9. Persephone
Persephone
Igasped as cold water enveloped me, the world turning upside down as my feet were swept out from under me. The sound of rushing water drowned out my yell, and I tumbled over and over as waves crashed all around me.
Instinct made me clamp my mouth shut as I inhaled a mouthful of salty water, then I was completely submerged. The light dimmed and panic and disorientation gripped me. I kicked out, feeling for the floor or anything solid, unable to see.
My lungs were burning as I flailed my limbs desperately. Then the swirling motion flinging my body about stopped abruptly, and bright light began to seep back through the water. I tried to steady myself, treading water, chest aching as I looked around.
I was at the bottom of the ocean.
Directly ahead of me was a huge sunken marble trident, jutting out of the sandy ocean-bed, its three points stabbing majestically towards the surface. I started to turn to look for more but dizziness made my eyes roll. I needed air.
“Breathe. You can breathe under here.”
“Hades!”
“Breathe.”
Gods, this was messed up. I closed my eyes, and forced out every instinct in my body screaming at me to keep my mouth shut.
I inhaled.
Instead of water, cool air filled my throat, then my lungs, and I laughed aloud in relief as my eyes fluttered open. I was breathing underwater. Unreal. I kicked myself around in a slow circle, taking in everything I could.
To the right of the fifty-foot tall trident, high up and floating on a platform, were the twelve gods, and a little way apart from them, the three judges. I threw a pointed scowl at them all, and moved my gaze on.
The ocean bed was littered with ruined buildings, white marble and lumps of bronze nestled in the sand. Only one structure looked like it had survived whatever had sunk it, but it wasn't in good shape.
I guessed the gem that I had to hunt out and put in the trident would be hidden down there. I was quite sure there would be more to it than just finding it though.
A treasure hunt wasn't exactly perilous enough for these sadistic bastards.
Didn't Poseidon say something about a steed? As soon as the thought entered my mind, my legs began to feel tired. With a final glance at the gods, I kicked myself down, swimming towards the intact building.
There was no point tiring myself out treading water and achieving nothing.
The water was cool but not cold, and it felt good to be swimming. I'd swum in pools all my life, but swimming in the sea was a luxury I could seldom afford while living in Manhattan. I was glad I'd left the leather corset off, my arms pulling me easily through the water.
As I reached the entrance to the building, the hairs on my arms stood up and I slowed.
It looked like I would expect an ancient Greek temple to look, with a triangular facade topping cracked columns.
It was a single story, and half of it seemed to have sunk into the sand, leaving it severely lop-sided.
I peered through the columns into the darkness.
Something rushed at me from the gloom, and I shot backwards, drawing Faesforos from the sheath on my thigh instinctively. But as I saw the thing, my knife arm dropped to my side limply, and my jaw dropped.
It was a seahorse. And not the kind of seahorse that I'd seen in aquariums back home, but an actual horse, with a fish’s tail curled underneath him instead of back legs.
In place of hair he had a solid covering of tiny iridescent scales that shone and caught the light like mother-of-pearl, and he rocked and whinnied as he bounded in circles around me.
Unbridled joy filled me as I watched him, and I felt like a child falling in love with ponies again.
“It's a hippocampus. They’re not the most intelligent creatures, but tame enough,” said Hades voice in my head.
“Are you allowed to talk to me?”
As soon as I projected the thought to him, a hot swell of water lifted me, and Poseidon's voice echoed in my head.
“Enough help!”
I'll take that as a no then, I thought, and reached a hand out hesitantly to the hippocampus. He bumped his large, cold nose against my hand and gave a gleeful little whinny.
A smile split my face, and I noticed a simple strap over his back, with a stirrup on either side. I swam up and over him, and he stayed perfectly still in the water as I maneuvered my feet into the stirrups.
I couldn't see how the strap was staying fixed to his back, so I guessed magic was involved. The cold scales weren't as comfortable as a saddle would have been, but this would definitely beat swimming.
I tried to ignore the creeping worry that I might be down here some time if they expected me to need to ride this guy to keep going.
As soon as I set my sights on the ruined building again, a deep rumbling started beneath me, and the hippocampus kicked in alarm.
“Easy, buddy,” I said, soothing his neck and looking down. The sand in the clearing in the center of the building was vibrating, dust clouds lifting into the water. “Let's not wait and find out what that is, eh?” I said to the hippocampus, adrenaline beginning to surge though my veins.
Something bad was coming, I knew it.
The hippocampus made a loud clicking sound in response.
“How do I make you go forward?”
My words were lost to the water around me, only audible as a bubbly mess of noise to me, but it seemed my steed understood them perfectly.
He darted forward, and I gripped his neck in surprise at his speed, then squeaked in alarm as I realized he wasn't slowing down.
“Slow down!” He did, immediately, and I let out a long breath, bubbles rising around my face. “Left a bit?” I asked him tentatively, and the rumbling grew louder. He swerved left. Good. “And right?” He changed course, heading right. “Excellent,” I told him. “Let's go get this gem.”
I couldn't help glancing over my shoulder as we charged towards the gloom of the temple.
I wished I hadn't.
The sand in the clearing was beginning to churn, and I could just make out giant black claws peeking up through the ground, tips sharp and lethal looking.
