Alive Again
Taereun
January 1, 15,666 AY
BOOM!
I died killing an oversized lizard that called itself a Dragon. I am dead. But some asshole wants to disturb me. Why can assholes not leave the dead to rest in peace?
Do I really want to rest in peace? I am not sure.
Though time passes, I cannot tell how much time actually passes, but it does not seem very long. Perhaps, it is just a few minutes.
BOOM!
I do not think I am really dead, anymore, but I cannot say that I am alive. I am a Mind and Soul floating within my Core Realm, my personal Realm, the center of my existence. As long as it continues to exist, I will never entirely die, but that does mean I will live. To live I need a Body, Mind, and Soul. Long ago, I repaired my Mind and Soul. Just being within my Core Realm, they regenerated on their own, and I was once again aware. But for some reason, a suitable Body is not so easy to rebuild. No, it would be wrong to say I rebuilt my body. I made a new one from scratch. Did I spend so much time because of that?
However long it was my new Body finally feels complete, but I still do not feel the need to exit my Core Realm and inhabit it.
BOOM!
While I have been dead, I have seen so many things through the Od. There was so much to learn about the Second Metaverse. Many of my questions from my precious life were answered, but I have so many more questions, many of them new, that I want answered.
I feel the Power of the Od swelling around me. It is as much a part of my Core Realm, as much a part of my Power, as Trinity. I can never separate myself from the Od. I was an idiot. I was born a Medium and became a conduit for the Od in life. In death, I let it lay claim to me. I am its Avatar.
BOOM!
Each explosion annoys me more than the last. Was that the eighth? The tenth? The hundredth? I cannot tell anymore. However many explosions it may be is immaterial; the time when I can rest in peace has ended. I have no particular desire to wake up, but it seems, I can no longer avoid doing so. I must return to the Triple Realms that make up the Universe of Taereun.
The Od does not want me to rest. The Od wants me to kill. That is not so bad. I like killing. There are so many assholes that need killing.
With the exception of Limbo and a few other unique Realms, all Realms of existence in the Second Metaverse are tripart Realms. Each Realm consists of three sub-Realms: the Realm of Body, the Realm of Mind, and the Realm of Soul. In ancient times, the High Men, the sons and daughters of Life and Death comprehended a variety of Names that applied to those Realms. Among them, the most commonly used were the Soma, the Eidos, and the Pneuma. Every thing natural to the Second Metaverse has a presence in all three Realms.
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For something to be living it must have a Soul, which is the most important aspect of its existence, but most living things are primarily creatures of the Body. High Men are no different, and I am a High Man. I am the Last Born child of Life and Death. Life once called me an Atavism, while refraining from mentioning that I was her son. I do not know why she kept that knowledge from me, but dying can be a liberating and enlightening experience. You would be amazed at how much you can learn from dying, and how much you can learn while dead.
My Mind and Soul expand outward from my Core Realm and merge with my Body. For the first time in a long time, I am, once again, whole and complete. A long time? How long has it been since I died? I cannot tell, but it must be hundreds of years. For hundreds of years to pass, it means I took a long time to repair my Mind and Soul and Make my new Body.
As all three of my parts merge together into one whole for the first time, I feel smooth chill stone beneath my body and open my eyes. If not for the faint glows from a few artifacts and spells, my tomb pitch black, but even with those glows, the dim light could barely pass the last fading vestiges of twilight. As dim as the light my be, I have no trouble seeing. My sight covers the full range of colors in the spectrum of visible light, along with colors deep into the ultraviolet and infrared ranges. My low-light vision is no longer in the greyscale that it was once limited to.
BOOM!
From the volume of the explosions, the explosive charges being used must be massive, but there is not the faintest tremor to be felt. My tomb is very well built. Still, a flood of black rage rises from the brutal depths of my Soul. It is my tomb. Who the fuck is stupid enough to be setting off explosions outside my tomb?
Sitting up, I look around. I do not need to look to know what is here, inside my tomb, but old habits die hard. From the moment my Mind and Soul exited my Core Realm, I had already become aware of everything inside my tomb.
As I rise to my feet, I am not prepared for the strength and power of my new body and nearly leap into the air. I have been through this once before. This is like the first time I awoke in the Body of Talon, without Woden's interface layer to buffer and adjust for the difference between my undeveloped real body and the raw power of a Half-Dvergar Body. Only this time, in addition to my strength, my density and mass have significantly increased. I would guess that I am at least fifteen times heavier than I should be based on the size of my Body. That was not my intention, but it seems to a natural result of how I rebuilt myself.
Taking a few moment a few minutes, I adjust to the new structure of my Body, and change the way my Trinity flows through it. With the slight difference to the path the Trinity takes, it alters how the laws of the Realm affect me, and despite my density and mass, I am left with a weight of around a thousand pounds.
While I did not know it at the time, I now understand that while I was growing up on Earth, someone must have placed a seal of some sort on my body to keep it limited to something resembling a mere human's strength. I would guess that it was put on me by Life, but it could have been someone else.
As to what broke the seal on my Body, I am not sure. It could have been the near death of my Body from the long absence of my Soul. Life would not want me to die, and she could have designed a seal that would unravel under certain extreme conditions. The seal, also, could have been slowly broken by the Od over time, when I was returned to my body in the wake of The Great Fuck Over. Either option makes sense, or it could be something entirely different that I have not thought of.
Standing on a raised slab of stone, I glance to either side. At the right the my slab, the broken open tomb of Talon holds a pile of dust, scraps of long mummified skin, and a few shards of bone, which are the remains of Talon's corpse. At the left of my slab, a similar pile is all that remains of my original body. Past my body, a ward preserves the ruined body of the dragon I killed, along with the wreckage of the Night Raven, my airship. The dragon's corpse looks like someone skinned about three-quarters of it before putting up the ward.
I never knew what Circle of Coalescence it reached, but that dragon was strong. I killed it, but my victory was Pyrrhic.
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