69°23'47.4"N 30°36'36.0"E

“You will be safe and at peace.

For there will be no smell of sulfur,

no taste of blood,

and no remorse of loss.

Instead, you will smell the refreshing fragrance of flora,

taste the vegetal bittersweetness of tea,

and basking in glory--

As radiant as Phebe’s gleaming steeds

You will not question any of these

because no one remembers

how dreams commence

Not even us...”

----Dolus/Dolos/Volos, Son of Light and Dark, Trickster of the night, “the Pale-Beak”, Guardian of Forests, “P10”

Y42 stood there, watching the chanting as the ritual unfurled. He was as curious and as cautious about illusions and psionic powers. Maintaining the ice casing on the wendigo and the water orbs as security measures soon took a toll on Y42’s divinity reserve. Slowly, his third eye closed, and with it, all the hydromancy was undone.

“Perfect timing isn’t it.” Clanking noises surrounded the three as the dead had returned as lesser wendigos. “Bullocks.” He looked back, and no one was there. Dolus has already deployed perception camouflage to hide the ritual.

“For real? Hiding? ” Without enabling his third eye, not even Y42 could pinpoint their location. There was no answer. Only the sound of the charging undead and their senseless growling echoed.

“I don’t know if there is an afterlife, a great beyond, or reincarnation for you, but please return to wherever you were,” Y42 raised his blade and tightened his grips. “I apologize for what I am about to do.”

Opposite to the violence and bloodshed outside, peace and serenity were all Dolus and Dalang. The two were outside a cottage on a hilltop, looking at the tide upon the horizon.

“Can you hear it?” Dalang asked. Dalang retained his mortal appearance as his simplest form in the illusion meant to penetrate mental defenses. On his shoulder, Dolus appeared as a pale-beaked ibis and listened to his three-stringed lute.

Why do I take you here?

You wonder.

The tide from afar,

Loud as a war.

The unwavering waters,

Clashes within each other.

Things across lifetimes

I always remember

The terraces, the silkworms, the willow trees

The mitten crabs, the paddy fields,

and whistles made with leaves.

Things I deemed unworthy,

Too mundane, too frivolous, too petty

Never knew here lies my peace

I grew up here,

I left here,

I forgot my way here,

And somehow, with your help

I returned here.

Oh, my immortal friend,

Our struggle lies in between

Those that are ephemeral

And those perpetual

We have nothing to live for

nothing to die for

Too powerful to abide

Too weak to make a stride

That is when I decide

This place will be where

I lay to rest.

The noise of the cicadas echoed through the valley at the bottom of the hill. Morning dews were evaporating under the gentle sun, making the surroundings pleasantly misty. Dalang left the lute on the bench and sat up.“I gotta go down the stream and catch some fish for you, my distinguished guest.” Bald and silver-bearded, the mannered old man resembled nothing like the orcish slob Dolus knew.

The pale-beaked ibis followed the old man down to the stream. Dolus was astonished by the number of details and sceneries created. Every face looked so expressive, every smell seemed so immersive, and every voice sounded illusive.

“Grandpa Raisin! And welcome! Pale-Beak birdie!” A line of sprinting children waved and greeted them. They were off to catch themselves some grasshoppers.

With his arms and hands resting behind his back, Dalang kept walking and nodded back with genuine smiles. The action stacked his countless wrinkles together, making his face looking like a piece of dried fruit.

“Raisins. Haha!” Dolus screeched in laughter. “So this is your retirement plan? Carve out a utopia with the divinity you have left, and live the rest of your days among the mortals?” The ibis paused and flapped its wings. “Can’t say I am not disappointed. I was expecting something extravagant.”

The premise was to tap into Dalang’s most cherished memories to create a mirage with them. In other words, Dolus would enable Dalang to challenge the wendigo curse in a virtual world created with Dalang’s mind. That is what the Sapien called home game advantage.

On the way through the valley and the bamboo forests, Dolus wondered how the curse would manifest in Dalang’s mind and how the slouching old man in front of him would combat it. Anyway, Dolus had planned multiple illusions to ensure success.

“I say we steam up some freshly caught carp and smear it with sweet and sour vinegar sauce. If we are lucky, we’ll find some shrimp to stir fry them with some tea leaves.”

“The famous Dragonwell Shrimp and West Lake Fish, I assume. Ancient recipes, huh?” The ibis asked.

“Yeah, we are talking about a whole eon before the Sapiens build their net. It’s ironic how we know more about their past than themselves, right?” Dalang said.

“The predator knows more about the prey than preys themselves. Nighthawks know everything about mayflies, and the only thing mayflies know about themselves are hiding underground and mating.”

“I love that analogy, except nighthawks die, and we don’t.” The old man slowed down by the bank and found his fishing stool with his equipment and bucket readied for him--the convenience of a created reality.

