Humanity Lost (ch 3)

I lay on the floor weakened by the loss of my blood. Cold shivers racked my body and steadily the feeling grew. The inevitable feeling that I had been trying so desperately all these years to avoid, I was dieing.
The knowledge of my slow demise caused the tears I had been holding back after all the atrocities I had committed to leak out and mingle with my blood. Desperately I scrambled my mind trying to think of some incantation to save my self. I came up blank every time I tried, except for one spell. The final choice was one that I had learned a long time ago and dismissed as madness. It was a spell that drained the life from another and gave it to the user, but there was no way I would use that on anyone, not anymore. Sadly I waited for the pain and suffering that was my life to end so that I could receive my punishment and move on to another life. Someone else had plans for me though.
The last of my breaths hung on the air as the mist on a lake does in the morning. My eyelids were so heavy and although I feared death beyond all other things I felt oddly at peace. Warmth caressed my skin like the breath from a beast and I felt vigor in my bones again. Carefully I stood and looked about me, for surely I was now dead, only to see the endless expanse of a desert all around me. Shifting sands and rising dunes seemed a live snake writhing in the earth. The sun beat down without mercy and yet not a single drop of sweat creased my brow. I took a step to see if this was all real or a fevered illusion. Once my feet touched down the sands fell away into a black abyss leaving me standing in a limitless void. Startled I leaped back and the sands rose up to catch me once again.
“By the gods what is this place?” I mumbled to myself out of fear.
“That is a good start for the questions Vereoth,” the voice was omnipresent and shook me to the core, sands whipped about as the voice blew dunes to pieces. “A better question I think though would be why is this place?” the voice said with a giggle that could have flattened a mountain.
“What is with the riddles? Come out and show yourself like a man!” The voice sounded androgynous but I had to say something.
“Of course Vereoth,” there was a vibration as if the earth was humming although this was certainly not my planet. As the humming grew there was a wind that grew heavier and visible. I was pushed by the winds, or rather pulled, towards where they were culminating. As my feet slid forward the landscape changed again to a void, and then to a jungle followed by mountains, and eventually a volcanic crater! Every step was a new place and I was struck dumb by the sight. “There, is this better for you Vereoth?” this time the voice was clear and musical. I stood in a cave of crystals and rocks that were threatening and beautiful all at once, much like the woman who rounded a stalagmite and walked towards me. Her eyes were not a single shade at any time and kept shifting as she walked. Her hair was the same and it fluttered in a wind that was not there. The slim figure was shrouded in a clinging dress that seemed to change cut and design.
“Wh-who are you!” I stuttered in fear and awe. “What is it that you want?”
“Always questions from you Vereoth and I like that, questions bring knowledge.” The strange woman approached me and flipped the hem of my cloak playfully. “Do you know who I am? No? Shame.” She sounded sad at this and I puzzled over her new mood.
“I think I do!” a deep and foreboding voice came from behind me, a voice that I knew. Asmodeus! I panicked and turned to see the form of my antagonist. Yet he was not there? I swiveled to see him thinking my age had dampened my hearing, but to no avail. That was when I saw my arm, attached at the shoulder by a gold band. I pried at it and pulled trying to remove the cursed artifact that bound me to the most hated and terrifying thing I had ever known.
“Now, now Vereoth it wouldn’t do to have you die in the afterlife and in your world as well.” The strange woman moved my hands away from the band as if I were a child picking at a scrape.
“Yes listen to her Vereoth can’t have you dieing!” Asmodeus cackled madly at me and the woman somehow heard it as well.
“You will stay quiet for you have your own judgment to ponder.” Asmodeus silenced.
“What is all this? Why am I not in limbo awaiting my judgment? Most importantly, who are you?” I felt a little claustrophobic at these new changes around me and it was worrying me.
“I am Oya goddess of change. This is my realm of the heavens and you are here because I want to speak with you.” My mind reeled at this. How did I draw the attention of one of the most powerful of the gods and why did she not just kill my immortal soul if I had done so much wrong? “What you need to realize is that if you had done enough to warrant the execution of your soul we would have done it by now so calm down. Secondly you caught my attention with that, magic of yours.” She paused slightly on magic and I felt my heart skip a beat. She didn’t care to see my parlor tricks, she meant necromancy.
