*************
Silas Moon
I grow a bit annoyed at Johnny’s want to investigate the noises, but it’s his crew, his exit, and his choices. I’m just tagging along because they’re kind enough to take me. But I can feel a physical repulsion when we get closer to the origin of the rumbling. High-pitched voices in about a dozen or so frequencies meet my ears, and I almost just turn around.
Stoneclads. I was so happy when that Stoneclad, Lennox, or whatever, left us. They are just pests, stealing, distracting, and annoying all those that are actually making a difference.
But, even as Johnny speeds up to see them, I stay quiet. It is not my place. Instead, I comfort myself by looking through my haul from Heights. I spent every moment possible, forgoing stasis, to collect as much gold as possible. Some might call it begging, but I call it being resourceful.
Other people in the Underworld have little use for the gold that circulates as there is very little to buy. And what there is to buy like a house, books, or the few weapons we have, is normally obtained through bartering or favors.
However, I am pulled from admiring my gold when I hear Johnny reunite with that annoying little gargoyle.
“Lennox! What are you doing here in the Old Fields? Are these your friends?”
My eyes travel along the thirteen or so Stoneclads, probably the majority of what remains as I inwardly scoff. Of course, they are here. This is where we make them go so they leave us alone. Wait… is that? Little fucker. I knew I didn’t just up and lose it.
“These are my brothers and sisters! I was trying to tell them how awesome Sigils are, but they just won’t listen to me… hey!”
I walk up as Lennox replies to Johnny, and I rip a bag from Lennox’s stony hands. One of my gold bags that up and fucking disappeared suspiciously after he appeared.
Johnny glares at me, and I feel bad for only a fraction of a second.
“It’s mine, the little fucker took it. Isn’t that right, Lennox?”
I stare at the gargoyle and see its little face twist, but unlike what I was expecting, it doesn’t cry. It instead looks me in the face and stands on its tippy toes. Maybe this one isn’t a coward like the others.
“Finders keepers! It fell out of your pocket while we were fighting, and you didn’t get it. Lennox thought it was his!”
Anger boils in me rapidly as I go to yell at the Stoneclad. How does it not understand that’s not how things work? The little shit is probably ten times older than me! But before I even open my mouth, Johnny puts an arm in front of me and gives me a glare with specks of gold that almost makes my heart beat again. The threat is palpable. Johnny doesn’t play when it’s about children.
He kneels to Lennox after forcing me to back off with a stare and speaks to Lennox as his friends —- no, family —- watch him. I just shake my head and put the bag into my sack of things that I took with me. I turn to Blake who is now carrying the deadweight, Wyatt, and she only shrugs.
“He’s stubborn and like that with most kids. We had a battle not long ago, and his only requirement for the weaker fighters was that they make sure the children survive. Other than that, we were allowed to fight wherever and however.”
I can only sigh and tune into the conversation between the man of living flesh and the child of stone.
“You can’t do that, Lennox. If someone forgets, drops, or leaves something without knowing, it doesn’t mean it’s free to take.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Haa… Let’s say you have a rock, okay?”
“Mmhmm.”
“Okay, and if you put this rock down, knowing that you’d come back to take it, would it upset you if someone took it first?”
“...No. It’d be theirs. I wasn’t holding it anymore.”
“Okay… So what if you had a string attached to it, that was impossible to see, but let you hold onto it from afar? Would you then be upset if someone took it from you?”
“Mmhmm.”
“See, now you get it. Everyone has invisible threads that connect them to their things. Don’t take it unless they forget about it, which in that case you should return it. The other time you should take something is if they tell you to, okay?”
“Yep.”
Only after the third inane example does the Stoneclad finally understand. Their minds are truly slow. Almost as if they are turned to stone. Ah, I see. That is likely the restriction placed by Death. They are tough, extremely so, and gifted with the immortality of never aging, but with that comes the petrifaction of mind and body.
They either mature so slowly that it is near impossible to see or not at all. The only escape for them would be a Sigil as those touch the very soul go beyond the mere mind or body. Speaking of, Lennox got quite lucky with his Sigil. The synergy between a Soldier and the body of stone is massive. If only he wasn’t so Devildamned annoying.
