The Blunt Reaper

"Then why hasn't that been a rule in the manual." The young man asked, as if trying to find fault in that logic."

"Because it's too early for you to learn that. That only becomes a fact once you're outside the bastion and when you have an officer with you. Your job is to learn the abomination's behavior while your commanding officer is dealing with it. Once you've done this enough, then you'll learn to move."

Talren returned both drawings to the wall.

"You are newly awakened Reapers who will encounter Abominations in forests, ruins, flooded tunnels and roads where visibility ends several paces ahead. The creature may already know you are present before you see it. It may have fought Reapers before. It may understand your weapons better than you do."

He looked across the room.

"Most importantly, none of you possess enough experience to recognize the difference between an Abomination hesitating and one preparing to attack."

The students who had laughed earlier were no longer smiling.

Talren nodded toward Rook. "He has survived in the Underworld longer than every student in this room combined. He has encountered Abominations far beyond the Third Rank, crossed territories from which entire patrols failed to return and maintained contracts despite lacking the ability to Cull."

The book covering Rook's face shifted.

"Don't make this unpleasant," he said.

Talren ignored him. "His inability to Cull did not make him reckless. It forced him to understand the first responsibility of every Reaper more clearly than most."

The young man near the center glanced toward Rook. "Which is?"

"To survive long enough to protect the soul bound to you."

Talren rested both hands against the front desk.

"Culling an Abomination is not your first responsibility. It is not your second. Your first responsibility is protecting your contractee. Your second is remaining capable of fulfilling the first. If an Abomination can be avoided, you avoid it. If a route can be changed, you change it. If retreat remains possible, you retreat. The Cull matters only when the creature stands between you and those responsibilities."

Mara looked toward Rook.

He still appeared to be ignoring the lesson, but she found herself thinking back to everything that had happened since entering the Underworld.

Rook had never hunted the multi-armed Abomination that attacked her near the Eleventh. He intervened only because she had been trapped beneath it, and the instant another Reaper completed the Cull, Rook stopped caring about the corpse or the stolen credit.

He had not tried to kill the Weeping Child in the grasslands. He recognized what it was, redirected their path and led her around its territory.

Inside the forest, he placed Mara within the coffin before confronting the Abomination hiding among the trees. At the Eighty-Sixth, he escaped the centipede-like creature once he had secured the information they needed. Even upon the sea, surrounded by Reapers capable of Culling, he avoided every creature that could be avoided.

The Fourth Rank had been different.

They had possessed numbers, weapons and Reapers with several different Death Imprints. Even then, Rook had not charged immediately. He watched how the creature moved, protected Mara with the coffin and joined the fight only when the Abomination began cutting through the others.

Mara had thought his refusal to fight came entirely from his inability to Cull. There was some truth to that. Rook gained nothing by killing an Abomination he could not finish. Yet she was beginning to understand that he would have avoided many of those battles even if he possessed the strongest Death Imprint in the Bastion.

There was no reward worth risking the contractee.

No pride worth another death.

Rook lived by the lesson more strictly than the people teaching it. Or those too blinded by a reaper's power to see that simple fact.

Talren continued the lecture, explaining how physical-type Abominations selected targets and why their most dangerous feature was rarely raw strength alone. Many retained instincts from the souls composing them. A creature formed from soldiers might recognize formations. One born from prisoners could identify restraints and enclosed spaces. An Abomination created from hunted souls might flee from a large group, only to follow it for days and attack when exhaustion divided them.

Rook's book gradually stopped rising and falling.

Mara nudged his arm. "Are you actually asleep now?"

"No."

"You went quiet."

"I'm trying to be respectful."

"That would be more convincing if you removed the book."

"It would be less comfortable."

The class continued through several more classifications. Talren explained the difference between territorial and migratory Abominations, how repeated exposure to Bastion light could change their feeding behavior and why some creatures ignored wounded souls while others pursued blood across entire regions.

A large diagram replaced the previous illustrations. It displayed an Abomination with a heavily armored upper body and several unprotected limbs beneath it.

Talren pointed toward the chest. "Assume withdrawal is impossible. The creature blocks the only safe route, your contractee cannot move quickly and you do not know where its memory concentration is located. What do you do?"

No hands rose.

Talren waited.

The young man who answered earlier kept his eyes upon his desk. Several students consulted their manuals but appeared reluctant to repeat anything written inside them.

Rook shifted beneath his book.

Talren noticed. "Would you care to assist them again?"

"No."

"I would value an experienced perspective."

"I thought you were the teacher."

