Page 56 of The Beyond
“I guess I should have guessed,” Mia said with a sigh. “We’re Cerberus.”
“No, but we’re doing a smashing job of looking like him. Now, we have a long way to travel and not enough time,” Lucas said. “I’ll do the steering.” He took a step but stopped, then looked down at Selene. “Coming?”
Selene frowned up at them. “Yes, how?”
Lucas raised a paw. “Climb aboard.”
“This is so weird,” Mia said when they were jogging across a black field with Mia on their back.
“Hey,” Lucas said, when Mia bumped into him. “Just… relax. Like you’re in the passenger seat. Let me do the driving.”
Scott did as Lucas suggested, letting his mind wander as they ran through field after field, over more than a dozen hills. He supposed they could have been mountains. The landscape was so odd, he couldn’t tell.
Instead of normal trees and rocks, everything around them were just shapes, like nothing had formed completely.
Then they came upon a river. It appeared much like the one Selene had shown him in her Beyond place. The red water flowed so slowly, he questioned if it moved at all.
“The Styx,” Mia said.
“The gates are just beyond here,” Lucas said.
“Gates?” Selene asked.
“There are many paths to hell,” Mia supplied.
“Here is where we part,” Lucas told Selene.
“No, I go the entire way,” she said firmly. “This is my place.”
“Scott, talk some sense into her,” Lucas said.
Scott thought about it but, in truth, he didn’t want to lose sight of Selene. The thought of leaving her here while they went ahead scared him.
“I’m coming,” Selene said more firmly.
“Let her come,” Scott suggested.
Lucas was quiet for a moment.
“How are we going to cross the river?” Mia asked. “There’s the ferryman, but…”
“There is no ferryman,” Lucas said. “Never was. That was a myth.”
“Okay, so…” Mia asked.
“This is why Selene needs to stay here. Because we swim across. No mortal soul can survive the water outside of the forms we took.”
“If we aren’t really Cerberus, how do you know we’ll survive?” Scott asked.
“There’s one way to find out.” Lucas moved closer to the water and raised a paw towards the water. As he lowered it, the ground shifted and moved, forming some type of stepping stone of black dirt.
“Guess you don’t have to swim after all,” Selene said sarcastically. “Which means I go.”
Lucas growled and continued to move across the river quickly.
Just past the edge of the river was a road of sorts. Here, there were lines and lines of shadow creatures. There must have been millions of them, each line as long as the eye could see.
“They march to the gates,” Mia said.
