Ud the Mortal

by Mike White

to one. He didn’t have to imagine how he was affected by a Ghast Storm, when it came to the mundane mortal kind he could see it with his own eyes!

  He could feel it!

  It seriously felt like he could go down rolling around in the mud and watch it plop off of him all day. The sensations of life were so sharp, distinct. You knew who you were. Where you stopped and where the world ended. And when you moved through it, you didn’t feel like it was taking little pieces of you behind.

  Ud the Mortal walked through a forest that didn’t moan at him for the first time in thousands of years.

  After a brief yelp, he actually laughed the second or third time he stepped on a sharp rock. Physical pain at that level was a novelty that he couldn’t imagine ever getting sick of-at least not any time soon.

  Still, I should endeavor to avoid damaging my new mortal body overmuch, he thought. This was truly a wet world he’d come back to, and he marveled to think that it could be the same as his home when last he was a mortal.

  How long had it been? Time was different in the Way Down.

  That was when he’d stumbled out of the forest, practically skipping with glee, and saw the house there for the first time. It wasn’t made of mud at all. Nor reeds. He was so floored by the sight that he practically skipped over to it, placing his hands on the outside surface.

  Perhaps it was a baked mud that he didn’t recognize? Maybe it was made of Moaning Bone like the houses from Second World?

  But no, it didn’t feel shaped like bone, and the consistency wasn’t right. It was also a bizarre color. Bright blue, like the sky! What mud or bone looked like this? What creature?

  Scraping fingers tested the surface of the structure and found that the color came right off. Strange. What was it? He sniffed it and it smelled foul, like nothing he’d ever smelled before.

  Ud wiped his fingers in the muddy grass beside the house to rid them of the scent. The world smelled too beautiful to ruin it. The grass and the fresh air. He almost felt like he was eating again, though he wasn’t, yet.

  Something to look forward to then.

  Ud moved around the house, letting his eyes take in more of the strangeness. His first mortal days were but a dim memory, and none of those memories yielded much help with interpreting what he was seeing. The material underneath the foul top covering looked familiar, but he couldn’t quite place it.

  There were strange openings in the sides of the wall. At first, Ud thought that they were broken, but they were too regular for that. Then he marveled at the idea that they were planned holes. Weren’t they worried about wild creatures getting in? No ghouls or ghasts or Enlilii here, but mortal animals, yes?

  The furry ones with the hard bones.

  Wolves?

  He started to put his hand through the hole to climb in, but it banged against something invisible!

  Ud immediately hopped back. Had it been warded? Ereshkagali magic here on the Tip Top?

  When flames didn’t appear on his hand, or anything else save for more soft rain, he carefully extended his hand again. It stopped right at the opening, and he felt something there with his fingertips.

  It was smooth, like when water froze at night in the desert. But it was more cool to the touch then freezing. It was almost completely transparent, which is why he’d missed it the first time.

  Strange. It was so much like a Ghast ward in some ways, but it was mortal, it was physical. Ud continued his walk around the house unlike any he had ever seen. Finally, he came across a door. He had seen other things in the yard he did not understand- strange objects made of mortal metal, but he dare not approach those.

  Whether in the worlds of the mortal, ghoul, ghast or Lalartu, you never wanted to approach something you didn’t understand.

  There was always further to fall, even in Fourth World. And he’d fallen down there faster than anyone he’d ever encountered.

  But this was a house, and it had a door, and that he understood at least in a basic way. Before he thought about entering, he peered around more through the wholes and into the house.

  Ud stared in the window at a machine he saw in there. It was round, and there were three long rods with points at the end. There was writing around the circle at regular intervals. Quickly, he counted them, since he didn’t want to use the soul energy to access his deeper memories on the chance he had some there that would allow him to read the inscription.

  Dish, min, esh ,limmu, ja, ash, umin, ussu, illumu, U-

  Eleven, twelve. There were twelve.

  Twelve! The thought struck him like lightening. He had a sudden suspicion and he squinted at the circle to confirm, were there extra marks there between each inscription?

