Galacta Knight had imagined the afterlife to look like many things. His beloved home of Halcandra had two ideas of what awaited the dead, the official sentiment which seemed to insult him at every turn of his life was that of the great kingdom beyond the tip of Mt Haldera. Of a utopian reflection of the living world, from which great kings would descend and spread wisdom from. The oh so grand wisdom that even in death kings would be kings and peasants peasants.

But for peasants such as Galacta and his kin, the uselessness of that myth was clear. They had their own belief, one that despite Galacta's general disdain for spirituality he could never help but feel affection for. It was the hope of his people after all. There was no soaring into the aether, or paradise among the stars for his people. There was only the dirt you tilled until you became it. Still and nourishing for eternity.

He had memories of that being a shock to his royal peers, but it really was a beautiful belief. Not of abandoning the living, leaving them in their pit of miseries while you become a celestial hedonist, but of staying with them in the most naturalistic way possible. Continuing to provide for your people as you sleep in the warm embrace of the halcandra you'd known all your life.

Galacta was a very worldly (or galactic) man as well, and had heard many more stories of what would await those in the beyond. A range of colorful expressions of the hopes and dreams and comforts of those facing the inevitability of the end. He always came back to the two of his home though, likely due to familiarity. And, because in his first time being lucid since his sealing so long ago, he realized how much he missed the sentiment of rejoining the planet with his brethren, rather than his destiny of flying off into unknown skies.

Despite everything however, now that he was in the beyond, he couldn't say that a single myth he had ever heard was wholly true. He had been open to the idea that the afterlife could look like anything. Nothing. Many things at once. Some indescribable mess only for the alien senses of the dead to parse...

What he was not expecting, was for the afterlife to look like a Mexican fast food restaurant.

Galacta stared at the food in front of him, a jarringly alien yet familiar arrangement of plants, meats, and sauces in an ovular bowl. He wasn't hungry, death had taken away his bodily needs if the years of imprisonment hadn't, but Galacta was not one to let something as silly as existential culture shock get between him and a good meal. If he could bring himself to try an array of foreign dishes across his galaxy, he could extend that openness to this plane of existence. And his prior openness in life seemed to have primed him for this, because despite the indescribable, extra-dimensional taste and texture of the food, he felt nothing but simple comfort at getting to eat something.

He tried to pretend that he wasn't painfully aware of the presence of a certain... thing... sitting across from him at the table. With it's figure faintly radiating like a vaguely person-shaped hole in the fabric of reality, its ethereal red wings slowly idling behind it, and its beady eyes like distant stars visible from the inky depth of space staring at him. Galacta would much rather try to wrap his mind around the sensation of the otherworldly fibers and meats he was shoving into his mouth, than think for a second about the blinding wall of hatred he felt directed at the creature posted across from him. But said creature wasn't satisfied to leave him alone.

You did always love food, an annoyingly light and alien voice echoed into the depths of his mind, making him cringe. It's in the nature of your kind I suppose, always needing to consume something to fill a hole within yourself. Galacta stopped eating. You do it physically and psychologically. Your bodies need to destroy and consume to continue itself, and in your emotional states you do the same thing with other beings and creatures around you. Always needing to fill some kind of lacking within yourself, and never satisfied.

"Am I not allowed to fucking eat my last goddamn meal without being judged?" Galacta dragged his glare up to meet his abhorred companion. "I thought the judgment shit was over."

It is, the voice continued neutrally in his head. The rest of your eternity has been planned out now; The roadmap of your punishment and rebirth before you are allowed your eternal slumber is set in motion as we speak. I am just making personal observations. I cannot judge you for those simple natures of your flawed, mortal body.

Galacta fought the urge to roll his eyes. His 'simple nature'. It only said that out loud to piss him off, it could have kept it to itself.

We are linked psychically, Galacta Knight. The boundary between thought and 'speech' in this realm are very blurry. It corrected before he could try to feign indifference and return to his food.

