Hades is what you’ll find beneath!

And thus, John found himself once more walking down the path towards the shores of the River Styx. The main differences being that, one, he didn’t feel nearly half as drone-like as he did the first time and, two, this time he had a very chatty guide with him. “And the guy has the audacity to tell me: But I went to church all my life! And I say, yeah, but you killed ten people just yesterday! Of course you’re not going to heaven. Some people, man, sheesh!” Thanatos shook his head as he guided John past the long, neverending flow of spirits.

“You really meet some interesting people, don’t you?” John laughed as he shook his head in disbelief.

“Oh, you know it. Like, usually, the afterlife is what you picture it to be, you see? Say, you’re a good little hunter all your life, pray to Artemis all day every day, and when you kick the bucket, I’ll come and grab you to bring you here, ya know? Well, what if you were to, let's see, had a chance encounter with Odin up there instead, maybe get some nice b(r)uns for your trouble. Well, if you fall in battle, some beauties with wings come and take you to his longhouse to party and drink all your ‘after’ life. And for some reason, we, gods of ****, just… feel who we need to pick up and take where. Yet some bloodlines were damned in perpetuity by one god or the other and they wind up right where they get cursed to be. Poor sods.”

John, not going to point out that he didn’t ask about that, but liked the bit of background info anyway, found his attention then drawn to a large, long stretching queue of single file souls he hadn’t noticed the first time he got here. “Thanatos, who are they?” he asked, thinking that, if he was getting a loredump anyway, he might as well ask about anything that caught his eye.

“Oh, those are the literal damned, if I say so myself. You know that you have to pay Charon to cross over, right? Well, in this day and age, the old ways are slowly getting forgotten. Not everyone buries their dead with things of value anymore. Those souls? They are people like that.”

Mid explanation, John’s enhanced eyesight got drawn to something further down the queue. “Are we needed immediately across the Styx? I could swear there’s something about one of them that doesn’t sit right with me,” John confessed, already starting to move away from the path.

“We can spare a little time… What’s going on?” Thanatos, clearly intrigued, stepped out alongside John. “We should really do this more often. It’s rare that I get to hang out with someone so chill with gods. And of course less dead…”

John gave a chuckle as he speedwalked towards the area something had caught his eye. “I guess not everyone in the Abyss gets heckled by gods from the moment they turn eighteen either. If you want to hang out, I won’t say no, though how about we leave that until we finish our business down here?”

“Done deal. I can already tell we’re going to get along just fine.”

John by now was scanning the droves of people, some souls clad in armor, others in jeans and sweats. It was all too easy for John to pick out what souls were Abyssal and which were out of the loop, so to speak. Eventually, though, John found who he was looking for.

In the middle of the line, John found a woman, mixed race, pristine white skin, though being a soul gave it a blueish, unsettling hue. Her hair was a mix of strands of blue and black and her body was covered in tattered armor. Her pale skin showed clear marks of bondage, the less fun kind. Her right hand, even in her soul like daze, was still clutching onto the broken heft of a polearm. However, there was something about her face. John could swear he had seen her before.

“Thanatos, what’s her story?” John asked in a soft whisper, trying to recall why she had sparked something in his brain.

“Her? Tragic case. **** gone wrong, kept for ransom but one of the captors couldn't control his temper. Why? Don’t tell me you had anything to do with this?” the personification of **** asked with some literal morbid curiosity.

It was only when John cast Observe that it clicked.

Gwenifer Hollmey
Status: soul
A young member of the Abyss that walked right into an ambush. She’s been kept alive just long enough to send a proof of life video before tragedy, and the kidnapper, struck.

“Can I talk to her?” John asked in a small voice. “I think some things are finally starting to make sense.”

Thanatos, by now fully invested, gave a shrug. “Go for it. Though you didn’t answer my question. You weren’t involved in her ****, right?”

“Not as far as I know, no. I just have a feeling that I know her sister,” John muttered. As he waved his hand in front of her face, her eyes regained some of their clarity. Her mouth immediately started to move in silent prayer. Only to stop when she looked around.

“Where am I?” a voice, raspy yet ethereal, flowed from her blue lips.

“You’re in the underworld. In line to cross the Styx. I’m John. This is Thanatos. Can I ask you a question or two?” John spoke softly. His brain feverishly connecting the information he had just gotten to his first encounter with an Abyssal mercenary.

“I’m dead? Oh, thank the gods. I prayed for relief, to get out of that hellhole. The actual hell would be preferable to that **** chamber,” Gwenifer replied, her eyes then settling on John’s. “Ask your questions.”

“Do you happen to have a sister named Ellen?” John went for broke right away. The question burning on his mind as he saw her give a half smile, then a nod.

“I do, how did you know?”

“I have had dealings with her just last week. Your face reminded me of hers, I think. In a way, she is a benefactor, I guess. She could have had me down here along with you but chose not to,” John explained with a bitter sweet expression.

“That sounds like her alright. Never been one to kill when she could avoid it. Are you friends? Or, well, do you think you can get a message through to her?”

“I wouldn’t call us friends, but I can try to reach her? My girlfriend seems to know your cousin. What do you want me to tell her?”

“Good enough for me. Can you please tell her that I’m, well, dead? To stop paying those bastards? I don’t want her to get ****. Just, have her know that I love her, and to not throw her life away for my sake, okay?”

John swallowed heavily. He looked over at Thanatos, who gave him a nod. “I’ll try. And for what it’s worth, I’m sorry. If what I think happened, actually happened. You were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. None deserve the way you died.” As he said that, John retrieved something from his inventory, a seemingly joke gift from Gaia, which he promptly deposited into Gwenifer’s hand. “Here. Take this. With these, you can at least pass over. May you rest in peace, Gwenifer Hollmey.”

“You can call me Gwen. And… thank you, John. I don’t know what to say.” She looked at the two silver obols in her hand, to which John just shrugged. “No need to say anything. Sometimes things just go the way they do for a reason.” With those words, John gave another nod at Thanatos.

“I guess I’ve done what I wanted in line. Shall we get going?”