Legacy of Talos

On the shores of the Acheron, there was only one truth. That of the coin.

The rest was just noise, a predictable tide of mortal sorrow washing against the black sand. The flickering forms of the newly dead gathered before me in an endless procession. The air here was heavy and motionless, thick with the weight of endings. It drank each shade’s ghostly plea like parched earth drank rain, leaving no trace behind.

I leaned against my ferry pole, the ancient wood smooth beneath my palm from millennia of use. Carved from a tree that had grown in a world that no longer existed, the pole was taller than any mortal man. I watched the spirits approach, observing them with the patient detachment eternity had taught me.

I’d been here since before the gods themselves had learned the shape of their own names. I’d heard every permutation of human pleas and bargains and threats. They were all the same in the end.

A woman drifted forward first. She had been young when she died. She clutched at the phantom outline of a shawl around her shoulders, pulling it close as if it could protect her from the cold that seeped from the river itself.

“My son…” Her plea emerged as little more than a whisper, already half-dissolved by the realm’s silence. “He’s alone now. No father, no kin to look after him. Please, Ferryman. Just let me see him one last time. Just once. I need to know he’ll be all right.”

I held out my hand, palm up, a silent demand for payment. The gesture was as old as death itself, as immutable as the turning of the spheres. No words were necessary. None ever were.

Her translucent features crumpled with a grief that would have moved stones to weep. I felt nothing. The story of her son was just vapor against the unyielding hold of the Acheron. Her maternal instinct, fierce as it had been in life, meant nothing here.

With trembling fingers, she drew an obol from the depths of her being. The coin manifested slowly, reluctantly, as if even this last possession didn’t want to leave her. It was solid proof of a world that was no longer hers, that would never be hers again. “You are a mother no longer,” I told her as I accepted the coin.

She let out a broken wail but drifted toward the line waiting to board.

The next to approach carried himself differently. His spirit bore the faint, tarnished outline of authority, the ghost of power that had once bent others to its will. A king, or perhaps a tyrant. He advanced with the imperious stride he must have used in life, as if he could command respect from death itself through sheer force of habit.

Those who died in the fullness of their power often clung more fiercely to the memory of what they had been. They bargained. They raged. They offered kingdoms and curses in equal measure. This resistance made the unmaking no less inevitable, only more prolonged.

“I was a king,” he announced, just like I’d known he would. “I have treasure buried beneath the old cypress in the palace garden. Gold, Ferryman. Enough to buy a fleet of ships. It can all be yours. Anything you desire.”

His offer echoed in the dead space, a hollow promise that dissolved almost before it had finished forming. The other spirits shifted restlessly behind him, their patience wearing thin. The dead grew weary of mortal arrogance.

“I have ferried ten thousand rulers before you, each one equally convinced of their own exceptional importance. The price is always the same. And you do not have it.”

For all his posturing, no one had bothered to give him the final, proper rites. Here, in the Underworld, they’d left him poorer than the worst pauper.

“You don’t understand. I—“ he began again, desperation finally creeping into his voice.

I pointed a single finger toward the murmuring crowd at the back of the line. “No fare means no passage.”

A youth shoved through the others then, his spirit crackling with almost blinding indignation. Young men always arrived angry at fate, at the Olympians, at the simple unfairness of a life cut short before it had properly begun.

“I am not ready!” He pushed past the former king, his spectral hands balled into fists that could grip nothing. “It was not my time! The gods themselves know it was not my time! I demand—“

I saw the glint of his obol clutched tight in his fist, held there like a talisman against the dark. The coin knew where it belonged. It simply… transferred. It was one moment in his grasp, the next in mine—as inevitable and final as the severing of a thread. The metal still carried the last fading echo of the living world. “Your time is an echo. Nothing more. Your fare is paid.”

The youth’s anger collapsed inward, his spirit already beginning to dim. He stumbled toward the barge, shoulders hunched. He’d learned the first and hardest lesson of the dead. Nothing they felt, wanted, or dreamed of mattered anymore.

