9. Ascension

“ I’m sorry for my grandson,” a voice said.

I looked around. I found myself in a forest. I looked over, and an old man was sitting on a fallen log.

“ Thank you for not cursing him,” the man continued.

I laughed. “Koras? Is that you?”

“ It’s been a long time. I’ve been waiting for you. Had a thousand things I wanted to say to you. Mostly yelling at you for the way our little tift derailed my life. But then I started thinking about things. In the end I realized that it was more my fault than yours, the way things turned out. So then I was waiting to apologize to you instead. But then you went and got yourself killed by my grandson, and honestly now I don’t know what to say.”

I sat down next to him. He was dressed as a peasant, and it was hard to imagine him as the hot-headed youth I used to practice-duel with all those years ago. “I wish he hadn’t done that.”

“ Me too,” Koras agreed. “He’s going to get away with it, you know. He had a friend of his help hide the body. He’s going to--”

“ I don’t care,” I said. “Whether he faces earthly justice or not, he will not escape heavenly law. He has stained his own soul with his actions, and I pity him for it, but there is nothing I can do about it from this side of the veil.”

Koras eyed me suspiciously. “You really went all into the whole cult of death thing, didn’t you?”

I shrugged. “It was my only available path to power. Soul cultivation is real, Koras. If I had another five, twenty years, I could have made it to the fifth step and constructed my wards to keep my memories through the rivers of lethe. But even so, the --”

“ Twenty years? You’ll get that,” Koras told me, laughing. “I’ve been wandering this forest for centuries, Elisia. Or at least it feels that way. Hard to tell when there’s no day or night. No stars in the sky, no sun, no clouds. Plenty of light to see despite the sky being black. And the forest, the endless forest.”

“ Koras, you said you were waiting for me. Was there anyone else you were waiting for?” I asked.

“ Sure. There was my wife, but we met ten years ago. And my daughter – wanted to apologize for a few things to her, but--”

“ Let it go, Koras. That’s why you haven’t been able to move on. You’re dead. Accept it. This forest, it’s the place for you to come to terms with your life, and your death. Let go of your life and move on into the cycle with me.”

Koras looked at me. And he sighed. “You’re right. You always were the smart one. Come on, I think I know the way out of here.”

And so I followed him deeper into the forest, until we came to a river. It wasn’t very wide, possible to swim across, but I stopped cold.

“ Do you know which river this is?” I asked.

“ We already crossed styx. We’re dead, aren’t we? This must be lethe,” he said. “Here, I’ve built a raft.”

The raft was a poor little thing, barely large enough for one of us, let alone two. But it was a narrow river, and it should get us across. We sat, nervously, on the rickety little thing, and Koras poled us across. The raft fell apart halfway across, and we both fell in the water. Kicking and spluttering, we swam to the other side. Koras laughed.

“ So much for that,” he said. “Should have known we couldn’t cheat.”

“ I’m sure we’re not the first to have that idea,” I agreed. “Well Koras, if we are bound to forget everything soon, then I wish you prosperity in the next life, and should we meet again, I hope that it is not as enemies, but as friends.”

