She coughed out the last of the foul water and gazed around, trying to work out where she was. But it was completely dark. The only thing she could make out was the high rock tunnel the current was dragging her through.
‘Did anyone bring a torch?’
Hailey squinted in the direction Aaron’s voice had come from; she could barely make out his silhouette. ‘Hang on. I’ll use the wa–’ A wave dunked Hailey, another slamming her against the rock wall as the water frothed into a rage.
She clawed her way back to the surface, only to be dunked again. She felt like a ragdoll being pulled between two quarrelling children as the waves tossed her from side to side.
Hailey braced herself to be smacked into the rock wall a second time, but the water suddenly calmed as it emptied into a circular cavern lit with flaming torches. She glanced up and cringed at the towering ceiling, where rocks hung like icicles, waiting to slice through the air and burrow into anyone unfortunate enough to be floating below.
She tore her gaze from the daunting ceiling and spotted a rotting dock at the end of the river. Land! She began swimming towards it and then stopped.
What’s the point?
Without the wand there’s no hope. The Erinyes would kill her and her friends, and it would be her fault, because she woke the creatures up. And she dragged her friends to the Underworld.
She was nothing but a disappointment: the most useless and inept Zeus who had ever lived. The world would be a better place without her to make a mess of things.
With that thought, Hailey slipped beneath the water.
Deeper and deeper she sank, her melancholy growing as she imagined her friends drowning around her because of her mistakes. Her lungs screamed for air, forcing her to inhale the burning water dragging her down.
Everything blurred.
Her eyelids grew heavy and she faded away.
27
The Underworld
Hailey felt as though she was rising, moving towards whatever afterlife existed as the heavy sadness that pushed against her chest lifted.
Pain erupted in her body, dragging her mind back. Her eyes flew open. She wasn’t in the water anymore. She was lying near the dock. Hailey was so grateful to be alive, she could have kissed its rotting wood, but she was too busy coughing up water.
She inhaled deep glorious breaths of air, ignoring the scratchiness in her throat. Once her lungs stopped burning, she sat up and smiled in relief, finding her friends sitting on the dirt around her.
‘Sorry it took me so long to use my powers,’ Jayden said, wringing out his jacket.
‘Don’t worry about it,’ Aaron told him, his voice hoarse. ‘We’re alive, and that’s what matters.’
Hailey glanced at the dark water and shivered, remembering the gloom that had pressed against her and dragged her under. ‘Did anyone else suddenly get really depressed when they were in there?’
Demi pulled her drenched green jacket closer around her. ‘Yeah, that’s why I stopped swimming. It seemed pointless.’
‘That’s why I didn’t use my powers at first,’ Jayden said. ‘I didn’t feel like there was a point in saving us. But when I was about to die, my instincts kicked in.’ He shrugged. ‘And here we are—alive.’
Alec climbed to his feet, water dripping from his clothes to the muddy ground. ‘That’s what Acheron does to you, it causes depression—the river we were just in,’ he added when everyone stared at him blankly.
‘The river of woe,’ Hailey said, remembering Amathia mentioning it in class.
It was the river you had to cross to get into the Underworld, which made the cavern they were in the entrance. She stood up and frowned. She hadn’t had a clear image of what the Underworld’s entrance would look like, but she definitely thought it would look a little more foreboding than the arching tunnel in front of her.
The tunnel was high enough that a giant could have walked through it without having to duck too low, but other than that, it was your average tunnel, having jagged rock walls and a hard-packed dirt floor. There were no cobwebs, skeletons, or rats from what Hailey could see.
Demi shuffled to Hailey’s side. ‘I expected something a little more… creepy,’ she said in a voice tinged with disappointment.
‘I thought Cerberus was meant to guard the entrance,’ Jayden remarked, peering down the dark tunnel.
‘It’s been almost twenty centuries since the gods died.’ Alec raked a hand through his wet hair. ‘I don’t think monsters live that long.’
‘Well, just in case you’re wrong, I’ll have the wand ready,’ Hailey said, her grip tightening around it. As long as she had it, they’d be safe—at least that’s what she was hoping.
