The Sharded Blade | Part 1 (A Dark Fantasy Novella)

Part 22 - Epilogue

I should have known I wouldn't be allowed to enjoy my death.  It couldn't have been more than a minute of total, tranquil blackness before the ominous, black-robed and hooded form began striding towards me. I don't scare easily, but I do admit, I was a little petrified to see such a portentous figure baring down on me and preparing, I assumed, to claim my soul.

"Just great," I said.  The pronounced groan accompanying my words was emphasis to how seriously I was wondering why I couldn't be left in peace for once.  At least Gertrude was nowhere to be found, and I was free of her annoying chatter.

Once upon me, the vision of death lingered, each of us staring down the other. Nothing like having to deal with a deity possessing a flare for the dramatic and drawing out the inevitable, I thought.

The robes of my counterpart fluttering, a straightforward question, blunt as a mace to the head, emanated from within.  "Kaldon Waystone?"  There was this weird mix of octaves to the voice that were both manly and menacing as well as simultaneously feminine and sweet.

"Who's asking?"  I stood up to him.  I'd been through a terrible fate already and figured he couldn't do any worse if I got on his bad side.

"I am known by many names," the robed figure said.  "What do you know me as?"

"I mean, I'm not a religious scholar or anything of the sort, but I'd say Lord Kaflas?  God of Death."  I could tell the robed figure nodded by the way the hood dipped and rose.

"That is certainly one," it replied.  Then the god turned back the hood concealing its face to reveal the pleasant smile of a woman with blond hair that shone like golden rivers.  In that moment, it was like the darkness subsided, but only enough to reveal a fiery world of molten rivers like her hair within a volcanic wasteland.  "But, I suspect you know me best perhaps as the Goddess Si?"

"Wait..." I stammered.  "What?"

Shedding her black robes, I was thusly confused.  Now displaying herself before me was a tall woman wearing a revealing gown of natural materials; mostly a mesh of leaves and sticks.  "Are you shocked?" she asked, her voice now falling fully into the feminine range.

"Well, yeah, a little."

"You mortals and your delusions never cease to amaze me," she said.  "There are not as many of us gods as you think."

My timbre found bite for the next words I would speak.  "What do you want?"

The goddess chided me with a sort of tsk tsk tone.  "What I want is to give you what you want.  See, we're kind of in a quandary here.  You're dead, but you can't be dead until you fulfill your curse.  So you can't be here."

"Swell, and here I was under the impression I'd found a loophole."

To that statement, Si laughed.  "There are rules, unfortunately."

"Gods can't break rules?" I asked.

"We can, but in so doing, it tends to upset the natural order of things.  Your case is bizarre, but also not so extraordinary that I find myself compelled to make an exception."

My head down, I accepted my undying torture was not at an end.  "Fine.  Send me back then."

"Oh, I will, but I have a proposition for you.  One that I think will provide you an incentive."

"I haven't had much luck with deals lately," I said in a somber tone.

At that moment was when this lean woman stepped up to stand beside the god identifying as Si, Lord Kaflas, and, if to be believed, others as well.  The latest woman was as close to being naked as one could get without actually being so and sporting a long, fleshy tale like that of a possum ... or a rat.  A pair of distinctly rodent like ears protruded from the top of her head and through full, black hair.