"If you win this race, you get Lizzy. If you lose, she dies. Or you can just back out of the race and let go. You know, they say love might be about letting go."
"I'll race," Arion answered.
"I see. Your arrogance will kill her. If you back out, she'll be mine and she'll continue to live, though, as my bitch. If you lose, I repeat, Arion, she dies."
"I. Will. Race!" Arion said and changed his focus to the road.
Rictus reeked of stale booze. He stood before the custom-built beast of a car, a low-slung, growling nightmare.
As leader of The Vipers, his reputation for cruelty preceded him. They were age mates, college mates, but miles apart in circumstance.
Rictus, flush with ill-gotten gains, wanted Lizzy. Arion, scraping by, wanted only to make ends meet and protect the one woman who had chosen him. The only person in the world he had left to fight for.
He had never been in a race like this. Never. But he would. For her. From the rear mirror, he watched her wave at him.
Rictus's voice, a harsh rasp, cut through the murmuring crowd. "Y'all are fighting for someone, for something. If you lose, you lose it to me forever. Only the winner goes home free."
Arion looked around at the other drivers. Fathers, haggard and pale, hoped to reclaim children lost to gambling debts. Husbands prayed to win back wives forced into prostitution. Others simply sought the return of property seized by Rictus's iron grip.
A gun blared.
Engines roared.
Arion's car, a beat-up relic, lurched forward. The screech of tires tore in a brutal lament. He gripped the wheel, knuckles white. The road ahead twisted into a dark tunnel.
A sickening crunch echoed behind him. He heard a crash, then another, metal tearing, glass shattering.
He didn't look back. He couldn't. He was already losing ground, falling behind four cars.
Adrenaline surged. He slammed his palm onto the nitro button. The car shuddered like a beast unleashed, rocketing past two competitors
Second place. "Yes!" He cheered himself.
Another clash and then a deafening explosion ripped through the air. A fireball blossomed in his rearview mirror. He heard the distant screams, then silence.
Drones zipped overhead, their red eyes blinking. They were watching. For fun. Where people are dying.
A cold fury coiled in Arion's gut. He realized it wasn't a race; it was a morbid spectacle. Rage clouded his judgment.
He lost focus for a split second. The car fishtailed, tires shrieking a protest. He slipped.
Third!
The road wound tighter, a serpent of asphalt. He had to regain control. He slammed the brakes, then accelerated hard, taking the corner with a reckless abandon that defied the laws of physics.
The tires bit, pulling him through the turn. He felt the g-force press him into the seat. He was gaining.
Back to Second.
He knew what he had to do. With a silent prayer, he hit the last of his nitro. The engine screamed a final, desperate cry. He surged forward, inching past the lead driver till he was a bit ahead.
They were on the final stretch, the finish line a distant gleam in the city lights.
"Please! My daughter is five! She'd be raised as a prostitute!" The voice, raw with anguish, ripped through the air from the car beside him, another driver.
"He has my girlfriend!" Arion shouted back.
He saw the man's tears, the genuine, heartbreaking sobs. His focus wavered. The road ahead became a blur of desperation and human suffering.
He knew the sharp turn was coming, the one they had warned about, a near-impossible curve. He should prepare. He didn't. The images of the crying man, of his implied daughter, of Lizzy, of Rictus's leering face, filled his mind.
He didn't see it.
The turn was upon him. Too late.
He crashed.
The impact was bone-jarring, a symphony of rending metal and shattering glass. The car slammed into a concrete pole, the force so immense that the pole splintered, tearing his vehicle and folding it in half.
The passenger side crumpled, folding in on itself, the jagged metal weeping into his flesh. He felt no pain, just like the KO punch that would floor a pugilist.
Then, it came.
A silhouette, darker than the deepest night, stood over the wreckage. Arion was out, beside the pole.
A heavy cloak, seemingly woven from shadows, billowed around a form that was somehow both vast and impossibly thin. A sharp, hooked thong gleamed in its unseen hand.
Arion couldn't make out a face, but the presence was undeniable, vast, and ancient. The voice, when it came, was thick, like gravel shifting in a tomb.
"You have come far."
The cloaked figure raised its hand. There was no theatrical flourish, only a quiet, deliberate motion. The heavy cloak parted, then fell away, dissolving into motes of shadow.
And there, standing before him, was Lizzy.
She smiled. A wide, knowing, impossibly beautiful smile that held no sorrow, no fear, no pain. Only peace.
"Lizzy," he breathed. "Did I win?"
Lizzy merely tilted her head. "You are free from the pain. From the suffering. They say I am a villain, but I am not. I am the end of struggles."
Arion felt a strange lightness, a sense of release. The crushing weight of the world, of Rictus, of debt, of fear for Lizzy, evaporated.
