Daniel lazily ran alabaster fingers down the length of his dark leather cuirass. Though he couldn’t physically touch it through the baleful-looking armor, with all its thorn-like protrusions of black metal and hardened, form-fitting leather the color of midnight shadow, his mind recalled keenly the feeling of the old scar that ran from stem to stern. The years of habit had seared the harsh and jagged line of ruined flesh firmly into his memory as efficiently as the operating scalpel had carved the stigmata so firmly into his chest.

He breathed a deep, calming breath. The midnight breeze ran a cool and soft caress over his pale and gaunt features; playfully tugging at his silky, shoulder-length black hair. Softly, the breathy caress swirled and shook the branches of the nearby trees, their leaves rustling in contentment.

His chest rose and fell in the soothing ritual once more. Not for the first time, a ghost of a smile crept across his pale lips. It was truly a wonder to him that this stigma that had once caused him such grief and overwhelming trepidation was now his greatest source of comfort.

But it was understandable. With all the scars - physical and spiritual - that he had amassed in his short lifetime, this one scar had been the beginning.

… ‘She’ had been the beginning…

Absently, Daniel’s eyes rotated to the right, his lips quirking up once more while he watched ‘her’ out of the corner of one glittering jade orb.

Her waist-length hair was the color of raven’s feathers amidst a pool of moonlight shadow, and her skin was as white as new-fallen snow that drank in the light of the moon. She was lithe; a taut bow ready to spring, with eyes as black as the void and lips as red as blood.

Alice…

Her fingers lightly flexed, each delicate-looking digit ending in a savage black claw. She rotated her head around to look at Daniel, her hair lightly fanning out almost as if it were underwater.

When her black eyes met his green, the ghost of the smile that had been on his lips blossomed into a feral grin and he rotated his head back and forth with several loud cracks, closing his eyes in satisfaction. The façade of peace that surrounded this place began melting away, however, and a thick, coiling tension filled the air.

Slowly and with great deliberation, Daniel opened his eyes and looked up. That feral grin never leaving lips the color of frosted wine while his breath came out in a long misty wisp in the cold midnight air.

“So, tell me, paladin,” Daniel began, the grin becoming predatory as he locked eyes with a man in gleaming white armor not but a stone’s throw away across a pool of still, glimmering water. The man’s eyes narrowed at the sound of Daniel’s voice, and his lips tightened in a grimace. The seven other similarly clad men to his left and right seemed to be exuding an aura of hatred and contempt as they gripped their gleaming blades in white-knuckled hands.

“You know how to hunt, hmm? But… have you ever felt what it is like to be hunted by that which you once called prey?”

Daniel’s grin faded then, his mouth forming a tight line as he crouched low. The shadows seemed to thicken around him, clinging to him like a cloak woven of night. He held out his hand and the shadows began running off him like rivulets of water before taking physical form and coalescing into a sinister scythe. He brought up the malignant-looking weapon to rest on his shoulder and ran his left hand through his hair. A gleaming silver circlet adorned his brow, and the single deep red gem encrusted in its center glinted and pulsed with dreadful promise.

He brought his hand back down and grasped the shadow-wrought scythe in both hands, locking eyes once more with the man that stood across from him. Behind the armor-clad man, Daniel could see that the peaceful night was being shattered. Near to a dozen other men in soldier’s garb sounded alarm and ran from the nearby clearing where they had set their camp. Joining in a shaky formation, they gathered behind the paladins with confusion and fear flittering across their eyes.

“Come,” said Daniel. “Let us begin re-evaluating who is the hunter and who is the prey,” and with that Daniel leapt, the shadows springing to life around him and propelling him forward.

A haunting and melodious scream sounded out from Daniel’s right as Alice launched herself in a swift, jerking motion alongside him. As they rocketed through the air, her body seemed to flicker. She vanished completely before re-appearing in an instant amidst the mercenaries grouping up behind the paladins.

A banshee’s cry ripped from her lips, causing the nearby men to recoil in pain and grasp at their ears. None too few of the less elegantly clad soldiers buckled to their knees. Crimson liquid dripped from their ears and tears of blood sprung up from their eyes as they were overwhelmed by the baleful cry before some fell and crumpled to the ground, unconscious or dead.

The man in front of Daniel faired a little better against the enfeebling howl. His jaw tightened in pain and blood began to drip from his eyes and ear canals, but he was able to draw a belligerent-looking war hammer from a sling on his back. Swiftly and with inhuman speed, he swung it out wide to catch Daniel’s reaping slash.

