BOOK TWO
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Flori in the Underworld, Part 1
Immediately after Holder’s Deep, Flori had plunged into a crazed depression. In her moments of lucidity, she would try to use the necklace again and when it didn’t work, she would spiral once again into frantic despair. Orion sensed Flori’s dangerousness while in this state and allowed no one to see her. It took three weeks for her to dig her way out.
Half of the dragons agreed to give our heroes asylum in the Valley as long as they promised to avenge Moriandra. Despite hating her, the death of any dragon dealt a hard blow to their small population and each of them felt it deeply. The other half protested their presence, but tolerated it at Orion’s behest. After her recovery, Flori met with Cicero, Orion, Jove and the Prince to discuss what had to happen next. Tensions between them still ran high. The first topic they discussed was how to get the North Star out of the hands of the Queen.
“We can’t,” declared the Prince. “None of us can.”
“What do you mean?” challenged Jove. “I can pop into her bedroom, nick it while she sleeps, and fly out the window, or Flori can magically freeze her or something, or Cicero can, uh… Well, Flori or I could do it.”
“It only takes a second, less than a second for someone to fall under the power of the North Star. Can you imagine if the Queen gained control over Flori? She’s indestructible and magic. Your power makes you a weapon, and since we all know about this place, we cannot risk any of us being caught.” The Prince’s restraint impressed Orion who knew that he more than anyone in this room wanted the North Star back. “Besides,” he continued. “If I know my mother, she’s already taken serious precautions to protect the Star. Until we have more information and a better plan we cannot attempt to retrieve it.”
“So what do we do instead, leader?” Jove asked with bile.
“We start finding people who can help us.”
Previous to Holder’s Deep, the Queen’s philosophy of governance had been inconsistent at best, deranged at worst. One day she would imprison and interrogate everyone in a certain town, and the next she would go around handing out extravagant gifts and food to them. One day she would clean out the jails, executing everyone no matter their crime, the next she would forgive even the most heinous offenses. Apart from these actions, however, she mostly had a laissez-faire attitude towards those under her rule. After she gained possession of the Star, things changed. She moved from one town to another, magically claiming allegiances, creating unwilling spies, and issuing martial law. Finding her son became her obsession, and she meant to root him out no matter what. The longer he stayed in hiding, though, the harsher her search techniques became. She grew paranoid, convinced that he had agents everywhere, and she punished those she suspected, guilty or not. Like every tyrant, she did not realize that the more she cracked down on imagined rebellion, the more she fueled actual rebellion, and her son stood at the center of it.
The Prince worked tirelessly to create a kingdom-wide network of safe houses and operatives, always staying ahead of the Queen’s movements. Once their numbers were up, the Prince implemented one initiative after another to steal the North Star away, but each failed due to the Queen’s stringent and ever-growing security measures. With a heavy heart, he altered their goal to assassination, but the Queen proved as difficult to kill as she was to rob. They needed an advantage, something that could counteract the power of the Star, and they could only think of one person who might be able to help them…the Star’s creator, Persephone. And so, at the first sign of autumn, Flori and Jove left the Valley of the Dragons to travel to the Underworld.
Jove dropped Flori at the bank of the River Styx. He told her that since she had already died and been buried, she should have no trouble crossing the river on the ferry. He said he would join her if he could, but after chasing them all out of the Underworld, Hades had made it impossible for dragons to return until dead. He then promised to return to this place daily to check for any word from her, reminding her that while he could move himself instantly between this place and the Valley of the Dragons, if she needed anything brought to her, he would have to fly it here, and that would take time. He hugged her, wished her luck, and vanished.
Flori approached Charon the ferryman gave him a gold coin she made from a lock of her hair, and he let her on his boat. “You are not like the other souls I’ve ferried,” he commented. “You have a body, though it be not what the gods gave you. Why have you come here when you may yet live in the world?”
“I have come to ask Persephone for help,” Flori told him plainly. Charon laughed in her face.
“Oh, I would not do that, my golden friend. The Goddess of the Underworld does not possess a generous spirit. She would have you thrown into the Phlegethon without a second thought, and you would burn forever. What you must do instead is offer yourself as her faithful servant and earn her trust. That’s the only way you might succeed.” Flori thanked Charon with another coin and went on her way. When she came before the goddess, she followed the ferryman’s advice, and Persephone, intrigued by the uniqueness of this golden creature, accepted her as her new handmaiden.
