Death was just the beginning for me. I remembered an old minister once telling me otherwise. He always said that once you die your physical life is over; that it marks the start of your spiritual life with God. His meaning was simply stated that humans, with our finite knowledge of our world, believe that death will end all our life’s suffering and pains, as long as we lived a faithful life in our devotion to the Lord. My death, on the other hand, just caused me more pain that I get to feel again later. Most men only have to go through death once. For, I get to die at least twice, maybe more times. But I’ll never forget that venomous tooth of steel sliding into my body, the cries of the princess when she saw her best friend dying in her arms, and the last words she ever heard come from my mouth: the promise I’ll never be able to fulfill, “I hope you can find another who can give you what I can’t give now, a happy life with one who will take care of you. But I swear to you, I’ll be waiting for you in life everlasting; I’ll find you, I promise.”
Thinking on my life experiences, I began to feel tears welling up in my eyes. I was not going to cry though; what good would it do? I quickly took in my surroundings. It was similar to the Realm of the Twilit. There were dark structures surrounding me, all of them had the same architectural design as the castles of home. Some of the buildings were in shambles that made it look like it had been years since they were used. Others had pale light flowing from their windows like small streams of white water. The buildings seemed so familiar, yet so alien. I stood up from the spot where I lay. My hand went to the spot where the ghost of the blade that killed me still lingered. I felt no hole in my chest and no physical proof that I had ever been stabbed in the first place. The thought of not even having the hole as a reminder left me no strength left to keep from crying. I wept bitterly.
I felt the gaze of eyes as they lingered on me, as they watched me go through my pains loss of the life I regretted losing. The owners of these two sets of eyes never showed themselves while I wept. They stayed within the building before me watching from the window. I lost all my thoughts of my past after I heard them laugh. Pain was replaced with uncontrollable rage that I fought hard against to control. This rage of mine had almost killed me at other points, but now it was pointless. There were no creatures that seemed hostile in the area. My rage suppressed itself after a short time. I ventured to the nearest building with light spewing forth from the windows. The house was very large and was the only building left standing in this part of the area. Anticipating my arrival, the door swung open. Startled, I stepped through the threshold of the building with care, constantly watching my back as I proceeded through the hallway.
The large house’s interior reminded me of her majesty’s castle. There was a high arching ceiling in the foyer. A lone hallway was placed between two sets of marble staircases. Looking up the stairs, I saw that they lead to a small second landing, and then continued on in what seemed like an unending ascension. I strode down the hall seeing that a light was pouring through a door at the end of it.
There were many sculptures in the hall, mainly of unicorns and pegasi, but there were a few of men and angels. There were also many paintings of what looked like winged unicorns with runes that I couldn’t read under them on gold plaques. Continuing down the long hallway, I found a parlor that was unlocked and heavily furnished. The floor was covered in soft red carpet. A crystal chandelier was in the center of the ceiling, a gold chain tethering it to the four corners of the room so as to allow it to gradually dip down at a slight angle. Mahogany chairs coated in lacquer surrounded a hand hewn cherry table in the center of the room. Four of the mahogany chairs had no occupants, while two others had shady individuals in dark robes seated in them.
The shady characters, eyes following me as I walked into the room, finally spoke as I was not but a foot from the nearest chair.
“Oh, dear, he is nearly ten minutes early, brother,” said the first of the individuals.
“That’s a shame,” the other replied with a voice filled with laughter. “One would think that after a millennium of doing this, you might have been able to tell one the very second they would die and enter our humble house.”
Annoyance in his voice, the first of the pair retorted, “I have no control over when they die, and might I add, that an assassin came out of nowhere and changed the actual time of death, quickening it by almost an hour. This guy is just fortunate he died by the hand of the assassin, not the falling stone walls that were supposed to kill him.”
The two brothers sighed and turned their attention back at myself. They picked up a china cup filled with a slightly green fluid. I first thought it was tea, and grabbing one of the small porcelain cups, I took a sip. I spat the foul fluid out in disgust; it reminded me of all my life’s misery. Laughing, the brothers nodded toward each other, and then they spoke to me again.
“Oh, what appears to be the problem sir?” The insincerity in his voice was almost all I could handle, as if he were making a joke that could be understood only by those who were of his same level of comprehension.
“He seems to dislike the taste of Memories, Jotham.”
“I do suppose that seems very obvious.”
“Well, it would have helped to have known that that particular cup of memories contained all his life’s sorrow filled ones.”
