The first time I Died

I laid dying on the mountain.

There it went again, the stars moved. I felt it long before I saw it. No one can tell me I saw it, no one can tell me that didn’t happen.

A broken man dead inside. A fall. Temptation.

It’s all there written in the sky for any to see but few to understand.

Knowing one’s destiny gives one a confidence that smaller men would never see, but shrinks the world itself into a prison. So when the world shows you an open door, you take it.

I lay dying here knowing for as long as I’ve known things to know, that this was the end. I live in a world of eternal Deju Vu. The snow cradles me like mother death, and what scared me more was the introduction of hope. It happened as a winking star first, born and dying before my very eyes.

Eternity seen in a blink.

“Is that you Treiodod?”

The stars didn’t speak back, they never did. There I was, written in the stars, winking out of being as silently as all living eventually did, but it happened again. The star of my dying went away.

“Are you alive? I felt your spirit leave you,” spoke a voice. “Treiodod, I am ready,” I said with courage and confidence, a false confidence born of knowing the inevitability of my end, but confidence all the same.

I reached for oblivion with my icy right hand and it embraced me. “Come,” said the voice who had now become a shadow.

Had his silhouette blocked the stars’ light?

I crunched snow under foot, and as it was before I had been returned to the world… dead, or perhaps not. The pain made reality all the more real. Pain was always an accurate measure of the depths of reality. I moved slowly, by the light of the moon. The snow slowed me to a crawl, but not the stranger. His steps were light and he did not leave a trail.

We were in the valley of the Sarengal mountains, that much I remember. It was coming back to me in pieces now, like a man placed back into the realm of the living after being in the between-world of dreams. The stranger was a slight man, bald, almond eyes, dressed with a vest that was adorned with the hooks and straps of someone who climbed. He had a rope over his shoulder and animal skinned moccasins. Steam rose from his head unlike the steady streams of ice that I inhaled.

“Was that your settlement that was razed?” asked the stranger, half glaring back at me and half surveying the way forward with his strange eyes. “I was, I was the last one out… I think,” I said. “I saw the blaze from the mountains, I felt the presence of death,” he spoke with reverence.

“Was I dead?” “I sensed it in you, but then I didn’t, for some the soul decides it has more to do.” “So I died?” The man shrugged as if he did not have those answers. “Trust me when I say, your life or death is uncertain and by no means assured past tonight,” said the stranger.

Why did he put it that way, I wondered, was he an agent sent by Treiodod? The stranger looked over his shoulders a few times and I felt his steps quicken. I got the impression he could easily leave me behind, but instead he chose to shepherd me away, unless he was destined to save me from true death, and this life was to be my next. The stranger nimbly moved in a deliberate direction, as if towards a place. Though what place in the tundra? I could not hazard a guess.

He looked back again with urgency and even pulled my hand to spur me on. “Is something there?” I decided to flat out ask. “I do not see anything so much as feel it,” said the stranger. “What?” I inquired. “Death… darkness, something unmistakable closes.” “How do you know?” “The same way you can read the stars.” “I cannot say that I am a fighter, but fate brought me here for a reason. I was not reborn only to fall.” The stranger nodded, giving no indication he believed me or didn’t.

After traversing the eerily still tundra for a time I asked, who are you and where are we going?” “Amon Til, and we are on our way towards the order of frost eater temple. If we get there none would be foolish enough to follow. Who are you and how did you survive when all others did not?” said Amon who only half looked to me. “Bargain Belost,” I said. “A rather lyrical name?” “So I am told. My mother said she called me Bargain because she called to the gods to give me life. I’ve always suspected that it wasn’t gods that she made a pact with.”

I typically didn’t speak so candidly about my life, lest I look like an arrogant prima donna, but given the nature of the relationship, and the strangers kinship with death, perhaps death and destiny ran abreast like two parallel forces of inevitability.

“Ever since I was young I could read the stars, they tell me stories as surely as any tome. It speaks of the events of the future and the past as if written and done. It even speaks of my end… spoke of my end. I was certain that that was the place of my death, the stars have never been wrong.” “Though they have been vague or cryptic?” “Yes, that is true. The language of prophecy is wrought with metaphor and hyperbole.”

The stranger nodded as if he only interjected to facilitate me to further elaborate. “Throughout the years the stars have spoken to me directly.” “And you listen?” “Why would I not?” Amon nodded, as not to contradict my point even though it was clear he had an opinion on the matter. I didn’t want to elaborate on the one that spoke… at least not yet, but there was more, there was always more.

“I lived my life without fear because of the stars.” “Was it a comfort to you to know the time of your own end?” “Yes and no, for if that was to be true it would mean that free will is an illusion, but in knowing this it gives you a measure of immortality. In reality if my death is written in the stars, then nothing I do will end me.” “I do not see this as a good thing.” “I came to that conclusion as well, life without death is not life without consequence. At a young age I threw myself from a cliff, certain that I would not die. I didn’t. A branch inexplicably caught me, and I fell from a lower elevation, breaking most of my bones. Freedom from death isn’t freedom from consequence. I learned not to test fate when fate was not in a mood to forgive. The stars told me that Bargain goes out on patrol tonight, which is why I was outside. Why I ended up there, lying in the snow, I do not know. It is familiar, but not clear.”

“You had no one in your settlement who you wish to go back for?” “I did, but they are dead I knew it the moment I woke. I have been mentally callousing, my heart. I knew that in the end it was me, it ended with me.”

