JUNE 18th, 2014.
There was nothing around me but black.
I died again, no doubt about that. Kat killed me.
That was just her job… I said I would’ve done the same, and I would’ve.
After everything, this is just…
…another string of bad luck.
“You’re giving up that easily?”
A familiar voice comes from directly behind me, echoing all across the void we found ourselves in. I didn’t need to turn, I knew it was Yggdrasil. There was no mistaking that distorted, raspy voice.
Maybe just to be formal, I found myself turning to look at him. I do owe my life to this thing, for better or worse.
Yggdrasil cocks his head at me, barely moving an inch as he watches my eyes meet where his would be.
“There’s not much else I can do now. I’ll wake up anytime now… Kat and Yasu will never have known me.”
It stares at me without eyes, relentlessly.
“That isn’t how this works, human.”
Somehow, those words didn’t surprise me. I should’ve figured that it was far too simple, how I had thought of it going.
“Then,” I begin to say through gritted teeth, “how does it work?”
Yggdrasil turns and walks backward away from me, beginning to pace around the void as he speaks. Every step of his causes another ripple in what I can only imagine to be a liquified form of space-time, or something incomprehensibly complicated like that.
“Joining these signers is an event that happens in all of your possibilities. It’s an inescapable fate for you. A ‘conflux event’.”
What the hell is a ‘conflux event’...? And why?
“Of course… you need it spelled out for you. Conflux events are points across every timeline… each timeline meets at and branches off again after them.”
“So I can’t… not meet them. They’ll be there, even if I die… like Seraphim?”
“It’s… surprising you caught onto those terrorists. They’ll follow you, and you’ll follow them. No matter how many times you die…”
Yggdrasil turns toward me, quitting his constant pacing.
“...You’ll never escape from either of them. But explaining this isn’t why I called you here again.”
I watch as a mouth, which wasn’t there previously, forms below Yggdrasil’s missing eyesockets. The teeth are like spikes, sharp enough to impale anything… and they sat there, uniform together, glaring at me.
“I warned you about dying again.”
He was smiling… one hell of a sadistic smile.
“See, I sit in here, and rot… but I see everything through your eyes. You are the only thing that can entertain me… and yet you are insufferably weak.”
As he insults me, his body contorts forward, pointing at me with one of his arms.
“It is painful to watch. It really is. That being said, I have a solution.”
My throat feels dry as I gulp down what’s left of my saliva, feeling dread from those words.
“What solution…?” I barely get those words out, and I feel as if they don’t ask the questions I wanted to know the answers to. Though, I felt afraid. Just like the first time I saw this thing.
“This is a consequence. You are far too carefree… and with this, I will make you afraid of death. Then… if you still wish to use me, I will allow it.”
Yggdrasil walks forward to me, leaning down with that same insane, sadistic smile he had manifested a minute ago.
“But if you try to run from your contract… if you die while synchronized with me? This will happen again, and again, and again, until you lose everything you’ve ever cared for, and will ever care for. Remember this, Seth…”
It raises its head, as I slowly begin to sink into the void below me, drowned by the black liquid that makes up this space. I try to reach my hands out and yell, but my body sinks further and further down until this liquid covers my neck and I can do nothing but helplessly watch as Yggdrasil stares down at me from above.
“...I am both a prison you will never break out of, and the key to the door of your cell.”
“You— Dammit! No!” I uselessly yell out toward him, but it doesn’t do anything.
At that moment, I realized what was happening as clear as day, despite being surrounded by nothing but black.
He was enjoying this.
As my eyes were covered by the liquid of the void, as my entire body was submerged into it… I began to see again. As if I was in my body.
But I wasn’t.
I couldn’t move, let alone speak. The pressure of the liquid suspending me felt suffocating, as I couldn’t do anything but watch as my body moved without my permission… without my input.
I sit in horror, realizing that anything Yggdrasil does from this point on…
…I can’t stop it.
. . . . .
“...Seth?”
