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“Essentially,” Persephone agreed. “Although, there’s some more flair and finesse to it. There’s jumping for your own purposes of movement, and then jumping to answer a soul’s call. There is a difference.”
She watched him mull this over. The man had dedicated his life to his work, his mission, and now he had a new one. For the briefest of moments, Persephone recalled him as he was when he lived as the Viking Chief.
Bloody.
Determined.
Steadfast.
The glimpsed memory faded almost instantly.
“Would you like to try a shadow jump with me?” Her words surprised him. It took Devon a second to realize what she asked before he gave her a quick nod.
The shadows swirled up around him, moving over them and between them, her hold on his shoulder never letting go. The shadows took over her vision, for the barest of moments, and in that instant, they were in a whole different place.
Persephone had shadow jumped to the prominent hill not far from the castle that overlooked the Underworld’s entrance. Devon wobbled a bit, trying to get his footing on the loamy knoll. She pretended not to notice how embarrassed he always became when he was not in complete command of himself.
“That was,” he murmured, “… unpleasant.”
He blinked, as if clearing his vision from the disorientation of the shadows.
“You’ll adapt to it,” she said. “If you are indeed to live in service to the Underworld, you will learn to shadow jump in order to heed the call of the souls, preventing them from becoming rogues.”
She looked over at him when he said nothing in response, only to find that he was barely listening. He looked over the realm, his eyes wide in fascination.
“Holy shit,” Devon muttered, mindlessly stepping forward.
She followed his line of sight to the gates, the two monumental stone structures that stood between the living and the dead, standing sentry to the Underworld. A long stone wall, that looked well over twenty feet tall, framed the gates and fenced in the Underworld.
“We are not of the mortal realm or Earth, really, but I suppose the most mortal understanding would be that we are a pocket of the human world. One with an infinite amount of space to hold the dead of thousands of generations.
“The veil you crossed is what holds our world from the living, so there are no dead escaping here. History may have led you to believe that we are underground, but that is only because you must follow the river beneath the surface to access the portal to our world.”
His eyes followed her description, taking in each area she pointed out.
“There are two large openings where the river flows from above, creating access points to the underground from the mortal realm. We call it the River Styx, and as you know, it takes you to the main gate.”
As she finished speaking, she watched his eyes move over the river, as it curved around a rocky corner to the gates. From where they stood, the gates sat atop a hill, the long stone wall reaching out as far as one could see on either side of the gates. From the gates, paths made of cobble stone led down into the Underworld. There were two points in the wall that allowed the Styx to branch off into various rivers beneath it. The water flowing more sedately as the rivers and paths crawled through the Underworld.
“Should a very much alive person follow the river, they may only find caverns. If they were to die there, this place would show itself.”
“The sun… the moon… It seems like a whole other planet. How are they different if we are only in a pocket of Earth?” Devon asked, seeming to understand, and moving the conversation forward.
“Not a true planet, but a rift opened by Tartarus to create a pocket for the dead to still be able
to access from Earth. That is the true sun, but it as you see it through the veil,” she explained.
“As Goddesses,” she started, changing the subject to continue with the tour. “We make our oaths on the River Styx, so it does have another purpose aside from transporting souls. Cerberus is behind the gate and keeps souls from escaping the Underworld. No one can leave without my say.”
Persephone pointed to a building, or pavilion, right inside of the gates. It looked like a Parthenon from ancient Greece. “The judgment hall. They determine where you end up in the Underworld. There are three judges, almost worse than the Moirai, with their nonsense. Blind and prone to ramble,” she muttered. “They choose from the three parts of the kingdom as to where a soul spends eternity. An area for people who are not necessarily good, but not truly evil, that we call the Asphodel Meadows.”
Devon looked at where she pointed to see several fields where people worked the land. They seemed just to be existing but not completely unhappy.
“The Fields of Punishment that my Furies, whom I will introduce you to in time, especially enjoy working.” She pointed to the fields that were north of the Asphodel Meadows. The Fields were filled with gore, torture, and bloody chaos. What looked like the human’s idea of demons tortured the souls, the screams not audible from where they were standing, but yet another veil covered it so that it did not disturb those living around the Fields of Punishment.
“They each conduct a punishment fit for the crimes the person committed in life. A person murders people in the mortal realm, then the murderer is to have the same done to him for eternity by one of the Furies. They each have their own sins they’ve divided between them to punish. No mercy on the souls whose crimes overlap between two of the Furies.”
She could see from his face that the Fields of Punishment turned his stomach, his knuckles turning white as he clenched his hands into fists.