“ Yes. To the next life then,” Koras agreed, and we walked arm in arm deeper into the forest. And as we walked, we began to forget.

~~~~~~~

I was born again, and to my surprise my memories of my life as Elisia began to return to me. My name in this life was Johan, and I was a peasant. As I searched my memories of my past life, I quickly regained the ability to see the threads of karma and prarabdha. However, as I grew, I quickly became dismayed.

This world was not a world of cultivation. The spirituality was adequate, but the people did not know how to make use of it except in crude and superstitious ways. If I were to cultivate in this world, I would have to do so without the support or help of others. I was but a poor peasant, and did not have the resources to form a brand new way of life for these people. As I struggled to find a path forward, my path was decided for me by the world I lived in.

I was fifteen. I had spurned the advances of the village girls, for I did not want the karmic ties of parenthood. But it would not have mattered, for the savages came to our lands and conquered us in the name of their dread god. They swept across the nation of my birth, putting down all armies that stood before them. They slaughtered all those who resisted them, and of those who did not, one tenth were sacrificed. The rest were enslaved.

Our village was close to the sea, and it was one of the first to be swept up in the unending tide of violence and blood. We surrendered, and the tithe was made. I volunteered.

I was dragged back across the ocean to the land of their origin. Beaten and starved with the others who wept and lamented their fate. I was silent. I remembered the exercises I had learned during my life as Elisia. I gained many strange looks from my captors and fellow captives as I cultivated my soul, breaking through to the fifth and then the sixth step despite my environment.

We sailed up a river to a massive lake, and in the center of the lake was the city with the temple where their god was said to reside. A pyramid, with a bonfire burning at the top that was never extinguished. Into that fire the still beating hearts of the sacrifice victims were thrown.

I did not fight or resist. I was a willing sacrifice, something which my captors could not understand. They simply thought that I was touched in the head, uncomprehending of my situation and my fate. But I understood perfectly well. I had been through the cycle of death and rebirth before, and I was willing to make the journey once again. I had felt the same pull of fate towards my decision to volunteer as I had felt to make the journey to be murdered by Koras’s grandson. I would embrace it, knowing that I had taken the place of a stranger upon the altar.

We were beaten and starved as we waited for the holy day. Then one thousand of us were dragged before the temple on the solstice, and from dawn until dusk the high priest carved out the hearts of man, woman, and child in an unending orgy of blood.

It was terrible to behold, but far more terrible to my eyes than most. I could see prarabdha. I could see the bulk of negative karma which the priests, the guards, and the feverish adherents of the faith were accumulating. They were killing us, but in doing so, they were harming themselves even more so.

The sacrifices began at dawn, and at noon, it was my turn. I was dragged, naked but unashamed, atop the pyramid and held down on the sacrificial altar. I did not resist, even as the priest cracked open my chest, pulled out my heart, and showed it to me. My last vision of that life was of gore, and the last sound I heard was the chanting and raving of madmen.

~~~~~~

I did not find myself in the forest, but a vast plain of lamentation. All around me were the screaming souls of previous sacrifices, still bearing the wounds that had been inflicted upon them at the end of their life.

“ My daughter, my daughter! Where is my daughter!” a man screamed endlessly.

“ I can’t. This isn’t real. This is all a nightmare. I can’t be dead!” another said.

“ Oh merciful goddess, please, release me from this torment,” called another.

I frowned. This was not what I had been expecting. I looked down and saw the wound in my chest. When I thought about it, I could still feel the agony. And I could feel something else. Something hungry, something evil. It invaded me through my wound, filling me with thoughts and emotions that were not my own.

I pushed away the invasion with a slight effort of will, but I did not let go of it. Rather, I followed the invasion as it led me deeper and deeper into the fel plain of suffering. Now that I had noticed it, I could see the agony and fear and resentment being infected in the other sufferers, and I could see it being harvested by the whatever force had tried infecting me.

Eventually, my journey brought me to an awful effigy, and I understood. This was the dread god, in all of its terrible glory. It was a siphon. It infected the innocent souls of the sacrifice victims and allowed them to incubate the evil emotions. We were like the soil in a field where misery was the crop that was grown.

This was the source of their prowess in battle. This was the truth behind their god. They victimized innocent souls to generate bad karma, then inflicted that karma upon their enemies. I found it disgusting.

I turned to leave, and saw behind me a river. And I understood. I was not bound here, I never had been. I could leave any time I wished simply by crossing the river. I began to approach it, but I stopped. Could I leave behind all of these innocents?

I walked over to a child, screaming for her mother. She did not see me until I took her hand.

“ Please don’t hurt me!” she said, but she clung to my hand all the tighter.

