Thanatos

.Nel opened her eyes from the now-familiar blackness of death and saw a dark sky, lit by an enormous, dim, red star that gave the ever-rising smoke and haze a faint red glow.
 
She hadn’t felt cold since becoming undead, but the rubble she was lying on was like ice. She picked herself up and looked around. A ruined city stretched out around her in every direction. Buildings smoldered and smoked. Others were overgrown with now long dead vines.
 
A row of gibbets – cages hanging from a sort of gallows– each held decaying bodies whose eyeless sockets contained lights that followed her movements. As she stood up, the dead in the gibbets began a chorus of noise – some wailing, others laughing or screeching. This place was very dead and very much inhabited.
 
She reached for her axe and realized it wasn’t there with her. But she could see the lights of torches being lit in the broken windows of the crumbling buildings. She turned and ran down the nearest alleyway away from the noise. The symbol of Orcus that Venowin had branded her with burned and throbbed as if were new again.
 
She heard heavy footsteps behind her and saw an enormous skeletal devourer giving chase. She rounded a corner and sprinted down another alleyway only to feel the ground give way beneath her, then an explosion of pain as she landed with a crunch of bone down in the bottom of the deep pit trap.
 
She stayed there, shivering for a moment, then looked herself over. Her right leg stuck out at an odd angle, a shard of bone poking through the skin and her right arm was out of socket. Despite her efforts to stay quiet, a sharp whine escaped her as she tried to sit up and drag herself…where?...to the wall, at least, so she could have her back to that.
 
Suddenly a red mist appeared in front of her and began to grow solid. A moment later an enormous creature stood in front of her, bigger than she was even with rune magic, curved ram’s horns arching over glowing red eyes and a mouth full of needle-like teeth. The creature’s bloated body was translucent and the glow of tormented souls trapped inside lit the space in a dim, sickly light. It carried a scepter of bone and wore a garland of entrails. Her brand began to glow with it, a blinding pain that dwarfed even her destroyed leg.
 
“Orcus,” she hissed.
 
“Welcome home,” came the reply in a deep and mocking voice. “All of mine come home eventually.”
 
“This ain’t my home and I ain’t yours,” she growled.
 
Orcus laughed. “You thought that mark was what? Decoration?” He pointed to her glowing brand of his symbol.
 
“Listen,” she hissed urgently, fighting through the pain to find words. “I got to go back. Morwen is breaking his cage. If he escapes, your world will end just like mine.”
 
“That’s a new one,” Orcus replied, voice full of amusement. “Usually it’s just ‘ahhh, please no! Spare me, I beg you’. I can, you know.”
 
“Can what?”
 
“Spare you. You’re a fighter. I could always use more servants and a rune knight who controls an echo is a useful thing to have. You can fight for me. Or you can feed me. Those are your choices.”
 
“Go fuck yourself,” she growled, trying to drag herself away from him.
 
He bent down and grabbed her by the throat, lifting her as if she weighed nothing, so that she was face to face with him, then he began to inhale.
Nel opened her mouth to scream as she felt her soul beginning to fray and shred and wisps of it, resembling nothing so much as the Northern Lights, began to be sucked into him.
 
“Hey, fuckface.” The new voice was far too casual, dripping with disdain. “Get your hands off my property.”
 
Orcus stopped and turned to the newcomer.
 
“Your property? That’s rich. Look – I even put my name on it.” The demon lord grinned, a deeply unsettling sight.
 
“Mine,” the voice repeated, emerald green eyes glinting from under his black cloak. “Check the label if you don't believe me, Orccy.”
 
Orcus chuckled and looked at the back of the paw that Nel was using to claw at his enormous hand wrapped around her throat.
 
The sign of Orcus burned into her skin turned into a holy symbol of Steyfano.
 
Orcus hissed and turned to Steyfano.
 
“You cheat!”
 
Steyfano shrugged, flipping a coin in the air. "I don't really care what you want."
 
