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imagine-darksiders · 3 months ago

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Cold Hands, Warm Heart - chapter 24.

The Champion.

“My heart was fashioned to be susceptible of love and sympathy, and when wrenched by misery to vice and hatred, it did not endure the violence of the change without torture such as you cannot even imagine.”

― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein: The 1818 Text

Words; 20,144.

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You’re no stranger to rude awakenings.

You seem to have suffered a plethora of them in the week following your unexpected departure from Earth.

But this morning in particular, the event that pulls you from your healing slumber amongst Draven’s moth-eaten sheets is not so much rude as it is downright malicious.

The world around you – once so peaceful and quiet and dark enough to keep you in unconscious bliss – is suddenly shaken up by a deafening crash that sends you lurching upright with a yelp, scrabbling for purchase on the bed as a veritable earthquake rocks through the Eternal Throne.

“Wha-th’ hell!?” you slur blearily, wrenched from sleep so swiftly that your brain has to take a moment to catch up with your body. Somewhere overhead, an indignant squawk answers your rhetorical question.

For several, disorienting seconds, your eyes rattle around inside their sockets, and you frantically try to work out whether it’s just you vibrating or the entire room.

And then, as if the world has hit its collective brakes, everything pitches sideways – yourself included – causing the bed to skid a few inches away from the wall, and the hanging lantern overhead to swing wildly up and slam into the ceiling with an almighty racket, raining dust and woodchips down on your head.

Sadly, you aren’t spared a blow. The jarring halt tosses you right off the mattress and onto the floor, your teeth bouncing against each other with an audible ‘clack�� when you collide with the wooden boards.

“Oof!” you exclaim, landing on your spine violently enough that the air is punched out of your lungs.

Blinking stupidly, you gape up at the juddering ceiling whilst the lantern continues to ricochet from side to side, threatening to pull itself free of its iron fixtures.

At last, just as your stomach clenches like it’s about to purge the meal Draven had so thoughtfully provided, the walls around you start to stabilise, the quakes peter out, and the world grows still once more, save for a squawking, ebony barrage of feathers zooming about over your head.

Once your vision steadies enough to see straight again, you realise that it’s merely Dust flapping in mad circles around the confines of Draven’s quarters.

Paralysed on the floor in a state of shock, you can manage little else but to gawk up at the crow as your chest rises and falls in quick succession until finally, you manage to swallow the heart wedged in your throat and wheeze out an anxious, reedy, “What the Hell was that?”

It’s a question that, for the most part, was meant to go unanswered, a by-product of sleepiness and a befuddled mind attempting to comprehend a reality it has just freshly awoken to, but regardless, you don’t have long to wait before receiving a tangible answer.

A pitch-dark shadow suddenly looms above your head, blotting out the lantern’s sickly glow with a curtain of thick, black hair that frames a contrarily pale mask.

“That-“ comes the gravelly voice of its wearer “- was our scheduled arrival.”

The shape moves, and through the gloom, you can make out a large hand reaching down towards you.

For a moment, your body goes tense, only to fall slack again once the comfortingly familiar sensation of cool, calloused fingers slips around your bicep, hauling you effortlessly to your unsteady feet.

It’s only Death.

… A few weeks ago, saying ‘it’s only Death’ might have garnered you some concerned looks from your peers.

Now, however, you’ve had time to come to terms with the fact that there are far worse things to wake up to than an ornery Horseman with a daunting name.

The soles of your boots have barely touched the ground before his hands are pivoting you by the shoulders until you’re facing the door, where he removes his appendages from your arms in favour of nudging his bony knuckles into the small of your back, prodding you forwards.

“A-arrived?” you stammer, parting your jaws to let out a wide, obnoxious yawn, “Where?”

“The Arena, no doubt” he offers, as concise an explanation as you’re liable to get this early in the morning. Then, raising his voice, he snaps, “Dust! Will you calm down.”

The volume sends a little jolt through your heart.

Somewhere above you, a thoroughly offended crow lets out a caw that sounds more like a huff, but after a moment, he swoops down to land on Death’s shoulder, his feathers ruffled and unkempt.

Again, you blink hard, clearing away some of the sleepy residue gathered at the corners of your eyes. As soon as the Horseman’s prior words register, the events of yesterday swing around to hit you like a punch to the gut.

“Oh, god,” you groan, lifting an arm and scrubbing the back of it across your weary eyes, “S’morning already?”

“Mm, at least the Chancellor is punctual,” Death grumbles as he guides you to a halt near the door.

Reaching past you, he lays his palm against the withered wood and shoves it open with a mere flex of his wrist.

Dimly, it starts to dawn on you just how urgently you’re being bundled from the room.

“Hey… Woah, hey!” Giving a sudden start, you dig your heels into the floorboards to try and slow the Horseman’s pace as he bullies you through the open door. Of course, your efforts are for naught.

You’re pushing back against the raw strength of a Nephilim, which isn’t unlike blowing bubbles at a hurricane and expecting the winds to change directions.

“Death, just – wait a moment,” you complain, exasperated, “What’s the rush?”

In response, the Horsemen only gives your spine a more direct push until you’re forced to stop dragging your feet and take a step forwards into the dingy corridor outside Draven’s quarters.

It’s only after the door behind you slams shut with a creak of rusty hinges that Death lowers his arm.

“If it’s all the same to you, I’d like to get a move on,” he tells you gruffly.

Clicking your tongue, you raise your brows at him as he stalks past you down the hall, a disgruntled crow still perched on his shoulder.

“I can see that,” you quip, falling lazily into step behind him, “Didn’t think you were this excited to fight the Champion.”

“Excited’ is not the word I’d use,” he retorts smartly.

His tone, clipped and sharp like the blade of his scythe, is a stark contrast to the manner he’d graced you with last night.

And that’s when you’re struck by an unpleasant pinch of guilt. Perhaps Death wouldn’t be in such a hurry to get moving if he hadn’t been guarding you all night. He might have used the time productively, training for whatever he’s to face in the Arena.

The guilt, however, doesn’t weigh you down for long, given that Death immediately follows up with, “I’m keen to leave the vicinity lest your little devotee come sniffing about.”

“Devotee?” you echo, scrunching your face up distastefully at his tone, “You mean Draven?”

The Horseman’s hair bounces as he given an affirming nod, prompting you to tip your head towards the ceiling and heave out an exaggerated groan.

You might have guessed.

“Okay. What is your problem with him?” you huff, dropping your head again to aim a scolding look at the back of his skull, “He let us have his room? He brought me food!”

You don’t receive a response for several paces as Death veers to the right and leads you into yet another corridor, this one lined with many rickety, wooden doors. “No doubt sowing the seeds to call in a future favour,” he mutters darkly, eyeing one of the doors as it starts to creak open.

The scrape of wood goes unnoticed by his yawning tagalong.

“Why’s that such a bad thing?” you sigh, digging a pinkie finger into the corner of your eye and flicking out a kernel of sleep dust, “He helps us, we help him if he needs it. That’s how a lot of people make friends, you know.”

Death’s shoulders rise and fall with a disgruntled harrumph. “I’m not sure friendship is what the Blademaster has in mind.”

Ouch. Pulling a face, you open your mouth to ask him why - if Draven doesn’t want to be friends with you - would he have been so unequivocally accommodating to you? If Death knew how badly you'd missed the point, he might have tried to shake some sense into your clueless skull.

But at that moment, your attention is snatched away by movement in the corridor up ahead.

Swinging your gaze forwards, you suddenly falter, feet clumsily fumbling underneath you in some feeble attempt to trip each other up, and it’s only the fact that Death is still walking that you manage to keep yourself moving after him, the fear of being left behind outweighing your trepidation of the path in front of you.

Two rows of doors stretching up and down the corridor have started to pivot open, filling the narrow space with creaks of wood that are accompanied another, less definable sound, something that reminds you of bones squeaking under too-tight sinew.

Chilly fingers dance across your spine when, from the gloom, several, emaciated figures prowl out into the corridor.

Far more awake now than you were seconds ago, you clutch at your elbows, bruising fingertips tightening on your bare arms as an unnatural cold envelopes you and raises all the hairs covering your body.

Undead – a startling number of them – begin to emerge from the open doors, shuffling out into the hallway ahead of you in a manner that reminds you all too starkly of a scene from some plotless horror movie. The difference here, of course, is that these aren’t actors wearing prosthetic makeup and fake blood. These are the real deal. Real people – perhaps not human – but people all the same who just so happen to have passed their expiry date.

Muttering to one another in deep, rasping tones, they seem to be in the throes of getting ready for the day ahead, fastening the clasps on their worn and rusted hauberks or stooping to pull boots over their exposed shinbones.

“Didn’t think we had a stop scheduled,” one of them grunts, too preoccupied with peeling a flap of loose skin from his shoulders to notice you slink past in Death’s all-encompassing shadow.

The undead beside him is equally distracted, using withered fingers to grasp his own jaw and tug it this way and that as if he’s trying to realign the bones.

A gruesome ‘crunch’ flips your stomach on its side.

The wheezing sigh that whistles out of him doesn’t quite make it to the undead’s mouth, but rather slips through a gaping hole torn out of his throat, exposing a rotten oesophagus, and when he speaks, his words are airy, like the wind given voice.

“Didn’t you hear?” he rasps, “Another Arena fight. Some fool wants to challenge Gnashor to gain audience with…. with…“

You’ve been staring hard at Death’s boots, sticking to the grim Horseman like glue, unwilling to lift your eyes and meet the hollow gaze of an unfamiliar undead. But as the soldier you pass fumbles over his words and trails off into silence, you can’t help but dart your eyes sideways towards him, catching a brief glimpse of his sunken sockets and the unhinged jaw that hangs open to an alarming degree. You’re amazed the strands of flesh connecting it to his skull are strong enough to keep it from falling to the dusty floorboards beneath your feet.

With his sudden silence – and the obvious, bug-eyed stare he’s caught you in – the other undead finally take notice.

Over a dozen heads, each in various stages of decay, creak around on disjointed necks to lock you in their sights. There’s an oppressive hush that falls over the corridor then, only disturbed by the shuffling of your footsteps.

You’d much prefer to think that Death is the cause for the impromptu silence.

Alas, despite a lack of any visible pupils, it isn’t difficult to tell whose movements the undead are tracking.

Swallowing audibly, you offer them the most feeble, fleeting smile as you debate saying 'good morning,' before thinking better of it and kicking up your heels to close the meagre distance between you and the Horsemen even more until you’re practically treading on the backs of his boots.

You remain entirely ignorant of the dark glares that Death is shooting at each soldier he passes, his hunched shoulders and luminous eyes all but broadcasting a wordless challenge.

He can understand the surprise of seeing a human in their midst, especially if word hasn’t yet spread around the whole ship. He’ll allow them a few, curious stares. But anything further…

Well… If a murderous glare from the Reaper doesn’t deter them, the scythes hanging from his hips might prove a more effective deterrent.

Unfortunately, he can do little to guard you from the whispers that have started to creep after you as you pass.

“Is that…?”

“That’s a human!”

“A maiden? In the Eternal Throne?”

Disgust, amazement, and contempt are prevalent among the tones he picks up on. The former and lattermost culprits receive a fierce eyeballing from Dust.

You’re only too pleased when you traipse around another corner and have the end of the corridor loom into view, with pale, green daylight spilling through the opening like a beacon calling you forth.

Casting a wary glance over your shoulder, you allow yourself a breath of relief when you don’t spot any of the undead trailing after you, though their murmuring voices still drift down the narrow corridor in your wake, jumbled together and indiscernible from one another now. The topic of conversation isn’t hard to guess at though.

“You’re causing quite the stir,” Death remarks, setting foot on the old, rickety staircase that winds down into the courtyard from the upper balustrade.

Mumbling something under your breath, you busy yourself with rubbing at your chilly arms in an effort to disperse the goosebumps from your flesh. “Yeah well, believe me, I’d much rather I wasn’t… Some of them looked like they wanted to mount my head on a wall.”

“I doubt they’d resort to that,” the Horseman returns conversationally, leaning sideways towards you and adding, “Your head wouldn’t make much of a trophy.”

“Oh, hardy-har.”

Jumping down the last step to land with a thud at the bottom, you hesitate for just a second, casting your surreptitious eye over an empty courtyard. Sadly, your search yields neither hide nor hair of your new, cadaverous friend, and you can’t help but purse your lips and slouch as Death herds you straight towards the door laying in wait at the foot of the main staircase.

