Board Thread:Roleplaying/@comment-5543592-20181223224329/@comment-5583506-20190111040947

"And rest you shall", Deaphanie said as she guided Kheiro towards that end of the tunnel were all predictions ceased to be. "Quite a story it have been. But here is where it ends and another one begins. And that story... is for you alone to pen."

She took Kheiro by the hand. It was a firm grip, but not unfriendly. It felt welcoming and final, as something that had been calling for him his entire life, yet he had failed to grasp what it was. Like a missing piece of puzzle finally being recovered after years of incompletion. With Kheiro's hand in her own she departed with him into that neverending darkness, as she would have with an old friend...

Deaphanie stood over Kheiro's lifeless body where he had fallen, closing his eyes for good with a soft stroke of her palm.

"You foolish man", she said quietly. "You poor foolish man."

"Nothing poor about a homicidal maniac", snorted Ward. "Certainly foolish though."

"Perhaps", Deaphanie said.

"You mourn him?" her brother scoffed.

"I mourn *everyone* at some point", she replied.

Ward didn't really know how to counter that. If there ever was such a thing as a cruel fate, his older sister had been dealt the bad hand. He knew she more often than not just put on a charade, acting as if it didn't become her a thing to be there and present to deal the hand of death. But the truth was that Deaphanie, for all her flaws, didn't enjoy what she was doing one bit. In fact that was the only reason he knew of that made her to take on a mortal guise. So that she wouldn't forget or be able to deny the misery she caused others.

Death was a horrible thing for mortals. Something they would never experience, at least not permanently for all he knew of. Though they could be killed in their mortal forms, sooner or later, once called upon, they would be bestowed new forms to haunt this world like the terrors of the Earth.

Deaphanie hated that role. And she played it poorly by trying to act jovial and uncaring. The truth was that every life she took was a pain in her very being. It was quite ironical as well as morbid that the bringer of death came even more and more alive for each life she took. When she suffered she was the most real.

Ward squeezed her shoulder in comfort. "You ready to go?" he asked.

Deaphanie stood over Kheiro's corpse quietly, not saying a single word. She just nodded then. "I am ready."

"Finally", sighed Pestin. "Look, sis. I know that you were given the short stick, but we really got to... you know? Do this." He motioned with his hands around him. "Those are the rules. You have questioned them for millenia, but haven't acted on it. So we start now? It ain't gonna change, you know?"

Famian grumbled something incoherent.

"I know", Deaphanie said. "I still think however that... that I need some time to think things over."

Pestin adjusted his cigar. "Pardon?"

"I am not coming back home."

"The hell?"

"Well", she smiled slyly. "At least not for a while. You go on ahead without me. I plan to exploit this form of mine for just a little bit more."

Both Famian and Pestin cocked their heads and looked at each other confused.

"I want to be alone with someone who will make me feel alive in more ways than when I take the lives of others", she said.

Ward shrugged and rolled with his eyes, figuring what she meant. "He ain't gonna live forever, sis. Remember that. With that said..." He smirked and nodded. "Happy holidays."

Deaphanie smiled back. And for an instant she wasn't quite there. Neither in physical or disembodied form. Deaphanie had simply just ceased to be in front of her siblings eyes. While Famian and Pestin were confounded as to where their sister intended to go next, Ward knew.

He clapped his hands together and motioned for his brothers to set out and head on back home. There were troubles brewing on the horizon in the future. And once more would they be prepared once the Horsemen were summoned...

Along with Morty Mortigress, Deaphanie had found her way not shortly behind his footsteps. For just a short time she needed to feel even more human than just wearing their physical form. Duncan wasn't far off, and to feel even more alive, even for a brief moment on Earth, she needed to be together with him. She wanted something that could be considered real. Something that wasn't expected of her nature. She was both a harvester of souls and a psychopomp, but for just this time she felt as if she was owed something in return for all the misery she felt when forcing it on others.

This reward came in the form of spending how much time she so desired together with someone she truly cared about.

"So let's go and meet him", she told the tiger cub hiding in her vest.

The tiger cub meowed in response.

(END OF EPILOGUE)