Death's Mantle 3

by Harmon Cooper

  This did little to the demon bug aside from distracting it while Yoshimi continued to slice and dice her way through its tendrils.

  Growing stronger, the demon bug sent a fist in Lucian’s direction, which he managed to slice through with his claws. As soon as his blade cut the fist off, it split into two long tendrils covered in sharp bristles, which the parasite tried to snap at him.

  Popping a new magazine in, Lucian squeezed his finger on the trigger and fired at the two tendrils, ripping them to shreds before they could reach him.

  Lucian was just about to equip his grenade launcher and wait for Yoshimi to move away when a flash above caught his attention.

  “Yoshimi!” he cried, but not before a purple pillar of blistering energy hit her, Yoshimi falling to her knees as the force continued to rain down from the sky.

  “You fucking asshole!” Lucian shouted, blasting off, all of his creations joining him as he summoned his enhanced lava sword.

  Lucian’s blade met Azazyel’s gunmetal gray gauntlet, the fallen angel’s golden eyes flaring up before firing a cantaloupe-sized hole through Lucian’s chest.

  He spiraled to the ground, connecting with the corner of Connor’s roof and smashing into the home, where tendrils from the demon bug met him and started whipping against Lucian’s back.

  Looking up again, he saw his crows and his six replicants struggling to engage the fallen angel, who swatted them away with ease, the man barely trying.

  Grunting, and trying to elbow his way free from the parasite’s attacks, Lucian pressed himself out of the debris and crawled forward, waiting for the wound in his chest to heal.

  His eyes darted to Yoshimi as she dodged a searing beam of purple energy, Azazyel keeping the pressure on while engaging Lucian’s creations and fending off a stray parasitic tendril.

  Charging forward, Lucian pushed Yoshimi out of the way of another beam’s trajectory, feeling the blast himself, everything around him burning with purple fire.

  His Soul Points flashed in front of him, blurry, the numbers dropping rapidly.

  The pillar of energy suddenly disappeared, Lucian hitting the ground, smoke coming off his body as Yoshimi came to him, as an inferno started up somewhere behind him.

  “We have to go,” he told her.

  Appearing in a flash of silvery sparks, Azazyel suddenly stood behind Yoshimi.

  He cut into her with a sword that was larger than any blade Lucian had ever seen someone wield before aside from a mecha, or in a video game.

  She took the strike, her arm, shoulder, and a piece of her back cutting away and quickly resealing as soon as the blade left her body. Yoshimi flew into the air and pivoted, her blackened katana now in her hand as she raced forward to meet the fallen angel.

  His breaths short, Lucian took just a moment to recover while their blades clanked together, the fallen angel clearly stronger than the female Death.

  But that didn’t stop her from fighting back, Yoshimi able to brush past him, cut into his armor and pivot back around, delivering a kick to Azazyel’s back.

  He stumbled forward, letting out a grunt tinged in both annoyance and animosity as he placed his hand where she had just cut him, a small amount of blood on his fingers.

  He showed her his hand, the blood disappearing, his wound stitching up.

  A sinister smile formed on the fallen angel’s face, as if to tell her she was too weak to ever seriously injure him.

  “This ends today!” she shouted as she came forward again, Yoshimi livid.

  It became clear to Lucian that she was not only fighting for her life, but for peace of mind, that she was tired of having the fallen angel hunt her. It also was increasingly clear that he needed to do all he could to help her.

  With the swipe of his hand, Lucian conjured a few dozen injurecrows. He sent some toward the parasite, to keep it engaged, and the rest to Azazyel’s feet, blowing the fallen angel off balance and kicking up a puff of debris.

  Taking a knee, Azazyel quickly turned to Lucian and cast his hand out, a purple pillar cutting Lucian down and tearing through his armor.

  One of Lucian’s replicants landed and grabbed what was left of Lucian’s lower half.

