Chapter Text
Amori could hear chattering all around her, she stood among her peers, watching carefully. She was the only girl standing alone, that should have made her mad, but it didn’t. She didn’t care, she saw no use in friends or companions or buddies or lovers or anything else related.
She knew how the other children talked about her, about how odd she was, never occopioning herself with anyone. This had never made sense to her, they were in hell, why would they want friends from here? Being down here meant you were screwed in the head or had died too young to be properly evaluated for the oasie. That's what had happened to her.
she didn’t remember much about her life before this, just that it was always cold. What she did remember was coming here, she didn’t remember how she had got here just the events right after. She remembered walking down a hall with one of the older kids, a death bringer, being put in a room with three other kids and a toy-box. These children were the closest things she had that could be considered ‘friends’.
By the time she had got there they had already been a close-knit group of friends, they had tried to befriend her, but she wasn’t interested. She instead chose to spend her days studying, she didn’t enjoy it in the slightest but it had given her something to do, plus, she knew that if she excelled it would give her an upper-hand when the day she was to turn thirteen happened.
It seemed that her efforts to push her roommates away had been fruitless, as they never seemed to stop pestering her with useless conversation. If she recalled correctly they had once told her ‘You make four, and we’re not going to be one member short when we become deathbringers because you don’t like us’ she thinks it was Crucemcum who had said it, she had always been a tease. She didn’t think Crucemcum had been being mean when she said, just honest.
She didn’t understand why they didn’t give up after the first few years, but she supposed she had learned to live with it. It seemed that they were the only people she would tolerate.
“Mori! Over here!” Rosaamoris could feel her annoyance grow as she heard the knick-name, but turned towards Crucemcum’s voice anyways. “Good afternoon, Crucemcum.” She responded briskly, walking up to them. “Aren’t you excited! Were getting our official deathbringer title today!” She was practically bouncing off the caverns walls as she spewed her words. “It is quite the thrill” she tried her best to match the girls excitment. While the girl may have been annoying, she wasn’t going to crush her spirits or be rude, as their would be nothing to gain. “You don’t sound thrilled.” She teased “Just kidding!” She smiled, giving her hair a ruffle. She flinched, she had never been one for physicall contact, “I would appreciate if you didn’t do that.” she responded blankly, she didn’t have time for this, the event was going to start soon and she wanted to pay full attention. “Ohh, thats right, sorry.” she looked down, she obviously felt bad. This was, in Rossaamoris opion, the most intrugeing part of Crucemcum, her abilty to cycle through emotions at a uniqe speed. After careful examantion, rosaamori had discovered a pattern of sorts with Crucemcum’s emotions. She noticed that she seemed to let the world lead her, it seemed as if she never sad for more than a day. She seemed to always live in the moment, never considering anything long term. While to most this was just a carless girl letting the wind take her, to rosaamori, it was complex way of living. She was sure that it wasn’t an intentional life-style, it couldn’t be considering the premise of it. If she were to care so much about planning her emotions to act like that, then she wouldn’t be letting the wind lead, she would be leading herself. But she haven’t the time to ponder Crucemcum odd behaviorl habits, the event would start soon. “Oh, oh, look, it’s starting!” Rosaamoris backed away a bit as she heard and saw Crucemcum get herself worked up, pointing and jumping to the rocken caverns ‘stage’ that was really just an elevated line of rock along the east wall that had been dressed up. She turned to head to face the stage watching as one a deathbringer walked up to the microphone her frilly robe swirling around her legs. Her eyes widen as she say a small raven clip in the girls silky blonde hair, an ascensio.
Asensios’ were only given to a select four every year, these four were those who group had the hightest combine end-of-year test score. These children rarely made appearances done in the underworld because they were given a supreme privilege, they got to stay in the upper world all the time. While most deathbringers worked in shifts, nightime or daytime, the ones with asensios’ got to stay for both. Another bonus was that while most deathbringers got to go up, do their job, come back down and wait for their next charge, the ones with asensios’ got to do as they pleased as long they got their targets when asked, it was like getting to live again. The best part of having a asensio though, was the special power. Every asensio came with a special power attached, so you got a have a bit of fun while executing your charges. Every year, at the beginning-of-school assembly, the new asensios’ were announced. “Ahem.” Amori was pulled from her thoughts, forcing her attention towards the stage. “Can I have everyone's attention, please?” Amori surveyed her face, she looked nervous, this was obviously not her usal setting “Umm” the microphone screeched it feed-back, the girl winced “my name is Madison, and I’ll be running the gradtion ceramony this year, sooo, lets kick off with gradution speeches, ‘kay?”
