Chapter 36

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Chapter 36

Thanatos awoke in death. He looked at his translucent form, and then at the waterfall that pulled him closer. It was true what Aurora's tutors had said - the waterfall was a sorting house for souls. Inside angels and demons busily separated the dead.

Thus it was that Thanatos's soul passed through the water amidst thousands of others. One nearby angel surveyed the crowd. She had a luminescent glow, a woman's young face. Her eyes rested on Thanatos, and her sonorous voice sounded in his mind, "You see, you needn't have feared death a decade ago. What a pity that you served the devil."

Thanatos saw souls cast down into hell. He felt afraid; the angel's words did little to calm him. Then a demon set its eyes on the swordsman. Word must have spread through hell of the man that had killed Bahamut's Spectres. Its manner was precipitous, cutting a path through the dead crowd to the one soul that mattered most. "You," it said in an evil baritone.

The underworld was worse than Thanatos had reckoned upon. The dark kingdom had rivers of lava, volcanoes, and black porous rock that emitted an acrid smell. Dead souls were everywhere tortured by demonic creatures. Thanatos waited for an abaddon to come like they had for the others he'd entered the underworld with; but no-one came. He looked out at the barren wasteland. A great fortress stood amongst the mountains in the distance.

The swordsman saw ramparts of blood, and men tortured. He knew that when you died in the afterlife, you passed into the abyss - an eternal vacuum. He wondered why those around didn't die, but he concluded that souls were more robust than flesh and blood. They would die with a little more time. He turned his attention from the gore to finding the throne room, and, when he entered this brutal hall, all the demonic courtiers stopped; every one of Thanatos's movements was watched by a hundred eyes.

Bahamut appeared like a man. He had a hard face, lean body, tall, but his eyes were black, and his voice utterly demonic.

"You had only to kill her," Bahamut said, "And you would have been free?"

The devil didn't get an answer from the defier.

"Why do you love them?"

The ghost's mind centred on Astraea. The devil knew that, "You believe you've saved her?" He paused. "She will die, and then she will be mine."

Thanatos knew what cruelty awaited Astraea, and so, drawing a deep breath, he did what he had come to do. He stepped forward drawing Montalais from its scabbard.

The devil's eyes widened against a tapestry of skin.

Thanatos was a desperate man during his final days on Lucretia, but he was still Thanatos. Long had he sought a way to escape his pact with the devil, and in the book of swords he'd at last discovered it. The devil, when young and foolish, cast a sword capable of killing a god. It was meant for Bellerophon, but it was equally lethal to himself. Now it was in the hands of a man more than capable of wielding it, and for the first time since he'd ascended to the throne, the devil felt fear.

Bahamut stood, his mind fastidiously at work. The words fell upon him one by one, like thunderbolts in a raging storm, "I-challenge-you," the libertine cried in the hall.

A deafening silence ensued.

Considering the mythic weapon, Thanatos said, "The sword that you made will prove your undoing."

The devil's strike might have cut Thanatos in two had the latter not brought Montalais up to guard against the primordial blow. The god Bahamut possessed unnatural strength and struck again and again. The flurries intensified. The devil at last, thrust his superhuman forearm at Thanatos, who was sent hurtling across the room. He bounced off a stone wall, and gasped for breath upon the floor. Bahamut, sprouting black wings out the cavity in his back, flew at the cavalier. He ran his sword through him, but Thanatos made an exquisite block.

Thanatos at last lay again supine upon the floor - unable to match the immortal he faced. He'd lost his weapon during a sabre lock, and searched around with his eyes for it, but the devil stood over him, and, sensing his victory close, placed his foot upon Thanatos's chest. The weight of which began to crush his ribs. Thanatos screamed in pain. Looking across at his sword, he clutched in futility. The devil's black eyes locked on him, and Thanatos knew he'd lost.

Bahamut endeavoured to give that fatal blow that would demonstrate Thanatos could no longer defend himself; the latter tried to wriggle out from under the devil's foot, but he was crushingly pinned. The sword came down when Thanatos at last pulled the poniard from his boot, and sliced at the devil's foot. Bahamut howled because the tendon upon his right ankle was severed completely; it flopped around as black, viscous blood spewed out. He was wounded; he couldn't walk.

The iron wrist of Thanatos pounced upon the devil, and his sword of raw power augmented his prodigal swordplay. Bahamut could not defend himself from all the blows. Thanatos's sword soon lodged in Bahamut's chest. The devil's wings twitched and spasmed while his body lay in a sea of his own blood. Thanatos dislodged his sword from the carcass, and surveyed the chamber.

The demons fell to their knees while Thanatos slumped onto the throne. He shut his eyes while a new found power coursed through his veins. Then the chevalier-god departed the underworld.

A storm raged that night: thunder rolled in the cloudy skies; rain fell to the floor; lightning cracked against Lucretia's bosom like a whip when a hand thrust itself out of the ground. Silhouetted against the bolts of lightning it grasped at the air.


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