Throne Room, Abaddon - 1st day of the Garnet Moon, Year 44 BH
The demons were restless. That morning, the thick air of Abaddon strummed with an added pulse, one that rode the cold winds and whistled to every corner of the kingdom. Regis could hear their faint mutterings when he closed his eyes, could feel the tangible sparking of restless souls. A stranger was passing through his kingdom, and they would reach his castle soon.
Regis opened his eyes again, one finger tapping rhythmically against the cold stone arm of his throne. “It appears,” he said, “that we may have a guest arriving soon.”
Standing beside the throne, Hal raised an eyebrow. He was in his lesser form today, six massive white wings fanned out behind him. They stuck out sharply amidst the dark, dreary hues of the throne room. Silver against black and grey and brown. Regis had tried to add a bit more color to the building, but the overcast skies above ensured no natural light could touch Abaddon.
“Good or bad?” The angel casually adjusted his grip on his spear. “Am I gonna get to fight today?”
The demon chuckled. “That remains to be seen. Regardless, it seems it will be an interesting start to the new year.”
“Well, I hope you’re right. Could use something to spice things up,” Hal joked. Regis raised an eyebrow.
“I seem to recall you killing a demon lord not a week ago,” he said amusedly. The southern parts of Abaddon had always been more unruly—the demons there regularly challenged his authority. After the oldest and most powerful had been dealt with, he’d assigned Hal the task of handling the rest. It kept the angel busy, cemented his position in the demon court, and it allowed Regis to devote his own attention to other matters.
“Yeah, but that guy was weak. I didn’t even die once.”
“That is a rather high standard,” Regis said. “Perhaps we should spar.” He tilted his head, gaze moving to the door. The flow of air shifted slightly, displaced by something outside. He stopped tapping.
“It will, however, need to wait until after this.”
The heavy stone doors rumbled. In slow but steady increments, they swung apart, pushed not by any physical hand, but with magic. A few stray stones scattered across the floor rolled away, clouds of perpetual dust rising from the ground. The doors finally came to a stop when they met the walls with a heavy, echoing thud. Silence returned to the room.
There, standing in the doorway, was a humanoid figure in plain grey pants and a coat, white gloves, and a distinctive mask that would’ve given away their identity even if their magic signature had not.
“Reaper,” Hal said. Regis narrowed his eyes slightly, but remained in place atop the throne while the reaper took a few steps forward. He understood Abaddon’s restlessness now, as well as why no demons had approached the stranger on the way here. The reaper came to a stop in the center of the room, where they stared up at Regis behind that blank mask.
“This is a surprise,” Regis said. “I never expected to receive a reaper as a guest. To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“The pleasure is all mine. It’s an honor to meet you,” the reaper said. Her voice was deep and contained a somewhat raspy quality. She nodded to both the demon and the angel. “First King of Abaddon. The Spear of Avalon.”
“I don’t go by that anymore.” Hal’s grin was sharp.
“Ah yes, of course.” The reaper cocked her head. “I see the rumors were true.”
“Gotta be more than rumors at this point,” Hal said, raising an eyebrow. The reaper chuckled.
“Can you blame people for doubting? It’s hard to believe Avalon’s strongest soldier would betray them.”
Hal’s eyes flashed. Regis raised a hand, silently halting the angel before he could respond or step forward. He kept his own gaze fixed on the reaper. “Enough. I assume you did not come to Abaddon to question my general. What is your purpose here?”
The reaper was quiet for a moment. Without a face to watch, her stillness was uncanny. Finally, she spoke again.
“There’s been talk—whispers of your future plans. I’ve heard quite a few things.”
“Reapers seem to hear much but do little.”
She chuckled. “You’re not wrong. Our actions are quite limited.”
“Why are you here, then?”
The reaper raised a gloved hand towards her face. Hal automatically tensed, but the reaper simply gripped her mask and carefully removed it. Regis raised an eyebrow. Reapers never removed their masks; they were a faceless collective that performed their duties in the background, only seen rarely and even more rarely heard. There had been a great deal of speculation on what a reaper’s face would look like, but the one that greeted them was plain and ordinary, with average features that were nearly impossibly nondescript. The only true standout were the eyes—a dull, unblinking slate grey.
