NOVEL NEXT Chapter 9: Grief of the Dead
It took less than an hour of careful wandering for the three of us to find another interesting building. Closer to the center of the city was a building that looked like a massive Greek temple, made of pure obsidian. The entrance to the building had no doors – it was instead an open archway that stretched into the sky like a cavernous mouth, dozens of times the size of our group of three. The road leading up to the building was also ludicrously wide, seemingly built to accommodate hundreds or even thousands of people walking side by side. On the sides of the road, massive trees lined the streets, all in neat rows and bearing odd fruits. Each fruit was nearly the size of me, and smelled vaguely like a mixture of apples and pomegranates. They were all as red as rubies, and seemed completely unaffected by the fall of this city.
Of course, the building’s massive scale and architecture weren’t what stood out the most. While this building would have screamed ‘important’ in any other city, the closer we got to the center of the nursery we were in, the more bizarre and grandiose the architecture became.
What stood out was the advertisement floating above the obsidian palace.
“Luxcorp’s reincarnation point! Just pay five Achievement to proceed to your next life! Cheaper than anywhere else in the city!”
And, right below that, in smaller letters…
“Short on Achievement? Need an extra few Soul Fragments or Abilities to give you a boost before you start your next life? Take a loan with Luxcorp! Starting at interest rates of only 3% per world if you have a good credit rating! Don’t hesitate to strengthen yourself and live out the best life you can! Your brighter future in each dimension starts with Luxcorp loans!”
“Do you want to advertise through the System? Get an advertising slot on people’s death Statistics report for just a small sum of Achievement! Starting at 0.03 Achievement per view! Get your product visible to hundreds of billions of Transmigrators across all levels of the cities of the dead!”
In much smaller letters, I was still just barely able to make out another set of words below the larger words of the advertisements.
*Legal Disclaimer: False Advertisements may be punishable with anything ranging from a severe fine, to up to six millennia imprisonment, or partial or full execution if the false advertisement results in the permanent deaths of Transmigrators. For more information, please reference legal code section 114-A.”
What interested me the most here was the statement claiming this was a ‘reincarnation point.’ Thus far, Sallia and I had found plenty of evidence suggesting that the residents of this city considered ‘reincarnating’ over and over again to be normal. The friendship bracelets and casual mentions of centuries passing, traveling from world to world, and discussion of continuous rebirth we had seen all indicated that reincarnating was very important in the Market. However, thus far, the three of us had no idea how reincarnating worked, or why the Market put so much emphasis on it. If this place was a ‘reincarnation point,’ we might finally get some answers to our more important questions.
I looked at Sallia, and she looked back at me. She smiled as she looked at the advertisement, and I did the same. This felt like a place where we could finally gather some good information.
Then we turned back to Little Six, who was also staring at the advertisement. Unlike us, he was frowning in confusion. And besides confusion, I could also see a few other things in his expression. Wariness, shock, horror, numbness… a slew of emotions that looked like they had been building up for a while, but were only finally erupting now.
“Why… why is it referencing reincarnation and lives so much? That’s… that’s crazy, right?” He said, looking at Sallia and I with increasing uneasiness. “The friendship bracelets were just a joke, right? And this… this floating sign. It’s also a joke. Right?”
I sighed, before I gently stood on my toes so that I could add a bit to my height. Then, I gently reached out and patted his shoulder. “I’m sorry. I thought you would figure it out sooner or later, but…”
Little Six looked at the city around us. The walking skeletons that Six identified as being related to ‘necromancers.’ The massive, galaxy-sized pirate ship that our city was built on top of. The strange and unique contraptions, with magic and technology braided around each other in almost every aspect of culture and architecture present in this place.
And the three of us. Slowly, a look of dawning realization entered his eyes. His gaze turned incomparably bitter, and I saw a slew of emotions flicker through him in the span of a few seconds. Feelings of emptiness, desolation, and a growing sense of realization warred in his facial expression.
“So… so we’re really…” He started laughing hysterically, but his laughter turned into tears as the massive man began openly weeping in front of me. “I thought it was weird. That I had ended up here. But I *hic* never thought… that… then I’ll never see my mates… That dinner was the last - that I” The rest of his words gradually became less and less coherent. Then, he reached out and hugged me. I felt like a rag doll as he picked me up and began sobbing onto my shoulder. My ribs creaked in protest as I slowly patted him on the back.
