Karn shoves the door open with slightly too much aid from his strength. Forcing the latches ajar with a hard swing and breaks the stone behind into crumbling shambles. Genevieve curiously crosses through the door's staggeringly high frame and into the near pitch black, dark room. The average items in a simple, medieval bed chamber stand before her. Involving a chipped nightstand with dormant candles atop it, cherrywood shelving, and a hay-filled, sturdy looking bed. The only main difference is that the furniture are the sizes only suitable for the great magnitudes of the Makers. The only light in the room originates from a gaping paneled window about the woman's size centered above the bed. It had been open for a while for shriveling leaves and petals had wandered in and splay about the knitted red comforters. She kicked off her boots hurryingly at the sight of the tall and soft centerpiece of furniture. It certainly is not something out of a Holiday Inn, but it was a bed, and it had been far too many years since Genevieve rested in anything close to one.
Even though considered almost freakishly tall among other humans, she still has to climb into the high bed frame. Karn takes it upon himself to push her legs up high enough until she can climb the height herself.
"Thanks." She beams sheepishly as she catches the sheets on the edge taut in her hands. "But I was just fine climbing this thing by myself."
"Sure." Karn retorts, his thick Scottish accent mixes that one word with obvious sarcasm.
She drags her belly to the edge of the bed, peeking down the six foot drop from the ground. She doesn't have to worry about rodents as much from being so high up, she considers. She flips over onto her back towards the sunlight in the center of the bed, crushing the leaves beneath her. Her face slightly tenses as she stretches like a relaxing cat, clenching the oversized bed sheets and strands of hay in her toes and between her digits. Studying each recent looking crack that look to have been done by an earthquake of some sort. But she doubts that, in worlds like these, it was probably done by something far worse than a natural disaster. That is only one of the millions of topics running through her head and pulsing through her jumbled thoughts. She retracted unhurriedly and gazes at the ceiling as Karn inquisitively gapes at her.
To him, she bears an indulgent face unlike any he has ever known in his land. A fairness comparable to the angels, but a personality and deviance relevant to a demon. Perhaps this was all humans were like. Keeping their own weight with an ignorance to what held above or below them. Was that all that humans were? He wanted to know how humanity had grown. There may have been different terrains, bustling or barren cities. Dissimilar cultures along with strategic and merciless wars. Karn curiously yearns to know. He resources, he has one before him. Perhaps, he wondered. Perhaps he could ask.
"You're truly unlike any creature that I had ever seen." Karn recognizes. Genevieve weakens her neck, letting it fall back to the doorway's direction.
She smiles almost blankly at him, unsure if the comment was one of flattery or otherwise. "Sure hope that's a good thing."
"Are you like all of the humans that wandered the Earth?" He asks wonderingly. "Just a young, once flourishing race belonging to neither side?"
"I'm afraid that's all." She shrugged, slowly turning her face back to sunbathe before the windowsill. Genevieve pauses midway in her twist to the sudden words of interest towards her.
"No, that couldn't be all that you have been," Karn denies, "There had to have been more than just Adam and Eve."
Genevieve rises from her comfort with arms locked straight behind her. Her eyes pierce into his longstanding soul with both a puzzling and keen glow. No one had ever shown interest in her. Or at least not in a way that included sharing any useful information. Maybe he would be someone to talk to. Tell tall stories and whisper deep secrets. Maybe he could be a friend in these cold new realms.
"I don't know. Earth was pretty lame." Genevieve grinned sincerely in the overcasting black of the shadows. Her wrist hangs a long curl slackly behind her ear. "But if you're so interested, then I guess I can ramble a bit when I'm not busy."
Karn did nothing but nod slowly with an accepting grin. "It'll be good not remaining the only pup on the Forge anymore."
And with that, he finally let the door creak loudly to a close. The broken wall from the two's entrance finally loosens and falls to powdery shambles to the floor.
With him gone, her face then fades blank when she sets herself over the windowsill. Her reason is vacant in contrast to the millions of words and pictures sorting madly behind her face bare of any emotion. Her thoughts of Vulgrim and the ship begin take hold. To her it appears to be far too often. Nevertheless, Death's outlash is what grips her entirely. Genevieve does not believe that she has found a friend on her first days here outside of the Third Kingdom. Death has made sure she has known that. How much he verbally abuses her, shuns her. But the thought remains a conflicting mess. He did save her, and far more than once for that matter.