“So, as I was saying, they won’t listen to me! I showed them how awesome my Sigil is with how I can move huge rocks and they can’t even hurt me, but none of them care! What do I do, Johnny?! And where is Wyatt, is he feeling better? Could he show them how to be brave as you did for me?”
I move away from debris leftover from the chaos of the start of the invasion from Hell and the collapse of the regions to sit comfortably. Blake joins me as she sets Wyatt carefully down beside his fox.
Interlacing my fingers behind my head, I watch the man and gargoyle go back and forth a bit more.
“Lennox, you can’t force people to do things, and Wyatt is still recovering. Here, let me talk to your friends.”
Johnny then walks past Lennox and tries to speak to the other gargoyles for several minutes, but they all just kind of look at him. And the second he stops talking, one steps away, another asks him a question about his intestines, and a third throws a rock at Lennox which just bounces off the hard skin of the Stoneclad. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt his feelings, though.
I can hear the gargoyle sniffle as I start to see the difference between Lennox and the other Stoneclads. Johnny is trying to make the other ones listen to him, but most just kind of shrug him off and leave, only a few even bothering to listen. And the ones that do only do, do so just to antagonize him.
My eyes move over to Lennox who is sitting upon rubble and looking at his hands, the stone orbs in his eyes moving just as those of flesh do. Maybe… I was quick to judge. He listens, even if it might take a few tries to get it into him, and it seems as though even his own kind ostracizes him. Was no one ever simply patient enough to teach him? Probably. Down here we undead are simply too busy. If we had people willing to give their extra time spent resting, perhaps some of the Stoneclads wouldn’t be so useless.
A flash runs through my head, shattering all my thoughts as a memory long past comes to the forefront for a moment, burning its way to my focus.
A beautiful lady standing in front of me with a smile covering her face and a dress that simply steals my heart, even now. I can’t recall her name, but I’m sure she was my wife. I can feel the rift within my heart as the memory tears its way through me. I’m standing to the side as the lady of my dreams leans down to a group of ragged and dirty children, handing out bread and speaking to them with love in her heart.
“Be sure you come back later! I’ll be teaching math and sharing, and afterward, Silas will jump in to talk about Hunters!”
The crowd of children sighs at the portion of math but all scream with joy and anticipation at the second part of her sentence. All of their eyes flicker with elation to me just as the memory breaks, sending me to the ground, embers coming out of my eyes like tears.
I try to recover quickly and wipe them away, but Blake notices the oddity and questions me.
“You okay?”
I wave her off and sit back up as if nothing happened.
“Yeah, I’m fine. Just tripped.”
She doesn’t seem to believe me but doesn’t press it. She stands and moves over the Lennox, speaking to the gargoyle as Johnny starts to give up. Only a single Stoneclad is still listening to him, and oh, wait, it just tried to steal his gun. Now it’s running away. At least he won’t shoot it.
“You want to come with us, Lennox? If your siblings don’t care, we do. Do you want to see the sun? We’re going to the surface!”
Blake tries to get Lennox to come with us, and I feel significantly less frustration at the thought than I did just a few minutes ago. Was it that memory? I think she was a teacher for orphans while I took care of us both as a Hunter in a big city, not sure which though. I can see a bit of resemblance between her and Johnny and those kids and the Stoneclads.
Lennox, however, is extremely excited at the mention of seeing the sun, despite not knowing what it is.
“The sun?! What’s that?! It sounds awesome!?”
I speak up as I move closer to the child, my voice softer than I expect.
“It’s this huge big ball of burning fire way high up in the sky. It flies through the air to make night and day.”
The child of stone’s eyes go wide at my description and is in total awe.
“Woah. Let’s go! I want to see the ball of fire!”
A small grin is pulled onto my face as I see the smile on the child’s. He starts to skip and run in the direction we came from, so I have to pull him in the other direction. It is quite hard to, however because of his innate strength, and I am forced to flow Ether throughout my body to activate Monetary Muscle, burning through another coin just to be able to pull him.
But I don’t feel any animosity at losing this coin, a fact that surprises me. Lennox doesn’t care that I pulled him and just starts moving in the direction I pulled him to, toward the Gate Of Death which only appears in the presence of the living. I see Johnny finally give up with the other Stoneclads with slumped shoulders and missing a shoe, but he seems to cheer up seeing the happy Lennox.
