Death is Never the End

And he thinks to himself, Hello again, you odd little creature. (Part of the Balanced on a Butterfly's Wing Universe)


He meets her for the first time at the end.

She is a tiny figure in a sea of of the dead, eyes wide with pain and fear as she struggles to breathe. Her body is severed almost in half by the sword that still remains trapped in the remnants of her innards. She is dying, and she knows it, he thinks as he approaches. She will be the last soul for him to take on this battlefield.

(For now.)

He moves to cut the soul threatening to burst free from her body when a voice stills his movement. It is low,choked, and tinged with both agony and, strangely enough, relief.

"T-Took…yer time…didncha?" He looks down into eyes that are as green as grass and filled with wry amusement. She is so pitiful, lying there in the tattered remains of her green armor with the light green butterfly blazon. She has died for a war that was never hers, and they both know this. She is of balance, of the one who gave him his own job and duties, just as he is. She had no reason to fight in this war between zealots, but her sister had needed her, and so she had gone. Gone to die a senseless death.

"I am sorry," he says, and the words are unexpected to them both, it seems. She laughs and it is a wet sound, choked from the blood filling her lungs.

"Ahaa…getting an apology…from Death?" she cackles at the notion, then coughs, blood pouring from her mouth. "Ta hell with that, ya were…just doin' ya job… Just hurry up…will ya? This," she gestured to her brutalized body with an ironic smile "Is gettin'… wee bit painful."

He draws his scythe. "Close your eyes," he tells her, this odd little creature, a gesture of comfort he's given to no one else in his many, many years. Before she does, she smiles, light and free and wide.

He wonders why, even as he cuts her soul free. He holds the soul in his hands and it is so big, he thinks, for a soul. For a human's soul. It sparkles and shines as though it is laughing at the world, as though it can now laugh at the world without fear of pain and torment.

He leaves, bearing that strange soul in his hands to take to Icthlarin, and does not see a green-robed man fall to his knees beside the corpse of the woman, tears in his eyes. He will not know the man's name, nor will he care. It is no business of his. He has what he came for, and he will make sure she goes where she must.

(The man's name is Misalionar)

Many, many, so many years later, a young woman with dark eyes and hair wanders shellshocked into his office for the first time bearing the unendurable weight of immortality stamped into her soul. She will visit him many times, but it will not remember.

It is only when she stands beside him at the gates to their sleeping God, ready to face down the army that will come to murder him that he realizes. She will turn to him with a smile that is light and free and wide, glowing with the power of Guthix's blessing on her heart, twined with the fierce protective rage of a spirit from another realm. She wields two swords as though she was born with them in her hands, and wears green robes that are all too familiar.

And he thinks to himself, Hello again, you odd little creature.