AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“These are the Isles of the Blessed, and it’s little more than a waiting room. There is a mirror island to this one in the upperworld—the veil separating the two is thin here. From this island, one can figure out their way back to the land of the living, if they’re smart enough. From the underworld proper, it’s not so simple.”
“Can I get back to this island from the mainland? If I succeed in saving Dare?”
Hecate glanced back at me. “If you were anyone else, I’d say no, but you are unusual, the Spirit of Dreams.”
Okay. That sounded… positive?
She gestured to a small wooden row boat. “Get in. It will take you to the mainland.”
“Will you come with me?”
She snorted. “No. I have my own means of traversing the underworld. The boat will take you across, then you will need to walk through the mountains.”
“And go where?” I gripped the edge of the boat tightly, clambering awkwardly into it. κτ?μα ?ς ?ε?.Huh, I wonder what that means.Almost immediately, the boat moved with a lurch, heading into the center of the channel while Hecate stood watching impassively from the shore. “Wait! Where am I going?!”
“If you don’t figure it out, you’re not worthy of saving him!” she called back.
Great. Just fucking great.
The boat sped across the channel at an alarming rate, coming to a stop with a crunch on the rocky shore at the base of the mountains.
The flimsy toga thing I was wearing felt extra pointless, but I also didn’t feel like I was going to die of exposure either. Perhaps a perk of this not-quite-dead, not-quite-alive state I was in.
There was only one path in front of me, a steep walkway cut into the stone of the mountain. My not-ghost feet slipped on the smooth surface, and I lurched forward, grabbing the jagged boulders that lined the way, digging my fingertips into the rock to keep myself upright. I waited for the pain, but there was none. Just a sort of phantom sensation that let me know I was in fact holding onto something.
I wanted to slow down to gauge where exactly I was and where I was heading, but there was this strange pressure in my chest, building, building, building.
Is this… fear?
Yes, fear. That sounded right. I was afraid—not for me, but for my friend. The friend I didn’t remember, who’d made some kind of vow in front of the gods to save me. Whoever he was, wherever he was, I was going to savehim. I was going to keep him safe for his love, my love, our Grace.
That felt right. Like the correct order of things, in a way I didn’t really understand.
So instead of slowing down, I sprinted. The more momentum I gained, the more I realized that I wasn’t being constrained to what I was pretty confident were normal, human running speeds. At some points, I was a decent leap away from full-blown flight.
Woah. Badass.
Take that, Persephone. I didn’t even need real Spirit of Dream wings. I could fly on myfeet.
Not that it was the priority right now, but it felt pretty cool to be sofree. At some point, I realized I was heading down rather than up, and slowed my feet until I was just sliding down the slope. Vaguely, I was aware of eyes peeking out of crevices, and a general aura of Not Being Alone, but I was moving fast enough that I didn’t think anyone would catch me.
Besides, I wasn’t entirely alive. Surely that had to make me slightly more indestructible than the average person.
Now where?
To the left were more mountains, and to the right were more mountains, but with what looked like flat plains beneath them. Neither particularly called to me and since Hecate had given me basically no instructions, I guessed that following my gut was my best option.
And my gut said straight ahead. I couldn’t quite make out what it was, but something over there was glowing a fiery orange, illuminating that entire spot on the horizon. Honestly, it had a sort of evil vibe, but maybe that was just how things looked down here.
I jogged until my super speedy not-ghost feet kicked in again, and then I sprinted. There was a section of huge, craggy rocks in the way in an oddly circular shape, and I skirted around them in search of the giant glowing thing… and realized that I was running towardfire. Which seemed… bad? Yes, bad. Don’t run into fire, that was the reigning school of thought. Except fire was meant to be hot, which would be a pretty great warning sign to stay away, and this wasn’t. It was nice, but more like the memory of heat than actual heat.
Where were all the people? I mean, dead, obviously, since this was the underworld. But Hecate had mentioned souls, and I wasn’t seeing any. Did they live somewhere else? This place was pretty expansive. Or maybe they were just avoiding me. Maybe in the underworld, it wasn’t cool to only be partially dead.
Once I’d fully rounded the rocks and was standing in front of the fire, I realized that the two were connected. The flames were a river, and they poured over a sudden drop into a terrifying black pit, surrounded on all the other edges by high sharp rocks. Perhaps to stop anyone from accidentally wandering in and dropping into… wherever it went. Nowhere good, I was pretty sure.
The skyabovethe pit looked kind of weird too. There were thick clouds moving almost constantly, but above it, the sky looked off. Too light and too dark at once.
The flame river next to me started to jump, spitting enough sparks in my direction that I took a few healthy steps back in case I wasn’t as invincible as I thought I was. Maybe the fire river was telling me to back off? Totally reasonable, except I didn’t have any better ideas of where to go. Back to the mountains? Before I could decide, the flames began shifting into a distinctshape, and I paused to watch, mesmerized.