Tipping your head back and stretching your jaw open into another yawn, you follow the Horseman down each step, your footfalls heavy and sluggish in comparison to his.

The morning air whistles through the fortress, cooling your brow and sweeping away the vestiges of exhaustion. Halfway down, the dishevelled blob of ebony feathers sitting on Death’s shoulder suddenly flicks his long, black beak up to the sky, spreads his enormous wingspan and takes off with a few, hearty flaps, buffeting the Horseman’s ear as he goes.

“Where’s he off to?” you muse aloud, tracing Dust’s erratic, vertical take-off until he catches an air current and straightens up, gliding elegantly over the top of the towers and out of sight.

The Horseman only grumbles something inaudible under his breath, though you’re almost certain you pick up on the word ‘mischief.’

At last, you reach the bottom of the stairs, and the large, looming doors set snugly into the wooden wall just up ahead. Absently, you note that this is the same entrance you’d come through yesterday. You’re so busy trying to suppress a second yawn that you don’t realise Death has come to an abrupt halt just a few feet from the doorway, and in your obliviousness, you waltz right past him, stretching out your arm to reach for the handles.

You’re promptly stopped in your tracks, however, by a large, pale hand flattening itself against your stomach and shoving you gracelessly to a standstill, pushing a strangled wheeze out of your lungs.

And not a moment too soon, it seems.

Without warning, the doors you’d been reaching for are unceremoniously flung open by a force from the other side.

You yelp as the rotten wood whizzes past your nose and barely misses by a few, scant inches.

Blinking widely – suddenly feeling much more alert – you swallow back the retort you were about to throw at the Horseman, instead offering him a grateful tilt of your lips before returning your attention to the figure emerging from the gloom of the dark hallway beyond.

A faded, green cloak is the first thing to catch your eye, and for a moment, you perk up, lifting your lips even further to aim a smile at –

… Oh.

“Hmph. Still here, are you…? Joy.”

With a shuffle of long, elegant robes, the shrouded silhouette steps over the threshold and out into the light, revealing a taller, slenderer figure than the one you’d been… expecting to see.

Embarrassed heat rushes up the back of your neck, chasing the wake of your eagerness as you shrink away from the Chancellor’s looming frame and blurt out a hasty, instinctive, “Oh-! uhm, good morning.”

As expected, Death offers no such greeting. Nor does the Chancellor for that matter, beyond making a derisive sound at the back of his decayed throat and slowing to a stop in the doorway, the ridge above one eye quirked down at you expectantly.

It takes you a second before you realise that you and the Horseman are standing side by side, taking up the entire width of the path at the base of the stairs.

“Whoops!” Giving a start, you sidle quickly behind Death, “Sorry. After you.”

You pretend you don’t hear the Horseman tut under his breath.

Sniffing haughtily, the Chancellor merely sticks his hollow nasal cavity into the air and saunters past Death, ignoring him entirely, but pausing long enough to sneer down at you with all the disgusted intrigue of a child poking at a dead bird.

“Do give my regards to the Champion, won’t you?” he says, curling his lips disparagingly, “It’s been so long since I’ve sent him a half decent meal.”

The strained, albeit polite smile that had been on your face recedes at once, shrivelling up at the implied threat, and the badly concealed insult.

Not exactly words of encouragement…

Audibly, you gulp, sending a troubled frown at the undead as his cruel grin stretches the hollows of his cheeks.

Standing as close as you are to the Horseman, you notice that the ever-present chill rolling off his skin suddenly grows colder. Moments later, just before you can think of a retort to the undead’s undeserved hostility, Death twists one of his arms behind you and lays a palm on the small of your back, ushering you around to his front and giving you a nudge through the open doors. All the while, he strains his neck over a shoulder to shoot a cool, unimpressed glare at the Chancellor.

Not another word is exchanged between any of you as Death steps through the doorway on your heels, making sure to turn his back on the undead with a dismissive scoff that earns him several, indignant splutters in return.

Then, using the heel of his boot, he kicks the stone door shut in the Chancellor’s scowling face.

As effective a snubbing as you’ve ever seen.

“Weaselly little sycophant,” Death grumbles, loudly enough that you’re sure he’s been heard even through the thick wood of the door.

“Death.” Admonishment is always more effective when you mean it. In this instance, your tone doesn’t carry nearly enough weight for the Horseman to believe you actually care about his affront on the Chancellor.

Shoulders twitching with a quiet scoff, he simply turns to lead the way through the long, murky corridor, his towering figure disappearing quickly into the gloom.

Casting a last, pensive look at the closed doors behind you, you heave a sigh and start after the Horseman, scrubbing a hand tiredly down the length of your face.

“Wait. Isn’t this the way we got in?” you ask, traipsing along in the wake of his loping strides.

In response, Death gives a noncommittal hum, likely reluctant to dredge up any relevance to the events of yesterday and his… less than dignified actions as the Reaper.

After several more seconds spent trailing through the corridor in silence, he comes to another stop, and you’re just a bit too slow to glance up from his boots to see the wall of pale flesh in front of you.

‘Thud!’

Funnily enough, it isn’t unlike walking into a wall either.

While you bounce straight off the Horseman’s back, you’re not surprised to find that he doesn’t budge an inch beyond sending you a mildly exasperated look over his shoulder.

“Sorry,” you offer, rubbing your nose with a grimace.

Now it’s his turn to heave a weary sigh.

Swivelling forwards once more, Death tilts the chin of his mask down and nods at something near his feet. “Mind the hole.”

Raising a brow, you start to edge around him, trying to get a glimpse of what’s ahead. “Mind the -? Ah.”

Stepping up to his flank, you follow the Horseman’s downturned gaze and immediately feel your stomach swoop.

The floor ahead of you has completely caved in under its own weight, leaving an enormous, yawning hole to span the width of the corridor. It’s round and bottomless, the wooden boards splintered around its circumference like a great maw filled with too many teeth.

Bravely shuffling your feet closer to the drop, you stretch your neck out and peer down over the jagged, dusty floorboards into the gaping chasm, gulping back a nervous hum. What meagre light exists in this corridor isn’t anywhere near strong enough to disturb the ink-black darkness that begins just a foot or so from the top of the hole.

“Is this… how we got in?” you ask, voice little more than a whisper.

Warm air rises gently out of the abyss from somewhere far, far below you, playing with the finer hairs on the side of your head.

Beside you, Death simply replies, “It is.”

You draw out a long, slow whistle. “Wow…” Then, “Glad we came up that yesterday, and didn’t fall down it… Wait.” Grimacing, you send the Horseman a lopsided frown, face screwed up apprehensively. “It’s not… We’re not going down there now, are we?”

Beneath his mask, Death’s lips twitch. “No,” he replies, watching your shoulders slump, palpably relieved, “There’s a door on the other side.”

With that, he gestures for you to look by bobbing his chin at something on the other side of the sizeable gap.

Sure enough, as you raise your head and squint through the dim lighting, your gaze lands upon a nondescript pair of doors standing in wait at the far end of the corridor.

“Oh, good,” you sigh as Death moves towards the wall, “So… We’re jumping, then?”

“Again, no. Do you ever watch where you’re going?” he teases, his eyes crinkling at the edges of his dark sockets and betraying that he’s more amused than annoyed, “Here… There’s a way across on this side. The wood is still intact.”

“Intact,” you parrot dubiously, “Right.”

Regardless, traipsing up behind him, you follow his line of sight and glance down to find that, yes, at the edge of the hole, there’s a narrow stretch of mostly intact floorboards that hug the wall, spanning from your side of the gap to the other. The problem, however, is the remaining boards that have managed to cling to their fittings in the wall barely appear strong or wide enough to admit even one person at a time. Their splintered edges extend out over the hole, evoking the awful comparison of a wooden plank extending from the port side of a pirate ship. One misplaced foot, and you’ll tumble straight down into the depths of that hungry void.

“Looks…. sturdy,” you comment aloud, pulling your mouth into a thin, sceptical line.

“If it’ll carry the Chancellor, it’ll carry you,” Death reasons, stepping aside and sweeping his hand out to gesture at the start of the ‘path.’ “Ladies first,” he offers.

You can’t help but snort, flashing him a begrudgingly amused smile and quipping, “Age before beauty, Death.”

Luminous eyes narrow in the sockets of his mask, but with the softest exhale that he’ll insist is not a laugh, he simply turns from you and steps out onto the narrow strip of flooring, beckoning for you to follow.

“Just stay close,” he says gruffly.

In spite of the dismissive intonation, you don’t miss the unspoken consideration that lays hidden between the lines of his command.

‘If the floor breaks, I need to be close enough to catch you.’

“Read you loud and clear,” you mutter, treading gingerly onto the floorboards and wincing at the way they creak and bow under your weight where they definitely hadn’t when Death trod on them.

With one hand braced against the rough-hewn wall, you stick to your companion like glue, making your way slowly but steadily across the broken path, cringing visibly with every uneven step.

It isn’t far. Only a dozen feet or so to the other side. Admittedly, you’re a little envious of the way Death hardly seems to dip the boards he stands on, unlike you, who can feel every one buckle and groan underneath your boots.

You just chalk it up to another one of those mind-boggling things you’ll never truly fathom about the Grim Reaper, like how he can walk on top of ash or sand without sinking up to his knees in it.

‘Show off…’ you muse fondly.

Something else that dawns on you is that he’s moving at a deliberately gradual pace, sending several backwards glances over his shoulder at you.

Despite the tight ball of nerves rolling around in your stomach, an ember of appreciation spreads its warmth out across your chest.

Then again, perhaps he’s just keeping an eye on you because he thinks you’re clumsy and are bound to-

‘SNAP!’

The ember extinguishes in the blink of an eye, and the strangled curse that you choke out gets stuck in your throat as the surface below you suddenly and unexpectedly disappears.

For one, gut-wrenching second, you’re falling sideways, arms pinwheeling to try and reorient yourself on a floorboard that’s already plummeting down into the hole ahead of you, as if it just can’t wait to beat you to the bottom of a deadly fall.

And then, just as abruptly as it had begun, your impromptu tumble is cut short by the strong arm that darts around your waist and goes taut, jerking your body to a painful halt and hauling you back up through the air instead. Within another second, you’re sent crashing into a sturdy, cadaverous torso, grunting in shock as your cheekbone knocks against the bottom of Death’s sternum.

Breathing hard, you shakily pry your eyelids apart, increasingly aware that there’s wood underneath your feet again, and an enormous hand splayed out across the width of your back, keeping you pinned in place and sending tingling chills up and down your spine.

Letting out a wobbly breath, you crane your neck back to see the underside of Death’s strong chin, then rove your gaze up further to find the Horseman peering back down at you with eyes as wide as your own, as if even he can’t believe he just caught you.

With your heart thudding loudly in your ears, you manage to swallow through a bone-dry throat and gush, “Ho-lee~ shit. Thanks, Death.”

Even now, it still puzzles the Horseman every time you give him a word of thanks.

Blinking once, he’s quick to lower his brows and school his expression into a flat, stony glare. Though most of it remains hidden from view behind his mask, he has no doubt that his eyes say everything they need to say.

"Are all humans as hapless as you?” Death grouses, sliding both of his sizeable hands to your waist and effortlessly lifting you into the air with the same ease he’d pull his brother’s gun from its holster, “Or were you jinxed as an infant?”

Thrown off balance without a solid surface under your feet, you hurriedly clasp your hands on top of Death’s wide wrists, bracing yourself against them as he swings you carefully around to his front. From there, he resolves to simply carry you the remaining distance to the other side.

A small part of you is mortified at being manhandled so easily, but there’s a far larger part that’s more grateful than it is embarrassed.

Once he’s well clear of the ledge, Death lowers you until your boots hit the floor, and he retrieves his hands from your waist.

“Thanks,” you tell him again, slipping your own hands from his wrists to dust yourself off.

And again, Death’s mind does a funny little skip.

Giving his head a minute shake, he silently gripes to himself as he pivots on a heel and marches with purpose to the doors, throwing them open and allowing an intrusion of daylight to flood its way into the corridor.

“Ah!” you complain softly, throwing an arm up to shield your eyes against the sudden onslaught.

Death just squints, his golden stare aglow as he turns it to the desert beyond the doors.

Together, you step out into the sickly, green light of an ethereal sunrise.

A wide, wooden gangplank of questionable stability extends from your doorway down to an ash-strewn courtyard on the other side.

