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The Raven Queen was a very busy goddess, probably one of the busiest of them all. She ruled over the natural order of life and death. Keeping that in check could be hard when the mortals figured out how to use their own magic and promptly figured out how to become immortal and resurrect the deceased. It made her job immensely harder, now having to track down these few who broke the order of things and give them eternal punishment. As those few increased, she stopped being able to complete her other tasks as the goddess of death. Things she thought of as tradition, such as visiting the dying mortals and escorting them, kindly, to their afterlife.
Escorting mortals to their afterlife was something that The Raven Queen found she enjoyed doing. Not many gods or goddesses visited the mortals that they ruled over, but people seemed so afraid when they died, that something bad would happen to them, and she found people took to her more when they realized how gentle of a goddess she could be. (She would never admit that she, herself, found comfort in reassuring the mortals that they would be fine.) However, they were soon to find out how vengeful she could be as well when it came to collecting the souls of those who defied her.
The Raven Queen hated to admit it-- though she did over tea with Istus and Pan on occasion-- but she was a bit… overworked. She wasn’t exhausted per say, but she found herself having too much to do, liches allowed to wander around and cause mayhem for longer than she would like it. She needed… assistance. Though the thought of a god having helpers was near laughable, she needed it. She couldn’t stop the number of liches, necromancers, cults that were growing by the century all on her own. (Well, she certainly could if she took no time for breaks or paperwork, but Istus would be very upset if she didn’t make it to tea. The last thing she wanted to do was make Istus sad.)
The only issue that The Raven Queen faced was that she wasn’t exactly sure how she was going to get help. She wasn’t sure who to employ to help her. Her first thought was to seek out some of her mortal followers, but she came to realize that they could die too easily to be useful, lasting aid. They certainly wouldn’t be able to defeat liches who were unimaginably powerful. She would need something more… invulnerable to death if she wanted the proper assistance that she wanted.
Needing someone immortal brought up other issues for The Raven Queen. She would be defying her own order by employing an immortal worker, technically, but she was the goddess here, she made the rules. If she were to ask someone who was already dead and near, essentially, reviving them, the question would be: Who? Everyone was content in their own personal afterlives doing the things they loved, and she wouldn’t use someone who was locked up in the Eternal Stockade- she didn’t trust those people as far as she could throw them.
Then, one day, she found a solution to her problem.
There was a single soul who wasn’t content with his afterlife, a man by the name of Kravitz who had died a year or so beforehand. His afterlife consisted of a home that teetered on the edge of being a gothic mansion (That was something The Raven Queen herself could appreciate, seeing as her kingdom looked rather gothic itself. That was just her style.) with a beautiful garden and as many instruments as he could ever hope to play. Yet, with his perfect afterlife, he wasn’t happy. She soon came to call him restless as she picked up on the fact he was trying to find something else to do with his time, something constructive.
She kept an eye on him, for a while, to see if his restlessness ever ceased and to see if he ever grew happy with his afterlife, but he never did. He seemed to only to get more and more restless than he was when he first arrived. She eventually decided that he would be the one she would entrust to help her.
The Raven Queen, one day, decided to visit Kravitz herself instead of summoning him to her gothic manor-like castle. She took on a more human form, one she liked to be in as it reminded her who she ruled over, and who she could not be without. The form was a nicer one as well, mortals tended to like a form around their size instead of one that towered menacingly over them. She rather liked the form’s look as well, cascading black hair and dark skin with almost piercing stormy eyes. She took to the feathered skirt Istus helped her decide on, and the large black cloak.
She lifted a hand to knock at his door, smiling almost slyly when she saw the expression of shock on Kravitz's face as he opened the door.
“Hello, my dear,” The Raven Queen greeted, “may I come in?”
Kravitz stared in disbelief a moment longer before almost jumping to the side to let her in. “Yes, of course, um-”
“My Queen will suffice.”
“-My Queen.”
She walked in, smile still present on her face as she walked into the home’s living room, knowing exactly where she was going despite never having been in to visit him before. She sat down at one of the armchairs he had, interlocking her fingers and resting her hands on her knee. She looked expectantly at Kravitz, who had followed her into the room, and shifted her gaze to the chair across the fireplace from her. He sat down, almost mechanically, and swallowed nervously.
The Raven Queen laughed lightly. “There’s no need to be nervous, dear. I’m not here to punish you.”
“May I ask why you are here, then?” He paused a moment before adding, “My Queen.”
“I have… a proposition for you. You see, I need a bit of assistance when it comes to making sure those who break the natural order of life and death are punished. The number of them has been growing since you mortals discovered magic, and I’m unable to complete all my duties in a timely fashion anymore- it’s quite inconvenient. Though, I’m aware that you are… seemingly unhappy hear, yes?”
“Yes, My Queen. I don’t mean to be rude, but I find it rather, ah, suffocating here. So to speak.”
“You’re not being rude at all, however, you are certainly a first. But, that is where you come in.” The Raven Queen leaned forward, raising one eyebrow. “Would you like to be my bounty hunter?”
“Your bounty hunter?”
“Yes, you see, you’ll collect the souls of those who defy me. Liches, necromancers, people of the sort. You’ll have a book so you know who to go after, as well as a scythe that can tear portals in the fabric of space-time itself. Modeled after my own. You’ll get a room in my castle as well.”
Kravitz paused, thinking it over a moment. “I’ll be able to… to do things again?”
The Raven Queen smiled and nodded once. “You will.”
“I’ll do it.”
“Wonderful.”
The process of making Kravitz her immortal bounty hunter was a simple procedure, though one she never did often, as she wasn’t much of a fan of making people immortal (but who could make exceptions if not the gods themselves?) She taught him how to summon his scythe and book, an honestly quite amusing lesson to give. It took him a few tries to summon them, and then a few more tries to make them appeared fully formed, but he eventually got the hang of it. Learning to tear a portal was a breeze after that, him only having to figure out how to get the portal to open where he wanted it to on the Material Plane. The last challenge he had to face was learning how to switch between a more human form and his skeletal form. That one probably took the longest for him to completely master, taking him a couple decades or so, but he one day finally got the full grasp of it.
The Raven Queen felt as if she was teaching a baby bird how to fly.
She would be lying-- and she would never dare lie to Istus as she recounted Kravitz’s progress to her over tea when they would have it-- if she said that she hadn’t taken to Kravitz. It was nice to have someone to share her kingdom, her domain with. He was definitely a charming man, and she came to like the conversations that they would have. She insisted, when they both were free, that they have dinner or tea together, and she came to like that time spent with him, too. She wasn’t sure she would go as far to call the man like a son to her, seeing as she was a goddess and had no real family, but he grew important to her as the centuries dragged on. It was nice to have his company.
The Raven Queen soon picked up on the nicknames that the mortals gave Kravitz. Death was a bit inaccurate. If anyone was Death, it was herself. She was the one responsible for the cycle of life and death, even if Kravitz helped her enforce it. Yet, there was a nickname that she found he liked and that she liked as well: The Grim Reaper. It was quite the interesting nickname, and she liked the flare that it had to it. Kravitz was the Grim Reaper, her Reaper.
For the first time in a long time, The Raven Queen was content.