Death's Mantle 3

by Harmon Cooper

  Lucian sent Hugin in this time, just to be sure that Old Death and the fallen angel weren’t in the throes of passion.

  “Hold on,” his predecessor called out. “Just give us a bloody moment.”

  “I’m with Danira and Mastima,” Lucian called through the opening of the tent.

  “You’re what? Fine, fine. Come in.”

  Lucian stepped in to see that the place had been rearranged once again, the two now going with a large, circular bed that sat near the far wall and was covered in cushions.

  The motif was similar as it had been before, a Middle Eastern feel to it, but there were also Western influences, such as the leather chair on the far side of the giant tent, which sat before the stove.

  His predecessor once again looked oddly fresh with his new skin, and he wasn’t wearing black robes this time. No, he now wore a three-piece suit, which was also black, everything looking perfect aside from the fact that he wasn’t wearing any shoes.

  “Well?” he asked, doing a quick turn.

  “Why are you so dressed up?”

  His predecessor laughed. “We have guests,” he told Lucian. “Or should I say, you have brought guests.”

  Leliel conjured a round table, some of the cushions and rugs they had on the ground disappearing. Chairs formed around the table, and she was the first to take a seat.

  Lucian did the same, Danira sitting to his left and Mastima to his right. Old Death relaxed into a chair next to the fallen angel, the grin on his face starting to harden. “Why do I get the feeling that something bad has happened, or something bad will happen?”

  Lucian quickly caught him up on what had happened at the Congress of Death, how he had been attacked by angels and told that Danira was to be sentenced, how he had gone after her at the South Wind.

  “You succeeded where I failed,” Old Death said, admiration in his voice. “Attacking the South Wind, from the inside as I attempted, or from the outside as you have now done twice, is remarkably difficult. I am sure the angels at this table will agree.”

  Both Danira and Leliel nodded.

  “But why do I get the feeling that there’s more to the story?”

  “Because you haven’t let me finish yet,” Lucian told him.

  He then explained his plan, and how he had planted the seeds to hopefully bring the Progeny of Light to the Congress of Death the following day.

  Leliel mumbled something under her breath, her brow furrowing. “This could create an all-out war.”

  “Sometimes the forest has to burn down before new plants can grow,” Old Death remarked. “Have you ever kicked over an anthill, my dear?”

  Lucian finished his explanation with his final plan, one that he hoped would bring the two sides together in the end.

  His predecessor sat across from him for a moment, taking Lucian in, a proud look in his eyes. “I love it,” he finally said.

  Lucian tried not to smile. “I was hoping that it would be to your liking, that you would see what I’m trying to do here.”

  “I see, and I also see a number of issues that could arise in attempting something like this. What if the angels don’t show?”

  “That’s why I wanted to bring you two together,” Lucian told Danira and Leliel. “I was hoping one of you may have a way to get this message to the Progeny of Light, to confirm that they will indeed attack. I don’t know how to phrase that in a different way, but this won’t work if there aren’t angels showing up.”

  “They’ll show up,” Danira said. “News travels quickly in my Progeny, rumors even quicker. They will have channels in our upper echelons reach out to the upper echelons of the Progeny of Darkness, just a query as to if there is a meeting, no discussion as to what it is about. This will be confirmed.”

  Leliel nodded. “And then they will begin planning. Attacking the South Wind will be what pushes them over the top. The first attack drew talks of war, the second one will solidify it.”

  “And hopefully, it will end as quickly as it started,” said Lucian.

  Old Death laughed long and hard. “He’s ambitious, I’ll give him that,” he finally said. “Just have a backup plan if things don’t go the way you’d like. Even if we managed to liberate the lower echelons, and even if they manage to kill most of those at the top, it is impossible to say for certain that doing this will have the effects that you want, of bringing our two Progenies together. But it’s what needs to happen, so you have my blessing. And…” Old Death looked to his counterpart, the fallen angel nodding. “And you have our support. We will certainly be there to help out in any way that we can. And once all this is over, you and I will need to discuss strengthening the borders of our world here. You think you have enemies now, my boy? Just wait until you pull this off.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five: A Day’s Rest

  The day was his to enjoy, Lucian planning to take full advantage of all the time he had with Danira.

  They started off with food, but rather than try to conjure anything else, they settled for pizza yet again, the two of them setting foldout chairs in front of the lake, their upgraded home behind them, everything feeling right, normal, natural.

  The calm before the storm.

  Lucian went ahead and changed his clothing, so that he now wore a dark maroon swimsuit.

  “Is that how we are doing this?” Danira asked, glancing over at him.

  “Who doesn’t like a trip to the pool on a day off?”

  “You mean the lake?”

  “Same difference.”

  Danira did the same, hers a one-piece suit, gold with white trim. She also summoned a pair of sunglasses with white rims, Lucian chuckling.

  “We are so stupid,” Danira said, her smile cracking ever-so-slightly.

  “No, we’re smart. There’s nothing we can do now,” he reminded her. “We are trying to do the impossible, and aside from a little prep, which I can handle later, we’re pretty much off for the day.”

