Chapter 15

~~Otrera~~

Well, shit.

“Darian, wait!” she said. Damn man was going to wreck the world if she wasn’t careful.

“Why should I?”

“You don’t know what’ll happen if you kill them. You could start what Charon was talking about, or who knows what.”

Darian snarled, and a rasp that sounded less like him, more like the first time she’d heard the mask came through. The tall, robed entities stood before their brother’s vessel, and they cowered with a multitude of shadowy limbs raised, flailing like children’s arms. Children didn’t have half a dozen arms though, and as the Fates trembled, Otrera half-thought they looked kind of like an octopus.

Above them, there were the glowing things that circled the vortex of souls. Still a ways off, but the tendrils of color that wrapped upon sections of the pillar of light were plenty visible, humongous, and pulsing. It was like she could see their heartbeat, except it was their whole body, and each pulse pulled a color from the pillar, whatever color the creature was, brighter, into the main body. Like they were feeding on it.

And as Darian held the Fates in the palm of his hand, other floating orbs started to appear. The city that lay ahead, the enormous temples, the pillars of black stone with windows and doors carved into them, the dome roofs, the colossal hooks that dangled chains as big as roads, each with buildings hanging from them, all of them started to show more of the glowing orbs. Each of the spheres had a collection of tendrils that dangled from them, but the spheres floated, pulsed and radiated a color unique to them. So many colors, each unique, rainbows upon rainbows.

“D-Darian, I ... um—”

“They should die! We don’t need them, we don’t need these creatures manipulating fate, manipulating destiny. We don’t need these vile, abhorrent, disgusting abominations controlling us!”

“Darian, uh—”

“We should kill them. Be rid of them. Toying with our lives, our deaths? We should—”

“Darian!”

“What!?”

“Look up!”

Darian raised his masked face, and slowly lowered his outstretched hand.

The host of floating orbs were drifting in their direction. While a few of them were easily a hundred feet tall, from tendril to orb, many others were only a quarter that size. The massive spheres hovered closer, down toward them and the soul rivers along the cavern floor, while the smaller ones stayed behind them. They came closer as well, but always with their larger brethren in front of them. The cavern became alive. More, and more of the floating orbs appeared in their temples and homes, and they floated around, closer together like a flock of slow-moving birds. The flocks drifted, colored the stone with their glow, and joined in hovering nearer and nearer the two Fate’s Children. There were thousands of them.

“Bellerophontes,” a sister said, “you cannot destroy us. Without our hand, there would be no civilization. We are the spinners, we have woven the tapestry of your history, your tales, your greatest heroes and greatest villains. We are—”

Darian put out his hand, and squeezed his fist. The three sisters all fell flat — not fell, more like squashed into the ground. They shrieked and waved their arms of black mist, but they stayed down, flattened to only a foot tall, with their masks pointed up and shaking.

But Otrera barely noticed, and when she glanced Darian’s way, he was still looking up at the oncoming cloud of colors too.

One of the greater orbs came down closer to them, and as its tendrils drifted near the cavern floor, many of the souls in the running rivers reacted. The colossal creature was navy, and souls of a similar color drifted toward it, while other colors avoided it, depending upon their difference. But the descending orb grew smaller, its tendrils shrank into itself, and its glow started to fade. The souls ceased responding to it, as once it was upon the cavern floor, human feet stepped from its glow.

Otrera gasped and took a step back. From the navy, pulsing light of the creature, a man emerged, tall, muscular, with a long beard of black, and penetrating, brown eyes. He looked fit, healthy, perhaps in his thirties, with a beautiful, almost glowing robe of white chiton.

“Moros ... again you have come. Again you will destroy what we have built.” He swept his arm to the side, stance aggressive. It was comically exaggerated, Otrera thought, but it seemed to be a running theme with the gods. “Be warned, Moirai. Know that I am not my father, and you will not best us so easily this time.”

Darian tilted his head to the side, and looked at the oncoming man. “ ... which one are you?”

The tall man blinked, and looked between him and Otrera. “You are ... not Moros?”

“No, I am not Moros.” Darian stepped toward the newcomer, and the unnamed fellow stood his ground, but Otrera could see the grimace in his face. “I’m just the idiot who’s taken his body.”

