where the dead go.

acarya

Forget everything you've been told. There is no white light to go toward. There is no welcoming arms of your ancestors or the loved ones who have gone on before. He does not float above his body, looking down at himself while Sunitha lays herself down and injects herself with the same poison. He does not watch her pour a few drops of water from the Ganges into his mouth, or how she holds a few drops in her own mouth while she slides a needle into her arm.

Richard just dies. And he is not conscious then of anything. He is just dead, and it is dark, and there is nothing.

--

When consciousness does return, shadows are moving around him like fog, slowly parting. There is a light, but he does not go toward it; it comes toward him, slow and unwavering. He has never felt such silence in his life; he did not know such silence could exist. Everything is cold. Swimming in the autumnal ocean he was not this cold, but he does not shiver. Shivering is for the living, trying to warm themselves, and Richard is not alive.

The light makes the shadows dissipate and shift aside, but they do not leave. It is a plain lantern, held aloft by the slender hand of his acarya, who appears here in white. Her clothes are white, her hair shrouded. Still everything is thick and difficult and there is no connection between this imagining of a body and the memory of a mind. Her mouth moves but he hears nothing, cannot connect what his eyes see with anything. He knows her but does not have her name or his relationship to her. He knows her and he knows what 'light' is but he is a part of the darkness now, it is wrong to pull him from the darkness, this is what death is.

Only gradually does her name come baack to him, and then her voice, and his own name being said. There is a shadow beside her, still in a sari, but this one is stony gray, unadorned, and her long black hair is unbound, her body is unmarked. He can't remember the shadow, the ghost, but she holds no light and does not call his name. That's

Eleanor

saying

Richard.

--

Oh, her voice is firm. Perhaps he breathes. Perhaps it comes rushing back: he is Richard, he's an apprentice, this is his ritual, his mother and his father and that's Eleanor that's his teacher she's a lawyer they're in Oregon and panic sets in because he's dead, they're all dead, and this isn't silence, this is profound noise, this is a hollow, howling, screaming storm raging all around them, they are caught in it no wonder he can't hear her voice until she's SHOUTING RICHARD

RICHARD

RICHARD TAKE MY HAND

Richard Levasseur

One wonders what it is Eleanor sees when she reaches the other side and begins to look for her apprentice. One wonders if he appears there, a new shadow amongst shadows, if this shadow is formless or perhaps quite tall, if this shadow perhaps just feels like her apprentice.

Regardless she finds him. She finds him and he is coming back to himself, shadows are leaving his face and his hands and peeling back from him, slithering unwillingly away as her light casts them away. He is looking at her then, caught in the absolute silence which is really absolute noise. There is no recognition in his eyes.

And then there is. There is recognition and clarity, and by this alone one can say: this is not true death. In true death there is no clarity, no recognition. No noise. Only silence and a timeless sort of waiting; waiting for that wheel to come around again, to catch one's spirit up in its momentum, lash it screaming and kicking and wailing into the horrid bright world, the shine of operating lights, the gloved and gowned hands of the obstetrician,

congratulations, it's a boy!

There is no obstetrician here, and that grey shadow is not his mother. There is a woman in white. It is his acarya. She is shouting RICHARD, RICHARD, RICHARD TAKE MY HAND and as suddenly as that profound grief had crashed over him, a profound relief crashes over him now. He grabs her hand. He would hug her but he is not sure it is allowed. Then he thinks to hell with what is allowed, I am dead, so he hugs her after all, flinging both arms around her and squeezing.

acarya

She grabs hold of him. Her hand is tight but not warm, not warm like it was in the house and on the beach. She is as cold as he is; it is difficult to feel anything. Even the panic, fear, even loss or confusion is difficult. It is hard to feel anything here, just as it is hard to hear, and see. The most profound loss is scent. There's no smell here, not blood or death or rot, nothing. Existence has flattened out. Death is, as they say, the great equalizer. All who breathe share this destiny.