If whatever it was had claws bigger than me, I shuddered to think how huge the rest of it was.
I snapped my attention back to the job at hand as we zoomed between two columns, and into the temple.
“Slow down a bit, buddy,” I said, straining to see in the darkness. The hippocampus did slow down, but he also made a funny squeaking sound, before beginning to glow.
A soft blue light started emanating from him, casting just enough illumination about us for me to make out more columns and what was left of a cracked marble floor, sinking into the ground.
Something large scuttled on my right, and I jumped in surprise.
Trying not to think about what else might be in there with me, I urged the hippocampus on.
“That's a neat trick. I'm going to have to give you a name,” I told him, as we floated cautiously through the room, me scanning the ground beneath us for anything that looked like a gem.
“How about Buddy? I keep calling you that anyway.” He nickered and I nodded. “Buddy it is.”
A loud screech from outside the temple carried through the water to me, and I shivered. We needed to do this faster.
We did a full circuit of the room, finding nothing but more broken rock and marble, and lots and lots of large crabs. I grimaced as I realized we were going to have to go further into the temple.
There were two dark doorways at the back of the room and we hovered before them. Choosing the one on the left arbitrarily, I directed Buddy towards it, and we swam through.
It was pitch black, and Buddy's soft glow failed to penetrate the darkness.
A primal fear of not knowing what was in the dark crawled over my skin.
Heat swept over me as I blinked and I realized that being completely submerged in water was a much, much more suffocating feeling when the water wasn't nice and cool.
A budding panic started to blossom in my chest as Buddy turned in a slow circle, and the water around me heated more.
Despite every breath I took being dry air, my lungs were straining, and it felt like I couldn't fill them enough.
Tightness was spreading across my whole chest now, and I knew the signs of oncoming panic in my body too well.
Big black spots would come soon, along with the dizziness.
“We'll come back to this room,” I said, even my blurry underwater voice sounding breathless. Buddy seemed to agree, wasting no time at all speeding back to the doorway.
The gloom of the main hall seemed positively bright compared to the dark room, and the water we moved through was mercifully cool, almost like a balm over my skin.
I took long breaths as Buddy slowed, petting his neck absent-mindedly as I reassessed the hall, my racing pulse calming. “Let's hope the gem is in the other room,” I said to him. “Cos I do not want to go back in there. Ever.”
The ceiling in the second room was cracked, and the gaps were letting in shafts of blue light that shimmered over an array of rotting wooden crates. We were on the raised side of the building, the side that wasn't sinking, and I couldn't have been more grateful for the extra light.
“OK. Let's see what we've got,” I said nervously, and slid my feet from Buddy's stirrups. Swallowing my trepidation, I kicked myself over to the nearest crate and reached for the lid.
I'd half expected the wood to crumble under my touch, but it felt sturdy as I eased the lid up. There was no hinge, and the lid slid off, hitting the sandy marble and causing a wave of dust to lift from the floor.
I heard a distinct slithering sound and froze, trying to tread water as gently as I could while looking slowly around myself for the source of the sound. Nothing was moving though, and I let out a long breath as I swam over the top of the open box to look inside.
Books. Piles and piles of books, probably submerged in water for centuries. I felt a pang of sorrow that they were ruined, then another distant screech made me focus. I needed to check the next box.
I went through them all and whilst I found some pretty awesome stuff, none of it was a gem. There was an unbelievably sharp looking sword, a large box full of rusted armor, and a whole host of cooking paraphernalia, but nothing that looked like treasure.
Swimming back over the top of the boxes towards Buddy, I sighed. “Guess we'd better go back to the room of panic,” I told him, then froze.
Wrapping itself tightly around the first crate I'd opened was a snake. An enormous freaking sea snake. Documentaries I'd seen about how reptiles flashed bright colors as a warning to other animals popped into my head as I stared at it.
This thing was neon-bright, don't-fuck-with-me orange. It was also massive, looping itself three times around the box already, with more tail seeming to come from nowhere. And it was between me and the doorway and my hippocampus.
Would it care if I just swam over it, or would it attack?
A thought stopped me from kicking up higher and trying though.
What if it was wrapped round that particular box for a reason?
Was there such a thing as a guard snake?
But that box was full of books, not gems. Although.
.. I hadn't removed any of the books. Or looked underneath them.
Pulse racing, I swam back to the box with the sword in it, and hefted it up out of the crate. It weighed a ton and I screwed my face up, dropping it again immediately.
There was no way I could wield it. Besides which, I didn't really want to kill or piss off the snake. Just get it to move out of the way. I began to dig through the crates, tossing things out as I hunted for something that might distract the serpent.
It didn't move from the box of books, but its head lifted warily, beady black eyes fixed on me as I launched bits of ancient sunken trash through the water.
My eyes fell on the rusted armor, a new plan forming quickly in my head as yet another screech from outside reverberated through the building. I reached into the box and lifted out a dented shield with a sun carved on it.
It was heavy, but nowhere near as bad as the sword, and it seemed solid enough.
I fought with the straps on the inside, eventually looping my left forearm through so I was wearing it properly.
It was large enough that when I held my arm in front of me it covered my whole body, down to the waist. It wasn't ideal, but it was the best I had. It would have to do.
“Here we go,” I told Buddy, and swam towards the snake and the box of books.