TAMING APOLLO | completed

11. the danake

He shrugs. "Same as you. Looking for answers."

The door is pulled open by a petite young girl in a maid's uniform. Her skin is pale green, almost translucent as her white eyes scan over us as a group. Her eyes linger on Apollo, and if she wasn't already so pale, I would say she was shocked.

She returns her composure before plastering a service smile over her face. "The dark king and his queen will not be seeing anybody. Try again in a century if the universe has not been blown to smithereens." Her face remains straight as she dismisses us and attempts to slam the door in our faces.

Apollo's foot stops the door before it can seal itself, and the maid scowls at the lot of us. I refrain from grimacing at how her face changes when she scowls. She looks like a ghost, her face stretches and her eyes darken. The sight is something fresh out of my nightmares.

I'm so focused on the maid's freakish face, that I haven't even noticed Hercules' fingers rummaging through a satchel around his waist, interconnected to his sword holster.

The maid's silver eyes wander as well, but she's not in the least bit intimidated by large the bronze sword near his satchel.

He pulls out a large, strange looking coin. At first sight it looks silver with strange archaic drawings on it, but when he holds it up, it turns a coppery colour, with completely different drawings and ancient greek writings on it.

I find myself wishing I'd paid more attention to when Ariel would go on and on about mythology and how everything worked, because that kind of knowledge would come in handy in moments like these.

The maid watches the coin almost hungrily, all that's left is for her to stick out her tongue and lick her lips. Her bright silver eyes never wander away from it as Hercules clears his throat. This motion doesn't shift her focus, but she's definitely listening.

"This danake is yours if you let us speak to your dark king." The maid's eyes dart up to Hercules, and she doesn't say anything for a moment before opening the door up wider for us to enter.

We all gladly oblige, and the shack is so small that Apollo has to bend to fit through the door hole. I breeze through as if there's no frame thanks to my small stature and have to do a double take on what I see.

The inside of the shack is enormous and I have to take a moment to process the fact that this is the same shack I just entered through.

I step into some kind of foray, with a wide black marble floored passage and black walls leading to a door at the end of the hall. This walk way in itself is bigger than my entire apartment, and just from looking in I can already see that magic is real.

There's a door at the end of the hallway, the frame looks to be pure gold, and there's heat radiating from it. A few vines, with delicate little flowers seem to be growing on the large door.

I glance back to Apollo to make sure this us all real, and he smirks at me, as if he didn't tell me that this shack would be this mystical on purpose just so he could see my reaction.

He has an amused simper lingering on the corner of his perfect pink lips almost as if to say it was worth it, and a foreign emotion passes through those silver orbs of it, but it's gone within a second and I haven't been able to identify it.

A foreign feeling develops deep within the pits of my stomach, like I've just reached the peak of a rollercoaster ride and we're all going down. The flutters.

I look away from Apollo and the feeling subsides. Maybe it's Cyrene, I tell myself before my gaze falls back on the maid, who seems a little uneasy but she can't seem to keep her eyes off of the danake in Hercules' hand.

As we head deeper into the hallway, my eyes wander onto the walls, where many luxurious tapestries are hung. On those tapestries are illustrations of many disturbing things; of hellfire consuming old bones of people, and of a large river, which seems to be made of molten lava, but if I look closely enough, I can see hands reaching out from the lava, pulling at the one boat that floats perfectly on the river.

At the very end of the hallway, is a tapestry of a mix of wild flowers, which serves as a contrast to all the daunting paintings I'd seen before.

The maid guides us through the giant foray, and huffs in a huge breath before pushing the flowered door open. Theres a bright light beyond the door as she bustles through, and Hercules follows after her, still carrying the bleeding Thalia over his shoulder.

I wait for Apollo. He notices this and speeds up. He walks through the door, but makes no other movement, only waits for me to come through.

I'm scared. This door represents so much for me. I could always tell them to go on without me, and take my chances with the reforming harpies outside to wait in the car, or I could go in, anchoring myself down deeper into all this insanity the same way Ariel did.

At least she understood it all, and knew what she was getting herself into before hurling in. Me? What do I know? Absolutely nothing. I'm in over my head here. Apollo frowns at my reluctance to enter and a crease forms in the space between his perfectly shaped brows as his silver eyes stare into my soul. He's studying me.

He looks like he wants to say something, but in the end just reaches as hand out to me, like he's promising he'll keep me safe, and that if ever there was a risk worth taking in my life... it's this one.

I gulp, taking one last look at the trail we've blazed, into the dark and glamorous hallway we've just walked through, and take his hand into mine. Before I know it, I'm drowning in light, the gold door behind me slams shut and I just know, there's no going back now.