Machina Arcanis: Two Worlds Collided

TUChapter 3. Fair Bargain

TU3. Fair Bargain

Apart from a few flaky surfaces and a failed attempt at repainting, the massive corridor of the ferry was remarkably similar to the battlecruisers in the Overworld. The ceiling featured the same connected spines that supported the vessel’s structural hull integrity, interspersed with regular intervals of bright white lamps.

Another difference Aurora noted was the distinct absence of an Arcanite engine whirring.

Perhaps this machine runs on a different type of fuel? She thought as they made their way through the hallway, their marching steps echoing into the vast, empty space.

“As you can see, we’re a tad bit understaffed here,” Aeacus’s deep, rich voice echoed. He pointed his staff at a poorly maintained patch of the hallway.

“Is it just you and that stewardess?” Thanatos asked, chasing off the awkward silence.

“It appears so, my lord. As you know, the Underworld is a boring place where time stretches out indefinitely. Most people would rather rot their nights away in the Stygian Marsh.”

“Is that why you became a Charon? To rid yourself of boredom?” Thanatos asked, clearly amused.

“No…” The old man drew his lips into a tight, thin line.

Aurora hummed a polite acknowledgment. She could see the deep scratches of claws gouged into the metal surfaces. Why are those here? Is there a beast in this place? Her mind couldn’t quite figure out why a state-of-the-art battlecruiser equipped with a full arsenal was needed to simply cross a river. Or perhaps the journey itself was dangerous?

As they marched along what felt like an endless tunnel, the caged lamps overhead giving off a low, static hum, Aurora summoned an arc gourd. She took a sip of the sweet nectar within, and a rush of soothing warmth gathered at her core. Her mana refilled. It was a strategic habit to regularly refill her mana to the maximum, allowing the Everfeast to accumulate more nectar for her next use.

Feeling the heavy weight of the unknown pressing down on her, she asked, “Charon, why is this battlecruiser equipped with such an arsenal? Are you expecting hostilities during the journey?”

Aeacus halted mid-stride, turning back to her with a wicked smile. “Your observation is sharp, Empress. It’s to protect the passing souls from the ugly creatures.”

“Which are?” Aurora tilted her head.

“The Furies, the children of the goddess Erinyes,” Aeacus replied, his cold tone striking like a spear to the heart.

“Ah, yes. I almost forgot about those grotesque wenches,” Thanatos interjected, waving his hand dismissively. “That barely concerns us.”

“Care to elaborate?” Aurora couldn’t let it go. If there was a threat, she needed the full details.

“They are creatures of Erebus, birthed from the realm of darkness,” Aeacus conceded with a nod. “I believe the reason Lord Thanatos said so is because they only target wicked souls, Empress. You are the absolute least of their concerns here.”

“See? No cause for concern for us,” Thanatos grinned, feeling full of himself.

Aurora sighed in relief, closing her eyes for a brief second. Their march continued for a long while. She almost didn’t realise it at first — these entities, Charon, Tachyon, and Thanatos, didn’t require air to breathe. Their voices weren’t travelling through sound waves like conventional speech. The souls here communicated through a sort of telepathy.

Truly fascinating.

“We’re here.” Aeacus gestured to a thick slab of a door with a spoked wheel at its centre. With a heavy heave, he managed to swing the wheel, and the door’s hinges groaned deep and loud as it opened.

Inside was a chamber featuring an analog control dashboard bristling with dozens of switches, levers, and pull-valves. At the centre sat a wooden table housing some sort of gyroscope and an arcane compass. Located next to that was a high captain’s chair and a pull-down bridge pelorus — a steel cylindrical device hanging from a ceiling rail, fitted with high-powered binocular optics.

It looked exactly like something she had seen in a museum from the time before she was born to the Overworld.

At the forward section of the ship, thick tempered glass panels revealed the crested, sparkling waves shifting under the glare of the surveying headlights.

“Please, make yourselves comfortable,” Charon said with a polite hand gesture as he inserted his arc oar into the middle console slot. The control panels chimed with power, and a low, fan-like noise reverberated in the background.

