by Hugo Damas
Some of the creatures suddenly exited the smoke-filled room, running thoroughly alarmed.
Morgana and the other two quickly got out of view, hoping they wouldn’t pick their corridor.
They didn’t.
The Sorcerer, however, was left convinced that there was nothing left they could do. She breathed deeply and turned to lean against the wall and out of sight.
The only good thing about all that had transpired was that the three of them had gone unnoticed.
But all and all, their presence there was utterly useless.
“There is naught to do now,” Morgana confessed, distraught.
“That was crazy,” the Shadow said.
“We could go back for the power stone,” the Hunter suggested, probably considering that all that commotion would pull the guards away from their stations.
“No,” the Sorcerer said. “There is no way we escape this vessel if we do not…ugh…if we do not do it now. Let us flee, and if they still pursue their invasion…we will just have to…” Her words trailed off.
It was hard to admit that it was going to happen, but as she coughed blood again, Morgana examined her breathing, and how it felt squashed. There was no denying it.
“You will have to fight later. It is…much more important that we…augh.”
Morgana felt the Hunter’s hands on her back, and the Shadow was approaching, even as she looked around as if drawn by the smoke-filled room. The poor girl was clearly in shock.
“Are you dying?” The Hunter asked.
“I…it is most vital… we pass on what we know,” Morgana said, heavily struggling. Every word felt like driving a nail into her heart. “Your hands… I am taking us out of here.”
They did so. She closed her eyes and focused her powers one last time. Her chest pressed so hard and painfully that she thought she was going to whimper and give up before casting the spell, but she got it out of her. Somehow, the Sorcerer found the strength and made it surge. That familiar feeling.
Morgana felt herself falling for a second, hitting the dirt hard.
Grunting, she rolled to a stop. “Ow…I am…sorry, I guess I…” she tried taking a deep breath, but something didn’t let her, so she let air out to try and bring some relief. But there was none.
The Sorcerer saw the Hunter show up above, in a crouch. She felt the woman opening her robe, pulling her hair apart and over her arms.
The Hunter threw a struggled look at the wound Morgana had suffered.
More importantly, the Sorcerer looked around to find that they were alone.
“Where--” The Sorcerer coughed. There was so much pain. “The Shadow?”
The Hunter looked around too, then, suddenly realizing it herself. She was not there. The Hunter stood up and vanished from sight for a moment.
She soon returned shaking her head.
The pain hit Morgana’s heart hard suddenly, and she was not sure if that was her wound or the guilt that she had somehow messed up on the spell and left the Shadow behind to die.
“No…” tears came to her eyes, which was something she didn’t expect. However, dying apparently had a way to make one emotional. Her whole nervous system was so destabilized she could hardly keep herself from wailing, which she should, because it would hurt very much to properly yell, or even cry. Her body was asphyxiating her. Rather than hurting her to death, it was cutting her off from life. Very much against her will.
Still, maybe she could yet save the Shadow.
“We have to--”
“You did not fail her,” the Hunter’s voice came through.
Morgana looked up at the Hunter who was looking at her with cold, detached eyes. Stalwart…or without compassion? It didn’t matter. “She must have let go before the spell was cast,” she added.
The Sorcerer began saying a complicated sentence, but the torture convinced her otherwise. “On purpose?” She simply asked.
“I do not know,” the Hunter said, looking away. “I do not know many things.”
The Sorcerer smiled, even though it turned very sad and regretful very quickly.
“You…you need to escape,” Morgana said.
“I will bring you with me,” the Hunter said.
“I will smack you you even try!” Against all odds, she just blurted it out angrily, even raising her head in protest. Immediately, in consequence, she coughed out blood over her chest.
“Ugh…” Morgana laid down her head again and looked up.
The mist was solid. More solid than any fog she had ever seen. Morgana grunted, displeased.
“I am impossibly crossed…that I cannot even see the sky.”
If the Hunter was trying to find words to say, she failed.
Morgana coughed again -- a hammer to the lung -- and just exhaled away her emotions in a heartfelt gasp.
“…I really thought we would stop them,” she said, feeling completely defeated.
“We will,” said the Hunter.
The Sorcerer frowned.
“You need to…return to -- the organizers…Griff, Eliza, one of. You… tell them all what… has occurred. And…about me?”
The Hunter nodded reassuringly. “I swear to you, Sorcerer.” It was clear the woman did not say it with any measure of levity. It was a relief, but it helped very little.
Morgana, to her shame, was not some folk-hero who was fine with dying for the life of another. She didn’t want to die at all, much less for a mission that had been completely pointless.
“Oh…this is the worst.” Morgana felt like shaking her head but didn’t find the energy to. “I am really not ready to die.”
But she was dying. The Hunter offered no complaint or discouragement. Morgana was in silence a little longer, witnessing everything around her get farther and farther away.
“My…my name’s Morgana. Oh, wait.” She blinked or thought she did. “I’m blind. I can’t…are you talking? Are you there…”
Then she noticed she wasn’t actually speaking, she was just thinking. She wondered if she was dead already. Morgana wanted to really cry. She hadn’t, and she really felt like she wanted to.
