by Lucas, Naomi
Pressure filled her head. A shudder wracked her. She gasped again, and—finally—her lungs opened up, and she took in an excruciating breath of air. Tears filled her eyes as she exalted in the simple sensation of air flowing through her. Each breath was a knife-stab in and out of her throat, but she didn’t care because she was breathing.
The hand of her savior returned to her shoulder and gripped it hard, forcing her from her fetal position to look up.
It wasn’t Haros who saved her.
Dark eyes and even darker shadows met her, revealing the outline of a man, but her gaze didn’t linger, moving to the glinting short-sword poised between them.
Cyane jerked back, her eyes widening as the point of the sword pressed against her chest.
“You’ve committed a great crime coming here. Who are you?” The shadowy man’s deep, rumbling voice suited his dark mien.
He was her savior no more.
She leaned away as the tip pushed a shallow dent in her skin, but her back was already against the floor of the boat, leaving her trapped. The ache in her throat returned when she opened her mouth to speak. All that emerged was gasping, hacking coughs.
He made an animalistic noise and withdrew his blade.
His strong arms banded around her, drawing her off the floor of the boat and against his chest. He slid his hands over her back and forced her head between her knees, pulling her wet hair away from her face. More tears filled her eyes as his palm hit the center of her back.
Water and saliva dribbled from her chin. She closed her eyes against the sight.
With each ragged inhale, sense returned, and her mind cleared. Where am I? It was too dark to be Athens. She opened her eyes. Dark water, dark cavern walls, and an equally dark castle filled her eyes.
Oh god, where am I?
The man’s hand slammed into her back again, and she gasped.
Cyane gripped the side of the boat with shaking fingers. “Stop,” she croaked. “I can breathe now.” She rested her brow on her hand and shuddered.
She shook and steadied herself, all the while knowing there was a strange man with a sword directly behind her, waiting for an explanation.
Not that she knew how to explain.
The castle loomed directly over her, its foreboding silhouette filling her vision. She’d never seen anything like it. And she knew if a castle such as this existed, with a hundred black, pointed spires stabbing skyward, she’d have learned about it by now.
The spires ended far above.
Her empty stomach dipped with nausea.
There was no sky.
She rose from where she huddled and strained her neck. There was nothing but blackness with jagged edges—it made no sense. It reminded her of the top of a cavern...but it couldn’t be. The sky, if that was the word for it, was so far above her that it should be where the clouds were.
She sat there, gapping, but the man’s voice snapped her out of her shock.
“Face me,” he ordered.
The boat rocked as the man stood. Cyane shivered again and pulled her gaze away from the sky—or cave ceiling, she had no idea. She turned slowly—her eyes flicking again across the strange landscape one last time—before she released her death-like grip on the boat with one hand.
Her eyes fell on the man as he raised the sword in his right hand and pointed it toward her chest.
This time, she didn’t squirm away from his blade.
He wore dark pants with plated metal armor over his shins and knees. The pants disappeared behind a muscled cuirass decorated with the glint of sculpted abs, sculpted pecs. Thick, leather strips hung from the bottom of the cuirass, shielding his groin and thighs. The leather strips were covered in clean but dull ornamentation of howling canines.
Her eyes squinted upon the well-crafted ancient Greek warrior armor. It was in excellent condition compared to anything she’d seen in a museum, and she found it as misplaced and unwelcome as everything else was. Armor covered every inch of him, including a dark, leather-like material down his arms. For a split-second, she wanted to laugh.
An equally unpolished black and silver helmet rested on his head, its points as sharp as the terrifying castle at her back. Only the glow of his pupils deep within the helmet’s inner shadows indicated he looked at her.
“I’m facing you,” she choked out to break the silence.
Cerberus tightened his grip upon his sword. He studied the female before him. Her lips quivered, and her chest rose and fell with each shuddering breath. Even her shallow words gave her away.
She’s not one of Charon’s dead.
Questions beat at his mind. Not even Hercules himself had spent that much time in the water of Styx.
“Do you have any last words?” he asked. Though he didn’t care for any answers she might give him. He had surprised himself already by helping her cough the last of the water out. He would follow through by giving her the dignity of words.
Her eyes widened. “L-last words?”
He raised his sword from her chest to poise at her neck. “All those who trespass or defy the laws of the Underworld are punished. Your soul will never return to the mortal realm, nor will it reach Elysium or Asphodel Meadows. Your crime will be judged by me. Here. Now.”
She stared at him wordlessly. He swallowed and continued.
“I do not know how you came to be before the entrance to Hades’s castle without loss of life or help, but it matters not. The crime has been committed. The law has been broken. I will devour your soul, but first, your flesh will be rent open by my sword’s edge.” The boat rocked beneath his feet. Styx’s current was slowly pulling them towards the castle.
The woman trembled, and her eyes flicked from his face to the weapon in his hand. To his abrupt shock, she pivoted back around to look at the castle.
His hold on his xiphos wavered.
She was not reacting as any mortal—or even immortal—should be in the face of imminent annihilation.
