Episode 38 - Into the Forsaken Underworld – Part 2
The underworld looked completely different from what was expected of the group of three: Matt, Santi, and ShirleyC. Shirley knelt down to sniff the rock-like flowers, “Mm, this is strange but interesting. Have you smelled this one, Matt? It’s like an actual flower!”
Matt placed his nose near the flower and Shirley blew onto the flowers petals so that dust can disperse all over the place. Matt began to cough and Shirley giggled. Matt panicked, “Gah! What was that for?!”
Shirley placed her hands behind her back and smiled. “Heehee.”
Matt noticed that this was one of the very few times he had seen Shirley really happy. It seemed to him that Shirley loved exploring the world, especially something that has no relation to what looks like the outside world such as Earth. Santi continued walking down the dark road, “Alright you two, let’s go. There are a few lights that we can follow up ahead. They are either just lanterns from afar or it is Eidothea sending a prayer to the upper world.”
Shirley stood up and ran along with him. Matt followed them, asking, “Where do you think Erica is right now?”
“Like I said, it could be one of the lights where she is shown, but I am not so sure. It is the only thing we can trust right now since Jon decided to find her on his own.”
Shirley questioned him, “Isn’t it strange how Jon is helping us? Why would he want to help us after all we did to each other?”
Santi stopped to explain, “Like Matt sort of said… Jon might be doing this for Earth, for Olympia, not for us. But of course there’s always that ‘possessed’ possibility. Right now, we are forced to trust him. Let’s keep going before we lag even more.” Matt and Shirley agreed as the group of three continued walking.
Along the road, Matt became curious about his other friends. “Hey how come we didn’t ask Danny or Yessenia to come with us?”
“Yessenia has a hard time trusting Jon, right?” Matt nodded slowly and Santi’s guesses. “As for Danny, well, it is pretty obvious. He would cause some riot down here.”
Shirley turned over to look at Matt, “That’s true. She might think that Jon is possessed which could be true, but she most likely has that strange feeling of untrust for him still. Right now, we shouldn’t let Yessenia and Jon keep in close contact with each other into things are fixed up with Jon, hopefully.”
“Hey Matt, just a thought…” Santi caught Matt’s attention now. Matt paid full attention to the tone of Santi’s voice. “Do you like adventure?”
Matt looked away, blushing, “Uhm… yeah. I just… couldn’t have the chance to experience the world, or at least around the city of El Monte. I never even gone out of California, to be honest.”
Shirley frowned, “What? Why not?”
Matt decided to explain. “When I was little, my family was considered somewhat high class. We had a lot of money I think. My dad was betting 500 dollars on every single chicken fight, like a real hardcore gamble. He lost most of the bet and we lost thousands and thousands of dollar. Not only that, my dad and his friends weren’t even home the next day because he had to work or something. I still don’t know what he was doing. My mom called him and said that it is an emergency that he comes home quick. A tree in our backyard was on fire and it was a problem to the house so we had to move completely. We rented a 2-story building but we moved again after a year, causing us to lose even more amount of money. We became lower-middle class after I became around six years old. Since then, I made friends with people who didn’t enjoy hanging out. Last year, I went out only to movies, and it was only twice…”
Shirley clenched her teeth, “That’s such… a sad story.”
Matt became angry. He clenched his fists, shaking. “If I was old enough back then, I would have yelled and stopped my dad from gambling on such a stupid thing! And as for friends… I really didn’t like how they were all anti-social! I just couldn’t hate them… they were my only friends and I didn’t want anyone else. Not many people were as smart as them so if I hung out with people that were less smart, I figured it would influence me.”
Santi crossed his arms, “Hm, so you sort of had a forced childhood, I see. You did not have the money to visit out of California and you did not have the potential friends to hang out and explore the whole city?”
“Exactly. I just feel as if I’m missing out a lot. I figured, what would happen if I had new friends who loved to explore the world? That’d be so cool.”
