CHAPTER THREE: The return to Tartarus

CHAPTER THREE: The return to Tartarus

Nika had stormed out.

Her worst fear had come to pass – she was losing the only place she’d ever loved. Even if Garth didn’t fire her, he’d drive that place into the ground trying to prove that he’d made the right decision.

She had to find a way to save it.

Overnight, a plan had begun to formulate in her mind. Something in her reminiscing recently must have jogged her memory, for when she was brainstorming, Orpheus had popped into her mind. She recalled seeing him in the caves below Tartarus when she was a young spirit. The once great musician who was now a recluse. If the rumours were true, he stayed in the caves voluntarily to avoid Hades, whom Orpheus had slighted. Apparently, he had made a mockery of Hades by trying to take his own wife out of the Underworld and back to the world of the living.

If Nika could find a way to get the recluse maestro to come out and play, specifically at Zeus’ Watering Hole, that would be the ticket that would have them back to turning a profit comfortably – without cutting corners or relying on another investor. Perhaps then Garth would forgive her for storming out, too.

Not that he didn’t share some, if not all, of the blame for that.

There was only one problem. If Nika was to go to the caves to find Orpheus it would mean she’d have to return to Tartarus, and she hadn’t exactly left her family on good terms all those centuries ago.

She also hadn’t been back since.

Young Nika hadn’t had the nerve to tell her mother she didn’t want to do the job she’d been born for. Instead, she’d waited until her parents were both sleeping and then snuck away in the bright light of day. For Nika’s mother was none other than the Goddess and personification of night itself, Nyx. And her father was the personification of darkness, Erebus.

If she was to go to Tartarus to look for Orpheus, there would be no way to avoid them. They were the deities that presided over the neighbourhood itself. They’d likely know the minute she stepped foot over the border again.

But, with no better plan in mind, Nika began packing a small, black, leather bag etched with one of Hephaestus’ stamps that said the bag had been crafted in Mount Olympus and shipped down here on one of the freight canoes that Charon ran, now that he’d expanded his boating business.

The bag was only big enough to fit enough items that would get her across the Tartarus border: distilled water from the rivers, a loaf of bread that Rae had baked that Nika begrudgingly admitted was pretty good with its rosemary and olive oil glazed crust, and a couple of extra layers of clothes. Finally, cramming a  thick chequered scarf that would help her withstand the icy wind nymphs of Tartarus into her bag, Nika slung it over her shoulder and strode out of her house – making sure to lock the door behind her.

On the northern side of Styx’s border, closer to the river Lethe than anywhere else in the Underworld, it would take almost a day to cross the Asphodel rolling hills and plains, where green hills gave way to large stretches of dense forests and ploughed farming fields. Nika had left the meadows early enough that it was late afternoon by the time she heard the tell-tale sign that she was getting close to Tartarus – the wailing.

A thousand brokenhearted cries, from Souls that had spent their mortal lives pursuing the love of another who did not love them back, rose up to greet her. As Nika walked closer, they rose up over the horizon – a throng of phantom forms with desperation draped around them, so dense Nika could almost see it. As she got closer still, they began to swarm her.

“Please, miss, just tell me where my Henry is. Is he beyond the flame-filled river? Tell me where to find him.”

“Miss, have you seen my Penelope?”

“Where is Crantor?!”

“I’m looking for Arrian. Arrian! Arrian!”

“Selene? Is she with you?”

“Get off me,” Nika muttered, swatting away bone-white, cold hands that reached and clawed at her. “You are wasting your time, just like you did in the mortal realm. Leave. Me. Alone!”

Nika hated the Vale of Mourning, for that was what this stretch of land was known for. Though she hated it, Nika hadn’t had much choice. She’d either had to pass through here or the Plains of Judgement, and Nika didn’t particularly want to cross paths with the three judges of the dead. What if she was mistaken for one who had come for judgement of her deeds, and the judges decided on a new placement for her? Gods knew what they would hold over her for the rest of her immortal life.

No, far better to move through the heartbroken. They were a nuisance, but once she got to the Phlegethon – the flame-filled river – they would leave her alone. These Souls weren’t brave enough to cross it, though not many were, Nika supposed.

