Solus was waiting when she got home. He was waiting on the couch reading something or other in the writing that had been widely used when they were godforms; children, and human at that.

"About time. That took a lot longer than it usually does." Solus sounded much more concerned than he looked, but not very much; he hadn't even spared her a glance when she walked through the door.

"God needed to talk to me. He's frustrated because my control over the dead and who affects them has grown exponentially. He needed my permission to change some of the destinies of the nearly dead." Riyanna explained as she walked to her son's room. Arkelus was sound asleep.

"He woke looking for you. When I told him you weren't here he went directly back to sleep. If you really are leaving for the rest of time, I would suggest you make sure his habit of seeing you first in the morning be broken before you disappear. He could hurt himself sleeping that long." Solus had followed her and watched his son sleep over Riyanna's shoulder.

"I suppose..." Riyanna's statement trailed off as she felt Ryan enter the house.

"Yes Ryan?" She asked. Her voice was quiet, but she hadn't needed really to speak. Ryan would always know what her question was. It was the answers that were tricky.

"I wanted to go with you to try to figure out what this mysterious happening means."

"Did you smelled anything throughly disgusting when you saved my life?" Riyanna asked.

"Something similar to a dead corpse." Solus added.

"When we died? Nope. I remember everything going black and seeing the old Angel of Life shortly after. But while everything was black, so was it silent and without any feeling. All of my senses were gone. Why do you ask?"

"Little Boy! Little Boy! Where are you, Little Boy?" Came the voice from the darkness. It sounded like a girl.

"Arkelus! Little Boy! Why are you hiding from me? You know I will find you!" The voice changed from that of a nice little girl to that of the stinky old man that had visited him the day before.

"Go away! Go away! Leave me be!" Arkelus shouted silently into the air, but as always it did no good.

"Arkelus! Arkelus! Arkelus!" The terrifying voice began to fade and then all he could hear was the sound of his mother calling franticly.

He belatedly noticed that he had been dreaming a bad dream.

"Arkelus, sweety, what's happened?" Riyanna's accent had deepened with her terror. She had heard his soundless cry of terror while they had been talking to Shay, the goddess of love, who knew nothing that was of any conscequence. She had offered no explainations but had left to save her son. Even worse, she could smell the stench of death even thicker, and it even hung off of her son's skin, as if it had touched him.

"I smell it." Solus commented. "It's faint, but I can smell it."

"Who or whatever it was has been here. By the Gods, Solus, it touched Arkelus, he smells of it." Riyanna was at a loss. Loss brought painc. Painc lead her to unadultrated rage. A rage so great she thought her body would be destroyed by the force of it.

"So what are our options?" Solus asked, mostly to calm her. If given a question to focus on, she usually was able to focus.

"I know that I smelled that same smell when I died. I know that I seem to be the only one who can track it, for whatever reason."

"I can smell it, but not as stronglyt as you. That can be a large plus." Solus added.

"We need to find out if anyone else knows the smell." Riyanna folded her arms under her breasts, thinking.

"Raina." Solus whispered.

"Chaos? How do you know?" Riyanna asked.

"Just before she died, if you remember she said it seemed that the world was covered in the corpses of the newly dead. Maybe she was talking about the smell."

"It's a long shot, but it's a start." Riyanna and Solus left to find their closest only friend: Raina, also know as Chaos.