I had felt less lost then he when I had realized I was dead, but at the end of the day, I knew that somewhere in my memories were people I cared about. People I would never see again. My grief was quieter than Little Six’s, but I had felt it from the moment I had come to this world as well.
“Am I really dead? But I have so many things I still wanted to… There are people I still…” The man’s voice became softer and softer, and at the same time, a growing hollow feeling started to well up in his speech. “I didn’t even get to say goodbye. We - when I… They were with me since I was young. Just two months ago, since I had always wanted to go traveling abroad, John and Wells got us three tickets to Eldriss and planned out a whole trip for us as a present for me. I was… I was so excited, and it was so much fun… I wanted to thank them, so I had been prepping with Grant to save up for a Lycinian pug, because John had always wanted one as a pet. I was so excited to see the look on his face when he got it… Are you telling me that all of that is just… gone? That I’ll never see them again?” The man’s voice had gotten louder and more high-pitched the more he spoke, and his shoulders started shaking as he spoke.
I paused for a moment. Had I also left things like this behind? Unfinished regrets, dreams that would never be fulfilled?
I was sure that I had. A hollow feeling crept up inside of me as well, as I tried to think back to those I couldn’t quite remember. Even though I couldn’t remember her face, there was still someone’s voice I wished I could hear one more time. Someone who used to call out a name I didn’t answer to anymore, one that I couldn’t even remember. Someone whose name started with ‘Mar.’
“Isa…. Isa something,” I unconsciously muttered, my memory running into a wall when I tried to remember my name. Then, I shook my head as I felt my eyes starting to blur as well. For all that we didn’t need to eat or breathe anymore, I could cry just like before.
And out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Sallia giving both of us a hollow expression. Her eyes were scrunched up, almost as if she wanted to cry, and her mouth was continuously twitching. Half of her face looked normal, an austere, frozen mask that suited a young noble.
And the other half of her expression was that of a young woman trying very hard not to cry.
I finally realized part of why Sallia seemed so… formal. She was a former noble - she had probably been trained since the time she was young to avoid showing emotions and expressions in public, since that might mess with her house’s standing. The fact the current circumstances were managing to break down that mask, even a little, was a testament to just how stressful things were for all of us right now. Sallia usually only showed emotions when she was preparing for a fight - a testament to a warrior that might have existed if she was less focused on being a noble. But now, I saw a very different side to her.
“Even if the three of us are dead, we haven’t reached the end yet,” I said, pushing back the hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach. My voice was scratchy, and trembled a little, but I needed to push my words out or I might never get to say them.
Even if I had unanswered regrets, even if I had things that I had left behind that I still cared about… I couldn’t do anything about them now.
I managed to get my feet back on the ground before I stepped closer to Sallia. I grabbed her arm, and pulled her a little closer to Little Six. Then, I gave both of them a tight hug. Even if Little Six had friends and family he had left behind, even if Sallia had regrets she had left in her previous world, none of them would ever be resolved.
But at least the three of us weren’t alone, rotting in the river of souls with no awareness of time passing.
I couldn’t choke out any more words, so I just hugged the two other corpses standing with me as we tried to etch our remaining memories of our previous lives into our thoughts forever.
Little Six sobbed for a few more minutes, and Sallia silently buried her face into my shoulder. She didn’t make a sound, and didn’t move, but I could feel a wet sensation slowly grow on my shoulder.
It was nice to know that even if our current bodies didn’t need to eat or breathe, we could still cry.
Finally, Sallia lifted her face up, and apart from the skin around her eyes being a little puffier than before, I couldn’t see any sign that she had been crying at all. Her face was back to the stony mask she wore most of the time. Little Six also began to calm down. Finally realizing what he was doing, he gently set me back down, before he started wiping at his eyes. “I’m sorry. I just hadn’t realized before that… Fuck,” said the man. Then, he took a few deep breaths, before focusing again. He turned to Sallia for a moment. “No wonder you were asking if this place appeared in Asaira’s teachings. You two already knew, and you were trying to figure out if I had any clue what this place was. I wish you had told… no, I’m sorry. You two must have also died, right? How… how did you two…?”
