The Concourse was painted black, a citadel of life essence surrounded by a thousand reapers. All in wait. Their constant, eager chatter fell to a hush as Ash emerged from the Wavering. He had combed the scrappy remains of his hair, tidied his beard, and wrapped himself in the black cloak and hood of the primordial reapers--the only ones that ever seemed to get any credit despite being extinguished long ago.

“Fuck me,” Ash whispered, continuing across the Concourse’s spacious plaza.

“Don’t tell me what to do,” Hatred said, walking by his side.

“Yeah, Ash,” Love added. “Just because we’re emotions doesn’t mean we’re overly sexual.”

One crow broke from the murder. The reaper Dementia approached Ash with a hand raised to stop, and the other on his whip. “Hold now, Reaper. You’ve been exiled from the Concourse until further notice. Your friends, too.” He gestured with the flat palm at Love and Hatred, and Volatile beside them.

Geduld had forgotten to conceal the emotions. No matter.

Ash said “I have a bountiful harvest. A fellow reaper, in fact. I’d like to inform Time that I went down to the mortal surface and extracted Detritus.” To be fair, Ash knew he was a miserable liar. That also didn’t matter.

Dementia pivoted, unraveling the whip at his hip. “Turn back. Pretty please.”

Ash filled his non-existent lungs with a bounty of air, looked to the blackened Concourse, back to the reaper, and asked “Did you know that Reaper Detritus had harvested all the souls at the Grand Gorge incident?”

“I--no, I hadn’t a clue. That’s an immense lot for not-a-Grand-Reaper.”

“Aye.” Ash nodded, then shattered Dementia’s skull with an uppercut.

The black flooded down, leaving the Concourse barren, and all the people Ash had once worked alongside were swinging for his head. He stood tall, letting the hood cast deep shadows.

Almost all his former coworkers had turned, at least.

A halberd broke the line, and Volatile vanished into the fray. Reapers spiraled, spilling essence into the air, up for the harvesting.

As new faces filled the slaughtered space, the reapers drew their blades and bludgeons, their baseball bats and pikes.

The obsidian maul broke through them with ease, swallowing the essence of Cancer, Sorrow, and Nightmare. He dropped beneath the clattering blades and grabbed Reaper Fire as a shield.

Forcing Fire deeper into the pile, Ash called for peace. He wasn’t given it. Knives sliced flesh, a hammer cracked his shin. Fire was mostly useless, for he had lost his head halfway through his first seconds as a shield. Ash took his essence anyway.

The suit’s needles flooded him, and the wounds fluttered off like butterflies.

The darkness swallowed Ash, for a moment, as heroes don’t die like this. Maybe at the end. But not now. He grabbed one coworker, and another, climbing atop them. The black never seemed to end, clambering for him from all directions, shouting his name, shouting--no, not his name. Not even close. “Warmonger! Warmonger!”

So be it. Ash drove the maul down, pulverizing the immortal bones of those that dared to draw close. He danced over the reapers as a feather, cloak giving chase too quick for any malicious hands to grab. He howled in a violent rage, succumbing to the taste of so many souls, so little time, so much power.

So caught up that it took him far too long to notice the other reapers had scattered to the winds, treating him as a pariah. Essence rushed in his ears, in line with the sweet tune of a violin.

He pirouetted.

Then pirouetted again.

And he lunged backward into the empty air, reversing his every attack on the corpses of an empty Concourse.

Down on his knees, Volatile watched the macabre play, bloodied, drenched in sweat, but pumping with adrenaline.

As he spun, and crawled, and held his fists up as if he carried a useless, headless shield, Ash saw Time tramping from her palisade, scorched from the flaming ice between pancakes.