The two strikes met, billowing shadow crackling against blinding light as the paladin’s weapon flared brightly. Daniel’s predatory grin flashed once more in the light of the paladin’s aura, and a cloud of darkness began to form behind him. It rose up like a wave as he brought his left hand out and thrust it forward, palm open.

The darkness rushed forward, breaking like a tide against a beach of golden white sand; crashing against the paladin’s barrier of light. Other paladins dashed forward and rose up their own barriers of golden energy to try and aid their leader against it, all the while the shadows threatened to swallow them whole.

Alice screamed again, this one no more than a savage war cry as her hand shot out, nine-inch black claws tearing a still standing soldier’s lower jaw from his skull. Blood and bone blossomed out like a fountain as the man was launched from the sheer force of the blow. He twisted and fell face first against the gnarled roots of an old tree. his eyes already clouding with death while his lifeblood began to liberally water the aging roots.

In no more time than it took to blink, Alice darted forward once more. Passing a man as he stumbled drunkenly from the wail. Her vicious claws slid across his throat and before he could even understand what had happened to him, he found himself buckling to the ground. A veritable waterfall of blood cascaded down studded leather and a wide, crimson puddle began forming at his knees.

She twisted and ducked at an impossible angle, a golden light shrouded sword cutting through where her neck had just been. With preternatural speed and the sound of cracking bones, Alice shot upward, her hand lancing out as fast as a lightning strike while she rose up and underneath the paladin’s wide swing.

The crimson-stained digits struck true and collided with his unprotected chin, the stiletto-like appendages parting flesh like a hot knife to butter. The paladin’s eyes bulged as the claws pierced through his jaw and upwards into gray matter; blood rupturing in a torrent out of his mouth while Alice’s black claws gleamed darkly from behind his parted teeth.

Men cried out in outrage and fear in equal measure at the scene of the brutally efficient massacre that was happening in front of them. The few remaining paladins who were not caught up in trying to hold back the tidal wave of dark energy Daniel was trying to drown them in, and the few soldiers with enough fire in their blood to be left standing and not staining their pants, rushed forward to put a stop to the wraithlike girl’s blitzkrieg of slaughter.

Before they were able to converge on her, however, shadows rose up to enrobe her in their silky darkness. In an instant, Alice melted back into the ground and the rushing men came to a stumbling halt. Only the fallen bodies of the dead or unconscious men lying around like threshed wheat gave any evidence that she had ever been there.

The fumbling warriors never even had a chance to right themselves as a ghostly wail washed over them all once more. Recoiling from biting cold fear and mind rending pain, all the soldiers not protected by the paladin’s veil of holy energy fell to their knees once more. The remaining combatants capable of doing so looked up to the trembling wave of Daniel’s dark energy.

The wave of shadow exploded outward in a frigid pulse of darkness. It easily shattered the field of energy protecting them as it washed over the human wall, pushing them backward. At the explosion’s epicenter floated Alice, arms outstretched and head raised back in an enraged howl.

The man who had faced Daniel directly now felt an indescribable chill bite deep into his bones. He struggled to keep his vision from failing while the other-worldly wail washed over him. He felt the field of holy energy that surrounded and shielded him from the effects of the life-devouring shadow shudder as the detonation of dark energy shaved away at his protections.

The Paladin Knight Captain looked up, gritting his teeth against the ravaging chill and debilitating fear that was trying to claw its way out of his chest and shred his mind. But when he did so… When he looked up and into the soulless black eyes of the necromancer’s pet while her howl sowed continuous discord into his troops… The necromancer in question was nowhere to be seen.

Eyes widening and heart jumping into his throat the man whirled around, war hammer raised defensively for the strike he knew was about to come. It was, however, too late. As he twirled around, the necromancer, Daniel was already there, materializing out of writhing shadow and crouching low with a victorious gleam in his eye.

Daniel’s scythe flashed while he spun, shadows coalescing onto the fine edge of his reaping blade as he pivoted and struck low. The blade of darkness scythed outward and connected at the paladin’s right hip, meeting but a moment of resistance as shadow-wrought steel clashed with light veiled armor. But then the moment passed; shadows severed the light and curving blade parted steel in a single fluid motion.

Daniel’s scythe came to a halt, one knee planted on the ground while he held a macabre pose, blood and liquid shadow dripping from the point of his blade.

