The green SUV was stationed in a field of elephant grass.

Chris sat on the dry vegetation with his back against the vehicle’s side bumper. It didn’t make for the most comfortable position for his spine, but he stayed put anyway. The thoughts whirling in his head did a good job of taking away the attention of the pressure on his back.

Disappearing from the hotel area was for the best. The violent event will go down as another local legend. The mention of a small gray-haired, pale girl swinging a scythe will help solidify the happening as a wild case of mass hysteria.

Chris stared forward into the grasslands. Its crude beauty was shrouded by the darkness of the night, and a crackle of crickets chirped in unison. There was the recurring buzzing of a hungry mosquito in his ear that he swatted every time it got too close. Chris was thankful that it was the tiniest (but most annoying) of the fauna that decided to show instead of their bigger fellow grassland inhabitants. The earthy scent of the area made sure it was all that his nose could smell.

One of the backseat doors opened. Tayte climbed out with a pair of water bottles in her hand.

Chris looked at her, noting her languid demeanor as she pushed the door shut with her shoulder by leaning onto it, and then flopped down beside him.

“I thought you were going to sleep,” Chris asked.

She handed him a bottle and then produced two plastic packets from her pocket. “I’m too tired to sleep.”

“Wow. That’s actually a good way to put what I’m feeling now too.”

Tayte dropped a packet onto his lap.

Chris picked it up and inspected the item. “Powdered wine…?”

Then, Tayte bit into the packet and gave up after one lousy attempt. “It’s pink Moscato.” She extended it to Chris and looked at him blankly.

He grinned at her adorable, pathetic look and took her water bottle and packet. Maintaining his grin as he twisted the cap off.

“When I punched her. I forgot about the ‘knocking out a Fighter’ thing, but then again I didn’t think she was going to be knocked out by that punch, anyway.”

Chris tore the packet open in one move, studying her. It almost sounded like she had remorse for what she did. “No. Don’t worry about it. I gave Lis—Melissa… plenty of opportunities to give up her Relic, but she refused. And besides, from the moment I refused to work alongside her, it was made clear that we were going to become opponents after the last Fighter was chosen. So, we both knew one of two possible outcomes was going to happen for sure.” He poured the pink-white powder into the bottle, twisted the cap back on, and shook it.

Tayte curled her lips to the side and looked around. “Are you happy with the outcome? Would you prefer the alternative even though you’re afraid of dying?”

The question made Chris halt and stared back at the mortician apprentice.

“You told me, remember?” She responded.

His mind went back to the robbery. An image of an undaunted Tayte being held at gunpoint flashed in his mind. “Right,” he said. He averted his eyes from Tayte and handed her the instant wine. “Before that night, I mentioned what terrifies me, which is… not knowing what happens next.”

“But you said that Melissa should wish for herself and her comrades to go to hell.” Tayte hushed abruptly, pulled back and gripped her bottle. “Sorry, I…”

“You’re trying, I know,” Chris reassured. “You didn’t say anything bad, actually. Yeah, I guess it doesn’t make sense for me to say something like that, even though I’m not sure if it exists at all. Hell, even participating in these Trials doesn’t assure me that there is an afterlife. How dumb is that, right?” He opened his water bottle and started mixing in the powder.

Tayte took a sip of her Moscato. “You want to beat the Trials just to know if there is an afterlife or not.”

Chris helped himself to a big glug of the sweet drink to start off. “I want to know what happens after you die. Where do you go? What do you do there? Who do you find there?” He paused, staring at the bottle. “How my uncle is doing…”

“Your uncle…?”

Chris gave Tayte a faint smile. “Your latest client.”

“Oh,” she remembered, taking another sip. “Mr. Nangobi—”

“He was Uncle Davis to me.” Chris pulled his knees up to his chest and rested his arms over them. “He was the guy that everybody in my family looked up to. He was our mediator and resolved every conflict in my family with just conversation. It was amazing. Every time there was a problem, Uncle Davis was our guy. He didn’t have any children of his own, nor a wife. For his age and in African standards, that would make him a loser, but my family didn’t see him that way.” He took another glug. “He was an archaeologist and traveled the world, bringing the coolest stuff for his father and mother, brothers and sisters, cousins, and nieces and nephews.

“I’m not close to my parents. They never mistreated me or anything. It’s just that our relationship always felt mild, y’know? Every conversation I had with them was basically just small talk. It was the same with my siblings, although I’m the youngest and they are all much older than me, so there was nothing we had in common, but the one guy who got me was Uncle Davis.”

“He’s the reason you like history so much,” Tayte said.

