Mortuus Mundo (Hololive EN Fanfiction)

Chapter - 3: Should Never Be

The winds carry a message, words whistling incoherently. Sometimes they were mourning, mostly they were mourning. That was how mortal poets interpret it mostly, thinking that the voices not heard by anyone will be brought to them by the careless dancer of gales.

Mori Calliope dipped her feet into the water, the mites of sand washed away by the refreshing water blossoming in the desert. The shrubbery housing the edges of the pond, the palm trees dancing along to the wordless winds and the shine over her pale skin.

A seldom smile stretches itself upon the grim reaper's face.

Yes, this was a pleasant feeling, she thought. A grim reaper had no need for a day off from work. They do not tire, they do not need to eat or drink. They reap and guide the souls to the underworld where they shall be judged. Humans would call it corporate hell.

The only time that can be called a break was the journey between the mortal coil and the afterlife. Limbo, people call it.

Limbo was a strange place, ornate and ethereal yet vicious and deceptive at the same time. The journey was always different. A gentle stroll over a meadow of flowers that sprung into butterflies can very much manifest into a cesspit of screaming whirlpools with hands trying to rock the boat. Whom the scythe carries in its chine will reflect upon the environment, their sins becoming the lighter to so many travesties or the hush to a childlike wonderland of comfortable dreams.

Creativity, the escapism and the damnation of humans.

Limbo was ruled by no one, a place of free reign. Only grim reapers can walk on the thin balancing rope that is Limbo, for they themselves were born from the mystic and static nothing of it. A dark, cold and gentle place. A blinding, burning and harsh place. Home of the grim reapers, home for Mori Calliope.

Or that was how she interpreted it.

The grim reaper blinked into the perception of a face when the steady water her feet embellished in had bumped into something. A pair of eyes, not a conscious soul. Moving its legs, paddling through the water gently, bumping into the wall of sand. It was like staring at a bugged machine, a failure in coding, unable to overcome such a trivial obstacle.

Now that Mori had taken a closer look, the gem embedded right on his sternum, there was a prominent slit in the middle. Black swirls, odd ones circulated or emanated from it, like a haze that revolves around it. As if someone swatched paint over another, merging into another hue slowly. Black mixed with reddish-brown would lead to a darker colour but the outer parts were red.

Perhaps it was the light reflecting upon it but Mori could feel that small hint, that small hint of fire that she hates. The shining brightness, the eternal flame, as if it itself wants to be the sun-- no, greater.

"I will never die." It mocked her. "I will live, and live again. Your scythe fails you, grim reaper. Your life is just for killing and when you cannot, you find more. That is why it is so absolutely outrageous that you cannot do the same to me. It goes against your very existen--"

The wind stopped. A cold chill in the desert, the air had gone stagnant or rather, redirected from the very essence of anger. A grim reaper is not one that can be provoked by mortals, or anything for that matter. They were not supposed to feel any form of antagonism towards anything.

Unless that 'thing' that provoked them was an imbalance to their being. The only way to make a grim reaper angry is to make them feel threatened. The wedge to their literal being, the phoenix that defies the natural order that the grim reaper upholds. The mistake that should never have happened.

Mori Calliope withdrew her scythe.

"We killed you once. Your fire will not burn forever." She slammed her feet down on the phoenix's face, submerging him down beneath the pond with a splash as she loomed above like a guillotine. The man struggled, his arms flailing and grasping the air. He was confused, he was afraid.