Page 7 of Taking Orders in the Underworld

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,weretrue.

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 Nikacouldcross.

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 werestandardsto 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.”

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