It seems you’ve reached the exit.

Heaving a sigh, you tilt your head back, seeking to feel the warmth of a foreign sun on your face. No sooner have you lifted your eyes to the horizon though than every muscle in your body seizes up all at once, and your brain screeches to a sudden, jarring halt.

You try to make sense of what you’re seeing…

It’s the sheer scale that flummoxes you for a second, rooting your feet to the ground through shock at first, but steadily, the all-too familiar curdle of fear starts to claw its way up your throat.

You blink hard. Then once again, as if your own vision is to blame for conjuring up a mirage of two, mountain-sized serpents coiled around a pair of crumbling towers in the distance.

It’s like gaping up at writhing skyscrapers. The titans that had been towing the Eternal Throne have found a temporary eyrie, coiled around the spires that stand on either side of a vast structure, their rotting, serpentine heads breaching the sky itself.

Massive chains stretch from fixtures on the Eternal Throne’s bow and are still secured to the anchors that have been thrust straight through the beasts’ skulls, keeping them tied to the fortress.

Your jaw hangs ajar, awed by their majesty but horrified of their size. Even with half of their bodies disappearing over the edge of a sandy plateau, you can tell that they would have absolutely dwarfed the Guardian.

The monumental scales on their underbellies clench and constrict around their chosen towers, scraping centuries’ worth of stone off the outer walls and sending the residue cascading down in chunks to the courtyard below.

Vast, uneven cracks mar the corners of each spire, telltale signs that this is a perch the serpents frequent.

“Oh my god,” you whisper reverently, taking two, small steps into Death’s shadow, never daring to take your eyes off the monstrous snakes.

“I wouldn’t worry about them,” comes the Horseman’s easy retort as he casually steps out onto the gangplank, “I doubt you’d make much of a meal.”

He doesn’t need to see to know that you’re shooting a look of abject horror at the back of his skull.

“Calm yourself,” he adds mercifully, a smirk threatening to warp his mouth to its own whims, “The dead don’t eat.”

Wringing your hands, you start after Death, planting your steps carefully as you descend the gangplank behind him, keeping your eyes fixed on the serpents high above you. “It isn’t so much being eaten that worries me,” you retort, “They could breathe at us and send us flying.”

“… The dead don’t breathe either.”

As if to contend his claim, a sudden, earth-shattering hiss slithers up the length of an exposed throat as the serpent on the Eastern tower parts its jaws, filling the very world around you with a tremulous screech that has you slapping your palms over your ears, teeth buzzing in your skull.

Stretching its colossal neck towards the opposite tower, the first serpent hisses, then with the power and volume of a thunderclap, it snaps its jaws together near the throat of its twin, barely scraping the softer scales underneath its chin.

Like a planet moving out of alignment, the other beast simply raises itself higher up the tower, part of its ribcage visibly quivering through gaps you can see in its flesh as it issues a loud, sonorous growl and lunges forwards to ‘nip’ at the anchor sticking out from its companion’s head.

“Are they…?” you begin, pausing on the gangplank as the titanic snakes draw away from one another again and shake out their great, scaled necks, causing the chains to rattle loudly over your head.

“Are they playing?”

You can only imagine the damage these things could do to one another if they really wanted to, but here, you’re reminded of a pair of cats batting at one another before retreating again, tolerant of the other’s presence, but still prone to antagonise as they see fit.

A breath rushes out of you in a wheezing laugh.

They could level a city with barely any effort. All they’d have to do is fly a little too close to the ground. And here they are.

Play fighting.

Giving your head a shake, you pick up your jaw and start after Death again, wondering who the maniac was that managed to shackle those titans to a floating fortress in the first place, let alone trained them to tow it across an endless, desert sky.

Hopping off the bottom of the gangplank, you have a brief moment to appreciate solid ground under your feet once again before you’re suddenly alerted to movement up ahead. Your head snaps up, and from the corner of an eye, you notice that Death has already stopped in his tracks, his own stare adhered to a figure shuffling towards you from the massive structure ahead.

Tall, broad, draped in robes and sporting a distinct, ovine head-…

All at once, you perk up, face brightening in recognition.

Ostegoth trundles towards you, his head angled down at the pipe that seems to be constantly at hand. He’s too busy tapping his gnarled fingers against its bowl to notice that you and Death have appeared several dozen yards in front of him.

“Ostegoth!” you call out, your wariness of the serpents dissipating in your delight of seeing the old capracus again, “Hey! Over here!”

Startling to a complete standstill, Ostegoth almost drops his pipe before he manages to fumble it back into his grasp and throws his woolly head up to squint along the length of the courtyard. When he spots you waving at him, his features open up in pleasant surprise, and his muzzle stretches wide with a smile.

“Ah! Salutations, little Lamb!” he replies, tipping the pipe towards you in greeting, “I see you made it to the Eternal Throne after all!”

“Thanks to your advice,” you remind him, breezing past the Horseman, who seems content to let you stray ahead, for the time being.

With a rustle of his rich, brown robes, Ostegoth traipses to a halt as you bound up to meet him, skidding to your own stop at his hooves and tilting your head back to give him a smile that warms his lonely chest.

“God, it’s nice to see a friendly face,” you beam, earning a sheepish chuckle from the old one.

“Is it…? Hmm. Likewise,” he returns jovially, his gnarled hand twitching towards you for a moment before he seems to reconsider and returns it to his side.

Old habits die hard, he reflects… It’s been some time since he was in the presence of a youngling. Longer still since he’s affectionately ruffled the wool on a Capracus lamb’s head.

Shaking off bitter-sweet memories, he matches your smile and asks, “Ah but tell me; How goes your search for the Well?”

“Poorly,” Death’s rough voice grunts behind you, closer than you thought it would be.

Drawing to a halt at your side, he eases his head back and leers up at the Capracus, his eyes narrowed guardedly.

“What are you doing here?” he demands, “And more to the point, how did you get here? We were travelling all night.”

There’s an underlying accusation barely hidden between his words. ‘You’d better not have followed us.’

With a slow incline his head, Ostegoth remains patient and sage in his response. “I heard whispers that the Throne was heading South-west for the first time in decades, and the only thing out here of note is the Gilded arena. And besides,” he adds, offering Death a cryptic smile, “A merchant knows many roads. Not all of them are shared with Horsemen… As for why I’m here…” Trailing off, he raises the pipe and wraps his lips around the end of its long, slender stem, his furred cheeks hollowing as he takes a few puffs, savouring the smoke’s taste on his palette.

Humming contentedly, he draws the pipe back and lets out a long, gentle exhale, neck craned sideways to blow the smoke well away from you. “Well, I am a merchant,” he deadpans, clearing his throat and aiming a rather flat look at the Horseman, “And this ship is the only civilised locality within a thousand miles. Where else do you suggest I go to trade?”

Death doesn’t bother to conceal a derisive scoff and folds his arms curtly over his chest. “The dead have use of your wares?”

“Everyone has needs, Horseman,” Ostegoth replies, “Even the dead… Perhaps they most of all. That Blademaster is always particularly interested in my inventory.”

“Blademaster?” You perk up at once. “You know Draven?”

Unseen, Death’s scowl darkens.

Dipping his horned head, Ostegoth appraises you curiously as he runs a long, dark fingernail through his ivory beard. “Indeed, I do, Lamb. A fine lad, that one. Very fine.”

“Yes, yes, I’m sure he’s quite the paragon,” Death gripes, raising his voice and clapping his palms together impatiently, “Now, I’m afraid we haven’t got time to stay and chat. We’re supposed to be on an errand.” This he says while casting a rather pointed glare at the side of your head.

“An errand?” Ostegoth’s small, floppy ears prick forward attentively, giving the Horseman an up and down glance as if he finds the prospect of Death completing errands completely absurd.

“I’d hardly call it an errand,” you interject with a wry smile, “Apparently Death can’t get in to see the King without proving himself in a fight, or something.”

And just like that, the Capracus blinks, drawing his head back and furrowing the skin above his browbone.

“… Fight….” Quietly, he swivels around to peer up at the towering stone wall of the amphitheatre laying in wait behind him. Then, breathing a sigh that causes the crystals on his robe to clink softly as his chest rises and falls, Ostegoth’s jaundiced, sunken eyes slip shut, and in a whisper, he utters, “Ah… Gnashor… I might have known.”

“Gnashor?” you echo bemusedly, while at the same time, Death asks, “Might have known what?”

Rather than answer however, Ostegoth simply stands there, staring up at the structure in silence for several, long moments, and all you can hear are the serpents high above you hissing through immense, decomposed lungs as they resettle themselves around their perches.

“Ostegoth?” you prod again, “Who’s Gnashor?”

… Nothing.

Shifting your weight onto your other foot, you spare a quick, searching look up at Death, only to find that he’s regarding the capracus with a glare that could only be described as dubious.

At last, after a long stretch of further, uncomfortable quiet that Ostegoth seems too lost in thought to break, the Horseman tuts, uncrossing his arms as he meets your questioning gaze with a roll of his eyes. “Come on,” he tells you, “We’ve dawdled here long enough.”

Stalking past your new, enigmatic acquaintance, Death heads for the arched doorway, shooting a glance over his shoulder when your footsteps don’t immediately follow.

“Y/n!” he barks.

Startled, you drop the hand you’d been stretching towards Ostegoth’s arm.

“Oh – er, coming!”

Chewing on your lip, you reluctantly sidle past the Capracus, stealing a glance back at him as you go. He’s moved his gaze to the ground, the ridge between his brows turning deep and contemplative.

“Well… Bye, Ostegoth,” you call out to him hesitantly, lifting your hand in a half-hearted wave.

At the sound of his name, he suddenly blinks, his long pupils expanding with surprise. Lifting his head, he meets your troubled look and pulls a face, tapping his pipe’s bowl in a palm.

Just as you turn around and see Death pushing open the doors, the strained atmosphere is cut by Ostegoth’s voice.

“Horseman!”

Death’s massive silhouette pauses in the doorway, long enough for you to catch up.

The pair of you turn to regard the old Capracus; you with anticipation, Death with impatience.

Long, furred fingers curl tightly around the stem of his pipe. “Are you certain this the only way?”

Frowning, you hear Death give off a tiny, irritated exhale before he retorts, “If it wasn’t, I wouldn’t be here, would I?” Then, a little more waspishly, he adds, “Why? Do you doubt my imminent victory?”

But Ostegoth has already withdrawn his focus from the Horseman and given it to you instead.

Strange, yellow eyes meet yours across the courtyard, softening considerably when they do. He gives you a funny look, one you can’t decipher, not least because it still seems so bizarre to see an ovine man pull any expression at all, but you almost get the inkling that he’s studying you, turning something over in his mind.

What is he-…?

“Tell me, little Lamb,” he says abruptly, cutting off your train of thought, “Will you fight the Champion?”

Taken aback, you exchange a glance with Death and open your mouth to reply, but your companion beats you to it with his own, curt response.

“Don’t be foolish,” he scoffs at Ostegoth, “Of course she won’t.”

Once again, the Capracus blithely ignores Death’s input, keeping his eyes fixed on you instead.

Suddenly uneasy, you open your mouth and halfway manage to ask, “Why?” before Ostegoth interrupts.

“You must not raise a weapon against the Champion,” he stresses, tone uncharacteristically urgent, “Do you understand?”

Letting out a bewildered little laugh, you can only think to offer him an awkward smile and a nod. “Yeah, I mean - don’t worry. For once, I’m actually planning to stay out of it.”

“Hmph. I’ll believe that when I see it,” Death grumbles, turning to the stairwell beyond the doors and disappearing into it.

Shooting a faux-offended glare at his retreating back, you start to follow only to hesitate once you reach the doorway.

Planting a hand on the cool, stone frame, you turn to the Capracus one last time, finding that he’s still peering after you, his forehead wrinkled deeply with an expression you’ve-… you’ve seen before….

The moment you place it, your smile drops, and the air is almost knocked out of your lungs.

It’s the same look you used to catch Eideard sending your way.

Gentle worry on a pensive, ancient face…

The heart in your chest murmurs sadly, and your eyes threaten to mist over.

Giving a hard sniff, you raise your hand again in farewell and croak, “We’ll see you on the ship, yeah?”

Ostegoth opens his muzzle to respond.

“Are you coming!?” Death’s voice drowns out whatever the old one might have said.