The man looked him up and down, and folded his arms across his chest. “ ... Bellerophontes?”

Darian nodded, and snarled again. “And you?”

“ ... I am Hades.”

Otrera slowly lowered her bow, and gawked. She could see his gold mask flicker in and out of existence. The golden mask of a god, similar but different to the Moirai.

Gawking turned into a surprised squeak when Hades fell to his knees, unfolded his arms, and raised his straining hands up to his chest and head. He was in pain, and the veins in his forehead started to bulge as he trembled. For what was apparently an illusion, the illusion behaved quite accurately to human agony, as Darian pointed his palm at Hades’s chest, and started squeezing the air.

“Where are your brothers?”

“I ... will ... not—”

“Where are your brothers!?” Darian’s voice cut through the cavern until Otrera felt it vibrate in her bones.

“Z-Zeus ... and Poseidon ... above ... Olympus...”

Otrera blinked, and looked between Darian and, evidently, the god of the underworld. He broke easily. She winced as her conversation with Chimera walked through her mind. Vile, putrid mound of filth, he’d said of Ares. And for all his threatening, Hades was brought to his knees in seconds.

She wasn’t sure whether to be happy things were going so easily for them, or be terrified.

“Get them. If they’re not both here when I return, I will destroy your Moirai friends, and your brethren.” Darian motioned to the swarm of weird squid-like floating spheres of pulsing colors. “And make sure Athena is here too.”

Otrera shivered and stepped in a little closer to the masked man. He had beef with Zeus, and Poseidon. What would he have done if they were here? And Athena, she imagined the goddess would be a splattered mess of ... whatever these energy balls turned into when they exploded. At least the Erinyes turned to blood, she could understand that. But the Moirai, and these ... gods, evidently, they were what? The more she learned, the less they seemed like powerful gods, and more like parasites.

Darian lowered his hands. The sisters got up, and they made tiny chittering sounds as they did. Hades, coughing and struggling to breathe, got up as well. At least she could understand the signs of discomfort on him ... it? The whole trip was turning into a mind fuck.

“Let’s go, Otrera.” Darian took a step forward, and the whole of the underworld moved out of his way. The Fates hovered to the side, around him, and Hades did as well.

As Darian stepped toward the vortex, it was like watching a sea part. All the gods floating above had descended closer to them when Hades had, but now that Darian was walking forward, they made way. Such a myriad of colors, rainbows over rainbows, hundreds upon hundreds of glowing tendrils of light, all swaying with their movements as they opened the path.

The two Fate’s Children stepped into the city. There were no roads, only the soul rivers, and none of the buildings were really on the cavern floor. Some were a bit low, attached to the stalagmites, but none could be reached by them. You’d have to be able to fly. And sure enough, some wings started to become visible as the Amazon stared up at the colossal buildings above. Erinyes, more of them. And other creatures started to stick out their noses ... and snouts. Weird things, with glowing faces similar to the gods’ bodies, but they walked on all fours, with black wings that looked more like bat wings than anything. More and more oddities stuck their noses and snouts out of their homes and temples, some with extra heads, some with extra tails, some almost human shaped, and all with varying degrees of glow to their eyes or limbs or claws.

As they walked by, Otrera re-nocked her arrow, but kept it lowered as they drifted past the enormous stalagmites of black stone that jutted up from cavern floor. The closer they got to the vortex, the more the floor started to slope downward. The color of the souls near the base was dark, blacks and heavy colors that made her depressed just to look at them. Some of them pushed up for the massive judge statues, and as they approached the monoliths of stone, some of them changed color and started to drift upward. Others were cast back down, and rejoined the swirling pool of souls at the bottom of the crater.

A crater the size of a city.

Ridges in the black stone let her find her footing. Every step was cautious, slow, but Darian’s were determined, hard, as he walked into the pit. Otrera looked behind her, and stared at the cloud of glowing dots. They’d moved back together, and they were all looking at them — or at least, it seemed so. They didn’t have faces. But some of the larger creatures were coming down to land next to Hades, and they too were beginning to transform into their human shapes. They turned to each other, chatted, whispered, eyes wide, hands up to their lips. More and more they looked human, with each of them dressed in the garbs she’d come to expect of gods sitting on Mount Olympus. The underworld wasn’t Mount Olympus though, no clouds to be sat on or anything. No grapes either.

