It was by the will of the gods that she be thrown into the underworld. For committing a heinous sin against them, the gods gave her a monstrous form and if one were to find themselves gazing into Medusa’s eyes, they would be turned to stone.

- Tímios, Renowned Olympian Scholar

Nýchta opened her eyes to find herself being held up by something.

Her eyes widened as she realized that she was in the arms of a large creature that looked like the twisted union of man and bull.

It had large furry hooved legs and large, muscular arms. Sitting atop its cow-like head were horns that were adorned with various chains and rings made from old silver and gold.

The Minotaur, as it was known, threw Nýchta onto the cold hard floor of what she realized was a cave before mounting her.

She tried moving but the Minotaur pinned her arms down as it let out its many foul breaths onto her face.

It looked down at her long scaly body. Her torso was protected by an ornate but dirty golden piece of armour.

The Minotaur tried ripping off the chest plate, but after its attempts failed it simply raised its large fist and punched Nýchta in her scaly lower body seemingly out of frustration.

Nýchta let out a gross squawk and spat out the blood and spit that had filled her mouth.

The Minotaur then turned to the skirt that was strapped onto her chest piece.

It lifted the skirt up revealing Nýchta’s soft underbelly.

It then let out a series of wild grunts and roars before grabbing her waist.

Its maw, filled with countless jagged teeth, opened to take a bite but a muffled call stopped it.

The Minotaur let out a grunt and dropped Nýchta before walking away, it’s every step made deep thuds which added to the pain she felt in her ringing ears.

What remained of her vision rapidly darkened as her breaths grew weaker.

She then found herself taking refuge in the relative numbness of unconsciousness.

.

..

Nýchta awoke with a series of painful coughs.

She looked around in search of the Minotaur from before but the monster was nowhere to be seen.

She used her short, bruised and muscular arms to sit up, but she quickly fell back to the floor as a multitude of pains assaulted her body. Or more accurately, she became reacquainted with the pains her body already knew.

Her face felt as though it was on fire and her lips were so bruised they couldn’t close properly.

Her fingers were covered in countless small cuts and many of her scales, which once made a spiral indigo and green pattern along her tail, were damaged.

Nýchta coughed loudly as a deep pain surged within her.

One that surpassed any that she felt in her body.

“Pegasus… Chrysá..."

She groaned weakly but her throat was beyond sore and her lips were so bruised that moving them even slightly brought her nothing but excruciating pain.

Nýchta tried sitting upright again and this time she managed to avoid falling back onto the cold floor.

She looked around and saw that she was indeed in some sort of cave. A wide space made of dark, shiny stone with the only source of illumination being the countless small holes that littered the wall in front of her.

She shifted her body, which measured around four meters long, towards a certain object that glinted ever so slightly in the dark and picked it up, revealing it to be a golden helmet.

She held in her trembling hands and remembered the words she heard when the mast was given to her.

“The path you tread will be dark and perilous. They’ve never taken kindly those who defied their wills and you may not fair off as well as I. Take this. Let it serve as a mask to hide the scars that you will undoubtedly accumulate. It will also serve as protection for your pretty little head among its many other uses.”

Nýchta carefully placed the mask over her head and it is here that she felt that one of the many small serpents that grew from her head had died. While the others moved about in whichever way they like, one in particular hung limply from her head.

She carefully lifted its cold body up and willed that the other serpents move up allowing her to put her helmet on.

Nýchta then spotted two golden daggers lying in a pool of dirty water nearby.

She moved her large body across the cold cave floor and grabbed the daggers to find that they had no visible damage on any part of their blades or ornate golden hilts.

After wiping her bloody nose with the back of her hand, Nýchta tightly wrapped her muddy hands around her daggers and made her way seemingly deeper into the cave where the pained screams of a man could be heard.

Accompanying the screams were the many snorts and grunts.

She made her way deeper into the cave before eventually arriving at a pit which was lit only by a few small fires here and there.