I called out to the lifeless, but now moving corpse in front of me. I saw him die— scratch that, actually— I killed him with my own two hands. Did I mean to? No, of course not, but the fact remained:
He was supposed to be dead… and he wasn’t.
It didn’t respond to my calling, either.
The tombstone gauntlet on my right arm began to fade… pneuma is directly tied to my mental stability, and right then… my brain was burning up.
The thing, whatever it was, began to move… to try and force its head free. I can’t say it was professional of me, but I just sat in horror. With as many horrible things that I’ve seen throughout my life, the scariest people I’ve met… right then, none of that compared to what was in front of me.
I felt like a child, defenseless and innocent. How could I know why his body was still moving?
Just then, it began to make a little more sense.
The plates of fleshy, teal, and grey armor that had been around when Yasu and I jumped him near his apartment… began to manifest from his back, covering his entire body. They pushed against and cracked the damaged wall encasing him within, as he slowly pulled himself out of it. His head was already covered by the armor, and it was just like it was when he was fighting that Archangel.
As he turned to look at me, I knew immediately that I had either lied to myself or made a deadly mistake. I wasn’t sure which, to be honest. I wanted it to be a lie, some kind of… fabricated reality that I made, because I was too afraid.
But there it was, as I saw him in full. His eyes open wide, glaring at me like a predator catching a look at their prey… knowing full damn well that it’s weaker than they are. The confidence, the smugness that comes from knowing that. The double-layered halo was there as well, untouched… but there was something else.
The hourglass that was originally embedded into his forehead was missing, and starting near the temples of both sides of his head…
…There were large, twisted, and rolled horns pointing near the ceiling. A pair of them. I don’t know if it was the contrast against the halo, or it was the glaring eyes staring at me, but I immediately turned my head, almost snapping my neck in the process, toward Yasu to warn him.
“GET MIYUKI!” I yelled, desperately. “GO! RIGHT NOW!”
I don’t remember how I felt, as if it was instinct, or… just, fear as I watched him run faster than I’d ever seen before. If I hadn’t insisted that he went to get her, he probably would’ve joined me to fight him…
…And we both would’ve died.
As I looked back to face him, I realized that my head was already in the palm of his hand. He had launched toward me faster than I could even see in my peripherals… I viewed his sadistic, glaring eyes through the gaps of his armored fingers. He was staring at me in glee, almost a sadistic pleasure as he smiled. Though, as soon as he saw my eyes meet his, and my back slammed against the wall behind us, he frowned and his eyes similarly lowered.
“I really thought you’d put up more of a fight. What a shame.”
He let go of my skull as he began to walk backward, never letting up that sadistic, smug look or body language. My arms slumped forward as I stayed against the wall, embedded into it if only by a few centimeters. He glared at me with what I could only describe as hatred.
“My signer, Seth… you shattered his skull. It’s only fair if you die the same way… and besides…”
He raised the eyebrows of all four right eyes at me, giving me a questioning stare.
“You know, he’s watching right now…” he claims, as his shows yet another evil, sadistic smile, “...and I can’t afford to disappoint.”
Pointing his finger at me, he cocks his head to the side and opens his mouth, revealing a large, disgusting tongue.
“SO PUT SOME MORE EFFORT IN, REAPER! OTHERWISE, I WON’T BE ABLE TO ENJOY THIS!”
I moved my arms out of the rubble, angrily pushing them out, one by one. My head was hung the entire time, I felt this… rage inside of me. The fact that he sat there staring at me, like someone staring at an ant before squishing just for their own sick amusement, pissed me off more than anything. I gritted my teeth as my feet hit the floor, standing upright as I stood before him.
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
“Fun…?” I asked him.
My right arm rose to my side, as I outstretched my hand… a swirl of black energy, resembling lightning, struck and swirled around my feet.
