Running her fingers over the stone, Unending smiled. “It’s warded.”
“Go figure,” I replied, half-smiling.
The scythe was useful once more, as she identified and scratched off the symbols while I kept my ear on the door. The silence beyond was almost disturbing, and I was beginning to wonder where Shezin and his priestesses had gone. But that was a mystery best left for another day. There was only so much Unending and I could do in one night. We had two more days to work with.
“Oh…” she breathed, drawing my attention.
The slab revealed a metallic box with death magic runes scribbled across its silvery lid. “What is that?” I asked.
“It’s Death’s… handwriting, for lack of a better term.” She looked up at me, her eyes wide. The galaxies within burst with wonder. “I’d recognize it anywhere. We all have our own way of scribbling the death magic symbols, but hers is unique. Even the scratches are impossible to mistake for something else. They were made with Thieron.”
“What’s in the box, do you think?”
“I don’t know, but Death thought it was important enough to ward it herself.”
“Can you get past it?” I replied, and she nodded slowly.
“I feel like I’m violating her privacy,” Unending said quietly.
“Well, she did ask you to investigate. Besides, she’s done way worse to you,” I said.
“Fair enough.” She shrugged and proceeded to break the charms. Once she was done, Unending removed the lid, revealing dozens of small glass balls. From where I stood, I could only see the faint glow within each of them, but they meant something to Unending. They left her breathless. “Holy crap…”
A minute went by in absolute silence as she dipped her hands into the myriad of glass balls. They clinked as she moved them around until she picked one and brought it up between her thumb and index. “Holy… crap,” Unending said again.
“Okay. I’m on the edge of my seat here.”
“I think I know why Death doesn’t remember anything about Shezin,” Unending said, giving me an illuminated look. Her eyes were big and round, and a smile tested the corners of her mouth. “These are memory keepers. I haven’t seen one in ages. Not since before I went to Visio.”
“Memory keepers?” I asked.
Unending took them all out and put them in a pillowcase she fished from one of the drawers, then proceeded to reseal the metal box, placing the lid back on and repairing the wards with her scythe. “Memories can never be truly deleted. Not from a Reaper’s mind, anyway,” she said as she worked on the box, then repositioned the stone slab on top, making sure it wouldn’t stand out upon Shezin’s return. “And certainly not from Death’s mind. We use memory keepers to store the moments we wish to remove from a Reaper. I think Death chose to have her memories removed and stored inside these things. And I think we’ll find the memories of the Reapers who came to Dain in here, too.”
“Why would Death wipe her own memory about him?”
“I don’t know, but I’m positive we’ll find the answer in these,” Unending said. “They must be studied, and we can’t do that here,” she added, handing over the full pillowcase. We left Shezin’s room, and Unending resealed its death magic ward before locking the door. Careful as before, we snuck back to the ground floor.
It was quiet, the priestesses and their master still somewhere beyond that hidden door, most likely. It gave us a clear path back to our room. The return trip didn’t take long, but curiosity had already begun to eat me up on the inside. What memories had Death left behind? Why had she chosen to place them in these memory keepers? And what was Shezin doing with them?
Tristan
Back within the safer confines of our room, Unending placed wards on the door to make sure no one would come in. Shezin had protected his room and temple from certain Reaper magic, but that didn’t stop her from casting the same protective magic for her own good. We settled on the floor as Unending took out a few of the glass balls. She pressed her scythe’s blade against one and uttered the spell—a moment later, the small glass bauble glowed and swelled to the size of a football, the images within it becoming clearer and incredibly vivid, like a video recording.
In it, I could see Death from millions of years ago as she gazed into a reflective surface. Her black hair flowed down her back like liquid silk. Her eyes were like the home of the entire universe, her skin as delicate as the surface of a freshwater pearl. She wore a white lace dress that glazed her body and accentuated her delicate curves, tied around the waist with black satin ribbon. She was staring at her own reflection, I realized, before a tall mirror.
“Well, let’s see what this tells us,” Unending murmured as we watched the memory unfold inside the glass ball.
“Look, there’s Shezin,” I said.
He entered the room, and we could see him in the mirror. Death smiled and turned around. We lost sight of her, but we witnessed everything through her eyes as Shezin approached her. They kissed, and I looked away for a second because it was unbearably weird. Unending nudged me gently when I could resume my viewing.
It was a simple memory. A moment of love and tranquility in a house Shezin had built for them on a stony ridge. Unending opened another memory, and then another. They weren’t in a particular order, but we were able to figure out the timeline of what had happened, and how, eventually.
Just like Shezin had said, his home world was dying when Death found him. She spent days just watching him, utterly enamored. She didn’t dare say anything for a while, postponing his demise with every hour that passed. Unending explained that when the universe sets us an expiration date, it’s damn near impossible to prevent it. Death had gone to great lengths to keep Shezin alive.
Finally, one day she gathered enough courage to reveal herself to him. Upon seeing her, Shezin’s first instinct was to run. That made for amusing viewing until Death tracked him down and assured him that she wasn’t there to harm him. “She was there to reap him,” Unending muttered during that particular replay.
From where we stood, Death and Shezin had a long and happy relationship. At first, of course, he was fascinated by who she was. To have the affection of such a universal force wasn’t just an honor, it was an overwhelming experience for a living creature like him. In time, especially after Death made him immortal, Shezin adjusted to it all. That was the difference between them. It became obvious over the centuries. His mind and manners could change.
His ideas and aspirations could shift. His heart could spin and beat in a different rhythm, while Death remained forever the same. Indeed, her love for Shezin was eternal. Once the gold chain grew between their hearts, her end never withered or faded. But he wasn’t as stationary, nor had he been made to withstand such a long time in the same position—not physically, mentally, or emotionally.
We saw details of their time together. Sweet moments when nothing else mattered. Bitter moments when Death returned from her travels and found an increasingly disinterested lover waiting. Until one day he wasn’t even there anymore. “Where were you?” Death asked Shezin when she found him by a nearby river.