Post by Khaos on Mar 7, 2021 21:36:20 GMT -5
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Damien Carter stood naked in the shower, the hot water cascading down his head and body. It had been months since Damien had felt the sting of pressurized water on his frame, the dirt and grime rinsing off his body and swirling into a brown puddle around his feet, before disappearing out of sight down the drain. Damien stifled laughter at the sight, the sight reminding him of a baptism of sort… only his had been a baptism by fire, his sins burned away into total absolution. Closing his eyes, he could still recall the heat of the fire licking at his exposed flesh.
“What are you doing here!? You shouldn’t have come for me! Why would you do this!? If they found you…”
His fist slammed repeatedly into the tile of the shower until the skin had cracked and small droplets of blood rolled off his knuckles, mingling with the dirty water below. How could he have been so reckless, thinking she cared the way about him that he did about her? She had used him to get to where she was and, once she had no need of him anymore, was cast aside like the insignificant piece of refuse he was. Even now, a part of him would always see her as the little girl he had met in that orphanage – the one that needed him to protect her from the darkness of the world. But now, thanks to her, he was the darkness – and the darkness could not survive in the light. Shadows would only stretch so far before the fire would ignite and set the world ablaze. Damien begrudgingly turned the water off, deciding he had indulged himself long enough within the comforts of the water. Opening the door, the steam rose from his flesh as he wrapped a towel around his waist. He walked to the bathroom mirror, wiping his hand across it to clear off the build-up of condensation on its surface. Looking at his reflection, Damien often wondered what type of person he would be if he had made different choices. He brought a hand across his buzzed head, feeling the patches of where they had burned the hair from his head. This was part of his punishment, for meddling in affairs beyond his comprehension. He had tried growing his hair back after the ordeal, but it all grew back in such random and mismatched patches of length that it was easier to simply keep it cut clean. As often was the case, his eyes found their way to the everlasting memory of his stay within Hecate’s conclave, the six-pointed sun star encircled by three symmetrical barriers directly over his heart. This was the first of many “souvenirs” he received, but none compared to the feeling of the Goddess herself branding him like he was nothing more than common livestock.
He had been marked…
He had often wished for death but, just like everything else, she had denied him this as well.
“My God,” she whispered, laying eyes upon her friend for the first time in weeks.
Damien’s wrists were shackled and chained above his head as he dangled from the center of the cavern, a small recess of moonlight creeping through a crack in the foundation. At each corner of the cavern was a large copper bowl adorned with silver crystals, an eternal red fire lit in its center. Despite the warmth that flooded the room, there appeared to be one place that the heat did not touch, the central spot in which Damien remained restrained. His friend cautiously approached him, surveying the damage that had been done to him. His body was adorned with various scars and burn marks; his figure caked in dried blood. As she stepped into the center of the room, her hand went to his face, his right eye swollen shut. At her touch, a chill ran through Damien’s spine and he flinched away from her, the chains rattling noisily above him.
“Shhhh,” she whispered, nervously looking behind her. “Damien, it’s me!”
With his one good eye, Damien blinked away the darkness, his vision finally landing on that of his childhood friend.
“A-are… you really here?” Damien questioned.
His friend simply responded by dipping her hand into a container of water and bringing her finger up to Damien’s cheek, tracing it across his bruised and broken skin as he she muttered a few words. He felt a cooling sensation spread across his face, the swelling in his right eye fading enough so that he could, once again, look upon her with both eyes.
“I didn’t think I’d see you again,” Damien stammered, forcing a smile from his lips.
“You need to be quiet,” she commanded, lifting the container up to Damien’s lips and letting him drink from it.
Damien had never tasted anything as sweet as this water, guzzling the liquid at such a pace that it forced him to choke. His friend pulled the container away as the water sputtered from his lips, forcing her to place her hand over his mouth, doing her best to deafen the noise.
“You are going to get me caught!” she scorned.
“Well,” Damien started, struggling to catch his breath. “At least I’d have a ‘roommate’ with me, then. I know it’s not a lot to look at it, but it grows on you after a while.”
“Do you think this is funny?” she accused.