“Just who in the fuck…”
While I began to ask, a black and grey adorned scythe, my Tool of Death, began to rise out from the ground as black and purple energy crackled around it, flowing throughout its silhouette. The curved snath reached my right hand as I gripped around it, feeling the cold touch against my palm. I often described it as obsidian, because it looked like it was made out of hard black glass, but it feels more like metal to the touch. The snath itself is made of two tendril-looking pieces twisted throughout, leading into two sharp spiked ends. Attached to it is the chine, a large executioner-esque blade design with a medium-sized circular hole cut into the heel. Similar to those cleavers that some of the cafeteria girls used to cut through stubborn bone.
I raised the scythe with both hands, spinning it effortlessly before embedding the bottom into the floor next to my feet.
“...Do you think you are?”
Sorry, Seth. I thought to myself, as I ran with it toward him, readying a swing.
I’ll try not to hurt you any more than I already have.
“Yes!” I heard Yggdrasil exclaim excitedly through a disgustingly smug smile, “THIS is what I expected!”
I wanted to wipe it off his face.
Passing the snath of the scythe against the palms and thumbs of both of my hands, I spun it to gain momentum before I began to swing it toward the right side of his neck. He quickly dodged backward, widening his eyes.
“Oh? Did my words piss you off, Reaper?!”
I take the forward momentum of the failed swing and twist my torso around to meet it, taking the scythe with me as I jump upward, swinging it behind my back and over my head as it strikes down in front of his feet, glaring at him with deadly anger as the floor splits and the cracks emanate black and purple energy.
“I’ll kill you.”
Yggdrasil rushed forward with his sharp claws outstretched, enthralled by my threat.
“YES, THAT’S IT! TRY AND KILL ME!”
Right before he reached me, I kicked the snath toward the bottom of the scythe upward with my right foot, slamming it against the bottom of his forearm. As his arm recoiled, I grabbed the snath near the top with both hands and swung it against his other arm, which was blocked by a clash of his armor against the blade. I kept trying to push it further in, but it wouldn’t cut through.
Clicking my lips together, I shifted backward and spun the scythe in my hands until the blade was upright over my shoulder. Just like I wanted him to, he rushed my opening like a rabid dog. Spinning the scythe to my side to build momentum once again, I brought the blade crashing toward his head.
Thinking that was the weakest part of him, I expected a dead-on hit.
But I forgot I wasn’t fighting a human anymore.
He had grabbed my scythe’s blade between his spiked teeth, biting against it to stop its momentum. When my eyes widened in surprise, he squinted his, knowing he caught me off-guard.
“Ready to fly, Reaper?”
He twisted his entire body to the left like an animal getting ready to throw its prey before I recalled my scythe into the shadows and used the force to slide behind him and to his right. Confused, he tilted his head back at me with an annoyed look in his eyes.
“Should’ve figured a signer would have more tricks up her sleeve.”
The scythe reforms from a shadow slithering on the ground back into my hand as he rushes toward me again with a forward punch, hitting against the flat blade of the scythe as I use it to block the brunt of the attack. The impact caused me to slide backward, almost hitting the wall to my back.
I wanted to leave Seth alive, but I couldn’t allow myself to die there.
As I slammed the bottom of the scythe into the ground, Seth stood there curiously and watched.
No, I thought to myself, that isn’t Seth anymore.
“Target met. Soul targeted: ‘Yggdrasil’...” I began to say as a circular cyan and purple light was cast around me on the floor, “...Releasing Class ‘A’ limiters.”
Yggdrasil stands there, never casting off that insufferable look of superiority on his face. It’s like he was begging me to attack however I could, that he knew he could just shake it off and kill me after I was done.
Let’s watch you shake this one off.
I swung the scythe in a circular, clockwise motion before slamming the bottom of it into the floor again, as cyan-colored orbs of flame began to erupt from the ring that had cast itself on the ground, surrounding themselves around my scythe. They burned a hot white in the middle and began to connect to each other through tendrils that looked like blue lightning bolts lit on fire. There were twelve in them in total, from the bottom of the scythe to the edge of the blade. Despite looking like they’d burn me alive, I couldn’t feel their heat whatsoever. All I wanted in that moment, was to watch the thing in front of me suffer.