Genevieve gazes down at the glass amulet resting on her chest. She cups it into her hands, caught in a staring contest with the lifeless diamond skull. All of the times her heart had been fractured and her soul scarred as did her eye. Death did nothing but to add more and more. But to him, this is only business, she believes. It will always remain that way and that's how she will treat it.
Genevieve immediately forfeits the challenge against the inanimate charm. Her right hand dives into her pocket and grasps one of Ostegoth's homemade and enchanted cigarettes. Remembering the damage she had done to the Dead King, she tests out the small trick and puts an end of the roll less than a hair before her mouth. She blows softly, then pulls the hot breath in when she sees a wary gray line of smoke. She turns the cigarette between her fingers and pops it between smiling, pursing lips.
"Funny how you use weapons of endless power." Genevieve turns swiftly to the voice of the firstborn Nephilim clouding her mind seeming come from the door as well. His spectral claws glowing above him had caught the hinge before it slammed shut after Karn's exit. "Using them for mere party tricks. What will you do next? Shoot your shotgun into the skies for fireworks?"
"Oh I'm sorry," Genevieve apologizes kindlessly, her charring light bounces by the end of her bottom lip as she makes her snide remark. "I wasn't aware I had an audience." Her cheeks briefly hollow as she sucks the gray smoke with a smirk. "Like you're one to talk, you bum. Got all the strength in the world. But so lazy, you use magic to hold open a door."
Death would've chuckled at her bitter response, but his mind is still wrapped entirely around the shaman's advice. "Enough with your cruel words. I am only making a small joke." He tones refocusing on why he came to her dorm in the first place, "I beseech that you pardon me of my intrusion." He apologizes.
"You're good." Genevieve pardons. Her eyes leaving him for the view of the forge's rivers of water and lava.
"I came back to say . . ."
"Yeah?" She accidently chirps twisting her head a bit sharply to her shoulder, desperately fighting down any smidgeon of happiness to see the reaper once more.
". . . I came back to remind you to gather your strength while you can." Death advises, He slowly pulls the doorknob and himself into the dim light of the outside. "Thane begins your training at daybreak."
"Oh. . ." It becomes discomfitedly silent between them. So silent, that the whispers in Death's amulet can be audible in the large, dark room.
"Traitor. . ." The voices whisper a desolate curse in the cyan haze. He takes it as an opening to abandon her. The door creaks loudly as it closes, inches from the tumblers and hinges to hold it shut.
"How long will you be gone?" Genevieve blurts out, wondering. Secretly scolding herself for keeping him from entirely closing the door and to share some extra time. She knows her plan had worked from how Death freezes loosely, holding the doorknob still in spectral claws overhead.
". . . I'm not certain." Death believes, "Not with all of the Corruption about." Genevieve looks down, seeking comfort in the spiraling smoke emulated from her cigarette's aurelian embers. "It is for the best. I am not one to have linger in another's company for too long."
"You've been fine in mine." Genevieve looks back up, nearly matching Death's solemnness, only hers being louder. "At least, you haven't been the worst."
"Look where I have gotten you." Death retorts in a voice seeming to be concerned at the siren's response. He distances himself from the door and towards her. His spectral hands disappear into the dusty air of the chamber and the entry clicks to a seal "You have endured enough suffering at my side. The proof such plights are embedded over your eye, as a reminder of your suffering." She frowns at the remembrance, the fingers not busy with the task of holding her cigarette stroke a small and sudden itch from her imperfection. Her softened eyes revisit the pale straphanger, having noticed that he fully entered the room and closed the door behind him. A halved smile forms at the aloneness and uses this felicity as a mask for her unease.
"It may be a bit of an eye sore, but it sure as hell beats being dead, or worse, being that mummy-for-a -king's slave." She said highheartedly. One valid enough to calm the other showing his a bit of his worry. She sees that it still remains and outbreaths. Carefully, she rubs the cigarette ashes on the outside edge of the windowsill and leaves it there to save for upcoming stresses. She climbs down from her high post. Her bare feet land onto to the ground and before Death. Her voice levels back to a reassuring tone once again. "You did nothing in the past that you could put against me."
"Then you have not yet heard all of the stories." Death warns with a wistful growl.
"Why won't you tell me then?" She barters, a bit annoyed of being out of the loop of his past for so long. "It seems that everyone knows a ton more than I do."
"What is there to tell?" Death asks as if it were a thoughtless question. "I destroyed your home world by the needs of the Council. I am no more than that order."
