On the second floor of a decrepit abandoned building on Zalcien's Black Block, Carn the thug opened the door to the room he and his friend Gaston were in, torturing Dane, a child that served as one of many of Guy's informants. Instead of his friends and fellow goons working for Runar as he had expected, what stood in front of Carn was a shadow. A tall and thin humanoid black mass that darkened the world around it by simply existing, void of any feature on its ebony surface. Though he wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed, Carn could easily recognize the thing he and the rest of the team had seen enter a shop - Silhouette, the creature their boss wanted to get his hands on.

Carn didn't even have the chance to speak out and warn Gaston before the thing began to talk with an otherworldly voice, a smooth tone with a strange hum and a sharp edge. Before the first word had even finished Carn already felt a chill going down his spine.

"Normally, I'd offer for you to surrender, and if everything went well I would offer a job. But for you? I think I will make an exception."

"Wha-"

A tentacle sprang from Silhouette's shadow and coiled around Carn's body, snapping his legs together, forcing his arms behind his back, strangling his throat, and stuffing his mouth. Muffled screams tried to make their way through the dark flesh before the grip of the tentacle strengthened and Carn felt his bones creak.

Seeing the fate of his friend Gaston promptly let go of Dane, letting the small hooded child's body drop to the ground as the thug readied his mace and shifted into a fighting pose, some of the runes on the dodecahedral head of the mace glowing with a grey light.

Before Dane's weak and bloodied form could hit the ground shadows spread from where Silhouette stood in the doorway and rose to cushion their fall, gently taking hold of the young one's barely conscious form and taking them away to a corner of the room as Silhouette advanced further into the room, approaching Gaston and leaving behind Carn, struggling to breathe in the constrictive grasp of a black tentacle rising from the darkness on the floor.

"You ain't gonna get the jump on me, buddy."

"Do you think I need stealth to handle scum like you? No. My employees would already be more than enough to put you in your place, I simply didn't want to disturb their work."

"Big words for someone who keeps hiding."

"You are confusing cowardice and strategy, much like you're confusing bravery and stupidity."

"Eh, you won't be talking so tough once I break your bones."

"There is nothing you can do to me."

"This stuff can break a ghost's bones, it'll find something to break in you."

"The only things your toy will shatter are your feeble hopes and expectations."

Gaston groaned and struck at the ground where the ambient shadows kept spreading, more of the runes covering his mace lighting up as the metal of the head met the magical darkness and tore it apart, creating a hole in the black mass where the room's original floor was now visible.

"See? It's going to-"

Gaston fell silent and swung upwards to parry the assault of a tentacle falling from the ceiling and going for his neck, and then used his momentum to keep on bashing the shadowy limbs that emerged from the walls and the floor, destroying them in black splats that returned to the ever-encroaching darkness that spread from Silhouette's body. As much as he would like to grin to taunt his opponent, Gaston knew better than to let himself get distracted from the deadly game of whack-a-mole. He might not have been an incredible warrior, but knowing how to handle swarms was one of the first things he had learned, growing up next to the nest of a Sickler pack. Silhouette may have been scary, but so far Gaston could handle it.

And it's as this thought went through Gaston's head that something almost went through his hand, promptly blocked by a small shield formed from one of the runes on his mace's handle. He hadn't even had the time to see what it was before the thug felt a sharp pain in his shin and barely managed to stop himself from falling on his knee. He could feel shards of broken bones piercing his flesh and his blood flowing down to the floor, as well as a strange feeling slowly spreading, something that he knew was too cold to be blood from his experience with wounds, although he usually caused them instead of receiving them. He didn't dare to look down to check what exactly the strangeness afflicting was, and his decision quickly paid off as more tentacles came from all directions to take him down, but his damaged shin made every movement more difficult and painful, and it wasn't long before a stray tentacle coiled around Gaston's neck, though he immediately blasted it apart with a strike of his mace as soon as he felt the pressure on his skin.

But while Gaston was handling the tentacle choking him, he felt another bolt of pain in his other leg, more specifically in the knee, and this time he couldn't stay upright and fell to the ground with a grunt. He didn't even try to get up and instead did his best to crawl to a corner while still striking at any approaching tentacle and the growing darkness, leaving trails of blood in his wake that were quickly engulfed by the shadows. In this position, Gaston could see from the corner of his eye what had happened to his legs and had he had the freedom to he would have probably panicked. Disregarding the already grievous wounds that he knew would need to be treated by a professional, there was a creeping blackness slowly spreading through his damaged flesh and onto the rest of him, much like the shadows that grew from Silhouette's form.

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"It appears you broke first. So tell me now, where has that confidence gone?"

Gaston ignored the taunt and focused on striking away the tentacles that kept on coming and the darkness that kept on spreading, though he quickly noticed some sort of black orb shimmering into existence in front of Silhouette's head before it began to morph, becoming longer and thinner and pointing straight at Gaston's right shoulder. Thick as he was he could still easily guess that whatever it was that he was witnessing was probably what had hurt him and spread that weird poison thing, and it would be extremely stupid to let that hit him.

