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Dom opened his eyes.
A bright light blinded him.
He quickly shut them again and tried to remember where he was and what had happened. He remember the fight between Tomas and his mother, he remembered seeing Kel astride her horse her long hair blowing in the breeze, her face alight. He was hazy about what came next.
He opened his eyes again. This time slow, so the light wouldn't blind him. When his eyes were finally open and his had adjusted he saw only the clear pale blue of the noon sky. He could hear the sound of waves pounding on the sand. He slowly raised himself from his prone position and looked around him.
Beneath him, the sand was warm and golden hued. The waves were low and the breeze coming of the water was cool. Behind him, the forest was dark and endless. He knew this place from his childhood. His older sister had loved the ocean. She had been sick most of his life, a frail pale child with wide pale eyes, but when she was at the shore, the moment her feet touched the water she came alive, she was free from her illness. When he was younger, his father built a home on the shore so that every morning she could wake to the ocean and go to sleep each night to the sound of the waves dancing on the sand.
His sister would often sneak into his room in the morning, before any of the house servants were awake. She would hurry him out of bed and the two of them would sneak of to the ocean. Out the side door, through the courtyard they would run as if the very hounds of hell were chasing them. When they reached the beach both would lift their voices to the newly rising sun. They would dancing in the retreating tide, welcome the day with laughter and abundant joy that even to this day resonated within him.
His sister would lock her pale eyes on him and with a wide smile would ask
"What do you see on the horizon? Is that the place in the sun? The place where souls pass from this world and come back to dance in the rays of the sun?"
Dom never understood when he was a child, never understood that those days on the beach would be his last with her. She would close her eyes at night with a murmured pray to the Dark God, "When you come for me, give a place by the sea."
She died when he was still a boy. Barely a lad of more then 12. He understood what she meant then… and the day they buried her, he didn't attend the funeral. He came to the shore and ran into the waves, letting them crash around his hips before he stopped. Lifting his eyes to the horizon line, he called out to the God of Death.
"Give her a place in the sun, a place where the land meets the sea. Where she can be free…" He never knew when his parents had joined him there on the shore, but when he walked in from the ocean, they waited for him and embraced him with whispers of love.
Now, Dom stood and looked out at the ocean, at this place he had not been since her death. He remembered what happened before he came to this place.
He remembered the pounding of his heart, the tightness in his chest… the end of his life.
A voice broke his introspection.
"Come, Domitan. We have much to talk about." Dom turned and saw cloaked figure standing behind him. The figure spoke softly as a father might to a son resounding love filled the words.
"Who are you?" Dom asked his voice tight.
"You know who I am. Come now. We have much to discuss and little time to do so." The figure moved away from Dom, leading the way.
Dom waited for a moment, trying to figure out if he truly knew this dark figure. His eyes danced across the shore and his eyes found the form of a girl, young… still in the prime of her adolescence dancing in the waves laughing as the water embraced her ankles. Dom shook his head and closed his eyes. This dark figure was Death; he had come to the end… these were the white shores of the Elysian Fields.
Dom's drew a deep breath, opened his eyes, and moved to follow the God of Death who waited for him a little way up the shore.
As Dom reached him, Death turned into the forest and lead him away from the shore and the dancing girl.
Dom and Death walked quietly for a short time through the dense undergrowth of the forest. This was the same as it had been when he was a child. Dom smiled a soft sad half smile, not at all surprised that at the end of his life this is where his soul longed to be. Soon Death entered a small clearing where a canopy stretched to cover the cleaning. Strangely, the center of the canopy had been cut away, leaving the edges of the cleaning covered and the center exposed to the sky.
Death walked forward with Dom in tow, until they stood in the center of the cleaning under the opening. Dom looked up and gasped. The sky above them was a mix of night and day. On one side, the moon shone and brilliant star glistened in the endless sky. On the other, the bright sun filled the sky with its radiant light, the sky was cloudless, and the lightest blue Dom had ever seen.
Death spoke.
"Dom, I have brought you hear to tell you the truth of the matter. To give you the tools that you will need to save those that you love." Dom drew his eyes away from the sky above them and locked them on the hooded figure speaking to him.
"You may not know this, my child, but you are one of my chosen." Dom raised an eyebrow, as he might to Raoul when he said something sarcastic or humorous.
Death seemed to understand what the gesture meant. Death raised small human hands to stop the flow of questions about to bubble forth from Dom's mouth.
