The four others walked through the woods, Mark and Horan carrying Hurat’s body between them. Up ahead, Quet held her hand out in front of her, waving aimlessly at the trees. “We hired a Mayan thaumaturge to set up an invisibility barrier around our house back in the seventies. Th-the 1370s, sorry. Mayans died before disco. But aside from that, the barrier should be right around…” Her hand vanished in a ring of orange light. “Boom.”
The other three stepped through the barrier to reveal a large clearing, in the middle of which was a twelve-storey pyramid with wooden double doors fixed into the bottom.
“We also got the Mayans to make the house,” mumbled Quet. “They weren’t very imaginative with the design. It’s nicer on the inside.”
Omet opened the door for the others. “I’ll go in first. The Greeks are still here, and I don’t want two guys carrying Hurat’s dead body to be the first they see of us.”
They walked through the decently-decorated foyer and into the central atrium. All sorts of things one would expect to find in a normal house were scattered against the walls, from several couches arrayed around a TV to a large banquet table to an impressively expansive kitchen. A triple-wide spiral staircase in the middle of the room wound up to the ceiling and connected to the other floors ringing the walls.
Saralai turned away from the TV, which was currently displaying VHS sitcom footage, and noticed Omet’s arrival. “Oh hey, you guys didn’t die. Bit of a twist, actually. So, where’d you end up?”
She was about to comment on Quet’s arrival when she saw Mark and Horan bringing Hurat in. “...Oh.”
Omet nodded. “He got pulled into the Down Below, along with the whole Norse Domain. We tried to head down and stop some monster dark lord from killing them all, but by the time we got there, there was just one Norse left. So, uh…”
Horan took over for them. “You said we weren’t the first ones back?”
“Yeah, for people who… You first started coming back yesterday.” Saralai called out to the upper floors. “Hey! It’s Quet and Omet! And, uh… And Hurat!” She turned back to Horan. “And where’d you come from?”
Horan glanced at Mark. “You two weren’t the only Domains who got invited, you know.”
Saralai glanced at Mark. “And that guy?”
Horan shrugged. “We’re pretty much a package deal at this point. Get used to it, ‘cause we’re moving in. Once we’ve dealt with…” He nodded in Hurat’s direction.
Other Aztecs and a few Greeks showed up on the upper floors, leaning over the balconies and gasping at the sight of Hurat. Omet glanced back to Horan, who nodded reassuringly. Omet glanced down at Hurat. “Yeah, you can just put him down.”
While Mark and Horan breathed simultaneous sighs of relief, Omet looked up at the people above them. “Yeah, uh, maybe you can all come down? Say a few words?”
The Aztecs began exchanging looks among themselves. A few went down the staircase and stood awkwardly in front of Omet. Meanwhile, Omet struggled to think of what to say once they were ready. Right, like that would ever happen.
Quet nudged them as she walked past, giving them a calm nod before sitting down on the floor in front of her other siblings.
Omet sighed and tried to compose themself. “...Okay. Hurat’s dead. You, um, all of you can see that. He was killed sometime this morning by the person who led the attack on the party. But, as I’m sure would be something he’d be very proud of, the Norse survivor of the whole thing told us he took them down with him.”
They cleared their throat. “So, I don’t really know where I’m going with this. I mean, I guess I should say some words about him, since I’m pretty sure I’m the new ‘leader’, but… I really never thought I’d see the day where any of us would have to deal with something like this. Here’s our brother, the guy who kept us going through a millennium’s worth of rough patches and hard times with a smile on his face. And now he’s dead at seven hundred and one years old. It’s…”
They decided to just kneel down. Standing felt wrong. “It’s tough, finding the words to say what I feel about this, what we’re all feeling. We all knew this could happen, and probably would happen eventually, but… I don’t know, I guess we just let ourselves forget about that. ‘Wow, look at those tiny little humans and death rites, and their existential dread, and-’” They glanced back at Mark. “No offense, right?”
“N- Uh, none taken.”
“Great.” Omet decided to use their accidental diversion as a way to skirt around talking any more about the inevitability of death. “By the way, this is Mark, and that there’s Horan. You probably remember them, they’re the ones who I helped to take out that giant red storm guy back last December. They, um, they’re gonna be moving in with us! Starting now.”
The other Aztecs murmured among themselves, several nodding in assent. A few of the Greeks, who were still looking down from the balconies, gave thumbs-ups in response.
“Great.” Omet sighed. “But that’s everything I have to say, for now at least. I guess we can, like… organize a funeral? Send him off, and all that?” They rubbed the back of their hand against their eye. “Step one, figure out how to do all that stuff. Also try to keep the body preserved while we plan all that. I…” They glanced at Quet. “I mean, I don’t want to use the freezer, but…”
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They collapsed onto their back. They weren’t ready for something like this, none of them were. Practically or emotionally. Omet certainly wasn’t, and they doubted any of their siblings were, either.
Horan leaned over to look at Omet. “Hey, uh, dude? You good?”
Omet grunted and got up. They were in charge now, and a leader had to be strong for the people they were protecting. That was how their brother had done it, and now it was how they would do it.
While they got to their feet, Omet glanced at Horan and whispered to him. “How am I doing so far?”
Horan simply shrugged. “Could be worse, I guess.”
“Okay…” Omet turned back to the Aztecs. “This is gonna be hard for us. All of it. But as long as we work together and do our best, we can give our brother the sendoff he deserves.” They sighed. “Not like he deserved any other part of this…”
Quet was the first to stand. “Alright everyone, you heard ‘em. We’ve got a job to do!”