With each passing moment, her breaths steadied further when they should be quickening. If she has nothing to say, so be it. Cerberus raised his weapon to lob off her head.
She turned back around. “I don’t understand... Where are we? Is this some sort of horrible joke?”
Sudden fury filled Cerberus, hot and hard. The mortal’s audacity drew molten rage through his veins. Had she listened to anything he’d said? Didn’t she have respect for where she was?
He growled, his sword vanishing, as he snatched her neck in his grip. He dug his fingers into her flesh.
His body grew cold as the shadows coalesced within him, making him larger, and returning awareness of his prior monstrous form. Cerberus drew on it. He wanted to see her fear before he killed her.
Fear was powerful. It was delicious. And a mortal’s fear… his tongue lashed the roof of his mouth.
Finally, as his mouth grew and malformed into a canine snarl behind his helmet, she released a scream of terror. Her hands came up to beat at his chest and clawed at his wrist in the effort to tear his hand off of her. The skies rang with the cackles of harpies as they watched from above.
Warmth surged into him where he touched the woman, where she fought him in defense. A warmth unlike he’d ever known in all his years in Tartarus. At first, he assumed this human must be an agent of Helios, or worse, Apollo, to bring such heat here, but then he tossed the thought away. The sun gods had never been known to scheme against Hades. They wanted nothing to do with the dark places of the world.
Cerberus’s grip loosened when her nails dug deep into the cloth covering his forearms, ripping it.
“Let go of me!” she shrieked.
Blood welled beneath, startling him long enough for the woman to kick hard at his chest, pushing him backward. The momentum forced him down, and he barely caught the side of the boat, stopping himself from falling overboard.
He heard a splash, and his fury returned. He rose to see his devious intruder swimming madly away.
He surged to
the side of the boat to catch her limb. He touched her flesh but missed her ankle by a hairsbreadth. The currents swept her up as she tried for the shoreline. But it carried her towards the castle instead.
His hands tightened into fists as the female disappeared under the dark archway that led directly to the Judges of the Dead.
A pair of oars materialized in his hand, and he began his hunt.
Cyane struggled against the current but quickly gave up. There was no point in fighting it. The water had a mind of its own. It wasn’t like the ocean’s current but the will of a living being.
She kept her head above the water, kicked her legs frantically, and tried to get as far from the man on the boat as fast as she could.
Please. Please, please, please. The word pounded in her head with every stroke.
The foreboding castle loomed ahead of her. She thought she was headed for the gate, but with a final surge, the water pushed her towards a dark cavern that opened at the rocky castle base. Cyane grasped for the sidewall just as the opening swallowed her up.
The current was faster here, desperate, hungry, and far more powerful. Her fingers dragged across the wall without finding purchase, and the faint light from outside shrunk as she slipped farther into the darkness beneath the castle. She was about to give up hope when she caught the edge of a stone. She gripped it with her life. Several of her nails snapped as the current tried to drag her away. Sharp pain surged up her fingers but quickly vanished in the numbing cold of the water. The current rushed around her like eager, grasping hands.
“Take my hand!” the Greek soldier from before roared, his boat quickly slipping past. His fingers grazed over her shoulder as he reached for her. He was gone, disappearing into the darkness beyond before she could make a choice.
The last thing she saw before he completely disappeared was the sheen of his eyes from the shadows of his helmet.
Cyane whimpered and closed her eyes. I don’t know what to do. Her fingers ached, everything ached, and the adrenaline that kept her going was diminishing, leaving fatigue behind. She didn’t know how long she could hold on.
All I wanted to do was to meet my parents. Tears streamed down her cheeks. The pain in her fingers returned with the strain of her clutching.
Something grabbed her leg and tugged her off the wall.
With a frightened wail, she kicked off the thing holding her.
The current shot her forward, deeper into endless darkness. Despite the water’s speed, her head remained above the surface. It was as though the water itself was trying to keep her alive. But to what end?
Blindly, she called out for help, to find the man and his boat, to find anyone who could help her. No one answered. When she reached for the wall again, there was nothing but slick, wet rock.
Death awaited her. She was sure of it now. She’d escaped it twice, but a third time wasn’t always a charm.
The water froze her to the bone. And just when she thought she’d lost hope, as the endless blackness threatened to drive her past the point of insanity, a light appeared in the distance.
Cyane stared at it, transfixed.
It grew bigger with each passing second. Relief flooded her. Even if death awaited her, at least hell wouldn’t be an endless journey in which crushing anxiety drove her mad.
The tunnel opened up into a cavern with stalactites hanging from the ceiling. She gazed at them mutely as the current delivered her into a shallow pool in the middle of the cavern. Three old men stood near the bank awaiting her. Suddenly she was beside the shore, floating unmoving as if the current had never existed at all. Her feet found the bottom, then her knees as the water grew shallow.
She crawled weakly onto the edge of the bank and fell upon the dry ground with a cry.
“Leave, Cerberus, she is in our domain now, not yours,” one of the older men said.
Cyane huddled into herself, fighting off the deep cold penetrating her flesh. Cerberus?
Nothing makes sense.
