The Heir of Olympus and the Forest Realm (18 page)

“Gordon Leonhart!” Hades’s voice came from everywhere at once, even more tremendous than Zeus’s. The souls in the field all stopped and turned to look in their direction. “I, Hades of Olympus and Erebus, set to you the task of leaving my realm with Chiron the centaur in tow. If you but once look back at him, you will fail your task, and Chiron may never leave this realm!” The resonant voice continued to reverberate through the Underworld as if it rained down from the stars above.

Hades doubled over, panting with his hands on his knees as his reverberating command died away. Gordie watched in silence for a few moments.

And then started to laugh.

That’s original!
he thought to himself, and he slapped his knees despite the seriousness of the situation, leaving Hades looking abashed.

“What is so funny?” he breathed, his voice returning to its usual sonorous echo, with a definite hint of annoyance.

“I’m sorry, but really? You’re gonna Orpheus me? That’s kinda lame, don’t you think?”

Hades scrutinized him for a minute, which felt like an hour. Gordie began to shrink away, afraid that he had made a grave mistake, but then the Lord of the Underworld broke into a fit of raucous laughter.

“Maybe so!” Hades boomed, barking out a few more chuckles before catching his breath and reverting to his serious tone. “It is true that I have used this lesson before, but I would be remiss if I did not try to impart any knowledge onto you. Humor me. Realize that Chiron is the linchpin to your success. Without him you will unquestionably fail. Patience is a virtue, as is trust, and knowing
whom
to trust. Most importantly, your strength of will is required to complete this task. You will soon learn that physical strength can only accomplish so much. I suggest you prepare yourself. This will not be as easy as you think, but I believe you can do it.”

Gordie started to fear the gravity of the trial awaiting him, but he felt bolstered by the vote of confidence.

“What was all that silvery silly-string stuff?”

“That was our fates being bound together,” Hades explained. “Now before you go, I imagine you are hungry.”

Gordie hadn’t thought about it with all the remarkable goings-on of the day, but now that Hades mentioned it, he realized he was famished. As if it had ears, his stomach rumbled, almost audibly saying, “Foooooooooddddddd.”

“Take this.” Hades pulled a little morsel out of his pocket, wrapped in a miniature quilt of the same gray flowers on which they stood.

“What is it?” Gordie asked as he took it and studied it.

“Ambrosia—the sustenance of the gods. Eat it now, for I fear you will not be able to consume it in your normal state.”

Gordie raised an eyebrow at Hades before he shrugged and brought it to his mouth, preparing to bite into it.

“Unwrap it first.” Hades grabbed his wrist, making Gordie feel like an idiot.

As he unwound the floral packaging, a bright light spilled out of it. A little golden ball dropped onto his hand, blazing like a miniature sun. He looked up at Hades again for reassurance, who nodded.

“Here goes nothing.” Gordie popped the nugget into his mouth.

His senses exploded in confused ecstasy. He could taste the light of the morsel rapidly melting on his tongue. He wouldn’t have been able to describe how he knew it, but the smell it produced was the smell of molten gold. All sound was blocked from his ears, and he closed his eyes, listening to the sound of pure bliss. He could feel the immediate effects of this nectar coursing through his body as warmth filled him, eradicating the lingering soreness that he didn’t realize he still carried after his fall.

“That was amazing!” he said, greedy for more.

“It truly is, but you must never consume that in your mortal state. In fact, I am relieved that it had no adverse effects on you now. I was not precisely sure that your body could handle it.” Gordie was a little miffed about being used as a guinea pig, but no harm no foul, he supposed. Besides, it was hard to be in a bad mood after eating that stuff. “That should hold you for quite some time, so do not fret over lack of food on your upcoming journey. Now it is truly time to depart.” Once again, Hades gripped Gordie’s shoulder with a massive hand, looking down on him with his tremendous, dark eyes.

“It has been an honor to meet you, Gordon Leonhart, and I believe we will see each other again, in time. Take care of yourself and remain vigilant. You are destined for greatness—realize that potential. Farewell.” With that final word he hoisted Gordie up under the shoulders and placed him on Cerberus’s enormous, muscled back. “To the Greek gate!” he yelled as he smacked Gordie’s steed on the rump. And they were off.

“Ahhh!” Gordie clung to Cerberus as they flew past trees, flowers, and souls all blurring into a colorless kaleidoscope at their breakneck speed. Gordie was pressed flat to their massive, shared back, feeling the powerful shoulder muscles beneath him expanding and contracting with every great stride. He closed his eyes and dug in his knees, praying for this roller-coaster-ride-from-Hell to end soon.

