Crowned Reaper: The Way to Death's Door

Etan Za'Darmondiel.

***

"How will you proceed?"

"On foot." Amun snorted through his nose in a crude manner of laughter while keeping his meandering pace along the road.

We melded into the shadows once Amun came into view of the watchtowers. But he did not act. He kept to the road, waltzing by the gates while the barbaric humans growled and threw curses beneath their unpolished helms. Their growls grew to mutters as Amun passed. Utters that prompted one to retreat behind the walls with haste.

Of course, there was no place in Shujen, or anywhere, for that matter, known to welcome drow openly. The eldritch eyes and fanged maw of Amun would only turn an unwelcome attitude into open hostility; thus my ears were hardly surprised by the sharp click of a crossbow piercing the silence.

In the grayscale of the early morning world, I watched the quarry sail true from the watchtower and miss as Amun feigned tripping on his own leg, causing the bolt to pass harmlessly behind his head. Then the clicks rang like falling rain and Amun burst into action, dodging, ducking, dipping, and diving around their quarries with uncanny ease until he darted through the brush, breaking their line of sight.

While cursed screams and toiling bells rang through the morning air, Amun was a blur in the darkness on the far side of the city, skipping between stones and trees to launch himself over the walls and halt his pace with a graceful somersault.

Chaos spread like fire, filling the air with the amber glow of torches and the thunderous rumble of three hundred boots. Yet, like water, Amun meandered through the alleys at a casual pace, turning this way and that to avoid the walls of mobilizing humans until he made his way into a… tavern.

Melded in darkness, Matron Etyl and I ascended to the rafters to look down on the dozens of humans within. The building was crass. A rectangular structure filled with tables and benches and large open pits of fire meant to warm both bodies and slabs of meat. They were reported to be blisteringly loud places filled with degenerates. A far cry from what we witnessed.

It was filled with humans aged by labor, rather than time. Civilians, most humans called them, were not warriors or soldiers, distinctions Drow cared not to make. They were simply weak. Meant to die or be subjected. But to Amun, they were… playthings. Toys. He smirked and grinned and nodded at those within as he meandered to the far end of the hall to take up a seat.

"What's a guy gotta do to get something to eat around here?" Amun's voice echoed through the hall. His arm cast eerily long shadows over the tables as he waved for a barmaid to serve him.

Rather strangely, the barmaid to sway forth was dressed in armor of black metal and white fur like the fighters outside. Yet this one was here, reeking of honey and alcohol while brandishing an impractically long sword at the intruder. Naturally, such an idiotic display emboldened the other humans to gather behind him or run off to spread the word, thus emboldening the brute even further.

He slammed the tip of his blade into the ground with a deep thud, ceasing the growl of murmurs in the room and giving him a bit of clout in the process. Enough, at least, to make his supporters turn a blind eye to him leaning on his weapon for support. "How'ed you get 'ere?" the brute swayed.

Amun carelessly shrugged. "The door."

"You lost then?" Someone behind him shouted, followed by the brute. "Must not be feelin' quite as mighty. Bein' out by yer lonesome, shroom sucker."

"Not so." Amun shook his head, a cunning smirk spread across one side of his face. "I know exactly where I am. The Dryndrabethei Mead Hall. Alerus County, Shujen Kingdom." As the words fell from Amun's lips more and more eyes bore witness to the jagged shards of ivory set within his maw and promptly turned tail for the door, clearing the room for the squads of humans to take up their positions around his table.

"And I assure you." He continued, flicking his eyes between the blades and bows trained on his frame. "I am never alo-"

A metallic click sent the words trailing off into an incoherent mess of gargled breaths. A bolt ran through Amun's neck, throwing him from his chair before the crude laughs followed, mixed with the clamor of scattering wood and the squelching crunch of quarries sinking into drow flesh until the biggest brute within called for a ceasefire.

And then, silence. Or as silent as barbarians relishing in a fresh kill could be, anyway. They screamed and cheered and patted each other on the back while the assumed leaders huddled together to make plans of some sort. Others went to pour drinks for their comrades while one unfortunate human went to search the drow corpse.

Flipping the body over must have come easier than the brute expected, as an inquisitive grunt escaped his lips before a swift backhand split them against his teeth. Any grunt of pain was cut short by the claw-shaped hand slamming into the brute's throat, bypassing any air that would have left his mouth by virtue of the gaping hole in his neck.

Amun overexerted in retracting his arm, using the added momentum to flip himself onto his hands and gracefully push off the ground with his unrestricted strength. Now ascending with a slight spin, Amun reached for the quarrels embedded in his neck, torso, and legs and sent them hurtling towards the lead brute's unsuspecting back.

