What happens after death is a question that has plagued mankind for all eternity.
The fact that we cannot make any concrete hypotheses has sparked many critical debates and caused the rise and fall of several religions.
Quentin never cared about such matters, and why should he?
To care about what happens after death means one must have conquered life and all it had to offer.
He had not. He hadn't even scratched the surface, so why would he worry about death when he had all the problems of the living to deal with?
Besides, he was sure nothing happened. Black. Nothingness. That's all there was after death.
While alive, he had these thoughts, but as he descended into the cold sea and the white of death embraced him, he found himself wondering about the possibilities of an afterlife.
He realized that his self-belief and the promise he made to himself to reach the upper echelons of life were the roots of his nonchalance toward the afterlife.
To dine with kings and command the masses beneath him the way he was commanded.
That had been his objective, and he worked towards it with the doggedness of a bee, doing all he could to get to his goal.
Dying in the cold embrace of the ocean, he felt totally defeated for the first time in his existence. He hadn't achieved his goals. He had died as a nobody. Leaving the world no different than he met it.
An afterlife had to exist; it just had to. No way, this was the end of his life.
He thought of his mom, and his heart went out to his sister; if it was the end, he wanted his last thoughts to be about sending as much love and luck to the most important people in his life.
********
"Up!! Scallywags. You cursed souls ready for the trip of a lifetime?"
Disorientation was an understatement for what Quentin was feeling.
The crack of a whip rung through the air, followed by an excruciating pain that burned his thigh, and if he wasn't fully awake before, Quentin was alert now.
He squealed in pain and fell to the ground clutching his leg.
Quentin's vision came into focus; his legs still burned from the whip, but now his eye saw things his brain refused to register.
The whip was coming down for one more lash, but Quentin, seeing it this time, was quick to anticipate and dodged at the last second.
The ground cracked as the whip connected with stone.
"I said up!"
Quentin was up, straight as a tree. He was surrounded by numerous other beings, all dressed in the same sack loincloth he was wearing, but at the moment something else deserved his attention.
He glanced back, furious at whomever was attacking him, and saw a monster. That was the only way Quentin could explain what he was seeing.
It appeared to be a typical man, dressed in medieval armour and riding a horse, but there was something unusual about it.
Quentin realized he wasn't riding on a horse. It was the horse. A man and a horse have fused into one.
It took all his willpower not to add to the numerous screams that already filled the air.
Quentin thought back to one of the books he read back in the day about the ancient Greeks and the things they believed in.
He was pretty certain he was staring at a centaur. An aggressive and annoyed one that seemed to have lost interest in him and was headed for the next poor soul that was still laying on the ground.
The entire surroundings were like something out of a nightmare's nightmare. There were hundreds of creatures around him as far as he could see.
Some humans or human-like, others not so much. Quentin was certain of one thing: they were all slaves to the master centaurs, who roamed around with spiked whips.
Most of them were crying out in agony to the numerous gods they served. He witnessed one of them bowing his head in prayer, only to be swiftly brought back to his feet by a centaur's whip.
"I'm now your god," it declared with a cruel laugh.
Quentin's eye followed the crowd; from what he could tell, he was at the centre of the pitiful crowd. His eye traced its way up, where a menacing mountain stood.
Lava flowed out its jagged sides, and dark stormy clouds obscured his view, preventing Quentin from seeing the peak of the mountain.
With all the ferocity he had witnessed so far, it was something else short the breath in Quentin's lungs. At the base of the mountain, a centaur stood.
As Quentin's eye locked on the monster, his knees grew weak and his palms were sweaty.
Whether it was instinct, intuition, or just pure guesswork, Quentin knew that the monster was different from the ones all around him.
The mere presence of it infuriated him; a sense of madness surged through his veins, and if he harboured any sympathy for the plight of those around him, now he held none.
Quentin averted his eyes from the monster and almost collapsed out of exhaustion.
He was crouched on the ground, taking in deep breaths, tears welling up in his eye, when another excruciating pain struck into his back, drawing blood.
In-between gasping for his breath and willing his sanity to come back, Quentin didn't care about the whip.
Something about the centaur at the base of the mountain wanted him to turn into what he wasn't. He was certain.
Whip, another sharp pain pierced his back. Quentin clawed at the ground until his fingers were blood red.
"Stand up right this instant!" a menacing voice growled from behind.
Quentin still felt the madness coursing through his veins; he still felt the disdain for his fellow man—the violence that had come to rest in his heart—all just from looking at the creature.
Again the whip tore into his flesh, and now Quentin could feel the agitation of his tormentor growing.
"I said get up!!" His voice tore through the air like a bullet as the whip came flying down.
The more pain he endured, the less he felt like killing everyone around him. The more compassionate he became for the people all around him.
The whips stopped for a brief moment. At this point, Quentin's back was bare, the weak loincloth reduced to nothing more than pieces of thread stained with thick blood.
Quentin's resolve was gradually regaining strength, yet he faced a fresh challenge; he had infuriated the ferocious centaur to an extreme extent.
"You've earned yourself a one-way trip to the end of the camp!"
Grabbing Quentin by the fluff of his hair, the monster dragged him across the rocky floor, his back crying out in pain with every movement.
Quentin knew how to endure pain, so he sucked it all up without whining one bit.
Poor souls scampered out of the way as he was dragged across the pitiful gathering.
The further back he went, the more pitiful glances he got. Putting two and two together, Quentin assumed, 'The more distant the souls and the monster at the foot of the mountain are, the calmer and more human they are.'
The whipping centaur stopped abruptly and tossed Quentin like a rag doll.
It's laughter that angered Quentin so much.
"Now, it doesn't matter if you stand or lie down anymore. Either way you're going to die."
Quentin looked up at the monster; its smile revealed serrated teeth, and it had a menacing gash across its right eye.
Quentin spat blood to the floor, "I'm going to be the one to kill you."
"What the hell did you say to me?"
The centaur was prepared to lunge at him, and Quentin thought his loudmouth had sealed his fate when a large thud echoed across the valley.
Stopping in his tracks and halting its attack, the large beast seemed to forget all about what it had been about to do.
As a matter of fact, the whole valley seemed to pause as if the entirety of living beings had chosen to hold their breath at this very moment.
And then it happened: the voice echoed across the plane, and Quentin didn't need anyone to tell him who the voice belonged to.
The mighty centaur, who had almost made him lose his mind, was addressing the crowd.
"MY NAME IS JURON."
Hearing him speak brought back the awful feeling that Quentin had endured much to escape.
He hated everyone around him; the hatred he had for the whipping centaur paled in comparison to what he was feeling at the moment.
He wanted death. His whole body was aching to see everyone around him perish in the most mind-boggling way possible.
A cool wind danced through the valley, stinging Quentin's back as it passed.
The pain from the whippings and being dragged across the valley brought Quentin right out of the frenzy and into reality.
He looked around him; the poor souls were still in a trance, and Quentin felt deeply sorry for them, knowing exactly what they were going through.