After a day of commotion, the Field of Truth fell into complete stillness.
A gentle breeze brought with it a faint sense of comfort, and the screaming and wailing of the spirits gradually died down.
At this moment, in the rear courtyard of the judgment hall.
An old man and a young man sat across from each other at a stone round table, raising their cups and chatting leisurely about old times and recent developments.
"Are Ariadne and Phaedra doing well?"
"Thanks to your blessing, they are both fine. They have successfully settled in Athens with their people and kept the flame of Crete alive."
"And my sons?"
"The eldest and second princes have taken root in new territories, but the rest have not been heard from."
"Mm. As expected."
King Minos nodded, his face carrying little of what one might call grief.
After all, he had done everything he could, giving each of them a fair chance to choose their own path.
As for how things turned out, those were futures they had chosen for themselves.
There was no need for a dead man like him to keep worrying over the living.
After a brief exchange of pleasantries, the old man looked at the young scribe sitting before him and moved to the point.
"So then, why did you end up in the underworld?"
"Entrusted by the goddess of love, Aphrodite, to retrieve the soul of her little sweetheart Adonis."
Lorne did not bother being evasive, answering with a smile and quietly shifting all the blame onto his client.
King Minos's expression stiffened at once.
"Releasing a soul without authority and defying the laws of life and death. That is a serious offense!"
"As long as I have not been caught, I have not done it."
Lorne blinked and gave the judge of the underworld a cheerful look.
"So, can you tell me where Adonis's soul was sent?"
"Absolutely not!"
King Minos refused with righteous firmness, then flipped through the large book with a black cover in his hands and reiterated gravely.
"I will absolutely not tell you that the souls of heroes, demigods, and unblemished divine beings are generally sent to the Elysian Fields to enjoy eternal peace."
"What a shame..."
Lorne shook his head with a helpless sigh, though the smile on his face had only deepened.
"Fine, I will not ask then.
But surely you can at least tell me how to get out of the underworld? Every day I, a living person, remain here is a violation and desecration of the underworld's order!"
"Of course. It is my duty."
King Minos nodded and dipped a finger into his wine, tracing the rough lines and outlines of the underworld's regions on the stone table.
"Setting out from the Field of Truth and reaching the Elysian Fields, you can follow the river Styx to the edge of the underworld.
There is a cavern there called Arima.
It bypasses the guards at the main entrance of the underworld and leads directly to the surface."
"The land of Arima?"
Prompted by King Minos's words, Lorne suddenly recalled the origin of that name.
According to legend, after the God-king Zeus defeated the primordial monster Typhon, the place where Typhon fell was called the land of Arima. It was from there that Typhon had broken free from the abyss and reached the surface.
In Hesiod's Theogony, it was also mentioned that the snake mother Echidna's dwelling, far from the immortal gods and all mortals, was a deep cavern called Arima, a second gate to the underworld.
Excellent. This saved him even the trouble of breaking through the front.
As expected, the move he had made at the underworld court earlier had been the right one.
Lorne quietly congratulated himself, memorizing the route mapped out on the table, then reached out and swept away the wine traces, eliminating any incriminating evidence of collusion.
Done with that, he raised his cup toward King Minos in a respectful toast and rose from his seat.
"Very well. I will take my leave now and not disturb you from returning to your cases."
"It seems I will be retrying your case quite soon then..."
King Minos turned his cup idly and added in an unhurried tone.
"Hypnos, the three Dream Gods, and the three Erinyes (Furies) are all waiting for you outside."
"Ahem, ahem..."
Lorne coughed violently, hastily set down his cup, and stared with an expression of genuine shock.
"The three (Furies) Erinyes? Those three who dwell on the primordial sea?"
"That is correct."
"Were they not allied with Eris?
How did they end up taking a position in the underworld?"
"That, of course, is thanks to Lady Hecate."
King Minos answered with perfect seriousness and gave Lorne a brief, no-frills account of how the three sisters had come to be employed.
Not long ago, Hecate, entrusted by Hades the Underworld King to ascend to the surface and investigate the disruption of the balance between life and death, had encountered the goddess of discord Eris and the three Erinyes at sea, who had moved to obstruct her.
