Chapter Text
1349, Tarragona
It took the Lord seven days to create the world and everything in it.
It takes less than a week for that new plague to claim its first victims. By the time anyone realizes what has crept in with the rats, it is far too late to close the ports, or quarantine the city. People have already fled into the countryside with pestilence festering inside them.
Upon Tarragona descends an Angel of Death. He is one of many that were called into creation by the Lord the first day. Back then his older siblings had sung in exaltation to welcome the youngest of their members, for they had not yet known his purpose. Under the shadow his twelve wings, plague victims shiver all the harder. None can escape him, for his body bristles with eyes. His sword drips bitterness. One by one, he steals souls away, sometimes in comfort and others in callousness.
Weeks ago, the angel had come for people on their deathbeds and forcibly quarantined in their homes. Now there's too many bodies for the graveyards. The dead are tossed out onto the streets, and sometimes the dying with them. An Angel of Death is rarely welcomed. These days some people beg for his embrace.
A woman with black bubos constricting her throat smiles when she finally sees him. When her eyes glaze over at his touch, tears of relief still cling to her cheeks. The Angel of Death has already turned his gaze down the street, to a man struggling for every breath. Step by step, he advances to-
-A horse, gaunt and pale, thunders around the corner. Its skeletal rider swings his scythe, and severs the man's life in one cold swoop.
The Angel of Death gawks. Then every last one of his eyes narrow. "Excuse me!" he calls. "Excuse me!" The rider pauses, one bony hand clasped around a soul newly dead. "Yes, you! What are you doing?"
Blank eye sockets quizzically glance from the soul to the scythe. "...Reaping?"
"Stop that!" the angel snaps, storming their way. "He's mine!"
The soul should be soothed that a messenger of the Lord defends him. Instead the soul gibbers incoherently.
"Excuse you," huffs the skeletal rider. "How many souls do you have stuffed beneath your wings again?"
The Angel of Death bites back a wince. The souls bundled in his wings, numb and dreaming, don't even stir. "It-It's been a busy year. I just can't take them one by one like I usually do!"
"Aha!" The rider waves his scythe at streets brimming with plague victims. "Even you admit there's plenty to go around!"
The Angel of Death hazily counts back the centuries it's been since he last saw a pagan echo of death. Mot and Mors, Wodanaz and the Three Queens; their times in this land have come and gone. They've long since vanished with the last of their dead. And this yellowed skeleton is not familiar. "W-Who are even supposed to be?"
"Uh, Death?" the soul blurts out.
The skull's grin stretches wider. "See, this guy gets it."
"I'm the Angel of Death!"
His voice echoes with the might of the Host, the last prayers and pleas of the countless souls he claimed before this one. The soul cowers. The skeletal rider glances up. Above Tarragona the sky is dark with the wings of the angel's brothers and sisters.
"An angel," the skeletal rider points out. "An Angel of Death." The angel's face puckers. "And there's still too many for you to handle. No wonder they called me up too."
"Y-You... blowhard bag of bones!"
"And you have too many damned eyeballs!"
"Heathen!"
"Braggart!"
Their volley of insults devolves into angry gestures and shaking their weapons at each other. Above the Angels of Death diligently continue their God-given task. The soul, long let go by the skeleton, nudges hopefully at his body. He grimaces at its wretched state. Not only is rigor mortis setting in, but it's still a festering vector of disease. Instead he starts petting the pale horse's nose. She leans into his touch.
An idea suddenly dawns to the angel. The eyes on his wings fixate on the soul. "You!" The soul freezes in dread. "You were Christian, born and baptized. Don't you want to be delivered by me unto your eternal fate?"
"You mean hell?" the soul asks bluntly. "Because I know damn well that's where unrepentant thieves go." The Angel of Death can't hide his guilty wince. "Yeah, I thought so." The soul arches a quizzical brow up at the pale mare's rider. "And where are you taking me?"
The skeleton cocks his head. "Um... we can try someplace that isn't hell?"
"That's the place for me!"
The Angel of Death splutters indignantly as his soul clambers atop the pale mare. Several of his eyes glance anxiously upwards, as if the siblings up there might be watching him. A human soul has their whole life to confess and repent for all the sins they accumulate. Upon death, their fate is sealed, and the angels carry out the conviction proclaimed by the heaven courts.
The Angel of Death brandishes his sword, pale fire igniting around his blade. The pale horse stares back, thoroughly unimpressed. The soul flinches back, trying his best to hide behind a bony skeleton.
The rider slowly inches for his scythe. "Are we really going to do this?"
The angel's sword glumly flickers out. "No."
The soul shudders in relief. The pale mare rears, hooves striking toward the sky. The rider salutes one flustered angel. "Better luck next time, peewee!"
There is indeed a a next time, and a time after that, an endless number of dead. The angel takes righteous lives and sinful lives. Just as indiscriminately, the reaper claims his harvest. He is not a Grim Reaper, not in a medieval age that steeps its fearful resignation of the grave with irony and macabre humor. The reaper does not always come astride a pale horse. Other times he dances into town and leads a procession behind him to their graves, lords and beggars, the old and the young.
Why the reaper always fixates on this particular angel's souls, the angel himself has no idea. Maybe the reaper recognizes he's a sucker. Maybe the angel's siblings diligently drive the reaper back every time he tries to steal their charges, just as this angel should. But he's afraid of an outright fight. In the days of the Black Death fear of the grave is just as strong, if not stronger, than their faith in the life after. What if this angel makes it even worse somehow? The plague's already devouring half of every city it touches!
