Chương 6: Dum Spiro Spero

The ingredient for a Philosopher's Stone proved simple enough: blood. The Coach-Eater's blood was the keystone, but the Lost Deaths also had me extract samples from various patients at the asylum. Agnès had been among them. Years of internment had left her gaunt and pale, but she still possessed a certain beauty, with auburn hair the color of the same fire that slew her brother. I will never forget the look she sent me upon spotting the necrosis marks on my arms.

That face of recognition, laced with a dash of sharp fear.

"You believe me now," she had said.

"Yes, I do," I remember replying as I took a blood sample from her; officially to check on her health.

"I will get you out of here one day." I didn't think she cared too much about the last part. She simply felt relieved that someone out there didn't think she was mad. Agnès had been involved in multiple cases of spontaneous human combustion, one of which caused her brother's death and the other her fiancé. She always maintained the same story: that a ghost had set them on fire.

Her words had earned her an indefinite stay in Portenoire under suspicions of arson, but I now knew that she was a victim rather than a perpetrator. A Mortality had haunted her steps since childhood. Perhaps it would return for her one day to finish the job that it couldn't complete all those years back. Part of me hoped it did, even if its ability and willingness to burn people alive in broad daylight meant it was likely much more dangerous than the Coach-Eater had been.

I would ensure that the asylum became its tomb one way or another. The Mortalities had won many battles, but now I knew there was a war. Once I'd collected all the blood samples that the Lost Deaths required, I returned to my room and then mixed them with the Coach-Eater's fluids. Black and red merged into a dark and murky substance darker than petroleum and so cold to the touch I could feel chills through the glass.

Every fiber of my being told me not to drink this, like an old animal instinct warning me against poison. The Lost Deaths informed me that the blood of men came in various types and variations, and that recombining them would let me tap into the very essence of life and death. Ingesting this potion would refine my body and let me access true magic, or so it said… at a cost.

"Beware that there is no turning back after this," the book warned me.

"With power comes enemies. The Mortalities and their servants are relentless. They will hunt you down as much as you hunt them, and you shall never find rest."

"Not unless I slay them all first," I replied.

"Yes," the Lost Deaths confirmed.

"What you will see next is a truth you shall never forget. Not all are strong-willed enough to accept it. Many of my would-be masters went mad or died from shock." I didn't care, not since it told me what awaited me after death. I would do anything to slay the Mortalities and delay my death one more day. Anything to avoid the… the darkness.

"What will I see?" I asked.

"The Strangers who created me. The origin. The war." So cryptic, and yet so ominous. I sat on my bed, but did not immediately drink the vial. I first flipped through the Lost Deaths' entries on defeated Mortalities until I reached the gallery's end and read its latest addition. The Coach-Eater's illustration faced me with a new set of text. The Coach-Eater Death by carriages, a minor Mortality in the service of the Hecatomb of Misfortune, which delighted in crushing men beneath its wheels.

Incinerated by Laurent Valmore with Greek Fire in Paris, June 3rd, 1889. So reassured, I smiled and ingested it all in one stroke. I did not hesitate; not even for a second. A terrible cold seized me the moment the substance touched my tongue. Pain surged from my necrosis patches, sharper than ever. A terrible chill traveled through my body and froze the blood within my veins. The icy grasp of death had closed around my heart. I barely remembered falling onto my bed before darkness seized my vision.

A terrible and primeval fear seized me as my body went numb, leaving my limbs heavier than stone and smothering my breath. The first and greatest terror had come. My soul drowned in cold tar and pitch blackness, deep into an abyss that would devour me until nothing remained. Panic seized my addled mind. Had the Lost Deaths lied to me? Was this all a trick? Was this… the end? Then I saw them. The countless faces of death staring at me with malice and hunger.

