Chapter Text
Death’s Master exhaled through their nose, exasperation flooding Them to Their very core.
Regrettably, They had left the nearing inevitability for far too long now.
Reports and complaints were piling into cabinets the Compound just didn’t have, becoming increasingly overwhelming to the staff that was hired to deal with a more minimal amount than what was arriving at their doors at an erratic, yet quickening pace.
They, as in the Master of Death, had, admittedly, wrongly believed- naively hoped, as another phrase for it- that, perhaps, this time, it could have been avoided. Maybe it was a mere myth- a fluke, perhaps, that had kept on repeating for the previous Masters, because of some unknown force- though, it could be Fate. Fate was known for Fate’s trickery and mischief in areas such as these.
No matter.
All previous attempts of such futile actions just proved that it was an experiment coming from erroneous origins, with just as equal results. Proven to be incorrect, time and time again, revealed by the continuous growth of, even now, the unholy-
A nock resounded, hyperactively bouncing off the cream walls, supposedly originating from the darkened oak door.
“Come in.” Vexation was clear through Their use of tone. However, remorse made Them wince apologetically as Their assistant, Ender, opened the gateway into the room and entered the threshold. Ze was harrowing zis way through zis anxiety-ridden lower lip, gnawing away at it while an oversized clipboard was held within one of zis trembling, smooth, chocolate-coloured hand. Death’s Master lowered Their pitch to resemble an apologetic tone, stating what would have been a sarcastic, scathing remark into something much more tangible as repentance for Their actions. “Sorry, Ender. I’ve been having one of those days, you know? I thought you were one of the countless of myriad of souls coming here to file a complaint.”
Ze nodded, a quick, sharp gesture, to show that ze understood.
Timorously, ze chuckled, oceanic skies and sweet, fudge-dipped honeycomb mixed globes glancing around the room restlessly. Although ze had seen the place interminably, Death’s Master allowed zim to gather the minuscule courage ze held within zis entirety in order to spit out what ze had came there to say.
“It’s-” Ender’s eyes dropped to the robust, stone-made floor, apparently finding the worn-down slates intriguing. They settled into Their hard-back, well-cushioned mahogany chair. “It’s about the Parasite.”
Of course.
What else could it have been?
It was, obviously, unfeasible to assume for the topic to be anything apart from that.
The Parasite.
They winced inwardly.
The tide was rising upon Death’s Realm, its hunger insatiable, gnawing at the souls with invisible, piercing canines as they screamed in agony. No matter if it was Paradise, or Torment; they were all, unfortunately, affected.
Death’s Master sighed, outwardly, this time.
It was time to send one of Their Reapers into the Mortal Realm.
Harry was, in his opinion and surely in many others, just the everyday, standard Reaper, doing whatever his duty obliged of him. Myriads of souls were collected each day, done by him and the others- obviously, who else but the Reapers were to do it?- he handed in the appropriate amount of paperwork that was required for the day prior- ugh, shmatics- and did half the interminable amount all over again for the day he had just worked, only to have it handed in the next afternoon (he needed to make sure he did everything properly, and didn’t miss anything out).
In that moment, however, he was doing the foremost of his tasks.
An elongated, dusk-filled cloak rippled with the excess of liquidated shadows, Enchanted so he could walk and yet not trip over their onyx strands as they bled into the pebble flooring of the medieval dungeons. There was an absence of illumination, rendering his sight futile as the obscured surroundings made his mind ever-the-more irritable. A hood made of the essence of a Black Hole fabricated the illusionary mask of shadows swathing his face, making him beyond recognition for the soul he once was. Leather boots with cushioned padding and unresolved flexibility made sharp, rasping sputters of excellent timing; only the people of Death’s Realm, and the souls somewhat, somehow, for some unknown reason, clung onto their near-decaying bodies could discern, as long as they weren’t deaf.
As the Reaper sauntered forward, his boots started to make a splashing noise- almost as though he was stepping on something… wet. It made a pathway on the floor as the further he went along, to the point where curiosity pinged itself across his heart, forcing him to unbecomingly bend down and dip two clothed, bone-encrusted illusionary fingers into the estranged liquid that had been plaguing the ground. Without hesitance, he brought them to his mouth, and his tongue darted out as to scoop the unknown solution onto it and taste it with repulsing reverence.
Blood.
Human blood.
Mixed with what seemed to be soiled water. Perhaps there was a hint of urine in it, as well? Either way, the majority of it was the blood of the creature he once was, upon a long time ago.
So it was the crimson rivers weaving through the flagstones, a kind of ruby made to hold vital things such as water, iron, hormones, and the list went on. It was freely, painfully, woefully a thing that, for the homo-sapien kind, was supposed to be kept inside their body, unless a vampire was nearby or some other unmatched creature, and it was given with consent to said creature.
But no.
The Reaper continued to prowl, gaining ground as he got closer and closer to the opposite end of the dungeons.
Drip, drip, drip.
It was a requiem. Melancholic in a twisted way. The sound echoed, though it only had one source: the far wall, where, if he squinted, a distant figure hung.