The two sides came to blows, and in the end, Eris had every last feather plucked from her and fled in a sorry state.
The three Erinyes, who had not been quick enough to escape, were placed under a binding seal by Hecate and thrown into the underworld to serve, currently stationed at the border of Tartarus, tormenting the souls of sinners.
After hearing King Minos's account, Lorne could not quite suppress the urge to laugh.
He had guessed Hecate would make a mess of Eris, but he didn't expect things to go this badly for her.
Not only had she herself been thoroughly beaten and stripped of every feather, but even the allies she had gone to such trouble to win over had been conscripted into the underworld's service.
Well, well.
Who could have imagined that this same figure had once been free to leap back and forth between the Olympian and Othrys factions during the Titan War?
And yet here she was now, reduced to having even her last meager reserves stripped away.
Most people stirred up trouble to profit from the chaos.
For her it was the other way around.
The more she stirred things up, the worse off she became.
'Ha. You enjoyed chasing me around quite a lot before, did you not? Without the three Erinyes behind you, just wait until next time we meet. I will deal with you properly then.'
Lorne indulged in a satisfied moment of schadenfreude, then sat back down and refilled both his own cup and King Minos's.
Since both the three (Furies) Erinyes and the God of Sleep were lying in wait for him outside, walking out that door was clearly out of the question.
For now, the only option was to lie low at King Minos's residence for a while, wait for the guards outside to ease up, and then think about slipping away.
But since there was no rush to leave, there was one matter he wanted to take the opportunity to resolve.
Lorne drained his cup, chose his words carefully for a moment, and asked in a measured voice.
"I also want to look up the death record of one particular person."
"Do you think the underworld is your back garden?! You want to just look someone up? That kind of confidential record can only be accessed in the Central Archive of the judgment hall.
Do not think for a moment that I would let an outsider in there!"
King Minos held a stern expression and gave a cold snort, then glanced at the grave look on Lorne's face, paused for a moment, set down his cup, and muttered something as he slumped face-down onto the stone table.
"Getting old. I really cannot drink too much..."
As the sound of loud snoring rose, a bronze elephant token engraved with dense runes rolled off from his waist and fell to the ground.
Lorne understood immediately.
He bent down, picked the bronze token up off the floor, and under cover of the darkness, quietly made his way toward the Central Archive.
Since the underworld's judgment hall was still in its early days, the guards were essentially all warriors of divine blood who had died alongside King Minos in the battle of Crete.
And so, he encountered not the slightest obstruction on his way in.
Before long, he arrived at the doors of the Central Archive, inserted the bronze token into the recess in the gate, and turned it.
A moment later, streams of glowing inscriptions lit up and the doors swung open.
Lorne carefully retrieved the token, slipped inside, and looked up at the metal modules of varying sizes and shapes that were constantly shifting around him.
The architecture here resembled the memory shrine he had once visited.
It was clear that the goddess of memory Mnemosyne had also played a hand in the construction of the underworld's Central Archive.
No wonder she appeared in certain mythological accounts as having a presence in the underworld as well.
And this also happened to give Lorne a convenient familiarity with how to search through the records.
"Semele..."
He silently mouthed that name, grown somewhat faded in his mind, and pressed his hand against the bronze wall where the storage modules were housed.
But after a long wait, the dim, cold bronze wall returned no response at all.
Nothing found.
"What does it mean when nothing is found?"
Back at the round table, Lorne slipped the bronze token back into its place, refilled King Minos's cup, and asked in a low voice.
The old man across from him yawned, rose as though waking from a dream, and spoke plainly.
"Death is not the end. Chaos and nothingness are the origin of all things. And only the soul of a chief god possesses true immortality..."
"I understand."
Lorne nodded.
At the same time, a sliver of hope he had held onto quietly crumbled.
As expected.
Since that God king had chosen to act, he would not have left behind any loose ends so easily.
King Minos said nothing more and asked nothing either and simply rose, pouring Lorne a cup himself.
"Drink!"
The latter raised his cup without hesitation and drained the deep red vintage in one go.
The coldness in the depths of his eyes grew a shade more profound.
It seems bringing the two of you back together will be no small feat,
Your Majesty the God King.
(End of Chapter)