Blake bumps into me as she walks past me with Wyatt on her shoulder to catch up and whispers to me as she does so.
“See? You don’t hate them. Every child just needs a mentor.”
The snarky side of me kicks up without me even being able to recognize it as a reply flies out of my mouth.
“Yeah, and how do you know that?”
She turns to look at me, her brown eyes full of meaning staring right into my pale flames.
“I used to be like them. A wild child in the middle of a swamp. Sometimes all it takes is for someone to reach out and pull you up.”
I move to keep up with her, pointing out how the other children don’t seem to care.
“And what about the other ones? They just pushed aside the only hand to ever reach out.”
I hear her voice turn sad as she goes from a confident loud to a grim quiet. I can feel the experience in her voice as if she’s lived like this before and seen it happen before. I haven’t ever asked her about her past, but I can only assume it wasn’t the best.
“Some are too deep in the wild and don’t want to be pulled out. All you can do is leave them and hope they pull themselves out. You can’t force someone to change. They have to want it. At least a little.”
I go quiet as I think of those children my wife took care of. They all desperately reached out for a hand, anyone that could possibly help them. But what would those children do if they were left neglected for millennia, unable to grow or mature? Would they stop reaching? Stop caring? Stop wanting?
Perhaps.
Perhaps I was the asshole all along, unwilling to care for the woes of children forced into solitude and eternity. But then what’s special about Lennox? Nothing. He just hadn’t given up hope yet. Just as I didn’t. To see the sun. For you, E–. Damnit. Almost. Always just the first letter… never any more.
Time seems to warp, not literally, but I dwell in my own thoughts for so long that it feels instant when I hear Johnny call out to me.
“Silas!”
I look up from the ground I stared at for so long without much truly going on within this dead brain of mine. I don’t see much at first, but as Johnny moves the lantern, it is revealed under the blue light.
“Yeah, what’s— oh my. That’s—”
Lennox skips from foot to foot underneath the closed gate made of stone, iron, and skulls, interrupting my awe with his own
“The Gate Of Death!!! None of us could ever find it! My turn! How did you find it!?”
I answer the question that was proposed to me despite me not being the one to find it or to even ask a question first.
“The gate only appears under the sights of the living. Undead can not only not access it, but they can’t even find it. Not even an Augur such as Warren.”
Lennox dances happily at seeing it before running to open the gate, pushing it open with his incredible strength gifted to him. I try to yell at him not to run through as it might snuff out his flame of Undeath, but I stop as everyone else keeps yelling at him.
“Wait–...”
He doesn't have one. None of the Stoneclads do. And just as my mind comes to the unfair conclusion, I see the child made into stone a millennia ago cross the boundary of death into the realm of the living without any effect.
He has nothing for it to crush. No fire of Undeath to smother out on the way out of his, and no heart to crush on the way in.
Was that her true gift to the children? To let them all go back? If only we knew that a long time ago…
Johnny and Blake chase after Lennox worried to all hell as I stand just at the forefront of the gate, feeling the pressure on the two flames in my eyes where the Gift originates. They catch up to him and make sure he’s fine as he’s confused about why they are so worried. My eyes just trail the edges of the gate, taking in its majesty.
A crack goes through my mind, a lost memory once more coming to the surface. Something that is only growing more and more common as I seem to approach this gate.
In this memory I walk through a dark tunnel with a torch in one hand and a revolver in the other, calling out a name that seems to break and distort with the words not fully coming back to me. I only get the first letter, an ‘E’, before it distorts. My feet grow unstable and the tunnel now seems to raise out of the earth, until it eventually breaks out into a large brick building.
Several men stand inside with guns drawn, crooked faces, and blood etched into their skin while they have dozens of children, women, and men mutilated and tossed into a corner to rot. One of them is that beautiful lady I once knew. They laugh at me coming alone as one in the back raises his arms to worship the architecture of some grim being on the ceiling.
I look down and pull something out of my pack as they scream at me to surrender. I barely have time to even recognize what it is before everything goes white. A stick of dynamite out of a full bag of the stuff.
The memory breaks and I fall to the ground, panting for air that doesn’t matter to me at all, merely an instinct left in my dead body. That memory comes back to me often. Of my death. I feel arms pull me to my feet as a familiar face shakes me into focus.