He's dead. He doesn't care what's allowed. He throws his arms around her, engulfing her, and if she were not dead she might buckle from the intensity of it. As it is she pats his back, rubs it. Tells him it's all right. you're all right. but maybe that's just the tenor of what he hears. For a moment it sounds like someone else talking, someone speaking French, but that brief flicker passes.

Sunitha witnesses. She is as silent and still as one of the statues of gods in her home.

When Richard lets her go, Eleanor passes him the lantern. As it changes hands it changes form: becomes a torch, primitive and fiery. Even before it comes to him he can feel its warmth, feel its magic. That is Sunitha's touch, on that lantern, and it is not a real lantern, not a real torch. That is not fire, though it flickers and moves like fire. That is magic, and it is a beacon. "Keep this," Eleanor says, her voice sounding as hollow as before, as though it echoes within herself, as though she is emptied out,

they are all emptied out.

"You may feel a pull to return to the Great Unmaking," she tells him. This is Sunitha speaking. "Just as you may feel a pull to remain here forever. Resist both. Here you must witness the breaking-down that must come before rebirth, but there is Oblivion here as well. Do not use tamas," she tells him, using the old word for Entropy. "It will draw Oblivion to you. In the Great Unmaking there is renewal and reincarnation; in Oblivion, your soul will be gone forever."

She turns, nodding to Eleanor. Eleanor reaches out, taking Richard's hand again. They walk into the darkness.

He hears a whisper against his ear, neither voice nor wind, and that whisper feels like a touch. It passes. There is no one there.

Richard Levasseur

The lantern becomes a torch. The torch blazes. It feels like magic. It feels more real and solid and present than anything else here, his own body included. As his hand grips the haft, he can feel the roughness of wood, the splinters that, if he's not careful, will work their way into his palm. He can hear the hollow roar of the fire, see the light it casts.

For an instant his memory is confused. He remembers not this most-recent life but one longer ago, a time before electricity, a time when torches such as these were commonplace and necessary. Perhaps he was a soldier. Perhaps he crossed the Channel; perhaps he Crusaded. He was laughing and kind in that lifetime too, but it was not a laughing, kind time. I go where my Lord bids me, he said, and I do as I am told. He cannot remember if it was a man or a god he meant. It didn't matter. In the end it was always blood, blood, such blood and such atrocities committed in the name of Good and Righteousness. His mind shrinks back from the memories. He is glad that spoke of the wheel is behind him now. Death comes so much rarer at his hand in this iteration.

You may feel a pull, Sunitha is telling him. Do not, do not. Your soul will be gone forever.

He looks at her in the light she gave him and he nods. "Thank you," he says. This is as far as she goes, though some apprehensive part of Richard wishes she would stay. She is, he thinks, perhaps even more powerful than his acarya, and more certain and sure of herself in these strange lands than either Richard or Eleanor.

He understands why she leaves them, though; just as he would understand if, at some crucial juncture, Eleanor chose simply to step back and observe. It is his Agama Te, after all.

His hand grips Eleanor's. They walk into darkness.

acarya

As they go, the darkness abates a little, but everything is shadowed, everything is a bit dim, a bit dark. Sunitha recedes, but she is not gone, not completely. She is tethered to them, following far behind, but the longer they go, the harder it is to remember that she is there.

Loneliness pervades everything. It would be easy to despair, here. Every emotion seems to be singular, to be total, to be faced in its entirety and faced entirely alone. But Eleanor does not let go of his hand, and gradually, they pass through that pitch-dark veil between worlds, the endless blackness that, apparently, has an end.

Shapes form like sketches, first pencil and then charcoal, solidifying slowly. He begins to recognize things: this a tree, that a road, a lamp that does not flicker because here, lighting it means using a precious soul reforged into flame. He begins to know that they are near the sea, they are now standing outside of a house, it's a familiar house, it's... Sunitha's house, which -- as he looks back on it -- holds a surprising strength, where other structures are more dim. It is a warning, though, that dark pulsing that comes from it. Strong spiritual magics guard that house, anchored by Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva.

Eleanor is watching him as things begin to clarify around him and to his young, lively sight that is not quite made to see the other side of death.