“You shine like the sun. I always miss that in these dreadful dark months,” Persephone lamented bitterly. The next day the goddess had dinner with her husband Hades at his waterfront château on the other side of the Underworld, a somewhat new addition to their marriage if Flori guessed right. He greeted his wife coolly, then noticed her metallic companion and a distinct lasciviousness came to his eyes detected by all. Dinner ended with a screaming fight and many broken dishes. Persephone would not visit again that winter.
In the beginning, Flori attempted many times to bring up Moriandra, but doing so elicited such a sore response from her mistress, she thought it best that she stop. Months passed, Flori and Persephone never parted. The two became close as sisters, but not once did the goddess speak of her dragons. Flori started to fear that her journey here would not yield fruit. Then one night near winter’s end, after too many glasses of wine at dinner, Persephone started waxing nostalgic about her old friend the Purple Dragon and her bauble the North Star. How she put so much of herself into the dragon, it couldn’t be contained in one body and a large amount of power ended up separately compressed in carbon. How she had hoped to teach Moriandra how to use it, but her dragon left before becoming mature enough to learn. How because of Mo’s actions, her husband had grown cold to her. Flori listened, rapt.
“It’s lucky, I suppose, that she never learned its deeper secrets, she was so quick to anger, a side effect of being made from me. I loved her, but she lacked wisdom, and might have made a mess of things,” Persephone sighed. “Then we’d have to get the Twins, and we’d owe them one, and nobody likes having them around.” Flori nodded in somber solidarity while her heart danced in triumph.
That night, Flori left her mistress’ side for the first time since coming to the Underworld, and ventured out of the palace to ask after the twins Persephone mentioned. To her surprise, everyone knew exactly of whom she spoke and pointed warily to the same place, strongly suggesting she not pay them a visit, but refusing to expound on why. As she followed the direction the souls gave her, the beauty of the Elysian Fields changed to a macabre greyness. She came to a small dead wood where the brush had been cleared creating a circular open area at the center of which stood a boy and a girl each with one eye and one empty socket. A chill ran down her back as she came into their presence; she now understood the general reaction to their mention. “Hello,” she said.
“Hello,” they responded in tandem…creepily.
Half of the dragons agreed to give our heroes asylum in the Valley as long as they promised to avenge Moriandra. Despite hating her, the death of any dragon dealt a hard blow to their small population and each of them felt it deeply. The other half protested their presence, but tolerated it at Orion’s behest. After her recovery, Flori met with Cicero, Orion, Jove and the Prince to discuss what had to happen next. Tensions between them still ran high. The first topic they discussed was how to get the North Star out of the hands of the Queen.
“We can’t,” declared the Prince. “None of us can.”
“What do you mean?” challenged Jove. “I can pop into her bedroom, nick it while she sleeps, and fly out the window, or Flori can magically freeze her or something, or Cicero can, uh… Well, Flori or I could do it.”
“It only takes a second, less than a second for someone to fall under the power of the North Star. Can you imagine if the Queen gained control over Flori? She’s indestructible and magic. Your power makes you a weapon, and since we all know about this place, we cannot risk any of us being caught.” The Prince’s restraint impressed Orion who knew that he more than anyone in this room wanted the North Star back. “Besides,” he continued. “If I know my mother, she’s already taken serious precautions to protect the Star. Until we have more information and a better plan we cannot attempt to retrieve it.”
“So what do we do instead, leader?” Jove asked with bile.
“We start finding people who can help us.”
Previous to Holder’s Deep, the Queen’s philosophy of governance had been inconsistent at best, deranged at worst. One day she would imprison and interrogate everyone in a certain town, and the next she would go around handing out extravagant gifts and food to them. One day she would clean out the jails, executing everyone no matter their crime, the next she would forgive even the most heinous offenses. Apart from these actions, however, she mostly had a laissez-faire attitude towards those under her rule. After she gained possession of the Star, things changed. She moved from one town to another, magically claiming allegiances, creating unwilling spies, and issuing martial law. Finding her son became her obsession, and she meant to root him out no matter what. The longer he stayed in hiding, though, the harsher her search techniques became. She grew paranoid, convinced that he had agents everywhere, and she punished those she suspected, guilty or not. Like every tyrant, she did not realize that the more she cracked down on imagined rebellion, the more she fueled actual rebellion, and her son stood at the center of it.
