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Phlegethon had mentioned Hades was the King of the Underworld and Tartarus was the king down here, and apparently, there was a sense of competition there. I could work with that.
Some unseen force hit me behind the knees, and I fell backward but instead of landing on my ass on the ground, I was being lifted into the air, sitting on some kind of floating platform.
“I will carry you. You are small and weak.”
Nope, not a platform. I was definitely sitting on a god’s hand. This guy must be bigger than Hecate because there was no way I would have fit in her totally average-sized hand.
Note to self: gods come in different shapes and sizes.
“It’s quite hard to see,” I hedged, squinting into the darkness. “I’m guessing my eyesight isn’t as good as yours.”
He let out a long suffering sigh, and suddenly the space around us was illuminated by bluishthingsin the rocky cavern overhead.Movingbluish things. Worms, perhaps?
“They’re pretty,” I murmured, staring up at them. They were writhing around the ceiling, coiling into shapes among themselves in a way that seemed intentional—like a form of communication.
“Yes,” Tartarus grunted. “They are magnificent, but Erebus is the god of darkness, and he dwells in this realm. For his comfort, they usually extinguish their natural glow.”
I nodded in the general direction of where I thought Tartarus was, but he was still invisible, even with the light. Maybe that was just how he looked all the time? Or maybe he preferred the anonymity? It seemed rude to ask him to reveal himself either way.
Another note to self: there is an Erebus, god of darkness.
There probably weren’t that many gods, right? Ten seemed like a nice, round number. I’d already encountered Persephone, Hecate, and Tartarus, and heard of Hades and Erebus. Plus, there was Phlegethon, whatever he was. Surely, that must be about half.
“Did you know there was a pit open from the human realm all the way here?” I asked.
“You can’t have come through that, or you’d have a real body. You’re a soul, but not.” My in-between state was clearly bothering him, which was fair enough. It was bothering me too. “And of course I know about it. My son used it to go to the upperworld.”
“Oh. Just for a visit?”
There was a long moment of silence before Tartarus spoke again. “You don’t know much about gods, do you?”
“I don’t think so. I’m the Spirit of Dreams, or I was. Something happened to my brain to save me. Well, maybe save me. It’s still up in the air.”
Tartarus hummed. “Curious. Do you have a name, the Spirit of Dreams?”
That was a really great question. “No, I don’t think so. Or not one that anyone has told me.”
“Then I shall call you Oneiroi.”
“Why?”
He harrumphed. “That is what a Spirit of Dreams is, the kind of daimon you are. And if you are an Oneiroi, then you must visit your spiritual mother while you are in this realm. I will take you to her.”
Huh. I had a spiritual mother? That sounded cool. I swayed back and forth with every step Tartarus took, making his way through the cavernous tunnel to wherever it was he was taking me.
“As for my son, no. I doubt I will ever see him again.” There was a sadness in his voice that I recognized, that called to my own. Although I couldn’t remember the ones I’d loved, I was familiar with the sense of loss, the gaping wound in my chest that I doubted would ever heal. “Typhoeus has been either used or imprisoned his entire life. He wants to be free. He will never return here voluntarily.”
“That’s good… right? That he’s free now. Even though you’ll miss him. There’s a lot of things I don’t know, but I’m pretty sure freedom is better than imprisonment.”
“He’snotfree,” Tartarus corrected sharply. “He onlythinkshe is free. Typhoeus is a monster, he will be hunted to the death, and his blood will be on my hands for not finding a way to make him happy here.”
The biting edge to his voice had softened into sadness by the time he finished speaking, and while I was several leagues out of my depth, I really wanted to reassure this guy. After all, despair was one of the few emotions I’d become acquainted with recently, and honestly,no onedeserved to feel that way.
“Far be it from me to argue, since you’re an all-knowing god and all, but it sounds like it would have been pretty hard to make him happy if he never wanted to be here in the first place, you know? What exactly could you have done?” I shrugged. “I’m never going to be happy in the underworld, no matter how nice and peaceful that empty island I was on is. It isn’t where I want to be.”
“An island, hm? Now your strange in-between life makes more sense. You traveled here from the Isles of the Blessed. What a strange mortal you are to leave such a paradise and come here. Perhaps your spiritual mother can elaborate on why that is.”
A woman, a goddess, stepped forward, veiled from head-to-toe in black fabric, with a silver crown over top that glinted in the blue light from above.
