The peak in the distance took a clearer shape, a mountain of sorts, jutting up from the ground, jagged and in all the hues of gray imaginable. Alone it sat, far out from them, surrounded by a whole lot of nothing. Korinna began to feel a little better, bored even, and she glanced over her shoulder to look at the others.
In this light, comparison was a bit easier. The muscles of Andreas were lit from below, and his figure was stunning. There were some bruises and blood spatters on him, but his swagger clearly stated he could not care less. Erepho was lankier, but his face was easily more attractive, especially now that the fear had gone from it. His brow was knit in thought, and she imagined how he might be lost in the composure of a new piece. Calix was built well and classically handsome with a bent nose and hard jaw. She couldn’t tell where his mind was, but she could see his eyes had been on her—the back of her at least.
Then there was Nikeros, walking a bit farther off from the others. When he caught her eying him, he smiled. She smiled back.
Then Korinna turned toward them fully, walking backwards. “We’re going to play a game.” They looked at her like a pack of expectant dogs. “I’m going to give you two scenarios and you have to pick one and tell me why. Okay?”
Carefully, she took steps backwards, trusting Phille at her side to lead. They nodded.
“Fight a gorgon or fight a chimera?”
Andreas answered first, of course, boasting about his prowess with both beasts. Erepho admitted to facing neither, but that he thought a gorgon might be easier if she could be lulled to sleep with music, to which Andreas scoffed. Calix answered neither, and that he would much rather be faced with a siren. Korinna insisted that answer was cheating, and he told her he would then pay someone to fight in his stead. She went on to ask them in quick succession: honeyed bread versus goat cheese (honeyed cheese, of course, insisted Calix), tragedy versus comedy (she was surprised by Erepho’s preference for comedy), sweeping versus linen washing (which none of them had a satisfying answer for), and so it went as they wandered, each trying to outdo the other.
Korinna peeked back, the mountain now revealing itself to be more complex than random, jagged rocks, but a palatial structure with spires reaching up into the night sky. It looked deserted, a banner flapping in some unfelt wind near its highest peak, but she could feel at least one presence beyond the walls. She turned back to the men.
“All right, answer me this, boys. You are searching for something immensely important, the fate of which might change all of Gaia. There are two roads to take to it: one more difficult than the other. Choosing the easier path will make your success much more likely, and the harder path may cause you to fail, but the harder path will give you the opportunity to help a friend. Which do you choose?”
Korinna listened to their answers, logical, heartfelt, creative. She didn’t expect any of them were lying, but even if they were, she knew it didn’t matter—and really, it does not matter which said what—because they were just words, after all. She could never know what they would actually have done. But she did know, for a fact, the only one’s answer who really mattered, and he didn’t have to say anything at all.
CHAPTER XXXVI
Just as Calix finished telling Korinna how he would hire an entourage to ensure his success in this hypothetical Gaia-changing journey she had posed to them, she watched his face change. His brow furrowed, and his feet slowed. Phille had also fallen out of step with Korinna, and the girl’s eyes had gone wide. Even Andreas came to a stop.
“Uh, guys?” She waved at them. “What’s going on?”
The five stared back at her, but not really at Korinna at all. The smell hit her first, hot and wet, and she choked on a mixture of rotten fish and sun-soaked garbage. Then humid air fell on her shoulder.
“Nikeros,” she said, keeping her body very still, “What’s behind me?”
“It’s, uh, hard to say.”
“Try.”
“Remember Ares’s pets?”
She gave him a curt nod as something wet and mucusy dripped onto her shoulder and slid down her arm.
“A little like that.”
“But bigger?”
“At least three times.”
Six eyes shined back at her, red as fiery coals, buried in black, bristled fur. Three jaws dripped a hot and steaming slobber onto the ground, but only two front paws dug into the rough, craggy ground, talons displacing the stones as if they were simply sand.