‘Um, would you mind using it to dry us off?’ Demi asked, trying to brush off the dirt clinging to her wet clothes, but only managing to turn it to mud.
Water dripped from the wand’s moonstone tip as Hailey spun the wand around her and her friends and said, ‘Aom. Svatr.’ Her soaked clothes burned with warmth, like she was sitting in front of a crackling fire, and were dry within two seconds—even the putrid smell of the Acheron River evaporated, leaving her and everyone else smelling like clothes fresh out of the dryer.
‘Let’s get this over with,’ Aaron said, marching into the tunnel.
Hailey followed behind him, the wand raised, ready to shoot a sleeping spell at anything that moved. She wrinkled her nose against the rotten-eggs smell that seemed to be getting stronger the further down the tunnel she crept. She wondered what would be waiting for them on the other side. She hoped it would be the Erinyes with their backs turned. That’d make things easy. All she’d have to do was flick the wand, and they’d be asleep before they’d even whirled around.
The last of the dim light feeding into the tunnel from the entrance ebbed, casting them into darkness. Hailey was tempted to use the wand to light the way, but didn’t want to risk alerting their presence to anyone—or anything.
‘I think we’re almost at the tunnel’s end,’ Aaron whispered back to them.
Hailey peeked past him; a faint flickering light was coming from somewhere ahead, revealing that the tunnel veered to the right a few yards down. Her fingertips tingled, but she didn’t need their warning to know there was danger waiting for them.
Keeping the wand held out, she vigilantly followed Aaron towards the light. When she reached it, she sucked in a deep breath and turned the corner, preparing to enter the Underworld.
Ice swarmed through her veins as her legs froze in place and she silently screamed, realising that what she’d walked through hadn’t been the entrance to the Underworld, but its pre-entrance.
The true entrance loomed in front of her now, lit with flaming torches, and it became alarmingly obvious that Alec had been wrong about Cerberus being dead.
She’d grown up hearing stories about the monster who guarded the Underworld’s entrance. It had been described as a three-headed dog. She’d always imagined it as a snarling pit-bull with two extra heads—something more frightening than blood-freezing petrifying.
But now that she was standing in front of the primeval monster, she realised that whoever had used “dog” as an adjective to describe it had clearly been blind, because it was nothing like a dog.
Its four legs were double the height of Hailey, and its three monstrous heads glowered down at her with burning red eyes. Strings of drool dripped from its snarling mouths, sizzling on the ground.
A guttural growl rumbled inside the beast’s throats, and it took a step towards them.
‘Use the wand, Hailey!’ Jayden shouted.
‘Quickly!’ Aaron barked, raising his hands to hold Cerberus back with his force field.
Hailey forced her arm to unfreeze and aimed the wand with a trembling hand.
‘Wait!’ Alec cried, darting in front of her.
Hailey’s hand faltered. She stared at Alec with wide eyes, too shocked to form words. Does he want Cerberus to eat him?
‘Alec, what ar
e you doing?’ Demi gaped. ‘Get back!’
Despite having a giant three-headed monster breathing down his neck, Alec appeared the picture of calmness. ‘It’s okay,’ he told them. ‘Cerberus only attacks if you try to leave the Underworld. It won’t hurt us if we’re walking into the Underworld.’
‘Alec, STOP!’ Aaron yelled as Alec skirted around his force field.
Alec ignored him and marched beneath Cerberus. He paused halfway under the monster and stared back at them. ‘See.’
Hailey waited for Cerberus to crush Alec with one of its paws. But the monster didn’t appear to even notice he was standing under it, with its burning eyes remaining fixed on Hailey, Demi, Jayden, and Aaron.
‘Incredible.’ Demi reached out a hand like she was about to pet the beast.
‘Don’t.’ Aaron’s eyes screamed with admonishment, and Demi pulled her hand back. ‘It might be waiting for us to let our guard down before it attacks. Now get back here, Alec, so Hailey can use the wand.’
Alec didn’t move. ‘No. We don’t know what using the wand on Cerberus could do. It might alert the Erinyes. I promise it’s safe to walk past it.’