  His replicant dragged it over to him as Lucian equipped his plasma blowtorch, Lucian burning with rage as he locked his weapon on the fallen angel and delivered what he hoped would actually do some damage.

  His blast was able to momentarily cut through Azazyel’s armor, but it quickly reformed by the time Lucian needed to swap out a charge pack, and at that point, Azazyel and Yoshimi had already moved on, crashing through the neighbor’s fence and continuing their sword fight, parasitic tentacles careening after them, the fire now raging off to their left.

  “Come on,” Lucian said as his legs healed up.

  His replicant helped him stand; another Grim Mecha landed to act as Lucian’s support while he finished healing.

  Once he was good to go, he shot forward, going with his scythe this time, hoping it would give him a little bit of distance.

  An idea came to him as he neared Azazyel, Lucian throwing his weapon to one of his replicants, who quickly swooped it up as he charged forward and prepared to tackle the fallen angel.

  Lucian concentrated all his weight into the small of Azazyel’s back, the fallen angel turning just in time to catch him.

  Lucian was still able to drive Azazyel into the ground, and sink a few fists into his armored face before the tip of the fallen angel’s sword went sent straight into Lucian’s gut and ripped out the top of his head.

  Lucian’s vision moved left and right as he fell, the piece of his body that had been bifurcated slapping back together for a moment.

  He turned onto his back, realizing that there was a wider gap between his eyes than there normally was, Lucian cut in half from the sternum up.

  It was going to take a moment to heal from that, and as he did, he watched Azazyel continue to overpower Yoshimi, Lucian’s creations trying to help when they could, his injurecrows still distracting Connor’s parasite.

  As their numbers started to thin, he summoned more injurecrows to add confusion to the fight, Lucian watching as they shot forward and exploded into Azazyel’s back.

  Rising into the air, Azazyel threw his enormous sword at Yoshimi, pinning her to the ground.

  He had spread his palms wide, another pillar of purple energy striking her, frying everything around them, burning a goddamn crater into the ground that continued to grow as he blasted her.

  Healed again, Lucian equipped Menor’s cannibalistic ax, which he hurtled at the fallen Angel, its bit immediately forming teeth and chomping down.

  Much to his surprise, it actually connected, the weapon causing some confusion as Azazyel tried to beat it back, his pillar of energy dissipating as he pivoted.

  Lucian rushed to Yoshimi and tried to pull the sword out of her body, his hands blowing off once Azazyel struck him with a horizontal purple blast.

  “Lucian,” Yoshimi said, her voice strained.

  “We have to go,” he told her, feeling his hands start to reform. “We can’t beat him.”

  “Lucian, you…” Yoshimi swallowed, exposing her neck. “You must…”

  Lucian intuited what she was suggesting, everything coming to him at once, Lucian dumbfounded by a feeling of remorse for something that hadn’t even happened yet.

  “You… Must…” she whispered, parasitic tendrils starting to swell in their direction.

  “I…”

  A few of Lucian’s replicants banded together and collided with Azazyel, the one with his scythe able to get in a brief hit that sunk the blade into the fallen angel’s shoulder, his cannibalistic ax still distracting the man. Everything stopped for just a moment as Yoshimi said the words. “Lucian, you must kill me.”

  “I…”

  “I’m ready,” she said her voice unwavering. “I want you to have my power…”

  “I…”

  “Lucian, you must,” she said, her
voice growing stronger. “Or he will.”

  “Look,” he said, showing her that his hand had reformed, that they could teleport out of there. “We can go somewhere, we can leave.”

  “I’m ready,” she said, her eyes pleading with him. “Kill me. I’m done with all worlds.”

  “Yoshimi…”

  “Lucian, kill me!” she screamed, her voice haggard.

  The female Death extended her neck back even more, exposing her throat completely.

  Lucian saw her katana and went for it, Yoshimi nodding as he brought the blade against her throat. “It will… Work. I’m close.”

  Lucian lifted the blade over his head and closed his eyes as he brought it down, a sudden burst of what looked like solar energy igniting and spiraling all around him.

