Nighttime. Finally, fucking finally! No more running on fumes or conserving energy. Now to get serious!
I have always been stronger at night. Which should be obvious considering that this is when the world is at its darkest, when black mana can be found literally everywhere and the world itself seems to enter a state of rest. It isn’t just the darkness either. It is the quiet of the night. The general consensus of existence that night is not just the time for sleep and rest, but also the time for the predators to come out and play. This is the time when the real monsters wake up so they may hunt those that are foolish enough to go bumping around in the dark. This is the time when good little boys and girls are lying in bed, scared of the monsters in their closets or under their beds, when the clothes thrown over the chair looks like a shadow monster sitting in the corner of your room, patently waiting for you to close your eyes and go to sleep. It’s the time when the horror movie villain goes around slaughtering horny teenagers in the obviously haunted woods. This is a time when the dark things are at their strongest.
This is my time.
Because I control the dark. I’m the shadow peeking out from under your bed and nibbling on your toes. I’m the prowling beast hunting the blind mouse. I’m the silent presence walking behind you on a dimly lit street that isn’t there when you turn around. This is my time, and the world agrees with me, my every instinct agrees with me, my body and every fiber of my being agrees with me. Because this is my time and I am the apex predator.
It quickly becomes easier to breathe. My footsteps become lighter, and my motions become smoother. As my instincts slowly take over and I give into the night, my posture shifts to become lower and more animalistic. To become the prowling shadow that you can only catch in the corner of your vision before it disappears.
I give in entirely to my instincts.
With a breath, I disappear.
Father, who had been running all this time, smiling joyfully at being the one that is chased, stops. With confusion, he looks around and tries to find me, but he can no longer sense my presence, I am gone. I was never here.
His senses, granted by fire, normally allows him to sense me no matter how well I shroud myself in darkness, because it is only natural for the fire to peel away the dark.
But how well can a single torch push away the darkness of night? A shadow during the day is nothing more than that, a single shadow. But in the night, there are no shadows. There is only an all-encompassing darkness.
Without the light of the sun, no matter how muted through the cover of clouds, the world around us grows darker and darker, my Field feeding off the night and feeding into it in turn to further its descent into a state of deeper and deeper black. Until distant objects begin to vanish, swallowed up by the void, and the world, at least for Father, becomes nothing more than a circle of his own light around his body, produced by his own flames. Beyond this light, there is nothing to be seen. He is now an island and the world is gone and is all mine now.
“Gre’dem, what trick is this now? Do you think this will stop me from slaughtering your people? The only way to make me stop, is to fight me!” He screams into the night.
I don’t respond. The world is silent in response. Despite the rain fall, the thunderstorm overhead is deathly quiet, there is no noise from chirping insects, there is no wind, or even the creaking of shifting trees and their branches. There is nothing.
He spins on the spot as I stalk around his light, like a predator moving around camping humans, my footsteps making no noise as I move on the balls of my feet, staying just shy of the light to only allow my presence to briefly show before vanishing again.
He turns, feeling something behind him and for a moment he is facing towards me, but I am not there, I am nothing more than a figment of his imagination right now. Nothing more than an unseen predator moving though the dark.
“Gre’dem, where are you!?”
He turns again, facing the wrong way, and again when he thinks he saw something move from the other side, but I am not there, I am nowhere.
“Where are you!?!?!” He bellows, as he shoots a stream of fire into the night, but his voice doesn’t travel far, swallowed up the dark like everything else. Even his flames only manage to travel so far before they are simply swallowed up and extinguished, their fading light only managing to temporarily expose the silhouette of twisted trees and hints of figures dancing in the night.
I step forward, having been standing just on the edge of his light this entire time, not moving. I was always here, and I was nowhere.
Stepping out of the darkness, it parts for me like I am walking out of tar, my naked body exposed to the light of his fire. I am no longer dressed in my shadows like a ninja. I am no longer playing pretend. I don’t need to dress up to be a shadow. I simply am.
He turns towards me, my prey locking eyes with me and looking surprised. We both stand in silence, the both of us naked and laid bare before the other for what we are. Nothing more than two animals wanting to kill each other in the night.
“What has happened to yo-?”
He tries to speak but I move. In a splash of darkness I am before him, my arm stabbed through his stomach and claws piercing out his back. His eyes widen in surprise, blood escaping his lips with a cough as he tries to backhand me, but I just rip my arm out from his gut and disappear. I was never there. I am nowhere.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
Flames are quick to fill his wound and he is soon healed, but it doesn’t stop the shock of what just happened from hitting him. He continues to look around, turning on the spot over and over as he tries to find me, but I am not here. I am nowhere. Until I am suddenly behind him. Because I was always there. My hand pierces his side, claws destroying his kidneys and ripping through his intestines.
He doubles over in pain and tries to strike me, but I’m not there. I was never there.
I’m behind him again, claws shredding his back and grating against his ribcage.
I’m beside him, claws ripping off his ear and tearing open his cheek.
I’m above him, a drop kick pushing him to his knees.
I’m below him, my knee slamming into his chin and sending his head flying back.
I’m behind him, fist punching into his lower spine.
I’m below him, claws severing both of his Achilles tendons.
I’m in front of him, my claws slashing though his throat and ripping out his vocal cords.
I’m behind him.
I’m beside him.
I’m above him.
I’m below him.
I’m in front of him.
I am everywhere. I am nowhere.
…
With every strike or bloody slash, the flames covering his body begin to slowly diminish. With every wound he heals, his light dims. Slowly, ever so slowly, the encroaching darkness continues to close in, tightening its grasp on this place as it slowly inches forward to surround my prey on every side.
