Chapter 25: Melinoe's Rest

The next morning we ate our oatmeal in companionable silence. Ulrich, Daphne and Karla were absolutely glowing and while they seemed excited to try more food from the surface world the change in their relationship was obviously much more important to them. A little less than a year before I might have found that kind of relationship weird but nowadays I wasn't just in a relationship like that but me and my women could apparently inspire others to be true to their feelings as well. It was a nice feeling though it made me feel like an even worse hypocrite for the way I'd once frowned upon my mom's new relationship.

After breakfast we set out in the direction of Melinoe's Rest, the one and only town in the underworld we would be visiting on this trip. I was a little excited for it, truth be told. I'd already met a Dark Elf, who were exceedingly rare on the surface world, and an empusa, a race I'd only read about but never met before, and I was sure I'd be seeing more races that weren't very common on the surface.

“So who is this Melinoe anyway?" Alisha asked. “A lot of villages are named after gods but I've never heard of a god by that name.”

“She's the firstborn daughter of Hades and Persephone," I said. I actually wanted to ask Athena about her since they were technically cousins but I obviously couldn't do that.

“So she is a goddess, then?" Alisha asked.

“It's not that simple," Athena said. “Not every child of a god becomes a god. They need worshipers to become gods. And while Melinoe has admirers she doesn't have the sheer number of worshipers to become a true god.”

“So the difference between her and y—" Selene began but just caught herself, “your goddess is that Athena is actually worshiped as a goddess?”

Athena had seemed terrified at Selene's blunder but then relaxed when she'd fixed it. “That's right," she said. “Though there are some people who call Melinoe a nymph, which isn't entirely correct either. She is most certainly a demigod, not a mere nymph.”

“So is the town just named after her?" I asked our three companions.

“She technically rules the town," Daphne said. “Most of the time she leaves the ruling to the council but it is her town. We all love her very much but apparently our little town isn't enough to give her the worship necessary to make her a true goddess.”

“So, Aithia, you seem to know a lot about the gods," Karla said. “How is that?”

“I'm a Saint," Athena said. I had to hand it to her, she was a pretty good liar when she chose to be. Of course, that only made me trust her less. “I've spent time in my goddess' presence on Mount Olympus. You'd be surprised how much you you can glean if you spend time in the presence of the gods.”

Karla smiled. “Any juicy rumors you can share with us?”

Athena shrugged. “I'm sure you've heard about Ares making a conquest of Aphrodite?”

Of course they had. Everyone had. The slimy bastard couldn't shut up about it and neither did his priests.

“He never touched her," Athena said. “Aphrodite and Hephaestus have a very open relationship but Ares is one man she would never touch.”

My eyes widened.

The three adventurers seemed equally shocked. “Are you serious?" Daphne asked.

“Absolutely," Athena said. “I was there when she threatened him to stop spreading that lie. She called him by some very colorful names.”

“Don't hold out on us now," Karla said. “This is the greatest gossip I've heard in years.”

“I don't remember all of them anymore," Athena admitted and I was certain she was lying because last I checked the goddess of wisdom had a perfect memory, “but at one point she called him a 'snake-tongued spawn of a boar's hemorrhoid' and that she'd rather spread her legs for a pack of werewolves than let him touch her.”

“I'm liking this Aphrodite more by the minute," Yume said.

“What about you, Felix?" Alisha asked. “What do you think of her?”

I bit my lip. “She's nowhere near as bad as Demeter and Hera," I said, then decided to get a dig in. “Definitely not as bad as Athena either. All in all I've had very little to do with her. She doesn't really concern herself with Chosen Ones aside from 'choosing' a few of them to be her personal bed warmers, but I doubt she thinks too highly of me.”

“You sound like you know the gods," Karla said.

“They think he's insufferable," Athena said, staring daggers at me.

“I help Chosen Ones kill Dark Lords," I countered. “Not my fault some gods would rather see the lands destroyed than see the 'wrong' people save it.”

