“It was simply an illusion.” Apate said as she lead the way across the sandy landbridge. “His soul was destroyed, meaning he exists no more, not in life or death he was simply wiped from existence,  Irkalla works that way, she taps into your psyche and uses whatever she can to stir you up, make you emotionally unstable, then she leads you astray with comfort, with peace.”

“It was all so real,” he said thinking about it.

“Of course it was, it was created by your own mind, if there is one thing I have learned over the years it is that the mind can trick you into thinking anything.”  she looked at Dan. “And I mean anything.”Dan shook his head, dislodging the thoughts of the dead as they called out to him.

“She was just using your guilt against you,”  Abyzou said, her hand tightly clasping his own, she had refused to let go of his since the far beach,

“I suppose so,”  he sighed.Apate looked back at Dan, who was at this time looking left and right for the fallen cities, for the armies of dead.

They were nowhere to be found.

The sea crested softly in a gentle breeze, like a timeless creation forever rushing forward and then receding, never making ground and never losing it, a constant ebb and flow.

It was peaceful.

Not at all what he had expected from a city of the dead, a land of death.  But that was perhaps due to the fact that he often viewed death as a violent end to life.  It wasn't always that way, when his mother had died she seemed so at peace, and the same with his father, like they had drifted into a warm embrace and had simply fallen asleep, sinking into the comfort of nothingness.  Across the bridge a building slowly came into view.  Its golden dome shone in the light of the twin suns and its blue walls matched the waves perfectly, almost sa though they had been painted by the waves own color.

It was a single building, and though grand it was not too large,  its design minimalist, to a tee. A simple cylindrical structure, built from simple blue bricks that were laid one over another, arranged in a neat order so nothing could cause them to fall, not even the pounding of the surf.  The front of the building was adorn with a small door. Or rather with a lack of one,  there was simply the gap where one should be, and a lazy finger of smoke drifted out of the door.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

It would seem as though the sand continued inside,, but it sloped down sharply, putting himself in front he stepped in, and stopped, allowing his eyes to adjust to the difference of light here in the hut.

“Welcome,” A voice called out to them, “there is no need for weapons, I come unarmed, and your attacks will unfortunately do you no good.”  a woman stepped out of the shadows and into the light of a small fire that burned at the center of the room, a point to which all the floors made of sand sloped down to. “I am Ereshkigal, goddess of this world.”

She was a tall woman, cloaked in black and gold, her skin a deathly white and her features a delicate sort of beauty.  She had high cheekbones, and long raven hair.  Milky white eyes from which gold ran down her face, like divine tears, forever imprinting there sorrow on her face. A golden chain wrapped around her head from behind,and split into two encasing the sides of her head.  She walked so calmly to the fire and sat beside it, Dan couldn't help it, it just felt wrong to have the sword drawn in the presence of such a woman.

“Thank you,”  she said, nodding as she watched him sheath the sword. “I am not a woman of action, and as I said it would do you no good.”

“Why is that?” he asked, making his way down the slope of sand to sit on the other side of the dying firelight, with Apate and Abyzou in tow just behind him.

“No matter how I am attacked I cannot die.” she said, she almost said it like it was another person she was talking about, and not herself, the monotonousness of her voice cast a weird dissonance on her words. “Not even to my own hand.”

“How did you come to be this way?”  Abyzou asked looking at the other goddess.

“I was born to a god of death and a goddess of love, I was born with each of their abilities, but I wanted neither, I rejected godhood and chose to live as a mortal, but when I did this it angered them, and they cursed me with death, the death of anyone I cared about, anyone I loved.”  she still spoke like there was no emotion in her whatsoever.  “Unfortunately for them this also included them, I came to this land to search for a way to break the curse, but have long since abandoned that purpose, I am now the gate keeper to death, I am the holder of the key to the land before the rebirth.”

She looked up, directly into Dan’s eyes, the milky whiteness of them set his bones in a frost. “I judge those who are dead, and deliver those who are pure. Are you prepared?”  she asked. Dan closed his eyes and took a deep breath, he had to do this, he couldn't die here, he had too damn much to do.

“I am.”  he nodded, his golden eyes glowing in the darkness of the building.

“Very well,”  she pulled out a book, it was bound in a blackened leather, and the leaves of the pages were torn and tattered, as though it had been thumbed through by a multitude of people.  On the front of it was a golden lock, standing at odds with the dark worn leather.  Ereshkigal brought it up to her black lips and kissed it softly, tenderly, and with a small click the lock fell, dropping into her lap, as though it was a pet, and was told to go home.  She looked at Dan deeply and passed the book to him, through the flames themselves.

The edges of the book caught on fire, a divine golden flame, and the outside became darker than before.

“What is this?”  he asked, reaching through the flames to retrieve it, he had thought the fire would burn but it only softly lapped at his skin.

“That is your book,”  she said with a heavy voice, “your beginning, your end, and everything inbetween, across all possibilities.” she looked at the book. “You are a very old soul it would seem, not many are that thick, and none that I have ever handed were that heavy with sin.”

“I have done something that weighs heavily on myself.” he said, looking at the burned book.

She smiled at him, and he could not tell if it was malicious or not. “It is not the sin of this life that weighs that book down, nor the sins of the past thousand, but the sin of the first that pulls it so.”  her smile deepened. “Never before would I have thought to meet you here Ea, lord of the Abzu.”