A lot of time must pass while I sit there on the side of the high cliff, my legs dangling over the ledge. It feels like a long stretch to have no needs, no desire to rest, or speak, or move. I don’t try to explore my surroundings—not that there’s much to see or anywhere to go—or to modify anything about my strange new circumstances. There’s no sun that rises or sets, no changing of weather, no passing of days. It’s neither too hot nor too cold. It just is, and that’s the best anyone can say of me, or this place.
The monotony is soothing. It doesn’t require thought. Or memory. It doesn’t poke at dormant emotions like a child prodding a snake with a stick. Nothing uncoils and strikes without warning. Nothing makes me feel. The gray doesn’t conjure the faces of those out of my reach, and it’s better that way. There’s almost peace.
The clouds remain as thick as ever, except for right in front of me. There’s nothing to see, far less even than on the Plain of Asphodel. There are no despairing souls, no angry evildoers. There’s no ferryman, no River Styx. There’s no Kato to send off to a glorious afterlife.
A spasm bursts beneath my ribs. It seems I can still feel. It’s awful. The spasm fades, replaced by gray.
I eventually lie down on my shelf of rock, looking out and letting my hand dangle over the edge. Hanging it over the side hides my wedding ring from me, because Griffin is starting to bump his way into nearly all my thoughts. He’s stubborn, not leaving me alone. With my thumb, I spin the metal band round and round on my finger, my mind straying to the lone figure who was still conscious in Sykouri, his bloodstained hand outstretched to me, his grief-stricken eyes pleading, his mouth moving on frantic words I couldn’t hear, trying to call me back from the brink of my own destruction.
Each blink solidifies the image, so I stop blinking. My eyes stay open, gritty and dry. I wish I could sleep. Sleep is the only real escape, especially from this thing inside me that keeps poking at that snake and trying to wake it up. Emotion stirs, bubbling inside, bubbling up. Closer and closer to the surface. If it boils over, it’ll leave me in a place I’m desperate to avoid. I need to shut it down, shut myself down. But it’s getting harder and harder, and sleep doesn’t appear to be a requirement here—wherever here is.
As if that stray thought were a question, it conjures what might be an answer in the slow reveal of the landscape. It might take minutes. Hours. Days? I don’t want to be interested, but I can’t help watching and wondering as the blanket of clouds gradually evaporates, disappearing from the hills all around me, leaving them stark and bare. The bumps and cliffs and contours around the deep, dark valley slowly show themselves. Everything is still somber, just more grays upon grays, but for the first time, the air is clear, and I can see what’s around me.
The final clouds dissipate like wafts of smoke that might never have been, and I blink. I blink again. That can’t be right.
I sit up. Across the sheer drop to my right, a man rolls a boulder up a steep hill. He’s muscular and strong, his thighs and arms bulging from his work. He concentrates on his task, never once looking at me, or at anything else around him. His feet dig into the hillside, pushing, pushing harder, pushing up. After an endless stretch of labor, he’s almost there, almost to the top he’s worked so hard to reach. He’s right across from me now, high above the valley floor. He wrestles the boulder onto the narrow summit of the daunting rise and then straightens, wiping his forearm across his brow.
The boulder tips over, flattens him with its first full rotation, and then crashes back down the hill. I gasp, my heart rate picking up for the first time since I got dumped here. Almost immediately, the squashed man re-forms into his previous shape. He stands again, loosening his shoulders and shaking out his huge, strong limbs.
I stare in shock. He looks…fine.
The boulder finishes its long, silent descent, traveling what looks like a well-worn path. My unnerved gaze swings back and forth between the man and the rock. Did I just see what I thought I saw?
He begins to walk back down the hill, his stride neither energetic nor dragging. My pulse thumps wildly. I know what’s going to happen. I know that when he’s behind that boulder again, he’s going to get down low, brace his hands against the rough and ragged side, and then start to push all over again.
I scoot back from the edge of the ledge and track him with my eyes. Dread takes a sharp chisel to the stony numbness still encasing me, hammering out a solid crack.
That’s Sisyphus. The ancient king was punished by Zeus himself for his egotistical behavior, underhanded cleverness, and chronic deceit.
Time feels like it has no relevance, but it must take him hours to perform his task again. I don’t take my eyes off him. All the way down. Starting back up again. Roll. Step. Roll. Push. Slowly up the hill.
I swallow hard.
The harsh shriek of a bird of prey shatters the protracted silence I’ve been existing in. It’s the first sound I’ve heard since the God Bolt hit Sykouri. The strident call pierces my eardrums like the tip of a lance, and I jerk my head around to the left.
A terrifying sight greets me. My eyes widen. Not far from me, but across a space of sheer rock too wide for me to possibly reach him, a huge male is strung up and brutally chained to the side of the cliff. His head hangs in defeat, his long, brown hair trailing into the tangled, curling mass of his beard. He doesn’t fight at all when the giant eagle falls upon him and tears into his side, ripping out his liver and eating it in one bite. The bird’s beady eyes flash over me. Gore and blood drip from its beak. It tucks its wings against its sides and then plummets back down into the valley, the arrow-fast dive taking it quickly out of sight.
The harsh tang of fear bursts across my tongue. My nostrils flare on too-fast breaths. The eagle’s call reaches me once more from far away, mixing with the new sounds I hear all around me. There’s nothing novel or distinct in the noises, just the muted whir and whump of a world that’s not so stagnant after all. And all the while, the defeated colossus of a man just hangs there, his face contorted in pain, waiting for his body to regenerate.
Which it will. Because it always does.
Shaking all over, I get my feet under me and then scramble the few steps back toward the rock wall. The cool stone bumps my back and blocks any hope of further escape. My eyes jump to the right—endless, drudging boulder roll. Jump to the left—man pierced with a hole.
Oh my Gods.