In the turbulent dark waters that stretched onward for eternity, a small, wooden rowboat buckled above its acidic waves. Only darkness lurked beneath the waves, hiding away the true horrors that called this Ocean it's home.
On the boat, only Evatide remained. Everyone else that was on the boat had disappeared. A thick, viscous fog had settled in until she could barely see anything within a meter of her. Even moving her body was difficult.
But she wasn’t focused on that now.
Instead, Evatide was desperately sealing her ears, trying to silence the sounds of the outside world.
But no matter how much she pressed against her ears until they ached in pain, the voices still came through.
Maddening whispering permeated all around her. At first, she had thought that it was just the other passengers on board, but that idea was quickly quelled when she realized that everyone else was gone.
It was only her. The whispering was just low enough that she could barely hear them but loud enough for her to understand what they were saying.
At first, the voices spoke about her. They criticized every single act she had ever done in her entire life. How she was useless, how she could not even stop the death of her own grandma. She was just the bastard child of an unnamed city guard. Not even fit for the slums, much less the sewers.
She wasn’t worthy of her grandmother’s warmth and love. A slum rat like her was only good dead in a ditch somewhere. Their whispering got angrier and angrier, as Evatide felt cold daggers being plunged into her heart with every accusation they made.
Wet tears streamed down her pale face, now buried in her arms. She was curled up against the side of the boat, completely abandoning her tough exterior. But even then, the whispering did not relent.
Soon, her clouded vision was forced open, as she was forced to see different versions of herself, visions of what she could have been. What could she have accomplished, had she been better, had she worked harder, or had she made the decision to leave years ago?
Evatide saw herself as a successful business owner, enjoying the luxuries of high society while married to a man who had their face obscured by the fog. That vision faded away, replaced with another version of herself.
Here, she was in shining battle gear, no doubt that she had accepted the invitation to attend a young military academy all those years ago. People praised her wherever she went, and she was even granted a noble title.
Evatide wanted to stop. The more she saw herself as a successful human being of high society, the worse she felt. Insidious thoughts drifted through the dark corners of her mind, seemingly working in tandem with the whispering.
Maybe she should have left her ailing grandmother that day. She even gave her the entire family’s savings, she could have become a successful entrepreneur. But she wasted it on treatment for her grandma.
Why?
Because she just wanted to return what her grandma had given her all those years?
“Bullshit.” A haunting voice whispered, next to her ear.
“Fake.”
“False.”
“Liar.”
They knew. The whisperers and even Evatide herself knew the disgusting truth. She was simply greedy. Greedy for more time, more life, from her already ailing grandma. With each day she was alive, the more pain she experienced. Until the end of her life, every waking moment was filled with mind-numbing, soul-crushing pain. The pain of having thousands of hastily sealed wounds reopen, the pain of having flesh literally melting off the bone, the pain of being constantly re-healed only to lose it mere days later.
All because she was greedy for more of her grandma’s time. In the end, she was the cause of all her suffering.
“All your fault.” The whispering chanted. “Join us. Suffer no more.” A soothing voice called out, making Evatide seriously tempted. “Come, Eva.”
Evatide choked back a sob. “Grandma?”
“Let's be together again, alright?” A warm hand ruffled through her hair, making her tremble.
‘No.’ Evatide’s rational side screamed, wrestling control of her body away, planting her body firmly against the rough wooden floor.
Suddenly, the hand froze. Its warmth was instantly drained, as wet, gooey slime matted her hair.
“You are not dead.” The whispers stopped for just a moment, shocked.
“How.”
“This cannot be.”
“A living?”
“Fire.”
In an instant, the whispers were driven into a frenzy, and the once pale white and tranquil blanket of fog stirred, whipped into a storm. The dark waters threw the boat up and down, threatening to drag it down beneath the infinite abyss.
The whispers had turned into shouting, then ear-piercing screaming. Blood trickled slowly from her ears, her hands doing little to nothing at stopping it. Evatide herself soon found herself unconsciously screaming with them, her sanity shattering like porcelain.
They told her the truth. The ugly, disgusting truth of everything. The secrets are hidden beneath the dark waves, visions of doomsday, and memories that were not hers. Centuries of life whizzed by her eyes, each more horrifying than the last.
Beneath the dark waves opened hundreds of thousands of pale green irises, shining like spotlights as they peered onto the surface. Shapes began emerging from the waters, each part seemingly enlarging or shrinking infinitely the longer you looked at them. While shrouded by the white fog, even their presence alone began accelerating Evatide’s insanity.
Through her open eyes and ceaseless screaming, thing glowing strings appeared in the air, countless amounts of thin glowing strings, connecting herself to everything around her.
She didn’t know when, nor was she even aware of it, but soon, she started laughing. Laughing at how pointlessly futile existence was, how everything she did, nothing would’ve changed. No, nothing mattered. They were all just frogs at the bottom of a tiny well, unaware of the massive world around them.
She was just merely one of the many billions of humans, neither special nor powerful. She was nothing.
Nothing that would matter to the uncaring hands of time.
