Chapter 169

Master of Death

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!”

It was getting beyond difficult, Sylas sighed, to die. It took him nearly four hours of brutal sodomy to kill himself, and all the pain that entailed. He was so hung over it that, after being reborn, all he could do was saunter back to his room and collapse. He felt empty, like a glass of water left too long in the sun.

Opening up the bottle of wine, he poured himself a cup and drank, sip by sip, but it did little. He was already numb, as though perennially hazy drunk. Memories drifted like leaves in the wind, his mind a torrent of collisions. Forcibly shaking it off, he returned to his senses slowly over the course of the day and began training, once again.

By now, it was just the optics of time--he barely thought about it, doing it all on instinct. His body told him when he was done. This time around, it took record-breaking 13 days to return to his vaunted peak. As most times before, Asha didn't come to visit him for the duration. She usually stayed away for a few weeks after the rebirth, in part because she had to catch up emotionally unlike him, and in part because she seemed to have learned it was best not to bother him so quickly after death.

On the 16th day, while he was having a silent breakfast with Ryne and Valen, he saw her peeking from the corner window. These days, few things could still rev his blood flow, and she was one of them. Even after so long, so many years, each time he would come back, and each time he’d see her for the ‘first time’, in some ways, it truly felt like seeing her for the first time. Her snow-white hair and eyes that yet remained unmatched framed the face that anchored him, as above so below.

She waved her forward, causing Ryne and Valen to glance back in confusion. There, she walked in from the snowed-in castle wearing nothing but a fiery-red dress, a change in the long-standing motif of white. Valen turned forward and eyed him strangely, a faint smirk escaping the Prince's lips.

“This is Ababababababa,” Sylas rumbled. “She’s a voodoo witch who predicted I’d die on the 44th day of the 44th year of my 44th birthday.” She slapped him gently across the head as she sat down while Ryne and Valen snickered.

“Who are you calling a witch?” she quizzed, unceremoniously joining them for the meal, pouring herself a cup of milk. “Last one’s a blur. Care to elaborate?”

“Was quite brutal,” he replied. “Tender eyes do forget.”

“How charming. When are we leaving?”

“In a couple of days.”

“You’re leaving? Where?” Valen interjected.

“Just some cautionary business,” Sylas replied. “Why? Are you going to miss me?”

“You do worry me,” Valen smiled back. “Promise me you’ll stay out of trouble?”

“No can do, my dearest Prince. Trouble seems to find me like beetles find their rolls of dung.”

“You have a strange obsession with comparing things to shit,” Asha called him out. “Do we need to talk about it?”

“No, not any time soon,” he replied.

“If you say so.”

Three days passed swiftly and the two snuck out in the middle of the night, while the fog continued to descend. It was a strange sight--beyond eerie of caught by a human’s eye, even. A pair of humans trekking through waist-high snow-laden lands wearing nothing but a casual dress, and a pair of trousers. No jackets, no boots, no shawls or scarves or gloves. Not even a lounger for supplies.

And yet, the two walked casually, as though taking a romantic stroll through a spring-flourishing park. They remained silent deep into the night, following a familiar path north through the creepy and desolate trees.

“We’re really doing this, huh?” she asked at the break of dawn while the faint glimmers of the sun barely managed to pierce through the layers of ashen clouds.

“Sure, why not?” he replied, glancing at her with a smile. “You scared? If so, you can go back.”

“And leave you without your favorite wine? I have no heart!”

“You worry too much,” he said. “I’ll be fine.”

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“... will you?” she asked with a more serious tone. “You’re slipping.”

“... yeah,” he admitted with a shallow nod. “I’ve felt it. But it’s not the kind of slipping that you’re thinking of.”

“It’s not?”

“... I’m dying, Asha,” he said. “Not from any wounds, not in a true sense of death. As a human,” he looked at her. “I feel it all... slipping.”

“Strange it took you this long,” she said. “How old are you anyway, Sylas? A few centuries at least at this point, no?”

“Something like that.”

“We aren’t meant to live that long,” she replied. “Ever since I met you and ever since the whispers rekindled what my past self lived through... I started feeling the same. And if it impacts me, who restores her memories second-hand, I can only imagine what sort of an impact it has on you.”

“... no, it’s a bit different,” Sylas said. “I... I almost stopped caring. No, I did stop. I try fooling myself into thinking I didn’t... but mirrors are whores, turns out.”

“What a fancy way to put it,” she rolled her eyes. “I have read a book before.”

“Wow, you can read?”

“Hush,” she slapped him gently. “It was called Optics of Eternity. A rather dry and boring read altogether, mostly a boorish man relating pointless thoughts for pages on end. But something caught my eye.”

“...”

