I studied the others, the Ferryman proving unhelpful other than periodically laughing at my questions. The other dead, as much as I hated to acknowledge sharing that distinction, were a bit different than me. Most of them were faded, whatever skin color they would have naturally had was muted and smeared, the edges of their very being was blurry and unraveling. They felt like true ghosts, shades of who they once were. Only a couple of others held more definition and color to their appearance.

I glanced back at Charon the Ferryman, thinking about asking him why that was. Only, that wouldn’t work, the Ferryman only commented when it allowed him to poke fun in one way or another. Being too useful made him shut up to focus on rowing. Not enough enjoyment in helping lost souls over the entirety of human history as much as it was to twist the knife, as it were. I supposed I couldn’t be too harsh, if the only thing you did in your immortal life was to deliver unimaginable amounts of ghosts that you would never see again after a short ferry ride, I could see why you would end up jaded. Any kindness he gave would only drain him until he grew tired of it and he only had left apathy and spite.

Didn’t mean it made him very likeable though.

“Hey.” I said to the closest ghost to me, a man whose eyes nervously darted around and whose cheeks were dissolving away into spectral mist that let me see the teeth inside his mouth through the holes.

His eyes kept dancing frantically and he periodically twitched. I resisted the urge to ask the shade what was wrong with him, but I wanted to form a connection, not start an argument.

“Hey.” I said once more, reaching out to place my hand on his shoulder. It sank in, to my disgust. Just lightly putting my hand on him pushed inwards, the substance like a very pillowy meat, cold and moist. Mist and smoke hissed out from the area with just the hint of mold and rot in the vapors.

“Praise Olympas I don’t have to smell you with an Imperator’s senses.” I muttered. When I pulled back, my hand was covered in a pale slime, just the right shade to be utterly vile between something so clear that it appeared clean and something so colored that it appeared to be cream or a dairy product. Against my better reasoning, I brought it closer to my face and sniffed. That was a mistake.

I dry heaved overboard. Charon laughed hard until the sound turned into hacking coughs. It smelled like rotting fish, deceptively hiding its putridness until I had it right before my nose. I grimaced as I held the offending hand in front of me, shaking it slightly. The ghost had reformed quickly enough, but the slime had yet to do the disappear. I scraped my hand against the boat but it wasn’t coming off. I grit my teeth and started putting some real pressure and friction on it when the Ferryman whacked me with the closer part of his pole that he steered the ship with.

“Ow!” I said, rubbing my head. Getting used to not being durable enough to laugh off artillery and aerial bombardment with just my bare skin was going to have to be yet another thing to adapt to not having anymore.

“Why did you do that?” I complained.

“Boy, this is my boat and I’m the one who has to be on it for the rest of eternity. Clean your hands somewhere else.” Charon said.

“Where else?’ I asked. “It’s not coming off at all.”

“Try sticking your hand in the river.” The Ferryman suggested.

“Would that make my hand indestructible like Achilles was everywhere but his heel?” I wondered, thinking of how his mother had dipped him in the Styx as a child.

“Its different for the living and the dead, and even more so for a demigod than a living mortal.” He replied. “But go on, just dip it in and it will get rid of the slime.”

I leaned over and stuck it in and then screamed like I was being electrocuted. I ripped my hand out of the water, but it was too late, the flesh had been eaten away by the river’s touch. There was nothing bones held together in the shape of a human hand by soft blue glows at the joins and seams.

“Bastard!” I growled. “You told me it would get rid of the slime!”

“Well, it did.” He said, chuckling.

“It got rid of my damn hand too!” I said, heat rising in me.

“You would think most people would know better than to touch the sacred river that all dead souls must cross over and that the gods themselves swear oaths on.” Charon said.

I moved to attack, the idea occurring to me that I could somehow overcome the Ferryman, I could force him to turn back and lead me to an exit. I was already dead, after all. Right as my right fist was about to crunch his nose in, some invisible force froze me in place.

