion attacked him, engulfing him in supernova-level flames which actually came close to scorching him. Lucius responded by duelling Hyperion through the volcano in sword combat before defeating him and rescuing a near-death Khione from the volcano. She rewarded him with a loving kiss, which onlookers remarked turned him intensely blue until she pulled away. Thus the quest was dubbed the Quest for the Lips of Khione.
 * Lucius was also tasked by the Fates to ventured to Mount Othrys and taking the celestial burden of Atlas for a whole week. He did this reluctantly, and when he did take the burden for Atlas, Atlas derided and mocked him for being a fool and for allowing Atlas to unleash his destructive wrath upon the entirety of Greece. Lucius endured this for the week, until he realized that a huge section of Sparta was aflame and spotted Atlas battling with the armies of Greece, outmatching them completely. Furiously, he waited until Atlas returned to gloat, as he did every day, and when Atlas did return, Lucius goaded him into approaching, at which point Lucius surprise-attacked Atlas, grappling him back into his punishment and leaving and helping repair the damage done to his precious city.

Final Battle and Death
Lucius, after so many of his quests were painfully completed at so much personal expense for him and his people, ventured to the Athena Parthenos and prayed for several days, pleading for Athena to provide him with an answer that would properly redeem him for failing to protect his family. He receives on answer from Athena, since she knows the wisest choice is for a man like Lucius to find his own way and that redemption is truly unnecessary since he tried his absolute utmost to protect his family from the Furies. However, Lucius takes this the wrong way and curses the Gods for their ignorance. He decides that he must now face Hades alone and directly in order to redeem himself.

Lucius ventures to the outskirts of Sparta and stabs his sword into the ground, screaming for Hades to confront him finally. Hades does appear, in a vast pillar of darkness, and greets Lucius as if he were a friend, but Lucius furiously confronts Hades about the agony that Lucius has had to endure because of him. Hades calmly returns that the agony he has had to endure is agony he placed upon himself: He killed Cerberus and took his brothers from the Underworld, he failed to save his family from the Furies, he swore on the River Styx he would repent for failing his family, he decided to embark on these quests, he decided to come to Athena for wisdom, which led him to confront Hades in the first place.

Hades then scorns Ares for defiling his daughter with Lucius all those years ago, and declares that Lucius has two choices - he can walk away and be allowed to live the rest of his life with Hades unperturbed with trying to torment him, or he could stand and fight where he stood and face Hades himself, which would eventually kill him. Believing that he has nothing left to live for, Lucius chooses the latter, and Hades disappears, summoning a superhorde of skeletons from the ground and attack him. Lucius violently battles with the skeletons for several days, tiring heavily but refusing to back down, but the skeletons continue to pursue him.

Eventually, the people of Sparta came across the battle and moved in to aid Lucius, who screamed for them to stay back, because this was his battle and he did not want anybody else to die for him. The people watched in awe as he continued to battle the skeletons in their millions. Eventually, they overpowered him and he was repeatedly impaled from all sides, and he died screaming Hades' name.

When he died, the skeletons immediately descended back into the earth without leaving a trace, except for a huge bed of bones underneath Lucius, left from the number of skeletons he'd destroyed. The people retrieved his body and had it cremated, but because he was still immune to fire and heat his body refused to burn, when a huge vulture (The same vulture that rescued him from the volcano) soared in and retrieved his dead body and flew away. Honoured by Hades for fighting until his final breath, the Death God provided him with his own section of the Underworld, with a beautiful mansion and to be reunited finally with his wife, children and brothers.

Personality
Lucius of Sparta, when he was alive, was renowned for being an absolutely hardened warrior and a true son of Ares, personifying a series of the better qualities of his immortal father. He was extremely courageous - which was deeply explored on account of him journeying to the Underworld several times and surviving, battling a multitude of monsters, partaking in the Trojan War with a legendary bravery and even facing off the Hunters of Artemis and Artemis herself. In spite of being a fearsome warrior, he was also highly benevolent and capable of extreme nobility and diligence. This was especially evident in the Trojan War when he fought battles and ensured minimal casualties, taking prisoners and trading them democratically, which won him immense respect and admiration among both his allies and enemies.

He was also a prominently loving man at heart, despite spending the majority of his life wit ha sword in his hand and a helm upon his head. He fell in love with Bernea and they had children whom he (A seasoned and devoted military commander and hero) decided to leave the Trojan War for. He also knew that conflict was not the only absolute in the world, and taught his children to be peaceful and benevolent as he never had the true chance to be - this shows that he had a self-reproachful side to him, and that he did not truly recognize his own mercy. He also deeply cared about his brothers, enough to personally venture into the Underworld and battle Cerberus himself in order to retrieve.

Despite being a warrior and a gentleman, Lucius was an extremely dark man at heart and possessed a powerful capacity for wrath and obsession and self-hate. He brutally blamed himself for failing to protect his family from the Furies, but emptied that wrath against Hades and the Gods. Lucius' self-hate led to him enduring a life of pure terror and violence with the hope that it would redeem him of his alleged crime and dishonour. It also led to him becoming confused and enraged when he went to Athena for guidance and didn't receive any, but took this as ignorance from the Gods as opposed to direction by Athena since demigods must choose their own path when they can. He also refused a peaceful life from Hades in favour of battling Hades at last, thinking that he had nothing left to live for because he would have given up on redeeming himself for his family's death.

