Heart of the Universe: Discovery

CHAPTER TWO: DREAMS

Jim opened his  eyes in a field. It was huge. It looked like it cold go on forever. The field was filled with people, human people, but they were gray and devoid of light, so if you looked at them from the side, they just weren't there. They're faces were constantly changing, shimmering like a mirage, and they spoke in a constant bat-like chittering. They reminded Jim of ghosts from old movies he used to watch with his mom. The field itself was also drained of life and colors, filled with black trees that appeared to be poplars. There were only three people there that had life, had color, had meaning. They were a boy with goat hooves, a satyr if Jim could remember his mythology correctly, a girl with blonde hair and intelligent, stormy gray eyes, and a boy with tussled black hair and sea green eyes. The boy who had just tried to kill him, in fact. Jim recognized him from the news or something. Hadn't there been a good two weeks of news a couple years back about a boy who kidnapped his mother, blew up several national monuments, and then turned out to be just another victim of a kidnapping spree? He didn't seem much like a victim after trying to kill Jim, but who knew?

 They were clearly trying to keep a low profile, but it was like trying to blend in to a ball while wearing rags. If anything, their attempts seemed to make them more noticeable, not less. But no one but Jim seemed to notice them. No one noticed Jim, either, for that matter, though he clearly stood out among these shadows of people.

 Jim crept cautiously closer to the boy. He was talking to the others, and he was clearly the ringleader of the group. They were talking, using words that Jim knew, but still couldn't make sense of. After all, they were talking about Hades and the gods and Cerberus and the Fields of Asphodel. He would have pegged them off as crazy right from the start if not for two key points. A), they clearly knew more about this place this place than Jim, and B), he would have called Strickler crazy if he told Jim about trolls six months ago.

 " I suppose it's too late to turn back," the goat boy was saying. " We'll be OK." My attempted murderer said, in a way that sounded like he was putting on a brave face for them. "Maybe we should search somewhere else first," the satyr said anxiously. "Like Elysium, for instance..." Jim  mentally scrolled through his mental archives for mentions of Elysium. Oh, right! It was the Greek version of heaven. Which meant that Jim was... he couldn't bring himself to even think it. There couldn't possibly be a such thing as the Underworld... Right? "Grover, stop messing around." The girl was saying to the satyr, who was apparently named Grover. "Untie the shoes!" She yelled, forcing Jim out of his head. Grover's sneakers were sprouting wings and dragging him full-speed towards the gates of a giant obsidian palace. His friends were right behind him, yelling loudly and attracting the attention of everyone in the shadowy fields. Just before he slammed into the gates and became a satyr pancake, he veered left into a tunnel that led to an endless black pit that radiated evil and smelled of death. Something primordial and malevolent was down there, chanting in an ancient language that wasn't that ancient.It was Troll.

 Before he could dwell on that, the chanting stopped, and the pit started sucking inward like it was trying to inhale them all. Jim was about to run, when he turned and saw that the goat boy Grover was still being dragged in by the sneakers, and that if Jim didn't intervene now, then he would stumble and whatever was in the pit would get him. Jim sighed. He couldn't leave him here to die. He was the trollhunter. He had to answer every call, whether or not they knew their call was being answered. Still, not dying sounded like an excellent option right about now.

 Jim gathered his wits and walked towards Grover, though it wasn't hard what with the giant vacuum. Grover was sliding down the slope into the pit, but he managed to find a rock to hold onto. With Jim's help, he managed to kick off shoe number one. Jim was now pulling as hard as he could, grunting with the exertion of removing the shoe. When it finally came off, the shoe did whatever the opposite of a victory lap would be (a pulverized lap, maybe?) before turning around with great indigence  and, in  one final act of vengeance, caught Jim off guard and pushed him down into the never-ending trench.