Hope, courage, a mind of my own -- all things I need more of to fix this shit, Jack thought as he fearlessly bolted through the darkness. Though compared to when I was a lonely mercenary, I have seriously improved.

Back then, only uncontrollable rage and curiosity drove me to do things.

Far behind, the spirals of white entered the tunnel, tanking through the darkness.

Jack ran past a sole lantern and, soon, reached a bright room where, for a moment, he slowed down and breathed.

The room led into a huge cave occupied by a massive temple built from stone circles. Jack had to turn his head for the whole thing to be in his view.

The spirals of white emerged out of the tunnel.

I don’t even get a second to rest! Jack struggled up the temple’s stairs and walked along its walls, hoping to find an open entrance. Instead, he came upon a chubby-kid-sized gap and--without a second to waste--entered through it.

Inside the massive temple, a nexus of obsidian light floated, black smoke swirling around it. Humanoid black voids sat in a circle of chairs.

Jack’s eyes widened as he froze, but then sprung to a shadow and put his back against a wall.

The powers that be?

There were half translucent auras around the gods, with human features: clothes, hair, faces, skin tones. One of the auras helped visualize a burly man with a huge beard and hounds’ leashes in his hands while another showed a thin woman with massive glasses.

Jack squinted -- his heart beat urged him to stay on the move, but he had to make sure.

A black man with a white beard and an indigo hat sat a few feet away from any other power.

“Powers that be,” Jack uttered in amazement then shut his hand with his mouth.

The gods argued in whispered voices out of which Hunter’s was the loudest.

“That thing out there has to be dealt with,” he said.

“We don’t even know what it is!” a voice from the crowd replied.

“First of all, call it Everia, second of all -- you all damn well know what it is!” Hunter waved. “We can’t grasp its nature or how it came to be--Throck will need to think about that for a while longer--but we have to fight and contain it! Otherwise, it’ll destroy all we have built and drive us to the prairie!”

“You could see that as a good thing -- at least it won’t destroy us!”

“But it’ll take most of our power, drain to us like desert sticks and leave us as phantoms once in a while able to reappear and cause some havoc!”

“And we don’t see a problem with that. Power is still power. No matter how little, it’s still more, way more, than any simple human can achieve. Our natures are different than yours, Hunter, and we’ve spent countless years longer than you here. As just a human sorcerer who became our apprentice, you might not understand that we’re no longer driven to achieve what we set out. Collapsing seems fair.”

“You’re throwing all that we’ve built away and forgetting the goal just because you’re a bit older!?”

“You yourself have lost your dedication towards it!”

“Indeed, I’ve been distracted by pleasures and emotions, by love and by the saving of children. Yet those things are temporary. Ten years is nothing for us and I would’ve returned to the goal once those simple human things started to bore me.”

“That’s incredibly evil.”

“No, that is a sign of my dedication. I cannot let myself waste a drop more of my blood on those pleasures.”

“Well, I’m mistaken then.”

“You are and that’s why it’s time focus on the matter at hand!” Hunter raised his voice even louder. “We’ll fight and capture Everia or die trying! It’s not a question of do we stand up or do we run. It’s a question of do we win or do we lose.”

“No, the question is--”

“You’ve strayed so much from who we were that your words don’t even sound like yours. Backing away from a fight?! Missing the chance to cause havoc?!” Hunter shouted then took a deep breath. “When I was young and naive, you ordered me around. Now that you’re old and foolish, I think it’s time for me to do that.”

One of the powers that be stood up and moved beside Hunter.

“I’m with him,” a whisper sounded. “His words contain more truth than anything spoken by all of you in forever.”

More humanoid voids rose and moved beside Hunter’s side. Six stood with the old man while only one remained seated. After a moment, the last god got up as well. The old man pointed towards an exit which was in the middle of opening. Jack fell into a lower crouch and crossed his fingers.

“It’s already here!” Hunter said. “Though now that we are one, we have a chance!” He charged and all the others followed.

Jack waited for a moment, then, as silence took over, walked into the room.

This has got to be the Heart, he though, overlooking the majestic nexus. At least something should be here. It’s such an important place and that deadman wouldn’t have led me to it for no reason.

