Chapter 50: Why

Axel gasped awake.

His pain was gone, but so was the sensation of his limbs or torso. He was floating, drifting across empty space.

Darkness stretched as far as his eyes could see. He was standing on nothing, dressed in nothing. Blackness surrounded him from all sides.

“No… No, no, NO!”

He was dead. Axel had died.

The thought should have been a jubilant one. For so long, he carved the embrace of the end, fought for so long to earn that sweet release he granted so many others.

And now he was here… But all he could feel was horror.

Lune… She was still out there, alive and alone. 

Axel had killed her… But the King had brought her back — wasting no doubt what was a precious resource of the Great Game to do so — solely to torture her in front of the soldier.

But then Axel had died — a wretched mercy delivered by Lune. The Tyrant would be enraged beyond words and would no doubt seek an outlet for his fury.

Lune would not be spared.

Axel’s emotions were in turmoil. Killing the Eldarin, fulfilling his duty, but then watching death be robbed from her as she was forced back to life…

For the Harbinger, who worshipped Death as the final and greatest peace…

It was sacrilege beyond his means to describe.

And that final moment, when Lune chose to kill him rather than herself… To prioritise granting him that mercy, despite knowing the fate that awaited her… 

So many died to save him. Ymir, the Moonfly grub, Lune…

“Why?” he asked despairingly. “Not for me. How could you do that for me? I’m not… I don’t deserve peace…”

“That is not for you to decide.”

Light shone down upon the abyss. The sole source of illumination across infinite aeons radiated its pale glow upon him. 

Axel looked up and finally saw the visage of his God.

Ethereal. Otherworldly. A cloaked woman atop a headless horse, wielding a scythe that shone brilliantly with baleful starlight. Axel could not see the face hidden beneath the hood, but she was recognisable to him all the same.

Axel chuckled brokenly. “Would the proper procedure be for me to prostrate myself?”

The woman’s lips, the only visible part of her face, curved into a gentle smile.

“And why would I wish to see you lowered in prostration, my dearest Consort? If anything, such a sight would leave me unbearably sad. The Dread Harbinger that is yourself should not kneel for anyone. Not even Death.”

Her voice was odd to his ears. Smooth, polished, with not a hint of roughness or husk. It was neither sultry nor coarse. The words that passed through those moonlit lips were shaped by the sweet interplay of inhuman lips and tongue.

It was a mad, lyrical melody that left him speechless. The gentle hush of her voice seemed to sap his very thoughts. Soft as a brushing feather…

Axel stood up numbly. “So we meet at last.”

“So we do.” The woman’s smile grew fonder. “I greet you, my dearest Heart. My Consort of Ten Thousand Deaths. My very own Demon.”

The Harbinger nodded in return. “I greet you, my Handler.”

