SSD 4.70 - Epilogue - Funeral Rites

Sorry to be gone so long. One of my partners, John, had his father pass away a few weeks ago. Everything kind of went towards that. It isn't my first time feeling grief, but this is first time where I was the one supporting someone else through it.

I didn't really have anything left to deal with other things. Honestly, I am still tired, but I think finally getting back into writing is good for me.

Of course, as luck or fate would have it, this chapter gets to touch on death. I am certain that my recent experiences have shaped what I wrote.

Hope you enjoy:

“Pity the elder with many jars, and no one to drink with.”

-Proverb

==Caden==

Swirling marble biers stretched out in long rows ahead of me, mostly empty. Unfortunately, it was only mostly.

I wasn’t sure why I was here in person. Not exactly.

I could, and had, seen the bodies with the senses stretched throughout my aura. And… with my new abilities, I could have seen the bodies with my more human senses.

I didn’t need to be here in the flesh.

If I had flesh…

Still, I was offering the closest thing I could. My stone body was here, physically present. And I was only here. I had turned off all my shards. I was as present as it was possible for me to be. It seemed the least I could offer them.

The bodies were peaceful, recumbent on beds of stone… but that was all they were. Of course, it was arguable if these even counted as their bodies. The original bodies had been consumed after death, their patterns added to my vast catalogue. And then they had been recreated, flawless dolls of flesh, save where scars had been replicated, each clothed in a semblance of their original garments, though even those were hidden behind white sheets. Only their faces were visible, though one of them was slightly askew, a hand protruding slightly from under the cloth.

I touched the hand of the young man in front of me, fixing the cloth to cover it, but it gave only the impression of icy cold flesh, stiff to the touch in the preserving chill of the room.

What were you expecting?

Even knowing about the soul… it was strange to see the bodies. It was painfully obvious that something was missing, that it had left. That whatever had made them a person was simply… gone.

I had had the rather unique opportunity to see my own dead body, but I had been rather distracted at the time.

Did I look so… empty?

If I had, and if it was a commonality among all corpses, then I understood religion better.

Even beyond the desire to believe, to want there to be more, the hollowness of a remaining body invited speculation on what had left, and where it had gone.

Pretty sure no one was expecting where I ended up.

My lips smiled gently.

To be fair, I think I would have ended up somewhere else if Tam hadn’t intervened.

Staring at the bodies, I felt a faint urge to cry. Not that I could. Well…

I allowed myself to be distracted, imagining adding tear ducts into my current form. I could even fill them with salt water.

I rolled my eyes and shook my head gently.

That would all be… rather artificial.

Still, I filed the thought away. Perhaps there would come a time when being able to cry would prove useful.

Whoever these people were, I didn’t know them, and whatever grief I felt was just as much for myself.

I felt the pull of sympathy for them, the same as I had felt sympathy for those I heard about on the news. My sympathy was magnified by my proximity, by the ability to look at the bodies.

However, I was mourning for myself. For the guilt I felt.

They chose to come.

It wasn’t the first time I had said that, and I would again. Still, it rang hollow to me now.

I’ve done what I can.

The waxen flesh seemed to mock me with its sallow tone. Mocking my efforts with the implacable permanence of death.

I knew more about the soul now, but I didn’t find it comforting. And perhaps that added to my guilt, too. To end these lives and have this incarnation of their soul meet its end.

Having my self, and who I was, combined with countless other perspectives… It wasn’t as bad as simply dying and then no longer existing, but… I didn’t expect that much of myself would stand out against the vast amalgamation.

And I doubted these poor souls would fare much better.

You’re overthinking it.

I knew I was, but sadly that knowledge did little to help.

It was foolish to be so worked up over it. Before I had come here, I had lived with that uncertainty for all my time on Earth.

Congratulations, you are back to the baseline state of being uncertain of exactly what happens after death. Truly, everyone should weep for you. It’s not like they are going through the same damn thing, after all. Oh wait…

I guess I just didn’t like going back to faith.

Based on what I learned from GAIA, someone had built my soul. Apparently, they had also placed an AI inside to run it too, which was more than a little odd.

Doesn’t really fit into any of the belief systems you know, does it?