“Verdict: Damnation.”
The ground around us began to shake, cracking and turning the laminate floor into rubble as purple and black lightning began to rise out of each opening, surrounding Yggdrasil in a rounded cage made of it. For the first time, he’d thrown away the look of superiority and exchanged it for one of worry. I couldn’t help myself, I couldn’t help but show a smug grin as I watched him lose his standing in front of me. Cyan-colored, humanoid spirits began to rise from beneath the ground, breaking out the larger gaps in the floor. They desperately grabbed onto Yggdrasil’s ankles and began to climb up his legs, trying to force him down into the depths of Hell.
Deformed spirits, or Sapra-class, infamously. Dead and enslaved spirits made from some of the most incorrigible, rotten souls alive. Anything they see, they wish to destroy, so they can selfishly cast others into the same fate that fell onto them. Deformed freaks who don’t have enough power to form a contract with a signer, but have far too much hatred or regret to pass on. They write in constant agony as their faces distort in anger and despair, yelling at whoever they see. Knowing that whoever it is can’t save them, so they should suffer just the same. Distorted voices of the damned fill the air as Yggdrasil stares down at them, confused for the first time.
Even if it ended up failing to kill him… that look in his eyes?
God, I loved seeing that.
Yggdrasil began to punch at them, trying to kick them off, but the sheer amount of them made them impossible to shake off. They started to bite into his fleshy armor, ripping it off as aqua-green liquid ran down their faces. Disgusting cannibals that knew nothing but hatred and violence. He continues to punch at them, ripping them off of his leg as more crawl from the depths and latch onto him.
“What the hell is this, Reaper…?!”
I swung my scythe just to show off, resting it at my side as I cocked my head. I felt like I had won.
“I’m not really the type to tell their enemy how they’re going to die. Figure it out for yourself.”
Yggdrasil glared at me, incredibly annoyed. With his entire lower body covered in spirits, I watched, satisfied, as they began to rip into his skin. He began to roar out in pain, and I felt chills down my spine as I listened to his inhuman voice yelling, but I knew that I had won.
There was nothing he could do at that point.
But something still felt wrong.
A doubt, screaming at me that I was far too confident in my own ability.
I take my scythe in both hands, swinging it as I begin to rush toward him to assist those tortured souls in killing him. Initially, he was too busy punching and tearing at them to care, but…
…As soon as my scythe swung down, he brought his forearm up to stop it.
Then, I figured it out. I knew what my mistake was.
He was lying the entire time.
Regaining that smug grin, his eyes glared at me from an angle, and I froze.
“Ah… did you enjoy that act? You truly thought you could best a god…”
Before I could say, or even think anything in response, he slammed his fist into my stomach and blood spat out of my mouth as I was hurled backward, my back slamming against yet another wall.
There’s… no way. Damnation should’ve…
I tilted my head upward and watched as Yggdrasil picked up a collection of the tortured spirits, taking them between his teeth as he bit their heads off.
I get it now.
He’s not a god, or even a spirit.
He’s a devil.
How do I beat something that shouldn't even exist…?
He continued to stomp on the souls until they were just splatters sinking into the recesses of the cracks… he gripped the black and purple lightning-shaped energy and tore through it with his claws as I couldn’t help but gaze in horror as he stepped through it, heading slowly toward me.
“Was that supposed to be your full potential? How… disappointing.”
I tried to move my damaged, beaten body as I leaned into my scythe… just a combat stance, anything. I barely managed it as I saw his glowing, horrifying eyes stare at me like I didn’t exist. I was so weak to him that he thought I wasn’t even there.
“I was going to let you off with a broken skull… to teach that brat a lesson. But you, and all your arrogance…”
He leaned downward, cocking his head toward me… opening his mouth to show just how horrifying he could look.
“...Have really pissed me off. I’ll be killing—”
He suddenly stumbled forward, holding his head and groaning.
