Chapter 503
With Wilkins' help Buffy, Angel, and Spike opened the portal to the underworld. They figured that Wilkins could be trusted on this. He might be evil but he didn't want the world to end. After going through this portal the three of them looked around. This seemed to e a cave of some kind. Torches provided some light, but not much. There was a river, not of water, but they didn't know what exactly it was. Spike put his hand in it, and it aged very quickly. Spike's body hadn't aged in over one hundred years, now it looked like the had of a hundred year old man, at least the part that touched this "water." Then a boat came, and a hooded man rowed it. The hooded man called himself "Charon." He offerred to take them across to his master's kingdom. They saw no other way to get across the river, nor could they survive swimming. On the boat ride Spike asked about the river, and his hand. Charon said Spike was stuck with his old hand for the rest of his un-natural life. This was the river Styx, the river of lost souls. Any mortal who touched it aged very rapidly. The name was not a metaphor. This river was made up of millions of lost souls stuck together.