“So you have Dark Lords and Chosen Ones on the surface world as well, huh?" Daphne asked, a little resigned. Well, that answered that question.

“So yer some sort of famous Dark Lord killer?" Ulrich asked.

“I don't think I'm famous," I said. “I do have a reputation though.”

“A reputation for being an insufferable ass," Athena said. “Can't stop insulting the gods.”

“Oh I can stop," I said. “But so long as they keep acting all high and mighty I won't.” I glared at Athena.

She glared right back at me.

“These two got it bad, huh?" Karla said, looking between the two of us.

“You have no idea," Anna muttered.

**

It took us a couple hours to reach Melinoe's Rest and on the way we were attacked by monsters surprisingly often. On the surface most monsters would think twice before attacking a party of nine people but clearly the monsters down here were bolder. Maybe they were used to easy prey or maybe there weren't enough adventurers down here to instill a healthy fear of groups of mortals in them, I had no idea. Whatever the reason we ended up being attacked by a giant snail that was surprisingly carnivorous but that I managed to kill by using a Qi Burst to chuck a clump of rock salt at and we also encountered a group of hobgoblins. Those were... different. Goblins enhanced by the Black Goat's red milk were slightly stronger than normal goblins but hobgoblins were a different matter entirely. They were no match for the nine of us and even without Ulrich, Daphne and Karla along they wouldn't have been a problem but the three of them alone I could imagine struggling against a big group of these.

The problem with goblins was that while you were never outmatched you were always outnumbered. Hobgoblins weren't quite so numerous but they made up for it by being significantly stronger individually. They weren't scrawny with flabby bellies but instead had muscular arms that could wield proper weapons instead of the tree branches, femurs, slapdash spears and looted kitchen knives most goblins used. They were also a good foot taller than normal goblins, able to see eye to eye with Ulrich, who stood at only slightly under five feet. Surprisingly the guy wasn't embarrassed about it and actually made fun of Yume's wooden sandals that gave her a couple extra inches of height, just enough to let her look down on him.

Aside from the hobgoblins and the snail we ended up finding a cave troll that we ended up taking out. As Ulrich explained to us the Adventurer's Guild actually had a permanent quest out to kill any trolls that got too close to any of the towns and the one we found was just close enough to count so we took it out. Unlike the rock troll we'd encountered way back when this one wasn't covered in tough rocks and the lack of armor made it much easier to kill. By the same token its back wasn't covered in gemstones, which made the kill much less lucrative but Anna still seemed excited by all the mushrooms that had grown on its craggy back.

Anyway, I hadn't even known there were branches of the Adventurer's Guild in the underworld but honestly I really shouldn't have been surprised. They were everywhere, after all, to the point that I wondered if they might not actually be the most powerful and most connected organization in the world.

“Are there branches of the Adventurer's Guild in the southern realms?" I asked Yume as we walked.

“There is an Adventurer's Guild in the south but I have no idea if they're the same organization," she replied.

“You're from the southern realm?" Daphne asked as she gave Yume a long look.

“One of them," Yume corrected. “There are three kingdoms beyond the volcanoes.”

“That's exciting," Daphne said. “I heard it was impossible to cross because of the magma flows.”

“Magma flows?" I asked.

“Of course," she said. “Great rivers of molten rock divide the underworld here and the underworld to the south. Is that not the case on the surface?”

“Oh, I get it," I said. “No, there are no magma flows. There are volcanoes up there, mountains where the lava comes streaming out the top at irregular intervals, making travel extremely hazardous.”

“Leaking mountains?" Daphne asked. “That sounds bizarre," she said, then turned back to Yume and asked: “Does that mean you crossed over those volcanoes? You must be very brave then.”

“I arrived by boat," Yume said quietly. “I don't like to talk about it much.”

“Boat?" Daphne asked. “So you crossed a river?”

“There's actually a huge body of water called an ocean to the west," I said. “If you take a boat over that you can get from the southern realm to this one, bypassing the volcanoes entirely.”