“I’m here,” the reaper said, “to propose an alliance.”
Tolbury, The Serpent Isles - 14th day of the Sardonyx Moon, Year 24 AH
A passing breeze swept through the ruined village, rattling the collapsed wooden buildings and scattering stray grasses. Frey remained standing by the fields, watching them with a steady gaze. Finally, she smiled. The expression itself was not insincere, but remained uncanny on her countenance. Since their first meeting, Regis had seen a few more reapers’ faces, and they tended to be as expressionless as the masks they donned. Frey emoted more than usual for her kind, but the expressions never looked quite right. Regardless of what she did, her eyes always maintained the same flat, detached quality.
“Regis. Halcyon. I see the two of you are doing well.”
Hal snorted. Some of the earlier tension had bled away from his posture, but his hand remained firmly wrapped around his axe, ready to swing at a moment’s notice. Regis inclined his head towards the reaper. In some ways, he was not surprised to see her. Of all his former generals, it was only logical that she would be the first to find them.
“I would say the same to you. You do not seem surprised to see us.”
“I knew you weren’t dead,” she said simply. “I didn’t feel either of your souls return to the Ark. I’m impressed; I wasn’t certain you’d be able to resist the Ark’s call.” Her eyes shifted over to Hal, scanning the angel for a moment. “It’s good to see you free. That prison didn’t suit you.”
“Yeah? You could’ve dropped by and said hi,” Hal said, mouth twisted into a sharp grin. The reaper chuckled.
“You know it’s not so simple. For the record, I’m sorry I couldn’t do more to break you out. Frankly I didn’t think the Hero would go as far as he did.”
Regis glanced over at Hal. The angel’s jaw tightened slightly, but he otherwise gave no visible reaction to her words. He’d heard enough to surmise what his time in the prison had been like. He had not, however, heard anything regarding the ten years before that while he was still regenerating. The otherworlder, it seemed, had had a more direct hand than he’d initially assumed.
Another part of the reaper’s words caught Regis’s attention. ‘Do more,’ she had said. He turned back to Frey.
“You guided my soul to this island.” It was less a question than it was a statement. He’d drifted rather aimlessly in that state, half-conscious as he was. The fact that he’d awoken on the Serpent Isles, the other side of the world from Cannia and near where Hal was, had been a lingering curiosity of his. A reaper could guide a wandering soul fairly easily.
Frey didn’t say anything in response, but her silence was answer enough. The demon studied her closely. In the past, Frey had been in a rather unique position compared to the rest of his generals. She’d helped them, but had never fought on the frontlines and often vanished for long stretches of time due to her duties as a reaper. Even in those history books, he hadn’t seen the reaper’s name mentioned once. Her existence, it seemed, had remained largely unknown to the world.
The demon’s eyes drifted down to her hands, gloved as always and without a weapon in sight. Whatever her reasons for appearing now, she did not, at least, seem interested in attacking them. She’d been too unreliable and enigmatic to be considered a full ally back then, but was currently more trustworthy than the traitors.
“So? Why’d you decide to show up now?” Hal asked.
“I believe you already know the answer to that.” Frey nodded her head at the few remaining souls drifting near the ground, then at the melting flesh of the creature. By now, it had almost fully dissolved into grey sludge, only a few chunks of quivering flesh remaining inside the slurry.
“That,” she said, “is a sluagh.”
She gestured towards the ruined village and at the motionless dead bodies surrounding them. “As you theorized, it’s a collection of unreaped souls that have formed a large enough mass to create that creature.”
“I’ve never heard of it,” Regis remarked. Hal nodded in agreement, and the reaper smiled.
“No, I doubt you would have. They’re quite rare. It’s been a long time since there’ve been enough wandering souls to form one.”
Hal raised an eyebrow. “Yeah? Any reason you reapers aren’t doing your jobs?”
