Chasing Death

Chapter 25

"Choices aren't difficult. It's us and our overthinking brains who makes them hard."

🖤🖤🖤

Lachesis' POV

"You know we could just let her go. She did it as a way of self-defence," I said for the umpteenth time as Atropos continued to type on her keyboard, her glossy manicured nails moving at lightning speed.

"And I'm saying it once again that rules are rules, Lachesis." Atropos slammed her fingers to a stop on the keyboard.

"But this is an exemplary case. There hasn't been something like this before," I argued. "We're setting a bad example. What if it was one of us that got attacked?"

"Aargh!" Atropos threaded her fingers through her raven hair, rubbing her forehead. "I don't understand why you are so obsessed with this girl."

"I'm not obsessed with anyone," I bit back, raising my chin to give her a haughty look.

I had my dignity to keep, and Atropos had no dignity whatever. I knew exactly how low she could stoop with her words and actions to further her gain. And I wasn't like her though I looked like her. We matched only in looks. We were different people and different personalities, but her reputation marred the image of us all in the minds of our subordinates.

"Then what is your issue?" She swivelled the chair to face me.

"My issue is justice and doing what is reasonable," I raised my voice too, "And keeping that Yakshini locked up in the depths of hell for no fault of hers isn't the right thing to do."

I marvelled at how clearly I had flung those lines at my sister. How fearlessly I had lied. The human girl was far from innocent, but I didn't know why I was defending her at all. Maybe because I knew her reasons, or maybe it was a way to make things better between Death and me. Or rather, I needed her to destroy that stupid machine.

"How dumb can you be, Lachesis?" Atropos got up from her seat, looking at me eye to eye. The edges of her irises were lined with speckles of ruby red. That was the sign that she was furious at my nagging. "It's not about justice. I need a distraction."

It stumped me for a while. "What distraction?"

"The employees are staging an uprising. The tensions are growing and rebellion is brewing in our lanḍ they are unhappy with the modernization. They feel their jobs will be threatened. So I used this incidence as a diversion." Her eyes gleamed in glee as she rubbed her hands. "The Underworld Patrika will be busy covering the proceedings of this long drawn case now and the workers will keep working too. This shall be our decoy while we modernise the system without the worker's knowing."

I blinked in shock. What a sick, power-hungry bastard! All that drama was just to distract the media! I felt like saying a lot of things to her but that was not the right time.

"Fine," I said, swishing my floor-sweeping dress as I haughtily walked away, my heels clip-clopping in the silence of the room. I could feel her eyes boring into me, but I knew this discussion was over. I had to take another route.

But what?

I came to my office and collapsed on the lone chair. The numbers were still whirling on my screen, births and deaths and fates changing every minute, but I was too preoccupied with my own thoughts to notice anything else. Immortals can't feel emotions, but our mortal forms can, and what I was feeling was just plain anxiety, a sense of doom. The realization that I had failed, failed to do justice, was somehow eating me up from the inside, like a worm hollowing an apple.

🖤🖤🖤

A soft knock sounded on my door. Almost as if the other person was reluctant to call me. Normally I would have ignored anyone that came to me, but there was a certain air of foreboding around as I floated to the door and opened it a chink.

Mrithun was standing there. He looked like a hollow shell of an existence. The darkness seemed to have sucked all the life out of him and he was just Death now - plain, bland Death.

"What are you doing here?" I asked.

Someone else stepped out from the shadows outside my room. I did a double-take on seeing the two of them together. What were the odds? The spurned lover and the friend-zoned admirer of the human, jointly at my door. I looked left and right but the passages were empty.

"Come in," I whispered, closing the door behind them. I clicked my fingers and let the anti-teleportation spell spread around the periphery of my room. That was war ground and extra precaution was necessary.

The two guys stood there, fidgeting with their hands.

"What?" I asked, looking from one to the other.

"It's about Tora," Mrithun breathed first.

"I can take a guess," I drawled, frowning at Mani. "But what are you doing here?"

But before Mani could open his lips, Mrithun interjected, "She apparently confessed everything to him."

"What?" I almost screamed before consciously lowering my voice.

"What a silly girl with a death wish," I seethed. I could feel my body tensing up. This was not good.

"She trusts me, my lady," Mani replied coolly.

"And what makes you think I will trust you?" I asked pointedly.

"Because I know all of what you did and I could've exposed it long back if I would've wanted to," he sighed.

"He's on our side." Mrithun took a deep breath.

"So basically we all want the same thing." I relaxed my tensed shoulders, padding my way to my seat where I sunk into the soft velvet. "So what do you guys think would be the best course of action?"

"Is there any chance that the case will come up in court anytime soon?"

Trust Mani to ask the most intelligent questions. It was not for nothing that he's the God of property.

"I guess no..." I left the sentence hanging, not wanting to reveal anything more.

"How much protection is there down in the cells and can you relax the guards for say half an hour?"

That question threw off my train of thought completely.

"Just tell me clearly what you are implying at." I narrowed my eyes.

"We would break her out of prison," they said in unison.

"You know the consequences if you get caught, right?" I glanced between them, still wondering what spell one mortal woman cast on two immortal men, one God and one Death himself.

"We know." This time Mrithun spoke up. "That's why nobody will know Mani is involved in this. The bird will escape and so will I. If ever a question comes on who aided her, it'll be me."

"What? Are you crazy? I can't risk you both for a mortal girl." I crossed my arms. I was afraid for my friend. Scared for Death would be an apt term.

"Well, seems like we went too far ahead to retrace our paths anymore," Mrithun replied wearily.

There were signs of fatigue on his face. If I didn't know better, I would've said he had aged a few years in those few days. I just nodded.

I hated choices to be made but sometimes in life, we all have to make choices and as the Fate who decides life, choices are what I do anyway, right?

🖤🖤🖤