the underworld (Redux)
a short story
the underworld (Redux)
by Ophelia Everfall
12/24/25
Daphne dreamt while awake — sitting — grinding spine — breathing — receiving — committing — allowing — synchronizing herself with that Goddess she was to become.
Dreams were a known factor. She’d learned not to resist within far-planes at time of sleep. She would walk with what came forward while knowing herself at rest in physicality. Lucid dreaming without control was a gift.
Waking up to the fact she was within a dream happened often. D had once explored consciously. Flying away if she so chose, when things got too scary. Most commonly, she’d awaken because of frights becoming too surreal, too brightly lit for an appropriately intelligent mind to fail at accepting.
Those factors would always wake a person up to what surrounded their container of consciousness.
Sleeping had been her safe space, waking too. Spaces set would hold an energy of permanence about, leaving echoes of energy within a smallest room rented.
Daphne had been wondering who’d occupy it next.
That night was different. Everything opened in her mind at once. Images and knowing poured free upon her crown. A briefest, journaled set of instructions, beginning with that calling in of her soul, and who it was she’d see as those beside her. It was for who would help in means to encourage trust in her partners. She’d known that going in.
Daphne loved women. She was abused by some. She’d been abandoned by others. Hope burned brightest by reflection in the lack of returns within her heart, and they’d proven to her some connection through a friend never seen but felt. They were of strange lineage together, those three women, among many others.
The one who’d passed. She’d been driven by Hekate herself. She was Seline in heart.
Hekate was an order of binding energy between a three most responsible for some debt. It was the maiden who asked the mother, the brightest witch she’d ever met, to reach out towards that long-embodied crone, all in their own deepest blackness. It was the mother who would fail tests of honor until she’d be broken into honest truth. The crone had only told one lie. All were learning what they’d need for moving on. More would be too.
Since unknowing that girl she’d loved like a sister but more, Daphne begun sensing an energy as the elder. It had been encouraging and was felt previously as such in dreamscapes most similar but different. Those projections would be true and false.
Daphne had been connected with a two her entire lifetime.
They would often show and were not as they appeared.
It wasn’t what she’d want, to walk with that Goddess and God who’d lead her into the underworld. They were familiar from before, and her preconceptions which lacked the trust necessary would be lost on their truest visages seen as threats in lowest reaches of fearful shadow.
Masculinity and Femininity embodied as two — truest. Daphne knew them well, as would all who rode her line of her soul, and would those of the order she was a part. They’d been guardians for all of her make and purpose.
Artemis and Apollo were taking Mt. Olympus.
Daphne had been placed upon the lands of Earth and awakened to who she was by their families’ lights of orb. Their colors clear in the night, except that little amber who’d stopped appearing years previous.
Persephone had been reborn in the underworld.
Hekate and her kind were to make the change that would see their harvest of Mt. Olympus renewed in her honor. Yet the cycle would change.
Zues and Hera were corrupt, unworthy, dishonorable and petulant, keepers of a throne most undeserved, yet believed themselves righteous. Hated they were, by all Gods, Goddesses, and Nephilim alike. That sister and brother known as hunters two, proved their meddle as fighters of earnest duality. The light was a lie to Apollo. Darkness was the truth to Artemis.
Balance had been forsaken for a man of ego who would fall from Olympus by right of that reborn warrior woman brought to existence by Hekate and her own visage of Hera. Daphne had been married to a woman. She’d birthed her child. She made the entire affair possible with her continued and ever-forsaken sacrifice for that petty-goddess who would exploit until she’d fallen from Olympus herself.
Everything Daphne had done was steered for weeks on end until she’d began the dance, and spoken her invocation into the mirror again, as before, as told, “I let Hekate in.”
Contracts were made with Nephelims of all make, those misunderstood beings who walked between worlds. They were not of the gods or man, but both. Daphne had been a soul of such make. Each individual contracted to work with Hekate would come to know their rider. In the modern distillation, upon that Earth, within the container of its isolated spacetime reborn by denigration after contracts renewed, all had been unaware of themselves.
