#glib murphy

Glib is old. Not physically, he stopped aging a millennia ago, but mentally.

He’s seen cities rise and fall, walked the streets of plague-ridden villages, and held the hands of dying soldiers who were shot in a war they never wanted to fight. He’s known the corrupt rulers who are too arrogant to fear death, the coughs of children too young to understand what it truly means to die, and young men who call out for their mother on their death bed, only to meet him. He’s buried everyone in his family, all the people he grew up with, and all of their kids several times over.

He was the first to become a God, and he was just unlucky enough to become the permanently immortal God of Death, doomed to walk Vontral alone.

Except he’s not quite alone.

Sure, there’s Callum, the insane God of Dreams, but there is also a certain half-elf mortal who gets reincarnated every 200 years, and always seems to come back with an infatuation with death.

“Those are bad for you, you know,” Glib says as he pulls his hood off his head, his brown hair falling limply in front of his deep green eyes while he steps out of the darkness from beside the man. The setting sun casts long shadows across the buildings, giving an ethereal, almost spooky look.

“So you’ve said,” the mustached man says nonchalantly. He’s leaned against a brick building in Bowenburg, watching the mostly empty streets while blowing smoke from a cigar that hangs loosely from his lips. His eyes stay transfixed on the unaware people in front of them, unbothered. He knew Glib would come to him.

The god scowls as he grabs the cigar from his mouth and puts it in his own, sliding to stand next to the taller man. The smoke fills his mouth and floods his airless lungs before he lets it slowly seep from his mouth like a dragon. “I mean it, it’ll fucking kill you,” he growls.

“Death doesn’t scare me,” he says cheekily.

“I should,” Glib says snappily. “Most people are fuckin’ terrified of me.”

“Well, I’m not most people, now am I?” he shoots back, mirth twinkling in his coal-black eyes.

For a moment, Glib considers telling him everything, the reincarnations, the old love, the lifelong relationships, all of it, but he stops. “No, no you aren’t,” he settles on instead.

“Besides,” the half-elf begins slowly, grabbing the cigar back from the god, “An early death just means eternity with you sooner.”

“Goodbid,” Glib growls, though all his previous names sit heavy on his tongue. Lawrence is always the first to come to his mind because it was the first, followed by Naethan, Plutos, and Milburn, but this time it’s Goodbid. Johnny B. Goodbid. “You’d be with me for eternity anyway, why are you fuckin’ wasting the time you have among your friends and family.”

“My family won’t talk to me no more, not since I began workin’ in your bidness,” Goodbid brushes off easily. “And Mr. Goodbid works alone, I ain’t got friends other than Death himself.”

Glib growls, but knows there’s no way to convince the half-elf. There never is. “Why are you here anyway? Aren’t your stomping grounds Riftreach and east of it?”

“Yeah, but I heard a rumor of this dope ass horse that walks the town at night.” The taller looks at him with a cheesy grin. “And I want him.”

“Her,” Glib corrects, “And you can’t be serious, you came all the way out here to try to catch a horse?”

“What? I’m a man of style and that white horse is stylin’!” Goodbid jokes. He snuffs the end of his cigar on the brick wall as the sun disappears over the horizon.

“Let me get this straight, your plan is to what? Stake out here until a pretty white pony comes prancing through town and then you are going to try and what? Catch her?” he questions, his irritation at the plan slipping into his words.

He has to admit that it does sound like something that he would do.

Every iteration of him always loved horses, and Milburn, the reincarnation before Goodbid, had a gorgeous brown and white horse that he lost on the coast just east of Bowenburg. The horse was given to him by his father the Friday before his death, so Milburn named her Friday and treated her like royalty, often better than he even treated himself, so losing her was the worst thing imaginable for him. For nearly ten full years, Milburn searched for that horse day and night, begging Glib every night to promise him that Friday hadn’t died yet and that there was still time. The search for her killed the half-elf, but the horse never did die. Well. The horse, unless she gained immortality through magical means, died sometime after Milburn, but Glib pointedly refused to check because an angry part of him would try to take his wrath out on an innocent horse who got spooked in the middle of the night and ran off.

Distantly, Glib wonders if Goodbid’s infatuation with this infamous white horse is the past echoing through him.

“Hey now,” the mustached man begins, bringing the shorter out of his train of thought, “I thought you promised me you ain’t a mind reader!”

“Goodbid,” Glib groans, using a bit of irritation to mask the fear that he would lose this reincarnation to horse hunting as well.

