Tarous

by Jeremy W Eason

  The party was a lot of fun. Though there were no issues among the guests, plenty of food was spilled as more than a few guests became intoxicated. We already had several Mogs prepared to clean up after the party. After discovering my interest in them, Lord Rask had gifted me five. I loved those little clumps of slime. They made cleaning a dream.

  As the night wore on I lost sight of Nyxra. I didn’t see her on the dance floor or around the room so I went to her room to check on her. I opened the door and saw two half naked people groping each other.

  “Sorr…” I began to apologize for interrupting their fun when I realized one of them was Nyxra. Half naked with the monster from earlier. They were both shirtless and his hands were roaming over her body. I had been right about him having abs.

  The whole thing hit me like a ton of bricks. Suddenly it was hard for me to breathe. They turned to look at me. I saw that her lipstick was smeared. The guy saw who I was and sneered.

  At the sight of his face it felt like fire started flowing through my veins. I clenched my fists and became lost in my emotions. My body reacted on its own. I jabbed my hand into his chest and reached, not for his heart, but for his soul. I ripped it out of his body.

  I had no idea how I had grabbed his soul. Memories from previous reapers had floated into my mind and shown me how to do it and I had reacted on instinct. The black scythe on my head glowed along with the hourglass tattoo on my hand.

  “In time everything arrives at death’s door… Except for you.”

  I created an unending loop of the exact moment that I ripped his soul from his body. I closed my hand, crushing his soul. When I opened my hand his soul had reformed into a red crystal where it would remain in the time loop eternally. I placed the crystal in my pocket.

  Nyxra sat half-dressed on the floor looking at me as if in a daze at what I had done. I didn’t even want to look at her. I turned around and ran.

  I don’t know how long or how far I ran, but I was no longer on the school grounds. My cheeks were wet from tears, but I didn’t remember ever crying. All I could remember was his sneering face. I clenched my fists again.

  Nothing in the world seemed to make sense anymore. The emotional chaos was physically painful. I wanted out, but I couldn’t escape from myself. I was overwhelmed. I felt like I was drowning in an unending sea of my own confusion, betrayal, and grief.

  I replayed the scene in my head over and over again. The thought of his hands on her made me sick to my stomach. It was so hard to breathe. Every time I thought I was getting my emotions back under control a picture of them would pop up and I would be lost all over again.

  “I can’t breathe,” I was barely able to whisper aloud as I fell to the ground. I tried to calm myself. I tried to pull in a breath. I needed to get this feeling out of me.

  Summoning my scythe, I turned it into a long sword and used it to draw a pentagram on the ground. A normal demon summoning brings the demons up from the hell dimension. This technique was different. When I finished drawing all of the runes around the pentagram, I stood in the middle of the pentagram and I sent myself to hell.

  Chapter 28

  I had to admit a prince of hell was rather intimidating. Taller than most skyscrapers, with red skin and two thick horns sticking out of its head. It was like every picture of Satan I had ever seen.

  I lost my self in the violence and the blood. I was too busy fighting to think. It was exactly what I needed. I ripped its left horn off and stabbed it through the eye. It squealed like a stuck pig. It felt so good killing it.

  By now none of the weaker demons would come near me and even most of the strongest would not remain in the same area that I was in. I eventually had to start hunting demons down. It was a hell of a good time.

  In the past I had worried about demons one day invading the human realm. As I looked around at the stack of dead demon bodies, I no longer worried about that. Now I was just worried I would run out of demons to kill. The difference in power between a witch and a god was staggering.

  With all of the demons avoiding me it took time for me to hunt them down. As it turns out, even demons feared death. Speaking of fear, while fighting demons a new technique floated to the top of my mind from the pool of past reaper memories. Death Approaches.

  I had been surrounded by a small army of demons when I released the technique. Waves of power rushed from my body into their souls. They lost their minds, clawing and trampling each other in their rush to escape. It was a glorious sight.

