The Creator is here!!! 

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 "Faster!"

"Pull your knees up higher, so they're aligned with your hips."

"AGAIN!"

"Fist up, head tilted down. Protect your face at all times."

"You knock over a cone, you start over!"

"Are you napping?"

"NOT GOOD ENOUGH!"

"I don't know what that was, but it definitely wasn't a god damn push-up!"

"Break."

My back hit the mats again with a cringe worthy wet slap.

This whole training thing was getting out of control.

"I am absolutely blown away," Death said, his unnaturally flat expression now hovering over me, "that you made it halfway through the Graveyard yesterday."

"I made it an eighth through," I corrected snootily. After correcting him, I realized I made myself sound like a wimp. I mean, who can blame me? "The Graveyard" looked like something straight out of Ninja Warriors or a boot camp, with its monster tires, swinging spikes, ladders, ropes, and a warped wall, that led to ominous black curtains.

"Glenn was gracious to you, then. He told me you made it halfway through. One-eighth is absolutely fucking pathetic."

I pulled my aching body up so that I sat up on my forearms. "I'm so glad you accept me for who I am. Please, tell me more about how you feel."

"I feel you would lose at an arm wrestling match against my pinky."

I scanned over his hard muscled frame. He wore a crisp, faded grey t-shirt with black joggers. Unholy Lord Almighty, did he look good, and I certainly wouldn't win an arm wrestling match against his pinky...

"Are you even listening to me?" He growled.

"I'm trying the best that I can!" I yelled, realizing I'd been blatantly checking him out.

"Then try the worst that you can."

"You're not even sweating, you freak," I growled as I peeled the rest of myself off the mats. I stood up as smooth as possible, in an attempt to look like I was getting my second win. In reality, I looked like I was about to escort myself to the hospital to get my two broken legs looked at. Death clearly found this very amusing, but it only showed in his eyes. "At least I tried to keep up today," I continued.

"Tried," he clipped.

"Listen, you don't even have to breathe. And that makes keeping up with you in here–oh, I don't know, impossible?"

"Just say the word and I can stop you from breathing too, cupcake." He arched those stupid pierced eyebrows. As usual, His exotic, masculine beauty captured all my attention. Every day something seemed to change about him. That day it was his eyes. They were exposed because of his lack of aviators and narrowed more cynically than usual. His one eye was darker than normal, and a deep, woodsy green. His other eye, with that horrific scar slashed through it to his eyebrow, nearly glowed a livid mint green. The only part of his eyes that remained the same were his pupils, thin horizontal slits, trapped aesthetically in their catlike way.

He flashed his fangs in a vicious grin. I realized I was staring.

"Handsome, aren't I?"

"More like strange."

"And handsome."

I wasn't like I was going to object. "It must be nice being an egotistical psychopath."

"I'm rarely bored." He began to stalk around me in a slow, calculated way. "Feeling tired?" he asked in a low, luring voice.

"You wish," I said, mostly out of pride. I regretted my answer as soon as I heard his laugh at my back, low and deep in his throat.

His mouth brushed against my ear, and in a deep, chilling voice, he whispered, "Look alive."

The lights went out.

Fear clicked into place. There wasn't even a wink of light in the gym and my heart began to pound like thunder against my ribs.

I knew that Death was no longer standing behind me. But his laughter, insane and wicked, lingered in fractured echoes that bounced off the high ceiling of the gym. The sound tricked me into turning towards different faces of the room. I seemed to twirl around and around. At some point, I fisted my hands and tried to create my own light. I let out an exasperated noise and rubbed my hands together as if it would make a fire. Nothing.

Finally, I planted my feet, crossed my arms, and waited.

"What is the point of this?" I demand, but as expected, there was no immediate answer.

This was another one of Death's games. I felt his gaze on me in the darkness like a withdrawn beacon. He could undeniably see me­­, but I couldn't see him. And that made my heart pound like thunder against its cage.

I started to move, slowly, feeling through the darkness and hoping I didn't trip over anything. I wouldn't rush. That was exactly what a predator like Death wanted, a runner.

Where my vision was gone, my hearing seemed heightened. I focused on things I hadn't observed before. The small squeak in my left shoe. The clicks from the vents steadily blowing heat into the gym. There were sounds in the room that became a constant. If they changed ever so slightly, I'd know he was close, wouldn't I?

"Here, kitty, kitty," I taunted.

No matter I strained to listen for Death's footsteps, I heard nothing. He was too good at prowling in silence.

I shuffled into something sturdy and nearly fell over. It was large, a dense rubber, curved, and had deep grooves on the sides. A tire. I vaguely knew where I was now. I walked passed the tire, brushing my fingers against the next rows of tires after it. I tried to remember where the tires lead, and where the exit out of the gym was in relation to the tire section of the Graveyard. What came after the tires and before the tires? Oh god, I was drawing a blank. Why did I suddenly feel rushed to get out of there?