Amon extended his arm to stop me from stepping into a deep chasm that I only became aware of when directed to look. There was a steep drop to an icy cave below. There was a treacherously ice covered wall that extended to other side of the ledge. Amon took his climbing pick from his back. He paused for only a brief moment then looked to the expanse of snow we traversed. There was an urgency in his eyes that rippled unsaid throughout his body.

“We need to keep moving. You can’t see what I feel, but my feelings are never wrong,” said the stranger. Amon took a breath followed by two small steps backwards. He dashed with deadly purpose towards the edge of that drop. Before I could object, Amon’s feet gild across the sheer wall. It was as if Amon’s body only paid a token respect for the force of gravity. He ran on the side of an icy wall. His momentum drove him forward. He leapt the last ten feet and rolled in the forgiving snow.

He didn’t wait. He tied the rope to his climbing pick and tossed it to my side of the chasm. I held on to the end of the cord. “Jump and I will reel you in,” Amon said holding the rope. I looked down at the dark depths of the down below and knew then that I should not have. I stared to the stars for signs, to find the chapter of my life that would guide me.

“We don’t have time we have to move now,” protested Amon Til from the other side. For the first time in all my life I was untethered by fate, uncertain, scared. “I thought you were unfazed by the prospect of death, come on please,” said Amon. I took several starts and stops. The leap was of faith, the first I had taken. After numerous attempts I told myself this was what freedom was, be it for good or ill. I leapt. I bounced off of a powdered white ice wall. Amon began to gently hoist me up.

Through the moonlight I gazed up and saw the glint of steel disrupt the calm in the air. Amon instinctively rose his hand and plucked a dagger from the sky with his thumb and forefinger. With the temporary loss of his hand the rope slacked and I slid down into the dark depths. I braced, dangling like a helpless worm on a hook. I wasn’t certain if I should climb back up or face the cavern below.

I looked up to Amon who pursued his lips to speak before another dagger flew at his face. He caught that, but this time the assault continued. Amon’s own shadow betrayed him. Nothingness rose from his feet and lashed out at him. The indistinct shade swung indistinct limbs of blackness.

Amon showed more focus than any man I had ever met in my life. With one hand he let the rope slack to lower me, with the other he blocked plunging dagger blows with one hand. He twisted his waist in time to avoid being gutted, but never managed to take more than little half steps. Lesser men would have prioritized his own safety and let a stranger fall. I hit the ground gently but not so gentle that I didn’t tumble down.

Amon felt the rope slack and instantly dropped it. He worked both hands with the speed of humming birds. The shadow was struck. Blows landed on insubstantial flesh and wispy bone. Amon jumped down to his doom, the height was one of which he was unlikely to survive. Amon may not have known how to read the words of the infinite, but in his own way he could defy reality and shape his fate. He slid down the side of the icy wall with the grace and certainty of a droplet of water.

The shadow Disappeared.

Suddenly a dark blade appeared in my gut. My own shadow animated and struck me. Amon charged at the shadow while I crumpled into a mound of snow. The sounds of battle faded away, my mind clouded making it hard for me to remember, hard to even care.

My eyes opened and closed seeing nothing. There it went again, the star moved. I felt it long before I saw it, no one can tell me that didn’t happen. It was written in the sky, but the stars blinked. I wasn’t to die here. A shadow moved over the sky. A hand reached for me.

“Treoidod?” “Are you alive?” said the familiar voice. “… I felt the spirit leave you,” Amon said, as he lowered his hand to the ground to lift me to my feet.

I was not dead, yet I had, I remembered this. With new eyes I scanned the horizon and Amon did as well. “I couldn’t say why, but I knew death haunted our steps, and so did Amon. We spoke and every word said I had heard before, yet I said it, because the stars said that I did.

Through the grueling snow we came upon the moment, the moment the stars could not see. They sat there stagnate in the sky as if they didn’t have a word to say to me.

Alas I only had vague memories of this and only during the moment it was happening, what was the point? Amon skated along the wall sending the rope over. I reluctantly leapt the chasm blind. I bounced off the wall. The knife came from nowhere. Amon caught it with his hand, and placed me down. As he was sliding down… I recalled. My shadow was still my own, but the shade traveled in-between the dark and emerged.

The sword pierced my chest, once and yet again, and I remembered my life and death. I looked to the stars for answers but there were none. Was it my lot to die and die and again, unending.

…Or

Perhaps it wasn’t that I was destined to die. I had listened to what the stars said as gospel, but was my death not a fixed point in time?

The stars were asking me a question.

I was not just listening to the edicts of the universe, interpreting the words of a tome. No, perhaps I was learning the language of the infinite. It did not stop because it was my end, it merely asked me if I wished to live. If this was true, I would give them my reply.

I lay dying on the snow, the stars winking at me… waiting. I didn’t reach for Amon’s hand, not this time. I reached to the stars themselves with my hand. I pushed in the stars as if dipping them in celestial ink. I dragged their light across the canvas of the sky. I forged the words in a language I had known since my birth. I penned the words, ‘I want to live’. The constellations parted. The stars swirled. Its light was born of the after images of hundreds of dead suns. It formed a face based on what it best thought it believed my mind could understand. The words the entity spoke were not audible, they came out as symbols and characters.

“Treoidod?” I asked using the stars as my voice. “Yes?” “Did you ask me if I wanted to live?” “Yes.” “Can you help me?” The face nodded and and looked down with a smile… “yes.”

Amon took my outstretched hand and pulled me to my feet. “Are you alive… ?” he asked the same as he did many times before. “Yes, I am, and we have work to do.” I ran towards the shadow, towards my doom, towards my life… my new life. “Come on Amon Til, we have a shadow to best.”