And that’s where he found Connor lying on the ground, his mouth open, his older brother barely breathing.
Lucian checked his death date again just to be sure it hadn’t changed.
Name: Connor North
Date of Birth: 11/01/1980
Date of Death: 06/06/2021
It hadn’t, and once he got that detail out of the way, Lucian focused on the semi-translucent parasite on his brother’s back, its body pulsating.
“You piece of shit,” Lucian said to the parasite as he equipped his carbine. He walked right up to it and unloaded his magazine, all the bullets passing right through it, just as they had before.
The parasite paid absolutely no attention to him as it continued to feed on his brother. Lucian was completely distraught as he tried to pry it off, his clawed fingers going right through it, right through his brother, who continued to lie on the ground.
“It’s too strong,” a voice said from behind him.
Lucian turned, his carbine disappearing and his claws sharpening as he took in the angel’s form, her golden armor accented in white, the blue strip over her eyes.
“Danira?”
His crows buzzed next to the woman, looking to him for confirmation as to whether they should attack.
“You’ve got quite a creation here,” she said, looking at his crows.
“They are helpful,” Lucian said as his claws retracted.
Lucian felt his cape tense and settle. He watched as Danira took a step closer to his brother.
She dropped to one knee, her wings pulling back just a little.
They were smaller in the basement than they normally were, likely because of the size of the space, which led Lucian to believe that they could grow on command.
Danira placed her hand on his head, a golden energy forming and sparking, then the angel pulled her hand away. “The demon’s hold is incredibly strong.”
“Aware,” Lucian said, feeling salty again.
He was completely embarrassed by his brother and his behavior.
Lucian had always looked up to Connor, and now he’d gone from being a more or less responsible guy to a jobless drug addict with a child and a soon-to-be wife upstairs.
He wanted to lift his brother and shake him, to scream in his face, to tell him to wake up and see what he was doing.
And Lucian knew that this wouldn’t work.
He knew that one would have better luck asking a tree to lower a branch to the ground than they would discussing an addict’s chemical dependency.
“I wish that there was more that I could do, but the hope in this household is starting to wane,” Danira warned him as she got back to her feet.
“And you feed off hope,” he said bitterly.
“Is there something wrong with that?”
“I really don’t know. Is there something wrong with me expediting a person’s death?”
Her sword started to take shape in her hand, but rather than point it at Lucian, she sheathed it at her side.
“Is that supposed to be some type of threat?”
“No, it’s just better to be armed when demons are around.” She shook her head at Lucian. “You seem troubled.”
“You think?” He threw his hands in the air. “My brother is dying before my very eyes, and you and your kind have taken a friend of mine.”
“I thought he was your predecessor?”
“I suppose he was a friend too.” Lucian suddenly felt bashful for saying so, and he didn’t know why. Why wouldn’t Old Death be considered his friend? How many friends would he actually make in this form anyway?
“I’m sorry to hear about your friend, but he attacked us, and he is where he should be.”
“Where should he be? Your kind attacked us,” Lucian said, “not the other way around. Let’s stop all the bullshit. Just tell me where he is. That’s all I really want to know. I already have an idea of his location. I just want confirmation, I just want to know how to get to him.”
“You will not get to him, and whatever you think you may know about his location would be worth forgetting. I have called a temporary truce with you, Lucian,” she reminded him. “The other angels do not know about this; I’m trying to help you here.”
“Life trying to spare Death, huh?”
“Call it what you will,” she said, starting to turn away from him.
“Danira, wait.”
She stopped, lowering her wings ever so slightly.
Lucian felt his cape tense again as if it were telling him to get ready to defend himself.
“Yes?”
“I met a fallen angel,” Lucian said. “I was looking for another Death that I know, one that seems to have good advice.”
Danira kept her back to Lucian, not even looking over her shoulder at him.
He took in her form at that moment, her shapely figure, the way her wings almost resembled a cutout heart in the way the tops were curved, the bottom of her feathers pressed together.
“Did the angel tell you their name?” she asked carefully.
“Azazyel,” Lucian said. “He seemed powerful. Big black wings, sort of a gloomy, depressing guy, if you ask me.”
“You saw Azazyel?” She turned back to him, concern in her eyes.
“Do you know him?”
Danira nodded. “He’s one of the most powerful of the Watchers, one who has Life and Death on his hands.”
“He was hunting my friend.”
“Then she must be incredibly powerful.”
“I believe she is.”
“And you got lucky that he didn’t kill you just for fun.”
“He didn’t even bat an eye at me. He basically told me I was a weakling, and that was it.”
She shook her head. “Azazyel always had a warped sense of morals. He would rather let a Death go than kill one that wasn’t prepared to give him a good fight. Same with my kind. And each one of us that he slays increases his strength.”
“What about God? Why won’t your God do something about it?”
“My God is your God is everyone’s God.”
