Chapter Text
Kravitz, for lack of a better word, feels off.
The feeling starts off small, barely perceptible at first - the best corporeal equivalent he can think of is the mild pressure of an impending headache - but by later in the day it’s built, steadily and increasingly overwhelming, until he’s confidently able to identify it as the balance of life and death shifting further and further from the norm. The feeling isn’t particularly abnormal (hard to be a decent grim reaper if you’re not able to sense things going out of whack), but it is unexpected for this time of year. Necromancy season generally doesn’t kick in for another few months, so bounties are pretty sparse, which is exactly why he’s cooped up doing paperwork rather than hunting down liches and dark warlocks right now.
But there it is anyway. That overwhelming, vaguely headache-y feeling. Grimacing, he materializes a heavy, dark tome in front of him, flipping open the cover to see what new bounties have appeared.
Unsurprisingly, the first names he sees are the trio from the Miller lab - they have the highest unclaimed bounties by a significant margin, after all. But the reaper lingers for a moment and cocks an eyebrow in confusion, quietly observing that the numbers somehow appear to be higher than he last remembers.
Blinking, he takes a moment to run the math in his head. Taako Tacco, eight deaths; Magnus Burnsides, nineteen deaths; Merle fucking Highchurch, fifty-seven deaths. The page in front of him now shows, respectively, nineteen, thirty, and a whopping sixty-eight deaths on file.
Yep. Math checks out. Somehow, these boys had managed to get themselves killed eleven more times, all without a single trip to the Astral plane.
How the fuck.
Before he could investigate, or really even consider any further, his thoughts were interrupted by what he could only describe as a sudden, sharp tug at the center of his very soul, so strong that it pulled him straight to his feet and ripped a hissed, unnecessary breath from his clenched teeth. This feeling, too, wasn’t necessarily unfamiliar; he understood instinctively that this was a call to the side of the Raven Queen. That said, normally, the call wouldn’t be quite so… well, forceful. Whatever she needed him for, it was clearly exceedingly urgent.
(His mind wandered back to the trio as he started off to her chambers, the eleven new deaths, the bet to erase their bounties that they had managed to win against him, and Kravitz tries very, very hard to convince himself he’s not being called in to be fired.)
The Raven Queen is, at first glance, serene as always when he arrives - perched in front of an intricately designed stained glass window, a glossy sheen to her dark feathers, a cacophony of glittering, silvery bangles and charms strewn over her silky robes and black veil. But Kravitz has worked for the Raven Queen a long, long time (or at least he thinks he has; time worked funny in the Astral plane, and he’d never been especially good at parsing it even in life), so he’s able to pick up on her unease without a particularly close investigation. Attempting to ignore the knots subsequently forming in his incorporeal stomach, he stands before her attentively, ready to receive his next job.
She takes a moment to turn and fix her gaze on him, as if she hadn’t quite noticed his arrival. “Kravitz,” she finally begins, her voice deep, smooth, full of poise and gravitas befitting a goddess of death. “You’re not gonna believe this shit.”
A beat. “Do tell,” he finally responds (fairly smoothly, he thinks, given everything).
The Raven Queen takes a moment to settle herself, feathers ruffling slightly as she does. “Where to even begin. Do you remember those three boys you tracked down at the Miller lab?”
“The ones with the patently ridiculous number of deaths, yes.” He hesitates a moment, trying to steady his nerves, before quietly observing, “they’ve added a few more recently.”
“They sure have.” His Queen leans down now, eyes meeting his more directly. “And I bring this up because I just want to drive home how fucked up this next bit is: we just received information on a whole group of people who make those three look like die-and-dash amateurs.”
Kravitz responds with a slow blink, anxiety abruptly giving way to sheer, stupefied confusion.
“Right? So, listen to this,” the Queen continues. “There’s this little town called Refuge, down in the middle of the Woven Gulch? Real small settlement, can’t have more than a few dozen people living there. But, Kravitz-” and she leans down even further on that, fully eye-level with him now- “every single person in Refuge has died two-thousand, five-hundred and seventeen times.”
Somehow, Kravitz abruptly experiences the feeling of choking on a drink in surprise, despite not having a drink and also being incorporeal .
