Zayn spent the morning on the hill watching the sunrise. He had seen the long stretch of the wasteland, but he had never really watched it before this moment. A part of him felt that it was suicide to cross this direction, but he felt that he had a better chance if he didn’t go through the heart of the great desert.

He looked to the north and then to the south, trying to gauge which direction looked better, but either direction looked equally difficult. No one had ever told him if there were ways that were shorter, so all he could do was get a good angle and do the best he could to judge which way he wanted to go.

He yawned as he considered which way would be the shortest distance to cross.

Neither of them looked particularly promising. He looked to the rising sun, wondering if it held his salvation. If people couldn’t cross the land, perhaps it was because it looked like a long flat stretch of nothing. It would be easy to get turned around in that place without landmarks.

He couldn't afford to get lost. So the best solution was to use the sun.

He stood up and walked back to the town, looking to see if he could see any sign of soldiers in the morning light. There didn't appear to be anything, but the rolling hills of rock and sand offered many places for men to hide.

As he drew nearer the pit, his eyes were drawn to the pit. The hole, seemingly small, drew in the eyes with its unnatural darkness. He had read what the book wanted him to do, but he wasn't sure if he would have the strength to commit to it

> The pit is the heart of the ritual. It is the doorway to the realm of death, and through it, the supplicant must gain the permission of its lord and master. There must be a retinue for the lord of death. Prepare a council of the dead around the pit. At the head, back to the sunrise, place a throne and a body for the king resting upon it. At even intervals, place six more bodies, three on each side of the throne. They must be placed in positions of respect to the great one.

Zayn felt sick reading those words, but he saw a glimpse of many truths in The Eternal Balance and he suspected that there were many more. It offered the keys to immortality and the possibility of bringing his loved ones back.

Pathetic Humans. The wind mocked him briefly.

He stood up and made his way to one of the houses and brought out the nicest chair he could find. It was nowhere close to a throne, but it did have a backrest and armrests making it the best choice available. The wood was weathered and worn, showing its age in many spots.

Zayn placed it in the correct position of the circle and stared at it. It didn't look even remotely throne-like. He knew of several gold coins in the village, but he wanted to save those for his journey. There was nothing else of gold in the village, so he turned to the jewelry.

There wasn't much.

They made most of it from leather strips, but there were a few made out of copper plates fastened together. All of them had semi-precious stones on them. No one had any gemstones or anything, as they couldn't afford to keep something so extravagant.

He placed them on the armrests and back of the chair, like spoils of a conquest draped on the chair. It didn't really help, but it looked better than doing nothing.

The only question was which cadaver to place on the chair. He eventually decided that it should go to Corin, the closest thing that village had to an elder. His grey-speckled hair had continued to grow, and Zayn wondered if he should spend some time cutting and cleaning it.

He stared at the rising sun, feeling the heat of the day build. It would be better to travel at night. Finish the ritual and then travel after sunset. That meant he needed to gather the other corpses.

So he turned to setting them up and found he had a real problem. Getting them in the proper position was surprisingly hard. The bodies were growing stiff and he suspected he shouldn’t use any of the ones that he had harvested material from. So the muscles had dried and hardened into their resting position and he struggled to get them into the right position. He discovered that the second body was far easier and that the older ones were easier to move than the fresher corpses.

He eventually had six figures, kneeling on both knees, heads touching the ground, and arms outstretched to the pit’s welcoming darkness.

Then it was time to begin.

He gathered up the body he had worked to preserve and placed it before him. On it, he lay the organs he had painstakingly removed from numerous bodies. Each of them was assigned a specific location on the body.

“World of death, heed my call.”

He knelt down and raised his hands to the sky.

“I have received words of wisdom from beyond the land of the living, and I seek audience with the lord of that realm.”

It started out like a distant rumble, emanating from the pit, and slowly grew in tone and ferocity until it blasted out of the pit with unnatural fury. The wind howled into the sky forming a sandy cyclone as it blew debris clear of the pit.

After a moment, the cyclone faded as it ran out of material to blast into the sky. It maintained a steady torrent of wind until it just stopped.

Zayn stared down into the pit, gazing at the darkness. It wasn’t darkness anymore. Previously he had felt it was a consuming hunger that wanted to devour him. Now it felt like an endless void, stretching into another world.

Pathetic Humans. The wind mocked.

Zayn pulled his eyes up from the pit and to where Corin sat. He was no longer placed in the chair, having taken a far more relaxed and comfortable position.

“Mortals are all the same.” The thing behind Corin’s lifeless eyes spoke, “You fear death. You fear emptiness. You run from it all your lives. What does it accomplish? Nothing. You always die. It is pathetic to see how far you have fallen.”

Zayn felt his mouth go dry. The book had suggested that he would be talking to something, but he hadn’t really believed it would be real. The fact it was the voice in the wind terrified him.

“You are the wind. Aren’t you? That voice that has been tormenting me.”