She hurried herself off the stage with a slight blush dusting her pale skin, allowing the first member of Amori’s class to step up and start blabering about how great the school year had been. Amori had no intrest in this, she instead bussied herself with planning the evening carefully, after she was to get certified as an official, then carrie out her part of the teams first mission, they would have to think of name eventually. She wanted to be part of the naming process, only because she didn’t want to participate in group with a title that resemabled a goth kids internet screen name. She heard the sudden nervous tap on a microphone and the feed-back that followed. She lifted her eyes to look at Madison again, had it really been that long?
“Excuse me?” She darted her eyes to the side of the stage nervously. “We’ve decided to cut the speeches a little short this year so please give your attention to my friend, kylie, as she announces this years ascensio receivers.” With these final words she handed the microphone to a much younger girl, around fourteen, she looked much more confident than Madison had. “Hey people! My name is Kylie and I have been given the great honor of being able announce this years ascensios’ so lets start shall we.” Her relaxed peronalitly seemed to put the audience at ease. “Alright, after careful caclutions and lots of consideration we’re excited to announce that this years ascensios’ go to group four!” Amori paused, she was part of group four, group four was her group. Had she missheard? She glanced at the rest of her group, all three of them had shocked looks on their faces. It seemed they were to shocked to move, so she took matters into her own hands. She stood briskly the stiff fabric of her uniform only rubbing against her legs. It seemed the whole room was as shocked as the rest of group four was because the only sound in the auditorium was the slight clicking of Amoris heeled boots. Shooting a look to the rest of her group from the sides of her eyes seemed to finally spurr the rest of group four into action. Their stands had not been as elegant as Amoris had, instead being rushed and clumsy as they tripped to catch up her.
Walking up to the stage together, the group ascended the steps up, greeting Kylie. “Crongrats!” she said taking out four small boxes, all with intricate designs. The first had a small rose pressed into the middle of the box with shiny red ink, thorny tangles of vines surrounding it in the same ink. The next box had what appeared to be a heart made up of shattered pieces of glass, with same ink as the one before. The same thing repeated with next two boxes, one having a man with crosses littering his body and the next looked strangely similar to the third one, but with lines instead of cross’s. “Thats odd” Kylie said, reaching the same conclusion that Amori had with the last two boxes. She frowned slightly as she pulled out a piece of paper from one of the many pockets on the robe dress contraption all death bringers wore. She looked at the group surveing them “Would any you happen to be twins?” She looked between them again as Oleum made a grab at Crucecum’s wrist to raise both their hands “That would be us, the dynamic duo, the handsome boy and the ugly girl, if you will.” He let out a laugh as Crucecum smacked him on the head. “Hey! I’m very pretty thank you, if anyting your the ugly one!” Amori was inclined to agree. “Intresting…” Kylie’s face contorted into what aperead to be a sadistic smile, her, now apparent, carefully crafted layed back mask slipping for just a moment. “Well, that clears it up then!” she smiled in a way that she knew people just couldn’t resist relaxing by. “It looks like you guys are somehow the first twins to get an ascensio together, and since they are desingehed specifically for their users, it makes sense since you guys seem close.” She gave a small shrug, ignoring the twins whos eyes had practically become stars. “Now lets get on with the vows, shall we?” She looked extremely bored with the task at hand as if she would rather be anywhere elese, which she probably would. “Do you, group four, swear to the code of conduct that you will not abuse power, blah, blah, blah, theres like twenty more minutes of this do I really have to finish?” She smiled in relife as the group collectively shook their heads. They had heard the vows atleast eight times before at previous ceremonies. “Alright then!” She carefully handed each one of them their boxes as the audience clapped reluctantly. “Congrats! And with that friends our ceremony comes to a close, please go back to your rooms and some of our