  Now that he could continually fill his power, he would need to enhance his armor. Doing so used his mantlecore, which Lucian was fine with, especially for something as important as defense.

  He had played enough video games to know what it was like going into a battle without the correct gear, and the battle he planned for tomorrow…

  “Well? Let’s go swimming,” Danira said, interrupting his train of thought. She stood, offering her hand to Lucian.

  Even though it could all change in the span of twenty-four hours, Lucian still couldn’t believe his luck.

  He took the fallen angel’s hand and moved to the lake with her, the water just the right temperature.

  They waded in until they were about waist deep and then she turned to him, still holding his hand.

  “Everything okay?” he asked her.

  “This is nice. I feel like…” She frowned. “I don’t want to say that I feel like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders, but it has. All this time, I was this other person, projecting for them, for their causes, and…” Danira bit her lip. “I still believe. I’m not saying I don’t still believe. I’ve seen Him myself. That doesn’t mean that I can’t have happiness. Especially after how much service I’ve given.”

  “It doesn’t.”

  “For so long, I felt like I was…” She turned away from Lucian and looked out over the water.

  “Yeah?” he asked, coming up behind her and placing a hand on her waist.

  “Some of my incarnations, let’s just say I had some pretty draining jobs. Some of my jobs were better, like when I was the midwife in India, as I told you; others were worse, like when I was a settler. It’s like all this time I have been going through cycles of being a member of the Progeny of Light, back to a more worldly role, and then back to being an angel. All of it seemed like just one long job.”

  “But it wasn’t,” Lucian told her.

  She looked at him curiously for a moment. “What do you mean?”

  “You’ve lived countless lives, all of which were fulfilled in d
ifferent ways. I mean, that’s what I got from it. Am I right?”

  She nodded.

  “Then you would come back to this role and do that for a while and then take a life again. It sounds interesting, to be honest with you. I wish that I could go back.”

  “You do?”

  “You don’t?”

  “I get the itch…”

  “And that’s why you went back then, right?”

  Danira nodded. “I would try to see how long I could go without getting the itch, but eventually I would want to go back.”

  Lucian felt a sudden tinge of apprehension as he thought about what this would mean to their blossoming situation. If he made it through the next day, and he was damn well going to try, would there be a point that she would want to leave him?

  Danira picked up on what he was thinking. “I can’t leave now,” she told him. “I’m like Leliel; I’m a fallen angel, practically discarded in their eyes. I will not have a chance to be resurrected.”

  “But if you could, would you? If you could go back to being a human now, would you?”

  “To be honest, I don’t know. We’ve only been living together a day,” she said with a playful chuckle.

  “Yeah, you might start to hate me after a while.”

  “I seriously doubt that. Although I might not like some of your video games.”

  “You seem to like Enigma Kart…”

  “That’s true; that was a fun game.”

  “I should show you the game that it’s based on; it’s one of my favorites. That’s one awesome part about essentially being immortal. I’ll be able to see the future incarnations of these games. I hate to ponder what they will be like in a hundred years, or two hundred years, but they must still be around. These are real franchises, I’m talking the really big games, the ones that have been entertaining people since the 1980s. They’re only going to get better, better immersion, and if there’s one cool thing about living as long as I’m able to live, aside from, you know, the whole part about living forever, it will be to see what becomes of these things. I don’t have to die.”

  “So one of the things you look forward to is future video games?”

  Lucian nodded.

  She smirked. “Humans have a way of recycling these things, the stories, these ideas. I suppose that’s something I can look for in the games you play, while I watch you enjoy them.”

  “Yeah? What’s that?” he asked her, Danira finally turning back to him.

  They moved just a bit deeper into the water, which was now up to their chests.

  “All of the stories that are popular now, from the Hollywood blockbusters to your video games, have foundations in texts and stories that have cycled through the ages. Maybe I’ll recognize a few of them. The tropes, the themes.”

  “If you do, let me know. But back to what we were just talking about. You realize that this role now won’t allow you to do what you used to be able to do, right? Leliel is experiencing that. She’s growing a bit weaker as well. But I think she could grow stronger if she wanted, right?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “No, it must be true. I mean, as long as you stay here, you’re pretty much protected. But you know, going out there, if we run into any injuresouls, that kind of thing. You’re going to want to maintain your power level.”

  “I’m sure I can share some of yours, can’t I?”

  “Yes, you can,” Lucian told her. “And that’s all thanks to Yoshimi. Maybe I would have figured this out at some point. Probably. I don’t know. Eternity is a long time. But she gave me this elixir now, and it’s been helpful as hell so far. I just wish that she hadn’t wanted me to kill her.”

  “That must have been hard.”

  “It was terrible. But she’d seen enough, maybe. I don’t know. That’s not for me to say. It must have been weird though, being in Japan after the bombing.” Lucian shook his head. “I’m thinking too much about these things.”

  “Today’s supposed to be a day of relaxation, remember?”

