“It doesn’t matter how! Hannah told me his location, but she was summoned back abruptly, which means we are in big trouble with a capital T. We need reinforcements, now!”
“I’ll go meet Hannah: you get the other Gods and find us!” I instructed Mom as Claude summoned a portal to where they were.
She gripped my forearms, her eyes like glass. “Nicodemus, under no circumstances are you to engage until we arrive. Do nothing beyond try and get that book from Ambermourn, do you understand me?”
I huffed once in fear. “What are we about to walk into?”
Her tone deepened, darkened. “The worst battle you may ever fight.”
The field Dad and Ambermourn were in was void of all life beyond the two. The sky above them was that sickening black from before, which seemed to be brewing from my father, who stood motionless in the center of the field. His eyes were pure black, but his body hung forward crookedly, like he was a puppet whose strings had just been cut. Ambermourn watched him with the book locked in his hands, though the pages whipped wildly in the wind consuming the field. I summoned my Shadows and Akira, who flanked me with weapons drawn, ready for commands.
Akira growled menacingly at three spots on the ground, which were dark voids where Dad’s familiars crawled up from. They were no longer the happy-go-lucky family pets I had known them as; they stood as cloaked creatures, consumed by the purest form of darkness as they waited for Dad’s final command. Ambermourn flicked his eyes to me, but only his eyes, as he was frozen by fear.
“Dad...?” I breathed in horror.
My voice seemed to ignite whatever was brewing inside of him.
His neck cracked, popped, when he turned it upright, as did his arms, which began to rise towards the sky. His mouth opened to allow black smoke to plume from it, which clouded the ground in thick bundles. His body began to turn to bone; hiseyes, ears, and mouth leaked black tar that dripped like blood through his skeleton. “Oh fuck....” Jackson whimpered.
Ambermourn stepped back an inch, unsure of what he had done, but knowing it was serious. He pressed the book to his lips as he watched whatever held onto my father’s soul breach the surface for the first time in centuries.
A loud humming sound echoed from Dad, like thousands of insects buzzing. Ambermourn and I covered our ears against the aggressive hum, which seemed to consume our bodies in its vicious claws. The three demon familiars wrapped their hands around Dad’s neck, and as soon as they did, an explosion of dark energy exploded from the group. Dad's body morphed into a solid black shape before his bone arms and legs burst through the blackness.
He was not the regular scale of the Grim Reaper, but a form much similar to my ultimate, that towered well into the sky. His scythe cracked and sizzled as a dozen blades erupted from it, scaling the back of the weapon. Their flames roared and made the air heavy and hot. Dad's familiars smiled under their dark cloaks, with rows of sharp teeth breaking through the empty abyss that their face was consumed by.
Those smiles made shivers run down my spine.
“Nick, snap out of it! We need to get our hands on that book!”
Claude shook me out of my thoughts and made me whip around to Ambermourn. “You!”
“I think you have bigger concerns over me!” Ambermourn laughed, nodding to Dad. “Might want to contain your daddy before he obliterates the entire world.”
“You bastard!” I went to rush forward, but he dissipated in an instant, his coy smile filling his slick face as he disappeared.
Dad’s low moaning echoed through the air as he changed, his head snapping in various directions, as if he were fighting the transition. His familiars kept forcing it out of him until he losthimself to the evil within him, until all semblance of my father was stolen by the ancient forms behind him.
I did not recognize this Grim Reaper. The Grim Reaper I knew was a gentle soul despite his terrifying exterior. The Grim Reaper I knew protected souls and humanity, cradled them gently into their afterlife, and would never bring harm to this world.
The man before me was no longer my father.
He was now Death, the last of the mighty Four Horsemen.
And he was going to bring calamity to this world in the most destructive way possible.
He breathed plumes of that sickening smoke and addressed his familiars with a deep, booming voice. “Exi et purga hunc mundum a peccatis suis!”1
“No!” I cried.
Dad’s command sent his familiars high into the sky before they split off, each spewing a ghostly haze behind them. I tried to grab the end of his scythe, but he flicked me like a bug. That flick looked harmless, but the action propelled me into a wall so hard that all the air was ripped from my lungs in an instant. I wheezed horrifically, clutching my throat to try and catch my bearings. Blood splatted from my nose, and my head pulsed from how hard it had hit the wall.
My Shadows were shocked that Dad would ever hurt me like that, and began to realize, too, that he was no longer the man I adored. Dad vanished alongside his familiars, his cloak slipping through my fingers when I went to jump forward and grab hold of him.
“Dad, please, don’t do this! DAD!”
“There’s no point trying to stop him now!” May tried to convince me as she held me back from chasing after him.
“That is not your father, Nicodemus. That is a monster…” Stark croaked.