Chris nodded with a smile stretching from ear to ear. “From world history to mythology, it just clicked with me. And I was the only one in the family who gave a damn about the information he learned, instead of just the trinkets he’d bring back. And… he was the one who told me about the Tombstone Trials.” He turned to Tayte, resting his arm on the side bumper. “Tayte, have you ever heard about the Ugandan myth of how death came to be?”

She shook her head and swallowed her wine.

Chris placed the bottle down and used his hands as he explained, “It all began with the first man, King Kintu. The legend goes that Kintu fended off the forces of nature while literally being the only man on earth and caught the eye of Nambi, the daughter of the god, Ggulu. She watched him from Heaven and was enamored with his skill for survival. Given that she liked what she saw, Nambi descended to Earth and interacted with Kintu. He introduced her to his cow and his lifestyle, I guess, and that was enough to get the two to hit it off and get married.”

“Nambi sounds like she was really bored. She must’ve been. In Heaven, she’s the daughter of a deity and probably over pampered daily. Nambi decided to leave to find excitement.” Tayte took a swig of her drink. “I like her.”

Chris stared back with a stale look. “I don’t think that’s what you’re supposed to take from the story, but sure, whatever.” He went on. “Ggulu wasn’t happy with this, so in order to be convinced that Kintu deserved his daughter, he set up a series of trials for him. They were difficult, but Nambi meddled a bit and helped in secret, and so Kintu passed all of them. Ggulu was impressed and allowed for the marriage to happen, and to let his daughter leave heaven for good.”

“And they lived happily ever after,” she said coldly.

“Not quite.”

“Ooh,” Tayte said with her eyes widening a little.

Chris sighed. “Ggulu has two other sons: Kayiikuzi and Walumbe. Walumbe was not a fan of the idea, even after the trials. When the time came for Nambi to leave for good, Kayiikuzi gave her the heads up to not return to Heaven under any circumstances. Walumbe might follow her on her way back and make things difficult for the couple. Despite these warnings, when Nambi came down to Earth, she realized she forgot some millet and returned to grab some. Walumbe followed her back to Earth. Now, it’s important to know that Walumbe’s name in Luganda means ‘that which causes sickness and death’, so it goes without saying, him on Earth is a bad idea. Walumbe wanted their children as offerings—”

“Whoa, when did they have children?”

“Africans work fast.”

“Ahh…” Tayte rotated her hand, giving him the cue to continue.

“Anyway, Ggulu sent Kayiikuuzi to retrieve his brother as he stirred trouble. When Kayiikuuzi arrived, he dug the ground in search of his brother and a fight ensued, as Walumbe formed pits to hide from him. Unfortunately, Kayiikuuzi wasn’t able to find him and returned to Heaven, and thus, Ggulu waited for Walumbe to show himself again so that he can get Kayiikuuzi to retrieve his brother. Since Walumbe is still on Earth, according to Ugandans, he is the reason sickness and death is a thing. That’s where the story ends.”

“But there’s more?”

Chris guzzled the wine and then placed the empty bottle on the bumper. “My Uncle told me that this is the general story that is shared with the world, but the story does go on. This is sort of like a legend within a legend. Walumbe, while hiding underground, formed his underworld, and vowed to influence Kintu’s descendants in any way he could from underground. Thinking back to the trials his father put Kintu through, Walumbe came up with the concept of the Tombstone Trials as a way to tear the family apart. With promises of having their greatest desires be realized, Walumbe pitted descendants of Kintu against each other in a series of sadistic challenges designed by himself for amusement. Manipulating them through messages he’d sent to the surface while staying hidden underground.

“Inadvertently, these trials caught the attention of other African regions and other gods of death who misinterpreted the Tombstone Trials participants as representatives of Walumbe. Naturally, they sent in warriors of their own to battle these participants. Even though his plan was to have the descendants of Kintu destroy each other, a sense of pride in Walumbe prompted him to make sure the subjects he picked were the best in the world.”

Tayte stretched and yawned, letting out a squeaky sound.

Chris gazed at her, focusing on the small tear dotting the corner of her eye. He’d be blushing if he could.

“That’s when the Tombstone Trials became worldwide,” she added.

Chris shook off the adorable image of her from his head and continued, “Not worldwide. The Trials were spread across the African continent, where gods of death pitted their best warriors against each other with godly Relics to aid them. And then… the slave trade happened. That’s when things became worldwide.” Chris burped quickly and apologized. “As Africans came into contact with races they’ve never interacted with before. They brought with them their gods. Deities of various regions met for the first time ever, and all of them were interested in these Tombstone Trials. The competition’s scope increased once again, and this time to a truly global scale. A new agreement surfaced in which, whomever’s warriors won a total of 50 times, then their god of death will be granted lordship of life and death of every clan in the world, and those who lose will have to forfeit their title as gods of death.”

