I'm going to start by saying that this is being written without any sort of editing being done before posting. If this ends up going somewhere, it might not look quite like this by the time it's in print.
The darkness wrapped around me, cold black mist. I felt like it was shaping me, rather than shaping itself around me. Screams rang in my ears, those of the dying, the damned. This nightmare was excruciating. When would it end?
I don't think it's ended. I don't think the screams have stopped. But the dark mist stopped swirling and tightening. I think I wear the mist now, and inside the hood are the souls and the screams. Or maybe it's the scythe that holds the remnants of those who refused to die quietly on my watch. Sometimes these are what I think about, when I have enough free time to think. It's then that the screams are loudest and the tension highest. It's then that I ponder whether the general view on my position and profession are correct in that it's a punishment.
I'm a Reaper, an agent of whoever holds the office of Death. In essence, I'm one member of a unit of souls with the fate to provide the justice of death to the masses. After all, one of the few justices in a miserable mortal existence is the right to die. I am not one committing a crime, for I am not the murderer. If blame must be doled out, my scythe is the murderer. I am just the vehicle for the scythe's will.
If you do not believe me, allow me to provide an example, a story of when I first woke from the dream called Life, and into Eternity. I still remember the man who greeted me, so long on the position that his features were all cold and gray, darkened and gaunt form looking devoured by the robe--or the scythe.
"Sir, you have just awakened," he said.
"Me?" I asked.
"Yes, sir. You have been chosen as one of the Reapers. We carry out Death's will upon humanity, since a different set of rules governs the higher animals. I have little to say, except that the manual you will find inside your Robe is invaluable. It cannot be lost, but I'd suggest reading it right away, after you have had time to meet your Blade."
"What's going on? I vaguely remember an end, a cord being cut, and then the darkness and chaos bound me, and I presume they became this cloth that drapes over me like so. You imply that I've awakened, I assume from 'life' and into 'after'." Of course, you yourself have seen the various mistakes I made in my naïve state. The man, whose name I still don't know, gave other small pieces of information not worthy of speaking of. What is worth speaking of, however, is the Scythe.
I was led by the cold man across some bridge through space and time that never existed, from one dark room lit by torches to another. Stone floors, stone walls, and no apparent ceiling--nothing at all above, in fact--were all that I noticed in this place, the Stronghold of Death. The last room we reached, though, was full of sharply curved blades with pieces of wood attached. There was no "iconic" scythe, with a perfectly straight handle and a blade with a perfect curve.
The one that called out to me was at first the most beautiful thing I had ever seen, and then the most terrifying, and still after that the most powerful. A twisted, gnarled limb of willow was the shaft. The blade almost seemed to curve down, then up again, before returning back down almost to the point of pointing straight at the ground. Its initial color was bronze, but I have since seen it turn silver and occasionally red. The fluidity of the curved blade, the apparent strength of the shaft, called out to my very soul. I think that's where it hides, now, inside Darkness-Eating-Burning-Water, as it calls itself.
This scythe rent my spirit open and tore out all of my worth. It's my home, now, with this husk as its vehicle. My name is Mordus, or The Bringer, and sometimes Darkness-Eating-Burning-Water.
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