As you may notice, this story has been discontinued. You were forewarned.

Chapter 2

The hollow observed almost giddily as he crushed the skull of his prey.

He had become aware of the Intruder as soon as the Intruder entered the hollow's mind. The hollow's mind was shared with a few others, but one of them rarely showed up. The other was unbelievably annoying, but the hollow had no choice but to deal. No one was leaving, so might as well get used to each other.

The hollow had never had an intruder before. This provided an unparalleled opportunity to rip the entrails around a human's spinal cord. Unfortunately, more things were going on than that. Mainly, Ichigo.

Ichigo hadn't been showin' up lately, mostly because he got sealed into his human body so he could stay in the World of the Living. Che. The hollow didn't understand the appeal. It sounded rather boring to him.

So, he was a little surprised to find Ichigo in his mindscape. He was even more surprised to find him sleepin'. In his own mind. That wasn't done.

The hollow walked over to the neatly lying figure, orange hair askew every which way. His arms were lying neatly by his sides, legs straight. The hollow prowled around him, suspicious of getting too close. It could've been some twisted prank. Though Ichigo wasn't one for pranks.

A foot away, the hollow smelled it. Life. Yuck. Disgusting stuff, that was. It clung to Ichigo, hovering over him like cobwebs.

The hollow felt the Intruder begin to move.

The hollow really didn't have time to deal with Ichigo, he needed to eviscerate something. He glanced around and, yes, there he was. The old man, at the edge of his vision, was watching the scene from the height of a pole. He nodded once, and then sank into the building, not waiting for a response.

The hollow found the Intruder right where he expected him to be. Obviously. It's his mind. The Intruder himself looked like a sickly human. He probably wouldn't be fun prey. Too easy.

The hollow noticed something off about the human. An almost imperceptible gossamer thread came from his back, twisting here and there. It absolutely reeked. The whole human did.

It had to be Life; what else could it be? Nothing else he knew reeked like that. The hollow would know; a whole section of his mind had the same scent.

To others, it's the Energy of the Body, which was probably a more correct term. The hollow liked to call it Life though, 'cause you had to be living to use it. Hollows didn't mess with Life users, and Life users didn't mess with hollows. It was simple. Hollows (and any other creature of the afterlife) can't see Life users. They're like living ghosts. And Life users obviously can't see hollows (and etc.), end of story.

It was just Ichigo's luck that he had to go and break that.

Who knows? It might be fun, the hollow thought while he caved in the skull of the hapless Life user.

The hollow dropped the frail body to the ground, displeased with how little of a fight the human put up. The body started to crack apart like paper mache, tiny flecks of skin breaking off and floating in any random direction, following its own wind. The tiny flecks soon turned black and burned from the outside edges, the flame making short work of it in moments. The entire body broke apart this way. His mind's way of disposing of foreign material, the hollow supposed.

The old man came over, wiping his hands on his dark cloak from having touched the Life user's thread. "I have attempted to remove the Energy holding Ichigo captive. I am unsure of its effectiveness."

"He's still out?" the hollow said in his strange voice.

"Unfortunately. Perhaps it takes time."

The hollow scowled, though the old man wouldn't be able to see that in this form. Ichigo's such a weakling, he thought. To get caught by Life users.

(o)(0)(o)

BEFORE

Voldemort looked at the body of the prone God of Death, thinking that he expected Death to look quite different. He had underestimated redheads all those years. He thought on how different this day had become.

Earlier, he had been lounging around with a rare spot of free time.

Turning a page in his book (some ancient novella on the nature of Dark Arts, boring) he reflected on his goals. It all began with childhood, he decided. And as a child, he had always loved death. He still loved death. He loved it in the way his mother must have loved him, in the way his mother must have loved his father.

What did it mean to die? He didn't know. That's just it. He didn't know.

How Voldemort longed to know.

He could send others into her sweet embrace, coddle them in fear and agony, but it wasn't enough. It was never enough. He would never know until he went himself, something he would never let happen. What if, at the end of everything, there is nothing but the pain of nonexistence? What then?

