The cycle of camping and rolling continued for days as the terrain got more mountainous and snow appeared. Night snow was my favorite, untouched and kissed with moonlight. Day snow always seemed to have blood on it.

The carriage ground to a halt. We had arrived. Even Wrath knew what that meant. I was released before Wrath to stretch and empty my bowels. Hard enough with the rag, but with years of practice, this was no problem. Wrath was force-fed her sleeping potion and unchained. Goaded forwards by brandished spears, she stormed off towards the field. Two hours of battle given the size of the potion. Must be a big army.

Once I was given the clear, I joined, the no longer sleeping Wrath in the field of snow. She was already fighting, sending men flying and crushing bones. The rag was finally off. Looking around, there were piles of corpses bearing the colors of the kingdom. The scenery was broken by the soldier trying to stab me with a spear. Our eyes met and with one swift movement, he was gone.

The bodies clattered. Left, right, middle, left and up. I plucked a shield from one of the fallen and raised it to block the hail of arrows. At some point I met eyes with a general or an officer because the ranks crumbled and men began to flee.

Wrath didn’t appreciate cowards. With a guttural bellow, she charged. At the same time, I became preoccupied, a rallied cavalry charge. The horses fell beneath them as my gaze met theirs. Poor creatures with foolish riders. I hated killing horses. It always felt wrong. An officer cursed and held a burnished shield towards me. Staggering, he pitched forwards and my shield met his helmet. One of the arrows splintered into a spike and he perished. His shield would suit as a replacement. So shiny, an arrow magnet. Guess he thought it’s worth the risk. The going theory was that I would die if I saw my reflection.

I wasn’t sure what would happen. I would have to try sometime, not that the guards would let me. The sins were intimidation tools and nothing more. Free will? Never heard of it. A futile boxed life.

The battle was over swiftly. If only there was a little more time. The guards rushed over and I was cuffed again, the rag in its place. Why not try to kill them all? I toyed with the idea all the time. Arrows in my back would be the key argument. Teacher always made a point of showing me how fast arrows were at close range.

Imagining running, led down a similar vein. Even if I escaped, I wasn’t even sure where I was or where I would go. No one would hide a sin. Everyone wanted a caged tiger, never a free one.

Wrath was slowing down as the potion began to kick in. She stopped crushing a corpse as she yawned and shrunk a little.

I remembered nothing past the evening meal. On the way back to the holdfast, I was often drugged so that I wouldn’t cause any trouble.

***

Darkness once again appeared before my eyes. The moon hid tonight from my cell and sleep would not beckon me into its embrace. Even the broken shelves seemed melancholy. The memories would not leave me alone, a festering blister of fear. Moonlight always seemed to shield against that dread, but the moon wasn’t here tonight. The old man had come like he always came, hobbling down the hill, his cloak, long soiled by rain and sleet. My parents greeted him like they always did, scowls and frowns for tinkers who weren’t welcome on the farm. They called him the Stranger for the time that he stayed in the barn. In the morning, he thanked them and offered a gift in return. A curse, it’s a curse! I scream out, the sound echoing in the cell, for my parents to refuse the gift.

Don't accept the gift. Don't... but then they always do.

They looked at me with a smile and I heard their bodies hit the floor. The thud of life leaving. Smiles garishly plastered on their face. I rushed over feeling their corpses cool before the darkness claimed me, protecting me from grief. The gift was a curse, always a curse. The stranger’s voice echoed within the chasms of my mind, “you have become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”

I was told after killing more innocents, the entire village was empty. Halted only by the royal guard subduing me and placing me in the care of the sorcerers. I didn’t even remember. They had told me that it wasn’t my fault. Something about a ‘master sorcerer’ who had done this to me, but I knew it was my fault. I always knew. The pain usually made the thought disappear. The guilt clung to the innards of my mind as I stumbled over to the wooden shelves.

