The darkness that claimed him cleared up in black smoke trails after an unknown amount of time. He opened his eyes again and saw himself crumpled to a heap on the ground. He wasn’t seeing through his own eyes anymore. He was looking at himself from above. His head felt clearer than it had ever been. He felt as if a weight that was crushing him had been lifted.
There was no one else in this world. There was no ground that looked like the ground, no sky that looked like the sky. It was an endlessly empty void made for him and his grotesque body alone.
Now he could see what actually went wrong.
He’d been split in half.
His body was arranged in a complete mess, like a badly butchered chicken. His legs lay open like a book, bent at weird angles over a pile of his guts and burned flesh.
The pitch black void around him gradually turned gray. He had no sense of time here. It could’ve taken anywhere from minutes to decades.
He’d had enough time to realize death was a lonely affair. He wondered about hell, heaven, and purgatory. He thought about places he could go from here. Yet, it seemed like he was anchored to his body. He didn’t float up toward the sky. He didn’t fade away. He was doing nothing in nowhere.
At some point, the gradient slowly faded into this gray world. It established the sky, ground and horizon. The gray world’s ground turned sandy and monochrome.
A slow green bolt of lightning hit the ground right next to his body. Sending small gray sand particles peppering his wet bloody mess of a body like salting a steak.
He would’ve flinched at the thunderbolt if he was alive. In death, he just watched it happen. There was no sense of danger. He had no reason to avoid what has already happened. He’d had enough time to realize the importance of the fear of death.
The lightning bolt left a pair of black feet where it struck. It looked like it charred someone that he couldn’t see. Three more strikes hit the same spot over time, and each time, the charred body grew by a foot or two. The bolts continued like jagged laser beams from the sky.
The final bolt of lightning was impossibly powerful and slower than others. It kept going for a long time, printing a charred figure into existence layer by layer.
“You have come to my gray sands, chosen,” the figure spoke as soon as it gained a mouth. It sounded like a young man, distorted as if he was speaking from a loudspeaker underwater.
Arcen tried to speak, yell, or move. This was the first interesting thing that he’d seen after death. He’d been desperate for anything to pass the time with. He’d spent enough time to realize death was cruel in this way.
The figure raised a hand. Arcen felt himself coming back alive. He had his first thought in a great while. He could finally hear his own voice.
What the hell is—
The lightning bolt sparked as the figure was completed. Arcen couldn’t tell what to think of it. The figure was humanoid, but slightly wrong in proportions. It had two glowing white-green dots for eyes on a completely black body. The skin was cracked with green lightning, and those cracks glowed from within. His body distorted slowly, like flames reacting to an imperceptible wind. White vapor erupted from the glowing cracks, encapsulating its body in a pale outline.
Vapor trails followed as the figure moved, pouring out of the glowing green cracks.
“You have died rather spectacularly,” the black figure said, walking around Arcen’s corpse like a cat stalking a mouse.
Who is this?!
“You may know me as Osiryn. The auditor of life and death. A God for your kind.”
He can hear my thoughts?!
“Yes. You are dead in this moment. You are in my gray sands, and I am you. Your thoughts are my thoughts.”
This was no God from any religion. This thing looked more like a nightmare creature. Something that was clearly beyond human despite its humanoid shape.
Everyone sees you here when they die?
“No. Most of them fade alone to the all-dark.”
What’s happening then why am I here?!
“I am here to personally oversee the fulfillment of a contract of mine.”
A contract keeps me here to talk with you?
“It prevents you from fading to the all-dark. A contract cannot oblige me to communicate with anyone.”
What does that mean! am I going to be stuck here?! why am I special?!
“You are not special. I have a problem that is special,” Osiryn said, looking up at him, his glowing white eyes flaring intensely. “You must do something for me.”
What am I going to do for you? I’m dead!
“You will be revived, as per the contract.”
Revived! what is this contract?!
“Revival, obviously.”
What does that mean!
“Silence. Chosen. You ask too many questions.”
Osiryn used his finger to draw a line mid-air. It glowed white like his eyes and sparked slowly like the lightning that brought him into existence. He widened the line he drew, rubbing his palm along its length.
A new figure emerged, parting space time like it was just a curtain. This figure was just as dark as Osiryn, except it had no eyes. It wasn’t even bipedal. It was like a half-made shape of a human: no legs, no arms.
It looked like a floating mummy, wrapped in a human-shaped cocoon. The top half unfurled in six petals, revealing an inverted triangular head with two pinprick eyes and a dot of a mouth.