“None of that.” The Ferryman said with a god’s voice, someone else’s than his, his black cloak becoming living shadow and the flames in his eyesockets burning away his face to leave a grinning skull. “Sit.”

I was smacked down so hard that the boat nearly capsized. When I tried to shift or rise, I found myself stuck to my seat. The other side of the river was getting closer and closer. I tried to find some brightness in this dismal place, at least my hand was… healing might not have been the right word for it. It was coming back, at least, even if it felt number and looked more faded and blurred than the rest of my body. I compared my hand to the shade I had named Fish. Fish was a little worse off than my hand, but it was a lot closer to him than the rest of my body. Curious.

Yet again, I felt the desire to ask the Ferryman why I looked different from most of the rest and why the others seemed so out of it. No way he would make himself convenient after the stunt I just pulled, and he probably wouldn’t bother even making any meanspirited remarks in favor of just focusing on his job so he could be rid of me. The only way to get him to say anything at all would be to present a target so juicily open that he couldn’t resist stomping on it. You would have to be the worst kind of prideful, arrogant jackass to do it though. I smiled. Depending on who you asked, some might say that was my job description.

“You there!” I said, pointing at a woman whose soul was brighter and more vivid.

She looked at me with all the attention of someone who hasn’t slept in a week.

“Wha?” She slurred. She pointed at herself; the meaning clear.

“Yes, you.” I said, giving a smile meant for the cameras, or at least one someone who desperately wanted to be in front of them would give. “Isn’t this fantastic?”

Her image sharpened even further, a red-haired woman with brown eyes. She seemed almost familiar. “What?”

It was like the look of incredulity and confusion she had felt compelled to give was so strong it brought her back to full consciousness. I could feel the heat of the Ferryman’s eyes on my neck. Good.

“I mean, isn’t it obvious? We’re special, better than the rest of these drooling, smudges in the air. Superior in intellect and appearance. We must have been destined all along to be so, I bet the Corpsefather will let us straight into Elysium.” I said, puffing out my chest.

The redhaired girl shook her head. “What are you talking about? Are you mad? I’m not getting into the land of heroes and you’re…”

What she was politely was refraining to add to finish off the sentence was, “and you’re not either.”

It was also possible that she wasn’t being polite at all, but had had enough consciousness and focus before I had gotten her to speak that she had saw and remembered me trying to get into a fist fight with an immortal who had been born long before humanity had drawn breath and was trying not to incite the raving lunatic. I’d give it a solid forty percent chance.

“Nonsense.” I said, still smiling that stupid smile. “It’s a sign from the gods.”

“I doubt that.” She said. “But I’m happy you have some amount of… optimism left in you.”

I raised my left hand.

“Look!” I said, eagerly waving it about.

The redhaired girl looked to Charon. “Do they make psychiatric medications in the Underworld?”

“For you or for him?” The Ferryman rumbled.

“Good question.” The girl said. “Preferably both. Where do we pick them up?”

“There are none, I was just curious who you wanted drugged out of their mind.” The Ferryman replied.

She looked back to me and sighed. “What is it about your hand?”

“Even when I intentionally and bravely slammed my hand into the river that gods swear oaths on, I have regenerated! Healed! Renewed! Not even the dread waters of the Styx could reduce me to the pitiful creature next to me!” I proudly stated.

The heat of Charon staring at me pressed down on me like a brand pulled straight from the fire.

“You didn’t bravely do anything. I tricked you into it.” Charon protested. “I don’t even think you knew Olympians swore oaths on this river before I told you about it!”

I inspected my nails. “No, I actually learned that when I was six years old from a beggar.”

“A beggar?” The redhaired girl said.

“Yes. Interesting fellow, just wanted to know if I knew where he could find an honest man.” I said.

“You didn’t know that touching the Styx would burn you!” Charon growled.

