Lotash cradled his head in his trembling hands. He couldn't remember anything of the occurrences of the past day, yet people were insisting that he'd killed his own daughter.

"Not dearest Kasha," he thought, he'd do anything for her and would never dream of harming a hair on her beautiful head. Surely it must have been some escalation by the cultist Bearnath who had captured Kasha in order to serve her to the Beastlord once summoned.

As the insistent crowd began to disperse each taking their questions and confusion with them, a voice was heard in all minds across the realm.

"The line will be yet drawn. Watch," the sourceless cold tones bade all who were capable of hearing.

Compelled by the unknown voice, the entire realm watched on as a strange dark figure traversed the outskirts of the Soulrealm, the bleak territory he crossed familiar to almost all alive.

Where most of the momentarily unliving were overcome by the sensations of Death and were met by Lord Thoth, the interloper pressed on unphased until he easily passed through the great doors that led to the Endbringer's throne.

Slith's red eyes gleamed as he stood behind the throne of Death and its inhabitant's seated form, the prophesied trespasser's every action a carefully chosen mockery of the interred God's daily duty.

"Be still," parodied Ugrach's son in his sneeringly sibilant tones.

The light within the great hall faded, and Thoth shifted, His attention earned as His pallid visage turned to face the visitor. Before the Lord of Death, his skeletal form clad in black steel plate and clasping a gleaming demon-forged blade, was the unconscionable, the unthinkable thought. Cold stare met burning ruby ambition as white mask locked eyes with those that flared behind the inimical visor.

Slith's mocking tones broke the tense silence, "Come Thoth, your eternity is over," and the Prince of Undeath reached forth to place a gauntleted hand upon the scythe of polished bone, the God's symbol of office. Dark shadows swirled with streaming light as death struggled against undeath, the challenger and the Endbringer locked, frozen as the twain contested wills.

"Long have you lingered here at the threshold of the Soulrealms, reduced to paltry usher for the ingrate flits of life abused. Long have we considered your fate." There was a strange air of solemnity and ritual to Slith's words, but he maintained his grasp upon the scythe. Slowly, deliberately, Thoth raised His four free hands, each a fist clenched in defensive denial.

The finalistic tones echo like the tomb as the masked Lord spoke, "It is I who judge your soul, and it is I who deem your task ended." The Lord of Death's face lifted a modicum, allowing the trial of ambition and desire versus inevitability and duty manifested in the swirling light and shade to flash blacks and white across His expressionless mask.

As ghostly vapours flew from the clenched fists of the Endbringer, Slith moved, a tiny motion that screamed against fortuity, against the very nature of the Soulrealms. Yet wielded by Thoth, the great scythe, reaper of souls, it that cleanly severs opportunity, swung back under the impetus of the profane Prince.

As the bone blade found its mark at Thoth's exposed neck, a single word rushed victoriously through all minds, living, dead, and inbetween. "Die."

With a hollow and final clatter, an empty mask of white bone fell to the floor before the empty throne. The torrent of light and shade froze, stunned, the contention completed and cast the bleak Hall in stark tones, allowing all to clearly pick out its sole inhabitant, the figure of Prince Slith, Lord of the Undead Legions.

All heard the afterlife's wails sounded in mourning across existence, and, with a fatalistic echo, the immense doors to the throneroom shut with a rumble that shook worlds.

The last thing that the living witnessed of this terminal encounter was Slith. The Prince of the Undead triumphant yet raging in a futile effort against the closed doors that barred his egress from the Soulrealm's now desolate throne.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Summary: Slith traversed the Soulrealms and delivered a devastating blow to all of Creation by slaying Lord Thoth. In response to this heinous crime the doors to the Hall of Death have barred, and the interloper Prince remains trapped within the throneroom.

Penned by My hand on the 13th of Mayan, in the year 715 AF.