Debt of Nature

Show Content

SpoilerRunning simultaneously on Eagle Time and MSPAFA. Unfamiliar commands presumably come from the other.

Such a fleeting thing is life. Beautiful, from a certain point of view. Tragic, from another. Pointless, from yet another. All things experience life, be it for seconds or for millennia. No matter the experience, though, life holds one thing constant: it ends.



It takes very little. An errant step atop a precipice. A misjudgment of which mushrooms to eat. Perhaps merely a fire, if one has the misfortune to not be fireproof. Life can end suddenly, or have a drawn-out conclusion, but a vast minority of mortal beings can circumvent their own deaths.



But death is hardly the end. If it were... well, we wouldn't be here right now. But I have something far more important to tell than a metaphor about death and burning plantlife. A story quite familiar to me, and assuredly quite unfamiliar to you.



This is a story of death.



More specifically, a story of Death. One Death of many. There exists in this multiverse a corporation, one assuredly greater than any you have seen. This corporation deals not in simple products and monetary profits, but in something far grander. This corporation deals in souls.

DEATHCO, it is called. A soul's first stop after leaving the body. Some are cleaned up and sent into new bodies. Some are simply judged and sent to the proper afterlife. But a few - some might call them lucky, others might prefer "unfortunate" - end up staying here, in the employ of DEATHCO itself.

This story is about one of these souls.



A recent recruit of DEATHCO, barely even settled into their office space. Their job, simple: to retrieve souls from the myriad universes and return them for sorting and judging. As you see them now, they appear as the "Grim Reaper" - a familiar sight to a race called humans. But you'd know all about that, wouldn't you?



Nonetheless, the Reaper isn't the "true" nature of this soul - they've lost nothing of their former self after all. Behind this facade, they...

Um.

Oh dear.



This isn't good at all. One second, please.

...

...



FSSSSSSSHHHHHH

- One brief clean-up later -

I must apologize. I may have underestimated how flammable this tome is. ...Quite a bit of it has burnt away. No matter, I know this story by heart. Now, where was I?

Ah, yes. The soul who appears before you is...

Show Content

Spoiler...up to you! You, collectively, as readers, that is. Who, and, perhaps just as importantly, what is the soul currently appearing as the Reaper? Give as much or as little description as you want; all is welcome, and, just this once, nothing is set in stone.