Death's Mantle: A Dark Fantasy GameLit Novel

by Harmon Cooper

  “Do you really want to test that theory out? You can kill me, who says I can’t kill you?”

  She gulped. “I won’t attack you for now. You have my word.”

  Lucian toggled his carbine to fully-automatic mode. His cape floated behind the angel as she sat up. Lucian’s scythe was at the ready, his crow flying a circle above her head.

  “When did you die?” Lucian asked.

  “You mean recently?”

  “Um, sure.”

  “February 14, 2019.”

  “Valentine’s Day,” Lucian said, his weapon still trained on her.

  “Cute.”

  “We are more like than you think. I passed on October 19, 2020.”

  “I’m aware.” Danira was on one knee now, her hands at her sides, her wings ruffling. Lucian could see his crow inside her body, slowly moving back and forth so she couldn’t pry it out as easily.

  “Are you in any pain?”

  “Does any of this stuff hurt you?” she asked in response.

  “Not really.”

  “It’s the same for me.”

  “And when were you born?”

  “You mean recently?”

  “Yes,” he said, “why do you keep asking me that?”

  “I was born in 1995, five years after you.” Danira scowled at him. “I can’t believe I’m talking to you; I can’t believe you have trapped me like this…” She shook her head. “Why are you here, anyway? What could you possibly want with a mental hospital?”

  “We will get to that in a moment. I want to know where you took my predecessor.”

  She glared at Lucian. “We took him to a place where you won’t be able to get him.”

  “Heaven?”

  “Like I said, a place you won’t be able to get him.”

  “We don’t have to be enemies, you know,” Lucian told her.

  “You prey upon people, we help people through prayer. Tell me how we aren’t supposed to be enemies.”

  “You feed off hope. We grow stronger by killing the parasites that are artificially keeping people alive. I don’t see why that’s so hard for you to understand.”

  “That’s not what…” She bit her lip.

  “That’s not what you were told? Because that’s exactly what’s happening here! All the Deaths in our world, and any world to possibly exist, are aiding people who have lived past their expiry dates.”

  “Thus killing them,” she said. “Admit it. Admit what you are.”

  Lucian thought about Lisa, and how she had died just after he killed her parasite.

  “Admit it,” Danira said, her nostrils flaring, a curl of her golden hair falling in her face.

  “That’s why I’m here,” Lucian finally admitted. “I don’t want to deal with parasites that prolong people’s lives, not if I don’t have to.”

  “So you have come here to a mental hospital to prey on the weak?”

  “What? No, nothing like that. I have come here to…” Lucian hesitated for a moment. “I’ve come here to hunt other targets.”

  “Looks like you have done a bang-up job of it,” she said, glancing around the room; a few of the fires were still burning.

  “You and I are similar, admit that. Hell, we’re even from the same generation.”

  “You know nothing of the generation I hail from.”

  “And we’re both utilizing our powers in new ways,” Lucian continued. “How many of the other angels use guns?”

  “A few.”

  “Ones like yours?” Lucian asked, going with an assumption he had made the first time he’d seen her aim her golden weapon at them, that she had been inspired by his creation.

  “No,” she finally said.

  “And how did you track me?”

  “I know everything about you,” she told him, “your history, what you have been through, your family…”

  “Yet you attacked me while I was at my own funeral, as I was checking in on my brother?”

  “I had to be sure.”

  “Sure? Do you know what my brother is doing?” he asked, anger rising in his voice.

  Danira nodded. “And hopefully God will be able to help him.”

  “No one is going to help him. Connor is going to die in seven months, with or without God. Have you even met God?”

  “I have been in His presence, yes.”

  “How do you even know it is a he?”

  “Is this the conversation we need to be having right now?”

  “Maybe not. What I care about is saving my brother, actually doing something, so if you want to know why I’m here, and why I do what I do, that’s why. I’m trying to make a difference...”

  “I’m trying to do something too,” she said, conviction in her voice.

  “Can you kill the parasite that is attached to him?” Lucian asked.

  She raised an eyebrow at him. “Parasite?”

  “Just like the things I killed in here.” Lucian waved his hand around the room. “Only stronger. He has one, and it’s the thing that is fueling his addiction. I saw it; I have seen it. I saw it as recently as today. My powers are useless against it. Yours?”

  Danira gasped. “You can see the demon that has attached itself to him?”

  “The demon? It’s a parasite,” Lucian told her. “It has clear skin with yellow inside its body. It’s not as large as some of these other ones, but that thing is damn hard to kill. Anything I’ve done so far simply passed right through it. That’s why I’m trying to grow stronger. Maybe if I grow stronger…”

  “You’re really able to see the demon?”

  “What kind of demon looks like an insect to you?”

  “That’s not what it looks like to me at all,” she said. “To me, it’s just this force that has attached itself to him. It has wrapped itself around his body, bringing its claws into his chest, constantly feeding on his neck.” Danira clenched her fists together again. “I hate it, and I hate the other ones I’ve seen.”

  “An angel that hates?” Lucian smirked. “I believe I’ve seen everything now.”

  “The thing attached to him is a demon, just like you,” she hissed. “Maybe it is time to come to terms with what you are.”