The dog stood as tall as Andreas standing atop his own shoulders. It was monstrously big but thickest at the neck where his body contorted itself to split off into three heads, each with distinct features, though they were all currently snarling. Korinna managed to turn fully toward the creature without invoking an attack. She leaned slightly and was unsurprised, but disappointed to note it had only a single tail (which was actually a snake because why the fuck not). The snake-tail was not wagging.
The group was petrified as the tri-headed hound growled in harmony with itself. One would dip down as another gnashed its jaws and the third raised its hackles. It would have already attacked, Korinna thought, if it could coordinate itself, and she began to panic.
The Sword of Teethis was unsheathed with a shining ring. Andreas called out to his cohorts, “Stand back, all of you!”
The creature dipped its heads low then and dug its talons deeper into the earth, ready to lunge. Korinna could see the blood before it even came.
“Wait!” Nikeros choked out between grit teeth, “This is most certainly Cerberus, Hades’s most faithful companion.”
“Cerberus?” Erepho’s voice sounded louder than expected. “I’ve heard tales of this beast.” To everyone’s surprise, he took a step forward, but no one dared move to stop him. Even Andreas dropped the tip of the Sword of Teethis to the ground.
Erepho flung his kithara around his shoulder and held an arm out in front of him. “Prepare to be soothed, beast!”
Erepho’s fingers masterfully flew over the strings of the kithara, and the sound erupted into the nothingness around them. It was beautiful, passionate, and dizzying. Cerberus’s three heads all reacted in kind, pulling back, their growls ceasing. The animal stared down at Erepho with all six eyes, the flames behind them dimming. In turn, each head tilted to the side, holding one floppy ear up to listen.
Erepho completed his tune and grinned up at the monster. It stood pondering him. Glancing back over his shoulder at the others, he smirked. “You see, music is the true way into any beast’s heart.” As he spoke, Cerberus dipped its middle head down and began to sniff him. Erepho continued, “It can touch any soul and quell any rage.” Just as he winked at Korinna, Cerberus’s rage was unquelled.
The animal set its jaws around the kithara and ripped it away from the man with a simple tug, crushing the instrument in its jaws. The head on either side snapped at the pieces that remained, hanging by strings from the center head’s snout. Together they completely obliterated the kithara, dropping the crushed pieces of wood and sinew on the ground at Erepho’s feet.
The last bit of color seeped out of Erepho’s already impossibly pale skin, and his knees buckled.
“Well, that didn’t work.” Calix almost sounded amused.
“Can you shoot it?” Korinna asked the Erote.
“Well,” Nikeros hesitated, “I’d like to stay on Hades’s good side and not attempt to kill his dog.”
“What about a love arrow then?”
“Um,” his voice hitched, “The only other target is one of us, and animals experience love…differently.”
“I think I’d rather it love us than attack us,” Phille’s voice wavered.
“Trust me, you would rather be eaten.”
“Just stab it,” Calix urged as Cerberus took a step toward them, “It’s going to kill us otherwise!”
The head closest to Calix snapped at his hand.
“He speaks the truth,” Andreas looked to Korinna for approval, “And this creature’s soul will make a mighty
fine addition to the Sword of Teethis.”
Remembering the deer, Korinna wrapped her hands over his own and around the hilt. “Andreas, no,” she hissed, and she could see his mind working as his face went slack. He couldn’t seem to understand her request that he not slay the beast, but he still had a firm grip on the weapon. With a grimace, Korinna knew what she had to do, and she leaned up on her tippy toes and planted a kiss on Andreas’s cheek. The man yielded the blade to her, its sudden weight in her hands causing her to nearly tumble over. But then the weight drained out of it, and she was able to hoist the sword up before her as if it were merely a twig.
“What are you doing?” Andreas’s face was pained, alarmed, and a bit excited.
Korinna looked at the beast, then to the blade. He was a dog, wasn’t he? In fact, he was not just a dog—he was three.
She heaved the sword as hard as she could above her head, spun around, and released it. With a single flash, it glinted through the air, sailing tip over hilt in a flurry away from them all.