Next to the love, there was fear, just as it should be. Until he met Death himself, he would never know.

Naturally, he would have to arrange a meeting with this Death person.

But there were more immediate concerns, one being returning wizards and witches to their proper place in the world.

The Wizarding World was a mess. Inefficient. Disorganized. Contemptible. Contaminated. The only way to fix it was to raze it to the ground and build it up anew. Judging by the almost complete lack of resistance, the wizarding world wanted this all along, even if they didn't know it. The Order of the Phoenix, the source of the last pocket of resistance, was reduced and scattered. It was only a matter of time before it all shattered like a cracked cup that couldn't take the stress.

That included Harry Potter. He-Who-Is-My-Doom. Ridiculous. How could a child who barely understood the magic he wielded defeat him? The most powerful wizard in ages? It happened before, he thought. His mood plunged into darkness with the swiftness of a sinking ship. Did hard work mean nothing anymore? What about talent? He'd never thought to see the day when a talentless whelp would defeat a skilled and practiced master.

Footsteps approaching. It was Lucius, the owner of the estate he now resided in. Voldemort was taking a break by the fire, reading his book. His enemies would probably be dumbfounded by the mundane scene that presented, but Voldemort would be fast to contradict them. He never did anything mundane. But he had some downtime. Some plans have waiting periods.

Lucius stopped a few feet away, unwilling to interrupt Voldemort in his reading. Voldemort didn't look up. He was silent for a few moments, making Lucius sweat.

"What is it, Lucius?"

The man visibly relaxed, letting loose a silent sigh. "My lord, my humblest apologies for interrupting you, I would never dare to trouble you for anything underneath your notice-"

"You presume to know what is beneath my notice and what isn't?"

"Of course not, my lord. However, a man has broken through the wards without a wand, and, naturally, he was to be detained by Death Eaters, but, my lord," he licked his lips, glanced up once from his bowed head, then quickly averted his eyes, "we were unable to hit him with any spells." He continued on in a rush, fearing Voldemort's changing expression. "He managed to incapacitate a large number of our forces, and demands to see you immediately."

Voldemort snarled and whipped out his wand. Almost as an afterthought, he flicked his wand, ("Crucio!") at the offending servant, not stopping to watch the man writhe.

Voldemort approached the intruder as a storm wall, unstoppable destruction and natural force. It was quite an odd sight, if anyone cared to look. In the center of a ring of bodies was a nondescript man with brown hair mostly pulled back from his face except for a single stubborn piece. He wasn't impressively muscled, though he certainly was fit. Thick glasses were perched on his straight nose; his features were rather handsome in a charming way. He was dressed nicely in the muggle way, if not exactly formally. Thrown over his shoulder like a sack was another man, much younger, with light orange hair. He was wearing casual muggle clothing, a jacket and jeans.

Voldemort did not spare a glance at the fallen Death Eaters; they were failures. Instead, he was all eyes for the perpetrator. "Avada Kedavra!"

The man just stood there until the spell was almost touching him, then he stepped aside. The man then looked to where Voldemort was, but not exactly at him. He looked just to one side, as if he was having trouble seeing Voldemort. Preposterous. How could he dodge his spell if the man could not see?

"I have a present for the Great Lord Voldemort. Bring him out."

Voldemort stepped forward and said, simply, "I am he. Avada Kedavra! Avada Kedavra!"

The man did that same strange dodge, waiting until the last second and then moving from both spells with a twist. "If you are not the Great Lord Voldemort, I will assume you are a proxy and will carry this message on word for word."

The man dodged Voldemort's next killing curse with barely a pause.

"This child is a God of Death."

Voldemort did not send another curse. "What?"

"I understand that you wish to meet one. He is yours to do with as you wish."

"He is a what?!"

"I will leave him here. I do not expect anything in return."

He dropped the orange-haired man on the floor just like a sack, and Voldemort took a few steps forward, eyes greedily taking in the prone form of the God of Death.

Voldemort looked up to the man once again, hoping to take him captive, but he was gone. Just gone.

A God of Death. The possibilities were endless. "Lucius!"