  “What I am? Look at you. I’m not trying to do anything to disturb you, yet you continually come after me, and you and your kind kidnapped my predecessor, who…” Lucian nodded. “Who has become my friend in all this.”

  “He attacked us, we responded.”

  “Being the Grim Reaper is lonely,” he said, the vulnerability he had just displayed making his voice quiver. “Going around and seeing all the things that are feeding off people, living past their lives, fighting these terrible creatures…”

  “Am I supposed to feel sorry for you?”

  “You are supposed to have compassion,” he snapped. “I thought it came with the wings.”

  “You have a mouth on you. I don’t know if or when I’ll encounter another Death, but hopefully, he’s not as mouthy as you.”

  “There you go assigning genders again. Death can be male or female or probably anything in between. I don’t know. I’ve only met two. And my name isn’t Death, it’s Lucian. Just like how your name is Danira.”

  “That’s my angel name,” she said. “When I was human, I went by the name of Danielle Morales.”

  “And how did you take your role, anyway? Did you just die and become an angel?”

  “No, I died helping someone, and then I returned to my original form,” she said, her voice softening.

  “Original form? What happened?”

  “There was a shooting. I was at a club with some friends, and some guy angry with the way his life turned out stormed the place with an assault rifle. There wasn’t much time to act, and as it happened, I shoved my friend behind the bar. In the process of helping another person get to cover, I was shot six times.”

  “Did the shooter die?”

  “He killed himself at the scene, and now he rots in hell.”

  “So sin
ce you died doing something good, you were reborn an angel? Is that how that works for Life?”

  “Sort of. Some have been angels for thousands of years; others like to return to Earth and live as humans. This was the path I chose. I’d been an angel before, and decided to take the life of a human again. Of course, I only came to understand this after I died. While I was Danielle Morales, I didn’t know I’d once been an angel.”

  “That’s interesting.” Lucian ignoring the fact that the fire behind him had started to burn through a support beam.

  “I could return back, you know,” she said, looking at Lucian earnestly. “I could return back to Earth and go through the whole process again. Maybe one day I’ll do that. As for now, I’m happy being an angel again. It was nice taking a small break from it, even if it was just a short amount of time in the grand scheme of things.”

  “Well, you already know my story, otherwise this would be the part where I tell you about who I was before all this. At least I can tell the truth in how I became Death. I’m guessing you don’t know that part.”

  Danira shook her head. “I don’t know much about how you became the demon that you are.”

  “First of all, I’m not a demon. Stop calling me a demon.”

  “I suppose I can refrain from calling you that for the time being.”

  Lucian took a deep breath in. “Since you say you know everything about me, you already know about the heart condition I had, ventricular tachycardia. But anyway, I was playing video games when Old Death came for me. I could actually see him, which is apparently a rare thing. I had a gun sitting next to me because I lived in a rough neighborhood. It made me feel safe. I aimed the gun at Old Death, and as soon as I did, injuresouls came. I’m guessing you know about them, right?”

  “They are a particularly nasty class of demon, but let me assure you, Lucian, there are things worse than injuresouls.”

  “But they can kill us, right? At least that’s what Old Death told me.”

  “That is true,” she said softly.

  “But for some reason, they can’t kill someone who is mortal. And since I could see Old Death, I could see them as well. So I started shooting and I killed like five of them, and he killed one.”

  She tilted her head at him, his crow still moving in her body. “He was powerful enough to kill one?”

  “You wouldn’t know it by looking at him, but yes, he has been Death for three hundred years, and even though he’s semi-retired now, which is possibly the only reason that you and your little group of angel buddies were able to take him, he’s quite powerful.”

  Lucian recalled the city that Old Death had seemingly created from scratch, far enough away from civilization that it seemed like no one would find him there. While he hadn’t quite put his finger on it, he knew his predecessor was more powerful than he let on.

  “And he gave you his mantle after you saved him,” Danira said, connecting the dots.

  “That’s exactly what happened, and here we are.”

  Lucian had been too busy talking to notice that a black mist had started to seep into the room from underneath the door. Danira pointed her gun at Lucian, her eyes wide with fear.

  “Hey, you said…”

  She fired her weapon directly over his shoulder, Lucian stepping aside to see her blast go straight through the body of an injuresoul and exit out the other side, the creature experiencing no injuries whatsoever.

  Several of them formed out of the mist. Lucian lifted his hand and instantly recalled the crow from inside Danira’s body, which tore out from her armor, the woman cringing as it returned to Lucian’s side.

  “Sorry about that!” He equipped his lava sword, even though he knew it would do little good against the injuresouls.

  He drove his sword into one of the injuresouls’ chests. The creature gnashed its teeth at him, its jaw dislocating as its tongue burst out of its mouth, wrapping around Lucian’s face.

  His crow shot right through the tongue, and as Lucian stumbled away, he watched the tongue fall to the ground and slick its way back to the injuresoul, moving up its body like a slug and reattaching itself.

  The injuresoul charged Lucian and slipped around him, digging its claws into the back of his head, slamming him to the ground.

