HI, REAPERS!!!!

SCREAM IF YOU'RE HAPPY TO SEE ME!!! <33333333

Sorry for the slow updates, I've had so much college work and life has been really hectic lately. It's hard to get back into the swing of things when I haven't had a lot of time to write, but I'm trying for my babies! Love you!

Got a really cool edit from a fan for DIMBFF. It's attached to this chapter, sorry if you can't watch it!

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There was a humming in my ears. The air was as thick and humid as a rainforest, choking the oxygen from my lungs. I ran through the twisting forest stained with dark blue. I was being chased. It felt like it was a monster.

            A shadow appeared to my right. It ran alongside my desperate strides and then raced ahead of me. It was on all fours and black. Its muscles were thick and they shifted underneath its fur like smooth waves. It looked like a jaguar, or a panther. It disappeared into the distance with a snarl. Foliage moved past me in green smudges and my bare feet bled tracks in the ground. I spotted to a body of water ahead and stumbled as I came to a quick stop.

            I didn't hear the sound of anything dropping to the ground behind me, but I felt it. When I whirled around, my chest tightened and I instantly backed up a step. There was a man larger than life a few paces ahead of me. His skin was mostly bronze, perhaps from constant exposure to sunlight, but was also patched with black discolorations, which seemed to move along the surface of his skin in intricate designs, before dissipating all together at the center of his chest. His body was ripped and coiled with muscle.

             He wore a perfectly fitted, brown leather belt with plated designs along the buckle and a leather quilt with golden fragments, which hung in straps down half his groin and his right, powerful thigh. A loincloth covered the tops of his thighs and his privates that would otherwise be exposed by the quilt as he walked. On his right shoulder, he wore a intricate shoulder plate, which hooked across his chest and back and wrapped under his other armpit. The plate had leather pieces attached to it, which snaked down his thick arm in straps and hooked on to the plated bands around his right wrist. He had a matching band on his other wrist, too, as well as other arm cuffs tight around his biceps, and bands on his ankles. 

            And then there were the two short chains draped over his shoulders, each with a piece of raw meat dangling from it. They bled down his drool-worthy, wide chest, down the ridges of his torso, in dark red streaks. I wondered what those were for. Maybe that wild cat, I guessed, but I didn't understand why. Although, he did look like he was hunting. His chest heaved as he took in hard, but silent breaths from exertion. He had shoulder length, tangled hair that was too dirty to be determined as blonde. It hung in wet tendrils over the facial features I knew belonged to Death.

            The man pushed his hair back, verifying my thoughts. It was Death all right, with those mismatched eyes trapped between a serpent and a cat, but there was an air about this version of him that was vastly different than his current self. For starters, he was clean-shaven, which was a shock in itself. His lack of facial hair drew attention to his full lips and lethal jaw. Oddly, it didn't make him look younger. His eyes were too wise, too stained with an old, lingering storm to allow it. His bronze skin was a blank slate, besides the scar over his eye and the other ones scattered here and there. I was used to his skin being practically concealed by permanent black, intricate markings. But his expression was the most significant difference. He looked haunted by anger, but that anger was not yet so entrenched into him that it plagued outwards like an invisible force, making others feel a little angry at the world, too. This wasn't my Death.

            I noticed those eyes would not look at me. He was fixated with something over my head. He moved towards me in a slow, calculative way, more animal than human. My blood seemed to harmonize with his closeness and a flush rose to the surface of my skin closest to him. But despite the vehement in his eyes, and that blade that he decided to rip from his belt, I stood still. Behind me, there was the echoing growl of the wild cat. And, to my astonishment, Death...Alexandru suddenly took off, running right through me.

             I was only a spectator.

            The world melted around me as if it were made of water. Things shifted around me, trees disappeared and the ground became grass. I turned in a circle, watching the new world form. The ground became manicured grass. Tombstones had materialized from the ground, rows and rows of stone and moss. There were bare trees with crooked arms. The sky was a grey canvas without a single cloud. I was alone.

            Or so I thought. I felt a gaze on me and turned my head. A figure stood in the distance besides a tombstone. They were made of moving black shadows, a silhouette of a woman. She lifted her thin arm and motioned for me to follow her, before turning and heading down a row of headstones. I hesitated at first, but my feet felt compelled to move forward. I could tell the shadow woman was wearing a gown of some kind. Suddenly, the wind blew harshly onto my face. The shadow woman stopped and looked back at me. I turned back as well, and saw the world melting away behind me, blackness crawling towards me. I turned back to the woman in question. Her arms bent and she lifted her shadowy gown. Suddenly she took off. I took off after her and we raced through the graveyard. We approached a depressing looking mausoleum with a decayed face and overgrown plants around it. The shadow woman ran through the thick front door and it blew open. I followed her inside, but she was gone. She was gone.

             There was a mirror pressed against the wall ahead of me. I didn't recognize the person who stared back at me. My feet dragged to the mirror until my gaze was level with hers. Her hair was black and fell at her shoulders. Her eyes were fiercer than they used to be, meaner, too, as if she'd been through life's turmoil seven times. They glowed. There was a small pattern arching from her cheek over her one eyebrow. Her tight black clothes revealed her newfound athleticism. This couldn't be me. It was.

             The mausoleum was quiet. I could feel someone standing behind me. And sure enough, when I turned around, I found the shadow woman standing in the corner of the building, next to the entrance. She watched me in silence, her hidden eyes hitting me like ice.

