"If you don't hold still, you're going to get a shuriken in your eye."
"I'm fucking still!" I cringe a little at the man named Vito, who definitely wasn't still.
"Just fucking throwing it, you bitch!" Banks laughs and without another moment of hesitation, Nico lets his shuriken loose. It slices through the air so quietly, even with my new hearing it doesn't make a noise.
We all erupted into cheers when it hit its target, a paper wrapped cheeseburger sitting on top of Vito's flame red hair.
"What'd I say?" Nico taunts, plucking his weapon out of the air when Vito hurls it back, much clumsier than Nico did, I would like to say.
Me, Jaskier, York, Aster, Banks, and Nico all sat around for a while at first, drinking blood and talking.
I asked them a couple of things, like what the best and worst parts about being a Reaper were. Everyone but York agreed the worst was when someone begged them not to take their souls away because of someone they were leaving behind. Like a mother or father, a husband or wife, a child. They all agreed seeing someone so truly desperate was heart wrenching, especially because there was absolutely nothing they could do about it.
York said the worst thing was he'd never get to see what cocaine was like. He was such a little shit. I wanted to smack him sometimes, but despite that, I don't think I hated him. Not yet at least.
They all agreed, even York, that the best thing was the absolute freedom that came with being a Reaper. You can go anywhere, see anything, do whatever you want. I mean, within reason, you know.
After a while of talking about that, Vito and Ivan appeared suddenly from a hole created by two giant K- Bar knives slicing through the air.
Ivan was a pretty big guy, very stoic. He had spiky black hair and wore a cloth over his eyes. When he arrived, he looked in my direction for a moment, dropped the fabric bag he was holding, and then pulled his knives back out of where they'd been resting on his hips.
Before anyone could even say anything, he'd sliced through the air and disappeared into the hole without a word.
"He's not very chatty, don't take it personal." Aster had said with a sad look on his face. I just shrugged. I wasn't that sensitive. I had been the one to stand and pick up the bag he had dropped, mostly out of curiosity. It ended up being a pair of giant black boots for me to wear. He was cold to me but brought boots. Couldn't be that bad of a guy.
Vito, on the other hand, was very talkative.
He was shorter, and seemingly quite young, unlike Ivan who looked to be at least thirty. He had bright red hair that stuck up in every direction, and matching eyes, totally red, spare for yellow slits in the middle of each. All of his teeth were sharp and pointed, something he quickly told me upon seeing me staring, he had specifically requested after seeing Aster's.
"You wanna know how I went out?" He had started after. I nodded. I hadn't drunk any more blood since my first glass and already I felt much clearer in the head. I wasn't nearly as chatty as I had been before, and I wasn't spilling all my secrets. I was glad too, because I didn't like meeting new people while under the influence. I had tried the new thing, and decided I was okay without it.
"My mother was accused of being a witch. She may or may not have been, but who's to say for sure?" He grins, clenching his fist. What was he getting so worked up about? "Men in our day hated her strong nature, so she was targeted from the beginning. I saved her from the stake in the middle of the night, before they ever even lit her up. But I made the foolish error of returning to our home after I had her to try and gather supplies. I was caught by the same men who'd gotten my mother, and they burned me on a fucking stake in place of her." He growls, and I swear his eyes start glowing. "She never even tried to save me." He shakes his head then, and spits on the ground.
I had just tilted my head at him, and said, "Fuck her then." This made him and Bank crack up gleefully, and soon after Vito had a cup of my blood in his hand.
Dylan popped back up a few minutes after Vito and Ivan, with a bunch of bags filled with burgers and fries and other fried products. He claimed they were from the best burger place in Florida he had ever been to.
For some reason, before we could even start eating, Vito got it in his head that his weapon was better than Nico's, and Nico ended up demanding he stand with a burger on his head so he could prove him wrong.
That's what is happening now.
"So, you can hit a giant burger off a still target? That says nothing about the coolness of your weapon." Vito sneers. Nico rolls his eyes, and plops down in his chair, spinning his shuriken between his thumb and ring finger as he watches Vito boast. "It's my turn to show off." He looks at me to make sure I'm watching, and I give him a thumbs up.
He leans his head back and reaches his hand into his mouth.
"What the fuck." I say as I watch the hilt of a sword emerging from his mouth as he pulls back.
"Ah." Vito holds up a finger, as if to say, "I'm not done yet."
Sure enough, as the blade comes out of his mouth, I can see it has somehow ignited with flames.
"What the fuck am I looking at." I ask when he's pulled a full length, on fire longsword out of his throat. He stands there with it, grinning from ear to ear.
"Vito here has more natural magic than almost all of us." Aster offers up.
"What's natural magic?" I ask, hesitantly looking away from the on-fire sword and to Aster.
"It's just as it sounds. Humans are very rarely born with any magic at all these days, even the ones that are, it's a very minutiae amount. Enough to win the lottery twice in a row or to never get pulled over with three-year expired tags. Magic in humans these days is quite insignificant, but at one time, there were legitimate witches and wizards, people who possessed real powers. It's been two thousand years since I've seen anyone with powers like those though. These days it's people like Vito, who are distant relatives to those powerful people. Compared to his ancestor, Vito is very weak, in the magic sense. It only comes through this much because I've tweaked him."
"Hey!" He protests, his eyes glowing. Aster shrugs.
"It is true. Nonetheless, he still has more natural magic in him than even I possess. I suspect you might also have a fair share. You've both had similar transitions so far, though I must admit, yours has been even more bizarre." Aster rubs at his forehead. He also hadn't had any more blood, so he seemed pretty sober to me now. Banks was still sipping, so was York, Jaskier, Nico, and Veto. Dyan had wandered off again. Something about him is very… wispy? Like he was a hard guy to pin down. He seemed pretty uninterested in hanging out with us, to be honest.
I sit there for a moment, just kind of looking around at the men around me.
Suddenly, a realization hits me.