“Wind?” Corin’s head twisted as if he was listening to something unexpected. The neck cracked and popped as it moved.

“It is possible that you heard a medium like that, but I am not the wind.” A finger twisted, slowly rising upward as it tapped the chest of Corin’s body.

“I am the author of that book.” The finger twisted around and pointed at the ghostly tome. The head looked around, first gazing at the blue sky and then at the dry brownstone homes.

“Where exactly are we?”

“This is my home village, Hushwood.”

“Village..” Corin muttered the word as if it held great value, gazing at the building that had once been Corin’s home, “You killed them all? No, that isn’t right. That smell, is it what I think it is?”

The body of Corin jerked upright from his death-like posture. The head jerked quickly from side to side, “This is interesting. Come to me, boy.”

Something tugged at Zayn, almost lifting him off the ground and towards the pit. He grabbed at the body and felt the pull almost vanish completely. He looked around the prepared body and could see small tendrils of glowing energy connecting it to the ground.

“Fine,” The voice sounded slightly annoyed, and the tugging stopped. Corin's body jerked out of the chair, dangling like a puppet, and drifted over the pit. He drifted closer and closer, almost to the point where he had completely crossed the pit.

Zayn held his breath, watching to see if it crossed the line; but as close as he got. He never once crossed it.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

“I wrote the book, boy.” Corin’s mouth moved, but it was strangely slow compared to the words.

Zayn felt stupid for thinking it would be that easy.

Corin’s head leaned in, sniffing the air, “You smell of him. Why are you here boy?”

“I lost everyone, and I want to bring them back. I want to survive. To overcome death.”

“Tell me the truth boy, or I will rip it from you by force.” Corin waved a hand into the air, and the six kneeling figures all stood up. Each of their eyes was unnaturally red, their teeth were long and sharp, and not one of them moved in the awkward way of Corin. They moved with a grace that spoke of power.

“Give it to him,” they all chanted.

Zayn stared at them. Even if he was feeling strong, he doubted he could resist them. The book had said nothing about what they could or couldn’t do. It had just described them as members of his court.

Attendants.

Zayn thought about everything he had heard about a court or its people.

He knelt down, bowing his head low as if he was a courtesan, “Great one, take no offense. I…”

Zayn heard the attendants settling down.

“I..I…” Zayn couldn’t get himself to admit the truth.

“Can’t say it, can you.” Corin’s head cocked to the side and a finger touched his lips, “Fine, I don’t think that it matters much. What are you willing to give me for this power?”

“Can I overcome everything? Can I change what it means to be human?”

“You cannot imagine what is possible. Death is the doorway to so much more than what you might hope to accomplish. Look.”

Zayn raised his head and watched as Corin gestured towards one of the now kneeling attendants. It howled, muscles writhing beneath the flesh, and a great monster ripped its way from beneath the skin.

Golden lances of bones grew out of it, rising into the sky. They twisted around each other like snakes forming golden flowers and budding gemstones. The whole process was over in an instant.

It floated on wings of golden light, pearly white bones shinned and shimmered in the light. Each of the bones was covered in beautiful decorations.

Corin gestured with his other hand, and a second corpse writhed in energy. Instead of the bones growing out of its flesh, the skin itself changed as it grew into long thin plates. The plates were black and oozy but quickly grew hard. These also reminded him of a snake, but now it looked like the scales of a snake.

They didn’t stay that way but grew into like dark spires, overlapping each other into thousands of knife-like points.

While the first was beautiful and inspirational in appearance, this one was a twisted monster.

“The distinction between good and evil is no more significant than the difference between life and death. The divide is the domain that is mine. I rule over it and control all that passes through it.”

Corin was selling himself. Zarn couldn’t be exactly sure of what that meant, but he could feel it. This ‘god’ needed something.

“Why?” He found himself asking a being that could obliterate him, “Why write the book? If you hold so much power…”

Zayn looked into Corin’s lifeless gaze, “The divide may hold much, but it doesn’t occupy much if any space. What of the light and the darkness.”

Corin hissed, drifting away from Zayn. A face, ghostly and pale, emerged from it. She was beautiful, radiating painfully dark green energy that grew silvery and bright for a brief moment.

“You are smarter than you look, boy.” Her voice was playful and soft, “What do you want?”

“Revenge.”

“Oh, you think someone did this?” She gestured around her at the village. The Corin figure's arm slowly followed her movement.

Zayn blinked, “What? No, I don’t think that. I want revenge for everything. Life itself is responsible for this. I want to break this process. To escape the boundaries that we live in.”

“To break open the divide?” She drifted close to the boundary.

“What is the divide?”

She held up a finger and wagged it, “Ah, ah, you didn’t say the magic word.”

“You can’t tell me?”

“Let us consider this. If you were to sail on a boat, cross the ocean, and discover the truth about the Kraken and the sea god, what would you do if I told you that the answer involves their hubris? Would it help if I told you what the word hubris means?”

