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A tarnhelm is a magical helmet that will allow you to become invisible. Any internal sound in your body will be silenced by its magic, but if you create any outward audible noise, you will be heard. Add a few sprays of the scentless potion to conceal your smell.

The tarnhelm in Romeo's backpack was a level up from the one he had showed me and Death's gym. Although it still resembled some sort of spy gear, it wasn't as bulky, and I didn't feel like a Lego character.

As I picked up the tarnhelm and placed it onto my head, I laughed to myself, thinking about when I had tried it on in Death's gym with a protective vest, and how Death and picked me up like a piñata in front of all the reapers. At the time, I hadn't found it funny, but now that Death was gone at least in the physical sense, I missed those times he would tease me.

I missed how he would train me and never treat me like a lesser partner. He'd treat me like an equal. He'd treat me like an enemy. And that's how I learned how to fight, but I'd still had so much to learn, and we been so pressed for time. Being in his past made me think of all the fighting knowledge he had yet to teach me.

Standing in front of the mirror in my fancy Victorian room, I realized with an increase of my pulse that I was in fact invisible. When I slid off the helmet, I reappeared in my reflection, and nearly gasped. My dress looks like something from a horror film. The tears from deaths claws left my bodice almost completely broken, held together by a few threads. Taking off the Tarnhelm, I disposed of the gown in the corset, which left a thin undergown, leaving practically nothing to the imagination.

I searched around the room for something to put over my under things, but the room was as bare as can be, and I didn't want to miss death and aces conversation. Left with no other choice and putting all of my trust into this damn device and the scentless potion I'd sprayed all over my body, I reluctantly snuck out of the room into the dark hallway with my backpack strapped over my shoulders. Leo was nowhere in sight, but I knew he was nearby as a crept Down a wall into another hallway, where he was conversing with another knight.

The tall, shadowy hallways appeared to grow darker the further I went for my room, like the torches on either side of the walls couldn't touch certain parts of the darkness. It made me feel paranoid, like the shadows around me weren't just shadows. Like I could be caught any second for sneaking around.

I made it down a staircase without bumping into anybody and navigated the way which Leo took me, when I started to have second thoughts about all of this. There was still time to turn around. There's still time to crawl back into bed and try to catch up on some Z's. Let's be honest, falling asleep would've been another Adventure I was not looking forward to.

I'd made it back to the dining hall, when I realized Death an Ace had to move somewhere else. There were no servants yet sweeping up the mess or putting away the food, so I snuck in and shoveled whatever I can get my hands on into my mouth to eat. If anyone had walked into the room it would've looked like a ghost was eating at the table, probably something straight out of Ghostbusters, but I had to get something in my belly. I was losing energy and I had some snooping to do.

Sneaking back out into the hallway, I wandered around close to the shadows of the wall in case a guard came and saw me sneaking around. My first assurance that the helmet worked was when Helvius appeared from nothing at the center of the hallway, futzing around with a piece of paper in his hand that appear to be a checklist by the way he was muttering to himself and crossing things off.

Helvius lifted his head and walked right past me like I wasn't even there, and as it turned back to watch him scurry away, I released a breath I'd been holding.

As I watched his short frame retreat down the hallway, I noticed somethings slink out from the shadows. It was a cat. A dark gray cat, and right behind it was another, although this one had brown and gray stripes. The two cats chased each other down the hallway. I watch them approached me without noticing I was there, just so happening to walk perfectly around me on either side, before continuing their journey down the hallway. Seeing those cats almost felt like a sign. Like I was supposed to follow them. So, I did.

I traced their slinking steps, desperately trying to keep quiet as they took me down a spiraling stone staircase. We passed the hallway with more boarded up windows, one of which had a crack that made me stop and try to peer through it into the unknown darkness outside of the castle. I could see the night sky and the outline of trees, when something large swept the sky, making me jump back from the boarded-up window.

"The hell?" I whispered. Whatever was out there, I no longer wanted to know.

When I look back at the hallway, the cats were gone.

Tiptoeing further down the hallway, I found a doorway and picked up onto Death's deep snickering laugh. I could only see a sliver into the room, since the door was ajar, but the only thing that was in view was Kalace bent over a fireplace and stirring something in a small pot over the flame.

"The temperature you keep in this castle is ridiculous," Kalace said, rubbing his hands together vigorously to keep warm. "Hell should hold more heat than this."

"Not in the dead of night," Death's disembodied voice replied. "Hell is akin to a desert in that way. Better to freeze than to fry."

