It took some time for Oroza to figure out that she was dead. Not just dead, but in the afterlife, at least in a sense. It should have been obvious from the beginning, of course, as she stepped free from the shredded remains of dull scales and emaciated flesh on the shore and strode into paradise.
From the sea, the island seemed like a tiny thing surrounded by strange, colorful plants made of stone just beneath the waves, but as she walked with the dark man into the interior, she found more. More of everything, really. More trees, more buildings, and many more people. Eventually, there were more people in this one spot than she’d ever seen in her life, but it was only when she started to meet some of the women that she recognized as her followers from decades and decades ago that she finally understood.
This was the eternal reward. It was the end of everything.
“Well, not everything,” the dark man corrected her. “Souls stay here for a time, and when they are ready, they move on to the next stage to be reborn again.”
He showed her a cave that people occasionally entered, leading down into the dark. No one forced them to leave paradise and walk into the darkness, and yet, sometimes, they did for reasons that Oroza could not explain.
“You will need to walk into the darkness soon,” he told her, “Though not that way. There’s no way back from this particular point.”
“Then why do people go?” she asked.
“For the same reason people die,” he answered with a shrug, “It’s their time.”
That conversation led many places, but the place it returned to again and again was Death. “If you’re the god of death, then why are you here on an island and not out there, stopping all this?” she demanded. “Evil has been unleashed, and you could do more than the goddess of a river or the god of a city could ever do!”
“I would have,” he nodded sadly. “Alas, I have been dead for a long time, and I no longer leave this place than any of the other spirits that have been confined here.”
“But that doesn’t make sense,” she insisted. “How can the God of Death die?”
“All things die, eventually,” he said, looking at her with eyes so deep and dark that eventually she was forced to turn away. “As to how I would tell you to ask Siddrim, but sadly, he is not here. Sufficed to say, Death was one more evil he sought to eliminate from his perfect world, but he was only partially successful.”
“The world decided that death was something it would handle on its own, and for the most part, it does.” he continued with a shrug. “If I sit here long enough, then all the dead of the world will come to me on the tide just as you did. It’s only a matter of time.”
Oroza didn’t know what to say, so she sat down on a nearby boulder and stared off into the distance. This wasn’t what she’d expected at all. Here, there were so many people chatting and swimming or simply eating fruit that grew back almost instantly. It truly was paradise, but it wasn’t what she’d been looking for.
She’d been looking forward to when her grip on life relaxed, and she slipped down her river and into the sea to die. It was supposed to be oblivion that awaited her, but instead, Istiniss had forbidden such an outcome. However, if the god of Death was to be believed, then she would have washed up here one day, regardless of what she wanted. She’d only found a more direct course.
“Well, if people can’t leave, then why did you say I’ll need to descend into the dark,” she asked finally, unwilling to complain about this outcome.
“Dead Gods and Goddesses are far more complicated than the average soul,” he said slowly like he was trying to decide how much to say. “These things take time. Days. Months. Years. It depends on how long you lived, how much power you possessed, and how many worshipers still whisper your name. It took me decades before people forgot about me.”
Orozoa tried and failed to remember his name, but she found she couldn’t. She wondered how long it might be until she forgot her own name too.
“Regardless, at least as far as the prophecy Lunaris shared with me,” he continued, “You still have time enough for three things.”
“Lunaris’s prophecy?” Oroza asked. This wasn’t the first time she’d heard of it. “What is it I’m supposed to do exactly.”
“Not her prophecy,” Death corrected her. “Just one that was shared with her. Magic and destiny are not the same things. Regardless, the words of fate say you will yet do three things: you will visit the forge, you will imbue the sword with light, and you will give it to the chosen one. After that, you may finally rest.”
“What if I just stay here?” she said, feeling suddenly obstinate. “What if I just… just stop and wait here for it to all be over?”
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She knew she wouldn’t do that, of course. If she had something she could do to strike back against the darkness that had taken so much for her, she would. Still, part of her wanted to. She was tired, and more than anything, part of her just wanted to lay down and sleep, even as rejuvenated as she was.
“You can try,” Death agreed, “But the words of true prophecy are difficult to resist. I should know. I’ve tried, but here we are.”
“I don’t even know what the forge is,” she sighed.
“Oh, that much is easy,” Death smiled, his dazzling smile. “There is only one forge worthy of prophecy, and it sits at the very center of the earth where the All-Father pounds away night and day on his creations.”
“That sounds like a long way,” Oroza answered doubtfully.