He didn't believe that shit for a second, was the reaper simply not thinking for the last... whatever amount of time since they had last spoken?

Not anything that was worth sharing with you. That observation was the culmination of all my ruminations since that last time.

He jabbed his fork towards the shadow across from him. "So you CHOSE to share that stupid fucking comment with me! Weaselly ass fucking liar, you're not as fucking mysterious as you think you are."

The being refused to react physically. You are greatly oversimplifying how this form of communication works. But that is unsurprising, it is an entirely foreign sensation to your kind.

"To my kind!" Galacta mocked. He felt on the verge of hysterics, "Yeah, I don't know about this type of communication-- Like I haven't had a million fucking conversations just like this one! Sitting there on your ass pretending to be some great neutral party, when you're just some petty bitch trying to tear me the fuck down!" The last thing Galacta had expected out of meeting the grim reaper in the afterlife was to have the same sort of shitty date arguments he'd had eternities ago. But of course this would be his goddamn luck, maybe it's part of the fucking punishment.

In a way yes, but this is supposed to be a relief before that truly begins. The voice defended itself.

"Big fucking relief would be if you left me the fuck alone." He completely gave up on eating by now. "What kind of cruel ass joke is that, bringing me here to eat just so you can fucking judge me for that! Gonna judge me for breathing next?"

It was an observation, not a judgment.

He was going to scream, he was going to fucking scream.

Galacta gripped his fork with a force stronger than he'd ever held his lance before a killing blow. His face flushed hotter than it had in the frenzied bloodlust he'd lost himself in for aeons.

He wished his end had just been an eternal sleep underneath 30 feet of dirt. That he could fly off to some peaceful copy of his old life. Free of parasitic, two-faced, delusional whores like this. Free of people like fucking--

I don't understand how I'm reminding you of your ex-lover. It interrupted matter-of-factly. My intentions nor my mannerisms are anything like her's. You're projecting your mortal experiences onto this situation.

Galacta made a loud sardonic snarl that was maybe supposed to be some sort of laugh, he was awash in disbelief. "Well clearly you never listened to her! You could be her fucking reincarnation the way you sit there on your ass and talk!" Everything about this being reminded him of her, these words, these stupid fucking traps, these dismissals - maybe its just that she was so awful that of course her only equal in pretentiousness would be this fucking god of death.

The being shifted so slightly in its posture. Galacta Knight. I, The Reaper of Warriors, have combed through the great sands of your mind, and analyzed every grain of thought, feeling, and memory within. I have followed the trail of your life from creation to now over and over, and across a sprawling map of universes and timelines. I had been there with you, to observe the most poignant and defining moments of your life. Your loves and losses, your despairs and euphoria... The expressionless abyss of it's head stared at Galacta in such a way he could delude himself into thinking it squinted at him in scrutiny. I do not think I am like Yulia.

"Well of course you don't think you're like Yulia. Yulia didn't think she was like Yulia!" His voice broke into full blown screams. "She thought she was some fucking saint - some goddamn fountain of infinite wisdom and patience lowering herself to my level to bless me with her presence! Just like--"

Galacta Knight, I am the Reaper of Warriors. Something about the voice seemed to raise itself enough to even be able to cut him off. It is my job to travel from higher planes of reality to judge the souls of beings like you.

"Well, Yulia thought that was her job too didn't she!"

Perhaps, but that is your opinion of her opinion of you. I am stating an in-construable cosmic truth.

"Perhaps!" Galacta yelled mockingly. "Well Mr fucking 'Cosmic Truth', if you know so much about me and how pathetic we mortals are, why don't you know what she was thinking? That she-devil probably didn't get this scrutiny!"

Yulia was not a warrior such as you, so I never passed judgment over her soul. It did not require this level or speciality of consideration.

"Oh," He screeched in disbelief, "I think it did for everything she fucking put me through!"