Part 3: "O Jetsun, Lord of phenomenal existence, You directly perceived Manjushri, Bodhisattva of the wisdom of emptiness. Seated in a radiant aura as blue As the colour of a perfect sapphire; O Illustrious Lama, at your feet I pay homage." -- Jamyang Choje Tashi Palden, Song of the Mystic Experiences of Lama Je Rinpoche [Spring 1409 AD, hillside above the newly built Ganden Monastery, Central Tibet] The mediocre sunlight of early spring filtered through the thin mountain air, barely warming the Immortal's dirt speckled naked skin. He shivered as he stumbled forward, his bare feet scraping painfully against the rocky soil. Bandits had divested him of his gold, his clothes, and, temporarily, his life, several days' journey north, burying him indignantly in a shallow grave by the side of the trail. He'd already died of a combination of starvation, thirst, exhaustion, and exposure once during his vain trek toward what he hoped was the relative civilization of a monastery. He prayed he would be able to muster up sufficient strength to breach the crest of the hill before he collapsed again. Methos mentally said a prayer of thanks to all the deities of wisdom for his shrewd decision to have his accumulated property -- including a rich trove of the exquisite new blue and white pottery of the Ming emperor's court -- sent ahead by caravan to the Abbey of Citeaux, where his old friend Enkidu was spending yet another decade of his life as a monk, this time as part of the Cistercian Order. Normally, Methos would scoff at his friend's decision to waste yet another decade of his lengthy life in the poverty and austerity of the cloister, but the relative safety and comfort of a monk's life seemed a veritable paradise at this moment. <<Perhaps I will take him up on his invitation -- Kantipur can wait for another century.>> Clawing his way up the shifting sand of the sheer face of the hillside, Methos cursed his impatience. There was, most probably, a far easier approach to the south, but he was desperate to reach the fluttering string of multicolored prayer flags he'd seen from the distance. Flags meant people, which meant food, water, and shelter. As he crested the top of the ridge, Methos cursed his lapsing judgment. In this case, the flags meant death, not life. Faint bloodstains from sky burials past discolored the flat expanse of laid stone. It was in this open aired place that the locals offered up the dismembered bodies of their dead to the vultures -- the final act of compassion and kindness the dead could offer as they began their trip toward their next rebirth. From the utter lack of any sign of occupation, Methos guessed it had been a while since an offering had been made. The faded, flapping bits of cloth were tattered to virtual shreds from what he could only guess were months of exposure to the elements. Crestfallen, desperate, Methos had no choice but to round the edge of the hilltop and start down one side. He followed the well worn path, hopeful that it would eventually lead him to someone, anyone, or at least a safe place in which to die for a while. His mouth parched, his stomach aching, every inch of his frigid goose-bumped skin trembling, he felt his mind swimming in a sea of irrational thoughts. As he passed around one rugged limestone cliff face, he glanced up to see the horrible painted black visage of a bull-headed, wrathful, deity, standing upon a human corpse, leering down at him from beside a small cave cut into the rock. "Someone painted that...." Mumbling to himself, Methos struggled up the hillside, off the path, desperately grasping at sparse juniper bushes for some sort of leverage. He suddenly lost his footing, and gave in to the inevitability of gravity. As he slid down the rough, ragged slope, tearing open his skin in more places than he dared count, he wondered why the Fates had decided to make him pay for all his accumulated negative karma in so short a period of time.... ----------------------------- Methos stared at his reflection in a gilded framed mirror, raising his hands to feel his facial features. Staring back at him was an image he hadn't seen in over two thousand years. This was Death, his other self, the self Kronos had fashioned from the amnesiac wreck found wandering aimlessly in the Egyptian desert. His hair was long, wild, half his face tinted in the blue war paint he'd worn to increase the fear in his victims' hearts. So many victims. His fingers lowered to his bare chest, his fingers recoiling at the stickiness of the still-warm blood of his victims he found coating his entire body below the neck. How he'd wanted so to feel warmth, but he'd certainly not dreamed of achieving that goal in this ghoulish manner. Not *this* Methos, the civilized man of the world. Death was dead, vanquished, a willing victim of Kronos' reign of terror. The man who survived had learned from the insanity, the ruthlessness. Never again would he be that savage, that... barbaric. But could his self-proclaimed oath, to