The Angel of Death (18+)

Chapter 37: Reincarnation

I struggle against the grip that's holding me under the water, thrashing as the hand's strength doesn't falter, not giving me one inch to break free of their hold.

The one second I do manage to break the water's surface and gasp in a burning lungful of air, I see who my attacker is...but they're fucking invisible.

I'm back under the water again, struggling to get free of my captors hold, my panic surges up and I lash out with my magic. The hold on me immediately loosens and I break free, swinging myself out of the tub. I clutch my chest, nude as the day I was born and lash again.

Something in the edge of my peripheral vision to my right shimmers, I lash out again and this time there's a muffled sort of sound of a groan, and a shimmer again. I get up, feeling the cold marble beneath my feet as I walk to where I saw the shimmer and threw my hands out and felt something. SoI grabbed on and didn't let go, and whatever my attacker was squirming beneath me.

I let my magic flow free as it connected from my hands to the creature I was holding, and as the milliseconds ticked by, a form began to take shape. It started from the neck where I was currently grabbing onto, then slowly up to the head and down the length of its body. The color being a burnt ash, until finally the eyes appeared.

I stared straight into them, I don't know what the thing saw in my eyes, because when I looked back. I saw pure, undiluted terror.

I delighted in its fear and pain.

I smiled, true and wide as it began to fall to its knees before me.

As if it were bowing before the Devil.

"Who sent you?" I asked it, my voice laced with venom and coldness, death.

I gripped harder and it worked, because the thing spoke human words, but sounded nothing like one, "He did. He wants you back. You belong to him."

"I belong to no one but myself, I am Mara Dabria, and anyone that dares try and claim me will pay greatly for it." A declaration to the world, the words leave my tongue and the ground shakes as if it too is hearing my words.

It laughs weakly, more hoarse than anything and then speaks, "You think so, but you are wrong," it pauses, and scoffs as it says my name, "Mara Dabria."

I hear it a fraction of a second too late, from my head turning to the sound of the feet against marble, to the thing before me finally taking its last breath, to the blade that pierces through my chest and gleams with blood in the soft light of the bathroom.

I turn around with the blade still piercing through me, I look down as if I was only dreaming and touch the blade softly, careful not to cut myself. However, the joke was I'd already been scratched. Quite more than scratched.

I finally look up, as the edges of my vision begin to darken and I see him. I laugh even as I fall to the ground and take my last breaths.

"I don't belong to you, and I never will." These are my final words as I sink into death's cold embrace.

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"Hello again." A voice from everywhere and no where at once.

I open up my eyes to see that endless black depth once again, devoid of any life and color. I look around and don't see the other version of myself immediately, but I can hear her.

Her voice mine but not, the same but not.

I get up, not feeling the piercing pain that I did those few moments ago when I died.

I wonder if I'll wake up again, if that one time was used up for good.

"Show yourself!" I shout into the depth, waiting for her to show herself. I wanted answers this time. Not the half-ass ones where they only lead to more questions instead of answers.

She formulates in front of me, she looks the same as last time, but she still had that different aura to her. The one that told me that we in fact were not the same after all.

"I see you've come back, and so soon it seems." She tells me, the same wariness to her tone as if she's done this thousands of times before.

What if she has and I just don't remember it? But it wouldn't make sense, because I remember last time, and I sure as hell don't remember dying before any of this.

"I want answers this time, not more riddles. Definite answers that will explain things." I demand of the other version of me, she only looks at me solemnly like she wants to but can't. As if there's a restriction on her that stops her from telling me the answers I want.

"If it were that easy, then the entire world would be perfect, wouldn't it? But it isn't, nothing is."

"So then what can you tell me?"

"I can tell you this, that the parents you believed to be your true biological parents, they are not." When she tells me this, there's a look of true sorrow for me, I won't decide to trust it. I still don't even know where I am for sure. Maybe I'm in Hell.

But if it were Hell, wouldn't I feel at home if I were the Devil?

"Who-" She cuts me off when she puts a hand up, "I cannot tell you that, nor do I know who they truly are."

Fine. Next question.

"Am I really the Devil?" It still sounds ridiculous as I ask it.

She chuckles at this, the lines around her mouth deepened as if she laughs on a daily occasion, "Oh Mara, you are so much more than that."

Everything in the depths around me begins to fill with light, I was running out of time again.

"Wait, what do you mean?" I ask her frantically as I feel myself being pulled back, back into the world of the living.

"You will find out soon enough, you will. Just remember to keep pushing through it and to never give up." Her last advice to me, but I just have so many questions. I don't know when I will ever see this other version of me again.

"What is this place?!" I yell as I feel the final parts of me being brought back to life, my vision fails me as I can no longer see because the once black depths were too bright with white light.

My ears, however, have not failed me yet, because I hear her whisper the last words I hear before I'm gone.

"Home."