Also, this vision is taking so long to end, compared to the last one… and it’s actually affecting the deads…

I guess it’s cause this place is so much bigger, the whiteness is taking forever to engulf it all, Jack shrugged it off. Thankfully I got some time now.

Jack paced around the circle of seats, searching for the urn or anything similar. He acknowledged that he might’ve made a huge mistake by leaving the coffin room and committing to this direction. Perhaps what he needed was in the other side of the Grandest Chapter…

Out of ideas, he turned on his heel and walked to the nexus in the middle. A hot force started to push his chest, growing unbearable in a second.

Jack stumbled back into the safezone.

Feels exactly like the auras of Everia’’s servants.

With the corner of his eye, Jack caught a leatherbound book on one of the stone seats. His jaw dropped and he leaped towards it.

The force returned as powerful and painful as ever, blasting him back.

The burning blazed through his chest and he screamed, “damn you like a bascalle!”

It’s right out of my reach!

Jack strided forwards again and, once more, fell back with a flash of pain.

Nope, this way really doesn’t work…

What if…

He took the deadman rags off himself, quickly tied them together and threw the makeshift rope towards the book. It landed half an inch away.

I can’t get any closer than this without burning my face off! Jack thought, bit by bit, edging closer.

The force pushed on his chest then on every inch of his body. He bit his lip and went on. The rope slithered around the book. With throbbing fingers, he pulled and fell back as the his legs weakened from the pain.

A hand appeared, drew Jack out and held him by his shoulder to keep him from falling. He heaved, grinning in relief.

Hold on… what?

The hand belonged to a woman with ashen hair which perfectly contrasted her ebony skin

Jack quickly grabbed the book from his feet and embraced it.

Who are you?!

Where did you come from?!

Also...

...why are you not dead?!

***

“Go ahead,” the woman spoke softly. “Read it.”

Not willing to answer any of my woes, eh?

Jack fumbled to book in his hands and flipped open the first page.

No time to get any of that out of you…

“Note to self: don’t forget the cat,” he read and went to another page. “The recipe of a deadman.” He flipped to the third. “How to kill someone who’s been killed.”

Half is in the common tongue, half in the tongue of death, but I understand it all..

Jack continued down the page with a face of interest. “The amount of power we have doesn’t matter for the process of bringing someone back is tricky (probably because we no idea how it really works). At some point, things will go wrong and I can’t trust all these old fools to remember how to deal with that so here’s the basics: deads don’t feel pain and they don’t die like living people (obvious reasons why), but they also don’t really think. There’s something really corrupted in their minds. You can use that to your own advantage, if you have the opportunity, or you can splash them with holy water (which you can get in any church on this planet). You can also use real weapons to slowly turn them to dust. The dust is a pain to clean so at least it flies away and turns into deathrocks. The last way to kill deads is by saying rare curses in the tongue of death. It’s also the best way, but can backfire ‘cause it kills all the creatures who can hear those words.”

Jack looked back at the woman. “This is Hunter’s journal,” he uttered.

The woman gestured for Jack to continue.

He went past “the dictionary of the tongue of the dead” and stopped by the “note to self, part two”.

“I thought we could contain the Everia half of her, but I guess I was wrong. It keeps returning, becoming stronger and reeking more havoc. You’ll have to make a drastic, perhaps painful decision otherwise it might end the Hall of Ceremony and the whole world.”

Shivers went down Jack’s spine as everything connected then mind-blanking terror came over him as it all started to make sense.

“Is this--”

“Keep reading,” the woman ordered.

Jack took a deep breath and went back to Hunter’s journal.

“Map of the Hall of Ceremony.” He tried to take in as much as possible of the convoluted scribbling and flipped to an ink covered page. “The goal.”

“Once I became the most powerful sorcerer, and then eventually a power, I was eager to break the rules and rule existence itself. Yet at the plateau of being able to do anything on the planet, my hope and motivation died. Now that I have Helen, I realize the goal is more important than ever. I have to protect her. I have to protect everyone. I’ve already started with giving the dead a second chance, but I want to do even better. No one has to suffer like me or the people who I used.”

Jack dropped the journal and locked eyes with the woman in front.

“Helen?”