Rather than answer the question directly, Frey stepped forward. Her footsteps, too, did not make any sound as she proceeded towards the ruined village. Regis watched her movements closely, and she finally came to a stop a few feet in front of them. She truly hadn’t changed at all in the past twenty years, he noted. It was a stark contrast to Markus.
Slowly, Frey raised her hands. In one smooth motion, she pressed them together. As she pulled them apart again, a long pole materialized between her palms, lengthening inch by inch until finally her full scythe appeared, its curved blade gleaming in the light. She spun it around once. Regis could see Hal nearly swing, but he placed a hand on the angel’s arm, shaking his head, which was enough to halt the movement.
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Rather than point the weapon towards them, Frey instead turned to the closest soul. She raised her scythe, concentrating on those wispy remains. In a blink, slate grey eyes shifted to solid black as she brought the curved blade swinging down through the center of the soul. Regis had seen reapings before. The soul should now scatter, dispersing in a flash of light as it was sent into the veins. There, it would travel through the rippling stream, replenishing the Pulse’s magic with its lingering life energy until it was eventually born again.
This did none of that. The smoke simply lingered in place as though nothing had happened at all.
Frey retracted her scythe, lightly resting it on her shoulder, and turned back to them with a faint smile. “Most people don’t know this, but we reapers can’t simply reap whatever soul we wish. That would be chaos.” She cocked her head, thin grey hairs shifting with the movement. “We’re each assigned a group of souls, and those are the only ones our scythes can touch.”
Regis raised an eyebrow. “I’m assuming your assignments have changed.”
“More than that.” Her eyes shifted back to their regular shade, flat and unreadable as always. “No reaper has received an assignment in the past twenty days.”
The demon digested the information, allowing it to settle as he considered the implications of her words. He mentally traced the days back by twenty until he landed on one specific date: the 26th of the Ruby Moon.
“Since the System first appeared.”
Hal’s eyes snapped over to him, but Regis kept his attention on Frey. The reaper did not react at all to his words, silently confirming them. The demon frowned. Though he had not been aware of the reapers’ methods of assignments prior to this and Frey’s description had been fairly vague, the implied mass spread of information did seem rather reminiscent of what the System was doing. Nothing else so far was comparable in terms of scale.
“Are you suggesting,” he began, “that a reaper created the System?”
“I wouldn’t go that far, no. I certainly haven’t noticed any odd behavior, and no reapers are powerful enough to take over the assignment magic.”
“You do, however, think the missing assignments and the System’s appearance are correlated.”
Frey smiled. “Wouldn’t they have to be? I don’t believe in coincidences. I was under the impression that you didn’t either.”
“No,” Regis murmured. “I do not.”
If the System was utilizing the same type of magic that had allowed reapers to receive assignments in the past, it would stand to reason that its implementation might interrupt said assignments. Whether that had been intentional or not, or whether the System’s creator had even been aware that this was the mechanism reapers used, remained in question.
As Regis ran through various possibilities, he paused, a thought suddenly occurring to him. His eyes landed on the few lingering souls again, smoky splotches on the road. The others had scattered far away, likely to every corner of the island, but he had not seen any fully dissipate like they typically did when they were reaped.
“The sluagh. After we destroyed it, what happened to the souls?” He suspected he already knew the answer, but he wanted to hear a confirmation.
“Nothing,” Frey said. “They’re scattered for now, but they’ll remain on the material plane. None of them passed into the stream.”
“And none of them will, if the reapers aren’t getting assignments,” Hal muttered.
A few beats of silence passed as the full implications of the situation settled on them. Elaren had always functioned as a cycle. Souls traveled along the veins of the material plane until their birth. Following death, those same souls were reaped and sent back to the veins to await rebirth. Those souls had all existed since creation; the Ark had formed and scattered a finite amount, and those same souls continued to cycle throughout Elaren for the rest of eternity, simultaneously replenishing the material plane’s life energy while they did so. The entire network of souls and veins was often referred to as the Pulse of the World for this very reason.
The only exceptions to this were the fae—who were manifested by the magic of the Wild—and demons, angels, and reapers, whose souls were newly created directly by the Ark. They did not enter the veins to await rebirth after death, but were simply reabsorbed into the Ark from whence they came. That uniquely close connection was what gave these species an innate access to Ark magic.