  “It is,” Lucian told her. “I’m definitely going to do that.”

  “We’re going to do that,” she corrected him.

  “Heh. It’s been a while since I had a real day off.”

  “Eons,” said Danira. “I can’t remember the last time I wasn’t busy or required to do something, or simply wanting to do something.”

  “Yeah. I have a question for you. I know that you said that angels feed off hope, and that’s why you were in Connor’s backyard when we first met, that you were going to feed off some of the hope, or whatever, in my brother’s home. But is that really why you were there?”

  Danira swam just a bit further into the lake, Lucian waiting for her to turn to him before catching up.

  “The Progeny of Light has more knowledge of the Progeny of Darkness than the other way around. Information is given to us quite freely from those at the top of your Progeny. Does that make sense?”

  “So they really are in cahoots. I mean, I already knew they were, but what you’re telling me is that they are definitely working together up at the top.”

  Danira’s sunglasses disappeared and she dipped her head under the water and came back up, running her hand over her wet scalp. “As much as you spend your power trying to create new weapons and increase your strength, other Deaths have spent that same power working on ways to understand their Progeny better, to track and control them. What I’m trying to say is that there was a disturbance that let someone at the top know that your predecessor had given up his mantle.”

  “Would they know the same thing if I killed another Death?”

  She shrugged. “I couldn’t tell you that, but I would assume that that would be the case. They probably don’t know exactly who you killed, or maybe they do, but I’m assuming they don’t know the exact circumstances. Like Yoshimi, for example. They would know that her power was suddenly missing, but they wouldn’t know that it was you who did it until someone actually interpreted the data to see that you had grown more powerful. But this is just speculation. I never got into the data management side of the equation. Please, no.”

  Lucian laughed at the way she said that. “You really are something else.”

  “You are just now noticing that?” she asked as she floated back over to him, wrapping her hands around his neck.

  “I can’t wait to hear all of your stories, about all the lives you’ve had,” Lucian told her. “I know you told me a little bit, but there must be so much more.”

  “There is. The highs and lows of humanity are written into my blood,” she said.

  “And the war from four thousand years ago, or whenever it was, I’d like to know more about that.”

  “Well, you’re basically reliving it, so what would there be to know?”

  “I would just like to know everything,” Lucian told her.

  “I’ll tell you what, make it through tomorrow and I will tell you as much as I can remember.”

  “You don’t remember it all? I thought you had the biggest brain in all of Heaven…”

  She pushed away from Lucian, playfully splashing him.

  “It’s on,” Lucian said as he dove under the water and went for her legs.

  Of course, he didn’t have to hold his breath here, so there was no real fear of drowning or anything like that.

  He was able to pull Danira under her and she was able to retaliate, kicking off his body and bursting out of the water, the fallen angel soaring up into the air before performing a graceful swan dive back in.

  An idea came to him.

  Lucian conjured a diving board on the edge of a rock formation he pulled from the shoreline.

  “What do you say?” he asked as he reached his hand out to Danira.

  “Let’s see what you got,” she told him.

  The fallen angel took his hand and they floated over the diving board, Lucian walking to the other end of it and stretching his arms over his head. He jokingly performed a practice jog, and once he was
ready, he took off, hitting the edge of the diving board and jumping up into the air, his knees coming into his chest as he screamed, “Cannonball!”

  He hit the water and was just coming up when Danira pressed off the edge of the diving board herself, doing a twisting backflip and landing on the surface of the water, never sinking in.

  “I didn’t even think about trying something like that,” Lucian told her as she stood above him.

  “I thought you would be impressed.”

  The two played around for a little longer, Lucian finally at the point that he knew he needed to do something to feel like he’d made some progress during the day.

  While Danira looked out from the balcony on top of their home, Lucian focused on his armor, growing it from his flesh. He brought up his Soul Points and watched them start to diminish as he poured more of his mantlecore into his armor, Lucian reaching deep inside himself to strengthen his outer shell.

  Of course, conjuring the armor also allowed him to replenish his power, his Soul Points going down and quickly back up every time he took a break.

  He recalled Azazyel being able to cut and blast through his armor, and he hoped to prevent that this time around.

  If his plan was going to work, he needed to be able to withstand the worst the fallen angel, or anyone as powerful as him, could conjure.

  Once he felt that he had reached a good level, Lucian slowly melted his armor away and turned back to his home.

  There was a set of stairs that went through the place, and rather than float to the top, he decided to take them this time, going into his workshop, passing the shelf that he created with Yoshimi’s comb and whiskey bottle on it.

  He took the spiral staircase up to a kitchen that had an open concept vibe to it, no walls in the space aside from glass that provided views from every angle.

  The furniture that Danira had chosen for the living area was sleek and modern, Scandinavian in design, Lucian at first skeptical if it was even comfortable.

  But as soon as he sat down on the couch and kicked his legs up, he noticed that it was absolutely perfect. He looked to the opposite side of the room and to the fireplace, figuring this would be an ideal location to kickstart some video games.