Chapter 1: Harvest

The Reaper swung his heavy blade and the young woman’s plea died. Her head rolled away from her kneeling corps. Blood spouted onto the Reaper’s face, warm, metallic, and familiar. 

He released his long-hafted blade and flopped to his back. It had finally stopped: the ache behind his eyes. The itch at the back of his neck. He lay in the blood of his harvest and the world finally felt right. The sky over his head looked somehow more blue, the trees more vivid. The foliage and shrubs held more color, more life. He knew it was just in his head, nothing more than the euphoric release of an itch finally being scratched.

He lay there for what felt like an eternity relishing his hard-earned peace. But before he could feel at home in the lack of ache, before the blood began to stink, the sensation began anew. 

It started as it always did. As a feeling at the back of his neck as if he were being watched. It harried him from his rest, and he sat up, truly seeing the bodies for the first time. He became aware of the blood soaking through the cloak on his back deepening its red hue and sticking to his flesh. The acrid scent filled his nose, and he fought the sudden urge to vomit. 

Why? Why was he like this? What vile spirit possessed him to do such evil work? 

He turned about and the feeling of unseen watchers followed him. Only, when he turned toward the setting sun did the feeling fade. 

West then. His next harvest lay to the west. 

The Reaper stood. Glanced at the weapon at his feet and the headless bodies strewn around it. For the thousandth time, he considered letting his harvester lie. Slightly curved, it’s thick blade was mounted to the end of a four-foot-long haft. The haft was made from wood unlike any he’d seen, and it lived as surely as he. He stared down watching it drink in the blood of the dead. Leaves sprouted all along the wood. Moss and lichen grew around the blade, mushrooms sprouted from a seemingly rotten knot behind the head. As it drank up the blood, a chip in the blade healed, and the edge shined more brightly as if just honed. That blade had tasted more flesh than a hundred beasts. 

The reaper glared down at the wicked blade and the bodies of all shapes and sizes around it. Some male. Some female. They all looked to be of middle age, but that didn’t meant much. Everyone looked to be in their prime except children, and those were extraordinarily rarer. Children and himself. 

The reaper was a tall man. His shoulders broad. His limbs and joints gnarled like an old oak. A thick beard hung from his face dark black with patches of grey. His skin was tanned from the sun and wrinkled like his clothes. Those were coarse wool, dark and patchy. His cloak and his eyes alone held color. The cloak was drunk on the blood of his harvest, and his eyes were a green as deep and rich as the wood around him. 

He made himself study the dead. Made himself see their faces, try to match the heads with the bodies to know his victims. Why? Why did he do this? Death. Death and more stinking Death. He spat. 

“May you live forever.” He cursed, kicking the wood of his haft-axe. He turned his back on it and stomped towards the woods. 

He made it five steps before the ache behind his eyes deepened. Ten steps before his legs began to shake from the pain, and twelve before he collapsed in a twitching heap. 

The sun had set by the time the reaper managed to crawl back to the axe. With the blade’s aid, he climbed to his feet in the twilight and set out to the west, the only direction that didn’t offer blinding pain.