The Pythagoras Curse Part II

Death In The Territories

America’s West in the year eighteen hundred seventy and six is filled with terrible dangers and the most difficult hardships. But it didn’t deter a multitude of immigrants who took settlement in these dangerous territories intent on carving out a new life.

I am one of the thousands who have come to this strange new land.

Although I myself seek something others do not.

My name is Petra Allers and I carry within me souls given to me by an old man who I let die a horrible death.

As I have the last six hundred and thirty two years, I seek a way to shed myself of these souls without enduring the most torturous death I will ever experience.

The old man called it the Pythagoras Curse. I now agree. It is bad enough my dying is long past due, but I’m forever hounded by the fact my end to this immortality will be a horrific death.

I knew little of Pythagoras that night so long ago. In my day, knowledge of mathematics and science was reserved for the elite and scholars of my time. Although I was of nobility, and a land owner, I seldom took the time for study of such things.

I’ve now had hundreds of years to learn.

Aside from his theories of mathematics and numerology, Pythagoras believed in Metempsychosis.

He believed a human soul was immortal and could be transmigrated to another body.

All one needed was a vessel, a host which could aid in the transfer.

It is written he once traveled to the underworld, a shadowy place of spirits and otherworldly creatures. There he learned of this curse.

There he was taught how to bestow this “blessing” to others.

Most believe Pythagoras understood it as a way to lead immortal souls toward righteous paths of purity until they finally stood alongside God.

And yet, it was discovered by recipients of the “gift” the underworld had deceived Pythagoras. The creatures from the lost world used him as an unsuspecting carrier for their vile intent against the Human race.

Once the “gift” was transferred the penalty for failure to comply was brutal, the final reward for compliance even more so.

Over these hundreds of years, humanity and its warring lust for power and control has aided me in staying true to my accord.

Many lives are lost in wars.

I know because I am no stranger to war. It was a war of faith which brought me to the lands of Jerusalem.

It has been by remaining close to death each year I have been able to pass the souls of others to those who died in my presence.

In the beginning the transfers crazed me, drove me to the very brink of insanity. You cannot understand the terror of knowing one must perform a transfer each year to stay alive, but the very transmigration of that single soul, could result in your own gruesome death.

Each time I honor this anniversary I search myself for the feeling, the feeling which tells me I am giving up my last soul, knowing what will happen the second I do.

And yet I continue.

How could I not?

My quest is to find the other two Teutonic Knights who fought beside me that day on the fields of La Forbie.

Together we can discover a way to break this curse.

In my years of searching, I have learned to blend into my surroundings, adopt the clothing, the lifestyles and customs of those around me. But there are things of my past which comfort me, of which I will not part.

My English long sword which I carry in a rifle sheath beside my saddle, my great helm which rests atop the robe of my order in one of the saddle bags and three Quillon daggers in the opposite bag.

I shall not part with these things of my past. They serve as a reminder of who I was, who I hope to become once again. I will not let living hundreds of years fade my memories.

But I have learned especially in these savage lands, there are times when you cannot reach a sword or a dagger in time to save the lives of others.

And though I have yet to kill another being since the night I let the old man die, it does not mean I won’t should I be offered no other way.

And so, as most men of this decade do, I travel with a Colt Peacemaker strapped on my hip.

I move from town to town, stopping only to gather information about a stranger who like me, is just passing through. I stay only long enough to replenish my canteen, gather more hard tack, dried plums and hard bread then continue on my way.

This day I ride a chestnut mare purchased three days ago in Adobe Walls Texas for a single hundred dollar red seal. I’ve had time, more time than any, to discover ways to gain fortune. Even in this cursed land I have access to funding should I need it.

It is only when I cannot work for meager supplies or gain a gold coin or two I rely on the funds.

I found him laying beneath the meager shade of a spindly mesquite tree along a coyote trail north of Adobe Walls. A native of this land, he lay there, blooded squares of hide covering his loins. He was hardly moving, his eyes closed, shoes of animal hide torn and ragged on his feet.

Blood was everywhere, his deeply tanned bare chest ragged with vicious wounds where skin had been flayed open. A puckered hole just beneath his left shoulder blade spurted blood in rhythmic pulses down his chest where it pooled with other wounds and continued to flow across his stomach.

I dismounted and hurried to the young boy with a canteen. As I approached his eyes opened and I watched him attempt to brandish a knife he held in his right hand.

The exertion seemed too much for him and no sooner had he held his arm up than he was forced to let it fall to his side.

I knelt beside him, opened the canteen and helped him with a sip of water. After drinking his fill the boy rested his head against the trunk of the mesquite tree. He gestured at the canteen and murmured a single word, “oka.”

I nodded, “yes, water. Oka.”

I could see the gratitude in the boy’s eyes, but there was something else I could see. Each year on the anniversary of that night in the cave I’d been forced to see that look.

When the boy died I gently closed his eyes with a thumb and index finger.

I could save him; transfer a soul into his body which would instantly revive him. It would have healed his wounds and brought him back to life.

But I had no idea how many souls I had left. If it were only one I certainly wasn’t going to squander it on this child.

Instead, I carried him to my horse and draped him across my mare’s hind quarters just behind the rise of my saddle roll. He’d come from somewhere, a nearby village perhaps.

I at least intend to take him to back to his family.

READ ON — THE PYTHAGORAS CURSE PART III

Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V, Part VI, Part VII, Part VIII, Part IX, Part X, Part XI, Part XII, Part XIII, Part XIV, Part XV, Part XVI, Part XVII, Part VIII, Part XIX, Part XX, Part XXI, Part XXII Part XXIII, Conclusion

Let’s keep in touch: [email protected]