So, with an apologetic shrug, you slip through the doors and hurry after your impatient friend, failing to spot the hand that Ostegoth has lain tenderly over his old, ragged heart.

The words he utters are lifted from his muzzle, drifting away on the breeze before they can follow you through the doorway.

“Be safe…”

-------------------------------------------------------------

“Well,” you break the silence that has been lingering between you and Death for the last few minutes as you both climb yet another staircase within the ancient, evidently abandoned arena, “That was… interesting.”

“Hmph… Interesting,” the Horseman echoes derisively, “Try ‘suspicious.”

“You’re wondering if he knows who the Champion is.” You have to admit, you’ve been thinking the same thing.

There’s no way Ostegoth fought the Champion… Is there? You know nothing of the Capracus, save for the fact that he’s the last of his kind.

Thoughtful, you find yourself staring blankly at the mouldy, wooden walls all around you. Much like everything else you’ve seen in the realm, this place seems two heavy stomps away from collapsing in on itself. Everything here, the architecture, the people, they all seem to hang suspended in a space between death and complete and utter decay.

It reminds you of the Horseman, in a way. Alive, but not. Half dead, with a working body and mind, but a heart that’s long since ceased to beat.

He’s… liminal, you realise mutely, much like the Land of the Dead.

It makes you curious.

“Hey, Death? Can I ask you something?”

The Nephilim's sigh almost feels traditional at this point. “I imagine you’ll ask regardless of whether I say yes or no.”

Undeterred, you blurt, “Do you live here?”

“Do I-… Excuse me?”

“I mean in this world,” you clarify, skipping a step that’s a little more worn than the others, “In the Dead Lands?”

“Why would you assume I-…" Trailing off, he hums, mulling it over. "Hmm… Actually, I suppose I can see why you’d assume that…”

“So, this isn’t your home?”

“I don’t have-…” Pushing another long-suffering sigh through his nostrils, he amends, “No. I do not live in the Land of the Dead.”

“Huh.”

“… Huh?” he echoes waspishly.

Sensing his rising impatience, you quickly elaborate. “No, I mean… It just… seems so you.”

Well… Death can’t decide if he should take that as an insult or a compliment.

“Why are you asking me this?” he accuses you suddenly, his voice a touch cooler than it was before. Not defensive, per se, but definitely guarded.

“Gee, Death. Not sure,” you chuckle, unperturbed or perhaps unaware of the shift in tone, “Maybe I just want to get to know you better?”

All at once, the Horseman’s shoulders prickle with warning and he snaps his head forwards, eyes burning a hole through the steps below his boots. He doesn’t reply. Unbidden, age-old instincts raise their sleepy heads, no matter how he tries to rationalise the point of your question.

For some time, the only response you get is the soft padding of his boots on the stone steps, accompanied by your far louder, more hurried footfalls that send echoes back up the stairwell. After a long and admittedly awkward pause, you let out a quick sound of bemusement, cocking a brow and asking the back of Death’s head, “What? Is it taboo for Horsemen to ask each other about where they live?”

His retort is immediate, loud and barbed, cutting off the end of your sentence. “It’s suspicious.”

“I’m sorry? It’s suspicious to ask where you live?”

“Knowledge is power," he snaps, "Even the most insignificant details can be used against you if discovered by the wrong person. It’s never wise to freely give that knowledge away.” After a pause, he adds, “Not even my brothers and sister know where I live.

Again, you blurt out a quick, incredulous scoff. “You’re kidding.”

But when Death remains entirely silent, your humour evaporates like rain on a hot tin roof. “Oh my god… You’re serious…. I wasn’t trying to -… Look, you know I wasn’t asking because I want to use it against you, right?”

For the sake of his pride, Death pretends to consider your words carefully, though deep down, he’s already sure of his answer. He does know. But it’s hard to shake the manacles of an eternity’s worth of suspicion.

“For humans,” you continue cautiously, “It’s totally normal to ask our friends about themselves.”

When all he does is bristle in response, you realise it’s probably best to change the subject.

“Right... Anyway, um... You reckon they fought?” you muse aloud.

“Who?”

“Ostegoth and the Champion," you clarify, "Is that why he wanted to make sure I wouldn’t be fighting, uh, what was his name? Gnasher?”

“Gnashor,” Death corrects you, his feathers gradually unruffling themselves, “And I highly doubt the old goat has fought much of anything, let alone the Dead King’s Champion.”

Pulling your lips into a tight line, you softly retort, “You don’t know that.”

The Horseman doesn’t respond.

-------------------------------------------

After several more minutes, you finally reach the top of the stairs and find yourselves standing at the head of a colossal amphitheatre, open to the sky and surrounded on every side by towering, stone walls. Vast spires of stone loom in the distance, well beyond this place, and you start to imagine a vast, dead city laying just past its boundaries.

“Welcome to the Gilded Arena,” Death remarks, unimpressed.

“Wow.” Laying your hands on your hips, you pivot around to survey the immediate vicinity. “Quite the turnout.”

Save for you and the Horseman, there doesn’t appear to be another soul in sight.

“Well,” Death shrugs one bulbous shoulder, “I never was one for crowds.”

Venturing forward, your feet move off wood and onto stone slabs, and as you amble out of the shadow of the hall behind you, you feel the sun warming the top of your head again.

Stretched out to either side of you is a walkway, wide and entirely paved with mossy stone. It angles sharply around a corner on both sides, and as you cast your gaze over the area, you realise it loops in a massive square. Surrounding the centre of that square, is a barricade made from black, iron spokes.

Unable to fight against the nervous curiosity building in your stomach, you allow your feet to carry you forwards, right across the wide walkway until you reach the metal barrier, where you slip your fingers around the rusted bars and peer down through the gaps.

All at once, an ice-cold dread bubbles up from the pit of your stomach, blooming into something unignorable.

“Oh, my god.” You gulp thickly, nausea churning in your guts.

Materialising beside you, Death’s eye sweeps over the gladiatorial pit below.

And it is a pit, you decide with a grimace, akin to the ones you’d find in the Colosseums of Earth, with high walls on all four sides and a flat, ashy ground. Eight, ominous pillars of wood are spaced evenly around the arena. And set into the furthest wall, you spot the dark but definable grid of a portcullis.

Thick chains have been hammered into the sides of each pillar, and from them, dangling by manacles worn shut forever by rust, are…

“Skeletons?!” you gasp aloud, your body turning stiff.

Indeed, from at least half the pillars, several skeletons of various size and shape have been strung up, their sun-bleached bones browning in the daylight.

You half expect them to raise their skulls to glare up at you, but as the seconds tick by without any movement, you deduce that these skeletons must really be dead. In the traditional sense.

At least, you hope they are.

An eternity spent dangling by their wrists in this lonely place would be a cruel, awful fate.

“That’s a little morbid,” you comment, pulling a face at one skeleton whose arms, horned skull and torso are all that’s left of it. Everything below the spine has rotted off and fallen in a heap to the ground below, joining hundreds of other calcified bones that are scattered across the arena.

Hundreds…

‘Shit,’ you think to yourself, tugging worriedly at the hem of your skirt, ‘How many people died here?’

“Mm. What remains of those that failed,” comes Death’s voice, quiet and thoughtful as he scans the pit.

You don’t even bother to suppress a visceral shudder at that.

Tearing your eyes off the pillars, you shoot him a thin-lipped smile, wondering how much it must resemble a grimace. “Just... do me a favour? Promise I’m not gonna see your body strung up there when this is over?”

Death twists his mask towards you, taking in the tense pinch of your brow. “Hah,” he snorts, “And give Dust the satisfaction of pecking out my innards?”

“Death.”

“Do you really have so little faith in me?” he quips.

Aiming a swat at his arm that you miss on purpose, you turn away from him to lean against the fence and mutter, “Well, it’s hard to know who to bet on if I haven’t seen your opponent yet.”

After a moment of hesitation, you almost add, ‘just kidding,’ but a fleeting glance up at the Horseman’s profile reveals a glimmer of humour squeezing his eyes at their edges. He knows.

So, you close your mouth and instead return your gaze to the sprawling arena below.

From the safety of the elevated walkway, you squint down into the pit, casting a careful eye over every shadowy corner, and trying to peek behind the pillars.

“… Huh,” you say, furrowing your brow, “Um… Where do you think this Champion is?”

“I doubt he just waits around down here for some fool to come along and challenge him,” Death replies, placing a hand on the metal railing and bracing himself to vault right over it.

Before he can though, your fingers suddenly curl around what they’re able to of his immense bicep, delicately clutching at the cold skin as if you could prevent a force of nature from moving.

Perhaps it says something about Death that it actually works.

Rather than snatch his arm away as he might have done several days ago, the Horseman merely twists his mask around to appraise you coolly, only for his expression to waver when he sees you peering back up at him with an imploring frown.

“Please, be careful,” you say, neither demanding not demeaning, just a statement of concern expressed to a Nephilim for whom concern is (and always will be) an alien concept.

A thousand responses flit through his skull. Some prompt him to give you a sarcastic remark. Others, a harsh rebuttal of your well-meaning sentiment. ‘What sort of advice is that for one of the Four?’ he might say.

But there’s a sincerity to you, as always, that douses indignation and soothes his reflex to brush your worry aside like it’s a silly, frivolous thing. He can even see the tiny, yellow pinpricks of his own eyes reflected in your watery gaze.

‘Humans,’ he sighs internally.

Again, you’re throwing him off kilter. Something that’s been happening with startling frequency of late.

Resolving to address that at a later date, Death doesn’t say a word, instead offering you the tiniest of nods as he pulls quietly from your grasp and lays both of his hands on the metal barrier in front of him.

You let your fingers slip off his arm, stepping back to give him the space to swing his leg over the bars.

Shooting you a brief look over his shoulder, he only issues one, stark order. “Stay. Here.”

And all you do is nod in return, offering him a thin smile that doesn’t quite reach your eyes.

With a grunt, Death hoists himself up, effortlessly vaulting over the barricade and plummeting ten feet to the ashen ground below. He hits it lightly, nearly soundless save for the clink of his boot buckles, sending a plume of ash blossoming out around the spot where he lands.

Rising to his full height, he strains his sensitive ears to try and catch any sounds above the moaning desert winds and your anxiously shuffling feet up on the stands.

“It’s quiet,” he remarks to himself, though even he won’t venture to add the typical follow-on to that remark. No, he isn’t superstitious, but eons of experience have taught him that the Universe is full of patterns, and it does so love to try and catch him out…

Venturing further from the wall, Death continues to send searching glares at the pillars, his eyes lingering on a skull that’s turned to face the other end of the arena, staring blankly and eternally at the walls that entomb it.

On a whim, he follows its gaze, and finds himself look straight at the portcullis. Down here, it seems so much larger than it had from the stands.

Rusted, metal bars as thick as his wrists conceal nothing but a pitch-black darkness beyond the grid.

Senses primed to a hair-trigger, Death continues marching forwards, his steps light, his eyes unblinking and affixed to the looming, black gate.

The moaning wind picks up, blowing through the pillars and sending the skeletons swaying gently to and fro, bones knocking hollowly against one another.

All of a sudden, Death stops in his tracks.

Tiny particles of grit roll and tumble over the ground towards the Horseman’s boots, drawing his eyes down to watch them skitter past for a second before he jolts, snatching his head back up, hands flying down to the hilts of his scythes.

Without warning, the whole arena is sent shaking under the force of an almighty, ear-splitting roar.

The bellow reverberates throughout the amphitheatre, petering out on an echo carried off by the winds.

For the breadth of a second, everything falls silent once more.

It isn’t to last.

Somewhere inside the structure, a hidden winch starts to turn of its own preternatural accord. Metal chains jangle and clatter, and with a squeal of rusty hinges, the portcullis begins to rise, disappearing into the vertical grooves that had been carved into the wall thousands of years ago.

And from behind that dark, iron grid, twin balls of radiant green light spark to life.

Every hair on your body stands to attention as a guttural, hissing growl slides beneath the ever-widening gap.

Then, with a final screech, the portcullis clanks to a stop, the spikes jutting down from the roof of the hypogeum’s exit, like a vault yawning open to unleash a terrible monster.

Something innate bids you to call Death back to the safety of the stands, as if to warn him. But of what? He already knows.

An awful hole opens up under your feet, sucking any and all optimism down into it.

Ostegoth’s perturbed expression flits in front of your mind’s eye, and you wish you’d pressed him for more information. In fact, it occurs to you far too late that neither you nor Death had asked anyone what lays in wait in this arena.