“Are you okay, Silas?! Can you not come with?”
Johnny’s words make my legs stabilize and my mind steel. The sun. I’ll see it once more for you, E. I promise. You never got to see it for your last year. I just wish I found you sooner, but no amount of money can buy that.
“Yeah, I’m fine. Haven’t even tried yet. Just old memories. They spark up near you guys quite a lot.”
I push him off and pull out my coin that I will use for my Wish. Ether flows through me in a mysterious pattern that starts on my forehead and ends on my thumb as I flip the coin in the air.
“I wish to be alive again.”
I pray against hope that my wish will come true as I close my eyes and let the coin fall. There is one fatal restriction to my Wishes. The coin has to be the thing to make it happen, literally. If I ask it to kill, the coin must physically do it. If I ask it to let me fly, the coin lets me step on it to float.
So, I wait seconds with my eyes closed until I feel something, a pierce in my chest and a faint rumble deep within my body, something I haven’t felt in a long, long time. A heartbeat.
My eyes flash open full of excitement and hope that I can’t possibly hide as I take my steps toward the gate, wanting to enter the land of the living. Deep inside, I can feel something force my heart into action, the coin doing the work somehow. I take it in stride and move faster. As I do so, I feel a pressure upon my eyes built of the flames of Undeath, but the pressure dissipates the second my heart beats, allowing me to pass through.
And as I stand on the other side of the Gate Of Death with freedom in my grasp and the sun close enough to taste, I take a deep breath that fills me with strength, unlike the pointless breaths of the undead.
Sadly, just after that breath, the feeling dissipates and the rumbling within me fades, leaving me poor and weak as the coin within me gives out. But, I am out. Finally. For you E. Anything for you E. I’d spend a world of gold to see your smile once more.
I almost stumble, but the thought of her gives me strength, allowing me to keep walking. And as I expand my senses by funneling Ether into my nose for Gold Sniffer, I smell a colossal font of Ether in front of us, invisible to our sight. The Crossroads rift in space that Johnny and Blake spoke about. Without even meaning to, I walk closer to it, a bit too close and my vision distorts as I feel my body distort alongside it, bringing me to wherever this rift will take me.
*************
Silas Moon
I grow a bit annoyed at Johnny’s want to investigate the noises, but it’s his crew, his exit, and his choices. I’m just tagging along because they’re kind enough to take me. But I can feel a physical repulsion when we get closer to the origin of the rumbling. High-pitched voices in about a dozen or so frequencies meet my ears, and I almost just turn around.
Stoneclads. I was so happy when that Stoneclad, Lennox, or whatever, left us. They are just pests, stealing, distracting, and annoying all those that are actually making a difference.
But, even as Johnny speeds up to see them, I stay quiet. It is not my place. Instead, I comfort myself by looking through my haul from Heights. I spent every moment possible, forgoing stasis, to collect as much gold as possible. Some might call it begging, but I call it being resourceful.
Other people in the Underworld have little use for the gold that circulates as there is very little to buy. And what there is to buy like a house, books, or the few weapons we have, is normally obtained through bartering or favors.
However, I am pulled from admiring my gold when I hear Johnny reunite with that annoying little gargoyle.
“Lennox! What are you doing here in the Old Fields? Are these your friends?”
My eyes travel along the thirteen or so Stoneclads, probably the majority of what remains as I inwardly scoff. Of course, they are here. This is where we make them go so they leave us alone. Wait… is that? Little fucker. I knew I didn’t just up and lose it.
“These are my brothers and sisters! I was trying to tell them how awesome Sigils are, but they just won’t listen to me… hey!”
I walk up as Lennox replies to Johnny, and I rip a bag from Lennox’s stony hands. One of my gold bags that up and fucking disappeared suspiciously after he appeared.
Johnny glares at me, and I feel bad for only a fraction of a second.
“It’s mine, the little fucker took it. Isn’t that right, Lennox?”
I stare at the gargoyle and see its little face twist, but unlike what I was expecting, it doesn’t cry. It instead looks me in the face and stands on its tippy toes. Maybe this one isn’t a coward like the others.
“Finders keepers! It fell out of your pocket while we were fighting, and you didn’t get it. Lennox thought it was his!”