“The surface world sounds incredible," she said.

“You've never been up there?" I asked.

“Never," she said. “Karla and Ulrich have gone, but not me.”

“Well now that we're together I'm sure we can all take a trip to the surface together," Karla said. “If you want that.”

“I'd love to!" Daphne said.

I smiled at their antics, glad to see the three of them were working out so well. But then I got an idea. “Hold on. If there are magma flows keeping people from crossing through the underworld to reach the southern realm that means that technically the underworld connects the realms, right? What about the north? Does the underworld connect to the northern realm?”

There was a little more travel between the Trismegistian kingdom and the kingdom to the north than with the realms to the south but travel between here and the north was still perilous since the mountain range that separated the two realms was home to many very territorial dragons. But if there was a safe way to travel between the realms through the underworld...

“Of course," Karla said. “Us Dark Elves were all originally from the northern realm. The people up there are prejudiced against us.”

“Why?" I asked.

“They claimed we were servants of Hel when in truth we've been fighting off her draugar since the beginning of our records.”

Selene looked shocked. “Hold on, does that mean the northern realm worships the Aesir?”

“Some," Karla said. “The rest worship Svarog and his children. An entirely different pantheon and yet they both consider the world tree sacred.”

Selene stopped dead in her tracks. “The world tree is real?”

“As real as Mount Olympus," Athena said. “It exists in a different plane of existence but it is very much part of this world.” She paused when she realized she'd said too much. “Or so I've heard.”

Karla nodded. “It's as she says. We can trace our lineage all the way back to the world tree's roots. From what I was told some of the world tree's roots actually exist on this plane and whatever magic keeps the rest of it out of phase isn't absolute but by the time I was born my family had already fled our homeland so I can't exactly confirm that.”

“Fascinating," I said. And it was. The world was so much bigger than I had expected and the more I learned about it the bigger it felt.

“I would like to see it one day," Selene said. “The world tree, I mean.”

“All you need to do is pray to Freya and ask," I said and then smiled as I watched her face twist up in distaste.

“What's with that reaction?" Ulrich asked. “What did Freya do to ye?”

Selene glared at him and pulled her sleeves up, exposing the scars crisscrossing her arms. “Sent me out as a Chosen One, knowing I'd get tortured before I succeeded. And then she had the gall to claim me as her paladin.”

The dwarf held his hand up. “I'm sorry. I didn't mean to offend.”

“Sorry," Selene said. “I'm still sore about it is all.”

**

Finally we managed to arrive in Melinoe's Rest and I found myself stunned. The town itself wasn't the largest I'd seen. Far from it. I'd even seen far more bizarre locales, like Shackled Hollow, a village built upon a disc of rock floating above a bare glimpse into the underworld, or one village to the east I'd once stayed at that had been built in and around the skeleton of a truly gigantic monster that had come from the eastern sands. But Melinoe's Rest was still unique.

The town was built around one of the giant stalactites propping up the cave, arranged in a loose circle and wide enough to encompass part of the river we'd traveled along. The stalactite wasn't just the town's center, it was also its centerpiece. Out of it grew many luminescent mushrooms that helped keep the center of the town slightly brighter than the rest of it and some particularly brave souls had even carved holes into the rock to turn it into additional housing. I'd asked the three adventurers if that was safe and they'd explained that this only happened with the council's approval and with the assistance of earth mages to make sure the changes wouldn't damage the pillar's structural integrity.

But that was just the stone pillar itself. Much more jarring were the people. I was used to a pretty broad mix of races on the surface. Things got more homogeneous the more one traveled into the more rural areas but in the cities and especially in the capital there was a staggering variety of races on display. Humans, Light Elves, Wood Elves, dwarves, minotaurs, orcs, dozens of different types of beast-kin and plenty more besides. Most of these were absent down here but there was still a staggering variety down here, but one entirely different from what was found on the surface.

