Five days passed in a flash.
Hypnos and the three Erinyes, having turned up nothing in their search, reluctantly returned to Tartaros to suppress the restless souls of sinners and the clamoring monsters and Titans.
The three Dream Gods standing guard gradually withdrew to Somnus as well, leaving behind only a small number of Oneiroi to serve as sentinels.
Evidently, they had given up the pursuit of the three fugitives.
Even so, to be safe, Lorne stayed two more days, and only after confirming it was not a trap did he formally bid farewell to King Minos that same night.
As departure drew near, the Minotaur retrieved the last member of their party from the tribunal's holding cell and brought him before the two of them.
Looking at Sisyphus still snoring away on the ground, Lorne could not quite hide his surprise. "It has been seven days already. He still has not woken?"
"Woke... woke up. About a dozen times."
"Then how..."
"When he woke... had to knock... knock him out again. Could not let him... know too much..." The Minotaur answered in halting fragments, then pointed a finger toward King Minos standing nearby. "Father... said so..."
Lorne nodded.
Well...he understood King Minos's reasoning perfectly well.
As a precaution, that old swindler Sisyphus absolutely could not be allowed to catch on to the connection between them.
Still...
He glanced at the Minotaur's arm, thicker than Sisyphus's neck, then at Sisyphus's head, which had visibly swollen by a whole size, and quietly lowered his eyes in a few seconds of guilty silence.
Every time he came around, he had to face a fist the size of a cooking pot and be physically put back to sleep, courtesy of the bluntly honest Minotaur...
Lorne could more or less imagine what kind of miserable days that this poor guy had been living through in the temporary holding cell.
After a brief exchange of parting words, he hoisted the still-unconscious Sisyphus, concealed their presence, and quietly slipped out through the rear door of the judgment hall.
It had to be said that with Hypnos, the three (Furies) Erinyes, and the three Dream Gods all withdrawn, what remained of the so-called defensive line looked laughably thin to Lorne's eyes.
And so it proved.
Within just a few hours, he and Thetis silently slipped past the patrolling sentinels, crossed through the three-way fork in the Field of Truth, and set off toward the Elysian Fields.
* * *
Led by the map King Minos had provided, Lorne and his companions arrived smoothly at the outer edge of their destination.
Stretching before them was a vast grey plain shrouded in deathly mist.
Tens of thousands of spirits, filled with resentment and unwillingness, drifted and clawed at a golden barrier constructed from the densely packed divine script, unable to pull themselves away.
This wall was called the Wall of Lament, and it was the final barrier separating the Elysian Fields from the Field of Truth.
Cross it, and even the most insignificant soul could at last attain the life it had always longed for.
But most could only gaze upon it and sigh, and when that obsession finally dissolved entirely, the spirits would break apart into drifting foxfire, and in the end become nothing more than pure death energy.
After ages of accumulation, the endless plain was already thick with countless wisps of mindless phosphorescent light.
"Hmmm!"
The Flame, Lorne's Avatar of purification, surfaced behind him.
He raised a hand and traced a series of runes, and the spirits around them, whether consumed by grievance or drifting without awareness, scattered like mice before a cat, leaving a clear path straight to the Wall of Lament.
The two stepped forward to stand beneath the luminous barrier.
Lorne recalled the formula King Minos had taught him and traced the runes through the air.
When the final stroke was complete, the divine-script structures, shaped like bricks, automatically receded to either side, peeling back layer by layer like an onion to expose the Elysian Fields at their core.
They had finally arrived.
Thetis exhaled a long breath of relief, following close behind Lorne as her pillar of support, moving forward with cautious steps.
After breaking through what felt like a membrane of water, the five senses that the underworld's death energy had suppressed suddenly sharpened severalfold.
The fragrance of soil, the warmth of sunlight, the singing of insects and birds all flooded in with vivid clarity, and an overwhelming sense of vibrant life filled her chest, washing through both body and soul.
At the same moment, Sisyphus, slung over Lorne's shoulder, snapped his eyes open.
Every trace of the half-dead stupor from before vanished in an instant.
Like a mouse injected with something volatile, he launched himself off Lorne's shoulder, sprinted toward the nearest stream, and drank in great mouthfuls.
The murmuring water, wound through with aether, curved and twisted through the land.
A cupped handful tasted clear and sweet.
After drinking his fill, Sisyphus rubbed the neck from which the aching soreness was gradually fading and turned back with bright eyes.
"Old friend, quickly, come try it.
This is the water of life I read about in the old texts. It does extraordinary things for nourishing the divine nature and the soul."
Lorne did not answer.
He was busy surveying his surroundings carefully.
Beyond the water running rich with aether, the very air was saturated with dense, almost fog-like magical energy, and the vegetation covering the ground was extraordinarily lush.
Along the paths and among the trees on either side, shrubs heavy with fruit and grain bowed under the weight of their harvest.
Birdsong and the chirping of insects drifted through at intervals.
Flowers and grass grew freely in all directions, sweet-scented and inviting, with butterflies and bees weaving through them.
Compared to the Greek lands that had already lived through several near-extinctions of human life, this place was like a garden of supreme abundance, with nourishment gifted by the heavens at every turn.