I had just slipped his coin into the depths of my cloak when a new cold descended upon the shore.

It was not the familiar chill of the realm, that constant, bone-deep cold that was as much a part of this place as the sand and mist. It was something else, a grave-like frost that leeched even the lingering traces of warmth from the assembled souls. The air itself seemed to contract, pulling tight against the skin of reality.

The spirits nearest the river recoiled, pressing back against each other in a writhing mass of terror. Their earlier complaints were forgotten in the face of a power too great for them to process. “The King…” one managed, the words barely more substantial than thought.

“He is here…” another whimpered. “We are lost…”

They were already lost. That was the point of being here. But I understood what they meant. There were degrees of lost, and some were worse than others.

From the deepest gloom that nested over the river, a figure materialized. His face was sharp, as if carved from the same stone his throne was made of. His eyes surveyed the shore with the detached interest of one who owned everything he saw and found it all equally tedious.

Hades.

He was tall, taller than mortal men, but not by much. Some gods needed to tower. Hades simply was. His mere presence made the river behind me cease its sluggish current. The mists paused in their slow, rolling drift. Everything in this realm knew its master when he walked among them.

Everything except me.

I remained where I was, my grip steady on the pole. I did not bow. Did not kneel. Did not offer any of the gestures of obeisance that the other denizens of this realm would have offered without thought.

He was a god, yes. But this was my domain. The passing of the dead was governed by laws older than Olympus. Laws he had no part in writing.

“You have no business on this shore, Lord Hades.”

He arched a dark brow at me, and the simple twitch of his face made the souls wail in anguish. “I am the god of this realm, Ferryman,” he said. “I go where I please.”

It was meant to be an ending, a declaration that would brook no disagreement. I had heard other gods make similar proclamations before. They were always so certain of their own authority, so convinced that power and right were one and the same. It was almost charming in its naivety.

It did not impress me. “Your realm ends where my river begins. Why are you here?”

For a single instant, something flickered in those dark eyes—surprise, perhaps, or amusement. The moment passed quickly.

Before he could answer, the air before him began to shimmer and distort. The change was sudden and violent, as though reality itself was burning from within. The scent of the forge rolled across the shore. Brimstone and cooling iron, the acrid bite of metal being shaped and beaten.

Hephaestus appeared all at once. The Smith God stood there, broad-shouldered and powerful, his massive torso a testament to centuries spent working his forge. His arms were corded with muscle, his hands scarred and callused. But his right leg was twisted and malformed, dragging behind him as he shifted his weight.

It was a flaw that divine power could not unmake. He bore it without shame, without any attempt to disguise it. If anything, it made him seem more real than the other Olympians with their perfect beauty. Pain, at least, was honest.

One scarred hand rested on the arm of something that had materialized beside him—a construct of bronze, massive and ancient. In the gloom, the thing gleamed with a dull, reddish sheen. I recognized it instantly. How could I not? The great automaton of Crete was legend throughout the realms. Many shades that had crossed the river carried its memory in their hearts.

Talos.

The guardian stood motionless, a colossus that towered three times the height of a mortal man. Every line of its body served a single purpose: protection. The broad chest was scored with deep gouges that spoke of weapons turned aside. One arm bore parallel scratches, as though some beast with claws like spears had tried and failed to tear through the metal.

But it was Talos’s ankle that drew the eye. A crude patch of darker metal sealed the spot where its weakness had been exploited—the single flaw found by the sorceress Medea in an otherwise perfect design. The plug was rough, utilitarian, lacking any of the artistry that had gone into the rest. A reminder of Talos’s failure, hastily mended but never truly repaired.

Instantly, I knew where this was going, and I had no desire to play this game. “This is no place for constructs.”

Hephaestus positioned himself protectively before his creation, his scarred fingers tightening on Talos’s arm. His expression was difficult to read, a mix of pride and something rawer, more wounded. The look of an artist forced to display his greatest failure for all to see. I almost felt something like sympathy. Almost.

