Velli

The Dullahan’s head hangs at its belt and gives me a black-gummed smile. It cracks its bone whip twice to torture and shred the brown ground underneath it. The nuckelavee rains blood onto the floor, a pool forming beneath him. His naked red body is an alarm in the darkness, a warning. My eyes would not leave it if his companion didn’t have such a presence. Death, in his same all-black robe, looking like a homeless vagrant, slides off his massive Clydesdale. It is a slow, unbothered drop then a powerful, lumbering plod toward me.

Four shots, straight in his head. He doesn’t stop walking. I reload for another four. They do not stop him. The noise of the gun bothers him more than me. Both horsemen behind him don’t even care to acknowledge it. They stand behind him, bored with the scene.

Yes, children’s fairy tales, Velli. “The ones that tell you to be brave.” Yes, those are the ones you should listen to. Well done.

“Take my hand,” Death commands, five inches from my face. His icy breath touches my eyes as he presents his withering hand to me. Flesh melts off of it and grows back every second. “Take my hand, and I will bind you to my horse. You will walk behind us, and we will take you to the land of the dead. This is what you have come for. All flesh take this walk.”

“I have come to tell you no.”

The Dullahan’s whip lashes out. I dodge.

“Death doesn’t accept no.” The Grim Reaper slams its scythe into the ground with surprising force, contrasting his sluggish movements.

“False. I already have. You may be Death manifested. You may actually be the Grim Reaper and not some mutant freak stuck in this carnival, but the fact is, I beat you once. You wanted me dead the first time we fought, and I escaped. That’s a win. Even if I looked like a coward, even if it brought me somewhere worse than death. If I beat Death once, I can beat you again.”

“Do you think it will be easy to beat me?”

“No, you’ll get me eventually, but there’s so much I can do in the meantime because you’re slow.”

I burst forward, yank the scythe from the ground, keep stride, and raise it to block another strike from the Dullahan’s whip. With my other hand, I toss my blade at the nuckelavee’s eye. The sinking zip of blade into flesh satisfies me. The beast Death rides is a Clydesdale and it is big for its breed. I’ve never seen anything like it, but it’s easy enough to command. I hop on, and with two swift nudges from my heels, we’re off.

Facing Death again, beating it, it’s a thrill unmatched. Now to finish the job before the sun rises and all of this ends. Time’s passed here. It’s almost morning. Few monsters are out, from what I can see. I assume that means they’ve gathered somewhere.

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Far to my left is a massive hill over a swirling whirlpool of water that beats against the hill. The hill itself crumbles under the pressure, bits of it falling into the whirlpool.

On the edge of the hill, beneath the now-fading moon and above the rising sun, is the Old Soul. She battles a literal wall of monsters, who fight to taste her flesh. She’s found the limit of her teleportation powers. She can only move where she can see, and there’s nowhere safe for her to look.

I nudge the beast’s belly again twice, urging him faster.

“Old Soul!” I cry as we run through a brook formed by a woman’s tears, over a sewer system filled with snapping gators, and past a workshop where slave elves make whips and chains while their horned master sits on a throne.

We zoom past black-eyed children who produce dread through my skin. We go over a bridge where a pigman battles a troll for dominance, and we go past a story time as an old fae reads to young fae from a storybook with a picture of a human boiling alive in it.

Finally, at the hill, it’s a slaughter. A mass of blood, monster, limbs, fur, and teeth. All battle. All grasp forward. There are no allies. There is no communication. I can’t identify a single thing to slay. Death’s scythe doesn’t need names. I only know bodies drop, and I carve the mass from a wall to a tunnel. A tunnel with enough room for me to walk through and a perfect view to finally see her.

“Old Soul!” I sing.

Ironically, she smiles—a real one this time, full of hope and joy. Until she sees what’s rescuing her. It’s her worst nightmare. The one thing she wouldn’t face. The reason I won and she lost. I faced death, and now I am death. I’m death on a horse.

The Old Soul freezes. I ride forward until I can slam the back of my scythe into her gut. She lurches forward and retches. Her cane is free from her hand. In one swift movement, I leap off my horse and catch her cane. I wait for the pathetic old woman to raise her head and stick my scythe by her neck. Her back heel is off the ground now. The sun rises, and I’m almost out of time.

Typical, Velli. You never—

Fate, you’re getting old. I win. You lose.

She isn’t me. She is a coward. She should see the signs that she only needs to hold out a minute more, but fear of death makes some foolish.

“Old Soul,” I sing again. “You’re running away? You’re scared? That’s fight or flight, right? Sorry, just a psych major if I got that wrong.” I nod toward the edge of the cliff. “Why don’t you try flight for me?”

The monsters are probably disappearing behind me. The sunrise is as inevitable—

As your defeat.

Once the sun rises, I assume all this goes. Even Death’s scythe. The Old Soul is brilliant. Will she really fall for this? How scared is she of death? How scared is she of the thing she’s run the most from? Scared enough to give up her life? She doesn’t speak. She’s not buying it. No, she doesn’t speak because she knows she’s in checkmate.

“Old Soul.” I put on my authoritative voice. “Swear by your name to obey me—Velli Greene—until the day you die and to never harm me.” I shrug. “If not, die.”

She does not hesitate.

“I swear. I swear Billie Wares, the Old Soul, to obey Velli Greene until the day I die and to never harm you.”

The sun rises behind her. The horse below me vanishes. It’s the best feeling in the world to witness the Old Soul’s face when she realizes that if she had waited five more seconds, the nightmare would have been over. I win. The world around me returns to normal, and yet the scythe does not disappear.