“Prove it.”
5
BEYOND FOREVER
Eirikr was engulfed inside a torrent of darkness moving so fast nausea gripped his guts. Before he had time to blink, he was still again, standing on the roof of what looked like a factory. As far as the eyes could see, there were millions of thin, identical silos. He turned, only to find more of the same all around him.
The light was so faint, even his eyes had a hard time seeing much, until the luminous goddess appeared at his side.
She wore the same gold dress, but everything else about her had changed. She was much taller, with a skin tone two or three shades lighter, and sage green eyes. Her hair, still falling in waves around her bare shoulders, was the color of wheat catching the sun on a summer day. She shone so bright Eirikr could see much farther now.
Yet the view remained unchanged. Silos and silos and silos. He looked up to the sky and found only darkness.
“Where are we?”
“Can’t you guess?”
His eyes squinted, not making sense of any of this.
“Long ago, this place was in the underworld, but there were too many souls clogging up most of Hades’ kingdom, so he moved it off-world. This is the Asphodel Meadows. It’s in orbit over the Underworld.” She offered Eirikr her hand, and he stared at it with some mistrust.
That said, Ariadne couldn’t have done this—whatever this was. Either move him to this place, or made him see it, he wasn’t quite sure. Eirikr didn’t feel entirely whole—part of him might still be on Earth.
He finally took her offered palm. It was ice cold, so freezing his skin felt like it was scorched. Before he could try to let go, they started to float, flying fast, though the speed wasn’t nearly as dizzying as before.
Athena finally let go, stopping in the middle of a dark void. From this vantage point, Eirikr could see a planet in the distance. It didn’t seem that different from Earth, in a way, with water and clouds, land and mountains. The colors were all wrong though. The land was darker, the seas shining red rather than blue.
“The Underworld,” Eirikr guessed.
She gestured behind his shoulder. Glancing back, he saw the fields of silos from underneath; it was shaped like a massive organ with millions of pipes.
“We’re too close, but with a more distant perspective, this looks like a moon crescent,” Athena told him. “Hades’s quite artistic, when he sets his mind to it.”
“There are…people, in there?” Eirikr couldn’t imagine the horror of spending all of eternity stuck in one of those silos. “That’s horrifying. No torture could be worse than that.”
The goddess inclined her head. “The meadow is meant for unremarkable souls. The passive sheep who never rose to undo an injustice, content to keep their heads down as other suffered. Their afterlife isn’t meant to be pleasant, Eirikr.”
Eirikr cursed in Old Norse. Unremarkable could describe the bulk of humanity. They churned, struggling every day just to put bread on the table and keep a roof over their head and after a life of suffering, they ended up here? It wasn’t right.
“Come, Child of Knowledge. See your truth.”
This time, he was prepared for the ice-cold hand and the speed of her flight.
What he wasn’t prepared for was what he saw when she stopped over the edge of one silo, and he looked down.
Deep down, farther than his eyes would have been able to see if the goddess wasn’t lighting the way, was the broken, curved body of Greer. She sobbed softly, cuts and bruises all over her.
“What is she doing here?” If there was one person who didn’t deserve this fate, it was Greer. She’d died helping her friends. Her entire life was full of courageous deeds. This was wrong. So wrong.
Her eyes lifted upward, and she squinted, as though she saw the goddess’s light. Greer moved on shaky legs, forcing herself to stand. Then she started to climb, groaning, wincing, and cursing, but never giving up.
She’d moved almost five yards before she fell again, breaking all her bones.
“She’ll heal, eventually. Souls are resilient—hers in particular.”
Eirikr ignored the goddess. He hopped on top of the silo, and jumped down into darkness, falling for what felt like forever, until he hit the ground right next to Greer.
Here she was. Her smell was still the same, though it was faint. Her beautiful face was more bruised than he’d realized, her lip cut. The stench of blood felt sickening to him; it didn’t smell like the kind of blood he could have drunk. It was as though her blood had been mixed with sulfur.
“Let me help. Let’s get out of here.” He offered her his hand, but she remained on the floor, a single tear running down her skin.
Eirikr could have screamed.
“She can’t hear you. We’re not really here.”
Eirikr wanted to scream, destroy something, stab the goddess if he could.
“Greer doesn’t belong here. No witch does. She was stolen from Fate and dragged into the meadow. She’s been cut off from her magic. She can’t get out.” Each word felt like a knife right into his chest. “You’re right—this place is far worse than any hell, especially to brave souls. She was sent here as a punishment, as well as a prison. Can you think of anyone who might wish to punish and control her?”
Slowly, Eirikr turned to the goddess. “Enough with the theatrics. What do you want of me?”
He would do anything to get Greer out of this nightmare. And the goddess knew it.
Athena waved a hand and the next moment, they were back in the highlands, he on his knees, she, standing a foot away, once again with Ariadne’s damnable face.
Now Eirikr wondered which one of the two goddesses was his true enemy. Ariadne or Athena.
“There are bigger things at play, child. I have read the signs, and they all point to war in Olympus. That a soul was so easily plucked from this world and redirected concerns me. Alliances have been made in the shadows.” The goddess’s voice sounded less like Ariadne in her ire—deeper, and infinitely stronger. “I would have you be my eyes and ears on your journey. I will have you uncover who dares play with the gods of Olympus. In exchange, I give you my blessing, will come to your aid when you call to me—only once, mind. And I will free the girl from the meadows.”
Eirikr would have told the goddess to go to Tartarus had she not uttered the last words.
“Where will you bring her?”
“The girl’s been dead for a day—her soul will be called by the Fates in six days, to be sent where she belongs. I will bring her to Olympus. Whoever sent her to Asphodel could only have done so from there—unless it was Hades himself, and I can vouch for my uncle. He has little taste for such intrigues. You must travel to Olympus, find her, discover who took her, and report back to me. Upon your return, I shall wake her flesh so that the girl might live again.”
Eirikr may not have dealt with many gods, but he knew enough of power to realize he was being used at best, played at worst. Probably both.
He also didn’t happen to have a choice.
“You will swear to it on the river. Swear on the Styx that you’ll free Greer from the meadows and bring her to Olympus.”
He thought Athena might have been offended, but she smiled, sickeningly beautiful with Ariadne’s appearance. “A word of advice. When you require a vow from a goddess, make it as specific as you can. See, I could swear what you demanded, and free her in, let’s say, a thousand years?”