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Loren asked Rezolo the very same question that he could hear being uttered aimlessly by the other men around him. 'Where did they go?'

'No telling. Perhaps they achieved their objective.'

'Which was?'

'Let's search the camp.' And Rezolo didn't wait for him.

Loren followed. To his eyes, the reaper was an oversized gecko with glowing white eyes. The long toes and swollen tips of the reaper's large feet hung rigidly below him as he floated impossibly through the air. It almost looked like the reapers were all standing on some kind of invisible ball as they moved.

The rest of the camp was still intact, it seemed. The confusion among everyone was apparent, but he didn't see any injuries.

He spotted a commotion in the distance, however, and Rezolo was already heading toward it. As they got closer, the reaper wisely slowed in order to let Loren take point.

Loren pushed his way through a gathered crowd to see what they were all staring at.

The smell hit him first. Charred flesh. All too familiar. Not enough to make him recoil or wretch, but it was still far from pleasant.

And when he saw the body, it took him a moment to even recognize it as such. Blackened ashes were all that remained. If not for the small and the vaguely human shape left behind in the smote grass, Loren might not have been able to tell what he was looking at.

The low mutterings among the onlookers increased as someone else began to push through the opposite side of the circle.

It was Kareem, Loren realized. A tall man of dark complexion and chiseled features, Kareem was one of the few people in this camp who actually bothered to dress well for his job. His stiff black coat with its golden collar and buttons looked like it would have fit in at a much ritzier event than this.

"Who was it?" said Kareem, loud enough for all to hear. "Who was killed?"