Chapter Text
Darkness, pressure, and Fallen’s hairy sack, but she had really, truly hoped that this shit was done with. It had been three years. Three years!
Stone against her cheek. Systlin pried her eyes open, and blinked. Blinked again.
Everything was bathed in a sickly green light. There was a great deal of screaming and moaning. And swearing. From, specifically, her aunt. Even as Sys levered herself upright, she saw Stellead kick away some poor crawling wretch who, naked, had tried to seize her leg.
Death. It was screaming at her, from all around. She was, unfortunately, used to this sort of shit by now, and she climbed to her feet, leaning somewhat against the jagged stone wall behind them.
It appeared to be a vast cavern, but she knew it wasn’t. In her bones, instinctively, she knew. She didn’t question how she knew.
“You ratfucking bitch.” She muttered under her breath. Dropping them into the fucking underworld of some other land was a new low.
Even as she got to her feet, even as she collected herself and looked around to see who had been brought with her, the poor writhing souls were retreating. The souls of those dead, she knew, again instinctively, because she was what she was whether she wanted to be or not.
“ The fuck.” Ah. Well. High Commander Elias. That was new. Sura was there, and Foicatch, and her aunt. In the coldly calculating part of her mind, she was glad that she had two High Commanders of the Bloodguard; she’d wished a thousand times and more in the previous shitholes her pushy divine sister had dropped her into that she’d had more.
“Oh.” Foicatch was struggling upright too. “Oh, what the fuck.”
There was a clear circle around them, widening, as the souls of the dead drew back from the death goddess who had suddenly appeared to stand among them. They were bowing as they did so, fearful, and it made her angry.
Not at them. No. But here, standing in death, looking at the dead, even when not trying to she could see them, and these poor tormented souls were not deserving of torment. Not most of them.
Annoyed, angry, she hissed under her breath. Bitch.
Well. The voice in her head was unrepentant. I couldn’t think of a better way to force you to embrace it straight away, even if for only a short time. Besides. This place needs setting to right just as much as the rest of this world.
I hate you so fucking much.
You don’t. Not really. The presence faded.
“Where the fuck…”
“It’s an underworld.” Systlin said, aloud, an answer to Sura’s slightly groggy question. “These are the dead.” She took a step forward, even as the other four drew closer around her.
“But we’re not…” Foicatch.
“No. You’re not.” She closed her eyes. Opened them as she loosed the shackles she kept on the power she did not like to admit to, and as she suddenly could feel everything. “And we are very close here to the realm of the living.” She frowned, because that was odd, and should not be. One shouldn’t be able to walk between life and death.
Well. She could. But she was hardly a usual case.
“It’s that way.” She pointed, forward and to their left. “Not a few hundred yards.” She wanted them out of here, and fast. She didn’t know what it would do to…
…well. Sura and Foicatch were not properly mortal any longer. But still. She did not know what it would do to them, to stay here long, and her aunt and Elias were mortals. She knew, again instinctively, that close to her and with her favor they were protected here, but she did not like it.
“And who is this?” She had heard no footsteps, but the voice that spoke from the shadows rippled with power. She knew before she turned what was standing there, because she was not unlike him.
But, even as she turned, she knew that she was greater.
The shape was that of a man, but his eyes were like red coals. He chuckled, sounding almost gleeful. “Mortals?” He crooned. “In my lands? Little fools.”
Stellead drew her sword, but swords would do nothing against the lord of the dead. But Systlin took one step forward. She put herself between her little group and the figure of the Lord of whatever underworld this was, and dropped any attempt to hide anything.
She did not know what he saw. She did not know what she looked like, standing in death, as the lady of the dead. But the dark figure stopped even as he reached forward, his hands filled with sickly green light.
“What.” The word was surprised, shocked, and the ground under them trembled. “Who are…”
“They’re mine.” She said, quietly. “Not yours. You will lay no hand on them.” She looked out over the vast screaming fields of writhing, naked dead, and the wrongness was a raw nerve. “And you will stop tormenting them.”
