Chapter 312: Stone

"War is the greatest plague that can afflict humanity, it destroys religion, it destroys states, it destroys families. Any scourge is preferable to it."

-        Martin Luther (1483AD – 1546AD)

It has been only two weeks after the victory that the entire atmosphere in both the camp and Thessaloniki turned straight down from every one celebrating to every one praying. This news eventually could no longer be hidden and began to spread around to both the other camps and the city Thessaloniki, halting all actions of the subsequent conquests as there are no one able to grant their permission. This news too affected the mayors and lords from the other cities and holdings who are preparing to submit to the rule of Antonius willingly to avoid the flames of war, making them hesitate on whether they made their prior decisions a little bit too hasty. 

Eventually at the end of the day, the death rate of men in this era from sickness and plagues are shockingly high to a figure that people thousand of years later would never have imagined, and the average life span of people in this era is awfully low. It is logical for one person in this era who seemed fit and healthy suddenly dropping dead in his late twenties because of some random sickness that God knows came from where. And if Antonius is dead there is no figure head influential enough to take over his position in the army consolidating the various captains and lords from different back grounds. 

Antonius don't even have a son! That is more ridiculous for a man in this era who will usually get married after puberty, have the first child before twenty and might have a grand child before mid thirty, thinking about this he is not even married! Which means that if he dies his force will soon dwindle back to the state of a unintegrated pirate kingdom giving time for the Ottomans to take a breathe and make a come back. 

Antonius himself too knows about this, but suffering from a high fever his mind has gone in to a totally misfunctioning state unable to think and vocalise any thing clearly. In fact he has been speaking nonsensical stuff to Abdullah who is by his side since last night.

"Abdullah…Abdullah! You there?" 

"Yes, I am here." Abdullah responded yawning and trying to break a block of solid ice. 

"You know what…" Antonius murmured. "Abdullah, being human means having limits… I have learnt some thing, that along the long run of life there are too many unexpected events coming along… As long as you are human…." 

"What? What do you mean?" 

Antonius coughed a bit tilting his head towards Abdullah. "I am throwing my humanity away! Abdullah! I am moving aside humanity!" 

"Alright, alright." Abdullah packed the broken ice in to a cloth bag and placed it on top of Antonius' fore head tilting his head back to position facing up. "Be quiet, do not move, you will make a faster recovery I am pretty sure, just if you listen to my words." 

Antonius turned his head away facing the ceiling and closed his eyes obediently. The herbal medication he was fed soon took its effect forcing Antonius to begin sweating controllably cooling his body down and making him go in to his sweat dreams in less than around ten minute's time. 

…

Antonius woke up finding himself in a strange latitude, a place that seems to have no boundaries covered in an entirely white boundary with absolutely nothing in its surroundings, a world of vast emptiness with no object, no sound, no movements, only himself, stuck in this void of totally nothing. However, Antonius surprisingly did not find any thing weird about this, instead he just kept on walking towards a random direction, as if some thing over there in a distance is guiding him, luring him, in to the unknown, like a man with out a soul, a silhouette with out a head, a machine with out a gear. 

Slowly after a god knows how long period of time Antonius found a table together with two chairs being placed nicely before him, with one chair already occupied by a figure with a long hair drinking a cup of drink casually. Antonius walked forward to the front of this man taking a peek of him but failed to match this man's face with any familiar person he can recall in his memories. Although this man, seems to know him. 

This long haired man elegantly placed his cup down on the table and wiped his mouth with the table cloth reaching his hand forward in a friendly gesture. "Have a seat, Antonius De'Ricci… I have longed to having a little chat with you." 

Antonius grabbed the chair and sat down and stared at this man who seems even younger than him. "Who the hell are you?" 

The man smirked without answering Antonius' question. Instead, he pushed another mug filled with the same kind of brownish in colour liquid to Antonius. "Drink it." He said softly. "That shall make you feel a little better… You don't know me it is fine, but most importantly I recognize you, I have been looking at you for the past entire year." 

Antonius hesitantly grabbed the drink before him and gulped it down in one go, and tried to cough it out finding it rather bitter standing up from his chair asking while patting himself on the chest. "What the hell is this?" 

The long haired man took another sip with the mug and replied. "Don't worry it is not a poison… No poison in the world of the living will function in this place. It is a new kind of drink called coffee, from a place too far away for you to know… Seat down, seat down, do not be nervous this is just a plain normal chat. What a waste sharing this drink with you, can't you appreciate its sweet aroma and relieving effect?" 

Antonius looked around himself finally realizing that he is caught in an abyssal like latitude and asked. "Where the hell is this place?" 

"It can be quite hard to explain… This place is called the 'space'." The man smiled and explained in a slow tone. "A place which intersects the world between the living and the dead. Above us is the world of the living, where you people are, beneath is the world of the dead, where I am supposed to go. This place is obscene to you people and no matter how much you people of the living try, you shall not be able to acquire the knowledge of this place, not in the past, not now… But you might in the future who knows." 

"Why the hell is this place so damn quiet?" Antonius feels like this world of anomalies and incongruities is chilling him out in every second he seats here. 

"Oh is it?" The long haired man looked around and waved with a smile on his face to his sides. "It is actually rather rowdy here, with so many spirits going from the world of the living to the world of the dead every single day, there are people singing, shouting, laughing doing all kind of things around us, actually just now there was a man presumably your soldier bowing towards you just now, what a pity that you cannot see them." 

"Why the hell am I here then?" Antonius calmed down and continued asking raising his eye brow and hand on his thigh. "If what you are saying is true, then I ought to belong to the world of the living, why am I here listening to all these craps from you?" 

"Simple, you came here because of mainly two reasons." The long haired man leaned back holding his cup of coffee drink. "First, because I wants to meet you, if I wish for some thing no one is able to defy my will, except for you, once, but only once. Secondly, according to the fate I see on you, you are already near the brink of death from consuming some thing you are not supposed to consume, and thus I am able to make you come here." 

These statements bewildered Antonius at first, but then did he remember in his blurry head on the water he drank the other day with that dead man's head staring at him with a pair of bulging eyes, and the subsequent illness he acquired from that day onwards. In less than a few seconds thousands of clips and memories gushed in to his brain making his mind clear as before again with he hugging his head in agony. Still, he rose his head up at this man still drinking that mug of coffee and asked biting his teeth. "Tell me, who the hell are you?" 

This time the long haired man finally decided to answer Antonius' question in a straight forward manner. "Me? Alright, since you asked, now listen carefully, I am your sworn enemy, rival and also victim, I am called Mehmed, the Sultan of the Ottomans – last time."