Raising Hell
Author: Amata le Fay
Title: Raising Hell
Story: Danse Macabre - RP
Flavor(s): Fig 4 (wax wings)
Toppings/Extras: Hot Fudge
Rating: PG
Word Count: 878
Notes: “You've been telling us stories since the dawn of time, warnings not to build ourselves wings and fly too close to the sun. You treat us like children, to be scared into good behavior. But none of us are children anymore.” // Holy shit. Holy shit holy shit holy shit.
The lady traveller was the very picture of elegance, wearing a long black gown more appropriate for the eighteenth century than the twenty-first but nevertheless maintaining a sense of timeless beauty that matched her porcelain skin and pinned-up hair. She looked at her gentleman companion with a cool but curious gaze; the emotions underneath that gaze were nigh-impossible to discern. She spoke for the first time since the beginning of their voyage. The faint smirk that had so often graced her lips in life returned as she recited. “Because I could not stop for Death, he kindly stopped for me. The carriage held just but ourselves-and Immortality.”
“I'm surprised that you don't quote your own ancestor,” the gentleman replied. He too was dressed in an antiquated fashion-black tails and a top hat-but with one concession to the modern age: his shirt was cut off above the sleeves, leaving his arms, dark and muscular, exposed. His left hand gripped a scythe that radiated black light, odd as it sounded, upon which mortal eyes were never meant to gaze. In his left hand was an hourglass. Fittingly, all of the sand was collected at the bottom, settled and still.
“A quote from 'Death be not proud' is not nearly as apropos to our situation,” said the lady. “Whereas you have quite obviously modeled this scenario upon your dear little reaper Miss Dickinson's poem. I wonder what will be next? A gravedigger showing me Yorick's skull?”
“What comes next?” The man-the god, rather-could not resist a smile. “You mean, the undiscovered country from which no traveller returns?”
His companion rolled her eyes. “Oh, don't flatter yourself. Plenty return. In fact, these days, more travellers return than don't.”
“You say that as if zombies possess the true essence and capabilities of living men, which is simply not true. Even your fully-souled zombies are listless and incomplete. But I see that my words will not sway you, as they have not swayed all necromancers before you.” Without a glance out the window, the death god called for the carriage to be halted. In one swift movement, he opened the door and stepped out, gesturing for the lady to follow.
“Welcome to hell, Miss Donne,” he said.
Siona Donne carefully descended from the carriage, then looked around. Before her was a gate a thousand meters tall, wrought of iron and shimmering with the same dark glow as the aforementioned scythe. The gates were meant to instill in her a sense of dread. Instead, they made her vaguely bored. She had studied this realm extensively while training herself to necromance, and thus was impervious to its scare tactics, which relied mainly on shock.
Hell's master, the death god L'Ordre, crossed his arms. “Well?” he asked. “What do you think?”
“I think,” said Siona slowly, “that it could do with some changes.”
In an instant, she held the dream level of reality in her mental grip, as if she were raising a soul or forging a psychic link. She sent the gate crashing down, erased the burnt-red sky and the black horses and carriage in which they had arrived. L'Ordre sliced into her mind with his scythe and she screamed, half in pain and half in joy. She toppled the skyscrapers the god had constructed to hold souls, pulled the dead out of their various torments and sent them to pin L'Ordre down. Siona herself grabbed the scythe out of his hands, then moved in for the kill.
She put her hands around his throat and grinned. “Humanity will learn the secrets of the immortals,” she hissed. “What need will we have of you then? Death, thou shalt die!”
L'Ordre's eyes widened, as if he were remembering a particularly dark nightmare. “It was-you-then,” he managed to say as he gasped for air. “It-was you-all-along.”
“What? Did you think it was going to be your girlfriend who destroyed your kingdom?” Siona could not help but let out a laugh. “La Dissension has done nothing to you. It was always going to be human ambition that led to your downfall. You've been telling us stories since the dawn of time, warnings not to build ourselves wings and fly too close to the sun. You treat us like children, to be scared into good behavior. But none of us are children anymore.” She leaned in to whisper in his ear. “And none of us are scared.”
She kicked his chest, then stood and turned to the swarm of dead that she had liberated. “Today, we let our childhood die and return to the land of the living!” she screamed. “Trap this so-called god in his own prison! Make him suffer as you have! He cannot die, so let there be no end to his pain!”
The hourglass L'Ordre had once held, Siona's hourglass, lay on the ground next to her feet. She picked it up and drove the scythe through the glass barrier. The sand that was her life flew out, swirling around her, transforming her and lifting her up into the sky. She screamed once more, this time in pure ecstasy.
The process was slow, but once started, there was no stopping it. Siona Donne would be the first human fully raised from the dead. Powers and all.