Truth stood passive as he watched the entrance to a country home in Endeavor, Ohio. It belonged to a man he had met briefly once at a bar in Athens, Greece. In a fit of shame, he remembered that evening, smoke and dancers flailing and mingling together like oil and water, touching but not mixing, rather sliding along and between.

A man, Lucius Kines, stared blankly into an empty shot glass as if his concentration would fill it with his poison of choice. Smoke and dancers parted before him, the lies inherent to them repulsing them subconsciously due to his Nature. Truth remembered laying a hand upon Lucius’ shoulder, the man never stirred to see who, just muttered that he had nor owned anything but a space in the gutter to die.

Truth took pity, and in an uncommon fit of spoken word, told Lucius to be himself in anything he did. Truth being new to being Truth didn’t realize he had just made a horrid mistake. He didn’t look inside; he assumed, that this was a good man who had fallen on hard times. The truth he would discover was in fact disgusting and dark. The man was an Evil made flesh. It took five years for Truth to stumble into an article about a murder of a pilot in Greece who had somehow managed to make and fly his flight back to the United States. His Nature told him this was a thing of his, a work he had touched.

Truth let his mind touch eternity, searching for this person who had so direct a connection to him. It took twenty-nine years in such a state to find him. It was a bloody trail. The man ate lives like a starving man devours food. Taking each one and for a brief time becoming the one he killed. Always someone alone with little connection to others, though not before torturing every detail of every facet of their life from them. Followed by carving chunks of flesh from his captive eating them as the bled and shrieked their way into Death’s arms. Eventually he became more centered on eating over a longer period of time, stopping their bleeding and, even worse, stopping when they passed out from pain or shock. Some were brave enough to bite through their tongues in an effort to speed Death's embrace.

The horrors that bludgeoned Truth subsided and he opened eyes he didn’t remember closing. It isn’t often a Truth fucked up like this but invariably it was from good intentions and being new to the Nature.

It was a cold comfort, almost as cold as his ice blue eyes, as they stared their hate into the door of Lucius’ home. Willing himself into motion he walked with the air of executioner at his back. He couldn’t correct the past, but this man had many more years of life left and no desire to desist. He knew Lucius was contemplating an apprentice to “carry his legacy of greatness as ordained by god”. Clearly, his delusions were at least of the grand kind.

The door was before him almost as if it were a gate of hell. The being within didn’t really qualify as human. Hell, Truth had met literal Monsters that were more human than Lucius. Truth moved mechanically by hate alone. Truth knew it was his fault, but also knew he couldn’t take upon himself the actions of another. Free will and all that. Still, the conflict in him had caused him to be out of sink with his Nature. Thus, he stood there Knocking like an automaton.

Finally, a shrill response came, full of spite and self-importance telling him to hold the racket and that he was about important work. A shiver of raw hate slithered across Truth’s spine like a serpent full of venom. There was only one thing to this man that was or constituted an “Important Work,” taking a new life as his own. The door swung wide with a quickness speaking of immense frustration. Clearly his latest work wasn’t going well.

Truth could feel no other life present. He hoped whoever the poor soul was died fast. A sad thing to wish for a person. Eyes of a blue much like his own crouched rat like in a face some would have called handsome once but was so no longer, lesions marred skin in every facet of his appearance, making him on the outside as his actions did on the inside. A snapping comment of what in the fuck Truth wanted flew forth in the same instance as the door opened, followed by a comment of how cops were already on the way as he had seen me standing out there like a serial killer for the past six hours.

The comment spurred harsh laughter from Truth. Lucius had stated what he was and didn’t even flinch. He didn’t even believe he was a serial killer just a messenger of godly intent. Finally, Truth spoke.

“You don’t have a clue of who or what I am, do you?” Lucius’ face scrunched and replied with a, fuck no, why should I, kind of line. Truth wasn’t really paying attention. “You should, from a bar in Athens, twenty-nine years, seven months, twelve days, two hours and thirteen minutes ago to the T, as it were. I have a gift for you Lucius Kines, a much-delayed gift.” Truth could hear sirens coming fast as he watched Lucius’s face turn ashen and waxy with every word that tolled forth from Truth.

Truth handed him a piece of paper, which Lucius accepted with trembling hands, from his pocket, while his other hand withdrew a .45 caliber 1911 pistol and fired twice into Lucius’ heart, spraying blood and bone everywhere.

Lucius died instantly as the wailing sirens came to a crescendo of screeching tires on pavement. Truth dropped the pistol and reached into another pocket, which held yet another note. The cops fired into him immediately, offering no warning, no shouts, nothing but the awful percussion of eight pistols going off in tandem with the furiously beating hearts of their wielders.

Next thing truth knew, he was laid out on the driveway concrete, a blood trail showing how he had walked through a storm of bullets to lay peacefully down. He could feel the chill saturate his body, not unlike that hate that filled it either.

That was when he saw Death. A fat, indolent man who cared of nothing but watching how things went. Death looked upon him with empty eye sockets. He was withering. Spitting up blood in frothy bubbles, Truth spoke, “You’ve lost weight, started a diet?”

Death was not amused, he was oddly proud of the extra weight, as if defying his stereo-type gave him immense gratification. “Ass, you know that’s not the case. I am at the end of this incarnation. I must leave and give my Nature to another. Go figure, even Death can die. Anyways, I need you to help the next one with my, well, this Nature, so he won’t fuck up like you have. I have been around long enough to see four of you fuck up this way. That’s astounding. Anyways, you can do this, or pass on, as being out of sync with your Nature has left you in my porky hands to decide if you stay or go. So, what do you say? Favor for a favor?”

Truth laid there and grumbled frothing blood the whole while as a cop frisked him, ignorant of the fact that he squatted not mere inches from Death. The cop didn’t try to stop the bleeding or request assistance. Odd behavior for a cop.

Truth set that aside for now, even as he felt the touch of another’s Nature in the air. “You have your deal, Death. Just wake me in the morgue. I would like peace and quiet while I sleep this off. After all, dealing with you leaves me feeling something rotten in my mouth, no joke intended.” The cloudless sky began pouring rain and lightning flashed directly overhead with out sound. “Maybe you should let me die, the Earth is quite furious with us, it seems.”

Death sighed. “This isn’t because of you or me, kid, this is because of who was behind you and your friend, here. Not to mention those three other Truths and their friends. Something really fucking shitty is going on in this world. Atlanteans may even return, and the Witnesses are doing more than Witness. Mark me, Truth, the Ships of Glass have become Ships of Darkness. Whatever that means. Goodbye Truth, and good luck finding the next Death, all I know is he will be a bit of a beanpole. Disgusting.” With that, Death was gone and Truth’s eyes grew heavy as he drifted to a place between Reality and Death.