Beyond the End of Death

Prologue
     Contained within wrathful tomes yet unwritten, unintelligibly scribed by the black hands of vacuous undead, lay a tale of the greatest sin ever committed.
     In the ancient age of man and sword, there stood a city by the name of Virtannis. In the previous age, it's name was Autarch, and before that, Taiba. It had bore earlier and more guttural titles; one even in Elvish. But it's name mattered little.
     For the city was known to all ages as the center of civilization. As each eon passed, it's inheritors built directly upon the structures of those before. The deformed metropolis grew until it's baleful spires and cynical cathedrals buried the island it laid upon. A monolith of darkness standing alone in dead, cold waters.
     Looming above Virtannis were the last remnants of it's original architects. The Grand Old Cathedral with its colossal belfry who's bells tolled unpredictably. Nearby and even taller still, stood the enigmatic Lunarium Tower.
     Within this tower, blasphemous scholars listened to the frantic dreaming of the twin moons and used their secrets to create indescribable nightmares.
----Chapter 1 of 4: La Morgue (The Mortician)
     Two, four, six, eight....
     Artor's pale fingers tapped each glass case of odorous embalming fluid in order. Checking, double checking and then triple checking his count. Scratching the temples of his balding head in frustration as he lost count once again. He glanced nervously at the hideously simple clock on the wall, then to the elevator door in the center of the room.
     She should be here any moment now. He sat and inhaled deeply. Though that clock probably isn't accurate anyways.
     He flexed his jaw anxiously and scanned the unadorned tower walls seeking windows he knew were not there.
     There's no reason they wouldn't slow down the clock; I've got no way to see what it's like outside. Lying about the time would drag out my working hours.
     The elevator door split silently open. A woman stepped out, unremarkable and mature, like himself; like all the other milquetoast scholars of the Department. She wore a dispassionate glare in the same manner she wore her standard issue black overcoat; that is to say, openly and with confidence.
     Grim. She must've been working in this tower as long as I have.
     She stood absolutely motionless for a few breaths before Artor made it to her. "I'm Artor, the Mortician."
     "Evelina."
     "I'm... supposed to show you around."
     "Okay." She blinked in a way that reminded him of the reptiles he tortured for fun in his youth. He stared at her, certain that at any moment her tongue might slide out of her mouth to wet her eyeballs.
     "Follow me..." He turned and began walking the perimeter of the circular room that made up the entirety of the tower's 103rd level. His level. He tried to relax.
     This is a good thing. He thought, lying to himself, as he often did. With her help the project will be finished sooner. Which means the sooner I'll get transferred to something else. Hopefully back down to a lower level with mundane busy work like before. I'll get go home on the weekends.
     Then he remembered that his home had likely been buried under 20ft of brick and mortar since he last saw it. Or perhaps bombed to rubble.
     Maybe her last project was in a lower level? She'd know how the situation is on the outside; how the war is going.
     He shuddered instinctually. Discussing past projects was so forbidden that he found himself capable of purging his own memories to hide them. 
     Even if she remembered, she wouldn't tell the truth.
     Evelina cleared her throat. "Are you going to just show me around? Or are you going to explain what I'll be doing here?"
     His sunken cheeks instantly flushed and his eyes darted across the floor. "Y-yes. I... forgot. I haven't had a colleague in some time."
     He lead her around the stainless steel operating tables. A dozen in a grid, each with its own glowing sphere hovering above as a light source. Evelina seemed impressed with the orbs, as he had been when he first arrived. Magic appliances such as these were considered an obscene luxury in war times.
     "This is where I operate on them." He twisted his hands in a 'book opening' gesture. "Then I put the chemicals inside." He spent a few minutes explaining the intricacies of the gruesome and complex procedures he'd been ordered to do. The whole while, the woman stood still, only asking one question.
     "Who are the subjects?"
     He pointed towards the elevator. "They bring in cadavers once every other tuesday. Usually only 4 or 5, but sometimes as many as 10 recently. When I'm done I ring the-"
     "That's not what I mean. Who are the subjects?"
