"If you don't hold still, you're going to get a shuriken in your eye." Nico taunted with a hint of real warning laced in his tone.
"I'm fucking still!" I cringed a little at the man named Vito, who definitely wasn't standing as still as he thought he was. "Just fucking throwing it, you bitch!" Banks laughed and without another moment of hesitation, Nico lets his shuriken lose. It sliced through the air so quietly, even with my new hearing it doesn't make a noise I can pick up on.
We all erupted into cheers when it hit its target: a paper wrapped cheeseburger sitting on top of Vito's flame red colored hair.
"What'd I say?" Nico taunted, plucking his weapon out of the air when Vito hurled it back, much clumsier than Nico did, I would like to say.
Me, Jaskier, York, Aster, Banks, and Nico all sat around for a while at first, drinking blood and talking.
I asked them a couple of things, like what the best and worst parts about being a Reaper were. Everyone but York agreed the worst was when someone begged them not to take their souls away because of someone they were leaving behind. Like a mother or father, a husband or wife, a child. They all agreed seeing someone so truly desperate was heart wrenching, especially because there was absolutely nothing they could do about it.
York said the worst thing was he'd never get to see what cocaine was like. He was such a little shit. I wanted to smack him sometimes, but despite that, I don't think I hated him. Not yet at least.
They all agreed, even York, that the best thing was the absolute freedom that came with being a Reaper. You could go anywhere, see anything, do whatever you want.
After a while of talking about that, Vito and Ivan appeared suddenly from a hole created by two giant K- Bar knives slicing through the air.
Ivan was a pretty big guy, very stoic. He had spiky black hair and wore a cloth over his eyes. He sort of took up all the air in the room when he was in it, but I couldn't tell if that was due to his domineering size or the pure death aura he gave off.
When he arrived, he looked in my direction for a moment, dropped the fabric bag he was holding, and then pulled his knives back out of where they'd been resting on his hips. Before anyone could even say anything, he'd sliced through the air and disappeared into the hole without a word.
"He's not very chatty, don't take it personal." Aster had said with a sad look on his face. I just shrugged. I wasn't that sensitive. I had been the one to stand and pick up the bag he had dropped, mostly out of curiosity. It ended up being a pair of giant black boots for me to wear. He was cold to me but brought boots. Couldn't be that bad of a guy.
Vito, on the other hand, was very talkative.
He was shorter, and seemingly quite young, unlike Ivan who looked to be at least thirty. He had bright red hair that stuck up in every direction, and matching eyes, totally red, spare for yellow slits in the middle of each. All of his teeth were sharp and pointed, something he quickly told me upon seeing me staring, he had specifically requested after seeing Aster's.
"You wanna know how I went out?" He had started after. I nodded. I hadn't drunken any more blood for over an hour and I felt much clearer in the head. I wasn't nearly as chatty as I had been before, and I wasn't spilling all my secrets anymore. I was glad, because I didn't like meeting new people while under the influence. I had tried the new thing and decided I was okay without it. That was enough for me.
"My mother was accused of being a witch. She may or may not have been for real, but who's to say for sure?" He grinned and clenched his fist. What was he getting so worked up about? "Men in our day hated her strong nature, so she was targeted from the beginning. I saved her from the stake in the middle of the night, before they ever even lit her up. But I made the foolish error of returning to our home after I had her to try and gather supplies so we could leave town. I was caught by the same men who'd gotten my mother, and they burned me on a fucking stake in place of her." He growled, and I swore his eyes started glowing like embers dying in a campfire. "She never even tried to save me." He shook his head then, and spat on the ground.
I had just tilted my head at him, and said, "Fuck her then." This made him and Bank crack up gleefully, and soon after Vito had a cup of my blood in his hand.
Dylan popped back up a few minutes after Vito and Ivan, with a bunch of bags filled with burgers and fries and other fried products. He claimed they were from the best burger place in Florida he had ever been to.
For some reason, before we could even start eating, Vito got it in his head that his weapon was better than Nico's, and Nico ended up demanding he stand with a burger on his head so he could prove him wrong.
That's what was happening now.
"So, you can hit a giant burger off a still target. That says nothing about the coolness of your weapon." Vito sneered. Nico rolled his eyes, and plopped down in his chair, spinning his shuriken between his thumb and ring finger as he watched Vito boast. "It's my turn to show off." He looked at me to make sure I'm watching, and I gave him a thumbs up.
He leaned his head back and reached his hand into his mouth.
"What the fuck." I said as I watched the hilt of a sword emerging from his mouth as he pulled back up.
"Ah." Vito held up a finger, as if to say, "I'm not done yet."
Sure enough, as the blade came out of his mouth, I could see it hasd somehow ignited with flames.
"What the fuck am I looking at." I asked when he's pulled a full length, on fire longsword out of his throat. He stands there with it, grinning from ear to ear. I didn't even know what to say to that.
"Vito here has more natural magic than almost all of us." Aster offered up.
"What's natural magic?" I asked, hesitantly looking away from the on-fire sword and to Aster.
"It's just as it sounds. Humans are very rarely born with any magic at all these days. And even the ones that are, it's a very minutiae amount. Enough to win the lottery twice in a row or to never get pulled over with three-year expired car tags. Magic in humans these days is quite insignificant, but at one time, there were legitimate witches and wizards, people who possessed real powers. It's been two thousand years since I've seen anyone with powers like those though. These days it's people like Vito, who are distant relatives to those powerful people. Compared to his ancestor, Vito is very weak, in the magic sense. It only comes through this much because I've tweaked him."
"Hey!" He protested, his eyes glowing. Aster shrugged.
"It is true. Nonetheless, he still has more natural magic in him than even I possess and I was born in the age where I should have had more magic than any of you. I suspect you might also have a fair share." He pointed a boney finger at me then. "You've both had similar transitions so far, though I must admit, yours has been even more bizarre." Aster rubbed at his forehead. He also hadn't had any more blood, so he seemed pretty sober to me now. Banks was still sipping, so was York, Jaskier, Nico, and Veto. Dylan had wandered off again. Something about him is very… wispy? Like he was a hard guy to pin down. He seemed pretty uninterested in hanging out with us, to be honest.
I sat there for a moment, just kind of looking around at the men around me.
Suddenly, a realization hits me.
I had been so excited at the room full of new brothers I'd gained through death, I'd completely skimmed over the fact that that's all there was around me.
Brothers.