The Reaper sat motionless in a wooden chair in the armory of the guild-hall. The walls were covered with row upon row of axes. Alcoves contained tools for sharpening and repairing.
One small magic lamp simply illuminated the area with a dull green luminescence.
The Reaper was waiting for Senior Executioner Crocken– or more precisely, the item he would be carrying.
After a long silent while, the lock turned and the door opened.
The masked person that the Reaper recognized as Crocken squinted into the gloom around the lamp for a while.
"Oh! There you are, Sir!" Crocken said when his eyes had adjusted enough to spot the Reaper.
"There I am." The Reaper did not stand.
Crocken approached, took the wand out of his coat, and offered it.
The Reaper took it. "The King?"
"The King died very well," said Crocken. "Jantos did a good job. Very clean." Crocken shifted his weight from one foot to the other.
"The wand?" asked the Reaper.
"No magic detected," Crocken confirmed, "everything went normally. The Lots also went well. The new King accepted on the first round."
The Reaper inclined their head slightly, in acknowledgement that Crocken had correctly anticipated the question.
A moment of dead silence hung between them.
"Well… If that's all Sir, I'll be going," Crocken said.
"Yes," the Reaper nodded.
Crocken backed towards the door. "Have a good New Year Sir," he said, flinching with embarrassment at his own words before the sentence was completely out of his mouth.
The Reaper looked at the Senior Executioner. The Reaper understood Crocken. He required encouragement. "You have done well. Go."
Crocken looked relieved. He closed the door behind him, and the lock clicked.
Crocken was a very good executioner, but there was a fundamental difference between the Senior Executioner and the Reaper. Crocken was the sort of man who would go home and take his mask off and become a person again, and then go to bed and sleep until it was time to wake up and put the mask on again.
Finally the Reaper rose from the chair, and carrying the wand, walked through the armory. Past the shelves of wooden masks, for every shape and size of face. Past the racks full of the more specialized weapons, for the situations when an axe was not enough. Past the sealed cabinets of things too useful to destroy after being confiscated from the dead. Past the special glass cabinet where the wand would wait for the remainder of the year until it was needed for the next Regicide Festival.
There was somewhere the wand needed to be taken before it could be put away. There was something that needed to be done with it before it could be locked in that cabinet.
The Reaper opened the secret door, and took the wand down the pitch black spiral stair.