Reapers

Chapter 6: A Friendly Bet

Virgil struck down with his scythe, stabbing the neon phantom with his blade. It was a pretty big one, maybe a class 3, luckily it hadn't done any damage to the living yet. It screamed in pain before disappearing into cinders and sparks.

He wasn't quite sure what it was before, but it was strong despite being a new phantom so it had clearly turned into a phantom, meaning it used to be a soul. He set his scythe down and gave a small prayer.

Phantoms are created by three things, souls who stay in the spirit world without crossing over for too long, negativity from humans, or a soul being infected by a phantom.

It sounded silly, but lots of phantoms have been created by human feelings, usually despair, anger, fear, or disappointment, affecting several people at once or causing something to go wrong. They can be weak phantoms, or they could end up into extremely powerful phantoms, it usually depends on the emotion and how many people share the emotion. The more negative emotions for the phantom to feed on, the bigger it is.

For example, a coworker who is upset they can affect other people around them. Or if there's a war, then there end up being giant phantoms all over battlefields, causing more death and destruction and feeding on any souls to get stronger, including reapers.

Phantoms that come from souls usually start stronger than those that come from emotions. Animal souls are weaker than human souls, so phantoms from animals are weaker than phantoms from humans. The phantoms that start off the strongest are phantoms that used to be reapers, they're always the most dangerous. Reapers can only turn into a phantom if infected by one though, usually from a bite or scratch. If they can't be healed, then they have to be sent to an afterlife or killed before they turn.

No one knows what happens to souls when they die in the spirit world, not even Death themself. Reapers call it a second death, and it is one of their biggest fears. If a phantom or a soul is injured badly enough, they will fade away. You won't be able to find them in any of the afterlifes.

Luckily when reapers are injured, they have two ways of healing. An ointment that they all carry on them to help with phantom infections, an invention that was created by Death who had lost too many reapers to the phantoms. Or to go into a 'deep sleep' where they can turn into a condensed ball of light or an 'orb' as most humans call it. Unfortunately, when they're in this state they're at their most vulnerable, so it's only safe to do this when another reaper is there to help. Virgil is lucky enough to only have to do this once in the two thousand years that he has been a reaper.

When Virgil finished his prayer, he grabbed his scythe before sending it back to his own dimension pocket. All reapers have one, it's where they store their things that are too big to carry on their person.

"Virgil!" a cheery voice called, and the purple reaper allowed himself to smile.

"Sal, it's always good to see you," Virgil greeted.

Sal jumped down from the building she was standing on, her light pink hair bouncing slightly. She pulled down her gray hood, the sleeves of the hoodie torn off. She had changed her outfit from when Virgil last saw her, besides the hoodie. She had shorts with holes torn in them and a yellow flower shirt.

She pulled Virgil into a hug, squeezing the air out of him. "It's so good to see you! Where have you been?"

"Actually, I was stationed in Rome."

"Wait for real? Did you get to see your old home?"

Virgil laughed, pulling away from the hug. "Nah, Rome is just a city now. When I was alive, it was-"

"'The greatest country in the world!'" Sal impersonated.

"It was! It was giant! Now... it's just some place in Italy. Of course my old home is destroyed, and not even in Italy. Time was not kind to it."