Total pages in book: 92
Estimated words: 87781 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 439(@200wpm)___ 351(@250wpm)___ 293(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 87781 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 439(@200wpm)___ 351(@250wpm)___ 293(@300wpm)
In those cases, the lack of acceptance doesn’t change anything. The bell doesn’t need to ring for the ferryman, because the moment someone dies, Tuonen and Lovia, the son and daughter of Death himself, feel it in their bones. It’s an internal alarm that will forever sound for them, a scar of responsibility to the Finnish Underworld, the land of Tuonela.
So, while Aven Morris stood on the shores in disbelief, Tuonen, who was on ferryman duty that day, knew he had to pick someone up and bring them to the City of Death.
Unfortunately, Aven’s death happened during a game of Pukata, one of Tuonen’s many vices. While Tuonen and his sister, Lovia, shared the duty of ferrying the newly dead down the River of Shadows to the afterlife, Tuonen did everything he could to distance himself from his job. Sometimes, that included gambling on games of Pukata with the dead of the Golden Mean on the very days he was supposed to be working.
“Fuck,” he swore, feeling that alarm sound through his body. A second later, his opponent’s ramfrog headbutted his ramfrog off the table. The frog fell to the ground, its tiny, exposed bones shattering into pieces. Other than their heads, the frogs were especially fragile.
“I win again!” said Harald Drumsheller, grinning at him with missing teeth. He held his hand out and wiggled his fingers, indicating payment, while scooping up his winning ramfrog with his other hand. The ramfrog peered at Tuonen with a haughty look, two large black eyes underneath a massive bare skull with curled ram’s horns, before a long tongue slid out, tasting the air.
Tuonen grumbled and shoved his hand into his coat, pulling out a small bottle of frostberry liquor and handing it to Harald. Tuonen enjoyed gambling in the Golden Mean, the middle ground in the City of Death. Beneath it were the dark and disgusting tunnels of the Inmost (what most mortals would consider Hell), where the horrible people went to live among monsters. Above was Amaranthus, a nirvana or heaven. Most people, however, weren’t entirely pious and good, nor evil and malicious. Most people ended up spending eternity in the Golden Mean, a place that was comfortable at best and bearable at worst. It was here Tuonen related to people the most, where the gambling was always easy. After all, in Amaranthus, they already had everything they could ever want.
In the Golden Mean, the most popular things to bargain for were alcohol, which was scarce at times. Even the dead still had a need to get drunk.
“Lucky for me, I have to go anyway,” Tuonen told Harald, getting to his feet.
“Aye,” Harald said, breaking the bottle’s seal with glee while his ramfrog leaped to the table. “The dead never stop coming, do they?”
“Never,” Tuonen said grimly with a shake of his head. Death was the only thing certain in all the worlds and would be so for an eternity. Though Tuonen was an immortal Lesser God and didn’t view time the way most mortals did, he avoided thinking of living his life, just like this, for eons to come. It made him want to tear his hair out at the monotony of it all.
Tuonen left the Golden Mean through the twisting streets of the city, through a series of checks and gates until he was outside the main walls, which stretched for miles up into the ever-present clouds of Tuonela. He went to the dark river, got in his ferry boat, and set out toward Death’s Landing. Tiny snowflakes began to fall from the charcoal clouds, dusting his coat, and Tuonen wondered what set his father off in a foul mood. Snow was ever-present in the north, but near the city in the south, it was rare, unless his father, Death himself, was feeling particularly miserable. His moods controlled the weather, after all.
The boat glided through the dark waters with increasing speed, the way it did when Tuonen was late to pick someone up. The boat didn’t communicate with him, but even so, it seemed to be autonomous and committed itself to the job more seriously than Tuonen often did.
To Tuonen, there was no rush. Time often behaved strangely in the Underworld, especially where the newly dead were concerned. Though countless people and creatures throughout the universes died every second, their entry into Tuonela was slow and controlled. Whether it be Tuonen or Lovia, they were constantly going back and forth between Death’s Landing and the city, transporting the dead one at a time (though sometimes more if they happened to have died together).
In the case of Aven Morris, Tuonen didn’t know anything about them, except that the bell hadn’t been rung, which meant he might be dealing with a special case. Sometimes, he liked the challenge of dealing with mortals who didn’t accept that they were dead, but on this day, he wanted things to be easy, just so he could go back to his game against Harald and try another ramfrog.