On a small outcropping hidden away from the rest of the Sect, I told my story. For a few brief moments, I allowed myself to return to the glory days of first arriving at the Sect, to the initial insults I’d received and the promise I’d made to ascend to Heaven, no matter what came. I spoke of short-lived allies and bitter rivals, of a race to earn some worth in the Sect, to prove myself the best of the Outer Disciples using every last measure of grit and perseverance to reach the top.
I spoke of a dream that came crashing down. I talked about how those first six months had only served to sharpen the pain of the next thirty, bare survival made all the more sour in comparison to the life I’d had. And, at the very end of that painful drudgery, I explained how nothing more than a momentary brush against my betters had led to the end of that sad existence.
I awaited judgement.
Death clicked her tongue. “Sounds real tough, Ryan.”
I slumped forward, hands braced against the mist-soaked grass. “Couldn’t you at least do me the honour of treating my life with the smallest measure of respect?”
“Nah,” Death flippantly replied, scratching her chin against the top of her scythe that leaned against her shoulder as she gazed off over the landscape beneath the falls. “Honestly, not sure what there is to respect. Do you know how many hundreds of thousands of young cultivators I’ve seen who were cruelly killed before their time by their seniors? If I had a yuan…”
“And that’s it, then?” I pushed myself off the ground, staring at Death in disbelief. “This is barely a novelty to you, but weren’t you the one who’d demanded to know everything about my life?”
Death shrugged. “I mean, I was hoping you’d reveal that you had some special heritage, or perhaps that you’d been granted a blessing of some kind from a spirit. But you’re nothing special.”
“Nothing special!?” I gestured towards myself. “Then how do you explain me still being alive, huh?”
Death harrumphed, still refusing to look in my direction. “The matters of Life and Death are none of your business, mortal.”
None of my business!? I stepped forward and leaned into Death’s view, hand braced on the bench she sat on as I glared at her over the top of her scythe. “I have died twice. It is absolutely my business. And if not respect then at the least treat me with the same straightforwardness that I’ve offered to you.”
Death returned my glare with one of her own, slowly rising to her feet and forcing me to move with her as she did, her scythe now in her hand. “Oh? You’d make demands of Death? And what right do you think you have to my knowledge, Outer Disciple Ryan? What rights do you have to the mysteries of Death? To the fate of all cultivators?”
I firmly refused all her assumptions. “I don’t care about any of that. Tell me, why-” I weaved my arm around the scythe, finger pointed firmly at her in accusation, “-do you look like a farm girl?”
Death choked, her breath caught in her throat. “That’s what you care about!?”
“It’s the only thing that doesn’t make sense,” I countered. “This entire situation can be traced back to that!” It just didn’t make sense for such a pretty girl to be Death itself!
Death reeled back, retreating from my superb offensive manoeuvre. “I-I told you to stop that!”
“Then answer the damn question!”
“Fuck off!” Death began her counter attack, pushing me backwards with the haft of the scythe. “Seriously, what’s wrong with you!?”
So many things are wrong with me. Even before I’d had my chest caved in by some noble. You certainly don’t reach the Second Step in six months by being normal. But two and a half years of bare survival had only pushed me beyond what most cultivators would consider as merely ‘driven’. I let her shove me a few steps back, but I only used that as an opportunity to cross my arms and look down at her. “I’m not hearing an answer.”
Death watched me for a few moments, holding the scythe between us as if it was some sort of shield. But as my calm stare continued she sighed, letting the scythe drop to her side even as she wiped at her face with the other hand. “Gods…” she muttered quietly, before returning my look. “Because I am.”
It took me a moment to connect her words to my own from earlier. “You’re actually a farm girl. So you’re…not the real Death?”
“Real as they come.” She glanced down towards the scythe, tapping its base against the ground. “But I got the job from someone else. I think they’d be more what you expect.”
In my mind, I could already see the figure; some black-robed individual towering over me, their scythe looming with a deadly promise, their head shrouded in darkness. And then I thought of this Death, standing in front of them with a job application in hand. The questions in my head multiplied. “...How did that happen? Did they just give you the scythe? Did they say they’d ever be back for it?”
“As for the how, I just happened to be in the wrong place at the right time,” Death ran her finger along the blade. “And yeah, they did. Said they’d be right back after they milked the cows.”
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
I glanced out to the world below, where the seven great rivers wound their way out towards the horizon. “Uh, out of curiosity, how long ago was that?”
She shot me a withering look. “A while. Any more questions?”
“Well, I mean,” I tried my best to chuckle. “It’s just, if I’m the first person to see you, am I meant to, what, take over? Is that what I’m meant to do?” Is that my purpose in death, now that my life is over?
Death’s grip tightened on the scythe. “Every last living being on this planet will die, and the world itself will shatter, before I ever give this to a cultivator.” She spat the word out like it was a curse, before glaring at me once more. “Do you even know what a cultivator does?”