“Goddess Oya-“
“Just Oya please”
“Of course. Oya I never meant to harm anyone with my magic’s but I have been tricked and polluted by another entity and unable to control my actions! Asmodeus has killed the innocent with my hands and I will not stand for it any longer! Please remove him from me or let me die”. I fell on the ground crying from the pain of admitting the beast was inside me. A cool hand fell on my shoulder and I peered up through bedraggled white hairs and bleary tear filled eyes to look upon the most beautiful sight I had ever seen. My arm rested in a box with the gold band sealed on around the severed end. I was free of Asmodeus at last. Free!
“I am sorry that I had to put him back into your mind like that but it was necessary to see if you had really committed those deeds or if he had forced you. The fact that you pushed him away before is the reason that you are not being executed at this moment. Asmodeus has, I’m sure, told you his side of the story but I am also sure he left out the part about how he had killed thousands of humans in his freakish paranoia when he was escaping us. The deaths on his head caused the demonic form you saw, warped by the screams of his victims.”
I cringed and realized that I had avoided being possessed by a demon, or something very close to one. My soul and life would have been forfeit had he gained control of my mind. He had read the warnings in his books about the chance of being possessed and the horrors that entailed, horrors, like the ones he had committed! My entire body shook with fear and I lost control of my bowels in the throws of absolute and encompassing terror. I had been possessed, I had. My soul carried the taint of a child of the netherworld.
“Oh my,” exclaimed Oya, “I told you if you had done those things you would be gone already. A demon cannot save a child though. Can’t you see that you are not possessed; you forced him from your mind in the woods. He maintained in your arm but you made the sacrifice and cut him away like the decay he is. You are human, although not entirely normal.” The catch in her voice set my mind racing. What could she mean! What was abnormal? Did I do something wrong? Oh the questions in my mind!
This is all that came of those questions, “What”?
“Well you see a demon was in your mind, and you still are dead so you don’t have a real body. Also your hair, you are a Necromancer. Hardly normal. Lots of changes, yes lots of changes in the time a mortal has on earth. Oh but don’t feel bad you would have died naturally the next day, although hardly in so dramatically a way.” Oya’s eyebrows furrowed and she looked at me as if seeing into my heart. “I have a proposal for you. Since you brought back Asmodeus to us we owe you heavily and gods don’t forget their debts. So I can return you to earth with your old memories, or I can put you through the cycle and you can start over again as another person. Your choice.” My head swirled with the possibilities. I could start over and be the son I had always wanted to be for Chaos and I could turn away from Asmodeus as if he didn’t exist. My other option, to return to the world now though came up with one big hole in it. Oya had said I had no body.
“How would I return to the world now if my body is gone?”
“Oh, well I hadn’t thought of that…” My jaw dropped to my chest, this goddess was a joke. Well she was the goddess of change so a changing amount of aptitude at her job was understandable. “How about if I send back your Immortal soul and you use that as a body?”
“But if I get killed or die won’t my immortal soul die as well?”
“Hmm I guess my only choice would be to make you immortal.” I choked on the thought. Immortal! The only thing I had wanted all this long and I grasped for it like a baby at its mothers teat.
“Send me back now, please I don’t want to start over.” I grasped at Oya’s skirts and pleaded with her.
“All right, all right, here touch this orb, it will grant you the immortality that it gave Asmodeus” I clutched the ball in my grasp then peeled away the cloth covering it, it felt just how Asmodeus had said it had. My fears and cares were swept away by the timelessness of myself. I went to hand the orb back to Oya and she pulled away like a viper. “Don’t touch me with it! Sorry, here wrap it first.”
“I apologize but what is wrong with the orb?”
“Well I don’t see how it could hurt; see the orb changes the life of a person who touches it. So if a mortal touches it the power makes them immortal but if an immortal touches it they become mortal.” I nodded my head and made my apologies. I handed back the orb now wrapped in silk. “Now Vereoth I will return you to your world as a man but you will be immortal. Good luck. Oh and watch ou-,” the last words were cut short by a sickle the size of a full grown man rising up from Oya’s gut. There was a look of shock and surprise on Oya’s face when the blade retreated and she was left standing with a foot long slice in her middle. Staring incredulously at the wound as if it should go away a man rose up behind her like a specter. A heavy dark smoke emanated from his shoulders in a semblance of hair. The eyes were set deep in the skull and burned like a furnace, the red of coals on a fire. A skull shaped helm crested his head and formed a disturbing picture in my mind of who this was. Godambe, the god of the underworld.
Oya’s hands flew towards me and I was immediately wrapped in a heavy mesh of swirling colors and lights. The cacophony was overwhelming and I soon lost consciousness. I awoke later, although I couldn’t tell how long I had been out, I thought that it hadn’t been too long. I rolled over and saw the eyes of hell staring back at me. A grin of flame split the freakish black head into two equally frightening parts. I tried to move away but met with resistance against my back. I turned to remove the obstruction and saw only a gossamer veil.
