Charon lead us down the pitch-black corridor, each stride was powerful but silent. Eventually, at the end, the corridor opened up to a massive expanse, huge and wide like it was outside.
It was dark, but red, but also bright gold at the same time, all the different colors merging together to form a beautiful citadel. Monsters that I'd usually be afraid of were living like they were normal humans, travelling inbetween buildings, conversing with each other and just living their everyday lives. It was disconcerting to say the least.
The city of monsters was far above us though, on a higher level than everything else. And honestly, I wasn't complaining.
In the distance, I could see a huge castle, made of the same obsidian that DOA Studios was, but it was much more elegant. Metamorphic rock protruded from it, like an innate defense against any attackers. Lava poured down the side of it, forming a sort of moat that was effectively uncrossable. However, there was something even more strange about it, that was glaringly obvious.
The castle was upside down, hanging from the infinite dark expanse that seemed like the sky, higher than all others, even the city of monsters. I gave Annabeth and Grover quick glances and they nodded.
That had to be Hades' palace.
However, all of that was great and all, but it was on the other side of a river, the river that Charon was gonna help us cross. But this wasn't just any river.
It was the River Styx. The mythical river that granted Achilles his invulnerability, until he obviously died. I'd heard legends from my mom about this black, destructive, dangerous water, and I felt no connection to it, nothing like I had with other bodies of water. Poseidon had no claim here. The river would kill me just the same as anybody else, and if my mom was right, it would burn me up horribly until I get erased from existence.
Yippee.
Charon took us down to the banks of the river, careful not to let it splash on him, and got on to a rotting fishing boat easily, taking a seat at the front of it. He gestured for us to get on with him, and we all nervously looked at each other.
Grover was the first to get on, then Annabeth, leaving me to hesitantly step inside and clutch onto the sides of the boat to keep my balance.
"Let us depart." Charon declared, grabbing his oar and rowing forwards.
Instantly, I saw the other side of the river, and my heart dropped.
On the other side was a massive dog, a Rottweiler to be exact. It was at least forty feet tall, and it's face seemed vicious.
Well. Faces. It had three heads, growling constantly and ready to rip us apart.
"Cerberus..." Annabeth muttered beside me.
It towered above a large cluster of souls, all waiting in a well formed line, like they were queuing to get somewhere.
"Hey, Charon. Why are they waiting?" I asked and the boatmen grunted.
"They're waiting for judgement from the Judgement Pavillion, so their souls can be granted rest in the correct part of the Underworld." He said. I nodded before asking another question.
"Who are the judges? And what do you mean, 'what part of the Underworld'? Isn't it all just the same?" I asked.
Charon only glared at me with irritation, probably annoyed at my questions, so Annabeth stepped in.
"The judges are some of the most acclaimed mortals, specifically demigods, in recent history. Hades selects them every couple of centuries or so. I think right now, it's Winston Churchill, Martin Luther King, and Bill Russell." She spoke and I raised my eyebrows.
"Bill Russell? Really?"
She shrugged. "He was a great guy."
"Fair enough. So what do they judge exactly?" I asked.
"Well, they judge what you did in your life, how good of a person you were, your tributes to the Olympians, so on and so on. If you're deemed to have done nothing necessarily good or bad, you are placed in the Fields of Asphodel, which is basically purgatory."
"If you were bad, you go to Tartarus. Hell, but even worse. And if you're good, or even just a demigod, then you go to Elysium, which is eternal happiness. But if you go to Elysium, decide to be reincarnated and end up there three times in a row, you go to the Isles of the Blessed, which is like Elysium+." She finally finished, breathing heavily after her long explanation.
As soon as she stopped talking though, we landed on the banks of the other side, and got off quickly. I looked back at Charon.
"Thanks man." I nodded. He scowled.
"Save it. Just bring up my pay rise, like we agreed."
"Sure."
With that, he left, pushing himself out to return to DOA, and I looked back at my friends.
"Right, so we need a plan. Is the only way we can get through to Hades by doing the whole soul judging thing?" I asked and Annabeth pursed her lips.
"Yeah, but that might take a while." She gestured to the massive line of dead souls, all stationary and their faces apathetic. I grimaced.
"Right..." I muttered.
"Why don't we go past Cerberus?" Grover suggested, pointing to the huge hound that towered over all of us, glaring in three different directions.
"Cuz that would kill us." Annabeth blinked.
"Well what other choice do we have? Waiting for eternity to meet a basketball player so he can judge us?" Grover retorted. I whistled.
"He's got a point." Annabeth gritted her teeth.
"Fine. But when we die and we come back to this place, I'll kill you both again." She darkly threatened and I believed her.
So with that, we began to push forwards, passing the entrance to the queue and moving inbetween souls while we headed to the dog. There was a sign somewhere that said "EZ DEATH LINE" but I ignored it, more focused on the gigantic fucking canine.
