Watching them charge, little starbursts of electricity shot down my legs and arms. Miasma flashed and roiled inside my sea, and my brain started demanding I tear out their life points, but I forced myself not to move.
Okay, what do I do?
Death cultivator must first understand the essence of Death, Hungry Ghost croaked.
Frustration twisted in my gut. We’d already covered this ground a million times with Rali and the jade books and gotten nowhere.
Warm Heart cultivator could not understand the true power and comfort of oblivion, Hungry Ghost said. Only Death cultivators understand.
But I don’t understand, I told him. I need an explanation.
Explanation is complicated. Showing is better.
So show me.
The mist and the marshy ground around the Heartchamber disappeared. Suddenly, I was running across an open field of sun-scorched grain, the bouncing heads of the plants right at my eye level. Not because the grain was tall, but because I was short.
I was a little kid, only eight years old.
From behind me came the barking of dogs on track. Voices yelled. I ran harder, panting like I was about to drop.
A line of trees stood at the edge of the field, offering protection and places to hide.
But the barking was gaining on me. I couldn’t outrun the hounds.
I swore to myself that they wouldn’t take me back. Not alive.
I spun around just as the first hound leapt at me out of the grain.
It wasn’t like any kind of dog the real me remembered from Earth, but the little kid I was then recognized it as one of the hounds from the pits. It was completely headless, but as it jumped, its stump of a neck and hulking shoulders opened in a starburst of razor-sharp, yellowed teeth, snarling and snapping at me.
I exhaled, letting out my last breath, and shut my eyes. Strangely, dying didn’t scare me. It would be better than the first eight years of my life. The moments leading up to my death wouldn’t be peaceful, but the oblivion it brought would. I welcomed that eternal rest with the loving embrace of her exhausted son.
Then I wrenched the hound’s life point out of its gut. Its snarling stopped on a high yelp, and its hot, foaming corpse slammed into me, driving me to the ground.
The search party was drawing closer, the barking and yelling growing louder. They hadn’t felt me kill the dog, so they didn’t realize they had anything to fear. I cycled the churning Miasma to my muscles, reveling in my first taste of true power, and shoved the dead hound off my tiny body like it weighed nothing.
The second hound tore into the clearing of crushed grain, and I plucked its life out of its body as easily as picking a flower.
Strength like I’d never known surged through me. This was Death—the loss of all fear, the ultimate victory over my enemies—I was Death. While the rest of the fools in this world clung to Life as if it could save them, I waited patiently for them to run to me. And they did. They ran straight into me, and not one of them saw Death coming.
Does Death cultivator understand? Hungry Ghost’s voice snapped me out of the dream or vision or whatever it was. Death is not to be feared or hated. For Death cultivator, Death is a lover and companion. A sweet mother offering protection and respite.
It’s the comforting bed at the end of the journey, I thought, remembering what Rali had said about it forever ago in the Ghost Town boneyard.
Hungry Ghost sent me a feeling like a nod. Death shelters, strengthens, and empowers. It brings oblivion, nothingness. Relinquish Death cultivator’s hold on this mortal coil and sink into oblivion.
I took a deep breath, then let it out, trying to recapture that little kid’s eagerness for nothingness. It was surprisingly easy. When you felt nothingness, you didn’t feel any kind of shame or self-hatred or disbelief at what you’d done. With oblivion, there wasn’t a past or a future. You didn’t have to deal with any of that.
A bog feral gurgled right beside me, and I felt the change in air pressure as a swipe came at my face.
I opened my eyes and attacked. The Miasma roared through my muscles as I pumped it into Death Metal, but I couldn’t see the shields. It was too late to question them or try for another attack. I threw an elbow into the bog feral’s face. The invisible edge of Death Metal cut right through its rotting skull. Black, gooey brains sprayed across the marshy ground in an arc.
I was so surprised the cloaking worked that I let out a, “Holy cow!”
Death cultivator has dropped his cloaking, Hungry Ghost said, even though I’d already seen the turquoise shields flicker back to visible.
Sorry, I said, throwing a kick into another incoming feral’s gut before it could slash me with its ragged arm bones. I killed the doubled-over feral with a shield bash to the decaying brain stem. How do I get it back?
Oblivion.
Okay, just a second. I jumped over the rotting corpse toward the next bog feral, taking a deep breath as I went. Not an appetizing smell, but I could feel that the breath was a necessary part of the technique. The inhale collected all the frustration and anger and freaked out banging around in my brain, every bad thing from being alive, and pushed it away on the exhale.
As I breathed out, I tried to focus on recapturing that feeling of imminent death and embrace the nothingness, but I couldn’t. I bashed one Death Metal shield after another into the feral, trying to make my Spirit disappear again. One fail after another.
I was about to be overrun because I was screwing around with this one feral instead of just killing it and moving on.
Frustrated, I gritted my teeth and threw myself into the larger melee, killing off a bunch of them uncloaked.
