‘A busy day, it seems…’ Death mused sadly, walking the halls of the great academy, stopping only to comfort and pass on those who fell in the fighting. Dozens had already needed his comfort and guidance into the afterlife. Soldiers, mainly, prepared for death if it came for them in the pursuit of protecting others. ‘So unlike the children who die beside them in that way…’

None of them were cowards, of course, but when the young died it was always a more bitter death. Filled with regret that could darken their souls if he left them unattended. A grim fate, even beyond the one they had already suffered, to darken to the core of one’s very soul. Ghosts and demons grew from such, tortured tormentors that haunted the world of the living.

The very thought was enough to move his feet, seeking out pain filled and lost souls before they could break.

The blooming of a veritable sun overhead, lighting up the night sky as surely as the old moon would have, pulled him from his musings. The great dragon atop the tower it had ruined writhed and roared in answer, its shadowy form broken and streaky as such bright light as to blind even the Reaper enveloped it. When it faded, the Grimm stood still and frozen, a stone gargoyle snarling atop the tower.

Beneath it he found his next soul, bent over a body that was interestingly not her own.

“Ruby! Ruby you have to get up- It isn’t safe here, we need to move.” Pyrrha Nikos called, ethereal hands trying and failing to check on the unconscious young woman, lying in a heap at the dragon’s feet. Where her body was the spirit couldn’t be sure but, then, he didn’t need her body.

Just her soul, as the body couldn’t be brought along.

A flutter of feathers echoed from the woman’s other side and the two spirits looked up, a man standing as feathers fell around him. Seeing the girl on the ground, he rushed over, grunting an exhausted but terrified, “Ruby! Gods, be alive you little twerp.”

“I think she’s okay, Sir. Just unconscious.” Pyrrha tried to console, voice weak as the man rushed over. When he ignored her entirely, rushing over and pulling the girl into his arms, a hand finding her mouth to check her breathing, she grew confused. Reaching for him, she asked, “Why are you ignoring m-me?”

The reason for her stutter was obvious, even from across the once-office, now roof that they were standing on. Slowly, trembling, she withdrew her hand from inside the man’s shoulder and watched him stand. Speaking to the girl in his arms and still ignoring the dead one on her knees, the man assured her, “C’mon, Rubes. I’ll get you out of here.”

And, cloak billowing like a hero of old and one hand gripping a great sword he leaned on his shoulder, the man turned. And then he leapt off the roof, while the spirit watched. Suicide for some, travel for a Huntsman, and his role in existence assured him the man would survive. As would the girl he was carrying.

“W-Wait, where are you going? I need help, too!” Nikos shouted, rising and rushing to the roof edge. Her self preservation kept her from leaping, though, for obvious reasons. A dead Huntress meant they had no Aura prior, and even in denial their instincts would acknowledge and act on such a weakness.

Namely by not leaping off of a very, very high rooftop.

“He can’t hear you, I’m afraid, my child.” His voice, quiet and soft, was still more than enough to carry over the sounds of fighting below them. When she spun to look at him and flinched for fear at his bare, skeletal visage, he raised a bony hand and chuckled quietly, “I mean you no harm. You have nothing to fear from me.”

“Says the man dressed as a skeleton and wielding a scythe.”

“I am dressed as nothing, I assure you.” He argued simply, leaning his scythe against his shoulder and crossing the ruined room. Standing a foot away from her he sighed and watched the grim beauty of the battle play out around him, he asserted simply, “You already know what I am. And why your hand went through that man, and why you couldn't touch the girl.”

“You’re not actually saying you are the Grimm Reaper… Surely not.” In answer, he reached up to tug his hood down, letting it pool around his bony shoulders. Something he rarely did, but which always had the same, desired effect when he did. Shaking, the girl sank onto a fallen wall to sit on, murmuring incredulously, “Impossible… That’s a bare skull, which means you’re-”

“Death.” He nodded, “Or an aspect of it, at least. It’s complicated, I assure you, and nothing you need to worry about learning.”

“Because you’re going to reap me?”

“I am, yes.” She stiffened and looked away, hands trembling weakly, and Death sighed. Gently, he consoled her, “You’re a brave woman, Pyrrha Nikos. You have nothing to fear from me.”

“Except you dragging me to hell…”

“You are certainly not someone who needs to fear any kind of hell.” He chided her, the woman looking up and pursing her lips. Like she wanted to say something, but had stopped herself at the last moment. Amused, he told her, “What you were going to have done to you is not worthy of damnation, Nikos. That tragedy was long coming.”

“Do you know all?”

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“No.” He shook his head, and would have smiled if he could have. “I spent a long, long time here, you know. In this place, waiting, for hours upon hours. So that I might take that young maiden to her deserved, hero’s rest. And now,” he added, “I am here for you, my brave little Huntress.”

“Don’t call me that…”

“I call you what you are.” Death answered simply, “Why would I do anything else?”

“A Huntress would have been able to protect Beacon.” She argued, shaking her head and resting her head in her hands. Gesturing around her, she added, defeatedly now she had seemingly accepted her own death, “But look! I couldn’t even beat one woman, and I… I butchered that girl! What kind of Huntress does that? I murdered her and failed everyone else.”

“No, you did not.” The woman’s head snapped up so fast that had she been living he’d have feared she’d hurt herself. Chuckling audibly, he explained, “The girl lives. Her mind is contained and she can be rebuilt in time.”

“How do you know that…?”

