We Are: Waking The Fallen

11: The Soul of The Lady

There was a tower, taller than all towers, surrounded by hundreds of other towers, and it was still the tallest. 

Each of the monstrous spires had barred windows and only a single door, which was sealed with a glowing blue light, and locks that only innumerable keys used in the right order could unlock. However, the tower with the most locks, and the brightest blue glow was the tallest, which towered miles over the others, where the air was the thinnest, 

And inside the spire was a figure, in the highest room, chained to the wall in iron shackles, where water dripped from the bone white skin of their wrists. They wore a black cloak, torn and tattered, wrapped around their damaged form. The hood covered their head, pulled low and shadowing their mutated face. The cloak, if you looked closely, was more of a robe, leaving the arms free, exposed through the holes in the side of the 'cloak'. There was a crow on the prisoners shoulder.

Neither the shrouded figure or the crow moved, the didn't seem to breathe, either. 

Outside the mighty spire, the glowing light blinked out of  existence, and the locks slid open. At the noise, the figure stirred and the crow's once shut eyes opened, staring in silence as the figure crawled into a sitting position, the hood falling off of their head, revealing the spiral tattoos. Revealing the distorted face of Death.

A figure appeared in the door frame and scowled as her feet touched the water- the blood of Death.  "Now, Death," She greeted, the voice of the Dark Lady. The crow screamed, the vstrangled tone of Death forcing through  the beak of the black feathered creature. "Oh, do not fear...." The Lady cooed, stepping further into the room, and the light hit her body. There was a bandage around her slender neck and one of her merciless, cold, yet burning coal eyes was covered in a sincle, black eyepatch. ichor still dripping from the wound where her eye once belonged. "I am old, and as are you. We must join together, we must fight the menace of my half-brother."

"I am not old." The crow spoke, and Death themselves hissed. "Neither is my name Death." The crow's voice was twisted and strained. "You have contained us here for what feels like years, and murdered Death. My past life, my past form. I have a new name, new powers, but ld memories. We remember. We never forget what happened to our past selves. We take their bodies but lose their powers." The creature explained, his, for it seemed more male than before, voice through the crow was painfully slow, and the Lay waited impatiently for the creature to finish his monologue. 

"Will you assist?"

"No." As he answered, the spiral tattoos began to move. seeming to slide smoothly off of its skull, twisting and writing through the air. "I have been newly born, and I must collect the damaged souls you have ripped from my embrace." His voice now, was no more than a whisper, as the strange, snake like tattoos began to coil around the Dark Lady. "I am weak. Our kind has always been. But the one you discovered, though the weakest, was the leader, and you stopped our activities. Now I am the leader, and who else should follow the weakest but the strongest?" The crow lifted it's tattered wings and began to tear through the shackles that bound him, and he stood. 

The blackness began to flow back towards the man, forming tattoos on his skeletal face once more.

The Lady cried out in rage, but no sound emitted from her throat and her body shook. A shape began o crawl out of her mouth, agonizingly slowly, and the figure opened his arms wide, like he was to embrace the shape when it had fully formed. "And as I am stronger, so is my familiar." The void like space in his face moved, to form a wide, open smile, and though the expression was grotesque looking, it seemed kind, welcoming, accepting. "Do not fear, My Lady. Our father will welcome you to his home in the underworld." As he spoke the shape fully formed, and formed an ethereal, soul like entity, which glittered coldly. The soul cried of an endless sorrow and it floated towards the cloaked man with the crow on his shoulder. The tattoos of wings on the creature's back spread wide, again, emerging from the bone white skin on his back. The black wings began to move, but they did not lift him off of the ground, but merely moved. A great light enveloped the soul, and in a scream hat echoed thousands, the soul vanished, and the Lady's body fell to the floor, dead.

"I suppose we should fix this mess...." The creature sighed, and began to glide out, his feet barely touching the floor, the black wings a simple tattoo once again.

This act was shorter than others, yes, but it is no less important. Death, or more so, Death's descendant has escaped the Lady's clutches, and in return, removed the soul she carried with her- the soul that keeps ever on of your mortal bodies alive. Even the soul  harvesters have souls of their own, more fragile than your own. 

I would know.

I gave each and every one of you life, light and souls.

But I am not 'God', for I would not claim such a pitiful title.

Spiral, the giver of light, the taker of life, the collector of souls.