"And I am inviting someone with practical knowledge to express an opinion."

Rook lifted the manual from his face and stared at the diagram. A faint crease marked his cheek where the book's spine had rested.

"Carve it up."

Several students looked at one another.

Talren waited for him to elaborate.

Rook sighed. "Cut off its limbs if it has any. Cut off its head if it has one. Pin it to the ground if you can, crush through whatever protects its body and keep removing parts until it can't reach you. Once it stops moving, find the memories and Cull it."

A woman near the front raised her hand. "What if severing the limbs doesn't stop it?"

"Cut them smaller."

"And if it regenerates?"

"Destroy the pieces or separate them far enough that regeneration takes longer."

"What if the head isn't important?"

"Then you wasted one swing. Try somewhere else."

Another student frowned. "That doesn't sound like a strategy."

"It's a very simple strategy."

"It assumes we can injure it."

Rook looked toward him. "You have weapons and Death Imprints. Use them."

"And if the Abomination is stronger than the Reaper?"

"Then it was your mistake for getting trapped with it."

The student stared at him. "That isn't helpful."

"It isn't supposed to be. If you chose the route, ignored the warnings, entered its territory and allowed it to cut off your escape, the Abomination isn't responsible for your poor decisions. You are. Deal with it."

Several students appeared offended by the answer. Others looked toward Talren, expecting him to correct Rook again.

Instead, the instructor nodded.

"Every decision a Reaper makes beyond the Bastion determines what they will eventually be forced to face. The route you choose, the weapons you carry, the contract you accept and even the amount of noise you make can decide whether you return."

He moved toward the diagram and tapped one of the armored plates.

"Abominations are not arranged for your convenience. A First Rank can become dangerous when encountered under the wrong conditions. A Third Rank can destroy an experienced patrol that enters its territory without preparation. Higher Ranks may be impossible for you to Cull even when you possess the correct ability."

The young man with the spear raised his hand again. "Then what are we expected to do if there is no way to win?"

"Survive."

"And if we cannot?"

"Protect your contractee for as long as possible. Injure the Abomination enough that another Reaper can finish it. Leave evidence of what killed you. If death becomes unavoidable, make certain your remembered body is not entirely consumed. Suicide Explosive Charges are an excellent choice for that. Always carry them with you."

The room fell silent.

After all he just told them it was better to blow yourself up and your contractee than be eaten by an abomination.

Talren's expression remained unchanged.

"You have all heard that death in the Underworld is temporary. That belief makes young Reapers careless. Death may not be permanent, but it is neither quick nor harmless. An Abomination will not politely kill you and leave your body intact beside the road. It may feed upon your memories while you remain conscious. It may tear you into pieces and carry those pieces in different directions. It may trap part of your soul inside its body before the rest can reform."

He looked toward the illustration of the armored creature.

"Some Reapers return after days. Others require years. A few reform without the memories needed to understand where they are or why they carry a Brand. Those taken by powerful Abominations sometimes return incomplete, if they return at all."

Mara thought of the Fourth Rank speaking through several voices.

The souls inside it had not simply died. Their memories had remained trapped together until the creature no longer understood where one life ended and another began.

Talren looked across the rows of new Reapers. "If you are overpowered, fight anyway. Tear away whatever you can. Break the mouth before it feeds. Destroy the limbs holding your contractee. And if all fails, the nuclear option. It will kill you, it will kill your contractee, but it will also not leave the abomination with anything to feed off."

His attention briefly shifted toward Rook.

"That is what he meant by carving it up. He expressed it poorly, but the principle is correct."

"I expressed it efficiently," Rook said.

Talren ignored him. "Your actions beyond these walls belong to you. If you enter a place without knowing how to leave, that is your decision. If you challenge an Abomination stronger than you, that is your decision. If your contractee dies because you wanted the Cull badly enough to forget them, that decision will remain upon your Brand long after both of you return."

Several students looked down at their forearms.

Mara glanced toward Rook's sleeve.

His Brand remained hidden beneath the dark fabric, but she remembered its size. Black markings covered nearly the entirety of his arm, darker and broader than any other Brand she had seen. She had assumed most of it represented whatever murder condemned him to the Underworld.

"It's not what you're thinking, this was from before I got here," Rook said before the idea finished forming in her head.

"I wasn't thinking anything."

"You give off that vibe," he smiled.

He received another elbow to the ribs. That one hurt.

Talren closed the manual upon his desk. "That concludes today's doctrine. Tomorrow, we cover memory cores and why attempting to Cull the first glowing organ you see is an excellent way to lose an arm."

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