Each head in turn raised up. Cerberus’s talons retracted, jaws closed, even the serpent-headed tail came to attention, eyes following the iron. In one fell swoop, the dog bounded after the sword and disappeared after it into the mist.
“The Sword of Teethis,” Andreas spoke hollowly, “you…you threw it.”
Korinna was stunned at her own actions, but even more stunned that it had worked.
“Passed from king to general to king through the ages. Holding within it the souls of all those it has slain. Blessed by the goddess Athena herself.” He raised up his arms weakly and mimicked her movement. “And you just…threw it.”
“Yup, and now we need to go.” Korinna started off at a run toward the mountain, the others following. Andreas’s feet seemed to work in spite of himself as his face had lost all semblance of what he was about.
CHAPTER XXXVII
The gate surrounding the palace was coming up fast as the six flew toward it. The entryway was open wide, both inviting and not, and they slowed to a stop. Beyond the gate, creaking in the nonexistent wind as it swayed before them, gnarled trunks of trees long dead contorted themselves, reaching for a sun that did not exist, their leafless branches spreading out like claws overhead.
There was only a small spit of land past the gate that narrowed into a long pathway leading to the palace proper. Korinna went first this time, creeping her way to the edge. The land dropped off sharply into an abyss that surrounded the palace like a moat. It had no bottom, but was filled with a soft, white glow and a feathery haze, and she could tell that if she toppled over, she would be falling for an eternity. The only way across was the narrow, rail-less, stone walkway, supported on either end, but otherwise simply hanging out over the maw of the Underworld.
She slid her foot out onto it, testing for stability. It didn’t move, and the stone did not crumble away, so she glanced back at the others and gestured for them to follow. One by one they loaded onto the path taking care to stay in its very center. Korinna kept her eyes forward, doing her best to ignore the sound of the void below them, wind whipping through caverns like voices calling out for help. It was unnatural, that call, and it was better to not think about it at all.
The palace still seemed impossibly far but was closer now than ever. Stones glimmering with a wet sheen crawled up the sides of the palace walls like some beautiful fungus, lit from below by the haunting glow of the abyss. With measured steps, the six picked their way across, no one daring to speak. Korinna could barely believe what she was headed into, but now there was genuinely no turning back as she would be met only with body after body of people to whom she each already owed too much. No, she had to go on, and so she did, just to the edge of the palace.
Doors of blackened oak stood before them, but again open, and they could see right through into the main hall. Like a long shadow, the floor was smooth and black, reflecting the many hanging torchlights so that it appeared to dance like the waters of Styx. Onyx columns lined either side, etched with figures, skeletal and frightening, and climbed up into the shadows where they assumed a ceiling might be.
Korinna’s footsteps echoed softly as she continued inside. She could see at the far end of the hall a great dais was raised up in the same shining slate, lights shimmering over it so that she was unsure if it were solid or not. At its top sat a throne of ebony, so black it would have melted into its shadowy surroundings if not for the figure atop it. Hades.
It was the presence she had been feeling from the moment she descended the spiraling stairs, heavy and looming, though most notably, alone. They had seen no guards, no other deities, not even a lost soul wandering the grounds. Korinna thought she should feel too loud, too present simply walking into Hades palace like this, but there was no one to stop them and, moreover, the doors had been left wide open. Even as the others shuffled along behind her, their collective noise growing, she stood a little taller, the fear she thought she should feel slipping away.
Instead, Korinna made her way to the center of the hall where she could finally make out the god. He sat stiffly, his right hand gripping a staff. He commanded the room of no one, looking out at the newcomers with derision, but again Korinna felt no fear. It was something else she felt, but she just couldn’t place it.
Hades had not spoken, only glowered. Korinna took a breath, knowing she would have to lay the first stone, as it were. She cleared her throat and licked her lips, then raised a hand and smiled. “Hi.”