The crowd stared at them, soon an army of human-looking gods of many shapes, sizes, and hair colors. Many were trembling, and holding hands. A few were placing their fingers upon Hades’s shoulders, fingertips glowing with various colors. Healing him, maybe? Many of the other floating orbs still in the air landed upon the balconies or floors of the nearby temples, and they too transformed into their human disguises while they looked down at the two Fate’s Children from above.

Every single god in the underworld — and that was apparently a lot more gods than they knew — was staring at them. Otrera shivered and stayed close to Darian. But as they walked deeper into the crater, things didn’t get much better.

The rivers of souls spilled into the deepening cavity. Many of the souls had already left the river, and were floating up or down in the pillar of light, but many more were still grounded. It wasn’t until the streams opened up and spilled their contents into the crater that Otrera started struggling to see. Faces in the colors swam past her, around her, over and under, with the fading trails of their bodies behind them. Some opened their eyes, some did not. Features were lost in a haze, so no matter which way she looked, all she could see was an unending tide of blurry faces.

“You have any idea what you’re doing, Darian?”

“Yes. I can see ... I can feel it. You’ll see.”

Oh, wonderful. She’d see. Not exactly filling her with details, or confidence, but she had no choice but to follow him anyway. Into a towering pillar of swirling light comprised of what must have been a million souls. Just wonderful.

Well, she did decide to help him after all. Just didn’t realize that meant walking into a literal tornado of the dead. Turn back? The thought made her laugh, and she slung her bow back over her shoulder. Run to where? And besides, the deeper they went into the crater, the more she wanted to stick by Darian, and help him save Medusa.

Gods she was dumb.

The pillar grew brighter, denser, and she found herself squinting trying to peer through the blinding pillar. They’d past the three judges, and for a moment, she thought they’d step on her. But the stone giants were unmoving. She stopped by one of their toes, and looked it up and down. There were bumps and lines in the skin, same as a human, as if someone had taken an actual man, turned him into dark stone, and made him a couple hundred feet tall. And as she grew near, she heard a quiet thud coming from the statue once a second.

A heartbeat.

She gulped, and jumped a couple times down the slope to rejoin Darian.

“You think they’ll let us out of here when we’ve got Medusa back?” she said.

“They’ve defeated Moros once before, at great cost from the sounds of it. I’m betting they won’t risk that again for the sake of keeping Medusa’s soul.”

“Maybe. They are gods, fickle, prone to bouts of stupidity and obsession.” She shrugged and stepped in closer to Darian’s side again, until they were shoulder to shoulder. “I was expecting ... well, not this. It looks like there’s thousands of them, Darian. And a lot of them look like kids.” A glance back at the crowd proved it. Hundreds of the floating orbs of light had landed, and transformed into a human shape, many looking no more than ten years old. And why did they look human at all? The Moirai didn’t.

The priests of the world would spontaneously combust if they knew how inaccurate their understanding of their masters were.

“They’re not kids. They’re parasites.”

Otrera shook her head, and grabbed the man’s wist. “Maybe, maybe not. Let’s just ... focus our hatred a little, alright? They’ve done a lot of bad things, but only a few of them deserve your punishment.”

Darian sighed, but nodded. Funny that the man was more receptive than ever, now that he was wearing the mask of doom. Seeing the Moirai there, at his mercy, she expected him to kill the sisters, and leave the world without their guidance, twisted as it was. The sisters did have a point though, much as the thought disgusted her. Would civilization even exist if it wasn’t for the people’s worship of the gods, their attempts to appease them?

Good gods she was starting to sound like Chimera. Get out of your head.

Darian pressed on, and stepped into the pillar of souls. The colossal obelisk was solid light near its center, and Otrera raised a hand again to block some of it out. Darian did no such thing, and he reached out a hand to her while the other reached for the pillar. She took it, and took a few deep breaths, before she followed him into the burying light.

Darkness struck like a hammer. The moment her head passed into the pillar, all light was gone, even from behind her, and endless black buried her, crushed her, and robbed her of her senses. All of them. She squeezed her hand, and felt nothing. She spun around, and saw nothing. She cried out, and heard nothing.