“He is my finest work,” Hephaestus snapped at me, his voice a low rumble. “I will not have him rust in some forgotten land for mortals to gawk at. He deserves better.”

The declaration hung in the air, heavy with desperate defiance. As though Hephaestus himself did not quite believe what he was saying.

I looked at the automaton. Beyond the dents, the scratches, and the crude patch, there was only one reality I truly saw. “Deserves? He is a tool. Tools do not deserve. They serve or they break.”

It was not cruelty. It was truth. The distinction, I had found, was often lost on gods.

“He is more than a tool—“ Hephaestus shot back, his temper finally showing through the careful control.

“Enough.”

Hades’s single word cut through the rising tension. Hephaestus fell silent, though resentment flickered in his eyes. I waited for the unavoidable conclusion of this power play.

Hades’s attention fixed on me. “Talos has been repurposed,” he said, each syllable echoing with irritating certainty. “He will serve as a sentry for my realm.”

If I’d been anyone else, I might have been shocked. But a part of me had known from the very beginning what Hades intended. That didn’t mean I’d let Hades get away with it so easily. “Sentry? Another mindless guard dog for your gates? You have your Cerberus and Orthrus for that.”

“The hounds are beasts,” Hades replied, his lips twisting in an impatient sneer. “They hunger. They tire. They require care and feeding and, occasionally, discipline. This one will not. His mind is a clean slate. No memories of failure, no lingering attachments to the world above. He will walk his path and nothing more. He will not interfere with your duties.”

Perhaps Hades genuinely thought that, but I knew better. “His sheer presence interferes. This is a shore for souls. Not machinery.”

Hades couldn’t argue with that, but neither did he particularly care. “Regardless, Talos stays. He will be an additional layer of security. That is my command.”

I tilted my head slightly, meeting his stare without fear. I couldn’t defy him further. The attempt would be meaningless and would only satisfy my pride. But being petty wasn’t beneath me.

“As you command, Lord Hades.” I leaned against my pole and smiled sharply. “My regards to the Queen, when her mother allows her to return.”

The gloom around the Lord of the Underworld seemed to darken. The air grew colder. Frost formed in delicate patterns on the bronze beside us.

Hades’s jaw tightened, his eyes flashing with fury that would have reduced lesser beings to ash. But he did not strike out. That would be beneath his dignity.

It was a small victory, but it was enough. A reminder that here, in the heart of his own domain, there were still things he could not change with a command. Wounds that had never healed, no matter how many eons passed. Absences that gnawed at the edges of his authority like rust on iron.

Persephone. His stolen bride, his reluctant queen, spending half her existence in the world above where sunlight still meant something. Hers was a bargain struck that not even the King of the Underworld himself could break, a reminder that some powers existed beyond his considerable reach.

“As ever,” Hades said between gritted teeth, “you are bold, Charon.”

“I am the only truth that matters. Death is the only thing that is real. Everything else is pretense.”

His supposed love for Persephone, Hephaestus’s adoration for his creation—all of it was paltry nonsense compared to the inevitability of death.

Hades didn’t answer. He gave an imperious nod, not in agreement, but in acknowledgment. A concession that this particular battle was not worth fighting, that his authority was secure enough to survive a single insolent ferryman.

The air shimmered. In an instant, both gods were gone. The oppressive cold lifted. The shadows returned to their usual gray indifference. The river behind me resumed its sluggish current, as if it had been holding its breath and could now exhale. The spirits gradually relaxed, their despair settling into something quieter.

For a long moment, the automaton stood perfectly inert. I almost hoped the gods had forgotten to wind it, that it would remain nothing more than an elaborate memory, slowly corroding into rust. Then, deep within its chest, something stirred. A low, grating hum began to vibrate through the ground.

The sound was wrong. Fundamentally wrong. I had heard every variety of death sound in my existence—the rattle of last breaths, the crack of breaking bones, the wet collapse of failing organs. This was none of those. This was the sound of something that had never been alive trying to move anyway. An abomination against the natural order. Here, on the shores of the Acheron, it felt like a particular insult.

