Kevin stared about the black house and shuddered. It was amazing how depressed you could start to feel when everything in sight was just… well, black and depressing.

He tapped his fingers on the table before him and looked across to the opposite side where the strange, bony man was sat with a book clasped in his bony hands and…

And why the hell was he so damn bony?

“What are we waiting for?” Kevin asked suddenly. “Shouldn’t we go and find my friends before they do something else? We’re running out of time!” he complained. How much longer was he going to sit here?

NO, WE ARE NOT.

“Yes we are!”

NO, WE ARE NOT.

“How do you know?”

I KNOW EVERYTHING.

“That sounded a little big headed.”

HOW CAN SOMETHING SOUND LIKE A BIG HEAD?

“Forget it.” Kevin shook his head and rubbed a finger in his ear. There was something strangely disturbing about the way the voice seemed to pass straight into his mind without using his ears. He swore it was giving him a headache. “You have a weird voice you know? I would kill for something like that, I mean it might actually make Nick listen to me for once!”

I DOUBT IT.

“How do you know?” Kevin asked suspiciously.

I KNOW EVERYTHING.

“Oh yeah I forgot.”

A thick silence followed after his words. Kevin was not sure how a silence could be thick, but it certainly was now. He gazed about the Frenchman’s office (it had taken a while, but Kevin had finally decided that he was French seeing as he wasn’t Russian or Bulgarian) and idly drummed his fingers on the desk. It felt like he had been sitting here for hours now but he couldn’t be sure as there was no clock and Kevin’s watch had stopped working. It hadn’t moved since he had woken up in the stable.

The shimmering image of the Discworld was still hovering in the air a few feet away. Slowly Kevin stood up and peered down at it, marvelling at the tiny ships that he could see floating in the immense blue sea. “Wow, the detail on this thing is amazing.”

IT IS A WORLD. OF COURSE IT HAS DETAIL.

Kevin tried to touch the world but his hand just passed straight through it like a morning mist. He pulled his hand away and then tried again in a different spot, but still he was unable to touch it.

“Say, if they world is gonna end, hadn’t we better hurry up and save it?”

WE HAVE TIME YET.

A bony finger was pointed at five hourglasses upon a shelf to the right. Curiously Kevin approached them and squinted at the names that had been carved on the side. “Hey, they’ve got our names on it!” he said, as he traced the black wooden letters of his name with a finger. He frowned slightly. In his hourglass, the sand was frozen in mid trickle. He tapped it slightly but nothing happened. The other four however, had a steady trickle of sand flowing down the centre. There wasn’t much left at the top in any of them

“Why isn’t mine moving?” Kevin asked.

BECAUSE IN THIS PLACE, TIME STANDS STILL FOR YOU.

“What does the hourglass represent?” Kevin asked. “It’s moving for the others.”

THE HOURGLASSES REPRESENT HOW MUCH TIME YOU HAVE LEFT ON THIS WORLD. HERE THERE IS NO TIME SO YOURS HAS STOPPED.

“What happens when time runs out?” Kevin asked.

The Frenchman did no reply.

“What are we waiting for? Do you even know hot to get us home?”

I AM WAITING FOR WHEN YOUR FOUR FRIENDS ARE ALTOGETHER.

“Oh, okay. When will that happen?”

SQUEAK. SQUEAK.

Kevin looked about him at the strange sound that had just arrived in his head. “What was that?” he asked, his brow furrowing in puzzlement.

SQUEAK.

He looked down and suddenly spotted a tiny, cloaked figure sitting upon the black carpet. There was something long and silver within it’s paws.

SQUEAK.

It placed the silver thing in it’s mouth and then began to scuttle up the led of the desk until it reached the top. SQUEAK, it declared to the Frenchman.

“Is that a mouse?” Kevin asked.

EEK! SQUEAK!

“Or a rat?”

SQUEAK, it confirmed.

MY ASSISTANT SHALL WE SAY? HE TELLS ME IT IS TIME I WAS PREPARING FOR DUTY.

“Duty? You mean like your job? What do you?” Kevin hoped to God that he wasn’t an interior designer… or even a garden designer. Kevin wouldn’t be pleased if someone spray painted his grass black one day.

I WORK FOR THE PEOPLE.

“In what way?”

I TAKE AWAY THOSE WHO ARE NO LONGER PART OF THE WORLD.

“Uh, okay.” Probably asking him to elaborate would not mean it made any more sense whatever.

He nodded. WAIT HERE. I WILL RETURN FOR YOU WHEN I AM READY.

“Sure.”

He watched the rat in the cloak leap from the desk to the carpet, still carrying the… Kevin peered closer… scythe?! How many rats went around with scythes?

Suspiciously he watched as the stranger rose form his seat and crossed to the door. The rat’s cloak was identical to his own. Kevin scratched his head as the door was silently closed behind them to leave him alone in the black room.

He sighed as he stared at the floating Discworld. “Guys where are you?” he whispered. How was he ever going to help them? He really wasn’t sure if this stranger was going to help him or not. He seemed friendly but there was something about him that provoked something like an instinctive fear inside of his chest every time he glanced at him.

And then there was the fact that Kevin could not see the face properly. It was like it was blurred, preventing Kevin from focusing upon him and every time it did seem to clear, Kevin found himself looking away as if he did not want to see what the man looked like.

He carefully stood up and glanced at the hourglasses again. There was something disconcerting about the way the sand trickled from them so unceasingly. He carefully picked up his own and shook it experimentally but nothing happened. He scrutinised it carefully and felt something pulling at his stomach in fear. He found his hand gently replacing it, as if afraid of breaking the precious object.

Something had been screaming at Kevin’s brain for a long time now but he had not wanted to listen to it… and still didn’t. These hourglasses only added to his unease. Them and their damn trickling of sand…

Trickle, trickle, trickle.

They were like hourglasses of death almost…

Hold on.

Black house + Scythes + Strange bony man in black cloak + Hourglasses =…

Oh crap…

He stared at the hourglasses again. They were almost empty now, including Kevin’s. It seemed as if as soon as he was in a place where time would begin to move again, his own time would run out.

Did that mean they were all going to… die?

“Oh God… where the hell am I? I’m in the Grim Reaper’s house!” he gasped.

What was he going to do to his friends? Was he going to reap their souls… would that stop the Discworld from being destroyed?

‘He’s going to kill us!’ Kevin thought. ‘Damn it thought he was going to help!’

Kevin did not know what he was going to do but he knew that he had to find his friends before Death caught up with them. Presumably that would be when the sand in the hourglasses ran out. He bit his lip as he stared at the glasses. There wasn’t much time at all…

He dashed to the door and carefully opened it. There was a slight creak but there was nobody in sight so he hurried down the stairs. As he approached the front door, he heard a faint muttering coming from one of the doors to his right and recognised it as Albert, the man who had shouted at him before.

He silently opened the door into the black garden and then swiftly closed it behind. In a second he was down the steps and dashing across the cobbled, black path to the stable. There was a pile of tack outside and he swept it up into his arms before shoving the door open.

The white horse he had seen before was eyeing him with big, brown eyes. It snorted and continued to eat at the black hay.

“Here boy,” Kevin said softly. He looked down at the tack and suddenly noticed the name inscribed on the side. ‘Binky’. “Binky? Is that your name? Come on boy. You wanna help me find my friends don’t you.”

And then he needed to get out of this crazy world. How the hell could a Grim Reaper like cats, have a rat as an assistant and ride a horse called Binky?

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