What would've been a quiet summer turns into a globe-trotting adventure when an incident in Olympian High's campus garden gets the attention of resident Chosens Amelia Kingston and Zeus Olympian. To their surprise, the culprit is none other than the...
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It was the first time Pierre descending into the Underworld, but the realm felt like stepping into a familiar place. An eerie but very familiar place.
Pierre suspected it was because of his dreams where he met Hades. The palace and the gardens were the only things he could remember vividly. Beyond that, it was just a huge blank of darkness in his head. But then again, he didn't have that much of an imagination to begin with.
He felt something holding his left heel, but he didn't bother to look down and see. He knew it wasn't some bony hand but Nadya gripping him. It was necessary, she told him, unless he wanted to fall and get trapped in the Underworld in return. With him walking on his two feet on solid ground, Pierre wasn't sure how he'd exactly 'fall', but he was pretty sure he didn't want to become stuck in the Underworld for who knows how long.
The Underworld was almost the same as Pierre imagined it to be. Dark, cold, and hopeless. It was a wasteland teeming with lives that were lost, dreams and promises that were broken by those who died trying to keep them. At the bleak horizon, a large stream cut across the land. Fog rose above the murky waters, shrouding the rest of the realm ahead.
The River Styx.
"Claudius told me that Benjamin Miller died not long ago," Nadya had told him as she put Claudius to sleep, a step that she needed to do for the spell. "So it will be easy for you to find him. He'll be lingering in the banks of Styx. It's a big river, and there's a lot of wandering souls. You may want to cross the other side to make sure you covered your bases. But don't take your time. . ."
"Or you'll end up like them," Pierre finished the last part.
He hoped Nadya meant that he'd end up like the souls if he failed and got killed by the mafia, not some other freaky, supernatural thing. The job sounded so easy when he was still in the normal world, but now, in what was literal hell, not so much. Even if Nadya assured him that there won't be creatures that would try to hurt him, Pierre wasn't confident that he'd be strong enough to face ghosts.
Pierre marched forward, dodging phantoms as they floated past. They weren't like the ones he'd seen on TV-white, blanket-like things with eye holes. They just looked like normal people. Glowing, almost identical people staring at space. Their gazes were so empty Pierre shuddered at the chill traveling down his spine. They didn't look dead, but the way they looked in their surroundings-at him-said otherwise.
He wondered if the souls were aware of everything, and if it was the reason why they looked so lifeless.
The entire way to the river, Pierre looked at each and every soul he passed or that passed through him, but no one resembled Amelia's uncle. He even forced himself to walk up to some of the souls gathering together to ask, but they would either just stare at him or scatter away. It didn't make him feel better that they'd sometimes look at him as if he was the creepy ghost. As if they knew who he was and what he could do.
