Chương 85: The Twin

The man rose to his feet. Just as barefoot as the trio of visitors, but there was a natural confidence to him that at least Jordan felt himself lacking. This Shaza Padma, perhaps as much as if not more than the other Padma before him, was in his element. Here among the wispy remnants of long-dead souls was where he belonged. Where he had lived for 1, 800 years. He looked… young. No older than 30-year-old Hanza, in fact.

Clean-shaven like the nobleman too, which made him look a fair bit younger than Mountain Man Jordan. Not exactly how Jordan might have pictured an 'Immortal', but that was maybe the least surprising part about this. [Race: Immortal]? Is that one of the Elder Races to be introduced in the Cauldron Wars expansion? And holy shit! I did have a sneaking suspicion that there might be a cauldron involved in all the deathtouch shenanigans … but I didn't expect the reveal to go like this!

It was safe to say that Jordan was the only person in the room sparing any thought to Vesselia the video game. Everyone else was living Vesselia the real life—or the real after life in this case—each man reckoning with perhaps the most unusual encounter any of them had ever been party to.

"You look so much like him." The first to break the silence was Shaza Padma himself. A voice as 'clean' and youthful as his face. A subtle smile played at the edges of his non-greeting, just as it also tugged upon one end of his scar.

"You even brought the dagger." The smile widened a touch. Shaza looked as though he was greeting an old friend.

"Here to finish the job, I presume?" A direct question. One that demanded an answer. Jordan, for one, was paralyzed by the sheer lunacy of the situation. Judging by the blank look and the mouth that hung slightly open, Pewter was no better off. It was a very good thing, then, that Hanza Padma had really come alive since crossing into Yellowspring Grotto.

"Finish the job? No," was what the Shaman said. But what he did was step forward and unsheathe the heirloom dagger, looking for all the world like he really was about to finish the job.

"There was no job from the beginning. Only a mistake. The mistake of a scared and lonely eight-year-old boy." Hanza took one more step. As he did, he turned over his palms to present the dagger to Shaza, hilt first.

"And I'm here to entreat on that boy's behalf. On behalf of your twin. Forgive him, Shaza Padma. And along with that forgiveness, also lay to rest the grudge you've held onto for far too long. Free my people from the touch of death, that they might yet live out their mortal lives to the fullest. Surely, ancestor, you can see that your quarrel isn't with them."

"Nor is it with you," Shaza said calmly, still smiling, "which makes your attempt at a—what is this, a peace offering? —rather misguided. What did you expect me to do with this dagger? Cut up your face? You think then we could call it even?"

"If that is your wish," Hanza said, just as calm, "and if that is the asking price in return for my people's lives… then I shall gladly offer up my face for you to cut up." Jordan tensed. He thought he should say something, but he didn't know what. A part of him wished for a system dialogue to pop up right about now—a 'guide' to set him on course—and he kind of hated himself for it. Shaza Padma, on the other hand, seemed to know exactly what to say.

"And if I were to negotiate a higher price?" the Immortal asked, eyes glinting with amusement.

"If I asked for your life instead of your face… what would you say then?"

"If that is the price," Hanza said without hesitation, holding out the dagger toward Shaza, "then I shall gladly pay it."

"No!" Jordan blurted before he could stop himself. He too took a step forward, his hand instinctively shooting for the hilt of his own [Dagger]. On the other side of him, Pewter did the same. Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit. Was this really how it was going to go? Throwing down against an 1, 800-year-old Immortal Necromancer?? Jordan had expected this day's adventure to take some crazy turns, but he'd be lying if he said that he saw this coming!

"Gatekeeper, please!" Hanza hissed.

"I've already told you that I was prepared to do this. Of you and Tetherer Sapling, I ask only that you bear witness. Bring back the tidings to my people and see that they're taken care of. Please… we don't have much time." Only five days left to be exact, based on Little Bean's clock. Jordan knew the urgency, understood Hanza's desperation. A tiny part of him perhaps even welcomed a clean, 'easy' solution… where one noble man gave his life to save the lives of others, including Jordan's own.

But most of him found that solution to be unacceptable. He was being greedy, he knew, but that was just who he was. He wanted to save Little Bean, save Yarrow, save himself, and he also wanted to save Hanza Padma. And maybe, heaven willing, save even Shaza Padma too. Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site. It was this greed that made him stand his ground. Made him refuse to back down, even as his bare feet chafed against the chill of the stone floor.

Made his hand slide away from the [Dagger]'s hilt and onto the straps of his cauldron's [Harness]—the go-to weapon in his recently updated build. Shaza Padma watched all this. Watched even as his smile widened some more and his scar twisted with it. He then put out a hand as if to placate the whole group.

"All this bravery. Compassion and self-sacrifice," he remarked.

"Where were such things, I wonder, when the plunderers left me to die as a newborn? When they forced my mother"—the briefest of glances at the white-robed wisp sitting on the bed—"to endure an impossible choice. One that claimed her life while condemning me to, well, an existence that is no life at all." Jordan frowned. And even in the midst of this morbid standoff, his natural curiosity demanded satisfaction.

"How did that happen, anyway?" he asked breathlessly.

