The Reaper King

Chapter 1: The Orphanage

Damien's brow was drenched with sweat as he sighed deeply from exhaustion. "Definitely getting stronger," he muttered to himself sourly, "so why doesn't it feel like it?" Clutching his heavily bruised left arm, he noted dryly, "and you're definitely broken aren't you?" It was the third time this week that he had been pulled into yet another fight, and it was also the third time he would need to go to the infirmary. He groaned in frustration, his allowance for clothes was also petering out.

Though the orphanage was a massive force that had protected and raised wayward children of all ages for hundreds of years, its large population meant that the meager amount the orphanage could afford to pay the children as allowance for their chores, just couldn't keep up with Damien's constant demand for non shredded clothes. He winced as he remembered asking Sister Hua for money or to fix his uniform was a possibility, but the many memories of the nun constantly worrying over his injuries, staying up late to care for him, and mending his clothing constantly while somehow always managing to find time for her own tasks, filled the boy with a deep sense of shame. Suddenly, Damien was ripped from his thoughts by a small, dirt stained hand pulling the corner of his shirt.

"Thanks for the rescue Damwen," said a chubby child, sheepishly, with dirt staining her cheeks. She picked up the notebooks that had been knocked from her hands, before quickly running away to the larger group of children huddled behind one of the old couches.

"Thanks for the rescue Damwen!" came a chorus of child voices soon afterward from a small group of similarly dirt stained children before they scattered off.

Damien looked at the merry, disheveled band of misfit kids running off. He'd come to become something of an anti-bully amongst the littler kids. They came to see it as his duty to protect the other foster home children from the older bullies and their gangs, whether he wanted to or not.

With a final strained wave he gave the departing kids a fake, pained smile.

Looking over his shoulder, he sighed solemnly at the pile of 16 year old boys that lay strewn out on the floor in various states of consciousness and suffering. Damien, with his one good eye, gave a pleading gaze, searching the crowd for any assistance. But as usual, there was none.

Heaving a heavier sigh than the one he had previously given, the golden and diamond blue-eyed, black child rose to go clean up the mess. Purposefully keeping his gaze focused on the older boys, he walked towards the mound of strewn out bullies, blotting out the sea of observers as best he could.

There wasn't anything Damien enjoyed about being voluntold by the entirety of the foster home to be their designated meat-shield from the other children that had either become too old to be viable for adoption or were from races considered "unsavory." Ivan's gang was far from the only one of its kind on the campus, but they had become a serious problem after they turned 13 and had failed to be adopted. Now that "graduation" was only 2 years away, they had transformed into a massive fucking problem. The beatings they gave other orphanage kids had turned from cruel to just savage. Some bullies had even gone as far as getting permanently expelled by Ma LaCroix herself. And yet, they always had a reason for their terrorism. There was always a reason.

'Best just try and ignore it,' Damien thought to himself. It was fortunate that he had the powers he did, but he couldn't take any solace in them. Despite magic being commonplace, he still had no clue what he even was. At the ripe old age of 12, that placed him solidly in the same unfortunate group of undesirables as the bullies themselves were. And everyone knew it. Though some were begrudgingly grateful, very few outside of the adults and the younger kids ever really spoke to him, if they even approached him for very long. None wanted to ruin their own chances for adoption and have to go through "graduation."