The wind rose and fell upon the shadows, shifting them into shapes of canines and vicious dogs, growling and panting. These were no illusions, their eyes glowed white like ice and their growls of blood lust were real, all of it was aimed at Mistress.
Gulp, Mistress swallowed and raised her arms in a fighting stance.
Then the hounds struck, all charging towards a limb, a joint, a vein, all to kill her.
"What did she even use as a Method? She's got no visible Transcript!" Mistress shouted as she nimbly evaded and dodged as many of the shadows she could. However her stamina had not recovered from earlier and this woman had caught her at barely above half her full power.
That meant after a while, cuts started popping up here and there from hound claws.
"You...Pretender!" The Pariah shouted with blood oozing out from his mouth.
The woman had never turned away from him, even when she'd used ERA Codex. As he lay in the rubble, his one eye screaming hate and fury, she floated down to him slowly.
Her left hand struck down and her long nails pierced his chest like stakes through the heart, but luckily or not, it would not kill him as it would have a mortal.
"Ah! Just kill me! You'll be killed by the Dead Lords regardless! My fate was sealed long ago, so do it! Free me! Kill me!" The Pariah shouted with fury and unimaginable pain.
"Why would I do that? Are I not your Vessel?" The woman asked in her eerie voice that sounded like layered voices in a hollow tree.
"You're not her! You can't be! She's gone, and I won't fall for any tricks that you might use. Pull on her visage, attempt her speech but you're not her. You know not my name, none will."
"I am Pariah. Nameless. Only she could.... you're not her, you imposter! Now end me! " The man shouted vehemently as he raised an arm to punch her, or what was left of his arm.
The skin had been peeled away by the third scream and the bones were cracked enough that a breeze could crumble them to pieces. The woman flicked the arm away nonchalantly, then with her claws in his chest, she hoisted him up like a fish on a hook.
"Ahh!" The Pariah cried out but his eye still glared with hate, pain and the hope of death at last.
At long last.
"You really do want to die? Oh, you must surely be jesting." The woman tilted her head," Lie upon yourself but not upon me, how many times have I told you this?"
"Stop it... Stop talking like her... You demoness... Demon scum." The Pariah spat from his busted up mouth.
"Your words grew colder over the years, how sad that this you have improved upon instead of so much more." The woman brought him close until they were eye to eye," However I have no intention of killing you, or remaining here. You struck me, the thing you vowed never to do, vowed upon your name."
"Shut your mouth! I have no name! I am Pariah! Slave of Death." His voice was surprisingly sharp and clear, despite his teeth being cracked stumps.
"Right, Nameless. So that absolves you of attempting to end me? Not even an inch of forgiveness will you recieve for that. Do you hear me?" The woman raised his chin, looking into his eye," The pain I gave you now, is nothing to what pain you gave me with the look in thine eyes.
"Your vow you broke, so I take off my yoke of service and duty, even if that was already lost long ago. We are companions no longer, for not by time, but by your weak resolve do I leave you. Fault yourself for this day, this day you failed me, not then. So I leave you this; final farewell, and peace upon your death."
"Rest in peace... Iazel " She whispered softly and let him go, dropping him to the ground.
"You!" Mistress silhouette appeared from the shadows once more, her body covered in hundreds of tiny cuts and bites, bleeding and raw. Her cold and cruel composer was destroyed, her pitch black eyes were burning with raw fury and murderous intent.
"Farewell, Reapers and Vessel kin." The woman said softly and like a puff of smoke she faded away into nothing.
"No! Where is she? Where is that demon? I'll strangle her over the pits of fire for this!" Mistress shouted into the night as she stomped the ground, cracking it and making more of the wall of the building fall.
"She disappeared Mistress." Antoinette said softly from the belt." Her aura just vanished, this time truly and completely. Before I could still sense a wrongness and gaze upon us but now, she's truly gone. What a strange necromantic creature."
"She's not a necromantic creature."
"Pariah you shut your mouth!" Mistress turned to the source of the voice ready to vent her anger at a free target but when she saw the man, her words died on her lips.
"She," The man said slowly," was a Vessel. A banshee. She was 3rd Graved last time I saw her, but now I would say she is 6th Graved or even 7th."
"A 7th Graved Phantasm Vessel? You can't be serious," Antoinette said indignantly," Such a Vessel is on par with a Dead Duke at the least, which is far above all our powers combined. She could have killed us all in an instant if that was her true Rank."
"Antoinette, be quiet." Mistress said in a calm flat voice as her eyes gazed at the man," His injuries are healing and his energies are replenishing faster than my own."
"His words are preposterous Mistress." Antoinette said but Mistress cut her off.
"There is also the matter of... his face."
