“Goddamn, that’s creepy,” Lucian said as his arm scrambled back over to him.
It flipped onto its back, the legs curling just a small amount. The flesh started to strip away, revealing the bone inside. Lucian took notes on how each of the centipedal legs was connected to his radial bone and his ulna.
He created a joint that allowed the centipede legs to fold out and then press back to spaces along to his radial bone and his ulna, stacking so that they wouldn’t create any bulges in his flesh.
He then reformed the flesh around his severed arm, noticing that it was now helpless again, not able to do much more than flip itself around and then use its palm to scoot forward.
The centipede legs tore out of it, giving the arm mobility again.
“Fuck yeah,” Lucian said as he looked down to his own arms, imagining his skeleton and the retractable centipede legs attached to it.
Now, if his arm was ever severed, or if he had to sever them himself, he would be able to utilize them in the same way he used his cape and his crows, as distractions and for other tactics to take down parasites, or anything else that came at him, from angels to injuresouls, his own kind as well.
After all, there was no telling what Yoshimi and he would encounter on their way to the South Wind.
Chapter Twenty-Seven: Shigatse
Lucian awoke the next morning.
He placed a hand on Ezra’s head, blinking as he looked out at the glistening lake beyond his workshop.
The sun was coming up on the horizon and everything had a pink tone to it, the smell of nature in the air, a scent of wet soil and budding flowers.
“Do you like it up here?” he asked the cat as he scratched behind its ears.
His two crows, perched on a pillow at the end of the bed, started to wake, turning to Lucian and then turning away.
“You two are sleepy this morning,” he said as he dropped to his feet, a cup of coffee appearing in his hand.
Lucian walked toward the water, sipping his coffee. He paused once he reached the shoreline, taking in a deep, satisfying breath. He continued forward, the water coming up to his ankles as he made his way in. He looked down at his bare feet, noticing that the temperature of the lake was just right, not too cold, not too hot.
He assumed that Yoshimi would not be able to find this place, that he would need to make himself available in the real world.
This last thought caused Lucian to chuckle.
The real world?
There must have been something better to call it than that, considering it was only real to the people who were able to inhabit and interact with it.
His first crow joined him. It dipped into the lake, shaking off the water once it came back up.
He raised his coffee cup to the crow, his spherical creation naturally tapping its beak against his cup to cheers him. Lucian finished his cup, the tasty beverage instantly refilling as his cape came to him, settling on his shoulders.
“Sleep well?” he asked his cape, the fabric bunching up and relaxing in response. “I will take that as a ‘yes.’”
Lucian smiled as his stats flashed before him.
With two hundred Soul Points, he was much more formidable than he was a few days ago when he would grow exhausted by the end of one battle. With his regen rate clearly tied to resting, it was imperative that he continued to increase his SP going forward. Lucian could only imagine how strong he would be in a year’s time, let alone one hundred, or even three hundred like Old Death.
He looked back to his outdoor workshop, and even though it didn’t matter, he mentally created a garage door that would shut it off from the outside world. Nothing inhabited the space, and he controlled the weather, but it felt very human to close something up, to separate it from the rest of the world.
As the door started to retract, Ezra slipped out, followed by his second crow. His predecessor’s cat waited by the door that led downstairs, and after letting him in, Lucian walked to the side of the cliff that overlooked the empty city in the distance.
He took another sip of the hot beverage, nodding as he stared out at the lake.
Lucian’s coffee cup disappeared as he pressed his pinky finger and his thumb together.
His form took shape on the beach in Portland, Maine, on the small cliff overlooking the Atlantic. He saw the bench that he’d sat at a few days ago and made his way to it, yawning as he took a seat.
His coffee cup reappeared in his hand, and he took another sip, staring out at the sea, at the small clumps of islands in the distance. He could see that there were homes on the islands, reachable only by ferry.
It was something he planned to check out the next time he came to Portland. And that wasn’t all that he wanted to see. Lucian had the ability to go anywhere in the world, yet he’d only been to New York, Salem, Portland, and Kyoto. And it wasn’t like he had to get on a flight and deal with jetlag or an annoying child a seat in front of him.
He smiled at this thought.
How many people had the world at their fingertips only to stay at home, or in places that were comfortable to them?
One of his crows took off, the other following it. Lucian watched them chase each other, the two dipping down toward the water and diving in, coming back up, spinning in the air, the sun reflecting off their forms.
“You two really are like having a pair of puppies,” he said, taking another sip of his coffee.
Lucian sat like this for a good hour, staring out as the water sluiced back and forth, a sailboat slowly drifting away from one of the islands in the distance.
At some point, his crows returned to him, spiraling around Lucian before finally settling on the ground in front of the bench. A woman in warm athletic wear walked by, stretching her arms over her head.
Name: Elizabeth Thompson
Date of Birth: 10/10/1947
Date of Death: 09/19/2029
Lucian watched her do her warm-ups, the elderly woman moving slowly, talking to herself, going over her plans for the day.
