24 - The Reaper’s Army

    

    

After having restored Maia Lee to life following her fiery death in the Buckshot Mansion, the Grim Reaper sat brooding on his throne in the underworld, his hooded cloak enveloping him, shrouding Death in mystery.  Like his scythe, his robes were a symbol; a powerful one that evoked dread in all those who had ever stood before him as they awaited the unknown.

   

    

And the Reaper was indeed powerful.  But he was not immortal in this form, as he had come to learn over the course of millennia.  Nothing was eternal, not even something as seemingly unconquerable as Death. If for no other reason, the prophecy of Grim's impending demise was evidence of that.

The world was naturally ever-changing, passing from periods of darkness to light and back again, like a pendulum swinging through illumination and into shadow.

   

    

The balance was always shifting.  But though the light was benign and would never seek to restrain the world from its forward motion, the dark was a grasping entity that would like nothing more than to seize the world and keep it for its malignant self.

   

    

Death was lord and master to those creatures that lurked in darkness, the beasts with scrabbling claws and cavernous mouths that sought to fill their own emptiness with the suffering of others.

Grim understood them well, for he had nearly become like those fiends himself, feeling the desire to escape the underworld and torment the living to try to ease his own pain and rage.  Instead, he had re-channeled his fury into a purpose, and now appeared to mortals to escort their newly dead souls into the underworld when their lifetimes were up.

But what he took with one skeletal hand, he had the power to return with the other; and restoring dead souls to life was something he occasionally did, for a price.  Particularly when it benefited him. 

   

    

Resurrecting Maia Lee would certainly benefit him.  Without her and the others attempting the 100 baby challenge, the world as it was would come to an end. No living being would remain and there would be no need for the Reaper. Once his current reason for being was removed, he would cease to exist as he did now. His time would be up and his own hopes would never be realized.

For the past few centuries, Grim had felt the end of days moving closer.  Every time the Seven Sisters had been reborn, there had always been those willing to relinquish them to the fires in a misguided attempt to prevent the end of the world.  But the pendulum had continued to swing towards the darkness; faster even, with each sacrifice of the innocents.  Had the sisters been allowed to grow up the first time around—or the second, or the third—there would’ve been less urgency to the task and none of the women would’ve have needed to birth all 100 children in just one lifetime. And whatever children they’d had in each life would’ve already provided many additional generations of living souls.

But now, and most importantly, some of the loathsome creatures that had been imprisoned in the depths of the underworld had recently escaped, and would eventually begin to spread their infection.  And other undead beings were bound to arrive soon; cunning enemies who could organize these shambling corpses and lead them to victory, for soulless husks had nothing to fear from him. Death had no power over those who were fully undead.

   

    

It was time to act, and Grim needed something to ensure his own triumph. Making certain that Maia and her sisters were all able to complete the 100 baby challenge was only part of it. He reasoned that the greater the number of mortals in existence, the better chance there was that at least some of them would survive and multiply if the worst must come to pass. And that would allow him to remain where he was, to guide the souls of the dead into the underworld, while he waited for the return of the one that would end his exile.  But it still would take legions of the living to thwart the bleak future that loomed over the world.  It would require an army of souls greater than what presently existed.  

But what if he could find another way to quickly swell the living population?  What if he could encourage humans to bond with another race, who would then attain souls of their own? And what if that race was immune to the plague that was brewing and could pass that immunity down genetically? What if... what if...

   

    

"If" was such a powerful word, brimming with the promise of possibility.  If the Reaper could find an answer, he could endure long enough be rejoined with the soul that had been torn from him so very long ago.

IF.

And in that moment, Grim had known exactly what form his army would take.

   

    

After that, all that had remained was to make Maia an expectant mother, and to make certain that her offspring, as well as every other child born from then on, received a special toy from him in the mail.