Book Of The Undead

DAMNED

A warrior meets his end on the battlefield, a fitting end for one such as him; but in the days of old, warriors brought misery, they instilled fear and for Aloch, the fear he instilled in the hearts of his foes was enough to fell armies. So as his life of violence came to an end, he welcomed the sword in his chest for with it came the chance to escape his fate as a warrior and finally rest, or so he thought. Time stands still for the soul that approaches the gate to the afterlife. Aloch has fought his entire life and now approaches the gate that promises rest but the gate refuses to open. Aloch tries to force the gate open but to no avail. He hears a voice “you who has slain men, women and children shall not find rest for those voices have cursed you” an unbearable pain begins to consume his being “what is happening to me?” Aloch groans in pain as he asks the voice “your soul has been sealed, you shall return and walk among the living as the terror you have always been, you shall know not rest nor shall you know peace, now leave” Aloch opens his eyes, he is but a rotting corpse but he feels no pain, he is a few feet in the ground and hears the sounds of a horse, the soil above begins to shift, Aloch forces his way out of the soil and soon stands on his feet, he looks like the terror he inspired; faceless and lifeless. The horse paddocking close falls dead, its life drained, the skin and muscle tissue on Aloch begins to grow back to normal, he looks at his arms, “what is this?” he asks himself, he walks toward the dead horse, tied to the horse is a carriage, its rider dead, skin and bones just like the horse, inside the carriage another man and a woman also dead in the same manner, the life drained from them. These are events over two thousand years in the past.
Three thousand years ago the warrior should have met his end of the field of battle, it was what he wanted and it should have been that way but the voices of the dead, the voices of his victims pleaded to the gate keeper and so a man blessed by the god of war was cursed by the dead and denied passage into the afterlife, his soul was sealed in a cauldron and life itself was denied him, unable to die or to live. The warrior’s existence became an abomination brought to life by his sins, the first one hundred years of his existence were  spent looking for meaning, being accepted by no one, he was seen as a monster and so he became one, the world of the living would feel his wrath for centuries but his intentions were misunderstood. The warrior saw the living waste their lives and fail to understand the worth of the lives they had, the warrior was a vengeful spirit that haunted the middle ages
He never knew rest, he could never sleep and existed in constant agony, he lost his mind countless times over the first one thousand years of his existence. Watching from the beyond was the gatekeeper of the afterlife who felt pity on the damned warrior and appeared before him as the warrior knelt on a battlefield surrounded by the bodies of fallen soldiers on a cold winter night. The warrior had found himself in a campaign of a certain country’s unification or was it independence? The warrior didn’t know, he just followed the screams and the call of battle, he had truly become death itself, when he was living, he was a warrior, so he held on to that part of himself and it kept him sane although only barely. As he knelt down on the battle field, he heard a voice call to him “Aloch!” the gate keeper spoke “ will you not find hope at all?”  it had been so long since Aloch had heard his own name, he was surprised, some one knew him..
The gate keeper felt pity on Aloch and received permission to aid the damned warrior but Aloch had long since forgotten how to hope and how to believe but he could still hear the gate keeper speak “Aloch, will you not turn and face me” Aloch did not prepare a response, he only spke as his essence demanded, “ why should I face you? Do you have more to torment me with?” Aloch said, the gate keeper answered “ I did not do this to you Aloch but  I can converse with you and make you feel less alone” Aloch laughed lifelessly and said “ alone? I have been speared by savages, torn to pieces by great beasts, I have bathes in the pools of flaming mountains, I don’t care about your company, I want this to end, I want an end” the gate keeper then responded to Aloch “Aloch you were blessed by a god and cursed by humans but you need to understand that to have an end, to be deserving of an end, one must first begin” 
Aloch did not want to hear any more, he stood and begun to walk the gate keeper said one last thing before he left “find your beginning Aloch and then the end you desire will reveal itself to you” it has been two thousand years since the gate keep first appeared to Aloch, the world has changed, the gate keeper still appears to converse with Aloch.  So much has been learned. Aloch was cursed by humans and sealed his soul; they created a torment unlike any other and unknowingly created something called the book of the un-dead. Although Aloch would never admit it, the presence of the gatekeeper helped him keep his sanity and In doing so Aloch had leaned quite a few things and decided to take certain steps. Aloch wanted to learn the meaning of life, he believed that it would be the beginning, the first step in his journey to find an end to his existence.
The book of the undead was engraved into Aloch’s essence, Aloch learned through ancient texts and conversations with the gate keeper that there were two other books much older than the book of the undead, the first and oldest book was the book of the living. The gate keeper was not allowed to say so much about the books, in fact; he was forbidden from ever teaching Aloch the language used in the texts of any of the books, the gatekeeper could see possible futures and he was allowed to steer Aloch towards a possible future as long as he was not directly involved. It is because of this that Aloch finally came face to face with the book of the living, an encounter that turned the pages for the wielder of the book of the un-dead.
For three thousand years, Aloch had taken countless lives without giving it so much as a thought, without hesitation but twenty two years ago, he found himself in a hospital, being engulfed by flames, he walked through the hospital as if hearing a voice calling to him meanwhile the gatekeeper watched from beyond, taking note of every detail, Aloch found himself facing an infant child and thinking to himself “this child must not die,, it cannot, not tonight, it must live”, as soon as he carried the child the gatekeeper smiled and said to himself “ There is your beginning” Aloch did not know it yet but the cog in the wheel of his destiny had been removed and his world twenty two years after that night would be invaded by something more dangerous and frightening than even the damned warrior himself.