Appearance
When Lucius finally appears, he is described to be in his mid-forties at the time of his death but to physically look in his precise thirties. He is extremely tall and imposing, with a spectacular muscular frame (Though not to the scale of Hercules or a Cyclopes), with slicked-back brown hair and poisonous orange eyes, a result of surviving being poisoned by the Furies. He appears wearing heavily battered Greek battle armour and a helmet styled like the head of a vulture, with a red cloak billowing behind him that is patterned like feathered wings, wielding a sword and a large, magnificent shield with a snarling wolf's head moulded into it.

Lucius has a growling, dangerous-toned voice that reminds of a hungry wolf that is hungry for blood, and his laugh is almost bark-like.

Abilities
As a son of Ares, Lucius is obviously very powerful, possibly even more so than most children of Ares:
 * ADHD: Like all demigods, Lucius' supernatural alertness and keen senses that keep him ready for, and alive, in battle. Even for a demigod, his battle instincts and reflexes are renowned for being incredibly sharpened and powerfully precise, making him a fearsome warrior.
 * Master swordsman: As a result of being a son of Ares, and of training his entire life for warfare, Lucius was a master swordsman and combatant, possibly eclipsing Hercules as one of the best warriors in Greek heroic mythology. He fought with a sword and shield, and it is remarked that he started training with that sword and shield when they were too big for any normal child his age to carry, but he quickly managed to become a seasoned swordsman with this. He was capable of battling a series of monsters, including Scylla and Cerberus himself, as well as immortals like Hyperion, Artemis and other heroes such as Hercules. Cerberus was particularly impressive because Hercules struggled to restrain Cerberus, let alone kill him, and yet Lucius eventually managed to kill him, invoking the wrath of Hades that would result in him being hunted and harangued by the Death God for the rest of his life. Finally, he fought off a relentless horde of skeletons from the Underworld for several days, before succumbing to exhaustion and eventually being defeated, though he left a massive litter of bones as a result of the battle showing that he put up an incredible fight.
 * Master strategist: Lucius, on account again of being a son of Ares and a lifetime of military combat, is a master strategist and military commander, having fought bravely and brilliantly in the Trojan War for most of its duration until he was wounded, and was proven to be an extremely respected leader by both his soldiers and his opponents. Lucius was also able to elude the Hunters of Artemis when they hunted after him and even trick Atlas into retaking his celestial burden when the Titan of Strength tried to earn his freedom.
 * Monster fighter: He was a superb monster fighter, shown by how he fearlessly and efficiently fought and defeated them, including Scylla, Cerberus, the Furies, Charybdis and reportedly the Minotaur and a group of Laistrygonian Giants.
 * Enhanced physique: He is in the peak of the human physical condition, as a result of merciless training and being born already with an impressive musculature and metabolism. He had the human peak of speed, strength, endurance, durability and pain tolerance, and had maximum powers of brain function, but his metabolism was not entirely indomitable because he obviously managed to get himself critically drunk on the night his family were murdered. His reflexes were incredible, since he was able to catch an arrow in one hand without even seeing it coming.
 * Pyrokinesis immunity: As a result of being blessed by Ares at birth, Lucius was immmune to tremendous amounts of heat and flame, to such an extent that he was virtually unable to overheat or perspire under exhaustion. He was also immune to the flames of a son of Hyperion, able to wield the Hammer of Hephaestus and even endure a supreme attack from Hyperion himself. During the latter incident, it was reported that he nearly overheated, showing that his immunity had limits, which is understandable since Hyperion is the Titan of Light. His immunity to fire continued after death, since his corpse endured being cremated without being marked and when an explosive arrow was fired at him, he absorbed the flames of the explosion.
 * Telumkinesis: Lucius, like all children of Ares, was capable of adapting completely to any weapon he laid his hands on, becoming immediately precisely familiar with its history, limits of durability and the ways in which to effectively wield it. He was also able to telekinetically manipulate weapons, for example disarming a sword from an enemy's hand with a simple hand gesture and even causing it to superheat in its owner's hands.
 * Necromancy: He was surprisingly proficient with wielding necromancy, shown by his ability to intercept the attacks of skeletons (Who have no minds or presences that ordinary ADHD can detect). He was also able to personally summon a substantial group of skeletons from the enemy's side to fight and protect on his behalf. This ability was revoked by Hades during Lucius' final battle, so that he would properly face the horde of skeletons alone.
 * Odikinesis: Lucius exuded a powerful aura of emotions, depending on his mood: in the presence of his men, he exuded a fierce aura of confidence and bravery and self-assurance that inspired them. When he was angry, he inspired a sense of violence that nearly persuaded people to turn on each other irrationally.
 * He has gone through his entire life without being given the Blessing of Ares, showing how impressive a hero he was.

Items

 * Sword: He wielded a four-foot xiphos sword, which is his primary weapon. This sword is made of Celestial Bronze, and is described to be completely clean and unmarked despite incredibly intense combat situations throughout its history.
 * Shield: He carries a magnificent circular shield with a wolf's head emblazoned upon it. The shield is made of unknown metal, but it is almost completely impervious to physical and supernatural attacks, including Hyperion's flames and arrows and intense light from Artemis herself.
 * Armour: Lucius is seen wearing intricately-designed armour that is perfectly sculpted to his body, and is styled like a vulture - the helmet is shaped like a vulture's head, and the red cape is V-shaped and styled like a pair of wings with feathers patterned into the fabric. Because of immense amounts of combat throughout its history, it is described to be heavily battered and marked by swords, arrows and axes.
 * Cerberus' jaws: He wears the miniaturized jaws of Cerberus, a trophy and spoil of war from his famous battle with Cerberus.