  A demon came running at me when I turned my back. When he got close, I punched through his chest and ripped out his heart and took a bite out of it. With that one move I felt my injured male pride healing. Plus I learned something that day. Demon hearts are really REALLY nasty.

  I was getting ready to draw another pentagram and head home when the ground beneath my feet turned into molten rock and I sank up to my neck. The rock quickly cooled and that’s when they came.

  It was a trap. The reason I hadn’t been seeing many demons is that they had been grouping up. As far as I could see in every direction came demons of all shapes, sizes, and colors. From that moment everything became a blur. My eyes burned with black flames and my heart beat painfully in my chest.

  All the anger I had been holding in, all of my rage, and all of my sadness exploded out. A black wave of pure death qi traveled across hell killing thousands and thousands of demons. I passed out as the last of my energy reserves ran out. Even a god has his limits.

  When I woke up, all I could smell was sulfur and the smell of burnt hair. I was lying in a crater with the ground around me scorched. There were no demons left alive around me. There wasn’t a lot of anything left alive around me.

  For the first time in days I actually felt better. Suddenly refreshed, I took out my scythe, transformed it into a sword and drew another pentagram. It was time to go home.

  Chapter 29

  I decided not to arrive near the portal where the fabric between dimensions is weaker and easier to break through. I didn’t want to risk seeing her. Instead, I broke through a few states over. I had emerged in the middle of a field of corn. I had wisps of smoke coming off my body and I smelled like sulfur. Spending a large amount of time in hell will do that to you.

  It was night and the moon was out. The moon’s light shined down between the corn stalks. I was alone until two headlights headed in my direction. The noise I made breaking through must have caused a disturbance.

  A man with a shotgun stepped out of a beat up truck. It may have once been blue, but it was so faded it was hard to tell. He pointed his shotgun at me and I went cross eyed for a second looking at the end of the barrel.

  “Who are you and what are you doing in my field?”

  For some reason I expected him to have a piece of grass in his mouth and a straw hat on his head, but he didn’t. A hat might have been a good idea though, his hair was rather messy. I found him rather annoying and without meaning to I glared at him.

  Something in my look must have startled him because he took a quick step back and opened fire. He was apparently using buck shot as several thick pieces of metal struck me in the chest. I cocked my head to the side and black flames rose up to cover my body.

  “I’m Tarous and I just crawled out of hell. Nice to meet you.”

  I gave him my biggest and creepiest smile. He screamed and dropped his gun. He ran and jumped back into his truck and sped off. His tires threw dirt into the air along with a few stalks of corn. He turned sharply, kicking up another spray of dirt, as he went out of the field as fast as he could.

  That was fine with me. I wasn’t in the mood for polite conversation anyways. He had tried to kill me with buck shot. I felt a bit insulted. After everything that had happened and after spending a few weeks in hell constantly killing, I was still feeling a little annoyed with the world. I had noticed in hell that I didn’t need to sleep. Maybe that was why I was still in a bad mood.

  I heard a rustling in the corn field
. It was getting closer. I hoped it wasn’t another farmer. It was getting closer and closer. I could see several stalks of corn shaking. Whatever was causing the stalks to shake was definitely closing in on me. I pulled out my scythe and it changed into the shape of a gun.

  Whatever it was would be stepping out any minute. I leveled the gun at eye level when a tiny fur ball only a few inches tall walked out of the corn field. I dropped the level of my gun until it was pointing straight down.

  “Crowley! Where have you been?”

  The little dog had a vacant but happy look in his eyes and his tongue was sticking out of his mouth. Like always, he looked unbearably cute. He was so cute it was painful to look at him.

  “Well little guy, I still don’t want to go home yet. How about we hang out in the human world for a little while?”

  “Yip yip,” was his response. He ran around me twice before sitting down in front of me.

  “Nice.”

  With one hand I reached under his belly and picked the little pup up. He barely weighed three pounds and was rather easy to carry. He didn’t squirm or anything. Rather, he seemed to enjoy being carried.

