Instead of just enjoying not having anything to do, other than follow the track I made through the long grass yesterday, or enjoy the expansive world filled with only nature and myself; I called Death.
This time, instead of a video-like call, where I found myself in a facsimile of his strange lava-lit cave, I heard his booming, jovial voice inside my head.
‘Ah, I wondered when I would next hear from you, Lad. Wasn’t expecting it to be this long, though. So did that expert God found manage to sort your issues out? Ah, before I forget, God said thanks for the message you sent Them! It made Their day, They were here enjoying my cooking when it arrived. You should’ve seen the way They lit up.’
‘I’m glad that God enjoyed my thanks. It’s been rough here,’ I thought, instead of speaking out loud. Only the sounds of me striding through the grass, trampling it, and it brushing up against my legs were audible in the real world. I didn’t want to ruin that by speaking.
Instead, I allowed the weak sun which was shining down upon me to fill my inner self with a sense of peace and calm whilst I talked to Death as if he was an old mate I’d only just reconnected with.
After a while of idle chat, Death changed the topic. ‘Though it has been nice catching up with you, lad, you didn’t just call for an idle chat, did you?’
‘You’re right.’ I allowed my amusement to be sent across to him. ‘I’ve come up with something I want to do with my life here. Maybe it’ll be a fool’s mission, maybe it’ll be the death of me, or… What I do know is that I need something like that, something to help give shape to this life of mine.’
‘But you already know what this mission of your is,‘ I heard him smile, then he grew serious again. ’What is it that you want to talk about?’
‘Two things. First, how easy is it to regain control from one deity and replace it with control with another? Second, why am I seen as a Demi-God? And just what is a Demi-God?’
I could feel him debating something within himself, along with some tutting. ‘Okay, that path of yours can be quite dangerous, you know. Old gods normally get consumed or destroyed by newer gods. Sometimes they can even just fade away into a form of oblivion.
‘Often the Regional Administrators slowly gain more and more regions until they become the Supreme Administrator. Though this growth isn’t even and can even backtrack, often these Regional Administrators get consumed by other Regional Administrators, making them more and more powerful. Until, as I said before, there becomes a single Supreme Administrator.
‘As our world is an older world, and as God allows others freewill, how things operate here is different than in the world where you are. The basics of what I just told you are more-or-less similar throughout all the different worlds. And before you worry about me, most every Administrator requires those who help them control their domains. Which is where angels, prophets, and other holy figures come in for God. Strangely, though I am none of those for God, of all the divine beings here I am closest to being on Their level just because of who I am. And though They are old, I am just as old, if not older.’
I let what Death told me sink in, even if it didn’t make much sense right now.
‘Now, about Demi-Gods, I’m sorry but I’ve not got any, nor have I ever had any. And those that God had were not typical ones, more of enhanced holy figures. Sorry, hang on a second lad.’
The connection I had with Death went quiet. I took this moment to break from the trail I had been following by climbing up the rise next to me. It was surprisingly difficult work, the rise was steeper than expected. When I reached the top, I looked all around at the expansive grasslands.
Small bushes dotted the rolling grasslands. In some areas, small clumps gathered together. In the distance, I could just make out the snow-topped mountains.
Birds flittered and flew through the endless blue sky, enhanced by thin wisps of clouds. By now, the sky was almost directly overhead. Yet its warmth wasn’t overbearing. Somewhere in the distance, towards where he was heading, was a largish pillar of smoke—far larger than a simple bonfire should be—drifted lazily in the faint breeze.
There must’ve been a nest for the small rodent animals nearby, as he heard them scurrying almost silently backwards and forwards, hidden by the tall grass. Other than the faint sounds of the rodents, there was an almost overwhelming sense of quiet and peace. His mind stilled itself from the thoughts and fears and worries which had overwhelmed him for far too long.
Up here, on this rise, he finally understood true peace, true quiet, and true stillness.