“ Nobody is going to hurt you anymore. Nobody can hurt you here. This is a place of memories only, not pain,” I told the girl. “Let go of the pain, and it will go away.”

She looked at me as though I were mad, but as I spoke the wound in her chest healed.

“ How did you do that?” she asked me.

“ I haven’t done anything but show you the truth,” I answered. I turned and pointed toward the river. “Do you see that river?”

She looked in the indicated direction, frowned, and then jumped in surprise as though something had come into focus. “Was that always there?”

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“ Yes. Always. If you cross that river, then all of the pain and suffering from this life will be washed away.”

“ I can’t leave without my sister,” she said. “She was before me, I had to watch. I can’t leave without her.”

I nodded. “Search for a while. If you cannot find her on this plain of suffering, however, then perhaps she has already moved on to the other side of the river. Perhaps you will find her there.”

“ Okay. Thank you mister, I will start looking for my sister now.”

The girl ran off, dodging between the other sufferers on her quest. I looked around, realizing what I must do. An unpleasant task, and I do not know why it fell to my shoulders, but I could not leave these people here.

I tapped the shoulder of a man screaming for his mother. With kind words, I told him that he was dead, and I told him how to move on. Once he saw the river, he made a mad dash for it, stripping off his shirt and diving into the water.

I made my way through the crowded masses. There were so many. So many victims of the dread god. Not all of those I attempted to show the path would see it. Many chose their suffering over the waters of rebirth. But I persisted.

For every soul I saved, five more would take its place. It seemed to be a Sisyphean task. But only at first. Some of the souls that I awoke from their damnation joined me, as the girl had. Some to search for their own loved ones. Others began to act as I was, spreading through the crowded plains and awakening the sufferers, showing them the way to liberation.

Slowly, the momentum built. Then, it became exponential. The influx of new victims did not slow, but the plains were emptying too quickly for it to matter. The power siphoned off through the effigy began to wane.

A sudden change took place when the victims were of the dread god’s own people. The number of victims increased to a staggering degree, and the resentment that they generated was far beyond what the innocent victims had created. However, it did not flow into the effigy, but rather built upon their own souls endlessly.

Many of those who had helped me ignored these new visitors to the plains of suffering, but I and several others tried to show some of them the river. Most could not see it, and the ones who could would drown when they attempted to cross it, for it was far wider and deeper for them, and they would forget how to swim before they got very far.

It was not only that their priests had begun to sacrifice their own people. Soon, the priests and the dread god’s holy warriors and even the feverish adherents who had watched the sacrifices with joy began to appear in those plains. They were not sacrifices, but rather they showed other signs of violence.

From those coherent enough to explain, I learned what had happened in the world of the living. The power of their dread god had waned, and then it had turned against them. Where once they were unbeatable in battle, able to inflict terror and misfortune with their fel magicks, they suddenly found that the well of their power had run dry.

The tide reversed as they ran into an enemy they could not sweep aside. Worse, the enemy banded together with those who had not fallen and the survivors of those lands which had. They pushed back the invasion all the way to the sea, and then they crossed the ocean and purged the dread god’s holy lands.

The faithful of the dread god found themselves in his plains of misery upon their death. And all of the pain and misery that the dread god had accumulated during his reign was slowly visited upon them.

The others who had freed the innocent victims with me began to disappear, one by one crossing the river. I lingered for a while, sometimes attempting to show the dread god’s new victims the river, but mostly simply watching in pity as they paid the price for their worship. It was dreadful the things that they had done, but more dreadful to watch their suffering in the afterlife.

Time passes differently when you’re dead. I lingered for centuries, and I left after a day. Stars were born and died in the time that I spent in that god’s lands, and it was no more than a heartbeat. Soon, of the innocent victims, I was the only sane soul left in those lands, and I could convince nobody to join me on the other side of the river. Just as I resolved to leave once and for all, the effigy of the dread god cracked and shattered releasing a torrent of fel energy which struck his former worshipers all at once.

But not me.

