Chapter Text
Lance hadn’t been expecting this.
Actually, if he had been expecting this, he would have been worried for his own sake. Nobody intentionally summoned a demon during their first ritual spell. Considering he had been in the market for a love spirit, this was just about the furthest thing he wanted.
And it wasn’t his fault, not really. It wasn’t even his spell, for crying out loud. He’d gotten it from Pidge as thanks for completing a few errands, and their scrawl was difficult enough to read in English. He wasn’t even entirely sure what language this was supposed to be. Pidge had been helpful enough to at least use letters he could read and pronounce, but the dialect could have been Hieratic for all he could tell. Maybe those “G”s were supposed to be soft.
The point was, when he had scrawled out his pentacle and lit his candles, he was expecting a pink poof of perfumed smoke and sweet, lyrical words telling him exactly how to woo the high witch in his coven. Yes, he had used different candles, and yes, his offering may have been a little off, but his candles were so close in color he figured it wouldn’t really matter, and Pidge had insisted he use cat’s foot and bat’s wings instead of his usual jelly doughnut from Dunkin’ Donuts.
Whatever he’d done, he’d done clearly wrong. Instead of looking up at a love demigod, he was staring up at something considerably more frightening. Whoever, whatever , it was, it had immediately popped a few light bulbs and extinguished his candles in an almighty whoosh , leaving him sitting slack in front of a very dark altar.
A deep voice boomed across his kitchen floor, and he was suddenly deeply grateful he’d done this when his roommates weren’t home.
“Who dares request audience in the name of the Crone?”
Fuck him running. Lance hadn’t tried to do anything with the Crone. He had been shooting for Freya and fertility, not Morrigan and death.
It wasn’t like he could exactly turn around, all oh no, I didn’t mean that left. I meant the other left! He had made his deathbed, and now he had to lie in it.
“Uh, hey there,” he squeaked out. “Um, Lance McClain? But I, uh, I didn’t mean to summon, or rather, um, request an audience with the Crone.”
The figure floating above his pentacle was shrouded in a deep black cloak covering any semblance of a face, but he could have sworn he was getting judged.
“...Are you serious?”
“Serious as the plague!” Was that inappropriate to say to what was most likely a portent of death? Shit, he really was in over his head.
“You’re doing your ritual during a waning moon.”
Lance huffed, forgetting just where he was for a moment. “Well, I don’t know who you think you are, but I checked it on the way home and I’m pretty sure it’s waxing.”
“No, it’s definitely waning.”
Ah, shit, seriously? He could have sworn it was growing bigger. Hadn’t it just been new, like, a week ago? Or maybe that was a few weeks ago. College was seriously messing with his head.
“You’re also using animal bones.”
That he had a valid excuse for. “In my defense, this isn’t my spell. My friend lent it to me after I got them late night French fries. It literally says right here in the instructions to use cat feet and blood and shit, so obviously I’m gonna follow the recipe. Can’t make an omelette without cracking a few eggs, amiright?”
The specter bent down, peering at the green Post-It Lance proudly held aloft. They were still floating a good foot or two above his altar, and he wasn’t about to stop kneeling in front of a reaper.
“You do know those refer to plants, right?”
He rocked back on his heels. “What?! It literally says blood right there in modern English! That part isn’t even written in Draconic, or whatever the hell this is supposed to be.”
The specter pinched at where the bridge of a nose might be under their hood. “It means elder sap. Or literally any tree sap. And your ‘cat feet’ are supposed to be ground ivy. Also, that’s written in Galran. Are you not a witch?”
Lance puffed out his chest, trying to look proud under his deep blush. “Half witch! Mortal dad, witchy mom, et cetera et cetera. And I figured I’d go old school and follow it on the nose to make it really work!”
“Which is why you used candles more commonly associated with spiritual power and the third eye than the ones the recipe calls for.”
He rolled his eyes. “Okay, you’ve got me there. I ran out of pink candles, and I figured purple is, like, right there on the color spectrum, right? Easy swap.”
“Why didn’t you sub in a white candle?”
“Alright, wise guy.” Now he was starting to actually get pissed. “If you wanted to do the spell, by all means, do the spell for me next time. I thought I did okay for my first ritual.”
That was probably crossing a few lines he should have been more wary of, but he didn’t particularly care at this point. If this demonic douche wanted to get all critical, he was gonna get just as critical back.
So he crossed his arms, staring defiantly up at the shrouded reaper. The lack of face made it a little more difficult than he would have liked, but he figured he covered himself okay by looking vaguely in the cowl direction. “Why are you even still here? Aren’t you supposed to, like, not casually chat with witches? If you’re trying to kill me with all this criticism bullshit instead of the good ol’ fashioned one-two, by all means, keep going. And what kind of fake-ass reaper voice is that supposed to be? You’re not John Cleese a la Meaning of Life . Drop the act, jackass.”
That was definitely crossing a few lines. More than a few, more likely.