It was an expansive feeling, one which made him feel small and insignificant.
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Yet at the same time, he felt free.
Free in a way that he had never even within his beloved cities.
He didn’t know how long he stood up there, still and quiet, being and belonging.
All he knew was the sun was heading towards the horizon, and the sky was glowing with a brilliance he hadn’t known it could make.
Then with a final blaze of brightness, the sun fell beneath the horizon. With that, he once again headed off.
‘I have an apology to make.‘ The suddenness of a voice in the almost pure-stillness of the early night shocked him. ’It’s an important one, lad, I’m afraid.’ Death’s normally jovial voice seemed somewhat restrained. ‘When I lost control back when we were having that meal together—’
‘When I insulted my best friend’s wife, needlessly and thoughtlessly.’
‘Yes then,’ I got the sense was happy about my semi-apology, ‘my anger ripped part of your soul away with it. To avoid you fully disintegrating and to make sure the weight of your soul remained constant, I started to patch you up with some of my own divine spirit…’
‘That was when they snatched me away, wasn’t it?’
‘Indeed, it was, lad.’ There was a slight hesitation when Death said lad. It was as if he wanted to say something different.
‘So when you started to patch me up, you did something to my soul. Is that right?’
‘Partly, yes.’ Death was hedging again. I just wished he would carry on. ‘Sorry, son, I will carry on. It’s hard to admit, as old as I am, I make mistakes. But normally they are few and far between, and normally we can fix the mistakes with some patches.’
‘I know how being busy leads to mistakes. I’ve made more than a few during busy times at work too. And I made a few here, but that wasn’t because of being busy…’
‘I saw the logs, son. I’m proud of what you done, well, maybe it seems like Death being proud of you saving people’s lives seems odd. But I am proud. Just remember that death comes to all when it’s their time.’
That statement seemed kindly ominous.
‘You cannot blame yourself, for even if you were there, the results would be the same. Stop. Wait. Before you go, son, I need to tell you something.‘ He sighed. ’I need to let you know that when I started patching you, I was in the process of adding a mixture of soul stuff and some of the residual death spirits which inhabit my cave. When they ripped you away from me, they took some pure soul from me, which got mixed up with your soul as they transported you across the worlds. Further more, because of the trauma of your new body and your constant ongoing battles for survival, it attracted some local death spirits to my latently powerful soul housed within you.’
‘Okay,’ I said out loud into the almost still night. ‘So you’re telling me that my soul isn’t pure? That it’s a mixture of mine, yours, Earth death spirits, and death spirits from here?’
‘That’s right.’
‘And what does that mean to me, right now?’
‘Right now, that’s easy, son. You are who you are and you have some mission or purpose for your life. To make your life mean something.’
He was right there. But I still felt he was holding out on me.
‘So, what is it you’re not telling me?’
‘Through your connections to the death spirits in that world, I know your brother has died.’ For a moment, I didn’t believe him. Didn’t want to believe him. But I knew he was telling the truth. I too sensed the truth that my brother had indeed died. Even with that news overshadowing the conversation and haunting me. I could tell that Death was still trying to hide something from me.
‘Please, just tell me what you’re hiding from me. I’ve known you’ve been trying to keep something from me almost this entire conversation.’
‘You are my Son, in a spiritual sense—which is the genuine sense for beings such as us. When they took you from me, your fragmented soul, filled with some of my diluted self and death spirits, ingested a fragment of myself. Instead of that patch melding into you and disappearing in time, it started to take my soul stuff, becoming more and more potent.’
‘And it took in death spirits from this world too, death spirits which were attracted to either me or the situations I found myself in. I’m guessing that part of within myself ingested those death spirits.‘
‘That’s right.’
‘So what does this all mean for me?’
‘It means, son, that the world you’re in. A world, which hasn’t had a true Deity of Death, will soon, in our—that is spiritual—time-span will see the birth of a God of Death.’