Chapter 4
It had been a week.
Seven days,
One hundred sixty-eight hours,
Ten thousand eighty-minutes,
Over six hundred thousand seconds and counting.
Since I had left my home,
My brother,
My friends.
Since he had left me.
I had just left a mythology museum in Topeka. I was listening to a lecture on the five rivers of Tartarus. I recalled it all.
"Think of pain, deep unbearable pain. Pain that kills, that strips away your very soul. That's the Styx.
"Now think of sorrow. The absence of love, the lack of emotion. Emptiness. Emptiness that doesn't show on the outside, but the inside, you are broken. That is the Acheron.
"Now think of sorrow. Deep, everlasting sorrow. Being powerless, feeling useless. Sorrow that lasts forever, that follows you into the afterlife. That it the Cocytus.
"Think of fire. Deadly, beautiful, like the Sirens of the Mediterranean. Fire can kill, but it can also bring happiness. It burns away the sorrow and pain. That is the Phlegethon.
"Think of oblivion, lastly. Think of forgetting everything you've ever known. The absence of nothing. Pure oblivion. Nothing. Nothing to live for, and nothing to fight for. That is the Lethe,"
I remembered every word, everything I could recall. It was the prophecy. The one that I've been running from. But I can't run from fate. So, why not run to it?