Her face then twisted into a scowl upon noticing that, huddled at the centre of the pit, were three Minotaurs who loudly ate away at three corpses.

These corpses, however, were the souls of the recently deceased and instead of flowing down the river Styx, as per usual, they had been captured by the Minotaurs.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

Nýchta saw that the entire pit was lined with mangled corpses. Some of which had already been eaten through to the bone.

“H-“

Nýchta’s eyes widened after hearing one of the men being mutilated speak.

She looked into the man’s eyes, which glowed a dim purple, as the Minotaur ate away at chunks of his naked body and since what was being eaten was in fact his soul, he would not die from his injuries.

The man mouthed the words “Help Me” to Nýchta who simply watched as the Minotaur greedily scooped out the last of his intestines.

It then dug its teeth into the man’s left arm before chewing it off but at the point, the man could no longer scream from pain.

Nýchta watched as the Minotaurs ate their fill and it wasn’t long before their victims were reduced to a handful of bones.

The Minotaurs eventually fell asleep and after waiting for a bit, Nýchta slid towards them.

She gently placed her dagger above the neck of the nearest one before sliding the blade across its skin, parting its thick furry hide in the process.

The Minotaur shot up and wildy screamed.

This awoke its bovine brethren who sat up to find one of theirs bleeding profusely in front of Nýchta who watched the monster die without expression.

The two other Minotaurs quickly lashed out to grab her, but she slid away before sending her tail towards the rightmost Minotaur.

The monster raised its arms to protect itself, but the end of Nýchta’s tail was fitted with a golden blade which cut the Minotaur's wrists.

The monster cried out in pain while Nýchta slid towards it.

She then wrapped the screaming Minotaur with her tail before pushing it towards the last Minotaur which was charging at her with its large, sharp horns.

The charging Minotaur’s horns impaled the other and this allowed Nýchta to slither towards it and stab it in the neck.

Unfortunately, this wasn’t enough to instantly kill it and so the Minotaur punched Nýchta in the belly as it wildly kicked its legs in an attempt to remove its horns from its brethren.

Nýchta slid away, but before she could get very far, the Minotaur freed itself and charged towards her.

She tried her best to avoid getting impaled but the Minotaur had other intentions.

It grabbed her arm as she fled before forcing her into the ground.

It then punched her in the belly several times before letting out a loud and smelly roar right in her face but this would be the last thing it did as the last of its blood fell onto Nýchta.

The monster limply fell on top of her and although the beast weighed quite a lot, Nýchta didn’t try to move it.

Instead, she blankly stared at the cave’s ceiling while catching her breath.

Her wheezes were her only company but even in the relative silence of the cave, a certain sound could still be heard.

Nýchta eventually shoved aside the Minotaur before getting up and moving towards what she hoped was the exit of the cave.

She travelled for a few minutes and followed the ever-present noise from before and the louder it got the more confident she was in her movements.

The noise eventually got so loud that it quickly became the only thing Nýchta could hear in the darkness of the cave.

Nýchta eventually gasped upon seeing some grey light in the distance.

She crawled up the many jagged and cold rocks that made up the cave’s floor before eventually reaching an opening that led to a large platform that was made from the same dark stone as the cave.

She slithered towards the edge of the platform and looked out into what was the source of all the noise.

The Underworld

A dark realm bathed in the pale light that was said to be from the edge of the world. This light illuminated a vast Ocean of Souls that swam beneath the bottom of the world while letting out anguished cries and screams.

They swam towards a gigantic circular chasm in the distance. At the centre of the chasm, a fiery place known as Tartarus and growing all around it was a bed of gigantic roots which came from somewhere above the Bottom of the World.

That was Nýchta’s destination.

The feet of the Ieródéntro, the Roots of Olympus.

Nýchta looked around and saw that the underworld was littered with countless enormous pillars which held the world up.

The platform she stood on was on the trunk of one such pillar.

None of the pillars were directly connected and were separated by hundreds of kilometres.

