The Warrior

Seerose

I followed Gemini and Perseus to a seemingly normal city street.  Cars passed through the lights and humans walked from sidewalk to sidewalk.  It was a meeting of two different worlds, soon to be three.  In one of the lanes for the cars, there was a metal disk pressed into the ground.  The entrance to the underworld.

"Getting to it will be a challenge," Gemini said.  "Perseus and I nearly got hit by one of the human vehicles this morning."

"It is in the middle of the street," I said.  "How do you suggest we attempt the entrance?"

"This would be so much easier if we could halt time," Perseus said.

"Where would you get an idiotic idea like that?"

"Do you see that building over there?"  He pointed to the theatre across the road where some of the other gargoyles used to sit at day.  They were missing now.  "Gemini and I went there to see what had become of the others and ended up seeing a moving picture story about time travel and an old man who can stop time."

"I think they call the moving picture stories movies," Gemini said.  

"You went to experience human activities without me?" I asked.

"Well, if you hadn't gone to the church we would have never known about the Devil and his forces, would we?"

"I suppose."

"I have figured something out," Perseus pointed out.  "Whenever those lights turn red, the cars on one street will stop so the cars on the other may pass.  We can make it into the passage on the next red light!"

"Something tells me that humans are not accustomed to people walking into the streets and opening portals to the underworld."

"Orion, we saw people doing the exact same thing this morning."

The instant the light turned red, Gemini sprinted out onto the street.  Some of the cars let out honking noises as he bent down to remove the passage covering from the ground.  He slipped down before the light turned green.  Perseus went in on the next light, myself on his trail by the next.  The passage was a small drop onto wet pavement below.  Gemini and Perseus were looking around, as was I.

Beside the stretch of pavement was a river the color of soil with a rancid and rank stench.  Small hairy creatures scurried past us, with glowing red eyes and huge teeth for their size.  Gemini jumped when one passed him.  He calmed himself down and took a piece of paper from his pocket.

"Draco could be either way," he said.

"Well we cannot split up," Perseus told him.  "One of us would have to go on their own and who knows what would say happen to them."

"What is in the water?" I asked.

"Humans wastes and garbage.  I would not say it is safe to drink, since it has been referred to as flowing poison."

"Maybe we could find Draco with the current, or against it."

Gemini bent down by the water, only inches from its decaying wrench.  He put his arm into it and pulled out a horn.  I could not say if it was Draco's or not, but it belonged to a gargoyle.  "The current has indeed begun to help us.  It must have been brought from that way."  He nodded off towards the direction the water was coming from.  "We should take that route."

"Are you certain?"

"I have never been more certain."

There was a slow and churning moan that circled through the waterways.  It sounded as if it was calling out to us.