Young Writers Society

Natalia smiled at Trevor. "Here, you can come along if you want." She held out a hand.

There was the reaction that he had expected. The fear was coming off of Bleffles and Trevor in waves - at least, that's what he guessed it would look like if he could actually see something like that. Both of them seemed flustered and afraid; they were both rambling. Natalia and Adeline's reactions didn't make the slightest bit of sense, but the reactions of the others did. He never liked being feared, but there was something comforting about things playing out in a familiar way.

He decided to drop the whole ominous act. Maybe Natalia and Adeline would get scared of him if he started acting like the person he really was. Maybe they wouldn't. But he couldn't stand the flustered messes that Trevor and Bleffles had become, and he had to do his best to remedy it.

Not that it ever works, he miserably thought.

He made his scythe disappear.

"I'm not...I'm not here to take your souls," he said, returning his voice to normal. "I was just trying to go to the store."

He pulled his hood down a little farther to hide his face. His hands were shaking, despite his best attempts to stop himself from trembling. He hoped that it wasn't too noticeable. "I can see when people are going to die, but I don't like looking..." He looked over in the direction of the door. "I'm just-I'm just going to leave now."

He started to make his way over to the door, skeletal hands still trembling as he returned them to underneath his cloak. He could sneak back and grab his costume later - right now, all he wanted to do was hide away as a partial. He slipped past Natalia, walked quickly down the hallway, and let his body go from solid and visible to invisible. If he wanted to, he could walk through things, but right now all he did was sit up against the wall and let out a heavy sob that he hoped no one noticed.

Adeline quickly refocused as the Grim Reaper walked out of the room. She bit her lip- tried to anyway, and glanced back over at the others, who seemed to be heading to some sort of maze. Without another glance, she left the room to go find Grim.

When she had reached the foyer, she looked around in bewilderment. Where had he gone? Maybe he was hiding somewhere, or was off exploring alone. She guessed by how upset he had seemed that the former was more likely. A dob somewhere close by confirmed her suspicions and made her jump.

"Um- hello?" She gave another glance around, keeping her voice soft and hopefully non-prying. "Grim Reaper?"

Natalia joined Adeline once she got Trevor and Bleffles up the stairs.
"I think he needs a moment." She told Adeline. "Our reactions aren't normal, but Trevor and Bleffles went to pieces."

She suddenly gritted her teeth and winced as a pain shot through her body. She started breathing harder, but kept her voice calm.

A moderately shaken Bleffles stood atop the staircase, where a large window overlooked a vast and intricate labyrinth, in a vaguely familiar alchemical pattern. Many parts of it where shielded from outside view by a thick, thorny overgrowth.
Thousands of fireflies made the scene prettier, but did nothing to actually illuminate.
It was still too dark to make out most of the details in the distance, but much of the scene seemed to be...crawling.
As though it were covered in something that from this distance looked like tidal waves of ants.

In her fright, she had allowed herself to be led up these stairs more on autopilot than anything else.

And yet, disconcerting as it was, she found staring at the tiny, all-encompassing, inscrutable lulls of movement eerily calming, like rocking, almost. Bleffles exhaled, and looked over to the guy next to her. Trevor. His name was Trevor.

"So, eh, hedges, right?" Bleffles said to Trevor.

"Yeah. Hedges," Trevor repeated blankly. He still wasn't sure what was happening with Griffith/the Grim Reaper, but Adeline seemed to be trying to talk to him. Besides, this maze thing was freaking him out far more at the moment.

"It sort of reminds me of that maze in Harry Potter, you know the one?" Unfortunately, that maze didn't exactly end well. He dreaded going into this one; the rest of the castle was unexplored, but... "Do you think we have to make it through the maze to make it out of here?"

"Yeah, I know the one. Eeeh...We'll never know, but I feel as though whoever went to the bother of installing a sick labyrinth into their castle yard prolly didn't do it just so people could look at it and move on.
If this was made by, say, a wizard drama queen, which is every wizard, something's gonna chase us in there before the night is over.

-Y'know. If it is wizards. Could be anything. Could be nothing. I'm no expert yet." said Bleffles.

A sob caught in his nonexistent throat.

He must have been sobbing louder than he had initially thought. Adeline was standing only a short distance away, as well as Natalia. He tried to calm himself down, but he wasn't suddenly magically able to. Knowing very well that his location would be discovered in only a matter of seconds once they started taking note of where the sounds were coming from, he let himself say, "They always act like that."

He raised his head and looked over in their direction. He still kept his legs pulled closed to his chest. "Either they're like Trevor and Bleffles, or they beg. They ask me when they're going to die, and what they can do to stop their death from happening even when I don't give them an answer to the first question. They-They try bartering with me like I'm the Devil. I'm not the Devil. I'm just..." He took a deep breath. What? The Grim Reaper? That was absolutely terrifying and he knew it.

Adeline stared straight ahead, hearing Grim's voice and roughly pinpointing his location. She was starting to realize that he probably needed some time, but also didn't want to just leave him alone. With a torn wince, she turned to Natalia.

"Y'know what, you guys go on ahead. I'll catch up." She smiled reassuringly. "I mean- if I can find you guys though the maze. But go on. It's fine."

Natalia shook her head. "The most important thing is to stay together." She walked over to Grim Reaper.

"All you do, Mr. Reaper, is your job. Your job is like a messenger. You take to deliver. Most people are terrified of dying, because people fear the unknown. I know that after this, you and I will meet again, and that doesn't bother me..." She stopped. Why had she said that? She usually kept the fact that she was dying to herself. "You really aren't that different from any other human."

The sob finally lodged itself free at Natalia's comments.

"I'm not-I'm not human," he said, his still-invisible body shaking with a sob. "I don't even look the part. I'm a giant skeleton. I can do what ghosts do. I can make a scythe. I can-I can see when people are supposed to die. That's not human in the slightest."

He stared back at the ground, even though they still couldn't see what he was doing. "I don't...I don't even take people's souls!"

"People have become narrow minded. There is nothing that says you shouldn't be accepted."

"I've been around for centuries," he quietly said. "It's not a new thing. People have always been scared of me. I'd be scared of me."

Adeline frowned and wrapped her arms around herself. "You really aren't that scary. And you don't even take people's souls!" Her voice dropped and she gave him an empathetic smile. "People usually aren't scared of me, but they definitely think that I'm a... freak, I guess. And those are justified prejudices. I'm not even sure I have a soul."

With a frown, her eyes widened. "Not- not that I'm comparing myself to you, or that I know how it feels to resemble an infamous mythical figure!"