I think about dying more often than the average person. It’s a common habit among people within my line of work. After all, it’s the sort of career you only pursue if you have a death wish. Even then, I still think about death more than the typical Mythdiver. That’s what we call ourselves, those of us who delve into the remnants of the gods’ forgotten library.

Calling it a library doesn’t really do it justice, and it’s not a name that’s remotely accurate anymore. The issue is that calling it the ‘giant wasteland that’s constantly spreading from the Library of the Gods after they went to war, destroyed the whole area, and released untold power and horrors upon the world’ is a bit of a mouthful.

I would prefer to just call it the ‘Wasteland’ and be done with it. The powers that be, however, decided on ‘Library’, so that’s what everyone calls it now. I think the name is supposed to serve as a reminder, or maybe it’s meant to be ironic. Either way, words have power. The name of a thing matters, especially when it comes to the library. A single word from one of the gods desecrated tomes can kill someone from across the country. Or erase every memory they’ve ever had until nothing is left but an empty shell.

Or in my case, a single tome could detail the way I’m supposed to die.

It was years ago, when I found the black tome, latched with a golden lock with no key hole, my name scrawled across the front cover in golden filigree. I was still new back then, on one of my very first excursions into the vast expanse of the Library. A land fraught with rivers of ink, deserts of ash, and filled to the brim with monsters straight from the gods favorite myths.

There were a scaled beasts that drifted just beneath the surface of the ashen desert, striking without warning to drag their prey directly to the underworld. Scaled monstrosities that flew through the air, breathing fire and raining death to those below. Scaled beasts that could turn a man to stone with a gaze. Honestly, I’m starting to think the gods had a weird obsession with scales.

Regardless, the mission started like any other, thirteen Mythdivers walked into the expansive wasteland (I’ll call it what I want, thank you very much). We navigated our way through the ruins of a village consumed by the wild magic of the Library’s explosion.

Nine of us a fought off a horde of skeletons dressed in the armor of a long lost army.

Five of us were about to reach our destination, a vault of tomes believed to contain intact books of power. That was when the giant spiders attacked.

Two of us opened the vault doors, and I, well I let the other guy go first. Which is how I survived the spike trap.

At the center of the vault was the damned book. I should have turned around and left it there. But that would have meant I’d traded twelve lives for nothing, and I told myself I could still sell the book, that maybe the words on the front changed based on who held it.

They didn’t.

I die in a frozen lake, surrounded by diamonds with a woman I’ve never met before. The pages described her as beautiful beyond measure, which is nice consolation prize. If you’re going to die, it might as well be in a beautiful place surrounded by beautiful people.

Still, I don’t quite like the idea of dieing any time soon, so I avoid lakes at all costs. And beautiful women at most costs.

One of those things is harder to avoid than the other, but it’s a self imposed rule so I get to decide when I follow it.