Chapter 38

  They did not leave the palace. Rather, they went down one stairwell, and then another, and then another that did not end.

  “It is a well known secret that the palace of Troy was built upon one of the many entrances to the underworld,” Hector said when Mattie asked where they were going with undisguised hatred towards the man who had led the ambush that she had thought, for a while, had killed her son. “We are going to that entrance.”

  They arrived a moment after the question had been asked and answered, and when they did, they stepped through a massive doorway to find a chamber that defied comprehension. They were underground, and yet there was a haunting green sky above them, with black clouds that had stars within them.

  There was grass upon the ground, but when Eli stepped up behind the soldiers who led the way deeper into the chamber, the grass died, puffing and blowing away.

  “You have returned,” a grotesque voice said. From the impossible sky, a figure flew down. A harpy, her exposed naked body feminine but exposing no lust, twisted and scarred as it was. “It is not yet time for the weekly sacrifice, and yet you return. Is it time, surface dweller? Or do you—”

  “It isn’t time yet,” Hector said. He turned to Eli and grinned. “I am simply showing the enemy what they face should they ever breach the walls of Troy.”

  Eli frowned. “I don’t understand. I mean, this place is incredible, in an eerie sort of way, but what—”

  “You fool!” Hector exclaimed. He pointed towards the open door. “Do you not understand what that means?”

  Eli turned to the open door. “I’m a little rusty on my Greek mythology, to be honest.”

  “I opened that door,” Hector said. “Me. By myself. With no assistance. When I passed through I spoke with the master of these lands. He has vowed that only a man of my bloodline shall be able to close them, and woven magics to ensure that his words remain true. Until I close these doorways, the gates of the underworld shall remain ever open. Men and women will grow old. They will grow feeble until their bodies can bear the strain of living no longer. They shall die.”

  Eli blinked. “Well, yeah. We’re mortal, after all.”

  Hector blinked at him. “What do you mean?”

  “Everyone ages and dies,” Eli said.

  Hector sneered. “Perhaps that’s true of Americans,” he said. “But until I opened these gates, Greeks lived forever.”

  Eli opened his mouth to rebut the argument, but stopped. This was a dungeon, after all, so there was no point in arguing with the white-eyed NPC. “Okay. So what do you want me to do about it?”

  “As much as I’d like to strike off your head and put it on a spike on the wall,” Hector said, “You may serve as my messenger. Pass this message on to the Greeks outside. If they care about their parents and grandparents, go home, for the weakness shall strike the elderly first. If they care about themselves, make peace. If they care about their children, then abandon the ways of war entirely. Consider this the final warning of Hector, Prince of Troy.”

  Eli swallowed. Then he nodded. “I’ll pass this message on to the leaders of the Greeks,” he said. “If you promise to let me live.”

  Hector drew his blade and put it at Eli’s neck. Mattie reacted, drawing her own blade, and the rest of the guards a moment later.

  “You know exactly what to say to make me want to kill you,” Hector said, then he sighed and sheathed his blade. “Go. Take my message to the Greeks. Let them know that the price of war is death, and whether they pay now or for all eternity the Trojans care not at all.”

  They returned to the surface, the weight and oppression that Eli had been feeling from the underworld loosening slightly with each step upward. Eli breathed deeply of the fresh air outside.

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  And the moment that they arrived, they heard a booming voice call out “Hector!”

  Hector blinked in surprise. “Achilles? But I killed him!”

  The prince turned to the party, then to his men. “Come. We must go to the walls. You and you, stay and guard the prisoners until it is time to send them as messengers.”

  With that, he turned, flared his cloak, and stormed off towards the walls.

  Eli looked at the two muscular men who were guarding them. He wondered if they could get away. Perhaps cause a distraction and--

  The moment the majority of their escort was gone, Mattie and Maia struck at once. Eli blinked in surprise, having completely missed the nonverbal signals that the woman and the teen had exchanged. In an instant, the guards were dead, pierced through with deadly steel.

  “Let’s go!” Mattie exclaimed, and the party ran, returning to the SafeZone.

  ~~~~~~

  You Have Been Branded a Criminal In The City of Troy

  SafeZone Shall Collapse in 2:12:43

  Eli cursed as he entered the SafeZone and received the new update from the system. He turned to the others, who were busy preparing to abandon the supplies that had spawned in the zone with him.

  “Okay, so here’s what we learned,” he said, and he quickly summarized the situation.

  Then they spent the next two hours discussing what to do. They couldn’t reach a consensus. Cassandra appeared ten minutes before the SafeZone was set to disappear.

  “The guards will find this place soon,” she said. “You should leave.”

  “Why would we leave now?” Eli asked. “Cassandra, are you sure about the puzzle?”

  “Yes. Hector’s son must live until he becomes a man. Or at least until he’s old enough to close the Gates of Hades. If he dies before then, then the world becomes mortal for eternity,” Cassandra answered. “And the damn Greeks intend to throw him off the walls.”

  “Okay,” Erik said. “My vote? Kidnapping.”

  The others looked at him.

  “What?” Peter asked.

  “We kidnap the son of Hector,” Erik said. “And hold him hostage to get Hector to close the gates. Then we tell him about the Trojan Horse. The Greeks should be on their last legs for this war. If they don’t succeed with the Trojan Horse, worse, if the horse is set on fire and destroyed, then they’ll have no choice but to head back to their homelands. So let’s just—”

  A sudden wave of lamentation rose up from outside, with the women and children who filled the streets crying out. The party frowned and went to investigate, only to find that Hector had just been slain by Achilles.

  The city of Troy had just lost its general.

  “You must go now, during the confusion,” Cassandra said. “Take my nephew from his crib and spirit him away to safety. Only then will tragedy be avoided.”

  The others turned to Eli, looking at him for leadership, which surprised him considering that he had been absent the previous floor. He nodded. “Okay, let’s go.”

  Moving as a unit—even Jose and Lucy, the noncombatants, moved with the others with cohesion that had been lacking a few days ago—the party infiltrated the palace, which was mostly empty as the king and the rest of the royal family left to go watch as Hector’s body was desecrated before the gates of Troy.

  They found the infant much as they’d left him, napping quietly. His swaddling had just been changed, according to the nursemaid responsible for that, who simply shrugged at their appearance.

  “Lady Cassandra is always playing pranks on her brothers. I wonder where you will hide the little one this time,” she said when they questioned why she was not raising a hue and cry.

  With the infant in hand, they escaped the palace without alerting the guards, who were conspicuously absent. The rest of the day they moved about in the city. They robbed a laundrywoman for clothes for Eli to change into, as he was the only one not dressed in the way of the Trojans, and proceeded to blend into the city.

  Cassandra found them again that night and showed them the entrance to the sewers, which led them out of the city. As soon as they crossed the threshold and stood outside, they received the floor clear notice, vanishing thirty seconds later.

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