never again act so savage, ever hope to atone for all of his previously accumulated sins? Could he die enough times, have his own blood shed in pointless ways, to even begin to atone for all the innocent blood he had spilled? Spilled with such relish, with such zeal. Could Death every truly be considered vanquished? Methos lifted his eyes back to the image of his face, and gasped as he saw his reflection morph into an unrecognizable form. The blue tint of half his face spread over the rest of his skin, his head contorting and bloating into the snorting countenance of a bull. But it was only one countenance of many. He had a myriad of faces, arranged in three rows of three. His normal face, the one he knew as Methos, was merely one of the chorus, sandwiched in the center of the top row of strange expressions. The apparent peace on his familiar face seemed strangely out of place, surrounded by the most wrathful visages he had ever remembered seeing. Arms, too many to count, fanned out from his chest, and nearly as many legs supporting his body. Around his neck a garland of severed heads leered back at him, accusing him. All of the faces seemed to be Kronos, his brother, the one he had betrayed, all those centuries ago. He closed his eyes, shutting out the disturbing image from his mind. When he dared open his eyes again, he was faced with the most contrary image he could have imagined. He was staring at his own face, still peaceful, but this time attached to a body which reflected tranquility and not chaos. A delicate shade of the pure spring sky, his legs were crossed in the position of the Buddhas, seated upon the traditional lotus cushion of the holy ones. At this left shoulder he saw a book, and he held in his right hand a sword enveloped in flames, held upright, but, yet, not menacing. As he stared in wonder at the reflection of himself as one of the treasured masters of this land, he beheld himself transforming yet again. The blue deepened slightly in his skin, his robes turned to brilliant gold. Gone was the sword, his right hand now resting on his knee, the outstretched fingertips touching the earth, in the same way Shakyamuni was depicted in holy art. His left hand was cradled in his lap, palm pointed upward, with a gilded dorje scepter balancing there in perfect equilibrium despite the downward pull of the earth. Methos lingered in a wondrous inspection of his own image, marveling at the serenity he saw. He hadn't felt that kind of peace in so very long. No, he had never truly felt such peace. There wasn't the hint of care, of reservation or tribulation in the mirror's view. This was a maddening taste of nirvana reflecting back at him -- a taste of what he could have achieved, if only he had taken another path. "If only...." He heard that whispered regret hiss through his lips on the wings of a breath before the image before him changed, once more. The tint of his preternatural skin deepened, brightened, becoming the unmistakable gleaming hue of lapis lazuli. His gilded robes transformed into the customary burgundy and deep yellow robes of a common monk, yet an azure glow seemed to radiate from his very pores. It filled all of space, bathing both him and his image in its strangely soothing light. It felt healing, inspiring, rejuvenating. He rejoiced in its power, its infinite energy and unequaled positivity. He studied his metamorphosed form with wonder and delight. His right hand still reached toward the earth beneath his lotus cushion, but the palm was turned outward, a flower he recognized from his travels as having medicinal powers clutched between his thumb and forefinger. His left hand rested in his lap as before, but the dorje was now replaced with a begging bowl, filled with what he somehow understood to be the purest nectar imaginable. All his desires, his concerns, seemed to fade into the distance, his only desire to drink of the nectar and feel its healing powers flow through his flesh.... Methos awoke with a loud groan, wrestling with the rough yak wool blanket which entrapped his still-naked body. "Hush, you are safe, my friend," an unfamiliar voice quietly urged in Tibetan, as a hand gently pushed against his chest. The Immortal opened his eyes, straining his bleary vision to focus in the dim butter lamp light of what he surmised was a hermit's cave. "Who are you?" he croaked, aware once more of the thirst which tormented him. Freeing an arm from the blanket, he leaned up on an elbow, feeling his panic receding slightly as he felt the unmistakable thrumming of Holy Ground surround him. The Tibetan smiled back at him, stiffly stood up from the floor of the cave, and fetched an urn of water from a crowded altar along one wall of the cavern. "I am called Tsong Khapa." The monk smiled to himself, turned back with a small bowl of water in his hands, and knelt down next to Methos. "I found you off the path." He paused, waiting until his guest had swallowed several mouthfuls of water before he continued. "You were dead."