Lucian snorted. “I find that hard to believe,” he said as he raised both his hands, looking down at his blackened form, the ends of his cape swelling around him.
“And true higher powers don’t get involved in these affairs,” Danira continued. “Things that play out in the spiritual realm don’t really matter so much to Him, not as much as they matter to us.”
“None of this matters to me,” Lucian said, indicating that he was talking about spiritual hierarchies. “The only thing that matters to me is my family, and finding the guy who gave me this power.”
“Why do you want to find him so badly anyway?” she asked.
“Because he gave me this role, and I owe him that much. If I am able to save my brother, it will be because of him. As I continue to understand what being Death truly is, I want to use this role to do good, as odd as that may sound.”
“Death isn’t really known for its benevolence. Your confidence in things you couldn’t possibly understand will be your downfall.”
“Good and bad, Life and Death, does it have to be so black and white?”
Danira couldn’t help but grin. “What kind of dumbass question is that?”
“I thought angels weren’t supposed to cuss,” Lucian said.
“While it is convenient to use the word ‘angel’ to describe me, I’m not actually an angel. I am Life, the Progeny of Light. You are Death, the Progeny of Darkness. ‘Angel’ is the term that humans have given to me. ‘Demon’ is one of the many terms that humans have given to you. Which one sounds more benign?”
“So you don’t consider yourself an angel?”
“I consider myself Life, and the promise of life is hope.”
“And the promise of death?”
“Despair.”
Connor’s phone rang. He gasped as he came awake, scrambling to get his phone out of his pocket. He pressed himself off the ground and shook his hea
d.
“Hello?” he groaned. “Are you serious? Where am I supposed to…?”
He listened for a moment, nodding. “Are you sure about that? Look, this stuff is…It’s not bad, but it’s too much. I’m just looking for those, you knows. I get it. But there’s nothing else? Okay, hit me up.”
Connor grunted as he made his way over to the small couch in the basement. He sat, shaking his head when he saw that his little black case was open, some of the supplies visible.
He quickly packed up and stored them away.
“I have a strange question for you,” Lucian said, returning his attention to Danira.
“Yes?”
“Do you want to go somewhere?”
She looked at him curiously. “What are you suggesting?”
“I want to know more about all this, and more about you, more about who you were during your last life, and before that. I don’t think standing in the basement here is a great place to talk about these things. Seeing my brother like this depresses the hell out of me.”
“I can imagine.”
He cleared his throat. “So, do you want to go somewhere?”
“Not now,” Danira finally said, turning away from him again. “But perhaps…”
She disappeared before she could finish her answer.
Lucian’s body took shape in his bedroom back at Old Death’s home. His cape lifted off his form and settled on the back of a chair, relaxing as if it were tired.
He shook his head, his mind gravitating from how he had found his brother to the conversation he’d had with Danira, especially with how it ended.
She seemed interested in meeting with him one day, and as he took a step out to the balcony, staring out at the hollow skyscrapers in the distance, Lucian wondered about the previous relationships Life had with Death.
He recalled his predecessor mentioning something, but he couldn’t recall what he’d said, and he was certain that Old Death hadn’t elaborated on it.
Ezra came out onto the balcony and hopped up to the railing. Lucian was initially concerned that he might fall.
The cat shrugged off his concern as he made his way over to Lucian, allowing him to scratch behind his ears.
“You’re not a bad kitty, you know that?”
Ezra purred and purred, a cat smile on his face.
Lucian eventually turned back to his bedroom, looking at it from his balcony.
“It’s time to switch things up.”
Bringing his hand up, Lucian began to form a spiral staircase in the practice area of his room, the space instantly reorganizing itself.
Once it solidified, he started up the staircase, where he created a short hallway and finally a door in the rock.
He let himself out, the city behind him, a vast swath of dark forest before him. His crows took off immediately, followed by Ezra, all making their way toward the tree line and reminding Lucian of what dogs were like when they were let out to piss.
Preferring to be by the water, Lucian began to walk with his hands in front of him, the trees getting sucked back into the ground as the space cleared. He threw his hands out as if he were conducting a symphony, and all the trees to his right flattened.
Lifting his right arm into the air, Lucian began to pull water from the soil, creating a massive lake that stretched farther than the eye could see. He clapped his hands together, and the water became tumultuous, lashing against the shore as if it were the ocean.
Lucian always liked the sea, and he knew it was safer for him to be here next to the water than it would for him to be in Portland, Maine, or perhaps near his birthplace in Salem.
He would grow stronger, especially now that he had figured out a ‘Death life hack’ of sorts, and that meant that other beings would be searching for him, fallen angels included.
There was still plenty of space to his left, and Lucian figured he would use this area to create a testing ground and an actual workshop for him to create new gear.
It didn’t seem like he actually needed shelter out here, not with the fact that he could control the weather, but he still lifted a large garage from the ground with a flat roof on it, his human instinct telling him that it would be more comfortable that way.
