After the guards left Dennis canceled his shadow cloak and quickly inspected the wheelbarrow and tome. Good news, the tome was still intact. Bad news, he now had half a wheelbarrow.

“Oh no, baby. It’s okay, it’s okay we’ll get you a better body in a bit.”

The wheelbarrow responded by making a sound of a flicked spring.

Dennis pulled the soul back in one of his soul gems

He was isolated from reality via dream/dungeon shenanigans.

There were three rooms, three chambers with three corpses of people who wanted to escape rebirth. Contrary to what the human heroes believed of the three’s demise, it was all orchestrated to give them a chance at suicide. ‘Suicide’ in a sense that they aren’t alive, but they aren’t dead either. They voluntarily put themselves in stasis, between the crux of life and death. They did this to escape beings that hunted them in the lands of the living and the afterlives. One was even chasing them by anchoring to the great wheel of rebirth.

Anyway, back to where he was.

Three rooms with three corpses. Three fates, three tragedies.

The first one was a stone room with barely any features, cracked and weathered from non-existent wind. Red blood spun and bent in an arc spiraling to the center of the room. At the center lies a woman in rags, bloody, beaten, and bruised. She held an arrowhead made from solidified time, like glass that held the image of a location that no longer existed in a story that has already passed, and it was embedded to her chest by her very hands. Jeau Dithias, The Rakshasi of the burning heaven. Or Judith, the drunkard as she was commonly known by his friends.

She was a human with brown skin, bronze and hairless. Her hair was red with white streaks as if set aflame and frozen. Her face unblemished and smooth, with eyes that bore a regal noble spirit and a face that was bold and intimidating, though round and soft. It was gold. She was frozen in the very event that led her here. She only wore the rags that covered her muscular physique. She wore an expression of serenity, as if confident in whatever life would toss her will pass.

It was time to give her another chance at life. With this she wouldn’t be hunted down, with this she could be here again.

He sat down right next to her, leaning on to one of his closest friends. He was silent, gentle. He spoke to her in her native togue, English, a language earthians commonly used. A hand was laying atop the ragged woman’s feet.

“Judith it’s been a long time hasn’t it? The Spire has a lot of things for you to break again. Heh..”

The weight of a long life fell on him. Tragedy, after tragedy, after tragedy. Countless uncaring, absurdly powerful beings came and passed in his life and he was still too powerless to do the things that mattered.

For the first time in ages, what stood there wasn’t a cold and calculating mage king, but a boy, sobbing wet and trembling at the horrors he faced. He was here, the few places he could feel vulnerable, the few places where he was sure nothing would hurt him.

He was a coward, but he had to be strong.

He tried to pull Wyatt here, but just like always he didn’t want to get emotional. He worried that his vizier would break down and loose control, one of the few fears that his friend had. Who was he to put him back in that small and fragile world. He was also glad he wasn’t here to witness the rite.

He needed to be strong. He needed to do what must be done, willingly and wholeheartedly. Now that he can feel and sense, the rite can have weight. A sincere sacrifice that only someone like him can do.

With tears and worry he reached the intersecting hallway. One to Judith, another to Charles, and the last to La Hire.

After wiping his face, he broke his finger, snapping it till it bled. He felt the pain just like when he was still starting out. The pain of sacrifice. He did this to another, then another, then another, until all of his fingers were bitten off and spit into positions directing the entrance on the three rooms.

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Sacrifice.

Pained and shivering, he clasped his finger-less hands and prayed. He bowed his head as low as he could.

“Holy mother of life betrothed to death, I sacrifice my pain, a celebration of life. I accept you in my heart and soul. I give you my fingers in hopes that we may not be touched by life that seeks us harm.”

A presence blanketed the area and making the boon known.

He slowly looked up and a spike formed in front of him. His eyes were looking st the spikes, the ball near the jutting thorn in the ground. He impaled his right eye. He was thankful that he couldn’t die, yet at this moment that wasn’t such a boon. He cried loudly, wailing at the non-color filling half of his world. He was whimpering and hyperventilating at the loss of sense and the gift of a new one. The other eye was followed as he almost vomited from the nauseating sensation. He was bling and now he was forced to continue the ritual.

Sacrifice.

He bowed low using his stumps to support him. His head felt the cold stone and he spoke with desperate prayers.

“Holy mother of life the hand that holds death, I sacrifice m-my sense, a monument to being alive. I accept you in my heart and my soul. I-” he wheezed from the pain holding in his vomit “give you my eyes in hopes that we may not be seen and remain hidden under your canopy.”

A weight enveloped the room that could be felt even with the mind-breaking pain.

He was shivering from the cold. He felt blood leave his body, but he would never die from it. He needed to continue and feel what it means to be alive again for the ritual.

The final sacrifice. He put his teeth around his tongue. The feeling of pins and needles in his body spreading from the veins dying of drought. Their ichor taken from them. He needed to do this quick.

He bit down. The cut wasn’t clean and his tongue bloody, dangled from strings of flesh. He bit down even harder till all that left him was pain.

Sacrifice.

To be heard by the divine through sacred rites of pain.

He made sounds that only a desperate man could make. Numbing, violent, and cruel. He bowed his head and uttered a prayer unintelligible, but with heart and conviction.

“Holy mother of life, the one who cut what is and what isn’t, I sacrifice my words, the one that sung my creation. I submit myself to you. I sacrifice my tongue in hopes of being unheard from the ones who hunt us.”

All of which said within his heart. A presence was felt around him. His world of darkness filled with needles and squelching was covered by a warm/painful light, indescribable and filled with malice.

A gentle/cruel hand touched his chest and gave him hug filled with love/hatred. The flesh around his chest and the bones that encased his skull melted and putrefied like rot/nectar filled his veins. He allowed/was forced to show this being his self, unmarred by thought and experience. An invasive process that was both too long and too short.

The being gave his brain a kiss and filled him with pain that could shatter souls and would put even the highest of hell kings to shame. A kiss filled with boundless love and bottomless scorn.

His flesh twisted and warped till it felt how and blinding.

Then finally he exploded. Meat and bloody viscera covered the walls. Each marking the rooms as it’s bloody temple. Wherever the entrails touched made the area sacred altars for the goddess of life. A sanctified image of grotesque art. The meat spread inside the rooms and covered the walls. The tomb now became an eldritch sanctuary where the weight of sacrifice was answered.

The flesh adorned walls slowly branched covering the ceiling and floors. A tomb made of dreams touched divine flesh and made a nightmarish paradise, sacred and pure. The flesh sprouted leaves, green and lush, flowers bloomed from the veins, and roots squirmed and dug through the stone that came from thought. The tomb was now a garden and an altar.

Now it was truly safe. Now he can free them.

A red gem floated above the tomb now garden and pulsed a dark light.

A heart formed out of nothing, then nerves, then organ systems, then skin, and then fur.

The world stilled in the unseen presence of the goddess. Then she spoke.

Today you offer your voice and your heart in my name

Child of my betrothed, apostle of the merciful one

Join your fingers and stomp your feet and rejoice at the pain to be inflicted

Rustling veins, pulsing hearts, and flesh-colored skies shall be birthed

I curse you with life

may you hear the crashing waves in your ears and may you taste the blood in your mouth

You shall be given my gift

…

…..

There he was panting and sweating, as he was reborn from total agonizing annihilation mere seconds ago. A sacrifice that bore weight. Yes, he is alive but a wound now stayed in this place and in his very being. The area open and breathing life as the will of the goddess of life manifested here. Here he cannot be hunted, here he can ignore the misfortunes that fell on his comrades.

This was all worth it.