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The Underworld made Odysseus feel small.
Crags of rock sprouted out of tall, dark walls and the ceiling overhead. Water dripped and pooled in the gaps between cracked, porous stone, and spilled into the wide, winding river where Odysseus’ ship slowly glided. Water, unnaturally pale and calm, stood still as the ship moved. The land surrounding stretched off far into the distance, the edges of the cavern obscured by suffocating, grey fog. If Odysseus looked askance, he could just about see the outlines of shades, translucent in the corners of his vision; less than earlier, thankfully, though he could still hear the distorted voices of his crew (this life is amazing when we greet it with—) floating up from the deceptively calm waters on which his ship sailed. Whether it was the true voices of the spirits of the dead speaking to, past, through him (Odysseus when you come home I’ll be—) he could not tell.
He didn’t know how long he’d been down here. One week, maybe? Two? Distantly, he recalled that someone had been keeping track of the days by measuring rations, but couldn’t recall who. His own words echoed back to him, ringing in his skull; No matter what we hear, full speed ahead. He couldn’t stop now, not with how close he was to leaving this godsforsaken place.
Well, Odysseus thought, staring off into the darkness as the ground of the Underworld rumbled around him, thinking of its godly king, not wholly forsaken.
Odysseus could see the light at the end of the tunnel though, now; in some deep crevasse in his mind (warrior of the mind, his traitorous, ten year old self still running around in his skull exclaimed at the word, which he definitely disregarded), he groaned at the pun, but he pushed that even further to the back of his thoughts as his eyes squinted at the blinding daylight ahead.
The crew clearly saw the light too, if the shouts behind him and increased vigour of the rowers meant anything. As they drew toward the opening in the ocean, Odysseus turned his face toward the afternoon sun as it threw its light eastward just at the opening, warm orange dispelling the dim greenish-grey mist that tinted just about everything in the underworld. He stepped up, letting his face feel the wind— real wind, not simply caused by the ship’s constant forward movement.
Odysseus felt a hand on his shoulder— cold, though that was probably because of how unnaturally freezing it was down here— and he glanced back, a wide grin stretching across his face, and it took far, far too long for him to realise that the ship had stopped.
He was only permitted a second of eye contact with Eurylochus (at the other end of the ship, not nearby where he thought he was) before the hand on his shoulder (ghostly, translucent, so so cold) dug into his skin with unnatural fervour. Odysseus tried to grip the wrist and yank it off, but his own flesh-and-bone hand fell through the outlines and tingled with freezing cold as another wrapped around his ankle and around the end of his cloak and they pulled, forcing his feet staggering back, more and more tugging at his arms his legs his clothes and he thought to himself is this how I’m going to die? Faintly, he heard shouted profanities. Even more faintly, he could feel his mouth moving to do the same.
There were more of them, now. Out of his peripheral, Odysseus saw shades rising out of the river, translucent fingers clutching tightly onto barnacles and the infinitesimal gaps between planks, clambering slowly over railings. One grabbed his hand, fingers intertwining as if he was a friend. He shook it off, trying not to look at the face— incorporeal, familiar, a stranger— but it only gripped tighter. He looked side to side, frantically, but he could just about see one of the rowers trying to bat off a specter with an oar and he wasn’t going to get any help here, was he?
They were speaking, he realised, voices gargling, spitting, sluggish, merging into one. Five hundred fifty-eight men, they accused, who died under your command, and no no no no no he was not doing this again, but still they dragged him back and for a moment he thought he could hear the quiet drone of Elpenor’s voice, warped and pitched almost so that he could barely recognise it as his. But what do you care, the voice— shade— something said, and Odysseus wanted to deny it and say no I’m sorry we had to leave I didn’t mean to leave you behind I’m sorry my friend, but there was then a spectral hand over his throat that surely should not have constricted its breathing as it did, and he tried to look around for his crewmates but his vision blurred and darkened around the edges as he struggled for breath, not realising that his ghostly tormentors had released their grip as he continued back back back—
And then the sunlight hit his face.
Odysseus collapsed to his knees on the deck. Behind him, past the buzzing in his ears, he could just about make out the panicked voices of his crew (his real crew, his alive crew) fending off the last of the spirits that had somehow managed to board. He breathed hard, in, out, over and over before he managed to get the willpower— or was it spite?— to stand. He ignored how his breathing was still far too fast to be normal, and the concerned faces of some of the closer crew members, and the voices at the back of his head still parroting those disdainful words that his old friends (dead friends, he had to remember that they likely weren’t going to come back to the land of the living to yell at him any time soon). He felt a hand on his shoulder, warm, and he looked up to see Eurylochus staring down at him with a worry he hadn’t seen since before Circe’s island. The thought should have been more concerning than it was.
Odysseus stumbled forward to the bow of the ship, elbows on the railing, head on his forearms.
Full speed ahead.