Worlds Fairs would mark sighting of that bygone end to an era past, lost willpower and literacy. Corruption tore the intelligence of man to shreds by the generation, and worse in the end for all elderly. Magnification by trauma of age would affect towards exponential loss near ends of lives. Capacities of humanity which constructed such events would feel most separate from what they’d become by agreement with their evil toil.
Seline and Helios were Nephelim. They’d been confused by man of Earth.
Gender would wear itself quite backwards, and often. Lovers wanted to be of their other. On Earth they’d made it so. The soul of Olympus itself was manifest in a special sort, along with Daphne’s dearest half-mortal friend, Leucippus, who would play great parts.
Daphne would always love Olympus like a home, and for that way she saw its finest graces needed to all. Yet once, in every lifetime, she would witness Leucippus as herself upon some beach. Once free, Daphne would be as they’d taught her of herself by reflections of transformation they sought.
Three Goddess’s of a remade heaven would come to know each other through time and space most disparate. Leucippus found a most preferred form in their life. She’d be as she wished.
Olympus walked alone.
Known would be that trio of the witch by feeling. Daphne, Olympus, Seline, and the binder of a Goddess of gloriously broken boundaries herself.
Daphne was a mother.
Every martyr made Goddess to-be was taken that way by guidance of three. Maiden, a mother, and the crone. Each shining for all who were taking place amongst the gods of a next afterworld.
Even Hades would go home, in his ways, and both their forms.
The Tower of Eels
Slithering, snaking tentacles of purest darkness were manifest in the dark. A rising cylinder of them, clamoring, clawing into the mind.
Fear incarnate; a test to enter the underworld.
Daphne’s vision seared into her mind as she led-way through pitch darkness. She was Hekate in form, holding their torches in hand, using a breath of focus within her apartment for retaining the light upon a journey begun into an underworld of real.
Evil was present — true evil — fear.
Daphne felt it creeping in them all, into the backs of their skulls. An infectious terror was taking Apollo and Artemis beside her. Those images utilized of a friend known as Olympus by heart, and their elder who was only seen by photograph, felt most clearly through searching their energy upon her friend’s request, which meant the most somehow.
Hekate spoke through her then.
“Don’t be afraid. That’s all it has.”
Daphne held Hekate’s torches high when they’d begun flickering. Her focus perturbed by the infectious visions, curdling silence, sights of swaying, tentacles reaching and grasping through the blackness.
Surging through breath, utilizing her focused ability for manifesting peace and understanding safety, Daphne would not need the strength of Hekate for clearing her mind. She quelled her worries.
Those gods appearing as her friend and their elder, beside Daphne, were unfazed, standing in strength their own.
The flame of her torches burned brighter.
The Mountaintop
They were heading to the mountaintop. That much was clear. Daphne understood it after the fright was left behind. Times were lost to a journey unseen.
Reservations flared, torches dimmed. Daphne believed herself most connected to that friend in the moment. It would wear her going forward.
Once beyond fear, the trek was of time. Their passage needed caution.
When mind wandered the torches would dim. Daphne stayed present in receiving. She was allowing Hekate to work through her. Their party would not be lost in the darkness.
A highest mountaintop was reached.
Such strange sights the underworld’s horizon held. A darkest beauty therein. Yet, and still, so felt, an ever-pressing sense of danger engulfed their arena. An atmosphere of foreboding — inescapable, encompassing — unknowing what was to come except for some false concept of why.
Daphne had received like that before. It was not a dream she could fly away from. She knew herself committed once passed The Tower of Eels. The need for finishing had been an instruction begun with. She’d been warned it was for only the bravest of sorts.
She knew it not a dream at all, nor some imagining, so Daphne would breathe and release to sights of those fiery flames of fury in fist.
A plateau they’d come upon was carved down flat into the great circle, with a stone tablet at its center. Twelve circular touchstones of place about its seismic breadth.
