CoXFic: A Rogue's Monomyth (Part Four)

[stsisyphus]

Thursday/Friday - The Stygian River

Synge woke up on his back in a pool of water only deep enough to lap at his ears. His eyes cracked open, admitting a weak, diffuse light above and around him. It was still too much for him and Synge rolled over onto his side, shielding his face from both the sudden, weak, brightness and the pain in his skull. The water was chilly, but not quite frigid, and faintly mineral to the taste. Synge pushed himself up on one arm, allowing the water to begin draining from his clothes and hair. Synge attempted another look around, and found that the pool stretched to about a meter on each side of him, and was bedded by stone blocks fitted for that purpose. He looked upward, but rather than the open shaft of dark stone he expected, there was only a flat and hazy grey sky caused by the pervasive fog in the air around him. Synge rolled himself up on his knees and looked around for his backpack but didn't see it anywhere nearby.

"Typical," he sighed.



By reaching into his pants and coat pockets, Synge could quickly take stock of his belongings. His cigarettes were ruined, having disintegrated in the water. Fortunately, he had thought ahead enough to wrap the Spanish cigarettes in a plastic bag - he had hoped it would keep the trimming from decaying or wilting - so at least that wasn't for naught. His wallet was soaked, but there was nothing in there that wouldn't be usable once it dried out, and his athame would work wet or dry. Synge looked over the shell of the Ear of Babylon carefully. The communication artifact had a deep crack in the exterior shell, the wound hadn't oozed but it did flex slightly on pressure. He decided not to chance activating it, in case its cryptotech circuitry had been damaged. Synge covered the shell with his palm and concentrated on transmuting and reordering the matter, hoping to seal the crack. Once he pulled his hand away, the crack was shallower, but still noticeable. He could do nothing more than hope that it would eventually heal over. He squeezed a little more water from his hair, slicked it behind his ears, and picked a direction to start walking.

There was no telling how long he had fallen or how long he had been unconscious after jumping into the well back at the entrance. While he had managed to slide silently down to the floor of the entrance chamber, his guide had made too much noise in trying to slide the backpack down to Synge.  The Arachnos soldiers had responded with all the haste that Synge had expected. Strangling the lights to darkness with a touch of aelectromancy hadn't phased them, but flash-blinding them by overloading the bulbs immediately afterwards had given him enough of an edge to burn through the nearest panel of chain-link fence using the Tongue of the Dragon.  As he expected, the Fortunata didn't need her physical eyes to strike and wasted very little time in jack-hammering his mind with her psionic abilities. Jaime hadn't wasted any time either, however, and was already leaping toward the melted hole in the fence. Perhaps if she had attempted to telekinetically shove him first, she might have stopped him from tumbling over the edge of the well.  As it was, Synge fell into the pit, struck what must have been carved stone steps on the interior rim of the wall of the well, and finally rolled off of those into darkness and air. Synge's last memory before losing consciousness were the blasts of the Bane Spider maces and the mingled Greek and Russian curses of the soldiers he was falling away from.

The question as to whether or not had survived the fall was not uncontemplated by the mage as he walked through the foggy landscape. Although he expected caverns or stone, or some other subterranean dungeon conforming to woodcuts of the underworld, Synge was surprised to find himself walking past trees and bushes, walking on a thin layer of grass, moss, and occasional gravel. The trees were small and very stick-like, and the bushes were hardly more than scrub and brush, but it was more than he expected. "I guess the Lady does some work in her off time too," Synge wondered aloud.

Synge nearly walked into the river before seeing it. Only after his boots sucked down into the mud almost to the ankle did he hear the energetic lapping of the water on the riverside. Synge stepped back onto firmer land and scanned as far as he could see, which wasn't much, even after he set his jaw and flipped through a few other ranges of light. However, there was bracken and a low mound ending in a slate cliff to his left, and essentially flat riverplains to the right. He turned right and continued walking until he found the lantern post and a short, weather-blackened dock. No one was waiting for him.

Synge walked over to the lantern post and found a thick iron triangle and bar chained below the weakly glowing lantern. Synge rang the triangle for about a minute before dropping the bar. The noise it made was flat, dull, and he barely believed it could be heard even fifty feet away. Still, he walked over to the dock, knocking the remaining mud from his boots and settled himself on one of the dock's piles to wait.

After a few minutes of flipping through his soaked English-Greek conversational dictionary, Synge was startled by the sound of a low-powered boat motor approaching the dock. Synge folded the book closed and walked to the edge of the dock, and peered into the distance. After minute, his vision cleared and a small wooden boat piloted by a man in a black oilcloth cloak came into view and approached the dock. The man rose from the outboard motor and tossed a coil of wet, almost mossy rope to Synge. The boy wrapped the mooring line around a bollard at his left and waited as the man halted the boat and balanced himself before Synge. His left hand turned outward, the fingers falling down in a subtle, polite request for remuneration.

