Chapter Thirty Two - The Underworld (part 2)
Looming in the darkness against the distant horizon was a vast palace of glittering black obsidian. Three dark bat-like creatures flew, silhouetted above the parapets; the Furies. I got the feeling they were waiting for us.
"I suppose it's too late to turn back," Grover said wistfully. "Hey, maybe the bolt isn't even in his palace. We should look other places first. Like, maybe in Elysium?"
"Hey, it's fine," I tried to sound confident. "We'll be okay. We've made it this far, haven't we?"
At that declaration, the winged shoes suddenly activated themselves and had begun flapping like crazy. I felt my stomach give an almighty lurch as the ground fell out from under my feet and I found myself falling backward. Stars exploded in my vision as my head smacked into a rock, and the next thing I knew, I was being dragged down the hill.
"Penny!" Andromeda shouted.
"Maia!" I screamed, pulling out entire clumps of black grass by the roots as I tried and failed to slow myself down, but the magic word seemed to have no effect. "Maia, already! Help me!"
Grover leapt forward in an attempt to grab my flailing arms, but missed by inches. I began to rapidly pick up speed as I skidded down the hill like a demented bobsled, my backpack slipping off my shoulders in the process.
"My bag!" I shouted.
"Untie the shoes!" Annabeth shouted back.
Yeah, good idea. In theory. In practice, it took me several attempts to pull myself into a sitting position. Seriously - if the Hunters could replicate this for their workouts, I was almost sure they would. Unfortunately, I still couldn't quite reach the laces. The stupid shoes kept dodging my attempts - pulling my legs at uncomfortable and sometimes painful angles to evade my hands. Still, my friends kept chasing after me even as I blasted through a small group of spirits who shook their fists and chattered angrily at me.
"Sorry," Andromeda apologized as she ran past them.
"Guys?" I called, then let out an indignant squeak of surprise and pain as my butt bounced off a particularly large chunk of fallen stalactite. I twisted around, trying desperately to grab onto something - anything - trying to slow my momentum only to suddenly be jerked to a sharp right turn. The grass was starting to grow sparse, and gave way to sharp gravel that cut and tore at my clothes and skin as I blasted into a side tunnel. I could feel the cavern growing colder, and I could feel my inner fire burning to be released in response.
With a gasp of effort, I twisted myself back around and lobbed a handful of flames at my feet. I missed the left shoe, but managed to hit the right as it tried to dodge. In an instant, the wings blackened and burnt away. With nothing supporting it any longer, my right leg fell. I cried out in pain as I felt my ankle roll underneath me, the flames dying in my hands. Suddenly, a howling wind tore past me, whipping through my hair. Blinking through tears, I looked up to see the tunnel ahead widen into a huge dark cavern, and in the middle was a chasm the size of a city block. And I was still sliding straight toward the edge.
Luckily, with only one shoe flying, I had lost a lot of forward momentum - allowing my friends the chance to catch up. I was only ten feet from the edge of the pit when they finally caught me by the arms and hauled me back up the slope. With a grunt of effort, Grover grabbed my left leg and wrestled the other winged shoe off. It circled around us angrily, kicking at his head in protest before flying off into the chasm.
Andromeda and Annabeth helped me scramble back up and away from the chasm. Then, we all collapsed, exhausted, on the obsidian gravel. My whole body ached, and the various cuts I'd gotten were starting to itch. Andromeda's hair was even more out of control than usual, and Grover's eyes had gone slit-pupiled, goat style. It was a little unnerving, to be honest.
For a moment we simply sat there in silence, catching our breath. The moment was interrupted as I felt a tug of pain in my right ankle. Looking down, I saw that the wings had once again started to reform and the shoe was starting a renewed attempt to drag me off.
"Oh, hell no!" I yanked the offending shoe off my foot and threw it hard as I could into the chasm. If it wanted to join it's twin down there, I was happy to let it.
"Guess Luke won't be getting those back," Annabeth murmured.
Grover grinned, Andromeda snorted, and I broke out into full, body shaking laughter. I couldn't help myself. I was just too glad to actually be alive - an ironic sentiment given my present location. Our laughter was quickly cut short as a wail of outrage echoed from deep in the tunnel. Something was clearly not happy we'd gotten away. The force of the anger and the feeling of malice that swept over us made me shiver. It felt... familiar. And then I heard something else - a deep whisper in the darkness.
After a few seconds, Andromeda said, "Penny, this place..."
"Shh. Wait," I stood. "Listen."
The sound was getting louder, a muttering, evil voice from far, far below us. Coming from the pit.
Grover sat up. "Wh- what's that noise?"
I could almost make out words now, ancient, ancient words, older even than Greek. As if ...
"Magic," I said. I tried straining my ears to make out the words. If I could just understand, I knew...
"We have to get out of here," Annabeth said, suddenly. She must have heard it too, now. I could see it in her eyes. "Tartarus. This is the entrance to Tartarus."
"I've been here before," I said, my voice barely louder than a whisper as I looked around the cave. There was no doubt in my mind that this was the same pit that I had seen several times in my dreams.
"What?!" Grover asked.
"When?!" Andromeda demanded.
"Not here, here," I said. "Not physically. I mean that I've been here in my dreams."
"Dreams?" Annabeth pressed. "What dreams?"
