A War on Death

Chapter One: Collection

Editing coming soon

Wars are too simple. Good against bad. Right versus wrong. Wars have rules, they have order. They're boring. Massacres are much more fun.

Walking amongst the mangled bodies set my bones aflame. The mortals are layered so thickly on top of one another that it is like trying to walk through knee-deep cement. I can't stop my face, the muscles betraying my utter delight as a broad, ever-so-white smile dances across my lips. Wars were much too long, but the slaughtering of man only needs a second. They kill each other with such carelessness that I can't help but laugh.

What simple, ignorant creatures.

I see a young boy within a pile, unease nipping at the soles of my leather booted heels. I will never comprehend their hatred of one another. They are all the same, so why do they slaughter each other like they aren't? These bodies serve no purpose besides power and greed. But if you're able to take power, you are able to lose it.

I ignore the churning bile now warring in my gut, huffing out my pity, and breathing in the smell of blood and metal. My body relaxes, its muscles and tendons, and ligaments loosen as my brain clicks back on track.

I'm here to collect. Not to mourn.

Never to mourn.

My bright white robe flitters in the gentle breeze, its blood-stained train brushing against the men scattered at my feet. I make my way to the center, weaving through craters and piles of corpses. The land is flat, though it wasn't always, the sun beginning to peek up above the horizon as I meander along. I hum a tune under my breath, one my mother had sung to me as a baby. When I was normal– human.

Leather, cold and thick in my hand, wraps around my palm as my whip trails behind me, occasionally snagging on several body parts. Its tip has become cracked and aging, though it will never die. It is rumored, at least in the mortal world, that the gods formed it from the skin of those that defied them, their punishment to the humans who had stood before them... then bled beneath them.

As a baby, my brother had fallen sick, the doctors refusing to touch him due to the unfamiliarity of his disease. He was both an anomaly and a travesty to those around us. My mother bargained with the doctors, trying so hard to save her little boy. I was merely an afterthought to her. I never meant much to anyone, no one has ever loved me the way I crave. My mother refused my yearnings, dismissed me into the night.

So much so that one night, when the tide was low and the moon was missing, my mother sold my soul. She made me a new home from the matchsticks of my splintered heart. She never knew that I would later trap her within its walls and burn it to the ground.

Several decades earlier...

The Goddess of Death came to my mother, whispering through our beachside hut to collect my brother. My mother refused, claiming that he was only a boy and the Goddess could not take her child.

The Goddess was resentful, claiming that if she came for a soul, she would leave with a soul, whether mortals liked it or not. She did not care for my mother's demands, laughing in her face as she tried to fight off a Goddess. Normally, she would've stolen him away without another word, but the Goddess wanted to play that night, having been too long since the smell of blood had graced her senses.

I sat in my crib, staring at the dark angel as my mother cowered in fear and heartbreak. The woman made from shadows reached for my brother, clammy hands meeting his warm flesh before my mother screamed– screamed at her to take me instead. The Deity had paused, shocked by her words.

I, unlike my brother, was silent in my crib, staring up at the winged demon with nothing but joyous curiosity. The Goddess watched me cautiously, with both confusion and frustration.

My brother had sobbed in my mother's arms as I blinked. The Goddess was lanky and beautiful, so thin she looked almost ghastly as she cocked her head to study me. For a moment, all was still. Then, the rustling of her wings, dark as midnight rain while she clicked her tongue, deep red eyes kind and generous to the baby before her.

"Silly mortal..." she stepped away from my mother, gently lifting me from the crib with shadows as she brought me to her with magic. I giggled and laughed, barely two as I held the dark woman's hand. My mother yelled at the Goddess to leave her home and never come back. The winged beast laughed lowly, slowly caressing my face as I watched her with fascination.

"I will not come back here, mortal, but my actions of life will soon bring my death. You may be brave and honorable to your second born, but he will never be as valuable as your first." The dark woman glared at my mother as she held me tight to her side.

"She means nothing to me, demon." My mother yelled. I remember being confused as to why she was yelling at the beautiful creature holding her daughter.

"I will not return–" The Goddess grinned, pointed canines gleaming as she spoke with a sinister tongue. "-but I cannot promise the same for your daughter."

My mother hissed as she glowered from the floor. "She is no daughter of mine." I stared at her sad face on the floor, wondering why on earth she was crying.

"No, she's not. Now she's mine." The dark angel growled, wrapping me protectively in her arms as she turned and stalked out of the house on legs of pure steel and gunmetal. I began to panic, to kick and cry as the night air stroked my cheek. The Deity cooed in my ear, wrapping herself around me like a shield as her wings shot out.

The air stung as we rose through the sky, away from my home... and on to the next.

The whip cracked playfully in the air as I thrashed it against the thousands of bodies. My true mother, the original Goddess of Death, gave me this whip. Gave me this life. In exchange for sparing me from ultimate death, she had given me a new purpose—an afterlife. I am now an Angel of Death, a viper, a phantom. The new Goddess of Death.

My mother was right, her actions finally caught up to her. Before she fell with the sun on her final day, she told me my purpose. I will not only be her predecessor, I will become her champion.

I stopped dead in the center of the field, slowly scanning my surroundings as giddiness bubbles through my body. This is the best part. Lifting my hands out, I continue to hum under my breath as my magic seeps from my veins and wrings outward like a stream down a mountainside. Over bodies and through craters, my magic snags onto every lingering soul on the battleground. The dark shadows wrap around their throats, dragging them back to me as screams rise from their souls. I hum my favorite tune, my magic grabbing their lives and stuffing them into my mind like apples into a bag.

A resistance captures my attention, my head turning as I search hungrily for the source. It isn't uncommon for a soul to struggle against my powers, but this one is angry and it isn't just pulling at the leash of my magic... it is shredding through it.

My tune stops on my lips, a dreary note that licks over the bodies and the hillside towards the sun. "My, my, someone's alive..." I smile, lips tightening over my teeth as my dagger-like canines tingle with the urge to be plunged deep into a mortal's neck.

With the last of the souls trapped within the back of my mind, I step forward, dragging my whip alongside me as I scent out the man. I snap it in warning, testing the water for any thrash of limbs. A flash of movement out of the corner of my eye causes a soft laugh to bubble up my throat. I stride up behind him, observing the young, lean mortal beneath me as he begins to crawl away.

"Darling," I purr, his head whipping toward my voice as indignation and pure steel wraps around his brain. He is a younger spawn, about twenty if I had to guess. I bend down, running a blood-red nail gently over his dirt-caked jaw. He is handsome. "You're supposed to be dead."