He laughs. “What? I think it’s an excellent plan, thank ya very much.”

The Death God levels a flat look at him before shaking his head and stepping back towards the shadows, drawing his hood up.

“She doesn’t come out until about two,” Glib explains. “You might want to sleep until then.”

Without hesitation Goodbid sits down in the alleyway with his back to the brick wall.

“What- no- I meant-” the Death God sputters.

“I ain’t gonna spend money on a bed if I’ll just have to kill the staff that sees me,” Goodbid, ever the penny pincher and hitman, reasons. “I ain’t exactly supposed to be in Bowenburg.”

“And the better option is to just sleep in the alleyway?” Glib questions, gesturing to the many ways that he could be spotted and captured.

Goodbid just smiles up at him. “But my guardian angel wouldn’t let that happen, would he?” he asks cheekily, already settling against the wall and closing his eyes.

“I’m not your fucking guardian angel!” the shorter retorts, but it doesn’t come out as hostile as he intended it to.

“Then why are you always here for me?” Goodbid questions, sleep edging into his voice.

Glib is silent for several minutes, as he watches the other’s chest rise and fall until it evens out into sleep before he answers. “Because you’ve always been here for me.”

Despite himself, the human mutters a small spell that would redirect anyone’s attention away from the alley, fulfilling his role as guardian angel as he settles against the opposite wall, alternating between watching the half-elf sleep and watching the empty streets of the college town.

A chill settles in the air after a while, causing Glib to drape his cloak over the sleeping man to keep him from shivering in his dreams before he tilts his head back and bathes in the cold air as it blows across his icy skin. He lets his eyes drift up to the sky and traces over the stars that have been named and renamed by every new generation of scholars.

He thinks about old times when he and Lawerence- no, it was Naethan then- used to star gaze. The half-elf would name the stars and constellations easily before asking Glib for their old names, and in every language the old god could think of.

He stares silently at the sky until his mind inevitably wanders into the song that seems to live within his brain.

“Lily, o’ lily of my valley won’t you stay the summer long?” he sings softly, remembering the first time he sang it to Goodbid.

“Fall leaves me tired and winter is cold without the sweet ring of your bells to keep my body warm.”

Although he had been Plutos at the time.

“Your lips are poison and your love leaves me dizzy, o’ lily of my valley, won’t you just kiss me?”

He had been so nervous to show him the words, worried he’d understand what it actually meant.

“Summer grows near, your time comes to an end, and until springtime, I can’t kiss you again.”

But Plutos was none the wiser.

“Lily, o’ lily of my valley can’t you stay this summer long?”

He had asked Glib to sing it to him whenever he was upset, like a lullaby.

“Lily, o’ lily of my valley, I will miss you while you’re gone.”

And he had it sung to him on his deathbed.

“Beautiful song,” Goodbid says groggily as he sits up, causing Glib to jump.

“Jesus!” he hisses.

“Nope, just Goodbid, but I’ll give it to ya, Mr. Death, you were pretty close,” Goodbid teases.

Glib swallows the uneasy feeling of being called “Mr. Death,” but it’s not like this Goodbid knows any better. Glib stopped telling them his name in hopes that one day he would remember on his own.

“What time is it, anyway?” the half-elf asks, stretching like a cat, the Death God’s cloak pooling in his lap as it falls off his shoulders. “Do I got time to catch a few more Z’s?”

Glib looks back to the sky, tracking the moon. “No, your internal clock was fucking spot on,” the Death God mutters. “It’s nearly 2 a.m. exactly.”

“Well, hot-diggity-dog!” he says with a manic grin. “Well, let’s get on movin’!” He stands up, straightening his clothes and mustache as he throws the cloak back over the short man.

“Mustache, do you even have a clue where you’re going?” Glib says as he steps out of the alley behind Goodbid.

“Not even a little,” he says as he weaves through the streets. “But I’m sure I’ll know it when I see it.”

“Goodbid,” Glib growls. “Tell me you actually have a-”

As if cued in by Glib’s annoyance, the sound of hooves clopping on the stone roads draws both their attention.

Before the Death God can stop him, Goodbid is racing towards the noise. The Death God follows close behind him, muttering swears in every language that he knows -which is all of them- as the tall man almost certainly runs headfirst into a guardsman on horseback.