Just when her lungs decided they didn’t want to breathe anymore, she fell forward onto her knees when a flash of white blinded her. Light once more. Darian was standing next to her, and her hand was still in his.

“Another barrier,” he said. “Sorry. And just ... stay near me. You’ll be stuck here if I have to leave without you.”

“Good ... to know...” She sank her free hand’s fingers into the grass, and coughed on a few failed attempts to breathe. Was that what it felt like to die? Gods she hoped not.

Grass? She looked down, and squeezed the earth in her fingers a little. Indeed, there was grass, and soft earth, and a gentle breeze. She looked up, and gasped. The sun. Oh gods, a beautiful sun was high in the sky, and it washed over the land with a gentle, warm glow.

As she stood up, she blinked down at the white flowers around her feet, and further out down along the green valley before them. Or at least, it should have been green, but the grass was ultimately overwhelmed by the unusual white flowers, with raised stalks in their center that bore white pedals from many blossoms.

White asphodels, in unending amounts. They poured over the smooth hills around them, and swayed with the breeze.

“ ... Asphodel Meadows,” she said. “It’s ... beautiful.”

“I wonder how Elysium looks.” Taking his own deep breaths of the beautiful scenery, Darian gave her hand another squeeze before letting go, and started walking down the gentle slopes. “Come on.”

“You know where we’re going?”

“I can see — feel pulls of something. I can tell where Elysium is, and ... I can tell where Tartarus is.”

“You could take us to Elysium?”

“ ... I could.”

She shivered, and followed after him down the grass and flowers. “Awfully tempting.”

“Yeap.”

“Think you can rescue Medusa, and just go to Elysium?”

“Maybe. Probably. But ... this place ... the afterlife, I don’t think it’s permanent.”

“What do you mean?” She got in beside him, and stared up and around at the rolling hills, the warm but pleasant sun, the flowers, the quiet. No birds chirping or anything, but the silence wasn’t cold or dead. It was soothing.

“Moros said Medusa was going to Tartarus for a thousand years before she’d be reborn. And ... I can feel a flow here. I can feel things going up, going down, and then ... leaving. Leaving the underworld, and the afterlife.”

“Leaving? To where?”

Darian looked up, and stared into the clear sky above. “ ... back to the living.”

“Oh...” She’d heard the argument of reincarnation before, from people in the far East. Course, everyone just dismissed such absurdity as just that, absurdity. Not so absurd now. Would such an idea spread in Greece, if she mentioned it to others?

Over the next hill, they stopped, and looked out to the valley below. A city, a Greek city, with homes by a flowing river of glistening, clear water, and temples. For a second, she grit her teeth, and craned her neck to see what face or statue would adorn the temple’s front.

But there was no face of gold, no statue, no adornments — not with a recognizable face or symbol anyway. As she and Darian approached the city, they found no markings of the gods on any of the walls, any of the homes or temples, nothing. All they found was a vast array of pleasant buildings, with many built close enough to the river to drink of it freely. Not that she imagined the dead needed to drink.

And, upon getting close to the city, the dead did indeed emerge. She expected to see souls like in the soul rivers of the underworld, but instead, she found people. Just people, regular looking people, standing around, chatting. They wore typical white chitons and tunics, and they walked the grass — no roads — between the buildings, many with hands held, and of many ages. The city was big enough to house maybe a thousand souls, which made no sense to her. Not big enough to house all dead, even if they were being reborn regularly.

But damn, it was beautiful. She and Darian walked down the closest thing to a road, and as she looked around, she noticed the people walking by wore no sandals. Not only that, they were slightly see-through. Just slightly of course, and not in a gross way that exposed bones or organs. They looked beautiful, and as they continued through the crowd of dead, she noticed none were disfigured with a wound, or old, or weak. Everyone looked perfectly healthy.

And they were ignoring the two Fate’s Children. A pleasant change from the underworld.

It wasn’t long before the sounds of moans and groans started to become obvious. Otrera quirked a brow, stuck her head around one of the buildings, and raised a hand to her lips. In the alley between two of the buildings, a man and woman were having sex. Naked, clothes tossed aside, a woman was on her hands and knees, and the man was behind her, holding her hips, and pounding her. Otrera blinked a few times, and stared. The woman’s hair was hanging beside her neck, and the look on her face was absolute bliss.

