A Grave of Chains - The Journals of Kowèn

Part V: From the Depths

My life ended six months ago. I don't mean in the poetic sense of the word. I literary died. How I got back... only the Gods know. 

They needed not to explain themselves when they sent me away. Five years, maybe longer, they held me in their grasp. I had since long given in. Removed the parts of me that made me Kowèn, the sculptor, the husband, the free man. Not even my skin was mine. Every piece of it was Dimos' canvas through the years. A gory masterpiece. Not my hands, though. I thank him for leaving them intact. Gods know, I didn't make things easy on my master... I deserved the knife cuts, the whipping, the torture.

"Now, Kowèn," Dimos said and leaned in close to me as I forced myself to eat from the already half-chewed on meat they'd given me. "This page, or rather artifact, is never to touch you understood? Once you've found it, hold onto it with this cloth. Trust me, I don't want anything bad to happen to you."

"Yes, master," I said while trying to force the food down. I didn't want to appear ungrateful.

"Good. Retrieve it and bring it straight back to me."

I never enjoyed retrieving things for him, but if he told me to, I did not dispute him, not after that horrid night in the warehouse when he silenced me. I nodded and thanked him.

I remain uncertain how I managed to steer through the thick crowd of the city. How I managed to find Dimos' greatest competitor. Another procurer of the rare and foreign. Alreani Emserand, a man I had never met before, walked among the streets as I followed his trail. No matter what, I'd need to get my hands on the page and return home. The dangers of getting caught faded in comparison to disapproving the La'n'terre family and my master. 

A distraction was all I needed. Luckily, the city was boiling with malcontent and ill-will. A sudden blast erupted, frightening the crowd. All of them looked for a way out of the narrow alleyway, away from the explosion. I, on the other hand... rushed forward, bumping into Alreani. It was over in a blink of an eye. Dimos taught me well. I put my bandaged hand beneath the target's cloak and yanked the page free. He and his men disappeared with the crowd, which fled in chaos from the large flames spreading from an inn.

Someone shoved me to the ground, and I fell onto the artifact, my bare skin touching the cobblestone road and the page.

A land of ash, stripped of color, appeared. The crowd, the screaming, the flames disappeared. I looked up into a bleak, ashen desert under a gloomy sky. Twisted beings and deathlike creatures walked around me. Teeth clicked in the smiling monsters' mouths, and long claws burrowed into the dust. Staring into Dimos' green eyes filled with malice made my skin crawl, made me want to disappear. But this... these beings and monsters were like death itself. The air became stale with the dust, and I couldn't breathe.

Dying was far different than I hoped it to be. I wished to come home to my family. See their smiles and feel their warm embrace in a far too powerful hug. I wished to tell them how much I loved them. What they truly meant.

Instead, I was alone in a land of shadows and decay when my heart stopped. 

***

Faith left me a year after I was enslaved. No God or Goddess had any hand in my fate. None of them bothered with my prayers of respite, no matter how it would come. But I did expect death to at least bring me to one of their realms. None of them did. Nothing existed. No laughter, no pain, no sounds... nothing. In a way, it was for the best. Heaven and hell had already been presented to me through life. 

This was my chance to rest. To be at peace. 

***

A sharp breath filled my emptied lungs with a cloud of dirt. I coughed violently and opened my eyes. Six feet of earth enclosed me save for the ceiling basking at the stary sky.