The man raised his hand, which was nearly restored and touched his face, knowing the skin was stitching back together and becoming whole once more. Antoinette wanted to speak again but then she fully realised what her Companion was saying.
Pariahs were slaves of the Dead worlds and were used for many tasks, mainly as free mercenaries. As former Widowers and Reapers, they possessed great use on assignments and tests for the Wardens of Death.
However to control such beings required a significant sacrifice of power and identy to prevent revolts. The way the Wardens achieved this was by using The Codex of Death upon them, kliing their Identity and ability to grow stronger.
This meant a Pariah remained in a certain level of power and could never become more powerful or rise in Rank. To take their identity was the harsher fate, for their name and memory was killed in the minds of all those who ever knew them.
Except for one mind, the mind of their Vessel, which was linked to them by the Codex of Creation not the Codex of Death.
This means a Vessel could say the Pariah's name, returning their identity and freeing them from the Codex of Death. For with Identity comes aspiration and the need to be better, making the ability to grow stronger available.
This has rarely, if ever happened though, since to become a Pariah means one has committed the harshest crime of their duty:
They killed their Vessel.
This meant the only being able to free them was gone, and a Pariah they would remain till The last record was taken by the Codex of Death. There was no escape, no hope, no freedom given to these Pariahs, for they were scum unworthy of pity or mercy.
No one looked upon them with kind eyes, as none should, for killing a Vessel was unforgivable.
Yet, neither Mistress nor Antoinette spoke as the young man stood up and looked at them with his eyes, both restored and colour shifting. Before they had been a translucent grey , similar to those of blind mortals.
Yet now, a slithering ethereal darkness was passing through the man's veins and skin. Before their very eyes, his body mended itself, and his face turned back to its former glory before his punishment.
An even face with smooth pale skin, a curved nose below which rested sculptured lips and a chiseled chin. The greyness of the eyes was engulfed in a vivid ivory dipped in a faded yellow and the other a drop of obsidian, like two dead moons.
The disposition of submissiveness was gone from his frame as he seemed to gain height and an aura of deathly terror. The bowed head Pariah vanished before them, and in it's place stood an icy resolve and detailed indifference.
From the distant wall the forgotten scythe flew up as if beckoned by the energy flowing around the space, landing upon his hand. The black energy pulses upon the scythe aswell , and it's form shifted just like it's master.
The simple white bladed obsidian scythe seemed to evolve and surge with vicious intent.The white bone blade cracked and bent, melting and molding into a dark metallic curve with a white tipped edge able to slice through flesh, bone and steel.
The handle grew longer, the obsidian colour grew deeper, more harsher and cold. Before it was a dark night, now it ebbed with same colour as the void. On the man's shoulders, the black cloak shook itself anew, tearing and restitching itself like a dragon wing shedding it's scales, becoming an ethereal thing of fear and elegance, befitting power and death.
"You... Who are you?" Mistress asked softly.
The man looked her with cold eyes," I am Iazel. The Shadow Widower."
"Sha... Shadow?" Antoinette stuttered in shock," But he's a Widower presumed to be a prodigy, who vanished in the Epoch of Judgment after the Great Renewal of The Fallen world. You can't be him... that's just impossible!"
Mistress looked at Iazel and felt an instinctive sense of fear that she'd only felt back home and around her father. The aura wasn't quite as potent as her father, but one thing was clear to her:
He was strong.
"Lord of Shadow, if I may." Mistress gave a bow," How is it you were sentenced to be a Pariah? Someone of your renown could obviously have saved yourself such a fate for a time. The Count of Hades Twelfth Circle was rumoured to be quite favorable to you. Or so they say."
"I have no need for flattering from one such as yourself, I don't need to pretend to care anymore." Iazel waved his hand and his shadow crawled upon his body, mending his shirt, pants and removing the blood as if it had never been.
Mistress almost cried out in amazement, to be able to master a Transcript to that level was something she'd only seen her father do. The forgotten whispers were true, The Shadow Widower was truly a prodigy. She decided right then that no matter what, she would gain his favour.
"If your lordship would like, I could assist you in finding the banshee. I have good connections in the-"
"Assist me in finding my Vessel?" Iazel raised a brow," Brazen, is my first thought when I met you centuries ago, it has not changed. Neither have you."
We met before? Mistress thought fleetingly, I must have cared since he was a Pariah.
"Your lordship I merely meant-"
The man did not bother listening anymore, he gazed up to the sky and vanished from there like a ghost. The wind didn't stir at all, as if his presence merely stepped away from the area entirely without disturbing anything.
"Such speed!" Antoinette gasped as she took her ghostly hand form.