I startled as one of the cats lazed a slow path around my legs, before nudging open the door further, putting me face to face with Death. He was at the center of the room, leaning on a table made of from stone with his long legs out in front of him, sponging at the gravy stain I'd left in his black velvet shirt with a rag. His head briefly lifted as the cat entered the room, the feline pausing and staring at him in the same animalistic way, before prancing into the shadows to the left wall.

"You almost done over there, wizard?" Death asked with a sly smirk.

"What did I tell you about rushing me?" Kalace asked. The two of them started bickering, and I took that opportunity to sneak past the door and into the room, ducking behind a few wooden crates. I peered over the top to see better. We were in some sort of witchery room filled with various potted herbs. Balls of light trapped in jars hung from the one side of the room by the fireplace and Kalace. Where Death sat, he was nearly completely plunged in his own darkness, but the light still stretched far enough to highlight his face and make his all black clothes stand out.

Kalace had his sleeves rolled up to his forearms and was kneeling on the floor by the fireplace, reading off a small leather-bound notebook, while mixing something in a bowl. He snapped his fingers and a small plume of smoke erupted from the bowl.

"So, you got any lady friend's back at your mud cavern?" Death inquired.

"Not all witches and warlocks live in mud caverns, you ignorant bastard," Kalace said quietly. "I live in a normal damn house."

"Ignorant bastard? Touchy."

"I don't think you understand the seriousness of this, Death," Kalace said, turning the page of the small leather book in his hands. "You destroyed an entire village just to get my attention."

Death pinched the pointed fabric at the tops of his leather gloves to glide them off each finger, revealing the black, razor-sharp ends of his nails. "Destroyed is a very severe and inaccurate word." He stretched out his fingers, his nails extending into talons, just like a cat's. "Their houses are still intact, aren't they?"

"My apologies for not being specific enough." Kalace matched Death's dry, sarcastic tone. "You killed an entire village."

"How many times must I explain it? They would've died anyway."

"All of them would have died anyway, they're mortal," Ace argued.

Death sighed heavily. "I don't have the energy to follow your emotional statements."

"You can't just justify what you did to innocent lives by saying 'they would have died anyway.' You don't get to choose whether a human's life is cut shorter."

"Well, clearly, I do," Death muttered to himself, and then locked eyes with Kalace. "I mean, how horrible of me. I feel so ashamed and mortified..." He turned his head away and coughed into his fist to 'clear his throat.' "Might you conjure up something for me to eat? Squabbling makes me oh so hungry."

Kalace stared at Death for a long, painful moment.

"Don't look at me like that," Death said in all seriousness. "Your perspective is incredibly naïve. The way I see it, the humans were spared from a much more painful and slow demise."

"The way you see it is psychopathic."

Death ran his hand over his forehead, and I noticed he was profusely sweating again. He started to scratch his chest with his gloved hands, then the tops of his thighs, before pulling his black velvet shirt up over his head and the undershirt beneath it.

My mouth went a little dry at the sight of Death's broad shoulders and the carved tan muscle of his upper body. Everything about him was just large and powerful.

"Why are you half naked?" Kalace demanded.

"Because I'm hot as fuck," Death seethed, dragging his claws over his skin and drawing blood. "I can't stop sweating. And I'm so itchy...."

Kalace crossed the room fast to grab Death by the wrist to stop him from hurting himself again. "Sit down and focus on your breath like I instructed. You're going to trigger another episode."

"Alright, alright," Death said, waving Kalace off. "Don't baby me. I'm fucking sitting."

Something scurried in the dark behind me, and I startled a little, nearly bumping into the crate in front of me. I assumed it was one of the cats from the hallway and prayed it wasn't a mouse or worse, a plagued rat.

"Did you hear that?" Kalace asked, and I ducked fast behind the crate.

"Probably a rat," Death said, massaging his temples with his fingers. "Let the cat get it."

Kalace gave the room one more look over, before returning to his task.

"Smart as you are," Death said, raking his damp curly black hair from his face, "I see there are some things in this world not even you can understand. People die for senseless reasons all the time. So is the way of life. I won't bicker back and forth about it all night, I'd prefer if we somewhat got along while you were visiting."

"Believe me, I will not enjoy this visit in the slightest under any circumstance. I look forward to leaving as quickly as possible."

Something that resembled disappointment wavered in Death's face. "If you are so adamant on improving my behavior, then leaving would be incredibly contradictory. In fact, some might consider you responsible for anything that I do next thereafter."

Kalace laughed humorlessly. "Don't try to manipulate me, Death."

Death stood up, clearly no longer having no longer the patience to sit. He began stalking around the room. "I'm getting hungry again. I should have pocketed some jelly tarts from the dining room..."

"I've never met someone with such a sweet fang," Kalace muttered.

Death stood just five feet from me now, and even though he wasn't facing toward me, I was so nervous he would find me out.

