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He will be in the Underworld Waiting for us

The iano run toward the light I follow them in a daze, the world still quiet around aining on us fast, and the blinding blue-white light before us, I tear aze away from him, take a deep breathand step in at the same time as the others

MEDINA Have I arrived? Is this, truly, the ocean of the Underworld?

FORMIDITE Speak, child, for you stand at the gates of death

MEDINA O goddess! O angel of Fear! I cannot bear to look upon you

--Eight Princes, by Tristan Chirsley

Adelina Ay floods me It fills every crevice in od--Fear, Fury, Prosperity and Death, Empathy and Beauty, Love and Wisdo at once It burns my insides with its sheer intensity, and for an instant I think I won’t be able to stand it I want to screaiano’s voice or Raffaele’s shouts I can no longer sense anything but the light and the energy

I try to open limpse of the heavens beyond the sky, and the waters deep below the mortal oceans

Gradually, the light starts to fade The air turns cold again, but it is different froht It is a cold that burrows deep into my bones, a numbness that nestles there near my heart and wraps it in a cocoon of ice Tentatively, I open nize this gray It is that of the Underworld

Under iano On my other is Raffaele, then Maeve and Lucent

We have crossed into the world of the gods

Although the Underworld’s ocean looms at our feet, we do not sink into the water Instead, we stand on top of it, as if eightless When I look down at the water, I notice that not a single ripple disturbs its surface A ray sky around it, the realm between the heavens and the earth, the space where you are neither here nor there; the water is dark, allide the silhouettes of enormous creatures, the sahtmares of the Underworld Except noe are here

Adelina