  As we began walking down the road space distorted around us. For every step I took, I moved the same distance a normal person would travel in two hundred steps. I was moving faster than any human could move without a car. Trees and bushes zipped by. This was one of the many benefits I had discovered about being a god. I knew normal people would freak out if they saw me moving so fast. I willed not to be seen and so I wasn’t. No one ever sees death coming unless it wishes to be seen.

  We eventually arrived at a diner. It was a 24 hour breakfast joint. It was still dark, but the sun would be rising soon. I started walking towards the diner when someone came up behind me. I turned to see a man with a gun.

  “Give me your money,” said a man wearing a ski mask and currently pointing a pistol at me.

  “You must be exceptionally ugly if you have to wear a mask.” I decided to play dumb. I was good at that.

  “Give me your money now or I’ll shoot.”

  I don’t do well with authority figures.

  “I have another idea. How about you give me your money and then you leave?” I was not in a good mood and I didn’t need this crap. Seriously, what kind of crappy person mugs people?

  “Are you joking?” the criminal growled, aggressively waving the gun at my face.

  I wondered if I was going to be shot again within an hour of the last time I was shot. To be fair, with my people skills it’s surprising I’ve managed to live as long as I have.

  Crowley yipped at him.

  “Don’t make me sic my dog on you.”

  The mugger looked down and seemed to notice my dog for the first time. “That ugly little fur ball?”

  [Charm]

  The man reached into his pocket and pulled out his wallet and tossed it on the ground. Then he took the gun and placed it in his mouth.

  “I think you hurt his feelings. He doesn’t like to be called little.”

  “Muahsofsknamua,” came his muffled reply.

  [Charm]

  He cocked the gun.

  He began to cry. His eyes turned red, his face became puffy and red, and he bawled like a baby. It was so embarrassing I was wondering if this would be a mercy killing.

  “You promise never to rob another person again?” I couldn’t kill a crying man. I’m a god, not a monster.

  He enthusiastically began nodding. Snot began to run from his nose and mingle with his tears.

  I began to grow, my scythe appearing and growing with me. A skull became superimposed over my face. “Good, because I’LL BE WATCHING YOU, MORTAL!”

  The ground shook from the sheer volume of my roar. He dropped the gun and screamed, fell to the ground, and pissed himself. He crawled away as fast as he could, leaving the gun behind. It had been completely forgotten in his terror.

  He eventually managed to stand up and he immediately took off running. I was rather surprised at how fast he could move. I guess fear is a really good motivator. He was still running when he moved beyond my range of sight.

  I noticed Crowley had the wallet in his mouth. Apparently he had robbed the mugger. I reached down and removed the wallet from his mouth and began flipping through it. “Nice, over three hundred dollars. We are going to eat well today.”

  “Yip yip,” replied Crowley with his usual happy smile. He began to hop in circles around me. It shouldn’t be possible for anything to be so cute.

  We headed to our previous destination, the diner. We opened the glass door and stepped inside. The smell of frying grease filled the air. I could hear the sounds of sausage and bacon sizzling on the grill. The place felt a little dirty but we were hungry. It was empty inside apart from one middle aged woman who appeared to work there and one older gentleman drinking a cup of coffee and reading a newspaper. I hadn’t realized newspapers still existed.

  “Sorry sir, no dogs.”

  [Charm]

  “Doggie! So cute!” cooed the waitress. Crowley’s charm was a vicious weapon.

  I ordered one of everything on the menu and it was all delicious. Except the bacon. Not because it wasn’t good but because I wasn’t fast enough. Crowley ate every last piece. For such a small animal he could move really fast. He currently looked like a beach ball.

  The meal was excellent, at least 50% grease, just how a god of death likes his food. I left the waitress all the money I had acquired from the mugger. Crowley and I left and headed back out onto the road.