  He saw a burst of golden light above him. Danira’s shot forced the injuresoul to stumble backward, which gave Lucian the second he needed to slip out of the way.

  The next injuresoul that came managed to duck Lucian’s first swing, but not the attack from his cape, which spun behind the injuresoul and drove Lucian’s scythe into its back.

  Danira lifted up into the air, her wings flapping as two of the injuresouls leaped to meet her, the angel knocking them back down to the ground with her sword. She dove toward one of them and drove her blade into the top of its skull, all the way down into its body.

  But rather than die, rather than fall to its knees and give in, it simply tilted its head up, its mouth opening, cheeks starting to tear as it began to suck in air. Its mouth grew even larger, to the diameter of a beach ball. Danira used her blade to stop herself from being sucked in.

  Even though he was still fending off one of the demons with his lava sword, Lucian equipped his whip and cracked it in the injuresoul’s direction, the end of his whip latching onto the injuresoul’s lip and yanking it to the ground, stopping its attack.

  This also had the effect of helping Danira pull her sword out of its skull, her weapon immediately morphing into a gun which she used to fire on an injuresoul leaping in the air toward Lucian.

  They locked eyes, nodded at each other, and continued fighting back.

  Lucian knew it was an unwinnable battle, but he planned to stick around as long as Danira was still here.

  To tilt the odds in their favor, he equipped his plasma blowtorch and pulled the lever back, unleashing a rippling blast of thermal energy on the injuresouls forming in the dark mist.

  Lucian didn’t let up either.

  As he tore through them, he screamed for Danira to get out of the area.

  Lucian’s cape continued to protect him, flying before him and severing some of the demons' limbs, only for them to grow back.

  His crows did the same, slamming into the injuresouls’ chests and tearing out the other side, Lucian still screaming as he painted the mist with his plasma blowtorch.

  He was too focused on the action in front of him to see one of the injuresouls come from the side. The demon tackled Lucian to the ground, its jaw snapping open as its face enlarged like a blowfish, sucking in enough air to cause a small windstorm.

  Lucian could feel his skin pulling away from his face, his cheeks starting to tear, his hair whipping from the back of his head, his clothing shredding.

  Lucian equipped his carbine and unloaded a full magazine into the creature trying to inhale him.

  His cape slapped against the injuresoul, wrapping around its face and trying to stop its attack.

  The demon’s serrated teeth tore through Lucian’s cape, but it still managed to stab the injuresoul in the back with his scythe.

  Everything turned upside down after a hand wrapped under his shoulder, pulling him upward through the ceiling, an explosion allowing him to break through the ceiling and sail into the sky.

  Gray clouds, New York City on the horizon. Lucian took a deep breath in as he realized that Danira had saved him.

  The angel pulled him higher and higher into the air, his cape following after him and his crows not far behind.

  Lucian’s stats flashed before him, everything blurry, his focus on the Soul Points he had left.

  Something wasn’t right. They were going too high up, way higher than he’d ever flown before.

  And even though he could barely keep his eyes open, Lucian equipped his lava sword, the weapon hanging at his side as they continued through a cloud.

  He would fight her if he had to.

  If she tried to take him while he was weak, if she tried anything, he would fig
ht back. But he also had a backup plan, his other fist closed, his pinky finger next to his thumb.

  The city spun around him as Danira suddenly lost steam. She began to plummet, careening back toward the Earth.

  It wasn’t a graceful landing.

  The two crashlanded onto a rooftop, Lucian’s body flipping up and over, and rolling a few times before finally being stopped by the outer ledge.

  Danira was on her side, one of her wings splayed out, her eyes half open as she looked over at him.

  “Don’t try anything,” he said, the words fumbling out of his mouth. Lucian lifted his sword, cringing as he did so, and pointed it at her.

  “You fucking asshole,” Danira told him, a grin stretching across her face.

  “Angels aren’t supposed to cuss,” Lucian told her, his sword dropping to the rooftop, its sound drowned out by the city.

  “Are you going to teleport away?”

  She tried to press herself up, failing and falling back to her side.

  Lucian kept his arm where she couldn’t see it, his thumb and pinky still grazing each other. “Not just yet.”

  His crow landed in front of him, hovering just above the ground and tilting its head sideways as it looked at Lucian. His other spherical creation followed suit, landing next to the first.

  “Those things are pretty awesome,” Danira said.

  “They sure are helpful.”

  “So we fought injuresouls together.”

  “We did.”

  She swept some of the hair out of her eyes. “Care to come clean about why you were at the mental hospital in the first place?”

  “I told you, to gain power by killing parasites,” Lucian said. “Not only do I gain more power by killing the ones at the mental hospital, but…”

  “What?”

  “I don’t feel as responsible for what I’ve done.”

  Her eyes narrowed on him. “So you admit that that is what you do, that you go around forcing people to die?”

  “Paint the picture any way you’d like, I’m just trying to help my brother. And I would like to help my predecessor as well, so…” Lucian pressed himself up, groaning as he did so, his vision blurring and refocusing. “Either help me, get out of my way, or face the consequences.”

  Life and Death stared each other down for a moment, electricity sparking between them.