“Does it look like I’m laughing!?” Damien sneered, his words lashed out behind clenched teeth.
His friend glanced back over her shoulder, paranoid that the others might discover her in a place that she was not meant to be.
“No!” Damien hissed. “You fucking look at me; look at what your ‘new friends’ have done!”
She tentatively did as she was told, allowing herself to take in the full sight of his torture. Her eyes went over every bruise, every laceration, every burn, before finally meeting his gaze once more.
“I never asked you to…” she began, before abruptly turning on her heel, the noise of voices echoing off the halls behind her drawing her attention. “Shit! I have to…”
“No,” Damien pleaded. “Don’t leave me!”
“Damien,” she tried to reason. “If they find me here…”
“Kill me,” Damien suddenly requested. “Please… I can’t take anymore.”
She stared at her friend, horrified at what he had just asked of her. She had very little time to respond, however, as the voices continued to grow louder.
“I’m sorry,” she stated, turning and disappearing into the darkness.
Damien stood in the bathroom, looking down at his bloodied knuckles. Erebus knew where she was, after all these years and, soon, he would know too. He wondered what type of mood he would be in when he saw her again. Would he want to show her the type of “compassion” that Hecate and her disciples had once shown him? Or would he forgive her for everything that she had put him through? After all, the Nightshades believed that she would have a bigger role to play in events yet to unfold. But there it was again, this ever inescapable “fate”. Damien had half-a-mind to simply crush her throat upon reuniting with her, if only to piss in the winds of fate. He sighed as he cleaned his hand and, then, cleaned the wound on his side once more. Both were already healing at a remarkable rate, one of the benefits of being among the Shadow Lord’s “Grim Reapers”. Exiting the bathroom, Damien made his way to the bedroom, removing the towel and slipping his naked form underneath the cotton sheets. Much like the shower, it had been months since he had enjoyed the simple pleasures of having a bed to sleep in. It wasn’t until his head lay down on the pillow that he realized just how tired he actually was. Closing his eyes, he willfully let slumber take him.
The sound of the smoke alarm jolted Damien up from his rest as he gazed around, the darkness of night having now been replaced by the rising of the sun. Shuffling from the bed, Damien grabbed a robe and wrapped it around his body as he hastily proceeded down the flight of steps to where the annoying blaring noise was coming from. Finding his way into the kitchen, he saw a slender young Caucasian female stringing together an impressive sentence of obscenities as she waved a towel at the stove top fire that she had just created.
“Thea!?” Damien called out, squinted his eyes against the absurdly bright daylight.
“Oh… hi there DC!” Thea called over her shoulder, still occupied with the fire. “Sorry, did I wake you?”
Thea was one of Erebus’ Nightshades; three “sisters” of the dark, blessed with precognitive abilities. Combined with the other two, their powers were unparalleled in glimpsing into exact moments of the future, as well as tracking down specific individuals. In fact, as much as it was Erebus who negotiated Damien’s release from Hecate’s evil clutches, it had been the Nightshades who had finally tracked down where the “Light Bringer” had been hiding him away. Damien warily looked around for the other two siblings as he wasn’t too eager, or excited, about having a family reunion of sorts.
“What are you doing here?” Damien questioned, moving to open a nearby window to vent the smoke out of the kitchen.
“Um… well… I was trying to surprise you,” Thea stumbled, her effort to quell the fire having very little effect. “So… uh… surprise!?”
Damien brushed past her, removing the flaming pan from the stove and placing it in the sink, snuffing out the blaze by putting a lid over top of it. With the crisis averted, he turned back to Thea, looking the youngest of the Nightshades up and down. She stood a measly five-foot-four inches and weighed around one-hundred-and-ten pounds, making Damien stand a full foot over her as well as double her weight. Thea looked back at him with her silver-blue eyes as she nervously twisted her hair around her finger. Above all else, her hair was what usually made her stand out the most as she tended to grow bored of one color highlight after about a week. This week’s highlight was a teal-green, silhouetted by her natural dark brown color. Erebus was a stickler for traditions and, as such, usually required the Nightshades to be clad in dark moonlight-black robes. But that was only when they were in the Underworld; up here, in the “real world”, they were free to dress as they please. Thea had a taste for the eccentric, usually opting for a pair of bright colored jeans and mesh tops, complete with elbow-high gloves. As much as she tried to pass off the fact that the gloves were a “fashion statement”, Damien knew the real reason she was wary of human contact. At a young age, Thea had discovered that direct contact with another person’s skin gave her flashes into that person’s time of death. It was a harrowing thing for her to have to overcome, something Damien wasn’t entirely sure she actually ever had.