I didn’t know where I would have ended up after dying. Maybe I would have been reborn right away, going back into the cycle and been reincarnated.

Maybe there was some place of judgment, and we were rewarded or punished for our choices. Though, if true, those consequences were apparently not infinite.

Honestly, at least that part makes sense logically. An infinite consequence, whether reward or punishment, seems a little odd as the result of a finite mortal existence.

The thought that anyone should ever go to an infinite punishment… Well, it had always felt unreasonable.

Still, I just didn’t know.

Maybe there was no judgment. Maybe we simply rested, or spent time with others who had died. Maybe we lived in some version of heaven, doing and becoming everything we had ever wanted, and then when we were ready, we rejoined the cycle.

I shook my head.

It was all speculation.

For all I knew the afterlife was a giant bureaucracy and we spent a million years in line before a paper pushing angel assigned us our next life in a bored voice. Presumably after filing the paperwork in triplicate, of course.

Uncertainty and anxiety about death… Welcome back old friend. I haven’t missed you.

I looked over the room again.

There is nothing more for me here… Maybe there never was.

Of course, that wasn’t quite right. There was one thing left here for me, responsibility.

I split off a shard, sending my mind to seek Zidaun, finding after only a moment. He looked enervated, listlessly sitting at a desk with piles of paperwork arranged haphazardly before him.

‘Are you currently busy, Zidaun?’

He perked up immediately, losing the glassy eyed sheen.

‘Not with anything urgent, m- Caden. Do you have need of me?’

‘I’ll teleport you to me. Let me know when you are ready.’

Zidaun quickly stood, shouting out a quick message to Izradi, who I could see on the other side of the wall.

‘Ready.’

A moment of thought and Zidaun stood before me.

“What can…” Zidaun started saying eagerly, before trailing off as he registered the bodies, his breath sending out clouds of fog. “Oh.”

I nodded solemnly. “Yeah. Those who died inside. What… what do you even do for your dead? And…” I stopped for a moment. “I could give you back the body of your mentor, Phanal.”

Zidaun smiled at me for a moment, though it seemed fragile.

“I am honored by your consideration, but giving the body to the dungeon is our tradition. I took a few of his hairs, to plant later. To… honor him, and become part of the next generation, should they succeed.”

Kind of morbid, but then, death usually is.

“I have his pattern, the core of what makes his body. I can give you as many tries as you like.”

Zidaun turned away for a moment, not that it stopped me from sensing the tears that threatened to overflow.

“Thank you.”

“Of course, I will remember and honor his sacrifice.”

Don’t think I could forget it if I tried. If I could sleep, it might give me nightmares.

Zidaun’s tears started to flow, though his voice remained mostly steady.

“It, is all he would have wanted.”

Unfortunately, that might be true.

Yes, but what about without the mind control?

Guilt twisted in me like a snake, trying to strangle my intestines.

And I need you too much, to just find out right now.

I wasn’t intending to wait long, but I wasn’t willing to lie to myself, either. I was waiting so I could use Zidaun. Waiting until I would be safe if he fell apart.

Best to use him quickly then. Learn what I can, give what orders I must, and then… see what happened when I try to set him free. If nothing happens… then they are just believers, religious fanatics.

Or maybe, it is just part of their biology, made to serve and cooperate. All I can to then is do my best to be kind, to treat them well.

If he changes though…

I would need to free them all.

I didn’t know what would happen then… but I couldn’t refuse to free slaves just because I was worried what might happen.

Zidaun had finished crying, and was dabbing at his tears surreptitiously.

I pretended not to notice, waiting until he was finished.

“What about them?” I said, gesturing toward the bodies. “How do they honor their dead? Or do they give them to the dungeon, too?”

Zidaun shook his head.

“No. They burn the bodies. Relatives and close friends take a portion of the ashes and bone fragments, incorporating them into clay jars. Traditionally, some charcoal from the pyre is used when they fire the jar. On certain holidays, they put wine in the jar, and each person who knew them takes a drink from it, telling a story of the dead before passing it to the next.”

Okay, I think I like this tradition better.

