Lyra's body twisted and writhed on the ground. Her spasms were highly abnormal and her face flinched in suprisingly mortal pains.

"What the sea shell?!" Elise exclaimed, her mouth nearly dropping to the floor. "Did Miss Cowgirl really shoot...a reaper."

"And more importantly..." Tony stammered. "How does that work?!"

In a suprisingly concerned look of grief, Archibell hid his eyes beneath his dark hands. "What....what did you do to her, Sugar?!" he demanded.

Sugar blew the smoke off of her pistol, twirled it on her finger and put it back in her holster. "Why you really think I had the jones to shoot one o' dem ghoulies with a regular bullet?"

Sugar pulled the brim of her hat over her head and smirked. "That ain't thinking with tha business sense of a Southerncross. Which I inherited from my dear ol' daddy."

"What...did you do?" Archibell growled.

"I blasted that bobbed bowl cut with a magic silver bullet. Guarenteed to make all ghosts, ghouls and goblins drop dead instantly."

Sincirce crossed her arms and pursed her lips. "And where, may I ask, did you find that? I've had to avoid quite a few of those in my day from spiteful suitors."

Sugar placed both hands on her cowprint pants. "I had that old crone cough it up on the bayou!"

"The Whoo Doo lady...?" Elise said softly.

"Rootin tootin!" Sugar said with a confident head nod. She brushed her long brunette locks and gave a whiney laugh. "Now I can get what I came from. Ma prize. Tha golden piece of the trident o' triumph!"

She fixed her cowgirl hat perfectly. "This sea cowgirl misses only one man on the four great oceans...her daddy! And I was ready to cheat death in a game o' chance jus to get him back again. "

Sugar placed her velvet gloves hands to her cheeks. "Oh to hear Big Daddy Southerncross say to his little fily, 'yer sweeter than molasses' again. Yee-haw!"

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"Wow..." Tony remarked. "And here I thought Sincirce had daddy issues."

"Hey..." Sincirce muttered. "At least I don't use horse metaphors."

"Dats not your character quirk..." Tony barked, before he gasped like a fish out of water. "Guh guh guh!"

Sincirce side eyed the dumbfounded fish in Elise's hands. "Did your brain run out of oxygen you dumb guppy...uhh..."

Soon she was struck dumb too. Sugar watched nervously as the Lyre's grew turned pale in the darkness. No one could speak over the sight behind Sugar. "What's wrong with everyone?!" she snapped. "Y'all look like you seen a ghost!"

"My sentiments...exactly..." Archibell said.

Sugar turned around and screamed in horror. Lyra had risen behind her, with a determined look in her dead, red eyes. She held miniature reaping scythes in her hands and quickly sliced them through the air, cutting a hexagram into another dimension. The tear in reality opened up and unleashed a gaggle of disembodied hands composed of a purple miasma. They seized the cowgirl of the sea, manhandling her.

"Get yer hand offa me!" Sugar screamed into the void. "All ten of them!"

But the hands didn't let up. They pulled Sugar into another dimension and the last anyone heard of her was her wayward screams.

Lyra snapped her fingers and the gash in time and space closed up. Elise found herself crying in fear. "Did...did you kill Sugar?!"

Lyra shook her head, shuffling her black bob of hair. "Negative. The worst thing you can do to your enemy is put them out of their misery."

Lyra grimaced and winced in Archibell's direction.

"That...cold hearted hussy...she took too much pleasure in stealing you from me...Archibell."

"But...that bullet..." Archibell stammered. "How did it not kill you...?"

Lyra tilted her head, a wistfully look of melancholy on her face. "Really...Archie. A clever man like you should know. You cannot kill death. And I am the plague that lays every being on this planet to rest."

Elise took a step forward when she saw Lyra's expression. "For someone who takes many lives..." The young girl said softly. "You sure are sad."

Lyra Blackswan's eyes met Elise's. "Of course I'm sad," she said. "I was left by my fiance in the depths of hell. All because he valued his life over the lives of his crew. We may be dead...but he is dead to me."

Archibell nervously chuckled. It seemed an almost involuntarily response to Elise. The wily captain had no answer for what he did.

"And my sorrow..." Lyra said. "Has seeped throughout the ocean. Spreading Ghost Blight far and near to every soul infected with a strong sadness and melancholy. You may even know some who have it..."

"Father..." Elise squeaked. "My father has it!"

"Well then..." Lyra said. "Little girl, which I once was. Thank your captain for that plague. For he brought it on your father and the whole ocean!"

Elise wanted to cry out. It wasn't true. She didn't want to believe it even if deep down...it might have been. Perhaps Archibell was indeed the rogue who would betray her in the end.

Lyra's rectangular bangs hovered over her blood red eyes. "But worry not," she laughed coldly. "For now...I will blight all of you and you will seep into the next life....all courtesy of the worst pirate captain in all the ocean!"