Hailey had to admit Alec had a point. There could be some weird magic down here that’d let the Erinyes know if anything happened to their guard dog. Plus, Cerberus wasn’t really doing anything but growling and staring at them—he hadn’t even attacked Aaron’s force field yet.
‘Alec might be right,’ Jayden said. ‘I think we should hold off on using the wand.’
Aaron shook his head, ready to keep protesting.
Hailey put a hand on his shoulder. ‘Come on, Aaron. You’ve known Alec the longest. Has he ever been wrong about anything?’
A long silence ensued. ‘No,’ Aaron finally said. His hands dropped to his sides, lowering his force field.
‘Just make sure you don’t get any drool on you—it’s poisonous,’ Alec warned.
Of course it is.
This is insane, Hailey thought, edging forward with her friends. Her eyes stayed locked on Cerberus as she inched her way towards Alec, ready to use the wand if the monster decided there was too much movement going on for its likings.
But the most Cerberus did was growl.
Hailey sidestepped its drool, which smoked and sizzled on the dirt like burning oil, and reached Alec. Heat poured from the monster’s body over Hailey, and she pressed a hand to her nose to block out the beast’s putrid rotten-eggs scent.
‘Are you sure you want to do this?’ Alec asked her. ‘Because once we go into the Underworld, there won’t be any turning back.’
No was what she wanted to say. She was scared out of her mind already, and they weren’t even in the Underworld yet. But she couldn’t afford to be a coward now. ‘Yes,’ she told Alec. ‘We’re going to fix this ourselves.’
Hailey dodged Cerberus’s powerful tail and darted to the black iron gates he was guarding, which towered a hundred-feet high. Her friends gathered around her as the gates creaked open, revealing another cavern circled with flaming torches.
The iron gates slammed shut behind them the second they stepped through. Hailey gulped. There really was no going back now. They were prisoners of the Underworld, more or less. But she promised herself it wouldn’t be for long.
This cavern had two tunnels. The one on the right was dimly lit by torches that cast a foreboding glow on the ground, which was piled with layers of decaying bones—human bones, Hailey realised with a gulp, trying not to look at the skulls and their empty eye sockets.
The other tunnel looked entirely out of place. A bright light poured from it like sunshine, illuminating the glistening flowers growing over its walls, and the lustrous green grass on the ground.
Hailey veered towards it, enraptured to see what magical place lay on the other side. A hand on her shoulder stopped her.
Jayden shook his head. ‘We’re not going down that one—it’s the Elysian Fields.’ He nudged his head towards the other tunnel. ‘The Erinyes will be in Tartarus.’
Hailey gazed back at the enchanting tunnel, desiring to enter it even more now. The Elysian Fields were said to be pure paradise: a place designed by Hades to reward dedicated humans for their worshipping of the gods so that they could live out the rest of their lives in luxury. She wanted to see inside, to see what luxury meant. Pegasi for transportation? A room that conjures anything you want—like a dessert buffet?
Demi was already at the entrance. ‘We could just take a peek,’ she suggested, touching a bud on the wall, which blossomed into a bright blue flower that smelled like fruit tingles and had petals that sparkled like diamonds.
‘No,’ Aaron said firmly. ‘People are being tortured in that tunnel’—he pointed to the one on the right—‘because of us. We’re not taking any detours.’
Demi turned away from the flower. ‘Okay. First we’ll save everyone, and then we’ll come back and take a peek.’
‘Come on, Alec.’ Aaron grabbed his arm and yanked him away from the tunnel. ‘I’m sure you’ll find Tartarus just as fascinating as the Elysian Fields.’
Bile rose in Hailey’s throat as she gazed at the decaying bones and thought of the thousands of people who’d died here. She took some relief in the fact that the bones looked ancient—all yellow and crumbling to dust—which meant, she hoped, no one had died since the Erinyes had reopened the Underworld. It was bad enough knowing people were being tortured because of her, but she wouldn’t be able to live with herself if anyone had been killed.
‘We can’t walk over them.’ Demi recoiled beside her. ‘Those are people.’
