Afterglow

The Rule of Beasts

It would be rare that they would all be together for the purpose of their duties, but it would usually mean cataclysm. This would be the first time. The epidemic Empire was concerned with quickly evolved over the course of a few months.

Right now, a large city has fallen to the plague. Thane had seen it as a long time coming, Noble as they saw everything, and Empire as the mistakes they committed and the things they forgot.

Thane was a small figure beneath his scythe, brunette, only half broad in the shoulders and clad in all-black with passionless eyes. He came for those that fell to the tide of war, of anger and hatred and fear. The smell of copper and faint screams filled the air in his wake. The black hid the stains.

Empire was larger, but not by too much, in clothes and a cloak of white, sickle always held low, never raised above the shoulder. Long dark hair fell in waves from the hood he commonly wore, his eyes soft and filled with the millions of memories past. He awaited those that calmly shut their eyes, that smoothly breathed their last.

Noble was taller and slimmer than both, wielding a sword and dressed in ever-shifting shades of grey. Eyes like stars, they were the thing that only existed for a single, constant instant. Always happening yet forever ending and beginning. They always preceded their brothers, but their brothers did not always succeed them, for they were the apparition of near-death, and sometimes Fate defied Logic, and they bent to her will.

The three of them stood on a cliff overlooking the city. Noble and Thane leaned on their weapons, and Empire slowly turned his sickle over in his hands as he thought. "How long will it last?" He asked.

Thane stood with his eyes shut, both hands clasped around the staff and all his weight leaning. "How long has it been so far?"

"Two years."

"Another four, then." Thane said.

"They've been slow to act." Empire observed, watching the small specs of the carts of infected dead weaving through the city streets, headed towards the entrance of the catacombs.

"And they will continue to be." Thane supplied, his head tilting towards his shoulder. He was tired. The war had turned into a large-scale revolution across the sea, and it was taking a lot of his energy. The plague didn't require much of his attention, but where there was suffering so was he. He did not cause it, but merely followed behind, a chained shadow.

Noble remained quiet between them. They did not often wish to speak, but voice was not necessary between the three of them.

Thane's eyes suddenly snapped open. They were dark, dull and tired. "I have to go." He said, "A king is about to be drug from his bed and stoned by a mob." Empire winced as Thane straightened his jacket. "He deserves it." He reassured, looking over to his empathetic brother, "I have seen what he has planned. It's best you never have to." Then, in what seemed to be a flapping of a hundred black raven wings, he and his scythe dissipated, a few dark feathers the only evidence he was there at all.

Much of the pantheon would think that the emotions had gone to Empire and none had been left for Thane when the first god of time and death had disappeared and left them in his wake, but Thane simply just wasn't expressive. He felt, but not much, and not openly. Only his siblings and a few of those on death's threshold got to see past the dark curtains of his normal appearance.

It was fortunate, at least. If he were as sympathetic and emotional as his brother, he would have been torn from the inside out by now, and it had only been a few years. The reaper of violent death was unfeeling because he needed to be.

Thane appeared in a darkly lit alcove in the same fluttering of a thousand black feathers. The blade of his scythe gleaned in the light of the mob's torches as he watched, hawk-eyed.

The king, a man named Dougal, was dragged by the collar and shoulders of his jacket through the palace gates and thrown onto the broken glass and paving stones of the street. The mob cleared a wide circle around him, and it was revealed they all had stones in their hands.

The reaper's lips pulled to one side as a volley of violence met the flesh and bones of a violent man. Dougal was pitiless, cruel, and greedy, he exploited a people that had been at a breaking point for fifty years, and now was the revolution.

When the mob finally broke, they left him there, amongst bricks and mortar torn from the palace walls. Thane finally stepped out of the alcove and into the street, delicately picking his way between the rubble the way a society lady might through a garden. The used-to-be-king's head lifted weakly at his approach. People on the threshold could recognize a god at a glance.

"What... now?" The deposed king gasped.

Thane adjusted the legs of his slacks, then crouched down to look him in the eyes. "I get to watch you die." A rare smile crossed his face. "It's going to take a very long time."

And it did. Thane was the reaper of violent death, and ex-king Dougal laid there for an excruciating amount of time. When Thane finally stood up again, the sun was beginning to rise.

"Who are you?"

This is the second time in my short existence I have been asked this question by another god. Thane reflected as he turned to face the voice. I'm beginning to not enjoy it. He grinned, but there was no mirth. It was more of a threatening show of teeth than a smile. "I am the reaper of violent death and seer of the future."

The other god was much bigger than Thane, but that wasn't exactly a hard thing to achieve. He looked angry, and he radiated hostility. "My name is Atros." he said, still eying Thane.

That name meant nothing to him. Thane turned away. He wanted to go back to his siblings on the cliffside. A large hand wrapped around his entire bicep, and Thane froze completely. It was like Atros had wrapped his fingers around stone.

"There is already a god of death and time." Atros said, but he sounded unsure.

"Not anymore. Now there are three. Stop touching me."

"How long ago were you made?" Atros asked. He wasn't listening completely.

Thane looked over his shoulder and locked eyes with the war god, and Thane was not the frightened one. "Very recently." His voice was almost dreamy. "I have work to do. Go away now."

Atros, a god feared by most of the rest of the Pantheon for his violent nature and power, let go of the smaller god and vanished. He could attend the rebellion of this country in other areas aside from its capital, regardless of if that was where most everything was happening. He didn't want to ever be in the same city as that eerie little death-and-time god again. Something about him made Atros' skin crawl.

Thane reappeared on the grassy cliff the three of them had been standing on, and after looking around let out a disappointed hum. They were somewhere else now. Very well, he had other deaths to attend to as well. He shut his eyes, and vanished again in a cloud of avian darkness.