With a groan that seemed to come from the foundations of the realm, one massive bronze foot lifted. Talos’s leg bent at the knee, joints protesting the return to motion. The foot came down with a sound like thunder.

Thump.

The other leg dragged forward, leaving a groove in sand that had been undisturbed for millennia.

Scrape.

The automaton began to walk. Each stride was labored, graceless, a mockery of the smooth efficiency it must have once possessed. But it kept going. Of course it did. The gods never made anything that knew when to quit, when to accept that its time had passed.

“You will keep to your path,” I said as it passed, not bothering to raise my voice. Not a command—what use was commanding a thing with no will of its own? An acknowledgment of the new reality that had been forced upon us both. “And I will keep to mine.”

The construct offered no reply. Its vacant eyes remained fixed ahead, twin violet flames burning in the darkness. It simply walked, driven by purpose without understanding. Always, always making that sound.

My shore had been mine. Unchanging. Eternal. A constant in an inconstant universe.

Not anymore.

***

***

Even with Talos there, the procession of souls continued as it always had. Mothers and leaders, warriors and peasants, all reduced to the same transaction. Coin for passage. The price the Acheron demanded.

I kept watch near the barge, waiting as I had waited for uncounted eons. Talos continued his patrol, sometimes on the far bank, sometimes on the near shore, following a rhythm only he understood. I had almost grown accustomed to it, just as humans grew accustomed to the sound of rain or wind.

Almost.

The air shimmered, and a new soul bled into existence. It was not the gentle fading that characterized most arrivals, but something more violent.

He did not arrive with the faded gray of a farmer or merchant, those simple souls who accepted their fate with resigned grace. He held the faint, tarnished outline of a hero. I could see it in the set of his shoulders, in the way he carried himself even in death. He was the ghost of a legend that had outlived its own glory.

But time had not been kind to this legend. Whatever glory he had earned in life had curdled into something bitter and small, like wine left too long in the sun.

I recognized him. Of course I did. I had ferried heroes before, more than I could count, more than I cared to remember. They were always the most tedious passengers. They refused to accept that their deeds meant nothing here, that for the Acheron, courage and strength were irrelevant currencies.

But this one carried the particular stench of a fall from grace, of a reputation shattered by his own actions.

Jason. Once the greatest hero of his age. His glorious quest for the Golden Fleece had made countless others sing odes to his name. But he had betrayed his Medea, and the sorceress queen hadn’t taken it kindly.

Now, Jason’s soul was forever scarred by her grief, by the memory of the children she’d murdered in a fit of rage and madness. I’d ferried them, too, once. The youngest, a boy named Pheres, hadn’t even lived long enough to understand death.

Jason knew better. Even now, he preserved a fragment of what he’d been, of the man who’d faced gods and monsters.

He looked at me without flinching. He didn’t weep and wail. “I suppose,” he said, “even the King of Iolcos must pay his fare.”

King of Iolcos. What did such a title mean here? In my world, all crowns were rendered invisible. Perhaps he wasn’t quite ready to accept that. He would, soon enough.

“The river makes no exceptions for kings or heroes.”

His form rippled, a dry, soundless motion that made every wisp of his being shudder. Back when he’d possessed a throat and lungs, it might have been laughter. Now, the echo of what he’d lost made him look more faded.

He reached into the depths of his being and produced an obol. The coin was worn, old. He let it drop onto the sand between us.

He had not died with the coin placed on his tongue. But it responded to me, anyway. It rose of its own accord, drawn by the simple reality of transaction and bargain. It settled into my palm. I closed my fingers around it and moved toward the barge, driving the pole into the ground beside the gangplank.

The dull thud cut through the murmuring of the other dead, a summons older than memory. “Your journey awaits.”

Jason climbed aboard with the slow movements of a man who had already been buried once. He settled onto the bench behind me, and I pushed the barge away from the shore.