Eventually, she pressed on, jogging slowly once she reached the beach.
“Are you ready?” a voice asked him from behind.
His crows jumped into the air at the sound of Yoshimi’s voice. She wore dark robes similar to Lucian’s, although hers were in the fashion of a kimono tied off by a black obi with subtle red dragons on it.
“Ready whenever you are,” Lucian said, standing.
“Any new creations you want to tell me about?” she asked, observing his crows. She had white makeup on similar to that of a geisha. Aside from her eye makeup, she wore a two-inch strip of black on either side of her face that reached all the way to her hairline.
“Let’s just say I have a few tricks up my sleeve. I appreciate you coming with me.”
“As we discussed, I won’t be able to go with you all the way. It will be up to you to get inside the wall guarding the South Wind if you plan to rescue your predecessor.”
“Aware. Do you have any ideas on how I could go about doing that?”
“I have one idea, but you’re not going to like it.”
Rather than teleport away immediately, Yoshimi walked to the bench and took a seat. She motioned for Lucian to sit next to her.
“This is a beautiful place,” she said as she looked out at the ocean, at the islands in the distance. “It reminds me of Enoshima.”
“I haven’t been there.”
“I know, but you should go next time you visit Japan. Now, regarding a possible way to get past the South Wind…”
Lucian listened intently as Yoshimi told him of her plan.
There was a level of risk involved that he wasn’t quite comfortable with, but there really wasn’t another way in.
It was a risk he was going to have to take.
Once she finished, the woman stood, offering Lucian her hand. “Shall we?”
Lucian’s crows dropped onto his shoulders; he touched her hand and the two of them disappeared.
“Holy
crap,” Lucian said as he took in the view of a city spread across a valley, a white castle-like building towering over the homes. It was late in the day, and there were a few clouds in the sky, the view of mountains stretching as far as the eye could see. “What is this place?”
“Shigatse. It was the capital of Tibet hundreds of years ago.”
“And that building?” Lucian asked, impressed by the sheer size of the structure that loomed over the city. The structure was as wide as some of the mountains, almost as if it had been chiseled in the stone. Its walls were white with red trim. A series of stairs ran along the perimeter of the structure.
“The Shigatse Dzong. It was a monastery until the Chinese destroyed it,” she explained. “It was rebuilt from pictures starting around 2005. It is now a museum for Tibetan culture.”
“Interesting.”
“It is, but it was more interesting before they destroyed it,” she said, pursing her lips.
Lucian looked to her; a vulture overhead circled once and moved on. “You visited it then?”
She nodded. “You may have noticed by now, but one can get pretty bored as Death. I tried, and continue to try, to visit as many places as I can. As you can imagine, places that have gone through great changes, of which there were many during the twentieth century, produce easy targets for people like us. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
Lucian nodded.
“I know that can sound cruel, but it is a reality that we have to navigate.”
“Makes sense.”
Yoshimi turned toward Shigatse. “We will continue through these mountains to reach the South Wind, but before we set off, perhaps we should take a quick float around the city.”
“Lead the way,” Lucian said. He watched her form rise into the air and slowly pick up speed as she moved down the cliffside. Lucian joined her, his crows flying behind him. “Anything you are particularly interested in seeing?”
“I’ll let you know when I see it,” she said as they started to move through the dusty streets.
The homes of Shigatse were all built in a similar style to the giant monument on the hillside as if they had risen as clay from the Earth and someone had shaped them and smoothed out their surfaces. There were none of the interesting grooves or the clean lines of the classic New England architecture that Lucian was used to, which itself was styled after Greek Revival houses.
And while it didn’t have the same curb appeal, the homes here were practical, beautiful in their own way, all with flat rooftops, the construction crude, and their outsides painted white or red. The city was a perfect match for the flat valley that surrounded it, the occasional ridge from the start of the hill or the top of a golden stupa adding some variety to the horizon.
“Is there anything in particular we are looking for?” Lucian asked after they had flown around for a good twenty minutes.
“I was hoping that we would be able to witness a Tibetan death ritual,” she said. “It appears none are happening at this moment.”
“Old Death mentioned something about that as well. What’s so interesting about it?”
“You would have to see it to truly appreciate what they have devised.” Yoshimi slowed to a stop. She turned to Lucian, his two crows continuing on and checking the area out. “You’re your predecessor have a name? Perhaps I know him.”
“Actually, he never told me his name. I usually just refer to him as Old Death.”
She considered this for a second. “I suppose if he has been Death for three hundred years, he may no longer care to use the name that he was born with. What else do you know about him?”
“He was born in 1695 and died in 1720. He has some pretty wicked old-school insults, he’s fond of puns, and like you and me, he tried to take on Death, which was how he got the mantle. His mentor was Death for like a thousand years or something.”
“I see,” she said, turning away from the Shigatse Dzong, the colossal structure now casting a shadow over a portion of the city.
“But that’s about all I know.”
“Yet you are loyal to him?”
