The Reaper of Rathmere - Synopsis, Maps, and Chapter 1 (Patreon)

And another series!

At this point, the two series that I personally like the most out of all of the ones on my Patreon are either this one, or The Eternal Magician.

Anyways, I hope you enjoy, and there are maps for this one! :D

I love maps.

Anyways, synopsis first.

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The ocean world of Aria; one of endless chaos, where the hundreds of floating cities are ruled from the shadows by the criminal organizations and the Pits.

A world with a strange and unidentifiable substance filling the atmosphere, mutating one third of the human population soon after birth.

These mutations extend all the way from a simple horn, to the ability to use magic, or even a special power unique to the mutated.

But there are also those referred to by the populace as ‘demons.’

These ‘demons’ are people who have mutated to such an extreme that they are no longer considered human by the other humans of Aria. They gain incredible power at the price of their humanity, with many of them being forced to go underground to protect themselves from others who wish to kill or enslave them.

Some of them must drink the blood or devour the flesh of other creatures just to survive. Others must feed on rare materials, such as strange metals found around the planet. While the last kind of demon must devour the various ‘spiritual energies’ of other creatures to survive.

Adrian Shaw is a gladiator fighting in the Pits by day, and an assassin hunting for coin and souls by night, and he is one of the least tolerated races amongst the already feared demons.

A race of which sustains themselves on the souls of other beings, whilst gaining small amounts of power from any extra that they may devour.

A reaper.

Our story begins with the settling of an old grudge; a new threat; and a lovely reunion between master and pet.

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Now for the prologue!

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Year 849
Month 3

Adrian

I watch from my place perched on a building’s edge, high above the filthy streets below as the faint sounds of laughter echo from the docks behind me, muffled only by the sounds of the heavy rain marking the beginning of the first season.

The beggars on the ground below me can be heard asking for coin from an uncommon passerby who – like most people passing through the slums at this hour – ignores them to continue their way through, occasionally threatening them by drawing their sword when they become too ambitious in their attempts to ‘beg.’

After a brief glance at the passing justicar, I turn my attention to the building across the mud – and very likely disease – stricken street before closing my eyes and focusing.

Not on the patter of the rain, nor the faint whispers of the beggars below as they brood amongst themselves about the most recent passerby.

Not even on the seemingly insatiable hunger clawing at me from somewhere deep within my chest.

But on the souls nearby; and more specifically, the soul of my target.

Amongst the hundreds of souls within my vicinity, one of them stands out to me. The soul of the person who has haunted me ever since that day ten years ago.

I have never been able to forget his soul. Whether I want it to or not, the small, light blue soul with flickers of black and red will always remain in my thoughts.

The soul of my ‘teacher.’ Of my ‘Guildmaster.’

And of my current target.

My eyes shoot open as soon as I lock onto the man before I take one last look around the area, both with my ‘soul vision’ – what I call my sight when I look at souls – and with my physical eyes. After finding nothing but the common beggars still scattered about the streets, I summon my ethereal, raven-like wings before jumping off of the edge of the building as the rain passes straight through them.

Despite their ethereal state, my wings still allow me to glide down to the side of the building containing my target.

It’s a building located on the northern edge of the slums, just bordering on the docks. It has a surprising three floors, along with two open windows, and one entrance.

Overall, not a bad location for a hideout. If you ignore the scarcity of three-story-buildings within the slums, that is.

As soon as I claim my hold on the side of the wooden building, I glance down at the slum residents below to make sure that my little flight went unnoticed.

Which it did.

My black outfit, along with the rain itself helped see to that.

I turn my attention back to the building before closing my eyes again and focusing on the one, lone soul within the building. At the same time, my wings fade away again to nothing.

The Guildmaster appears to be sitting down somewhere on the third floor, which also happens to be where one of the two open windows is.

I ignore the fluttering of my black cloak amongst the wind and rain as I carefully – and quietly – climb my way towards the window before peeking inside.

A thin smile spreads across my face as I peer through my cloak’s cowl at the man inside of what appears to be an office. He has short, black hair, a clean-shaven face, and is wearing the same outfit that I am. A long black cloak over light, black leather armor, with several blades hidden away on his person, and a short sword sheathed at one side of his hip opposite to a long dagger on the other side.

I take a moment to palm the poisonous dagger sheathed in a hidden location on my sleeve, before deciding that it’s too impersonal for this job.