“I…I was assassinated, I think,” said Sallia. Unlike her expression, which had returned to stony composure, her voice was still shaky and raw. “In my world I was a noble. I have a few ideas who probably ordered the kill, but at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter anymore. I’m dead.” Sallia said. Then, in a voice I could barely hear, she said, “I didn’t leave anyone behind. I was the last of my house. My parents died before me. My world was a place ruled by magic and priests, and I used to answer to the god-emperor.”
“I don’t remember how I died,” I said, the empty feeling returning to my stomach. “I don’t remember much about myself at all, I guess. I just… I don’t know. My memories of my past life are nearly gone right now. I think something heavy hit my head, and I know that before I died my name started with ‘Isa.’ I remember some chunks of the world I lived in before, but almost no personal details. I lived in a pretty technologically advanced world, where things like the billboards we see around us were pretty common. But we had no magic at all. What does your situation look like right now?”
Little Six closed his eyes, as if deep in thought, before he opened them again. “I think I have missing memories too. I can remember a lot about the people I saw the night I died, and I can remember people important to me. My parents, my friends, they’re still clear in my thoughts. But I have no idea what the rest of my life looked like.” I felt a small spike of jealousy, when I heard he could remember his friends and family, but I washed it away after a few seconds. “Damn, I just realized how much I’m actually forgetting. What was my name? What did I do for a living?” Little Six shook his head in frustration. “I don’t know how I missed the fact that I can’t remember my name. That should have been a pretty obvious sign that something was wrong, right? I think my work involved something a lot of metal…” Finally he sighed. “Sorry, I know you have it worse than I do. You can’t even remember your family or friends, which must hurt way worse.” He took a deeper breath, before he sighed again.
“My pain doesn’t take away your right to be sad,” I said firmly. “The universe isn’t a competition of who has had worse experiences and gets to be sad. If other people tell you how you should feel because they’ve had worse or something, tell them to fuck off.” I was surprised by how firm and vehement my voice became in that instant.
“So you were a noble Sallia? I… I don’t think my world had any nobles after the revolutions five or six decades ago and the beginning of the Dawn Era. Were you…”
“As far as Isa and I can tell, we come from totally different worlds,” said Sallia, her voice slowly losing its unsteadiness. “I’m guessing that you’ve never heard of the god-emperor? I lived in the empire where he, along with his priests, ruled the empire. Our sacred animal is the phoenix.”
“I’ve never heard of it at all,” said Little Six with a nod. “I guess I understand why your eyes are so weird then. Were your eyes common there?”
Sallia chuckled weakly. “When I saw Isa, I thought she was born with some sort of birth deformity. I’ve never seen someone with these weird white and black colors mixed into their eyes before coming here.” Sallia shook her head. “Anyway, I don’t really know much more than you. All three of us are lost and confused.”
The man nodded, before finally turning back to the massive palace and the advertisements. “So… this is the place where we reincarnate, then. What do you think happens next? Do we just… forget everything and get reborn?”
“I doubt it,” I said. “This city, and these advertisements, seem based on the idea that people will be coming back here. Not just once or twice, or even ten or twenty times. We should be able to retain some amount of our abilities and memories, if I’m guessing correctly?” I shrugged. “Of course, I could be totally wrong, since none of us have confirmed how any of this works. But that’s my best guess for now.”
“If we came from different worlds, what if we all end up on different worlds, and can’t work together or see each other until we return to the - ah. The Friendship bracelets. I get it now.” Little Six paused again, and his voice seemed steadier and less broken than before. “If this city is really built around people continuously reincarnating, it’s likely we’ll find plenty of information and records if we just keep looking. Is that what you two are doing here?”
I managed to squeeze out a grin before I gestured towards the massive black palace. “Of course! This place claims to be a reincarnation point. If reincarnating was common for the former residents of this city, I’m hoping there’ll be some books or hints around here that’ll give us a better idea of what we’re looking at. Maybe we can even figure out how this whole mess of a city worked in its prime.”
Little Six didn’t manage to smile. However, at the very least, his expression wasn’t as downcast as it had previously been. Instead of being on the verge of tears, he looked more like he was trying to throw himself into a new task to distract him. Finally, after wrestling with his thoughts for a few moments, he clenched his teeth as he looked at the obsidian palace. “In that case, let’s get going,” he said.
The three of us began making our way into the massive black palace.
