My Servant Is An Elf Knight From Another World

Chapter 870 A Burning Memory, Part 3

"What is death?" Ria pondered to the class, cocking her head all around, searching for an answer in either of our faces. "Or if you wanna go even deeper, get more existential - then what is dying? Well? Anyone?"

No one raised their hands, of course… and I highly doubt she was even expecting an actual answer.

"This was the same exact question Torem and Silas posed to themselves day one of their long, prosperous collaboration. If they could find an answer, even the tiniest slice of one, perhaps it'd be the headway they needed to pave the way to grander questions. But one mystery at a time first. Let's discuss dying. What happens when a person dies? Okay, this is an easy one - c'mon now, anyone?"

"They die," I answered.

Ria beamed.

"Ten points, Slytherin."

I'm Slytherin?

"They die. But why do they die? Who says it has to be that way anyway? Your heart stops pumping, your brain stops working - so what? Living in a world of dungeons and dragons, you're telling me there isn't a spell to mend those little boo-boos? No, of course, there was. But yet no matter how many broken hearts Torem has put back together, how many addled brains he had un-addled, the dead still stay dead. But why, though? How come? What's missing?

"The soul. It's the soul, obviously. Without it, you're a husk. I know that. You know that. The moment you die, you're Lady Enstar's property with a rather permanent lease. Once she has you, there is no way of taking you back from her. No spell, no prayer, no God to save you. That's how it's always been, and always will be 'till the end of time itself. No exceptions."

A pause for dramatic effect, and with a big, deep breath, Ria raised a high, contrarian brow.

"Or is there?"

Irene seemed to have pieced two-and-two together quite easily herself, for the cluelessness I was feeling totally lacked any presence in her fixated gaze.

"Torem and SIlas' search for an answer eventually landed them upon the Reno. Or the Beastmen for the… uneducated," Ria added on, kindly nudging her head my way. "A little history lesson before we move on: the Reno-people are arguably the most fascinating species out of the bunch, helps that they're pretty disapproving to outsiders too… adds to that alluring mystique of theirs. One of the earlier people to walk the realm, predating even the Elves and the Elidna. Legend says they even existed when the Divines were still roaming around the place. But that's all A.E folklore if you still remember what that stood for… anywho knows if it's even true anyway? I wouldn't. I digress though - anyway, the Reno are a very unique group of folks, to say the least. Vampires, for example - you know what they are, you know what to look for. Fangs, pale skin, and a pair of scissorhands - very simple, very distinguishable. The Reno on the other hand, umm, well, they're like, uhh… hmm…"

The history teacher appeared to be struggling with her own lesson here, leaving the straight-A student to chime in instead and pick up on her slack, getting straight to the point without the need for long-winding detours… which was greatly appreciated.

"Picture a chimera, alright?" Irene said. "The Reno are exactly that. They are people comprised of different parts of other animals. You might see one with the head of a bear, or maybe a lion. One could have the tail of a snake, another the wings of a hawk, the gills of a shark. There is no one Reno alike with another. Some are born more fortunate with their set of limbs, while others die or are otherwise rendered helpless with their features. The strong are made into warriors, and they're extremely protective of what they consider theirs. Many conflicts break out over pieces of land, and In a war of attrition, prowess, they almost usually win."

And it was with that last bit of throwaway trivia that it finally dawned on me why their name and description were all so vaguely familiar. I've seen them before, in a dream… in more than a dream, dwelling deep in another long memory. Time and time again, I had witnessed Eshwlyn slay many of these people across a multitude of battles for the sake of her Master's - that Wilvur's - ambitions.

"Yeah, some speculate they're actually an accursed species," Ria followed up. "That they didn't always look the way they did. That something inexplicable happened sometime way back, a transgression against a Divine maybe - and as punishment, had their entire lineage turned into amalgamations of amalgamations. Over the millennia, however, their beastly properties had started gradually becoming less prominent… some actually looked almost human - forked tongues and gorilla legs aside - that was until your mommy decided to disintegrate thousands of years of re-evolution. Shame, really."