“Chronos, I seek confirmation that you stand by your decision? Is this the one that can deliver?” Osiryn asked, pointing at Arcen.
“I stand by it. He is one that can deliver. He will meet the black egg again in the near future,” Chronos said, in a voice so deep and low, with a timbre unlike any voice that Arcen had ever heard.
“You have no objections then?” Osiryn asked slower than before, his tone inquisitive.
“None,” Chronos replied as the petals of the cocoon wrapping around their head.
“Very well then,” Osiryn whispered as Chronos promptly exited the gray sands from the tear in space.
Osiryn rubbed his fingers together summoning a slow lightning bolt from the sky. He flared his fingers for the electric sparks to gather at his palm, bringing something new into existence. It was printed from the bottom to the top, creating a new being just like his own arrival.
“Eritheria,” Osiryn spoke at the sphere in his hand when the lightning bolts sparked off.
The sphere unfurled like an armadillo, stretching itself out into the shape of a bizarre creature with the body proportions of a newborn baby. It didn’t have any legs or arms. It was like a tadpole. It stood on its long tail, keeping its head upright, swaying in place like a cobra. It had eyes just like Osiryn, but instead of two dots, it had perfect circles the size of a thumb with no pupils.
“I wish to make a slight change to you, my precious child,” Osiryn whispered, gently touching Eritheria’s face with his other hand. Eritheria blinked once, leaning into his hand. Osiryn rubbed his thumb on its large forehead.
Arcen heard the familiar hum in his ears as infinite gold veins weaved a new pattern in his eyes. It looked like folds of a brain made of gold threads twisting into each other.
╭ ╰︶?? ERITHERIA ?? ︶╯ ╮
╭────────────────────╮
︶╯ QUEST ╰︶
????
RETREIVE ITEM
╰─────────╮╭────────╯
╭────────────────────╮
︶╯ DESCRIPTION ╰︶
????
RETURN THE BLACK EGG
OF THE MERONOLITH
╰─────────╮╭────────╯
╭────────────────────╮
︶╯ DURATION ╰︶
????
30 DAYS
╰─────────╮╭────────╯
╭────────────────────╮
Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.
︶╯ CONDITIONS ╰︶
????
MUST BE UNHATCHED
╰─────────╮╭────────╯
╭────────────────────╮
︶╯ STATUS ╰︶
????
DORMANT
╰─────────╮╭────────╯
╭────────────────────╮
︶╯ REWARDS ╰︶
????
SOMETHING OF EQUAL
VALUE, THREE OPTIONS
╰─────────╮╭────────╯
╭────────────────────╮
︶╯ PENALTIES ╰︶
????
WHILE THE QUEST IS SET
TO [DORMANT], YOUR
DEATH WILL BE REPLACED
BY A DIFFERNT INDIVIDUAL
ROUGHLY YOUR EQUAL,
PICKED AT RANDOM.
??
AFTER THE QUEST IS SET
TO [PENDING], YOUR NEXT
DEATH WILL BE YOUR LAST
AND IT WILL BE QUEST
FAILURE.
??
IF YOU FAIL THIS QUEST,
AFTER YOUR NEXT DEATH,
[OSIRYN] WILL KEEP YOU IN
HIS GRAY SANDS FOREVER.
╰─────────╮╭────────╯
I-is this for me?!
“Yes. You must return the egg.”
return where!
“To a Meronolith queen mother who can hatch it.”
W-why me!
“Because you will be at the right place at the right time.”
The letters slowly vanished, gold veins retreating back to the corners of his eyes where they burst from. Eritheria curled back into a ball, slowly turning into a lightning bolt peeling itself away, layer by layer.
Osiryn rubbed his hands together after Eritheria sparked out of existence. He pointed at Arcen with his left hand and he pointed at the crumpled corpse with his right hand. He snapped his fingers in the same order. Arcen felt himself pulled into Osiryn’s body, traversing the black void, dissolving into an endless black sea. He couldn’t tell how long he spent there.
Suddenly, he burst out of Osiryn’s right hand, straight into his destroyed body. He could see the same thing he saw just before dying. Fractured vision, twisted limbs, blood and this time, gray sand particles.
The puddle of blood around him slithered back into his broken body. His flesh writhed like worms on the sand, seeking other pieces to connect with, piecing themselves eagerly like a self-solving puzzle.