Nýchta looked up since the only way back to the Roots of Olympus was via the surface.

Her gaze crawled to the surrounding lumps of rock that stuck out from the pillar and noticed that they, along with the platform, were littered with the remnants of several souls.

Souls in their natural state appeared white. Souls that had been found and eaten by monsters would turn grey before turning into dark grey husks.

Nýchta assumed that they were victims of the Minotaurs she'd killed. This led to her concluding that there were probably more Minotaurs and possibly other monsters nearby.

She sighed before placing her daggers into sheaths that sat on the belt of her skirt and she crawled towards a set of stairs that spiralled around the pillar.

Her ears, one pointy and the other with its tip missing, sorted every sound she heard as she ascended.

The pillar atop which she slithered was littered with holes and caves and like the other pillars, it not only served to hold the world up, it was also the home of the monsters of the Underworld.

They were also sometimes home to beings the gods wanted hidden or discarded, much like Nýchta herself.

She thought about how, to the gods, she was no different from the Minotaurs.

They would much rather watch her struggle to even survive than allow her to live on the surface with their supposedly perfect creations.

Nýchta wondered if she was fated to be slaughtered and forgotten.

She wondered if there was no point to any of the pain she’d endured and she thought that maybe it would be better if she gave up.

Her thoughts were interrupted by a harpy which tried grabbing her and dragging her off the edge of the stairs and into the ocean of souls but just as the creature, which had legs that resembled those of a bird, two large wings and a human-like torso, grabbed her right arm, she stabbed it in the forehead.

Many of the Harpy’s jagged teeth were revealed as it screamed in pain but Nýchta didn’t care.

She forced it onto the ground while it fanatically flapped its wings and flailed its legs.

Nýchta looked into the creature’s shaking eyes and stabbed again, forcing her dagger deep into its skull.

She then removed her dagger from the now still corpse and resumed her ascent.

Fortunately, she was near the upper portions of the great pillar and so she wouldn’t have to travel for long.

.

..

Nýchta eventually reached the point where the great pillar touched the bottom of the world and she could see the bedrock that the pillars held up.

Several holes led into the pillar. She knew that most of them led to the surface and so she slid into one of them and climbed up the rocky paths.

Some of them were dead ends but Nýchta’s night vision was exceptionally good and so navigating through the labyrinthine system of tunnels was manageable.

She eventually noticed, as she moved further upward, the hard and dark rocks were replaced with soul and countless roots.

Hours upon hours passed as Nýchta travelled but, as her movements grew their slowest, she spotted something that sent a chill up her spine.

She didn’t want to believe it and so she moved just a little further to see beaming down, from the end of the tunnel, was what appeared to be a beam of sunlight.

Her movements quickened and she felt herself be filled with new life as she ascended.

Her head was the first to emerge and she was temporarily blinded by the light of what could only be described as a burning sky.

Churning above, in malignant shades of grey and red, were clouds that loomed above and roaring from deep within them were bone-shaking thunders.

Nýchta pulled herself out of the tunnel to find that she was in what appeared to be an abandoned temple.

Many of its gargantuan marble pillars sat partially broken on their sides and nature had already reclaimed the land that was once occupied by its floors, filling the temple with tall trees, vines and grasses.

Nýchta made her way towards the Temple’s exit as a bolt of lightning shot across the sky, briefly illuminating the dark recesses of the temple.

A twisted frown then formed on her face as she beheld a drowned forest that seemingly never ended regardless of which direction she chose to look.

The temple within which she stood allowed her to see, courtesy of its elevated seat, the vast stretches of trees and water around the temple.

However, that wasn’t what caused Nýchta's teeth to gnash and her breaths to quicken.

No, her gaze was locked onto the mountain that stood on the horizon. Its peak reaching even into the maelstrom of a sky.

A mountain which was said to be the home of the gods, a divine place which no mortal, man or monster, could ever hope to reach.

Mount Olympus.