The rhythmic scrape of the shovel had long ceased. Earth, freshly turned, lay heavy over Lizzy. He had buried her.
They were equal. They had nobody. Just each other. And Rictus took her from him. He'd avenge, he knew, but he didn't even know what he was at the moment.
Arion sat huddled in the corner of his room, the curtains drawn. He had cried all day. He would have prevented the sacrifice if he could.
But then he questioned himself over and over if it was a sacrifice. Lizzy didn't want Rictus and had taken her life.
And yet, he acknowledged, no one would have survived the crash.
His gaze was fixed on the bow lying on his worn rug. Beside it, the quiver, its arrows – some dark as storm clouds, others gleaming like captured sunlight – both pulsed with an unsettling, vibrant life.
A man appeared. From nowhere.
Arion flinched, startled. The door was locked. He had checked it three times. The figure was thin, impossibly tall, and starkly white as if carved from ancient marble. His eyes, though without discernible pupils, held an unsettling, ancient wisdom. Arion's breath hitched, caught in his throat.
"Howdy!" the man said, his voice surprisingly light, yet it resonated deep within Arion's bones, a vibration from within. "You should get to work. Your quiver is still full."
"Who… who are you?" Arion stammered, his throat tight with a sudden, overwhelming fear. The questions piled up, unspoken.
The man's head tilted, a gesture of profound amusement. "Asking who is an attempt to define, to limit, to place the boundless within a name. You needn't ask such questions. Some truths are simply understood. Others, more profound, are only truly felt."
Arion's eyes widened. A chill colder than any he'd ever known spread through him. It was him. The dread from the roadside, the moment of impossible revelation, flooded back, cold and absolute. Death!
He slowly stood to his feet and wished that the walls would crack so he could escape. Death! How?
"Do not fear," Death said, his voice now a gentle, almost musical hum, a melody older than time. "Fear is but a reaction to the unknown, a natural impulse of the small self. But you will get used to me. We all do, eventually." He paced across the room. "To succeed, to live, you need your bravery. You have to live your form. This presence, this form you perceive, is merely an accommodation, a bridge for your mortal sight. You possess a unique vision now. Once unseen things are now clear as the air you breathe."
Arion remained frozen. His mind was a whirlwind of unasked questions. Was Lizzy truly gone? Was this truly the same figure? The one who had removed his cloak to reveal Lizzy's impossibly serene, smiling face? Or was that a trick of his dying mind? A mercy granted in the final moments? But he couldn't speak, his throat constricted by a terror far deeper than anything Rictus could conjure. How would you be in a dialogue with death? He couldn't fathom.
Death continued, his voice weaving a tapestry of inescapable truth. "To keep the cosmic balance, a delicate web of existence you are now part of, you must add your bits. We need you, I need you. It must not be noted that my fraction is failing. You need to use the arrows in your quivers daily. It is your purpose now." Death turned, a whisper of air, and walked towards the solid wall. He did not pass through it; he simply dissolved, fading into nothingness.
Arion wanted to shout. How? How do I use them? What if I don't? What if the original Eros returns? I'm just filling a place! The questions screamed in his head, a cacophony of fear and confusion, but his mouth remained stubbornly sealed. He could not move it. He could not form the words.
A voice, clear as a bell, echoed in the silent, empty room. "Bravery, Arion, is not the absence of fear, but the willingness to ask despite it. Don't let your colleague govern you. To know, you must inquire. To wield, you must understand." The voice chuckled, a sound like dry leaves rustling in a forgotten wind. "But now, you need no bravery to get anything. The arrows will make anyone and anything do whatever you desire. Compulsion and affection are two sides of the same coin, for those without the will to choose."
Arion's eyes darted around the empty room, searching for the source, finding none.
"And no one will see your tools. As you can't see me now. They will just feel it. Your instruments are of the unseen. And you, Arion Blackwood, now exist in two forms. When you are working as Eros, you won't be seen by mortals. Only your human form would be. You will only be seen by concepts and entities like yourself. Think of it: the deepest emotions – love, hope, grief, despair, fear – they are unseen, yet people believe in them fiercely. They feel their truth, their undeniable presence. Your tools, Arion, are of that nature, affecting the unseen currents of being, reshaping the very flow of human will."
Silence prevailed. Arion processed the words.
"I'll see you later," Death's voice concluded, fading into silence. Then, truly, he was gone.
Arion stood frozen. A cold sweat plastered his clothes to his skin. He felt feverish, a pounding headache starting behind his eyes. His head swam, light, and disconnected.
Dread, like a suffocating blanket, pressed down on him. He was to finish his quiver? Shoot people? A jarring, almost grotesque thought.
But then, his racing brain slammed on the brakes. Eros. Affection. Lust. The arrows didn't kill. They raised. They compelled.
Silence. The deafening silence of a mind abruptly made new.
His brain, once numb with grief and shock, began to work. A cold, hard calculation, sharp and merciless, formed in the void where his old life had collapsed. If the arrows made anyone do anything he wanted...
"Could this be a means of fortune?" he asked himself, the thought audacious, electrifying.
"How?" He paced across the room as the question echoed in the small room.
Answers popped into his head, clear and unbidden, as if whispered by some new, awakened part of himself.
"The arrow will make anyone do anything I want? Let's try it!" He said, aloud.