by Mike White
Ud the Mortal
By: Mike White
Copyright 2016 Mike White
(Cover Image “Ghost Cat”(modified for scaling) by: Joel Frieson under Creative Commons 3.0)
Cover Font “Astral” by Aaron Pyran with permission for commercial use.
Ud willed his hand up one final time within the dirt of Second World. If he didn’t break the surface this time, he promised himself that he would let his bones sink down again.
Just one last push.
Then he could rest, one way or another.
He felt every grain of sand as he strained against the crush of soil. His greying hand, with the loose skin on it looked much improved from the white bones they’d been in Fourth World. There was an agonizing moment when he was extending out above and reaching the apex of a climb that had lasted for longer than he could even remember when he felt nothing but more sand.
But then- moisture.
He almost wept at the first water from First World that he’d felt for many lifetimes as it invigorated the tips of his fingers. He immediately felt color and sensation coming back into hands as he writhed upward with the will of a demon.
Before long, the seeping water became a torrent as Ud created a hole. Water rushed in all around him, and he fought to claw his way out of the final dregs of feculent mud from Second World.
And just like that, he was free. Floating unencumbered in the lucent waters of First World. There was an odd pressure in his chest, within moments of breaking free of the mud, as he felt a wave pass through him once his feet no longer touched Second World’s soil.
At first, he didn’t think anything of it. He was caught by the rapture of the First World and all of its sensations to such a degree, floating free in the Blue, that it took nearly a minute and a steeply rising pressure in his chest before he realized that he was alive now, and needed to breathe.
Or, he’d be in serious danger of dying and sinking down again.
Enough of his old memories were intact to tell him that it wasn’t so dire yet though, so he drew on more of his remembrances of being Alive, and kicked to the surface. His face broke the top of the lake, and his first breath of air from First World was almost as sweet as its waters.
What should he do next! So many choices. One had so few choices in Second World, usually only two in Third World, and none in Fourth. Usually.
It was all so blue and bright he could barely stand it. He moved his hands and felt the air move underneath and over them. Nothing like the dead stillness of Second World at all. He stared up at the intense light above him, awed by it, and after a moment he realized he couldn’t see it anymore, and he felt an intense, sharp sensation in what he now remembered were his eyes.
They were growing back! He didn’t just have a sense of the world anymore, but he saw it, physically!
Though he couldn’t presently.
That’s what you get for staring at the sun, He thought. Ud laughed as tears came out of his closed eyes and then lay down, waiting for the pain to subside so he could see again.
Eye pain from staring directly into the sun was quickly becoming one of his favorite memories, and he laughed and wept at the sheer sensation of it.
He looked at his surroundings when his vision came back. This was not the land of the Black-headed people.
When he had last been mortal. It looked so different: Was he even in the mortal realm? It felt like it. He was breathing again. But there was no sand around him at all, only plants. Green plants were everywhere! They didn’t look like any plants he ever remembered, and there was no desert here at all.
Maybe there was a zeroth world? He had expected to feel the scalding heat of day, to walk across the sand to a life-giving oasis. In fact, he’d assumed that’s where he was when he emerged in water.
But no, it seemed more likely that he was simply in an area of the Mortal World, of First World, far beyond the one he’d known when he was alive. After all, had it not been so long ago? And he did have memories of lakes and rivers, of the sea even, so maybe he was not remembering it right.
Perhaps the Land of the Two Rivers had grown so much in the millennia that this was indeed where he now stood. Somehow, however, he doubted it. This sun was weak compared to the one the Black-Headed people knew. That he knew.
Which was fine. It was hard to be nostalgic about a place you could barely remember. Ud’s vision started getting strange, and he remembered that he had to breathe again. Being a mortal was hard work! He laughed as he lay in the mud next to a sparkling blue lake covered in green growing things unlike anything he had ever seen before.
Staring at that blue sky of First World was strange. A wonderful kind of strange, but Ud still had afterimages of the blood red sky of Second World in his mind. He’d spent plenty of time looking up at it during his centuries there; wondering what gave it that color, why it looked like a muddy red in areas.
It was from the mud I just came through. Assuming it’s the same, He thought. Perhaps when he first felt the waters of First World this time, he had shifted in dimensions, and the mud he was standing on was not the mud of Second World at all.
Us grunt ghouls are never told anything, he thought.
But then again, he wasn’t anymore was he?
He was alive now.
Right, breathe again.
He took a shaking breath, trying to get used to the sensation, to get his body to do it on its own.
Thousands of years as a 4th world creature, centuries as a 3rd and 2nd, and now he was mortal again.
That was going to take some getting used to. As far as he knew, he was the first to come back. Every ghoul, ghost, wight and other creature from The Way Down had told him that it was ‘technically’ possible to make it back to the TipTop-
Just like it was technically possible to fight ten War Ghouls blindfolded.
They’d just never met someone from Fourth World before, Ud reasoned. They’d never met me. Compared to the 3rd World Climb, the other two were like climbing over a, what were those big rough things with green on top?
Trees.
Didn’t look like the trees Ud remembered at all, of course. Those had long fronds that came way down; they weren’t full of small flat triangle at the top. And they weren’t often so big. And so many of them!
There was just green everywhere here.
Like the skies had opened up, and water had flooded into the world, making everything grow in memory of that stored water. Ud didn’t see anyone fighting over this pool of water at all here like in his ancient Land of the Two Rivers, assuming he wasn’t there anymore.
Ud had spent so long imagining what it would all feel like, more years than 10 generations of mortals lived, that it was confusing now that he stood here. Should he be disappointed? Should he be enthusiastic beyond all ken?
Somehow he almost felt both.
The best part about being mortal was that even the negative emotions were interesting and every moment was unpredictable. He had been out in the open here for 15 minutes and he hadn’t been attacked by a single war ghoul or anything else. That had to be a first in millennia.
Even as he thought about it, light grey clouds rolled in overhead, and he felt water hit him from overhead. That never happened in Second World. The water there was black and foul, though far better than the ‘waters’ of even further below in the Way Down.
But this water was something else entirely. Fresh and clear it, dropped from a sky with no end. That was Ud’s understanding anyway-that First World had no ground overhead. It was actually on top. He was on the top of the Worlds. An unfettered sky. Wind moved from it, as if reading Ud’s thoughts and demonstrating how it went where it wished.
I’m free and clear, Ud thought. And I just want to stay this way forev
er.
But, unfortunately he got cold after what must’ve been an hour in the rain. Not that Ud realized this at first. He noticed that his body was acting strange. It was moving, even though he wasn’t telling it to do that.
Skeleton Ud from Fourth World had never done that. Nor had Ghast Ud or even Ghoul Ud from the Third or Second worlds. Then, wafting by on by in his mind, like the light breeze that precipitated the thought in the first place, he got a memory of rain from his mortal days.
The realms of mortal men are all physical, with the spirit aspect connected to them by an anchor. Little icebergs of spirit, with the part on top only in the physical, he thought.
That meant physical properties, which meant that his physical body was reacting to the cold of the physical world. It was beyond belief!
He didn’t have to seek shelter from War Ghouls or Ghast winds, but from regular, ordinary, physical rain and the cold! Ud got up then, mud sloughing off his bottom side, and he laughed at the glorious physicality of it. A thing that was what it was. Simple. One