"Ever since Auntie Em's place," I explained. "I've been having strange dreams about... Well, I recognize this place. There was an evil sounding voice, and someone else was there, but I couldn't see. A guy. He referred to the voice as the Crooked One?" Annabeth and Andromeda shared a look, and I continued; "And then my dream shifted to a black throne room with a bunch of skeletons and stuff."
"The throne room does sound like Hades' style," Annabeth said. "In any case, we really should get moving. Can you walk?"
I tried to stand, but fell backward in pain as I put weight on my right ankle, "I think I should use some ambrosia. Pass my backpack?"
"Sure," Andromeda handed it over. "What do you keep in here, anyway? Bricks?"
"Huh?" I was confused, but sure enough, the bag was heavier than expected as she handed it over. Maybe it was because we were so exhausted? With a mental shrug, I opened the bag to retrieve the baggy of ambrosia squares - then promptly slammed it shut again.
"Penny?" Andromeda asked, concern in her voice.
There was no way I saw what I thought I saw... Was there? Slowly, I opened the bag again and... Yup. There was no doubt about it. Zeus' Master Lightning Bolt was sitting right on top of my spare clothes.
"Um..." I cleared my throat, angling the bag for the others to see inside. "I don't think Hades has the bolt, after all."
Grover let out a nervous bleating.
"That..." Andromeda swallowed dryly. "That wasn't there before. Was it?"
"No," I shook my head. "Of course not!
"But where could it have come from?" Annabeth asked, her eyes fixed on the celestial bronze rod.
"I don't..."
I was cut off by a sudden blast of ice-cold wind that pulled at our backs, as if the entire pit were inhaling. For a terrifying moment, I lost ground, my shoe-less feet slipping in the gravel. If we'd been any closer to the edge, we would've been sucked in. Digging in our heels, we struggled forward, away from the gaping chasm, and finally reached the very top of the tunnel near where the cavern widened back out into the Fields of Asphodel. The wind died. The voice in the pit screamed out in pure rage again, sending a chill down my spine.
"We need to get out of here," Annabeth said, her voice shaking. "We got the bolt, just like we came for."
"Y-yeah," Andromeda nodded her agreement. "Good idea."
"Um, guys?" Grover pointed behind us.
I was almost too afraid to look, but my body reacted as if on auto-pilot. Surrounding us in a semi-circle formation around the entrance to the tunnel was a group of ten skeletons in assorted military dress. Some wore Greek armor, some British redcoat uniforms, some camouflage with tattered American flags on the shoulders. They carried spears or muskets or M-16s. One of the Americans stepped forward and clicked his jaw at us, gesturing with his rifle.
"I think we're under arrest," I said.
Half hidden in the gloom, the furies circled overhead as the skeleton soldiers marched us toward Hades' palace. My backpack had been confiscated, and with it my ambrosia and spare socks. Thankfully, the black grass of Asphodel was soft to walk on, but my feet were definitely still cut up from the sharp gravel.
The outer walls of the fortress glittered black, and the two-story-tall bronze gates stood wide open. Up close, I could see that Hades had clearly modeled his palace off the same design as Zeus' on Olympus. Like Zeus' palace, the gates were engraved in ancient bronze with various scenes of humanity's accomplishments both past, present and possibly future.
The difference is that where Zeus' gates depicted acts of heroism and hope, Hades' gates showed only death and suffering - an atomic bomb exploding over a city, a trench filled with gas mask-wearing soldiers, Flight Eleven flying into the side of the North Tower. I tore my eyes away from the last image, forcing myself not to think about it.
Inside, the courtyard contained the strangest, most beautiful garden I'd ever seen. Multicolored mushrooms grew in perfect circles and well-manicured poisonous shrubs lined the walkways. Precious jewels grew like flowers; ruby roses, diamond lilies and so on. And there in the center, was a small orchard of pomegranate trees, their orange blooms neon bright in the dark.
The idyllic scene was marred, however, as what I had at first mistaken for spirits from the fields of Asphodel standing around the garden were actually several of Medusa's garden statues - their faces frozen in various stages of false joy and genuine terror from their last conscious moments.
"The garden of Persephone," Annabeth breathed.
Still, the smell of those pomegranates was almost intoxicating. My stomach growled, reminding me that I hadn't eaten all day, and I found myself immediately overtaken by the sudden desire to eat one. Fortunately, I was jarred out of my temptation as one of the soldiers leading us jabbed me in the back with his rifle. I didn't need Andromeda to translate what that meant.
"Keep walking."
We moved on, a little quicker after that, until we reached the palace itself. The soldiers marched us up the steps, between massive black columns, through a black marble portico, and into the house of Hades. The entry hall had a polished bronze floor, which seemed to boil in the reflected torchlight. There was no ceiling, just the cavern roof, far above. I guess they never had to worry about rain down here.
Every side doorway was guarded by more skeletons in military gear. None of them moved, but their hollow eye sockets followed us as we walked down the hall, toward the big set of doors at the opposite end. Two U.S. Marine skeletons guarded the doors. They grinned down at us, rocket-propelled grenade launchers held across their chests.
The guards stepped aside as a sudden hot gust of wind blew down the corridor, and the doors swung open to permit us inside. The throne room looked exactly like in my dream, except this time the throne of Hades was occupied.
