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“Fucking Hydra,” he muttered beneath his breath, before continuing his list out loud.
“…Geryon, an irascible giant with three heads. The Chimera, a fire-breathing female monster with a lion's head, a goat's body, and a serpent's tail. Of course, our lovely harpy friends. And Centaurs.”
“Centaurs are not monsters,” Divina defended stoutly.
“Well, Ixion apparently made them into monsters with his cruel acts and the sacrifices,” Ere reminded her.
“If I deduced correctly, some or all of these monsters are what the Centaurs of the Pelion Mountains protect the Thessalians from. Maybe that’s why the harpies seem so eager to devour the dead of their enemies.”
Divina bristled and locked her spine.
“They’renotever going to get my Andros,” she vowed. “Even if…”
She cut herself off with a gnash of teeth. She refused to think negative what ifs.
“They’re just not going to,” she insisted.
“Calm yourself, feather dragon,” Ere said. His tone was cool, but his eyes were warm and sympathetic.
“We’ll figure this out. Let’s hide his body somewhere safe first.”
Easier said than done. Turned out, a centaur over two thousand pounds wasn’t going to be moved by three humans, no matter how strong one of them was. So, they gathered large, leafy branches from nearby trees and bushes, and stacked them over Andros’ body, covering him as best they could.
“Unless someone came directly this way, he won’t be too conspicuous from afar or above,” Ere said, surveying their handiwork.
“Should we leave Chewie here to guard him?” Divina asked, worrying her bottom lip.
Ere looked down at the giant lion-dog, who stared back up at him with cocked ears and shiny, intelligent eyes that were almost entirely obscured by the folds of his skin and tufts of fur.
“We might need him, actually. We need everything at our disposal to make this endeavor successful.”
Divina inhaled a deep breath to brace herself, and nodded.
“All right. Let’s go.”
Thus, the four of them strode together into the yawning unknown, disappearing into the black abyss of the Underworld.
~ * ~* ~ *~ * ~* ~ *~ * ~
Andros awoke to undiluted pain.
Everything within and without burned with the intensity of a thousand suns, as if he were roasting slowly in hellfire.
He tried to move, to find relief, even if it was just for a moment, just an inch. But no part of his body obeyed him. He could only endure, trapped within the prison of his own flesh and bones.
He tried to open his eyes, take in his surroundings. But there was only darkness, behind and beyond his eyelids. He didn’t know if he’d managed to open them. There was no difference. Nothing to see. No light, no darkness. Simply void.
Nothingness.
He opened his mouth to unleash the unbearable pressure and agony in a wordless cry, but no sound emerged. Even the expression of pain was denied him.
Was he in Tartarus? Was he in hell?
But he had done nothing in life to warrant this punishment. If he was dead, his resting place would surely be Elysium.
Indeed,a deep, nebulous voice echoed in his ears, as if it came to him through fathoms-deep oceans.
You can have Elysium if you stop fighting for your life, centaur. The poison in your body should have killed you long ago, and yet you refuse to let go. You are in the in-between hell of your own making. Waging a futile war against death.