‘But hindsight is a wonderful thing,’ you remind yourself firmly, curling anxious fingers around the bars of the fence, ‘Besides, if Death can take down the Guardian, he can certainly beat the Dead King’s Champion….’

Right?

Before you can stop it, a cold, empty doubt worms its way under your ribcage and sinks its teeth into your heart.

Down in the pit, Death’s mask dips threateningly, and in one, lighting-quick motion, he rips his scythes free, their blades catching the sunlight and glinting with deadly serration.

It’s as if their very appearance serves as the strike of a match because whatever had been lurking behind that gate comes exploding violently through it.

Death’s ears prick at the sound of your yelp as a ghastly beast slithers beneath the portcullis and emerges into the light.

He won’t begrudge you for your alarm. It is a nightmare given form.

At first glance, it looks like a snake. Fitting, he supposes, given that this realm seems so full of them.

The twin sky serpents, the Chancellor, and now this monstrosity…

“Gnashor, I presume?”

A golden, hominin skull sits at the head of a serpentine body, jaws parted wide to issue an animalistic hiss down at the Horseman.

Longer than the carriage of a train, Gnashor looks to be made entirely of solid, sun-bleached bone segments not unlike the spinal column of some long-dead sauropod, and around its skull, there hangs a cumbersome, black band of solid metal, fastened like a bear-trap above and below its head.

Clenching his jaw, Death muses that it’s presence might make removing this thing’s skull a little trickier.

A burning, green gem is stamped squarely at the centre of its cranium and flares with furious light, just like the sparks inside its empty sockets do as the beast hurtles towards Death, twisting its way over the ash with alarming speed.

Planting his right foot on the ground, the Horseman braces himself, waiting until it’s almost upon him before he suddenly kicks off, launching himself sideways and letting it careen right over the spot he’d just been standing.

Several tonnes of living bone barrels past, and as it does, Death twists himself about in mid-air and gives a testing swipe of his scythe. It glances harmlessly off the creature’s tail with a muted ‘shink.’

‘Solid as rock,’ Death notes irritably.

The force of its passing whips up a maelstrom of ash into Death’s mask, but he merely turns his back to the gale and readies his stance for another pass.

The almighty skull starts to turn, and its body follows suit, arching a graceful curve around the pit before it circles completely back to Death.

Eyes narrowed to thin slits of amber, the Horseman stands his ground, assessing, waiting for it to make the next move…

So, when it suddenly screeches to a stop with its massive jaw raising off the ground like a rearing cobra, he’s caught wildly off guard.

With barely a dozen paces between them, Gnashor poises for several, quavering seconds, its hateful glare boring into the Horseman with such contempt, he can nearly feel the malice rolling off its undulating body in waves and pushing against his own magics.

Hate is potent. This thing seems to have it in spades.

But something else occurs to him then. Whilst he’s been busy casting analytic glances at every part of the beast, studying it for signs of weakness, Gnashor, in turn, appears to be doing the same right back.

A mark of intelligence, he realises.

What is it humans say? ‘Know thy enemy?’

Death’s wrappings creak as he tightens his grip on the scythes. “What are you waiting for…?” he murmurs under his breath.

When Gnashor only shakes its segments like a rattlesnake warding off a larger predator, Death takes a testing step towards his quarry.

The reaction, as predicted, is visceral.

Gnashor’s skull recoils, and it lifts itself higher off the ground, jaws spread to roar threateningly at the Horseman’s advance, and without warning, it lunges….

…Straight. Down.

Death even leans back, preparing to dodge what he assumed would turn into a frontal attack. He’s almost thrown off his feet when Gnashor slams its colossal, bear-trap visor into the ash, and starts pushing in.

The power at the back of the Champion must be immense, for the ground gives way in a flash as if to readily accept those ancient bones back into its depths.

Spinal segments undulate, rippling with unbelievable strength as the backend of the creature’s entire body tips upwards. Within seconds, Gnashor has forced itself determinedly under the ground, and with a lash of its tail tip, it vanishes completely, leaving a burrowing hole in its wake that quickly begins to fill once again with sand and ash.

Somewhere above the arena, Death hears you give an indignant shout. “What the-!? That’s not fair!”

And while he appreciates the sentiment and your naïve expectations, battles are rarely won by playing fair. He has to commend the Champion. This might be harder than he anticipated…

The ground under his feet trembles like there’s an earthquake rolling through the amphitheatre. Spinning slowly in place, he tries to follow the vibrations, feeling for their intensity and spitting a very human curse off his tongue – one he must have picked up from you, somehow.

Sharp, discerning eyes scan the ground, but in the end-

“Death!” You’re the one who spots it first. “Behind you!”

Your shrill voice cuts above the rumble of Gnashor’s tunnelling, and as Death whirls around, he finally zeroes in on what you’d alerted him to.

At the other end of the arena - but quickly eating up the distance – a long lump of churning ash is careening across the ground in his direction. Gnashor lays just below the surface, burrowing along without hinderance.

The lump is rising up under his boots before he can heave a weary sigh.

In a split-second decision, he dives forwards and hits the dirt just as the ground behind him splits apart.

Gnashor erupts from the ash in a vertical lunge, his roaring skull aimed like a missile towards the sky.

Quick as a flash, Death rolls onto his back and drops one scythe to raise his free hand towards the beast’s spine.

“Oh no you don’t,” he growls.

His gauntlet flashes with a familiar, purple light, and the phantom copy of his appendage launches from the ether, translucent, disjointed fingers reaching for their target.

Bullseye.

They hit one of Gnashor’s jutting spinal segments behind its neck, instantly clamping down around the vertebrae with a vengeance. Then, taking up both scythes in one hand and giving his opposite arm a vicious wrench, Death uses the ethereal tether to haul himself off the ground, through the air, and straight onto the Champion’s back.

The ensuing howl of rage is loud enough to shake the ramparts above you.

With its job done, the phantom hand dissolves into wisps of indigo smoke as Death digs his natural fingers into the grooves around Gnashor’s neck, adhering himself to the writhing beast with one hand while the other swings his scythes down and hooks the curved blades underneath its body, pulling the metal up to cut into its ‘throat.’

He might have succeeded in severing its head after all, if Gnashor hadn’t wised up and chosen that precise moment to buck.

A sudden, violent lurch to the side dislodges Death’s weapons from its neck as the Champion vaults up and down, its serpentine body dancing erratically like a ribbon swept up in a maelstrom. Stubborn as a burr, the Horseman’s grip turns crushing, and he hooks his ankles over each other beneath Gnashor’s body, determined not to be thrown.

He’s a Rider, no beast could unsaddle him.

In awe, you watch from the stands, your eyes blown wide, shining with astonishment as Gnashor thrashes around the arena. Not once does Death slip. He’s leaning backwards, sitting himself heavily against one of the spinal vertebrae and letting his body roll with every, erratic motion.

You’ve seen him on Despair, but the horse and his rider are so in sync, they make it look effortless. This though… This takes real mastery. This is the Horseman in him, you realise with a growing swell of amazement and - oddly enough - pride, prompting you to pump your fist in the air and cheer, “Yeah! Woo! Ride ‘em, Cowboy!”

If Death hears your encouragement – and there’s no doubt that he does – he doesn’t respond. Can’t in fact. Because without warning, which isn’t so surprising, Gnashor suddenly changes tactics.

If it can’t throw him off, then it will try to knock him off.

Indignant, it sets its sights on one of the pillars, and a desperate gleam flashes across its sockets.

In a move neither you nor Death would have anticipated, Gnashor coils its bones together like a spring and, in one, quick jerk, it unfurls itself, launching towards the structure.

The Horseman realises its intent barely a second before impact.

Thinking on his feet, he hunkers down against the beast’s spine and throws himself to the opposite side, putting as much weight behind his lurch as possible.

Gnashor’s flank hits the column with an almighty crash, sending chunks of wood flying in every direction. Splinters pepper like hailstones down against Death’s shoulders and into his hair, and while he escapes being crushed entirely, there’s still a sickening crunch, followed by an unusual, uninvited stab of discomfort that goes shooting up his leg, so unfamiliar to him that he doesn’t register it for what it is at first.

His boot, it seems, the one slung around Gnashor’s serpentine neck to adhere him in place, had not been spared from the impact.

Metal and leather dig into his calf as his unorthodox mount slides down the pillar and hits the ground, shaking off its own daze, yet the only utterance Death makes is a small, muted grunt that he keeps locked behind his gritted teeth.

By contrast, your reaction borders on deafening.

“DEATH!” you yelp shrilly, all traces of enthusiasm gone.

Throwing yourself against the fence, you watch in horror as the Champion shakes the impact off and begins to rise, its armoured skull twisting around on itself to glare at the Horseman still clinging to its back.

The sound of your voice, harrowed and fraught with worry, steals a portion of Death’s focus from the battle. Snapping his gaze up to the top of the pit, his eyes dart left and right, seeking you out, and when he finds you, he’s quick to forget about the ache in his leg.

You’re leaning precariously over the barricade, your hands braced on top of the bars to lift yourself onto your tiptoes as if you’re moments away from vaulting over the fence entirely, driven by the same foolish, dogged loyalty that had urged you to follow him to this dead realm.

A bullet of alarm slugs the Horseman in his chest, just underneath the remnants of the Crowfather’s lantern.

“STAY THERE!” he bellows, his grasp on Gnashor slipping as it thrusts its skull into a forward charge, aiming for one of the intact pillars.

Up above, you’re almost chewing a hole through your cheek, one leg twitching as though you mean to sling it over the fence and leap down into the arena to help. Is it cheating to help? Does that really matter in a battle of life and death?

You’re so focused on the fight, you don’t even hear the steady tread of boots stalking up behind you.

How could you hear when Gnashor’s skull splits open to roar and the whole amphitheatre rumbles in response?

It’s why your heart almost leaps out of your throat when a giant, clammy hand fists itself into your hair and wrenches you viciously backwards, ripping your hands off the fence.

You can’t even catch a breath to cry out. Your head snaps back violently, scalp burning like it’s been set on fire as you’re flung to the ground, landing with a sickening thud on your spine and biting your tongue so hard, the taste of iron is quick to spread across its spongey surface.

There’s a ‘smack!’ when your skull follows your body’s momentum and hits the stone underneath it.

At last, you let out a wheezing cry, mouth hanging open in shock as pain and light explode behind your eye sockets. “Wha-!” Voice slurring, you give a dumb blink, your brain sluggish and hazy.

Keeping your eyelids apart is a feat, but you try to focus on what just happened, how you went from standing to laying on your back within a matter of seconds. Colourful sparks dance in front of your retinas, and your ears ring with a high-pitched whine.

‘What the Hell happened!?’

Suddenly, a shadow falls over your eyes, blotting out the sunlight overhead.

Heaving a miserable groan, you lift an arm up weakly to shield your vision and squint up at a towering shape that looms over you, a pair of horns sweeping out on either side of their head.

“Vuh-Ugh… Vulgrim?” you croak blearily.

Your brain feels three times as heavy, thick with fog and confusion, but there are alarm bells blaring somewhere far away as the figure bends down and fills your vision with the sight of a huge, rotting hand, crooked fingers splayed menacingly above you… Reaching for you…

At the back of your mind, a tiny voice whispers through the tinnitus, ‘That’s not Vulgrim.’

Kicking feebly at the ground with your heels, you try to scoot backwards, but you don’t manage to budge more than an inch or two before those same, putrid fingers slither around your neck.

And then, they go taut.

At once, your eyes bulge out of your head, rolling with fright as you’re dragged unceremoniously off the ground by your throat, gasping for breath around an obstructed windpipe.

Flailing your legs, you attempt to strike out with a foot, though your boot only glances off sturdy, unyielding armour. With your vision reclaiming ground, you peer down at the rusty, iron gauntlet below your nose, attached to the arm of the hand that’s strangling you.

Shivering, you tear your eyes off the gauntlet and lift them up to find a vaguely familiar face glaring back down at you.

“B-B-!” you choke out, silenced when the hand gives a squeeze.

A lipless mouth peels apart to reveal crooked, serrated teeth, sneering at you with all the hate of a man watching a bug squirm in his palm.

One of Draven’s recruits holds you aloft, the undead who wielded an axe and had seemed only too eager to separate your head from your body when you first arrived.

“You…” Brumox oozes venom when he spits out the word. “You filthy, little primate!”

