Radiant Shadow

The body was consumed in flames instantly.

I barely even had time to see the final line that completed the jagged, wavy, spikey, fiery symbol before raging bright flames swallowed it and the corpse. The wood of the very walls began to smoke and char from the ambient heat alone seconds before every loose piece of detritus burst into flames; all of which a distant part of me thought was rather strange considering I was presumably even more flammable than random bits of treated wood, yet all I felt was uncomfortably hot.

Very uncomfortably hot, mind you; I could feel the saliva in my mouth drying and it felt as if the very fluids in my eyes were a half-step from boiling.

Just as the paint on the walls began to peel off in smoking strips and flames began to spread from the already immolated corpse, Rokharth slashed through the rune. While this did immediately remove the overwhelming heat, the actual flames themselves refused to die so easily.

The old monster chuckled, "In hindsight, I probably should have displayed this one before the water one, but whatever." Still laughing, his arm blurred, the flat of his blade catching the air so hard it sent a blast of wind strong enough to slide me back a few inches even from as far away as I was and wiped away the flames in an instant.

I blinked, did… did he just backhand a fucking fire? And that worked?

I once more reevaluated just how big of a threat this ancient abomination was before deciding to push away the gibbering terror buzzing behind my skull so I could deal with it never.

Now, I probably weigh less than twenty pounds soaking wet so moving me wasn't particularly impressive, but the fact he had generated that amount of sheer force with such an effortless movement was still more than a touch terrifying.

No, no, repress, repress, rationalize, compartmentalize, ignore; no matter how scary that amount of physical power is, it's hardly worse than the ever present feeling of the insects crawling around inside me. He might be able to kill me in one blow, but I highly doubt he's going to lay eggs in my bone marrow and eat me alive from the inside out.

Honestly, conventional danger is a lot less horrifying when you're already living your worst nightmare.

I barely kept from sighing as I knowingly did a mental gymnastics routine to stay something approximating sane, though Rokharth's continued chuckling drew my attention back to him and away from the twisting abyss in the back of my mind. I carefully didn't meet his eyes even as I stared at his face, though I could still easily make out the amusement gleaming in those sanguine orbs.

"Pheh. Dangerous as it is, I just can't help but love a good fire. Mmmmm, but I do still have one more rune to show you, and a warning to give when I do." His already wide smile spread ever so slightly further across his face, making him seem just a bit more inhuman.

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This time he carved slower, speaking as he did. "Runes are scary things, aren't they? Unfortunately, they're a touch less useful than they may seem for exactly the same reason they're so powerful; they're too strong to survive their own power for long. A rune is a piece of something infinite, a fraction of a fundamental truth writ large across reality; trying to contain or channel even a tiny fraction of that infinity in any mundane substance will be flashy, but very short lived."

He paused, glancing at me as he continued carving a jagged yet incongruously smooth symbol into the charred skull of my former training dummy, "While there are some substances that can withstand a rune out there, most are extremely hard to come by; however, in my long experience I've found the flesh of sapients tends to last long enough to be useful. If you need something that'll last a few days, the easiest material to find by far is the flesh of a cultivator attuned to that rune; mind you, even that can be rather hard to find, with some of the more exotic elements being even rarer than proper materials."

The symbol forming beneath his blade was formed of a contradiction that nearly hurt my eyes to look at, smooth curves formed of jagged and straight lines in such a way that baffled my senses yet seemed so right in a way that worried me. With each additional line, I felt myself drawn more and more to the forming sigil; it was as if some deep part of me saw itself in those ragged lines, a piece of my very essence being drawn forth like a moth to a flame more and more with every line.

Something that only made my rational mind very, very worried and extremely suspicious; but even so, I just couldn't quite manage to tear my eyes away from the increasingly beautiful symbol being sketched out on my most recent kill's charred skull.

The moment the last line was carved, I felt something click into place in my soul; like a piece of me that had always been there was suddenly acknowledged and rising to the surface. The room grew notably darker, every light dimming and dying as pure darkness radiated out from the entrancing symbol as if it were a tangible thing.

None of this drew Rokharth's attention. No, his gaze had locked on me the moment he'd finished; I barely noticed as an odd little grin slowly spread across his face as he watched me stare with rapt attention at his handiwork.

His laughter had my attention flickering to him for a moment even as my physical eyes remained locked on that beautiful rune glowing with darkness. It was that brief flicker of attention that allowed me to notice something that actually managed to knock me out of whatever trance I'd fallen into.

My own pitch black eyes were radiating the same darkness as the symbol that so enthralled me.

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A figure slowly staggered out from a dark alley, gazing up at the moon with an eye that glowed like hellfire sat next to one that held no light. His dark and ragged clothes were absolutely soaked in gore and ash, blood seeping in between the seams to coat every strand.

Most of it was his own, though the innumerable, crudely stitched shut wounds across his flesh had long since stopped bleeding.

The crimson veins stretching up along his single arm pulsated irregularly, seemingly not synced at all with his heartbeat and yet causing him no visible distress as his mismatched eyes gazed upon the starry night sky.

After a moment a thin smile spread across his face, revealing a jaw filled with cracked and broken but flawlessly white teeth. His grin spread slowly, until his expression was lacking anything approaching sanity. Then he began to laugh, wild and wet sounding howls of joy and misery clashing violently in his throat until he no longer had the breath to cackle with.

After a moment he collected himself, taking deep breaths and wiping the tears and saliva from his face.

"Ahhhh, I'm going to sleep for a year if I survive this. Then I might burn this shithole to the ground."