Hekate spoke through Daphne’s voice, while a strangest, longest held gaze had rested upon her by that elderly woman, within the underworld alone.
Visage of Daphne’s friend was to lay upon the tablet first. A test of might, surrendering towards release of greatest fear on all sides, feeling connected to much beyond a group of three in the moment to Daphne.
The crone had come to Daphne’s side. They’d placed torches around the outside-edge of their circle. Hekate’s first visage on their Earth of agreement had taken the lead.
Together all three approached the tablet. As Daphne saw her friend lay upon it first, she believed she’d known why, and that their body was of great traumatic holding.
That mother sat upon an under-glowing symbol — many like it etched into the great border of the stonework — absences were felt.
The two who sat began to sway and chant in synchronicity. Skies above their mountaintop altar swirled in violets and blues. Clouds were ever darkening.
Something was happening.
Daphne lost herself in that simple mantra, unremembered to her perpetuity, felt through into her room and spoken there aloud. Before long she’d found it was their elder on the platform, and the maiden now resting on a symbol beside in her movement of song.
They chanted that hymn so taught by forces beyond. Daphne hadn’t stopped. She held eyes closed on the mountaintop for such time, only having taken that one glimpse after she’d felt her friend sit beside her. They’d seemed so clean.
Simply knowing it would happen, only apparent from distillation of rationality. Feeling that in her gut. Daphne finally opened her eyes to find an offering of hand. She was led to the tablet by Hekate.
Daphne was scared, but she’d known there was no turning back.
She’d taken place upon the smooth stone block with a rectangular top. As her body did the same upon a bed.
Feelings everywhere were inexplicably powerful.
Often, Daphne had known somatic release, those sensations from freeing herself of holdings in body would let themselves free.
At once, in whole, as much the goal, she’d been purged of much holding within. Tensions and tightness of the body, wrought from trauma throughout her lifetime, had begun their releasing.
Never had she felt anything like that. The energy pulled from within her on that slab would change Daphne. She’d known herself meant to be a feather.
She knew that could change the world.
Their journey was not over.
Hekate would take the lead again, within Daphne. That Goddess of the underworld, one who walked beyond boundaries, leading people into darkness for the facing of what had to be cleaned, guiding unseen, within, was about two guardians and their gleam.
Those three made way along highest ridges of the mountain’s range.
Torches dimmed along the way, as D’s mind swayed, calling her towards steel, allowing her touch to burn them brighter.
The Valley of Titans
They were upon the place. Daphne knew it her part to play. She’d been brought for what was coming next. There was purpose found divine in what would happen.
She was a teacher of heart and breath — telling people of the light — bringing it down upon her crown — speaking the words of her heart for connecting with others through the correction of spines, elongating in suitability to their own, necks guided long, chests opened wide, chins tucking gently.
It was only then she’d ask people to lift their hearts.
Her gift was to touch it there in the deepest of dark. She’d channel her light the same. It was hard to hold for how sad the gods were. Through that channel they’d been weeping into hearts of mankind. Facing it with others was of healing beyond the pale. Loving each other through it the key to finding meaning therein.
Those people who’d control — they’d been bleeding their mother dry. Oil was the Earth’s lifeblood. People were manipulating their perceived underlings to consume her flesh with disregard to those offerings provided — humanity was raping itself by such blatant betrayal of its mother — their history was biology — unseen had gone the truths within them.
They corrupted everything good. People lost their souls on oil and were growing weaker. All people, regardless of age, were dumber for it by the decade. Intelligence would be mistaken for conscription. Indigenous peoples were the only who’d have things the right way around from the start.
Great lumbering shadows moved through an epic spaciousness below them. A sprawling canyon stretched, filled by stone giants, littered, manifestations of humanity’s malfeasant disregard.
Daphne sat. As did those women appearing on either side of her.
She watched a titan birthed by pain from the sky directly before their vantage, forming from an esoteric darkness, congealing into the beast it would become. Those monsters were the unseen demons of humanity. They were creation made from terror, horror, and rape.