"It is called the shadowlands because it is a shadow of the world we know," Eleanor tells him, her voice a bit toneless. God help them if she'd woken up today like she does some days, unable to feel anything but grief. She wouldn't survive here. She'd just let go. She looks around, toward a sea that has no waves, that is black and eternal and terrifyingly still. "It has many names. Beyond it there are places that it's hard to imagine, or describe. Those realms are night." Her eyes come back to him. "This realm is only twilight."

Richard Levasseur

The darkness: it doesn't quite go away. It recedes, though. It's like the tide -- sometimes low, sometimes high. Doesn't mean the ocean isn't always there.

He can see now. And he looks, letting go of Eleanor's hand so he can turn in place. Three sixty. All the way around, shadows shifting and changing on those well-made planes of his face. His eyes, which are always wide and clear, seem huge right now. He's looking at everything, everything he can possibly see.

When his acarya speaks he attends. He looks at her, focusing on her. It doesn't escape him that she is -- flat. Flatter, when today was a good day for her. It doesn't escape him to wonder what it would have been like if it had been one of those days, those grey days. He wonders if she would have come all the same. He wonders if she would have made it back.

He asks, "Is this where the dead go when they die?"

acarya

The sky has no stars. No moon. The sky is slate-colored. Maybe sometimes ghosts look at it and remember things like the color blue, the movement of clouds, the shapes they could take. But there's really nothing there.

He can see sand under his feet, but no matter: everything feels cold and a bit damp right now. There would be no pleasure in digging his toes into this. Just the grate of it on his soles, the stick of it under his nails. Eleanor stays close, and the light from his torch loses and finds her again as he turns; she seems to appear again out of nowhere, but for a moment, for a second, she was so shadowed that she seemed to flicker.

Richard can't see himself, but he's flat, too. His voice doesn't sound right. There's almost no emotion; emotion, even wonder, is a strain to bring up. Yes. Even wonder. Wonder, and joy, and the satisfaction of knowledge pursued and gained: all these things are passions, and passions are a precious resource here. They can only drum them up in themselves at all because they are alived and Awakened. But they're not immune.

It would be unwise to stay here long. Or come here alone. But some do.

She gives him a small nod. "One of the places the dead can go. One of the places they can also get stuck. Ghost stories -- spirits hanging around because of something left undone, some passion they can't let go of -- aren't far from the truth. That's why we place such emphasis on the Good Death, so they can meet their end without remaining tied to what came before." Eleanor takes a breath. "Other things come here, too, from other realms. From here they can reach into the physical world and touch the living. But you would have to talk to a more experienced Spirit mage to learn more about them."

Richard Levasseur

He thinks about this for a moment. He tastes the concepts, imbibes them and digests them. Or -- he would, if he could, but he can't drum up the interest, the keen curiosity that he has come to take for granted and she has come to know. He simply absorbs it, here. Analyzes it for a moment, then moves on.

"If there are many places the dead can go, why do we come here for our Agama Te?"

acarya

"Because most pass through here, at very least," she tells him. "I only say that there are other places because even the Awakened don't know everything."

She walks towards him. "The thing is, one path you may find yourself walking will keep you on the boundary of this place more often than most living. You may need to speak with the dead, or find them. You may need something from the shadowlands that has been lost. Before you can really call yourself a Euthanatos, you need to know what is on the other side of the Shroud.

"And should you kill, even rarely, you need to know what you are sending that soul to. This place." She looks around, exhales, but it hardly makes noise. Small wonder they've both chosen to stay here a bit, where Sunitha's house seems so strong, so real, so safe. "I hear nightmarish stories about this place. Where ghosts enslave one another, strong to weak, and forge lost souls into everything from coins to walls, trade them as currency. There are wraiths who spend their afterlives just trying to walk in the skinlands again. And Oblivion winds like a snake through everything, seeking souls to devour, to destroy, removing them from the Wheel entirely."