     Artor stood frozen, his mouth agape.
     Maybe she's just here to test me? Reporting back if I know something I'm not supposed to? "I don't know. It's not important."
     "Are you sure?"
     He sighed. "I don't know- and am not allowed to know- their identities. But I think they were soldiers. They often have battle scars. Military tattoos. It's pretty obvious once you've had a look at the bodies, which is why I don't see the harm in telling you."
     "Do you know what it is you're doing to the bodies?"
     Without hesitation he replied, "No. And it would be wise for neither of us to find out." He inhaled slowly, exhausted already.
     He walked her around the rest of the level. They passed by the chemical storage, the spools of wire, the tool rack and were finally nearing their sleeping quarters, when Evelina stopped at a hatch on the outer wall.
     "What's this for?" She asked. The hatch was simple; a 2x2ft square iron door hung about waist high with a large handle. 
    "I don't know. They never mentioned it to me, so it's probably just something left over from an older project they did in here."
     Her hands gravitated towards the handle. "NO!!" Artor frantically lunged at her.
     But he was too late. The hatch swung open with a metallic pinging sound that echoed across the room. Artor fell to his knees, whimpering and covering his face.
     A long awkward moment passed before he lowered his hands to peer at her. Through his pounding heartbeat he heard her say, "It's.... just a garbage chute."
     He glanced at it. Indeed, it seemed to be nothing but a downward sloping shaft, caked in dried refuse. Artor breathed a sigh and stood, but it did not relieve him of his shaking. She closed the hatch and walked alone to their sleeping quarters.
     I'm certain now. The Bailiff sent her here to test me. Very well, Bailiff. I will pass your tests.
     Tragically, he did not.
----Chapter 2 of 4: Discours Interdit (Forbidden Speech)
     Evelina sat on the edge of the plain grey bed she'd been granted and studied Artor who stood in the doorway. For the first time, her face betrayed some small scrap of emotion. It was a negative one to be certain, but Artor had never been good with facial expressions and his isolation within the tower only exacerbated this. He had learned long ago to just ask, though he received more lies than truth. "What's wrong?"
     "This is how I'm going to spend the rest of my life. Juggled between levels of the tower. Never knowing what I'm actually doing anymore."
     Artor's wrinkled forehead glistened with sweat. Her sudden outspokenness only stressed him further. "You must've upset someone."
     "That much is certain." She laid back in the bed for a few breaths, staring at the claustrophobically low ceiling. "At my old project, I worked near the very top of the tower."
     Artor tucked his chin and clamped his hands over his ears. Against his best judgment, he didn't walk away and instead, furtively listened through the gaps between his fingers.
     Evelina paid him no attention, continuing, "We did horrible things to the children. Scraped away at their brains and replaced what we took with slugs. They'd be sent back, and would return a month later stinking of seawater. Then we'd take more and more brains. Until they could do little more than cry and shake."
     Artor dropped his hands from his head and timidly asked a question he knew he would regret. "Why?"
     Evelina smiled widely. Not a smile of joy, nor pleasure, but one of victory. "Sometimes while resting, the children spoke of distant seas. Seas not of this world. They spoke of the moons, and their dreams." She folded her hands on her stomach. "My best guess... is that The Bailiff was trying to make conduits to the cosmos. The moons hold secrets that aren't easily uncovered. The children were supposed to close that gap."
     She stifled a giggle, which grew to uncontrollable laughter, and then died down until she was quietly weeping. Through her gentle sob, she said, "But... it was a failure. Some had no effect, most died, and the rest became abominations. The project was closed, the children disposed of and everyone that worked on it were scattered across the tower. Since then, every project I've been on has been mindless and toilsome. I think they realized I knew too much. And this is my punishment." She continued to weep.
     Artor swallowed but his throat was dry. Suddenly, he was overtaken by an urge to comfort her, though he felt certain that she'd been lying.
     He shuffled forward and spoke in a professional tone. "One time, after operating on the bodies, the people I called to pick them up were late. When they arrived, I'd noticed that some of the incisions I made had closed up. No scar. Nothing."