The next thing he knew, they came skidding to a halt. The force of the deceleration was too much for Gordie to compensate for and he went flying up and over all three heads. As he flipped over in the air, he made eye contact with all three dogs, upside down. Crazy Eyes was looking at him ecstatically as if he wanted to snatch him out of the air like a Frisbee, Violet was looking at him with concern, and Bion was watching him with cool indifference—although it looked like the ghost of a smirk broke his hardened features. Gordie went tumbling and rolled to a stop before picking himself up and dusting off.

As he rose up from the ground, Gordie froze. The entrance of an earthen tunnel yawned to admit him. Glittering, black stalactites pierced down from the ceiling of the cave. They looked like they were made of frozen tar. The tunnel slanted up with a modest grade ending in a pinprick of light. Gordie squinted at this white dot at the center of complete blackness, trying to determine if it was real or imagined. He turned back to his beefy chauffeur.

The three canine faces watched him with their individually quintessential personalities readable on their features. Gordie approached Lysson first who watched him with glee. “Be good, Crazy Eyes. Try not to hurt anybody.” As Gordie patted him on the nose, the mad pooch released an ear-splitting bark, inches from his face. While Gordie’s ears were ringing, Lysson licked his face frantically, as if attempting to heal his temporary deafness. “Thanks, pal.”

Gordie slid over to Bion and took a step back as he did so. “Well, uh, thanks for not killing me?” he shrugged, not knowing what else to say. Bion studied him with his stoic eyes, but before Gordie turned away, he was bestowed with the slightest nod of begrudging approval. Gordie smiled as he approached Eleoa.

“I know we haven’t spent a whole lot of time together,” he started awkwardly, as if he were proposing to a girl he had met a month ago, “but I feel like I really know you, ya know?” He stroked her face as she leaned down to give him two gentle licks, one on each cheek. “Take care of yourself, Violet. Don’t let these clowns get you down.” Gordie gestured towards the other two. Lysson spouted another inane bark. With one last pat on Violet’s massive neck, and one last lick on the forehead, Gordie turned to head towards the surface.

He began to walk towards the tunnel, then stopped and turned again. “Where’s Chiron?” he asked the three-headed guardian of Hades. Violet just shook her head and lifted her nose in a shooing motion, which Gordie understood. With one final, sad smile, he turned away from his new friend beneath the ever-glow of the underground constellations and began his ascent.

8

The Trials Begin

When Gordie stepped into the mouth of the cave, he felt a strange sense of immersion, like he had walked through an invisible waterfall, or more accurately, a static wall of water. He started to turn to look back and see what it was, but caught himself.

“Two seconds in and I almost screw it up,” he said, shaking his head, feeling far less confident in his ability to complete this task that he had thought would be a walk in the park. He started to walk again. The path he strode was smooth, a constant and unchanging slope upward, made of the same sparkly black rock as the walls and ceiling. He was surprised and intrigued to see that the walls around him also had spires jutting outward, like horizontal stalactites. The stillness of the cave was disquieting.

Gordie looked forward to the tiny white dot in the distance and broke into a run. He was conscious of his speed now, not as fast as Cerberus, but definitely beyond natural. His endurance, too, was great; he sprinted at full speed with ease. He ran. And he ran. And he ran.

At least an hour had come and gone since his outset, and the light at the end of the tunnel did not appear to be any closer. His pace was starting to slow. Beginning to feel discouraged, he continued on, hoping that the tunnel did indeed have an end.

An hour later Gordie was still running. Nothingness fell behind him as his strides persisted, with the same nothingness looming ahead. His pace slowed more still. He continued on like this for what felt like hours, until he noticed that the light at the end of the tunnel was beginning to fade. Fear trickled into him and he pushed himself back to his full speed.

As the opening at the end changed to a light purple hue, Gordie realized with a little glimmer of hope that the circle had definitely grown since he had started: he
was
making progress. But his hope dissolved again as the light purple turned to a deep indigo, and he started to wonder if these walls also popped the torches on when it became dark. Something told him they did not.

He slowed down to a jog as everything around him blurred into a dusky stew of oneness. Although the path was straight, he was wary of running in the dark with those spikes protruding from the walls. Before Gordie had thought they were beautiful—now he thought they were terrifying.

Eventually he slowed to a cautious walk, barely able to see his hand in front of his face. He was certain that he would soon be swallowed by complete darkness and the thought horrified him. As his hand faded from his sight with the completion of night outside, Gordie fell to his hands and knees in utter nothingness.

He was frozen on the ground, a terrified child in the dark, unable to walk on, unable to sleep. And then he realized, with self-loathing, that he hadn’t even thought about his mom and grandpa since he had been down beneath the Earth.
Are they all right?
He should have asked Hades, but he was too excited to hear about his own powers. Gordie looked up again, searching for answers from above, and started when he saw little specks of light, twinkling in the very great distance.