Eleanor shakes her head. "Think of this place as an interruption. Souls are bound for eternity, whatever that eternity might be: a heaven, a hell, a purgatory, a paradise, an emptiness, or -- and I believe this is the majority of them -- a reincarnation. But so many, especially these days, do not die in any kind of acceptance or peace. Even those who want to... sometimes the will is too forceful, the mind too strong, and the spirit can't truly rest. Some of them, after a time in the shadowlands, manage to really let go. They move on. But this place wants to hold you. And the other things here want to hold you. Oblivion wants to unravel you.

"Some Euthanatoi," she says slowly, "are devoted to entering the shadowlands to try and clean it up. I think it is too dangerous, and too overwhelming a task, to be of much use. There are spirits here who are older than whole civilizations, and even an Awakened mage is a poor match for them. We have enough to do on the side of the living, I think. Including living, ourselves."

Richard Levasseur

She tells him more, now, than she has ever told him before of this place. He has never asked much. She has never volunteered information. He thinks he understands: after all, how does one describe a place that is so defined by its flatness, its silence, its not-ness?

She tells him, too, a little more than Sunitha had. The Great Unmaking, that mage had told him. Oblivion. And staying here. Three paths only. To those branchings his acarya adds more. Heavens and hells and purgatories and paradises and nothingness which is not quite the same as Oblivion. A handful of the many, many, many, perhaps infinite paths a soul can take after it is gleaned from the world of the living. Before it is reborn -- if ever it is reborn.

The fell economy of the place horrifies him. The strong enslave the weak. The powerful and old forge the weak and lost into objects, things, coins, currency. And everywhere, inescapable, perhaps inevitable if one remains here long enough: Oblivion. Richard's mind conjures the image of a snake made of shadow, but he knows that is not what it is. It is not a thing at all; that is the point. It is the very definition of nothing.

"Can you show me ... " he trails off; struggles for a while to put it into words. "Can you show me some of the souls that reside here? The ones that are bound here, and the ones who are moving through?"

acarya

There are some who consider the Great Unmaking and Oblivion to be one and the same; Sunitha does not, Eleanor does not. Unmaking breaks one down, but there is a return. Oblivion just eats. And perhaps in practice the two are impossible to tell apart, and are to be equally feared. Who knows. Eleanor lost much when she lost Henrik.

The depth of understanding she once had of the sphere of spirit was one of those things she lost. She is a neophyte here with him, here to protect him as much as guide him. She tells him what she knows, what she thinks she knows, and tucks away knowledge of what to send him off to find for himself, if he chooses; but she does not think he will become a spirit mage of the Euthanatos. She does not think he will seek that far into death, though perhaps he may learn to speak with the idealized avatars of elements and living things. She wonders so much about who he will be, what he will do.

She hopes he can hold on to the wonder that, even here and now, flickers occasionally in his eyes. It is a strong passion.

She hopes nothing comes, hungry for it.

"The departed are not, in general, fond of Wheel-turners," she says, slowly, a bit hesitantly. "We meddle. We send them into Unmaking, we smash their fetters, and some less moral necromancers... do other things to them. There is a whole world here, with its own politics and economies, and I am not strong enough in this sphere to keep us safe from that world, should we walk into the middle of it as tourists."

Eleanor takes a breath. "But I think there is a place where I can show you, more safely." She holds out her hand to him. "It will be a long walk, though."

Richard Levasseur

Richard's smile is thin, thin as Eleanor's often are. He can't help it. Here, all things feel thin. Thin and worn-out, almost worn-through. Everything is a shade of what it was. A shadow.

Still: curiosity. Still: wonder. A dread, horror-bound wonder at times, true. He comes again and again to what she said: the strong and the weak, the forging of souls into things. He understands why some amongst their order want to come here. Want to clear the place out, banish souls onward to one fate or another, sweep it all clean and dissipate -- this.

He understands, too -- intuitively, without even having seen the true denizens and masters of this land -- why that would be dangerous. Deadly. Nigh-impossible.

He takes her hand again, unhesitatingly; trustingly. His fingers fold around hers. Neither of them have any heat to give here. Even sensation seems numbed -- he knows the pressure of her fingers but not the feel of them. All the same he gives her that smile, which is as much a smile as he can manage.

"I don't mind the walk," he says.