Darian, Prince of Shadows, son of the God of the Underworld, stared at the newcomer in disbelief.

"That's impossible," he said flatly, his cold voice echoing off the onyx stone walls of his father's cavernous throne room.

The creature before him, half man, half demon, began to whine in a wheezing, high pitch that sounded like a jagged piece of glass being run over a porcelain plate.

"But my Prince," it whimpered as it cowered at the bottom of the marble steps leading up to the throne, its lank, oily hair sweeping across the floor as it hunkered lower on its knees. "It is t-t-t-true. She is nowhere to be found."

"She," a soft voice mused from behind Darian's shoulder.

Every creature in the room froze.

Sitting at the top of the black marble steps on a throne made of human skulls, polished and gleaming white despite their age, was Rathnos, God of the Underworld. Today, as with all days, he was dressed deceptively simply in a rich, black hooded cloak made of the most luxurious velvet, which draped downwards to cover his entire face. Darian knew that if anyone was dim-witted enough to try to peer under the hood, all they would see would be gaping, all-consuming darkness - a complete void of terror that devoured all light, with only two burning, hungry pits of fire staring back from deep inside.

And that would be the last thing they ever saw.

"Are you so afraid of her that you will not speak her epithet?" The question, asked in a mild, almost gentle, voice instantly had everyone on edge. Some of the younger demons shrank visibly backwards, fighting their instincts screaming at them to flee, while the more experienced ones stared at the ground, tense but immobile. To run, to draw attention now, would mean instant, agonising death.

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"N-n-n-no Your Majesty!" the creature cried, realising his mistake. "I would n-n-n-never-"

There was no warning. One minute, the halfling demon was grovelling on the floor, its trembling, grotesquely thin body bent in supplication; the next it had exploded into thousands of bloody chunks, the splattered pieces flying through the air in all directions, some of them landing on other nearby demons with a sickening crunch.

One of its eyes had somehow been thrown upwards with the momentum of the eruption, and it landed right by Darian's feet as he stood to the side, a few steps down from his father, his arms casually crossed over his chest. The pupil flicked manically from side to side in the bulging eyeball, its protruding, blood soaked nerve end thrashing on the floor like the tail of a lizard that had just been cut off.

"Charming," Darian remarked dryly, before kicking the orb away, ignoring the squelching sounds it made as it bounced down from step to step. Already, chunks of the demon's flesh were starting to jerk, as though pulled by some unseen puppet master, twitching along the ground as they slowly started to find each other and mash together in a macabre quilt-work of skin and tendons, making nausea-inducing slurping noises as they did so. It would be the bones that would be the most agonising - having those pieced back together would be like feeling each was being broken and ground together afresh. There was more than one occasion when Darian had witnessed a hapless servant finding his body re-animating and re-forming after a burst of silent rage from Rathnos, only to discover that its limbs weren't quite in the right place by the end, or that its skin had been re-knit inside out. One time, a demon even had its nether regions exchanged for its head.

His father did have a macabre sense of humour after all.

The entire court watched in silence, not daring to breathe. They all knew there was no such thing as a real death in the Underworld. All these creatures - demons, mortals, monsters - had already died once. And here they were, pledged subjects of the God of the Underworld, having sworn their fealty and sacrificed their souls in the depths of Rathnos's dark kingdom. Death would not be coming for them in the Land of the Dead.

All except Darian, of course.

Rathnos turned his attention to his only son. The Prince of Shadows stilled under the scrutiny, his face a blank mask.

"Go to the Land of the Living," the God finally said, his voice flat. "Go find her, and bring her back to me. Bring back the Goddess of Chaos."