Hope renewed even though he still couldn’t see anything, since the starlight didn’t fill the tunnel, but he at least had a guide, so he crawled forward.  Still too afraid to stand and walk—as he wished to avoid braining himself on one of the horizontal spires—Gordie remained on his hands and knees crawling into the constant darkness, his eyes fixed on the cosmos. The constellation ahead of him was one he was vaguely familiar with, but he couldn’t recall what it was at the moment.

For hours he made his painfully slow ascent. Joy leapt inside him when the outline of the tunnel’s exit started to appear in the distance as the sky behind it lightened. He stood and walked again, his spirits even more lifted because the round portal ahead was much larger than it had appeared earlier that night. He was not far away now.

As dawn arose, his vision returned in full force and he broke into a joyous run. Sprinting again with renewed vigor, he felt as though he had been released from a prison. The lightening sky beckoned him and he yearned to meet it.

No trace of night remained now, and the bright blue sky above waited patiently. Smiling like the children below chasing Cerberus, Gordie fantasized about his reunion with fresh air, which appeared to be no more than a hundred yards away. And then, at full speed, his muscles locked and his head swooned as he fell forward.

He collapsed on the cold stone, his cheek flat against the ground. His eyes drooped. His brain begged him to allow it to sleep. Every muscle in his body screamed with pain. Even his bones felt like they were on fire. His day in the sun was up.

Like clockwork, his twenty-four hours of strength had vanished at midnight . . . but it wasn’t midnight. It was midmorning outside. His fatigued mind struggled through the quicksand that is absolute exhaustion to find a logical answer.

Time zones,
a nearly dead whisper in the back of his brain offered.

Gordie couldn’t really process this, but it came down to the fact that his power was gone. There was no way he could stay awake long enough to reach his goal. As he started to give in, letting his eyes droop, he panicked.
What if I roll over in my sleep? Does it count as looking back then? It can’t! That’s not fair!

“It’s not fair!” he yelled, his outburst echoing through the cavern. Like pulling a sword from a stone, he raised himself back to his hands and knees, lifted his right hand, and slapped himself across the face. And again. And again.

Taking deep, steadying breaths he started to crawl again. If he had been any less drained, he might have been ashamed of the indignity of this infantile scrambling, but he was just too tired to feel any sense of pride at the moment.

Inch by hourly inch, he dragged his hands and knees in a drunken stupor. He didn’t even have the strength to lift his head to see how far he had to go. As he carried on like a sloth, he began to tremble. His body had endured too much over the last day. It needed to rest, maybe even to slip into a coma. Tears began to roll from his eyes as he trudged on, praying for the end.
Fatigue makes cowards of us all
. One of his father’s clichés echoed in his mind—Gordie finally understood the old adage.

The gentle slope of the tunnel now felt like climbing a ninety-degree cliff, but he clambered on. His route became a staggered zigzag, too tired to crawl in a straight line. He dropped to his stomach and started dragging himself in an army crawl. The stone beneath his hands began to lighten into a soft grey, but it took Gordie a couple minutes to realize this meant he was nearing the exit. He lifted his head to see the circular cave mouth ten feet before him with some sort of large, black frame in the shape of an arch. The tears in his eyes flowed stronger.

He was merely five feet away, about to slide into the light of victory, when a voice reached his ears from behind.

“Gordo?”

Gordie’s entire nervous system felt as if it had shut down. He was cemented to the ground. He heard the wind whistle outside the cave, felt the warmth of the morning on his face. His breath stopped as his heart pounded and his stomach lurched. Even his tears stopped flowing.

“Dad?” Gordie’s voice cracked and his fright echoed off the cave walls as he returned his father’s call.

“Gordo, don’t leave me down here. Come back for me!” Robert called.

Gordie started to turn around, wanting more than anything to see his dad’s face, but before he looked back he stopped. Every ounce of him screamed to run back to his father, but what little brain function he had left told him to stay true. His aching heart told him that if he did
not
go back he would be guilty of abandonment and neglect. His nearly extinct sense of reason told him that his father was not truly there, and that he could not help him.

“No,” he called back, his eyes brimming again. “I know it’s not you, Dad.” Tears leaked and then flowed as a torrent of sadness consumed him. “It can’t be you,” Gordie explained, still too tired to think through the problem in his head. “You don’t remember me.”

“No, Gordo! It’s me! Come back!” Robert screamed, terror in his cries.

“I’m sorry, Dad.” Gordie turned forward, unable to see through the tears as he crawled towards the light.