With aether this pure filling every corner of the space, any being, whether mortal, god, or an embodied spirit, could breathe the air, drink the water, and eat a little of the fruit and grain, and have it directly absorbed by body and soul, sustaining their daily needs and even strengthening them.
Beyond that, there was no cold season or scorching heat, no natural disasters running rampant, no wars tearing things apart.
And removed as it was from all worldly turmoil, every face Lorne saw wore an expression of quiet contentment.
In fact, calling it the Isle of the Blessed was no exaggeration.
Lorne and Thetis swept their gaze across the scene and took in the sight of souls indistinguishable from the living.
Their skin glowed with healthy radiance, every one of them preserved in their most perfect physical state.
Clearly the dense magical energy of the Elysian Fields had gifted them all with entirely new bodies.
Yet the residents of these fields before them wandered without purpose, drifting or stopping to rest, and not a single one showed any vigilance or surprise at the arrival of outsiders.
The welcoming smiles on their faces moved the right muscles, and yet they were like painted expressions on a puppet's face, wholly unchanging.
Looking at it too long made the skin crawl.
And on closer inspection, every pair of eyes among the residents had clearly lost its focus, which made the three of them feel, more and more, as though these souls were simply lost inside a beautiful dream.
Something is not right here.
Lorne quietly lowered his gaze to the grass-covered ground.
His divine power-enhanced sight pierced through the layers of earth, and he saw hundreds of spirit veins, vast as great rivers, flowing inward from the endless plain outside the Wall of Lament, feeding this small patch of purified land.
Death is not the end.
Chaos and nothingness are the origin of all things.
So that was it.
Not every soul could maintain a sense of self after death.
A great many lives, upon fading, dissolved into pure aether as well, filling the void beneath the underworld known as the Abyss, or becoming the nourishment that fed the Elysian Fields, delivering their bliss to this paradise.
No wonder the gods were so fond of stirring up wars.
It was not only for gathering devotion and asserting dominion.
More fundamentally, by continuously manufacturing death, they could harvest the sentient beings of the earth like crops, reaping them season after season, reclaiming the aether that all living things had absorbed from the world, keeping every people's numbers in check, and sustaining the eternal, unfading glory of the gods.
In a sense, the gods might truly be the root cause of strife and inequality in this world.
"Found him."
While Lorne was quietly turning these thoughts over, Thetis, who had been searching through the paradise, pointed toward a figure standing in the shade of dense foliage not far ahead.
A tall, upright frame.
Features as lovely and refined as a blossom. Dressed in garments in the style of Kypros.
This resident of the Elysian Fields was unmistakably the soul of Adonis.
Yet like everyone else around him, he was dazed and hollow, like a marionette from which all thought had been removed.
"Hey. Stop sleeping. Wake up."
Lorne walked forward, took hold of Adonis's collar, and gave him a shake.
Seeing no response, he let the Wheel behind him settle on the Flame, the Avatar carrying the power of purification, raised his hand, and landed several sharp slaps across that handsome face.
The crisp, loud sound carried a hint of personal revenge.
All right, he admitted he hated handsome men, especially those more handsome than him.
Slap, slap, slap, slap.
Accompanied by a stinging pain in the flesh and a burning sensation searing through his soul, the dazed Adonis blinked his eyes open, covered his swollen, reddening cheek, and stared at the stranger before him with a look of startled fear.
"You... who are you..."
"Good, you are awake. Don't be afraid."
Lorne patted him on the shoulder, pressed a mild smile onto his face, and spoke in a reassuring tone.
"We were sent by the goddess Aphrodite herself, specifically to come down to the underworld and get you out."
"Lady Aphrodite?"
At those words, Adonis's eyes lit up immediately, hope and excitement flooding into his gaze.
"She still thinks of me?"
"Without question. Her love for you is beyond all doubt."
Lorne gave a nod, happy enough to say a few kind words on behalf of his employer.
Then, after settling Adonis's nerves with a few brief reassurances, he raised a hand and pointed toward the Wall of Lament ahead.
"Time is pressing. If there is nothing else, let us be on our way."
For reasons he could not quite name, he had kept feeling that the atmosphere of the Elysian Fields was subtly wrong.
His instincts told him not to linger.
"Yes, yes, of course!"
Adonis agreed without hesitation and hurried to fall in behind the trio, ready to leave.
However, just as Lorne entered the secret incantation to open the seal and led the group out in single file, Adonis, bringing up the rear, had barely stepped across the luminous threshold when a black symbol rippling with halos surfaced on his forehead, branding itself there like a burning iron pressed into his skin.
"AAAAAH!!!"
The agony of it, like a red-hot poker being twisted through his mind, struck the young man like a bolt of lightning.
The whites of his eyes flooded red, the veins across his forehead stood out sharply, and he screamed without stopping.
At the same moment, deep within the underworld's palace, a pair of eyes, black as ink, slowly opened, carrying a cold and gloomy light.
Rats had crept into his garden.
And were attempting to make off with his collection.
"It seems the house is in need of a proper cleaning..."
With those murmured words, a tall figure rose from the throne, long fingers drawing the longsword from its rack, and passed like wind through the vast, deathly still hall.
(End of Chapter)