Chapter Two

The wizard traded his past for his future and found he died young.

The Seer's Parables

Purgatory

October 8th, 1842

The next thing that Hans remembered was standing on the shores of a dark river. The river was without beginning and seemingly without end, meandering endlessly in either direction as far as the former prince could see. He was in a world of brimstone, a desolate wasteland that was flat and featureless until an indistinct horizon. He could see neither sun nor moon but the sky burned, currents of flame dancing like aurora miles above. The air smelled of clay and sulfur and the whole place seemed to exist without a concept of time.

Time meant nothing to the former prince; he had no idea how long passed before anything changed. He did not walk in either direction, for what was the point if all the world was the same? He did not speak or move or scarcely hear himself breathe. A gondola was there and Hans accepted it readily, for how could he know that it had not been there all along?

The figure aboard the gondola was at least eight feet tall and cloaked all in black from head to foot. Its hood hid any recognizable features but the hands, the horrible hands that emerged from the creature's sleeves to grip at its pole, were the hands of a rotten corpse. The figure was as silent as a shade, yet it slowly extended a hand towards the former prince. Even without any verbal instruction, Hans could tell what the figure wanted him to do.

Hans reached into the pocket of the trousers he wore and was not surprised to find two coins among them. The coins were made of clay and he realized that he must have smelled them earlier. Hans stepped onto the rear of the gondola and tentatively extended his hand, palm down and curled around the coins, towards the silent figure. Hand trembling a bit and careful not to touch the rotting hand, Hans dropped the two coins into its palm.

Immediately the figure's hands curled around the coins and it was turned forwards, poling them away from the shore. Though the river did not rise in either direction, Hans could instinctively tell that they were moving downstream. They moved like this for a meaningless amount of time; it could have been ten minutes or a century. In the same way that everything seemed to materialize in this strange land, Hans became aware that on the distant horizon an ancient ziggurat was visible and growing larger in their approach.

The river seemed to head directly towards the ziggurat and Hans concluded that this must be their destination. All the while the figure remained silent, poling them along with an eerily symmetric force; every stroke was exactly the same as the one that came before it and perfectly predicted the stroke that came after. The former prince stared at the pole that the creature propelled them along with and became mesmerized by its slow, repetitive movements.

The former prince found that, if he continued to stare at the water after the pole stopped upsetting it, the surface became quite clear, almost glassy. The riverbed was very dark but there was a forest of distinct shapes along it, some rising higher towards the surface than others. Hans leaned down to stare closer at them, reaching out over the surface of the water for a reason he could not quite determine. As he leaned further over the surface it almost seemed that the shapes were moving towards him, reaching towards the surface of the water to be free from their watery grave.

Hands, many of them, all rotting and skeletal, burst through the surface of the water, all of them clutching towards the former prince, trying to pull him into the water. Hans let out a sudden shout and stumbled backwards, falling upon the gondola's surface and scrambling away as the corpses fell motionless and sank again below the surface. Breathing heavily, Hans turned to see if the figure had turned to look, had even noticed. The same as ever, it silently poled them along towards the ziggurat, facing the distant temple the entire time.

Gasping for breath, heart hammering like a gun, Hans returned his body to the center of the rearmost divide in the gondola and did not gaze into the water anymore.

Even as sudden and as gripping the moment with the corpses had seemed, soon all was quiet and all was the same again, that endless approach towards the ziggurat. After a time it seemed that the temple was finally growing closer, and then in an instant it was upon them. A yawning entrance to the ziggurat opened over the river, which ran directly into the temple. Now that they were upon the temple and rapidly approaching its entrance, it rose so far above them that it began to blot out the light from the sunless sky.

The soft noises of the figure's poling were amplified as they entered the temple, the only light now derived from torches mounted on either side of the wall at regular intervals, just enough that they were never truly cast into shadow. In the flickering torchlight Hans almost could not make out the form of the figure leading the gondola ever-deeper into the ziggurat. For the first time since the former prince found himself in this place, he became apprehensive. He realized that he did not know what was coming.

