Take me then to the Elysian Fields. Quickly,
take me away from this dreadful place."
He extended Charon's toll.
The figure made no move to accept.
Rather, a deep and melancholy voice responded. "Your stop is
not the Elysian shore."
Dionysius gazed at the dark figure, at the coin. Reluctantly he
let the coin fall, watched it disappear into the depths of the
murky water.
He was silent.
What more was there to say!
20. The Demon's Lair
There are dark grottoes in the high mountains. And tarns, deep
and cold, bottomless pits of murky water. And in some few
favored spots, dark grottoes and murky tarns together.
Such was the site at which Demo stood.
Here dwelt one whom even Olympians fear. This was the Demon's
Lair.
The village folk had long remembered legends. Hoary legends,
whispered around campfires during winter storm. Used to frighten
children to mind their manners. But only legends. Or so Demo had
long believed.
Something - no one spoke a name - there was. Or something there
had been. Something that preceded even the Titans, that ancient
race from whom the Olympians were descended.
The Titans, so the tales went, had not conquered it. Rather,
they had duped it, deceived it, and encaged it in bars not of
this world. Bars that, until now, had held. Bars that,
perchance, were weakening with the passage of eons.
Whispered conversations on earth, whispered conversations on
the pristine streets of Olympus, told of an ominous presence.
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