"Sugar is one of the few things I can still taste," Death said "I may be plagued by hunger always, but sugar and meat does help curb it. An excessive amount, I'll admit, but it is a loophole nonetheless."

"Maybe try the smokes I rolled. It might curb your hunger."

Death walked over to a table where Kalace gestured to. He picked up a hand rolled cigarette.

"Do you feel connected at all to the humans when you eat their food?" Kalace asked.

Death laughed. "You think too deep. Although, it is better to think deep than shallow. Light this for me, would you?"

Death casually extended his arm with the rolled cigarette. Ace tilted his head up, his eyes briefly glowing violet as he put his hand into the fireplace. A small spark of flame carried across the room, lighting the rolled-up cigarette between Death's fingertips in an instant.

"Always loved that trick." Death inhaled from the roll-up and balanced it between his lips, taking a turn around the room. I kept thinking he would somehow walk in-between the crates and bump into me. "Do you ever miss it, Kalace?"

Ace was fiddling with something inside of his bag. "Miss what?"

"Our friendship." Death exhaled smoke through his nostrils. "When things were...mundane."

Aces slowed whatever he was doing, peering over at Death from behind him. "Our lives were never mundane."

"You know what I mean," Death said broad grin. "Our days in Rome. Remember when I taught you how-to pick-up girls? I'd give you all those lines and you would memorize them terribly, like an amateur actor. Remember that one ridiculous one? The one you just kept trying...?"
"I remember it fondly," Kalace said dryly.

"Are you Medusa?" Death said with a clear impersonation of Kalace's voice. "Because you're turning my bits to stone." He could barely get the words out since he'd started to laugh so hard. "I can't believe how long it took you to figure out it was a joke..."

I had to clamp down a hand over my mouth to not laugh. That had been the exact joke I'd told Ace in his library after he'd told me Death had been his wingman. And it had actually been a pickup line they'd both used?! I could never let this go.

"You always did find ways to bully me," Kalace said.

"Now you know that's unfair," Death said, pointing at Kalace with the hand that held the cigarette. "You bullied me just the same, it's what friends do. I've always respected you and how you pursued medical school. Just like your father, rest his soul. The problem was you were an uptight virgin with the flirting skills of a blade of grass. I was admired and treated like a celebrity in the city. If anything, your jealousy smears your memory."

"Flirting skills of a blade of grass? I'll have you know, on my way over here, I sweettalked the stubbornest, cheapest witch in all of Europe to give me twenty pounds of various herbs. Including the smoke in your ungrateful mouth."

"By Devil." Death inhaled the roll-up and inspected it with slight disturbance, leaning back against a table in a way that made his abs tighten. "You laid with an old lady in her dusty old cavern for smokes?"

Kalace turned crimson red. "What––I––no I didn't lay with an old lady! Also, she was middle aged."

Death whistled. "Kalace. You naughty, naughty warlock."

Kalace turned bright red. "I said I flirted with her. I didn't lay with her!"

"Sure, sure..." Death snuffed out the cigarette on a stone table and shifted his eyes to the side. "Don't get your dusty unmentionables in a twist..."

Kalace threw the leather notebook in his hand frisbee style, nailing Death right in the head.

"Ow," Death said a delayed five seconds later, picking up the thrown book and starting flipping through it. "I'm assuming this is not the Book of the Dead, otherwise I'm fairly certain my entire arm would have turned to melted goo. Is this your diary?"

Kalace stood up from the fireplace and stormed over to Death, snatching the notebook from him. "It's a spell book. We need to stay focused; I'm running on no sleep. Are you feeling hungry still?"

"No..." Death's eyebrow arched. "Damn, I guess those smokes do work."

"Temporarily. As would the sedatives I'm conjuring, if you weren't so afraid to take them. This first dose won't help much. You need to build it into your system and it should make you calmer."

"I don't want to take medicine the rest of my existence. I'm fucking immortal, for Hell's sake."
"Well, then you won't get much better with that mentality." Kalace produced a needle-like tool to fill with liquid and injected it into Death's right arm. "Clearly a wholistic approach is not working for you. If you're not going to take the medication I recommend to you, then what is the purpose of me being here?"

Death watched Kalace inject whatever was in the needle into his arm, silent. "Is it true you still dabble in black magic?"

Kalace said nothing.

"I've heard some rumors that you've worked with curses before," Death continued.

Ace removed the needle from Death's arm, still silent as he walked over to the table and turned his back on Death. "Neither of your curses can be removed. You know this."

"Not the death curse, sure. But what about the Fallen one?" Death rose up from the table to his full height again. "I've heard of Fallen angels earning back their white wings. It's rare, but it does happen. If a curse upon a Fallen is reversable, there must be a way around what was given to me by Heaven."

