His reapers really were stupid. As he watched the reaper ping pong back and forth between the walls, he wondered how much work it would take to tweak them to give them just a bit more intelligence. Usually, when they wear a face, the reaper shares some of the intelligence from the one they borrowed the face from but faceless as this reaper was, they were sitting at the intelligence level of a baby. As the second reaper joined the first, he reevaluated that. Rocks. They were about as smart as a bag of rocks. He sighed as he dragged his hand along his face. As Kaia hurried off into the deeper parts of the house, he turned to the other reapers, holding his hands out to the sides to keep them from stepping forward and onto the carpet. “Alright, all of you. I'm going to need you all to take a face. Doesn't matter the face. Just pick one. Now.” All the reapers in the room froze to look at Death as their formless faces began to ripple and change. Some of them chose unfamiliar faces but many just copied the face of Kaia's mother. Death took a moment to stare at the duplicated faces before he just threw his hands in the air. “Good enough!”
A few reapers stepped forward, peering at the barrier that held their comrades before they reached down and started to dissolve the carpet. Death crossed his arms over his chest as he watched them work. Now that was far more logical than just walking into the barriers and getting yourself stuck there. Nonetheless, it was a slow process. The reapers were going to be dissolving the carpet for awhile at this rate. Death could do it with one touch but he couldn't use his magic and that infuriated him more than anyone could know. He paced behind his working reapers, clenching and unclenching his fists as he did so. He grumbled the whole time. He wanted nothing more than to just get his boys out of that stupid trap and go melt that magician in his bed but he had to rely on his reapers and Kaia to do all the heavy lifting while he sat back like a spoiled kid and do nothing.
When Kaia came barreling down the hall again, saying how they had to go, the reapers straightened and stepped back from the partly dissolved rug. Death gave her room to work, peering back at the reapers who all wore the familiar face of her mother. He made a bit of a disgusted face at those reapers but felt it wasn't the time to work with them to get new faces. They would just have to deal with problem later. They had to get out of this place if the magician was waking up. Just the thought of running from a mortal made Death grit his teeth. What had become of him? All powerful, reduced down to a mere powerless mortal.
He led the way back to the basement, his reapers following behind just as quickly. He whirled around on his eyes, looking for the window and the chair just under it. He locked his eyes on it and pointed. “Go!” He called out in a whisper and his reapers transformed into black smoke before sailing off and out the window in one fell swoop. He ran to the chair and climbed on before he turned to face Kaia, holding a hand out for her so he could help her up and out of the window. He gave a tug when she grabbed a hold, pulling her up on the chair and was about to grab her waist and push her up through the window when a voice reverberated out through the shadows.
“There you are!” It hissed before a larger than life hand of black shadows reached out and engulfed them both, carpet, chair, and all. There was a sickening spinning sensation as the world around them went black. Death clung tightly to Kaia as the world vanished.
Not now. Not now. They couldn't do this right now! They need to get out of this place. They needed to go! How could she do this to him now?! Damnit! He knew she would come. It was only a matter of time but right that second? She had the worst timing in the damn world!
The spinning sensation ended and Death felt his feet land solidly on- something. The chair clattered to the ground and Death took a look around. There was no color around them. The world was just solid black, the only color coming from them, themselves. It was as if they had been placed in a black void. Well, to be exact, that was essentially what had happened.
“Death!” A petite woman materialized out of the darkness, her skin a pale white. She wore a thin dress of black that left nothing to the imagination. A dark shawl of black and blue hung over her head with stars glinting along it. Her hair is long and dark, stars shining from within its curls. Her eyes were large and wide with a deep purple color. Two large black wings sat tucked against her back and when she saw Death, they spread behind her wide, those too flashing with sparkling stars. She ran forward to embrace him, wrapping her arms around him tightly and crushing her small frame against him.
“I have been searching for you! I feared I would not find you. I am glad to see you well.” She released him and stepped back, eyeing him up and down a moment before saying, “well, alive, I suppose. I was afraid a lesser god had finally decided to try and rid us of you so they could take your place but when Artemis told me where you were, I had to come and get you! Who would have thought someone could trap you, let alone a human. A hum-”
Death held up a hand to stop her ramblings. “Nox, I'm glad to see you well. I know you had only good intentions.” She only ever had good intentions with Death. If a god could have a crush, Nox's would be considered an obsession. In reality, she couldn't help it. Darkness and Death tended to go hand in hand together. Ever since her first manifestation, she had a thing for Death. He was, to a degree, a bigger, scarier version of her. Her darkness wasn't final. They were always broken by the light of dawn. But Death? Once you fell into the darkness of Death, there was no escaping it. His was the last and final darkness.
“We were trying to do something there.” Death continued, Nox crossing her arms and cocking a hip as she eyed him.
“Oh? It looked to me like you were running away and with a mortal girl, no less.” Her purple eyes settled on Kaia for a moment before she turned them onto Death again. “If you ask me, I did you a favor getting you out of that mess.”