[spoiler][i]An Adventurer and a Close Encounter with Death[/i]

  It was a good life, I thought. I mean, what more can an adventurer want from life? Gold, strength, good companions, great missions to far-off lands, searches for lost relics ... I tried them all. Niurit Emmanuel, that was my name. Some might have known me as the Warrior with the Seven Swords. Every single sword I had was a rare and highly magical blade. One was made from the bones and scales of a thousand year old dragon, another was forged from metal from the deepest parts of the earth. Meteorite metal? Pff, that thing's overrated. It's not as good as they say it is. Just because something falls from the heavens doesn't mean that it's [i]good[/i]. Case in point, there's fallen angels.
  Wait, where was I? Oh, right. End of my life. Important topic, it is. I took a heroic lunge at the Eighteenth Demonking of the Netherreaches, hoping that I would reach him before his profane magic pierced my gut. Sadly, judging by the lack of feeling in my body, I think I lost the race. I wonder what did happen to the rest of my party. Did they finish the Demonking off? Or did they also meet a fiery, futile death?
As I thought, I floated in the darkness. It was peaceful: there was nothing I needed there. No-one to pester me, no people to save, no threats to my life (though it's already gone, so I suppose there's no point) ... Is this all? Do I have to spend all eternity in this endless void thinking to myself?
  "Nay."
  Nice timing, I thought, and turned — if there's such thing as "turning" when I don't have a body -- towards the voice. I saw a thin-looking man, with a deep hood and a deeper voice, sitting on a quaint wooden chair at a simple round table. He had a black robe on, with the aforementioned hood, and on a low stool beside him his scythe rested. And what a scythe it was! Perhaps the crowning jewel of a hypothetical collection of farming implements, it had a handle as thick as a sword's hilt and was longer than your average pike.
  The man had four strange round pie-like foods in front of him. They each had a ring of bread, and were filled with a yellowish material. One was just itself, nothing on it, and another had what looked like chopped peppers and small chunks of sausage; one had a gold ring inside of the bread, and the other was heaped with flat leafs.
  "Forsooth, for hence I was waiting for you to look aroundeth, yet thou doth not ... uh, look back!"
  "What?"
  "Don't you people talk like that?"
  "...No."
  "...Really?"
  "No."
  "I thought your age-"
  He halted mid-sentence, gave an impression of frowning, then stood up.
  Here, there's something I must mention. I used [i]impression[/i], here, because in truth, the man's face wasn't visible. It was draped in shadow, a deep shadow that prevented me from seeing his features. However, it was somehow clear that he was frowning. I can't explain why, but it's true.
  "It's a pleasure to meet you. I'm Death. I see that you're in good health, Mr ..."
  "Niurit, Niurit Emmanuel."
  He shook my hand, which was strange, because suddenly I realized I did, indeed, have hands. His grip was firm, and it told me that this wasn't a man who sat at his desk, signing papers all day. Maybe he actually used that scythe, no matter how impractical that weapon was to my eyes.
  "I was waiting for you. I expected you to die a bit sooner, though ... that natural twenty at the end sure did help you a lot."
  "Sorry?"
  "Oh, no, never mind, it's technical stuff you can't really understand. Please, sit, and have a slice of pizza with me. It's the least I can do for departed souls like yourself."
  "Pizza?" I asked.
  "Yes. It's basically a round bread with melted cheese and various condiments on top. It's really tasty, but some just aren't up to scratch."
  He waited until I seated myself on another stool that wasn't there a moment ago and suddenly was, then spoke again.
  "Look at this fine, and here I used [i]fine[/i] in a very loose way, specimen."
  He pinched some of the yellow-white cheese between two bony fingers. With a grimace (an impression of a grimace, but you know what I mean) he tugged on it. The cheese went up, and the rest of the cheese that wasn't between his phalanges went up with it. Soon, what was between his fingers said its partings and snaps off. The newly holed mass sullenly collapsed to its original position, now imprinted with cracks like drought-parched land.
  "See?" he said. I didn't see what I was supposed to see.
  "I don't see what I'm supposed to see."
  "Well, isn't it obvious? This is fake cheese. It's an utterly morbid imitation of the real stuff, and in fact it's called imitation cheese. It's made from oil and white powder, of all things, and it just doesn't have the oomph of what it wants to live up to."
  "Uh-huh." I politely nodded. Apparently Death was into this thing, and I wasn't quite sure I was ready to irk the being who my soul's future existence depended on.
  "I mean, look at the real thing!" He swooped over to another one of those "pizza" pies, the one with lots of leaves on it. He took a slice of the pie, which was cleverly cut into eight portions, and lifted it. Strings of cheese connected the slice to the rest of the pie.
  "It goes on and on and on and on! [i]Nothing[/i] can compare to the real thing!" In fact, he was right. No matter how far he pulled the slice away, the strings just kept on becoming thinner and thinner, until abruptly a glob of cheese popped out of the pie. I idily wondered how he was doing that thing where his arm lengthened without limit.
  "Those who use imitation cheese in pizza should all burn in hell! Not that there is one! But I sure wish there was! In lieu of hell, they should first be dipped in the oil they use to make their pizza ... "
He went on about the punishments he would inflict upon those who dared to create fake cheese. They were many and varied, and included (but were not limited to) dipping in hot oil, being force-fed cheese until they died, reviving them, doing the same thing again, suffocating them in cheese, forcing cheese into some rather uncomfortable orfices, hitting them over and over with cheese, tying them to a pole and dangling food just out of their reach, and making them sniff burnt cheese. I decided I had enough of the various cheese-related punishments, and ventured,
  "Mr. Death?"
  "... and let them [i]fornica-[/i] ohwaitwhat? Sorry, I went off on a tangent there... Hrm, I suppose you want to know where to go for your post-mortem life? Just go to the line over there -" he pointed, and there a line did appear, with people of all shapes and sizes, wearing clothes I've never seen, with some in familiar tunics and armor, "- take these forms -" and a small stack of thin parchment weighted my hand, "- and file them. It's really easy, just follow all three thousand eight hundred and twelve steps. Well, I'll be off now. I'm Death number three-six-six-oh-one, and I hope I was a great help. Ring me up if you somehow get through the bureaucracy and I'll treat you to authentic pizza. Thanks and bye!"
He disappeared as if running away.
I looked at the heavy forms in my hand. I looked at the endless line, which doubled up on itself, tripled up on itself, winded back and forth, curved and hairpinned, looped and delooped, and did indecent things to my eyes, which started aching. In fact, it did rather look like one of those strands of cheese I saw just a while back. I looked at my forms again. And I realized one important fact.

He didn't give me a quill.[/spoiler]