The sniveling man came forward, shaking slightly, and bowed deeply. "Y-yes, my lord?"

"Take this man to the basement. Move the other prisoners to another secure location. I have work to do."

"...and the Death Eaters, my lord?"

Voldemort finally looked at them. The look reeked of contempt. "If any are still alive, you have my permission to heal them. I still have a purpose for them yet."

"My lord is so merciful-!"

"Move."

"Of course, my lord!" He immediately moved to comply, levitating the God of Death behind him as he left.

He was one step away from true immortality, and it came in the shape of a young man with orange hair and Eastern features. With complete control over a God of Death, death would hold no sway over Voldemort's life.

But first things first. After casting a few experimental spells, he learned that: 1. Magic works on a Death God, and 2. This God of Death was under a powerful sleeping enchantment. His unconsciousness was not physical, as Voldemort had suspected.

The being was set up so his arms were tied over his head from a rafter, his toes lightly touching the ground. His head was bowed in sleep. Sleeping people, especially magically induced sleeping people, were unusually powerless to stop Legilimency.

So, it stood to reason that, before Voldemort put him under the Imperius, he would find out everything the Death God knew.

Voldemort lifted the eyelids of the being, discovering brown orbs, and Looked.

He fell down a tunnel for an unnaturally long time in complete darkness, a consequence of entering the mind of a person in a deep sleep.

But instead of finding a whirlwind of memories and knowledge twisting around a central core held in a twisting revolution, as he was used to seeing, he found something radically different.

He found himself slamming into the side of a skyscraper.

(o)(0)(o)

Lucius Malfoy watched his lord enter the mind of the supposed "God of Death." Lucius was highly suspicious of the mysterious stranger's claim. He had never heard of the existence of "Death Gods," unless you counted the fairy tale renditions of "Death" found in childrens books. He was unwilling to think they existed just because some stranger found a random man on the street and said he was one. His lord seemed to ignore all this. Perhaps he knew of something Lucius did not? A likely possibility.

Either way, Lucius prepared himself for a new threat. If this redhead turned out to be a regular muggle, or even a wizard, no harm done. But the other stranger, now, he was a true threat. There was something completely and unnaturally wrong with that man.

Lucius quickly dashed these thoughts as he saw his lord begin to thrash. The man twitched uncontrollably from his head to where he stood on his feet, spasms raking his back. Through this, his lord maintained eye contact. The thrashing got more violent, nearly causing his lord to fall, and Lucius remained where he was, near the entrance to the basement, quietly watching.

In an instant, the spasms stopped. His lord went still. Then his eyes closed, his hands dropping from where they held the redhead's eyes open, and he fell backwards to the ground like dead weight.

Lucius remained where he was, watching.

His lord laid on the floor, still as death. Just pale flesh. Lucius knew a dead body when he saw one. He glanced up to the redhead, and felt his jaw fall in astonishment. He was quick to shut his mouth again.

The redhead was shrouded in streams of black light. Like ribbons of dark cloth tainted by red lightning, they circled the redhead like slow plodding flies drawn to a carcass. The redhead's hair, already an undignified mess, started to float upward in defiance of the natural forces, his clothes rippling in an unseen wind.

Lucius shrank back as an unknown force saturated the air, making his body feel twice as heavy. His chest couldn't expand, his legs wouldn't move.

Then bright white beams pierced the oppressive air from every direction possible. They came in through the walls, from the ceiling, the floor, through Lucius himself, all with one target. The redhead.

The light was so intense Lucius couldn't see, but he looked anyway, seeing nothing but white light. Until a scar appeared, a claw of blackness tearing the whiteness, shattering it.

The white light rebounded from the redhead, blowing away like a hot wind. It scorched Lucius's cheeks, blowing his robes back, making his mouth feel dry.

Lucius couldn't see for a few moments, but when he could, he saw that the redhead looked absolutely normal, and his lord was beginning to wake up.

He hurried over knowing the fact that he would be punished for coming, and punished even worse for not coming. "My lord?" Lucius said, hovering by his side.

