Hiya!

Disclaimer: Danny Phantom, Danny Fenton, Samantha Manson (Ha, I can say her name without anything happening to me! 'THUNK!' OW! What was that? 'Picks up large combat boot.' Now where did that come from?), Tucker Foley and all related characters do not belong to me, they belong to the lucky Butch Hartman.

Review notes are at the end.

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The Soul Sepulcher.

-By Sholay

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Chapter 2—The Beast

It was a beast, unlike any he'd seen before. Huge and black and formed from countless writhing tendrils of darkness, the thing was so tall it had to bend its head to not hit the ceiling. A large tail—thick as Danny was tall and five times as long—swished back and forth lazily, leaving trails of black smoke in its wake. Its body was taut, the dark masses making up the haunches trembling with the eagerness to pounce.

It was facing away from Danny—leering down at two people, a man and a woman, whose terrified forms barely stood any higher than the creature's paw—but Danny could still see some of its face, and what he saw frightened him. Its maw was gaping and huge, filled with teeth larger than Danny's head and filed down to jagged, broken points. Its ears were tucked back with fury and a low dangerous growl rumbled from somewhere deep in its throat, reverberating straight through Danny's bones.

But the worst part was the thing's eyes. A pale, sickly yellow, the two orbs gleamed with unholy light from within the darkness. Danny had a feeling they would look a thousand times worse trained on him.

The beast made the Fright Night look like a child's toy. As he gazed upon the behemoth, for a moment fear consumed Danny utterly and he was frozen.

Danny's hesitation nearly cost the man and woman their lives, but when the beast moved one massive paw closer to the couple—its nails scraping painfully on the marble floor, its forepaw easily tossing aside a tall granite statue like confetti—Danny was thrown into action.

"Stop!" he yelled, running forward. "STOP!" When the beast didn't respond, and moved again as though to step forward, Danny stepped forwards and put even more authority into his voice.

"STOP!"

Time stopped. Nothing moved and Danny stopped breathing, he was pretty sure even his heart had stopped for a moment.

Then, slowly, the darkness within the beast shifted and began to swirl in the opposite direction. It turned, nails dragging, until finally it was facing Danny.

Trying unsuccessfully to swallow his dread, the fourteen year old boy looked up. And as he did, his eyes were caught in the jaundiced irises of the beast. Danny choked.

He had been right. It was worse, so much worse, to be staring into the eyes of the beast.

He was drowning. In the beast's eyes he could see death: his mother's, father's, sister's, all slaughtered brutally by a ghost he failed to destroy. He could see Valerie, lying broken, dying by his own vengeance. And he could see Tucker and Sam, their eyes still open, but clouded and no longer shining, staring unseeingly. He stood above them… laughing.

'No, I would never…'

'But you could…'

And Danny saw himself, locked in a strange room. The hatred, self-hatred, was all consuming. There were no more options left, there was no more chance for redemption. Everything was gone. Lost. Something sharp was in his hands, poised, ready… his breathing got harder, and his body seemed to be getting farther away…

'No!' and with an amazing exertion of will power, Danny tore his gaze away from the beast's. He stumbled, but then his eyes flew up glaring scintillating green. With a flash he had turned ghost.

Immediately all hold the beast had over him fell away.

'That thing was trying to kill me!' Danny thoughts were filled with incredulous rage. Sure, most of the ghosts he fought on a daily basis were trying to destroy what life he had left in his unnatural, half-ghost existence. Hell, even his parents had come close one or two times. But what this creature had done… It felt violating and intrusive, like it had shamelessly invaded him and left behind something slimy. 'No way I'm gonna let it get away with that' and he floated upward until he was eye level with the beast, which greatly resembled a wild dog or wolf, now that he looked closer.

Those eyes, those disgusting yellow eyes—eerie yes, but not nearly as unsettling as before—regarded him closely. And Danny, with the distant ambivalence he used to regard all serious battles, identified the look as muted surprise. The teen clenched his gloved hands into fists, seconds away from lighting them with ghostly fire.

The couple, he noticed briefly, was being oddly unresponsive. Other than the initial scream—which Danny assumed had come from the woman—they hadn't moved or said anything at all. 'Must be in shock' he reasoned. He just hoped they hadn't seen him go ghost.

'Young Ghost, who are you to dare command the Hounds of Legion?'

The deep voice echoed and reechoed painfully in Danny's head, jarring his teeth and making his ears ring even though the dog's mouth hadn't moved. 'It, that Hound, must be able to speak telepathically.' The word Legion sounded vaguely familiar to Danny, but he didn't have the time to place it. He ignored the fearsome maw and violating eyes and let himself fall completely into his familiar battle numb state of mind.

He leaned back, a familiar, cocky grin growing on his face.

"The name's Phantom. Danny Phantom." He intoned cheekily; he'd always wanted to say that.

A low rumbling and harsh wind blew through the room, nearly throwing Danny out of the air. Humor fled as Danny tired desperately to right himself mid-air. Cruel, high-pitched cackling came from somewhere near his ear. The wind intensified sharply. Danny had no time to regain control of his flight. He was swept up and tossed bodily into a wall. An invisible force pinned him there, ankles held together tightly and arms outstretched to both sides of him to the point of near pain. A mock crucification.

"It is he," a voice whispered in his ear and Danny looked around furiously to identify his attacker. It was not the same voice he'd heard echoing in his head, but the Hound's mouth still hadn't moved. And the Asian couple he'd temporarily saved were standing motionlessly in the corner.

