Hunter

Chapter Thirty Seven - Perspective

I woke up feeling like I was being crushed by thousands of bodies. I was being smothered, but I could still breath easily. It was the weirdest sensation ever, feeling like I was buried underneath nothing. I could still taste the sour metal of the old obol underneath my tongue, and I could hear the faint swoosh of water around me. When my eyes eventually fluttered open on their own accord, all I could see was transparent bodies piled on top of me, all outlined in a different color. I glanced to my side, my gaze meeting a dark, wooden surface that curved inwards.

I was on a boat.

I was on my way to the Fields of Asphodel, and I was on Charon's boat, the Ferryman of the Underworld. I struggled to remove myself from the suffocating pressure of the bodies that lay on top of me, but I managed to dig my way to the top. I was wearing a long grey cloak, that covered me from head to toe. The material was light and sheer, but it was a sufficient source of clothing. I didn't have anything else on me: no weapons, no armor. I noticed Charon at the head of the boat, his movements slow and calculated as he pushed the boat through the water with a large paddle. The boat was enormous, made of a dark grey wood that I had never seen before. It sliced through the murky grey waters that were the river Styx. The waves glowed an evanescent white that dimmed out into a dull muted color. The water was turbulent, splashing violently and making the boat rock. The rippling sounds of the water sounded like the whispers of the dead, calling my name.

The soft hushes coaxed me over the edge. They ushered me to the water. They persuaded me to crawl over and sink to the very bottom. The soft swirls enchanted me, possessed me to the extent that I was willing to let go of all control, but I was saved. Saved by the river Acheron, the river of pain. Black waters sat below the boat, barely moving. Just stagnant. I didn't dare look into the abyss after what had just happened, but I felt the effects all too purely. I felt all of the strain that had been hiding deep within me from the moment I was thrown into this life. I felt the bruises that blanketed my body after my battle with the metal dragon. I felt the scrapes that decorated my skin like a rug after I slaughtered the Erymanthian boar. I felt the exhaustion from running away because I couldn't stand and fight. I felt the misery of being responsible for the death of four hundred innocent people. I felt the injury that radiated all over my body after fighting several automatons. Above all, I felt weak. Weak from not knowing what to do. Weak from not having a clue. Weak from always making the wrong decisions. Despite my abilities, despite my background, despite my lineage, I was weak.

Sitting there, on that boat, wallowing in all of my misfortune made me realize that. It felt like sitting in a pit of lava, the heat rising up and suffocating you, burning you, to the point that it was all familiar. It was the same old story, just a different writer. It was deja vu, and the familiarity of the situation depressed me, pushing me into an even lower stupor.

When the boat came to a halt, I clambered over the and dropped onto the black sand that resembled miniature shards of glass. The minuscule pieces dug into my skin and stayed there, bedazzling my skin in the darkest way possible.

I raised my heavy head and studied the single, winding path that the dark shapes that I had been riding beside in the boat made their way up. They shimmered past me, like forgotten memories, some of them walking through me. The formless bodies walked amidst the thigh high, grey grass of sharpened rope. The weeds swayed from side to side almost as if dancing in the wind, but there was no wind: it moved on its own accord, as though wanting to touch every single soul that passed by.

I prepared to stand up, and as I did so, my gaze wandered upward, needing to see the color of the sky; to see if it reflected the grey shade of the grass that wasn't grass. There wasn't a sky. It was more of a chasm, a hole in the heart of the earth that seemed to swallow up all color. It was as though all life was being sucked out through that single abyss, and that death was being spewed out. As though in support of my theory, random wisps of white light flowed out of nowhere and disappeared just as quickly as I had seen them. They cast startling shadows in the colourless world that made the gaunt faces of the dead look like the gnarled wood of an ancient tree, bark hanging and peeling in a grotesque manner.