He continues to try and fight back, but every time he strikes, I am not there, I was never there. I am nowhere.
More and more the darkness closes in, his light dimming bit by bit until he becomes from a blazing star into merely a lonely streetlamp, from a lonely streetlamp to a campfire, from a campfire to a pile of cooling charcoal.
…
His light is almost out now, his wounds healing slower, his body drenched in blood that pools at his feet. Skin and muscle is torn away, his sturdy bones lay exposed and open.
I’m in front of him, standing as I look down at him. I say nothing, simply watching as my prey bleeds out and grows weaker. I’ll eat soon. I could finish it off, but its bones are hard and cornered prey fights the fiercest. I will wait. Let it bleed out and die. I have time, the night is long and we are alone here. No one will disturb us here.
He looks up at me, his one remaining eyes staring at me with a look I can’t understand. His face is too far gone for proper emotion to be conveyed. He cannot speak, I’ve already destroyed his throat and ripped out his tongue several times. But still, that one eye remains staring at me. I look back without blinking, staring into its red depths as it stares into my gold. We are both here, standing by the light of dying embers, surrounded by eternal darkness. He will be dead soon, and I will eat.
With a final breath, he collapses to his side, his eye still staring up at me even as he finally dies.
I wait no longer than three seconds before walking forward, my naked feet splashing through his blood and entrails before I stand before him. Lowering myself to my knees, I stab my hand into his gut, working my arm up and behind his rib cage, pushing aside his lungs to grab and rip out his heart.
Fishing out my prize, I stand and devour it whole as his one eye continues to watch me unblinking, mouth left open for some final words where only blood now drips out.
Naked and drenched in his blood, I turn and walk away from my prey, his light now nothing but a single ember waiting to be extinguished, the darkness pushing in on all sides to completely draw this place into nonexistence, to draw everything into the void.
I am nothing more than a Devil walking in the dark, taking her tithe from a stranger at the crosswalks. I move to leave. To be nowhere. Because that is where I am. But for some reason, I am here. I am still here.
Why am I still here?
Light.
I turn and see that the ember has become charcoal again. Charcoal becomes a campfire. Campfire becomes a lonely streetlamp. Lonely streetlamp become a burning star in the sky, a flame burning bright and inextinguishable. It becomes the Sun.
The prey, the bloodied corpse, is ablaze now, light radiating off of it with blindingly glorious incandescence.
It moves. A sudden breath filling dead lungs in a corpse lacking a heart. Skin mends and closes, and the eye moves, soon joined by a second. The prey stands, its body whole and healed once again, looking towards me as I look towards them.
This doesn’t make sense.
It speaks.
“You look surprised, Gre’dem. Tell me, have you never died? Never been devoured whole by a monster or drowned in a cold river? Never been torn apart and eaten before? Because I have. I have died plenty of times, and each time, I have come back. I wonder, Gre’dem, do you also share this gift with me? If I kill you, will you return as well? If I devour you, will you become whole again? If I destroy you down to your core, WILL YOU SURVIVE?!”
I don’t answer. If it won’t die, then I just have to kill it again, and make it stay dead.
I’m no longer standing there. I’m behind him, my claws tearing though his back.
I’m beside him, tearing out his liver.
I’m in front of him… He is holding my arm.
“That trick won’t work anymore Gre’dem. Not while you’re in my light. Now, no more of this. It is time for you to wake up. I only want to fight the real you.”
His fist plunges into my guts, destroying my stomach, intestines, uterus, and liver, bruising my kidneys.
“Wake up, Gre’dem, now is not the time to sleep!”
His fist inside of me ignites, fire tearing through the inside of my body and escaping out my mouth. I scream. I scream! I scream!!!
“AAAAAhhhhHhhHHHaaaahHH!!!”
The blessed coldness of a Devil’s instinct falls away and I am left bare and burning, pain tearing through my mind as fire eats me from the inside out. Father laughs in my face as I scream and bloody tears runs down my face.
I have to- I have to get him- Ahhhhhahahhh! I have to make this stop!!!
Sheer desperation and pain pushes me to act without thought.
One moment I am screaming and on fire, and the next, I am exploding with black flames. Explosion turns into implosion, all the air and everything around us for fifty meters is suddenly and violently pulled into a single point of light. Then, pop.
A secondary explosion rips out from the closing singularity and send the two of us flying apart, smacking into opposite sides of a new crater in the ground that is perfectly spherical and has a radius of almost fifty meters.
I look down at myself, my body is burnt, but healing, the gaping wound in my stomach slowly healing as my destroyed organs shift around inside of me and mend. Trying to rip off his own trick, I push shadows towards my wounds, commanding them to heal my injuries.
“Hahaha…" I laugh as I spit out a mouth full of blood. "Oh, this such bullshit. Magic really is a giant pile of bullshit…” I can’t help but to say as it actually works, the shadows being converted into healthy grey flesh in a matter of seconds, leaving my stomach pristine and undamaged.
Looking across the crater, Father is sitting there, watching me with a smile on my face. He seems happy that I can heal like him. All of this is exactly what he wanted.
Pulling myself out of the crater, I mentally get ready to fight again. I can’t let him get any closer to the base than we already are. I can feel that my Demons are close. We must be near the northern wall by now.
Now then, what the hell was up with all that teleporting bullshit, why did I eat his heart, and why the fuck am I naked!? Hello, Devil instincts, what the actual fuck!?
Materializing some shadows on my body for the sake of decency, I lower myself into a combat stance and get ready to keep fighting.