The purple candles, previously extinguished, suddenly flared to life with a deep blood red hue, the flames larger than they could ever normally be. The apartment was instantly awash in the crimson light, flooding Lance’s eyes and turning his veins to ice. Lurid shadows painted the walls, frenetic and howling.
“Foolish mortal, you dare criticize a servant to Lady Hecate upon his own summoning? The price for that is grave, Lance McClain.”
For all his fear, he couldn’t help the little snort. He scrambled back after the slip, pressing up against the wall. “Sorry, sorry, just--’grave’? You’re using a pun before you kill me?”
“I--what? No! That wasn’t a pun! Servants of Lady Death do not use puns!”
“Freudian slip, then.” Lance was shaking, though he couldn’t tell if there was a bit of laughter mixed in with the bone-chilling fear. “Are you new at this?”
The candlelight died down a bit to a significantly more attainable color. “Of course not. Why would you say such a thing?”
“Dude,” Lance clapped his hands, half in delight, half to get the feeling back in his fingers. “Dude, you totally are! You’re a total newbie, just like me!”
The reaper raised their scythe menacingly, then slumped down closer to the floor. “...It isn’t that obvious, is it?”
At least it was getting easier to breathe now. “No, no, of course not,” he reassured. “When you first got here I was totally certain you were, like, crazy experienced. That entrance was perfect, with all the candles and shit. I mean, I’m pretty sure you broke my oven light.”
“Really? You’re not just saying that so I don’t kill you, right?”
“Promise,” he said. “I almost pissed myself when you first appeared. If I hadn’t gone right before I did the ceremony I would have definitely messed my shorts.”
The reaper stood a little straighter, looking as pleased as a faceless death spirit could. “Good. You wouldn’t believe how stressful today has been.”
Lance leaned forward, sitting cross-legged now with the elbows resting on his knees. A day in the life of a grim reaper had to be more interesting than his own. “Tell me about it!”
Pausing, the reaper adapted a more dubious expression. “Are you sure? It’s pretty boring over in the Netherworld when you’re a temp.”
“Wait a minute,” Lance held up a hand. “You aren’t just new, you’re an intern? ”
The reaper floated down a bit more, mirroring Lance’s seat while still hovering a good six inches up. “ Don’t even get me started. If you think interning here is shitty, imagine how it is off the material plane. If I get the wrong coffee for my boss I need to interdimensionally travel back to Starbucks to get the right one.”
Lance tried to imagine the terrifying, cowled form of death waiting in line at a coffee shop behind a soccer mom wearing Uggs, but he just couldn’t picture it. Maybe it was a Starbucks in the Ethereal Plane or something. That probably existed.
“Then I get to watch my superior go off on calls all day,” they continued, plowing straight ahead. “Meanwhile what do I get to do? Organize paperwork. Again. Do you know how much paperwork is involved in dying? More than mortal wills and death certificates, for one. I don’t even get to do the fun thing, like sorting people into Elysium or Hell or Purgatory, or wherever else they might go. I mostly decide whether to keep or recycle spam mail.”
“The immortal unholy Goddess of Death gets spam?” Pictures of politicians and religious fliers popped into his head. Apparently Hecate Herself wasn’t immune to Republican pamphlets.
The grim ignored him. “And at the end of the day my superior says, ‘you know what, Keith? You’ve done a great job today. I’ll let you go to a summoning.’”
Death’s name was Keith? That was even more underwhelming than Lance thought possible. He thought messengers of the Crone were supposed to have deeply spiritual names, like Apotelesma or Yorak. Keith sounded like a 7-Eleven cashier with braces in his twenties.
Keith clearly wasn’t stopping any time soon. “So I go to the summoning, and what do I get? Some shrimpy little kid with a Baby’s First Grimoire trying to get it on with some love magic. They said you’d be a high level necromancer, not a dime store half witch with a plastic chalice from Costco.”
“Okay, slow your roll there, bucko.” Lance held up his hands again in an attempt to stop Keith’s tyrade. “First of all, this chalice is from Dollar General, not Costco. How cheap do you think I am?”
Keith looked taken aback by the interruption, so Lance barrelled ahead. “Also, I’m not even a necromancer! This is a love spell! So I can get flirting tips!”
Once again he felt spectral eyes boring into him from under the hood. “Lance McClain, this may normally be a love spell, but with the addition of your...liberties, it’s a deeply powerful necromancy spell.”
He had to be kidding. “You have to be kidding. How in the name of hell do you know all of this witch bullshit anyway?”
“Please tell me you have an actual teacher outside Witchipedia.”
Lance scratched at the back of his neck, shifting awkwardly. “Of course I do. I have a coven and everything.”
Keith clearly didn’t believe him, or maybe that was just Lance’s paranoia that this guy was still judging him. Either way, he sighed. “Reapers are witches that have been chosen in death to serve the Goddess directly. We did good service during our mortality, so we get to continue past the shade of the Unknown directly into Her path.”
Well, shit. So not only was this guy a terrifying death creature, he also had been a witch. A powerful one, too, if his description was anything to go by.
Aka he was outmatched on numerous accounts.