He saw glimpses through his fractured vision as his body twisted and turned. His fingers straightened, the bones of his shattered forearm clicked back into place. His guts crawled back into his stomach, his lungs found each other, his brain crawled back into his skull. His fractured vision fixed itself at one point, two perspectives combining back into one as his face came back together. This continued until he felt whole again, clean and pristine.
Osiryn glared deep into Arcen’s eyes, his white dots shining like two stars in a pre-Mayday night sky.
“You will not remember me or this interaction until it is time. This quest will be activated at a predefined moment in the future where you encounter the egg again. You will not get any other quest from Eritheria until this is activated, and fulfilled,” Osiryn paused. His tone turned slow and menacing. “ …or failed.”
Are you sure I’m the right guy to do this!?
Arcen had hundreds of questions. This God was just shoving this quest in his face. He was grateful for the revival, but this task seemed like another way to end up dead. He couldn’t imagine staying in this hell tower for however long it takes to see the egg again—whatever that meant. He had no idea where the egg even was.
W-what if I die before I see the egg again!
“This is not a problem. The gray sands will reject you for that duration the quest remains dormant.”
What does that even mean!
“Death will reject you until this quest’s activation, which will only happen when you see the egg again.”
I can’t die for... a bunch of days?
“Yes. However, it is not without consequences. Death is a balanced equation. Someone else roughly your equal in value will spontaneously die in your place,” Osiryn said glaring at him with his white eyes. “I hope you recognize the implications. Death will target the most suitable candidate based on proximity, a bubble that expands from you regardless of radius, until all suitable candidates are found. Death will strike one of them randomly.”
T-that’s insane! I don’t want anyone else dead—
“It is not up to me to me. I audit Death. I do not tell it who to kill,” Osiryn said, waving his hand dismissively.
I don—
“Whatever choices you make. Until we meet again, chosen,” Osiryn said, cutting him off.
The gray sands slowly turned white around him. Osiryn sparked out towards the sky in a single bolt of lightning.
The sand particles loosened and began tossing and turning like waves around him. The ground glowed white as the world fell apart, splashing everywhere in strands like ropes made of trillions of stars.
Arcen fell through the ground into the darkness underneath him, glowing sand dispersing all around him, finding their place back in this void canvas.
These stars glowed brighter and brighter, until white was all there was, swallowing him in their powerful light.
His mind went blank. forgetting gods, eggs, sands and quests altogether.
Death was cold and super wet.
Arcen couldn’t tell where he was.
All he knew was that he quite definitely died.
This place he woke up in didn’t feel like the afterlife. He didn’t belong anywhere in heaven, and this did not feel like hell. He wasn’t religious enough to believe in either of those.
He couldn’t tell how long he’d been this way. He thought he had died a long time ago, but he was still feeling and thinking things. The last thing he remembered was the oily girl laying next to him as he died.
He raised his head from the floor. He was covered in mud and all sorts of debris. He had a bunch of clothes piled on top of him.
He was fully naked under them.
What the hell happened here?!
“You should wear one of those, sir. You don’t have all the cool armor plate things anymore.” The oily girl’s voice came from somewhere behind him.
What armor plates! when did I have—
“What did you do!” he yelled, gathering all the clothes against his crotch.
“I just brought you back!” she laughed. “I was saving that contract for myself, but you needed it more. You were in five different pieces.”
“You can do that?! you can bring the dead back to life?!”
He was shocked than ever. He couldn’t imagine how this brat could seemingly do everything a brat like her shouldn’t be able to. Reversing death didn’t even fit her oil powers in any way.
“Sure can, only just once though, and it was very expensive.”
“W-what do you mean!”
“I’d love to keep chatting, but I have to go now, sir,” she said, walking around to face him.
He held the clothes tighter against his crotch. He’d never felt this vulnerable since the Mayday. She had the black egg under her right arm, holding it tight like a purse.
“You should go back to camp. Helviter will send a recovery team. Don’t tell them you did anything. Tell them you don’t remember.”
Her eyes glowed orange, and her pupils segmented to four again. “I’ll give you this subcontract. Just in case you need to hide some stuff.”
Gold veins weaved it in his eyes.
╭ ╰︶?? ERITHERIA ?? ︶╯ ╮
╭────────────────────╮
︶╯ TRADE ╰︶
????
EL
╰─────────╮╭────────╯
╭────────────────────╮
︶╯ CONTRACT ╰︶
????
FABRICATE WEAKNESS
╰─────────╮╭────────╯
╭────────────────────╮
︶╯ WORTH ╰︶
????