“It is, though it takes less time than you’d think, especially since it’s so hard to get lost,” Death explained. “Just listen for the pounding of his anvil, and you will not go away,”
They talked a while after that, but it became increasingly clear to Oroza that she wasn’t going to resist. Instead, she listened to the man as he explained to her where she must go. The cave at the center of the island wouldn’t take her to where she needed. That place only leads to oblivion and rebirth.
Instead, she had to don the skin and scales of her serpent form once more and wade back out into the sea. It was a jarring experience. Even though it felt like she’d only just left the water earlier that day, it already felt like an alien environment. The water chilled her, and the salt choked her, and even as she began to swim toward the bottom of the sea, all she wanted to do was go back and lie down on that sunny beach.
The crevice she’d been directed to find in the ocean floor wasn’t hard to find or navigate. All she had to do was swim ever deeper. It was only when she reached the bottom and had to search for the tunnel that things slowed down. It took her far too long to find the path forward, but once she did, she made good time again, descending ever deeper into the earth.
Things only slowed down when the water ran out, and she was forced to walk rather than swim. Then, at least, she could hear the hammer blows. They led her the right way at every juncture, though she marked her way as she went because she suspected that she would have to come back this way when she was done. As much as she longed for oblivion to take her, being buried miles beneath the ground was hardly her idea of a perfect end.
Oroza put one foot in front of the other until time lost all meaning. Had it been days or weeks? She simply couldn’t say. She was surrounded by darkness and stone, and in all that time, the only sign of life she saw, other than the continuous sound of hammering, was a tiny creature made of stone that fled from her as soon as it saw her.
The underworld was a strange place; it was a dark and endless desert that was only occasionally brightened by glowing crystals or luminescent fungus. Other than the Lich’s lair, she had never seen a less hospitable place. She’d actually never even imagined that such a place might exist, and it certainly went a long way to explaining the dour demeanor of the All-Father on the few occasions she’d seen him.
Still, she didn’t understand him completely until she saw walked past the flowing magma rivers, and over the ancient granite bridges into his stone sanctuary at the center of the world. It was a sweltering, oppressive place that made her long for the cold dark tunnels, but she’d come so far that there was no way she was going back empty handed.
Oroza continued, moving forward, though, through ancient halls that were built for someone at least twice her height. There, she found the ghosts of dwarves, or perhaps the memories of them, running to and fro on nameless errands. They ignored her, though, just as she ignored the deafening sound of steel on steel until she finally found the All-Father.
Though he was the god of the dwarves, he was a giant of a man at more than twice her height. He stood there at an anvil that must have weighed thousands of pounds, lit only by the orange glow of the incandescent metal. She had to approach within a dozen feet of the god before he finally stopped his endless hammering and said, “So you are here at last.”
“At last?” she wondered aloud before realizing that Lunaris must have told the dwarf everything she’d told Death.
“Yes,” she agreed. “I’ve come here as I was told to.”
“Well, then give me the metal, and I’ll get to work on the cursed blade that the Moon Maiden wants so badly,” the All-Father said grumpily.
“Metal?” she asked, confused. “I wasn’t told I needed to—”
“How in the blazes am I supposed to make a sword of singular sharpness without any metal?” the dwarven god yelled loud enough to make her tremble.
“I…” Oroza didn’t know what to say.
Was she supposed to apologize? Was she supposed to walk all the way back to the surface and ask Death for help getting the thing she needed? While she wondered about this, one of the scales that made up her fraying form fell to the ground, making a metallic clink as it hit the ground.
She picked it up and studied the tarnished silver scale between two clawed fingers. Was this why I was the one to be included in this stupid prophecy? She wondered. Is this what he needs?
“Will this do?” she asked finally, reaching up to hand the small thing to the dwarven god.
He studied it for a long moment before he said, “Aye, this and another hundred or more just like it mixed with mithril might indeed do the trick.”
The idea of plucking her few remaining scales off of her already threadbare form made her despair, but that sadness wasn’t enough to stop her from doing just that. If this is what it would take to stop the Lich, then she would do all of this and more.
Carefully, one at a time, she began to pull scales from her flesh. She started with the closest, but when those were all gone, it was like pulling teeth. Still, she bore the pain, and she she’d finally reached a hundred she handed them all to the All-Father’s ghostly helpers who immediately took them over to the forge to be melted down until the darkness and impurities were burned away and those pieces of her had been reduced to nothing but liquid silver.
“There we are,” the All-Father nodded, watching the metal that had once been part of who she was getting poured into a crucible to be alloyed with the Mithril that the forge god had spoken of earlier. “With this, I can make you a blade that could strike down any god, living or dead. Mark my words. Now you just need to find a hero to wield it.”