Something strange happened then.
All senses seemed fully committed to escaping her, but through touch, she felt something in her forehead. She felt some kind of… warmth.
A warmth that was both solid yet smooth coursed her face from the top of her forehead to the bottom of her mouth, as if closing her eyes.
That was it.
III
Darkness Spreads
Legacy
What did I just do?!
She was crazy. She really was.
Nervous beyond belief and surrounded by angry foreign words spoken through monstrous throats, the Shadow slipped back into the wall, transitioning into the layer of darkness that it provided. Once again, she confirmed there was no actual connection to any shadow stream, and its depth was limited. They were more like shadow lakes than anything else.
That made her feel even more in danger, and thus, crazier.
Why did I let go? Oh by the ancestors, I really am the fool.
It was all because of what she had seen in the room. She knew neither the Sorcerer nor the Hunter would care about it. In truth, she thought she didn’t care about it either, but when the time came to leave it behind, the Shadow had not been able to do it. Was it hesitation or the lack of it that had made her release the Sorcerer’s cloak?
Either way, it was evident that all the effort Kagekawa had put into her training, and brainwashing, had, after all, exerted the desired effect.
Damnation.
She had seen the eye slits. The shadow lenses. The equipment the Shadow would customarily put over their eyes so as to clearly and instantly discern all aspects of the world of shadows -- the reflection of reality that they had the ability to travel through -- on top of being able to perfectly see through any kind of lighting. Like the Darkness’s cloak, it was the most important element of the identity of the Shadow, a ver
itable legacy which went as far as Kagekawa itself.
Her skin was tingling all over, under her garments. Contradicting that fear, every fiber of her being was pushing her to go get it back.
The Shadow watched as more guards leaped out of the room, crashing out along the corridor and away. The alarm continued. She held her breath and sunk into the shadows as deeply as she could and then moved towards the door.
The Shadow was upside-down on the ceiling, as if swimming. Her chest and face were kept hidden by nothing but the mist and a choice not to look up. When long seconds went past without any more guards passing by, she swiftly floated into the room. Thankfully, the entrance was as tall as the ceiling.
The Shadow kept her breathing quiet, and watched as the other humanoids surrounded the one who had been shot in the head by the Mad Genius. It was hard to believe that really happened, even now.
The man really was mad.
They seemed upset, sad, but mostly angry. One of them had walked around to face the rest and began delivering some kind of speech. Sporting the pitch black eyeballs, the man was the hairiest of them all, especially where the chest was concerned.
Within seconds, he not only had gathered their attention, but also their hearts. He motioned his jagged, rock-hard hands, utilizing his height and width of body to fill up the room in a way none of the others could. He had a very muscular build and voluminous hair, like a beast’s mane. He had been borne to be listened to.
They all voiced agreement, still speaking in a language she didn’t understand. It sounded like it was made of vowels and little else, completely ignoring the use of the nose, and these were spoken in a really low volume. It was unlike anything she had ever heard before.
Once roused, the newly appointed leader reached down and grabbed hold of the Shadow lenses. They were, as she had noticed beforehand, on the table right in front of the now deceased leader. He had probably kept them as some kind of prize.
Maybe my predecessor’s body can still be found, the Shadow considered. Should I search for it?
The priority were the lenses. She knew any Shadow worth the title would agree to that, and what happened next forced her yet again to go against every instinct of hers, and at the same time, to follow along the lines of every instinct of the Shadow.
The new leader grabbed the lenses and every physical tell that she could read informed her he was about to tear them apart. He held them in front of him and said something about them. His vocalizations were angry and loud -- in comparison -- and vindictive.
The Shadow’s hand moved without much thought, and so did she.
A light ignited in an explosion of smoke, catching them all by surprise, causing them to wince in blind reaction. She landed on the table and jabbed the new leader in the face while forcing his hand open with a quick twist of the wrist. Her jabbing fist opened and swiped down and to the side, taking the lenses off the air.
The Shadow leaped straight out of the room, shoving the lenses through her top. She knew it would probably fall down into her pants, but there was no exit point there, so that was safe.
The room, now filled with smoke, sent yelling chasing after her. Despite the language barrier, she could tell how some were insulting with profanities, but the one voice made it over the rest, clearly issuing a very angry command.
The Shadow had to run. The shadow lakes in the corridors were not deep enough for her to disappear into, she would be noticed if properly searched. And now, they would be properly searching.
On the corridor, she was immediately met with a beast standing guard. It was turning to see what the commotion was about. She turned, to pass him on his opposite side, and continued running. Going straight was a mistake, though, so she turned as soon as the corridor allowed her to, and still nearly lost her footing from a loud, violent crash that landed right behind her.
Running on, the Shadow saw she was headed to an end that split two ways, so she threw a smoke bomb right at the wall to hide which way she went.
The greater problem was that she didn’t know what path to take to escape. When she had stayed, she had done so out of impulse, and because of that, she didn’t have a good escape plan.