In a fraction of a nanosecond, Evatide had experienced every single possible life, from birth to death, in that brief period of time. Hundreds of thousands of years flew by with the blink of an eye, and throughout each life, Evatide had peered into the inner workings of the world itself.
The grand tapestry of fate, with each of its colorful strings signaling a life, each branch a route, and each splinter an opportunity. It branched out infinitely, akin to a fractal, creating beautiful and incomprehensible shapes, extending far beyond the human mind’s comprehension.
And hers?
Seemed to end here, above the dark waves in the boundless Ocean.
…
As Evatide’s mind broke little by little, pieces of sanity crackling against the cold hard floor of incomprehensibility, a hand suddenly jerked her back into reality. Her vision, now clouded and permanently scarred by the glimpse into the truth, focused on a figure in holding her up by the collar.
“Living…” He savored the sound of the word, his voice rattling against his hollow interior, producing an ancient, raggedy sound. “Seeking death…? How amusing…” Evatide’s mind was only barely holding itself together, with each thought threatening to be the final straw that would break the camel’s back.
The other figures aboard the dark ship whispered to one another, eyeing Evatide up and down with their shadowy figures.
“... Broken, by the Styx-” The man uttered, snapping his fingers. A thick cloud of fog wrapped around the boat, concealing them from the outside world, no doubt hiding from the countless abyssal horrors that had awakened.
As the passengers continued to whisper, the man was contemplating what to do with the living mortal. She had already paid the passage fare, which meant she was allowed into the underworld.
He couldn’t just throw her out either, the rules stated in his contract stated that, no matter how annoying his passengers were. But living mortals were not allowed in the underworld.
“Ugh. Paradoxical rules, my favorite.” He growled, setting the broken Evatide back on board. Even without the rules, he didn’t want to feed the abyssal horrors that lurked beneath. Feeding them would only encourage them to actively hunt for his ship, and that would ruin his business.
As the mist-shrouded rowboat continued on its journey, the man pressed his bony hand against Evatide’s forehead. White wisps of foam were starting to trail from her mouth, while tears streaked from her eyes.
“Nearly broken-” He stated. “-How… typical of mortals.” The man sighed and channeled a few of his own powers into her body. Since she had already paid the fare, and it was his duty to protect all of his passengers, he couldn’t just let her be.
Of course, he could always throw her out after they had landed, and it wouldn’t be his problem anymore… but looking at her state, the poor mortal wouldn’t even last a few minutes at this rate.
“Wonderful… I expect double the fare in your next life…” He sighed, assessing the damages and slowly mending her mind. The man frowned again, this time, at the extent of the damage done. It was nearly shattered which meant that a complete recovery was impossible. Not without the waters of Lethe. The only possible solution now was to anchor her mind, so that it would be stable enough to stitch it together.
It was just like a vase with a hole in the side, on the verge of cracking. No matter how well you fix the cracks, the hole will continue to exist, rendering its purpose useless. Unless you use something to plug the hole, which for this analogy, is the ‘Anchor’, it will continue to be useless.
Sifting through the fragments of Evatide’s mind, the man quickly combed through her memories for something to be used as an ‘Anchor’. The easiest way was to simply ‘Anchor’ her mind to a desire, like pride, lust, gluttony, and so on. The stronger the desire, the easier it was to use as an Anchor.
Finally, he pieced together enough of her memories to finally create the ‘Anchor’ of her mind.
“Longing. Praise. Love. ” His voice has turned soft and silky, no longer as guttural and ancient as before. He had seen many mortals just like her, boarding his ship, set for the underworld. Each had a look that screamed of pain, and he thought he had grown resilient to it. But now that he had gotten to experience the memories firsthand, pity surged through him. “A childhood of pain, despair, and neglect, with your cherished grandmother perishing before your eyes, it will be the desire to be loved and praised that will tie you to this realm. ” Thousands of pitch-black runes seared themselves within Evatide’s mind.
He was no expert, and this newly stitched mind was nothing more than a temporary bandage, a hastily constructed dam against the constant torrent of violent waters. At best, she would lose most of her memories of her mortal life, only remembering important bits and pieces… at worst, she would become a permanent amnesiac. He hoped that, in a few decades, Evatide would find someone that would be her permanent Anchor.
“Only when someone takes the mantle of your long deceased grandmother, fulfilling your desires, shall your heart be at peace.” The man’s shadowy face revealed itself, the chipped hood slowly blown back by a gentle wind, a bleached white skull underneath the ragged robes.
A black-light shone from his eye sockets, wisps of white fog worming their way into Evatide.
Instructions for the path out of the underworld, alongside a letter for the Rulers of the Underworld, his boss. “Rest now, child.” His bony hands closed Evatide’s eyelids, as he gently laid her on the side. “May your death be more fruitful than your life.”
As the rowboat shrouded in white fog chugged along the boundless dark ocean, a bleak greenish-purple light peaked through the horizon.
“Why am I trying this hard for a mortal…?” The man whispered to himself, barely audible to anyone but himself.
The underworld was now in view.
…
Dianos· Apr 21, 2023