“I did know.” I said confidently in an exaggerated stage-whisper to the girl.

“No, you didn’t!” The Ferryman said, pausing in his rowing, inky black spit spraying from his mouth.

“See,” I said to the girl while pointing my thumb back at Charon, “this is exactly why I had to tell that beggar that I didn’t know any honest men, liars are everywhere.”

Power was building in the Ferryman, I needed to play my cards right, needed him to be so shocked by my idiocy that he wouldn’t even bother to smite me.

“I did intend to dip it to show my greatness.” I said to him.

The Ferryman growled and everyone else shrank away as far as they could on the boat.

“No, you didn’t.” He said once more.

“Here, I’ll prove it.” I said.

“What?” Charon said.

“What?” The girl said after him.

I held up my hands to show her. “I really hate asymmetry. Gets on my nerves.”

Then I sat back and plunged my other hand into the Styx.

I’d take six months in the temperature test room over this. I thought as I forced myself to keep smiling.

“See?” I said as I pulled my hand out, fleshless bone revealed. The other two were silent so I turned to the shade next to me.

“What do you think, Fish? Does this look like the hand of someone who thought burning off large sections of their body for dramatic effect was cool?” I said, waggling the clattering bones around, their phantom sinews stretching.

Fish moaned like a dying sheep.

“I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone like you.” The Ferryman said.

“I get that a lot.” I replied.

“Oh, I’m sure you do.” He said.

“But anyways, I did this amazing act of bravery because I know that I am destined for more than the rest of the dead.” I said.

“No. You’re not. I don’t know who gave you that impression, but you don’t have a golden ticket to Elysium.” The Ferryman said.

“Then why am I so much more vibrant than the others?” I said with just the right bit of ignorant condescension in my voice.

“You’re like that because enough of your deeds remained in humanity’s minds for you to be so. You’re still going with all the rest, even great Achilles wandered the Fields of Asphodel with all the other dead. You’ll still fade too, just slower. Congratulations on being the next story I’m going to tell to Thanatos when I get my next day off in another two thousand years.” He said, shaking his head.

We pulled to the dock and guards took us off of the boat. Infernal Beast guards. In life, I would have been slaughtering these things like pests, but in death they were the superhumans and I was little more than an animal to them. Wolfmen in plates of yellowed bone, scrimshawed with scenes of death and violence, winged creatures surveying overhead. It set my teeth on edge. We were being brought to be judged by the three Judges of the Underworld. Minos, Rhadamanthas, and Aeacas.

Surprisingly, the redheaded girl and Fish were sticking by my side. I would have thought that Fish wouldn’t have had the smarts to follow me and the girl almost certainly thought I was insane.

“Are your hands okay?” She asked with concern.

I flexed them. “They feel fine.”

“They’re blurred and greyed.” She pointed out.

“So’s everything down here eventually.” I replied.

“You didn’t know that when you did it though.” The redheaded girl said.

“I knew that my one hand was fine and that the second one would only cost me pain and blurry hands.” I said.

“You said it cost you, but what did you win? What was worth trying it?” She said.

“I wanted to trick Charon into telling me things.” I said.

“That can’t have been worth it. What was the real reason?” The girl said.

I paused, trying to discern what deeper motives I might have had.

“I guess I don’t like things being out of my control, and that making things go out of everyone’s control, even if it hurts me, makes me feel better.” I said.

“That’s a little horrifying.” She said.

“A bit.” I agreed.

“Do you really remember your life?” She said. “Or was that story about the beggar something you made up?”

“The beggar was real, but he told me something different. Yeah, I remember my life, what about you?” I said.

“Just my name, really.” She said nervously.

I extended a hand. “Well then, I’m Adrias.”

“I’m Pollixa.” She said.

“Oh.” I said and I realized why I had thought she seemed almost familiar. The Imperator’s Path changed people so much from what they would have looked like naturally that it had been hard to see.