  Crowley walked along beside me until he started to fall asleep. He stretched, yawned, stretched, and blinked as his eyes slowly closed. He stretched again and finally laid down on the road. I paused and waited to see if he would stretch again. Then I picked him up and put him onto my shoulder.

  He immediately woke up and turned so his head was facing forward. His eyes sparkled and his tongue was hanging out of his mouth that was currently in a big grin as I began to walk again. My dog was crazy and weird.

  I moved with my normal super speed and I only slowed down when we came to a rather large lake. It was nice and quiet with no one around. The sun was starting to come up and a cool breeze was blowing across the water. We walked over to the shore and watched the sun rise.

  “What do you want to do next Crowley? Want to go swimming? Or boating?”

  [Charm]

  A fish jumped out of the lake, then another and another.

  “So you want to go fishing I see.”

  The little dog ran around yipping as one fish after another jumped out of the lake. He began to eat the fish with his impressive appetite.

  I was still full from breakfast. While Crowley continued to wolf down fish I wondered where he was putting them. He was so tiny and despite how much he ate Crowley never grew any bigger. I sat and meditated as my tiny dog continued to enjoy himself. Ever since I became death the amount of death qi in my body had exploded to insane amounts. The original vortex inside my body had been destroyed. It was time I reawaken it.

  Using the technique I had learned years before, I rotated all the life qi in my body with an equal amount of death qi. I slowly began to increase the amount of death qi in the rotating hurricane of qi and as I did more life qi was drawn into my body thanks to the balancing ability of my technique.

  Taking a deep breath, I repeated the process. As the death qi increased in the vortex more life qi was drawn out of the air to accumulate inside me, slowly balancing out the vortex of qi. The rate I was absorbing life qi was insane. The power didn’t trickle into me, it flooded. I was being drowned in the overwhelming flood of power.

  I repeated the process over and over again, but it seemed like there was no end to the amount of life and death qi I could absorb. The vortex inside of me grew far larger than I had ever felt before. I could feel the power coursing throughout my entire body.

  This technique had the added effect of tempering the body and I could feel my body starting to change
. Then like a dam breaking, I could feel something drastically change within my body. A black sludge began to squeeze itself out of my pores. It was the impurities and harmful things that had been inside my body.

  My body was now covered with a nasty, smelly, sludge. I sat very still. I felt so dirty, and I didn’t want to touch anything. Crowley stopped fishing to watch me. He had a large smile on his face as if he found the entire situation hilarious.

  I walked down to the water and kneeled down to bathe. I managed to wash all the black sludge off of my body, though it was difficult since the stuff was sticky like tar. Once finished, I sat on the banks of the lake and let the sun bake me dry.

  It was nice to just relax. I felt wonderful. My body felt different, stronger. I felt like I had changed on a fundamental level. I was bursting with energy and I smiled just because it was good to be alive.

  I knew my body was even stronger than it was before. The technique I had used was originally meant to strengthen my body, I just didn’t think it was able to strengthen my body anymore since I became the god of death. How powerful was a technique that could strengthen a god?

  The more I thought about my technique the more I realized what I needed to do. I had learned the technique from a damaged book called the “Heavenly Emperor World Technique.” Unfortunately I only had the first chapter. But now that I had the man power, or soul power as it were, I could search the entire world for any pieces or clues about the technique. I might even be able to find the next chapter. I sent out my orders to all of my soul guides. I could sense acknowledgement from all of them. They knew this was high priority and took their mission seriously.

  I continued to watch Crowley play as I laid there. He was truly too cute. Just sitting in the sun, in nature, watching that cute little puppy have fun helped me to mend my heart. Your first love is always the hardest.

  As I sat there baking in the hot sun, I realized it was finally time to return home. I called Crowley over and when he came close I scooped up my tiny little dog and called upon the powers of my mantel of death. More memories from the previous grim reapers floated into my mind. A new technique appeared and now I would no longer need to draw pentagrams to travel long distances instantly.