Dark Night of the Soul

I awoke inside a cold, dark space. Darkness dominated the area as far as my eyes could see, save for a few points or pillars of light. They were not stationary; rather, they shuffled about moaning various phrases and statements. Many complained of being alone, others conversed with their own kind. None of them seemed particularly concerned about my own presence here, even after shouting “Hello?” multiple times. I was not familiar with a place like this. The sacred scrolls only mentioned the realm of Arakkia, a place of eternal torment, and the Seven Heavens, realms of varying degrees of blissful existence awarded to the righteous.

This place felt like none of those places. It was such a cold, distant place. If I was going to be stuck here for all eternity, I needed to figure out what this place was. Perhaps more importantly, I had to find a way out. Deep down, I knew there was some sort of mistake. It couldn't end like this, not with another failure. I chose a direction and started running towards the lights.

“Hello?” I shouted. “Can anyone hear me?”

I couldn't figure out how long I was running. Time and distance both felt meaningless as my running got me no closer to anyone or anything. I even tried changing directions several times, though nothing worked. I was merely wasting my time running in place.

After a while, I tripped over my own feet. I had expected to fall through the floor and into the endless abyss. That, fortunately, did not happen. Instead, I landed very roughly on the ground, feeling no pain as I landed. A very dark presence came over me, preventing me from getting back up. It told me to give up, to embrace my demise.

“No!” I shouted repeatedly as I slammed my hands into the ground. This whole thing had to have been another nightmare. It had to have been. Tomosse didn't betray me. I refused to believe it. “Gods damn it all! Let me out!” I felt nothing as I pounded the ground, not even the slightest tingle of pain. The whole thing felt too unreal. “I can't fail another time…”

“Oh, good! You're finally awake!” a voice called out to me as one of the pillars of light finally acknowledged my existence. The pillar approached me, slowly molding itself into the form of a beautiful woman. The woman's hair flowed around in all directions, mostly a bushy mess of black, but with hints of every color in the rainbow. Her face was flawless, reminding me of my own now ex-wife. Her eyes, however, glowed a strange reddish color, hinting at something sinister hidden behind that sweet-looking smile of hers. “Welcome to Sholas, the waiting room of the afterlife,” she continued. “Congratulations on your death.”

“No…” I protested. “It can't be… It's not possible.”

“You would think,” she pretended to agree, “but yet here we are. Now, let's get straight to business. My name's Sayane. I'll be your guide to the afterlife and everything it has to offer.”

“No…” I told her. “There's been a mistake. I need to go back home.”

“Home will be wherever you're assigned after your judgment,” Sayane continued. “According to the schedule I received today, you died about thirty minutes ago by having a sword plunged into your heart and your body dumped into the ocean. Do you remember this?”

“Why does that matter?” I asked her. “That's not -”

She interrupted me, asking, “How are you feeling today?”

“Heavy,” was my answer, “but also very confused. There's -”

“Oh, that's not good,” Sayane interrupted again. “Heavy souls are usually damned to Arakkia, but it could just be the fact that you had unfinished business to tend to while you were alive. Fortunately for you, the judgment process is a rigorous test designed to separate the wicked from everyone else.”

“Yes, a lot of unfinished business,” I agreed. “In the world of the living. That's why -”

There was that smile again. She interrupted for a third time, “Now, there's a lot of people who would like to see you. However, afterlife rules only allow you up to five visits before your scheduled judgment, so you'll have to choose who you visit wisely.”

“Hang on,” I said. “There's been a mistake.”

“A mistake?”

“Yes,” I explained. “I need to get back to the world of the living. Please. I'm not supposed to die yet… It can't be over so soon.”

“I'm not sure how to tell you this,” Sayane answered, still smiling that smile, “but your body is slowly sinking to the bottom of the Summer Sea. Even if I could restore you to life, you would just die again, this time by drowning. I know it's hard for you to process, but I promise you I can help you through this difficult time adapting to the afterlife. That is my job, after all.”

She was right. I couldn't believe it, nor could I process what had just happened. This couldn't have been it, not after all this time. But then I started thinking about the people who might have been here. The thoughts of those among the dead and those among the living competed for space in my mind.

“It's not fair,” I told her, slamming my hands into the ground several more times. “He was right there in front of me the whole time and I couldn't see it! The way he paraded himself around, taunting me in such a way… He played me like a lyre, and I was such a fool for letting him.”

Sayane ignored all of that, and instead said, “The transition must be difficult for you, but I promise you that this place isn't so bad. Perhaps visiting some old loved ones could help smooth things out.”

“My parents…” I finally said. I had not moved from that spot since meeting Sayane, my hands still firmly planted on the ground, waiting for everything to just disappear. “If what you're saying is true, and I'm truly stuck here… It would be nice to see them again.”

“Always the parents,” Sayane said with a giggle. “Fortunately for you, they are both in the First Heaven. Unfortunately for you, you just named two different people, so that will count as two visits.”

“I do not care,” I replied. “Regardless of what happens to me, I must see them one last time, just in case.”

“A beautiful sentiment,” Sayane said. “Shall we begin?” She offered me her hand and, not sure what else I could have done in that situation, I accepted.

•

The next thing I knew, Sayane and I were standing in the middle of a village. It was midday. The hustle and bustle of village life surrounded us on all sides. But two things felt wrong about all of this. First, the village itself was much larger and busier than any village I had ever seen. Even Andawas during the busiest time of the year paled in comparison to this place. And yet despite the chaotic crowds, nobody actually bumped into each other. If I focused long enough on the crowds, everyone merely phased through each other, a village of ghosts.