His fingers are cold against your neck, but not cold like Death’s crisp, gentle touch. Theirs is the cold of a blade at your throat, or ice pricking your delicate skin, so cold it might burn.

Trembling, and aware that you’re in real danger of suffocating if the abject hatred in his glare is anything to go by, you suck a tight, unpleasant wheeze in through your teeth and kick your brain into gear.

Floppily, you reach a hand down to the sword at your hip, fingers smacking painfully against its pommel as you try to tug it from the leather scabbard.

A curl of fear, more potent than usual, swoops your stomach out from underneath you when Brumox’s eyelights flick down towards your hand. You suppose it would be too much to hope that he didn’t notice.

A cruel sneer creeps across his skeletal face, cheeks worn through to show you the sinew beneath flaps of skin. “You have some nerve,” he hisses, spewing a jet of stale, rancid air into your face.

Just as you grasp the hilt of Karn’s sword, a far larger, far stronger hand clamps down around your wrist and tears it away, gripping so hard, you could swear you feel your bones grind against each other beneath your skin.

“A-arghh!” you manage to exclaim, screwing your face up in agony as Brumox tosses your arm aside and grabs the leather strap of the scabbard, giving a vicious tug and continuing to pull sharply until the strap starts cutting into your side. Then, with a final tug, the leather gives out and splits apart at a worn seam, and the undead tosses the whole thing aside.

Through bleary eyes, you watch it clatter to the ground several yards away, stretching a hand out after it and choking, “K-Kaar-“

You’re cut off by a terrible snarl, and the arm keeping you aloft gives a rough, harried shake, jostling you wildly. “You come into our realm,” Brumox spits, “You flaunt yourself in front of us, with your beating heart and your warm blood…!”

What the Hell is he talking about?

You try to voice your thought, but the air in your lungs is growing staler by the second, and your head is becoming too light to think straight.

Dimly, you’re aware of the sounds of Death and Gnashor battling it out in the arena below you. Can the Horseman even see you from down there? If you could just get enough air in to shout…

“The arrogance-!” he continues, “-of humans. You are not worthy of the souls you host!”

“Brmx!” you sputter through pursed lips, spittle dribbling from the corner of your mouth.

He’d come out of nowhere. Sure, Death said the undead don’t like the living but surely he doesn’t mean to-!

Dark spots circle the outskirts of your vision like insects crawling across your retinas, fast and fleeting.

Brumox, his sockets deep and cold, illuminated by the colour of envy, flexes what muscles haven’t withered away in his bulbous arm and hoists you higher into the air, swinging you clear above the metal barrier and letting you dangle by your neck above the ten-foot drop below.

“You want an audience with the King of the Dead?” he posits in a deep, throaty growl, the translucent glow of his skin going fuzzy at the edges as you try to keep your eyes fixed on his. Is it possible for lungs to catch on fire?

His bones creak when he leans towards you over the fence, his skeletal grin bordering on maniacal as his arm draws you back in, close enough that when he speaks, you can look right between his teeth and see the gaping hole at the back of his throat that lets daylight seep into the dry, hollow mouth from behind him. “Then die.”

And-

“Y/N!”

Death’s call sounds far away in your ringing ears, too far.

The deadly pressure around your neck vanishes with a rip and tear of nails through your skin, and you’re tossed, as dismissively as a piece of lint, down into the pit below.

For one, terrifying and confusing moment, you’re suspended in freefall, wide eyes staring blankly up at the face that sneers down at you over the railings.

You’re granted no more than a second to really comprehend what happened, but by the time that second turns into two, the arena has already risen up to meet you.

‘WHUMPH!’

A shuddersome howl of pain is punched right out of your screaming lungs when you land boots-first in the pit, and the only blessing that flits distantly through the back of your mind is, ‘at least the ash is deep.’

You might have considered it luck, if you didn’t feel so damnably unlucky after being dropped in the first place. Somehow though, you’re immediately swallowed up to your ankles by the soft, giving surface, cushioning an impact which might have otherwise snapped a femur. It still hurts though.

Badly.

You topple backwards, landing with a horrific jolt on your spine for the second time in as many minutes. Any breath you might have sucked back in when Brummox released you is expelled all over again in a pitiful, wretched gasp that empties your chest until it feels hollow and concave.

“Fu-uck!” you groan brokenly, too afraid to move lest you discover that it isn’t just your voice that’s shattered.

Above you, the sky is bright, entirely too bright, causing you to screw your eyes shut with a miserable whine, blocking out the ghostly, green blob hovering on the other side of the metal barrier.

If Brumox still had working salivary glands, he’d send a globule of spit down after you. The nerve of you. As if his perpetual existence spent in servitude isn’t punishment enough, he had to just stand there and stay his blade whilst a living, breathing human sauntered into their midst, rubbing that valuable lifeforce in all of their faces as if to say, ‘Look here. See what you can never have back.’

Curling the rotten side of his mouth into his best approximation of a smirk, the undead allows himself to bask in another moment of your suffering, only too pleased to see you laying stiffly on your back, afraid and bewildered, surrounded by the ashes of all those who came here before you.

With any luck, yours will join theirs soon enough.

Gasping like a fish on land, you blink up at Brumox’s hazy silhouette, watching him turn about as if in slow motion and stalk off, vanishing from the stands.

“No!”

….

…. Oh right, Death!

Piece by piece, your head stops spinning and stitches its scattered fragments back together. The ringing in your ears fades out until you can hear metal clanging and a beast roaring somewhere nearby, and that’s without even mentioning the tremors passing below you like you’ve come to rest right at the epicentre of a veritable earthquake.

Throat burning, aching as if it’s been squashed in a clamp, you muscle down a painful breath and grit your teeth, flexing your fingers and finding, to your immense relief, that you can still feel and move them.

The same goes for your toes. You could almost weep at the pain engulfing your ankles. It means your spine must still be intact.

Screwing your face up in apprehension, you arduously roll yourself over onto your side, blurting out a little cry of shock as the movement sends a jolt running from the base of your skull to the back of your calves. But at least you can move.

Craning your neck back, you blink away tears, clearing your vision enough to make out the blurry shapes in the arena with you.

One of those shapes, smaller and harder to make out, has broken away from the larger, who currently appears to be busy picking itself from the rubble of another, toppled pillar.

One more blink, and at long last, your vision returns to some semblance of normalcy.

You almost wish it hadn’t.

The hazy but discernible blob snaps into focus with a roil of your guts, and suddenly Death is charging towards you, his ebony hair whipping off his mask, eyes wide and explosive like two stars teetering on the brink of a supernova.

Jesus… He isn’t even limping despite the leg half-crushed inside his boot.

In the next instant, the heat of the desert is swiftly and aggressively blasted away by a shockwave of cold, icy air. It suffocates you like a blanket of snow, shocking the breath out of your lungs as if you’ve just dunked yourself in a mountain lake.

Death’s glare might be afire, but his magic has rarely felt colder.

However, that supernatural power, that raw, unparallelled sharpness permeating the air around you pales in comparison to the ice that seeps through your veins when you look beyond Death, to the gigantic mass of bone raising itself from the ash and giving its skull a shake before it twists itself around to glare after the Horseman, locking him in those wicked, green eye-lights.

A horrifying realisation strikes you then, stark and jarring as a slap to the face.

Death has taken his eyes off Gnashor…

He’s shifted priorities.

He… he can’t do that here! Even if it’s only for one, tiny moment, even if he realigns his focus in three seconds flat, you know it’ll already be too late.

This beast, this… Champion must hold its title for a reason.

Death might have gotten away with some lapses in concentration when he was fighting a construct or an over-sized bug, but the bones and skeletal remains piled up around the Gilded Arena are testament to how dangerous this creature is. How it isn’t to be underestimated.

As you feared, Gnashor seizes upon the distraction with a ferocious tenacity.

And it all happens in the blink of an eye.

The Champion’s streamlined body ploughs through the ash like a runaway drill, that shining, golden skull held low as it careens past Death until its tail runs parallel to the Horseman’s loping strides.

Your eyes are fixed on Gnashor, on the undulating motion that starts at its head and winds down the length of its bones as the beast prepares to swerve across Death’s path, one segment after the other snapping sideways.

You can see precisely where the momentum is going to culminate.

But Death?

The stupid bastard’s gaze is locked on you.

It burns your throat to snap up even the tiniest breath, but you hastily draw one in, just enough to open your mouth wide and shout one word.

“TAIL!”

As if coming out of a trance, Death blinks, his tunnel vision expanding outwards from the centre point. From you.

He hadn’t seen what lead up to your fall, not really. If he had, he might have reached you in time. All he’d seen when he picked himself off the ground and caught movement from the corner of his eye, was your small, vulnerable body dangling from the arm of that undead who’d almost gotten a bullet through his foot when he raised his axe against you yesterday.

No sooner has Death placed Brumox’s decaying face than the hand around your throat sprang open.

After that, he didn’t see much more than a red mist of rage that descended over his vision. Even now, he can feel the Reaper bucking against its restraints, but he’s been relying on it too heavily of late. The excessive toll it takes on his magics every time it bursts from him has left his natural reserves dwindling dangerously close to empty. It needs power to break loose. Power he hasn’t re-accumulated. It’s why Death is always so keen to take back control after an outburst. The longer the Reaper is free, feeding off Death’s mystical forces, the longer it takes to rebuild those reserves. And it had been out for quite some time yesterday.

When the Council granted he and his siblings the power to defeat the Nephilim species, they made sure to shackle the Four. Death wasn’t ignorant to their ploy. A failsafe, he supposed, was only understandable. Why build a weapon that doesn’t have an ‘off’ switch? But he’s never cursed them more for their caution than he does now. Limitless access to the primal Reaper would certainly come in handy here.

The Horseman’s legs are pumping before he can register having told them to do so, your name tumbling from his lips of its own accord. Not even the dull throbbing in his calf nor the tiny splinters of wood digging into his scalp could slow him down.

How is it that even when you’re doing the right thing and staying out of harm’s way, you still manage to wind up in danger?

Your shout of ‘Tail!’ tears him from his thoughts and thrusts him back to the present with a vengeance.

It’s just a shame the warning came too late.

Death barely has the wherewithal to glance sideways and spot the enormous, bony tail whipping towards him.

Without slowing his stride, his gives a pre-emptive wince and utters a quick, quiet, “Ah-.”

‘W H A M!’

Death has taken blows before. From makers, and constructs, demons, angels and Nephilim, and even his own siblings.

Over the eons, he’s trained himself to become very good at avoiding even a glancing strike. Which is why he’s always surprised when one does land.

Well. Not only does Gnashor’s wallop land, but it also launches Death completely off his feet.

Barely a few dozen yards away, laying on your belly now, you’re helpless except to let out a pathetic cry as the Champion’s impermeable tail lashes out and slams into your Horseman’s ribs.

Time seems to crawl on its hands and knees as you watch his eyes burst open wide, shocked. For just a heartbeat, Death’s gaze remains locked on your horrified expression, soaking up the fear and anguish and pain pouring off your face. Then, in the next breath, his whole body is suddenly sent flying sideways through the air, careening into one of the stone walls of the arena with a stomach-turning ‘slam!’ that has you flinching your head back instinctively and trying to scream, “Death!” though his name catches in your throat and comes out broken and weak.

Tipping its head back, Gnashor lets out a triumphant bellow whilst Death can only muster a faint groan, sliding down the wall until his knees hit the ash and he collapses onto his palms, shoulders heaving. His mask is tilted down, the dark curtain of hair obscuring his eyes from view, and it’s then that you realise with an awful stab of dread that the Horseman – your powerful, terrifying, nigh-invulnerable friend – might actually be very, very hurt.

Your jaws snap together with an audible ‘click.’

Lowering its massive skull, Gnashor begins slithering towards the slumped Nephilim.

There’s an ache in your body that’s gradually starting to fade, growing even more ignorable as you grit your teeth until they’re bared, curl your hands into quivering fists and push yourself off your stomach, gathering your knees underneath you to sit up. A deep, whistling breath threatens to turn into a cough before it reaches your lungs, but you force it down anyway, hardly caring when the threat to Death is so much greater than your bruised throat.

Zeroing in on the Champion, you open your mouth, heedless of the consequences, forgetting what you are and all of your sense as you bark out a sharp, sudden, “HEY!”

For just one moment, everything in the arena goes eerily silent. Gnashor stills its approach, the segments of its body jerking to a stop in the ash.