Deciding it was time to start fighting back, Danny's eyebrows drew downward as he powered up a ecto-blast in his hand. With a cry, he let the phosphorescent green energy fly toward the Hound. The beast didn't even twitch as Danny's blast neared him. Then, to Danny's shock, the ecto-blast seemed to hit a barrier, fizzling out of existence before it could even touch the Hound.

"He is the One." The vile voice continued and Danny suppressed a shudder as hot breath blew onto his cheek. With his wrists and ankles pinned to the wall, the only part of his body that he could move was his head and he craned his neck as far away from that voice as he could. He hated feeling helpless.

Drawing on pure determination, Danny bared his teeth and yelled back.

"Hey windbag!" he called. "Try fighting me face to face, or are you just a lotta hot air, getting your overgrown mutt to fight for you?" The banter sounded lame even to his ears, but it was the best the halfa could come up with on such short notice. Nonetheless, both the voice in the wind and the Hound seemed to completely ignore his words.

"He is the one who would mimic our kind," the high voice whistled in the air, unaffected by Danny's taunts. "He is but a pantomimic thief, a poor copy of our glorious kind. He is the Halfa."

A loud growl and a few bone jarring thumps found Danny face to maw with the Hound as it walked slowly forward, then leaned in. It sniffed him. Disgusted, Danny tried another ecto-beam, with the same result as before. He wriggled then, going intangible, but the strange invisible bonds held and Danny remained a wall ornament.

The beast lowered its head pinning Danny once more with those strange eyes—gleaming and yet somehow dusky all at the same time. Danny grit his teeth as a peculiar sensation overcame him. He'd never felt anything like this before. It felt like something inside of him, something that lay beneath his skin, that made him him, was pulling away and shifting. The closest he could come to describing the feeling would have been the odd half-alive, half-dead moment he went through right at the middle of his transformation.

Suddenly, that inner part, his being, gave a sharp tug outward. Danny bit his tongue cutting off a yelp.

'What…?'

It happened again, this time longer, and harder. Something was being ripped right out from inside him, through his skin, his eyes, his mouth and hair and it hurt.

A whimper was torn from Danny's lips, unwilling.

Suddenly it stopped, and Danny, exhausted, slumped within his invisible binds.

'The thief has a strong soul.' The Hound mused in its deep, telepathic voice. 'I shall devour him. Legion will enjoy feasting on such a soul. His strength will become the strength of Legion.'

Danny's eyes shot open in panic and he struggled wildly even as the beast's mouth opened, teeth shining within the infinite darkness of the mouth with promises of a painful death.

'No, no, get away…' Danny couldn't even gather the presence of mind to shout these words as he struggled to free himself: ecto-beams, ice, shields; intangibility and invisibility. But nothing worked, his attacks faded out of existence seconds after leaving his fingertips and the bonds held through intangibility. Finally Danny opened his own mouth and put everything he had into his ghostly wail.

Nothing happened. Danny felt a hand of ice close around his heart as his voice completely failed him.

Then the head loomed nearer and Danny saw within the Hound's mouth thousands of tortured souls, screaming and calling to him, beckoning him down into the depths of hell. Sword-like teeth descended like the reaper's scythe slowly, closer and closer toward his head. A long line of drool, viscous and slimy dripped down from one of the fangs, directly onto Danny's right arm.

He screamed.

The saliva burned. It felt like his arm was being sawed off, hacked at with careless abandon and dipped in acid.

Danny would have described it as thrusting his arm into hellfire.

"Don't try to struggle." The wind whispered sweetly in his ear as Danny tried to clench his teeth around the pain, muffling his yells. "You should be honoured. The Legion has deemed you a worthy addition to their strength."

With sudden, terrifying, clarity, Danny knew where he'd heard that word before. Legion. Legion! That was the name of the devil's own army of demons.

And he was about to be added to that number.

'No,' his mind refused.

"…No…" he whispered, voice raw. "Stop…"

Another drop fell, dangerously close to his cheek, and Danny flinched. Just the proximity of the saliva made his skin blister and burn.

"What did you say?" The wind crooned, sickeningly affectionate.

In a sudden, unexpected flurry, Danny's conviction returned to him.

"I said no." And his head shot up. "STOP!"

White light blinded him and Danny squeezed his eyes shut. Screams echoed in his head, then nothing. Danny tried to move, tried to open his eyes, but he couldn't feel anything, couldn't see anything.

He panicked.

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To Be Continued…

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Now for you reviewers!

mutantlover09: Hiya! Thanks for reviewing! I'm glad you liked the summary; I have a lot of interesting thing planned for this story, so we'll have to se how it goes. Oh and I hope you liked the chapter!

Moonstar5569: Hey, I tend to spend a lot of time writing details (which can work both for and against me... especially when readers get impatient with my pace XD). But I'm glad you liked it, and I hope you liked this chapter too! Thanks for the review!

Kyelor: HI! Yay, you're still reading this! Ahh, so yeah, I know it's not quite as good as Sooryavansham (rubs back of head sheepishly). Would you believe that after all the involved thinking and plot detailing I did for Sooryavansham, I just wanted to write something short and spontaneous? It's true that Danny's a little out of character, granted, he's had a pretty bad week XD, and he's a pretty emotional guy, so he tends to do stuff he doesn't mean to when he's angry... But I guess I'm so used to writing Kai that it's transferring over! I'll try to be better with that... Oh! And I fixed the mistakes XP, I can't believe I did that! So... was the Hound detailed ok? (I added a description of the room too, if you want to check :D)

Adio