Beyond Grim And Evil
(A/N: Second up today.)
For Whom The Bells Toll
Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang!
There it was.
Clang!
His call to duty.
Clang! For whom the bell tolls…
Clang!
GAoBaM
The clanging of the bell had been used for centuries. The bell meant many things. Time for school to start, meal time, executions, ceremonies. However, this bell wasn't tolling for any of those things.
Clang!
This bell was tolling to inform the citizens that a funeral was about to take place. Some said that the bell was tolled for the soul of the deceased, or one time per life if there were multiples, like if some disaster had happened. That wasn't true.
Clang!
This bell was calling to him. It was calling him from his slumber, summoning him to the cemetery, the garden of remembrance, in which many believed he lived...
GAoBaM
I have become Death, shatterer of worlds. Look into my face and see doom and eternal despair, thou foul sinner. I come for thee! It was a phrase he used often, whenever confronting said deceased; for truly there was no mortal who was considered blameless. They were all worthless, wastes of space. If anything it was a gift when they passed on.
Clang!
At least, that was how he once felt. There was a time he didn't care. Their loved ones would wail, would mourn, would try to plead for their dearly beloved. They themselves would try and cheat him or deal with him. Few succeeded. They would offer him anything and everything if they could hold onto life a little longer. He would laugh. He would laugh in the face of mourners, would laugh in the face of the victims. No more. No more. There were, of course, times when he took pity on the loved ones or victim; when he made certain allowances. Against the rules of course, for he didn't kill them, he just took them; and master of the forces or not, he wasn't supposed to go against the Grae. The fates.
Clang!
He'd been in the world of the mortals now for too long. He had lived amongst them, as one of them, and as much as he'd tried to deny it at first, it was becoming obvious that it was making him soft. He hated feeling soft. It didn't suit a god of death. Pity didn't work for Death. He had been witness to the misery of countless ages. He had seen the agony of millennia on millennia. Anyone else would have broken long ago. Not him. Never him. Death was what he was born to be, born to take the sadness and disaster that befell the mortal coil. He was cruel, rather could be. He could be gentle and kind, he had before, playing it up. The years had jaded him to everything, calloused him to human emotion, and with one loss to a girl and a boy, all he had hidden away had been forced back up into the forefront of his memory. And now he wondered how he had never understood it. How he had never seen it. How he had never noticed the love passed from one to another through a touch, a word, a gesture, a look... a held hand... Now he knew... Oh how well he knew... And the accompanying thoughts terrified him.
Clang!