-Not long now.- the voice within me noted, resigned, as the creature stalked towards me once more. I threw a few more building parts for good measure, but it didn’t make any effort to avoid them, its skin clearly as unbreakable as mine and without the notable weakness of having a single head to concuss. Although there was the occasional featureless maw every now and then, and I assumed there must be a voice in there somewhere.
“I know you’ve given up, but hypothetically, how does it feel about sunlight?” I asked the voice inside, keeping my eyes locked on the beast and steadily moving backwards.
-You saw the torches and mushrooms did no harm, why do you bother asking?- It replied, but as it did I caught the barest hint of anxiety in its snarling response and let my face twist into a rictus grin.
“Good enough for me.” I turned and ran from the beast, my enhanced muscles straining as I pushed myself to move faster than I had ever before. I leapt up to a rooftop only to push myself over the edge, bouncing and tumbling as I fell, shielding my head but headless to any damage that would have affected the rest of me if I were still fully human. I made my way back to the tunnel entrance, thankfully no sign of any of my companions to be seen, and I hoped they’d made it out rather than being snacked on in passing by the one of the monstrosity’s appendages. Ahead of me the sunlight streamed in, as if burning its way through the rock, brighter than the torchlight and the light of the devices, pure and white. My skin began to smoke as I approached the edges of it, confirming my hunch but giving me little pleasure. Despite surviving the light of devices, torches and other light sources, this was no escape for me apart from that most final.
Unwilling to take the step into the burning light beyond, I turned back to find the beast once more stalking me.
“I know what you want.” I stated, spreading my arms before it as if to give it a hug. “You want to be whole again, don’t you?” the beast rumbled and I felt a sense of agreement cutting through the aura of madness that surrounded the creature. I swallowed, contemplating my options, on one side a creature of darkness that wanted to consume me, on the other the burning light of the sun that promised a horrible death. Not the best options. I momentarily rushed towards the creature before me and pulled both with my mind and my arms as I grabbed a hold of whatever of the shifting mass I could. I felt rough stone beneath my hands, the sensation disturbingly like the obsidian my own flesh became in the viridescent light, but I had no time to dwell upon it as both my mind and my flesh fell into deep, impenetrable darkness.
-Now, brother, we are whole.- the familiar voice within me rumbled with resignation as it waited for us to be consumed.
-WHOLE.- I winced as the thundering voice rocked through my very being, my soul being twisted and torn away by the larger darkness, grown strong by years of slaughter, insane by millennia of agony. For a moment I too felt resigned to the end, before remembering my insane plan.
“Hey guys?” without form I somehow threw my voice into the void which consumed me. “Can I tell you a secret?” without a face I somehow still managed to grin.
“I hate the dark.” with that I grasped at the thin tendril of light still connecting me to the world and forced myself to stagger backwards, pulling the darkness from the beast along with me as I fell into the burning light, the two entities now fully within me joining me in agonising screams as we caught aflame, the pure white light burning me to the bone. I rapidly lost all ability to reason as pain consumed me, and heard nothing but screams, my own merging with that of the beast and the darkness within.
I may hate the dark, but man, I’ve got nothing on the sun.
A note from the author
You've probably sussed it out by now, this was my first novel, and I think it's turned out pretty ok. Hopefully you feel the same, else you wouldn't've gotten this far. Unless you're a masochist of some kind. In which case, I'm not judging, the book wasn't that long. That's because as you might expect from Part 1, I'm not done yet. Is Dav dead? Maybe. Is the story over? Hell no. I'm going to work on part 2 when I've recovered from writing this one. It may be a short book, but even writing this much it turns out is a ton of work. Next time you pick up a random crappy self-published book off Kindle Unlimited, appreciate that. I know I will.
The reason I'm adding one of these annoying, self-indulgent little notes from me to you is to ask for reviews. Good or bad, give me feedback. Give me a reason to write part 2 for you and do it better next time, share what you liked about it with someone who's still on the fence about enduring my writing. Ratings are the lifeblood of independent authors, and I'm not too proud to beg now that I'm one of them.
Thanks for reading, I look forward to seeing you again in Part 2, even if Dav doesn't.
- Matthew
Into the Dark Page 19