“You can reveal yourself, son of Nyx. There are no villagers here. Only us.” Dalang placed an earthworm on the hook and cast it in the clear stream. “And don’t use any abilities to help me catch fishes. I enjoy waiting.”

“Older and wiser, I see. When did you know of my true form?” Dolus asked.

“Well, I’ve seen you on Olympia the day Parthenos returned. I don’t forget anybody I met. The smell, the gestures, the aura, the psionic energy. Especially the psionic energy. ”

“Now I am sure who you are. Everything makes so much sense now. Dalang was your name as a mortal, your birth name, right?”

“Right, right. Now please be quiet and don’t scare my fishes away. Your lunch depends on this.”

“But we didn’t even have breakfast. You used to bring all sorts of snacks in your kibisis. Still have that with you?”

“I used everything in it to help the people here to build a life. In case you haven’t realized, I moved a whole damn mountain.” Dalang whispered.

“Mountain? this is merely a mesa.” Dolus mocked him. “I thought you would at least be a king or a lord of some sort. ”

“You ever heard the saying that the greatest power is to give up the power?” Dalang smirked.

“That sounds awfully mortal. Please don’t tell me you live by the sapiens’ ancient words. That is absurd, and they should follow our example, not the other way around.”

Just as Dalang trying to extend their debate, a disturbance from the bamboo forest caught the two’s attention. Something frightened the animals caused them to flee home.

There it was, the likeness of Wendigo, the manifestation of hunger eternal. Its giant antlers mowed down bamboos in the manner of a harvesting scythe, rapidly approaching the two from the other side of the stream.

The familiar howling, the familiar stench, and the familiar rage filled the peaceful and lively wild. The monster’s eyes glowed red, with acidic saliva dripping down, eroding the soil and killing everything it contacted.

“Oh, nice to see you again, my temperance and kindness, for I am your gluttony and your wrath. now come out and surrender yourself so that I wouldn’t feed on this little pet project of yours.” Words were transformed into emotion and thoughts, invading the two’s mindscape.

Dalang put down his fishing rod “ The reckoning of mine has finally arrived. Centuries of transgression would finally have a conclusion.” Dalang slowly extended his arms and walked into the stream with a serene smile on his face.

“You gotta be joking. I did not spend all this divinity so you can meet your end with ease, damn it. Fight it, conquer it, make the power yours and dominate it as you would.”

“This is the end I am hoping for.” Ignoring what Dolus had said, Dalang closed his eyes and stopped the middle of the stream, prepare to embrace the charging, razor-sharp antlers.

Dolus was left speechless and clueless as he witnesses the monster tore Dalang into pieces. Only, there was no flesh nor blood in his mortal shell. Instead, a high concentration of divinity exploded, consumed everything in the proximity with gleaming, blinding light. The destruction left only with a scorching crater and a pile of carbonized bones—both the old man and his monster were gone.

Felt the fleeting psionic connection of both the crown and Dalang, Dolus quickly realized Dalang was trying to sacrifice himself to burn off the curse from the world once and for all. He shut down the illusion immediately and enabled his backup ones.

Outside, all the lesser wendigos dropped down simultaneously. The crown was fading into the endless void alongside Dalang’s mind, thus losing connection with its subjects. Y42 still managed to pile up some of the dead and incinerated them with enchanted paper talismans. He ripped off all their exoskeletons and made sure nothing toxic was being burnt to poison the land. Pollution was an act of blasphemy that was made punishable by death, even for the immortals.

However, there was not enough time and too many dead sapiens to burn. Y42 could defeat them undoubtedly, but the bloodbath started to affect his mind and soul. He unavoidably found himself covered in filth and stenched of death. As someone who grew up with the mortals, Y42 developed compassion and mercifulness that most immortals inherently lack. He would slice and dice through a brood of insectoids but leave the eggs behind; he would spare the life of ghouls if they only subsist on dead things; he would dig graves for enemies he had to kill and write down their names on a scroll to carry as momentoes. In his meditation, he would repeat those names and ask the gods to grant them peaceful afterlives.

He closed his eyes and calmed himself down, and started humming the song his comrade P16 sings on every mission targeting the undead:

“Don't let your moral slow you down

No shame to cut the undead down

We are not killing; we’re safeguarding

We are cleansing for the living

We aren’t merciless butchers

We are reliable cleaners.

Remember though:

If you hate it, you are weak

If you like it, you are a freak.

Either way,

Havoc is what we wreak.”

Y42 took a deep breath, closed his eyes, entered a trance, and let his divinity and his blade guide him. He was not weak, nor was he a freak, and he thought of himself as an instrument of necessary violence, causing havoc that needed to be wreaked.