And bliss turned into orgasm as the woman arched her back, and dug her fingers into the grass.

“Otrera?” Darian said.

“I ... I uh...”

The woman lifted her gaze, caught Otrera’s, and smiled an exhausted, sweat-dripping smile. The man behind her did the same. A lovely young man, with nice shoulders and a hard chin.

“We don’t know you,” he said. “Come join us?”

Strangers inviting strangers for sex, without even bothering to ask names. If this was the Asphodel Meadows, what could Elysium possibly have better?

Always thinking with her thighs.

Darian took her hand, and dragged her away. “Come on, one look at sex and you break like a neglected wife.”

She frowned, and pushed the man a couple feet away, but fell instep beside him anyway. “I’m a grown woman! I—”

More groans stopped her, and she forced herself to keep walking as she looked by the windows. Most of the homes had a pair of people fucking. Some had triplets. More than one had half a dozen people, with arms wrapped around each other, pushing their bodies up against walls so Otrera could see them through the windows. And one window had a woman leaning out through it, her hands on the sill, her large breasts dangling underneath her and bouncing with the rhythm of a long, gentle fuck.

This time Darian stopped, and took a few moments to stare. Otrera couldn’t see through his mask of course, but she knew what was going on in his big dumb head.

“You really like tits,” she said.

“What, you don’t? I saw the way you looked at Medusa.”

“Hey! I ... I love a good pair of tits, except my definition extends to a lot more than only big ones.” She frowned at him some more, even tried to scowl a little, but it all sort of washed away, and turned into a laugh. Darian laughed as well, and the two forced themselves to walk past the woman clearly enjoying herself.

Otrera did take a glance back though, and grinned as the woman gave her a tiny wave. Everyone was so damn happy. The kids — in a different section of the city than the sexually crazed, thankfully — were running, playing, wrestling, throwing rocks in the river, and the adults were chatting, telling tales of their lives, and fucking like rabbits.

Some of the people faded out as they approached, often mid action, and a new person replaced them doing something different nearby. Overlapping afterlives? She couldn’t tell, all she could tell was she was seeing more people than the city would suggest she should be able to see.

It wasn’t exactly right for the two of them to be having a nice evening stroll, with Medusa’s fate as it was, and she could tell Darian wanted to move faster. But at the same time, he was the one setting the pace. Maybe he was lost, or just struggling to figure out how to use the mask? Medusa had a thousand years in Tartarus before her, and Athena had only brought her to the afterlife that same day. Five minutes to peek around and see what the afterlife was like wouldn’t—

“Otrera?”

Otrera froze. Ice in her veins, feet turned to stone, petrified, unable to move as the voice resonated in her mind, in her memories, and made her grow faint. But, after a couple seconds of silence, she turned to face one of the windows.

“ ... Aeryn?”

Aeryn, moderate height, fit like any Amazon, with long blond hair, and a sharp chin to match her sharp wit. One of her best warriors.

And of course, Aeryn was naked, her pert breasts on display and her nipples blatantly hard. She was leaning forward against the window on her elbows, and she was smiling. Not a typical smile, not a ‘hello friend’ smile, but a blissful smile. And as Otrera stepped in closer, she blushed. Two other women, and one man were in there too.

“Nallia. Jonnah. What are you two sluts doing?” she said as she got closer.

The other two Amazons got up from their squatting positions around Aeryn’s legs. They were wearing their loincloths, but that was it. A couple of brunettes, Nallia was a short thing like Otrera, but with large enough breasts for the two of them, and then some, while Jonnah was a tall woman, thin, with a nasty scar down her chest.

There was no scar.

“You two look great,” she finally managed to say. Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry.

“I can’t believe it’s you, Otrera. We ... we looked for you! You never came.” Aeryn held out her hands, and Otrera took them. She squeezed, and stared down at Aeryn’s fingers, at how they filled Otrera’s hands like fingers should, at how they were warm, and pulsed with life. Slightly see-through though. She was dead, no mistaking that.

Nallia and Jonnah got into the window too, elbows on the sill, and they each took Otrera’s hands to squeeze them.

