The dining room was how I imagined it would be: big, luxurious and dark. Aergia sat alone at the end of the long dining table. Upon seeing me, she waved a hand invitingly towards the chair next to her.
"Please, join me."
Although her power wasn't seeping its way through me, I could feel the instruction in her tone, making it clear she wasn't extending an invitation. Sitting down, I watched her carefully. She was unfazed by my stare, swirling her red wine in one hand.
At once, a servant appeared beside me with a dinner plate similar to the one Aergia had half-eaten, placing it before me. Looking down at the perfectly cooked food, I felt my stomach rumble for the first time since I'd arrived. I'd been so distracted with everything around me that I'd completely forgotten about food. Instinctively, I went to reach for my fork, but then I noticed Aergia staring at me, her gaze intense. I folded my hands in my lap.
"I trust your stay is going well," she said.
"You're acting like I'm on a holiday," I spoke before thinking.
Aergia raised an eyebrow. "Compared to what's outside the boundaries of Sloth City? Serena, you are on a holiday."
"But what is outside the city? This building, even?"
She looked at me from the corner of her eyes as she played with her food, chuckling darkly. Her sinister laugh bounced off the walls, making me lose my appetite.
"Wouldn't you like to know."
Her chuckle reminded me that she was no friend of mine. In fact, I had no idea who Aergia was to me. It was clear that she was willing to abide by Hades' orders – but to what extent, I had no idea. I tried to discreetly distance myself as far away from her as possible within the constraints of my seat.
Slowly, Aergia raised her glass up to her mouth, letting the wine slink downwards to her thick lips. Over her glass, she looked at me as though she could sense what I was thinking.
"It's not me you have to worry about Serena," she patronised. "In fact, if I were you, I'd stop being so curious about what's outside these walls and be more focused about trying to stay in them."
"Is Hades going to kill me?" I blurted, unable to control my thoughts in my own panic.
Aergia took a sip of her wine.
"Hades is a complicated man. It's almost impossible to predict what he's thinking, but no, I'm fairly certain he will not."
I breathed a sigh of relief, feeling a weight lift off me. If a Goddess like Aergia believed Hades didn't have it in for me, that had to count for something.
"But..."
Spoke too soon.
"He certainly has an interest in you," she drawled, looking me over. "And since he demanded that you be taken care of, well, there's always the possibly he wants for you to be one of his...escorts."
My body froze. "An escort? Like...I just have to follow him places?"
For the first time, Aergia burst out in loud laughter – so loud I flinched. "You humans are so naïve. Hades has specific standards. And his standards are young, beautiful and..." she trailed off, fleetingly glancing at my bust, "surely you understand by now. So, no, you will not just 'follow him places'".
She chuckled again.
My breath caught in my throat; my body completely frozen in my seat. If what Aergia was saying was true...
Shuffling sounded behind me. The servant who had visited my chambers earlier moved forwards, replacing Aergia's finished meal with a decadent dessert.
The servant accidentally knocked a piece of cutlery off the table, earning herself an incensed glare from Aergia. The servant fumbled to pick it up, quickly placing the cutlery back on the table and darting away, out of the danger zone.
It was clear from Aergia's exasperation expression that she didn't have a single care for her servants. And if she didn't care about them, she would hardly think twice about handing me over to Hades' Guard when they arrived.
After an hour of numbing silence in which I sat petrified as Aergia polished off her third dessert, Aergia excused herself and I was finally invited to leave the table. I scurried off as quickly as possible, guessing the directions back to my chamber.
Raven was hurrying to catch up behind me. "Serena, you're going the wrong way. It was a left turn, not a right."
I didn't care. I just needed to get out. To get anywhere. I picked up my pace. I needed air, that's what I needed. And to get to air, I needed to get outside.
The problem was, I had no idea how to get outside. My breathing was shallow, and I'd starved off the panic as much as I could, but to no avail. Tears were streaming down my cheeks as I continued to race through the dark halls, only getting myself more lost. This hall led me to a dead end. Growling in frustration, I spun on my heels to see Raven, who almost ran into me.
"I need to get outside. I need air. Please," I begged.
Raven looked over my tears with compassion, or what might have been pity. She pursed her lips and came to a decision. "Fine. Five minutes only, but Aergia can't find out. Follow me."
She took back off in the direction we'd come, and I gave up trying to figure out where we were in the building. Eventually, Raven came to a stop outside a set of ostentatious gold double doors. I grabbed the handle with relief and pushed it open, expecting to feel the wind on my face.
I was sorely disappointed, and so stunned that my own panic momentarily disappeared. The air was hot, humid and sticky. For a moment, I'd imagined that I would open the door and be back in my normal life, but the gloomy landscape before me was a solemn reminder that I was very, very far from home.
From the balcony, I got full view of what could best be described as an apocalyptic scene. The sky was dark red, deepening to black. But unlike earth, where stars, the moon and the sun shone in the sky, here there was little sign of life. Rows of decrepit, brick buildings stood upright as makeshift houses at the base of the castle I was in. I leaned against the balcony railing to peer closer.
I didn't know what I'd imagined, but it certainly hadn't been this. The houses stretched on for miles. Beyond them, an empty expanse of dry, cracked ground stretched on as far as the eye could see, merging with the skyline.
In the streets, people walked past each other in a flurry of activity. Children held up sticks in mock battle, slashing against their opponent's own weapon. They weaved through clotheslines and over fallen debris, making their way upwards and onto roofs. They were laughing and smiling, which almost made me fall over. Their big smiles were a harsh contrast from their surroundings.
I realised that, as much as Sloth City was terribly damaged, to some people like Raven, this was the one and only home they knew.
