Musings on Dying

I’ve been planning my death for at least a decade. It was always natural to expect I would die in a battle somewhere, ideally alongside a few close companions who survived, but perhaps alone. The battle was neither important nor unimportant, in my imaginings. I would fall in the service of something greater than myself—perhaps a town or an ideal or the living over the undead. For a few years, I would live on in people’s minds, perhaps in a death register or two, and then eventually, I would finish dying when the last scrap of proof I existed also left the Visatas. I would leave no legacy but I would also leave nary an imperfection in the landscape I was ultimately plucked from—my loss would be of minimal inconvenience and few would need to mourn.
 
None of my preparations resembled my actual death. (Or, I suppose, my second death, because it does seem that I have died once before, though those circumstances were quite different.) One moment I was fine, and the next pain and… a crossbow bolt? I felt it pierce me even as I grasped at it, and then I was in The Binder’s office, dressed in white, the silhouette of my place in the mural of his children forming. I wasn’t ready to be in the artwork. Not yet. I felt a sense of injustice. It wasn’t supposed to happen this way.
 
Sitting beside a god who is also your oldest friend as you watch your resurrection is a unique experience. Neither of us knew what would ultimately become of me, and I could feel swirling between the pair of us the same conflicting mix of emotions. It could be so easy to simply rest forever. To find a purpose in the afterlife on Veldorn, no longer a target or a threat. His gentle reminder that I would always have a home in his domain felt like a warm blanket wrapped around my shoulders as we sat, side by side, watching the tapestry of fate weave itself around me. I don’t think mortals should watch their deaths and resurrections. Its indelible impact on one’s psyche is discomfiting. I know now why the gods usually come to whisk the souls of their followers away, to spare them the pain.
 
Because it is painful. Not the physical kind—that pain, mercifully, ends as soon as your consciousness and body are separate. No, instead it’s the insidious, pervasive kind that aches throughout your whole being. The kind that hurts so completely that you can’t speak or cry. You just watch. The kind that makes you realize it would never be possible for you to blink out of existence and not leave something broken in your wake. The breathtaking kind that underscores for you that you matter not only because of a title or a genetic heritage but because people love you and aren’t ready for your intertwined destinies to unravel.
 
It is a uniquely mortal proclivity to only have epiphanies about those in our lives when it may be too late for them to be of use. As I watched the ritual below, Seksgar spoke simply but purely, emotionally moving as always in his uncomplicated way. I’ve never questioned whether Seksgar was in my corner—he literally carried me through much of the crystal forest, and his nonchalant counsel has more than once retinted my worldview. It struck me how utterly scarred both our physical forms were from our histories, looking down at the pair of us back on Xotera. Facing the world with inner demons is one thing, but confronting it with visible evidence of its trials is another. That man, despite his experiences, his parentage, and his trials, stands with an effortless strength before anything that comes his way. We are quite alike in some ways, and in others, he already represents things I hope to achieve one day within myself. He must have successfully appealed to Auril, because her divinity manifested across my form in delicate snow crystal patterns, yet another testament to the barbarian. To convince the goddess of heartbreak to intervene in an untimely death is no easy task.
 
And then Duraz joined the ritual, indignantly defiant of the priest insisting they let me pass on. This same penchant for obstinance had caused us trouble countless times, but maybe a germ of this in our midst was good for us all. His umbrage at the collective group’s lack of recognition of my station was certainly something, as was the ensuing response from Chendes as a result of Duraz’s call that Chendes wanted me back as much as anyone else. I saw myself in him, too, during these moments. I recognized him still grappling with his newly elevated station, with his entanglements in the fate of the world. I also understand—more than I would like to admit—his preference to shirk emotional display in favor of a simpler exterior manifestation of something more palatable, so I will forgive him the absolutely disrespectful rant he delivered as he told me about the work we still had ahead and that the most useful thing about me was my bow. There was a time when everyone couldn’t wait to get their jabs in about my failures as an archer, so even in his uncharitable rant he still paid me a compliment.
 
And then we—the god of knowledge and I—saw the third and final soul crying out from Xotera for my return. To see Rue, paladin of Lurra, the leader of Force Grey, the keeper of my heart, rendered so utterly broken I think killed me a second time. It gives me great guilt to admit that, as I watched his incoherent appeals to Lurra, it crossed my mind that perhaps it would be more merciful to remain gone. To unburden him from preoccupations of my welfare and to free him of all entanglement with me. Except even as I entertained these thoughts, I knew them impossible. Any doubts I may have still harbored about the depth of his affection for me evaporated. Watching him burned me, nearly consumed me. There was an ache I could not alleviate, an all-encompassing desire to be able to end his suffering and hold him. I don’t think I can conceive of what “forever” means, but I want the opportunity to live it out with him. Burden and asset though it is, it’s too late to change. He is mine; I am his.
 
I don’t fully know how the necromantic resurrection magic works, but I can tell you how it affects the departed soul. I felt a tug, like pieces of my essence being magnetically called back to Xotera, back to my body, back to my friends. But it didn’t compel me, and its pull was not overwhelming. I have heard this is not always the case—some have told of being practically compelled to return—and it made me wonder if the magic was tenuous in this instance. Oghma then told me I could choose, acknowledging that it would be easier and safer to simply stay. I agreed with him, meditating momentarily on the option to simply end the persecution and struggles. It would be easier to remain dead. To rest in peace.
 
Though he refused to tip the scales in either direction, I also felt Oghma’s inner conflict between an overwhelming desire to protect me indefinitely in his domain and release himself from worry and fear and between his belief in a different destiny for me and my ability to continue onward. I pointed out, after a time, that if not me, then there would just be another. Something I have understood for a long time is the idea of sacrifice. What right would I have to hide away and transfer this responsibility onto another? Had I really earned my place among the others in The Binder’s mural? Was I ready to close the chapter on my life’s work? He did not respond, but I could distinctly feel his pride in my deliberations. Neither of us needed to say it aloud to recognize that I had come a long way from the severely damaged person I was before.
 
As I sat with the decision, it began to snow in Oghma’s office. He told me Auril had threatened him, some amusement and surprise on his face. A series of thoughts occurred to me, one after the other. Thoughts of gods who had clearly thrown their lots in with mine—especially Oghma, Lurra, Nydra, Lepota, Chendes, Auril—and thoughts of the people throughout my life I had made promises to, either directly to them or quietly to myself. Thoughts of the confusing way some people lit up with hope and determination upon learning I was the Chosen of Oghma, or a horizon walker. Thoughts of inconsequential things on Xotera I had yet to do, see, eat. As the snow intensified to sleet, I told Oghma we both knew I had already made my choice, and I hugged him. I wasn’t sure he would release me, literally or spiritually. And then, in a flash of light, I found myself in my broken body on the ground in Cofre, filled with emotional pain and all the real pains of what my body endured. But I was alive.
 
It is, I have determined, certainly far easier to die. But it’s the nature of us mortals to only go kicking and screaming, willful until the end, thwarting the machinations of even the gods to remind them the world is not entirely under their dominion. I’m not finished. I am Chosen. Divinely, by my friends, by ma’len. I have bridges to mend, wrongs to right, and people, places, and ideas to protect. I will die, likely on a battlefield, but not today.