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"they are using you, marcel sadowski."
his eyes snapped open.
have i offended the gods? was the first thought that crossed his mind.
there was nothing but oppressive darkness swallowing him. he tried to move, but it was futile. his limbs were burning as if set on greek deathly-greenish fire and weighed over thousands of pounds.
am i dead?
surely hades couldn't look like... this.
a booming chuckle resonated through the nothingness. marcel tensed, but at the same time, he felt as if every limb, no, every part of his body was torn apart.
"you are right, little hero. this is no, as those godlings and their spawns call it, hades."
the voice was deep and hoarse. it made his skin crawl. not the ordinary adrenaline-junkie way - more like i'm-about-to-get-murdered-without-mercy way.
it was not pleasant by any means.
ignoring the burning sensation in his whole body, he looked around for the voice was coming from.
to his disappointment he saw nothing. as if he suddenly went blind.
marcel couldn't help himself but let his mind wander to phineas, the son of poseidon. he received the gift of prophecy - he could see the past and the future. he was foolhardy enough to expatiate others about gods' plans and what they were doing.
of course the gods didn't allow him to go without punishment.
enraged zeus penalized him with blindness and placed him on an island with a buffet of food he had no way to eat. but he let him keep his gift of foreseeing. wasn't zeus so merciful?
kind of ironic that phineas could see the past and the future but not the present.
is this how phineas's miserable life was spent before he died of starvation? with no light, no surroundings? was phineas filled with incertitude like marcel?
if that was the case, what did he do to insult the gods?
there surely wasn't anything that outrageous.
"i can see what you are, marcel," the voice called out from behind him. it sounded closer than before. "or rather... what will you become."
swallowing the lump in his throat, he called out, "who are you? and what do you mean?" into the nothingness.
then he spotted an indistinct outline of something. it was uneven, almost human-like. it was like a black mass of fire - the only thing he could clearly see were golden slits where its eyes were supposed to be.
marcel gulped and winced. the air suddenly went heavier and more toxic. it felt awful - as if sulfuric acid was burning his insides.
the darkness was starting to engulf him. his chest tightened in panic. what the fuck is going on?
