Page 7 of Invoking Ruin

It’s always the least important immortals—goddesses and beasts—who are tossed aside.

He approaches me as I enter the clearing, lowering his head to nudge my chest in greeting. I scratch his ears and feed him a carrot I’d stolen from the market earlier that day.

It’s fair to say I’d stolen worse.

“Did you miss me, boy?” I ask him, and he snickers in reply. As good an answer as any.

After some convincing, I hook him to the golden chariot I’d also left in the clearing. He does hate to be contained, but I need the chariot to carry my chest of supplies. It's too heavy to ride him alone.

Once he’s ready, I climb into the chariot and urge us skyward. He takes off in a flap of his wings and we’re soon rising over the dark, still waters of the lake. The cozy city surrounding it looks like a toy town, from up here.

If only my destination were so charming.

I urge him higher and then turn southeast.

There are many hidden entrances to the Underworld accessible from the Earth’s surface. Several are close by, but I force myself to go farther afield to keep the watchers off my trail. Luckily for me, Pegasus is faster than any means of travel save the instant ones some powerful gods can open up at a whim.

It’s still over two hours before we touch down in what used to be Ephyra and the Necromanteion that had once stood there. What the town is called today, I don’t know, and I don’t particularly care. Even before the mortals stopped believing in us, I had little use for them. Oh, they’d send me their petty wishes, but more often they’d curse me for their poor decisions whether I influenced them or not.

I don’t know what it means to be worshipped. Only feared.

The ruins are now the source of tourists’ curiosity, so I’m careful to land Pegasus far away from prying eyes.

And then I dig into the chest at my feet.

Unlike my mother, and her thrice-damned apple, and Lethe and her unreliable river, I have no special object to call my own. My power rests entirely in how I can wield my tongue to lead men and gods alike to their own ruin. I convince, cajole, even downright order if I can find the right weak point on which to apply pressure.

It requires far more wit than other gods’ powers.

Luckily, I have more than my fair share of wit, along with a trove of stolen goods from my fellow gods. The supplies I have with me now are but a small fraction of them. The most useful.

Hades’ helmet of invisibility gleams a dull bronze in the moonlight, and Hermes’ winged sandals leap up and down inside the chest, ready to fly at a second’s notice. I draw them out, and put them all on. I finish equipping myself with a nonmagical but well-made short sword.

It’s a small matter to enter the city of the dead unseen, with the helmet. Mortals, I could convince not to look at me either way, but this protection is necessary to deceive gods.

The city is little more than ruins with civilization built up around it, but as I bypass the guards and barricades, it still hums as if inhabited. Once, this place housed the Oracle of the Dead, and Odysseus himself walked the same path as I, seeking the wisdom of those passed on.

The location has the added bonus of being the convergence of three of the Underworld’s rivers: The Acheron, the Pyriphlegethon, and the Cocytus. None of them are the province of my sister. I’ll take the river of woe, fire and, lamentation any day over the Lethe.

The winding cave path I’m on begins to smell of smoke and dead souls. To mortals, these tunnels lead to a dead end, but they open for me. They converge into a single deep, dark hole, an entrance to the Underworld, warning me that I’m not welcome even as it lets me pass through undisturbed.

The Underworld itself, a gloomy, grey place, is still understaffed. More and more chthonic gods have returned to their former home, but the souls of the dead are still few and far between. Almost all of them were drawn into the tear of Void my grandmother opened seven hundred years ago.

They’ll never be seen again.

What their absence means for the Underworld in the long run, I don’t know. For this moment, it means even the few gates that are guarded aren’t watched very well. I slip by whatever cronies Hades and Persephone still command.

With Hermes’ winged sandals, following the rivers is easy. I keep low to the water. Even with the helmet on, if I collide with any of the winged beings who call this place home, they’ll know it.

But if I follow the coil of the Acheron, it will lead me straight to Tartarus, and I can bypass everyone and everything.

And I really cannot afford any run-ins.

Following the rivers is a slow slide from grey gloom to total darkness. The Pyriphlegethon’s fiery trail is my only illumination, and it only extends so far.

Even so, when the rivers drop away, it’s hard to notice.

All five rivers circle and coil through the lands of the Underworld like lazy snakes, separating the dead from their final destinations until Charon can take them across. The rivers make up the borders of the Underworld. Some of their streams break off to twine through the various realms within, defining the land’s boundaries.

---