Sorry people, it's been a while. I explained myself in the reviews.

Here's a fat juicy chapter as a token of my apologies. Bye me loves!

Black covers Death's conscience as he is set in a nearly catatonic state from the King's spell. His head pounding so hard, he can feel vital veins about his skull shy of bursting under his skin. His ears are almost deaf with a heavy ringing screeching into his eardrums. He feels horrible, as if a grenade exploded point blank at the back of his cranium. He wants to bring his hands to his temples but his body has no response. Instead, the slits in his eyes slightly open to someone politely calling out his name.

"Pardon me, Mr. Reaper?" An old rasped voice carrying strange politeness in his tone, "I am afraid that the time of slumbering is over." He coos at him as if he is speaking to an angelic two year old. Death says nothing, his eyes creak shut as he recedes from reality. Only then does the old creatures voice shift for the worst. "Wake up you slothful oaf!" A change in the wind brushes across his bone mask from the raise of a hand. On instinct, he grabs the daring claws.

"Don't." The horseman growls, but it sounds more like a yawn if anything. His attacker scoffs at him, his withering and raspy guffaw more fearsome than the poor intimidation attempt. Death's eyes groggily creek open and resharpen and the ring's volume lowers tenuously. Gaining a slight focus on the black claws outstretching on a gray, wrinkly hand, a metal mask reflecting unwanted candlelight in his amber corneas. Very small, milky green eyes surrounded by eerie black shadows cast from a noire black and blooming red hood. It flourishes over the ruptured skin on his face as he floated in midair. His body parallel to the ground as if he is floating in water rather than flying.

"Welcome to the land of the living, horseman," The broken skin siding his mask wrinkle upward, "Or in this instance, The Land of the Dead." His laugh is dry and so proud to make such a perfect pun on the spot. Death's stoic look disagrees and snuffs out the ghost's felicity.

"I don't have time to squander with your dry humor." Death grumbles softly. Noticing the King of the Dead sitting in his Throne alert and staring at him strangely, "Where is the girl?"

"Has my spell brought you to madness, Horseman?" The King inquires jokingly, in contrast to the pain he still feels from the burn. Death looks back at the smug aberration who phases his hand out of his grasp. His pale hand only clenching greenish black smoke the creature's appendage left behind.

"Act as if I cease to exist." His eyes crinkle as his grin perks again.

The rider returns to the King as he continues, taking the order to ignore the apparently invisible shade looming west of him.

"I haven't uttered a word." The ruler defends brightly with his bony fingers to his ribcage, then reach out slightly to the throne room's doors. "I do not wish to spoil the beautiful sound of my bespoken outside." The ringing stops and Genevieve's screaming sharpens. Death recollected his thoughts in an instant and recalls the bits and pieces of what occurred. "Have you ever heeded more splendid wonders?"

Death snaps at him, attempting climb back onto his knees, "I fear that we have different tastes on the subject you foul-!" He comes crashing down out of weakness. Atrocious, blood drenched screams mix with the laughs of the dead men creating them. It brings him to climb back up again only to fail once more, amusing the King who partakes in the laughter with his subjects outside. He wishes desperately to get back on his feet and rip the King to pieces, to tear whatever parts of him that dared to graze Genevieve's skin. But there is no time, and the hooded illusion reminds him of that.

"I surely hope you plan on protecting your prize, Reaper." The bleak olden ghost's holds his neck over the charcoal haired nephilim's shoulder, levitating too close for comfort.

"Why have you come to me, specter?" Death asks weakly under the laughs and screams.

"Fear not, I have not come in bad tastes."

"I don't fear." Death growls.

The black claws rest on his tattooed shoulder. Black veins flourish about his skin like quickly growing weeds. "Fearless or not, I only wish to aid you." Death desires to break his face in with his armored fists and then ask of his motives, but he feels his power greatly returning. He allows him to continue with his blackening spell.

"Or are you going to remain here like a useless prick and live up to your given slothful name?"

The thirty foot doors explode ajar in an explosion of purple smoke and death. Crushing the two guards on both sides like flyswatters on two meager flies. Their bones crushing to pieces, but they still remain conscious so they may linger in their pain.

"What in the nine hells!?" A deceased patron amongst the angry mob exclaims. The group's eyes part their attention from their captor and up to the skyline of plum fog. The line closing into their position like a heat seeking missile. A purple hooded phantom and his scythe crash to the ground, creating a mushroom explosion of smoke that momentarily blinds the group. Barely having time to look at the true form of the Grim Reaper himself.

