Azrael groaned, his entire body sore and aching. Why was it that he continuously woke up unsure where he was and suffering from some form of injury? At least in the stories the protagonist woke up with a pretty lady (or two) beside him. He let his head weakly flop to the side. No pretty beauty. At least he still had his clothes on. He sighed.

Scabs cracked as he shifted and abused muscles screamed in protest as he moved. He noticed that he was in his bed again. How he had gotten here he had no recollection. He knew that something had happened. Why couldn’t he remember anything?

Azrael thought back, trying to piece together what had happened. The dull, yet persistent, throbbing in his skull didn’t help the process. How had he gotten to his bed? He’d blacked out. Why? He didn’t know. What was before that? Why was he in pain? Fragmented recollections came back to him, slowly.

He’d fought. He’d fought Mors. Or more accurately the Beast inside had taken his body to fight Mors. His memories of the battle were fragmented at best, obscured behind a mental haze. He tried grasping at the scattered pieces, slowly reconstructing the battle.

A moment later he wished he’d hadn’t. He turned on his side and dry retched as he remembered. The Beast, no he’d, killed Mors. He’d warped Mors’ existence so thoroughly with the use of void energy that nothing remained. Nothing, except a twisted bubble of warped reality.

The Beast inside of him stirred as the mental chains around it slipped. Instead of trying to escape though, it raised an eyebrow, admonishing him for losing his mental grip. There was no remorse in its eyes for what it had done.

Azrael dry heaved again, his whole body convulsing as it tried to expel something. Nothing came however and he was left gasping for breath.

Eventually though the heaving subsided, leaving him feeling ill and emotionally empty. He wiped the moisture out of his eyes and struggled to rise. He had to go to the site, even if it was just to confirm Mors’ death once more.

Somehow the reality still didn’t seem wholly possible. Mors had been so quick, so confident. He’d been old though, an old man. Time could wear down the mightiest of mountains.

Rising he stifled a scream, his whole body in painful agony. Stiff muscles protested against the movement, while bruises previously undiscovered, decided to let themselves be known. He stood, his lip bleeding, due to an effort not to scream. Scabs cracked open fully and blood began to trickle out of hundreds of small cuts. He hadn’t even realised any of this while he’d been fighting. The adrenaline and the Beast’s bloodlust had overwhelmed any pain or discomfort that he’d felt.

Somehow, he still managed to take that first step, then a second, a third and a fourth. He accepted the pain as his punishment.

Eventually he made it to the large dusty area. Scorch marks, craters, and broken stone spikes marked the area, a testament to the battle that had taken place here.

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The monument of Mors’ death, the bubble of twisted reality dominated the center of the field. It was as eerily beautiful as he remembered it.

Dust and stone hovered in mid-air, exploding outwards, trapped in a single moment, while hundreds of hair fine stone filaments spiderwebbed through the entire thing. No trace was left of Mors, the potent energy from the void having destroyed his existence entirely.

The void was too dangerous, too uncontrollable for a mortal.

Azrael opened his status, remembering the backlash of void energy he’d experienced as he’d tried to gain control of it from the Beast. He focused on one particular bit of information in particular.

Race: Human (78%)

The backlash had entered his body, changing it. He flexed his fingers, wincing at the pain. Though he didn’t feel any change, his fears had been confirmed. The void energy was doing something. What exactly, he didn’t know, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to find out. So far he hadn’t noticed any changes though.

Staring at the monument of destruction, lost in thought, Azrael missed any signs of the of the thing that whacked against the back of his head. He fell to the ground off balance with a cry of pain and shock.

A figure, Mors, pointed the hated stick down at Azrael. Azrael closed his eyes, waiting for the ghost of his victim to deliver a final blow. The blow never came.

When he opened his eyes, the stick was still pointed at Azrael.

“Never let an opponent sneak up on you.” Mors said.

Azrael had no reply. Mors had come back from the grave to tell him that? He wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry. In the end he did neither. They both hurt.

Mors however wasn’t finished.

“Your skills are passable, but your execution is lacking. There’s no ingenuity, no creativity, no variation. You lack planning, you lack foresight, but above all you lack control.”

The irony of the situation didn’t escape Azrael. The man he’d killed had come back from the grave to tell him off for everything he’d done wrong. He must have hit his head harder than he’d thought when he’d blacked out for him to be hallucinating now.

Azrael let out a short laugh, before groaning at the pain. He looked at the ghost.

“You should be dead” he said. “I’m sorry, go in peace.”

“Like hell I am, you nearly killed me!”

“Yeah. I know, I kill… WAIT. WHAT???”

“I said you…”

“But I killed you!”

The stick came whacking down across his head once more.

“Like hell you did boy! I’m not going to die from such a pathetic excuse of a fighter! I was fighting wars long before you were a twinkle in your father’s eye. I didn’t die then and I won’t start now, so stop cursing me!”

Mors paused and continued in a gentler tone.

“You did give me a run for my money though, which is not something many people could do. For that you have my respect.”

And Azrael could hear it. The respect was genuine and shone out of Mors’ eyes. For Azrael that was the equivalent of a round of applause. He wiped his eyes clear.

“Something in my eye” he said.

pretended he didn’t see, or hear, instead allowing a big grin to spread over his face.

The look of respect turned to something far more sadistic.

“In lieu of the fact that you almost killed me, I have decided it would be a waste of your talent if I didn’t give you some training.”

Azrael looked into Mors’ eyes and swallowed. There was something deeply sharp about Mors’ gaze at that moment and despite all of his instincts screaming at him Azrael wasn’t sure he had a choice to refuse.

The person talking wasn’t Mors an old man but Mors the Silver Sword, a general.

Azrael gave a wobbly smile.

“I would be delighted” he said, a slight quiver in his voice.