A world where souls could not be reaped was one where veins couldn’t replenish their energy, killing the magic of the Pulse and the foundations holding the material plane together. It was a world that would eventually run dry of souls—a world spiraling headfirst into destruction.
“…sounds like the end of Elaren,” Hal finally muttered, spelling their thoughts aloud.
Frey hummed noncommittally. Another wind blew past, kicking up clouds of dirt and debris. The scattered souls swayed.
“Well, I wouldn’t be so pessimistic. It’ll take some time before Elaren runs out of souls. Maybe a solution will be found by then.” Her gaze shifted back over to the destroyed remains of the sluagh. “The sluaghs will be a more immediate concern. Their number will only continue to rise.”
“I assume Ark magic would be able to disperse them fairly easily,” Regis said. “I don’t suppose reapers would take up the task, now that you’re without your assignments.”
“You’re not wrong—they’re quite easy to scatter for us. But I don’t think many reapers are interested in handling them.”
Hal raised an eyebrow. “Why not?”
Frey was silent for a moment. Finally, she took a slow step forward, then another, then another. She only stopped once she was directly in front of the angel, eye to eye. In his diminished form, the two of them stood at the same height.
“Tell me, doesn’t it seem odd that angels, demons, and reapers are largely created the same way, but only we reapers are beholden to our duties?” She cocked her head. “That’s not very fair, is it?”
Hal narrowed his eyes, but didn’t respond. A beat of silence passed before Frey chuckled and stepped back again.
“Well, suffice it to say, many reapers are quite happy with the situation. A few will probably target the sluaghs, especially the younger ones, but most are glad to pass the responsibility onto someone else. After the sluaghs become a bigger concern, I suspect Avalon will step in.” She raised an eyebrow at the angel and demon. Though she did not elaborate on her statement, both of them understood the unspoken warning. Angels freely wandering around the material plane would be rather troublesome for them.
“I see,” Regis said. “Thank you for the information.”
“Yeah, you’re being weirdly helpful today.” Hal’s voice was an equal mix of suspicion and joking. “Keep this up and you might get moved to the ally category.”
Frey laughed. “And what category am I in right now?”
“Sort-of-but-not-also-not-really-allies,” Hal said bluntly. He grinned. “Same as Rysar.”
“I’m in the same category as Rysar?” The reaper raised an eyebrow. “Well, I certainly can’t have that.”
“Then why not join us? You’ve already given us a great deal of information. Information that I imagine is not public knowledge.”
“I only told you about the sluagh and the reaper assignments because if anyone manages to figure out the System’s origins, it’ll be you.” Frey turned and strode over to the fields, where her mask still lay fallen on the ground. She bent down to pick it up. “I don’t plan on intervening much more than that. I am a reaper, after all. It’s not in our nature to choose sides.”
Hal snorted, but his mouth was twisted in a grin. “You’re already the least neutral reaper out there.”
Regis caught the flash of a smile before Frey attached her mask back on. “Perhaps,” she said. “But I do like to maintain appearances.”
She raised her scythe to the sky. In one sharp swing, the blade cut through the air. The winds picked up. A crack formed, white lines spreading outwards from where the blade had touched, before they split apart entirely to reveal a dark, gaping void in front of the reaper. She glanced back at Regis and Hal, giving them a final nod before turning and stepping into the cut. As soon as she had fully passed through, the tear disappeared, leaving nothing but the withered grasses behind. The winds died back down to a soft breeze.
Once Frey was gone, Hal exhaled and slumped back. “Fucking reapers,” he muttered. Regis chuckled, but he fully understood the sentiment. Reapers were, in some ways, more alien to him than angels were. He’d suggested Frey join them, but he’d known she would reject the offer. Though her power would prove quite useful given his and Hal’s current limitations, he doubted they would ever be able to establish a true alliance beyond their current tenuous one. Not as long as the reaper’s true goals remained unknown.
“Regardless, we did receive valuable information.” Though he wouldn’t simply assume Frey was telling the truth, so far her words did align with what he’d seen and experienced thus far. Either way, they would have a chance to test these theories themselves once they reached the White Cliffs.
