Carrion Dreams

Thousands of Solomon searching. Grasping at straws and the one place he finally locates what he is looking for is on the one planet he said he would not interfere with. Crisis. Lives up to it's reputation. Of course this is where he would find something leading him to Death. A planet being destroyed by the Aramanth force. Now, Death himself isn't going to show but one of those aspects is around here. Somewhere. He over viewed the planet from his orbit a few thousand miles above atmosphere. He surveyed the planet, tracking every energy signature he could as fast as he could until he found the only one that could be an Aspect of Death.

Within the blink of an eye he was there in the African desert. A small deserted town, blown to ruins. This was not very ideal at first but Solomon soon figured out why he would be here. The smell. Almost like a giant pile of rotting corpses and he was proved a little too right when he turned a street corner. A giant pile of corpses. very few men but a lot of women and children. This was a slaughter. Most like the Aramanth forces came here hoping to find rebels, but found nothing and got annoyed.

"At least I don't have to worry about Cain getting on my ass at least."

Turning away from the pile he flicked his wrist and lit a new formed smoke in his hand, taking a large drag and tossing it into the pile as the entire thing burst into flames. "Aspect." Solomon called out, sensing the being nearby. "I know you are here, and I only want to talk."

It was just another day.

Death hung high in the air over this small town that haunted by the images of slaughter. A group of people running from the Amaranth... only to be murdered by their own. The earth was slick with gore, and birds hunting carrion circling the sky. Bodies lay in mangled heaps where they fell with most of them piled atop each other and yet still more people had run farther, making it a great distance before they themselves where mowed down. This was the first wave of souls, and they had already been collected. The looters then, their bloody harvest sewn, began to ransack the town.

That's when an Amaranth expeditionary force showed up.

The Amaranth are not the most honorable of creatures. They are not the most merciful. They are savage and powerful, craving conquest above all else. But they are not feral. They are not inherent murderers. When they stumbled upon this town, a just fury unleashed itself upon the looters who, ironically, shot at them first. If they hadn't the Amaranth would have simply passed the bloodshed by. Now, they had reason to fight, and a mere group of six Amaranth slayed a legion of human soldiers. This was not typical, but deaths are unavoidable in war, especially when fighting beings frail like paper. Especially when fighting weak predators.

The Amaranth left their mark on the town. They day old bodies already ferried by another were covered by new ones, bleeding out with horrified looks forever frozen on their faces. The Collector, list in hand, stepped through the bodies as he collected the sparks of the dead. He gently caressed them in his skeletal hands, wrapping his fingers around the sparks like they were newborn children. He cradled them, and gently rocked them into his cloak before moving on to the next. On the ruined buildings the Amaranth had left graffiti of several religious symbols, crescent designs encased in cubes. An empty moon in a spacious reality. A waste of existence. Nothing could be more appropriate.

Yet, as the entity did labor to collect the newest cache of sparks he observed another who had seemed to have simply appeared. He certainly was not there moments ago, but he was now though it was not of immediate concern to death. The being set a pile of bodies nearest him ablaze, before addressing the aspect directly. The Collector stood it's ground, list in it's hand. "It is rare that one such as yourself can see me. I have many souls to collect this hour, so I ask of you: keep this concise." The voice was as a rash to ones ears. It was uncomfortable to hear, and made one's brain knot up in an impossible circumstance. They were being allowed to hear a noise that human ears were not meant to.

Solomon turned to face Deaths Aspect, the fire raging between the two of them it's light illuminating Solomon in a red light. Making the man seem even more sinister than he usually does with his cold disposition and unwavering stance. Ignoring almost everything the Aspect said, Solomon pushed onward with his intention. He had little time to play introductions and how do yo do's. "I need to find someone, and you are my best bet." He started walking towards the Aspect. "I need Death, or if you can do me one better. I need Eternity." He put it out there plain and simple. A location, that was all he needed. He would prefer to bypass another meeting with Death himself, it usually gets bothersome and it only ever proves to piss the guy off.

The flames between the two lapped at the sky, thirsting for rain that would never come to quench it's heated roar. The smell of burning, rotten flesh smothered the area in mere moments, calling the birds that scavenged for parts to fly in clusters over head as they clicked their beaks and cried in hunger, yet refused to descend for they saw a single man by the fire. The Collector was beyond their notice. He clutched his list harder, and shook his non-existent head at the man slowly.

"I can not."

Solomon was finally within a few feet of The Aspect and stared the being straight in the face. The fire raged and the smell kept every living thing but Solomon and the Carrion birds away. "Yes you can." He said. "You are an Aspect of Death and you should know enough that there is nothing I can do to cause damage if I did find them otherwise I would die... If I could. Now, use that head of yours and tell me how to find them." The Mercenary, finding the noise of the birds overhead annoying, he tore apart their molecular structure and turned them to dust that fell into the fire without even looking away from the Aspect of blinking.

"It is not a manner of the damage that you could do."

The entity did not move, even as the birds above broke down into dust but mere moments later the Collector raised it's arm, reaching out for more sparks and pulling them in from the air, into it's grip. "Such disregard for life, coming from one who seeks audience with Death and with Eternity, the guardians of life itself. It is not the manner of the damage you could do, because your immunity to death does not make you immune to total non-existence. The entities will dispatch you in moments if you truly rouse their anger to it's height." The sparks retreated into the entity's cloak, and it stored them within itself.