They burst into a plaza, illuminated sparsely by floating magic lights, but standing in the center is a beautiful white horse with a long flowing mane that ends in electric green. She is larger than a normal horse and has an otherworldly calm about her. She stands patiently, white hair covering most of her eyes, before she turns and calmly trots away.

The pair stands gobsmacked for a little too long before Goodbid is back to running after her. A feeling washes over Glib that tells him something is amiss here. This horse has never allowed herself to be seen so clearly by anyone before, only flashes of white hooves and green tails trotting between streets. The fact that she let them see her leaves a funny taste in the old god’s mouth.

“Goodbid!” Glib hisses as he too runs after them. “Something isn’t right!”

“Not now, Death!” Goodbid whisper-shouts back. “We’re hot on her tail!”

Glib makes an annoyed sound but resolves to ignore his discomfort as they weave through the streets. They’re right behind her, step for step, and seemingly gaining on her, until they burst back into the open plaza from before, and the white horse is nowhere in sight.

“Damn it!” Goodbid swears. “I thought we had her!”

Glib scans the streets as he mutters, “This is probably for the best.”

Goodbid sighs dramatically. “Why can’t I have a snazzy horse?” he jokingly pouts, though Glib can spot the genuine disappointment in his face.

“Because I don’t think that was a normal horse,” Glib explains looking back up at the taller. “Trust me, something was up with her.”

“Well, now, I personally think a bounty hunter riding a ghost horse would be even cooler than a bounty hunter riding a pretty white horse-”

“Goodbid-”

Their little “argument” is cut short by the sound of hooves, though this time they are moving much faster and growing louder instead of softer.

The pair look around frantically before spotting the white horse barreling at them with her head low.

“Shit, shit, shit-” Glib screams as the massive horse hooks her head between Goodbid’s legs, throwing him onto her back and biting into the Death God’s cloak, lifting him easily off the ground.

A white and green mist forms around them as the horse continues barreling forward before in a flash of white -and a wave of nausea- they are suddenly somewhere else.

It resembles a weird amalgamation of Riftreach and Bowenburg, with the sleek style of Bowenburg buildings and the layout and height of Riftreach. The streets are impossibly clean and the sky is blindingly white, bathing the entire area in the same otherworldly glow that surrounds the horse.

Glib roars in anger, more at the audacity of the animal bringing them here than the fact that they are actually here. Thick black fog begins to billow from his cloak as his skin turns ghostly transparent, revealing his skeleton. His eyes become unearthly black as a sickly grey and poisonous purple swirl around his hands, but before he can fire off any of the spells he has, the horse drops him flat on his back.

“That will not be necessary,” the horse says, her voice carrying that same ethereal calm that surrounds her.

“You fucking talk?!” he shrieks, rage still boiling in his blood.

The horse gives him a flat look. “Yes, I am Friday, the Goddess of Fate, and I can talk.”

“Friday?” Glib echoes, bewildered. He stares expectantly at the horse for answers, but she offers none. Surely this can’t be the same horse, but the name is too convenient.

Goodbid awkwardly slides off her back and helps Glib stand up before half-hiding behind him. “Ms. Friday, this ain’t some kinda punishment for trying to catch you, is it? Because I didn’t know you were a sentient horse, and I do treat my horses quite well-”

“No, Mr. Goodbid, it is no punishment, I just needed to step in to make sure what needed to happen, happened,” she says to silence his ramblings.

“And how’d you reckon that?” Goodbid asks, a naturally curious man.

“Your vanity and love for horses would surely draw you to Bowenburg if you heard of an impossible-to-catch white horse,” she explains simply.

Goodbid is silent for a long moment before nodding slowly. “Well, now, I guess there’s no use in arguin’ with a goddess of fate now is there?”

Friday laughs, though it sounds more like church bells ringing. “No, no, there is not, I know what is fated to happen so I know what has already happened.”

“Yeah, yeah, that sounds about right,” Glib sighs.

“So, what are we here for then?” Goodbid questions. “You say you brought us here to make sure fate don’t change, but I don’t see much changin’.” He gestures around them before looking more closely for seemingly the first time. “And, uh, where is ‘here’?”

The goddess shakes her head. “Walk with me,” she says simply, as she begins trotting towards a large building at the end of the street.

“Well, you heard her,” Goodbid says after a moment of vaguely confused silence before he begins to march after her, Glib reluctantly following.

“This is a place known as the Order Realm,” Friday explains. “It is much like the Death Realm that your friend there comes from.” Goodbid looks at Glib before turning his attention back to the horse. “The Primordial of Order once lived here, but was killed by their creator, the Nothing. Butinstead of letting their power be destroyed, they and their seven siblings -in their respective realms- created thrones which would distribute power to any mortal who sits in them.”

