Chapter 1
“Don’t eat me!” a man with beady, black eyes, aged, olive toned skin, and short, dark hair woke with a start. As he oriented his focus, he reassured himself, “Oh, it was just a dream!” He realized that he was staring at a ceiling, but not the ceiling of the last room he remembered being in. This one had a cavern wall and stalactites, so he reasoned, “Oh, those super powered jerks must’ve thrown me in the palace dungeons! Oh, that figures! They were too noble to actually finish me off! Eh! I guess I can’t complain! As long as I’m still alive, I can prevail! I will not give up until the kingdom of Chaos is mine!” He cackled maniacally, and after his stirred up emotions settled down, he decided, “Well, I suppose it doesn’t do a lot of good lying on the ground talking to myself! I should probably get up and find an orator to argue my case! Oh, guards! I-!” He sat up and instantly froze when he beheld three men with flesh-toned, beak-like protrusions extending out of their faces, eyes that were basically just large pupils, and onyx colored robes staring at him from tall judicial benches. “Oh, never mind, I’m still dreaming!”
“You’re not dreaming!” a man with long, peppery hair, a thick, bushy beard, very pale skin, and a gray toga stood in the corner of the room with his arms folded as he spoke to him. “You’re dead!”
The other man in the room laughed as if the bearded man had kidded with him. “Very funny! Just wait ’til my orator hears how you all played a cruel joke on me during my capture! So, what’s the meal situation for prisoners here? It better be fresh or I swear, I’ll-!”
The bearded man interrupted him, “No, you’re dead! I can prove it!” He picked up a spiky, obsidian trident next to him and pointed it at the other man.
A green electricity shot out of the trident and hit the other man in the neck! After he felt a brief stinging, his head popped off! He expected to have everything go blank as he fell into his demise, but after that never happened, he had to conclude that the bearded man’s assertion had merit. “Oh my gods! I’m dead! How did this happen?”
“Just a wild guess, whatever was eating you!” the bearded man responded to him sardonically.
“Wow, you’re so rude!” His headless body tried to retrieve the rest of itself, but it stumbled as it attempted to do so. The men with the strange physiques all laughed, and as he screwed his head back on, he grumbled, “When I get my own cool, pokey thingy, I’m so getting you back for this!”
The bearded man shook his head and guffawed at his thick-headed ignorance. “I didn’t think I’d have to introduce myself, usually my new arrivals decipher it for themselves! I’m Hades, god of the Underworld! You’re here to meet your fate for the rest of eternity, and I’m here to supervise your trial. Any questions?”
The man snapped, “I demand an orator!”
“That’s not a question!” Hades reacted to his protest with heavy indifference. “But don’t bother, you’re representing yourself here! Judges, you may proceed!”
“Mercinon of Chaos,” the middle judge started the session, “We’re here to decide if your words and deeds have merited you an afterlife of bliss in the clouds of Elysium, aimless wandering in the fields of Asphodel, or torture and punishment in the caves of Tartarus. We have a list of your good deeds…” He motioned to the judge on his right, who unfurled a small piece of parchment. “…And we have a list of your misdeeds…” He indicated to the judge on his left, who’s list rolled all the way down to the floor! The other two judges stared at it in surprise, and then the middle judge concluded, “Well, this won’t take long!”
Mercinon put his hands on his hips and made a noise of annoyance. “I wasn’t that bad!”
The judge holding his list of misdeeds exclaimed, “You killed a lot of people!”
“No, I just had them killed! I didn’t actually lay my hands on them! Well, I guess a couple of people had to get pushed into the pit of jackals…” He saw the aghast expressions on everyone’s faces, so he tired to smooth it out, “But I had to do it! I had to try and take over Chaos to rescue it from the terrible royal family and inept senate that are in charge of it! I may have a teeny bit of blood on my hands, but it was for their own good!”
“What would you have done once you took over this land?” the judge with the good list queried.
Mercinon shrugged. “I dunno! Took over more places, put my face on all the Drachmas, you know, king things!”
The good list judge observed, “That doesn’t sound very beneficial for anyone other than yourself!”
“Oh, sure it is!” Mercinon disagreed. “My subjects would adore worshiping me!” A sparkling and billowy cloud of purple light flashed past him, and he asked, “What was that?”
“Sympathy for the dead,” the misdeeds list judge answered. “Normally, this room is filled with them, but based on this list, I’m surprised you got even one!”
Hades snickered slightly, and while Mercinon wanted to utter a clever comeback, the middle judge banged a gavel to get his attention. “I’ve heard enough! We’re ready to make our decision!”
Mercinon objected, “But you didn’t even discuss it!”
“Yeah… We don’t need to say out loud where you deserve to get sent to!” the middle judge let him know.
“I know, I’m going to Elysium, right?” Mercinon grinned at them hopefully.
All three judges gazed at him as if they wished they had more than just large pupils so they could roll their eyes at him. The middle judge decreed, “We sentence you to an eternity in Tartarus!”
Mercinon’s mood deflated upon that revelation. “Well, I’ll be damned!”
Hades remarked, “Yeah, that’s the idea! If you see Kamazota, tell her I said hello!”
“My mom? She’s here?” Mercinon trembled as he searched around the room for her.
“Kamazota is your mother? Yikes! I almost wanna feel bad for you! Toodle-oo!” He pulled a lever, and the three judges chuckled at his expression as he fell down the trap door he had been standing over.
Mercinon landed on a rocky floor face first, and he dully enounced, “Ow!”As he picked himself up, he griped, “If this really is the afterlife and not some kind of horrible dream, how is it I’m still able to feel pain?”
