Spellbound (A Soul Eater Fanfiction)

Chapter Three

"Would you like some tea?"

The years I'd been enrolled in the DWMA had truly shown me a different side of Lord Death, a side I would have never previously thought possible. Time had mellowed him, softened his edges; what I saw before me was nothing like the horror stories of my childhood had depicted. My lips twitched into a small smile. Having a son had done wonders for him. This child-friendly attitude was less than intimidating – although I knew from personal experience that that could change.

I watched, more than amused as he handled a porcelain teapot with the utmost care. How he managed to hold it at all was beyond me. The new mask was an improvement.

I sat down at the small table set up in the middle of the room, wrapping my hands around the hot cup of tea he slid my way. It smelled like chamomile and tasted sweet. Milk and a spoonful of sugar, just the way I liked it. But he hadn't called me here to flaunt the depth of his knowledge when it came to my drink preferences. The thought of the scolding I was about to receive was sobering and my tea suddenly wasn't as sweet as it was sour.

I set the cup down.

It didn't take a genius to know what the topic of conversation was going to be. Death sat silently at the other end, and we simply stared at each other for a moment. Eventually he sighed, and it was such a fatherly sort of sigh that I automatically looked down at my lap to avoid seeing the matching expression.

The disappointment was palpable.

"I warned you to be careful Lyra, and instead you're getting careless."

"I have it under control, I won't make the same mistake again." It almost sounded pleading. Pathetic.

"You choked." It wasn't meant – wasn't said to hurt me, it was just a fact. A simple observation. Even so, I couldn't stop my lips from trembling or my throat from closing up. "It has been years. All the extra classes you have been taking, the work you have been putting in outside of school hours."

"I know," I said thickly, completely miserable. Soul and I had been in the process of getting our final soul to turn him into a death-scythe, a witch's soul. All we had needed was one. It shouldn't have been so hard. But while I'd worked against others of my own kind, planned and plotted, I had never outright killed one with my own two hands. I had always been too much of a coward.

I may have set a fire and let them burn but I hadn't stuck around to watch.

The first 99 souls were easy to acquire. It was almost merciful, ending their lives. After all they were just polluted humans. The dregs of whatever was left after insanity had taken root and festered. It was my job, my duty as a meister to eradicate these lost souls from existence blah blah blah so on and so forth.

It was an ideal apparently, and the reason Death had started this school in the first place. And it was one I could easily follow. I myself may have been considered a monster, but even I had never met anything quite as terrifying as humanity. As terrifying as they were unpredictable. And a part of me, small, buried in my heart as deep as I could hide it, was almost happy to snuff out these lives. Human lives. Because I might have been just a little bit bitter, and if I was hunting them... then they weren't hunting me.

So, the first 99 had been easy. A piece of cake. A walk in the park. That last one... not so much. My hesitation during our fight had been just enough time for the witch in question to fling me backwards and get away. I let her get away.

Soul was never going to let me live it down.

"I knew her," I whispered a bit hesitantly. My hands played with the handle of my long since cold tea. "From before the fire." I had known her name, her smile. The color of her magic had been nostalgic in its familiarity. And her eyes had stared into my own with a hate I understood. A hate I felt, every day, and would never be able to run from.