  Yes! Five each!

  That made Gesh.

  Sixty.

  As Ud watched, the biggest rod moved around the full face, going through all sixty marks, including the larger ones with inscriptions. When it finished, it was pointing straight up, and then an amazing thing happened-

  One of the other rods moved from the first mark to the second.

  Time, he thought. It’s counting time! Using a Gesh system!

  It was using the system his people had invented. A hexadecimal system. The same system, thousands of years later in the mortal world. He felt his body react somehow and he put his hand to his cheek.

  He was crying.

  Everything else in this world might be mysterious, just as confusing as any of the three worlds of the Way Down when he’d first arrived to them-but this he understood, even all the way up here.

  A gift from his people to the future:

  Masters of time all.

  The time-slave concoctions from Way Down were far different than this device. Ud found that he loved it- so orderly, external. It didn’t count your thoughts, reaching into you the way Ghoul or Ghast methods for time telling did. It didn’t move in time with a Light Crack or river tides.

  It stood apart-eternal, inevitable, incorruptible. Tick, tick. As long as it remained untouched, the entire rest of the world could burn or be filled with delusion, and it would still tell the truth.

  Now, he just needed someone to tell all of this to make his exultation complete. The owner of the house, perhaps?

  He reached to to grab the handle, even though it was strange. It appeared to be made of some odd metal, but it didn’t look like copper or even any metal he’d seen in the Way Down, like bronze. Bits of memories floated by through his mind of other strange metals scattered throughout the Kingdoms of the WayDown as well.

  Still he couldn’t remember. It was hard to tell how the handle was supposed to function since it was perfectly circular.

  It took him a couple of tries to realize that something was wrong. The knob would turn a little and then get stuck, as if something was stopping it. He listened carefully to the mechanism as he turned the knob, and he heard a distinct sound of metal on metal. Was it stuck? Or was something causing it to not open on purpose?

  He had, of course, sent out a Soul-Inquiry into the house upon arriving, for he was no thief except by necessity. However, no souls resided within at present. He would make recompense when the owner returned, but for now his body was shivering from the rain and required shelter from the elements.

  Despite all of his efforts, the knob wouldn’t turn.

  Perhaps it is some mortal machine I don’t understand? He thought. Then he had to keep himself from giggling as he rolled off the step into an area with big soft dirt and large flowers beside the strange house.

  Something he didn’t understand! It just served to remind him how different he was now, and he couldn’t stop thinking about all of those in the past that kept telling him that what he was now doing was impossible. His life as a mortal was over, they had said to him over and over. He had failed, used it up his days under the sun and now there were only red skies.

  Or poison waterfalls. Or darkness. It was funny how they all said the same thing, no matter how many worlds he escaped.

 
The rain poured down on him, a coldness he felt keenly. Ud wanted to soak it all in, knowing that they were wrong the whole time. They were all the fools, not him. Now he was soaking in the water of the topmost world, and they were still stuck in the WayDown, so sure of their impossibles and possibles.

  Don’t get too full of yourself, Ud, He thought. Luck and aid were on your side.

  But surely it wasn’t all that. The circumstances that led to him falling all the way down in a record short amount of time were certainly just the opposite. Full of unluck.

  I’m here because I believed I would be. Somehow. Even when I told myself I didn’t anymore. Even when everyone said I was a rusted out old thing, with nothing left.

  It is like I have age backwards, Ud thought. Most things leech life, and tumble down into the WayDown to become immobile and mostly senseless, literally a part of the scenery, but Ud was headed in the exact opposite direction.

  He was aging in reverse.

  After a bit of effort, Ud managed to get himself under a bush at the edge of the garden to at least stave off some of the rain. Between the dripping leaves, he looked up at the grey sky. He couldn’t help but wonder if there was another world on top of this one. There were so many in the WayDown that doubted that the mortal world existed any longer, after all. Maybe there were more worlds further up?

  I won’t stop looking for better, ever, and I always get there. I’m too dumb to stop, Ud thought.

  No matter what any creature, entity, ghoul, ghast, skeleton-

  Or mortal-

  Says.