Synge dug the plastic bag out of his coat pocket and dug out the trimming from the box. The small, practically inconsequential pine bough glimmered brightly in the gloom, its tiny golden spines rustling like bristles in the damp wind. The man raised his head further, pulling the cloak hood back only enough to show a knotted, braided beard, chapped lips, and liver-spotted skin.

"It's a shabby offering, living man," Charon croaked.

"Times is lean, Ferryman," Synge replied.

Charon leaned forward, placing a weathered, knotted, and calloused palm on the dock's bollard. He scanned the shoreline silently for a long time before turning his attention back to Jaime. "Your mistress is not in residence at this time, boy. There is no audience to be had. And the King of this realm does not welcome uninvited guests."

"Funny that, I'm hearing that he's entertaining all kinds of guests these days."

The ferryman made a deep throaty noise that might have been a cough, a laugh, or might have been him choking on Synge's crassness. He scanned the shoreline once more and turned away. "You should return when Despoina is in residence. Perhaps she will see you then. If I do not see you sooner, boy."

"You're assuming that Despoina will be welcome here when the seasons turn, Ferryman," Synge called out. "I have come to seek the truth of bold rumors concerning the master of this realm. Bold and unkind words."

Charon glanced back at Jaime, his eyes still concealed behind the cowl of the cloak. "I do not place faith in rumors or politics, boy-sorcerer. My services and duties carry on, regardless of such games. So should yours."  Synge watched the man then shift his attention to something behind Jaime just as he heard another set of footsteps on the creaking wooden dock.

"You should take a break, old man," a whispery but familiar voice said. "I'll take him over. Snotrag, give the man something to smoke while he waits."

Jaime whirled around, a disbelieving slacken jaw tightening into a deep grin as he watched the figure take a spot next to him. "Kam..."

The other Radiant student had looked better. In fact when they had last seen each other years ago, Kam still looked alive. Not so now, with his flesh shrunken down mummy-tight and his skin pressed down thin and cadaverous across his body. When Kam smiled, Synge could see all the contours of his skull and his lips peeled back a little too far to reveal most of his teeth. Kam wore a loose pair of baggy black jeans and a woven hemp belt, but nothing else. His eyes had sunken in long ago, leaving only dark smudges where they had been once before.  To anyone else, Kameron might have seemed frightening or horrific, but for Synge it was a long awaited reunion and one he did not hesitate to welcome. The two former schoolmates embraced energetically with laughs and cries of relief.

"What are you doing here?" Synge asked, brushing the hair away from his face.

"This is sort of my job, you know," Kam replied, gesturing to the still waiting Charon. "I'm part of him, he's part of me. We all do the same job. We cross between."

Synge smirked. "The Ferryman."

Kam nodded and clapped a palm across Synge's skull. "The ever-fucking-burning Ember. Still getting in over your head."

Synge shrugged. "So you can get this done for me?"

Kam walked over and helped the Ferryman disembark from the boat. "We won't be long, old man. There and back again. Synge? Pay the old bastard."

Charon looked back at Synge, lifted two fingers to his mouth, and puffed a few times. Synge nodded and quickly pulled out the old Spanish cigarettes, having fulfilled whatever camouflage use they might have served. As the ancient ferryman clasped his fingers around the box, Synge finally noticed the brand embossed onto the cardboard: Palma de Oro.

"Figures," he sighed before letting Charon take the box. The trimming was already back in the plastic bag and slipped into Jaime's pocket before he stepped into the boat, shaking it slightly.

"Mind the shoals, boy," Charon called back as he leaned into the dock's lantern to light his first smoke in centuries. "The currents are not to be underestimated this time!"

Kam grumbled something unintelligible in response as he tore at the engine's ripcord and gestured for Synge to unmoor the vessel. Having done so, Kam guided the boat into the river and further into the fog.

"An outboard motor seems a little modern for the Underworld, don't you think?" Synge commented.

Kam gave him an incredulous smirk. "What, did you expect me to pole this thing across the River Styx?"

"Nah," Synge replied before firing the last bit of his cigarette across the water. "I figured your sister would show up and she'd work the pole."  Kam was across the boat and had punched Synge in the head three times before Synge had gotten the smirk off of his face. Dazed, Synge blinked the blackness out of his eyes and eventually checked to see if Kam's bony knuckles had broken the skin. He couldn't feel any blood, but he could sense his eye starting to swell. "Fuck, Tenderloin. That was a joke."