They have reached a tall white cathedral with green and grey stained glass windows. Friday easily trots up the stairs and into the building, walking towards a strange-looking chair at the far side. It’s made of metal and gears with tubes full of green liquid running up and down the sides.

“The four possible powers of Order are Fate, taken by me; Peace, taken by an older God named Vaktaan; Knowledge, taken by a man named Aldor; and Law,” she stops speaking as she reaches the throne before looking at Goodbid. “Who is meant to be claimed by you.”

“Me?” Goodbid asks, stopping nearly ten feet away from the chair. “Why me?”

Friday gets a pensive look to her face, well, as pensive as a horse can be. She looks at Glib, but only for a moment before carefully saying, “Fate works in mysterious ways, and you are fated to be with another immortal.”

“Ain’t no way an immortal would choose to be with me,” the half-elf counters. “I’m just Mr. Goodbid.”

Glib snickers at that, earning a confused look from the taller. “You have no idea, do you, Bid?”

“Mr. Death, are you telling me that you’ve been holding information back from me?” Goodbid asks, sounding more betrayed than accusatory.

Friday steps in to save Glib needing to explain. “He has only withheld information that you would discover in due time, as you have every time.”

Goodbid stares at her for a long moment. “What do you mean ‘as you have every time’?”

“Sit on the throne and everything will become clear,” she says, gesturing at the chair with her head.

“Why should I trust you?” Goodbid counters, resting his palm on the hilt of his short swords. “You’ve done nothin’ but kidnap me and my friend and talk in damn riddles.”

“Goodbid,” Glib says. “Trust her, sit on the chair.”

“I thought you had a bad feelin’ ‘bout this!” The hitman snaps back.

Glib tries to stay calm as he explains. “I had a bad feeling because you came to catch a magic horse with no plan and we were actively being led into a trap to get us here.” They hold intense eye contact for another few seconds before Glib says, “You’ve said it yourself, you aren’t afraid of death.” Another few seconds of silence before the death god growls, “Sit on the throne.”

Goodbid looks between Glib, Friday, and the chair for another few seconds before hissing, “Fine, what’s the worst that can happen?”

He walks over to the throne with a clearly fake confidence and sits down on it, crossing his arms.

For about three seconds, nothing happens, but then the gears begin turning, and the sound of metal clicking rings through the air. The liquid in the tube swirls and pumps faster before metal arms on either side of the chair clasp down onto him. The room fills with blinding white and green light.

“What the shit?!” Glib yelps, stepping forward, mind racing on ways to get the half-elf free before all the noise comes to a stop, and the metal arms slowly retract.

Sitting in the chair is still the half-elf, though his suit is now white with a green tie and pinstripes. He looks around, mildly confused, flexing his hands as he tries to adjust to the increase of power.

“I’ll leave the two of you alone,” Friday says, as she turns and begins walking towards the doors at the far end. “You’ll have much to speak of.”

“So,” Glib says, drawing his attention to him once the horse is gone. The light of recognition dances in the taller’s eyes, yet it’s different from five minutes ago. “How do you feel?”

“Glib?” he says instead.

The human’s stomach drops, and butterflies erupt, the contrasting feelings nearly knocking him off his feet.

“No,” the death god says, deep in denial as hope blooms in his chest. “No fucking way you remember.”

The half-elf grins at him, though it’s not the typical smile of his persona. It’s a genuine smile that softens his eyes in a way that makes the human’s heart speed up and time slow down. “Glib Murphy,” he says slowly, as if savoring the way the name fits in his mouth. “I remember you- well, I remember everything, but most importantly, I remember you.”

“Lawrence?” Glib says quietly. The hope spreads like fire through his veins and settles like hot coals in his hands. He wants- no- needs to lay his hands on the half-elf, but he can’t bring himself to move, as if he is afraid that if he moves too quickly, or speaks too loudly, this moment will shatter and his Lawrence will return to being “Mr. Goodbid”.

“That’s the name, Mr. Murphy.” He holds open his arms as he adds, “And I hope you’ll wear it out.”

Glib’s legs are moving before his brain comprehends it, and he crashes headlong into the taller’s open arms.

“I swear to fucking god if you die and I lose you for another two-hundred fucking years-” Glib says into Lawerence’s new white suit.