The Ferryman

After this all, I have concluded that immortality is intangible. I've spent the better part of my life ignorant, trying to be someone that I'm not. I'm no god or artist; a pariah is what I've decided I am. From the long path of broken and splintered dreams known as the Trail of Sorrow by hell-folk, I met the Ferryman of Amnyr. Who dispelled my inanities of permanence into ten second of silent amusement? When I first met him, I thought to myself, "Why would I take lip from a ferryman? He's nothing but a nobody in a nowhere land." But the more these thoughts engrafted themselves in my mind, the more that it made me realise how much of a reject I am. Maybe it's the river Nelle and its otherworldly souls that shook me to the bone. Or maybe I feel a sense of futility whenever I stare into the skeletal face of the Ferryman. He is quiet, I'd say. Too quiet. It has made me wonder if skeletons know how to converse or are vowed to silence because he sure makes for lousy company.

My mind is an entity of its thoughts. Nine out of ten times, answers to the perpetual debate going on in my conscience are, "You were not of sound mind!" or "The priest led you awry, he promised you something false. He used you." No, no, there undoubtedly is. I know little about anything else, but one thing's definite, I'm no ordinary sinner like the rest of these folk. I reanimated a god meant to stay dead. And so we continued down this river of unbridled hopes and ambitions, to my punishment. I looked to the Ferryman and contacted his spiritless face. He wore a ragged hood and cape from long ago. I mustered the courage and asked him, "Pardon me, Ferryman, where might we be going?"

The skeleton didn't reply; it pointed its macilent finger to a turn in the brook where I then saw above me a divine tower made of bone and black brick. Above this tower circled the four winged beasts of delirium, black as the night in appearance. They swooped around the tower carrying souls and dropping them into a pit that only the Creator knows where. Fretful, I gulped and contacted the Ferryman again. "We're going to that tower?" In response, the skeleton nodded its disillusioned head. And then my heart sank into my stomach. Unnerved, I ran my hands through my hair and paced about the ferry and thought for the worst. This is it—my doom is near. I'll die at the hands of some nasty imp or some other malodorous creature of the netherworlds. I deserve better than this; I deserve to die in some kingly way! No, that's absurd, I'm no seeker, I don't even deserve that name.

Then came the bend in the river which forever changed my blind eye of the underworld as I saw the Tartarean plain of the punished before me. There were people, like me, in rags and chains, toiling and breaking their backs to enshrine the likeness of their crow lords in stone. Among these dolorous souls were the formless terrors that kept them in line. These things, straight from the plane of outer space, indescribable in appearance, stood many sizes tall and bore their pearl eyes into the small ones. Onward the boat went down this hallowed brook, and my time shrunk by the minute. Culling is not the answer; I know that now. But how can you punish a man that has led all the colonies to ruin?… How can you? Whip me, beat me, torment me—I won't fight back. I am a monster—all the voices of my past scorn me for the man I've become. My father, my mother, my wife and son… and most of all, Mecerthe, the girl I stupefied and kept in my bedroom.

However long I've been down here, I already have forgotten what it feels like to have the suns on your back or watch the moon rise. It could be days, hours, or years—still wouldn't matter. Time seemingly cannot be fathomed in the underworld. We were ever so closer to the spire, and so grew my fear of the uncertain. I don't deserve to live on this planet, and I don't deserve a second chance. This is where I belong; right here in the valley of shadows and the ever-living fire. As we kept going, I noticed there were more of these shadow titans walking about the plains. There is a grace to these beasts not seen in the topside's fauna. Their stride is not one of avarice, but curiosity. I looked into their marble eyes and saw nothing but neutrality... But, there is another side to them I would rather not explore, sure as their ravenous appetite and willingness to eat anything within their sight.

And the Ferryman, although quaint in his guise, bespoke the people I've hurt and the world I left in shambles. To be candid, I don't know what code keeps the Ferryman from beating me with his oar, but anything would best the silence he has entangled me in. He knows this and goes as slowly as he can to observe my affrighted face. That must be why he was consigned to this boat; to watch people of my descent, shrill internally as they came to their inexorable doom. These are the last moments I will ever walk a free man. I cannot cry; I cannot escape. I cannot do anything but look into the placid face of death as it rows me down this subterranean river of tears. On the banks, where the persecuted souls grabbed at my tellurian flesh, I did nothing but look at them with horror as they clung to life as I did so many days ago.

Beyond tired, I shuttered my eyes and slept for the rest of my sojourn aboard the ferry. The screams and whispers were gone, and I was back at home, in the humble valley of Khiviok, before this entire fiasco unfolded. I was alone in the same grove I usually went to when I needed desperate inspiration. It was me and Amnesty lazing about and time in the summer breeze of a past time. I left our small den and ventured further into the woods in search of sustenance later in the day. Near noon, I stalked and tracked a small wolf that strayed away and lurked behind it in its shadowed path. Still unsuspected, I crouched and aimed my weathered rifle at the critter as it searched for easy prey. Ready now, I adjusted the scope and took several deep breaths before pulling the trigger back. Bam! I heard a loud thud and a whimper as I opened my eyes and saw a long trail of blood that led further on.