"My home world isn't gone." Genevieve says simply and with full sureness. Folding her arms with an unbelieving glare.
"You still don't believe." Death says rocking his head parallel into his palm, pinching where the bridge of his nose would be. "Human ignorance never fails to amaze me."
"I am the ignorant one here?" Genevieve questions, loudly appalled. She coughs a sarcastic chortle which switches drastically to an insulted sting. She pushes farther up into his face, growling fearlessly into the horrifyingly stressed mask of stained bone. "You're the one who won't allow yourself to get your goddamn ears open! You did nothing to make me distrust you. Get over it!" The Grim Reaper has become far too angry, he can push those fingers straight through his skull with the furious pressure growing beneath them. He lets that anger free through is roar back, if only he knew that he would regret it.
"I am one of the most feared creatures in all of the three kingdoms!" Death shot his furious eyes away from his hand and into the girl's startled face. "I have done acts that have instilled fear in the hearts of giants that you would find unfathomable in your smallminded thoughts! For all to fear my name and dread my very existence being even miles from theirs."
"Death, I—"
"No! You have not once bothered to heed me, you sniveling excuse of a child!" Death lashes his gauntlet out with an intense snarl. Genevieve closed her mouth bitterly. "Do you wish to know why I cover my face from the world? Why the only residue of my people is only I and other three? Because I stood by their side and slew them all!" Genevieve's eyes practically bulge. Her fists loosen at their sides and more of her fear peek through in her slow, backward movements. "I put a blade to each and every one of their forsaken throats and tore, letting their blood and entrails spatter the surface!" Death followed her footsteps until she backed the bed stand. Only drawing closer and making the small soul gulp dry air, ambivalent if this is either a prideful speech or a scare tactic. Either state, she is disturbed. She has to leave and hope to God that Karn isn't too far gone down the hill. "Yet you. . . You are the only one that simply won't listen!" She tried to evade out of his way but he seizes the wood stand behind her, blocking her escape on each side. "I have tortured legions who have gone against me and allowed them to live in their pain until they begged for my return to finish what I had dealt. . ." He sees the horror and confusion wrenching her, he is expecting her to tell him to stop. To back away and never wish to see him again.
This should have worked. Why isn't this working?
Death's anger collapses considerably at the confusion riddling him as well. His half failing intimidation crumbling his voice down a few marks. "You have known this first hand. . . In spite of such sight you have seen, you simply remain. . . Why?" He barks his final question to the child of man beneath him, sharply crushing the timber at her shoulders to splinters. Only to receive a small whisper of a response.
"Because. . ." Genevieve explained herself in a shaky voice. "I don't believe someone that has been so kind to me has the evil to do that." Death is wiped blank with only a couple of blinks, his hands slacken from the hold on the bed stand. They drop hopelessly, revealing the shattered marks of a former anger at Genevieve's tensed- upward arms. "I know I've done a few." She pauses shortly, rethinking her words. "A lot of things. To make you upset and even fuck you over, but. . ." Her sounds crumble, her eyes misplace their flare and to their familiar tearful and wounded ones. "Death, you're the only one." She sobs softly, "The only one who's shown me kindness in a very long time." Genevieve's sadness changes slightly. Instead, her face turns to a solemn laughter. "Death. . . Kind. Ha. . ." Her strangely smiling eyes return to the rider's desolate ones. "Who would have thought of it?" Surely the bringer of Death has never had that word would ever cross his mind. It was simply the last word that would describe him.
Kind, a soft, delicate, and weak word. For the good and benevolent nature as a person: a kind and loving person. The fact that it is to describe a person is strange enough for the Nephillim. Having known only an eternity bare of chaste morality. His mind had always fumbled for answers since this strange woman appeared into his existence. And Death believes it would be much more eons of searching before he would have the slightest clue of one.
"Surely there were some in your world that showed you affections more than I." Death assures, taking a few steps to the high bedframe, "You had family, did you not?"
"No." Genevieve answers bluntly, climbing back to the comfort of her large and dusty five-king size bed. "Not at the end."
"No friends, no love interest." Death infers, slowly taking a couple of steps more.
"No." Genevieve answers again. She wraps herself with her empathy in a tightening embrace about the comforters. "Did you?" Genevieve asks shyly, barely receding from the soft protection.
Death turns silent again. "Of course I do." He articulates. "I have my brothers and my sister."