"That's a prodigy from before Dark Ages, before The Renewal... I must have him approve of me. Father alone would recognise that as reason to acknowledge me in The Dead panel, raising me from a Lady in resting to a true Death Lady."
Mistress bit her lip as she turned around and left, her mind swarming with plans of conceit and cruel satisfaction.
Come Hades or Fay fire, she would get Iazel's acknowledgement, then her father's.
Nothing would stop her.
Meanwhile, high in the sky, above the city, at a level where airplanes were the only transportation services, Iazel finally opened his eyes.
The air was thinner than any normal human would have been able to withstand, but he didn't need to breathe, so he felt nothing. Not the biting cold, the sharp wind or the dry air.
His eyes gazed ahead at the dark night horizon with an unfathomable gaze, his emotions unknown to anyone but him.
"Not even an inch of forgiveness will you recieve. Do you hear me?"
Her voice, he thought, still the same.
"Ten thousand years... and I failed... again." Iazel whispered into the night," You were before me, and I didn't see. All of it, my vows, I..."
With a viscous shout, he screamed at the sky in fury, regret and fear.
Thunder struck the sky, like a claw strike in the heavens, giving a dark light to his grim silhouette. Iazel's cloak flowed out like mist from the pits of darkness incarnate, his eyes grew brighter and more contrast, one eye with a white iris, whilst the other had a black one.
The clouds grew thicker, darker, becoming vapours of ink coiling in the sky around him, the moon's shine reduced to a powerful glow behind him. The shadows seemed to be consuming the night around him, as his fury mounted and compounded like an explosive reaction.
Please, Iazel thought, don't give up on me.
Slowly, as if hesitant, a black tear fell from his eye, and with it, the sky opened and rain fell upon the city. Before the first drop of water touched the ground, Iazel had vanished from the heavens, leaving it dark, cold and empty.
...
A pair of empty eye sockets were by the rooftop of a distant building, gazing at the empty sky, blackness staring at blackness. Strangely enough, the person's 'eyes' were looking at where Iazel had been a few hours ago.
This person was a man with cracked skin, no eyeballs and wore black vestiges of a holy man, as if he was but a priest at a funeral.
This was the Chancellor that Sarah and Antoinette had spoke with earlier, the same one who summoned Iazel to the cathedral.
From his pocket he pulled out a silver watch shaped like a human skull, and moved the hands to the twelfth hour. The watch shook as the skull's eyes glowed crimson red and the Chancellor's expression grew respectful.
"Chancellor Iaziah, to what do I owe the pleasure of you disturbing me?" A sweet female voice echoed up from the watch.
The Chancellor knew better than most that the sweetness of the voice hid the most vile and cold words from this woman.
However she was his superior and he knew his place.
"My Lady, I must report of two... bumps in the New York Ringlet, in my Sphere to be accurate." The Chancellor said slowly and the other voice remained quiet for a moment.
"What sort of bumps?" The sweetness was thickening and his fear grew.
"An anomaly appeared in my cathedral and a Pariah was... freed." He said hesitantly.
The wind blew on the rooftop for moment before the voice from the watch started to laugh.
"Haha! That's... just rich! Hilarious! Utterly beyond words!" The lady laughed uproariously," Your skills in entertainment have risen beyond all scopes of reason. "
"My Lady I am not jesting." Iaziah said softly and the laughter died instantly.
"Are they Truly dead then?" She asked quietly and warning bells rung all around him, but he was compelled to tell the truth.
"The anomaly escaped before my arrival and the freed Pariah left the Ringlet, I believe he sensed my approach." Iaziah spoke with trepidation, fearing what would happen next.
The lady was known to punish anyone for nearly everything, only her husband was spared her wrath.
He would not be lucky, he just knew it.
"Iaziah, sweet young Iaziah. I won't kill you... yet. " She said and his eyes went wide," Replacing a Chancellor requires alot of work, so you have time to fix this pollution upon the Code. However I will begin the preparations for your replacement, it will take a month in The Fallen Mortal Realm, so you have two weeks at most."
The night air around him froze as knives of air and frost, appeared all around him, pointing on every sliver of skin and flesh, ready to tear him to ribbons before he could blink.
"Fail and you'll feed my new puppies." Her voice sounded right next to his ear, and frost covered his earlobe," Understand young one?"
"Yes, my Lady. I will handle it." Iaziah spoke in a choked voice with ten knives around his throat, each word causing a sliver of skin to be scraped off.
"Good. Rest in peace, Chancellor." The knives vanished as the eyes of the skull watch went dark.
Iaziah fell to his knees, the adrenaline rush of fear and terror tingling his body like a man who had taken a tiny seat in the electric chair.
After a few minutes, he got up and left, his mind filled with one thought; Survival.