As the quarries dug into the three leaders, Amun's foot spun into the ear of yet another barbarian, slumping the brute against the table while Amun rolled to a landing, holding crossbow bolts in a backward grip as if they were daggers. Then he paused.

That deadpan expression of his stare reached emptily out into the room for an endless moment. So long, it felt, that I began to assume he really was dead. But then the enraged screams of the barbarians began to shake the room. Their bodies began to glow and heat up from a fire dissimilar to ours. A fire that spread a wicked grin across Amun's otherwise placid visage.

A grin held on one side of the mouth like a stroke survivor. A toothless grin that was disturbingly similar to the one spread across Matron Etyl's face.

Much like her, that smile was the prelude to the most gruesome display of violence I could have imagined.

It was a losing battle, at first. Amun was strong. Abnormally so for a drow. But only slightly above average for a human of his size and certainly not strong enough to do significant damage against armored opponents. Much less sixteen of them. He was shot, hacked, disemboweled, and stabbed through. But through it all, he maintained his balance, and so he never fell.

Barbarian after barbarian fell to the undying monstrosity that was Amun until all that remained were five enraged barbarians swinging wildly within a crumbling building.

A slash across the gut caused the fires around Amun to fade, but then a lethal blow to a barbarian's throat rekindled the embers. Skipping with the Wind, Amun snatched the newly liberated hand axe from the air and flourished, slicing three throats in a frenzied spin that sent his guts flying around him.

Fully emblazoned with Ki, Amun gripped his intestines like a chain, sending the blue-green fires through the tissue to make them burn with the cold fires of death. They whipped around as Amun leaped over the final barbarian's head, spinning as he ascended to entrap the brute's neck in a visceral snare that sent him slamming head-first into a burning wall.

With the mead hall filled with only the dead, Amun darted outside to continue the slaughter until morning. We happily followed in his wake, at times merging with the fleeing townsfolk to spread whispers and rumors about the fiendish culprit who killed their armed force of three hundred.

Our return bore us witness to an elven mummy standing atop a pile of frost-claimed cadavers. No more was Amun's intestines, only a gaping hole remained where they had been. A cavity that grew larger as the sagging black organs within sloughed onto his lap. Similarly, his left eye was dislodged from the socket, leaving a glowing ember of blue-green fire to burn within the dark chamber of his skull. His cheek and jaw had been shaved off of the left side of his face, casting a fiendish half-smile in our direction as we stared in mortified awe.

"Are you…"

A bony hand waved suddenly, forcing me and the Matron Mother back a step. And back another once a hoarse voice rattled the very air. "Yeah. Just… thinking."

"A- about?" I hesitantly asked.

"What to do. What to do with this place." The hoarse-voiced corpse mused. It was so different in both voice and appearance that it was hard to believe it was Amun. But then again...

"Oh, fuck it." The corpse threw its arms up in frustration, then clapped twice. "Good morning, everyone!"

The Matron and I exchanged the most curious glances before a surge of energy forced us to look back at Amun. Or rather, just off to either side of him, where reality itself tore to reveal a hot lightless sun and a cold but bright disk of darkness.

Out of them trotted Amun's celestial wolves, Skoll and Hati. Fantastic beasts that were reduced to mounts for Amun's… children.

"Eww!" The small one screamed immediately. And yet, she rushed to the item at the end of her pointed finger to fall into its embrace. "You look like Zaraxus." She muttered while picking at Amun's eye socket. "I don't like it. Turn back."

"Oh?" he chortled in that horrid tone, yet they didn't mind. They only turned their curious eyes over the corpses sitting beyond Amun's pointed finger. "Blame them."

Curiously, the girl wrestled free from Amun's embrace in order to scour the dead for… something, paying no mind to the massive wolves or the strange owls feasting on the surrounding corpses.

"I'm due to train with Master Etan," Amun explained with a gesture to me. "After that, I'll need to meditate like this for a tenday. You can join us or-"

"Nope. I'm calling Kit" The larger red-haired one threw up her hands and walked off with the other two girls trailing close behind. "I've got better things to do."

"Same."

"Ditto."

Just when we thought only the small one would remain, she leaped from the watchtower and landed with no issue, then ran to catch up with them, clutching a severed skull in her little arms while she shouted something about needing a soul for Little Sim-Sim as she passed Amun. Then they were gone, leaving me and the Matron Mother staring at an undying corpse, two massive wolves, and a couple of divine owls.

"Well." The corpse stood. "Shall we get started?"