Gods Save the Princess (Grace of Gods Book 2) (21 page)

After a while the fog began to clear and land smoothed out around us, letting me relax a little more as we made our way along. Cerberus moved a little faster ahead of me, confidence in his steps as he recognised his surroundings and walked faster toward something ahead of us.

"Hey wait up!" I stumbled and tripped in my attempt to keep up with him. The rock underfoot felt like it was coated in a layer of slime and the fog still hung low around us like a curtain. I returned to my place next to Cerberus, much steadier on my feet immediately.

"Well, now what?" I asked, arching an eyebrow as I looked down at the big dog before glancing back up into the fog that lingered near the wall. Guessing what he was trying to tell me I went in that direction, holding out my hands in front of me as a guide just in case something unwanted popped out to surprise me. And it did.

I didn't expect for my hands to slip right through and for my elbows to catch on bars. I stumbled back, fighting to free myself once more as I looked up at the great iron gates that loomed over me. They were elegantly designed, huge looping bars soldered together to create faces in the iron. Each face was another spirit looking down on those who reached this point with despair and hopelessness; it wasn't comforting.

"I'm not going through," I said, turning to face the dog and feeling foolish for talking out loud to it. "That is not a nice welcome mat." I said pointedly before looking back at it, one particular face was screaming at me in silent horror. I felt a shiver crawl up my spine and I shook my head.

"No way." I was arguing with myself at this point. Cerberus wasn’t really replying to me and insisting I go through. In fact, I was sure the dog would’ve been fine if we just sat right down together forever. But how long was forever without food or real water?

I hated this feeling of cowardice. It was one thing to be in the Underworld, it was a completely different thing to enter the gates of what looked like my imagined hell. But where else was I supposed to go?

I stared at the dog for a moment or two longer, using it to get a grip on myself before I reached out using the bars to push the gate open. I was surprised to find it gave way under my weight. Glancing back at Cerberus I nodded my head solemnly in goodbye.

"You stay here, just in case I need someone to let me back out. Come." He did as he was commanded, sitting at my feet. I hoped it would be enough to keep the gate propped open. I suspected immortal creatures possessed an unnatural strength.

"Okay." I said taking a deep breath; I held it for a moment before releasing it again, "okay." Dragging my teeth over my bottom lip I stepped forward and descended into the darkness.

Chapter Seventeen

The walls around me were damper than before. I could feel the moisture clinging to the air with each breath I took while the dew settled on my exposed skin making it feel slicker. I could barely see two feet in front of me as I walked, keeping one hand firmly planted on the rocky wall to ensure I had a guide of some kind while I descended.

The hallway was misleading, sometimes it felt bigger than it was and other times I felt claustrophobic as the walls enclosed around me. The ground tilted downwards like a slide but I didn’t slip. My feet were aching from the effort of remaining standing but it wasn’t just that. I remembered that in my haste to leave the apartment I had forgotten shoes.

In the darkness I could hear breathing echoing around me. The distinctive feeling of being watched set me on edge while making my skin raise in bumps and my heart skip nervously. I regretted not doing more thorough research into what to expect of the lower realm and not just focusing on my Goddess. Maybe then I would have been able to anticipate a little better what I was walking into, maybe I would’ve known about the payment I was supposed to have or known Cerberus the first time I met him.

The longer I walked the more I speculated over the things that I could’ve done differently or would’ve made this whole experience a little different. My mother used to say vision of the past is 20/20 and I finally understood what she meant.

I didn’t even know how long I was supposed to walk for or when I was going to stop. I didn’t know what to expect at the bottom, if there was a bottom, and I didn’t know what I was supposed to do from there.

I hated feeling helpless like this. Here in this place I felt stupid, silly and the living definition of a damsel in distress. But I didn’t want to be, so I soldiered on while telling myself I was brave. Even if I really wasn’t.

I didn’t stop, not once, not even when I took a bad step and dug rock into the bottom of my foot painfully. I was too afraid of being swallowed by the nothingness enclosing around me if I did stop.

But then I hit a wall, and then another one, and one more to the other side. I spun around quickly intending to go back from where I came, I must’ve missed a turn but there was a wall there too.

Deep gasping breaths came to me then as I tried to keep myself from panicking while my fingers explored every wall that was closing in around me. They were getting closer I swore it. This was it: I had walked right into my own death – or was this simply just another level of my own personal hell?

“Hello?! Is anyone there?” I cried out to the breathy voice I had been following. I hated to rely on a phantom entity but these creatures of the Underworld knew more about how this place worked than I did.

“Valentina.” A great and powerful voice spoke my name making me shudder slightly. It wasn’t a kind voice, or an angry one; it was a voice that commanded attention with each word, his syllables laced with his demand of power. Of this realm, he was the Almighty...

Then I knew what was happening. Why had it taken me this long to think of it? I was still in the closet; I was still at my Uncle Adam's. In my delusion of grief and loneliness I had concocted this world of Gods and Goddesses, a life of blasphemy and now God was speaking to me. He had come to punish me for straying from his flock. My heartbeat quickened as I turned my head to the sky, closing my eyes and waiting for my punishment. Surely anything else he demanded of me would not be worse than navigating this strange and frightening place.

"Valentina, you have descended into the Underworld and seek judgment." Yes, judgment. But I wasn't in the Underworld; this was a fantasy - right? "For thousands of years we have judged the souls of those who have entered this forgotten place, only letting the worthy enter Elysium while condemning the rest to their punishment in Hades. But you, Valentina, you are not a soul that is to be judged. You do not belong here nor do you belong with the world of the living. You have entered the Underworld unlawfully and in your time here you have disrupted the natural order of things." What was he talking about? "I must converse with my brothers over your punishment."

