The cold was the first thing that surprised Saga.
The second was the clarity with which he could hear it calling out to him. He had to be close.
But Cocytus was so cold. His right foot felt numb, but he kept going through the sheer discipline that had gained him the Gemini cloth.
All around the white, frozen wasteland he saw the faces of those condemned. He heard their groans of pain. Others, too wasted away had become no more than blackened skeletons, staring at him as he crossed through, the clatter of their bones a constant whisper that hinted at words inside Saga's head.
In his mind their clattering of the bones talked of the darkness. It warned, it feared, it mocked. A thousand voices of the condemned echoing in his head.
One of the skeletons reached out with a boney hand at him, grabbing at his naked foot, his mouth open in a constant scream.
Saga tore off the bones holding him and threw them away. "Where is the darkness?" he demanded the skull, which moved side to side, with no tongue to speak with, not voice to be heard.
And yet Saga heard. He heard a voice that had been with him since birth.
"I am always there" it said. "You don't have to look for me. You never have. I am in you. I am in everyone. Did you not see that I was also in Aioros?"
Saga grabbed the skull and tore it off the ground, lifting it in his tiny hands.
"I'll destroy you. I'll destroy you wherever you hide," he told it. The roaring wind around picked up, tousling his hair, getting under his coat to claw at him with icy fingers.
"Yes. Destroy me. Destroy yourself. Destroy everything," said the voice of the darkness.
Saga blinked and saw that he was holding Aioros' head. Another blink. Aioros' face looked back at him with the same long black hair and black eyes that he'd had under the possession. His blood, red and black flowed through Saga's hands, down his arms. And it was cold and hot and burning and freezing-
Someone slapped the skull from his hands and pulled him up.
"No! It's there! It will come back!" he screamed, trashing against the hold.
"Stop! That's not what you're looking for!" said Rhadamanthys, taking off his coat and draping it around Saga's body.
Saga looked down, and saw the cracked skull on the white ground. The voices in his head died down, and he saw there had only been the roar of the wind and the clattering of bones to be heard.
It was all in his mind.
Rhadamanthys ran out of Cocytus with him in his arms, and only stopped once they were away from the cold and Saga had stopped shivering. He sat down at a nearby rock and unwrapped Saga from his coat.
Saga braced himself for violence, hoping that Rhadamanthys would hold himself back from hitting him too hard in the form he was, so he crouched in on himself, covering his head.
The pain never came.
Rhadamanthys checked his foot, rubbing it a little to see the flow of blood on it, then put the shoe back on it, and covered Saga again.
"It's not in Cocytus," he said, and stood up again with Saga in his arms. "But if you really can't stand to not know where it is, I'll show it to you."
A great black carriage arrived before them, drawn by a black horse with eyes of blue fire. The driver, a black soul that only hinted at a human form, opened the door for them.
"Tell Kanon I found him," ordered Rhadamanthys before getting into the carriage.
Saga bit his lower lip when he heard that. "Don't tell him where I was," he asked Rhadamanthys.
"If you didn't want people to find out then you shouldn't have gone there."
"Bastard, I hate you," muttered Saga.
Rhadamanthys ignored him and they stayed in silence until the carriage stopped again. Saga moved to get down, but Rhadamanthys held him harder.
"I'm not letting you down until we get back to the castle," he said, and stepped off the carriage with him in his arms.
"I can walk," complained Saga.
"I know. That was the problem," grumbled Rhadamanthys. A great black structure rose ahead of them, with a simple small opening as the only door. No markings on the walls or anything that would hint at what was inside. "What did you see back in Cocytus?"
"I heard it. It was speaking to me. And it saw it…I can sometimes hear it. In dreams and in waking life, but lately…it's stronger. Now things…become strange. Now I see things and I'm not sure if they're real…"
Rhadamanthys made a vague noise of acknowledgement, but said no more.
They went down a black staircase, and Saga started feeling a strange pressure all around him. As if there was an energy of containment weighing down on him. He grasped at Rhadamanthys' shirt to have something to hold on to.
"There it is," said Rhadamanthys, shifting Saga so that he could see the black crystal embedded on the wall, covered in Athena's talismans that vibrated with her energy, mixing with a net of black underworld energy. "Athena and I sealed it after we rebuilt the gate. It cannot get out. It cannot speak or escape or do anything. Whatever you saw…It was not the darkness that was in you."
Saga stared at the glowing black crystal, his eyes going from the talismans to the seals and back to the crystal.
"No. That can't be true. It can't. I saw… You're lying!" said Saga, his heart racing, his hands shaking.
"If you don't believe me you can go to your Goddess and ask her. She will tell you the same thing," said Rhadamanthys, walking away from the crystal and back up the staircase.
Saga started hitting him in the chest with his small fists. "It can't be! It can't be true!" he yelled, tears falling down his cheeks. He started sobbing. "Then…then…I've gone mad. Then it means I'm crazy…"
He slumped against Rhadamanthys' chest as the realization of what he had said meant. None of the things that had happened to him were real. They were all in his mind.
And his mind was the problem.
Rhadamanthys scoffed. "So dramatic. Giving up just because you're having hallucinations?"
"Stop!" cried Saga, feeling weak and so helpless it made him feel like he was asphyxiating. "You can hit me. Hurt me all you want, but don't…don't mock me…"
"I'm not. But if there's something wrong with your mind then we'll take you to a doctor and see how to fix it. You're not the first man who has hallucinations, and you won't be the last. And what do you even mean you've gone crazy? Crazy is what I call you because I can't stand you and you keep worrying Kanon."
Saga thought about Rhadamanthys' words, gradually calming down.
"I thought…It would make everything right," whispered Saga once they were back in the carriage. "I thought if it was gone…everything would be fixed."
Rhadamanthys sighed. "If only life was that easy."