Fabina was taken aback by his menacing glare. When she had sworn the oath, she hadn't dared to think that Pluto would truly appear. He swept toward her in one graceful motion, so soft, so subtle, and yet so fierce.
As his cold almost skeletal hand reached out to caress her cheek, she shuddered and pulled away.
"I...I.." she managed to stammer out, her body quivering. She sat before death personified, and had no idea how to react. The silence between them echoed off the silent temple walls; the only audible sounds where the muffled grunting of Pluto and every shaking breath that Fabina took. Pluto returned his hand to his side, and as he did she dared to allow her eyes to travel upward, to inspect the appearance of Death.
His skin was a dark blue, faded and peeling from the muscle beneath (looking very similar to the corpses you hear described as floating down the Styx). He was cloaked in a robe that seemed entirely to be made of a thick dark smoke, swirling around his emaciated form but dense enough to where it could be confused with a smooth, velvety fabric. The smokey robe formed a hood over what she assumed to be his face, though in the darkness of the temple she couldn't see what lay behind the dark.
She was brought out of her distraction as a gust of wind blew through the temple, extinguishing several of the torches that had provided the only dim lighting that exposed Pluto to her. The locks of brown curled hair flared from beneath the palla that covered her head. And as quickly as the gust of freezing wind had burst through the temple, a booming voice, much like the sound of thunder reverberated off the walls (while seeming to come from every direction as opposed from a single source).
"You have summoned me! I have no time for the trivialities of you idiotic mortals, no patience for a stammering virginal fool. Why would one of Vesta's devotees even dare summon me? Have you no shame in abandoning your goddess, you vestal virginal imbecile?"
At this point, she gained the courage to speak to this god.
"How dare you make assumptions about me. You've no idea who I am, and what I want. Clearly your impatience has gained the better of you, otherwise you'd not have been so abrupt and pretentious."
Pluto sighed and approached the girl. As the cloaked figure ushered closer, she could sense the smell emanating from where he stood. It was rancid, foul...and yet somehow smelled floral, as if she had visited the tomb of her beloved sister and showered her in roses and anointed her decaying young head with the sweetest of balsam oils. Puzzled by this apparent contradiction, her words failed her again and the booming voice echoed in the cold stone room again.
"Even if you fail to maintain fidelity to the goddess, that does not change the fact that I have little time for your trivialities. State your business before I cast you into the Styx myself so you can wallow in misery with your damned sister and your damned family. Why have you summoned the most powerful god of all? State your intentionsmortal."
His speaking was soft, eloquent, and yet filled with malice and spite. It frightened Fabina, but encouraged her resolve to demand of Pluto what she so desperately needed.
"You. Pluto. Death. I have summoned you. I demand of you, as your master in this very moment, that you release my sisters from the bonds of slavery which hold them captive. They were sold by my careless father (whom is not the father of my birth) as slaves so that they can service many vile ancient men and be tortured in ways even the greatest criminal shouldn't endure. Free them, and I shall do as you wish."
The words sputtered through her lips as sternly as Pluto's echoed through the temple. Her body shaking like a leaf, she leaned forward, toward the god of death, attempting to mask her fear by impersonating an air of arrogance and defiance. Then, without thinking she spoke again, this time, however, she was pleading with Death, praying that he would heed her and grant her this one request. If he denied this...she had no idea what to do...how to save them...how to kill her father.
"They had already killed my youngest sister a year before and my father received a mere ten denarii for her death. My other sisters, one elder than myself, the other three younger, will surely be murdered as well. I cannot bear for them to suffer, I cannot bear for the men who torture and rape them to live...and I cannot bear to look at my father, to even see him take another breath. Every moment when I look in his eyes and spy the spark of life, every time his chest heaves with air in it, every single moment that blood flows inside of him as opposed to flowing onto the floor...it kills me inside. Kill him, kill them...save my sisters...and you can have every bit of my soul."
Her body was trembling, every limb shaking like a tree in a storm. Her demands did seem outlandish, but if she was desperate enough to summon the god of death itself, clearly she meant business. Either way, should her demand be saw to or not, she was going to be dead after this night.
Pluto leaned closer to her and slowly pulled his smoke hood from his head. His face was as emaciated as the rest of the corpse that was his body, and yet it was more handsome than any of the men that Fabina had ever seen in the entire Roman empire. She couldn't help but be both repulsed and drawn to it. Death stretched his icy hand out and placed it between her legs, freezing her inner thighs and causing an icy wave to coarse to every fiber of her body and soul.
"I can tell with earnest you little virginal child...that you desire this with whatever remains of your cold heart. I will grant your request and end these men whom have killed such a sweet and innocent Venus as yourself...but first, we must seal the deal..."
His voice was soft and almost human. He leaned forward, closer to her and the closer he glided, the more pungent the stench...and yet the more it resembled roses.
"And how, may I ask oh Pluto, does a mortal sell her 'virginal' soul to a god?" she asked.
And before she could finish her question, she felt the icy cold lips of death press against hers and she felt the world spin as if she had fallen into the icy depths of the ocean, a wave of icy cold fear and bliss washing over her.
And then all was black.