Mr. Gold had told him that his path was an alternative to death, but if this was not Hans being brought to his final judgment, the former prince wasn't sure what it was. He turned to gaze upon the walls of the ziggurat in the brief areas where they were outlined by flickering light, and saw engraved upon the walls strange images of men and vultures intertwined in bestial embrace. He saw a particularly gruesome image of a group of vulture-men who had dismembered one of their own and a horse.

In the next panel, Hans saw that the two dismembered figures had been sewn together in a disturbing mockery of nature, a bird-centaur that held a long, wicked scythe. The former prince shuddered and turned away. Returning his gaze forwards Hans found that the river ended ahead.

As they reached the stone bank, Hans saw that he was not to be left alone. There were three more figures waiting for him on the bank and a stone bed with a pure white cloth upon it. The figures awaiting him wore masks of gold and lapis lazuli, had bare chests and held what appeared to be surgical instruments.

Hans saw the knives and hooks that these figures held and, with a strange lack of fear, began looking about for any means by which to fight or escape. He saw none and momentarily contemplated diving overboard and trying to swim to safety before remembering the forest of corpses beneath the surface. The gondola came to a halt and the figure who had led Hans here motioned towards the others about the altar. It was time to depart now.

Hans felt a strangely empty emotionlessness as he disembarked and stepped onto the cold stone of the ziggurat. Just as silently as it had came, the gondola turned and began to retreat into the distance as the masked figures came towards the former prince.

He did not attempt to fight as they placed icy cold hands on his arms and led him towards the stone bed. He lay upon the white cloth and felt a strange tingling as one of the figures slid a knife underneath his shirt. The places where it touched his skin felt as if they were being kissed by ice, but Hans realized that he was not being touched by the blade's edge. The figure ran the knife through his prison smock and split it wide; the other figures disrobed the former prince of his trousers in a similar manner.

They removed his undergarments and he wondered if this was an attempt to shame him in the face of death, as well. He raised his head and looked down upon the body that had once been so muscular, so handsome. An emaciated frame jarred his senses, every single rib visible and framed against a sunken stomach. The knives flashed and Hans lowered his head back onto the cloth upon stone, closing his eyes as steel suddenly bit his flesh.

Hans did not feel pain as he had expected to, rather a strange, tingling sensation as his skin was pulled free from his chest cavity and his ribs snapped like branches. He realized that they were going to remove his heart, but it was quick, impossibly quick: he felt hands work in his chest for a moment and felt several cuts from the knife and opened his eyes to see one of the masked figures holding a human heart delicately in its hands.

The heart was motionless, not beating, though the former prince supposed that he wouldn't have expected it to be. He still did not dare look at his chest as he followed the heart-bearer with his gaze; the masked figure removed the organ to another stone table nearby and deposited it into a simple masonry jar, which it promptly sealed. Hans saw that there were no other jars prepared and frowned. He had imagined that their might be one for each of his organs, but this did not seem to be the case.

Almost as quickly as the dissection had begun, it had ended too. One of the figures was placing pristine ribs into the cavities where the previous ones had been snapped away, and they sealed there easily, naturally. Another had threaded a needle with a strangely gossamer thread and began to sew up the cavity that had been so suddenly rent.

Within a few moments the figures were done and they retreated several feet from the stone bed. The one who had taken the former prince's heart now held the jar, and for the first time, spoke to him.

"Our master tells us that we are not to complete your passage," the masked figure said in a quiet, rasping voice. "He told us that we were to take your heart, and your heart alone. We are to keep it here, for safekeeping. While your heart remains in purgatory you will remain neither dead nor living, able to pass through both realms but unable to call either home."

Hans shakily turned upon the altar and sat on the edge as the two lesser masked figures provided him with a soft, white robe. He pulled it over his head and looked down; what he had at first assumed to be little more than a shift was actually a stylized toga that seemed reminiscent of the ancient Greeks.