From what I could remember, they did look quite odd, and some of the more fiercer ones, monstrous even… in any case though…

"What do they have to do with anything?" I asked.

"What, In our tale of literal death-defying?" Ria grinned. "Everything," she quickly, strangely eagerly pressed on. "If the Reno weren't already an oddity of an entity enough… for some strange reason or another, they are also the only species known in the realm to possess the extremely unique ability of dying twice."

I took a second, needed that second, to process that bizarre amalgamation of a sentence… which clearly was the reaction Ria was looking for on me.

"It's one in a hundred, thousands even, but it's been known to occur," her voice dwindled drastically, low and gravelly, like a haunting tale against the flickering shadows of a campfire. "Someone manages to slay one, decapitate their head, choke one to death, whatever means… hours later, the once dead body would spontaneously resurrect, their injuries healed… and if they happened to be missing any limbs prior to their post mortem, then they'd be also freshly replaced with something new entirely. And everything, mind, body, soul, they'd retain it all. Sometimes the process takes up to a week, so it is customary for them to bury their dead in shallow graves in the event they ever decide to return for round two. Pretty freaky, huh?"

Freaky was understating it. I know magic and the supernatural was beyond the scope of what I could even imagine. But this was another level entirely. Yes, even more than summoned fictional beings. At least there was some logic, some thread of sense in that whole mess. But this… how does this even begin to make sense?

"And it was precisely this," Ria continued on slowly. "This mystery, this phenomenon exclusively to the Reno that pretty much made the entire basis for my own existence. What is death? What is dying? With their combined brain powers, Torem and Silas came up with a baseless theory that dying was just simply another form of transformation - a transitionary period, if you will - from a living, breathing being to a rotting corpse ballooning with meat juices. They believed that perhaps there was a way to override this instant transition somehow, to divert course, and revert the dying to the living. I mean they already had living proof for the hypothesis. An entire sentient race of them at that. Perhaps the key lies in their accursed state of living, their cobbled-together existence that made them ever so occasionally insusceptible to death. Transformative beings.

"It seems Torem was wise to have chosen Silas as his partner in crime. Or maybe he was just lucky. Either way, they swiftly got to work, and their goal? To artificially recreate a being, a man-made Reno of their own… except fabricated and finely tuned to their precise preferences. They aimed to make a creature capable of replicating this overriding of death with no drawbacks, no last chances. An entity that Lady Death will never own. The logic was - if they could make this being into reality, then they were only a single step away from somehow applying this logic to current living beings as well. But how exactly? Where were they even supposed to start in making artificial, unprecedented life? Well, the Reno are just pieces of different creatures haphazardly fused together, aren't they? Start there, I suppose. Choose a creature, inseminate, impregnate - let transformation magic do the rest, all that fun stuff, and eventually - voila! Out plops a freak of nature at your feet."

A faint glimmer found the fiery crimson of her gaze, and for a moment longer than it actually was, Ria stared at her distorted expression reflected in a stagnant glass of water I had left neglected. Her lips formed a small smirk, and a warped smile mirrored back at her.

"I'm not sure why they decided to go for birds instead of anything else…" Ria muttered, her eyes continuing to linger into the nothingness. "Maybe it's supposed to be symbolic of something, who knows? Or maybe they thought it was faster, easier, to take care of an egg than some meaty, chunky mammal. I dunno… I personally think I'd look much better as something like a tiger or whatever. What do you think?"

Another question for the class, a difficult one at that, and here I was slouching down and looking away hoping I don't get picked to answer.

"You're fine the way you are," Irene said.

"The way I am," Ria muttered, throwing her a smile as empty as her stare. "But if followed the natural way of life like you, the way that's right, then really, I shouldn't be at all, should I?"

"Meaning?" I asked, cocking my head at her.

Ria stayed motionless for a second before shaking her head the next.

"I'll tell you when you're older," she said, perking right back up. "Anyway, let's continue…"