It made me angry too.
Angry that she was being hurt and lied to again, by her own maker. Had I not been a mere vampire, I would’ve gone after Death for this, if only to deliver a rebuke worthy of her terrible behavior. Alas, I couldn’t do anything, and that only made it worse. Unending had been brought up to believe she had been Death’s first “child,” a most precious being with a most precious talent. The hardships she had endured over Erethiel and the Aeternae of Visio had been more than enough, damn it. Unending had suffered too much already. Where would this end?
Anunit brought us to a realm in the Earthly Dimension, a faraway land that Reapers no longer frequented. It was empty of life. “This is Biriane,” she said as we appeared in the middle of a slender white stone plateau. Around us, valleys and hills and arrowhead mountains unraveled like a blank canvas of rock and dirt and sand and dust. There wasn’t a single green leaf anywhere. Not one breathing, living creature. The whole place looked like a massive sculpture left unfinished. “It was once the cradle of one of the greatest civilizations. Now it is empty.”
I forced myself to look away from Unending, if only for a few moments. There weren’t many ways to keep my anger in check here, but feeding the anthropologist within seemed worth a try. My wife needed room to think and process everything she had been told—everything that had turned out to be a shameless lie. Death, you’ve really screwed things up this time…
“Biriane,” I said, my voice barely a hum. “Who lived here? What were they like?”
To the north, an enormous city rose from ashes and white sand. The wind and the rain had not filed it down much over the eons. There were still walls and bridges and towers that stretched over a few square miles along a deep riverbank that had once seen water flowing. From here I could see the riverside with its marble-brick half-wall. I imagined the people of this place leaning over to admire the view. There must have been trees growing on the other side, at some point. I imagined a lush forest spilling all over the valley with tall trees and a thick, almost impenetrable canopy.
It was empty now, and barren, yet just as arresting. There was beauty in this desolation.
“I only know what I have seen depicted on friezes and faded paintings,” Anunit replied, gazing toward the city. To the south, a string of villages occupied the valley’s edge, sprinkled in a semicircle like a necklace of white pearls adorning the plateau’s slender neck. Between here and there, dunes of diamond dust rippled under the soft brush of a warm wind. Not much was left of the villages, though. I could only see portions of walls and battered alleyways snaking around the former residential structures. “Tall and pretty, is all I can say. But my perception may differ from yours.”
“Is there anything left of their history?”
“I’ve seen stone tablets that have survived in a massive library up there, in the city center.” She pointed to the north. The towers in the middle gleamed in the sunlight, their spear-like tips made of polished metal. They became shorter toward the outer limits of the city, thicker and square by the time they reached the riverbank. “But I admit I never had much interest in this place, aside from what it has kept hidden over the eons.”
“How did you come upon this information?”
Unending gave me a fleeting look. She’d been so deep in her thoughts that nothing else had captured her interest. She was back with us now, but still quiet.
“There were whispers,” Anunit replied. “Here and there, a rumor… an idea. One ancient Reaper heard it from an even older Reaper… They knew of some special kind of ghouls guarding something precious for Death. It took me forever to figure out where this place was. No one had a name, just descriptions of it. ‘The great white land of desolation,’ they called it. Home of the first men, others said. I spent years in the Reapers’ archives, combing through every tome of knowledge, where all the known worlds of every dimension are recorded for eternity.”
“You have a database,” I said.
“Yes, and Anunit isn’t supposed to have access to it,” Unending cut in, glowering at the Reaper. “How’d you get in there? How’d you even know where to look for such information? I’ve been in the records room many times and never came across it.”
Anunit smirked. “I’m industrious, what can I say? I’m also very patient, hence the aforementioned combing. It’s easy to find something in there when you know what you’re looking for. Anyway. Seven worlds stood out, since they matched the faint descriptions I’d gathered over the centuries. Biriane was one of them, and it was the third world I visited, looking for what Death had worked so hard to hide.”
“There was something here that made you forget about the remaining four worlds, right?”
“Indeed. Don’t you feel it?” she replied.
“I do.” Unending finally spoke, her brow furrowed as she stared at the city beyond the dried river. “She’s there…”
I looked at her. “Who is? The first Reaper?”
“I feel her rage. It’s silent but sickening,” Unending replied. “It makes my chest hurt.” It added a certain tension to her voice, too. A weight that didn’t really belong there.
“A familiar feeling for you, I suppose,” Anunit sighed. “You spent almost five million years locked up on Visio. The World Crusher might have lost count by now. She’s been trapped here for much longer.”
Her name made my skin crawl.