"No jokes, Synge," Kam said flatly. "That wasn't funny even back in the day."

"Fine. Shit," Synge settled himself back against the hull of the boat. "How long will this take?"

"Shorter than you think, but longer than you want," Kam said absently. "People generally spend this trip in silent contemplation. Maybe we should stick with that. I need to concentrate."

The ride did go on longer than Synge wanted. He had no need to contemplate anything except the questions he needed answers to. Where the rumors true? Was Hades attempting to replace his own wife for a minion of the Fallen? Did the other Gods even know? What were the Fallen asking for in exchange?  Questions birthed questions, and he had no choice but to search for the answers among those possibly least likely to provide them.

"How long have you been doing that?" Kam asked suddenly.

Synge looked up. "Doing what?"

Kam jabbed a finger at his left arm. "That, goddammit! Get your hand out of that!"

Synge looked over at his left hand, dangling idly over the edge of the boat and submerged past the wrist in the cold, black water. The coldness tingled but did not freeze, and the sensation was energizing despite a slight unease when he intially touched it. "Why? It's not poison, obviously."

Kam gave him a withering look. "Achilles."

The meaning behind the name took a few seconds for Synge to comprehend. "Wait, are you saying...?" He lifted his hand out of the water and inspected it. Neither looked nor felt any different than before. Synge turned back to Kam with a grin. "So if I try to swim to the other side...."

Kam had the boathook in his hand and pressed to Synge's throat, once again before Synge could blink. He had to wonder how someone who looked so dead could move so fast.  "I'll make sure you don't come back from that side, Synge. That's breaking the rules. Those are even your rules, on top of mine. Stay. Out. Of. The river. Got it?"

Synge raised his hands, one dry and one dripping with the water of the Sytx. "Okay, cool. Just a thought. Just a thought."

"I can see why you're doing this," Kam grunted as he settled the boathook next to him. "You love to get into trouble."

"I'm doing this because either someone's playing games with my pantheon," Synge explained. "Or someone's looking to overthrow them. Or some of my enemies are trying to enslave an otherwise innocent goddess for reasons I can't put together other than 'reasons'. I just need to know which rumors are bullshit and which aren't, so I know who to fight."

"What if they are all true?" Kam asked idly.

"Guess I'll have a lot more enemies than I thought I did."

"So, no real change then."

"Not really," Synge admitted.

Kam twisted the boat's rudder and began taking them on a slightly different tack. "Jaime, real talk here: this is dangerous shit you're getting into. You've said for years that you're the son of Hephaestus. But down here you have to know you just can't say that shit and expect people to believe it. These are Gods. More importantly, these are the gods you've chosen as your totemic guides. You start shit with them and they will not take it lightly. The Olympians play politics like champions. Hell, they practically invented politics as far as western civilization goes.  Nothing good is going to come from your playing in their games.  You might be one of the Incarnates, but that's just a word to them."

Synge kept his eye on Kam and he piloted and scanned the edge of the fog. "I work with people who fight gods every day. We've sent a few of them across this river. Hell, I've done that. I'm not here to pick a fight, for a change, but I'm not going to be ignored either. I'm getting my answers today, Kam."

Kameron rolled a dry, dark tongue across his lips. "Alright. If you're going in there, you're going in there for me too. You're right, there are a lot of rumors going around. I won't name names, because the devils you're likely to run across do tend to appear once they're named. The dead, resting and restless, are positively rioting that something horrible is going to happen in Hades' realm. There's talk of a civil war brewing, or a hostile takeover. Or a merger. No one is sure. The dead only have one interest: they want to rest in peace and possibly be reborn if they're permitted. Anything which messes with that sends them into turmoil. And when the dead get tumultuous, it spills out back into the material world. And you've seen what happens when that occurs."

Synge nodded, thinking of the red walls of Astoria. "I know what happens."

"It's not just me," Kam said as he navigated the boat toward an emerging dock. "The Drudges, the crow maidens, the Valkyr, these new guys the Shinigami; we're all on tenterhooks because we don't know which way this will go. I've got my hands full trying to keep things from breaking into a war, and I was already over my head with Mot breaking loose." He tossed the mooring line to Synge, who spun and hooked it over the bollard. "Listen, Synge, your purpose lies with what is and will be, mine is protect what has gone beyond and those who pass between. The dead are my responsibility, but I can't do everything. This is your arena, your pantheon. If you find something wrong, and you stop it..." Kam looked around. "...I'm in your debt." Kam tapped his breastbone with a knobbly, bony finger. "Me and me."