...And maybe, when a soul freshly ripped life would rather cower behind a skeleton than come into the arms of an angel, the Angel of Death just feels too heartsick to snatch them back. That's why he spirits away his own souls quick as he can these days. Sometimes he gets away. Other times the reaper still steals a soul from under his nose.
Worst are the times the angel and the reaper reach a soul at the same time. The angel thinks the choice between himself and a skeleton should be obvious. It's not like he's a burning wheel of eyes like the Ophanim or something! His form is mostly human. Just with twelve wings and a few hundred more eyes. Don't these people put their faith in a servant of the Lord?
Souls inevitably task if they're destined for heaven or hell. An Angel of Death is always honest. Those he assures of their place in paradise flock to him immediately. The damned almost always flock to the reaper and his vague promises of elsewhere. Very few prefer the known evil of their punishment in hell to the uncertainty of where the pale horse might take them.
The angel adapts. Folding away most of his wings and all but two of his eyes somehow makes him more palatable to mortals. Like this they believe him beautiful. More mortals rush to his embrace without asking questions. With them safe in his arms, he winks at one disgruntled reaper, and gains the upper hand. Hell stops grumbling about all the souls he lets slip through his fingers.
The reaper retaliates. He garbs his naked bones in a cloak black as night. Later still he manages to shape himself a human guise, though one even more gaunt and wan than the angel's own. Vanity aside, the reaper is a trickster. Try as the angel might to stay above his games, he always gets dragged into another round of insults. And accidentally reveals to the soul they're bound for hell. Oops.
Mortals are always more eager to believe the reaper after that. Especially when he offers them a simple little wager and promises if they win he'll even let them go.
Joke's on them. Unlike the angel, the reaper is a shameless liar, and his dice are loaded.
It's competition, it's rivalry, it's petty drama that makes every other destroying angel roll their eyes.
...And then it's something else.
1519, Seville
Seville is fast becoming the beating heart of Spain's burgeoning empire. The streets around its docks bustle with faces from across the Mediterranean and beyond. A dozen tongues drift across the crowds. It's alive as only a great city can be, still newly recovered from that last influenza epidemic a decade back and just as woefully unprepared for the next one.
Down these lively streets stride two unremarkable men. Crowds unconsciously press close to walls and each other to grant them a wide berth. None dare look them in the eye or call out to them. The young and the proud tend to ignore their existence entirely. Those too old and wise for their own good pretend just as hard, convince themselves these men are just men. They all sigh in relief when they're passed by.
The raucous ring of gamblers catches their eye. They stop in the center of the street, the crowd frantically flitting around them. The shorter man smiles wistfully at the sailors catcalling each other and boisterously squabbling over things petty as coins and dice. His partner, tall and gaunt, more cynically wonders what he can fleece from them. Bony fingers reach for his own set of loaded dice.
With a reluctant sigh, he leaves them safely stored away. "Come on, partner, we've got a boat to catch."
His partner pouts after the sailors, their cheering and their swearing, and follows. Instead of excitement they get to stand at the back of a far different crowd, dull-eyed and listless as a broad-shouldered conquistador whips his audience into a zealous frenzy.
"Today we sail to conquer the New World... for Spain, for glory, for gold!"
"Viva Cortes!"
Two unremarkable men roll their eyes at each other.
"I know where this one's going," murmurs one.
The other rolls deeply sunken blue eyes. "Ugh, you can totally have him."
His partner grimaces. "Well, um, we'll see what you think in another twenty years or so."
"Even more sure of that than I am today."
Cortes has chosen his crew as carefully as the disciples of Christ and tolerates no stowaways. Two unremarkable men stride right up the gangplank of his flagship. Their names are right there on the list.
The first man is corpse-pale, drowning in a dark shirt and pants only because mortal eyes refuse to see a cloak in such warm weather. His lank black hair is tied sharply off his face, revealing the harsh angles of his cheekbones and the deep hollows of his eyes. He grins unnervingly wide when he introduces himself as Tulio. It's a name that had once belonged to both patricians and commoners, one that may very well mean he of the people. Isn't that the truth.
The second man smiles wide and genuine. He somehow terrifies his crewmates more than the first. There's just something... overly familiar about him. His clean-shaven face might be conventionally handsome, but with a sickly undertone shared by only the most afflicted of plague victims. His hair is the yellow of dead, brittle straw. His clothes are more tailored to his form, but pale colors that remind men of bile and sputum and things far more gruesome.
"And my name is.... um, Miguel."
Tulio blinks at him. "Miguel?"
"Er, yes," his partner sheepishly replies. "Miguel."
"Welcome aboard," a sailor greets weakly. He never shakes their hands, and scuttles out of the way to let them embark.
"'Miguel?'" Tulio mutters, almost under his breath.
"It was the first thing that popped into my mind!"
"Isn't that your big brother that's... exceptionally zealous about his job?"
"Please," scoffs his partner. "It'll take nothing less than Judgement Day to get him down here."
Aboard for the expedition and here to stay, two unremarkable crewmates hang back as the last of the cargo is loaded aboard. Cynical eyes appraise the rigging and the dark waters of the Guadalqavir, that flow out into the fickle open sea.
"I'll bet the first one to go slips off that mast."
"Two reales says it's a drowning."
"You're on!"
On they sail.
It's their destiny, their fate.