“So, that’s what we’re really fighting for? The titles of the gods we represent?”

“Yeah. Man, I fell in love with the story. It’s all I could think about for a while. I even wrote a paper on it for myself. I worked on that thing throughout college and my master’s program.”

“Wait, you doubled as a grave robber and a college student?”

Chris chuckled. “Sounds like a plot to a bad children’s novel, huh? But yeah, although, when the time for my dissertation came along… I accidentally sent in my Tombstone Trials paper instead of my Ugandan history paper…”

Silence took over. Tayte blinked twice. “How does that even happen?”

“It’s because of my curse!”

“What curse?”

“For as long as I can remember, I’ve always had terrible luck. Like, unexplainably dumb stuff happens to me. Every time I’d leave the house without an umbrella, even though the news said otherwise, it’d start raining only in my area! I’d buy something with the added insurance price and nothing would happen to it, but whenever I buy something without insurance, boom! It breaks the next day. I can’t eat ice cream cones outside with confidence. It’s not worth it. I’ve never managed to finish an ice cream cone outside in my life! It always falls. Every. Damn. Time. So the only logical explanation for it all is that a witch put a curse on me when I was a baby.”

“Why would a witch put a curse on a baby?”

“I’d like to know, too. Of course, the paper was rejected and I am currently waiting for a resit.” Chris paused and looked up at the sky. “There’s not anything I want to wish for. I just want to make sure that my uncle is okay, and there’s something I need to ask him.”

“And you’re willing to risk your life for it.”

“I need to know, Tayte,” he said. Chris snuck another look at Tayte. It was time to get answers. “So, what about you?”

“Hm?”

Chris glared at Tayte. “Don’t give me that. You know what I’m talking about. Where the hell did you learn how to fight like that?”

Tayte cupped the bottle with both hands and focused on it. “Bo staff fighting.”

The answer came out easier and more abruptly than expected. “What?” Chris said.

“Okinawa Kobudō,” Tayte said with perfect pronunciation. “I used to train at the Honbu Dojo in Sugarmaple. I think I started going when I was 10, and focused on Okinawan karate—Okinawa-te—before transitioning to bo staff and began competing when I was 14.”

“Competitions in Sugarmaple…?”

“And in Okinawa. I’ve won a couple of tournaments both in Sugarmaple and Okinawa.”

He was prepared for a bizarre explanation, but this way was weirder than anything he could’ve prepared for. “Whoa, back up,” he said, raising his hands and trying to keep his head from spinning. “I’ve known you since high school; freshman year. You never mentioned anything like that!”

“We barely talked to each other. How could you have known?”

Chris lowered his hands and looked off to the side. She was right. They were friendly acquaintances at most. And then there was the fact that he had lived in Sugarmaple for eighteen-years and never heard about the Honbu Dojo—scratch that—he never heard that the boring town even had a dojo. This newly learned information was even weirder than learning about the Maasai tribe’s form of greeting with spit. “That’s true,” he admitted, “but everybody knows about your family, the Grim Reapers. If the daughter was out winning bo staff competitions, I’m pretty sure someone would say something.”

“In Sugarmaple, nobody really paid attention to that stuff and I barely talked about it.”

“And you mentioned Japan?”

“I went there on breaks. I had an aunt who lived in Okinawa. I did miss a lot of classes to compete, though.”

“And nobody noticed…”

Tayte shrugged. “I guess so.” She made a subtle yawn, whipped the hair from her face and continued, “Duels. Spinning competitions, and special Ryukyu kobujutsu commemoration events. They were fun. But that’s behind me. I stopped competing a little over three years ago.”

“Why the shift into mortuary science?”

“I got bored with bo staff fighting… and mortuary science guaranteed a job after graduation with the family business and all.” Tayte shrugged. “Why not?”

Chris could feel that there was something more, but he decided to hold off. “So, Tayte, do you ever—” he cut himself off as his eyes darted back to a sleeping Tayte. Slumped back onto the side bumper with her eyes shut and not making a sound.

The petite, psychotic creature looked picturesque and harmless in her quiet sleep.

Chris moved towards her and slowly slid an arm under her legs and another under her hip. His hand touched a thigh, and he lifted her a few feet off the ground.

He took a fist to the eye.

Dropping her and falling onto his back to roll in agony. “Goddamit, Tayte!” he screamed with his hand over his eye.

Tayte sat up. “Sorry. You woke me up.”

Chris stopped rolling and shouted back, “Who wakes up like that?”

“I was having a very exciting dream,” Tayte said.

“You were asleep for a couple of seconds! You couldn’t have been that deep in the dream!” He hissed at the pain and groaned continually.

Tayte watched him writhe vacantly. She thought for a moment. “Should I get more wine—?”

“Go get first-aid!”