Then, Axel raised his hand…

And punched her.

~~~

“Perhaps we should start over…”

The man glared at his— the Reaper. He studied every inch of her features, from the pale horse she rode on, the featureless simplicity of her hooded cloak, and to that baleful scythe that hurts his eye to look at. It took a very long time before he found the sense to reply.

“So, you are real,” he breathed out. “The Pale Rider. The Grim Reaper. Death.”

“I am those things and more.” The creature — God? Concept? What words could he use to describe her? — nodded her head. “You may continue to call me your Handler, if you wish.”

“I think calling you Reaper suffices,” he half-growled, half-sighed as he cradled his hand.

The Reaper stroked her jaw tenderly, rubbing the place where he had punched her previously. Axel doubted he actually hurt her. 

The moment his fist touched her skin, his body had erupted into baleful light, drowning him in a pain worse than any he ever experienced — which was really saying something considering his ‘occupation’ and the events of the past day. 

Axel looked up at the Pale Rider once more. Her face was still hidden under her hood of pale starlight, and the shadows cloaked whatever features she had beneath the fabric. Only her jaw and lips were visible, and yet…

“You look… familiar,” Axel murmured. “Why? I haven’t even really seen your face, but it’s almost as if I know you.”

“Does it surprise you that I have manifested in the way you so desperately envision me to be? So often you prayed to that totem of Death in your imagination… You crafted it with madness, piled tributes of murder and suffering on its altar, and then worshipped it in my name. Is it any wonder I would come to you in your desired form?”

More crypticism. Great. 

It was as if the woman was asking him to punch her again.

The way her lips quirked made it seem as if she could read his thoughts.

“I have heard your calls, Axel Roukin, and I have arrived in answer to your prayers. Such sweet words you said to me the first time you died… And then yet more to come in the hours that followed. You reaped such a wonderful bounty in our single day together. I am most satisfied with the things you showed me. So what part of me displeases you, my Demon?”

“Send me back,” Axel demanded. “You did so once. You can do it again. I need to be back before that bastard Tyrant takes Lune away from the Zone!”

There was no telling whether the King would choose to remain, now that his business was concluded, albeit in a fashion most undesirable. If they left the Zone, it might be impossible to find them again. Ymir had vastly more experience with the Great Game than Axel did, and even the Giant was unsure of his odds of finding the Tyrant without a lure.

“There is no need for this impatience. Time here is stilled. Should I allow you to return, barely seconds would have passed between your passing and subsequent resurrection.”

Axel stilled. ‘Allow’, she had said.

The Reaper chuckled at his reaction. “Once begs acceptance, but twice calls for a price. Surely you did not think I would allow you to cheat Death so wantonly? I am not that forgiving a woman. That said, I can be a generous patron, should my Consort prove himself able to satisfy my needs.”

Axel gritted his teeth. “Speak clearly.”

“I already have. You are not ignorant of my wants, of why I chose you. But since we are to play games with each other, I shall make it simple for you.”

The Reaper changed her tone once more, and this time, there was no ignoring her inhumanity. When she spoke, it felt as if the death of worlds had descended at her feet.

“Lieutenant Axel Roukin, leader of the 76th Cadre. Vice-Commander of the UEC’s infamous ‘White Child Demons’ Special Ops Division of the Carmine Wars, and the perpetrator of countless killings.”

Memories of murders flooded his mind. Axel clutched his head as the faces of the violently departed returned to him.

“You who committed atrocity and genocide upon your people. You who were madness unbound, who sang for me the most beautiful of music with your reaping hands.”

All those lives he took… for what? To what purpose? Because he was told to do so?

A weapon, walking the way of War. His sins marched with him, under the stains of Famine and the shadow of Conquest. 

But where else was he to go? There had been no other path but Death.

Was there?

“I order you to go forth and slaughter all that dares stand in the Path of your perceived repentance. Spare no one, neither beasts, men, women, nor children. All who deny the broken sincerity of your empathy are to be slain, either by circumstance or by your hand. Walk to the end of your ‘kindness’ — standing atop an altar of reaped souls, built under my name — and force the System to recognise you as their King. Becoming the Harbinger of all Worlds. That is my Command.”

Command? Command… He had been given a Command. A weapon did not need to think; it merely enacts the Command of its wielder.

And yet, Axel resisted, struggling under the world’s weight of her presence. “And by… whose Command… do these words come from?”

“By the Command of Death.”

Axel snarled in a violent grin, forcing the mask of madness to his face. “And by what right… Does Death hold to command me?”

The Lady named Death tilted her head at him.

“I am your Mistress and Shepard. Your Patron and Muse. I am the name you cried to in the dead of sleepless nights. I am the effigy you crafted in your broken mind to crown your worthless suffering and guilt — that flame you call Empathy.

“I was there when you killed your mother at birth, I was there when you killed your father at twelve, and I was there for every murder you partook in for your entire life. Men, women, and children, all reaped in my honour.

“I am the Deliverance of the Sword, the Hunger, the Plague, and all the Wild Beasts that you shall wield to bring ruin to the worlds you tread. I am the Pale Rider, claimant to a Fourth of all Ends, and I swear by my hallowed title that if you follow my will, I shall give the murderous hands you wield the purpose you have sought since the day you were born.

“I am your Reaper, and you will obey.”

The enormous pressure relented, and while Axel could ‘breathe’ once more, the heaviness that lingered behind felt almost material. It was neither intimidation nor fear that gave him pause, but that tangible thread of something that threatened to bind him to his Reaper the moment he answered.

In that instant, Axel thought of the unfathomable, unreasonable weight of sufferance that the world had pressed down upon him since the day he first drew breath. Why, he had asked. 

Why do I still live?

When no one answered, he built a shrine in his mind, gave it the name of Death, and threw upon it all the ugliness he could not stomach.

Why not give in? Isn’t this what I always wanted? To worship Death, to give others peace? 

To become an unthinking weapon… To not have to face the ugliness of the World anymore…

To let Axel Roukin die.

Let me… die…

He could accept her offer. It would be the easiest thing in the world.

… But.

Do not betray yourself.

He had not known Ymir for that long. Compared to his cadre, the time he had spent with the Giant was but a speck of sand in an hourglass.

But it was the first time anyone had ever tried to persuade him to live for himself. To exist beyond being a weapon for his wielders, or a Harbinger for his cadre.

The peace of suicide was comforting. Its mere existence was what allowed some to sleep at night, to continue on with their tortured lives, assured in the knowing that the final option would always be theirs to claim.

That the end was always just one decision away.

There would also be those who denounce such an act as sacrilege or cowardice. But it was not cowardly to be tired of life, Axel thought. It is never a mere instance of pain that triggers such an act, but a lifetime of meaninglessness and suffering.

If the path ahead was so dark, if one’s wish for death was so powerful, what weight should the judgment of others, or even God, have against theirs?

Nothing. Nothing at all.

Axel felt a blade rest on his shoulder.

The Reaper had raised her scythe — a thing of balefire and last starlight — and placed its moon-curved edge against his bare neck. Just the slightest touch, featherlight, and it drew blood.

“In my long life, I have seen souls beg for this blade countless times. Never have their cries held any bearing whether they received its touch. You can list your sins to me, Axel Roukin, and though they may be legion, they would ultimately mean nothing to me.”

“I am not the Judge; I am merely Executioner. The decision to take a life, whether one’s own or that of others, was always in the hands of the living.”

Relief. Fear. Anger. He was tired. Not even the mask of madness had the strength to come any more.

“Out of respect for the one who caught my eye — you who brought my peaceful embrace to so many others — I shall offer you that choice once more; one beyond Consortship to myself. 

“If you believe suicide to be the Path, then part the flesh of your throat right now. Weak as you are in this moment, it would not take much effort to sever your soul. Simply turn your head into the edge, and your life will end.”

His life essence ran down the blade. Axel did not move. He stared at the Reaper instead.

His eyes were pleading. Pleading for her to kill him. Pleading for her to make the choice he could never make.

It was as Ymir had said: Axel was always a coward who sought the means of his suicide through the hands of others, rather than his own.

“No.” The Reaper smiled sadly. “I will not make this choice for you.”

Axel looked upon himself. A monster in every meaning of the word. A Demon who killed endlessly. Wallowing in that sea of blood, and looking at the toll in lives he would claim should he not end his own life here…

His life… What was it really worth?

Nothing at all.

To live is to suffer. To kill is to sin. Where, then, does the proper Path lie for me?

Inevitably, Axel Roukin always came to the same conclusion.

There is only Death.

The soldier made his decision.

I don’t want to live anymore.