Well, here is the first chapter and it's a lot longer than the prologue. I had so much fun writing this one. Hope you all like it. Not much else to say really.

Oh yeah, forgot the disclaimer so please don't sue me! I don't own anything'! Nothin'! Not a sausage! Mmmm sausages! Yes, well, ahem. On with the story.

Thankies to TotallyRiddickObsessed and FitMama for your reviews! This will indeed, in theory, be Kyra/Riddick eventually but that may be a helluva way off yet…sorry. All I can say about who he meets in the Underverse is that they're from his past…and Kyra's too.

Righteo, Happy Reading!

Gem

xxx

Chapter 1: The Necromonger Way.

The vast assembly of armoured warriors knelt in a single, fluid motion, drawing Riddick's stinging eyes open from behind his hand. Only then did he realise the implications of what had happened. After seeing the life slip out of Kyra's pale, quivering body his legs had become unable to support him and he had stumbled backwards to sit down hard on the nearest thing that would support his weight. That just happened to be the Lord Marshal's throne. So, not only had he killed the Necromonger Regent, but he had willingly, if unknowingly, placed himself on that throne, inadvertently claiming it as his own.

"You keep what you kill…" he muttered to himself as he glanced down and the sight of Kyra's limp form, draped down the throne's steps, assaulted his vision. His silvery eyes stung again more ferociously than before and Riddick snorted. It was a feeble attempt at laughter and he knew it all too well, but if he didn't laugh, other emotions would come boiling to the surface and pour forth from his shined eyes like glittering, liquid diamonds and he would not permit himself to show such weakness. Not even now that she was dead. Kyra. Kyra who had always been with him as she had told him, lying limp in his arms as her life seeped out of her body. She was always with him, never against him as the rest of the Multiverse seemed to be. Kyra was the only one who had known him, and not from information that he had told her or hearsay that she had gleaned from the news and prison reports. All she had to do was take one look at him, deep in his eyes, and it was as if she had read his soul like a book.

She had always known when he had been planning something that bordered on the impossible. She had always been his voice of reason, his conscience, even after he'd left her with the Holy Man. When he stood poised above his victim, waiting for the right moment to strike, it was always her voice that he heard in his mind, telling him to think twice, to consider what it was that he was about to do. It was her voice that was the only thing that had ever soothed the beast that lurked beneath his deceptively controlled surface. She had never sought to control it or kill it off like many of the Slam psychologists had. She had accepted it, and in turn, the beast had accepted her. The beast had loved her for that simple fact that she had cared about it. She had cared about him, Richard B. Riddick, serial killer, convict, murderer. She had cared about all of him…unconditionally.

Footsteps, gentle and quiet against the smooth marble floor brought Riddick from his inner turmoil and his eyes, which had hadn't realised that he had closed, snapped open again to take in the thin, pale man before him. He was little more than a boy actually. Seventeen, eighteen at the most, his large blue eyes trained purposefully upon the body of Kyra, who lay so still that it made Riddick's heart clench painfully. He half expected her to spring to her feet at any second and shoot her smart-assed mouth off about how he was a stupid shit-head for letting her die. The blond haired boy stooped by her side, long fingers brushing her throat tenderly as he sought out any signs of a pulse.

"Don't you fucking dare touch her!" Riddick growled out, his hand falling from where it had screened his face off from prying eyes. His fists clenched and he sat forwards, ready to spring to his feet and kill the boy with his bare hands if he had to. No one touched Kyra. Not a fucking Necro, tainting her with his filthy, grabbing, prying fingers. The beast surged forwards from within him, pushing, clawing from inside his chest, hammering against his ribcage alongside his thundering heart. The beast wanted to break every single one of the boy's slender fingers, wanted to bite them off and spit them out on the floor so that the asshole could see his own bloody digits twitching before his feet. Better yet, the beast howled to force them down the boy's stupid, fucking throat because he had dared to touch her.

"I said don't you fucking dare touch her!" he repeated, his voice rising in volume until it roared around the vaulted throne room, resounding from ceiling to floor and back again like the pounding of a war drum.

The boy froze, fear turning his blue eyes to ice as he glanced up at Riddick.

"But-but-m-m-my Lord!" he stuttered, withdrawing his hand as if he had been scalded. "I-I-I-it is the N-necromonger way!"

