Poseidon's Academy

Chapter 27. The Underworld

Hailey felt as though she was rising, moving towards whatever afterlife existed as the heavy sadness that pushed against her chest lifted.

Pain erupted in her body, dragging her mind back. Her eyes flew open. She wasn't in the water anymore. She was lying near the dock. Hailey was so grateful to be alive, she could have kissed its rotting wood, but she was too busy coughing up water.

She inhaled deep glorious breaths of air, ignoring the scratchiness in her throat. Once her lungs stopped burning, she sat up and smiled in relief, finding her friends sitting on the dirt around her.

'Sorry it took me so long to use my powers,' Jayden said, wringing out his jacket.

'Don't worry about it,' Aaron told him, his voice hoarse. 'We're alive, and that's what matters.'

Hailey glanced at the dark water and shivered, remembering the gloom that had pressed against her and dragged her under. 'Did anyone else suddenly get really depressed when they were in there?'

Demi pulled her drenched green jacket closer around her. 'Yeah, that's why I stopped swimming. It seemed pointless.'

'That's why I didn't use my powers at first,' Jayden said. 'I didn't feel like there was a point in saving us. But when I was about to die, my instincts kicked in.' He shrugged. 'And here we are-alive.'

Alec climbed to his feet, water dripping from his clothes to the muddy ground. 'That's what Acheron does to you, it causes depression-the river we were just in,' he added when everyone stared at him blankly.

'The river of woe,' Hailey said, remembering Amathia mentioning it in class.

It was the river you had to cross to get into the Underworld, which made the cavern they were in the entrance. She stood up and frowned. She hadn't had a clear image of what the Underworld's entrance would look like, but she definitely thought it would look a little more foreboding than the arching tunnel in front of her.

The tunnel was high enough that a giant could have walked through it without having to duck too low, but other than that, it was your average tunnel, having jagged rock walls and a hard-packed dirt floor. There were no cobwebs, skeletons, or rats from what Hailey could see.

Demi shuffled to Hailey's side. 'I expected something a little more... creepy,' she said in a voice tinged with disappointment.

'I thought Cerberus was meant to guard the entrance,' Jayden remarked, peering down the dark tunnel.

'It's been almost twenty centuries since the gods died.' Alec raked a hand through his wet hair. 'I don't think monsters live that long.'

'Well, just in case you're wrong, I'll have the wand ready,' Hailey said, her grip tightening around it. As long as she had it, they'd be safe-at least that's what she was hoping.

'Um, would you mind using it to dry us off?' Demi asked, trying to brush off the dirt clinging to her wet clothes, but only managing to turn it to mud.

Water dripped from the wand's moonstone tip as Hailey spun the wand around her and her friends and said, 'Aom. Svatr.' Her soaked clothes burned with warmth, like she was sitting in front of a crackling fire, and were dry within two seconds-even the putrid smell of the Acheron River evaporated, leaving her and everyone else smelling like clothes fresh out of the dryer.

'Let's get this over with,' Aaron said, marching into the tunnel.

Hailey followed behind him, the wand raised, ready to shoot a sleeping spell at anything that moved. She wrinkled her nose against the rotten-eggs smell that seemed to be getting stronger the further down the tunnel she crept. She wondered what would be waiting for them on the other side. She hoped it would be the Erinyes with their backs turned. That'd make things easy. All she'd have to do was flick the wand, and they'd be asleep before they'd even whirled around.