I saw a grinning flame that offered no comfort, only ashes. I walked a hell of a Valhalla where corpses fought a war of annihilation, and heard the whispers of that frightful voice that advised me to slit my own throat. I felt the putrid kiss of plagues that boiled my skin and rotted my blood while I yet lived. I saw the deaths that were, and those unborn. I fled from a giant, monstrous vehicle of steel rising from the land of America, which would one day pave the roads of the world with blood.

I escaped machines commanded by no man, and burned in a mushroom-shaped light. I saw the shadow of the Hecatombs and the lesser demises that served them. More than that, I saw the dark. I saw the final end which the Mortalities all shepherded us towards, the cold and silent end of a finite universe, without end nor beginning. I saw true blackness. I saw the enemy. But then came the light splitting the coin of existence. The grip of death loosened on me and dragged me away from its waiting jaws.

I was welcomed back on the other side of the war, and gazed upon our origin. Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation. I saw the Strangers. I behold the host of life, our forefathers and future, and met with the true masters of reality. I walked on living planets of pulsating flesh whose moons were seeds waiting to bloom. I dined in the halls of the Silent King, amidst the ruins of civilizations which it collected.

I stepped inside the Dream of Kazat where all nightmares went to rest. I gazed upon the Web of Life that stretched across the cosmos and connected us all, all the way back to the impossible day when the first bacteria came to be under the light of distant stars. More than that, I saw what the Lost Deaths truly looked like; an ancient thing of names and eyes and tentacles, as old as the first Mortality.

I understood its nature at last: that of a weapon of life that could not be sealed nor contained, that changed forms and shapes with each era and civilization. It was one of many such tools that the Strangers spread across the infinity, my own world included, waiting for those ready and willing to take up the fight. There were other Chassemorts on Earth, soldiers waging a war that spanned all of space and time. And I now stood among their numbers.

When I awoke again with a clear yet shaken mind, my wounds had healed. The necrosis and burns were gone, along with the cut. When I used a knife to slash across my hand, I watched the skin knit itself back together in seconds. I looked the same on the outside, and I knew that would not change; not unless I chose to. I had become more aware of my body than ever before. I could feel my blood coursing through every inch of flesh. I heard the song of my organs, which I was once deaf to.

My senses were sharper than knives and my bones stronger than steel. I would not grow old. I would walk this world untouched by time and age's grasp. But I could still die. I could feel the cloud of death hovering over me, like a silent promise. I sensed the great malevolent force of which the Mortalities were mere incarnations everywhere around me, waiting, hating. Violence, fire, despair… it had so many tools to slay me with even with the gifts I'd obtained from my benefactors.

I've met many people who thought death was an inevitable part of life, but I now knew otherwise. Death wasn't a law of the universe; it was its undying enemy, a creeping cold that shepherded all things toward the silent oblivion which it craved. It offered no comfort, no promise of an after, only the end. Only when all worlds became silent, only when the last star was extinguished and the cosmos returned to eternal darkness, would it finally be satisfied. Maupassant wrote that death was the only certainty in life.

He was wrong; I now knew that death could be fought, even slain… but in my currently imperfect state, one of the Mortalities would eventually overcome me. I had taken the first step on a long journey towards immortality, yet many ordeals still awaited me. The Lost Deaths would guide me, teach me spells from the Web of Life, and perfect me until I became as imperishable as a true Philosopher's Stone. Everyone in Paris was abuzz with talks of Boulangisme and socialist gatherings, and I couldn't care less anymore.

I alone knew that there had only been one war waged since the beginning of time, only one conflict worth fighting: the Great War between Life and Death. I had seen our origin. The beginning. The same way all Mortalities were emanations of the same primeval hunger, we were only branches of a great superorganism called Life, whose purpose was only to spread and survive. A single human was no more important in the great scheme of things than a single cell; yet each of us played a vital role in its continued existence.

I had seen the enemy too. The dispenser of endings. So many thought they could bargain with death or lessen its threat, that it was only a door leading to heaven or a new life rather than our first and final fear. I assumed the Ankous believed that they could appease this great hunger. They were all wrong. Death could not be bargained with, because it was never alive in the first place, let alone human. Its hate could not be quelled. It would come for all without mercy or compassion.