  He opened his mouth and let the rain filter off of green bushes he’d never seen before and onto his tongue. It had the effervescent scent of life on it, and it was better than anything he’d tasted in thousands of years.

  Ud just let himself lie there for a while, since the earth was so soft, though it grew a little more compact after the tiny explosions emanating from each water droplet that found their way in between the leaves of the bush currently serving as Ud’s abode.

  After a time, the rain dripping around every newly-formed nerve ending of his body let up, something that he only noticed because he was broken out of a reverie of soft rain sounds.

  Second World had no such sounds. The screaming of WarGhasts could be calming after you got used to it, but Ud was never sure that he really had.

  Or at least-he hoped that he hadn’t.

  The sun came out and it was brighter and more of a soothing yellow then anything Ud could remember seeing. It took seeing it again to remember that it existed up here. They had the red-hot glow of the Earth to light their way in Second World, the FairyLights of Third World, and the Light Cracks of Fourth World, of course, but nothing like that cheery ball of bright.

  He had forgotten the sun, and it called him out of the dark. He moved out from the bush and sat once again in the garden. It was a testament to the state he was in that he didn’t cast runes into the dirt around him for protection. It had been centuries since the last time he had forgotten to do that, even for a second.

  At first, everything was fresh and new, like the first moments of the dawn of the world, where a cold wet earth was sparked into life by the sun. Then, a mist grew in the air, and Ud didn’t even try to run from fear. It felt almost protective as it wrapped about him.

  Like a mortal welcoming committee, he thought.

  After a time, the mists receded and Ud took to exploring the house again from the outside. He couldn’t bring himself to leave it, for some reason. It was the first he’d seen here, and he felt attached to it.

  Odd, I’ve never been sentimental before, the Immortal Ud thought. But then again, I have not been a Reborn Mortal before either. Perhaps this is the new me.

  It was then, sometime after the rain had stopped, while he was re-examining the door knob, that it happened.

  A sound, coming from behind him, had Ud moving before he even fully knew what was happening. He also sensed something moving toward him rapidly.

  An Acid Ghast, here?

  No! You will not end me now, beast Not after I’ve gotten this far! He projected the SoulSpeach directly at the source of the sound as he was moving.

  Ud rolled out of the way, with not a single drop hitting him as the stream of liquid sent droplets spattering against the door. There was a rapid clicking sound, and the liquid jet moved, tracking him!

  Weaving the geometries of Second World as he ran around the side of the building, Ud called upon the undead spirits of the Earth, his allies near the surface that had helped him get this far past guardians and other horrors in the first place.

  The spirit RememberBelow drifted up from the WayDown, where it had been lying just beneath the threshold. The liquid hit it straight on and was instantly transformed into a more decayed state, losing its energy and browning into the water of the Ghoul Ponds from second world.

  Clack Clack Clack, came the noises from the attacker, whatever it was, as it continued to track Ud while he tumbled and darted out of harm’s way. So far he’d been sure that none of the droplets would have hit him anyway, and RB was holding, but he couldn’t be sure of either for very long.

  His hands traced the geometric signs for HeWhoRises, which was a series of rising triangles. He requested it to aid him as he leapt to the side of the building. His foot made only enough contact with the shingles to guide him where he wanted to go as the hot miasma of HeWhoRises pushed him up and up.

  Finally, he rolled onto the roof, thanking HeWhoRises and letting him feed a bit on his soul energy before sinking down below the threshold. Meanwhile, Ud was pivoting seamlessly on the roof, straining to hear any changes in the attack from below, and making sure he didn’t neglect any that might come from the sides or above.

  As he turned, the scene below came into view once more and he focused his efforts on RememberBelow, the spirit of a WayDown Ghoul Lake. He traced the circles and rectangles that communicated with the spirit, urging it to move closer to the source of the attack which was spattering liquid still all across the side of the house, though there wasn’t any apparent damage yet to the house.

