The Southern Earth tribe Part II

Death.

One word, but it causes all humans to cringe, as it reminds them of their final destination. No matter who, everyone is afraid of death. The reason why everyone is afraid of death, is because no one knows what happens afterwards. Is it the end? There are various theories which humans invented in order to comfort themselves. Others said there is judgement which is done by God and you can either be thrown in hell, or be taken to heaven. Another theory was that you will be reincarnated into another cycle of life to live again as another person, and so on. The truth was, no one really knew what happened next, except Reeve of course, having died seven times. The only issue is he didn't remember the other six times.

So, having experienced death, Reeve tried to dodge the ice-sword but he ended up failing. As his head fell down the stairs leading to the altar, he thought it was all over. He expected the bright light from before to encompass him but the only light he experienced was the glare from the sun. He opened his eyes and became confused. His hands moved around to touch his head, but only touched empty air.

Azera was perplexed, shocked and afraid. He shouted, "Karim, what have you done?"

Karim only smiled and didn't reply. But the truth was, even he was shocked that the zombie he had reanimated was … well … undead. It couldn't be killed with normal weapons or some weak magic. This was outside of his expectations.

Reeve's body crawled on the ground until it located his head. He took up the head and placed it on his body, and in a matter of seconds, it was re-attached again, without a scar at the neck to show he had been beheaded.

Now, the people who were watching all of this take place began to panic. They started running all around the place, screaming, shouting and so on. The girl who was supposed to be given to Reeve as tribute fainted. The only people who remained after a few minutes were Reeve, Karim, Azera and the five young men from the Southern Water tribe who were paralyzed with fear. They didn't believe that anything good would come out of this encounter.

Reeve realized that he was now undead. He didn't die when he was decapitated. This could work to his advantage. He could now scare off the people from the Southern Water tribe, to make sure they wouldn't come back to harass him in the future. As he thought of this, he smiled and said, "Are you satisfied?"

Azera and Karim were confused. Well, Karim was trying to come to terms with the fact that the zombie could speak. Normally, when one used summoning magic, they could control whatever they had summoned to do their bidding. However, Karim's reanimation was … eh … special. He simply called upon the name of the deities praying and hoping something happened. In essence, he had already tried the funny ritual six times and all six times failed. This was the seventh time, and truth be told, he didn't expect it to work at all. So imagine his shock when the ritual worked and summoned a true undead! And it seemed as if this undead had a mind of its own.

Seeing no-one reply, Reeve pointed at Azera and continued, "By the power vested in me by the … eh … deities, I hereby curse you to the abyss!" As he said this, he chuckled inside. He could barely hold himself from laughing out loud. To anyone, what he had said sounded ridiculous, but the fear written on Azera and his cohorts' faces was priceless.

He actually just said this in order to make them even more afraid. What he didn't expect was, after he said this, a purple-black vortex appeared right behind Azera and black hands stretched out from the vortex. The hands grabbed Azera, pulling him into the vortex without so much as a struggle.

If Karim and the Southern Water tribe youths were shocked, then imagine the shock on Reeve's face! After the vortex pulled Azera inside, it closed up, as if it had never opened!

******

Far away from the continent where the southern tribes are located, there are floating islands. Each island is bigger than the continent and has forests that are thick. On one of the islands, there was an old man wearing a bright vest made of some type of silk. He had no hair in his head and a bushy beard which was grey in color. The old man was lying down, enjoying the sun, or so it seemed.

He laughed out loud and then said, "He thinks he's caused that phenomenon, doesn't he?"

An ancient sounding voice came from nowhere and replied, "Well, you might have overdid it."

The old man laughed again. He spoke, "I can't be blamed. You had to make him undead, and to top it off, you gave him too much magic! Are you trying to create one of us?"

This time the ancient sounding voice laughed and replied, "I just wanted him to appreciate life, it's shortness and whatnot…"

"Ha! Don't make me laugh! Anyway, do you think the other deities are going to sit and watch you create an Ancient?"

"Well, my purpose wasn't to create an Ancient. Besides, even if they want to interfere, they can't. I made sure of it."

"I think the mischievous one will be on his tail. This is the start of a lot of bad luck for him. Don't you wish you hadn't given him that power?"

"Not even. Right now my only problem is, if he starts looking for answers and he comes to us, what would I do?"

"Ha! You're a deity! What kind of questions would he have that you don't have the answer to?"

"Good question", replied the ancient sounding voice, as if the owner was thinking about something.