“You…? How are you…? Ugh…”
His hands began to scratch and rip at his face, cutting into his eyes and removing his own teeth as he yelled in pain. He continued to rip and tear at himself until I could clearly see Seth’s face from behind his form, his single eye looking more scared than even I was as he yelled at me.
“RUN! GET OUT OF HERE! I CAN’T…!”
He dropped to his knees, continuing to rip against his with right right hand as he slammed against the floor with his left fist. I sat there, stunned. I could move, despite him asking me to.
“KAT, GO! LEAVE, NOW! HE’S…”
His body goes limp on his knees, staring at me with one eye closed as I watch the armor and eyes that had covered his human face heal themselves and open with a wave of newfound anger, his teeth rematerializing into a snarl as he stands up, staring at me.
“Interesting…” Yggdrasil began to say, now having full control over his body again. I wanted to apologize to Seth… I couldn’t move at all.
“...He may just… No, that doesn’t matter. You.”
He steps over to me, grabs my scythe, and throws it out of my hands. Probably because I used Damnation, my pneuma and overall energy levels were tanked. I could barely move any part of my body, as I tried to pull away from him. He grabbed me by the collar of my undershirt and sent a punch flying into my stomach.
Now that he was pissed, I could tell.
He’d been holding back the entire time.
I don’t know if I was supposed to appreciate it, but initially, he really didn’t plan to kill me.
As I was sent flying into the air, crashing against the ceiling, and watching as blood poured from my mouth and the rest of my body… feeling as if every bone was simultaneously broken at once and being unable to stop crying out in pain, I couldn’t think about that at all. I watched through bloodied and blurry eyes as copious amounts of crimson splattered against the floor below me. Shortly after, the rubble that held me against the ceiling began to fall as my body helplessly fell with it, slamming against the floor of the arena with a splat against my own blood.
Everything was definitely broken.
Maybe I deserve this… letting myself go and killing him so easily like that…
I justify it with, ‘It’s just my job’, but I know that’s bullshit.
Even if he said he’d do the same… isn’t it just out of necessity? If I had denied this… would I have been fired, killed instead…? All because of some worthless test, for some worthless, idiotic geezers who sit in their damned chairs and watch as the rest of us suffer?!
But then, I guess I’m just blaming other people.
That’s what I always do.
From the death of my parents, to everything I did to become a reaper…
…I just blamed other people.
But it was all my fault.
Is this… that enlightenment you feel before death, that everyone talks about?
That feeling of release… so you let everything go…?
I heard the steps of Yggdrasil approaching me, being unable to look in his direction. The sound itself was muddy as blood flooded my ears… distorted. I couldn’t tell how far away he was. My nerves were too damaged to feel the shakings of the ground accurately, either. Unlike all the people I’ve killed, I was now at the mercy of another.
Something even crueler than I was.
If I don’t die here, I…
…I’ll try and be a better person.
The sound of the footsteps stopped, and I could tell, even then, that he was standing before me. Looking down at me.
In pity?
Disgust, even?
I didn’t have any way of knowing. I just sat there, waiting for my death. Before long, I felt the wind rushing, pushing and pulling on my bloodied clothes.
Seth… I’m sorry. If you’re watching, just… don’t blame this on yourself.
Miyuki, I… couldn’t be the little sister you dote on and spoil. Please be better than I was.
Yasu… I’m sorry for always being so hard on you, even though I never understood the pain you experienced.
And Liam… thank you for saving the life of someone like me, and giving me another chance... even with all the horrible things I’ve done.
As the wind rushed, I heard a voice… barely legible due to my fading consciousness, but I heard it anyway.
“Goodbye, Reaper. Advent Hor—”
It cut off, abruptly, before I heard and felt something large fall onto the floor with a loud thud. My vision started to fade as I closed my eyes, but I felt someone pick me up… I even felt their worry through how they carried me.
“Mi…yuki…” I uttered, barely able to move my mouth.
Yasu found her in time… I was glad.
This nightmare was finally over.
I passed out, relieved of my worries.