My answer was immediate. “They challenge the Heavens.”
“And what do they do on the way there?” She prompted me, gesturing out to the world, the razor curve of her implement tracing its way along where the sky met the earth. “Their gaze is so focused on what’s above them, that they don’t care a bit for what they trample over on the way there. Do you think I was being hyperbolic when I said how many hundreds of thousands of wannabes I’ve seen crushed by their seniors? How even that pales compared to the hundreds of millions I’ve watched, slaughtered like ants?”
The scythe cut down, as if to bisect the lands before us. “They take whatever they want. They do whatever they please. They think that their might makes right. But it doesn’t matter how powerful they get, or how many more people they can kill: they will always be the absolute scum of the earth.”
My eyes didn’t once leave Death, watching the girl as she glared out furiously over the world, her blade looming over it. I could feel the truth in her words, in each exhale hissed out between gritted teeth. No matter how common her appearance was, or that she’d admitted to me that she’d come from a background just as low as my own, I could feel the weight of the role upon her shoulders, and how even the smallest fragment of that could force me to my knees.
“And those cultivators,” I began, afraid of the question I was about to ask, “what happens to them when they die?”
Death’s response was to laugh. It wasn’t a pleasant thing, empty of any joy and filled with bitterness instead. When she finally turned to look at me, it was without a hint of that bloody rage she’d had just a moment ago, instead filled with a bone-deep grief and hopelessness that I couldn’t stand to see.
“I don’t know.”
A few seconds passed, my tongue working in my mouth but unable to make a single sound. What?
Death just laughed again. “I don’t know! Out of every single soul I’ve delivered to the cycle, I’ve never once had to deliver a real cultivator’s! Of course, if you’re young enough or weak enough, like you, then perhaps there’s a chance that I can be pulled to the moment of your death to deliver you on to your next life…but no more than that. At some point, a cultivator is beyond my reach.”
“But- no, hang on, just because a cultivator is immortal at the Third Step doesn’t mean they can’t be killed!” I don’t know why I argued with Death, but the idea seemed- was- preposterous. “I’ve literally been up to my elbows inside their corpses!”
More than that- I’d watched as the bodies of unfortunate Disciples who’d been killed on excursions beyond the sect had been carted in. I’d seen just how empty their eyes were, their spirits having clearly departed to leave behind nothing but their corporeal shell.
“Just because they were killed doesn’t mean they die,” Death insisted, “and they’re challenging the Heavens, aren’t they? Perhaps the Heavens claim them in turn, as recompense for daring to defy them.”
What do you mean, perhaps? “That’s just a guess!” I replied incredulously.
Death snorted. “Like you can do any better?”
“I can do better than saying the Gods did it!”
“Then,” her eyes narrowed, “prove it!”
I froze. Then, glacially, I lowered my eyes down to the scythe that was now pointed in my direction. I lifted my eyes up again, into Death’s own. “What, exactly, do you mean by that?”
Death’s eyes widened, and the scythe pulled up sharply, well away from my own body as she lifted out her free hand to wave at me in denial. “No! No no no! That’s not what I meant!” She took a few moments to steady herself against her scythe, the blade looming above her head as she took a few deep breaths. She slowly collected herself, her face twisting in thought for a moment before settling on a serious expression that she directed my way. “I’m not going to kill you. But you promised me back there that you’d do anything I wanted in return for your life, right? So your life is mine to do with what I please!” The scythe came down again, the haft thumping against the ground as the girl stepped forward, nodding imperiously as if assured by her own decision. “So I want you to help me figure out why.”
Another step. “I want you to help me figure out what they’ve done to put themselves beyond my reach.”
Another step, now within reach. Her expression began to lose its impassiveness as anger began to sharpen her gaze. “I want you to figure out how I can stop them.”
With one more step, she now forced me to pull back ever so slightly, only to halt me in my tracks as her free hand reached out to grab at my robes. I was forced to lean down to her height as she matched my gaze. “And I want you to figure out,” Death said, biting out the furious words, “what it takes for these bastards to die!”
Unable to move with her grip upon me, forced to stare into her eyes as she made her deadly purpose known, there was nothing but a single thought in my mind. Beautiful.
The image shattered as the girl almost tripped backwards, fumbling with her scythe for a moment before catching it and glowering at me, even as her face slowly turned red. “I told you to stop that!”
“I can’t help it!”
“Then start helping it!” She retorted. “Now focus! You cultivators have to know why you’re able to avoid me. You mentioned the Third Step, right? How does it work?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “It’s beyond my advancement. And it’s hardly like they just have it out in the open for anyone to read.”
But I could already see the parted waters of the Tzangtze in my mind, and feel the shadow loom over me. I could feel the stacks of scrolls surrounding me, trailing off into the halls that stretched for miles. And presiding over it all…
Death could feel the answer in me. “Where?”
“Not where. Who.”