demon friends will get you introduced into your new living quarters and then help get you started with your new jobs!” She turned to group four and whispered to them “Please stay here, Mattheww will be come and get you soon.” She turned on her heel to exit the stage. “Wait, who’s Mattheww?” Amori jumped just the slightest bit as she heard the soft voice speak. She turned to see Cordis, she had almost forgot the pink-haired boy had existed considering how quiet he’d been this entire time. He looked very nervous, and while she wasn’t one for conversation, she figured she had to make sure that his nervousness wouldn’t be an issue later. “Cordis, are you alright, you look extremely nervous.” She tried her best to sound concerned, but she knew from the moment the words left her mouth that they sounded a bit forced. He jumped a little, startled “Oh, Amori, yeah I’m okay, just a little shocked and on edge I guess.” His voice was still quiet and soft, although, she supposed, his voice was always like that. “Alright.” was all she said before opening her box to see what her ascensio was. Beneath the cover was a small rose, further inspection revealed that it was actually a hair clip. Gently picking it up, she clipped it into the side of her hair. Opening her small pocket mirror, she realized it was a nice contrast to her long black hair. Althoug she wanted to make sure her opionion wasn’t biased, so she turned to Crucecum to get her opinion on the matter. “Crucecum, what do you think of this clip, does it look alright here, or do think it could use a bit of adjusting?” She wanted to make sure she looked her best to make a good impression on whomever she would meet today. “O-oh, ya, you looke great.” Amori must have caught the poor girl off guard because she looked a bit nervous. “Thank you, I would like to ensure I make a good impression on whom ever we meet.” She was now using the brush portion of her pocket mirror to gently brush her long pigtails out to make sure there were no unpleasant tangles present. Crucecum giggled a little “You’re always so proper, it’s a little weird.” It seemed as if she had returned to her normal, a bit annoying, manner. “How kind of you.” She shot Crucecum a dirty glare, thourghly annoyed. Crucecum only responded by countineing to giggle. Amori realized she wouldn’t win this one, sighing and shaking her head in annoynce.
She wouldn’t have to continue with Crucecums teasing for much longer though because in that moment a tall, large, man strode into the room, he looked to be on the older side, seeming to be around fourty. “You guy’s the new recruits?” He looked uninterested in the conversation at hand. “Yes, that would be us.” Amori responded, seeing it quite rude to be so unintrested in people so openly. “Great, follow me, we got places to be and stuff to do.” The more he talked, the more Amori became displeased with him. The way he talked to the children was quite rude, it was obivouse to her that he thought them insigneffact. “If you don’t mind me asking, sir, what do we have to do?” It was Crucecum this time, she sounded a little nervous, probably intedmadated. “Well first we have to stop the office and get some forms for you guys to fill out, then, knowing you guys, we’ll probably have to set you up in an apartment near your target areas, or a boarding school, or an orphanage if we can’t find reasonable priced version of the other options.” As he talked he pulled out a pack of cigarettes from his inside pocket, flicking a lighter to its end, taking a drag. “Whats…the office?” Crucecm had always been to nosy for her own good, and she knew it too, which is why she sounded so nervous as she spoke. Out of all the response that Mattheww could have given to the question at hand, hysterical laughter was not the one that any of the four would have expected. “You didn’t think us demons just rolled around uncivilized done here did you?!” He kept laughing. “We have jobs were employed, I mean how do think I got here !” Amori immediately noticed a flaw in this logic. “Sir, if you dont mind me asking, isn’t this supposed to be the place were get sent to answer for your sins, are you really answering if your just doing the excact thing you did in life?” Amori was confused, an rare feeling for her, she had to admit she didn’t know a lot about hell despite living in it for the past eight years. She didn’t remember being told any stories about it when she had been alive, an they never taught anything about the culture down here. Everything she knew about down here had been picked up when passing by giggling school girls participating in hushed conversations.