Tortured, rattling breaths gasped from the unconscious, barely-there human. Chains they hung from were rustling slightly, making them, along with the inconsistency of the drip, drip of what he assumed to be the human’s blood, the only sounds in the area- bar from Harry’s hauntingly ancient boots whenever they fell upon the ground to create thunderous claps.
Harry stared.
It was disgusting.
There was a jagged-edged tear in their tummy, and extensive remnants of what they use to be barely hanging on to the insides. An elongated tube slopped out of the uneven hole and onto the ground just beneath their feet, as their wheezing began to slow.
He cupped their cheek with a soft tenderness, a touch designed to make a Mortal relax and become at ease. An echo of something akin to sorrow burrowed it’s way into his chest, and lodged itself there as he looked upon them in something akin to pity.
However, he still had a job to do; and thus, he lifted his hand, made sure it had the claw-like shape needed, placed it onto their face, and beginning the search for their soul.
It only took a few minutes to find the object of his salvation- aka his pay- on the average job, and this time it was no different. To his luck, it seemed to be intact, which was something that made Harry sigh with relief. He had encountered only one incomplete soul that day, but at least it was due to a soul parasite and nothing as drastic as a Horcrux- now, why did the wand-waving folk invent those again? And he wasn’t about the Goblins- poor fellas.
Horcruxes were finicky little bastards, and only the best of the best had the possibility of healing the shattered pieces- but that could only happen when all of the pieces were destroyed.
The Reaper began to tug on where the soul was residing.
Come on. Why were human souls always this stubborn?
Slowly but surely, a small wisp of butterfly-like wonder formed itself right in front of him, glowing, illuminating, otherworldly in its existence. It was timorous, in the way it fluttered about.
Time had passed, with it being over the average Mortal hour, though the chapter was surely not done yet. He never understood why souls wanted to cling onto their bodies the majority of the time. Perhaps it was because they didn’t want to lose something so familial, something that had been theirs and only theirs for the entirety of their existences.
With one, final tug, the ultimate, irrefutable shuddering exhalation of the human was only witnessed by a Reaper who had came for that exact moment.
Harry gathered the soul into his pouch, lest it escaped, and closed it using the strings dangling down the sides.
His brow was decorated with bloodied sweat, and when he brought his left gloved hand up to take away the moisture, it dampened the material slightly. Though, he felt ambiguity at the relief of it being the end of his shift. He had 30,450 souls to collect that day, and that was the last one- it had came out of the body rather quickly, compared to all the others. Not fast enough to have a chance of being offered Ghosthood, mind.
The Reaper Teleported out of the building, and had only just hit the grounds of the Compound when his phone rang.
A sigh of immense frustration egressed his being, yet he still dug it out of his rightmost pocket and answered the infernal thing with a, “Hello! It’s a pleasure, as always, to answer a phone call from the Reception! This is Harry the Reaper speaking, how may I be of service?”
His tone was sickly sweet.
“You are required to be at the Main Office within the next hour.” The Receptionist’s clipped response was borderline monotonous. Oh, wait. Never mind. It definitely was.
“I’ll be there!” Harry’s overly-chirpy voice dripped with the tooth-rotting sarcasm that showed evidently what kind if mood he was in.
“Bloody Receptionist.” Now, that was an image. Not that’s he had ever seen the Receptionist- in fact, he was certain that no-one apart from the Master of Death has seen their face.
The sound of his shoes was reverberating on the toxic marble flooring, and he stroked the pastel pink walls with featherlight touches, mourning his loss of being unable to spend an eternity resting against it. He was exhausted.
Yew wood was merged together as the ceiling, a continuity in its eyesore prosperity. Alas, he needed to endure it, if not for the sake of his pay.
Nifty fingers pinched the pouch from its location at his hip, and he threw the pouch into an abyss just in front of him where it would be collected and the souls become distributed across Torment, Central, Redemption and Paradise. The Judgement would be individual, and fair, with it all weighing down upon how the souls had led their lives.
In Central and Redemption- that was where most of the Workers, like Harry, came from. Torment was where the inexcusable went, while Paradise was where the souls got the opportunity of being Reincarnated, if they so wished, or, as the alternative, could have the most fulfilling time in the afterlife.
Some of them, for some mind-boggling reason, decided to become Workers in their spare time. It must be a pathetic, boring thing, then, their Afterlife that they may had not gotten prior.
The walk to the Main Office was nothing but a short distance away- though Harry was a rather lazy piece of sh|t, and did take his time staring at random walls occasionally.
Sorry I’m late. You see, there was this thing, and then there was this other thing. And, guess what- Thus his laziness continued.
He was half way through the walk, before giving up and Teleported- What? It took effort to walk all that distance- into the Office.
Heavy bags hung below deadly emerald eyes, obscured only by molten shadows. Nonplussed by the fact that the Master of Death was standing directly in front of him, Harry raised an eyebrow.
“Ah, Harry!” They had better not be after another favour. He recuperated Their acknowledgment with a sharp, almost reluctant-looking nod. “Care to join me for a walk?”