     Evelina locked eyes with him, unblinking. "What does it mean?"
     "I think they're making monsters to fight in the war. Undead soldiers who come back over and over again after dying in battle."
     She nodded blankly and rolled over in bed. "Thank you."
     Back in his own room, Artor vomited into a wastebasket. I'm done for. When I wake tomorrow- if they even allow me that long- I'll be in some dungeon deep below the Cathedral. Hot irons dragged across my soles. My tongue flayed into a thousand strips.... I've got to leave. I've got to get out of this damn tower. Somehow!
     He bolted upright with sudden realization, sprinted outside their sleeping quarters- and to the metal hatch on the wall....
----Chapter 3 of 4: L'évasion du lâche (Escape of the Coward)
     Artor grabbed the largest spool of wire available and carefully tied the free end in a large knot to the post of an operating table. He surveyed his work, sure that both the table, which was bolted to the floor, and the medical grade steel thread would bear his meager weight. His fingers trembled as they reached for the handle on the garbage chute and turned it. He stared deeply into the blackness of the tunnel ahead.
     His thoughts lingered on Eveline. If she was not a test sent by The Bailiff, then whatever punishments he had coming would certainly fall onto her. I should bring her with me. It wouldn't be fair to leave her here.... Even if she was a test. He turned back towards her room.
     There comes a time in every man's life, when he must steele himself. When he must face his deepest fears and risk his life for the sake of others. Artor considered doing so, for a moment, and then promptly thought better of it.
     He slid the heavy spool of wire down the chute and waited for it to finish falling. But after a few minutes the wire still hadn't been pulled taught. Odd. Artor ignored this, pulling a loop of the wire through the ring of metal on his belt and clambered into the fetid hole in the wall.
     As he rappelled, the surfaces of the shaft were slimy with an unidentifiable ichor whose blinding stench and grease-like consistency made him wretch. The chute sloped downward at a steeper angle than Artor anticipated, forcing him to slide through the slime on his belly in complete darkness. Deeper within, the smell grew in pungency until its foulness defied all description.
     After a few minutes, his feet touched the spool of wire. A dead end. He tried to crouch down and feel the blockage with his hands, but the tube had narrowed to barely fit his shoulders. Probing around with his feet, he found the obstruction to be fleshy but hard. Something that distinctly felt like a hand. Human remains? Artor endured another fit of dry heaving as he tried to scrape the sludge off his face.
     Desperate, he stomped his feet with his full weight. On his third jump, the clog sank a few inches. He double checked his makeshift harness and gave one last push. Slowly, it slid down the shaft, creating flatulent noises as atrocious gasses were released. After a moment, with a plop sound, it fell out the bottom of the vent and bitterly cold air filled the chute in its place. Through the exit, he could see that his clock was correct; it was indeed night.
     Clumsily, he descended out of the shaft and onto the outside of the tower wall. The frigid wind stung his face as he looked around, but could see only fog around and below him. The low hanging cloud coverage would be a blessing if it lasted; concealing him from the tower watchers or passerbys. Looking up, he could see the top of the tower with its enormous telescopes.
     My project must've been closer to the top of the Lunarium than they told me. This has got to be at least floor 150. Maybe even in the 200s.
     A pang of anxiety struck his heart as he tried to run the math, calculating the length of wire below him. He shook his head. Couldn't go back up if I wanted to. 
     He lowered himself, carefully spreading his legs across the gigantic bricks of the tower wall to keep from swinging in the wind. After a few long minutes he'd dropped below the fog and could make out the base of the tower. The side he descended was directly above the old aqueduct where the Lunarium dumped all of its waste. It would be a lake of embalming fluid, biological material and broken equipment... the perfect place to escape into.
     Partway down, Artor could see the gigantic stone buttresses that supported the midsection of the tower. He had planned to rest for a moment on them, but the one below him had caught the chute's dislodged blockage and was covered in it's large unidentifiable mass. As he grew nearer, he could make out a bit of its shape under the weak moonlight; 5 or so meters long, but narrow. There were definitely human limbs dangling among the mass but he could not decipher much more from it at this distance.