Riddick felt the red haze slowly start to descend upon him. He felt the restraints that he placed upon his inner demon starting to give, the links in the chain beginning to creak and pull apart as it clamoured to be released. And he felt his own desire to keep the thing locked away beginning to wane. He wanted to kill them all. The whole fucking lot of them! Every single last fucking one as slowly and painfully as he could.

"Fuck the Necromonger way!" he snarled, standing from the throne, that now belonged to him, in a swift motion that made the boy dizzy and sway where he crouched. "Get away from her!"

The boy seemed torn between his fear of Riddick and a fear that ran deeper, one that had been ingrained into him for many years, possibly since he had been born into the fucked up life of a Necro. His eyes darted from Riddick's imposing form, down to Kyra's lifeless body and then to his still out stretched hand that wavered as if he was desperate to touch her again.

"It must be done, my Lord. Her body must be moved and-"

"You're not taking her body fuckin' anywhere!" Riddick's tone changed into a barely audible rumble from somewhere buried in his chest, warning the boy not to challenge him like an alpha male lion would warn another male away from his pride, like a wolf defending his territory. "You're not taking her away from me!" the words howled from his throat unbidden. He knew that he was in denial. He knew that he should quash the hope that somehow he could save her again, like he had so many time, but he simply couldn't bring himself to do it. Even with the evidence lying before his feet, draped unceremoniously down the jagged steps.

This was the very reason that he never got attached to anything, to anyone. He just could not deal with it when they were ripped away from him so unfairly…and they always were.

Everything he touched, died. Everything he cared for, was taken away. Everything he loved, left him. That was what he had come to expect. It was the norm, and though he had foolishly thought that somehow she would be different, that Kyra would be different if he kept himself away from her and loved her from afar, he had been proven wrong…again, and the outcome was more than he could bare.

"My Lord, you don't understand." the boy mumbled again, cowering slightly as Riddick swung his luminous gaze, bright with fury and pain, to focus upon him again. "In order for her soul to reach the Underverse her body must be properly cared for. If the correct rituals are not performed her spirit will be trapped forever in the Threshold."

Riddick snorted, swaggering slightly as he descended the steps one-by-one. Then he laughed, loud and long as if he was blind drunk, though no amusement could be found in the sound.

"The Underverse? Spirits? Souls?" he laughed again, throwing his head back and barking towards the ceiling. "That's a crock of shit!" he sneered and the boy flinched as if Riddick's blasphemous words would damn them all to hell. "Hate to break it to you, kid, but there ain't no Underverse. There ain't no place that you go after you die where you can live in peace and bliss for eternity." he chuckled and rubbed a hand across his blood smeared jaw, still tender from his battle with the Lord Marshal. "You die kid, and that's fuckin' it. No bright lights, no redemption, no saving grace. Nothin'. You just end up as fuckin' worm bait."

The boy remained silent for an extended heartbeat, still crouched down beside Kyra's body, until he gave a great sigh, opening his mouth to speak again. He was interrupted, however, by a high, silky voice that Riddick knew all too well. His hands clenched of their own accord, wishing that they were tightening about her neck instead of curling into fists, but he managed to restrain himself…for the moment.

"What the boy says is true, my Lord Marshal." she purred, pushing through the throng of soldiers and shooting a sultry, heavy-lidded glance at her husband before stopping before Riddick. She dipped her upper body into a low bow, her eyes remaining intent upon his, and revealling just enough of her ample cleavage to set any normal man on a lustful rampage. Riddick was not any normal man, however, and he didn't have the time nor the patience for Dame Vaako's flirtatious games.

When she realised that her actions were having no effect whatsoever, she huffed and drew herself back to her full height and set about tackling him with a different approach.

"She was very beautiful." she remarked, glancing down to where Kyra lay at Riddick's feet.

"She is." Riddick corrected with a growl.

Dark eyes flashed up to meet his silver ones, tauntingly, almost. "Was she your woman?"

Riddick felt his gullet constrict and his teeth ground together so hard that his jaw ached as he glared back at the brazen woman before him.