Aurora pulled up a chair and sat down at roughly the same time Aeacus sank into his master chair, propping both hands lazily on the armrests.

The array of surveillance screens showed grainy live feeds from different locations across the ferry. One of them displayed Tachyon as she finished admitting the last of the passing souls; the lively girl poked her head outside, doing her last round of visual inspection.

“Charon, from the bridge, this is Tachyon speaking. Over,” the girl’s voice crackled to life from the speakers.

Aurora noted that she had radioed through some sort of arc comm. Hell was not nearly as medieval and underdeveloped as she had anticipated it to be.

With the press of a button, Charon leaned toward a standing microphone. “Charon speaking, Tachyon. I see you’ve finished your task. I’ll disengage the gangplank. Meet me at the bridge.” He rasped.

“Aye, aye!” Tachyon replied eagerly, offering a salute to the camera before limping her way through the passenger hall.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

Aeacus shifted in his seat, finding a comfortable position for his old bones, before pulling one of the heavy levers. Mechanical groans responded from deep within the hull, and the sloped entrance ramp began to seal itself shut.

“Does that mean you accept our ride?” Thanatos asked, his tone ever smooth and melodic.

“Sort of.” Aeacus turned to face them, his chair pivoting with a sharp creak.

The old man interlaced his fingers thoughtfully, observing them from beneath his bushy brows.

“State your demand, Charon.” Aurora opened her palm, already reading his mind.

“Your perception is extraordinary, Empress.”

“Spare your flattery. I don’t seem to have much of a choice, do I?” she groaned, letting her shoulders slump.

“For someone of your vast astral capacity and excellency, my request will be an effortless task, I assure you.” Aeacus opened both his palms, revealing the various sizes and colours of gemstones and rare earth minerals adorning his fingers.

He was clearly not short on wealth. What could the Charon possibly want that I have to offer? Aurora wondered.

“Aeacus, you surely don’t want that, do you?” Thanatos rubbed his sharp jawline, smirking deviously.

“Unfortunately, I do.” Aeacus drawled his words, his scraggly beard shifting with his breath. “I need my old title back. I was once the Great Judge of Leimonopolis.”

“The Meadows,” Aurora muttered, connecting the dots. The Meadows was a vast territory reserved for unremarkable souls — those who had neither achieved heroic greatness in life nor committed the grave offences necessary to warrant the torments of Tartarus. In essence, it was an eternity for the ordinary.

“Ah—why, yes! I do remember that good ol’ time when Hermes would help out with this oaring errand while you judged in the high court!” Thanatos added, recalling the memory fondly.

“Correct. Correct.” Aeacus’s brows formed a deep crease, his intense gaze falling to his palms. “How should I put it? It’s been the equivalent of thousands of Overworld years. Time tends to distort and stretch in this world.”

“You might have it all wrong. The concept of space and time doesn’t actually exist here,” Thanatos corrected, drifting closer, his dark wings flapping slowly to sustain his levitation.

“Impossible. Then how come there is a past, a present, and a future?” Aurora argued, raising an incredulous brow. “How can I still count the seconds and minutes here?”

“A brilliant mind couldn’t shut itself off from such a question, indeed,” Thanatos quipped, offering a hint of a wink through the eye sockets of his golden mask.

A wicked grin laced with a dark aura spread across his face. “That is simply your mortal brain’s interpretation of this realm. Take the Forsaken Shore, for example. You can travel away from this very shoreline at the speed of light, or...” Thanatos’s gleaming eyes drifted to Aeacus, “Or even at the speed of Tachyon particles. You would very soon find no edge at the other side of this shore.”

The God of Death seemed quite proud of his own pun.

“Really?” Aurora’s dignified expression shattered into a frown. It was the first time she couldn’t make sensible thought out of his words.

“Boundless…” Aeacus added.

“Exactly the word!” The grim reaper chuckled, raising a single finger. “But when you decide to turn around, you will arrive right back at this shore!”