Genevieve eyes pull a bit farther out from her knees. "Well, yeah. But did you have anyone else. I mean if it is true that you wiped out your race. You had to have been someone else before you were deemed what are you are now." Death's brows furrow and is ready to leave to hide his defensiveness, Genevieve pokes farther before he moves a muscle. "You had a face that was known to them didn't you? 'Bet it had a name as well."
"Enough." Death growled shieldingly. "My previous identity will never bear any importance." Genevieve looked back to the window that fled sunlight over her. Her form overcasting a thin shadow over the rider's face. "It shall fade into memory, as it was meant to be."
"It doesn't have to be that way, Death." She asks feebly, fumbling. "You could . . . show me." Her body tenses under the overcast. She got an intuitive stare in response from the rider. Almost as if to process the stupidity of her apparently obvious question. She looks away again to the window chuckling at his reaction. "I know I was asking too much. It was worth a shot, you know?"
Then there was silence that she knew to silently dread. All that was left was for him was to leave anyway. There was nothing left to retort, backlash, or sting at each other over. Maybe he did overstay their final moments and now all that was left was the departure. The silence finally broke by footsteps which she loathingly believed were a turn to finally step through the doorway. She picked her half-finished cigarette again, to relight it and null her thoughts and count his steps off the forge. The trots of his horse or the caws of his crow. For her to guess when she will hear any of them again.
Though the steps were not leaving, they were in fact growing close to her direction. Her body dips slightly as a weight climbs carefully and effortlessly atop the bed. With her heart dropping and her pupils contracted, she turns her head to her left side to the rider engulfed within the shadows as she remains in the light only an arm's length away. Her eyes are not tailored to the darkness. So the only glows perceived is the glass spattered into his taut chest and his stormy orange hue that emulate about his sockets as does his mask. His black pupils never leaving the woman in the light.
Her lips part to speak, but she sees an outline of fingers over his eyes that stump any words from tumbling out. She catches the near silent sound of the mask cracking as it aversely peels off of his face. She glares wide eyed to an armored hand that crosses the line of darkness and into the sunlight. Its contents bearing the bone mask known in the universe to only remain on the Nephilim's face. Yet here it is, laying face-up beside her in the four-sided daytime and Genevieve cannot help but leer deeply at the carved bone.
"Your amulet." Death orders firmly, "Remove it."
Genevieve changes the look at the other skull that she slowly began to scorn. It was glowing a bit brightly due to her excitement, she casts a hand over it and holds it there. Her eyes rose up to the mysterious shadow in the darkness, reading him better than when he ever showed himself in the daylight. She thinks of the shame he must feel. To literally immerse himself into the shadows to keep from feeling any retribution or even forgiveness. So what is occurring is sacred, a secret unknown naught by the three realms for eons and possibly more. With that thought in mind, the young woman obliges. Rising the chain over her head and setting it next to her dying, smoked over cigarette.
The armored hand reemerges beyond the crossing once again. Taking her recessive hand lightly buried inside the crimson sheets. He holds it tenderly, with the gentlest pull on her arm. As if her tendons would surely rip with any greater force. He guides it into the shadows with him and raised it up before her. She could barely see where it had gone. But then, with a microscopic and sudden flinch, her palm softly landed on something that of rawhide. She would first believe it to be such than trust it to be the skin of the rider's barren face. Though, her fingerprints glide, slowly and focused as she examined the foreign skin unseen for hundreds, maybe thousands of years.
It is not smooth, not as if Genevieve was going to expect it to be a comforting texture. Worn down and marred with wrinkles sprawling out from the corners of his eyes. The folds are not too prominent. By her guess, the creases belong to one resembling his mid to late forties. An age damn good for someone probably as old as time itself.
Her thoughts return to the significance at hand as her pads glide toward his nose. Her center finger sinks, sliding into the crease of a deep scar. She follows it downward, slowly and collectively. Toward his slim yet slightly flat nose. Past his nearly divided left nostril and toward his lip. Examining it like faded brail underneath her fingertips. This one is a print of a blade, so jagged and rough that the anger of the handler still remained in the skin, much like the mortal's mark. The hatred from battles in his youth and possibly before. The long mutilation finally ending below his thin parched lips.
"I don't loathe you for what you have done, Genevieve." Death murmurs as her thumb traces the smaller lines born from battle and age. "For defending yourself against Vulgrim and contemplating in killing me." Her gaze shifts puzzlingly to the locked orange glow peering from the abyssal shadows, causing her hands to pause. "It was all within your means to survive."
