Excerpt: Reapers and Storks (no way gonna be the real title, but I can't think of anything else right now)

Grene was sitting in his office, rubbing his head and staring at the wooden trapdoor in the floor, as he had been doing for the past four hours when Podreg ran into the room, anxiously wringing his hands.

Grene kept staring at the floor. “What is it?” there was little to no emotion in his voice.

“Well...” Podreg trailed off and tried again. “You know that...” he groaned. “That is to say...”

Grene gritted his teeth in disgust. “What. Is. It?” he enunciated the only syllable of each word violently, his voice almost a whisper, his eyes still on the floor.

“Pynde's dead. The...” Podreg cleared his throat and kept going, “the girl killed him.”

Grene betrayed no outward emotion besides a little disbelief in his voice as he asked, “the girl killed him?”

“Well, we can only assume so. He was sent after Keve had already left and when Keve sent him here his body had already been dead for a few hours. The only other one in the area was the girl.”

“So not only can this girl see Reapers, but she's able to stand up to them?”

Podreg squeaked nervously, then answered. “That would seem to be the case, yes.”

“Thank you, Podreg. You may leave.”

Grene heard Podreg squeak again, the door slam, Podreg's footsteps as he descended the stairs. He slowly stood up. It was time for the decision to be made.

He walked slowly to the trapdoor and bent down beside it. He rubbed the smooth wood, then felt the hinges. Then, before he could decide against it, he forced both his fingers under the heavy door and lifted it.

A stench wafted up from the perfectly white room inside. It wasn't the rotten stench of the dead, nor the musky scent of the living. It was the stench of a place where death and life had fought with each other for too long over an individual and finally given way to loss of self, loss of time, loss of sanity, loss of everything but existence.

“Greetings, Grene. Be there a chance that thou mightest have come here to free me from this cage?”

As Grene had hoped – and feared – there was a Reaper amongst the pristine white walls. Even though his hair was wildly tangled and his face was smeared with cracked dried saliva, Grene recognized him instantly. “There very well might be...Mongule.”

Mongule smiled, and it wouldn't matter if Grene would live for another two eternities; he'd never forget the animal he saw hiding in that smile.