Chapter 1 - The Birth of A Reaper

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Eleven years ago, a tribe of wandering spiritualists visited a village in the western territory of the Golden Empire and from this village, they took a teenage orphan whom they were convinced was to be a warrior for the goddesses. Many of the residents of the village wanted to stop these Wanderers from stealing the child, but could not bring themselves to risk a bloodbath as it was known that Wanderers had the ability to ruthlessly decimate any who opposed them - regardless of their numbers.

It was always at the back of the child's mind that one day she would be taken away from her home. Wanderers make it their job to track down the orphans of a village and turn them into soldiers. Still, on the day that she was collected, she felt nothing but sadness and rage. Her village had promised they would protect her, but they failed and she too was removed from the place she called home.

She felt especially betrayed because she knew that no one in any of the many towns and villages in the Empire truly believed that the spiritualists were protected by the goddesses, especially the members of her own village. So, as far as she was concerned, they could have done more to save her and she simply could not understand why they just did not.

Following her collection, the child spent seven years with the Wanderers and like the other orphans, she spent those years learning the ways of the warrior. Rage, hate and feelings of betrayal became the sources of her resilience and strength.

Her combat skills and physical abilities grew so rapidly that she was often trained separately from the other children and forced to face the adults just because of how ferociously she fought. Over time, she began to dominate everyone including the adults bringing all of them, even her master, Xekem, to their knees. This, coupled with consistent acts of insubordination caused the Wanderers to start viewing this orphan as a threat and so they made plans to dispose of her. However, their attempt on her life failed and she caught wind of the assassination plot. As you can imagine, this enraged the teenager so much that she decided to damn the consequences, if any - and wipe them all out. Little did the child know that she was right on track on the pathway that the goddesses had set for her.

Imagine her shock, as she sat in a pool of blood from all the men women and children she had just slaughtered, when she discovered that these Wanderers were indeed protected or at least sanctioned by the goddesses. To be fair, being the kind of magic-folk that they were, the Wanderers were supposed to be almost impossible to kill, so she should have been surprised that a person like herself, a person born without magic, had the power to end their entire clan. But she had grown to be arrogant and paid no mind to this fact as well as the fact that every life she took seemed to add to the physical power that she had.

She failed to notice, on the day of the massacre, that she started fighting as a human but was being led to finish as something completely different. She failed to notice the emotional change she was experiencing as she cut them down and that she had gone from experiencing feelings of resentment and repulsion to experiencing excitement, invigoration and omnipotence. She was not paying attention to the fact that she had gone from being torn inside by rage to being in love with the kill. She did not notice any of these things, at least, not until she was finished.

When all the Wanderers and the orphans that fought with them were dead, she was alone momentarily but not really as the forest around her seemed to be speaking to her, warning her of what was to come next.

Suddenly, she felt a presence and voices in her head began to chant and sing 'You've done well', 'A true prodigy', and 'Let us bless you'. Then in an instant, she was on her knees and confusion began to settle around her as the voices in her head got louder. The chants rose in tempo so much that they turned to screams and loud cheers causing her to wince and curl up into a ball for what felt to her like forever, but, it eventually all stopped, quite abruptly and it was as if the presence had left.

Relieved, she started to get up but before she could complete her rise, she was without warning, interrupted by a sharp burning sensation on her back, forehead and face. She immediately knew what was happening as she had heard the stories and she screamed in pain as the goddesses marked her as a Reaper.

It lasted for hours and her soul felt as though it was being ripped apart then resown together. The tears in her eyes flowed excessively till there was nothing left and the blood in her skin went from burning hot to icy and hollow.

In that period, she finally realised that this was what they wanted from her all along, they had tended to the hatred she had for those who raised her such that she would kill them all and posses the magic that they were born with. They had fuelled her rage and helped her through the battle so she could commit a genocide that would give her unbelievable, costly and unwanted power that came from the possession of souls.

The early hours of the morning came and the goddesses were almost done defiling her soul and branding her skin. However, before they finished with her they showed her visions of her ancestral line and of the god from whom her kin was created.

'Hunt them down'

'Kill them all'

'And you will have your place with us'

The voices chanted those words to her in a language she had never heard but somehow now understood. They wanted her to kill her entire godline, or rather the entire godline of the old god from whom she was created and had placed on her the curse of the Reaper to enable her to complete the task.

It's been a few months since this young woman accepted her assignment and she's travelled through the Golden Empire ever since. Starting from the south, she's worked her way upwards and is now in the first royal city, the City of Kinshasa where after hours of battling the royal forces and executing members of her godline, she's hunted down and caught the fourth son of the royal family who has now fallen at the edge of her weapon, regardless of his impressive arsenal and extensive knowledge of hand to hand combat.

After their short scuffle, the dark-haired and brown-eyed young reaper sits beside and looks down at the dying young man dressed in his royal uniform on the other end of her scythe. His face is battered from the punches she threw his way earlier and he is choking on his own blood but glaring at her with the most hateful eyes.

She stares back at the dying man then speaks to him in whispers. He responds to her words by shutting his eyes in anger but she continues to talk for a few moments longer before she stops, leans back on her hands and sighs.