Hal grunted in agreement. “Got that right. Crazy shit going on.” He shook his head. “Just who made the System anyway?”
“That would indeed seem to be the most pressing question,” Regis murmured. The demon turned, eyes scanning the empty road. The dried fields continued to stretch far beyond in a yellowed, withered sea. He adjusted his bag, ensuring all his items were on hand, and nodded at Hal. “Let us continue our travels. I’m quite eager to perform that tracing spell.”
“You and me both.” The angel squinted. “How much farther we got?”
“After we exit the fields, we should pass through a number of villages before we reach the capital of the Serpent Isles,” Regis said. “The High Mage lives just north of the city.”
“Alright, sounds good.” Hal rolled his shoulders back. “Let’s get going.”
The wagon bumped up and down rhythmically as its wheels rolled over the uneven earth, wooden boards creaking slightly. The clop of horse hooves formed a constant backdrop, and the sun beamed lazily down onto the uncovered wagon from above. Regis peered out into the distance, noting the growing buildings on the horizon. They would reach the capital soon.
“Are you two travelers?”
The demon turned around. Seated on the other side of the wagon, a human family of three was watching him and Hal curiously. He’d noticed their eyes on them since they’d first stepped foot onto the wagon. He gave them an amicable smile.
“We are,” he replied. “Are the three of you from Alardend?”
“I am,” the mother said. Hal raised an eyebrow where he was seated beside Regis, arms and wings lazily draped over the wagon bed’s edge. He nodded at the sizable number of bags crammed beside the trio.
“You guys moving or something?”
The two parents exchanged looks. “…Something like that,” the mother finally said. She absently pulled her child closer to her. “It’s just, with that System appearing everywhere, we thought it might be better if we had some more family close by. My sister has space on the east end of the city.”
“I see.” Regis made a sympathetic noise. “That’s understandable. This is a very odd situation to be in.”
“Very,” the father agreed. “Never seen anything like it.”
Up ahead, the driver tightened the reins, and the wagon began to slow down as the city gates came into view. Based on Regis’s reading, there were four gates that led into Alardend. The current one was the southern gate.
The wagon finally came to a full stop, and the driver spun around and jerked his head at the city. “Yer stop,” he said. Regis nodded and rose to his feet, Hal following suit.
“Thank you for the ride,” he said. He reached into the small pouch attached to his belt and pulled out a few coins, depositing them in the driver’s hands. They’d gathered a rather sizable amount of money between the guard barracks in Magburg, Cyrus’s home, and the prison Hal had been kept in. These coins were newly implemented after the end of the war, apparently a universal form of money that the otherworlder had spearheaded.
The driver grunted and turned back to the front while Regis and Hal got off the wagon. The family stayed inside, presumably waiting to be taken to the eastern gate.
“Safe travels. I wish your family well,” Regis said.
“You too,” the mother replied. “Maybe we’ll see you in the city.”
The demon smiled. “Perhaps.”
With another crack of the driver’s reins, the wagon turned and continued down the dirt road, clouds of dust rising behind it until it was soon a speck in the distance. Left on the side of the road, Hal peered up at the gates, bandaged wings fluttering slightly behind him.
From here, they could see tall buildings jutting out from behind the city walls. Smoke trails coiled out from brick chimneys, and the road transitioned from loose dirt to carefully laid stones. The gates were currently open, a few guards bordering its sides, and a steady stream of travelers and city residents alike filtered in and out of Alardend. The difference in size compared to the villages they’d passed through thus far was immense.
“So? We heading to the cliffs?”
“Not quite,” Regis replied. He began making his way towards the gates. He and Hal had cleaned themselves and their weapons up before riding the wagon, and now they appeared like no more than ordinary travelers. A few eyes did turn in their direction as they passed, but it was not out of suspicion. Hal raised an eyebrow.
“Thought you were eager to get that spell done,” he said.
“I am.” Regis turned to the angel. “But before we proceed, there’s some business in the city that I’d like to take care of first.”
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How trustworthy is Frey?