In the midst of trying to be clever and find my way to the door, I felt a brief presence at my back and something wet caress my neck. A tongue. I bottled up my shriek but squirmed from the sensation, my head flinching to my shoulder. I spun on my heel and took a swipe at the air with imaginary claws.

"Rely on your senses," Death's deep voice coached from no particular area of the gym. But I found myself too irritated to focus on anything except me imagining throttling him. "Focus, Faith."

I let out a frustrated noise. "This is absolutely pointless."

"Pointless, until it's applicable. Until you don't have the perfect lighting you think you'll have during a fight. Until you can't see your opponent, and they can see you." I felt the air get colder to my left and took that as a hint that he was there and snatched empty air again. His foot tripped me and I lost my balance, crashing to the floor with a grunt. "That's what happens when you don't focus," he said somewhere to the right of me. "Maybe if you listened to me, you wouldn't learn at such a snail's pace. You'd learn at my pace."

"I'm not like you," I seethed, picking myself off the ground and finding my balance again. "I didn't grow up in medieval times."

"You're more like me than you think," he answered, and I felt a strange twinge in my chest at his tone. His voice abruptly moved to my left. "I understand the change you are going through. You are clinging too hard to your humanity."

"You were human five billion years ago!" I yelled, unable to control my tantrum. "I don't even know if I am human!"

"You are exceptional. But you are still mortal, Faith. You bleed and breathe like any other human. Don't let your healing factor fool you."

I stood still, my heartbeat as proud as firecrackers in my ears. It felt like this was the first time he'd ever given me actual information about myself. "What am I, Death?" I demanded. "You know what I am!"

"Definitely not a creature with night vision," Death commented from another area of the room. If I didn't know any better, I'd say he was perched somewhere above me. "I could be totes naked, for all you know."

"You're changing the subject." I pinched the bridge of my nose, unable to control my next outburst. "I want to have something consistent. Something I can rely on, that I can control without these Mr. Miyagi Karate Kid lessons. How do I do that?"

Death didn't say anything a long moment. "What exactly are you asking of me?"

I chose my words carefully, trailing the darkness with my eyes. "If my resistant to injury was more consistent like yours.... at least then I wouldn't have a fear of hurting myself."

"My resistance to injury stems from my immortality, Faith."

Hesitantly, I answered, "I know."

I felt his presence at my side, his warm breath down my neck. "You want to live forever?" His anger quickly concealed his curiosity. "You should be thankful you have mortality. You should be thankful you have modest abilities."

"Modest. You think modest abilities freeze a monster the size of a truck and blow up a bathroom?"

"Bathroom stall," Death corrected lowly. "It was a bathroom stall."

"Same difference!"

"You can control this power to come and go at your will and remain mortal. I can teach you to maintain normalcy."

"And what if I screw up?" I demanded, a break of emotions beneath my words. "What if I screw up and get myself killed, Death? Then what? Are you going to just keep reviving me?"

"Where is this coming from?"

"From me," I said stubbornly. "There are good creatures who are immortal."

"Good is rarely preserved with chosen immortality," Death said. "It's preserved with integrity."

"I'm glad you hold me so highly."

"Immortality comes with a price. A price you should fear more than death, cupcake."

"I'm not afraid of death." I pinched my lips together. "Or Death, for that matter," I added persistently. "All I'm saying is, it's something I'll probably have to consider eventually. And I've been thinking about it."

"Well here's some more to think about." I felt the air shift and drop to a frigid temperature. The closeness of his voice indicated he was standing right in front of me. "Imagine watching everyone die around you while you remain the same. Imagine starting over once people start to notice your differences. Imagine hiding yourself, surrounding yourself with temporary people. People you think you can trust. People you'll outlive."

His voice circled around me.

"You'll seek a companion, someone to fill a void in your heart, but maybe they won't want to be like you, and maybe you don't have much of a heart anymore. You'll have to change your name, identity, and clothes to fit your atmosphere, or risk exposure and hunters who seek people with your gifts. Eventually, you'll kill someone." He ran a gloved finger across my neck in the dark, continuing his stalking. "Maybe you'll like it. And if you like it, maybe you'll become obsessed with it. Time will fly by like a merry-go-round at a carnival. It'll just circle, and circle, and then one day, you'll snap."

I felt the heat of his body behind me, and he leaned into my ear.

"You'll lose yourself to the madness of it all, and you won't know the difference between what you are, and what you wanted to become. You'll find that even your reflection cannot be trusted in a world like this. You'll realize how selfish immortality really is. How wrong you were to ever want it in the first place. But you're not that person who made that decision anymore. That person is long gone. And isn't that what you fear the most, Faith? Losing yourself?"