Jaime paused, looking deep into Kam's not-eyes, understanding that the debt would go far beyond the simple mortal obligations erased on death. Jaime smirked and slapped his friend on the shoulder amiably. "Don't worry about it. Chances are I'm not even gonna make it out of here.  But if I do, still don't worry about it." Synge heaved himself out of the boat and on the shabby, half-ruined dock. The planks groaned and sighed under his weight, obviously unaccustomed to taking any weight at all.  It was especially noticeable when Kam stepped up onto the dock which caused no complaint at all. A faint, bruise-colored mist circled his feet as he "walked" toward Synge.

"So where to now?" Kam asked.

"The Judges," Synge decided. "It's as close as I want to get to the Old Man himself, but they'll be the most attentive to what is going on in his court. Everyone and everything has to go past them. I can at least get some plain answers from them."  Kam raised a questioning eyebrow at Synge's assertion. "Well, plainer answers than from some oracle or prophet anyway. Anyway, I lost my backpack, and it had the blood offerings I was planning to use."

Kam nodded good-naturedly and patted his back, urging him forward. "Okay. The Judges then. Straight ahead down the main thoroughfare. I can't follow you in that far, them and I don't get along well. Seems I've questioned the judgements they've passed down a few times."

Now it was time for Synge to offer a querulous eyebrow. "Questioned?"

Kam spread his hands open. "There's an opinion out there among the spectral citizens that says I'm a kind of... court of appeal, you know?"

"I'm not hearing any more shit from you about how I'm the one who likes to start trouble, Tenderloin." Synge scoffed in bemusement and took a few more steps before he felt Kam's skeletal hand on his shoulder. He waited for a punch to come that never landed. "What?" he asked.

"The dog, Synge," Kam asked quietly. "How are you getting past the dog?"

Synge half turned to catch Kam's eye. He held out his right hand and folded flame and light into the spear of Apollo, a meter-and-a-half-long shaft of primal radiation and burning helium. "Kill it with fire?"

Kam glanced at the spear with obvious doubt in his eye. "It's a fifty-foot tall dog with three heads and enough strength to tear down a mountain. It guards a realm where some of the evilest, smartest bastards of antiquity are consigned. Titans would balk at fighting it openly."

"Heracles did it..."

"Heracles got blind drunk in Phrygia for three weeks and just told everyone he had been to the underworld, Synge. And, on top of that, you're fucking not well Heracles, are you?"

"Orpheus..."

"Orpheus sang the dog to sleep," Kam countered. "Which was damn well within his abilities. Aeneas had a goddess to get him past, which is what people who normally try this have on their side. You are going in uninvited, unescorted, and alone. You came all this way and now that dog is going to tear your soul straight out of your body. Nice planning, Snotrag."

"No, not alone," Synge said finally. "And not unescorted."

Kam watched Synge for several moments and then shook his skull-creased head. "Fine. Take my hand. Spoilers: This is going to hurt."

Synge shrugged and slapped his hand into Kam's and said, "What else is n-"

There was a snap of pain, a sudden halt to everything around him. He never would have guessed that the sensation would be so sharp, so total, so complete and utterly wrenching. As if he had been running at a million miles an hour, only to have every tether attached to every muscle, bone, and artery snapped taut and yanking him to a stop. Light, breath, heat, and thought slammed into a wall of nothingness. The pain lingered, tingling something, the last firing of nerves now ringing silent. Synge barely noticed his sense of self tumbling out of his fingers, and in the wake of that loss he had nothing to guide time or motion or meaning.

Then, the words appeared, commanding him: "Now wake and be whole."

Bone, muscle, blood, breath, light, thought. These stretched back and wove themselves, reunifying the senses and body. Synge opened his eyes and jerked to the side, rolling out of Kameron's arms onto the dusty stone floor. He coughed and groaned, clutching his chest, but feeling the ache of rebirth throughout his body.

"This is as far as I can take you, Jaime," Kam whispered. "If you make it beyond here, there are rumors that  there is a secret passage out of this realm and into a city of the dead within the realm of the living. I haven't found it yet, but others may be able to guide you.  Good luck."

Jaime struggled to his knees and desperately tried to remember how to breathe. "What happened, Kam? What did you do?"

Kam stepped backward into a shadow of a statue. "The easiest way to get past the dog is to show him what he expects. Just a hungry shade and its psychopomp. The fact that I was dragging a corpse with me was unusual but not alarming." Kam's bony hand gestured beyond Synge toward the immense iron and bronze doors behind Jaime. "Go on. The Judges are waiting for you. Good luck."

The hand dropped back into shadow and Jaime was alone once more.