"I mean your whole… situation. Your mom lost her life to save you? But you ended up stuck in the nether realm because of it? But then that also somehow made you Immortal…" Shaza turned his eerie smile onto the Gatekeeper, looked him up and down in silent judgment. The man's smile faded a little, though Jordan rather suspected that it might be due to the mention of his mom.

"You already have the bones of the whole story, Gatekeeper," Shaza eventually said.

"My mother—Tiena of Blacksnake Hollow—once stood at the threshold of Yellowspring Grotto and made a choice. Instead of leaving me, an infant, to be claimed in a ritual sacrifice, she went into the cave while holding me to her bosom. No doubt resolving to keep me company, whatever awaited me in the nether realm." Somewhere, Jordan heard the shuffling of bare feet against stone. And even though he didn't turn to look, he could clearly picture the remorse on Pewter's face.

"She got her wish," Shaza continued, "though perhaps not in the manner she might have imagined. For you see, the spirit-gods here are nothing if not equitable in their dealings. One life for another. My mother's in exchange for mine. Which is why I yet live, here among the dead."

"But not truly." This from Pewter, fearful yet firm.

"Your life is no life at all while your soul is bound to the nether realm."

"Precisely, Tetherer." Shaza directed a different kind of smile at Pewter. Genial yet condescending.

"I suppose you of all people would know something about the ties that bind each and every one of us to our lot in life. I myself was caught between two lives —never to perish like any mortal should, but also never able to leave this place for as long as I lived. Oh, to be sure, I could take the occasional stroll just outside the mouth of the cave. Which was how I earned myself this lovely scar."

"And what of the curse?" Hanza again, bringing the conversation back to what mattered most for those who bore the Padma name.

"Did you really call down maledictions upon House Padma, like you so claimed to your then eight-year-old brother?" At this, Shaza broke out in a bona fide grin—the most overt show yet of his twisted sense of humor.

"Did you really think that an eight-year-old boy was capable of such powerful magic? When he'd yet to come of age, and with no Vessel to his name! No, the curse wasn't real, no matter how I'd wished it to be. 1, 800 years. 1, 800 years of powerless grief and impotent hatred. My life truly was no life at all, not when I hadn't the means to make good on any of my wants and desires."" Was?" Jordan asked sharply.

"Something changed recently, did it? Something that let you start casting spells. Start sending out ghosts to bamboozle the Padma folk, lure them to become deathtouched. Lure their lord out of his hiding and come seek you out." The picture was starting to come together in Jordan's mind. And he didn't like what he saw there, not one bit. Across the room from him, Shaza grinned again.

"You're right, Gatekeeper. I suppose you of all people would know a thing or two about unexpected turns of fortune. My life was no life at all… the curse wasn't real… until this." A rumbling beneath the floor. Like a gentle premonition of an earthquake. Then, right in front of Shaza Padma's bare feet, a tripod cauldron rose from the ground, phasing through the bare stone floor. It was carried by dozens of transparent ghostly-blue hands, grappling at faded bronze at the behest of a Lv. 30 Necromancer.

And already, its basin glowed with a tell-tale rosy iridescence, ready to cast its next and most terrible spell. SHAZA PADMA cast: Equivalent Exchange. Targets: HANZA PADMA, PEWTER SAPLING, JORDAN YU. The color inside the Elegiac Cauldron shifted from rosy-pink to ghostly-blue. The blue of ghosts, of the afterlife, of death and the reflections it cast upon life itself. And slowly yet surely, the blue cloud rose above the rim of the cauldron, to then split into three tendrils.

One for each of the visitors from the mortal realm.

"My time in the nether realm," Shaza declared, now grinning triumphantly, "has instilled in me a respect for the sanctity of fair trades. As such, I shall take from the three of you only one thing each. From the plunderer's spawn the life that had been taken from me 1, 800 years ago. From the Tetherer the means to break free of my chains. And from the Gatekeeper… heaven's blessing for me to walk once more among the living—that I may reclaim what is rightfully mine. For my past shall finally set me free!"

The tendrils of [Equivalent Exchange] shot forth from the Elegiac Cauldron, ready to claim the souls of the living. Jordan didn't know what to do, other than to come to a terrible realization. I'm going to die here. This… really sucks. They say that your life flashes before your eyes when you're about to die. Well, the flashes did come for Jordan now. Mom, Dad, Rudolf. All the ups and downs of his Earthling life. The people he'd met in Stormvast—enemies, friends, and enemy-to-friends. And Canyon.

Her voice, her songs, her withering admonishments. Her porcelain rectangle and the eyes that stared out of them, serene yet blazing with fire when the occasion called for it. Serene yet welling with tears whenever her tender heart was moved by the stories of the land. I don't want to die, Jordan realized. The most obvious and mundane realization in the history of mankind, yet it came as a kind of surprise all the same. For there had been a time when it wasn't so obvious, wasn't at all mundane.

And it only took reincarnating in another life for him to realize it. Jordan unslung his own cauldron and set it on the floor with a loud thud. And just as he'd hoped—just as he'd prayed before coming here—the thing was glowing. A rosy iridescence. The light from another time, another place. The light of invitation. Just before the ghostly-blue tendrils could reach them, Jordan grabbed both of his companions—Hanza in his right hand, Pewter in his left.

He then pulled them toward himself as he dove into the Heavenly Cauldron. JORDAN YU manifested: Voidcross.