They seemed timorous in the way They spoke.
And so they walked.
The Endless hallways stretched out before them. The Compound was ever-changing, and Infinite in a way that only the Experienced could decipher. In that particular corridor, the floor was an estranged cream, with brown walls engraved with the lunacy of neon green, not of any Runes from any of the infinite languages and thus merely for décor, rather than protection. An overhung ceiling curved towards the middle, coloured as an open blue with a deeper meaning. They turned a corner, and suddenly, they were outside.
There was purple grass surrounding paths of weary blue stone, with a backdrop sky full to the brim with clouds that were full of acidic orange.
The Master of Death broke the silence. “I’m sure you have heard about the Parasite that has recently been latching onto the Souls in this Realm.”
Harry’s head snapped towards him. “I’m sorry, but, Parasite? As in, singular?”
Their grimace was apologetic. “Afraid so.”
The speech that ensured made Harry shudder at the length whenever he looked back at it for the entirety of his Immortality.
“-Of course, I completely understand if you don’t want to go through with it.” They finished.
Harry sighed, a headache that had been slowly unfolding behind his eyes was now at full blossom, making him severely regret his life choices. “I’ll do it.”
Obviously, there were over a million ways it could go wrong, but he didn’t want to hurt his Boss’s feelings. Or get fired. What? His job was fairly substantial, for what he did! Besides, it could be worse, with what some of the other job choices were…
Aaaaaand back to the topic at hand! At least he’d been sent to the Mortal Realm before, on non-Reaper duties, obviously. That had to be a bonus, right? Besides, it wasn’t as though there was anyone else in the Death Realm that was more qualified to the job than a Reaper.
The grin on Their face was starting to make him regret the choice he had made.
“You have one week to say your goodbyes, with no work whatsoever apart from any paperwork you need to finish, and then I’ll meet you in the Teleportation Centre at 5:15pm, if that’s okay with you?” Harry nodded.
That was a lot of time off. Almost like a holiday.
Ah, well. He’d dedicate it to the cat.
Unsurprisingly, the Reaper didn’t do much that week.
Just lazed about, binge watched any shows he felt like binge-watching, snuggled with the cat, fed the cat, fed himself, hydrated the cat, hydrated himself, danced in the malignant rain at least once, made sure the neighbours would look after the cat while he was gone, etc.
Oh, yeah. He had also consumed an alarming amount of energy drinks- since he didn’t know when he’d end up, and it wasn’t as though he’d get any unfortunate health sh|t from it.
He also ate treacle tart.
Always treacle tart.
He sighed at the cat in his arms. The cat let out a meow.
“I’ll miss you, Arty.” He blinked away a few tears as he burrowed his face into their sleek grey fur, and handed them over to the neighbours- they were a kind lot, and had their own smol gremlin to take care of, so he knew that Arty would be well-looked after there, but-
Harry Teleported away just as a single tear fell to the ground with a pathetic, indiscernible splash.
“Ah, there you are, Harry!” A milky extended limb wrapped itself around his shoulders. A pang of a vexatious chill surrounded his tanned skin, before settling into his bones.
The Reaper smiled through gritted teeth. “Hello, Master of Death.”
“We’ve been waiting for you.” They would have sounded patronising if not for the harrowing tone.
Harry sighed as They opened the Portal in front of them, made specifically for this occasion.
It had a robust, yet whimsical frame, with a tall, arching gateway. It was structured by curling, predatory dark blue mist that flowed sluggishly. It faded into the colour of Midnight as it let way inwards- where the Void itself was lurking. Contrasting to the middle, however, was the absence of colour- of anything, really- blending outwards on the outer parts of the Gateway. It slowly disappeared into the air the further away it got, giving it an ominous air.
“You can step through when you’re ready.” He was gently pushed forwards, as They took a step back. “Preferably within the next half hour, though. I have a lot of work to get through.”
Their attempt at humour fell as flat as a doormat.
Inhaling to the point that any and all Carbon Dioxide would be neatly torn away from any nearby trees’ grasp, he took a step forwards as he let out that same air. Dark currents were warily approaching him, sliding and winding their ways through the air.
As he made his way, closer and closer, they wrapped around him like a silk blanket, and he could taste the soil. A strange, skeletal numbness overtook his entirety- much like the touch of the Master of Death, but more- and then-
There was nothing.
Several days had passed since Harry stepped through to the Mortal Realm. Death’s Master was brooding, as the skies grew wary and the stars evermore solemn in likeliness.
“Are you sure this will work?” An unknown voice asked.
They replied with what seemed to be an unfeasible bravery, “It has to.”
Somewhere, on a planet called Earth, a baby was being born. So were hundreds of others, some may argue. How could this one be any different?
Well, he didn’t cry, for a start (and no, he was not mute). Another reason is because he did not squirm as much as the other babies.
But also, it was because this child who had been born, just one soul in hundreds of others, had the memories of over a lifetime’s worth.
He was either going to kick the Parasite’s a$$, or die trying. (Even though he’d probably just be reincarnated again. If it wasn’t too late, that is.)