Then, sharp as a whipcrack, its skull tears away from the Horseman, and those terrible sockets lock onto you instead.

It’s funny how quickly you can be made to regret a decision. Only, it isn’t really that funny at all when several tonnes of bone wheels itself towards you and makes an unexpectedly mad dash in your direction, responding to your challenge like a bull charging a matador.

It happens to fast and so suddenly, all of your bravado vanishes in a snap and you shriek, toppling over onto your rear and scrabbling backwards at a pitiful pace.

Gnashor cuts a path towards you, throwing bones and ash up like tidal waves to its left and right as its tail whips from side to side.

Your boots kick uselessly at ash, only succeeding in digging grooves into the arena floor as the beast bears down on top of you, careening to a violent stop just inches before it can crush you beneath the weight of a skull that’s as large than you are tall.

Golden bone shimmers in the sunlight as Gnashor rears itself up into a striking position, the metal clamp around its neck creaking with the movement.

Yelping, you tumble onto your back, throwing both arms up and holding your palms out towards the hissing monster, as if you could hold a creature so gargantuan at bay even for a sniff of a second.

The massive jaw that could engulf your entire body hangs open, but all at once, the bone-chilling hiss emanating from somewhere deep inside that cavernous hole cuts out, falling immediately and alarmingly silent.

Eyes screwed shut, your ears continue to ring noisily even in the ensuing quiet.

… Seconds fall away from you like dead things, lost to the desert wind, and when the awful anticipation of waiting for a blow becomes too much to bear, you crack an eyelid open, peeking reluctantly through your shaking fingers to focus on the enormous skull looming over you.

Gnashor cuts a gruesome silhouette against the sky above you. The green of its eyes is wild and vivid, yet as you continue to peep up at them, waiting for the strike to bring it crashing down on top of your head, you can’t help but notice that little by little, the lights inside its sockets are starting to dim.

It’s crooked jaw - filled with formidable, golden fangs as long as your forearm - inches shut as it drags its haunting gaze from your face down to your waist, then slowly slides a glance first to your left hip, then over to your right.

Chest bursting with anticipation, you swallow heavily and feel it catch on the heart lodged at the top of your sternum.

What the Hell is it doing?

You visibly jump in your place on the ground as Gnashor swings its skull from side to side, sweeping its searching gaze over the ash surrounding you, as if it’s looking for something…

With every poignant second that races past like your thundering heart, you’re brought closer and closer to an untimely and painful demise. Gnashor won’t poise like this forever, you remind yourself.

Is this really how it’s all going to come to an end? Crushed by the jaws of a skeletal serpent in some dusty arena far from your home on Earth? And all because you just had to buy Death some time by getting the attention of an adversary you never had a hope in Hell’s chance of escaping or besting…

… Each day is starting to feel more and more like you’re dancing on the edge of a broken record, barely skipping over the same perils and landing right back at where you started, stuck waiting until the next danger swings around to meet you.

A tear rolls off your cheek and buries itself in the ash beside you, lending moisture to a land that barely remembers the cooling flow of water.

Your eyes sparkle with the gathering liquid, and the tracks running down your cheeks glisten like jewels in the sunlight.

Yet still, still Gnashor doesn’t make a move. Its skull hangs above you, its fangs sealed together in a sharp, jagged line as its eye-lights roam from the ground near your hips to your face.

… Your hips though… Why in the world would it be-?

Narrowing your eyes, you risk throwing a rapid glance down at your side before returning your attention to Gnashor’s skull, only partially relieved to find that it hasn’t moved during your lapse in focus.

But that one glance reminds you of something… Something important. Something that only leaves you feeling more vulnerable than you were before, if that were even possible.

Karn’s sword.

It’s gone. It’s still up on the stands, where Brumox had tossed it so carelessly, rendering you unarmed and unable to fight back even if you wanted to…

… If you wanted to?

Fight?

Suddenly, something Ostegoth had said tickles at the back of your mind. What was it…? You give up chasing the train of thought when you realise you don’t really have the luxury of time here.

Wetting your lips with a dry tongue, you keep your eyes affixed to the Champion’s bear-trap jaws and hesitantly croak out, “Gnashor?”

You don’t rightly know what possessed you to speak its name.

At the sound of your voice, the creature’s eye-lights flare like bursting bulbs, and every segment that makes up its vertebrae suddenly tenses, cracking together audibly from the base of its skull all the way to the tip of its tail.

In response, you recoil, curling in on yourself with a gasp that irritates your sore neck.

And just as you’re starting to think you’ve gone and signed your own death warrant, Gnashor’s body abruptly jerks backwards.

The sound you make shouldn’t register in a normal human’s vocal range, but then again, you’re no linguist.

Even Gnashor utters a startled grunt as it whips its skull around at an angle that should have snapped its neck, jaw falling open to unleash an ear-splitting bellow.

Clutching handfuls of ash between your fingers, you drop your eyes to movement behind the beast and promptly let your own jaw go slack.

Death has appeared out of nowhere, apparently having recovered from his brush with the arena wall, shrugging off damage that would have utterly eviscerated a human being. His hands are clamped around the end of Gnashor’s tail, his fingertips curled into claws and buried deep between two segmented bones, anchoring him to the Champion like a briar with murderous intent.

And oh, there is murder, swirling in those wild, amber eyes.

You forget… How soon you forget that Death is a force of nature, arguably more than he is a person.

Even with a mask of bone covering his features, you know there’s a snarl on his face. You can tell in the rumbling growl that’s being forced through his clenched teeth.

All of a sudden, his muscles bulge and ripple beneath corpse-grey skin as he violently heaves his arms backwards, boots digging holes into the ash around his legs when the weight of Gnashor’s body contends with the Horseman’s strength.

You should have grown used to the laws of physics being broken by now. Floating fortresses, flying serpents and the living dead ought to have conditioned you to accept things that should be impossible.

And yet, you can’t keep yourself from gasping aloud as Death lets out a furious shout and swings an equally astonished Gnashor up into the air by its tail, spins on his heels… and slams its skeletal body into the ground behind him.

The tail hits first. Followed quickly by the rest of its body one segment at a time, until finally, with a deafening ‘clang!’ the Champion’s jaw makes landfall, and a sizeable tremor ripples through the arena, shaking the ground beneath your feet.

Dazed, Gnashor simply lays there, stunned into a stupor, pushing a moan of musty air out through the gaps in its fangs whilst Death straightens up and yanks his hands off its tail, curling them into crushing fists that cause his forearms to bunch up until their wrappings strain visibly over protruding muscles.

It would have been nice to get a moment to process what just happened. But alas, the shockwaves have barely stopped rolling by underneath you before the Horseman is rounding on you with a frenzied mania that sends you flinching back onto your elbows in alarm.

He wouldn’t hurt you… you know he wouldn’t… But in that one, split second - with the wind whipping his pitch-black hair about his mask, and the infernos raging behind those carved, bottomless sockets – something small and primitive at the back of your mind wonders if it’s only Gnashor you need to be afraid of…

He must have noticed something, the hitch of your chest or the pupils shrinking to pinpricks in your eyes, but whatever he sees when his feral glare lands on your face, he seems to pause. The oppressive cold billows off the Horseman in sheets. It seeps into your skin and pushes your hairs up from their follicles, obliterating any trace of heat until you forget you’re in a desert at all.

Clouds of crisp, white air start to billow through your teeth with each uneven heave of your chest.

Reluctant to meet his gaze, you lower your eyes to the ground in front of you.

“I’m sorry,” you choke out through a sob, “I’m sorry, I-I didn’t mean to-“

“Shut. Up,” Death grinds out, his voice pitched hazardously low.

He’s livid. No surprise there. But as your wobbling lips press together into a tight, bunched line, you listen to the Horseman move closer, dropping to his knee at your side and muttering vehemently under his breath, “The only one who should be sorry is Brumox…. When I get my hands on that coward…”

So, he did see what happened… at least enough to know you didn’t get yourself into this mess. Sniffling, you allow your gaze to venture around the Nephilim until your bleary vision lands on the long, expansive body laying stretched out behind him.

“It… it didn’t attack me,” you whisper aloud, “Death? Why didn’t it attack me?”

Distracted, the Horseman keeps his hands hovering mere inches above you as he moves them up and down your body, like he’s trying to feel out a source of injury. After a second, he belatedly grunts, “You’re not exactly a threat…” Then- “Damn this place! I thought you’d be-! … I should have left you with Draven…”

You might have taken in what Death is saying, but at that moment, something near the base of the crumbled pillar opposite Gnashor’s body starts to stir.

The Horseman’s words fade to background chatter as you squint your eyes halfway shut, scrunching up one side of your face to utter, “Um… Death?”

A calloused palm suddenly slips underneath your back.

You have to bite down hard on your tongue to resist the urge to lunge away from the sensation of ice on your spine, battling against instinct as you allow Death to manoeuvre you upright gingerly with one hand, the other hovering above your chest.

“You can’t be down here,” he manages to bite out through the ire broiling under his ribcage.

It’s probably a good thing you’re too distracted to make a comment about understatements and the like.

Movement beneath and atop the ash strewn all over the pit has caught your eye. Strange, oblong shapes bulge up from underground in certain places like so many crustaceans clawing their way to the surface of a sandy beach. Those shapes that weren’t buried have been bleached white under the sun, discolouring hardened tissue and causing them to stand out starkly against the grey ash…

‘Bones…’ is all your gobsmacked mind can supply, ‘That’s a lot of bones.’

As Death continues to gently lever you off the ground, your eyes stay firmly affixed to the skeletal remains that have begun to roll and bounce across the arena unhindered. Hundreds of bones are on the move, coming in all shapes and sizes.

All of them are congregating towards a central point.

Gnashor.

Femurs, ribcages, sternums and scapulas… There are some so small you can only see their vague whiteness wriggling like bugs over the ash, and some are so large, they look as though they were stripped right out of an elephant’s carcass.

Blinking dumbly, you find yourself gaping open-mouthed at one of the skulls that had been attached to a skeleton hanging off the pillar Gnashor destroyed. It… almost looks comical now, bounding along the ground, tugged by some dark, invisible call, guiding it towards the Champion.

“… Deeeaath…?” you draw out urgently, lifting your hand to point at the gargantuan fossil stirring back to life, its skull rising slowly from the ground and sending great swathes of ash cascading out of its jaw.

The first of the marching bones have finally reached it.

All you receive in response is a gruff, nonsensical complaint and a hand curling over the top of yours, gently but insistently coaxing it back down towards your side. “Be. Still,” Death commands, shooting you a glare loaded with stark warning, “I’m getting you out of-!”

Without waiting for him to finish his sentence, you wrench your limb out from under his and heave an exasperated groan. Then, quite thoughtlessly disregarding your own sense of self-preservation, you bend forwards and place your hands firmly on either side of his face, your fingertips pressed to the cool, calloused skin of his jawline and your palms cupped around the cheekbones of his mask.

At your unexpected touch, Death’s body locks up tight, shocked beyond comprehension, but he’s stunned enough that he doesn’t think to resist as you simply twist his head sideways over one of his shoulders until you’re more or less facing him in Gnashor’s direction, letting him go once his eyes lock onto what you’ve been trying to alert him to.

Inwardly, Death notes that you didn’t try to remove his mask. He notes the warm tingle left in the path your fingers traced. Then, he notes the path the bones are making towards his adversary’s body.

“Ah,” he says shortly, still hunched over you like a bristling shroud, “Well. That’s hardly sporting.”

Like a long-buried fossil trapped beneath the dirt, Gnashor raises itself up onto its stomach, tilts its skull back and unleashes one of its earth-shaking roars. As if on command, the bones that had been moving steadily towards the Champion are swept up in a sudden maelstrom of ash.

A vicious gust of wind whips across the arena as if out of nowhere, hauling the remains violently up into the air, and right before your eyes, the bones shoot towards Gnashor’s serpentine body.

Sinuous strips of leathery skin still clinging to some of the osseus matter latch onto the Champion, pulling the bones into place like a grotesque puzzle, stitching a hulking body together out of dozens of corpses.

In one blink, a bulging ribcage has surrounded Gnashor’s spine. In another, two arms are formed with crushing fists made up of thicker bones sprouting at the end of each wrist. Shoulders protrude outwards around its skull, jagged and enormous. Then clavicles and a sternum, a pelvis… It all fuses together, a body built over the top of what used to be Gnashor.