This job is very personal.

And it should be done in a personal manner.

For the first time in my assassin career, I ignore the stealth approach to leap through the window, into the office.

Unsurprisingly, Shade – the Assassin Guild’s Guildmaster and one of the four seats on the Rathmerian Council – just calmly looks up at me with a look of utter disdain on his face. As if he knew I was here but didn’t care.

I hide a smirk beneath my cowl before clearing my face as I push it back entirely to look at him.

“What the bloody hell do you want, Adrian?” he asks with an extra emphasis when he says my name, as if my name itself were a curse.

Without answering him, I begin walking through the room towards his desk from the window whilst slowly drawing my sword as the man stares unblinkingly into my pitch-black eyes.

A look of disappointment spreads across the man’s face as he sees my threatening actions – along with the water that I am dripping onto the previously clean floor – before he sighs, “Seriously? You know how this will end, Reaper.”

I raise an eyebrow as I continue my approach whilst retorting, “Yeah, and you should have known that this was the only possible outcome after you brutally murdered my parents.”

As long as he keeps talking, and doesn’t suspect anything, then I am fine.

“And?” he asks whilst crossing his arms as I make it halfway across the room towards him, “You’re going to be spending a few days in the cell for this little stunt.”

The cell – as he so poorly named it – is basically his personal torture chamber for the demons under his control.

I laugh at this before speaking more in the hopes that he doesn’t try to directly order me to do anything, “I doubt the Archwrit would appreciate you locking me up, considering the amount of coin it would lose him.”

Shade raises an eyebrow and says, “Really? That money-hoarding asshole? If he knows what’s good for him, he will stay out of my business.”

He has a point there; knowing the Archwrit, he probably wouldstay out of it. Even if it’s just to not disrupt the balance between the four seats.

Not that it will matter.

I speed up my approach, slowly entering a sprint straight for Shade before he sighs again with a light shake of his head and states, “I command you to stop.”

Without listening to him, I continue my sprint before flipping around behind him and sending a dagger flying straight into his shoulder.

He grunts in pain before looking up with wide eyes full of disbelief as I land behind his chair whilst drawing my long dagger and impaling it straight through the back of his chair, into one of his lungs.

Shade gasps in pain as I move the chair to face me whilst cutting his other hand off with ease thanks to my inhuman strength.

The man coughs out a mouthful of blood before sputtering, “W-what the bloody-*cough*-h-hell?!”

I smirk at him before using my telekinesis to wrap up his stump of a hand with his own cloak to delay the bleeding and allow him to live long enough to answer my questions.

“If you’re wondering how I ignored your command,” I begin whilst holding him down on the chair with his own cloak through my telekinesis, “it would be because I managed to remove that slaver enchanted bracelet that you put on me.”

His eyes widen in shock at my statement before he tries to speak, only to end up coughing out more blood onto his already-blood-soaked outfit.

“Yes, yes, you are probably wondering how I did that,” I continue with a smirk at his pain, “but that doesn’t really matter, now does it?”

In truth, I only managed to remove it about a week ago through manipulating my own soul under the bracelet to shrink to a size that was so small, that the enchantment couldn’t affect it. After that, all I had to do was take the bloody thing off me.

Of course, I was only able to do this recently thanks to learning from an enchanter how enchantments that affect a person’s mind actually work.

“Now,” I state, ignoring his obvious pain and irritation with my answer, “tell me where she is!”

Shade’s eyes widen at my question before squinting and closing, telling me just how willing he will be in answering my question.

“If that’s how this is going to be,” I mutter before swinging my blade straight through his other wrist, causing him to grunt again in pain – showcasing his incredible pain tolerance.

“Now maybe…” I begin before trailing off as I sense another soul appear within this office as soon as the hand hits the floor, leaking blood all over the expensive-looking carpet.

Some sort of shielding enchantment attached to something on his hand?

I ignore the dying man as I approach the bookshelf behind me. Without a shred of patience, I grab it before shoving it aside, sending it flying a few meters away from me to reveal a small safe within the wall.

At a glance, the safe looks completely unprotected, but in reality, it is most likely enchanted.

Everything that man uses tends to be enchanted.

He is an enchanter, after all.

Someone with a specific mutation that gives them the ability to infuse their base mana into objects to give it certain effects.

