Death was familiar.

In fact, Megara had been on a first name basis with him since childhood. Thanatos got a bad rap. Watch enough deaths, you could see his gentle, compassionate eyes while he led away those who were suffering. Megara thought he hadn't seen her at first, but he knew her by name. She supposed he knew anyone he passed by often enough, but hadn't thought it best to touch on that subject across the span of their friendship.

No other mortal had spent so much of their life among the dead and in the Underworld. Thanatos was a busy god, always winging off to aid those who could not be saved in life, but could be granted peace in death.

For Megara, there was no peace. Her entire existence was distant, fleeting, based on half-formed impressions. That final agony remained the one thing that never dimmed. It stuck to her, and twisted her spectral body. She was locked into that moment of expecting freedom and finding only this interminable misery.

This was her punishment: Until she reached that skull at the bottom of the vortex which reset every soul, she would exist as a mere echo of every pain.

How many times had she pitied the shades in their half-life state dulled of all emotions? She'd feared the thought of this place too much to contemplate her place in it.

There was no escape, no dream or activity that could distract from every moment that sapped all sanity from what remained of her.

In her sleep that she could not wake from, Megara remembered.

Hercules's voice mingled with that of so many others. His eyes burned with the hatred of her father, of her cousins, of Hades. She could never focus on any one person, but the guilt of everything she'd ever done rested heavy on her heart. It wasn't even beating anymore. She'd left it far away, but it echoed.

Trapped in a cycle of her worst moments melding together to crush her, Megara longed for it all to end. The few bright spots were distorted, drowned in the frigid olivine glare of so many who'd found her out or thought they had. The one remaining mercy was her eventual oblivion.

There was no way to know how near the end was, or how long she'd been there. Even her sense of immense cold couldn't give her any hint, nor could she open her spectral eyes to check.

She twisted in the sinking whirlpool. Closer and closer to becoming nothing, Megara felt the current quicken. Yes. End it.

There was no point holding onto the memories of Hercules. She'd never see him again. All hope was lost.

Something changed in the pulse of the current.

It had been steady, uninterrupted for millenia. Yet this felt much like something had been dropped in. A column?

Megara winced harder, reliving the impact without the moment of unconsciousness that followed.

Warmth seeped into the water. Life. Alien to this place, but unmistakeable. Even in her own living days, Megara had never experienced so much life.

It surged deeper into the water, though it shouldn't be there.

Powerful counter-current sweeps disturbed the flow, drawing nearer. The river sapped its power as it did everything else. The warmth and life evaporated into the current, a sick joke, a memory of what everyone suffering its torments had lost.

What was Hades trying to accomplish? Was he tormenting everyone in the river just to get his final laugh at Megara's expense?

Megara forced herself deeper into oblivion. Anything to get away from him. If the destruction of her essence was the only way to find peace, so be it.

Something closed around her hand. Unmistakably human. A hand. Impossible. None of the other souls could have done such a thing.

The sun rose in the Underworld.

For a moment, it interrupted Megara's agony while the light, warmth and life flooded the darkness. It wrapped around her, intense and brilliant behind eyes she could not open.

The current was meaningless.

Its cold held no potency.

Then it was gone.

Megara lay limp, and though the pain remained her constant companion, the memories were gone. There was only the pain and this all-encompassing warmth. It seeped through her whole spectral form, just as the water had, leaving an impression of tranquil determination. There was passion, even anger, in the light, but above all, they were getting out of there.

They? Who? Surely not her.

Before the shreds of her humanity could piece together this puzzle, familiar spidery hands clamped around her face like a prison. No. She wasn't getting out of there. She was dead. She didn't belong in the sunlight. This was a mistake. She'd been dead for a long time.

The hands were gone.

There was nothing but her and the light.

It made no sense. It would never make sense to her.

But then she sank into her bones. She drew breath. Her heart was beating. The pain was gone. Her eyes flew open to explain it, and there she found him.

She had to laugh.

Of course, Hercules was the light. He always had been.