Ironically, if the heartbroken did find the courage to cross the flames, they’d find their heartbreak eradicated, free from the spell of sleeping Eros and cruel Aphrodite. The thing that made these Souls such a scourge was the fact they would rather remain lamenting their plight on others than find the courage to choose better for themselves. It was why the judges sent them here.

Then, Nika heard the most interesting request. “Is Orpheus in the place you come from or where you go?”

Her head snapped around to see the bearer of such a question. Surely, Eurydice, Orpheus’ wife, would not be found amongst the brokenhearted. Everyone in the mortal realm and the Underworld knew of their tragic tale. Eurydice had died during her wedding celebrations, and Orpheus had travelled all the way to the Underworld to get her back. On hearing his tale through song, Hades and Persephone had decided to let Eurydice return with Orpheus to the mortal realm on one condition: that he should walk in front of her and not look back until they both had reached the Upper World. But he’d – famously – turned the minute he was in the mortal realm. His wife, however, had only had one foot in the Upper World while the other remained in the Underworld … and so she vanished back to Hades to serve her time amongst the dead.

No, it wasn’t Eurydice who asked the question of her. Instead, it was a young male Soul, who couldn’t have been more than twenty mortal years when he died if he remained looking so young. With blonde curls cropped close to his head and cherub-like cheeks, Nika regarded him.

“No. Why do you ask such a question when you are not his great love?”

“He was my first,” the young Soul answered in turn. Then his eyes went cloudy, as if pulled into the infatuated memory of the Orpheus he had created in his mind. “He would sing me the great stories of love, though, and I knew I was special. He did not sing them for anyone. It was rumoured amongst us that he only used to sing them for his wife, so when he chose me, I knew … I knew he loved me, too.”

Nika waved a hand in his face to silence him. “I’ve heard enough.”

But the young man continued now, waxing lyrical about his love for Orpheus, and Nika knew she had lost him to the longing. Pressing through the remaining horde of lamenters, Nika eventually made it to the river.

Beyond the river lay Tartarus, a giant mountainous god embedded in the rock face. Beneath him was the stormy pit known as the caves the rest of the Souls in the Underworld had heard rumours about. Some of the rumours, like the one where no resident of Tartarus may ever leave, were not true. Not everyone who lived within was doomed to live there forever. Nika had gotten out. Christos from the hole-in-the-wall bakery, too. There were some of them that chose to leave. Of course, there were those that were forced to stay, an agreement forged between Tartarus and Hades. Those rumours, the ones of torture and suffering, were true.

Thanks to Tartarus’ gigantic form, and the caves underneath him that ran like tree roots, the Phlegethon river ran downstream towards Styx. Of course, where those two rivers met was sacred ground. Crossing there was a faux pas that Nika knew not to make, for the two lovers would not be interrupted, the hot pools between them bubbling until a metallic, sulphur-like smell rose from the mud of their joining.

There was, however, somewhere here along the river of blood that boiled Souls where Nika could cross.

She wandered upstream.

From memory, the crossing point was somewhere up here. Everyone expected Phlegethon to be deeper the higher up the river went, but that wasn’t strictly true. Like every mountainous range, Tartarus had peaks and valleys. One just had to stumble into a valley to find where the flames of the river barely licked at their feet, rather than the peaks where those with the greatest misdeeds in the mortal realm continued to stand, up to their eyebrows in flames.

For Phlegathon raged, but it did not consume those who stood in it. It could not destroy a Soul, but it would flow fire through their veins. The more violent the deeds they had committed, the deeper they would sink into the rivers depths. A painful, all-consuming flame that forever raged within them. A nasty way to spend immortality.

Nika was immune, due to her nature as an Arae, but that didn’t mean she wanted to turn up in Tartarus looking like a barbequed mess. There were standards to be observed in Tartarus. If she showed up covered in burns and soot marks she was bound to be a laughing stock. Something no onewanted to be in the most merciless place in the Underworld.

Passing one of the centaurs that patrolled the river, Nika nodded.

“Darthyria,” she greeted.