“When everyone who knew the dead have died, the pot is ground down into grog, recycled into new jars of remembrance. If the pot is from a direct ancestor, it is traditional to save a small piece of the jar.”

Grog was a new word for me, at least as something other than a drink, but apparently the language downloaded into my head was familiar with the word.

It was fired clay that has been ground down to be incorporated into new pottery.

Haven’t really tried making ceramics much. Something to experiment with.

“What do you do with a body, if no one here knows them?” I asked.

“The adventurer’s guilds will have records. They will get ashes and bone to any family they have, and any friends they registered, as well.”

I looked at the bodies.

How often to adventurers even manage to get their bodies home?

“What do families do when they cannot get the bodies?”

“Uh, hair, I believe,” Zidaun said slowly. “It isn’t something I have asked a great deal about, but I believe they usually have a cutting of hair they add to an honorary pyre. And, I think I heard something about adding in their adolescent teeth?”

I nodded. It made sense for some other provisions to be made, just in case.

With the DNA in a tooth, I could probably recreate the full body… Nope, not going there.

The last thing I wanted was to start some kind of body recreation service for funerals.

I looked at the bodies for a moment, evaluating that last thought.

Okay, fine, I don’t want to create another.

Zidaun was shivering slightly, though he seemed to be trying to suppress it.

Right, not completely immune to the cold, like me.

“Come, we will go somewhere else. I’ll open a door so the bodies can be accessed afterward.”

Even as I spoke, a shard set up environmental conditions at our destination, while another fabricated wood and started to pile it high so it could be retrieved for the pyres.

Need to set aside an area where they can burn them.

With a thought and push of will, Zidaun and I appeared somewhere else.

It was a place that would normally have been far colder, and had thinner air, though now it was pleasantly warm, a sphere of air responding to my will.

Chairs appeared and a gazebo grew up around us, the only man-made (dungeon-made?) structure visible here, at the top of the world.

We stood at the very top of Twisted Peak, a relatively thin spar of stone beneath us, and a mile of air beneath that. If I couldn’t sense how the forces distributed themselves, I might have been worried.

As it was, I simply enjoyed the view.

The day was dying, and the visible star and black hole accretion disk were setting.

The disk positively blazed with light, the dull red having giving way to a central ring of incandescent white, which shaded out into bands of color before it faded back to red at the very edges, far outshining the pale glow of the star.

I doubted most mortal eyes would even be able to see the color of the bands, though skills from The System made that assumption more complicated. As it was, even with eyes of stone and no water to form blurring tears, it was barely visible. I needed to tap into the capabilities of my core to see the bands clearly.

Even at this altitude, some of the snow was slightly slushy, the burning fury of gravity having twisted matter onto itself so fiercely that it was warming the entire world.

“Thaw,” indeed.

The shallow valleys below were practically clogged with water. The snow soaked it up until it had become closer to a slurry, with chunks of blue glacier ice bobbing across the top. In higher areas, paths of snow showed where the weight of the water had grown to be too much, sending avalanches down to join the growing waters. Other sections were melting more directly, and waterfalls, both great and small, had sprung into being all across the mountain range. Even now, sections of water were falling off the vast spur atop Twisted Peak.

They rarely formed waterfalls, however, instead the water was cast away by the wind passing beneath, turning the water to mist. It made the long spike of rock, ice, and snow look like it was leaking clouds, the misty fog slowly dissipating into the distance.

The wind was fierce all across the mountains, ripping up sections of snow into blinding curtains and then dashing against the rocks. Ice formed from the displaced snow, only to melt when it was struck by direct light.

Here, in this little pocket, the air was calm. Wind struck against it only to find itself constrained, its power stolen away.

I let Zidaun take it in. His eyes were wide and his breath caught in his chest.

I smiled at his response.

Zidaun jerked back to life, trying to bow toward me.

“I’m sor-” he started, but I interrupted.

“Stop. I am glad you appreciated it.” I cast my gaze back out over the vast vista, noting valley leading down to the distant sea to the east, and the mountains that occluded the view in any other direction. “It is a glorious view. Feel free to sit, and take some time to look, there is no rush.”

Zidaun did as I asked, gazing out over the world.

When he was ready, I started up our conversation.

“What do you know about building a city?”