            "Who are you?" This whole ordeal had a dream-like quality to it–fuzziness around the edges of my vision, but I could feel the bitterness of the cold of room as if I was truly there. "Why am I here?" I asked, when she didn't answer.

            "Who are you?" I asked again. When she still did not speak, my voice rose for a second round. "Who are you?!"

            He her head darted towards the entrance of the mausoleum. She vanished.

            "Well, this is not good." My eyes darted towards the deep voice that entered the dream. He stood in front of the closed doorway of the mausoleum, shrinking the room with his incredible size. He wore a simple black t-shirt, sweatpants, and black sneakers.

            "Death."

            "Me." He looked a little disoriented, and as if his vision were blurry, he blinked a few times. He patted his chest, his stomach, and briefly grabbed his crotch. He breathed a sigh of relief. "Phew, everything is still in tact..."

            "What are you doing here?" It felt as if he were invading the privacy of my mind. I was angry with him, too, as the memory of what he did to me came back to me in fragments. I remembered his beast form, him losing control, and me falling from the apartment building. How did I get here?

            Death's mismatched eyes studied every crevice and aspect of the room, before landing on me. He looked wicked in this place, darker, as if he were a chameleon blending in with his environment. He belonged with the dead here.

            "I could ask you the same thing," he began in a slow, calculated way. His mind was clearly working out thousands of thoughts. "What am I doing here? I was meditating."

            "Meditating?"

             "Yes, that's what I said." A deep frown remained engraved his features. Clearly he didn't like to be so confused. "I was meditating. Then I wasn't anywhere. Floating, in some black space. Then I was here. With you. In a...mausoleum." His gaze fell on me and he arched a brow. "Is this a sex dream?"

            I was still confused with the whole meditating thing. I mean, a six-foot plus giant with two thousand years of evil deeds under his belt he was kind of the last person I expected to mediate. But mostly, I was confused because I was most likely losing my damn mind.

            "This isn't a dream," I decided, but Death continued to stare at me with interest.  My hear rate picked up, but for once, it wasn't entirely for him. The walls of the mausoleum were fading away from their tops. I began to feel trapped in some world that I couldn't escape. Where Death could vanish from any moment and leave me alone, a spec in some strange universe that wasn't my own. It didn't feel safe here. Not in the slightest. Not even with Death right in front of me. We were both two specs in some unknown universe.

            Death remained composed. His expression was as flat as ever as he watched the walls slowly deteriorate. "This is definitely not a dream," he agreed.

            It was getting hard to breathe. "Then...what is it, exactly?"

            "I believe, little prowess, you have taken me to someplace else. Some sort of bridge between our realm and... elsewhere."

            "Limbo?"

            "Perhaps." He moved towards me slowly, a single gloved finger lifting to caress the curve of my cheek. He brushed past me to study at the mirror on the far wall. The beautiful dark angel looked everywhere but his own reflection. His gloved fingers slid over the surface of the mirror with an artist's steady hand. The surface rippled like water, reminding me of the mirror the demons had exited in the Quick Check and the bathroom at the D & S Towers.

            "A portal," we said at the same time.

            "Not just any portal," Death took over. "The current feels ancient, its power vibrates these walls. Most portals are constantly shifting from mirror to mirror, or temporarily summoned by someone. This one... will hold open for a long, long time." Death turned back at me over his shoulder, fanged mouth grinning. "I do believe, cupcake, your pendant has shown me my portal into Limbo. Just like Ace said."

            The hair at the back of my neck stood.

            "What's wrong?" Death asked, facing me.

            Behind him, in the mirror, the shadow woman now stood. Her hand reached out and rested on Death's shoulder. Death stilled. His head tilted a little to the side, his eyes glossed over. He looked someplace else. His pupils rapidly dilated. He was no longer in that room with me. A frown knit his eyebrows. Something was being exchanged between the shadow woman and him.

            I ripped the invisible nails tying my feet from the ground. "Death," I gasped, moving towards him.

            He became startled, a reaction I rarely saw from him, and inhaled sharply. The shadow woman vanished before he whirled around and grazed the mirror with his hand. The walls were caving in. Death paid it no mind. He looked back at me and glared so coldly that I took a step back. Another shadow appeared from the disintegrating walls, a creature out of nowhere, launching itself onto him. He ripped it off with a hiss as quickly as it touched him. There was a sharp whistle, a hum that exploded from all around us as the world was melting away. Shadows began to crawl on the walls, opening their jaws at me. I backed away as they slid along the ground towards me.

            Death's eyes darted around the room, before his attention soaked into me again. He still seemed stunned by whatever had exchanged between the shadow woman and him, but quickly snapped into action. He ate the room with fluid steps, like that wild animal in the twisting forest, crushing the shadows on the floor with his feet. His large hands gripped my head and held it. His pupils were too large and too angry, but his words were lenient and composed. "Get me out of here, Faith."

            I woke up screaming. The stench of burning flesh filled the room. I tumbled off a bed and ungracefully onto the floor. My pendant was sweltering hot, melting my skin like a hot iron. I pulled it by the chain away from my skin and let it dangle in the air. Sweat soaked my shirt and my shorts. My hair clung to my neck and my forehead. I rolled over, still holding the pendant away from me, and screamed again.

            Death's big frame was crouched by my feet. His eyes were wicked with a piercings fire, glowing brighter than ever. He wasn't breathing but his expression was pained, and his head was shaking a little, as if he were trying to.

            "When were you going to tell me?" he grit out.

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;)

xoxo

Kat

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