The gruesome marriage of corpses finally ends when the Champion slams its newly-formed hands into the ground and pushes itself upright, and you watch horror-stricken as a pair of limbs are cobbled together underneath its bulk.

Clawed feet find purchase on the ground as Gnashor, now almost thrice its original size, stands on two colossal legs, the end of its prehensile tail jutting out from behind the bones and extending down to the ground below, lashing from side to side through the ash.

At last, it turns, heaving its bulky, crooked body around to face you and Death.

Its golden skull sits between two, mountainous shoulders, still attached to the spinal columns below it.

And then you realise… Gnashor is the spine, wearing this new, skeletal body like a suit of armour.

You’ve seen magic before. Death’s, Eideard’s, even the Warden’s when he constructed a bridge out of broken stone using nothing but his voice.

You haven’t seen this type of magic before though.

A body built from others, stolen from the ground.

On a blood-deep level, you know in your very cells that this is wrong.

A body should rest.

Is this what will happen to you and Death if Gnashor is victorious? Will you become part of this Champion, helping it defend its title, however unwittingly. Will your bones remember you?

The idea opens up a blackhole at the base of your throat, and all the air you try to draw in seems to go into the pit instead of your lungs.

All of a sudden, your view of Gnashor is partially blocked by long, agile legs.

Tearing your gaze off the brute, you find Death swelling to his full height between you, his scythes already in hand.

Gnashor lifts it foot off the ground, aiming to take a step forwards, but this time, the Horseman doesn’t intend to let it make the first move.

Silently, but explosively, Death lunges into a break-neck sprint, wrenching his arm forwards as he moves and hurling his scythe into a boomerang throw. Metal spins in a whirlwind, curving around Gnashor and clanging against its shoulders on both the toss and the return, sending the monster reeling away from you.

The weapon flies straight back into Death’s raised palm with a resounding ‘smack,’ but he doesn’t let the momentum waver, driving forwards with another swing aimed at the Champion’s leg.

Stomping its foot back down, Gnashor sends tremors through the ground with its weight alone. Verdant, flaring eye-lights flit down to the scythe that has just nicked a chip out of its leg, then up to the Horseman, and the other scythe clutched in his vice-like grip.

Something strange happens then, so briefly that you can’t be sure you caught it at all.

Perhaps it’s just your mind playing tricks on you – it’s hard to know where Gnashor is looking – but you think you see its skull tilt ever so slightly to one side as if it’s peering around Death, and then the eerie sensation of being watched creeps up the back of your neck.

The moment is over before the hairs have even fully risen on your nape.

In front of you, Death draws a scythe back, ready to strike out with it once more.

It’s as though he’s just waved a red flag.

Gnashor’s eyes are upon him in the next second, shrinking to small, green pinpricks in their sockets. Opening its jaw wide, it bellows down at him, pawing one, massive foot at the ash like a bull on the cusp of charging.

So, Death charges first.

Launching himself off his backfoot, the Horseman slips fox-like around Gnashor’s arm as it whips out in front of him, intending to smack him right out of his boots.

Thus, their dance begins anew.

Death drives, bullies and strafes Gnashor across the arena, and it doesn’t escape your notice that he’s deliberately leading the giant away from where you sit, gawping like a dead-eyed fish as their brutal waltz ploughs on.

What the Champion lacks in weaponry, it makes up for in the force and power behind its brawny fists, swinging them at Death with wild and reckless abandon, faster than the Horseman had anticipated. He continues trying to chip away at it, working out the weak spots, darting in rapidly to try and get his scythe around its neck only to be forced away again when it reels back and attempts to grab him with its savage fists.

The two of them seem so evenly matched. Death is giving Gnashor a run for its money, but the Champion doesn’t seem so willing to give up its title either. You suppose that’s fair, given the implications. Having to lose one’s head seems like a decent incentive to fight your corner, after all.

It takes another minute of letting the thunderous roars and clashing of steel rumble through your chest like cannon-fire before you come back into yourself with a start.

“The Hell am I doing?” you shakily whisper to yourself, twisting your sore neck around to look frantically at the high walls surrounding the pit.

You need to get out of here. Just because Death can’t help you right now doesn’t mean you can’t. If you can get to a higher vantage point again, maybe you can be his eyes.

Oh, where’s Dust when you need him?

It hurts to push yourself onto your feet, though thankfully far less so than you feared it would. Hesitant, you place a testing boot down, feeling it twinge as it bears your weight, but not nearly enough to whine about.

Setting your jaw, you amble around to face away from the fight raging behind you and start to drag yourself arduously across the arena, aiming for the closest wall and passing beneath the shadow of one of the last, standing pillars.

Behind you, Death’s attacks continue, relentless.

Even with its newfound mobility, Gnashor is exceptionally quick on its feet. But Death’s own agility has never been something to sniff at.

Through skills honed over countless millennia, he’s always boasted the best reflexes of his siblings, seconded only by Strife’s quick tongue and quicker trigger-finger.

The Champion has its back to you now, just as Death intended. Out of sight, hopefully out of mind until you get yourself out of danger. He’s starting to think he must have missed the sign taped to your back that reads ‘Sitting duck.’

In any event, he’s growing bored of this whole challenge.

The Dead King had better be worth all the hassle…

Folding himself over backwards to duck beneath one of Gnashor’s swinging fists, Death lets the air rush by overhead, then lurches upright again, and uses the sudden proximity to aim a particularly aggressive swipe at the underside of his adversary’s neck, where metal has been fused with bone.

In a flurry of sparks, Harvester scrapes a sharp gouge across the bear-trap around Gnashor’s throat.

The startling savagery of Death’s blow forces the Champion to falter and lean into a clumsy retreat to take itself out of range.

Snapping its teeth down at the Horseman to ward him off, it stumbles away from his malicious scythes, backing up too quickly in a frantic bid to regain ground. It doesn’t look behind itself. Shouldn’t need to when its only threat is advancing on it from the front. As such, it doesn’t see one of the few remaining pillars that still stands proudly at its back.

The arena is quite suddenly filled with the hollow thunk of bone colliding against wood with the pendulum force of a wrecking ball.

The huge notches on Gnashor’s spine strike the pillar hard, buckling the structure behind it.

Its gaze flits backwards, taking in the obstruction keeping it from retreating any further, and with nowhere else to go, it promptly leans its full weight against the wood and uses it as a springboard to launch itself back towards Death, its eye-lights a blistering inferno of sick, poisonous green.

But just as it wrenches its vertebrae free of the structure’s surface…

‘CRACK!’

Wood splits apart, a tiny yelp of alarm rings out across the amphitheatre, and Gnashor skids to a halt and spins around in a flurry of ash just in time to see the pillar snapping apart at its base.

Bright, luminous eye-lights zip down and lock onto the little figure standing directly underneath the toppling tower…

You know full well that you’re too slow to get yourself out from below it, yet still you try to scramble through the ankle-deep ash as the entire pillar comes falling towards you like a great, groaning tree, the chains trailing behind it with the speed of its descent.

At the very last second, you let out a shrill wail and throw your arms up to cover your head, only too aware that such a meagre defence will do you no good, in the end.

Above the sound of splintering wood and air rushing towards you, you think you hear the drumming of heavy footfalls as they thud over the ground, but you’re too busy wondering if Death will ever forgive you for this to pay attention.

All of a sudden, a spray of ash is kicked up against your arms, whipping at your bare skin, and in the next instant, the jarring yet familiar sensation of a vast, bony hand is enveloping your torso, palm to your backside and skeletal fingers caging you in from the front.

Without being granted time to adjust, you’re hauled sideways through the air and shoved up against a broad, impervious chest, smothering the yelp that jumps off your lips.

And not a moment too soon.

The impact of the pillar making landfall sends a boom through your body so fierce, it threatens to rattle the teeth right out of your gums. The force alone catapults a billowing cloud of ash into the sky, and if it weren’t for the hand cupping you face-first to a solid surface of bone, you’d no doubt catch a mouthful of corpse dust.

Even with the impromptu barrier, you still cough and splutter as grit coats your tongue after taking a breath.

“Fu-uck!” you hack, feeling the bones twitch at your spine in response, “Ugh… Death!?”

Only when the clamour around you starts to fall silent are you eased away from the expansive chest and tilted backwards until you’re sprawled out on the palm below you, head tipped towards the sky above.

Blinking through the haze of drifting ash, you squint up at the huge shape looming overhead, eclipsing the late morning sun.

“Death?” you repeat.

A skull… large and dark… You’d so easily recognise the shape of one by now.

The murk starts to settle, and you blink again, giving the Reaper a wobbly smile. “Th-thanks, buddy,” you whisper breathlessly, so sure the figure holding you must be the one you’ve become well acquainted with.

It’d be ludicrous to assume otherwise.

Which is why it comes as such a shock when a gentle breeze whisks away the floating particles of ash and exposes the skull above you.

Gold….

Not the safe, off-white cheekbones and cranium you know, nor the soft eyes that sit like spotlights inside ebony sockets.

These eyes waver, slowly flaring brighter as they take you in, casting you in their encompassing, emerald glow.

Your stomach promptly drops.

Peeling the dry tongue off the roof of your mouth, you draw in a trembling breath, feeling your throat squeeze around the air flowing into it.

Confused, bewildered – afraid – the only word you can think to utter is, “Gnashor?”

The Champion of the Gilded Arena… The beast whose head Death had been tasked to collect has just pulled you out of the path of the falling pillar…

“But… Why? I-… What?”

As you sputter through a string of nonsensical words, a dark silhouette seems to materialise in the air above Gnashor’s shoulder, soaring towards its skull with two, curved streaks of silver arched out on either side like a pair of wings.

Your eyes burst open, and the confusion steps dutifully aside to make way for urgent alarm and desperation.

“DEATH!” you cry, helplessly flinging a hand out as if you could keep his weapons from completing their arc through sheer will alone, “WAIT! STOP-!”

It always seems so unfair how time will slow down or speed up of its own accord. You need more of it. Now more than ever. Just to have a few extra seconds to catch Death’s eye.

But seconds don’t last as long as they used to, you think.

Because it’s all over before you can finish your sentence.

The infuriated Horseman’s flight ends with his boots landing on the juncture where Gnashor’s spine meets its skull. With one hand, he reaches forwards to grasp its cranium, his other arm curled back above his head, hand secured brutally around Harvester’s grip.

Before Gnashor can even register the presence on its spine, Death swings the blade out and down with one almighty heave, carving a silver crescent through the air…

You don’t know which is worse.

Seeing it or hearing it.

The dreadful ‘shwip!’ of razor-sharp metal slicing through bone makes you feel as though your ears are trying to shrink in on themselves.

Gnashor’s whole body jolts, locking up rigidly and hunching in around you, eye-lights receding to tiny dots in its skull.

The hand you’d stretched out towards Death ventures back to cup over your mouth in muted horror as you meet its dwindling stare.

Below you, the giant quakes, and then it suddenly pitches forwards.

The knuckles on its hand collide with the ground, jostling your aching body painfully against its bony palm.

For just a moment, you continue to peer tearfully into the Champion��s flickering gaze, and then with a final, thrumming groan, its jaw falls slack, and the lights swirling prettily within the sockets of its skull flutter once…

… and die…

All around you, Gnashor’s fingers go limp and start to fall apart. The individual bones that had once formed the appendage as a whole slip out of whatever magic shackles bonded them together and clatter on the ground below, forming a pile of skeletal remains all around you.

A second later, the Champion’s severed skull falls off its spine, revealing a neat, perfect slice where the bones had once been fused.

It crashes solidly to the ash just in front of your legs, dead-eyed and lifeless, glittering gold in the sun, and its body comes tumbling down afterwards like a house of cards, inevitably doomed from the beginning.

As the dust settles, you tremulously raise your head to see the Horseman standing tall and triumphant on what remains of the Champion’s back, his elbows held out widely from his torso, chest thrust forwards as if he’s posturing.

You came into the Gilded arena with the hope that Death would be victorious.

Now though, in the aftermath of battle, you find yourself wishing he wasn’t.

"Death," you croak, brows pinched achingly above your crumbling expression, "What have you done?"

#Gnashor has a backstory y'all #Darksiders #darksiders 2 #Death x Reader #Monster fight monster fight!#Dust is like 'lol bai'#Undead #Fluff #whump #angst #protective Death as usual #Ostegoth #fanfic #Feedback always appreciated

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