Bone, amulets, impaled skulls, tattered shrouds and armor are all that clothe Death's winged dark figure. His entire being is bare of any muscle or skin. His two larger skinless hands bear a razor sharp scythe twice his size covered with skulls that glow disturbingly green at the eyes. His face is entirely shrouded with a near destroyed hood that looks to have seen eons of combat. His eyes invisible underneath the shroud, but still hold a deathly stare at the barbarous victims before him.

"Finally!" A younger of the opponents pushes through his brethren, running to the towering slayer of kin.

"A time to test our skill on the Grim Reaper himself!" Another joins. They charge into battle with swords unsheathed and upright towards their combatant. Whom, quite easily, swipes harvester at them once, twisting his body in one long stride. The weapon taking their torsos from the rest of their bodies to the walls fifteen yards away. Their bones shattering under the impact.

The rest of the ghouls let go of their captor who crumbles to the floor and she holds her now even paler face in her hands. The undead circle about Death, assuming a strategic standing with their eyes never leaving the center.

His eyes scan about the ellipse of ghouls, catching a glance at the girl huddling alone underneath the crumbling balcony. Time slows as he takes in every bruise, cut and tear done unto her body when he fell unconscious. Her shaking wrists are purple with the finger shaped bruises with red streams flowing sulkily over them. Her once pure white jacket now tattered and layered red down her bare chest, coating the amulet in fresh droplets from the raw flesh on her throat. The streams of red conjoining as they trail down to a puddle gradually collecting about her kneeling legs. Her hands are layered with fluid due to sufficing them as deficient dams to slow the everflowing blood from her ruptured eye. The conserves of her afterlife dwindling making her skin sickly pale. Her unharmed, sharply tensing eye finally opens and sparks eye contact with the night blue hood peering at her intently. She shrills softly and presses her hands into her face once again, pushing her body into the stone wall as if she'd disappear into it if she pressed hard enough.

She looks so broken, so lost and Death never knew anything such as this could induce so much fury in him. Being even more so when he suddenly feels a small twinge of a blade at his back. Flickering his focus back into the battle at hand. Focusing on the ghouls that may feel the wrath of his anger.

His first victim is the ghoul whom thought it wise to drive a blade into the Grim Reaper's back. A skeleton hand snatches the head of the merc and dunks him into the deck on it's back, shattering the spine. He pulls north and bares down his scythe on a the helmet of a large ghoul who's body crushes down to a pile of pulverized guts underneath the blade, a small wave of bone dust flows from the impact. He swings to his left, taking one by his neck and another by the legs with a loud crack of the old steel armor and bone. He slices and breaks through the final few remaining bodies in less than five swings, crippling all until only one remains standing. After cracking the second to last's skull in his corpse fingers he turns to the entrance of the Eternal Throne as if to admire the carnage.

The courtyard's air is thick with yellowed bone dust and the wails of anguish. The moans rising from the broken jaws of the undead spread across the splintered planks and leaning on the cracked stone. Their bones broken and once vital organs gutted and splaying along the ground so they are unable to talk let alone stand. All that they may do is remain alive so they may linger in their torture. For Death would not give them their demise this day. He believes that they are not deemed worthy of such graces.

Draven is all that remains in the center of the battleground. His daggers bare at his wrapped palms and his skull grin visible from the few yards distance from the winged, heavier looking form.

"Death, I did not intend for it to come to this, but you must understand." He reasons but there is no answer from the cloak floating to the final corpse, the grip in Harvester tightening farther. The blade master assumes an agile warrior's stance with his legs apart and daggers pointing forward, "That dirty little vagrant deserved what was coming to her. I gave her the mark upon her eye to remind her of that!"

With the looming Grim Reaper a mere few feet away, Draven's voice calms as he recollects himself. "I am no coward, horseman. I do not back away from a duel. So you may enact upon your anger in battle if you so choose." The daggers swing across the air in a swift flourish as his valiance meant nothing to the hooded skeleton he swings at.

The knife wielding wrist is caught in the clawed grasp tight enough for the bones in Draven's joints to bend and rub together. The brittle structures finally snap, causing the dagger to release and the dead swordsman to let out an aggrieving roar. He swings his other dagger at greater combatant, but Harvester's hard steel backing strikes across his head before the blade could grow near. He hits the ground hard on his side. Before he could think of resuming his stance, The two handed sword driven into his shoulder blade is ripped roughly from the slit in with one heavy jerk that pulled him slightly off the floorboards. There is the littlest flicker of relief as Draven roughly lands on his back with arms spread, having been unable to do so in centuries.