A life of loneliness, death, and repetitiveness was insanity... That wasn't a life that I wanted at all, but in fear of losing control I had sought a simpler solution. Because perhaps deep down, heavy in my bones, but obscure, was the subliminal knowledge that something terrible was about to happen. And I knew that awful thing wasn't aimed at me.

I didn't say anything for a long moment. "I do fear that the most," I agreed.

But I also fear losing you, nearly escaped me.

My hands felt hot and when I looked down, flickers of white were leaping from my right hand, lighting up a section of the dark gym. It was scorching hot and as it burst, a small piece of light burned my cheek. I stared down at my hand in horror and my throat tightened at the thought of losing control again. The more scared I became, the more violent the light became.

Death's gloved hand curled tightly around mine, strong and capable, capturing the light. The anxiety in my chest seemed to lessen, as if I knew I knew he would never let me hurt myself.

"You know, Faith," Death said, "maybe you've only just begun finding yourself."

Then he let go of my fist and it glowed like a lightening bug. Then, slowly, he pried my hand back open, palm up. A small orb had formed there, appearing like a calm, compressed star.

I looked up at Death. If he'd been as astonished as I was, it didn't show. He was great at that. Still, his eyes met mine in our small cocoon of light in the gym, and I swam.

"What are you waiting for?" He pointed briefly up towards the ceiling. "Let there be light, lamp girl."

"I can't–"

"You can," he said. "Focus. Imagine it rising. Light up the ceiling." Death guided my hand towards the ceiling. "And then let it go."

In my head, I imagined the orb rising from my fingertips. It rose so that it hovered a few inches beyond my middle finger, and then it grew, expanding as it rose. Death let go of my wrist. The orb began to lower again, but then I raised both of my hands and pressed the air towards it. The orb shot upwards and exploded into webbed electric currents on the ceiling. The currents curled around the light fixtures, igniting them back to life.

"Perhaps you are a quicker learner in certain areas, cupcake," Death said, and I knew that would be the closest thing to a compliment he would give me. When I looked up at him, imagine my surprise when his face was closer to mine than I'd expected. Close enough to kiss me. And then he did, and it was rough and deprived.

It would have been a perfect, scenic moment, if one of the light fixtures above us hadn't burst into flames, cracked a part of the ceiling, and came crashing down to the floor a few hundred feet away from us. It even created a miniature explosion as it hit the ground, blowing back my hair ever so slightly from the blast. I didn't even notice.

By then Death had pulled away from me. The kiss had been so brief, and there was so little trace of it left behind except a light tingle on my lips. I actually wondered if I'd imagined it.

Glenn appeared out of nowhere, nervous and sweaty, with two fire extinguishers strapped to his back like something straight out of Ghostbusters. "I got it, my Lord! I got it! Don't worry, my Lord!" He circled the flames in a low squat as if it were a wild animal, aiming at the root of the fire with the extinguishers. It seemed to grow larger, as if the extinguishers had gasoline in them, but I appeared to be the only one who noticed.

"WHOA!" Glenn miscalculated a step and somehow caught his pant leg on fire, which resulted in him rolling around the ground and shrieking. He continued pointing the extinguishers at the larger mass of fire even as he was on fire himself. "All.... under control.... my Lord!"

Death gifted me with a dry and dirty side-eyed look. "Damn sprinkler system never works in Hell. I'll be right back." He growled something foreign under his breath, before turning sharply on his heel, and vanished, leaving the wreckage and me behind.

Shortly after Death had left, the fire at the center of the gym grew ten-fold, Glenn was thrown like a rag doll into a wall, and the pendant around my neck tugged me forward, lifting toward the flames until it lay perfectly horizontally in the air.

I was too terrified to scream.

Within the fire, two black silhouettes of men appeared. One wore a cloak and stood behind the other man. He had a weapon in his hand, which was unmistakably Death's scythe. Ahrimad. The man in front of Ahrimad was only slightly shorter and leaner. I knew him, too. Everything played out in slow motion. The man in front of Ahrimad had begun walk forward and lifted his hand towards me as the fire seared an angry orange and red. His pale fingers long and quipped with black talons, split through the flames, unharmed by the licks of heat, and pointed directly at me..

And when a raspy voice commanded from the fire, "Kill the girl," I realized the second individual was Malphas, the Raven Demon.

And with a heave from the fire's mouth, winged, fiery creatures began to outpour from the mass of fire, becoming black as night–ravens–as they bulleted towards me with rasping croaks.

I'd never felt so much pain than in that moment. I'd lost all my breath in one staggering fall to the ground and my eyes suffered wide open. All I could grasp were shadows beating their wings across an even dimmer sky. I couldn't cry out with the thick pool in my throat. 

And the next thing I knew, I didn't, because it all went blank. 

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