Rage. She felt it; it made the stone underfoot tremble. “They are mine.” The figure rumbled. “Wherever you have come from, whatever power over death you hold, this realm is mine, and these dead serve me.”
Anger. Anger clenched her jaw, narrowed her eyes, and the injustice of it burned. “A ruler,” she said, cold. “Serves those they rule, not the other way around. They do not deserve torment. I can feel as much, and so can you.”
“It amuses me. This is not your realm, lady, and you are not welcome.”
She looked over her shoulder. She did not know what she looked like, a goddess of death, standing in the land of the dead. “Go.” She told the other four. “Straight foward, two hundred yards, and you’ll walk into the realm of the living. I’ll be along shortly.”
“Your Majesty…” Elias looked faintly sick though, as if he had a headache.
“I don’t know what it will do to you,” She said. “To be near when I destroy this prick in his own realm. I will be all right, but I don’t know about you.”
They looked at her. She looked back. Gave Foicatch a pleading sort of look. He and Sura looked all right, but then the Lady had laid her hand on them and granted them some measure of divine power as well. Stel and Elias both looked ill though.
Foicatch nodded, once. Here, in a land that was not for mortals, she could see it in him; his eyes gleamed with a strange light, and in the strange green glow that lit this place he and Sura both shone as if the lines of their bodies were picked out in white fire.
“Go.” She said. “Please. I’ll follow. But I can’t leave it like this.”
Her aunt’s lips thinned, but she nodded, once. Systlin wondered again what she looked like here, a goddess standing in death.
As Sura and Foicatch drew Stellead and Elias away, she turned back to the shadowy figure. He was seething, and he was trying to press in around her, was trying to batter at her with his own power, but it slid off her like water off a duck’s back.
“You’ve two choices.” She said, softly. “You do as I order, or you don’t, and I destroy you. I am not leaving while they are suffering this way, needlessly.” She swept a hand out, indicating the screaming, writhing dead.
“There is no power of this world that can destroy the Keeper of the Dead.” He hissed at her.
“I’m not of this world.” She said. “And I killed a god of death when still a mortal woman. I will not give you another chance.”
He screamed at her, a wordless cry of rage, and she felt the command go out. Creatures peeled away from the ceiling and floor, creatures twisted and terrible emerging from the dark stone, and they flew at her.
She tore them apart, without looking. They crumbled, the magic that made them shredded to nothing. She tore them apart, and advanced on the Keeper of the Dead. He roared at her, and his fury was a physical thing here in his realm, but it couldn’t touch her. She unmade his minions as he threw them at her, the souls he ordered to attack her cringed back from her and would not approach, and then she had the Keeper of the Dead of this place by the throat.
He was not so great as the Fallen God had been. Not even close. He was easier to destroy by far. As she ripped into him the scream he let out shook the realm of the dead to its roots; the walls shuddered and began to crumble, and the souls shrieked in agony.
But there was another god of death there, and even as he and his power crumbled she reached out and took hold of the place. It shivered, shuddered, a rumble that was felt in the bones, in the teeth, and as she reached into the very heart of the Keeper of the Dead and tore his essence into bits and dissipated them to the aether she felt the weight of this realm settle onto her.
His final scream faded, and she closed her eyes for a long moment.
When she opened them, the sickly green glow was fading. There was grass, and the souls were no longer screaming. They seemed confused, sitting there as blades of grass unfurled around them, as a few daisies bloomed. The dark cave faded, as sapling trees rose. The sky above seemed clouded, an overcast day.
Some poor naked soul scrabbled his way to her feet, and kissed the toe of her boot. “ Lady.” He breathed. “ Lady!”
“Get up.” She said, moving her boot away. “Get up, I don’t need you doing that.” She looked up at the underworld around them, even as a brook began to sing through the trees. “It will be better now.” She scowled, and under her breath, again, said “Fucking bitch.”
Twelve minutes. The Lady’s voice was very self satisfied. Well done, sister. I knew you wouldn’t be able to stand it.
“Oh fuck
off.”
She turned and stamped away, towards where she could feel the boundary between life and death, thoroughly irritated, even as the stunned, joyful souls of the dead found themselves no longer naked, and heard the singing of birds.