I began scratching and gouging the wood. A large splinter of wood emerged, sharp and pointy. I carved my parents’ names onto my wrist. Tia. Phor. Penance for their ghosts. Blood for their memories. I barely felt anything anymore, I was crushingly alone. The darkness smothered me, I couldn’t breathe. My knuckles found the teeth in my mouth trying to control something, anything. Sleep found me later than I needed it to.

The morning came and with it Teacher. He saw what I had done. He always knew. The scars never had time to heal or to fade. Somehow, I always knew his

disappointment without seeing his face. I felt a book being nudged into my hands.

“A diary,” he said. “You will write of what happened in the battle, as well as your overall health and any injuries you might’ve sustained.”

When he left, a desk and a quill were in my room. The quill was blunt to prevent its use as a weapon. Wise enough. They didn’t care about how I felt, the battle, nor my health. It was probably just a trick to find out whether I planned on escaping or something of that kind. I resolved then to simply write things I knew. They knew everything about my life anyway so it would be an exercise in futility. At least somebody else would be miserable reading the damned thing.

I began with my name, my parents had called me Nilam. Now, Death was what everyone called me. An apt description, though not particularly inviting. Next was a list of the people I knew. My parents, the Stranger, the Teacher, the Servant, and the guards. Further down there were others; Wrath the sleeping beast, Pride the lame, and Gluttony the vast.

I had only met Gluttony once, but he was kinder than most in my life. His smile was a gift I’d never forget. He used to be colossal. It was just another source of grief when they executed him, useless as he was. I drew a little skull next to his name. A draining emotional void filled me.

The eight became seven.

Sloth the eternal

Greed the meek

Envy the lost

Lust the red

They all had their stories.

Their official titles were drilled into my memory because once a year we were presented to the king and listened to some old man rattle off our deeds and abilities. Next, he would croak about what would become of us and our powers. It always read the same. Gluttony used to regenerate and consume massive amounts of food. Wrath grew to gigantic sizes with her anger, Pride flew, Sloth made everyone around him fall asleep, Greed duplicated anything from clay, Envy shapeshifted, Lust, well… he drove anyone mad with attachment to him and whoever dared to meet my gaze, dropped dead. From their voices, the sins were all on the wrong side of sane. I too was not exempt from that.

There was also the King who seemed normal enough and his son who supposedly was present, but always silent. The guards liked this son, there was no mistake with them talking about him, day and night. His valor and all that nonsense.

I looked up from the diary at the sound of some noise outside, thuds and clangs were unusual to hear. Everything had been routine earlier today, but training could be held above me.

I was about to return to writing my petty list when I heard a death rattle echo out from the hallway. It was a hair raising sound that I had heard many times, usually following Envy slitting someone's throat. The strangest thing was that I’d never heard it outside my door.

I stood and looked at the door. An assassin? I grabbed the quill and snapped it against the desk making a sharp edge. A shadow was looming in from under the door, shifting into a man in armor. Looks like the quill shank would have to wait. A voice came through the door, muffled and deep. “Where does your allegiance lie?”

Taking a brief second to think, as usually there is no choice in the matter, but the man seemed to be impatient.

“Will you join the prince?”

“I don’t know,” seemed to be the best answer I could manage.

“Put the blindfold on.”

I put the rag on to my frustration and prowled right next to the door. A screech of metal and the guardroom appeared before me. If I didn’t see him then he was behind the door. Acting quickly, slamming the door and meeting a body huddled behind it. A knife clattered the floor and I tore off the rag as he recovered from the impact. His hands looked for the knife. My foot kicked the blade away from him, sending it spinning across the stone floor. It seemed the guess about his armor was partially right, it was leather with metal pauldrons and gloves without a gorget though, which meant it was throat stabbing time.

His head remained fixed at my chest to avoid my eyes as he swung a fist to the torso, but I glanced it off my forearm. He twisted to block my counter. The swing with the shank went wide as his fist impacted my ribs, relieving me of air. Another punch came which I tried to block. The shank went flying to meet the knife. In a brief moment, he slipped up. He looked for a second to see where my shank was and met my eyes. He folded over like a sack of flour and I followed his example. Lying on the floor wheezing, just like good old times.