Second, each time I blinked, the crowd itself would change. Every person would either swap places with another or disappear entirely, only to have someone else take their place. So this was the First Heaven, an utterly unremarkable place full of utterly unremarkable people. This was a place where people could live their lives as if nothing happened. They could, if they really wanted to, simply disappear without a care in the world.

With that known, it would have been impossible to find my parents among this constantly shifting crowd. I had expected sadness to come over me, but nothing happened. Despair should have taken me, but it did not. I thought perhaps I had wasted my attempt to contact them again.

“You need to call out to them,” Sayane told me, noticing my confusion. “They won't be able to hear you otherwise.”

“Mother? Father?” I shouted into the crowd. Blinking once revealed a lot of changes in the people there, but no signs of my parents. I blinked again.

There they were, exactly as I remembered them. Father looked almost like I was looking at myself, albeit with a smaller beard and an actual nose. He was a carpenter and even death would not stop him from working as one. Similarly to Ipas, he carried all of his tools inside a special box. Mother was a village healer, though in the afterlife, there would not have been any need for healers. She wore her hair as one long braid and two smaller tail-like branches going down her back and shoulders respectively. Both had golden eyes and hair to match.

“Halliyah,” my father said, “is that really you?”

“It's me…”

“So Nardos finally got you,” my father continued. “It's about damn time. We've been waiting for what, forty years?”

“Thirty-eight,” I corrected him. “But close enough. Too long. You two were taken away way too soon. I was barely a man at the time.” I tried to cry, but found out I could not. Tears were not allowed in the First Heaven. Twice I tried to hug my parents but twice they faded right through me and I through them. We were all ghosts here in the First Heaven.

“None of that matters now,” my mother told me. “We can finally be together again, this time for eternity.”

I replied, “Part of me wishes it wasn't so. I had so much left to do in the world… But if it has to be this way, I must await my judgment.”

“In any case,” my father said, “it is good to see you again, even if only for a little bit.”

“Where do I even begin?” I asked them. “We have so much to talk about.”

“And oh so little time,” Sayane reminded me. “You have three more visits yet.”

I turned to face Sayane. “Please,” I begged her, “just a little more time with them. I have not seen them in so long.”

“The Watcher comes quickly,” she answered. “If you're late to the judgment, only the gods know what will happen to you.”

“Go on, sweetie,” my mother told me. “No matter what happens, even if this is goodbye, we will always be proud of you.”

I smiled. Something about this place gave me this feeling that everything would be alright in the end. But I still yearned to return to the world of the living. Sayane said it was impossible, but these gods were supposedly capable of anything. Perhaps I could get the Watcher to hear my case. For now, though…

“Take me to my old instructor, Tappi Dolatta,” I told Sayane.

“Very well,” she replied with a slight smile of her own, offering her hand once again. “For this, we must go up to the Second Heaven.”

•

As soon as I had accepted Sayane's hand, we had suddenly appeared inside a great city. The walls towered so high above the ground they would put the walls of Freehold, or what remained of them, to shame. The central tower and the ziggurat stretched so far up, they grazed the clouds themselves. On the walls were many large doors leading to rooms the size of houses. Everything about this place screamed enormous.

“Tappi?” I asked, hoping someone would hear me. “Tappi Dolatta?”

The sounds of people fighting echoed in the distance, followed closely by the cheers others shouted when one of the combatants won. In no time, however, the fighting died down as quickly as it had erupted. Only the cheers remained, growing louder by the moment. The city gates opened to reveal my old teacher, Tappi Dolatta, carried into the city by a large crowd. “Tappi! Tappi! Tappi!” the crowd cheered. He was a large man with thick, red hair all over him. One would have been forgiven for confusing him for an ogre.

“Gods, I love the smell of sweat and rum in the morning,” Tappi said as he was carried down to the ground by the crowd. As soon as he noticed me, he continued, “I was wondering when you'd show up.”

“It's good to see you again, teacher,” I answered. “The war took me, dying with a sword in my hand.”

“Ah, yes,” Tappi replied. “There's always a war going on down there, isn't there? I remember your first kill like it was yesterday.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Some idiot dwarf thought he could raise an army and conquer the world,” Tappi explained. “You charged right into battle with blood in your eyes thinking you could end the invasion with a single swing of your sword. Well, you were almost right.”

We both laughed heartily at the memory. “Gods, what was I, nineteen?” I asked.

“Nineteen,” Tappi confirmed. “Fresh out of training camp. You always wanted to be the hero.”

“How about you?”

“Twenty years ago,” Tappi answered. “Hattu and that… elf king or something… they commissioned an expedition past the Mountains of the Moon. Let's just say they don't call those mountains impassable for nothing.”

I sighed. “Yeah… It seems our heroing days are long gone.”

“But our fighting days aren't,” Tappi said with another hearty laugh. “Come, join us out in the fields. Here in the second heaven, we eat, drink, fight, and be merry every day forever.”

“I hope to join you there soon enough,” I lied. Truth be told, part of me wanted nothing more than to spend eternity with my parents. But then again, the idea of fighting and having large feasts all the time did have a certain appeal to it. I imagined it would have been much more appealing had I died twenty years sooner, though. Whether it was wisdom or yearning or something else entirely, I was not sure. The more people I visited, the more the idea of staying appealed to me. But it wasn't fair to them, those who remained among the living. “We shall see what happens,” I told him.

“Best of luck to you!” Tappi roared in excitement. “You still owe me some fights, don't you know?”

“I look forward to it,” I told him, unsure whether I was telling him the truth or not.

“Who do you wish to see next?” Sayane asked me as we turned away from the crowd.

“Take me to Queen Rini,” was my immediate answer. Seeing my parents and my old teacher made me wonder if being stuck here forever was not such a bad thing. Perhaps she could tell me whether I had to surrender to this fate or not. Only time would have told.