Shirley giggled, “Hey Matt, I love to adventure too.”
“Really?!” Matt began to smile.
Santi placed his arms above and behind his head, “I have no opinion.” Matt and Shirley began to laugh softly to each other. Matt seemed to open up to his new friends for the first time. He finally felt comfortable with expressing what he needed to tell to the world. What he kept inside, was now something to be fixed with the help of his new friends, if they want to fix it, that is…
~~~
Once the group of three reached a light, there was a gate that obstructed their view. It opened up and Santi took a step back. “Maybe this will not be as pleasant as we thought it would be.”
Shirley opened her palms, “I guess I’m ready!” Matt watched the both of them. He could not use his fire powers without a cellphone of his own. He decided to take a step back but he showed an expression of fear.
Santi saw a Cerberus appear from behind the gates, “That is not so bad. Should we teamwork?”
“You shouldn’t even be asking that!” Shirley said with confidence. With that said, Santi began to slow the Cerberus and Shirley used her ice powers to freeze the Cerberus. She ran up to it and she began to punch it. Her fists hurt. She screamed, “Ow, ow!” Santi and Matt began to laugh. Shirley turned around, “This isn’t funny! We’re fighting some weird ugly beast here.” She decided to kick the Cerberus as it shattered into pieces.
Santi walked towards the gate, “That was not so hard. With me being able to slow down the monsters and you being able to freeze and shatter them, we should be having no problems at all. Matt, you can be here to experience the whole adventure.”
Matt felt useless. He said softly, “But I can’t do any-…”
Shirley interrupted him, “Santi’s right. You can experience it with us. You don’t need to do anything, okay? So let’s go!” She ran ahead and Santi took his time walking.
Matt watched them move on ahead. “Why… are they being so nice to me?”
~~~
After awhile, Matt began to slow down. He tapped his right foot in a certain pace. “Hey, wait a minute…” He turned to his left to examine the figures beside him. “I’ve seen these a few minutes ago. Actually, I’ve seen it about three times already.”
Shirley began to look around the areas surrounding the road, “Come to think of it, some of these flowers have the same type of rolls at the tip.” She noticed that there were some footsteps with the same designs on the floor. “And look. There are designs of our shoes up ahead yet somehow we didn’t even move on forward yet.”
Santi crossed his arms. He figured that they might have gone in circles three times already.
Shirley began to hug herself as she started shaking, “D-D-Does this mean we’re lost?”
“Well,” said Santi with a sigh, “I will have to tell you this in the nicest way possible: We are completely lost.”
Shirley screamed, “Ahh! I can’t believe this! How can we get lost?!” She shook Santi on his shoulders, “You’re the brains here. Why are we lost? Tell me! I’m going to go insane!”
Matt scratched his head. He did not know what was going on since they clearly have been taking different directions up ahead. “We only went straight. It didn’t feel like we turned at all yet we’re back to where we started. Should we start walking backwards?”
Santi felt the plants and he began to take a step over them. “I see what is going on now.”
Matt and Shirley began to panic once Santi suddenly disappeared into the plants. Matt said in fear, “Santi! Where are you? Don’t leave us.”
The both of them followed only to see a completely new road. Santi said to them, “I see now. We entered the underworld from an illusion portion of the area. If you think about it, the area we were in was an illusion. It was a really small area where it seemed like we revolved around the world three times. All we had to do was to walk through to the left or right sides. Now be careful, the underworld is very twisted.” Matt and Shirley had to make sure that they kept their guard up.
~~~
The road had finally come to an end. At the end, the castle of Hades was shown. The group of three stood in front of the tall castle where many bats flew by and dark mist surrounded the whole area. The castle was a very dangerous place to be in, but Santi had to make sure that both of the more careless students were not rushing through the cave.
Matt knocked on the door but there was no answer. He decided to pull the knob and push the door open, as it did. He whispered into the large room and down the corridor, “Hello? Is anyone in there?”