     His eyes scanned the horizon. Now beneath the fog he could clearly make out Virtannis' dark gothic skyline under the light of the moons. Except something felt instinctively 'off' to him. Artor studied it for a moment before realizing.
     Where are the lights? There's not a single damn lantern on in the whole city.... Did we lose the war while I was gone? Are the scholars in the tower all that's left of the empire?.... Artor made a second more terrifying realization. One that nearly loosened his grip on the wire. There's only one moon? Where..... where did the other moon go?
     Artor turned his head back towards the base of the tower. The moon is gone and everyone in the city with it.... I could... try to get back inside the tower. Climb inside a window on a lower level and beg for forgiveness.... or.... I could let myself fall and it would all be over in a few moments. In the end he chose neither. Both were frightening alternatives when the possibility of escaping into an empty city was still an option. In any regard, Artor was more pressed with his aching arms at the moment and lowered himself to the buttress below.
     As he arrived, he found himself pleased that the lump of remains were no longer present and smiled knowing it's soft body at the bottom of the tower would make for an excellent landing spot. He sat in the chilly night air and caught his breath.
     That was, until he noticed dozens of black, greasy hand and footprints along the surface of the tower wall. The trail started at the buttress he sat upon and lead to the right, curving upwards into the fog above. Suddenly, Artor's wire began to vibrate and shake; disturbed by something hiding in the fog.
     He slid off of the archway and frantically rappelled further down the wall. The cable cut into his body as the tugging became more aggressive. Whatever it was, yanked the line hard, flipping him upside down with his back against the wall. There was another tug... followed by another. Artor turned his head to the stone wall to realize that he was ascending. It's reeling me in. He righted himself and began descending even faster, crossing dozens of stories in seconds. I can smell the garbage heap! I'm so close! Without realizing it, he began to cry.
     Suddenly, whatever had been pulling the wire let go, and the slack fell, dropping him 3 stories head first. His hands clawed at the stonework trying to slow the drop, achieving nothing but shaving the skin off and ripping out his fingernails. Abruptly the line pulled tight into his waist as his limp figure swung sideways into a window- shattering it.
     Dangling upside down, Artor's bloodied hands felt his face, attempting to pick out the shards of glass. Pain of the wire digging into his arm reminded him that he needed to focus his attention on descending. He felt a vibration from the cable above and opened his eyes to see a face staring back at him through the shattered window. A younger scholar in the standard issue black overcoat of the Department; but her face was locked in a grimace. Her lips were pulled back to expose the fullness of her dark gums and her eyes so wide open that he could see underneath the lids.
     Artor screamed as the woman's arm plunged through the glass to grab him by the scalp. The wire shook wildly and he could hear wet stomping on the outside of the wall above him, growing closer. It's over. Fuck it. I'm jumping. He unlatched the ring on his belt, releasing the cable and tumbled several stories into the aqueduct landing face face up.
     He laid on the garbage heap for a moment, delirious with adrenaline and what he determined to be a concussion. Artor tried to shift his weight but felt a wetness and a sharp tingle in his spine instead. I.... I can't feel my legs. 
     He closed his eyes, and waited for death. Even as a child, Artor was certain he would die a slow and painful death, and it seemed he'd been right. Until he heard something climb into the aqueduct with him; the sound of dozens of clumsy appendages moving in unison.
     His eyes still tightly shut, he could hear the thing approach and stand over him. It lowered its long, spongy body on top of Artor, its tremendous weight pushing him deeper onto the spike in his back and pinning his arms down.
     Suddenly, he felt a sharp pain of something slowly penetrating his abdomen. A foreign extremity probed around his insides, pushed past his intestines, around his stomach and settled between the lungs. The thing on top of him began to gyrate, thrusting its member inside his torso back and forth. It convulsed, the appendage inside him spasming, and then retracted it back out of his body. Artor still could not breath, as it had deposited a large volume of something inside him which pressed against his lungs.
