Going toward the Worst
The techniques of the future Death Rituals were always there waiting for him in the distance, and the trail to them steadily kept working within all the remaining lessons, since whatever extreme self-disciplines he learned were part of preparing him against the day of his having to master his own extremes in facing drowning, burning, suffocation
One thing he’d learned from Yarboa was that the doing of those rituals meant something must die for life-power to be released for the practicers. Novitiates themselves died in the procedures from time to time. Always, some poor sacrifice. Whatever was involved, he must have no resistance to his superiors leading him when the time came.
But at this far stage in his life it raised big questions for him about his last remaining vulnerability. Just how safe was he in being taken by senior teachers through dying? And yes, he didn’t feel for any of his weird schoolmates, but was he really on the side of human killing? It was one thing to find people annoying and temporarily distort their bodies with a curse, another to actually use his bare hands to hold someone down for a sacrifice! And would his unusual powers be there for him against death when his own time came? How much was his prowess actually dependent on the strange force always there inside him instead of just on himself and his own skills?
He put answers to himself and tried for the high feel of them, but the surety wasn’t there for long, – final conclusions weren’t easy for one still untried in the worst practice of all. If anything, his big range of powers made knowing his true self and capacities even harder. But his initiation into the preliminary rites drew ever nearer.
He contemplated each face of his mentors, that of the Red Priest, imagined their smiles as they pushed him to the last second of the death ordeal. He reasoned, – had Aktiarh’s betrayals in the nightmare court been real? After many years he still had doubts. It might be as much a test for them as for him. Would the wants and rule of the never-seen Master overrule their minds when they were all charged up and had him at last at their mercy? Whatever the initiation entailed, the major issue of it was trust. And necessarily with it his deepest submission.
Hamar had an idea what would be involved in the dyings. Over the years whispers had been passed around among those mystic adepts who also were meant to go through them down the Dark Hall: “Once you master your breathing to increase your aura shield, you have to make sacrifices to Fire, Water, Wind, and then they grant ability to survive their full force. You’ll have to go through real burning or drowning or suffocation first, though, – on trust – to activate the blessing”. This was a reversal of Hamar’s command of those regal powers, and he wasn’t so sure how they too regarded him now. The price the learners paid for the secret was strict reckoning of the Elementals’ superiority, forever afterward having to sacrifice living things to them on a seasonal basis to keep them pleased. Overcoming death meant servicing death demands, he knew that much.
He discussed this with some of the graduates, “And why do you witch doctors need to go through death rituals? You have enough power from the spells you do to run your territories.”
“Ah but,” was their leader’s reply, “if we are to silence the whole region’s witch doctors when we arrive we have to show them that we can’t be murdered. To survive death once,” the man whispered, “should be enough.” Clearly none wanted to have to demonstrate it more than they had to.
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