“My feelings exactly.” The Raven Queen sits back up, looming over him again, and gazes thoughtfully somewhere just past him. “There’s a few other things that make this one even weirder, if that was even fuckin’ possible. First, those two-thousand or so deaths across an entire town? No indications of a single one on our end until today. No bounties came in for anyone from Refuge. Second, those deaths? One per resident every hour, on the hour, for seven years. Until today - as far as preliminary info goes; it’s been a few hours on the Material plane now and no one from Refuge appears to have racked up any more deaths, or at least not without checking in with us as nature intended. And, a third thing-” she locks eyes intently with him again- “which is where you really come in on this whole shitshow.”
The knot in Kravitz’s stomach has returned with a vengeance.
“Third, those Miller lab boys of yours?” Oh yeah, that knot is here to stay now. “Turns out those new deaths they racked up? Surprise, surprise, right there in Refuge. But - and here’s the real interesting bit, I think - their eleven deaths synced up with the last eleven deaths of everyone else in Refuge, before the whole thing stopped and we finally got all this info down on our end. Doesn’t seem like a huge leap to think that, whatever was killing off Refuge over and over - and blocking us from seeing it to boot - those knuckleheads actually stopped it.”
This new information is enough that Kravitz, struggling to find an appropriate response to this bizarre clusterfuck of a situation, ends up just silently opening and closing his mouth like a stupid, dumbass fish for a solid twenty seconds. Luckily for him, the Raven Queen doesn’t appear to notice, as she’s glanced off with that thoughtful look again.
“Kravitz.” He snaps back to attention, not certain how long he’s been floundering and she’s been thinking; the Queen has turned back to him now with something of a casual, curious look. “What do you think the chances are those boys would be willing to speak with you?”
And he’s back to floundering, blinking at the question. She simply regards him, silent and with an absurd amount of patience, until he finally recovers from this series of curveballs enough to consider her query.
Magnus. He starts with Magnus, because Magnus is an absolute hulking beast of a man, with a protective nature and little apparent regard for consequences (a trait the three of them seem to have in common), and that makes it easy to rule him out. He’s fairly certain Magnus would get one glimpse at him and immediately rush him with his axe. Kravitz is not especially eager to be rushed down with an axe today.
Next, Merle. Last time he had seen Merle, he’d impersonated the dwarf’s God and ended up costing him an arm. This seemed like it would be a significant roadblock on the path to a peaceful discussion. Kravitz soundly filed Merle away as a “no”.
Taako.
Kravitz took pause there. Taako was… unpredictable , to say the least (“Hey, thug, what’s your name, I’m about to tentacle your dick” ). Unpredictable, and indisputably a powerful wizard, enough to pose a very real threat to the reaper in a serious fight. But, all things considered, Taako had seemed somewhat… receptive to him during their previous meetings (his mind unexpectedly jumps to the elf calling him “handsome”, and he shoves that thought away right quick thank you very much). Equally as important, he seemed significantly less eager to rush headlong into a fight than his companions. Yes, Taako was just unusual and unpredictable enough that it seemed entirely within the realm of possibility for him to sit down with the grim reaper, chatting casually about dying eleven times that day.
“...I.” He starts and stops hesitantly, awkwardly attempting to articulate his line of thinking. “One. I think there’s one, um, one of the three of them that might- might be willing to speak with me about this. Maybe.”
The Queen tilts her head, just slightly, in a way that makes her beak appear to be set in a pleased grin. “Excellent news. I’d like you to track him down and get some more information as soon as you’re able. In the meantime, we have a few of our people here that will be speaking with recent arrivals from Refuge, and I-” the grin somehow appears to widen- “am going to pay a visit to Lady Istus. She had some followers in Refuge at one point, and, like, this fate and time stuff is kind of her whole jam.”
“Of course.” Kravitz grins back, slightly cheeky, because it’s no secret at all that the Queen needs no excuse to see Lady Istus. The inevitable intertwining of fate and death meant the two goddesses were equally close-knit, and as luck would have it, the pair were exceedingly fond of each other.
The Raven Queen simply winks knowingly in response. “Off with you, then. You’ve got some digging to do. Oh, and Kravitz?” She calls after him at the last moment, after he’s turned and nearly left the room; when he glances back she is wearing what he can only describe as a shit-eating grin. “Be sure you wear something nice. Stick with a flesh form, maybe; a lot less intimidating than crystal. Plus-” she punctuates this part by jingling her innumerable bangles and necklaces- “the elf strikes me as a man who appreciates the finer things, you know?”
The reaper thinks about asking her how she guessed he planned to speak with Taako, but after another glance at that shit-eating grin, he made what he felt was the very wise decision to just nod and make his way out of the room instead.