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// The Unbargainable Merchant 
// Story: The Avaritia Anthology 
// by SerPounce 
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While the Griffons live their lives without a care in the world it is only when the merchant rears his boney head that they begin to stare him in the face. It is only when death begins to near, their life’s end starting to get closer and closer, feathers dropping cheeks sinking. Their youth dries and age’s marks fill their bodies like the mark of a thousand tiny battles each day. 

Yet once it begins to take space in their mind they begin to act kind and generous, many a griffon have seen as their grandparents begin to shower them in compliments gifts and praise. But their gestures are hollow as they are not aimed to please them but someone else, the one following them from under the shadows, watching your every move like a hawk. 

And once you finally die, once your essence begins to drain away and your body turns cold as ice. There he meets you like an old friend, knowing you better than you know yourself. 

He speaks soft words to you, he takes your heart and puts it on his scale, testing its weight against bits. Starting at one and counting up till the weight of the heart and bits are equal. The heavier your heart the more expensive death becomes, every sin an unremovable weight that takes you down a notch. 

Most nobility survive this process, their deathbeds surrounded by chests upon chests of bits to use. The middle class do fine as well, their hearts usually having only small sins bestowed upon them. But the poor, the poor are forced to sin and then be punished for not having enough bits for it. 

Truly even in death the Griffons lust for bits cannot be sated, the merchant of death’s skeletal stomach filled to the brim with bits clinking about as he walks Tartarus in his free time. Watching those who could not pay up burning in the flames. All will pay the price for their sins, one way or the other.

For the Unbargainable Merchant’s job is simple, ever since the world began this has been his work. For all that die must pay the price of life. 

But even the Merchant himself has his troubles, for what happens when a chick dies in birth? 
Or when a street chick who has survived their whole life off of stealing and thieving now has to pay for their crimes. 

When the nothingness that was his heart stirred he would simply smile at the youngling. Ask them to close their eyes and hold out their claws, by the time they opened their eyes their claws would have a pile of bits and the merchant’s stomach felt a bit lighter. He would tell them “I’m glad you can pay! Now go on then, the path to the light is this way. And yes, Joseph your mother and father are waiting for you…” 

For when your craft is death and your trade is blood, the small moments of forgiveness are worth more than all the bits in the whole world. He’ll let Boreas yell at him later if he likes.