The journey unfolded in familiar quiet, a slow glide through water that was more dream-like than liquid. The pole slid through my hands, an extension of my will.

Jason sat slumped on the bench, already beginning to fade at the edges. I did not speak. There was nothing to say. The river would deliver us in its own time.

Ahead, a cold, violet light began to pulse from within the mists. Rhythmic, steady, like a heartbeat made visible. The light grew stronger as we approached.

Jason went rigid, stiffer than the corpse he’d left behind. “No… It cannot be.”

The barge shifted as he scrambled to his feet. It never followed anyone’s orders but my own. But fear was a powerful thing, and the barge, like the river, could feel it.

Talos emerged from the mist, his massive frame now fully visible. Spectral fire glowed from the seams of his armor, from the depths of those vacant, burning eyes.

Jason whirled on me, nearly losing his balance. He grasped for the sides of the barge, fingers passing through the wood. In his agitation, he had forgotten the basic rules of his existence. He had no substance anymore, no ability to affect the physical world, no power to change anything that happened around him.

“What is this mockery, Ferryman?” His voice came out strangled. “I saw him fall! I was there when Medea’s magic tore the life from him! I watched him topple like a cut tree! This cannot… He cannot…”

I did not stop my work. The long pull of the pole continued with the same rhythm it had maintained for uncounted ages. Let him panic. Let him rail against the impossible. His mortal hysteria was of no concern to me, for it did not affect the simple mechanics of our crossing.

“What is broken can be mended.”

“Mended?” He could not look away from the thing that should not exist. “He was scrap! Pieces scattered across the beach! The bronze was bent and torn! By whom? What power could—“

“The power of the god who forged him.” I cut him off. “Hephaestus salvaged what remained. He seemed to think Talos still served a purpose.”

The last flicker of defiance in Jason’s spirit vanished. He sank back onto the bench, the motion slow, as though his strings had been cut. The weight of his own worthless eternity settled upon his shoulders.

“So, it is like that, then. The machine was worth the effort. A tool worth mending. But I… There is no purpose for me anymore. I am not worth salvaging.”

He stared down at his own hands. What did he see? The useless memory of limbs that had once held the Golden Fleece? Himself, steering the Argo through impossible seas? Or perhaps the touch of a queen who had given up everything for him?

“I was left to rot beneath the timbers of my own fame. Left to die alone and unmourned, my name a curse in the mouths of those who once sang my praises.”

He looked up. His gaze passed over the indifferent automaton. The construct continued its circuit, unaware and uncaring of the former hero watching it. Unaware that its mere existence was a judgment more damning than any curse.

Jason’s attention settled on my back. “Do you know, Ferryman, I prepared the obol for my own passing? I knew no one would do it for me. How is it that a lifeless creature deserves mercy, while I do not?”

The river’s vast, indifferent quiet spoke more eloquently than any words I could have offered. The judgment had already been rendered.

One had been saved. One had been abandoned. That was answer enough.

But I’d lived by Talos’s side for so long now. Lifeless and mindless though he might be, he had something Jason did not.

“Great King of Iolcos, Hades deemed Talos valuable as a sentry of the Underworld. I can’t say I agree, but… Such a construct is trustworthy. Such a construct is loyal. Can you say the same about yourself?”

Jason recoiled as if I’d struck him. I was too old to feel any satisfaction over a simple shade’s grief. Besides, his journey had already reached its end.

The bow of the barge scraped against the ground. I drove the pole into the earth with more force than necessary, holding the vessel steady against the bank.

“We have arrived.”

Jason rose from the bench and shuffled onto the shore. Within seconds, he faded further into the gray mist that claimed all who ventured deeper into the realm. He did not look back. Did not offer any final words or pleas. He disappeared, one more forgotten soul joining the countless millions who had come before him.

In his wake, a single truth remained, burning as bright as Talos’s gaze. A broken tool could be mended. A broken hero was simply broken.

As for me… I began to think that, one day, I might find some fondness in machines, after all.