He shook his head, his bored look returning “I forgot they never tell you anything about this place. You only get to have a job like that if you born here or got here like you did, through extremely young death.” Amori nodded, storing the information for later. “So you can be born here?” She looked him, question in her eyes. He just continued to smoke, he was obviously bored with the conversation at hand. She just sighed before returning to her group. She stared ahead looking for any sign that they were near the office, she could see the others doing the same.
Oleum groaned as they kept walking “Are we almost there.” Mattheww looked at him, a bit surprised that he had even spoken. “Calm yourself, were almost there.” Mattheww looked annoyed that Oleum had even talked to him.
After a few minutes they approached a sealed door near the end of the hallway were all the childrens school quarters were. As they passed by, Amori realized she had never actually seen past these doors. There were no windows, like all the rooms in the cavern considering most rooms were just carved out of the rocks. The doors were different then most of the doors in the cavern though. Instead of the usal clean smooth black rock, their were made of steel. Amori tried to recall what she had learned about steel in her text books, but she came up blank, blushing as she realized she had forgotten.
Mattheww pulled a small card out of his pocket, shoving it into the slight crack in the doors. The doors rumbled open revealing what looked like a city, most of the buildings were made out of dark bricks or sleek black rock, these buildings also looked to have windows. Which made sense considering that these buildings seemed to be constructed, not carved. Amori felt a sudden sense of curiosity as she realized they had actually never let them see where they were, so she turned around to see where she had just exited.
She saw something truly breathtaking, it was dome. A huge, sleek, black granit dome that looked five times bigger and wider than any other buildings present in the city, and unlike the rest of the buildings that were squished together, the dome had its own space, like all the other buildings were being repelled by a mysterious force. It truly was an impressive sight.
The others had stopped walking now, too. Mattheww groaned, he been warned that the children would be excited or shocked or something inbetween when they left for the first time but it didn’t stop the fact that was annoyed. They didn’t have time for this, if he was going to get home at a reasonable time then they would to hurry this up. “Are we done looking, yet.” He let the sarcasm drip off his words so they would get the message. He watched as Amori silently joined him again, he had noticed she had a certain aurora that seemed to radiate off her and everything about her, from the way her jet black pigtails swayed as she walked too how her posture reflected that of someone proper and prim. It unsettled him in a way he couldn’t quite explain. What unsettled him most about her though was the way she looked at people, with those wide blank eyes so brown they looked pitch black.
She turned her head to look at him, those god-foresaken eyes staring straight to his soul, he showed no reaction. “Sir, are we going to continue on soon?” Although it was structered to be a question, the sentence fell flat, without the kind of voice flare that usually indicated a question. “Were going now, calm down.” If he noticed the irony in the sentence he showed no sign of it and just called to rest of the group, who had bussied themselves with chattering about the buildings and the city amongst other stuff. “We’re leaving, come on, we don’t have all day!” He then turned on his heel to start his away across the street, Amori following right next to him, hands clasped gently together, slightly behind her back. The other three children scrambled to catch up with the other two, not stopping there conversations. Amori just shook her head as she looked at their unprofessionalism of their small quarlls.
As they walked on, they approached a large office building. “You guys wait out here, I’m just gonna grab the papers in my office.” As the children stand there, they begin to talk again. “Oh, you know I just remembered! Most of us still need to open our ascensio’s!” Crucecum is already ripping open her box as she speaks, exited to put in her new hair clips.
“Oleum! Show me yours!” She demanaded of him. He rolled his eyes at her. “Calm down, here.” He took the his own clips out of his box, they looked like Crucecum but instead of a cross they were simply straight lines. He held them out to her for her to see. “There. See them?” He mocked her, treating her as if she were a child. She just huffed at him, turning away from him. Amori shook her head in disapproval instead turning her attention from the fighting twins to a certain pink-haired boy. He was frowning as he looked at his ascensio. “How come you all got hair-clips, I got an earring. Not even a pair.” he sounded a little sad, like he was being left out.