Zayn felt his face go red. He didn’t understand almost anything the figure had said.

“What is hubris?”

“Pride. The belief that one is unable to make a mistake.” The being pulsed fiercely.

“I don’t understand what you said.” Zayn lowered his head.

“If you had grown up near the ocean, you had seen the fury of its god, you might understand it. Every living thing changes. This is an ability that has no limits…”

“So you have limits.” Zarn interrupted, lifting his face to meet the gaze of the being.

She grimaced, her face scrunching up, ”Yes.”

“Are you alive?”

“God’s are a little different. We exist outside of the living realm.”

“So you want me to give you the ability to change?”

She laughed, a peal of powerful laughter that almost split Zayn’s ears, “No, but that isn’t a bad way to think of it. Go ahead and think that way.”

“I would accept this deal.”

“Good. Offer me the organs, and I will give you what you need to succeed.”

He did his best to follow the steps he had been given. The figure didn’t move any, so he assumed that he had done it right.

The wind started up, this time it was pulling into the hole with a thunderous roar. It pulled everything tied to the ritual into it. The chair, the jewels, the small stones he had placed, the bodies of the attendants. Finally, Corin was drawn into it, pulling the specter of the being with it into the pit.

There was a flash and the pit was gone.

All that marked its disappearance was a small green stone resting on a perfect piece of untouched land.

Zayn walked over and picked the stone up. It glowed brightly as he lifted it into the air, and he felt a surge of energy course through his body. He looked at the glowing tome, floating in the air, and realized it was an actual book now. Its leather was aged and worn ranging from a dark brown to a slightly off-color tan. There were several cracks in it and he could smell the pungent odor of its pages.

He dropped the stone and the tome turned back into its ghostly form. A little experimenting revealed that ‘The Eternal Balance’ would become physical any time he held the stone in his hand. Putting objects between him and the stone reverted it back to the ghostly one.

He wasn’t exactly sure what this meant until he looked at the book in both states. In the ghostly form, it looked more or less the same. In the physical form, its opening lines were very different.

> The Eternal Balance

>

> Devotee of Gavrik

>

> Most people know nothing of Gavrik. So you should be safe in revealing this to others, but it is important to understand that there is a group of people who are determined to kill any Devotee that they encounter.

>

> It is the nature of service to Gavrik that one would expect to face so much death. Realize that there is no clue who these individuals are. They will simply offer you no mercy, no hesitation, and no regret if they encounter you.

>

> Conceal the stone and the book, as they are clear indicators of your devotion. The stone is a font of your power and the book holds the knowledge needed to unlock more power.

Zayn looked at the small bundle of supplies he had been preparing for the journey. There was a backpack he had been planning on putting his clothes, food, and water into. It had belonged to Corin, as he had loved spending a lot of time wandering around the hillsides looking for treasures.

Zayn had always thought that his treasures looked a lot like junk, but he wasn’t going to complain about the pack. It would allow him to carry everything without using his hands, making this trip something he could survive.

He put the stone inside the pack, nestled among his clothes, and then packed the food on top. The waterskins went on the side of the pack, in case one of them broke.

He began washing himself off and getting ready to go to bed. It was still sunny and he knew it would be best to start the journey at sunset.

As he scrubbed his body, thick grimy water pooling at his feet, he wondered about the soldiers and how long it would take before they would come back into the town. The longer it took for them to come looking the better a chance Zarn had. He didn’t think that they would follow him into the desert, even if they suspected someone had fled into it.

They would assume that no one would survive crossing it.

Still, it wouldn’t hurt to let them think otherwise. He looked around at the buildings. How were the soldiers spotting signs of life? How long were they planning on waiting?

Until everyone starved, it would seem.

How do you tell if someone is out of food? Smoke.

He looked at the thin wispy tendrils leaking from his chimney. He didn’t really ever notice the smoke, but it was true that they almost always had something coming out of them. They all had coal boxes for storing hot embers to allow them to restart the fires. The only house that emitted smoke was his.

He wondered if they could count the tendrils of smoke.

“What if they came early?” He muttered to himself, just to hear something other than the whistling wind.

He realized he could solve the problem easily enough. It would explain where he was and what had happened to the last survivors. So he went through his childhood home and made sure everything he needed was in the next house, then he started moving anything wooden into his home.

Chairs, tables, bits of wood. Anything would do. The houses burned surprisingly well due to how air flowed through them. He didn’t remember anything from that day other than the surprising heat and how quickly it had started.

He then opened the coal box and made sure the pieces of wood had something to burn off of.

The flames licked hungrily at the pieces of wood, and before long they had roared into a giant ball of fire. It grew hot and fierce enough Zayn wondered if putting other items into the house was too much. He went to where he had stashed his traveling gear and went to bed.

He woke to find the fire was burning nicely. He ate one last meal, drank his fill of water, and set out into the wasteland.