“I can sense when someone’s soul leaves them.” He answered simply, “And hers did not. She is a mechanism, of metal rather than flesh, and a broken mechanism can be repaired.”

“So I’m not a murderer then…?” He shook his head and her shoulders shook, the woman’s hand clamping over her mouth to silence a sob of relief that tried to bubble forth. Tears springing, she turned away from him, hiding her face and apologizing. “I’m sorry, I-I was just so… So scared, that I had killed her. If I’d known, gods I wouldn’t have-”

“You would have still come here, to defend this place and those you love.” He interrupted, stepping to her side and laying a hand on her shoulder. At the cold contact and his words she turned to him, looking shocked and with reddened eyes. Gently, he comforted her, “You are a hero, Pyrrha Nikos. You’d never have let this place burn so that you could run away if you thought for even a moment that you could help.”

“But I didn’t help.” She argued, “I failed. I died.”

“Indeed you did. But please, let me show you something.” He answered, turning and pointing a long, bony finger down at an open street. In it burned the wrecks of a dozen of the little Atlesian droids, and the hulking figure of one of the automated Paladins as well. And amongst them, laying in a broken heap, was a single body. “Do you see that street? And what fills it?”

“Broken robots and… A soldier.” Her eyes widened slightly and she grew somber and sad, though not for her own sake. “Oh… He’s dead, isn’t he?”

“Yes, he is.” And already on to the next place and time, too, though he didn’t say as much. That part wasn’t so important right now. What mattered was relieving this one’s pain. “He died to prevent those machines coming into the flank of a unit defending the dorms, where students were trapped, unarmed. For his death, he saved dozens of people who reached their weapons and saved yet more.”

“A hero.”

“Yes.” He nodded, “Like you. And both of you have earned a rest, I think.”

“I… I suppose a rest sounds nice. Though I feel I could do so much more, I suppose it sounds nice.” She sighed, resigned now. Unafraid, seemingly, but anxious. Why was easy to predict, knowing her soul as he did, even before she asked, “Will you tell me if my friends survived at least? I… I think that would help me. Knowing if what I did worked.”

“They did, yes. And so did what you did here.” He nodded, giving the woman a glance. She nodded, shaky and relieved but still pained, and he added. “Would you like to see them before you go to your own rest?”

“I would like that, yes.” She smiled, standing when he bid her to. Gently, he laid a hand on her shoulder, and he took her hand.

With a blink and a rush of air, he took the young warrior to see her friends. Wounded, battered and in some cases, fleeing and broken of will. But alive and able to live on, walking their chosen paths in life.

The first was a young girl, being carried by her beloved uncle, who valiantly fought off everything in his path as he carried her. The second was a white haired friend, eagerly and kindly helping the frightened onto flying craft to escape the beasts besieging her home. The third place he brought her to was home to a blonde woman and a brunette, the former maimed for her partner’s salvation. And the latter a self-hating heroine that, even now, he knew would flee from her side. But, he sensed, fate would only ever tolerate their separation for a time.

“Gods, are they-”

“They will live.” He assured her, laying a hand on the sleeping blonde’s shoulder when her face pinched in particular pain. At his touch she relaxed and he explained, for his charge’s benefit. “I can deaden the senses. Often as one dies I do so, to let them feel some ease in their passing.”

“Oh.” She blinked, watching the woman roll over a bit and sigh contently. Quietly, as though afraid of his reaction, she said, “You are far… Kinder than I would have expected you to be. In the legends, you are always depicted cruelly. Dragging souls, screaming, to the afterlife. Typically to hell.”

“Life is cruel.” Was all he said, “Death doesn’t need to be.”

He could have argued further, but saw no reason to rail against centuries of culture and thought which harmed nothing. Aside from his pride, at least, but he placed little value in pride. Not because he didn’t have any pride, or any desire to challenge the depiction of him, of course. But because the girl already knew the truth, and he saw no reason to even employ the slight cruelty to correct it.

“I believe we have one more step to make.” He spoke simply, turning and offering her his hand. She hesitated a moment, knowing where they would go next, but at his steadfast gaze she finally took his hand.

The final place they visited was a small medical room. Two lay in beds, bandaged and resting while a third sat in a chair at the end of the room.Head in his hands and shoulders trembling. Voice breaking, Pyrrha looked on him and murmured, “Jaune…” Turning to him she asked, “Is he-”

“He isn’t hurt.” He assured her, “And I sense a distant fate for him. Nothing which will come within years.”

“I see. Thank you. Just let me… Have a moment.” The woman nodded, stepping towards the man and kneeling, wrapping ethereal arms around him in as best a hug as she could manage. The boy stiffened at a chill, but she ignored it, simply holding him for a long moment. Quietly, she murmured, “Is it odd that I would call you a friend, Death?”

“No.” he answered, chuckling, “I am the last friend every living thing makes, in the end.

“I suppose you are.” She laughed, quiet but happy sounding. Then, abruptly, she stood and turned to him, offering her own hand this time. He looked to it and then to her and she said, “I-I’m ready. Or, well, as ready as I ever will be. So take me now, before that changes.”

Nodding, he gently took her hand. And from it, he sensed less of the pain and fear he’d felt before. Satisfied, then, that she was content with her end he pulled her close and laid his other hand on her shoulder. And, turning her with him like a dancer might, he sent her to her earned peace. Satisfied his job was done he let her go to enjoy the rest, and would have smiled if he could.

Stepping out into the hall of the hospital, he turned, headed for critical care. And another echo of pain and fear that called to him. It was time to make a new friend...