-
None of the inhabitants of the Aztec household had much on their schedules, so funeral preparations were done in a matter of days. The three Domains (plus Mark) assembled under the cloud-covered sky at what their clocks told them was noon, putting up everything that was needed in front of their home.
Hurat was pulled from the walk-in freezer and laid on top of the rectangular pile of logs situated on a wide tarpaulin. Quet had prepared extensive catering and spread the food across the table nearby. Finally, every adequate seat in the house had been taken out and arranged in front of the pyre, haphazardly providing enough seating for the forty-odd people present. More Aztecs had shown up since Quet and Omet had arrived, but the crowd was still smaller than anyone would have preferred.
Omet stood on top of the coffee table which served as a podium. “Okay… I’d say this is a lot better than the living room, at least for delivering a eulogy. Before I get started, I do just want to both congratulate and thank everyone in front of me for helping to set up something like this so quickly. I know we’re Primoi, and there’s that whole joke about how we’re built to party, but y’know… Things aren’t quite the same now. But I do hope that if Hurat really does still exist, in whatever form that might be, he’d be proud of us all if he saw us now.”
They cleared their throat. “Of course, that’s just wishful thinking, for all of us. None of this is anything anyone should be proud of. I’m sure Hurat’s happy that he got to go out with a bang, protecting humanity, all that. But this was never our problem. The Primus that survived all that didn’t explain much beyond what happened to Hurat, but it doesn’t take another oracle to tell that the Norse made their bed, and they just had to lie in it. But Hurat got tangled up in the scene, and he ended up taking the fall for that one Norse. And sure, she was sorry, she tried to give him a burial and everything. But that’s not bringing Hurat back.”
They glanced down at Quet. “I think it’s easy to believe, even if it’s not at the front of your mind, that all of this has a point. I mean, there’s this whole dimension that dead human souls go to, it’s not hard to draw a connection like that. Humans do it all the time. But when we’re in a situation like this, mourning someone who died solving someone else’s problem for them, you kinda start seeing the whole world for what it is. Quet and I, we ended up going on this whole overly-convoluted journey into the Down Below to try and save Hurat, since we figured that a whole lot more of you guys would be stuck down there with him. And a ton of stuff happened, lots of good people ended up dying, everything.
And it’s like what I was just talking about. We ended up in this big struggle for control of a whole city in the down below, and we almost died all the time, and it had nothing to do with us!”
Omet took a moment to calm themself. “Things are crazy these days. Everything’s happening all the time, and I think we can all go more than a few months without some new nutcase trying to kill us all. The world ended a few years ago, the Greeks lost their home and half their family, we lost our brother…” They sighed. “We could all do with some quiet time. A lot of it. At the very least, enough for our new housemates to settle in, and enough for us all to deal with one of our own finally kicking it.”
They stepped off of the table. “If anyone else has something more to say, feel free to take the floor.”
It seemed like the entire crowd wanted to look anywhere except for the makeshift podium. Omet sighed. “Yeah, I-I figured…”
They picked a lighter up from the tarpaulin and held it inside the bottom of the wood pile until the kindling inside caught. They stood back and took a seat in the crowd, watching the fire grow and consume Hurat’s body.
It took about thirty minutes for the fire to finish burning. Halfway through, a few Greeks began to stand up and shuffle over to the food. A minute or two later, one or two Aztecs followed suit. By the time the fire was starting to die down, the seats were practically empty.
Quet sat on the grass a short distance away from the buffet table, watching people eat. She didn’t hear Horan walk up to her until he cleared his throat extra loudly next to her.
She glanced up at him. “I figured you’d be over there, mingling or something. How’s the new place been treating you, by the way?”
“Eh.” Horan floated a few feet into the air and let himself tilt backwards, as if he was in a hammock. “Pretty busy past few days. I kinda figured I’d just acclimate myself once things were a little more normal around here. Room’s nice, though. Don’t have to look up at the clouds, so that’s a plus.”
“Awesome.” Quet leaned back and continued looking at the people at the table. She was pretty sure she could see Mark piling stuff up on his plate. “Any particular reason you’re hanging out with me, of all people?”
Horan shrugged. “Saw you out here alone. Thought you could use someone to talk to, considering…” He looked at the burning pyre. “Things like this aren’t easy. I had to deal with the same thing, and I figure it was less bad for me than normal, so… Yeah. Didn’t really come over here with a plan for conversation, so I guess we can just talk about whatever you wanna talk about.”
Quet shrugged in turn. “Don’t really feel like talking about anything. I’d rather just sit here, watch people do stuff. No complaints.”
“If you say so.” Horan stretched and came back down to earth. “But I guess I just wanted to say that if you want to talk to someone, I’m probably not gonna be doing anything. I’m probably not gonna stick around here, the party I mean, so that offer’s just gonna apply long-term. Because, uh… This kind of thing’s hard. I think Omet went back to their room, and I don’t think Mark’s gonna suddenly turn out to be a world-class crying shoulder… Plus, I’ll just feel bad if I let you sorta stew here. We’re gonna be living together for the foreseeable future, so we might as well let ourselves feel comfortable around each other. My time alone with Mark taught me that stuff like that is pretty much step one.”
Quet nodded, got up and headed back inside. “Alright then. I’ll try not to forget that.”