Eventually, we got close enough to Cerberus that it started to pick up our scent, sniffing in the air. We froze, and he kept sniffing, all three heads swiveling around in confusion. It's eyesight was probably pretty bad, like other dogs, but it was still just as terrifying.
Suddenly, I saw Grover start to tense up and he brought his hands up to his nose, swinging his head back, and I instantly looked to Annabeth who seemed to have the exact same horrifying thought I was.
This fucking satyr was about to sneeze.
"ACHOO!" Grover let it out, and immediately, all three heads were staring directly at us. Cerberus began to snarl, and got up from where it was previously sitting, cocking his legs back like he was ready to pounce and rip us apart.
Shit.
Cerberus leaped up, claws extending from it's paws and it's fangs on full display. We didn't even have enough time to scream, let alone get out the way.
Getting shredded by a demonic dog wasn't exactly how I thought I'd pass away, but oh well. This was the end.
I closed my eyes and braced myself to die in the Underworld, and I didn't have enough time to appreciate the irony of that.
But when death didn't come for a few seconds, I opened them again, and tried to move around but I found that I couldn't, still conscious but paralysed.
I looked to check if my friends were still alive, and thankfully they were, but I couldn't even call out to them. My body was stuck, just like what happened with Clarisse, Achelous, Miss Dodds.
I could also feel my body ooze with power, like an aura was coming off of me, my strength increasing massively. This was that Hero blood thing Amphitrite was talking about. I think.
I blinked and looked straight forwards, only to find a previously deadly, aggressive, beast of a dog cowering in front of me, lying down with all of its heads tucked in it's legs.
Cerberus was peeking at me through its terror, and it was visibly shaking, staring down at the ground with its other heads. I followed its gaze, only to find the very earth beneath me cracking and shaking, my power rushing through the area.
As soon as I realised that though, I felt that crushing power stop, and I could move again. Everything also felt a lot lighter, as if gravity itself was releasing it's grip on us. I glanced at my amazed friends and shrugged.
"I have questions." Grover blinked.
"So do I." I replied.
"Yeah, we all do. Ask them later, we have a god of death to speak to." Annabeth said, moving forwards but still giving me a strange look while she walked. Grover followed her, eyeing Cerberus carefully, but eventually walking past it and into the deeper Underworld.
I was last, and began to stroll into the gate Cerberus was guarding, but I gave the dog one last look, just to make sure it wouldn't jump us again. It whimpered.
Eventually, I went into the gate, and my jaw dropped as soon as I got in.
We were looking down on the Underworld, a vast expanse of terrain, morbid but strangely beautiful. It was equally dark but majestic at the same time, dull light radiating out of the walls and the floor, gem stones scattered around.
It was split into four parts, the borders surrounding each part of it were incredibly clear. I pointed to the first one on the left. It was drab, dull and full of still souls who kept the same expression.
"What's that?" I asked, pointing to it.
Annabeth smiled, always happy to prove her intelligence. "The Fields of Asphodel. Like I explained before, it's for people who haven't really done anything good or bad, so it's kinda like purgatory."
"And that?" I nodded at the next one, a much brighter and joyous place, similar to some kind of island resort with how beautiful the beaches and nature were. Interestingly, there were much fewer souls around, and any that were there held a much more solid form than the others, like they were still human. It contrasted harshly with everything else.
"Elysium. Where we'll go when we die, since we're half-Olympian and everything. Also home to anybody who was good in their life."
"So that's the Isles of the Blessed?" I asked, gesturing to the next part, where hardly anybody was around, even compared to Elysium. But somehow, it looked even better than Elysium, a scattering of tropical islands that seemed to be personalised to each soul that lived there.
"Yeah. Gotta be reincarnated three times, and be good every single time. Its kind of a gamble, but it's high risk, high reward." Annabeth shrugged.
Grover started, pointing to the last part, which happened to be directly underneath Hades' upside down palace. "So that's..."
"Tartarus." I breathed, looking at it with amazement.
Effectively, it was a massive hole, just an abyss in the ground and the bottom of it couldn't be seen. Shouldn't really be that interesting, right? Wrong.
It radiated a disgustingly foul energy, which seemed to solidify into an awful smell, which was enough to make me scrunch up my face and give me nausea. Whatever the fuck was there was definetly not good, I could say that much.
Annabeth didn't even audibly confirm it, she just stared at the pit with a mix of emotions. Fear, curiosity, sadness, disgust. I felt the same way.
However, we couldn't spend too much time looking down at the planes of death, we had an objective to get to. Thankfully enough, there was a bridge that seemed to connect from a few feet from where we were, all the way to the palace of Hades, silver arches and black metal twisting around to form a direct path to the edge of Tartarus, directly beneath the palace.
We started to march and continue, ignoring all of the dead people staring up at us as we pushed on.
