The Demon Sword: Sorataki (Deaths Gamble)

Chapter 20: The next passing

Grim

He would never have claimed to be a know it all not by the longest of shots, however being one with the shadows, one who can erase his foot print and to the extent his presence from others without much mental effort from himself he got use to being the drifter in the room or rather (As his younger brother by two years Reaper would say) the large 'fly against the wall' if you want to get specific.

Although this meant that he seldom got any attention this fact never bothered Grim, it was thanks to his younger years as a boy of being overlooked and his first teen years as a hunter constantly given manhunt missions and assassination jobs that the man without a meaningful relationship besides his brother Reaper founded his identity.

He relished in the shadows of stray alleyways and bar corners. Being out of the bubble of casual conversation, missing out on all them social cues and etiquette he gained an outsider's perspective of a person's behavior, and not just the point of view that comes when you came upon a strange land for the first time and are absorbing their culture and manners that is perhaps vastly different from your own but something more wholey strange and universal. And Ironically it was this strangeness that bound all things together.

That strange universal thing... was death.

The destination to death was a one truth that all shared, a one road destination that all paths led, it was the black cat crossing the street, the boogeyman under your bed, the thing that you catch a glimpse of in the corner of your eye but never bother to look there to truly look it at not because you doubt your vision but because of fear, fear that by truly looking it in the eye... by truly acknowledging it, it will truly acknowledge you. Fear that it will not only see you with it horrid eyes and but then take you to a place beyond your own with no return, one that will not only kill you to even see but kill also your preconceived notions of fear and the peak of it.

But as true as this fact was he found that many people never truly acknowledged it. All too willing to forget such a thing is around the corner until a loved one dies or they are given the time or grace to look it right in the face and see it's abyssal wide jaws close over them. Because as willing as people are to forget this truth the fact remains that it is too big to ignore. Too big for anyone to ignore.

It connects everything. Behind all the conversations they'd have, the light and heavy palaver, the laughing, loving and loathing, was death. It. connects. Everything.

All conversations die, people interest or opiniones die, love dies, hate dies, everything that is on this here green earth from the tallest growing tree to the flimzeyiest built sand castle will eventually have its final day. It is the world's greatest equalizer, the universes only truth.

People are blind to this truth. Or rather, they choose to abuse all things in life as distractions to there acknowledging there own ever coming abyss. There own mortality that will one day grab them by the ankle and drag them down a whole. And because of these distractions, they lose clarity to what the game, the real game all comes down to.

Grim would sit out in the corner or the edges of a bar whilst his brother sits further into the limelight laughing, drinking playing. All those things he did and enjoyed unlink him. He was in all intensive purposes; just like them. But this was fine though, good even since as clear as his eyes where in the grand scheme of things, as much as he keeps his eyes onto that monster in the corner of his eye he still could benefit from a man willingly blind to it.

Being blood relatives under the same roof despite their vast differences they both spent their infant years chewing on the same toddler toys and fighting over there young boy's ones in there later years. When Reaper was at last old enough to talk and demand too despite there foiles he found that one tends to gain a kind of deep connection that can even supersede individuales persona's that are night and day to another. Perhaps it was just an infinite tolerance to his younger siblings heathen ways, or perhaps it was a free pass, an exception to the rule. More than likely it was simply a mutual understanding.