The Gates of Tartarus | I ✓

18. Apollo Is Schooled

I wasn't gonna post until I finished Chapter 19, but then I saw that I hadn't posted since literally two weeks ago, so I was like screw it, I guess that I can just post and try and make chapter 19 come to life. Hopefully it doesn't take that long.

Anyway, I've been going on for too long, so here ya go!

Edit: In which Apollo has a mental breakdown... ish. You know who I hate writing? Gods. I mean, they're human, but also not, so I can never figure out quite exactly how they should act... and I literally invented this characterization of them, so... It's my fault, I guess. I opened this can of worms, now I gotta lie in it.

Also, I usually try to post in my mornings, but my sleep schedule is so off that I've given up at this point.

Hours later, I found myself wishing a monster would just attack us and liven things up.

We were simply stumbling through the dark, hoping that we were at least going somewhat in the right direction. We could've been going in circles for all we knew, and Tartarus was definitely powerful enough to do something like that as a practical joke. Yet something told me that Tartarus was on our side.

Well, not on our side like one would've expected, because helping us escape was definitely below his pay grade, but I didn't think he was actively trying to murder us down here either. He was just letting us do whatever and the monsters do whatever. Maybe he wanted us out just as much as we wanted out.

"So I might be a little lost," Apollo admitted as we passed a rock that either looked exactly the same as the other ten thousand rocks we'd seen, or the same rock we saw ten thousand times.

"Gee, really? I never would've guessed."

"Ha ha," he said sarcastically. "Do you think the Fates hate us or are testing us? Which god has ever had as horrible luck as us before? Sure, I might've had the occasional unfortunate thing happen to me before, but nothing, nothing, beats falling into Tartarus. Why?"

I didn't think it a good idea to mention how I had told him to let go and he hadn't. "So you're fresh out of ideas?"

"Yeah," he said, grimacing.

"Any old legends about Tartarus you might've heard? Where the entrance or whatever is?"

"There was this one lullaby," Apollo said half-heartedly. "About Tartarus. The lines went something like, In the realm of chaos and red, where monsters dwell and immortals dread, go forth toward the kingdom of night, which you must pass to reach the light. But I mean, it's not like those lines can help us. I don't even know what they mean." Apollo sighed. "Maybe light doesn't even mean the gates. Who knows?"

While Apollo was trying to explain it all to me, the only thing I could think about was the fact that the gods apparently had a lullaby about Tartarus. Why not? It just seemed weird, before I remembered the lullabies I had grown up with: London Bridge, Ring Around the Rosie, Three Blind Mice, and about a hundred other horrible ones. I supposed it was just a universal thing to have rather morbid lullabies. Who had even thought that kids would sleep to those lyrics? They were right, but why?

"Maybe it's like a poetic prophecy," was the only suggestion I could make.

"In a realm of eternal night and darkness," Apollo sighed, staring straight ahead glumly, "let's find some night. Yippee."

He said it so sarcastically I snorted.

As we trudged on in the gloom, I found myself wondering about my dreams, and that conversation we had had with Pholus. An old legend about a priestess of Apollo... As Pholus had gone into more detail, I realized that I could almost remember the dream—there had been someone named Alexander, and I had been a priestess of Apollo. Yet something felt... off, about the dream. About Pholus' explanation. I didn't know why.