“Queen Otrera,” they both said. They all looked aroused, and ready to fuck at a moment’s notice. Their queen visiting them didn’t seem to spark an ounce of shame or shyness in them — good. She’d hate herself if she spoiled their fun.

Darian had stopped a few feet down the path, and when she looked his way, he nodded, and leaned against a nearby building. She had a few minutes.

“Who’s that?” Otrera said, and she gestured to the naked man standing behind Aeryn. At least he wasn’t fucking her anymore; even Otrera would have found mid-sex dialogue a little awkward.

“This is Vasilis. He was a fisherman, when he was alive. Poor fool never had a wife or lover. Lonely man, too nice. We like to keep him company.”

“H-hello,” he said. “Your friends have spoken much about you.”

“Have they?” Otrera laughed and grinned at the man.

While her sisters of battle were comfortable with the situation, Vasilis was not. He was blushing even more than she. An older man than the girls, maybe in his mid forties. He was in good shape, but that seemed to be something that just happened in the Asphodel Meadows. He had a soft look to him, with a short beard, long blond hair, and quiet, brown eyes. And from the look in his eyes, she could read him clear as day; he didn’t have a mean or aggressive bone in his body.

Not exactly her cup of tea, but the girls seemed to be having fun spoiling him, what with Aeryn sticking her ass out for him, and the other two girls around their legs. Maybe she should have died and stayed dead, if this was what awaited her?

“You’re still alive,” they said as they looked her up and down. “What’s going on?”

“Um, er ... well, that’s the guy that killed you.” She gestured to Darian. He stood upright, shocked no doubt, but she waved him off. “I was saved by a sorceress, and long story short, she turned out to be a bitch. Bellerophontes and I worked together to kill her, and now we’re here to save his lover. She shouldn’t be dead.”

“Oh! So romantic!” Nallia leaned out the window, huge breasts jiggling — focus, Otrera — and waved at him. “You were such a beast in battle, little man! And ... what’s with the mask?”

“It’s, um...”

“Longer story again, don’t worry about it.” Otrera shoved Nallia back through the window by the forehead. “So ... Asphodel Meadows.”

“Yeah. Sorry Otrera, but none of us got to Elysium. And judging from the people we see, so few do. Dying in battle isn’t enough, you have to ... well we don’t know.”

Darian sighed and looked to the sky. “You have to ... change the world ... to get in there.”

They all raised a brow at him. Something on his mind, she’d ask him later.

“But,” Otrera said, “you girls seem to be having fun.”

“Oh, it’s such a nice place Otrera. No hunger, no thirst, no disease, wounds are healed, everyone is healthy, horny, and friendly. Something about this place, it ... it brings people together, in whatever way lets you be happy. Some people have even stayed for decades, content to enjoy the different faces.”

“Stayed?”

Aeryn nodded and continued. “When we want to leave, and be reborn, we can. Any time we want. When we feel refreshed, revitalized, and ready to go back to the living, try life again, we can. Until then, we get to relax here, and just ... be happy.”

Maybe she really should have died. But then, she’d never have met the big dumbass she left in Aethiopia.

“Do you remember anything from your previous lives?” Otrera said.

“No, not really. Some hazy images, but that’s it. But I can feel my previous lives in ... well, my soul I guess.”

“You want to ... come join us?” Jonnah said. “Been a while.” With a wink, she stepped back toward the man they’d captured, and leaned in to put a kiss on his cheek as she pressed her breasts against his arm.

Vasilis started to visibly tremble, and Otrera winked at him. She’d break the poor guy.

“Nah. Really want to, but can’t. I have to keep going. And besides, you girls could use the break.” And I have a lover.

“If anyone deserves a break, it’s you, my queen.” Aeryn squeezed her hand again, and patted her knuckles.

“Maybe someday. Not today. Have you seen the other girls?”

“A few have gone back to the world. Many are around, enjoying themselves as we are. The Asphodel Meadows will bring us together sometimes, and sometimes it keeps us apart. Whatever will best let us relax, and be content.”

Thank you Asphodel Meadows, for not bringing back her entire tribe for her to face. She’d break down into a sobbing mess if she had to look each sister in the eye again.