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Reaper Man

He wasn't normal, they said.

He was unusually strong for a human, they said...whatever a human was. He shouldn't be able to breathe in the higher altitudes of Barbarus, let alone cry out when he was found by his adoptive father. Some even said that he should be put to death, that he was an unnatural thing on a world where the natural order of the strong dominating the weak thrived. And for all Mortarion knew, they were right.

Mortarion...child of death, in the tongue of the warlords. The swiftly growing young man didn't know how appropriate that technically was though-he was alive, wasn't he? He shouldn't be, but...well, maybe it was a name that would be earned when he finally succumbed to the poisons in the air around him. He could endure them, and they made him stronger, but it was far from a case of him relishing such trials. The warlords could train him in warfare all they wanted, but the human had yet to see a foe worth fighting. Undead, demons, rival warlords...petty squabbles against them, and though he had yet to take part in one, hunts of his own kind below.

He glanced at the mirror in his quarters, nothing more than salvaged glass. An ashen face, hairless stared back.

Sometimes he imagined it with a scythe...and that it would come for him.