The death bringer pins the hooded deceased with the hand that recently snapped his wrist to pieces. He raises the wide edge of his scythe and presses in the metal blades protruding from Draven's arm, forcing it into the wood. Widening his old wounds and breaking his arm like a slowly splitting branch. The hooded corpse begins swearing curses from old that echo about the ship. "End it already you coward!" He snarls, the scythe stomps on his other arm, it bursts dryly under the pressure. Draven shouts to the silver sky, "Do not keep me from my bestowment of a warrior's demise!" His torso convulses violently as he attempts to release his shattered arms from the old broken metal bounding them to the floor to no avail. Leaving Draven to lie there as another example of his wrath among his fractured and conscious brethren scattered across the deck. For his actions, he would receive the same damnation as his brothers in arms, as enemy or tutor. Besides, Death believes he is still of some use for he still has more skills and fighting moves to learn.

The being in Reaper Form can feel his power receding, his body beginning to resume it's former state of weakness and haziness plasters his senses. The resonating smoke begins to overflow about his body which shrank in size.

"This cannot be over yet..." He contemplates, "I still have one more."

Using the last of his energy, his large, webbed skeleton wings fully spread above him and he shoots himself across the sky to the other end of the deck in one swift burst. A line of plum smoke dividing the foggy air to the North back through the double doors where the it had originated.

The great barriers explode open with an overflow of air flooding into the throne room. The sudden puff of fumes hitting the King in a wave though only his beard phases along with flakes of ruptured and/or burnt skin that break off and swim with the spiraling current of wind. The King opens his eyes and his green resonance fades back over him as his head stiffly rises from slumber. He scoffs darkly at the creature shrinking in size underneath the dying shroud of gas.

"I have never caught you to be one for entrances, Horseman." He grins with lids low, "But I fear that you have used the rest of your quality on that little trick, have you not?"

He is right, the fast travel had drained what was left in the Reaper's form. The smoke thins significantly, revealing Death making no other sound other than metal grinding against stone echoing loudly about the room. The smoke relinquishes Draven's sword from it's hold. The blunt edge grinds achingly along the stone path as Death's average form drags strangely from the cloud. "I shall take your silence as a concurrence." Still, there is no answer, not even a snarky remark from the white mask walking to him straight faced with harvester remaining at their holsters. Only wielding the two daggers in one hand and Draven's two handed sword in the other. The confident king feels it suitable to taunt the weaker looking figure drawing closer. "I fear that my fainter subjects may have overestimated you," With the withering Grim Reaper a mere few feet away, the Dead King raises a dominant glowing hand with the aforesaid fiery hue of his eyes. "You had only taken on a mere few of them and you're already weak at the-"

The hand at the verge of casting a deadly spell is stabbed through cleanly with a dagger plucked from Draven's body earlier. As it's pinned to the side of the throne, the lord growls at the pain and hurls his other hand, but a granitelike fist clocks him in the unscorched side of his jaw before the enchantment could capture a glow. As he is stunned, Death takes the small sword stabbed into his clothes when in Reaper Form. Quickly pinning the other royal hand at the edge of the armrest so deeply, that the blade reappears underneath it. "Do what you must, bastard stableman!" He booms sending broken, melted teeth airborne into Death' frightening yet unmoving features, "But know this!" His eyes glowing brightly, "I shall condemn you before you could even think of killing me!"

"No... Not kill." Death mutters disturbingly low. Strange green and black smoke smolder about the reaper's aura. Seeing this, the King's baring teeth recede back to behind his lips as a recalled grin returns.

"Whatever your intentions, they will mean nothing." The king mood shifting rather nonchalant. His head slightly upward as his eyes remain locked tight to the horseman's tensing eyes. "You will not be about long enough to conjure such attempts."

The portal to the City of the Dead is at the later stages of taking force. The portal itself still stays dormant, but at the verge of it's opening growing nearer with each minute. Death has no time to teach any grave lessons as planned. He drops the sword and it clanks loud onto the concrete, Death hastily turns his back to the throne. He wishes to make his leave so that he may take the girl from a fate he feels may be worse than himself.

Though, the king makes one grim mistake, one that will doom him for the rest of his days. That will condemn him to fate equal to his subjects who reside in his courtyard.

He underestimates the Slayer of Kin.

"But before you leave, I must thank you for gifting me your plaything, but I must confess that I did not achieve a full observation of her." Death slows his pace, rationing his next moves with his depleting time limit. The crowned leader growing even more smug and leaves a grave remark in his final words. "I impatiently await her return for me to forge on such... Sensing."

With one swift flourish of movements, Death shoves off any sort of regret or reason as he turns back sprinting, recollecting the sword and pulls back the stock behind the side of his head. Recalling the young woman nearly shredded to mere shambles by a dead man whom he would have called an ally. Death promises himself that he would never allow anything such as this to happen to that woman ever again. And drives in the blade to close the deal.