As the structure erected itself, Lucian decided on a curved rooftop instead, something that was appealing to the eye, something that matched the movement of the waves.
He’d worked in construction for enough time to know how to put something like this together, but it was much easier with magic, or whatever dark force Death was able to control.
Once the structure was finished, he stepped inside, contemplating if he should add a garage door and opting for a fancy awning in the end, with the option of adding an actual door later.
Still not done with his world-building, Lucian swirled his hand, creating a fire pit next to his new workshop. He put down a few comfortable chairs next to it and called the forest in closer, the trees reappearing.
Lucian now had a workshop on the left with trees behind it, a long stretch of land for him to use to test his weapons, and a huge body of water on the right.
He checked his stats, seeing what he had left:
Lucian nodded, happy to have enough SP to really be able to craft some things. He realized it would be helpful to up his elemental abilities.
As his crows returned to him, Ezra still off in what was left of the forest, one of the dummies rose from the soil.
Lucian launched a fire dagger at it, and the dummy ignited.
He lifted another, and this time he did the same thing, only using ice. The magic attack struck the dummy in the chest, ice instantly crystallizing its body.
“Okay, okay,” Lucian said, figuring it would be good to add a little spark to the mix.
He hit the next dummy that popped up with a dagger of electricity, instantly frying it.
Lucian would need to add one more element to the mix, and to do so, he pulled up the final dummy, performing the same attack, this time making it a wind-based dagger, the dummy flying off its stand and landing thirty feet away.
He now had fire, ice, electric, and wind daggers, and while these wouldn’t be his main form of attack, it would give him some options rather than constantly torching the place.
There were times when he didn’t need a weapon associated with his attack, so Lucian performed all four maneuvers, this time without invoking a dagger.
He first shot a huge ball of fire out of his palm, completely torching the dummy and the ground around it, the fire kicking up black smoke.
He cooled this down with ice and then lit it up again with electricity. Finally, he performed the same maneuver, this time throwing forth a giant gust of wind.
Figuring it would be awesome, and wishing he could do things like this in a video game, Lucian conjured fire with one hand and wind with the other, using the wind to swirl up the fire and send forth a tornado made of flames.
He did the same with ice, and just for shits and giggles, Lucian created the same attack using electricity.
He thought for a moment of also conjuring up water. He didn’t know that it would be that helpful, but he figured it couldn’t hurt, quickly adding the ability to his list.
It felt good to be so OP, and bad to know that while he was pretty much a demigod in whatever strange spiritual world he inhabited, he had absolutely no power in the world that he came from.
Lucian thought about adding elemental abilities to his weapons, but decided against it, especially once he checked his stats, noticing that he had used quite a bit of Soul Points.
He was just about to turn back to the stairwell that led down to his room when Lucian figured it wouldn’t hurt to create a bed and a television set-up in his workshop.
He quickly did so, his bed facing the water, a flatscreen television lowering from the ceiling. Lucian settled on the bed, his two crows resting onto a velvet pillow that he had conjured.
Ezra joined them, and the three cuddled together.
The
television flickered on and his video game controller appeared in his hand. The Zero Enigma logo let him know that his game was loading up, facts presented on the screen.
“To the island dungeon with Danira,” Lucian said, using his thumbs to move the joysticks up and down.
One of his crows looked at him and Lucian laughed.
“What? Who says I can’t be friends with an angel?”
His crow turned to the other side in a playful way, Ezra’s tail flapping near it.
“Don’t judge me,” Lucian said as his avatar formed, the camera panning out.
Lucian practiced a few swipes with his scythe. Danira also brought her arms to the ready, her avatar responding to his.
“That’s the spirit,” he said as they got on the boat. “Now let’s go kick some ass.”
“The seas between Murgnar and Isle of Skye are very dangerous, so it’s best we move quickly,” the Nordic captain of the ship said. “Do you have any experience on a boat?”
A couple of options appeared, and as usual, Lucian chose the snarkiest one.
“You were not born on a boat,” the captain grumbled. “Only a fool would say something like that.”
The ship started moving, and the captain turned away from Lucian and Danira, his hands behind his back. “Please be prepared for anything. You will find your quarters below.”
Lucian explored the deck for a moment, checking in some of the crates, making sure no one saw when he stole a potion that gave him a permanent boost to his stamina.
He also thought about pickpocketing a few of the men on the ship, but every time he tried, they would tell him to bugger off.
He went downstairs, and as he did, another cut scene started up.
It showed Lucian’s avatar resting in a bed, Danira seated at a table across from him, both looking relaxed. The boat shook, the men above yelling for help.
The action returned. Lucian was standing on the deck of the ship with his weapon drawn, Danira next to him with her hands charging.
Pirates boarded the boat, and as soon as they saw Lucian’s avatar, they ran toward him.
Lucian hacked the pirates down, setting one on fire while Danira swirled purple magic in the air.
Death's Mantle: A Dark Fantasy GameLit Novel Page 21
