Reapers

Chapter Thirty-Seven: The False Mother

Carol struck her once again.  Darcie felt a trickle of blood go down her cheek from its source at her forehead.  The Angel of Light made her way toward Darcie in long strides.  Darcie’s mortal blood stained parts of Carol’s silvery dress, despite the stains, the Angel still seemed as magnificent and dangerous as any other creature of the supernatural origin.

Darcie held herself up, leaning against the table as Carol approached.  She couldn’t help but scowled at the woman she had once thought of as family, but then again, how could she know what family was like?  All her life she had been passed along from one foster home to another like an unwanted object.  It seemed a miracle when she had been taken in by Carol and David and stayed for so long.  With memories of Damaris’s life flooding into her mind, Darcie knew that she and the Lady of Darkness shared a somewhat parentless life.

Carol sighed, “I grow tired of this, Damaris.  Give the Divine Sword, the God’s Blade, to me.  Then all this suffering will end.  I shall even agree to sparing the lives of your friends.”

“But then you’ll kill me.  You’ll kill me when you’ve collect your prize, a prize claimed through endless misery and destruction.” Darcie spat, her legs and arms shaking violently in the struggle to hold her.

Carol’s eyes narrowed, “You are a child still, in mind and body."

"But I have the memories of an immortal Angel." Darcie said firmly.  "I know what you have done, who you have killed in your quest for power!"

“My quest for power?” Carol murmured absently.  “It is a quest for peace, for control.  For too long I have watched the mortal races scatter this land and allow the evil forces of temptation and corruption to devour them.  They abused the paradise they were given at their birth.  We were never given paradise, Damaris.  We were given a world with set rules, we were born with roles to play.”

“A role?” Darcie whispered.

Carol frowned, “Are you so blind as to not see that you were, and are, part of a greater picture?  That your role in our history had been determined since even before your creation!  Even Death himself was given a fate and destiny to take part in.”

Darcie shook her head.  The idea of every moment in her life, every second being planned out to one moment where her role would be completed was too much for her to take in.  Even her, the girl who had accepted the world of Reapers, Angels, and Gods in a few mere days.  The girl who found herself in the middle of what one could call a Reaper turf war.  The girl who discovered she was the reincarnation of a Dark Angel, of a Lady of Darkness.  She had accepted all of this as truth, and yet the idea of every second of her life being planned out, well, it made her sick.

Darcie's legs gave out, she fell to the floor looking at the white ground before her.  Perhaps everything she knew was a lie?  Something to keep her contained until this moment.  The moment she would choose to either give Carol the Divine Sword or deny the Angel of her life’s ambition.

Darcie slowly looked up at Carol who watched cautiously.  “I understand why you want the sword, to purge evil, but without evil there is nothing to be good.  Nothing to compare the light with.” she paused, “Eventually the light will become the darkness, a new darkness.  Can’t you see?”

Carol looked down at Darcie, a small smile across her face.  “Spoken well, Damaris, but you do not understand for you are too young.  When that day comes, if it ever does, then I shall purge that evil as well.  I will not allow such forces to arise in my new world, my new paradise.” her smile became cold and cruel.  “Heaven shall praise me, Damaris.  Praise me for what I have done to this failed world.”  She knelt in front of Darcie, “Can’t you see it?  This world, it was doomed to die from the beginning.”