Like that bloody slaver enchant.

I send a look over my shoulder towards the still-dying man before focusing on the safe again after feeling a light wave of hunger rise up from my chest.

It looks like his body’s grip on its soul is weak enough for me to take now; but she comes first.

I inspect the safe for a few seconds before deciding to just grab the handle with one hand, and the safe itself with the other.

“And…” I mutter before ripping the safe door off of its hinges.

“There you are,” I calmly say with a smile at the sight of the small, black and purple spider hiding within the safe.

Luna – appearing half-starved – looks up at me before straightening in excitement.

I reach my arm out to the cage before allowing her to slowly climb up to my shoulder and rub up against my neck.

It’s interesting how she still recognizes me after all of these years.

I turn back around to see the Guildmaster glaring at me through half lidded eyes as blood continues to pool around his feet.

“I’m surprised you’re still alive,” I comment with a smirk before walking back towards him – still dripping water as I go.

With every step comes an even stronger desire to feed as I get closer and closer to the unlatched soul until I stop right in front of him.

“This,” I begin as I sheath my sword, pull my long dagger back out of him, and reach out to grab hold of his neck, “is for my parents, and for Luna.”

I raise his face up towards mine before letting my hunger go free.

A brief look of horror crosses the man’s face before a bright white light shines from his eyes and mouth. At the same time, my black wings once again appear from my back to encircle us both.

Shade lets out a wordless scream of what I can only assume is pain – it’s not really something I can confirm, since no one has survived having their soul devoured before – before the flames of his soul sprinkle out through the white light and towards my eyes and mouth as thin white dots appear in my otherwise pitch-black eyes.

As soon as his soul enters my body, it moves straight towards the void in my chest before a warm feeling spreads throughout my body, and the hunger vanishes in an instant.

I close my eyes and let go of the Guildmaster’s corpse as the warm feeling continues to immerse my body until it fades away nearly ten seconds later, leaving me completely satisfied.

It isn’t until I feel Luna rubbing up against my neck that I open my eyes again and begin to look around the room, not even bothering to glance at the dead man.

I continue to drip water throughout the room as I walk, only to end up finding nothing of value within the office itself.

Did he really only take Luna with him to his hideouts and nothing else?

But if that’s the case, then where is his wealth?

I debate about this for several seconds before shaking my head and walking back to the man’s corpse to rifle through his pockets as my wings vanish into my back again.

A smile lights up my face as I feel a handful of coins, which I quickly take out to find is actually made up entirely of gold coins.

“Now this is something,” I exclaim whilst pocketing what must be nearly three dozen gold coins. Enough to live off of for years!

Assuming, of course, I decided to live cheap.

Which I don’t. Not considering how expensive alchemy products tend to be.

“Speaking of alchemy products…” I mutter whilst focusing on Shade’s body, “I wonder why you didn’t have any potions on you?”

I didn’t really think too much about it, since I had cut his hands off anyways, but assassins should always have potions on them. So why didn’t he? Especially since he was the one who taught me that.

I glance at the blood on the floor before pausing at the sight of a green liquid mixed in with it.

“Wait a second…” I mutter before turning the dead body over and lifting his cloak up to reveal a small sash with a large hole through it, and a green liquid mixed with blood leaking out of it.

“Huh,” I utter with a chuckle, “so you did have potions, but I cut through them with my dagger.”

That’s an odd place to keep your potions, but to each their own I guess.

It’s a good thing that potions have to be ingested for them to work; not just poured into a wound.

Anyways, I got lucky tonight.

If he knew that I was coming to kill him, and that I was free from the slaver’s enchantment, then this job would have been a hell of a lot more difficult.

Shade was considered the best assassin in Rathmere for a reason after all. Despite him just being a human.

I turn my head to look at Luna, who had fallen asleep on my shoulder, before I give her a light pat and pick her up, startling her awake.

“Sorry, little one, but you can’t stay on my shoulder for what I’m about to do,” I say to her with more compassion than anything I have said or done over the past ten years before opening up a pouch tied to my waist and holding her out to it.

She looks up at me for a second before crawling into the pouch and snuggling up inside of it as I partially close it, leaving room for air to go in.

I then walk back over to the window and glance down at the streets below whilst pulling my cowl back over my head.

“Job complete,” I mutter before summoning my wings again and jumping out of the window.