  “No!” Azazyel screamed, immediately slamming into Lucian and driving him to the ground.

  His replicants dog-piled on top of them, pulling the fallen angel off as Lucian crawled away.

  Lucian took one last look at Yoshimi’s decapitated body, Azazyel’s sword still pinning her to the ground, her severed head lying on its side, and her eyes open, watching Lucian, a smile on her lips.

  He pressed his thumb and pinky finger together and vanished.

  The sky was pink, a haze of clouds covering the sun, a bit of foam on the lake that sat before his workshop.

  The waves lashed against the shoreline, Grimzilla standing tall, eyes still blazing purple.

  Lucian fell to a knee, reliving what had just happened, the last image he saw of Yoshimi, her head lying on the ground, her eyes open as she took him in.

  Dead.

  Fucking gone.

  Lucian glanced up to his largest creation as it took a step forward, the guns on its shoulder that fired injurecrows pressing out of their compartments, whirring as the barrels locked into place. Lucian’s replicants fanned out, those that were damaged in any way already repaired, Hugin and Munin zipping around as Ezra the cat approached him.

  The cat ran his body against Lucian, purring, trying to soothe him in some way and ultimately failing.

  Lucian sighed with disdain as his Soul Points flashed in front of him.

  Killing Yoshimi had netted him over ten thousand points, Lucian hardly excited about this fact. The loss of his friend, one of the only ones he had in this wretched role, was worth more than any rudimentary point system he’d baked up to track his power.

  How then, to honor her legacy? What could he do in memory of her?

  Lucian pressed himself to his feet and began pacing back and forth as he thought of some of the things that she had told him, Yoshimi always a rock in his new life, willing to do more for him than he ever could have done for her.

  Mysterious, a pleasure to be around, wise beyond her years.

  She always seemed to support his decisions in her own ways, like becoming a Death Hunter, and she listened to his problems, even if they were trivial in her eyes.

  He wondered how he would have responded if their roles had been reversed, if he had been around as the Grim Reaper for nearly eighty years and some hungry new recruit showed up ready to take on the world.

  What would he have done? How would he have reacted?

  If anything, it was Lucian who brought death upon her. She would still be alive had he not involved her in his affairs.

  Clenching his fist at his side, Lucian decided at that moment to once again forego beating himself up over what had happened, knowing that she had free will, that neither of them could have predicted what would happen.

  There was also their last conversation on his mind, that she was ready to die, and that she wanted Lucian to do it.

  In the end, she had died trying to help him, a noble cause.

  Maybe the fate of ultimate death really was baked into the weight of the mantle, no one able to make it out the other side alive in the end, his current role simply a postponement of the inevitable.

  But how to honor her?

  Existential dread aside, what could he do in her memory?

  Lucian recalled some of the conversations they’d had, Yoshimi explaining how she had split her mantlecore with family members, something she had never gone into much detail about aside from what little she had revealed in their conversation.

  He knew then how he would honor her legacy, a small way he could acknowledge the advice that she’d given him and actually follow through with it.

  Not only would he continue to try to utilize this power for good, as best he was able, but Lucian would not split his mantle with Connor if it came down to it.

  He truly hadn’t given it much thought, but as his brother’s death date grew closer, Lucian knew that at some point he would have to make the decision if he was unable to save Connor.

  And now, still looking out at the shell of a city that used to reside on the other side of his cliff, Lucian formalized his decision with himself.

  If he wasn’t able to save Connor, he would not be giving Connor part of his mantle, nor would he give any of his family members a sliver of his core as they eventually passed.

  He would let them all die, even if it wasn’t peacefully, preventing them from ever wielding the kind of power Lucian had.

  “Hugin,” he said, his first crow quickly coming to him.

  “Yes?”

  “I want you to take a quick trip to the desert to tell my predecessor what happened at my brother’s home, all of it, from Azazyel’s appearance to Yoshimi’s death.”