“GORDIE!” The phantom voice of his father rang in his ears as he crawled through an invisible water-wall, like the one at the cave’s entrance, and collapsed on the ground, breathing raggedly, sobbing into the dirt.

But his despair was immediately interrupted.

Gordie’s body rose into the air like a marionette, his limbs outstretched. A golden aura surrounded him, pulsating in the bright morning light, making the sun’s glow seem like a desk lamp. A surge of energy burst within him, spreading outward from his stomach to every inch of his body. His muscles bulged, visibly growing like they were being inflated. He started screaming, one loud scream that continued to pour out of him. Power was coursing through his body, so much power that he felt as though he would explode. His whole body was on fire—maybe even actually on fire—he could not tell.

Roaring at the top of his lungs, certain that he was on the verge of being torn apart, the pain ceased in an instant, and his glow disappeared as he fell back to the ground, landing face-first in dust.

As Gordie faded into unconsciousness, he heard the sound of hoof beats, as if a horse were galloping to him from miles away. He was hoisted into the air by two powerful arms, and saw the blur of a man’s face with a black curly mane and beard swirl into sight before he succumbed to sleep.

***

Gordie was running towards his father on a flat rock outcropping, pelted by wind, rain, thunder, and lightning in the black of night. Robert was screaming his son’s name in horrible pain.

“Hang on, Dad!” Gordie called back.

Robert was on the ground, Zeus standing over him, stomping on his chest, laughing his terrible laugh. Gordie could hear bones cracking with every stomp.

“I’ll kill you!” Gordie screamed, angry tears flowing in his eyes. He was still running, but not getting any closer. Then Zeus lifted a jagged spear of lighting above his head and looked at Gordie. The spear crackled with live electricity.

“He died because of you,” Zeus said with a sneer as he thrust the electric javelin through Robert Leonhart’s chest, skewering him to the ground.

“NO!” Gordie flailed about, captured in some kind of cotton net. “No! Dad!” he wrestled to free himself from his bonds.

“Gordie?” A woman’s voice sounded startled and concerned. “Gordie, calm down. It was just a dream.”

“No!” Gordie was still thrashing when a hand gently grabbed his shoulder, and his panting began to slow as he looked into his mom’s glistening eyes.

“It’s okay. It was just a bad dream.” Ellie Leonhart wrapped her son in a hug.

“Mom!” Gordie gasped. “Are you okay?”

“Of course I am, sweetie. Are
you
feeling okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.” His breathing slowly returned to normal. “Where are we?”

Looking around, Gordie’s fear melted into confusion. They appeared to be in a cave of sorts, which he did not find all that comforting—frankly, he was tired of caves. He was grateful, however, that this did not appear to be the Underworld. He was in a small wooden bed, with his mom perched on the side, stroking his hair. A chair sat on the opposite wall beneath a torch, a blanket draped over it. On the bare stone floor was Gordie’s carry-on bag. There was some clamor through the adjacent corridor and a voice he recognized echoed into the bedroom.

“Grandpa’s here too?” Gordie asked, delighted.

“Yes,” Ellie smiled, her eyes no longer wet. “And you may not believe this,” she continued, shaking her head, “but we’re in Chiron’s home. Or the cave where he lived a couple thousand years ago, anyways. He’s been sprucing it up while you’ve been sleeping.”

“That makes sense,” Gordie said. Ellie looked at her son with obvious concern for his sanity as a giant smile spread across his face. “I did it!” Gordie yelled and leapt to his feet on the bed.

“You did what?” she asked in amused alarm.

“I led Chiron out of Hades! HELL YEAH!”

“Sit down,” she said, yanking him back to the bed. “Do you have any idea how worried I was about you, young man?”

“What do you want from me? It’s not like I chose to go there! Hermes threw me out of the friggin’ plane!”

“That’s no excuse.” In fact, it was a very good one, Gordie thought. “You should have told me where you were going.”

“I wasn’t given that opportunity,” he snapped back. “How did you get here anyways?”

“Well, when we got off the plane, we couldn’t find you. We went running around the airport for hours until we ran into a familiar-looking chauffeur with a sign holding our names. Hermes,” she explained in response to Gordie’s quizzical look.

“He doesn’t really take no for an answer, does he?”

“He told us that he knew where you were and that he would take us to you, so we went willingly. When he brought us here, you weren’t around, and I nearly killed him.”

I doubt it,
Gordie thought to himself.

“He assured us that you would be here by the next day, and without any idea where to look, we waited. I stayed up all that night, looking out the cave entrance, just waiting. At about ten-thirty in the morning, I heard a horse galloping, carrying two people. Well, at least that’s what I thought I saw.” Again she shook her head in disbelief.