Styx
It was called the River Styx. The place where the dead were ferried off into one of the three afterlives that could await them. Tartarus, Asphodel, Elysium. So many in Tartarus. Even more in Asphodel. A fraction of their numbers in Elysium. She wished she could say she was surprised. But as the last sun priestess, the last member of a civilization long gone, Alona could not say she was surprised in the least. Someday, she too would leave her earthly shell. Someday, if she was very lucky, she could hope to reside in Asphodel. For like the other legends who fought over the Relic, she had done great things. But terrible things as well. Often, the two were one and the same.
She could see Charon leering at her, or at least, the champions in general. A giant skeleton, held aloft on a boat drifting on a sea of souls. Perhaps he mocked the Black Knight, for sending so many souls his way, yet never so many that he couldn't ferry them. Or was it Morgan le Fay, whose means of ending lives were to manipulate others to do it for her? Spartacus, Thorgrim, Anne Bonny, Rawlins…she couldn't say how many lives they had ended, or the circumstances, but regardless, they were all her competitors for the Relic. An artifact known in all legends across space and time. The relic that sent so many over Styx. For glory, sport, power, whatever the motives, the results were the same. And her motives, she wondered? Lost to time. To myth and legend, when she had a civilization to remember her. How many had passed over Styx, she wondered? How many would she see when her time came?
Maybe the answers would come sooner than late. Perhaps they would never come at all. Perhaps one day she would claim the Relic, perhaps she would fight for an eternity for it. From here, to El Dorado, to Atlantis, across space and time, when word of the Relic was no longer spoken by men or gods.
But now, all she could do was fight.
And bear the gaze of Charon all the while.