There were far fewer humans around but far more dwarves in exchange, the only elves around were Dark Elves like Karla, and while there were beast-kin they were completely different beast-kin than up above. Instead of mostly cat-, dog- and rabbit-kin there were moth people, ant people, rat people and plenty others besides. And then of course there were the demons. There were a bunch of empusa but also many other varieties of demons. Many of these races only rarely ventured out of the underworld and so for many of them it was my first time seeing them. There were even a few demons with gnarly purple skin that I almost flinched away from, not because they were scary or evil but because I'd seen multiple Dark Lords of that exact race.

To my surprise, despite our races being minorities here we barely caught any stares as we made our way through the town. Apparently another few races weren't going to change anything. The one people stared at the most was Yume but that was the case on the surface as well. Not only was she gorgeous but her kind wasn't native to this kingdom, neither on the surface nor down here. Speaking of, I wondered idly if the underworld was technically part of the Trismegistian kingdom but I didn't want to out Anna as a princess by asking about it in mixed company so I didn't.

Soon enough we made it to the Adventurer's Guild, where we said our goodbyes to Ulrich, Daphne and Karla, and then made our way to the nearest inn. It wasn't quite dinnertime yet but we wanted to check in early so we could spend some time looking around without having to worry about them being filled to capacity later.

The innkeeper was yet another kind of creature I'd never seen before outside of books: A Lampade, a type of nymph that followed the goddess Hecate. She had grayish skin and lavender hair and her eyes glowed with that same lavender color. I don't mean her eye color was striking. I mean her eyes literally glowed, enough that she could read in a dark room by the light of her own eyes. Like all nymphs she was eternally youthful, looking perpetually in her early twenties, except for the expression on her face, which told of a long life, of love found then lost and found again so many times that she now accepted it as just a part of life. When she saw us approach she raised an eyebrow at me.

“Quite the collection of pretty women you got there," she said. “I assume you'll want one room? Can't guarantee the bed is big enough for six, though.”

“We actually want two rooms," I said.

“Oh dear," she said, her lips quirking up into a teasing smile. “All these women and not one wants you?”

I rolled my eyes. “It's not me who's going to sleep alone.”

“Obviously," she said, echoing my eye roll, which looked damn weird when they were glowing like a mage's light spell gone wrong. “The ties that bind practically strangle you. So much love tied to your spirit...”

I felt myself blushing and looked away to see my women smiling at me.

**

After settling into our rooms, that is me and my women taking one room and Athena the other, and freshening up we went to explore the town. Our first stop was the market, where we sold some of the materials we'd harvested off the monsters we fought along the way. I was both pleasantly surprised and relieved to find that they dealt in mun, same as the people on the surface. That reminded me...

“Say, is the underworld technically part of the kingdom or do they use mun in this region of the underworld because the dead pay the ferryman in mun?”

“No, the underworld is part of the kingdom," Anna said. “We don't really govern it but they quickly learned that trading with the surface world was easiest if we keep to the same currency and the same set of laws.”

“I'm just glad your mother didn't send us down here to negotiate defense treaties," Selene said.

“I can't really disagree with that," Anna said. “Though it does raise the question if whoever was sent down here ended up in the clutches of that spider monster.”

“I doubt it," I said. “I'm sure your mother would have told you when you went to tell her what was going on in Olympus.”

Anna chewed her lip. “That's a good point. I think you're right. No, I hope you're right.”

Soon enough we were well and truly distracted from the discussion as we started looking for things to buy in the market.

Anna was, of course, ecstatic as she saw the rare ingredients available for incredibly low prices and I actually saw her create some more sapphires just so she could buy more. Alisha found several types of fruits she'd never tried before, looking as excited as a child with a new toy. Yume ended up buying a book on magic, though given how powerful the technique we'd found in the Crystal Crown's dungeon had made Alisha and her I assumed it was more a matter of curiosity than need. Selene seemed uninterested at first but then decided to buy a few souvenirs to send home to her parents. I bought a few trinkets as well as a few things I knew I'd be able to sell at a huge mark-up back on the surface.