The god of the Underworld dropped his chin, eyes black as coal. There was so much resemblance to Zeus and Poseidon there even without a full beard, a handsomeness, a rugged, menacing look of dark wonder, but then something deeper, something tucked away, wanting to escape. Hades’s voice boomed out through the chamber, “Are you the mortal Korinna of the isle of Zafolas?”
Korinna glanced over her shoulder at the others as if maybe she had gotten it wrong all along, then back to the god. “Yes,” she squeaked out meekly.
“And is this your retinue of fellow journeyers?”
“Uh, yeah, I guess.”
Hades lifted a hand, brought his fingers together, and snapped. There was a pop, and the room burst into what the god of the Underworld might consider life.
The columns on either side of the room cracked, and the hall quaked. The flames hanging from braziers leapt up and transformed into an electrifying blue, casting an eerie but bright light below. The etchings in the columns ripped themselves out of the stone. There was gray rubble and dust and the sounds of boney feet rattling against the stone floor as the figures made their way toward the throne, and it was all so much, that Korinna and the others almost didn’t notice the hundreds of tiny scraps of parchment that fell from the shadows above.
The group huddled close to one another in the middle of the ruckus, but then, there was nothing. The skeletal creatures had struck odd poses, but they did not rush forward to take them, the flames crackled hauntingly blue, but did not engulf the room, and Hades himself, god of the Underworld who cast fear into the hearts of all those living, did not squeeze their souls from the mortal bodies. Korinna picked a lone piece of the parchment that had rained down on them off of her shoulder.
In the silence following, the god glanced upward. He cleared his throat loudly, and there was a bit of a skitter from somewhere in the shadows, and then a large banner unfurled from above the throne. On it in thick, black ink were marks that Korinna could not have read even if it had unfurled completely. Hades grumbled then, stood, and with his scepter, reached up to untangle it. He thwacked at it once, then again, then a third time and the thing came fully undone, but the bird figure atop his scepter got tangled in the ragged edges of the sheet and he lost it so that it swung away and out of his reach.
“Fuck it,” the god mumbled and turned back to them with a booming voice, “Welcome to Hades!”
The smile was…odd at best, too wide and didn’t quite reach his eyes, a bit like it was the first time he’d done it. H
ades held his arms aloft. His chiton was gathered at both shoulders, deep blue with bronze details, and framed his slightly more skeletal body than the other gods. His skin, though it still glowed, even gave off a more silvery hue.
“Few mortals have ever made it this far.” The god took a step down from the dais. “And I must say, I am so pleased you are here.”
“Pleased?” Korinna sputtered, “Is this a trick?”
Hades paused, his brow knitting. “No, I—”
From the entrance to the palace came a quaking, and they all turned. Through the doors bound three-headed Cerberus at full tilt. The middle head gripped the Sword of Teethis in its jaws while the other two snapped at it, throwing its body off kilter. It ran into a pillar then bounced off another, nearly smashing into the six. At the last moment, it bound over them and skidded to a halt before its master, its massive behind in the air and serpent tail wagging, the snake’s eyes rattling in its skull.
“Ah!” The god gave the middle head a pat and removed the sword with a tug. “I believe this is yours.”
He came up to them and offered it, still dripping with saliva, and Andreas took it without really looking, his eyes instead locked on the god who was a head taller than even he.
“You’re mortal, yes? Most of you? You must be starving.” Hades’s features were pleasing, if a little sallow, and he wore a more genuine, if quite nervous, smile now. The god waved over one of the looming creatures that had so recently just been trapped in a column. It hopped over on the one leg it had, balancing a silver tray which it presented to them. “Please eat!”
There was a smell then, something like hot, rotting flesh. The tray’s contents were indiscernible, but at one time everything had probably been alive. Now it was grayish-green organic matter that smelled of death and fermentation. Korinna held her breath as she pondered the stuff he was passing off as food, then glanced at the god who was nodding cautiously with an excited sparkle in his eye.
The Korinniad Page 20