Lucian nodded. “If not for him, I wouldn’t have the opportunity to save my brother. I’d like to return the favor.”
“If you make it through this, you should return here someday; it is worth witnessing one of the rituals.” They reached the end of the city, and Yoshimi floated down to the ground. “Let’s go on foot for now. It will give us an advantage if the Progeny of Light are running patrols.”
“I’d like to avoid them as much as possible.”
“While they wouldn’t admit this now, the Progeny of Light was the name first used by the Watchers, most of whom have now been exiled,” Yoshimi said, a strand of her black hair falling into her face. “They are mentioned in various books associated with the Abrahamic tradition, there are even some accounts that divide them into good and bad Watchers, but I’ve yet to encounter a good one. According to the books, they were sent by God to instruct the children of men, angering Heaven once they started cohabiting with mortal women and teaching people things that would lead them astray, such as Azazyel teaching men how to make weapons.”
“Is this stuff actually true, though? Did these fallen angels literally do that?”
Yoshimi shrugged. “You may have already noticed that we aren’t able to see into the future, and while we can conjure things from the past, there are still mysteries and enormous pockets of information lost to eternity. Was Azazyel, the one who is hunting me, truly responsible for teaching men how to make weapons? Or did men figure it out when they developed a taste for meat and a desire for conquest? Or was it something else? Could there have been a force that is neither spiritual nor of this world that taught people to kill? I don’t know. What I do know, however, is that every ancient civilization that has ever continued long enough to see its ideas spread to modernity have had their own creation myth, their own deities, and their own interpretations of how things came to be the way they are.”
“That’s better than I could have put it,” Lucian admitted. “But I’ve basically thought the same thing before.”
“If you truly utilize the power given to you in your new role as Death, you can travel around the globe and see these things for yourself, which can be a good and a bad thing. Good, because your perspective widens; bad, because the more you learn, the smaller you feel in the grand scheme of things.”
“So you don’t believe that Azazyel and the other Watchers were banished?”
“No, I believe it.”
Yoshimi came to a stop.
“You do?”
She looked up at a ledge above them; pockets of snow were now visible on a few of the edges that jutted out from the cliffside. “I do. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be going around with their wings tucked between their proverbial legs. I just believe their contribution isn’t what they actually think it is, and while they may have had influence in one region of the world, predominantly the areas along the equator spanning from Africa through the Middle East, I believe there’s more to the story. Regardless, I don’t like the fact that he is hunting me. And who would? He’s monstrously powerful.”
“It seems like everyone is hunting you.”
Yoshimi smirked, still looking up at the cliffside. “Let’s move this way.” She floated sideways, her feet lightly finding a place on the side of the cliff.
Lucian joined her, noticing his perspective switch.
It wasn’t the first time he’d walked along the side of a wall, but he was usually in the middle of a battle when he did so, his focus on killing demon bugs rather than actually thinking about the action he was performing.
“I think I understand why the Watchers would be hunting us,” Lucian said, “considering they were probably brainwashed with the same stuff all the angels seem to be brainwashed with about us being evil and all. But why are they hunting Life?”
“The Watchers were banished, and the new Progeny of Light were instructed to kill any of the offspring that the
y had with mortal women. You might find this hard to believe, but the Progeny of Light were stronger then than they are now. The angels were actually tangible back then, visible to mortals, something that is no longer the case. The Watchers who had fathered children were angered even further after their offspring were slaughtered, which is one of the main reasons they go after Life.”
“Sometimes I feel like this is just the tip of the iceberg…”
“It is, and the water around the iceberg is murky at best.”
The two came to a mountain pass, a cold breeze picking up and blowing glistening bits of snow over the cliffside.
“What ended up happening in the fight you had against those two Deaths?” Lucian asked her after they’d walked for another fifteen minutes in silence, his crows occasionally checking out the area and returning.
“I left Menor and Alice relatively quickly after you exited the battle. They are relentless in their pursuit of me, and I would prefer not to permanently end their existences.”
“Why’s that?”
“Death hunters are frowned upon in our community, obviously, and killing one usually conjures others. My hope is that they give up when they realize it’s impossible for them to kill me. I understand the appeal of rapidly gaining power. If you kill another Death, you absorb all the power they have taken from parasites. But they’re going about this the wrong way.”
“It’s like a cheat code,” Lucian said. “No, power-leveling. Actually, it’s more like power-leveling.”
“Which is?”
“Leveling up a character in a video game as quickly as possible with the least amount of playtime. I equate this to going after parasites in mental health institutes rather than the ones artificially keeping people alive. One mental health parasite is worth two-point-five Soul Points, the regular ones, ‘leeches’ as you call them, are worth just one Soul Point.”
“Soul Points?”
Lucian shook his head. “Not power-leveling, sorry. Death Hunters are more like Player Killers. They go after high-level Deaths, like you, to speed up their own progress.”
Death's Mantle: A Dark Fantasy GameLit Novel Page 25