Something frightfully real and dread-inducing rushes through his bloodstream. He feels as a mere shadow of himself, breaking repeatedly like waves on some uncomely shore. Deep inside, he knows that a darker drift awaits. No breath escapes him now. He is on the verge of being swallowed by the liquid that races to consume his entire bloodstream. He imagines a shadow passing over him, a shadow his mind previously left untouched. One that darkens by the day, patiently awaiting those facing the inevitable. He has learned to conquer this dread, but the poison is completely taking over his body. The heat of the springs enters him, and he can nearly taste the netherworld's blackness. He imagines going deep into cavernous bowels in order to be carried by the hot sulphur springs into Hades. After a few moments, he believes he is breathing out his life's entirety, letting it spread out like a thin vaporous sheet in which the last glow of his vitality will drown. Poison courses through his veins, and he finds himself before the hot gates, as if carried aloft by his own unbreakable will to live. A thought gleams coarsely in his mind: a demigod is dying. Then his inner voice speaks the gruesome truth: I, Herakles, will die. He is bruised and bloodied, feeling his godlike brawn slowly evaporate. He perspires heavily as the world spins in his eyes, and then near-madness seizes him like a seismic tremor. He is dying and feeling every bit of it, hoping that mercy swiftly descends upon him. But his suffering persists. Darkness swirls around the mere thought of blood and dying. Mortality feels like a fiery darkness now. Herakles feels his father's abysmal embrace, half-loving and half-caring in its reach. He imagines Zeus looking down on him with a mixture of sadness and awe. He imagines him folding his cold, distant arms around his dwindling vitality. A fleeting glow springs from Zeus' nebulous orbs, the eyes that flash not with lightning but with the shimmering distance between gods and mortals. For a brief moment, his entire world seems bold in its depth, fully traversed and savored. No mortal space in his mind has been left untrodden. Moments ago, the demigod moved past the Lion's Wall, where he remembers the lion he reduced to a mere bloodied breath. His heart is infused with immortal longing. He cannot feel mortal without glimpsing the immortality in his demigod heart's untarnished reach. The hot gates reek of dead men thrust into the underworld's darkness. Hades reaches through an imperceptible distance to make him feel fully mortal. Then he throws himself into the hot springs, letting his body bathe in the curative waters. The baths enfold him in their remedying embrace. The demigod feels the hot springs consume him. The hot springs enfold him and inspire soothing relief. Herakles breathes calmly as the poison flees from his body.