Chapter 2: Death Embodied
Keiichi sits at the table eating Belldandy's cooking like usual, but things are not usual. Urd is very agitated, and Belldandy looks ready to cry. He chooses not to ask what is upsetting Belldandy because he can see in her eyes she does not want to talk about it. The room has a feeling of anxiousness like something may happen, but nobody is sure what will happen.
Meanwhile up in heaven Peroth is steadily working when the whole room goes dark. She is about to ask what is happening when his footsteps are heard. Peroth immediately goes pale as he steps through a door that only he can unlock. His boots echo as he walks through Yggdrasil toward Peroth. A printout comes out of her display and she offers it to him, his cloak reaches up and grabs it from Peroth. The cloak then places the paper in his hand.
He seems to phase out of existence and the room lights back up. Peroth exhales for the first time since he appeared, and regains some composure. She takes a drink and starts to get back to work when she notices what had printed out for him. She spits all over her display as she realizes what is going to happen. Quickly she fumbles for a phone and hurries to dial.
Keiichi hurries to answer the phone, but right as he is about to pick it up there is a knock on his door. He slides open the door and a man in a delivery uniform is waiting with a clipboard. "Are you Keiichi Morisato?" Keiichi nods, and he offers the clipboard to him. "Please sign in all the spaces indicated please." Keiichi hesitates but something compels him to sign it. "Now please follow me," he turns around, but Keiichi does not follow him. Keiichi calmly shuts the door and starts to go back to his dinner.
His hand rips through the paper and wood door and drags Keiichi by the collar through the door. "I said to come with me, and I even said please, why are you humans always so rude?" He drags Keiichi down the path toward the stairs when suddenly he is hit by a burst of magic.
"Please leave Keiichi alone," says Belldandy. The man who had tried to take Keiichi climbs out of a bush and brushes himself off. "I will only warn you one more time to leave Keiichi alone, or-"
He gets out of the bushes laughing. He does not even take the time to brush himself off; instead he simply dispels the psuedo-appearance. In the place of the man in uniform, he becomes a man with pale skin. He is wearing an eye patch, and he is wrapped by a black cloak that pulses like it is alive.
"Little goddesses are going to take me on," he says. He reaches up and brushes back his hair and sixteen seals jangle on his wrist. He is wearing similar seals on his other arm and legs. Perhaps the most elaborate seal is the platinum choker around his neck.
"All of those are seals," gasps Urd. He grins and starts to pull at them, but he does not get the desired reaction. He wanted to make the fear take over so that they would be unable to function efficiently. Instead she started to charge lightening while her sister started charging wind magic.
He immediately realized he had wasted too much time and was caught in a pincer attack. Both unleashed their respective spells and he grins as the two magics hit him. Dust fills the air and both sister look anxiously to see if they did any major damage. When the dust clears a black energy shield is over him, and the ground around him is cracked and broken. The shield recedes and the Death God is still standing there. Rising out of his back is a horrible sight.
What once might have been an angel sits over him guarding him. "I am like you except this is my angel of death." It was not what Belldandy would call an angel. Most of its skin had rotted off, and what was left was either sick yellow or black. His face was a skull and only one of its eyes remained in the socket. Two wings grew from its back, one was covered on shiny black feathers, but the other wing was covered in dull gray feathers about halfway up, then rest was white bone. In the hollow ribcage was its still beating heart.
No sound came from it at all, since the ability for it to sing was lost long ago when it became a spirit that creates only silence. For a few minutes the battle between him and his angel against Belldandy, Urd, and their angels seemed even. However it was when Skuld, her angel, and Banpei joined the battle that even a death god knows that he is at the disadvantage.
He lands panting, bruised, and bleeding, but still grinning. "It has been ages since I have had so much fun, however I am very tired and I want to return to my slumber for another century or two. He yawns, and then stretches making his spine pop. "It seems that you have no idea who I am, so allow me to introduce myself. "I am Death God Elite Class, Top Order, Special License, Styx."