“Toward the end, there were a few lines I really liked, more so in retrospect even,” she added as the two stopped near a dead willow tree. “When a man is twenty, the world is massive; when he is forty, the world shrinks; when he is sixty, the world coalesces. Few who linger until eighty realize the whole world is themselves, and even fewer who reach a hundred... figure there is no world. All that they have known is dead and gone, and they are soon to follow. Men are not made for eternity, as goats were not made for riding.”

“... you memorized all that? I’m proud.”

“You’re really asking for a beating,” she rolled her eyes. “He’s got a point, you know? The more we live the less we care because we realize one simple thing: all things pass. The good, the bad, the awful. All the misery and all the joy... all things are temporary. That’s the beauty of life. We get the windfalls and torrents once or twice and then we go. Go before the life chisels us into, well, you.”

“Geez, thanks.”

“That’s how I understand the Gods, Sylas,” she added. “It’s not that they are heartless. It’s not that they hate us and despise us, no matter the teachings and the stories. It’s that they are so, so, so old... that nothing matters anymore. Why answer the prayers of a girl who has lost it all... when a million other girls prayed just the same over the course of thousands of years? But they still do. Answer the prayers, I mean. They answered mine.”

“... too old to care and too young to fabricate the care,” he grinned.

“What? You’re saying that if you were a God and I prayed you help me, you would just look away?” she teased with a smile. “How cruel of you. Besides, you do care, Sylas. Of course you care. I see it in your eyes, every time we're in that castle. Life hasn't beaten you yet."

“You sure did always have that unrelenting faith in me,” he said as they resumed the walk. “Still can’t figure out its depths.”

“They run deep.”

"Oh, really? Do the depths run deep? Who would have thought?"

“You have equal levels of faith in me,” she said softly. “I’m just repaying the favor.”

“... Asha, I don’t know how to say this--”

“Oh, shut up,” she rolled her eyes as he struggled to hold back a smile. “There are times when you can poke and probe me all you like with your funny little jokes, but there are times where you shut up. For a man so old, you’d think you’d have grasped the basics of romance by now.”

“I never was a good romancer,” he joked. “Women’s hearts eluded me.”

“Shallow excuse.”

“No, it’s true,” they broke toward the last two miles before the north splintered into another, desolate world. “As an old oak, I should know. In life, I learned, men and women love differently.”

“...” she remained silent as he came to a sudden halt, caressing her cheeks. “Women love with words, and they love with affection, reaffirmation, and a symphony of songs that their hearts sing.”

“And men don’t?”

“Some do, sometimes,” he replied. “Most, though, don’t.”

“How do you love, then? The men, I mean.”

“Just as a woman can make a man feel like a knight in shining armor when he’s just a fat couch-dweller,” Sylas said. “A man can make a woman feel like a princess of a kingdom when, well, she’s not. A loud noise in the night, a hefty bark or a howl, and the crashing skies. We’ll stand in front of it all.”

“... at your own peril?” she asked softly.

“You should rest,” he said.

“And you?”

“Well, sometimes, you see, men don’t wait for the crashing skies,” he chuckled. “We choose to crash them.”

“... be careful,” she warned, softly kissing his hand.

“A strange thing to say to an immortal.”

“I’m not saying it to an immortal,” she added, looking up at him with a faint smile.

“See you,” he said, leaning forward and kissing her forehead.

"Not if I see you first," her grasp lingered on his fingers for a second longer before she let go, her gaze glazed in sorrow and want. He didn't turn back, speeding off as the snow began to melt. As though springtime came, tiny patches of green grew from the soil at impossible speeds, a trail framing his vanishing figure.

“He commands death, dear doe,” a voice spoke into the silence that was the world, causing Asha to look to the side. “It is time.”

“...” there was a momentary silence before a burst of white light washed over the forest.

“Don’t weep, dearest doe,” the voice crackled like a distant thunder beset with sorrow. “All things end.”

“I won’t end,” the white light replied. “He wishes to die. He will never follow me.”

“You have never asked.”

“I do not need to ask.”

“You all but need ask,” the crow said as the white light transformed, leaving a snow-white doe standing on the patch of dirt. The crow flew over gingerly and landed on the doe’s head. “It is time for me to go...”

“I will redo the ritual, I must have made a mistake--”

“There was no mistake, Asha. Our mother told us--one is forever, and one is for now. I held on the last cycle, for you. But now... you have found someone.”

“He... he--”

“It is okay. I know I will always live on in your heart. And it is okay for someone else to reside there, Asha. After all, your heart is the expanse that knows no end. Ask him.”

“... soon.”

“Very well. Soon it is.” There was silence... and then there was nothing--nothing but a single, falling, black feather that melted upon touching the ground, as though it was never there. Much like its beholder.