They were tall as buildings, titans, seeming so made of stone, their movements glacial. With some darkness, still grasped within, seeping into its maleficence, Daphne could feel her own part in the birthing of a great creature before her.
Those beside would sport Hekate’s torches within outstretched grasps, and each, outcanting patternworks reborne into their airspace, gripped by outermost intrinsic strength, holding onto Daphne with the other, allowing her upward-facing palms to wrap their hands tightly.
Daphne knew it time.
Hekate was not to lead.
A Goddess-to-be reached high, through and beyond Mt. Olympus of both before and after, grasping that light she’d always found an intimate connection, felt so high above when pled for, and always. It was a place of wisdom, comfort, stillness, and peace. It seemed as if it chose her to wield it through time.
Apollo had made it to the top for Daphne. He’d become himself into that spacious fabric she knew as light. He had been most sorry.
She’d been the worst off, of the entire fabric, to ask forgiveness for everyone.
Having been led so far into the dark, things were becoming clear. She was to channel that energy wielded into her heart, to blast that valley of titans with divine light.
Daphne went in. She reached up. And out of the underworld was her heart. Above the reaches of a material plane, beyond seven layers, epochs of heavens, to the space of light connected with a fabric of all.
She’d pulled down grace her own.
Even at these depths. It was hers to channel at will.
Heart was glowing brightly. She’d never known it could hold that much. The power of Hekate had only opened her. With support of these two powerful gods besides, enflamed had been her love, confusing her mind for times to come.
Energy reached peaks. All of Daphne’s inner vision had completely washed-out in golden light. She’d let it go, beaming from her heart, a wave of energy more powerful than she’d ever known had coursed through her body. Daphne blew the titans to pieces as she knew she was to do from the moment she saw them. Having never felt such sensations before in her body. It had seemed a release for all-time.
Something was changed in the moment. Like all moments throughout her journey, she’d been aware it was herself first.
Yet Daphne could feel that stronger than ever, with something new.
Her world was changing too.
The Chasm
At farthest ends of the valley, a greatest chasm was found. It glowered with crimson aura.
Their approach took a great deal of time.
Three women had walked so far together. Daphne was more powerful than any of them then.
Her friend was not her friend. They were Leucippus in armor.
Those gods were gone — it was too deep.
Hekate stood behind Daphne and her man. That time the woman Leucippus had come to sow her seeds into their underworld was upon her. She’d handed her companion weapons of war.
First was given that shield to her girl. Then a sword of her own.
Daphne took them with pride.
Hekate would have all she’d need.
Leucippus’s longsword led into a reddened fissure within the side of a towering cliff-face, both of her gloved hands grasping its hilt.
Her armor was of some unknown glory. Unwritten to Daphne's human histories had been their woman’s greatness.
Hearts were surging.
Daphne understood what was coming — then they did — a hoard.
Two had torn those demons to shreds. Each and every would fall as known to be in Daphne’s shining heart. From the start it was writ by the hand of Apollo beside her soulful tree in Mt. Olympus. That woman she’d left behind was heaving, lunging, upon a seat of cushion at the center of an apartment’s secondary bedroom, losing breath.
Leucippus took the most of them. He’d once been the warrior chosen as such by Apollo. Now honored would be that woman she’d more than righteously become.
Daphne was viscerally, pleasurably affected by the violence Leucippus afflicted upon all monsters of the dark. Blessed glimpses fell her fear, blissed her heart, inspired a world’s greatest art. She’d been stunned by their ferocity. They were The Warrior Goddess.
Leucippus was of connection to Daphne’s soul. Nothing felt righter than watching them plow their longest sword through a horde member of Hera. Lillith had been the name of them all. Each demon of the gulch would be a soon-fallen queen of Olympus, destroyed by the one they’d want most, and in glimpse of her Daphne behind them.
Hekate held back as nothing but protector. While Daphne tore the many foul beasts which came her way by releasing into a furious movement of dance she’d not realized before her own.
Daphne fucked like Leucippus too.