"That doesn't mean what I did was right." The siren grunts in regret. "It got us into more shit rather than avoiding any."
"That may be true, though it is quite normal, that. To destroy what you fear." There is more silence and more hostile whispers from the amulet. "You fear me, don't you?"
Genevieve's hands abruptly freeze below his sunken cheeks. She lost focus in controlling the emotions striking in her hands. A tremor vibrates from her fingertips. Silently, Death gets his answer.
"I would have killed me in your position. . ."
"Hey." She urges in the laxest of voices, shrugging of the shake in her hands and she pillows them at the bottom of his face. "Don't talk like that."
"But I must." He retorts. "I killed so many in the name of my people. To only kill them all myself in the end."
"That's what war does to people." Genevieve comforts, moving her hands off course from his jaw and her fingers weave into the straight wires of Death's hair. "You were forced. You were misled in your conquest and you shouldn't hide what wasn't your fault."
"No." He objects with voice severe and graveled. Slowly bringing his steely eyes back upward to the mortal. "From what I have told you, it is something for you to save."
Genevieve's appearance coiled at the strange message. ". . . What do you mean?"
"Do not mistake my words from before as a speech of pride. What I have told you was a warning. That in my return, I will bring you suffering. More than you have ever felt in our time together. If you continue your journey, I cannot promise you protection form harm in its entirety. This is why I brought you here. To learn to defend yourself from detriment, an attempt to keep you from the misfortune I carry."
Genevieve returns to a softly burning, lamenting look. "I'll stay." Genevieve breaks the silence between them. Her arms dipped deeper into the dark, slightly scratched by the hair she intertwines herself into. Her arms bend around and below his neck. She rests her head on his armored cowl. "I promise to study hard with Thane and when you come back, I'll be ready."
Death could barely hear what she was speaking. Standing too busy reminding himself of the things she has seen in these worlds. The tortures that he constantly blames himself for, either it be in his arrogance or simply not being there at the proper time. However, she holds him, taking in his scent of a dying sphere of ash and peril, confining herself there as if to relish a sense of a new world born from the ashes.
"I'll stay for you, Death." She promises again, smiling softly.
"Young one." Death advises, his voice hinted in a new, impassioned tone. Pushing her quietly to look at her in the sunlight barely inches away. "You must know of what you're agreeing to." Genevieve catches the dilation in his eyes, experiencing the calming feeling of her hands loosely tangling themselves into soft tousles at the base of his skull.
What really catches Death's keening vision is merely the woman illuminating in the sunbeams. A woman broken by many of her own kind. Brought through the cold corruptions known only in the dark depths of what was once humanity. Yet warmth still clutches tight inside the core of her ruptured soul. Burning brightly in her beautiful studded pearls for eyes and her sad, genuine smile. Still remaining the embodiment of beauty and pain. A purpose of seduction and despair. Someone broken and lost. Full of regret and solemnness.
Much like him.
Two broken souls, divided by light and shadow, stared deeply into each other. Both mirroring the same image in their locking eyes. The claws reach from their hiding and discover their places. One behind her ribcage so his hand may lose itself in her sprawls of red gold. The other around her waist to hold her front form shallowly in the darkness to meet his. The rider dared himself closer towards the dividing line, risking showing his face at the distance from it. Both pairs of eyes drop to sheer slits, yet remained fixed. Noses graze and breaths run together. Their lips draw closer until they collide, melding together into a seamless fit.
For the first time what seemed to be eons in the horseman's mind, he feels numb. Indifferent to the hardships of the world and what held for the course after. Death knew if this siren remains, it would stay this way forever.
He would not have it in any other way.
Oh gosh. I hit over 50 reviews and over 20 followers. Guys, you're truly amazing.
Thank you so much for the support. You're criticism on my work goes a very long way. Seriously, I get the happiest and stupidest face when I see someone new on my follows/faves or another saying how much they enjoy my writings.
I'd like to thank Mopiece, Killer-Chan, Decepticon Queen, Final fantasy Joey, Young Volcano, Zarean, panda-kun, Nathan-hale, Eleyond, jess, frozen heart23, DragonXDelinquent, Darkis shadow, and XcelltasticX(Hey, I don't like that you're anon, I can't say thank you for all the nice things you say to me :C And that applies to all the anons and slight flamers!) You guys bring me too become a better writer and I love each and every one of you wonderful people you!