A Deal With Death - SCP Foundation

A Deal With Death

Byㅤ MoreMuffins

Published on 26 Aug 2022 21:17

A Deal With Death

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The palace of the golden kings, therein lies the graves of twenty thousand and more. When the streets were paved ochroid, where liquid carat flowed in the canals and the corpses were cleansed with the molten aurulent, all were dead in one calamitous event. The architecture, graced with the brilliance of design, all built upwards on foundation prerequisite, ever higher as one approaches the geographical center.

Upwards, and upwards, as bodies fell from ever deadlier heights.

Nearer still to the top lies a church, stained glass resplendent and hallowed in emanation. A decade of disuse has rendered it celibate, no sinners left behind to rectify, or to even comprehend. No priests to recite, no choir to praise, no sanctum to bless. Nor were there any reason for this to be true.

XIII kneeled in front the altar inside, dusty. Colored beams of moonlight, subtle, amalgamated by the stained glass to produce stranger tones, bathing the service with an insidious quality. No words are spoken, all recitations are but forgotten, bodiless mementos. Finally, the break of silence. It is wordless, soundless, a depth immemorial and infinite.

"If you've come to reap my soul then you've wasted your time." XIII whispered.

A figure towered behind XIII, as if scaling the height of arrogance itself. A pallid skin, stretched tight across the massive, boney frame, and eyes hidden, glowing a posy deep red. Crowned with long, snowy hair in sharp contrast with his torn and tattered black robe, it stands, static, unmoving. A hellion contained within a stranger-still stoicism.

"Oh, I'm well aware." Death murmured with a dream like quality, almost translucent, softer than one might expect.

"Have you come to punish me?" XIII asked. It isn't often other-beings entertain conversation.

"Punish?" Death clatters, an emotion analogous to laughter. "Ah, the mortal concept. No, the others merely fulfilled their contract. Why should a mere observer trouble me so?"

Death continues. "Such an enigma. Truly. But this chance meeting of ours reminds me of happier times, when the heartbeat of sola prime was everlasting. Why kill Yvith in the first place?"

XIII stands, placing idle hands on the altar. "I believed the same."

"Deicide is a truly momentous undertaking. What made them think they could?"

"They were righteous. They wanted a prosperous kingdom." XIII averts his eyes. "I knew of the consequences. Yet still, I never opposed them."

"How righteous. Alas, they too tried to bargain with me. Some offered the souls of their loved ones. A cult to raze foreign lands. I was even offered a sum of gold! What little use I could find, for such a heavy metal."

XIII paused. "Tell me, why did you really come here?"

"Verily, that success was found, however minute." Death places two fingers on XIII's shoulder, the others hanging off his side. Massive, as he was. "Your friends served only to offend Yvith. She tore through the upper realms to reach the moon."

"A chance, nevermore. In her petty rage, she walks the earth!"

XIII nodded, still averting his gaze.

"Does this not please the ears?" Death whispered.

"I don't understand. You… you'll help me kill Yvith?"

"Oh, think not! I wouldn't dare. However…"

"You want a contract." XIII's heart sinks. He long knew of the risks, attempts at forbidding their signation. He had warned his allies many times, before they too plunged humanity to ruin.

Death grabs XIII by the waist, and begins bringing him up to his face. He struggles against it, pressing against bone and pulling at cloth, reaching for fairer purchase. "Look beyond the horizon, and you will see me." Death chastises him, begrudgingly. "Don't you want a chance to end all suffering? To see the light at the end of the tunnel?"

Death uses the crux of his phalanx to angle XIII's chin to his gaze, his eyes glowing with the same bloody cinnabar shimmer of the full moon. "Or will you settle for quorum? Is this truly the most desirable outcome?"

XIII is motionless. As he did, so many times before, complacent and cowardly.

"I accept."

An unholy sound erupts from Death, like that of guttural popping, vomitous and hazy. Death stumbles in place, shaking as if titillated. Cracking, and hundreds of disembodied cockings of hollow bone sliding into place. Death's jaw hinges, the denticles warping and buckling outwards, like rotting flowers, revealing a thin, cadaverous figure. It is unmarred, yet scarred. It sits in listless apathy, nude, resting its face against its knee, other leg dangling over the canine.

It smiles.

"Liar." Death leans in closer, arcing his neck. "But the path before you has been cleared, ." He laughs in a disgustingly familiar boyish tone. He lazily traces an indistinct figure over XIII's outline, weighing the contents of his soul. A slow sigh, he reaches his hand out, palms downward, contract finalized.

"May eternity be kind to you, XIII."

XIII hesitates, before taking Death's hands unto himself. He bows his head, gently brushing his lips against the milky veneer. A heavy weight is placed upon him, this time within his grip. Top heavy, a metal sheen rings in the church.

In his hands are a patently wooden handle, the grain folding unbounded. Almost weightless, a subtle resistance beckons his attention to the end, revealing an invisible blade. He tilts the head towards him, revealing the crescent moon reflected, seamless against the timber it was bound to.

Though it, too, revealed impenetrable visions, of long dead and eternal sufferings. All the dogs of war, and those that perished the moment Yvith struck, every soul dashed against the golden walls of the city, whose remains lay unburied. The chimeral quintessence of everyone beyond the borders of this once prosperous kingdom, whose lives too met an end premature, consumed by the voracious, night-dwelling beasts. Those pious and humble, transformed under the firebrand moon, indulging in each other and the flesh of the innocent.

XIII listened closely as the whispers of millions from within the blade beg. He could not recognize any of them, but upon the skin of his heart, he could not deny they were all victims upon the anvil of eternal night, phlebotomized. The one upon which his idle hands made playthings of.

As Death's body crumbled, another voice rings from within the scythe. That exactly of Death's, except beyond distant.

"I watch now, saintly. Whether you succeed or not is of no concern of mine."

Renewed purpose, he exits between the struck wooden doors, the crimson light of the full moon incised by his figure, two snuffed towers blemishing the church nadir. XIII takes his first step onto the gravestone lined path, flecked with gold dust.

Silent, he whispers a threat.

"The sun will rise once more."