734,768 AURA
╰─────────╮╭────────╯
╰︶ INITIATE ︶╯
His eyes darted towards ‘initiate’ and the gold veins shifted.
W-what the hell is this!
╭ ╰︶?? ERITHERIA ?? ︶╯ ╮
╭────────────────────╮
︶╯ PRICE ╰︶
????
FREE
╰─────────╮╭────────╯
╰︶ PROCEED ︶╯
╰︶ ABORT ︶╯
His eyes went to ‘proceed’ right away.
“What did you do?” He asked, unable to see how this would change anything about his dire situation.
“I gave you this contract for free,” she said casually as gold veins shifted in his eyes into a different shape.
╭ ╰︶?? HERMAYA ?? ︶╯ ╮
╭────────────────────╮
︶╯ CONTRACT ╰︶
????
FABRICATE WEAKNESS
╰─────────╮╭────────╯
╭────────────────────╮
︶╯ DUALITY ╰︶
????
DECEPTION
╰─────────╮╭────────╯
╭────────────────────╮
︶╯ TYPE ╰︶
????
SUB
╰─────────╮╭────────╯
╭────────────────────╮
︶╯ MAIN CONTRACT ╰︶
????
FABRICATE
╰─────────╮╭────────╯
╭────────────────────╮
︶╯ RANK ╰︶
????
FIRST
╰─────────╮╭────────╯
╭────────────────────╮
︶╯ DESCRIPTION ╰︶
????
FABRICATES ALL
PARAMETERS TO REFLECT
THE WEAKEST POSSIBLE
CONFIGURATION FOR
[SELF]. THIS CONTRACT
CANNOT BE DETECTED BY
THE SKILL [REVEAL]
╰─────────╮╭────────╯
╭────────────────────╮
︶╯ CONDITIONS ╰︶
????
EFFCT DISSIPATES IN
TWENTY SEVEN MINUTES
╰─────────╮╭────────╯
╭────────────────────╮
︶╯ COST ╰︶
????
45,000 AURA
╰─────────╮╭────────╯
╰︶ACTIVATE ︶╯
Arcen had so many questions that he just knew this oily brat was not going to answer. He picked the most obvious one. This thing required forty five thousand Aura.
“W-what? I don’t have this much Aura!”
“What do you mean? you do.”
“Didn’t I just die before you brought me back?! how am I supposed to have anything left!”
“Oh, no. That’s not how it works, sir. You were fused. When I separated you two, you kept about half of the Aura, the baby took the other half,” she said, patting the egg. “You weren’t dead long enough for that to evaporate. I revived you in like thirty seconds. So, you should have like ten million.”
I have ten million?!
He was so shocked by this that he accidentally talked to the tower with muscle memory from earlier, tuning into it as if it was a radio frequency.
╭────────────────────╮
?╭─ GOLD ─╮?
╰ 0 ╯
╰─────────╮╭────────╯
╭────────────────────╮
?╭─ AURA ─╮?
╰ 8,193,276 ╯
╰─────────╮╭────────╯
“Oh god! what did I do! I have eight million!”
“Ah, it didn’t really split in half. Baby’s greedy. Sorry about that, sir.”
He stared at her, eyebrow twitching. She had completely misunderstood everything about this situation.
“Sorry?! what do you mean sorry?! I’m asking you what the hell am I supposed to do now!”
The oily girl looked startled, staring wide eyed at him. Taking a deep breath, she sighed and crouched to face him.
“You’re right. So, this is nothing but trouble. Pretty dangerous to have that much,” she rolled her eyes and counted with her fingers. “That’s like a five million dollars in a suitcase. You shouldn’t let anyone else see it. They’ll kill you for it.”
“How am I supposed to get out of this shit alive! this is all your fault—”
“The contract I gave you, It can hide everything about you. Use it over and over until you get out. Just keep lying to them. You’re a big boy. You will be fine,” she said, standing up as she flipped her oil drenched hair over her shoulders.
“W-where are you going?”
“Upwards,” she said, pointing up. “I climb.”
“That’s what all this was for?!”
“Mhmm. Yeah.”
Arcen stared at her in disbelief.
She paused after a few seconds. “Oh, by the way, there’s a woman alive in the camp. It’s very strange. I thought she was dying, but I don’t think she will be dying. I think it’s that office lady that you came here with.”
Who is she talking about?
“W-wait!”
“I’ll see you later, sir!”
“Wait, is it Jenna?!” he asked, heart racing, as he struggled on to his feet.
The oily girl’s wet footsteps faded into the darkness beyond the trees.