I chased after the wolf, rifle in hand, and followed the path of blood down the verdant hills. At the end of this drawn-out hunt, I heard the same faint wailing. Going toward the cry, I slung the rifle over my shoulder and drew my knife, and held it to its belly. Just as I was about to finish him, I heard a voice from the fringes of my mind. Do it, coward, kill the beast and take its skin. Live as you always have, y-you glutton.

Panicked, I turned around and scanned for the other stranger in the woods. There was no one else here. I gulped and prepared to finish the beast as it crawled away. With full intent of killing it, I sat down and the knife over its belly, but something in me struggled as I stared into its bluish eyes. As if there was an all-knowing force impeding me from slaying it. As the clouds set in, I walked away and decided that I wouldn't finish my wounded game and would turn home before sundown. Prostrated from my trek across the wood, I slowly trudged back to my small camp and thought how poorly the hunt went.

In the distance, I heard a crash of thunder loom behind me. Fearful, I picked up my pace and ran as I felt someone was watching me. In my scurried panic, I clumsily tripped and fell over a log and near-collapsed in horror as I saw what had just appeared in front of me. It was the Lamb in the flesh. Evidently amused, she smirked and watched my widened eyes. Her skin was no longer a hoary complexion, and she wore a vermillion garb lined with gold.

"H-how are you alive?" I asked, almost lost for words.

She laughed hideously. "I have my ways."

"There's no way you should be here," I struggled to say.

"But here I am, and here you are."

"... Look, please don't hold any ill-will toward me," I stammered. "That was then; I'm a better person now."

The Lamb raised a brow. "Really? Is this how a bettered man lives? In the woods running from not but shadows and thunder? You haven't changed, Ospeus. You're still the same scared little boy who couldn't kill the wolf. Instead, you left it to die. You're pitiable; you have brought the world to its knees, but in doing so, you enabled its downfall. See what you've done. See how you lead this planet to its end. You are the catalyst, Seeker."

I ran from the eidolon of my past, not looking back. Her tortured laugh echoed throughout the forest and drowned out the sound of thunder. Increasingly, the ground I walked upon was burnt, and the trees were nothing but charcoal toothpicks. I gasped in horror as I saw the first charred corpse in the forest, followed by many more. Along I went, there were more carcasses the further I ran and screams resounded throughout the woods. At the end of the forest, I looked around for Amnesty. I called out her name, but I nowhere saw her. I sprinted from the campsite, and outward from the scarce trees that shaded our campsite to the open trail where I thought I saw the end of days.

The hellish spawn of Amnyr, untethered from their life of eternal perdition, came and wreaked havoc unto the telluric plane of the vale of Khiviok. On the left side of uncombed wire and corpses, soldiers in grey and blood-red fatigues readied their rifles and appended their bayonets and then charged at the things from the underworld. One by one, the angler-fish monsters maimed or ate them. Far away, a city from a near land ravaged by the same titans seen in the Fields of Punishment burnt to the ground. Amid the evil and chaos on top, the highest hill of corpses stood a rotund man with a sabre in one hand and a rifle in the other. Ferociously, creatures of the underworld rushed up the hill of their fallen brethren, to take down the man that would not die. Undefeated, the man fought until his rifle jammed and his sword broke, then continued his wanton for violence with his fists.

He fought until his hands were covered in the viscera of evil, then fell to his knees as the horde came to a halt. The medley of monsters and imps ended as both sides withdrew and fled from the battlefield. In front of the champion, a giant of the shadows lurched before him. He did not weep, nor did he plea for clemency from the shadow titan. Instead, he yelled and dared the evil thing to come forward and take him down. Enthralled, the shadow-dweller took his ploy and extended an immense hand to the bloodied man and brought him to his cavernous mouth. Before his untimely death, the man pulled the pins of several grenades and yelled his cry of battle as the monster swallowed him. And from the beast of the abiding penumbra erupted a beam of light that engulfed the edging darkness of the valley. The light took out the vestiges of imps and dragons, restoring the world to a temporary era of peace.

In pools of sweat, I awoke, to the subtle bump of the ferry's arrival at the dock of the tower of madness. The Ferryman waved and gestured to me to hop off the boat, as this was my destination. I walked forward on the path and looked above to the top of the tower where the four-winged dragons flew. Ahead was an enormous gate that soon opened as I approached the walls that encircled the keep. From their place, the same unspeakable monsters from the depths escorted me up the grand staircase until we came to an elevator. They grunted, and I heard the crank of a lever, and the platform rose. Finally, at the end of a disconcerting ride with fish sentries, we came to a large courtroom made of marble and gold. The sentries put me into a cage and rang a bell. Hearing the bell, entered several corvid lords clad in hides of other animals. They looked at me with their odd eyes and I awaited admonition from this Court of Crows.