Anger boils in me rapidly as I go to yell at the Stoneclad. How does it not understand that’s not how things work? The little shit is probably ten times older than me! But before I even open my mouth, Johnny puts an arm in front of me and gives me a glare with specks of gold that almost makes my heart beat again. The threat is palpable. Johnny doesn’t play when it’s about children.
He kneels to Lennox after forcing me to back off with a stare and speaks to Lennox as his friends —- no, family —- watch him. I just shake my head and put the bag into my sack of things that I took with me. I turn to Blake who is now carrying the deadweight, Wyatt, and she only shrugs.
“He’s stubborn and like that with most kids. We had a battle not long ago, and his only requirement for the weaker fighters was that they make sure the children survive. Other than that, we were allowed to fight wherever and however.”
I can only sigh and tune into the conversation between the man of living flesh and the child of stone.
“You can’t do that, Lennox. If someone forgets, drops, or leaves something without knowing, it doesn’t mean it’s free to take.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Haa… Let’s say you have a rock, okay?”
“Mmhmm.”
“Okay, and if you put this rock down, knowing that you’d come back to take it, would it upset you if someone took it first?”
“...No. It’d be theirs. I wasn’t holding it anymore.”
“Okay… So what if you had a string attached to it, that was impossible to see, but let you hold onto it from afar? Would you then be upset if someone took it from you?”
“Mmhmm.”
“See, now you get it. Everyone has invisible threads that connect them to their things. Don’t take it unless they forget about it, which in that case you should return it. The other time you should take something is if they tell you to, okay?”
“Yep.”
Only after the third inane example does the Stoneclad finally understand. Their minds are truly slow. Almost as if they are turned to stone. Ah, I see. That is likely the restriction placed by Death. They are tough, extremely so, and gifted with the immortality of never aging, but with that comes the petrifaction of mind and body.
They either mature so slowly that it is near impossible to see or not at all. The only escape for them would be a Sigil as those touch the very soul go beyond the mere mind or body. Speaking of, Lennox got quite lucky with his Sigil. The synergy between a Soldier and the body of stone is massive. If only he wasn’t so Devildamned annoying.
“So, as I was saying, they won’t listen to me! I showed them how awesome my Sigil is with how I can move huge rocks and they can’t even hurt me, but none of them care! What do I do, Johnny?! And where is Wyatt, is he feeling better? Could he show them how to be brave as you did for me?”
I move away from debris leftover from the chaos of the start of the invasion from Hell and the collapse of the regions to sit comfortably. Blake joins me as she sets Wyatt carefully down beside his fox.
Interlacing my fingers behind my head, I watch the man and gargoyle go back and forth a bit more.
“Lennox, you can’t force people to do things, and Wyatt is still recovering. Here, let me talk to your friends.”
Johnny then walks past Lennox and tries to speak to the other gargoyles for several minutes, but they all just kind of look at him. And the second he stops talking, one steps away, another asks him a question about his intestines, and a third throws a rock at Lennox which just bounces off the hard skin of the Stoneclad. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt his feelings, though.
I can hear the gargoyle sniffle as I start to see the difference between Lennox and the other Stoneclads. Johnny is trying to make the other ones listen to him, but most just kind of shrug him off and leave, only a few even bothering to listen. And the ones that do only do, do so just to antagonize him.
My eyes move over to Lennox who is sitting upon rubble and looking at his hands, the stone orbs in his eyes moving just as those of flesh do. Maybe… I was quick to judge. He listens, even if it might take a few tries to get it into him, and it seems as though even his own kind ostracizes him. Was no one ever simply patient enough to teach him? Probably. Down here we undead are simply too busy. If we had people willing to give their extra time spent resting, perhaps some of the Stoneclads wouldn’t be so useless.
A flash runs through my head, shattering all my thoughts as a memory long past comes to the forefront for a moment, burning its way to my focus.
A beautiful lady standing in front of me with a smile covering her face and a dress that simply steals my heart, even now. I can’t recall her name, but I’m sure she was my wife. I can feel the rift within my heart as the memory tears its way through me. I’m standing to the side as the lady of my dreams leans down to a group of ragged and dirty children, handing out bread and speaking to them with love in her heart.
“Be sure you come back later! I’ll be teaching math and sharing, and afterward, Silas will jump in to talk about Hunters!”