“Sorry, DC,” Thea finally spoke up, breaking the silence. “I didn’t mean to wake you; I just thought I’d do something nice for you and cook you some breakfast. It looks like it’s been awhile since you’ve had a decent meal…”
“DC” was Thea’s term of endearment for Damien, calling him that as far back as he could remember. Even when he had served as one Erebus’ Reapers, she had remained firm in her stance to reference him by this nickname; refusing to call him by one of those “silly” names that the Shadow Lord tended to give to all of his subordinates.
“It’s fine,” Damien reassured her, looking around the kitchen. “Maybe we’ll just try something less flammable this time around… like cereal?”
“I love cereal!” Thea exclaimed.
Thea grabbed a pair of bowls and began to set the table as Damien grabbed a box of generic cereal and some milk, placing both on the table. Only when the two were ready to eat did they realize that there was only one chair amongst them.
“Oh,” Thea realized, looking around. “Guess Mr. Stewart was a bachelor of sorts.”
“No worries,” Damien announced. “You take the chair; I need to stretch my legs anyway.”
Thea didn’t even try to argue him out of his spot at the table, happily bounding into the chair and pouring cereal into her bowl. As she added the milk, Damien looked around at the kitchen, a monthly calendar catching his eye. Warren had listed all of his upcoming appointments of importance on here, along with his work schedule at the Pandora’s Box. Upon his investigation of the house the night prior, Damien had come to realize that Erebus had been correct in his assumption of the shop owner. Never married, never fathered any children. Just going from one day to the next, living out an existence of lifelong solace. Damien might’ve felt pity for the man, if it wasn’t for the fact that he was now dead and free of this desolation.
“You thinking of sticking around L.A. for a bit?” Thea asked, chomping down on a spoonful of her breakfast.
“I would assume you, of all people, know the answer to that,” Damien retorted, pouring himself a bowl of cereal and adding milk.
“I mean,” Thea paused, looking around the house as if seeing it for the first time. “You could pick worse places to live. It’s kind of quiet and cute…?”
Damien chuckled to himself, the words “quiet” and “cute” not often used to describe someone like him. Still, would it have been wrong for him to want some sort of quaint little life after this was all over? These were dangerous thoughts for him to even think about and he knew it. If Erebus was correct then there was something brewing beneath the surface and the whole world was about to be on the verge of disarray. Chances are, he wouldn’t survive the coming storm, and Damien had made peace with that; almost welcomed it, at this point. But before he let the eternal darkness take him, he had one thing left undone.
“So,” Damien began, re-focusing on the task at hand. “Where does Erebus have me going this time?”
“Lafayette Cemetery,” Thea responded, slurping up the rest of her cereal and going in for seconds. “In New Orleans, I believe.”
“Of course it’d be a graveyard,” Damien groaned, stirring his cereal, having now lost his appetitive. “Please tell me I’m not trying to raise the dead.”
“Nothing of the sort,” Thea laughed. “But the power of the spell does require a bit of dark magic…”
“Or,” Damien interrupted. “You could just tell me what I really want to know and we can just skip this little ‘side quest’ and get to the main event already.”
Thea sighed, putting her spoon down into her bowl and looking Damien in the eyes. He knew that she believed what she had seen to come to pass would happen, regardless of if he wanted it to or not. So trying to sway her from pushing him down this path would be futile, still… Damien felt like it was worth a shot, fate be damned.
“I know you really want to find your friend…” Thea began.
“She’s not my friend,” Damien corrected, his words reminding him as such. “Not anymore.”
“Be that as it may,” Thea continued. “Your fates are intertwined, DC… I’ve seen what’s coming and if you are to have any chance of surviving it, you’re going to need HER help.”