The Prince worked tirelessly to create a kingdom-wide network of safe houses and operatives, always staying ahead of the Queen’s movements. Once their numbers were up, the Prince implemented one initiative after another to steal the North Star away, but each failed due to the Queen’s stringent and ever-growing security measures. With a heavy heart, he altered their goal to assassination, but the Queen proved as difficult to kill as she was to rob. They needed an advantage, something that could counteract the power of the Star, and they could only think of one person who might be able to help them…the Star’s creator, Persephone. And so, at the first sign of autumn, Flori and Jove left the Valley of the Dragons to travel to the Underworld.
Jove dropped Flori at the bank of the River Styx. He told her that since she had already died and been buried, she should have no trouble crossing the river on the ferry. He said he would join her if he could, but after chasing them all out of the Underworld, Hades had made it impossible for dragons to return until dead. He then promised to return to this place daily to check for any word from her, reminding her that while he could move himself instantly between this place and the Valley of the Dragons, if she needed anything brought to her, he would have to fly it here, and that would take time. He hugged her, wished her luck, and vanished.
Flori approached Charon the ferryman gave him a gold coin she made from a lock of her hair, and he let her on his boat. “You are not like the other souls I’ve ferried,” he commented. “You have a body, though it be not what the gods gave you. Why have you come here when you may yet live in the world?”
“I have come to ask Persephone for help,” Flori told him plainly. Charon laughed in her face.
“Oh, I would not do that, my golden friend. The Goddess of the Underworld does not possess a generous spirit. She would have you thrown into the Phlegethon without a second thought, and you would burn forever. What you must do instead is offer yourself as her faithful servant and earn her trust. That’s the only way you might succeed.” Flori thanked Charon with another coin and went on her way. When she came before the goddess, she followed the ferryman’s advice, and Persephone, intrigued by the uniqueness of this golden creature, accepted her as her new handmaiden.
“You shine like the sun. I always miss that in these dreadful dark months,” Persephone lamented bitterly. The next day the goddess had dinner with her husband Hades at his waterfront château on the other side of the Underworld, a somewhat new addition to their marriage if Flori guessed right. He greeted his wife coolly, then noticed her metallic companion and a distinct lasciviousness came to his eyes detected by all. Dinner ended with a screaming fight and many broken dishes. Persephone would not visit again that winter.
In the beginning, Flori attempted many times to bring up Moriandra, but doing so elicited such a sore response from her mistress, she thought it best that she stop. Months passed, Flori and Persephone never parted. The two became close as sisters, but not once did the goddess speak of her dragons. Flori started to fear that her journey here would not yield fruit. Then one night near winter’s end, after too many glasses of wine at dinner, Persephone started waxing nostalgic about her old friend the Purple Dragon and her bauble the North Star. How she put so much of herself into the dragon, it couldn’t be contained in one body and a large amount of power ended up separately compressed in carbon. How she had hoped to teach Moriandra how to use it, but her dragon left before becoming mature enough to learn. How because of Mo’s actions, her husband had grown cold to her. Flori listened, rapt.
“It’s lucky, I suppose, that she never learned its deeper secrets, she was so quick to anger, a side effect of being made from me. I loved her, but she lacked wisdom, and might have made a mess of things,” Persephone sighed. “Then we’d have to get the Twins, and we’d owe them one, and nobody likes having them around.” Flori nodded in somber solidarity while her heart danced in triumph.
That night, Flori left her mistress’ side for the first time since coming to the Underworld, and ventured out of the palace to ask after the twins Persephone mentioned. To her surprise, everyone knew exactly of whom she spoke and pointed warily to the same place, strongly suggesting she not pay them a visit, but refusing to expound on why. As she followed the direction the souls gave her, the beauty of the Elysian Fields changed to a macabre greyness. She came to a small dead wood where the brush had been cleared creating a circular open area at the center of which stood a boy and a girl each with one eye and one empty socket. A chill ran down her back as she came into their presence; she now understood the general reaction to their mention. “Hello,” she said.
“Hello,” they responded in tandem…creepily.
Continued in Chapter Fifteen...