The crowd of children sighs at the portion of math but all scream with joy and anticipation at the second part of her sentence. All of their eyes flicker with elation to me just as the memory breaks, sending me to the ground, embers coming out of my eyes like tears.
I try to recover quickly and wipe them away, but Blake notices the oddity and questions me.
“You okay?”
I wave her off and sit back up as if nothing happened.
“Yeah, I’m fine. Just tripped.”
She doesn’t seem to believe me but doesn’t press it. She stands and moves over the Lennox, speaking to the gargoyle as Johnny starts to give up. Only a single Stoneclad is still listening to him, and oh, wait, it just tried to steal his gun. Now it’s running away. At least he won’t shoot it.
“You want to come with us, Lennox? If your siblings don’t care, we do. Do you want to see the sun? We’re going to the surface!”
Blake tries to get Lennox to come with us, and I feel significantly less frustration at the thought than I did just a few minutes ago. Was it that memory? I think she was a teacher for orphans while I took care of us both as a Hunter in a big city, not sure which though. I can see a bit of resemblance between her and Johnny and those kids and the Stoneclads.
Lennox, however, is extremely excited at the mention of seeing the sun, despite not knowing what it is.
“The sun?! What’s that?! It sounds awesome!?”
I speak up as I move closer to the child, my voice softer than I expect.
“It’s this huge big ball of burning fire way high up in the sky. It flies through the air to make night and day.”
The child of stone’s eyes go wide at my description and is in total awe.
“Woah. Let’s go! I want to see the ball of fire!”
A small grin is pulled onto my face as I see the smile on the child’s. He starts to skip and run in the direction we came from, so I have to pull him in the other direction. It is quite hard to, however because of his innate strength, and I am forced to flow Ether throughout my body to activate Monetary Muscle, burning through another coin just to be able to pull him.
But I don’t feel any animosity at losing this coin, a fact that surprises me. Lennox doesn’t care that I pulled him and just starts moving in the direction I pulled him to, toward the Gate Of Death which only appears in the presence of the living. I see Johnny finally give up with the other Stoneclads with slumped shoulders and missing a shoe, but he seems to cheer up seeing the happy Lennox.
Blake bumps into me as she walks past me with Wyatt on her shoulder to catch up and whispers to me as she does so.
“See? You don’t hate them. Every child just needs a mentor.”
The snarky side of me kicks up without me even being able to recognize it as a reply flies out of my mouth.
“Yeah, and how do you know that?”
She turns to look at me, her brown eyes full of meaning staring right into my pale flames.
“I used to be like them. A wild child in the middle of a swamp. Sometimes all it takes is for someone to reach out and pull you up.”
I move to keep up with her, pointing out how the other children don’t seem to care.
“And what about the other ones? They just pushed aside the only hand to ever reach out.”
I hear her voice turn sad as she goes from a confident loud to a grim quiet. I can feel the experience in her voice as if she’s lived like this before and seen it happen before. I haven’t ever asked her about her past, but I can only assume it wasn’t the best.
“Some are too deep in the wild and don’t want to be pulled out. All you can do is leave them and hope they pull themselves out. You can’t force someone to change. They have to want it. At least a little.”
I go quiet as I think of those children my wife took care of. They all desperately reached out for a hand, anyone that could possibly help them. But what would those children do if they were left neglected for millennia, unable to grow or mature? Would they stop reaching? Stop caring? Stop wanting?
Perhaps.
Perhaps I was the asshole all along, unwilling to care for the woes of children forced into solitude and eternity. But then what’s special about Lennox? Nothing. He just hadn’t given up hope yet. Just as I didn’t. To see the sun. For you, E–. Damnit. Almost. Always just the first letter… never any more.
Time seems to warp, not literally, but I dwell in my own thoughts for so long that it feels instant when I hear Johnny call out to me.
“Silas!”
I look up from the ground I stared at for so long without much truly going on within this dead brain of mine. I don’t see much at first, but as Johnny moves the lantern, it is revealed under the blue light.
“Yeah, what’s— oh my. That’s—”
Lennox skips from foot to foot underneath the closed gate made of stone, iron, and skulls, interrupting my awe with his own
“The Gate Of Death!!! None of us could ever find it! My turn! How did you find it!?”
I answer the question that was proposed to me despite me not being the one to find it or to even ask a question first.
