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“What should I call you?” I asked. He didn’t reply, staring blankly. “Does your name start with ‘A’?”
Shake.
“B?”
Shake. We went down the alphabet, and I did my best to make it look as though I was totally fine and comfortable having this bizarre conversation with a monster while standing ankle-deep in mud. Just a normal… whatever day it was.
“T?” I asked tiredly.Nod.“U— Wait, T? Your name starts with T?”
Another nod. He looked quite pleased with himself.
“Well, let’s just call you ‘T’ for now, okay? What is it that you want, T? Are you looking for something? Someone, perhaps?”
T looked at me for a long moment, before his black and red bat wings lifted, beating the air hard enough to knock me back. And then he was rising into the air, and I was more confused than ever because maybe he didn’t want anything at all?
Naïve. One day I’d learn not to be so naïve.
T’s enormous hand wrapped around my waist, and I screamed louder than I ever had in my life as he dragged me into the sky.
Chapter 12
Ifell,andIfell, and Ifell.
I fell for so long that I got bored of falling. Objectively, I was moving quickly, but it didn’t feel fast because the walls were just the same unchanging smooth rock the entire way down. This was really not as fun as the fly-running I’d been doing before. I wished I was still doing that.
What would happen when I got to the bottom? Would I go splat?
Like an egg? Something in the recesses of my mind told me eggs went splat.
And if I didn’tsplat, what then? I should have asked more questions about what saving Dare entailed if only to make sure I was doing it right.
Eventually, the landscape changed, just a little and in the worst possible way.
It was getting darker. Not from below, but fromabove. As though the pit was closing over top of me, shutting me in forever. Except it wasn’t all the way dark. What did that mean? I hoped it meant that the entrance in the human realm that Dare was going to use had closed and that he was safely ensconced in the land of the living. Yes, that would be ideal. That was what I wanted for the friend I didn’t remember.
It was a good final thought to hold onto before I splattered like an egg,I decided. I didn’t have any happy memories to hold onto, but I could still think happythoughts.
Somehow, without being able to see anything, I got the impression that the ground was drawing nearer. Like the way I’d felt the memory of heat on my body by the fire river, I felt the memory of icy cold now. The air had changed somehow, though I struggled to put my finger on exactly what it was that was different. This had to be Tartarus.
I let out a muffled yelp of surprise as I was snatched out of thin air by some invisible force, and I got the impression of being sniffed at for a moment before being deposited roughly on the ground with a grunt of disapproval.
“What are you? You are not dead. What am I meant to do with you? I knew the underworld was busy, but I did not expect Hades to start throwing undead into the pit. What are you being punished for?”
“Are you… Tartarus?” I asked the empty air, looking around for some indication of where the voice had come from.
There was a long pause. “Obviously.”
“Right. Okay. I’m not being punished. I jumped in the pit voluntarily.”
“Ach. I am sending you back to Hades. You are strange, I don’t want you in my realm.”
“No, no, wait. Can’t I look around, at least? This is the famousTartarus, it’s not every day that a mortal gets to visit here. Can I just hang around for a few minutes?”
Was Tartarus famous? I assumed so, based on the way Phlegethon had talked about it. I really should have asked more questions.
“Itisa very impressive realm,” the invisible god mused to himself. “And I have never sent anyone back before. Perhaps I will show it to you, and then you can return to Hades and tell him the ways in which my realm is superior. It would do him well to remember that I am far older and more impressive than he is.”
“Um, yeah. For sure. I’ll definitely tell him how much cooler this place is.”