It could only be delayed, fought, or surrendered to. The Lost Deaths warned me that seeing the truth might turn me as insane as the inmates I watched over, but my mind had never been clearer. I knew what I had to do. What I was born to do. So many philosophers thought about the meaning of life. They overthought it all. Existence was meaning in itself, and Death its negation. It was up to me to change the world.

The government and the Bureau clearly knew something, but they chose lies and suppression over carrying on the fight. That duty now fell to me. It didn't matter how long it would take, or the sacrifices required. I would slay the Mortalities one after another, gaze into the abyss of sorcery with my book's guidance, and rise ever higher to ascend to the Strangers. Immortality would be within mankind's grasp and all the deaths lost to time one day, with a book's gallery their final legacy. I would never die.

I refused to die. I was a Chassemort, and I had a hunt tonight. A Hunt's End Closing Words This story is dedicated to my stepmother Dominique, whom I loathed but who did not deserve to die like she did. I was at an author's retreat last year when I learned of her demise. Truth be told, it did not surprise nor sadden me. She had been struggling with smoke-induced cancer for years, but stubbornly continued to smoke while in chemo.

She was a cruel and bitter woman who treated my father terribly, and I never understood why he stayed with her after separating from my mother; besides perhaps fear of loneliness. But when I called him to offer my condolences and reassure him, he told me how she died.

He told me of the long nights of suffering and delirium, the fear, and that short yet fatal moment when she simply ceased to be; and for all of the disdain I held for that woman, I couldn't help but feel both sympathy and utter terror for what she went through. One moment she was here, and then she was gone. Sixty years of existence snuffed out like candlelight. I'm going on thirty, and while I'm still rather young by human standards, 2024 was the first year when I first started truly dwelling on my mortality.

My stepmother died; half of the people in my life over sixty are struggling with cancer or disease; a fellow author in my field perished recently, far too early. All these little things combined cast a heavy cloud on the second half of the year for me. Lovecraft said that fear of the unknown was the primal fear of man, and I believe he was right. It's not death that we truly fear, but the unknown that follows.

Some of my friends believe that death is part of life, or simply the start of another life, but their words always offered me cold comfort. No matter how hard I try, I cannot help but see death as something cruel and horrible; our first and greatest terror. It was during that time that the idea of the Mortalities came to be; reapers that weren't servants of a cosmic order nor anthropomorphized entities, but monsters that loathed life.

I believe there is something innately terrifying in an enemy that cannot be reasoned with, because there is nothing reasonable about them. You can't bargain with a meteor on its way to crash onto the earth or an earthquake. Senselessness is the greatest form of cruelty. So… the idea of The Lost Deaths was present in my mind for a while and it resonated with me, but I decided against writing it as a serial after my darker stories struggled on Amazon.

A Gaslamp Dark Fantasy Horror story about killing deaths is simply too niche. I had to professionally focus on more marketable stories for financial reasons (that Perfect Run game in development doesn't pay for itself yet) and wished to return to more lighter stuff anyway. Nevertheless, the idea simply wouldn't leave me. I had to write down these intrusive thoughts somehow. The Royal Road Magazine Prompt, which echoed very much with this story idea, inspired me to at least try writing it as a short story.

It has been a pleasant experience (the story flowed out of my head in a handful of days) and I would say The Lost Deaths probably rank high among my other tales in terms of quality. Long-time readers will also notice some winks and references to my Underland series, though those are left open to interpretation. In any case, I hope you've enjoyed reading this novella as much as I enjoyed writing it, and that it gave you much to think about.

I'm going to focus on Dungeon Wreckers/Blood & Fur/Board & Conquest (with Dungeon Wreckers hitting Royal Road next week normally), but I don't exclude writing more tales in this universe one day. So long as I breathe, I hope, as they say. Best regards, Voidy.