"Elite Class," repeats a stunned Belldandy. "I have never heard of such a classification." He laughs and reaches under the seals on his left arm. With a quick flick of his finger he breaks all sixteen seals. Almost immediately his sleeve disintegrates, and the flesh on his arm rots away. The bones of his arm are yellow, and he immediately reaches out to touch a nearby tree. The tree immediately dies turning black and the leaves fall. He holds his arm out and his living cloak folds on itself until finally it creates a long black handle. His skeletal angel reaches into its chest and pulls out its heart, and places it on the end of the handle.
The heart continues to beat, and then it spews fire. The fire becomes a long blade, a scythe blade. Belldandy remembers the scythe from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and she takes a few steps back. Urd remains frozen in her place remembering how he used it in Germany. He starts forward and he begins to twirl the scythe parallel to his body.
He starts to run, and then to fly and he raises the scythe poising it to take Belldandy's head off. Banpei tries to block the attack, but the swing is so powerful he cuts the Banpei robot in half diagonally. His cloak lashes out and grabs Belldandy's arms and legs and lifts her off the ground. He raises the scythe to end her interference, but then his cell phone starts to ring.
He carefully puts Belldandy on the ground, and then jams his scythe in the ground next to him. He pulls out a phone, and flips it open. "Yes sir?" He talks a moment much to the astonishment of Urd and Belldandy. "That can't be," he says loudly. He phases out of existence and appears behind Keiichi. He rips his collar and looks at the skull tattoo that his agent had marked him with. He bites his flesh hand so it will bleed, and swabs Keiichi's neck.
The original seal that marked him appears, and his blood makes a black stamp mark appear on his neck. "Whoever marked him for death was not one of my agents. The mark that the Lakesies puts on a victim is made from my blood, and should glow in the presence of my own blood. Whatever blood this was manufactured from is some sort of demon blood, not that of the death god." He thinks for a moment and he remembers a name that the boss gave him. "Hild," he spits. He reaches into his pocket and produces a silver whistle. He blows into it and almost immediately hundreds of his cutter agents appear before him.
"My loyal Atropi, find Hild so that I can make her pay for interfering with our task." He waves his hand and the Atropi all take off. "I am sorry for my actions, unfortunately nobody has ever been able to fool an Atropos with a fake Lakesies seal. Mr. Keiichi Morisato I will formally reforge your chain of fate after this matter has settled."
"Thank you, I think," Keiichi says. "When can you get to that, anytime soon?" Styx shakes his head. "Unfortunately I will have to go through a lot of red tape to get your chain of fate reforged, but I will make sure that you do not get assaulted by another Clotho.
They talk for a few minutes and he repeatedly apologizes, but they are interrupted when an Atropos appears. It whispers to him for a moment, and he sends it away. "Hild is nearby and I am going to give her a piece of my mind."
Belldandy, Urd, and Keiichi immediately try to stop him, but he ignores them. "She may be the leader of the demon people, but I am death itself. There is one major difference between the two of us, but you'll see when the time is right."
A little over an hour passes and Belldandy has almost completed the repair of the temple when something crashes through part of the temple. Styx climbs out of the rubble, and spits some blood out of his mouth. "That bitch will pay for that," he says as Keiichi stands where the door into the bath used to be.
"You're gonna make me pay?" Hild sits in the sky an amused expression on her face. "How are you going to do that when my powers exceed yours even though mine are sealed and your powers are not?"
This time Styx laughs at Hild. "You know that there are many more seals that I can remove, so what makes you so confident?" He reaches up and pulls off his eye patch. His eye has a long scar over it, but his eye is still bright and functional. "Let me show you the true depths of my powers," he hisses. His eyes seem normal, but then a black fluid starts to flow into his eyeballs. As it touches his iris it turns bright yellow, and his eyes finish filling up with the black fluid.
He vanishes and reappears in front of Hild, and grabs her arms. While the two appear locked in a battle of strength, Styx's angel appears in the distance carrying the scythe. The angel slashes at Hild, but before anyone can see if she is injured, she teleports away. "Don't think this is over cutie," she whispers as she vanishes.
Styx breaks down the scythe, and returns the heart to his angel. The handle rejoins his cloak, and then he returns the seals to his arm. When his arm regenerates, he passes out as the seals reduce his diminished power flow further.