     Artor's final thoughts before he finally suffocated were ones of indescribable revulsion and self pity.
----Chapter 4 of 4: Danse Macabre (Dance of Death)
     Young Artor, barely 5 years old, stumbled into the milling shed of his parent's vineyard carrying a chisel. He approached his father, who was doing some repairs on the mill, and offered the tool he'd requested. His father accepted with a smile, bent over and began smoothing out a piece of stone into a grinding wheel. His father moved slowly, describing each step to little Artor so that he could do it himself when he was an adult. Instead, Artor was more interested in the balding crown of his father's head; asking him where the hair had gone. Artor remembered the hurt look on his father's face, and he remembered not caring.
     Artor suddenly awoke, laying naked on a stainless steel table; his ankles and wrists restrained by steel belts. Looking around, he determined his location to be... his operating room in the tower. He quickly turned his head to the hatch on the wall, finding it to be missing and in its place, a large steel plate welded to the wall. On the other tables around him were the bodies of soldiers, like the many he'd operated on before.
     He turned his head to the elevator in the center of the room, and before him stood an enormous figure covered in black robes, wide as it was tall, bearing a skeletal head draped in greying hair and wearing a blindfold. In the center of its chest was another, smaller head, and a small set of arms next to it which clutched a large book against its bosom. To the right of the figure was another large individual, but not so large as the other; this one was clad entirely in unusual steel plate armor, whose eyes glew a dull white and bore a hinge on the jaw so that it might be capable of speech. There was no indication that a being of flesh laid inside the armor.
     Artor, gasping for air in fear cried out, "What happened? Where am I?.... What did.... Was the thing real? The thing with the arms? Was it the children?" Artor fell into shock, reliving the vivid memory of that thing violating him in the garbage heap. As he spoke, the suit of armor wheeled out the other bodies into the elevator and took them downwards.
     The gigantic figure raised a massive skeletal hand from beneath it's robes and spoke within his head. It's voice was cacophonous, a choir of a hundred male voices speaking in unison. It spoke deliberately, and with strange cadence. "It is not for thee to know." The figure invaded Artor's mind, blinding him and replacing his sight with forced images. He saw flashes of his bloated broken corpse in the garbage heap, and the gaping wound in his abdomen from which a sickly greyish liquid oozed. His vision went black, and then saw images of Evelina operating upon his corpse as he'd explained to her not long before. She moved swiftly and with no behavior that suggested she even recognized the body as him.
     "So you've made me into a monster too!?" Artor yelled. "Well I'm no soldier, worthless for your unwinnable war! If you haven't already lost it." His vision was shifted and showed new images of soldiers running through dark triangular chambers. They melted themselves with acid, froze in pools of water and burned themselves up in wooden boxes. He saw the soldiers fighting in trenches, casting spells, dodging artillery and most of all- dying. Over and over again these soldiers died. But the soldiers rose from the dead in place; no matter how badly mutilated, their bodies rose from the ground to fight again.
     The voice of the figure rang in his head, "Thine possesseth the gift of the elves. Everlasting life. The limits of thine immortality has been tested on the others. But the consequences of undeath may bear fruit within thou." Artor's vision remained black but he could feel his table wheeled into the elevator by the suit of armor, followed by the sound of their ascent higher into the Lunarium tower. Soon, the elevator stopped and he was wheeled out into a small unadorned room where he laid alone and motionless.
     I don't understand anything he said. Was that The Bailiff?
     Within an hour, his vision returned and no sooner did he begin to plot his escape. The room was small and empty, save for a single door on the opposing wall. Still tightly restrained, Artor gave up on escape within minutes and chose to wait for someone to come for him. But no one came. Holding out as long as possible, he was forced to soil himself on the table, and eventually began to suffer from dehydration. Outside he could hear the sounds of some sort of construction, though his screams went unanswered. After two weeks of neglect on the table, he died of dehydration.
