?


    That night, she went to the underworld and handed over all the souls which had been trapped by the soul attraction stone. After the hand off, she went looking for Ezrah and she found her sitting by the fish ponds, discussing something with a few other reapers. They were three in number, two female and one male.


    "Hi" she intervened in their conversation and gave a general greeting.


    "Oh, if it''s not the most famous reaper among us all." the male reaper said with a hint of sarcasm in his voice.


    Over the years she had learned how to mitigate certain situations. If she was unsure if someone was being confrontational or defensive, she would y things off orugh them away until she was directly confronted. So, sheughed and replied, "Yeah, I am not exactly famous for the best reasons, I am a teaching aid for all new reapers. I will never be able to live that embarrassment down. If anybody wants this kind of fame, please take it from me."She folded her hands in a pleading manner.


    "Should I?" Ezrah joked.


    The othersughed and Ezrah pulled Scarlet to her side, "Come and meet some of our fellow newbies. This is Hawk, Lisa and Martha."


    "Hawk!!" Scarlet rolled her neck and sheughed yfully, "Like the bird."


    "Correction." Hawk responded, "Bird of prey, please do not leave that part out."


    "Well, who am I toment on your name, I am Scarlet." she replied.


    "Like the letter." Ezrah added.


    "You know about that!!" Scarlet was surprised because the Scarlet letter was something from earth. Since there were many worlds out there as she had learned after death, she could not assume that they all came from that same earth. However, she wondered, did Ezrahe from the same earth as her?


    "It''s not something special that we all know, you can check the forum for your name and you will find every person who has had it and every instance where it has been used in every world." Martha informed Scarlet.


    "And if you are the kind of person who is sensitive, you will look for a new name when you discover that in some worlds it means something bad, like Scarlet and sin." Ezrah added.


    "That''s why I go by Hawk, in every world, it''s a bird, nothing more and nothing less."


    "Does everyone know about the scarlet letter?" she asked curiously.


    "It''s the price of fame." Hawk shrugged.


    "Don''t let him confuse you, nobody really cares. what have you been up to anyway I have not seen you in the fightstely. Are you taking a break from them?" Ezrah dragged her away from the rest of the group and asked in private. "Did your soul strength deviate?" she gasped.


    "No, nothing like that, I am just training my special skills and when I return I will be challenging opponents in the one thousand and above levels. The leaderboard is too full and I can''t fight everyone, besides only when you climb to higher do others notice. Right now, I am still nothing more than a tiny grain of sand on a veryrge beach."Ulysses was in the top two hundred while she was still wading waters in the two thousands. She wanted to return and fight challenges that mattered and not simply fighting because she could.


    "So, you want to be a pebble." Ezrah teased.


    "No, I want to be the entire beach." she answered.


    "Ambitious words from one so weak." a different voice joined their conversation. One of a stranger to both women as neither one recognized it.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    On turning around, their eyes were met by the sight of a ck hell hound, female judging by it''s voice the little hell hound following it around and nipping at it''s heels.


    "May we speak, Scarlet."


    "And why would you speak with a reaper that you consider to be weak? If you seek a contract with me I am all tapped out." She was not asking the question out of anger because she a weak, it was true. She had no business with any other hound but Severus.


    "I believe we share something inmon, a greedy loud mouthed opinionated hound named Severus." the female hound replied. "He also happens to call me mummy dearest."


    "Oh," Scarlet said in realization of who she was.


    "I will see you around." Ezrah patted her on the back and made herself scarce, this was none of her business.


    "Should we move our conversation elsewhere?" Scarlet asked the female hound.


    "Call me Ruby," the hell hound said, "This is Kory." she moved the little hound to the front with her power. Scarlet had been expecting to see her carrying the little hound with her teeth the same way female cats and many other animals did with their young ones.


    Scarlet bent down and touched the head of the little hell hound with her finger, "Hello baby Kory," she tickled it softly. "You are so so pretty, look at your shiny brown coat."


    Kory opened her mouth and let out a small me in excitement.


    "She has not yet learned to control her mes, it''s one of the earliest lessons hell hounds learn and we only use it as ast resort on soul eaters or other things that escape from...let''s call it the beyond."


    "You mean hell." She said and then she carried Kory.


    "There are other ces with monsters created by the deities which we keep locked behind closed doors. Sometimes however, they escape and then we use every weapon we have to hunt and kill or hunt and retrieve them. Which brings me to why I need to talk to you, my foolish son seems to have it in his head that you will not be giving up on your desire to reproduce."Ruby spoke while she observed Scarlet''s behavior with Kory.


    The female reaper was so taken with the little hell hound to the point of kissing it''s head and petting it while paying little attention to what she was saying.


    "Are you even listening to me?" Ruby asked her.


    "Yes I am." Scarlet replied, "I also haven''t been to see you because I am still thinking very seriously about what you said to him.I now understand quite clearly what happens when a grim reaper reproduces. I am beginning to see why it''s dangerous for us and the humans."


    "Ah," Ruby said in realization, "He mentioned the human husband you happen to be fascinated with. I am sure that will pass after all, he will die and either destroy you if you can''t let go of him or you will do your job and after some years pass you will find a nice reaper boy to pair with."


    "I am not interested in pairing." Scarlet enunciated the word, it sounded like a contracted marriage between two people who had no choice but to be together.


    "You will be, trust me, living for millions of years eventually gets lonely. If you have some time then maybe be you should pass by the dark rune vige. It''s notcovered in darkness because of the name, they just call it that because the first reaper to settle down there called himself dark rune. He took a break from reaping and lived in the underworld for many years, building an entire vige which is now upied by thousands of reapers. Even though you live between two worlds, you can still build a happy life here."Ruby shared new information with her which she had not heard about yet.


    Most important of all was the fact that grim repears could take a break from reaping.Who made that decision, was it the grim reaper or the guardian reapers?