  Perhaps this was a different acid-spitting creature from the mortal world and not something that had followed him from WayDown? Oddly, the clacking continued in a rhythmic pattern along its previous path instead of tracing where Ud had gone. After a few moments, it began tracing back the way it had come, however.

  More of a sentinel type than a hunter then? Perhaps less intelligent?

  No matter, it was still dangerous.

  At Ud’s urging, RememberBelow flowed across the ground in its circle-triangle-rectangle formation until it slipped into the mouth of the creature that was firing.

  In seconds, the creature was neutralized, its long snout no longer moving in one direction with that loud clack sound. Instead, it made a wounded whirring sound, and brown liquid burbled out of it rather than the stream of deceptively innocuous clear liquid that could’ve been water.

  With that, Ud relaxed a bit, the immediate threat having passed for now. His chest was vibrating oddly, making Ud worry that it was a new threat he was missing. Also, he felt very good, as if high on the cherani plant. Particles of dirt were also blowing hard off the top of the roof inches in front of him every second or two.

  My heart, he realized with a start. My breath. That’s what’s moving the dirt.

  They increase during distress. That’s right.

  For mortals.

  I must remember I am mortal now, he chided himself.

  Victory was so glorious for mortals! He felt as if he should be able to glide off this roof, into the blue sky.

  But at the same time, even just sitting there on the roof, he remembered every time he’d lie on some place above the ground in his many millennia of unlife. Those memories were often far less pleasant, even horribly at odds with the now.

  Does it diminish how I feel? He asked himself. The floating swamps as a ghast, the climb to the Floor as a ghoul. Clinging to the Bone
Towers on the way up a Crack.

  The deadened sensations, the remembrance of being human, co-mingling.

  No, the confusion doesn’t diminish it, he thought, as morning mist touched his face. As long as he didn’t let it. As long as he held on as tightly as he could to the new identity, the little bubble on the ocean.

  I am Ud the mortal now, no matter what.

  But I was once Ud the Ghoul, the Ghast, the Skeleton as well.

  And that is OK too, from this side of it.

  For I am like no mortal alive.

  Were it not for Ud the Skeleton and his Century of Sentry, I would not possess the alertness to notice the beast’s spit.

  Were it not for Ud the Ghast, I would not have recognized it for what it was.

  Were it not for Ud the Ghoul, would I know how to sing to the spirits of the earth? I would not be here a hundred times over if not for that.

  Ud was like the WayDown itself. Distinct pieces as you went down, one built on the other, undeniably, irrevocably, regardless of how painful the lower levels were. They were still there, supporting the whole business.

  Maybe I just need the right level, the right areas, the right me, at the right time, he thought.

  And right now the sun was out, he was safe, he was on top of the world-

  And he was alive.

  His others selves had kept him alive, but they were not in control.

  He lay at the top of the world, on a roof, in the mist, all of his selves but still only one-

  Ud the Mortal just-

  Was.

  Mr. Williams came home and couldn’t help but notice that a few things were a bit different as he pulled into the driveway. For one, his sprinkler sounded like it was broken judging by the noise it was making.

  Oh, also there was a naked man with dark skin crouching on his roof.

  He considered calling the police, but there was something about the man’s expression that gave him pause. He had the eyes of a cat, highly alert, even agitated, but not enough to affect his posture or demeanor otherwise.

  And he had clearly run away from a sprinkler, which he was still staring at with a sort of tranquil malice.

  Not that this was really a full description of the situation, of course. The weird shapes etched into his lawn, the brown ooze seeping out of his brown sprinkler, and other questions involving exactly how he had come to be naked and on Mr. Williams’ roof were also worth answering to get a really full accounting.

  This was quickly followed by another, more pressing and perhaps even more confounding question, as something appeared to drift out of his sprinkler and in his direction. It looked like the way a man might were he made only of water from a muddy pond. Grass wilted under the floating figure and some corner of Mr. Williams’ brain began screaming at him to run.

  Instead, some different, but perhaps crazier, portion of his brain was telling him that no matter what else was true about this situation, there were two main truths here. First, that this man on his roof was perhaps full of misunderstandings, and second,