‘Not anymore,’ Aaron countered, a tone of sorrow in his voice. ‘Now they’re just bones.’ As if to reiterate his point, he stepped into the tunnel, cracking a skull beneath his foot.
Demi looked horrified, as if Aaron had gleefully stomped on someone’s head.
Jayden wrapped an arm around her. ‘I know this is awful. But if it helps, you can think of them as sticks.’
‘Sticks,’ Demi said. ‘They’re just sticks—that look a lot like bones.’ She closed her eyes for a second, and when she opened them, her features hardened. ‘Come on, let’s stop standing around and save some people so we can come back and check out the Elysian Fields.’
Gripping the wand tightly, Hailey edged into the tunnel with her friends. Her other hand was ready to clasp over her mouth, but the tunnel smelled of mustiness rather than rotting flesh. Even so, she couldn’t hold back the waves of nausea that washed over her as bones cracked and crumbled beneath her shoes, sending bone dust scattering into the air. She tried to think of the bones as sticks, as Jayden had suggested, but it wasn’t working.
With every fibula, tibia, and ribcage she crushed, Hailey couldn’t help but think of the person it had belonged to. Maybe the hand she’d just pulverised had belonged to someone the same age as her who’d stolen a measly piece of bread and been thrown in here by the Erinyes as punishment.
‘Hailey, get ready.’
Aaron’s voice snapped her back to reality. She braced herself for unthinkable horrors as she neared the end of the tunnel. She imagined people screaming in hunger and thirst, while others wreathed on the ground in pain and insanity.
What she didn’t expect was what she found.
Forty feet below her was a colossal circular pit crowded by hundreds of people, most of them wearing jumpsuits. Dirt and mud caked their skin and clothes, and the reek of body odour hung heavy in the air.
They appeared to be separated into three groups. One group bordered the pit’s walls, swinging pickaxes at the rock, which glittered with a plethora of buried jewels and metals. A second group lumbered around with squeaking mine carts, collecting the hunks of rock mined by the first group. And a third group stood at a long table, chiselling away at the rocks brought to them by the second group, freeing rubies, diamonds, gold, silver, and many other precious stones, polishing them until they sparkled in the flickering flames from the torches lighting the pit.
&nbs
p; From what Hailey could see, no one was being tortured. That’s a good thing. Another good thing was that she and her friends stood on a ledge above the pit, which meant they had a better view to find the Erinyes.
Hailey assumed they’d automatically stick out among the crowd, but she was having a hard time spotting even one. And the pit had about twenty tunnels carved into its walls. What if the Erinyes are through one of them? Hailey shuddered, not wanting to think about what horrors the tunnels might lead to.
‘I see one.’
‘Where?’ Hailey asked Jayden.
‘Over there… Hey, where’d she go?’
‘Trespassing is a crime.’
Hands rammed into Hailey’s back, shoving her off the ledge.
She screamed, arms flailing wildly as the ground soared towards her.
28
Tartarus
Hailey squeezed her eyes shut, bracing for bone-shattering pain.
None come.
Tentatively, she opened her eyes, inhaling sharply. The ground was inches from her face, and she hovered above it as if she’d suddenly gained the ability to levitate. Her friends were suspended around her, and judging by the stunned look on Aaron’s face, he hadn’t used his force field to break their fall.
They floated above the ground a few more seconds before dropping. Hailey shot to her feet and pointed the wand at the Erinys leering down at her. The creature dove from the ledge, her tattered red dress flowing out as she extended her long black nails like talons and aimed for Hailey.
‘NNAST!’ Hailey shouted.
A shrill cry like a screeching hawk rang from the Erinys’s cracked lips as she soared backwards and slammed against the ledge, a few rocks shaking loose and pelting against the ground. Hailey advanced, preparing to finish her off when someone shoved her aside, sending her toppling to the dirt.
She lifted her head in time to see an Erinys tackle Aaron, swiping at him with her talons. Aaron roared in pain.
‘Get off him!’ Demi launched at the Erinys, only to get backhanded and sent flying into a group of people who’d abandoned their work to stare at the commotion.
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