I pitied them, but in the end, I turned to the river and began my journey. To my surprise, when I got to its bank, it was little more than a narrow brook. I waded through it effortlessly. There was a woman waiting for me on the other side.

“ Curious. Why did you do that, little godslayer?” she asked me.

“ Godslayer?” I said, confused.

“ You have slain a god. You were the rock which he choked to death upon. Had you not given yourself as a willing sacrifice, that world would have entered a two thousand year long dark age, filled with only wicked souls and those who wished to repent for their crimes in previous lives,” she explained. “Instead it will become … not a paradise. But not the land of darkness that it might have been. You have shifted the fate of an entire world. Of billions of lives. This is no small feat.”

“ Who are you?” I asked.

“ Just another traveler of the cosmos, like you, Elisia.”

“ You know that name? Did I meet you in my first life? I’m afraid I cannot recall you if I had.”

“ Your first life?” she asked, and then she laughed. “Oh, little godslayer, Elisia was not your first life. Would that it were, but alas, you are as old as I am. The infinite cosmos has infinite souls within it, and those souls live an infinite number of lives. Millions of times you and I have waded through this river, and swam through it, and drowned in it only to be swept downstream and come out the other side confused and naked and afraid.”

“ Is that so?” I asked. “Well, Elisia is the first life I remember. I awoke those memories in my life as Johan, and sought to continue the cultivation of my soul.”

“ Oh? I see. Well, in that case, perhaps I can make your journey a little bit easier from here on.”

We sat by the river, and she began to explain things to me about the lands of the dead. As we talked, others emerged from the river, looking around in confusion, before stumbling forward, wandering blindly and lost.

As we spoke, my heart began to sink. My companion was like me, a soul cultivator who had reached the eight step. But she had failed to reach the ninth. She had come upon the final tribulation, and she had failed. The heavens had stolen the providence she had accumulated. She could not influence the circumstances of her birth with what she had left, and she doubted that she could maintain the wards on her soul through successive lives until she found a body and heritage which would be able to recognize and nurture her to become a true immortal.

Instead, she planned to simply shatter the protections she had made and reenter the samsara. But she had lingered for a while in the land of the dead, as I had in the plains of the dread god’s sufferers, and from there she had seen my actions.

“ It is a shame that I could not have found a similar opportunity during my soul cultivation,” she said, eyeing me jealously. “Had I had your karma, I would have walked through the final tribulation effortlessly. The greedy heavens would have choked upon my offering and I would have been born into one of the eternal heritages in the cosmos. I would have been an eternal queen, ruling over a galaxy for a million years or more.”

“ What?” I asked.

“ You mean you do not know?” she asked, eyes opening wide in surprise. “Oh you blessed fool! You are like a star! Your benevolence on the plains of that false idol have created such an overabundance of providence that you cannot help but live ten thousand blessed lives! Even should you turn to wickedness and indolence, it will be a thousand rebirths before your actions in this past incarnation have run dry. And that is only if you do not pursue your soul cultivation to its completion. That is how I noticed you in the first place.”

“ Is that so?” I asked. Then I bowed to her. “If you wish to share in my providence, I would accept your teachings, elder. I have reached the sixth step in soul cultivation. If you would guide me to the eight, and prepare me for the final tribulation, I would repay the favor.”

She hesitated. “This was not my intention in speaking with you. But if you do pass the tribulations, perhaps you would indeed be able to give me enough providence to influence the circumstances of my birth in my next life. Very well. I shall accept you as my disciple.”

Like me, my teacher had many names. And only one. We spent an eternity in the afterlife. And it was but a heartbeat. I reached the seventh, and finally the eighth step under her guidance while we inhabited the land of the dead. I felt the karmic link form between our two souls, something I had not known was possible in the afterlife, and I was happy as I felt it growing stronger and stronger. The harder it was to sever, the more of my good karma it would channel when I went through my final tribulation.