"No?" Dame Vaako queried with a wicked curl of her lips and an arched eyebrow. She slunk forwards, circling Kyra and studying her as a scavenger would contemplate a dead animal for food. "She was important to you though, that much is obvious for all to here to see." she swung an arm gracefully, inviting Riddick to take in the host standing and observing the spectacle, yet his glare did not stray from where it bored holes into her skull.

Dame Vaako gave tinkling laugh, clapping her slim, well manicured hands together in delight.

"Perhaps my Lord Marshal would like a new woman, yes?" she asked excitedly, entwining her fingers together so that her hands resembled a gesture of prayer and tucking them beneath her chin, elbows drawn in tightly to her sides. "What would you like, my Lord? Young? Old? Blond? Brunette? Redhead?" her dark eyes glittered coldly as Riddick still refused to respond to her. "Perhaps, my Lord would like me?"

A cry went up from where her husband stood amid the other Necromonger troops, but Dame Vaako ignored him, focused entirely upon the new Lord Marshal before her.

Riddick's lips curled up at the corners into a small smirk and Dame Vaako beamed widely, triumphantly, as he reached his hand out towards her slowly. His fingertips caressed her cheek briefly before travelling down, smoothing her dark hair back from her neck and shoulders until he reached her throat.

"You?" he queried, raising an eyebrow and suddenly his hand constricted about her neck, causing her eyes to widen in shock. Her soft, small hands clawed desperately as he cut off her air. He sneered in distaste, turning his head to the side and spitting to rid his mouth of her foulness that had seeped in as he breathed and tainted his tongue. "I'd rather fuck a dead dog!"

Despite her dire circumstances, Dame Vaako actually smiled, choking out a brief laugh until Riddick jolted her and it died on her tingling lips.

"If that is my Lord's wish, then perhaps I should take the girl's body up to your chambers?" she posed it as a question and somehow that made the remark sting even more than if she had yelled it at him.

Riddick was so shocked, so absolutely horrified by her words that he released her throat, allowing her to take a step back and away from him before his beast took over and he lashed out, cracking his hand across her face with so much force that she hit the ground and skidded several feet away from him.

"Don't you ever fucking dare talk about her that way or I swear I will cut out your fucking spine!" he growled, his voice quite and cold with controlled rage. "Now get up and get out of my fucking sight you vile whore!"

Dame Vaako shuddered where she had fallen wiping blood from her chin where is poured freely from her split lip. Never before had she tasted her own blood and her cheeks, one darkened by a thunderous bruise, flushed red from shame.

"As you wish, my Lord…" she mumbled dragging herself to her feet and scurrying away towards the large doors of the chamber. Her husband met Riddick's steely glare for a split second before he too left, following after his errant spouse with purpose in his stride.

"You!" Riddick roared, spinning on his heel to face the pale, blond haired boy who still knelt on the floor beside Kyra, the scent of fear clouding around him in a haze after what he had just witnessed. "What the fuck were you saying? About the Threshold?"

The boy stammered nervously, dropping his gaze to the floor.

"Spit it out!" Riddick thundered and the boy jolted, eyes wide like a frightened rabbit.

"Her spirit will remain there if the correct rituals are not performed, my Lord." he blurted, wincing as if he thought Riddick might strike him also.

Riddick began to pace, ideas thudding through his brain like lightening. If he could…would he be able to…?

"Do you have a surgeon on board?" his voice was less harsh as spoke again, but no less urgent.

The boy nodded his head vigorously.

"Good. Can they heal her body? Can they keep it living without her…soul?" Riddick knew that he was clutching at straws but he couldn't give a shit. If there was some sliver of hope, some remote chance that the Necro's were being truthful about the Threshold then he may just have the chance to save her that he had been hoping for.

"On life support. A machine that breathes for the patient. Most patients are only in a coma though, my Lord, not dead." he replied and Riddick's mind was made up. He had to take the chance, no matter how slim it was. No matter if disappointment and despair waited for him at the journey's conclusion.

"Then what are you all fucking waiting for? Get me to the fucking Threshold!" he bellowed and Necromangers, old and young, men and women, scrambled to their stations, following the new Lord Marshal's first order.

-ooooo-

Wow, I really enjoyed writing that chapter! Woohoo! Dame Vaako is so much fun to write. She's such a biatch! Hahaha! Please read and review! Lemme know what you think!