     He returned to that strange place between life and death. Rather than seeing a memory of his youth, he saw himself, blackened and twisted, scavenging through the rubble of some ruined castle. After a few moments that perverse form of Artor stood up and wandered into the distance having forgot what he was looking for. The Artor viewing this memory of the future, recognized the rubble to be the ancient remains of the tower, long collapsed.
     He reawoke, still on the table, covered in his own filth. So this is it? Forced to die of thirst over and over again on this table? He began to sob uncontrollably, shaking his limbs in their restraints which cut into the skin. Once again, possessed by sudden realization, Artor froze in place. He took a few deep breaths, counted down from 10, reached 0 and started again from 20. When he reached 0, he began tugging against the restraints on his hands with all of his might. Blood gushed from the wrists and his head pounded with indescribable pain. After 10 minutes of straining, one of his hands finally ripped clean off at the wrist, exposing the pure white joint. Artor died of blood loss and shock.
     The visions this time were more frantic. In his nightmare he ran in a desert of grey ash. He ran and ran and ran across that featureless wasteland. At his back, hovering in the sky, was a black star. He was not afraid of the sun, but instead he feared of what it represented. A coming darkness that would envelop the whole world. The death of the sun.
     Again he awoke on the table. His hand intact and now free of the shackle, Artor celebrated his small victory, and then proceeded to kill himself 3 more times freeing the other limbs.
     Finally free of the table, he approached the door and turned the knob slowly. The sounds of construction had stopped several days ago and he was in no hurry to find out what project they had built around him. 
    Outside was a small chamber filled with implements of torture. Stretchers, irons, whips, a cage of rats affixed to the head of a chair.... Artor looked on in horror as he discovered in the next room even more. Spiked wedges with anchors for the ankles, a large pot of boiling tar, tall cases of flesh eating insects. He scrambled through the corridors, desperately looking for an exit but instead finding only torture chambers of increasing complexity and cruelty. He fell into a heap on the floor, weeping once again.
     The cacophonous voice rang through his head. "Cowards die many times before their deaths; The valiant never taste of death but once. Of all the wonders that I yet have heard, It seems to me most strange that men should fear; Seeing that death, a necessary end, Will come when it will come."
     Poetry?!?
     "The first of the many tortures thou shalt suffer here, coward, is that poem. There shalt be no being, no wretched creature, upon this world who will die as many deaths as thee, nor suffer as much pain. That poem will remind thou of what thine shall never have. Death. The harvest moon has tasted death, and soon the other. Their eternal suffering has ended, by miracle. But perhaps another can be born out of eternal suffering."
     Artor did not understand entirely, but wept more anyways.
     In the end, Artor indeed died more deaths, and suffered more pain, than any creature that ever lived. And yet, the labor of his suffering never did bear fruit. As all the other things Artor did in his now endless life, it was meaningless. Artor long outlived The Bailiff, his empire, and eventually even the tower. He lived and lived, and died and died. Until he outlived even death itself.
----Epilogue
     In the time beyond times, and in the age long after every other age, lived Artor. Though little remained of him at that time, it was still he.
     Billions of years past his tortures in the tower, his wandering in the age of demigods, his adventures as an immortal worshipped by a race of insect people, he was truly alone. The kingdoms of every age were ground to dust by time, mountains weathered down to meager hills. The last empire long fallen and the last tree long shriveled and dead; all buried under a sea of ash borne of the powerful flames of a dying sun.
     In this dead world, under a dead star, wandered the remains of Artor and the other undead he helped create. He knew not his name, nor how he even became undead in the first place. He did not remember where he was, nor where he had been. If there was food left, which there had not been for millions of years, he'd long forgotten how to swallow, and died constantly from starvation or exposure. Mindless he wandered in that desert until one day, the sun burnt out, and after, he continued to wander in the cold and dark.
     Eventually, he forgot how to walk or move and laid still in ash until it buried him. That dark sun he ran from in his nightmares had come and gone. But he had long forgotten why he was afraid of it. He forgot what it even meant to be afraid.
     In that moment, as the ash buried him where he would spend eternity in agony, he felt no fear. At the death of death itself-
     -Artor was finally no longer a coward.