“The gate only appears under the sights of the living. Undead can not only not access it, but they can’t even find it. Not even an Augur such as Warren.”
Lennox dances happily at seeing it before running to open the gate, pushing it open with his incredible strength gifted to him. I try to yell at him not to run through as it might snuff out his flame of Undeath, but I stop as everyone else keeps yelling at him.
“Wait–...”
He doesn't have one. None of the Stoneclads do. And just as my mind comes to the unfair conclusion, I see the child made into stone a millennia ago cross the boundary of death into the realm of the living without any effect.
He has nothing for it to crush. No fire of Undeath to smother out on the way out of his, and no heart to crush on the way in.
Was that her true gift to the children? To let them all go back? If only we knew that a long time ago…
Johnny and Blake chase after Lennox worried to all hell as I stand just at the forefront of the gate, feeling the pressure on the two flames in my eyes where the Gift originates. They catch up to him and make sure he’s fine as he’s confused about why they are so worried. My eyes just trail the edges of the gate, taking in its majesty.
A crack goes through my mind, a lost memory once more coming to the surface. Something that is only growing more and more common as I seem to approach this gate.
In this memory I walk through a dark tunnel with a torch in one hand and a revolver in the other, calling out a name that seems to break and distort with the words not fully coming back to me. I only get the first letter, an ‘E’, before it distorts. My feet grow unstable and the tunnel now seems to raise out of the earth, until it eventually breaks out into a large brick building.
Several men stand inside with guns drawn, crooked faces, and blood etched into their skin while they have dozens of children, women, and men mutilated and tossed into a corner to rot. One of them is that beautiful lady I once knew. They laugh at me coming alone as one in the back raises his arms to worship the architecture of some grim being on the ceiling.
I look down and pull something out of my pack as they scream at me to surrender. I barely have time to even recognize what it is before everything goes white. A stick of dynamite out of a full bag of the stuff.
The memory breaks and I fall to the ground, panting for air that doesn’t matter to me at all, merely an instinct left in my dead body. That memory comes back to me often. Of my death. I feel arms pull me to my feet as a familiar face shakes me into focus.
“Are you okay, Silas?! Can you not come with?”
Johnny’s words make my legs stabilize and my mind steel. The sun. I’ll see it once more for you, E. I promise. You never got to see it for your last year. I just wish I found you sooner, but no amount of money can buy that.
“Yeah, I’m fine. Haven’t even tried yet. Just old memories. They spark up near you guys quite a lot.”
I push him off and pull out my coin that I will use for my Wish. Ether flows through me in a mysterious pattern that starts on my forehead and ends on my thumb as I flip the coin in the air.
“I wish to be alive again.”
I pray against hope that my wish will come true as I close my eyes and let the coin fall. There is one fatal restriction to my Wishes. The coin has to be the thing to make it happen, literally. If I ask it to kill, the coin must physically do it. If I ask it to let me fly, the coin lets me step on it to float.
So, I wait seconds with my eyes closed until I feel something, a pierce in my chest and a faint rumble deep within my body, something I haven’t felt in a long, long time. A heartbeat.
My eyes flash open full of excitement and hope that I can’t possibly hide as I take my steps toward the gate, wanting to enter the land of the living. Deep inside, I can feel something force my heart into action, the coin doing the work somehow. I take it in stride and move faster. As I do so, I feel a pressure upon my eyes built of the flames of Undeath, but the pressure dissipates the second my heart beats, allowing me to pass through.
And as I stand on the other side of the Gate Of Death with freedom in my grasp and the sun close enough to taste, I take a deep breath that fills me with strength, unlike the pointless breaths of the undead.
Sadly, just after that breath, the feeling dissipates and the rumbling within me fades, leaving me poor and weak as the coin within me gives out. But, I am out. Finally. For you E. Anything for you E. I’d spend a world of gold to see your smile once more.
I almost stumble, but the thought of her gives me strength, allowing me to keep walking. And as I expand my senses by funneling Ether into my nose for Gold Sniffer, I smell a colossal font of Ether in front of us, invisible to our sight. The Crossroads rift in space that Johnny and Blake spoke about. Without even meaning to, I walk closer to it, a bit too close and my vision distorts as I feel my body distort alongside it, bringing me to wherever this rift will take me.
