"Tal!" Mena screamed as the audience gasped in horror.

She ran to her fallen boyfriend and saw the life seeping from his eyes. "Tal…" she blubbered hysterically. "We can get you to the paramedics. The Lollypop First Aid are standing by in case the backdrop fell on someone and…"

"Get away…" Tal whispered and Mena flinched from his words.

Why was he being so cold to her...again?

"But Tal…" Mena said, her cheeks dripping with tears and her lips trembling.

She reached out a consoling hand to touch Tal, but he screamed, "Get away!!!"

Before she could respond to him, his arms turned cobalt black and his fingers sprouted steely claws.

Mena squeaked in terror and fled to the side of the stage as Tal's body grew to 10 times his original size. He tossed his head back, and when he rose to the size of Julianna's manor, he threw his head forward; and he now sported the skeletal head of the Shadragon.

He dwarfed the Phantom of the Performing Arts Center, and with one well placed claw and a roar, he slammed Janus into the manor and the balcony crumbled beneath her. The stage was as silent as the audience until Mena whispered, "Tal...did you kill...her?"

In response, a gutteral voice growled from the ruins. "Did you kill death? You can't kill death. That would be like making disease ill!"

With a sickly laugh, the fallen debris parted and the phantom emerged, growing even larger than the Shadragon. "Nothing can be bigger than Death!" Janus exclaimed. "In the end, I will consume everything."

Mena shook her head in disbelief. Janus may have been the daughter of Grimm Harvester, but she was his daughter, not him. Why did she now think she was Death? But there was no time for a well mediated debate when Janus and Tal were both trying to kill each other.

Even if he was wounded in human form, Tal's Shadragon form behaved like nothing had happened and he swung his claws with a ferocity as Janus swung her own blade hands back at him. The audience gasped with every clang and clash. Even Mena was stunned into silence as the two shadowy creatures did battle.

"What is your intention?" Janus snarled from her fang filled mouth. "Surely you can't hope to kill me."

But Tal, who could not speak as the Shadragon continued to grunt and swing his muscular arms. The dragon's skull pivoted to Mena, and Tal pointed one claw at Mena. "Leave!" she could have sworn he cried.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

"No!" Mena cried back. "I won't leave you!"

The Shadragon roared loudly as Janus brought her scythe hands on his head. The dragon roared weakly before crashing down in a heap.

"It is time now," Janus said with scythe hand raised. "To reap what I came here for. To truly take the life of a starcrossed lovers on the threshold of a romantic play."

Janus was about to lay waste to Mena's boyfriend and she couldn't stand idle anymore. She dashed out onto the stage, standing between the phantom and the Shadragon. "Please…" she cried. "You cannot take his life! I love him!"

"All the more reason to end him," Janus laughed. "It's been my dream to reap a passionate pair of lovers!"

Mena flashed back to when she first met Janus. The pixie reaper had told her she was only interested in romances where the lovers die together.

"Please…Janus…" Mena begged. "I know you want this...but you can't."

Janus hissed loudly. "I am not Janus! I am Death. It is my destiny to become Death. No…"--the phantom shook her head of stringy hair--"I am already Death!"

"But you're not!" Mena shouted back. "If you were, you'd simply kill everyone without a second thought. You'd have taken my life along time ago whenever I was in danger."

Janus pulled at her stringy locks of greasy hair and gave a tormented howl.

"Please Janus!" Mena cried. "Come back to us!"

"I...I...I…" the phantom said, begining to shake back and forth.

"Janus?" Mena cried and the terrifying phantom dropped its head and disappeared into the shadows. Mena watched as the phantom's shadow traveled onto the crowd and out into the night.

She heard a groan and turned around. There...lying before her was her beautiful, dying boyfriend. Mortally wounded, his long brunette hair flowed on the stage like liquid chocolate. Mena ran to his aid.

"Nice job, doofus," Tal smiled up at her. "You banished that fiend...something I couldn't even do."

"That doesn't matter!" Mena cried in tears. "We need to get you some help."

Tal winced from the gash in his stomach. "That won't be necessary," the prince said, and with a weak smile, added. "I've resigned to my fate…"

Mena crouched down and held her arms around the prince. He looked up at her with his handsome brown and blood red eye. His black scars swirled in cosmic patterns.

"I remember when I first...met you," Tal said with a knowing smile. "How I pretended to be that heart throb wizard Fabias to impress you. You saw right through that…"

Mena watched him, her lip trembling and her eyes red and puffy. "I much preferred you when I saw you," Mena nodded. "I'd much rather have handsome Prince Tal than a fictional character."

Tal's weary eyes looked at Mena. "After the destruction of my Shadow Tribe and getting scarred by the Phantom Lord, I hid behind my darkness. You were the first person to bring light to my shadows."

Tal's shadowy scars began to untangle from his face like the long black legs of a spider. His demonic red eye turned to a handsome brown. For the first time, Mena saw his true face and even if he was more beautiful, she had always loved Tal from the start.

"Little Miss Shiny Teeth," Tal said weakly, but playful. "I need to admit one last thing to you."

"W...what?" Mena stammered.

There was light in Tal's brown eyes. "After a lifetime of misery, I can finally...die happy."

Tal closed his eyes one last time, leaving Mena alone on stage. As she kissed his forehead, there was silence, and then a round of thunderous applause.