Jotham laughed again. The sound sent a shiver up my spine; like a thousand tiny needles were pricking me. Gathering my courage, I finally tried to speak, but I stopped abruptly noticing a small shadow caged in the corner of the room. The cage, made similar to a basket, had a weaving pattern pleasing to my eyes. Patterns like the six-sided Star of David had been weaved into it, making windows so that the captive creature inside could peer out and see what happens outside of its wicker cage. The cage must have also had an enchantment on it, for the creature contained within could certainly have broken free if it were like any other wicker construct I’d seen.
The creature in the cage was like a small horse. Its head was larger than the head of most horses I’d ever seen before, and larger than most of the rest of its small body. A small horn protruded from the head, while wings sprouted from its sides. The pony had large eyes that seemed to pierce the soul. I pitied the pony; it looked pained, and tears flowed freely from her eyes.
I turned my attention back at my hosts. They had removed their hoods and had exposed their faces. Shattered dreams had the same facial features that the pony in the small cage had. The other brother was human in figure. My voice caught in my throat. Unable to speak; I pointed furiously back and forth between the small pony and the brothers.
Jotham stood up for the first time in this difficult encounter. He too resembled the pony in the cage. He was solid black from the tip of his horn to the bottom of his hooves. He had a mark on his flank that resembled a small six pointed star with a circle surrounding it. There were seven small circles inside the mark, each with a different color. They all appeared to be falling down into a swirling vortex. The wings were entirely different from the rest of his body. His wings alternated between the colors black and ivory.
He trotted over to the small cage, and a blue aura encompassed both his horn and the wicker prison. The cage vanished, like it had never existed in the first place. The small pony began to sit up on its hindquarters, and she stopped crying. I noticed that, unlike her older brother, her coat was ivory and that her wings alternated gold and silver. She looked over at me with sky-blue eyes that seemed to look through my physical form and into my spirit. I heard a voice that I instantly knew was her voice in my head.
“Your aura seems so similar to my oldest brother’s aura. Do you know if you have Immortal blood in your veins?”
“I haven’t a clue about what you speak about.” My reply was simple yet true. “Who are you?”
“My name is Ariel,” she said
Before she could “speak” anymore, the second brother, the one whose name was unknown to me, placed a hand on my shoulder. He motioned with a finger for me to follow him. Reluctantly, I followed him; thinking through the multiple different scenarios that could unfold.
My host led me down a long, cool passage. It was made of stone that was black and appeared to absorb the light from the lanterns on the walls. The lanterns before me were made of pure silver, shimmering bright as gold in the flames of the lamps. The lanterns began to flicker and threatened to extinguish their flames as a cool breeze blew down the hall. No heat seemed to emanate from these ghostly flames within. I peered into one of the flames and saw small creatures within, writhing back and forth, flames emitting from their bodies. I turned away, disgusted at the foul looking creature within and continued to venture down the hall.
The hall continued to a large courtyard. Stone statues of angels, more of the winged unicorns, and other various creatures lined pillars that supported a stone building on the eastern side of the yard. A small garden sat in the center. Weeping willows watered by a central fountain lined the western side of the courtyard’s walls. To the north was a tower that seemed to disappear in the clouds. I followed the man through the stone gateway that lead to the tower’s entrance.
The tower was made of white marble, its first floor chamber decorated the almost same as the parlor. Instead of the crystal chandelier that the parlor, it had a solid gold one with silver candles. The room smelled like cinnamon and some other unidentifiable spice, and made me thinks that I had been here once before because the smell was familiar. There was an oak door on the left side of the room. We opened the door and a cool breeze blew into the room, sending a chill down my spine.
As we climbed up the winding staircase, the temperature began to gradually rise. Uncovered braziers lined the hallway as we neared a solid oak door, coated with gold-leaf at the edges with silver runes having been placed in various configurations randomly on the door. The door was opened after a swift hand motion made by my host. We entered a room that seemed to be modeled after an observatory. There was a large brass telescope at the far eastern wall of the room. Multiple cauldrons lined the western wall of the enormous room; each one with a different molten fluid inside them. A small cabinet was also near the cauldrons. Shelf after shelf was filled with flasks filled with potions of various kinds; some flasks also had labels in the same mysterious runes that were on the door. The north wall had bookshelves aplenty. Books on magic were apparently stored everywhere on the various shelves. A few of the books actually had English titles. I recognized a book over some of the magic that I used when I was alive, Battle Magic: Volume 2- Ice Magics& Spectral Shields. I remembered the first time I had opened the book; I was enrolled in the Abram Magic Academy. I sighed; that life was lost to me, no need to be like a Specter or Shade, dwelling on the past is for ghosts.