Nevertheless, she keeps her gaze on him and can't help but smile at hate and distress she's seen in his expression. Both are looks that she is very much familiar with at this point and she can only imagine the curses he's rained on her in these last moments of his. The Reaper watches his agony a little bit more before she stares ahead into the room full of dead or dying guards who had put their lives at risk to protect their prince.

"At least you all died for something you believe in" Hana decides to shout into the room before she shrugs and adds after a pause "I'm the textbook definition of a hired gun." 

Her focus then drops back to the body of the prince who has his eyes open again and is back to glaring at her.

"Although, I really enjoyed fighting you. You've been very difficult to kill and I appreciate it." She says.

The prince chokes loudly and painfully once more and Hana watches him gargle for a few more minutes before she wraps her fingers tightly around the stem of the scythe and applies pressure to the weapon, delivering a final blow. As he takes his last breath, she closes her eyes and waits for a minute, but nothing happens, so she opens them, exhales and stares at the now dead body in front of her.

"Finally, a non-magic descendant" she sighs

Hana rips a piece of cloth off of the prince's attire and uses it to wipe both her face and the blade of her scythe. Then she pushes herself off the ground and pulls the scythe along with her as she walks past the small sea of bodies on her way out of the palace and into the daylight.

As she walks down the street there are more bodies, more injured than dead as opposed to the ones within the walls of the palace and beside the bodies are people attempting to provide some aid. Once the people notice her walk past, some of them scuttle away in fear while others bow.

She holds back from saying a word or looking them in the eyes but instead keeps her focus on the large gates far head. On arriving at the gate, she finds in her way, a huddle of defiant men and women with weapons in their hand and fear on their faces. She stops and glowers at them while they stare back at her and make no attempt to get out of her way.

"What is this?" She eventually asks

An elderly woman dressed in good linen and spiritual ornaments walks a few steps ahead of the crowd cries out to her.

"Our Prince was a good man, he protected us, he loved us, he allowed our village to prosper! The gods blessed him and us through him. How dare you! How dare you say you are of the gods when you take from us what they give."

Hana gives the obvious Oracle a condescending glare as the old woman breaks down in front of her. She looks her in the eyes for a moment or two, then her focus shifts to examine her appearance. She counts the eighty-two tallies tattooed on the elder's forehead which she knew to signal the years the woman has spent as a voice of the gods and the twelve tallies on both her hands marking the number of children she had sacrificed in their name. Hana also notices the marked knife in the left hand of the elder, a weapon reserved to be used against demons. Then the young woman clenches her jaw as she locks eyes with the Oracle again and she says with a disinterested look on her face.

"You will move."

The woman takes a defensive stance against Hana and aims the blade in her hand at Hana's head.

"You are of the devil," She replies. "The gods do not send you." The woman shouts back as the crowd quivers behind her.

Hana looks to her with visible irritation, then she looks again at the crowd behind her for a second before letting her eyes fall slowly back on the Oracle. Her annoyance suddenly overwhelms her as takes a breath and before anyone can blink she appears behind the old woman with the tip of a blade inches from her neck.

The Oracle is shaken but her defiance doesn't waver.

"You will kill a messenger of the gods?" she asks.

"I will kill who I deem worthy of death" Hana replies.

The crowd, who had all fallen back the moment Hana appeared behind the woman, begin to beg for mercy to be shown to her.

"Shut up!" The Oracle screams while Hana glances at their distressed faces.

She rolls her eyes as she watches them shake and releases the Oracle from her hold. The woman immediately steps away from Hana and the crowd gathers behind her.

"Are you that desperate to die?" Hana asks as she watches the crowd regroup behind their leader. The Oracle doesn't respond but instead glares carefully at her.

A smirk appears on Hana's face before she takes her gaze away from the crowd, turns back towards the gates and continues out of the village through the now open pathway. However, before she takes more than three steps, the Oracle throws the long, marked knife Hana's way and it makes contact with the back of her head and travels deep into her skull with its tip protruding out of her left eye.

There is a pause as Hana slumps forward a little and the crowd watches her from behind. Then the tattoos on her back begin to glow and the young woman's head turns around unnaturally revealing pupilless eyes, less skin, and the sharpened teeth of a skeletal head. The rest of Hana's body follows the turn and once again, she vanishes from her position and reappears directly in front of the older woman.

The crowd panics and turns to run, but she screams in an other-worldly voice that they stand and watch - which they do - visibly against their will.

Her ghastly white eyes then fall on the Oracle who now has lost all defiance and looks desperate to escape. Hana places both hands on the woman's shoulder and says.

"I showed you mercy." Her eyes then slowly flicker to the crowd behind the older woman and she adds "You all witnessed it."

She focuses on the woman again and a smile begins to stretch on Hana's face, all the way to her earlobes.

"Let this be a lesson to the rest of you" She snarls then her mouth opens wide around the now terrified woman and the crowd watches in horror as in a snap the Oracle loses her head.

They scream and cry as they remain rooted and unwillingly watch Hana's significantly larger skull rip off the elder's head and spit it out a few feet from where they stood. Then as her physical appearance returns to normal she releases them and they take off.

Hana smirks again and rubs the back of her neck as she watches them flee, then she turns around and exits the village.