From the Ashes

Chapter 7: Dreams and Nightmares

The knock came too early.

I guessed I had missed the first time it had happened, because it had already become a steady pounding on my door.

"What?" I groaned, and rolled over. The bed was softer than I remembered, the room cooler. Had summer reversed? Or even better- time? Maybe Dad had finally saved up enough money for a better bed. The heady scent of jasmine filled my nostrils.

"Xavier."

Goosebumps, immediately. My eyes snapped open.

It was Ash.

I was in the Underworld. In Hades' palace. And time was still trudging on, slow as ever.

I got up, slowly as I could, and locked myself into the bathroom as she pounded at the door, feeling some satisfaction at her growing frustration. I took my time splashing icy water on my face and brushing my teeth before opening the door. "Huh?"

"We should leave now," said Ash. Her tone was snippy.

"Why?" I tried not to make it sound too insolent. "It's too early." I checked the time on my watch, and almost choked on my own tongue. "It's four in the morning!"

"We should get an early start," said Ash. "I've asked Elvira, and we're allowed to borrow horses- but we'll have to leave a deposit, just in case we don't return them."

"What did you give them?"

"Fifty gold pieces."

I swore. Her eyebrows rose. "That's too much. Do you know how much food that could have given us?"

"Which I haggled down from a hundred. And we'll come back, so it doesn't matter." She came in without asking and sat down on the bed. "I need to explain some things to you." She opened the rucksack she had taken from the room yesterday. "We have some silver, a lighter and a torch. Some more stuff too, but it would take too long to lay it all out for you." She opened the bag, and I caught a glimpse of a pouch of coins, a knife, a lighter and flashlight.

"I'm not stupid, you know." I glared at her.

"We also have a map." Ash spread it out. I looked over her shoulder. It had probably been coiled tightly when she first got it, but now it lay flat, unfurled so many times that it was creased. It was made of heavy vellum paper, slightly fraying at the edges. Ash had plotted the Undead and Living camps.

"We're here." Ash pointed to the deformed mess that was Italy. "The nearest Undead camp is here." She pointed to England. "That's Aqua. Lignum is not far- it's in Ireland. There are two here-" she pointed to China, then Malaysia. "Aurum, then Argentum."

"Silver and Gold," I said. "Both Living camps."

"Yeah. And here-" she pointed to South Korea and Japan- "are their main adversaries, Ignis and Ventum. Terra and Lapis are in North America."

"How are we going to travel?" I asked. The meteor had raised the sea levels drastically- blown Mount Etna and Vesuvius to pieces and would cause an earthquake that triggered the hotspot under the volcano to erupt. Violently. Earthquakes had shifted the pattern of the earth, and steam had risen, mingling with the cloud of ash and dust. There had been almost no sunlight for two years.

When the dust cleared, Earth was drastically different. Venice had completely disappeared. So had the Maldives and part of Amsterdam and Nigeria. The borders of coastal countries shrank backwards.

"We can pay for a boat," said Ash. "A steamboat. A small one."

"With what? How many silver pieces do we have?"