More voices spoke then, whispering to each other in a foreign tongue.  It made me uneasy not knowing what they were saying except for when they repeated my name. Each time they did say it, it echoed around me like a curse word - Valentina, Valentina, Valentina... In those few awful seconds I came to hate my own name, dreading the sound of it.

"I don't understand!" I said finally, pulling myself away from the drowning confusion I felt. "Who are you? What do you mean I disrupted the natural order? I was brought down here by Hades and trapped." Trapped, Trapped, Trapped.... The whispering stopped for what felt like an eternity before it started up again in a fury, they whispered quickly and with growing excitement.

I pushed against the wall where the voices were coming from, a door suddenly forming under my hands and I stumbled into another room. It was cavernous just like all the rest but around me hung thousands of candles in mid air by nothing at all. Their light illuminated the three wise men that stood on a pedestal, staring at me in shock and horror. I had broken into their sanctuary.

In front of them sat a great book, flipped open to a page where one of them had been furiously scribbling. Intruder, Intruder, Intruder...

"No." I said firmly, "you're going to explain to me where I am, what and who you are and then you're going to tell me where I go to get out of here." Enough was enough; if this wasn’t a fantasy and it was still real life, if I was supposed to be Persephone's vessel then they were going to treat me like their Princess. If this was a real place and I really did rule this realm then these wise men were my subjects and I was not theirs, not for their bogus judgment.

The men stared at me with fascination, a grisly smile twisting their features at the exact same time. In another life I might've been scared of them but my growing frustration, confusion and anger with my situation had long since swallowed any of those other, weaker, emotions. I could no longer afford to be the damsel in distress, it would no sooner lead me out of here than it would give me the answers I rightly deserved.

"You are in the Underworld." The one with the Godly voice said, the man in the middle. He smiled at me, his teeth were rotted but refusing to fall out. "At the point where the four rivers meet."

"I know I’m in the Underworld. What rivers?"

"Phlegethon." Said one.

"Acheron." Said another.

"Cocytus." Said the third, their voices echoing the names around me unnervingly and then: “Styx.” They said together.

The Unbreakable Oath, Woe, Lamentation, Fire... The words echoed around me, folding around my body like a blanket and squeezing. So this place was purgatory, or at least as I imagined purgatory would be.

"Who are you then?"

"We are the judges." Judges. I had figured that much out for myself. 

"Judges of what?"

"We judge the quality of souls."

"And you think I have a dark soul?" I said with disbelief. I didn't want to sound arrogant but I knew that my life up until this moment had been pretty white, a blank slate with barely a scratch and yet they wanted me to believe I deserved punishment of some kind.

"There is a darkness." They whispered like a hiss, "it taints you."

"Perhaps because I am the Princess of the Underworld." I offered the suggestion and they stared at me as though if they could laugh they would've been. "So who are you to judge me?" I tried again, commanding myself to my full height in an attempt to appear regal to them.

"Rhadamanthus."

"Minos."

"Aeacus." I was definitely not going to remember these names if they turned out to be important.

I sighed, crossing my arms over my chest, "that was not the answer I was looking for."

"You are not Persephone."

"Yes, I am." I said quickly, trying to hide my brief moment of doubt. I was struck suddenly by the horrific thought that something had happened to my Goddess in all this. I certainly hadn't heard from her since I had left the apartment. I stared up at the men, refusing to let them see my worry. Even if she was gone, it was no doubt in my best interest to maintain my stance if I was going to get out of here.

They had stopped looking at me, querying the book in front of them for something. In fact as I stood there waiting for them to retort, it almost seemed like they had completely forgotten I was there at all. Finally I cleared my throat, interrupting their dialogue.

"Where am I supposed to go now?" Minos, the man in the middle, grinned again and at his sides his two brothers did the same. It made me turn cold, shivering under the temperature change and the dampness that was finally settling into my bones.

"Where indeed..." All three whispered. I suddenly had a bad feeling that I had asked the wrong question, or at least should've attempted to be a little clearer.

"There." They said, a tone of finality as they all pointed toward the wall to my left. I turned to watch as another door carved itself into the rock and created an exit for me. When I turned back to ask them another question all three were gone.

"Well, okay then..." I took another brave, deep breath and resolved that the worse thing that could possibly happen at this point was I would just get more lost in this place. Not that it mattered much because my plans to make my way back to Cerberus had been shot the moment the judges had placed me in the stone prison. "Down it is." I finally said, moving to the door and bracing myself on the threshold as I peered down the steps. How much further downwards could this place get? Surely I was no longer on Earth but in another realm entirely. Maybe I was going to end up on the other side of the planet soon. Probably in an ocean with my luck, surrounded by sharks.

I hated sharks.

I went through another round of mentally preparing myself for the descent before gripping the wall and helped myself start down the slick, dark stairs. I could've just as easily closed my eyes for all I could see as I climbed downwards. There was no sounds as I walked, in fact, even my own footfalls seemed to be swallowed by the darkness and sound ceased to exist. Save one: the voices of the judges followed me whispering one word over and over again.

Tartarus, Tartarus, Tartarus...

Thankfully the staircase was a shorter walk than the one down to the judges had been but I was confused when I reached the bottom. There was no where else to go; there was just a hole in the ground and a broken grate covering it.

"Is this a joke?" I called out to the judges, crouching down to finger the iron bars before straightening up. There was no other indication for me of what this place was or what it was supposed to be. I guess I could've jumped down into the hole and seen what was down there but there was no visible ladder or any way to get out and I didn't want to chance going down there and finding myself stuck at the bottom.