The S.S. Olympus -under refurbishment

Chapter XXII: Rescue?

"You do not know what you have until it is gone."

Cerberus skidded to a halt and growled. The ominous vibration of his raised hackles nearly dislodged Cornelia from her seat. 

They were at the beginning of the end, of a very long hallway. Like everything else on the ship, it's size was daunting. Cerberus continued to snarl at the shadows. His hair stood at sharpened and uncomfortable points that scraped her skin. "Just because it is metal its still a petaqing cave! I am going to get claustrophobia before this is all through." 

Hercules dropped Hades unceremoniously to the floor. He groaned and brushed himself off. "You know that was  likely the second most uncomfortable thing I have ever experienced." He groaned rubbing his back.

"What was the first?" Cornelia asked with genuine curiosity.

"Dealing with you after Athens," He remarked with a smirk.

"Too soon," She said with a generous roll of her eyes. 

"Only for you," He rubbed his back and scanned the room. 

 Hercules moved ahead with a stern focus, "stay here."

A screeching chorus filled the hallway. Cornelia seized her ears with her hands and winced. Tears escaped her eyes with the pain of the sound. Her body fell to the ground unable to sustain balance,  "What is that?" She yelled through the din, As she slowly picked herself up off the ground, Cerberus' reaction had knocked her clean off. No one returned her call. No one could hear her over the dynamism of the sound.

Until it ended giving way to a portentous silence. Then a light hiss. Like pressure that was steadily released, but from multiple pipes at once. A yellow cloud of gas filled the hallway barreling toward them at an impossible speed.

"Cornelia!" Hades' echoed voice scarcely cut through the ominous noise. She felt him grab her arm and pull her up. A mask covered his face and he gestured for her to do the same. 

"Is this the same stuff from the bridge?" She asked. 

He only nodded as she pressed the translucent apparatus to her face. 

When she glanced at him he was holding the mask over his face and gestured wildly at her to do the same. Fear clenched her stomach. She did not remember grabbing it. Her eyes were wild with panic, the yellow smoke gained on her, instinct drove her feet forward as her feet pounded away from the smog. Cerberus howled and picked her up with his teeth and threw her onto his back. Cornelia clung to her soft fur as they bolted down the hallway. The lumbering roll of Cerberus' stride jarred her terribly. She held on for dear life as tears streamed down her face as the tendrils of the poison gas burned through them to her lungs.

When Cerberus slowed she screamed for Hades and Hercules. Only silence answered her. Moments later a deafening roar rocked the ship. The sound of a successful hunt. Coughing seized her chest, and she worked hard to breath as she tore the mask from her face, and looked back to the dissipating yellow fog. My friends are gone. 

She collapsed to her knees taking in the enormity of the empty and shattered ship's hull around her, "I am alone."

 She allowed her mind to wrap around the monstrosities that roamed the S.S. Inferis. One had been enough, and she sensed the second was leagues worse. A Creature trapped in an infernal prison and starved after weeks of isolation. The weight of the world was no longer something she could bear, and she felt her will crumbling beneath her and she wept.

Cerberus whined and curled up on the ground next to her and wrapped a gargantuan paw around her. She licked her face leaving Cornelia a sopping wet mess of dog slobber. She stared at her gooey clothes in shock and then began to laugh, "A lot can happen in a few months. For one, I thought the worst thing in the world was marrying Gastonus."