That face, or the lack of a face denied an expression to the onlooker. But, the harsh tone that followed indicated the beings disposition. "For you see, you are not a threat to those with the real power. No, you have no right to stand in their presence. It is what you have so willingly done in your life that makes you unworthy of them."

Solomon did not move, he did not twitch, not a single thing of his outside form betrayed the anger he was feeling on the inside. The ground began the shake, the sand was shifting and the sky became dark. The clouds began to shift inward on their position. The fire quickly was quenched and the bodies began to turn to dust, flowing away as if some force was pushing them. A quick look around would notice the same the slowly happening to the building and everything else in the area.


"I have spent my whole life trying to bring my family back to me. James and Annabell were taken away because of something that was forced upon us. I only want them back. Everything I have done, every act I have committed has either been in the name of them, or in the name of whoever was paying me." Solomon said with his icy, emotionless disposition and made sure his next words counted. "I don't care if it kills me, I will get them back. Now give me a location."

"And yet, you have killed so many of our children." The words were cold and matter of fact, hanging there in the air with great importance placed upon them. "You speak of your family and friends, but what of us? Death has wept for the souls you've claimed, their destinies ended by a rouge element outside of Fate's wheel. Is it not enough that we have spent countless cycles carrying our children and hearing the tales of their lives, only for them to end in a selfish man's blade because he hungers for something that has been lost. Many mortal crave to recover the things lost. None of them have a casualty rate that can even touch yours. If a normal man were to have his wish denied to him, he would curse and spit and tear himself up inside until one day he could move on. If you are denied, then you make others partake of your pain, and in your anger destroy entire worlds."

The entity displayed an emotion that seemed foriegn to it. It bowed it's head. "Like the human beings that have made victims of the others here, only to themselves be killed by the wrathful Amaranth. The end result is all that matters. Motive accounts for nothing. Good intentions have paved entire roads with corpses of opposition, and at the end of it all the bodies will still reek of rotten flesh. Yet, I tell you all this and to a being such as yourself it doesn't matter. You don't care for the tears we've shed. You are lost in your own regret for the two, instead of the desiccated path behind you, all of them sacrifices to your endless pursuit of vindication. You are not unworthy of meeting Death because of the lives you have taken. You are unworthy of meeting Death because you have broken our hearts."

"Stop."

Time halted, everywhere time halted in every dimension of every world. The Omniverse was taking a break to the will of this man. Solomon was powerful, but this was only a deed he could hold for a few minutes. Time is like a massive raging river, and can only be held back for so long before such a force takes hold again. Also certain laws must be abide by. He couldn't harm or interact with anything, so the power was basically useless, but it gave him time alone and Solomon wasn't exactly in his most reasonable moment.

Solomon strode around the Aspect, and shot off into space, landing on an asteroid by a distant planetoid. He sat there and thought to himself as he stared into the vast nothing of space. He has the power to create and destroy anything, at least he assumed. He could never bring himself to attempt to dismantle a spark or bring down the walls of the void but he honestly could not come up with a reason why he couldn't. Yet with all his power he couldn't get one thing to tell him where to find the three most powerful entities in the Omniverse.

Taking a deep breath he stood up and took a step, standing behind The Collector once again. Taking a quick look at his list he memorized what he would understand. Looking and facing the opposite direction from him, time began again, "Now," Solomon said, his mind at ease again. The disintegration of their surrounding halted. "If I can't get a meeting with your daddy, how about the other two?"

"They must be dying to meet me like Death has."

"I can not take you to Eternity, for she is out of my reach. Nobody can reach fate, because nobody can find her." The entity was unmoved, standing still as it remained motionless against the storm of this man's will. "Solomon, you over think your importance to the scheme of the Omniverse if you think any of the three entities has an interest in meeting you. Against the infinite lives that inhabit the Omniverse, you are but one. If you are to meet Death, there is but one way you will find him. A way that, in your current form, is impossible to do."

"Then Death will have to do."

Solomon cocked his head to the right, he put a hand on his scar and sighed, he always felt naked without his body. Without another second of hesitation his body bloodlessly exploded, his flesh and bones turning into nothingness. All that was left was an ethereal form, invisible to the mortal eye. Nothing but his soul remained, but unlike any other, it remained him and his, just as alive as ever.

The loose ethereal form of energy soon took form into something that as much resembled Solomon as it could, "Better?" This is how he got to face Death the first time. The very first time he went without a body, and Death came knocking like it was any other day for him only to find out this was one part of the cycle that wasn't coming back. The Entity had a field day and to Solomon's knowledge had a fit for years, eventually biding down and just waiting to claim Solomon. A fate that Solomon wished to eventually embrace.

There was a tense few moments of silence following Solomon's actions, as the Collector gauged his response to what had been told. His body had been shed and before him stood a humanized spark, the shape of the man prior without any of the mortal flesh encapsulating it. Then, suddenly, the Collector nodded. "I see." Another few moments of silence passed, the wind whipping around them and the collector's cloak remaining eerily still. Then, he extended his hand towards Solomon.

"Forsaken child of Death," came the words. They were not stern as prior, but with sympathy laced in between the very letters that flowed from the Collector's void. "I'll take you to see your father."

The Mercenary, now a being a pure energy only in a familiar form simply nodded and put a hand on the Collectors shoulder instead of taking his hand, "Let's go, Aspect." The Collectors tone had changed, but ultimately did not matter. He got his audience and was one step closer. Taking one last look at the pile of bodies he decided to finish what his power had started and them completely turn to dust and become one with the Earth once again. Their ashes flowing in the wind and becoming the sand and dirt and the air.