The centaur frowned for a minute, his thick eyebrows knotting together, before a look of surprise shot across his face.

“My, my, Nika. I haven’t seen you here since you were a wiry young spirit, leaping over the river ditch.”

Nika grinned. “Ready to watch me do it again?”

He chuckled; a deep echo that bounced off the river’s edge.

“Do you even remember where the low point is?”

Nika scowled. “How far away am I from it?”

Darthyria smiled gently. “Not too far, actually. There was a rumble between one of the prisoners and Tartarus – caused a slip a few years back and shifted Phlegethon slightly. Follow me.”

The two of them continued in silence, Darthyria occasionally raising a bow and arrow at those in the river who were trying to secure a more advantageous position by wading to more shallow spots where the flames didn’t lick nearly as high. They quickly returned to their rightful level when they saw the spearhead aimed at them.

Meanwhile, Nika wondered in worry about what reception she could expect from her family on the other side of the river.

After another five hundred metres or so they reached the crossing where Phlegethon gently pulsed under volcanic ash.

“There you go.”

“Gods, there’s barely any fire at all. Why aren’t more leaving Tartarus?”

Darthyria smiled down at her. “Still so young, Nika.”

She scowled. “I’ve been around for thousands of years.”

“And yet you still think to leave is to escape your fate.”

“Don’t speak to me in riddles,” Nika grumbled.

“Very well.” Darthyria inclined his head. “Then this is where I leave you.” With that, he began trotting back downstream to his post.

Nika took a deep breath, steeling herself, knowing that while there was no fire this was still likely to hurt. She marked out the easiest path, memorising where she would put her feet so she could move swiftly across, and went for it.

The whole process probably took no more than thirty seconds, but on the other side of the river Nika had to bite back a small scream of pain. Raising her heels, she saw that they were blackened – the soles of her shoes having disintegrated.

Luckily, she’d packed a spare pair of everything with her layers. She had just finished fishing on her boots, and tucking the scarf into her leather jacket, when she heard another sound that had her head whipping around.

A cackle.

There, snapping her wings shut and walking towards Nika in a blood-wet dress, was Tisiphone. She wore a serpent wrapped around her waist in place of a belt, and a whip in one hand that dangled down to her boots. It kissed the ground as she walked towards Nika.

“Hello Aunty.”

“Nika.”

“I should have known you’d still be here, guarding the gate to the entrance of Tartarus.”

She accepted the open arms of Tisiphone for the briefest of hugs before stepping back.

“Are you going to let me through?”

“Is that any way to speak to your aunty?”

Nika shoved her hands back into her jacket. “I can imagine what’s been said about me behind my back.”

Tisiphone tsked at her. “Just because some of us don’t understand why you felt the need to leave, or your current occupation, it doesn’t mean we don’t still love you. You still perform your duties as an Arae when called upon, I suppose?”

“Of course,” Nika lied smoothly.

As one of the original three Erinyes, Nika’s aunty had taught her everything she needed to know as an Arae when it came to cursing the Souls who broke their oaths. Of her three aunties, Tisiphone’s speciality was inflicting madness that would haunt the Soul – a little voice in the back of their heads, which got louder the more they tried to ignore it.

Sometimes, Nika swore she could hear a little voice like that in the back of her own head and wondered if her aunty had placed it there as she’d left Tartarus the first time.

“Well then, welcome home.” Tisiphone gestured to the black iron gate behind her at the mouth of Tartarus.

It had been too easy.

“You’re really just going to let me through?”

The unspoken words sat thick in Nika’s throat – after she had ran away in the bright light of day all those years ago.

“I’ll have to tell your mother you’re here.”

“I’d really rather tell her myself.”

Tisiphone shrugged. “That’s my price of entry. You of all spirits know that nothing goes without consequence, particularly in this land.”

“Fine,” Nika said, rolling her shoulders back and squaring them beneath her leather jacket. “I can handle Nyx.”

Tisiphone cackled again. “Don’t let her catch you calling her that or there will be much more than consequences you’ll be facing, child.”

But Nika was already heading through the mouth of the mountain.