"What am I supposed to do now?" Hans's own voice sounded weak and raspy, and he hated it.

"Follow me." The foremost of the masked figures passed Hans's heart to the others, who departed down a passageway on the other side of the room. Hans followed behind the first of them and was led through another door. They walked for another, meaningless length of time down this passageway in complete darkness; Hans could only follow the footsteps of the masked figure before him and hope that there were no obstructions in his path.

When they reached the double doors at the end of the passageway the first of the masked figures had mysteriously gone. Wondering where it possibly could have disappeared to, Hans was grateful that at least here two torches stood beside the doors, which appeared to be wrought entirely from gold. Engraved into their surfaces were the same sort of twisted images that the former prince had encountered while on the gondola. There were no guards or anything else of the sort beside the doors, so Hans took a deep breath and pounded the knocker three times.

No sooner had the ringing of his ears faded than the doors silently opened to admit Hans. He stepped onto a narrow path, no wider than the hallway that he had left, which spanned perhaps fifty feet across the room, opening onto a platform many times wider at the other end of the room. Upon this platform sat a magnificent golden throne lit by double braziers positioned on either side and by the spectral blue flames that curled about the head of the deity that sat upon it.

"Hans, formerly the prince of the Southern Isles. Mr. Gold told me that I should expect you." As Hans began to approach along the path, he saw that the deity had pointed yellow teeth to complement its taught blue skin, stretched over a face that looked awfully like a skull.

He turned sideways and saw a seemingly endless drop into a black abyss below the path on either side, and stuck closer to the center. Once he had come within twenty feet of the throne, now on the wider, rectangular platform and blissfully no longer beside such a precarious edge, the deity spoke again.

"I am, as you are no doubt aware, Hades. Prince of Death, Master of the Underworld, and King of Getting Screwed Over by His Brother."

Hans was totally silent, confused and at a loss for words. He hadn't expected the Prince of Death to act so casually, not in a great stretch of the imagination.

"That was a joke. You, uh, have permission to laugh at it." Hades flicked a wrist as his brow flattened. After another moment of silence, he continued. "Alright, fine. Whatever." Added under his breath, "It's not like that was my 'A' material, anyway."

"So," Hades rapidly cut off the end of his last, muttered sentence by saying, "It's nice to see that you got through all of the rituals without instruction. I, uh, I've been wondering whether I should make some changes to the rituals, and I've been using the last couple of entrants to Hell as, uh, you know –" Hades gesticulated as he spoke, snapping his fingers repeatedly now. "Uh, a focus group, to see if things would still run smoothly if nobody spoke until the rituals were complete."

Hans stood in stunned silence.

"Because, you know, it seemed like it would be more intimidating. With silence." Hades looked at Hans. "How did you feel about it all? Were you intimidated?"

"Well, yes, I suppose so." Hans wasn't sure what he expected from Hades, but it wasn't this.

"Excellent. I'll keep it that way, then. Anyway, I suppose I should stop wasting your time and get to the point." Hades cleared his throat and drew a long roll of parchment from within one of his sleeves.

"So, Hans, you're here because of a pretty lucky coincidence. The last servant that I had in your world just recently, well, disintegrated. Nasty business, actually. Hell of a mess. Heh heh." Hans wondered why Hades had chuckled until the pun hit him. He almost groaned aloud.

"Her name was something-Gothel. I never got to know her super well – she was unpleasant and pretty difficult to work with. Anyway, now that she's gone, I have an opening for another mortal servant."

"You can only have one at a time?" Hans said, his voice rough.

"Yes, it has to do with the way I bind your soul to me, and a lot of boiler plate that we needn't get into right now. Anyway, you have experience with something very particular that I look for in my servants, so when I learned from Mr. Gold that you were slated for death, I had him go to you and extend the offer."

"What do I have experience with that you search for?" Hans could think of nothing; his mind was almost painfully blank.

"You, my soon-to-be faithful servant, have experience with magic."