"You are, I have known you all of your life. I have watched the tapestry of your life being weaved and loved you as a father. I have no desire to see those beings that I have guarded and stewarded for all these centuries kill themselves in senseless wars and the squabbles that come from petty things. You are a warrior, but your heart does not call out for death or bring shame to those you kill. You bare the weight of the slain with quiet dignity and honor each for the life they lived." Death paused at the look on Dom's face.
"You don't understand that's okay. Just know that I have chosen you to help end the senseless death coming." Death paused and in the break, Dom jumped in.
"What do you mean by 'guarded and stewarded?' You're death… don't you… want us to die?" Dom was utterly confused. Death motioned for Dom to sit and followed suit, folding into tailor style before answering.
"Domatin, I don't want you to die. I do not want anyone to die, but it happens. Without me, life would loose that sweet urgency. Without me, wars would last for eons and no one would remember why they fought. Love and friendship would be without value, and life itself would loose the spark that drives humans to live to the fullest. Like The Dream King, I live partly in the Realm of the Gods and partly in the Realm of Men. I watch men toil in the earth trying to grow things, watch them learn who they are, what them play on the beach in the early hours of the morning. Watch them offer prayers for those who have gone before them with reverence and joy in their hearts. I have fallen in love with the Realm of Men. Though sometimes you forget the value of life… and wage war against each other… you learn it again and for a generation, perhaps two, war is abolished from the world and the Realm of Men is at peace. That is why I have brought you here…"
Dom interrupted.
"Aren't I dead?" His voice cracked a little, remember all that he had left behind.
"No, Domitan. You are not dead. You are in my Realm because you cannot speak to the God of the Dead unless you are no longer of the living. I had to bring you here so that I could speak to you face to face… so that you can better understand your role in the coming storm."
The Dark God raised a small hand and presented Dom with a small leather bound volume. Dom opened the pages and found a scribbling of ancient words that he could not read.
"Give that to the wizard. You know him as Numair. He will know what to do with it. Now… as to what is coming. An army grows in the heart of the darkness. In a cave deep in the North of the world, over the pass at the roof of the world, in a place that no man has set foot for nearly five hundred years a nearly unstoppable force is gathering arms to wage war on the world. They are soldiers of an ancient warlord, who traded their mortality for power and strength. However, the Priestess who bound them to the world of the living tricked them. They are now little more than black forms; nothing remains of their human selves. When the time comes they will march across the known world, ravaging the earth and destroying all who stand between them and their goal."
"What is it that they want?" Dom's heart cried out, such senseless violence and death, all because of the greed of man.
"To have the world burning at their feet." Death reached out a hand to touch the center of Dom's forehead with two fingers.
"You, my child, will have to stop them. You will need to stand beside Keladry. Trust her and trust your heart. For there in lies your true strength. You are made great by your capacity to love. When I return you to your body, you must leave the Island of the Wave Walker and travel north for a short distance. You will come to the Yamani Islands soon enough, there you will meet the chosen of the Dream King. They will know the next place that you must travel too…" Death drew back the hand and waited for Dom to respond.
"Why? Shouldn't we just travel back to Tortal so that we can help them prepare. And why are we going to see a chosen of the Dream King?" Dom grew slightly angry that more tasks lay between them and protecting Tortal from the coming battle.
"I have laid this path out for you Domitan; I know that it makes no sense to you, but trust that I have your best interests at heart. You will be back in Tortal right when you need to be. As to why you need a follower of the Dream King on your side… we are in this together. The Priestess who gave this army, the Elhullot, its power was a servant of a lesser god, known as the God of Fantasy. Harmless sounding, but dreams and fantasies themselves are dangerous when they dominate life, when one forgets to live and becomes tangled in them, they become as dangerous as swords. The Priestess was human and when she died, she came to my realm… that was enough for me. The abomination she created in the name of her God… that is the problem. The Great Gods that rule our two worlds will have nothing to do with destroying the Elhullot… for they are the children of a lesser God and thus are not truly dangerous." Death stood and walked away from Dom for a moment.
"After all if men slaughter one another… what concern is it of theirs?" Death spoke facing in the dark of the wood.
"I stand at a precipice. The time has come for men to know the value of life and death… and you," Death turned back to Dom, "will show them."
Dom opened his mouth to speak, but the dragging sensation that he remembered from before he came had started again. Stronger, this time, than it had been last time. He looked to Death but the clearing had faded and now he stood once more on the shore. The adolescent that had danced along the shore before came closer. It was his sister and when she was only five or so feet from him, she spoke.
"Goodbye Dom. Tell Mother and Father I'm free." She danced away, her laughter echoing as his vision grew dark…
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