The Gates of Horn and Ivory - Chapter 6.3 Land of Dreams

Hades is a water realm.

Surrounded by Oceanus, it’s crisscrossed by rivers and streams whose rash and unsettled currents can be heard in the background almost everywhere.

From the quiet Lethe meandering between boulders in Hypnos’s cave, careful not to awaken him, to the echoes of the Styx, muffled as it flows through underground caves, the sights and sounds of water are everywhere, sometimes soothing, sometimes unsettling.

The rushing waters of the underworld carved intricate stone tracery and painted the rocks in spectacular hues.

They flowed slowly through sleepy valleys only to abandon themselves suddenly to grand waterfalls, diving into bottomless chasms nobody ever dared explore.

The perpetual sunsets painted their watery curtains with rainbows, and sometimes, when the light hit them at just the right angle, it illuminated them from behind.

The fiery river Phlegethon crossed the real waters sometimes, and their mingling gave rise to sharp hisses and clouds of steam, and turned its incandescent lava first to embers, and then to black stone.

The placid river Lethe branched into a delta when it reached the land of dreams, seeping countless rivulets and streams through its open fields.

Those who’d been brought to Hades through the gate of the sun could be deceived they were still alive when they reached this familiar landscape, only to be set straight when it changed without warning, lulling them into rationalizations in order to deceive them again.

The spirits always found an explanation for why their world stopped making sense. Any explanation but the real one.