“This is my realm! You can’t just come in here and steal from me in my realm! Someday, little god, when I’ve killed that fool Eosphorus and taken my rightful place as god of the undead, I’ll make you pay. I think hearing your screams from one of my gibbets will be sweet music.”
 
Nel watched the exchange with wide-eyed terror, struggling for breath for the first time since she became undead.
 
"Someday, maybe, but not today, you crimson fuckbucket."
 
“Maybe neither of us get this one,” the demon lord smiled nastily, a fire ball appearing on his fingertips, as he hauled back to throw it at Nel.
 
The trickster god immediately shifted into an absolutely massive green snake, big enough to wrap around the demon lord
 
The demon lord shrugged and let the flames go out.
 
“Fine. Have it your way. For now. Dunno why you even want it so bad. Mostly broken.”
 
"She owes me money," he replied, flashing all his teeth
 
Orcus turned back into a red mist and vanishes.
 
Steyfano shifted back into his human-ish form in an instant snapped his fingers, catching Nel before she hit the ground.
 
Nel clung to him, shaking, not having words for the moment.
 
“You came for me,” she whispered.
 
"I need to protect my assets," he replied casually. "Of course I did."
 
“We need to get out of this place. I don’t think I can stand—which is weird, since I’m pretty sure I’m dead. Again. Didn’t know souls had bones to break.”
Also, you got bigger.
Ain’t many people can pick up a polar bear.”
 
He flashed that mischievous grin, and suddenly, they were no longer in that terrible hellscape. Instead, they were standing in a plush sitting room, all black and emerald velvet and some strange green wood. "There we go."
 
She let go and tried to stand experimentally, no longer seeing bone poking through the skin of her leg or feeling the near-blinding pain.
 
“This is nice. Are we in your realm?”
 
 
"We're in somebody's realm," he grinned.
 
 
She looked down at the brand on her paw to see if it’s still changed.
 
The holy symbol of Steyfano had vanished, leaving behind bare, healthy skin. Or healthy bear skin. Either way
 
 
“It’s gone! You healed it. Does—does that mean I don’t got to worry about going to Thanatos again?”
 
 
"You shouldn't have gone there in the first place," he replied.
 
 
“I was in his control—Orcus’ —once. But only for a moment. It’s how I became undead. But I guess just regular dead now. Is that why I went there?”
 
"... he wants you bad," said Stefan.
 
“I got away. That’s got to hurt his pride something fierce. Weren’t nothing I did. Was my friends. They fought for me. Saved me.”
 
"Can't relate," he smirked "Anyways, you're welcome to chill here until they invariably raise you."
 
“Hopefully you can someday. You ain’t alone no more. You got a friend now.”
 
 
He blinked at her, tilting his head
 
“Me. I’m your friend. The person you just pissed off a demon lord to save from having having her soul devoured. That friend.” She smiled despite the seriousness of the situation.
 
 
"I told you, that was just asset protection." Thank you. I'm trying. I don't know how to be a friend.
 
She smiled warmly and nodded. “I know,” she said to the words behind the words. “You’re doing great.”
 
“And speaking of friends…it’s hard to remember, but I think we were on an airship…fighting an undead beholder…when I died. Are the others alright?”
 
 
"I don't think any of them have bit it as spectacularly as you did."
 
She grinned both relieved and oddly proud—if she was able to protect them, even by dying, then she was pulling her weight.
“Got a knack for that.
“Thank you,” she said a moment later, “for saying me. I didn’t think anyone was coming.”
 
He shrugs. "I put a bet on you. Means I'm invested."
 
 
“Back at ya.”
 
He paused, looked around, and then sliiiiiid over without a word. He laid his head on her shoulder.
 
She could count the seconds. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.
 
And then he was sitting in one of the plush armchairs, tossing a pair of dice in the air, grinning widely as if nothing had happened.
 
 
She beamed, but otherwise didn't acknowledge it and sat down across from him.
 
 
"Care to kill the time?" he grinned.
 
“Sure! Whatcha got in mind?” She grinned back.