Styx

Original artwork by Kyle Newbridge

Dearest Samantha,

Truly, I have arrived in Hell. Not to the chorus of damned maggots, nor to the screaming of devils, nor its dissolved circles. I am arrived, and Hell has no place for me. There are no bats, no forest people, no beasts which dove off the face of a world. There is oblivion.

Samantha, Hell is being forgotten by Satan.

All that remains of the fallen flocks from above is now dust around my ankles, dust up to my shins, dust that continues as far as I can see in the dark, and the sick of melted sinew in air. There is no sun, but a sliver of red, red diluted light that almost, and only almost, leaks over the edge of the world. Beyond the land of dust and rotted earth is only the curvature of barren space.

I waited after the descent, and the monster came to the edge with charred hide and fresh graves on its breath. In a single day, it heaved the whole of Florent off the face of the world; it threw the entire place away like so many broken toys, down to rest in ruins with me. And the clouds settled, and there were my rooms and boxes and fences and plans, there were my books and my letters, there were all of the records that I had transcribed from another place I used to fear. And Samantha, now, now I was afraid. And Samantha, I pondered what exactly I would give not to see your face again, not to be near you, but to trade places with you.

And Samantha, if I said I were sorry, if I said there was another way, I would be a liar.

It is gone now. I no longer hear its heartbeats, its steps. It disposed of Florent and detached my rope. As far as my notes inform me, the explorers of old discovered no return from this Underworld, this Empty Hell, theorizing only of a creature far more ancient and terrible than the one I fled. They, whoever wrote on the walls, said, “The dust lays upon it.” Presumably, it lived even further beneath the ground. I hope that, with a team, I may salvage materials with which to forge a way out.

After the monster left, I followed the noise of the river into a dip where it seems to have pooled for a long time. Beneath its thick membrane, the viscous yellow fluid is moving East. Despite its state, I plan to extract water from the liquid, and with any luck, I will find the people that arrived before me doing the same. Perhaps together we may yet escape this place. I follow the river at the sliver of what I assume to be daybreak.

Godspeed,

Tomas Cohen