His lord's eyes were open, and he slowly raised himself to a sitting position. Very quietly, almost soothingly, he whispered, "What am I doing here, Lucius?"

"My lord, you were interrogating a prisoner."

"What am I doing... on the floor?!" he thundered.

Lucius flinched back, almost without realizing. "It is not my place to question the actions of the Dark Lord." That seemed like a good response, Lucius thought.

The Dark Lord gathered himself and imperiously stood on his feet. He sneered once at the "God of Death," a markedly different reaction to the one he had before, and stormed out the room. He distantly called, "What happened to the other prisoners!"

"My lord, you asked them moved…"

"Move them back!" he said, walking up the stairs.

"Hurry! Move them back!" yelled Candryl Goshawk's superior.

"Ma'am! They're breaking the spells faster than I can cast them!" Candryl frantically replied.

"You're an Unspeakable working in the Hall of Prophecies! Do not tell me you can't cast faster!"

Candryl wanted to tell her that she only started this job today (because the last ten Unspeakables who held her position kept dying, she had rushed up the ranks), and that she could already cast spells in the fraction of the time it took a regular wizard to cast spells, so stop hounding her, but all she said was, "I'm trying!"

"Try harder!"

The Hall of Prophecies was a cold place, which was fine because Candryl much prefered cold places, but very dimly lit. Usually. Now the place was a bastion of light, as every single Prophecy in the entire forsaken building was lit up like a firework. Each orb was like a tiny sun spreading white light around it in a circle. Candryl had to cast a sun visoring spell in order to know what she was doing.

But really, she had absolutely no idea what she was doing. Apparently, neither did her superior, Franceline Hue, who was only her superior by a matter of weeks.

"Is this supposed to be happening?!" Candryl yelled as she dodged a Prophecy sphere that came spinning at her head. She quickly snapped a spell that would fly it back in place to its shelf. Normally, prophecies were completely impervious to any attempts at moving them, and Unspeakables were forbidden to try. But "normal" said nothing about this situation.

"Not that I'm aware of!" Franceline yelled back from a few shelves down.

After the spheres had started to glow, one by one, they levitated off their shelves and started to zip around of their own accord. There were so many prophecies, and only two of them. They couldn't possibly avert this disaster without backup or some type of far reaching spell. Neither of which were likely to be coming anytime soon.

So, they tried. This might put a stop to Candryl's quick advancement in the ranks. She wasn't too put-out about the loss.

Any prophecies that Candryl or her superior missed would go crashing against the wall, shattering themselves. The white light would seep into the wall and slowly fade as if through a foggy window into the night. The broken glass would fall to the ground, but no prophecies were whispered. It was like the prophecy went with the white light, and now the glass was just glass.

Two prophecies charged Candryl at the same time, crossing right in front of her face and then zipping by her ears. Oh no you don't! She flashed her wand, immobilizing the prophecies, then summoning them back. Two. At the same time. She felt herself begin to sweat from exertion.

She felt like the prophecies were becoming faster, more frantic. If that made any sense. But now they were becoming slower. And they didn't need to crash into the wall for the light to go out! As she watched, five prophecies that she had managed to wrangle back into place had their light burst out like a comet. The comets flew through the room and hit the wall just like the others. In quick succession, every flying prophecy around her had the light wrung out, empty orbs falling limp to the ground.

Candryl was quick to fire a large-scale cushioning spell, saving the now-dark prophecies from breaking. A large-scale cushioning spell was not very large, comparatively, maybe enough to save three people. The prophecies she saved were minimal. The rest crashed to the ground and shattered.

This, apparently, was the last stage. The sound of breaking glass was prevalent throughout the room as every prophecy had the light sucked out of them, dropping dead to the ground. The last of the comets faded through the wall, and Candryl looked around at the sea of broken glass, lit by the dim blue light of the wall sconces.

"Goshawk!" Candryl heard faintly from a few shelves over.

"I'm here!" she responded.

"You're getting moved to the Thought Chamber!"

In other words: You're fired.

Great, she thought sarcastically. My first day and I already screwed it up.

(o)(0)(o)