She frowned and forced herself up on trembling arms. The Greek warrior stood rigidly a short distance away, staring at her. A silvery haze and pulsating shadows enveloped him.
An uncertain truth settled in. Her frown deepened. He couldn’t be a dream, could he? He appeared poised to rush to her, but something held him back. Cyane tore her eyes away from him.
The three elderly men in Grecian robes surrounded her. She wiped the water from her eyes as she fell onto her back.
A low growl of a dog vibrated through the space as the closest of the old men knelt beside her. “My name is Aeacus, and I find you unfit to take my hand and join the western dead in the afterlife.”
Cyane blinked, and the man was gone. One of the two remaining men took the first’s place beside her.
“My name is Rhadamanthys, and I find you unfit to take my hand and join the eastern dead in the afterlife.”
This time, Cyane held her eyes open. Rhadamanthys stepped back and vanished like vapor. She pushed herself up on her elbows to search for him, but he too was now gone.
The third man settled into the same spot the previous two had.
“I don’t understand,” she said, her voice cracking as he smiled kindly down at her. “What’s happening?”
“Cyane, you have made your way to the Judges of the Dead. Not an easy feat for one still alive. My name is Minos, and I find you unfit to join either Aeacus or Rhadamanthys in deliverance to the afterlife.” He offered her his hand. “Take my hand.”
“I’m still alive?” she blubbered. “Why? If I’m still alive?”
“Would you prefer to stay in this vestibule with three old men forever?”
He eased his hand closer.
Cyane stared at it, at Minos. She was in Hell, Hades, Tartarus. Or she was so drugged that she was envisioning all of this. She rose up further until she was in a sitting position. She turned her face back to the Greek warrior who was still furiously tense in a statuesque pose.
The old men called him Cerberus.
Isn’t Cerberus a three-headed monster?
But two men vanished into thin air.
She shook her head. It didn’t matter. She was alive—with her head still firmly attached. She looked back at Minos and took his hand. He helped her to her feet.
“If I’m not dead…” The words tasted weird leaving her mouth. “What happens now?”
“I will take you above where others, those better fit, can decide your fate.”
“And him?” Cyane nodded in the direction of the Greek warrior. “He said I committed a crime.”
Minos hummed with mirth and slowly led her away from the pool, towards a stairway that materialized from the dark. His arm went around her shoulders, lessening her shivers.
“You have, in his eyes, but now you are here. You have escaped his domain, and so he cannot do anything more to you...unless you try to leave.”
All she wanted to do was leave. “I need to get to Sicily.”
“First you need to rest and remove Styx’s blood from your flesh. Only the dead are immune to her power.”
Cyane glanced down at her drenched clothes and discovered black and red rivulets sluicing down her arms and legs.
What am I thinking? This is all insanity. But she couldn’t deny the shock that the black and red water filled her with. She touched her fingers to her forearm and wiped the water away, her belly sinking into an abyss. A scream lodged in her throat.
Minos hummed again, stealing her scream, cleansing the growing terror from her mind.
He drew her up the stairs, and Cyane let him. But after a few more steps, she glanced back to find the cavern and the pool far, far away.
Her feet stilled.
This really can’t be happening.
Her eyes settled on the Greek warrior who was a dozen or so steps below her.
He’s still here? Why was he following her?
For some reason, she felt attached to him now. He saved my life and pulled me from the water. With everything e
lse churning her brain, even considering that the warrior had also tried to kill her, she wanted to confront him again and demand answers.
He’d seen how she’d arrived. Maybe he’d know how to leave?
Cyane removed herself out from Minos’s arm and fully turned around, taking several steps down the stairs towards the warrior. He tensed as she moved closer, but as she lowered her foot down onto another step, Minos’s arm snaked around her chest and stopped her. His humming continued.
She struggled out of his grip. “I want to talk to him.”
“Talk to a monster such as him?” Minos’s arm tightened, his lips suddenly upon her ear. “A true beast of old?”
An uncomfortable shiver coursed down her spine. “He’s just a man. He saved my life.”
“And now you feel indebted to him?”
Her brow furrowed. “No. I—”
“You’re a young, youthful creature, swimming in waters that are not your own. Look at him closely. See him for what he truly is.”
She tried again to break free from Minos’s hold; her strength was no match against his. His continued humming soothed but also addled her mind. She didn’t like it. At all. But her body gave in to it, betraying her. Her struggles ceased.
Cyane stared fixedly at the warrior below her who did not intervene to help her.
The stairway pulsated, inhaling, as if alive. There was nothing but her and the warrior.
“Won’t you help me?” she asked him without hearing her words in the air between them. Help me. Her thoughts echoed fervently, dreamily, in the back of her mind.
He didn’t respond, didn’t move. He acted as if her request hadn’t been made at all. The only indication that he was even there, more than a statue, was his glittering red eyes with specks of silver that she could now see. They resembled faraway stars.
Except they moved.
The longer she gazed at them, the bigger they became. Air whipped past her ears, but there was no wind. She gasped in a breath. The stars grew and grew until they blotted out all else.
Somewhere, far off now, she heard Minos’s humming.
Then she saw them. His eyes. All of them.