"It's a sad life, isn't it?" Raven said, coming up beside me. "None of us will ever know what we're missing on Earth. All because we were born in the wrong world. I guess we should just be lucky monsters don't come into the city."
I peered over at Raven. She was biting her lip slightly, her hands curled tightly around the railing. With the deep red sky behind her, it was a saddening sight. My thoughts went back to Earth, to my own naivety. But I couldn't blame myself for being naïve.
Nothing on Earth indicated that there was an afterlife, or that people were living their full lives, in such a world. The only indication of the Underworld was through religion and books, and I wasn't one to get involved in either. My heart went out to Raven, and the innocent people of this City, who dreamed of another world – another chance.
"What happens when you die?" I asked, my sight focusing back on the children.
"We become ghosts," she said, a far-off look on her face, "trapped in this world."
I focused my gaze back on the streets, searching. "I don't see any ghosts." Two seconds later, I realised my stupidity.
"They're not visible to everyone," she said. "You have to be thinking of a ghost – a person who you knew – in order to see them. And that's only if they're near enough to you to hear your calling."
This world was much more complex than I imagined. I ran my hands over the railing, finding comfort that at least the sense of touch was the same as it was on Earth.
"I know this is a lot to handle. If it means anything, you're doing really well," Raven said with a soft smile on her face.
"I'm not handling what Aergia said very well," I said, tracing non-existent patterns in the railing. "Does Hades really have escorts? I thought he had a wife?"
"He does have a wife: Persephone," Raven said with a crestfallen look on her face, "but the Underworld doesn't exactly have the same moral standards as what I've heard is on Earth. It would be unusual for someone with his power to be otherwise."
Her statement that Hades wasn't exactly monogamous didn't surprise me. How could the omnipotent King of the Underworld – the Devil – ever be faithful to his wife?
Raven sighed. "I'm sorry, Serena. You don't deserve this."
Neither do you. Or any of these innocent people.
Silence ensued between Raven and I, the only sound emanating from the muted chatter of the city.
A scream sliced through the air towards us. My body reacted instinctively, and I stood upright in a defensive position. The scream had sounded far from me, but not so far that I wouldn't be able to see it. After a minute of desperately searching the city grounds, my gaze locked onto the scene of the crime.
One of the boys that had been playing with his friends earlier was being pulled in two directions by a middle aged-woman and man in a vicious game of tug-of-war. Both adults held tightly to one of the kid's arms, trying to pull him in their direction. The man had a menacing look about him, even from my distance I could tell that his teeth were gritted, and his eyes flashing. The woman, however, had the pained look of a mother. I knew the scream had come from her.
"Let him go!" she screamed, crying hysterically.
The man retaliated by pulling harder, and in that one act of brutal strength, the young boy slipped from the mother and into his clutches.
"No! I'll give you anything!" she cried, falling to her knees. "Just not my boy!"
"Next time he should be more careful about what that stick of his hits," he growled, rubbing a red spot on his cheek. "He's coming with me. At least now he can be of some good use."
My jaw dropped at the scene. Not only was a boy being kidnapped off the street, but I was surprised by how the rest of the public was acting. That is, how they weren't acting. Instead of supporting the mother and young boy, they appeared to not even notice the scene before them. The only sign that I wasn't the only one witnessing the conflict was that people were skirting around the scene, every now and then glancing at the distraught mother but doing nothing about it.
The man hitched the boy over his shoulder like he weighed no more than a toy doll. The mother continued to sob, calling out to the crowd for help. No one was listening. The boy hung limply by the man's grasp, a look of shock on his face. It had all happened so fast, he probably didn't even understand what was happening.
I realised that I was leaning so far over the balcony railing that if someone gave me a light push, I would tumble towards the ground. I pushed myself away from the edge and back onto firm ground.
"No one even helped," I exclaimed. "They just let that man take that boy!"
Raven sighed. "Sadly, it's not anything unusual to them. They're used to people disappearing. Besides, if anyone helped, they'd only get themselves thrown into the goldmine as a slave."
"So you think it's best just to stand aside and let someone be taken?"
Raven nervously tucked a piece of hair behind her ear. "It's not like that. No one has the choice to help, because the only way to stay alive is to stay out of trouble and out of those mines. The people that go down into those gold mines...if they come back up, they're not the same person they once were."
If they come back up.
"That boy must've been about five years old! How on earth is he going to be fit or grown enough to work for Aergia?"
"They don't exactly work for Aergia. They work for the Sloth General, Marnix. He's the one that makes all of the orders and decisions about mining. As long as Aergia gets her gold, she turns a blind eye to anything that happens underground," she explained, a hint of bitterness in her tone, "and Marnix believes the younger the slaves are, the better, because once they grow up they're less likely to remember what they're missing." Raven waved a hand across the decrepit landscape. I knew the only thing she could be referencing as positive were the interactions between the public, who didn't know exactly what kind of life they were missing on Earth.
I opened my mouth to speak, but Raven beat me to it.
"Now please come back to your quarters. If Aergia catches us out here, it won't be good," she added nervously, ushering me back inside.
It seemed selfish to turn my back on the mother, whose wailing continued to ring clear. But I also knew Raven was telling the truth about Aergia – if she caught us breaking any rules, Raven would be more likely to get in trouble than I was. Knowing this, I trailed behind her back to my chambers, lost in thought.
Portraits of Aergia hung on the corridor's walls. Her eyes seemed to follow us as we walked, and I couldn't resist looking behind me, towards the now-closed door that led to the outside world. Aergia had been right; I hadn't been prepared to see that.
But perhaps, for my own good, I could at least know what I was up against. It was enough to teach me that it would be unwise to get on Aergia, and especially Hades', bad sides.