  “And what will you do?”

  Lucian grumbled to himself for a moment. Finally, he spoke: “I don’t think now is the time to go back out there. I can’t say for certain, but I’m pretty sure that I have now become Azazyel’s number one target. So I’m going to stay here at least until tomorrow. As to what I will do? I’ve got something I want to work on. And after that, it’s video games. As stupid as it sounds, I need to decompress before I take the next step.”

  His spherical creation spun once and zipped in the air, Munin following after him.

  Lucian conjured the potion that Yoshimi had made him.

  He was going to need more of these, and rather than question his own power, now was the time to make it happen, to take her years of experience boiled down into the liquid inside the glass bottle and replicate it.

  Being able to constantly replenish his SP would help Lucian immensely, and it would also allow him to take bigger risks.

  With that in mind, Lucian let his intuition lead him.

  He wasn’t a scientist, and about the only time he’d ever been in a lab was in the high school biology class he was required to take.

  Still, his power gave him limitless abilities to wield a magic that allowed him to do whatever he liked, which meant Lucian could create a machine that he didn’t understand.

  Boiling this down, Lucian realized that in doing so he was simply creating an outer shell for a concept, that the machine he’d already pictured in his mind’s eye, a device that looked like a microwave that replicated whatever he put in it, wasn’t necessary in the least bit.

  None of this was necessary, he realized, looking up at his largest creation, which loomed over him as it stood guard.

  None of it.

  The reason Lucian was able to create these weapons, his replicants, his crows, his serious tech, was because he didn’t question nor did he doubt that they could exist.

  He found himself with his unique power and his imagination ran wild, anything he had ever done in a video game or watched in a movie a real possibility.

  Why would he need to replicate the potion when he could instead just create a bottle that never emptied?

  A table took shape, growing from the ground, vines wrapping around its legs as it solidified. Lucian set the potion down and conjured another empty vessel, thinking of this bottomless bottle as he did so.

  He walked to the shore of the lake and scooped some water into the vessel, swishing it around. Lucian then poured it out, a smile coming on his face as he s
aw that it kept pouring. Even though the contents should have been emptied long ago, the magical nature of the bottle never vanquished the contents of the vessel.

  He held upside down for over a minute, water still trickling out into the lake.

  The only thing was, he couldn’t empty it.

  He shook the bottle, he tried to remove the properties he had added to it, and even tried drinking some, to see if that would do anything.

  Once the bottle was enchanted, it appeared that he wasn’t able to remove the enchantment.

  Lucian dropped the bottle to the ground, the glass disappearing before it shattered. He conjured another one, his eyes closed this time, Lucian sensing when it was ready.

  Careful as ever, he spawned a funnel and transferred a fourth of the elixir that Yoshimi had made into his new bottle.

  Just in case he was wrong, he conjured yet another vessel with a wide mouth, and once it was resting on the table, he began pouring from his inextinguishable bottle into the larger container.

  “Yes,” Lucian whispered to himself.

  One-fourth of what Yoshimi had made filled the vessel on the table until it was overflowing, his bottomless bottle working. He turned it right side up and saw that there was still only a quarter of the liquid in it, that it was self-replenishing.

  His experiment had worked.

  Lucian had the original bottle of elixir she had made him, his new one which was self-replenishing, and now a container of the fluid.

  The transfer had worked, but was it still going to have its same effect?

  Lucian checked his Soul Points again to see that he had expended some through his experimentations.

  “Here goes nothing,” he said as he took a swig from the largest container, noticing that the liquid didn’t taste like anything, yet it did leave him with a tingling sensation running through him.

  He waited for his arms to blow off or something, and when that didn’t happen, Lucian pulled up his Soul Points, seeing that they had recovered some.

  “Whooo!” Lucian threw his hand in the air, startling two of his replicants who immediately brought their weapons to the ready and looked around. “Easy, guys,” Lucian told them as he went back to his experiment.