“I see…” Aurora hummed, finally taking note and understanding the difference between the reality of a boundless realm and her earthly interpretation of it. “It is never about a measurable distance, because there is no distance to measure at all,” she concluded, closing her eyes.

“Oh…? You seem to get the gist of it now, Empress.” Thanatos let out a cheer, accompanying it with a slow clap of his hands.

Then timelessness must be similar. What I experience is just what my brain can make sense of. The studious part of her screamed with a hunger for knowledge like a ravenous beast. Aurora forcibly quieted her mind. Let’s park that ontological discussion for now.

A polite throat-clearing reverberated through the room. “Would you mind getting back to our discussion, please?” Aeacus raised his palm, trying not to be rude.

Aurora gestured for him to continue, and the old man nodded.

“A long time ago, there were three High Judges of the Underworld. Due to the different regions and customs at the Judgment Tribunal, we split our tasks rather evenly. Rhadamanthus judged the souls from the Orien and Aethian continents, I judged the souls from Eurian and Union, while Minos judged the souls from the vast continent of Agrian. Each of us had extensive knowledge of the people from these lands—knowing precisely what virtues and sins determined their places at the crossroad. It was a perfect harmony.”

“Was it?” Thanatos gasped in mock surprise.

“Aye. But there was the challenge of balance with Hera’s interference. She whispered into the ear of Minos, the most tyrannical of us all, feeding his hunger to become the supreme judge above us and take hold of the Underworld.” Aeacus’s eyes remained fixated on them. He was speaking nothing but the truth.

“Where was Hades in all this?” Thanatos probed.

“I do not know… as you know, my lord, time is indeed elusive here,” Aeacus admitted, scratching his head. “But my hypothesis is that he no longer cares about the state of the Underworld itself.” The old man shifted uncomfortably, lowering his voice. “Little whispers tell me he has been preparing for war, raising his army in Tartarus.”

“My, your little whispers are quite valid!” Thanatos wobbled his head.

“So it’s true what the passing souls said, then… He is waging war on the Overworld.”

“Checkmate,” Thanatos clicked his tongue. That wasn’t the personality one would expect from the traditionally grim and gloomy reaper, but myth was rarely accurate once it had been passed down through generations of verbal storytelling and songs.

“Then you must have judged my mother,” Aurora blurted out. She was absentminded enough that it became a slip of the tongue, a fact that surprised even her. It must have been those memories from when she crossed the event horizon; her mind was now tethered heavily to thoughts of her mother.

“I did…” Aeacus said softly, his eyes darkening. Since he didn’t care to elaborate and she didn’t intend to press the issue, the Charon continued. “The balance of the judges has been tarnished. With Rhadamanthus dead, I was exiled to this dangerous task.”

He looked down, finding his knuckles turning white from his grip. “Now I understand why. More souls have flooded into Tartarus than expected. People were not more evil in their nature; they were misjudged. It explains the strategic need for resources to fuel his war—” He paused as a sudden enlightenment dawned on him.

“Against you, Empress.” Aeacus’s jaw hung open, his palm flying up to cover his mouth as his golden eyes went wide.

“As Athena used to preach. The blade may sever the thread, but it is the loom of logistics that weaves the tapestry of conquest. Well, the brute Ares would argue otherwise, but—” Thanatos shrugged.

“How… how strong must she be for the Lord of the Underworld to break the rules of his own realm?” Aeacus babbled, “Just to raise a hellish army against a mortal?” The thought was absurd in itself, yet Aeacus needed no convincing when he looked into Aurora’s silver eyes. An unfathomable strength seeped out from their sparkling light.

Her descent alone had sent a signal to every corner of the Underworld; even the deepest pits of Tartarus now knew of her arrival.

Aurora rose to her feet gracefully. “If it is to restore the balance of the scales, I fully believe I would gladly help you, Aeacus, assuming you are the last righteous judge. With the honesty and humility you have shown me thus far, I believe in you.”

The Astral Empress extended her palm, and the Judge of the Dead stood up frantically, his weathered hand finding hers. Together, they shook firmly. With that, common ground was found, and the bargain was struck.