“Oh yes, you should be glad that lace is there to save your miserable hide.” Godambe’s voice echoed through the mind and tore sunder all things in its path I trembled but did not change my expression of defiance. “If it weren’t for that you would be dead.”
“You could try but no weapon can kill me now you foul pox.” I spat for good measure, though I regretted it.
“Really? I suppose you are ‘immortal’ now! Do you know who I am! I am the god of death, no one is immune to me not even you and especially not her.” He pointed his massive scythe at Oya who sat holding her stomach and bleeding out, she really was dieing! “As god of the underworld I can end any life I choose and whenever I choose. However some people are tougher than others and require a little closer attention, such as her. I have planned this since the beginning of time and I will not fail now. I will control the cosmos by taking the lives of my fellow gods and using that to defeat the god of time.”
“No!” Oya burst up to her feet and with a ferocious effort threw off her captors and touched the shield around me. “Go and be free, you are more important than you think Vereoth.” The lands around me fell and rose only to fall again, I saw ages of time pass by and I also saw the fate of Oya. Godambe drew back his arm and brought down his scythe with a blow to rock the heavens. I fell away into another place and time back towards my home.
I awoke on the ground, the day was bright and I felt very tired. I stood up and realized my arm was still attached, but there was no blackness no evil and no Asmodeus. Toward the end of the trip beyond death I had believed it a dream and couldn’t reconcile it in my mind that the experience was real. The arm proved it though. I reached up and felt for my hair, finding it full and long I dragged it in front of my eyes I saw the stark white strands and sighed on the inside. “I suppose the gods can only do so much” I chuckled to myself. The hair could be explained away, maybe but if the daemon in my arm was gone then I could be happy.
I conjured up a table and a chair along with the finest of delicacies and dug in to the meal. I didn’t feel any more full but the taste and satisfaction was all I really wanted. I was free. The word tasted sweet on my tongue and I shouted it to the canopy of trees above me. A startled gasp rose from the bushes behind me and I jumped back in shock. A blade came to my hand as I willed it and I was inwardly pleased that my magic was once again intact. Old age had crippled my abilities and now I was again in my prime of strength. A head of dark brown hair lifted up from the bush with its arms raised to signify peace. The head was attached to a lovely young woman with a full face and round hips. Her eyes, a deep emerald, held me in a steady gaze instead of darting about like most do when under a sword. I crooked my finger to tell her to come closer and she did. The woman really was gorgeous, about three inches shorter than I and curvaceous nearly to a fault. I looked her over and saw no weapons or any intent to use one, so I put down my sword and it disappeared. Her eyes widened at that.
“I mean you no harm sir, I was only looking around and was scared by your sudden shouting. I only came here because I saw a bright flash like lightening in the day time and thought to see the cause myself.”
“Sorry, but I am a little nervous at the moment. I had an odd night.” The understatement of the century.
“What is that thing you did with the sword and the table sir?” that was when I realized that the tables had disappeared and so had my partially eaten lunch.
“Well how do I explain this to you?”
“You’ll explain nothing to her!” a crotchety old voice came from the trees past the clearing. “Come away from there Briana!” an old man with a cane hobbled up to the girl and pushed her behind him. He put his hands out with the palms facing me. “I won’t have some freakish, devil-worshipping, dead raising, succubus seducing my granddaughter! Back to hell with you demon!” The man thought I was a succubus! That was when I realized that my white hair looked odd with my now smooth and youthful skin, another gift from Oya. There was an odd noise from the mans palms that triggered a memory in me, a fire ball! I threw up my arms and a warding against the spell just in time to block the blast. Something wasn’t right though. The spell started to bend back towards the old man and scorched his clothing and hair. I shouted at him to stop but he merely put more into the inferno that was slowly going back to him. I wondered at his madness at attacking himself when I noticed my spell was not a block like I had thought but a reversal. As the flames turned the ground around us to a desert the old man merely looked on in a fevered concentration blasting himself now with flames. There looked to be a smile on his face as he burned away his own flesh, a smile of knowing that I would never be able to harm him again and a smile of madness. He died and his skeleton burned with the remaining force of the flames. The girl, Briana, looked on in sheer horror and ran screaming about a devil.
In the back of my mind I heard a dark laughter that made me want to vomit. A laughter I had thought gone forever.