At long last, and all too soon, it was time. I embraced my master for one last time, and I willed the heavens to begin the final tribulation of my soul. I was whisked away into the samsara.

My preparations were insufficient. I saw, then, my past lives. All of them. There were so, so, so many. And I had been so foolish in many of them. I could forgive my past selves for the foolishness, but I was filled with shame at how wicked I had been as well. I had thought that the priests of the dread god were unforgivable, but compared to me, their accumulated sins were but a feather.

I felt the heavens demand payment for each of my transgressions. I felt, also, the providence that I had accumulated. It was like an ocean! But the heavens drank from it greedily. Every crime, every wound I had inflicted, every act of cruelty my soul had ever committed had a price, and the heavens had finally come to collect.

The pain was excruciating. For I felt then the pain that I had inflicted in my past lives. All of it, and the only way to ease my pain was to repay my debt.

The ocean began to shrink. It had seemed endless, vast and eternal as the sun. But it dwindled and dried, leaving behind a vast emptiness in my soul. The agony the heavens inflicted upon me seemed without end.

But nothing is truly without end. Finally, the cruel banker was satisfied that the debt had been paid, and I had endured.

I understood why my teacher had failed. It was perhaps a unique opportunity that I’d had, putting an end to the dread god, but normal souls could not accumulate nearly so much providence during a single lifetime. It would take a thousand reincarnations to pass the tribulation the normal way, and my teacher had prepared for but three lifetimes.

In that time, after my tribulation, I could see the link between my souls and those I had wronged. I could see all of the karmic links I had formed during my millions and millions of lives. I spent a short while examining them.

There were several types. There were mutual links. Blood ties, friendships, love. But those had been scorched away by the tribulation.

There were the debts I was owed. It was through these channels which I gained providence from others for the wrongs done to me in past lives. Those who had cheated me, abused me, wounded me. Those who had raped and murdered and tortured me. From them, I gained providence, just providence had been stripped from me by the heavens for my past lives’ transgressions. I found, to my surprise, that I could sever those ties with the slightest bit of will. And so I did. Even after the tribulations I had enough providence to last a hundred lifetimes, and I had a hundred lifetimes to begin generating more. I did not need to collect my past lives’ debts to ensure my future happiness.

And then there were the debts which I had incurred. So, so many of them. These were the channels through which the ocean of providence had been reduced to a small sea. If I focused on any one link, I would see the action or decision which had created the link to the soul on the other side of the channel, and each time I did so I would find myself filled with shame.

The heavens had extracted its judgment. But it was not enough.

One thread was a woman my past life had done wrong by. Another was a child I had bullied and abused. There was a woman whose husband I had murdered, an act which had eventually caused her own suicide. And there was the husband himself. So many lives I had been wicked. Those souls that I had wounded would find themselves with a sudden influx of providence thanks to my tribulation. But was that compensation? Did that make up for my past selves’ crimes? Could anything erase my shame?

No. No, it was not enough. The heavens were wrong, I could not be forgiven for so small a payment. With an effort of will, the sea began to empty again, the providence flowing through the channels once more to the people I had wronged.

I was surprised when the first thread snapped. And then another, and then another. And then thousands at a time. The heavens would not let me complete my mission, it would not let me make proper restitution for my crime. In defiance of the heavens, I continued to empty my ocean of providence, determined to keep not a single drop for myself.

And then, suddenly, the lake that was once an ocean was snatched away from me. I blinked in confusion. What had happened? None of the teachings had suggested anything like this was possible.

I could see the providence that had been stolen away from me moving through the cosmos, five of the links shining brightly. The rest of my debts had gone dark. And I realized something truly amazing.

Whoever had stolen my providence, they had also stolen my debts. My own soul was free. I had no karmic ties at all. I began to laugh. I was still willing to repay my debts, to make amends, to wash away my sins, but the heavens had prevented me from doing so! The irony was too much, and I filled the emptiness around me with my laughter.

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