Kalace turned to look at Death over his shoulder. "What purpose would you want your white wings back?"

Death laughed in a humorless way. "I'm talking about the curse of the Seven Deadly Sins, Kalace. The Devil's curse. It is what I suffer the most from of late and why I am getting these episodes. We both know that."

Kalace took a step back from Death. "I thought we had an understanding. I cannot be involved in yours or Lucifer's punishment."

"This isn't about Lucifer, it's about me. Lucifer is just fine. He's able to suppress his episodes almost entirely. He tells me it's because he's older, stronger. Do you think the devil tells the truth, Kalace? I wouldn't bet my death on it."

Kalace just stared at Death, quiet. "You speak so undesirably toward your master. I did not expect it."

"Lucifer is not my master; he is my alliance. Heed the difference."

"Lucifer is a king. You are a prince. Heed that difference."

"When he's around I will." A grin curved Death's mouth, his catlike eyes cynical. "I've heard the most peculiar rumor about Lucifer of late," he said in a dramaturgical way. "How he had a warlock displace a piece of his curse. I know it was not you, it was long before either of us were even born. Nevertheless, if this is true, if you know what I speak of... Kalace, I need you to tell me if you do."

Kalace shifted on his feet. "You cannot go down this route––"

"Cannot, or should not? Rules have so little power over me." Death stared unblinkingly for a moment. "Can it be displaced or not, Kalace?" he demanded.

"Listen to me very closely." Kalace stepped up to Death, fearless. "I will help you regulate these episodes, but it will be my way, wholistically, magically, and through medical treatment. Once you are reasonably stable, I am leaving. I will not be another one of your pawns to control."

"You don't understand a thing about me, or Hell," Death grated out between his teeth.

"Is it not what you've done? Trapped these creatures in this castle as pawns for you to play with? Sounds awfully familiar, given your past."

"Watch your mouth," Death warned, his voice deepening to something otherwordly as blackness consumed his eyes. "You don't get to talk to me like that, Kalace. I saved you. You crawled out of the grave because of me. The only reason you are alive is because of me."

Kalace shook his head slowly, his own eyes brimming with emotion. He moved fast around the room, grabbing his notebook, and shoving it into his bag.

"Where are you going?" Death demanded.

"To hang that day over my head long after the rope is gone is so beneath the friend I knew. We are done here."

Death watched Kalace collect the rest of his things in silence. His face was a cold, blank slate.

"You were so afraid." Kalace had stopped at the doorway with his back to Death and his bag over his shoulder. "So afraid to become like your father. There you stand now, and I see no difference between you and him. You truly have embodied everything that ruined you."

Something twitched in Death's flat expression, his fists clenching. Kalace left the room as Death visibly started shaking. The room grew dark as his temper grew, shadows slinking across the floor, the light from the fireplace violently rippling. He picked up the wooden table beside him and turned it over in a crash of glass jars and broken wood.

Something brushed against my shoe, a rodent scurrying out from the dark and into the room. I moved fast toward the door to a closer crate, realizing it was time for me to get the hell out of there before he found me out.

But I couldn't leave just yet and looked back at Death. He was leaning over the stone table, his legs crawling with shadow. The tattoos all over his back were broadening, blackness rapidly spreading over his tanned skin until his skin was the color of night itself. He lifted his head as a ripple of energy washed over him, two massive horns now protruding from his skull.

I couldn't see his face, but I could see the rodent pierced by his massive talons as he lifted his hand from the table. He clenched his hand tight, terminating the animal in a sickening crunch.

I released the tiniest audible gasp at the gruesome sight.

Death's head slowly turned to look somewhat over his shoulder, and I froze in utter terror. His face was a beautiful, feral nightmare. His catlike eyes were glowing against the wall a little, and I imagined he'd turn and spear right through the Tarhelm's invisibility power. I waited in dreaded silence for him to confirm he somehow knew I was there.

But Death looked away and cleaned off his hand with a towel. I watched him stride across the room and grab a handful of the smokes Ace had left him on the table and pocket them, before his whole body evaporated into a black mist. I was alone.

I got up and ran. Sprinted from the witchy room and booked it down the hallway. I ate up the stairwell and practically flew across another thankfully empty hallway to slip into my temporary bedroom, half-expecting Death would be waiting for me in there. But he wasn't.

I threw my Tarhelm helmet into my backpack and shoved it all under the bed, sitting back on my heels as I desperately tried to control my thrashing heart. 

That'd been way too close.

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OOOOOOOOOOO it's gonna get lit af

SOOOO I HAVE NEWSSSS

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