Someone in the near distance replied to him, “Well, how would we torture you if you couldn’t feel pain? Psychological harm only works if you have a heart, and if you had that, you probably wouldn’t would never have gotten sent here!”
“I suppose not, but I-!” He stopped midsentence when he saw who had been speaking to- a giant skeleton in a gondola that floated on a river of lava leading into a dark tunnel! “Now I forgot what I was gonna say!”
“Do I frighten you?” the skeleton jeered.
Mercinon no longer seemed bothered by his daunting appearance. Not really. I dealt with all kinds of monsters when I was alive! I just didn’t expect to be having a conversation with something that didn’t have a voice box!”
The skeleton rubbed his chin contemplatively. “Interesting! I haven’t seen this level of aloofness since Kamazota came here!”
“She’s in Tartarus too?” Mercinon jumped behind a set of sharp rocks and bit his nails as he shook in a hysterical manner. “If I thought I’d have to spend an eternity with my mother, I would have tried harder to fill up that good deeds list!”
“You’re related to Kamazota? That’s helpful to know!” the skeleton noted with amusement. “I’ll have to tell Hades that when we find her.
Mercinon barked, “He already knows! And he…” His tone shifted when he came to a realization from something else the skeleton had said. “Wait, you have to find her? So, she’s missing? Oh, thank Zeus! Okay, I’ll come quietly… Wait, she got sent to Tartarus too and escaped? Tell me how!”
The skeleton scoffed at his audacity. “Do you really expect me me to tell you that?”
Mercinon threw his hands up in a gesture that conveyed his lack of knowledge on that. “Worth a shot! So, it’s possible to avoid eternal punishment after all? That’s so good to know!”
No, it’s not like that!” the skeleton corrected his misinterpretation of the matter. “We originally planned to torment her, but she scared everyone who worked here, so we decided to employ her instead.”
“But you can’t find her, so she got out!” Mercinon persisted.
The skeleton differed, “No! She’s allowed to take a break from time to time. She never really takes a true holiday, she just works on finding her son… Oh hey, that’s you!” Mercinon’s face soured by that quip, which pleased the skeleton. He then directed Mercinon, “Well, I hope you enjoyed that ’cause it’s as close to fun as you’re gonna get for the next infinity years! Get in the boat!”
Mercinon crossed his arms defiantely. “What if I refuse?”
“You think you’re the first one to try that?” the skleton retorted. “Eventually, Hades will come by to check on things, and he’ll make you get on the boat if you don’t listen to me!” He paused and added, “Plus, your mother will come back to the Underworld eventually, and trust me, it’ll be a lot easier to find you on the banks of the River Styx than in Tartarus! So, it’s either deal with unbelievable cruelty or-?”
“Or deal with torture in Tartarus! Okay, I’ll go!” Mercinon sprang up and headed over to him.
Before Mercinon boarded his vessel, the skeleton blocked his path and notified him, “Not so fast! I need to collect your payment first!”
Mercinon puzzled, “Payment? No one said anything about paying money for pain and torture! Although I think my assistant was into that sort of thing…”
“You weren’t buried with a coin in your mouth?” the skeleton asked him.
“I don’t think I was buried!” Mercinon answered argumentatively. “Actually, I don’t even know if the Minotaur left enough of my mouth for an entire coin!”
The skeleton grimaced at the image he painted. “Gross! Well, if you don’t have the payment, you’ll have to earn it! Don’t worry, it’s just a few hundred years of manual labor!”
Mercinon’s eyes widened with horror upon learning that. “Manual labor? Nooooo!” He stepped backwards from the skeleton and fell onto his backside, but the tumble didn’t phase him at the moment. “I can change, I swear! Give me another chance!”
“It’s too late! You made the wrong choices as a human, so now you’ll have to pay the price!” The skeleton extended his hand and explained, “You have to report to the foreman in that door on the other side of the bank. If I don’t take you there, Hades will force you there! Or your mother-!”
“Don’t even say it!” Mercinon winced, and as he did so, he spotted something shiny out of the corner of his eye. He craned his head towards the object and was elated to see a coin lying there! “Oh look, someone dropped their coin! I’ll use that instead of doing peasant work, thank you very much!”
The skeleton relayed to him, “Nice try! That coin is stuck down there! Go on! See if you can pick it up! I’ll wait!”
Mercinon knew that it would most likely prove to be a fruitless venture, but he also wanted to avoid this detestable task he would get forced to endure, so he decided to make an attempt at it, even if it was a long shot it was still a chance at a little freedom! When he touched it, he expected it to stick to the surface, and he had already mentally prepared himself to go do his dreadful drudgery when, to his astonishment, the coin lifted up! The skeleton gasped, “How did you do that?” Mercinon wanted to give him a snotty reply to really rub it in his face, but instead, he found himself slowly disappearing! “Where are you going?” the skeleton inquired.
As he got pulled away from the area, Mercinon replied, “Don’t know, don’t care! Toodle-oo!” The last of him vanished with a pop.
Mercinon got sucked through a vortex of pure light, for a few seconds and then, without warning, he landed somewhere hard with a thud! As he rubbed his hind quarters, he studied his new surroundings. It still looked like a cave, but it had lighter rocks and a less dim atmosphere. “Where am I?” No one responded, but it didn’t bother him much. “Oh well! At least I’m safe now!” All of a sudden, a young woman with a gnarly face, cold eyes, and charcoal robes aimed a knobby staff towards him! “Dang it! So close!” Mercinon muttered as he stared blankly at this mysterious person and awaited her intentions with him…