Shirley began to shake, “Uh… I don’t like this idea of going into this castle.”
Santi pointed at the stairs from their left and right, “Well we kind of have to. Furthermore, we might have to split into three. We have to figure out which path is the correct way to go through. Why don’t I take the middle? Matt, you take the left and Shirley you take the right.”
Shirley clanged onto Santi’s arms, “B-B-But I don’t want to go alone. This is scary, can’t you see?!”
Matt began walking to the left stairs going up, “I really don’t want to go alone either, but I guess we just have to do this in order to save the present world of Earth, right?”
Shirley sighed, “Oh… I guess you’re right.”
“Oh Matt, wait.” Santi stopped Matt from walking any further. “Between the three of us, you have to be most careful. Remember, you cannot use your fire powers since you went into Olympia through Shirley’s cellphone.” Matt nodded as he went on up the stairs.
~~~
In Santi’s corridor, he began to hear a shuffling sound ahead. He took alert of the sound as he began to slow down the small area ahead of him. As he got closer, he noticed that it was a girl in pinkish purple. “Oh? What is this? Haven’t I seen you around school?”
The girl turned around and she quickly stood up, “Huh? Uh…! I can explain!”
“Mariel, was it? Are you trying to tell me you have a secret from everyone?”
Mariel looked away, “Why are you here?”
Santi explained, “Maybe for the same reason as you.”
“…Hades?”
“Yeah, that is right. Were you planning on stopping Hades alone?”
Mariel shrugged. “Well… I don’t know. I was angry at what Hades was doing to Olympia. I met the Water Goddess Tethys here in Olympia but she warned me about the underworld. She opened up the ocean for me to enter, thinking that there might be no hope of me coming back. I-I can do it though.”
There was a long pause. Santi gave a smirky expression as he said to her, “You need my help, don’t you?”
Mariel frowned, “Yes… I guess. I’ve seen you around Matt a lot.” She gave herself a hairflip and said soothingly, “I am guessing you both have powers then. Right now though, we need to stop Hades as soon as possible!”
~~~
Matt was looking through a large library with a bunch of books. He could see that many of them consisted of dark aura all over the place. There was one book that stood out and it was one shiny figure up above the top of the shelves towards the ceiling about five meters above from the ground. “There should be a ladder around here if books are going to be that high up…” Matt took a look around for a ladder. Hidden behind the desk, Matt took the ladder and he began to climb up to the top with it. “Here is the book.” He pulled the book away from the shelves but the whole shelves were beginning to slide away from each other. Matt examined closely at the hidden hole behind him, “W-What’s this? A secret passage?”
He entered the passage with the book still in his hand. He entered a room with many skeletons. Matt closed his eyes from the disgust with his expressions, “Ugh- What the?!” A girl from the back began to struggle with chains all over her arms and legs.
The girl screamed out to him, “Matt, is that you?!”
Matt looked closely, “S-Samantha?! Sammy?! Is that you?” Sammy gave a nervous expression, showing fear that whoever had done this to her might come back soon…
~~~
A voice was heard… “Those meddlesome children… Ergh!! I will take this to Olympia, heh heh…!”
~~~
---- Next chapter preview:Matt: On the next chapter, we will go through stages seven and eight at last! It is the final episode before we either clear or mess things up for Olympia. How are we going to solve this with just the three of us and Jon? There will be others who will pay a visit to us!
Sammy: Matt, tell me what the hell is going on here!
Matt: U-Uh! I can explain!
Mariel: Hey Santi, I know we're new friends and all but... do you think you can do me a big favor and fast forward to my future and see how prettier I get?
Santi: Who said we're friends?
Mariel: Damn jerk...!
Matt: Uh, anyways! We will bring Erica back!
ShirleyC: Yeah, and we're going to bring back the proper weather too!
ShirleyC and Matt: Only time between our powers and the underworld will tell! Next chapter, Olympia, the World of Ancient Times!
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