I am going to die, she thought, grimacing.
The thought had crossed her mind several times before in her life, but as she thought it, this time, she felt different about it. Like she really believed it.
The Shadow ran around, not shying away from depleting her ammo of smoke bombs, sending one every time there was more than one way to take, and then picking at random. That was their vessel she was running through, however. She was running across their corridors, their home base, so little by little, she found herself being cornered.
By the time the Shadow thought to give stealth a better chance, the corridors were being sucked clean of the mist. This did away with even the shadow lakes, revealing the walls and ceilings of the corridors. They looked made of chiseled rock, but a particularly dark one. It reminded her of marble onyx.
Despite all the darkness, the shadow realm was inaccessible. It was frustratingly impossible because it was real. The Shadow had no way to hide and knew not one single path of escape.
I killed myself. What honor is there in this? I should have left. Prolonged my usefulness! This was--
The Shadow was interrupted when she heard a different sound. She had heard it before, but because of all the alarm, in both the actual noise and in her nervous system, she only realized it was there, and approaching, when it was almost right on top of her.
It was laughter.
The face of her savior was the freakiest thing she had ever seen, which was really saying something at that point. She could swear that his jester hat, half red half black, was stitched to his head. The face itself was covered in white makeup, with black over his lips and teeth, and around his eyes in such a way that when he closed them, it made a cross that made it look like they were stitched shut. She knew because he had his eyes closed, but then opened them once he realized she was there.
The rest of the attire seemed regular jester nonsense, only darker and more fashioned to intimidate than to entertain. It also did not help that it was aged and ill-maintained, sporting a series of patches, the overall unwinding of fabric, and a general lack of upkeep.
More notably, while the Shadow was most likely looking grim, not to say terrified, the man was laughing out loud and having the time of his life.
“Upsy daisy,” was all he said as he hopped out of colliding with the Shadow, apparently giving her no more thought as he ran off.
That has to be the Circus Freak. He came here with the Mad Genius and the Eye. Her mind was speeding. They did not teleport, they must have come in at a specific location!
“Wait!” the Shadow called out, running after him.
“Wooohoooo,” he yelled in response, laughing out loud. He turned a corner and kept running, with Beasts leaping after them, trying to catch up. Even the Shadow, running at the top of her speed, was quickly losing ground.
“I said wait!” She desperately threw a flash bomb. Her reach, at least, was enough to catch up. She closed her eyes in preparation, saw the flash through her eyelids, and then opened them again to see him continuing his run.
“What?” She asked under her breath. How? Did he see it coming and closed his eyes as well?
But as she was thinking it, the Circus Freak giggled his way right into a wall.
She flinched at his impact, looking away in reflex.
“OOF!” The Circus Freak bounced off and fell squarely on his back, unconscious.
Oh, ancestors! She came to a stop and grabbed at her mouth, shocked. I think I just killed him!
Looking around her, The Shadow quickly approached to crouch next to him.
She nudged him a bit too frantically. “Hey. Hey hey hey, come now, wake up! Wake up, I need you!”
But the Beasts weren’t far off. She had but a few seconds before the incoming crashing turned a corner and saw her. She grunted
in desperation. Why did he have to be crazy?! It was so close, her salvation was right there…sleeping.
Dead, she thought to herself, shaking her head.
The Shadow ran off.
She ran, but because of him, she was even lost to what routes she had tried. Due to her beginner’s nerves, the hope of salvation had wiped her memory clean of the turns and twists she had taken so far, and that meant the map she had been building in her head was now lost.
It didn’t take long for the Shadow to run into a patrolling guard coming from the only corridor she could run to while still being chased by a couple.
She figures two unstoppable enemies were better than four, so the Shadow decided to run back and get past the pair. She turned and simply dashed as fast she could. She surprised them, so they both pulled back as she ran straight at them. They lunged but, with the element of surprise, she was able to hop and spin out of contact. The things crashed against the ground like spiked pistons, giving her the greatest fright yet.
The Shadow dashed, hearing them tearing at the ground to launch themselves after her. A second later, she reached the end of the corridor and turned left, hoping to make it before they could reach her. However, as she turned, her peripheral vision saw one of them had leaped to intercept her. The Beast was in the air, a second away from crushing her. The Shadow hardly had time to open her eyes in realization before she was pushed out of the way to the sound of a “ha!”
The Shadow heard a big crash as her vision blinked away, frightened at the prospect of certain death.
Her senses returned a moment later after her vision had wised up, to a human howl. She turned back to see the Circus Freak, his left arm pinned and crushed against the wall by one of the beast’s claws. She also noticed the other beast was at the opposite end, so they had leaped for different sides to make sure they would finally catch her. There would have been no way to avoid them.
Except for the fact that… the Circus Freak had saved her?
“WOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!” The crazy man laughed out-loud, maniacally. She assumed it was to handle the pain. “THEY COMPLETELY IGNORED ME!” He laughed some more. “BASTARDS!” He hopped and twisted his body to put both his feet on the massive beast’s arm.