When the strange floating object launched itself at his shoulder, Gaston was ready to bat the projectile out of the air, all of the runes on both the hilt and head of his mace lighting up to fight off the strange energy that kept trying to move forward and began to push back his enchanted weapon as it slowly came closer and closer, the muscles in his arm struggling to keep their hold.

But none of that mattered when he felt something pierce through his other shoulder from the back to the front, the sharp pain distracting him just enough for his grip on his mace to falter and for the weapon to be sent flying into the air as the dark projectile it had been resisting finally reached its destination and plunged into Gaston's right shoulder, pain and that strange coldness immediately spreading as Gaston couldn't hold back a scream.

A tentacle rose from the ground and picked up the runic mace as it grew, the black appendage taking care not to come into contact with any of the runes as Silhouette nonchalantly approached Gaston, more tentacles coming out of the walls and the floor to grab onto him and raise him to put his head at eye-level with Silhouette - though the dark figure had no eyes to speak of.

"Now that this has been taken care of, let's get to work, shall we? Although I am fairly certain I already know the answer, tell me, who do you work for?"

"I... I ain't talking, freak."

"Oh, how sad. What could I possibly do to make you talk? Oh, I know, I'll just have to use this interrogation technique I saw recently. It may be familiar."

Before Gaston could understand what Silhouette was hinting at the tentacle holding his mace swung at his still healthy shin and smashed it, the thug letting out a scream of agony at the feeling of bone shards spreading through flesh and something more, risking a look down to see it had been completely obliterated, his foot only being still connected to the rest of his leg via a bundle of nerves and veins, blood dripping down like a flood onto the floor.

"Oh, I didn't expect that. I suppose you are more fragile than that child. Still, I'm far from being done interrogating you, it would be a shame if you died of blood loss now, wouldn't it? Let's fix that."

Suddenly the blackness that had slowly spread from Gaston's kneecap accelerated its growth and focused it downward, quickly covering what remained of his leg and his foot in black oil, the grievous damage to the limb slowly healing as more black mass grew and replaced, his original flesh, some of the coldness already flowing through the rest of his body as it replaced his lost blood. Now that he thought about it, Gaston checked his other wounds and noticed they were undergoing the same process.

"Now, let's try again. Who do you work for?"

"WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU?! WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!"

"Tut tut, I'm asking the questions here. Let's try one last time before I replace what's inside your head. Who. Do. You. Work. For."

Gaston had never been that afraid of death. He had been cautious, and he didn't want to die that's for sure, but it was more of an obvious fact than true fear. But now? Now he was terrified, and talking didn't seem like such a bad idea anymore.

"Runar! I work for Runar!"

"Good, now we're getting somewhere. Second question, how many of you are there?

"I don't know how many people work for him, but I came here with some friends. Carn, Gonko, Gonch, and Daniel."

"And where are each of them?"

"Carn's the guy you got tangled up back there, Gronko was scouting the back of your store and Gonch was waiting for him, they should be back soon."

"And what about Daniel?"

"He... He went to get back-up."

"I see. Any idea of what he could come back with?"

"Probably just thugs and goons, maybe a rune mage or two, or even a knight if any of them is available and willing."

"Tell me more about rune mages and knights."

"I don't know anything about magic, but from what I heard rune mages draw stuff to cast spells, and they usually fancy trinkets to cast things quicker. Knights are just strong dudes with enchanted armor and weapons."

"Like your mace?"

"Yeah, but the higher ranking guys have better stuff. Mine was just a reward for a job well done."

"Any examples?"

"The knights usually stay with each other, but everyone knows Karadok. He's the strongest one and Runar's right-hand man."

"How strong would you say he is?"

"I dunno, I never saw him fight. But I saw one of the regular knights fight once, she was dealing with a Sickler pack leader that was attacking the warehouse we were taking over. She focused on blocking its attacks before cutting its head off with one swing."

"I see. I suppose your little team planned on taking care of me on your own?"

"If we didn't find anything too bad."

"Too bad I found you first. And what were you planning on doing with our little friend here?"

"The kid? We wanted to roughen them up 'till they spilled everything they knew, maybe have some fun afterward."

"What sort of 'fun', exactly?"

"Ya know, beating them up, breaking some bones, the usual."

Silhouette said nothing for a few long and unnerving seconds before dropping Gaston, letting his bloody fall to the floor with a meaty thud and a gasp of pain.

"You're not even worth interrogating. You know nothing any of Guy's informants hadn't told me."

"Please, don't kill me, I'll-"

"Who said anything about killing you? No, that would be far too easy."

At that point the tentacle holding Carn exploded, turning into dozens of ribbons of living shadows that pierced through the thug again and again like it was sewing him together before they all merged into a cocoon. Muffled screams escaped the new atrocity before it burst open, revealing a pitch-black humanoid with a faint grey tone and empty eyes.

"You, keep an eye on the others. If they try to run, break them."

The thing that used to be Carn nodded before approaching Gaston as Silhouette and the cloak of shadows left the room, dark appendages still holding onto Dane's unconscious form and Gaston's runic mace. And before the dark grey flesh of whatever Carn had become blocked his vision, Gaston could see through the doorway Gonko and Gonch lying on the ground in a heap, completely knocked out, bloody and bruised, black spots on random parts of their bodies.

For the first time in his life, Gaston prayed nothing would break.