"Yeah. Just like that," Lizzy said. "Duty is the cage love builds around itself. When love becomes an obligation, a debt to be paid, a role to be fulfilled, it ceases to be boundless. It becomes a task. But the end of duty, the liberation from that binding force, that is where love truly begins to breathe. It's when you choose it freely, without compulsion, without the weight of expectation or the fear of loss. It's not an absence of connection, but a profound presence born of unburdened will. Your striving, your very fight for her, while noble, was a duty. Now, that duty is stripped away, and what remains is the raw, unadulterated essence of what you embodied. That, Arion, is the truest love."
"What? Lizzy?
"I have come to take you home," she said.
"Am I dead?" Arion looked at the car. Blood seeped out. Enough for none to have survived the crash.
He nodded. There was nothing left to fight for, nothing left to hold onto. Just her, and the promise of peace.
Then, Lizzy winced. It was a subtle flicker, a momentary break in her serene composure. A sound, faint but clear, reached him. A cosmic sigh, perhaps.
"I just heard that Eros is missing in the Primordial Cosmic setup," she said, her eyes, Lizzy's eyes, suddenly filled with a different kind of light. "You... you have shown a great depth of it." She looked at him, truly looked, and Arion felt utterly seen, stripped bare of all pretense. "Will you take up this role for a while? Until it comes back?"
He stared at her, then past her, into the swirling, inky void that seemed to be her true domain. Nonsense. What nonsense was this? Eros missing? Him, Eros? He turned around to check.
Was any of this real? The screech of tires, the blast of the gun, the metal tearing into his body – was it all just a hallucination? A dying dream? He had seen Death. Death?
Lizzy's gaze sharpened, piercing his doubt. "I won't take you. Not now." Her voice resonated, no longer thick, but clear and commanding, the voice of pure authority. "Be what you stand to be, and more. Uphold the balance. As Eros."
The form of Lizzy wavered, shimmering. Her smile remained, but her features began to shift, to blur, reforming into the dark, cloaked figure he had first seen.
The sharp thong glinted in her hand. It raised a hand, a gesture of farewell, and then, as swiftly as it had appeared, the figure of Death vanished.
Arion's eyes snapped open. Back in the car.
The world was a chaotic blur of flashing lights and distorted sounds. He felt the cold, hard steel of the crumpled car door pressed against his cheek. He kicked it. It groaned, then swung open with a shriek of tortured metal. He tumbled out, landing hard on the asphalt.
He was covered in blood. His blood. Close to two liters had seeped out of the car. But there were no wounds. Not a single cut or scrape.
He stumbled to his feet, disoriented, and rushed toward the distant finish line. The crowd, a buzzing mass of faces, fell silent as he approached. They gawked, their mouths agape.
"He's alive?"
"How?"
"Impossible!"
"How could anyone survive that crash?"
A replay of the accident blared on a massive projector screen. He looked up at it too. The horrifying impact, the car folding around the pole, the impossible survival. Murmurs rippled through the onlookers, a wave of stunned disbelief.
"Wow," Rictus exclaimed, his voice a strange mix of shock and grudging admiration. He looked towards the side of the track. His eyes, fixed on something unseen by Arion, widened in dawning horror. "Had Lizzy known... she wouldn't have killed herself."
Arion's head snapped towards where Rictus was staring. His blood ran cold.
There she was. Her body lay crumpled on the ground, still and lifeless. A dagger protruded from her belly.
"Lizzy!" The name tore from his throat. He ran, oblivious to the stares, the whispers, the blaring screen. He fell to his knees beside her. Her eyes were vacant, staring at the unseen stars.
"Duty is the end of love, and the end of duty is love." The words, the strange, philosophical paradox, echoed in his mind.
He had been freed from his duty to win, to protect her in that race. But at what cost? Had his duty, his desperation, driven him to this crash, this moment, freeing him from his burden only to find her lost? Or was it her ultimate act, a liberation he couldn't understand? Did his survival mean her sacrifice? The chilling possibility of a cosmic exchange, of a destiny he couldn't grasp, flickered in his thoughts. Was it real? Had he truly seen Death? Death…
"Oh my God!" He gasped. His head around his temple.
Something glistened at his waist. He looked down. Arrows. A quiver, thin and elegant, materialized against his hip, holding a handful of shafts. Some were dark, almost grey, like shadows. Others glowed with a soft, warm golden light.
Then, a weight settled on his back. He reached back, his fingers closing around smooth, polished wood. A bow. A hunter's bow, perfectly balanced.
He remembered Death's final, commanding words. "Uphold the balance. As Eros."
Eros. He knew Eros. The God of Affection. And Lust.
"Have I just been awakened?" He asked himself. "I think so," he answered himself.