Oleum looked away from his sister, who had been squabbling with until then, instead pushing his sister out of the way and made his way tworad Cordis. “Hey, an earrings still pretty cool, lemme see.” He says looking at Cordis’s ascensio curuiosly. “O-oh!” Cordis jumps a little, not realizing Oleum had been standing their. He quickly handed it over to him, blushing in embarrassment. Oleum held it up for inspection, before finally nodding. “Looks pretty cool, actually.” He placed it back into Cordis’s hand, with a rare, gentle touch. “I mean, your ears are pierced, aren’t they?” He continued, as if it were obivous, but not in his usual mean way, in more of reassuring way, how odd, Amori thought to herself. “I guess your right…” Cordis responded, closing his fingers around the jewelry carefully. He gently poked the silver backs into his ears, making sure not to accidentally stab himself with them. Crucecum had joined the the three now, her prevouise anger forgotten as she was now curious to what all the commotion was about. “Oh those are adorable!” She commented upon Cordis showing her the asensio. She continued to complement and chat with him, Oleum making the occasional comment.
Amori stood, observing and listening as usual, she took note of how they functioned like a unit, each going off eachother, each bouncing between eachother. They had always been like this, as far as she was aware, and they most likely always would, and she would continue to sit and observe them silently like animals in a zoo. In a way, too her, thats all they were, at leaste thats how she wanted to feel, that was the ideal way to feel, but everytime she saw them and interacted with them, she could feel a nagging voice in the back of her head, telling her she belonged with them. She ignored it most times, but that could never stop the ghost of smile that haunted her lips afterwards.
Amori noticed Mattheww walk out of the building and figured it would be polite to join him. She up next to him silently, her heeled shoes seemingly scared into silence by her presence. He didn’t notice her until she gave a polite cough. Yet another thing about her that perplexed him, the way she was able to project such a calm and polite demoenor in such a disturbing way. He was a bit angry at himself, well more frustrated than angry, he had been employed to help these children for over six years now, and yet here was, becoming scared of a little girl. He knew he shouldnt’t hold it against the poor thing, she had been sent down here without a chance after all. He still gave her a small glare though, he couldn’t help it, she had managed to reduce him to nothing but the equivalent of an elementary school boy who had just heard rumor about a ghost in the bathroom. It was alright, for she didn’t seem to be aware of the building hatred he had for her. She instead had her hands in their usual position clasped lightly behind her, back straight, eyes forward. He realized now that he had been so caught up in hateing this child he had forgotten to make the other children aware they were leaving. He put himself back together as best he could in a short time and called back to the other three, he didn’t have to wait this time as it seemed they had learned from the last time when they had almost left infront of the orphanage boarding shool that they had been kept residents in for most of their un-dead lives. “Ermm…Sir?” He looked over behind him to see a nervous red headed child, her long hair pulled back into a pony tail, decreted with bows. If he remembered his briefing file correctly, this would be Crucecum, a hyper girl who had arrived with her twin brother, they had gotten here at the age of five if he wasn’t mistaken, he also remembered seeing that they were the first of the group to arrive, but that Cordis had joined them shortly after, having fought with scarlet fever for around six months before passing a few days after his fifth birthday. The came Amori she had been the last and likely saddest passing of the four, she had died alone, cold, and sad in her fathers basement, having passed from extreme neglect to the border of abuse and most things inbetween. He thought personally that it had been a freak accident; she even made it to five. He understood why the higher council had chosen to ensure she forgot these little details, though it seemed she had faced impacting trauma. He looked at the girl, her eyes looking lifeless, like a doll. He knew she must have been emotionally stunted, look at the poor thing, it seemed she found it impossible to see people as people. He shook his head lightly, it was a sad case, but she was down here, and she had a job to do. That might have sounded cold, but she was simply another child to have not been given a chance, hundreds of them flooded in everyday, and things would stay that way.
He realized now that the ginger child was still speaking. “...which is why I was wondering when we're gonna get there…” He glanced at her and shrugged, keeping his projected personality. “I don't know, when we get there.” He attempted to hide the fact that he hadn’t been listening to a single thing she’d been saying. “I’m sure we’ll arrive soon, Crucecum.” Amori seemed to surprise him as she spoke, her voice having a dead edge to it. He noted the way the ginger girl looked at Amori. It was a look of trust and assurance, he didn’t understand it. How could this child trust Amori so much, it didn’t make sense to him.