Over the next few days I learnt what powers I had been given. What new things my new second life offered me.

First, and most blessed, Vindrexis insisted, was my immortality. The way he went about showing me how it worked was strange, but effective. As I was shown around the complex of buildings - which apparently was the other god Sabazios' temple - several people attacked me at once. Unexpecting it entirely I gasped as I fought against five long pikes with nothing but my bare hands.

Desperately I tried to sweep them away. I cried out to Vindrexis as he stood there, beyond the warriors. "Help me, my lord!" I screamed. And he just smiled.

My claws managed to snap the neck of one with a flash of pain, but the others were long and strong. Damascus steel struck into my abdomen, then a microsecond later, my shoulder. With horror I watched as they were pulled out, but did not bleed. Instead glistening sand poured from the wound, and agony screamed from where they had struck. I shrieked, and attempted to pull one of the spears from the attackers, curling my full band around it. I felt another stab of pain as my talons scraped down the edge of the wood, and another blade was shoved deep, right down into where my heart wasn't anymore.

I let out the loudest, most violent screech as the pain of death twisted into me. Throwing my head back I cursed the world in rapid, cawing kenku. As the and rushed faster and faster from me I felt my body becoming weak. My angled legs began to shake, my fists closed in on themselves. I then realised that I had not breathed all this time, but it was too late.

I was done.

Crumpling down into a heap, my energy expelled, I became nothing more than a doormat. Still in pain, but able to do nothing about it I lay motionless but writhed and gasped in my head. Entirely exhausted I was collapsed on the ground and left alone. Feet walked by my own eyes, dragging spears with them and leaving my body alone. I was helpless, lonely, and I should have been dead.

Except I wasn't. Because I already had been, and my soul was now tied to a ruined hulk of a body. Completely alive, but completely dead. For a very long time I lay there, alone and left. Eventually feet moved into my view again, wrapped in soft leather on the ground of dusty stones.

"Ah, my undead creation," he whispered, "Ah, Avin. How perfect you are."

He curled a hand around my chin and pulled it up. Dead, but aware, I gazed back helplessly into his eyes.

"Don't you see what I have given you?"

But I could not reply. My body could not move for it was as it should be in death. I could not take in the air to form words, and I could not even move my eyes to look away. They were stuck in one place, but still seeing as my body continued to run out of the fine sandy dust.

Which I knew then was essentially my new blood. A heart I did not need for my body had no blood anymore, but this dust that seemed to fill my veins was the substitute. It poured out like a stream of water, spilling onto the floor. I felt my strength at nothing, my pain at maximum, but all I could do was live through it, the one called Vindrexis gazing down at me.

"You are truly astounding."