Seeing that my host was waiting at a large Black Locust desk, I continued into the room’s center, He had three items on the polished surface of the wood; a silver goblet, a gold signet ring that matched mine perfectly, and an amulet. I found the amulet the most interesting object on the desk. The amulet had a golden outer casing with a gem separated into four different parts. The parts were separated by four separate chambers that then kept each individual part of the gem inside. A silver chain with small rubies placed upon each of the small interwoven silver loops added nice detail to the amulet’s chain. A small number of golden threads were woven into the silver chain, strengthening it further.
“I see that you are fond of the Amulet of Order,” replied my host, taking notice of my curiosity over the amulet. “That Amulet belonged to my Master, who left that in my possession when he left for Earth. He was a remarkable man; he trusted me more than most of his other servants, above even his own brother and sister.”
“What was he?” I asked the question quickly, noting a mysterious tone in the man’s voice.
“Well, my master was many things in his time as an Immortal; a Master, leader of the House of Din, a Mage without equal, and brother to Chaos and Destiny themselves. Most importantly, my master was Order itself.” The servant then let out a sigh of both relief and pain.
He then motioned to the cup. “That there is my master’s goblet that he would use for both divination and inspecting the events that happened in the three mortal planes. It is imbued with his power, the very water inside runs with his energies. The cup’s water has special properties. None move it; the enchantments on it keep any but the one who owns it from moving it. It has been on this exact same spot for over two hundred years. Feel free to try and pick it up; don’t feel bad if you can’t. You wouldn’t be the first.”
I ignored the man’s comment on the goblet, my full attention on the signet ring. I put my hand out to touch it; then drew my hand back as the servant was about to speak again; fearful that he might be rebuking me. Instead of a rebuke he told me that I could examine the ring.
The ring was an exact match to my own. There was a triangle in the center that was split into three more triangles. There were three words on the ring as well. All three were Hebrew words; Toqeph, Chokmaa, and Chazaq. They translated out to be Power, Wisdom, and Courage. The ring had all the same physical traits my ring had, like they were one and the same. As I inspected the ring further, I noted that engraved on the inside of the ring was the Hebrew name that I can proudly call my own, Yownathan; translated in English it is the name Jonathan. As I held the ring it began to pale, almost like ghost does after its source is found. Startled, I tried to set the ring back on the table. The ring disappeared right after I set it on the table; my own ring glowed lightly.
The servant looked at me saying nothing for a while. In the eerie silence, I could have heard a pen drop. I shifted back and forth on my feet as I waited for the old man before me to speak. He sat there, still looking at the ring on my finger; watching the glowing light emitted from its gold surface. I broke the silence.
“What does this mean?” I asked, motioning toward the ring.
“It means one of two things dear lad, you are either my master in the flesh or his heir.”The elderly servant laughed.
The man’s laughter died down, and then he started to walk over toward the cabinets on the western wall. He opened one with great care, the old doors creaking loudly. He came back with a small flask and a cordial. He sat back down at the large chair behind the desk and spoke again.
“This, my dear lad, is a test; a test to see if you’re my Immortal master. I do so hope you pass, but you are still my master nevertheless.”
He poured the contents of the cordial into the flask; he then added water from the goblet to the flask using a small pipette. He handed me the mixture.
“Drinking this will unlock your memories if you are my original master, though it does have a few side effects which are unique to each individual who consumes it.”
I eyed the contents of the now half-full beaker. I wanted to know more about this before I did something I would regret, but at the same time I wished to also know more about what this man was speaking about.
My mind went fuzzy for a moment. Without thinking I grabbed the contents of the flask. The liquid tasted like tea, tea with a hint of lemon and something else that I couldn’t identify. It tasted sweet yet it had a bitter aftertaste. I felt a strain on my mind, as if something were trying to take residence in my mind. Try as I might to fight it, I was unable to prevent the inevitable. It was as if something that had been locked away had suddenly been allowed to escape their bonds.
The forces that were at work in my mind were forming things in my head. A vortex of memories, thoughts, words, languages, and many other things were instantly unlocked and took their places in my mind. The room suddenly went from something foreign; to the study that I used so many times back when I was here, at my home. I was home. That was all I could think of. This room, my room of study, had remained almost untouched. I looked around the room admiring again the many things that I had left behind when I left to protect mankind. I saw my royal armor; in its cabinet on the southern wall, enchantments hiding it from the eyes of anyone but myself.
While I stood there, the man behind the desk had vanished. A lesser demon, most likely an imp, was in his place. Being able to see the truth in things again was marvelous. I could see servants of my own outside the tower, demons among them. But this old servant wasn’t one of mine. This demon was a servant of my oldest enemy and dearest friend, The Master.