“How do you kill death?”
There was a hidden monastery located deep in the shadows of the Karcelok Mountains. William had stumbled on the place once while skirting the borders between Sommerslund and the Dornation Empire. Border skirmishes between the two nations meant that restricted travel between them. Even having a properly vetted set of travel papers wasn’t a guarantee of safe passage depending on the mood of the local garrison commander on the day that the traveler happened to pass by. Not wanting to escalate the conflict into a full-out war by slaughtering a number of men on both sides, William thought it prudent to simply find his own way through the barrier peaks that separated East Sommerslund from Carslyle County in Dorn.
William’s supernatural toughness, regenerative capabilities, and hellish heat had turned the trek from impossible to merely incredibly difficult. But there were limits to just how much he could subject himself to, and the Karceloks had pushed him to those limits. He doubted that even his abilities would have been much use had he fallen half a mile into the depths of a glacial crag that hadn’t seen light in ten-thousand years. But just as he’d reached those limits and been ready to turn back, William found the monastery.
The monastery had no name, William learned, and neither did the twelve ancient monks who resided inside. When he thought back to it, using the term ancient to describe the monks made it seem like an encounter out of a peasant’s tale. Like his stumbling upon the monastery was the act of fate’s divine hand guiding William towards a mysterious destiny.
It was hogwash, William knew, and yet when he though back on them, ancient was the only term that seemed right. They had each lived a hand span of lifetimes, supported they claimed by nothing more than the energy of the world; and each achieved this by delving into the very essence of existence and making themselves a part of it.
William stayed with the monks for a time, waiting out the piled snows, While there, the monks taught him the beginning steps of their path towards enlightenment, the first of which was to ask oneself an impossible question and then to answer it. William hadn’t really understood what the monks meant at the time and he’d left the monastery with his feet no further down the path of enlightenment than they had been when he’d arrived. Perhaps if he’d had several lifetimes of his own to devote.
But that was then, and William had grown as much in wisdom as he had in power. He’d discovered his own form of enlightenment in the years that had passed and had come to find his own impossible question to answer. How do you kill death? As difficult a question as it was to answer, it was an incredibly easy question to start.
How do you kill death?
First, you find it.
That in itself had proven a problem. He supposed that the average person could simply draw out their sword, reverse the grip, and then fall on the blade. But even if William wanted to choose that route it was closed to him thanks to his regenerative capabilities. And so he’d been forced to find death another way.
“The sacrifice will continue,” a rustling voice prodded. William blinked, realizing that he’d halted in a dead stop the moment the entrance stone had rolled away to show him the Arch of Death. How many leads had fallen cold in the years since William had taken up his search? How many rituals had failed and corrupted spirits been nothing more than imposters? Was this where he would finally find the spirit of death?
“The sacrifice,” this time the prodding wasn’t verbal, “will continue!”
William shot a dark look at the elderly tribesman who’d shoved him out into the arena. Most of the sacrifices that the Jhagati Tribe collected for their ritual were unwilling participants, stolen away and forced to fight one another to the death. But William had sought them out and offered himself up to them in the hopes that their Horseman of Death mythology rang true. The elders who conducted the ritual had been skeptical, but when it became clear that it wasn’t some sort of trick, they had accepted his offer and chosen him. Not that his voluntary presence had earned him any special favoritism.
The elder produced a key to free William from his magical restraints but the revenant simply concentrated on the magical bindings and let his cursed soul pull the bindings apart. The elder stumbled back in shock, looking from the key to William’s now-freed wrists and back. Then he muttered a hasty, “we thank you for your sacrifice,” and disappeared back into the depths of the approach. It was a petty act of defiance, but life was made up of such little joys.
William saw that the Jhagati had left his obsidian warscythe on the ground where he’d exited. He bent to retrieve the weapon, enjoying the familiar feel of its weight in his hands. He’d taken care to stay in his human form during the entirety of his stay with the Jhagati, not wanting to influence their choice to sacrifice him by revealing his war form to his captors. He wondered what they’d have done if they’d known that his true power came from one of the creatures that they were trying to appease.
The afternoon sun bore down relentlessly on the jagged arena and William raised a warding hand to shield his eyes as he rose to scan the rest of the combat field. He wasn’t sure exactly what he needed to do to call the Horseman of Death that the Jhagati were so afraid of, or even it the creature could truly be summoned, but he had to give it a try. But at the same time there was the matter of the other sacrifice in the arena that he’d have to deal with.
It didn’t take long to spot the middle-aged man on the other side of the arena. He looked vaguely familiar to William, but at this distance and with the sun in his eyes, it was impossible for William to know. Keeping his hand up and cupped over his eyes, William decided that discretion was not in the cards today and casually walked towards the other sacrifice.