The laughing stops. The sword stands flat at Death's eye level as The Lord of Bones chokes painfully. His arms palpitate furiously as his wrists attempt to release themselves from the old metal bounding him to his eternal throne. Wishing to remove the sword that has been taken from his subject's back and set painfully into another vital part of his body.

"No." He growls at the king's feeble attempts at freedom, putting a step to the clawed foot of the throne to bring himself to the leader's jaw. Cranked open by the blade deeply penetrating his throat as well as the large stone chair rest behind him. If the broadsword were any thicker, his jaw will certainly snap off from the pressure. Death is careful not to contact his spine or puncture his brain stabbing the sword longways so the cutlasses shall dig between his missing canine and smelted lateral incisor snugly. A palm grips the end the sword invading the king's mouth. Effortlessly submerging it deeper underground a few inches. The king attempts a growl with his tongue cut in half as he chokes on the metal.

"The blade stays."

Death's final words linger even with the tired, agitated tone as he retreats. Leaving the undead tyrant unable to cast a spell onto the reaper bursting through the doors, he lacks focus from the grievance in his face to function. Being forced to remain as a model of equality to his fallen brethren littered about his court. To feel the same tortures that Death will not grant them for today and possibly eons to come.

A thick yellowed ribbon of bandages is undone below the balcony. At the end of the trail of old wraps is Genevieve halfway through patching the wounds about her skin. There is a significant amount of bandaging over her neck and popped eye. The blood already seeping through the loosely tethered wrapping. She is lucky enough to have time to retrieve the bag that had been taken from her. To look inside quickly and pull out the first item that looked relative to a glowing green and heart shaped with a skull capped bottle. Instead, she had retrieved the wraps and hastily tended her wounds, trying to keep her eyes off the turmoil before her. Her mind had tried it's hardest to tune out the bloodcurdling screams and cracks of bone with each shaky wraparound her eye. Attempting desperately to keep from witnessing the slaughter that may seem to have certainly been in her honor and barely keeps herself from crying harder at the thought.

She isn't flattered, her horror has engulfed any remnant of the soft feeling. To know the raw, deadly power of the Grim Reaper first hand and how quickly and acutely said power can be dispersed. And that look of fear is visible as the Reaper drops onto his feet from the jump from the balcony, the plank flooring crushes to jagged shambles at the solid impact.

Not sticking the landing, the pale being collapses to the ground on all fours. The stained red head shoves her fear to the back of thoughts to worry about later. She throws the army satchel over her shoulder and stammers to back to her feet. Even in a daze form pain and the loss of blood, she manages limping to the horseman only a few paces away.

"You don't look too good." She observes queasily, "Whats that green stuff floating around you?"

"Don't fuss over it, we're leaving." Death mumbles slowly, "That is all that should matter." Finally gaining a bit of strength, his head raises for his hooded tangerine eyes to glance at the woman he barely saved inches from the nose of his mask.

"Genevieve..." He mutters with utmost apologies as the neon green fog growing thicker about the ground. Seeing her greasy, tangled mane tied down at the top from the thick bandages about her head with a large rose of blood solidifying where her right eye should be. Her less harmed eye isn't swollen, but it's purple with a shiner just below her bottom eyelashes. Her lower lip is puffy and dug in with the king's teeth marks and cheeks skuffed with a cut on her left where Draven had silenced her. The cut's fluid mixing with her constant flowing tears for the rider she conflictingly fears and worries for at the same time.

"I'm... I'm so sorry..." He tries to put a hand to her cut cheek, but is so weak it causes him to collapse under himself from the lack of support and thuds to his side, his head landing on her right thigh on the soft muscle behind her knee. It would have startled Genevieve if she hadn't lost her motor skills.

She obliges only because she simply doesn't know what else to do, she's pinned to the ground and could not tend to his wounds if he had any. All she can do put her small hand to the now colder skin of his forehead as he looks up to her face with his head resting comfortably on her lap. She pushes his disheveled long hair back reassuringly.

"It's alright. Really." She smiles softly without a shake in her voice contrary to the tears flowing from her bruised, pink eye. "I'm still here, aren't I?" She puts her lips to the bare skin above his mask. She retreats only slightly to look at those melancholy, reddish golden eyes.

"Just rest, 'kay big guy?"

Death stays silently for a moment. Then his eyes close and face softly presses against her stomach. The smoke grows to a fog engulfs the light about them as they sink into the portal below. A portal growing from underneath pulls them down into the abyss of black. Leaving only small dark lines of green that dissipate quickly into the dust in the domain's stailened air as if they vanish from existence.