Eventually, after about ten minutes of walking in a tense silence, we came up towards the edge of the abyss that Annabeth called Tartarus, and that's where the bridge ended.
Where there used to be silver from the bridge below our feet was now a weird material that I could only compare to sand really, it was grainy and mineralised but soft enough to sink your entire foot into.
We didn't dare look over the edge to peer into Tartarus for fear of falling and never coming back alive, but we did look up at the huge castle basically hanging above us from the dark, cloud sky of the Underworld.
"So how exactly are we gonna get up there?" I asked and Annabeth quickly pointed to Grover's shoes, clearly already having an idea.
"Grover can fly us up there. You can support three people, right?" She glanced at him and he bleated nervously.
"Maybe?" That wasn't reassuring.
"Won't I get hit by Zeus for, y'know, flying?" I asked and Annabeth shook her head.
"Ordinarily, yeah, he'd throw some lightning at you or something. But this isn't his domain anymore. The sky in the Underworld is still a part of the Underworld, so it's under the rule of Hades. You'll be fine." She explained.
"Maia." Grover breathed, and his laces began to contort into wings easily, fluttering at the side of his hooves. I awkwardly grabbed onto his arm, and Annabeth did the same with his other one.
Sure enough, the wings worked, every step Grover took sent us further into the air and closer to Hades' palace. We got at least sixty feet in the air, maybe halfway up, in a few seconds. It was great so far, maybe a little too gr-
FLUTTER FLUTTER
That thought was interrupted by the horrible sound of the shoes suddenly deciding to change direction, rapidly diverting from upwards to propelling us straight down, straight into the huge abyss below us.
"SHIT!" I screamed and Annabeth screamed, while Grover desperately tried to kick our way back up again, struggling and shaking.
The dark, eternal hole below us was getting closer and closer with each passing second, and honestly, I was fully preparing to literally die in hell, closing my eyes when it was made obvious that Grover couldn't save us.
At least I'd be closer to my mom.
When we didn't get horribly crushed or absorbed into Tartarus, I opened my eyes and darted my eyes around, only to find that we were stuck in the exact same position, Grover's shoes had stopped fluttering and gravity decided to stop working. It was like we were frozen in time.
Before I could fully understand what was happening though, a man began to form out of thin air before us, a cluster of shadows making up his frame while he appeared to be floating, just as we were.
Eventually, all of his features were made clear, and to be honest, I was just as terrified being in his prescence as I was at the idea of being sent to fucking Tartarus.
The first thing to notice about him was his amazing height. This man was no simple human, he towered above us all at about ten feet and if I had to guess, he weighed like twenty-five stone.
His face was extraordinarily pale, his facial features sunken and eye bags forming underneath his dull pupils. His eyes were dark grey, and he had a well-cut, brown beard that connected to his longer, brunette hair, which was all hidden underneath a black crown. He was skinny as well, barely any fat lining his frame, but not in a physically fit way, more like a severely malnourished kind of way.
His clothes were just as interesting. He had a ring on one of his pale, frail hands, silver and embedded with a green emerald, and funnily enough, it emanated an aura of freshness and nature, which seemed to juxtapose his whole shtick here. He also had a long, black cloak, which glimmered dully under the light, but when I got a closer look, I realised what was actually making it shine.
The cloak was made out of souls, reaching out and silently crying out for mercy, but they would get sucked right back into the cloak before they could escape, and the cycle would continue. It was so horrifying, I couldn't help but stare at it in morbid curiosity.
The man cleared his throat and raised his eyebrows.
"I believe the direction to my palace is this way, nephew." His voice was smooth and low, but not necessarily deep.
Annabeth seemed to catch on first, her voice hitching and her eyes growing to the size of dinner plates.
"Your palace? N-nephew? You m-must be-!"
He sighed and nodded, closing his eyes and scratching his forehead. "I suppose it makes sense for a child of Athena to realise it first, hm? Well, you are correct, I am he."
"Who a-are you?" Grover asked and the man's eyes lit up spectacularly, glowing with a bright green fire that could've been amusement, anger or excitement.
"Well, you're in my kingdom." He smirked.
That's when I realised. "S-so you're-!"
"I am Hades." He grinned.
"And I have been expecting you, Mr. Jackson."
___________________________________________
AN:
Word Count: 3,033
Overall Word Count: 46,205
Sorry for the slightly shorter chapter, and it's probably not that good, but I just needed one that took us from DOA to Hades, and this is the most appropriate time to end it.
By the way, I changed the people at the Judgement Pavillion because I could. No other reason.
And the city of monsters will be relevant, trust me.
Also Hades wasn't considered the god of death, he was considered the hod of the dead, and there is a difference. I just write the former because it sounds better.
It's the end soon now lol, maybe like four more chapters left to go.
Anyways, I hope you enjoyed, and I'll see you next chapter!