Back Again

     Moans. Sadness. Twisted anger. Those were the only things I heard and felt until I snapped out of my daze and looked around to see that I was stuck on a pitch-black boat sailing on a bright red river. The shoreline was covered with trees, giant black pines with seemingly-burnt bark and dark green needles. The blood red water lapped at the obsidian sand that gleamed even brighter as the waves drifted back out towards the centre of the river, only to be pushed back by the current and the boat. The sky was artificially brightened by a harsh, yet dim, fake sun that bounced off the roiling grey clouds that swirled over the place.

I took the chance and looked back towards the boat, noticing that not only were some of the people there moaning and crying, but some were still dazed while others where full-on wailing, their heart-wrenching sobs of agony and confusion making me raise a brow. I simply sighed before standing, only to have one of the near-by guards make his way over to me before attempting to push me down.

Everything that had happened and everything that I knew suddenly came back to me in one fail swoop and I shocked the guard who had his hand on my shoulder. He yanked his hand away, the dent that my magic made in the armour on his hand, puffing back out with a metallic clank. The piercing blue eyes that floated in the abyss of blackness from the inside of his helmet, just as every other soldier that this realm held, eyed me warily before I smiled at him with a cocky sideways smirk. It actually kind of hurt my face; the last humanoid body that I had been stuffed into didn't have the right facial strength to do this, and my memory had been wiped clean of any previous memory until I entered the boat, just like it did last time, and the numerous times before that, rendering me unable to know that I even looked good with that facial expression.

The guard's pale blue orbs suddenly widened in surprise before he quickly put his hand over his chest and bowed deeply at the waist. "Lord Baryn, I apologize for my insolence, I hadn't realized it was you." I recognized the voice instantly and a giant Cheshire-like grin stretched across my face.

I grabbed him up by his shoulders and gave him a giant hug. "Aw, Taurasus, is that the way you treat old friends? Where did all this 'lord' BS come from, eh?" I joked, letting him know I held no grudge against his previous instinctual behaviour.

By the way that the orbs squeezed together a little bit, I could tell he was smiling, or at least he would have been able to had those masks held faces underneath them and were not actually just orbs that lead into pits of Hell. Trust me, I had seen Taurasus with his mask off, and it was not pretty, nor did it leave much of a person's sanity; but I was already insane, I had to be if I continuously, willingly, came back here after every death and left again, so I hadn't been that affected by the event.

"I was wondering when you'd be back, man," he said, finally relaxing. He quickly touched the chains that bound me to the side and floor of the ship, popping them off with such a force that it almost hit the dazed woman next to me and the cowering old man that sat at my other side, looking at me as if I was the Devil himself. Taurasus moved to my side, his arm around my shoulder as he directed me towards the office of the ferry-master himself. "How long has it been?" he asked me. "Forty, fifty years?"

I scoffed at that. "Try more like thirty," I said, scowling playfully at my old friend. He looked surprised by that number but didn't say anything more. He didn't have to; I could already tell what he was thinking. Normally, I was gone a lot longer than this, but I fucked up early on and had been waiting to die for nearly three years before I ended up back on this river.

He knocked once on the office door before a monotone, "Enter," was received. He nodded to me and patted me on the back, promising me to catch up with me when we made port. I smiled after him; he had been a good friend, a loyal spirit that had almost earned his freedom from here to either go to Olympus or to wander to another pantheon so he could find a place to call home, but some of his earlier actions in his human life had made it nearly impossible for him to leave now, despite his many atonements and helping to watch and ferry prisoners for the last ten-thousand years. He was still a good and loyal friend, and I loved him like a brother.