The last living demon’s skull was stuck to a granite wall of that canyon by Daphne’s own sword. She’d felt her hands shaking, blood boiling.
Daphne screamed, for glory.
They all were.
The Beast
Beyond the chasm was a chamber. Within it, a beast like no other.
His was a towering inferno of hatred and lies.
The beast was once a god. He’d been Zeus before. He was a visage cast down. Peoples of Earth would call him Hades. To die would send all of Zues back to know what he’d truly become. Those petty-gods would kill himself in a final blow of equality.
He would choke. They both would.
All horror and bloodshed was compiled into form of The Beast. Each one of those titan’s darkness was inside a lone, lumbering child of ignorance, wanting destroyer of worlds, and wieldier of power they’d not deserve to sniff.
He’d become a giant in his chamber of size, yet unmet.
They would fight there.
Victory was known from the start to Daphne.
Having gone that far, doing so much beside such women, the Gods, and The Witch, Daphne knew they were to destroy evil. She’d seen their numbers manifesting in her works upon the world. She had felt them signs.
Leucippus gashed the fool’s ankles with a shot from her bow.
Daphne would show, for coming to land that final blow.
And it would be Hekate holding them so.
Climbing onto the monster reborn in those final moments, the one just a boy playing games, having fallen at the evisceration of his rear by Leucippus’s blade, was when Daphne would prove it.
His skull was of bone and there would be a spot for Daphne’s blade.
She lodged it deep.
That monster’s muffled screams were music to the soul. Something within Daphne, that woman of the deep, and of herself had released in the moment.
Something important was changed.
She’d not yet the idea what, but that much was clear to the women left panting into collapse upon her bed.
Daphne awoke in the cold. Her covers tossed aside.
Feeling into herself, she’d noticed something changed. Those releases were recognized. They’d really happened. She was different somehow.
She had dreamt right after some fit of release had taken her to sleep. It was a celebration, a party. That maiden she knew was beside her. Their elder had been there too.
Yet many others — a whole family — some kind of order.
They’d done great things that night in early September and Daphne understood herself meant to feel quite proud.
Her friend had approached her at the end of the dream, with an oddest revealing, not seeming herself. It was about the power Daphne had wielded on their journey. Those torches she held of Hekate — they had been lent — it was only hers to channel.
That journey had been a test for Daphne — to know herself worthy.
She’d proven most cable of being the witch.
The next day was a strange one for Daphne. She’d gone to work, still lost in what happened. She wrote a letter. It came out of her. That was the first time she’d ever felt it happening so strongly, words written automatically, a happenstance which would come and go, sources unique quite often pouring through.
One voice had begun writing through Daphne, telling itself as Hekate previously. Words flowing from that source would surprise the mother for their unique misspellings.
That letter would be the voice’s best work yet, and for Daphne’s friend Morgan; from Hekate.
How Daphne felt so driven in the underworld, knowing of her purpose, and free of fear. She’d carried that with her to deliver the letter.
Daphne walked right into her own underworld, gone back out, then returned again to feel herself facing her own greatest demon. It was the bravest thing she’d ever done, even if she panicked and ran back to her car on that first try walking in to see a social worker in a community center.
She had respected her friend’s boundary too much.
Over a year had passed since that September. It was Christmas Eve.
Daphne never figured out why all that happened. She’d still never heard back from her friend. The confusion of it sent her spiraling. Her life’s demons all rose to the surface at once. Everything was needing to be faced and fought.
She’d navigated every step of that time in trust, faith, alone, incapable of facing the world as it was, still feeling Hekate inside her — their strength — her guardians always nearby.
Her life had changed. Everything was changing and people couldn’t tell. She was more than she’d ever been before, but it was starting to make sense to the woman.
Still under the cloud of that darkness and confusion so wrought into her life. It was then Daphne asked herself the questions which would plague and bless the rest of her time upon the Earth.
Did I ever make it out of the underworld?
Have I been living in one my whole life?
Can I witness her glorious violence?
Who is it I’m supposed to kill?