Once we were done shopping and sight-seeing we went back to the inn and relaxed for a little while before we had dinner. I had been a little excited about sampling the local cuisine and it didn't disappoint.

The first course was arapaima fillet in a sauce that... well, the closest I could get to comparing it to something that made sense to me would be a white wine cream sauce. Except instead of white wine it used the same drink I'd sampled back in Shackled Hollow, a tea fermented with a special type of mushroom and then fermented again with fruit in it, and instead of cream from a cow it was cream from an ophiotaurus, a weird hybrid creature I'd only heard tales of before that was part cow and part snake. The fish and the sauce were served over mashed potatoes. The dish was a little heavy for a first course but the small portion size kept it from being too filling. It was delicious, the fish glassy and the potatoes so silky smooth they had to have been run through a strainer. It reminded me of something we'd once eaten in the royal palace, though not quite as refined.

The main course was a piece of venison in a deeply flavorful sauce packed with mushrooms. The dish itself wasn't too unique but the ingredients were all truly special. The venison tasted completely different from what I was used to, likely owing to the deer's diet down here, while the mushrooms were the unique kinds found down here. There weren't just the huge variants but also plenty of smaller ones. The potato side was also quite unique, balls of mashed potato rolled in breadcrumbs and then fried in lard. Delicious.

The dessert was simple but no less tasty for that. It was a simple pound cake served with whipped cream and sliced fruits, except the fruits were all varieties I'd never seen before, the ophiotaurus cream tasted quite unique and the cake was definitely made with something other than wheat flour in that it was slightly chewier and nuttier in flavor.

All in all it wasn't as unique as I'd expected but it was all quite delicious.

During dinner we'd started ordering the drink I'd first sampled in Shackled Hollow. It was about as strong as beer but with a slightly sweet and tart flavor, deep and complex and utterly unlike the beer it was substituting for. At first Athena had refused any but after a few carefully placed insults from me and a few encouraging words from Alisha she'd tried some.

Soon enough she'd gotten a little tipsy and by the time dessert rolled around I actually found myself thinking that tipsy Athena was rather charming. No, scratch that. There was nothing charming about this crone.

Nope, I heard that, you said she was charming, Syr teased.

Nobody asked you, I growled back.

She tittered. For how much of a badass you are you can be really cute when you're flustered.

What have I ever done to deserve being fucked with like this?, I asked.

You don't have that many weaknesses, she said. That makes the way you act around her even more bizarre.

Don't I deserve some retribution for her behavior?, I asked.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, she said. The opposite of love isn't hate, it's indifference. And indifference is the last thing you're feeling for her.

Whatever, I said.

That short conversation managed to sober me up and so when we were done with dinner and Alisha suggested that I take Athena to her room I decided to go along with it. She wasn't that drunk but if she was being honest with us and had never had alcohol before then maybe the one mug she'd had was enough for her.

I admit to being a little bit tipsy myself so when I followed Athena up the stairs to her room I didn't notice the girls following us.

I walked past the goddess and opened the door for her.

“You're being rather gallant tonight," Athena said.

I might not have had the same reaction to that statement if Syr hadn't needled me right before but she had and so I growled out: “Don't want you to hit your head and pop up back on Olympus.”

She spun around. “Do you honestly think I'm that clumsy?" she asked, swaying side to side. “I'll have you know I'm still a go—” she stumbled and I lurched forward to catch her before she could hit the ground.

“You were saying?"

“Oops," she said with a giggle. What the fuck? Why was tipsy Athena so cute?

At just that moment I heard another giggle and saw Alisha and Anna standing in the doorway, with Selene and Yume behind them. And before I could say or do anything they slammed the door shut.

I let go of Athena and rushed to the door, trying to yank it open before I saw a layer of sapphire spreading over the lock, sealing it in place.

“Open the door," I yelled, banging on it. “This isn't fucking funny.”

“Sleep tight," Alisha told me. “And don't do anything I wouldn't do!”