Considering The Apocalypse As A Thing Unwanted

[Professor Charles]

Stressed, I huffed, and looked out through the doors. A single cloud was in the sky today, twisting delicately into the atmosphere. There was also a quiet horse nibbling her lonely way across the field, which I found odd, not knowing where precisely we were. When Morningstar had brought me here from my office we had teleported, and appeared beyond the doors. Without much of a struggle from me, mainly for the same reasons I had never struggled in the first place, I had been chained where I was now, and left there for all to see who came in and worked.

A few of them stopped to stare now, lurking as they did. Two young women who bore washing between them peered at me, tilting their heads. I caught them looking, and bringing a dull smile to my face I gave a two handed wave. One of them smiled, the other chuckled, and Morningstar kicked me in the gut.

Reeling over I spluttered, as pain rippled through my body. I had not seen him even walking close. “What,” I coughed, “was that for?”

“For pulling you back into the conversation,” he spat. Glancing over to where the women had been I now saw a bare wall. Curled in a lose foetal position, I watched there, just in the rare hope that they would come back, as Morningstar continued.

“Now, my offer still stands. I give you back what power I managed to get from the King of Death, you swear allegiance to me and -”

“If it is between that and you keeping me here, I will go with the latter,” I hissed, now more pissed off than anything. “You have probably lost me my job, so I might as well stay here. Why are you so obsessed with me anyway? There are plenty far more powerful siblings of ours out there.”

“People actually like you, Charon,” he replied. That took me by surprise. It was certainly not the answer I had been expecting. Rolling around my head I stared up at him, seeing him tall and threatening above me, with his arms folded, resplendent with his mighty horns and magnificent hair. His jaw tightened. “They listen to you. If I have you on my side, I am far more likely to be able to rule.”

“You know, maybe if you stopped threatening people and kicking them in the gut for no reason, they would like you more.” Sucking in a breath I managed to bite through the pain and concentrate on him. “You’re a tyrannical dictator, not a beloved monarch.”

His top lip curled again. “I do not have patience for people. Or friends. I have power, and redistribute it. That was what I was made for.”

“And I was made to destroy things carefully, and have empathy, but that is hardly what I do now.” I used my cuffed hands to sit up into a kneeling position. Glaring down at me he looked exactly like the king that he considered himself to be, and in that moment I was in the position of his vassal. Disliking it I twisted around, gritting past the pain to sit slumped again as I had been before. Ruined grapes, upset by him kicking me, rolled around the floor by my feet. “First I was a ferryman, now I am a teacher and a scholar. And I am fucking good at it. You have taken me from that. But my point it, what we were made for does not have to define us. But …” I laid my hands against my sore gut. “Well, clearly you are not going to change, so you might as well shove me in a cell for now, and I will see you after its all dead.”