“It seems…” he said, taking a contemplative tone, “… that the re-evaluation is complete.” A moment later the paladin’s upper torso toppled forward to the ground as his bottom fell back on buckling knees. Blood and viscera spilled onto dew-covered earth as lifeless eyes, now permanently frozen into shocked disbelief, stared up into the gentle moonlight through a thin canopy of branches.

From beginning to end, as soon as Daniel had sprung forward, the encounter had lasted only a handful of seconds. The Knight Captain and several more besides lay dead while most of the rest were in various states of soiling themselves, or bleeding witlessly on the ground.

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Daniel raised his head to look at the remaining individuals still capable of standing, eyes shining victoriously with an eldritch light. He made eye contact with one powerfully clad knight of the holy order and the man let out a strangled yelp before backing away. It was unfortunate for him that he backed directly in to Alice’s outstretched arms.

The man went stock still as clawed hands wrapped gently around him and Alice let a raspy, gurgling breath out into his ear. Shadows rose up to enshroud the two before suddenly the air was rent with screams of terror and pain, along with the soft tearing sound of parting flesh and splintering snaps of cracking bone before everything went horribly still. A large puddle of blood could be seen forming around the shroud of darkness.

Like that, the damn broke. The remaining soldiers began screaming in abject horror before trying to scatter while the paladins called for formation. Daniel was ready though, and he didn’t give the opposition time to re-mobilize. As soon as the first lips began to part and cry out, Daniel ‘Blinked.’

With a silent puff of billowing darkness, the Necromancer vanished and reappeared behind the panicking soldiers with a blade of pure darkness melding to his left hand. He struck out with that hand and the remaining half-a-dozen mercs were cleaved with that dark blade.

They stumbled and fell, screams dying in their throat as life fled from their blood-stained eyes, even though no cut appeared on their bodies. Where that darkness struck, however, it seemed to stick; roiling just under the flesh of the fallen men.

The remaining paladins tried to form up; their training pushing them to quick and concise action. But even as they did so, the bodies of the fallen soldiers began to convulse. First, the ones struck by Daniel’s phantasmal blades, and then even the ones that had already met their ends began jerkily rising to their feet and knees as darkness rushed out of necromancer’s shadow and coiled around their limbs. The darkness wormed its way into open wounds and mouths; tunneled into eyes and ears. The ‘holy warriors’ could only look on in fear and disgust as the dead touched by Daniel’s hungering shadows began to rise again like puppets on ethereal black strings.

Daniel held his left hand up and the dark energy that had formed around his hand began to take on a crimson tint. Slowly tightening his hand into a fist, blood began to flow from the surrounding corpses and amass into a swirling ball a dozen feet above his head.

Sensing what the sanguine harvest was about to bring, the paladins broke rank and rushed outward; three heading straight for Daniel’s position while the remaining two ran towards Alice.

The zombies had fully risen then, and the reanimated corpses let out mindless moans as they shambled into the paladin’s charge. The gleaming warriors raised their weapons, looking to make short work of the life-stinted familiars. Unfortunately for them, the zombies would not fall so easily.

Even though their blades and bludgeons severed limbs and crushed bones, the undead soldiers clawed and grasped, their blunted teeth searching for unprotected flesh as they attempted to pile onto and overwhelm the smaller force. That being said, the reanimated and clumsy corpses had no realistic chance against the trained paladins, no matter how sturdy and persistent they proved to be. But they were enough to slow them; and as the undead hampered the bull-rushing paladins, Daniel finished his grisly work.

The sanguine ball darkened and pulsed before a blood-red lance shot out and forked into the motionless corpses and surviving zombies that surrounded the paladins. There was a single moment of pause before energy began to roil and bubble under their flesh.

Eyes going wide, one of the paladins was able to duck low and raise a shield, light flaring right before the corpses detonated.

Heavy sounding pops echoed around the forest clearing, acidic blood, and dark energy exploding into a fine mist as the paladins were knocked backward from the sheer force of the explosion. The one who had managed to prepare his defenses in time still cried out in pain as he was launched into a crumpled mess.

The other two did not fare so well; the explosion rupturing ear-drums and even organs as it sent them flying, the acid and dark energy already beginning to eat into their flesh. The two paladins were flung like rag-dolls and came to a rolling stop, one croaking out a pained gasp of agony while the other lay very still.

Having shielded himself from the blast, the remaining battle-worthy paladin rose to one knee with clenched teeth. But as he raised his head in defiance his face went pale, and hope fled from his eyes. The necromancer stood as a pitiless judge with his hands outraised, a dozen rotating spears of frozen blood floated behind him like a pack of attack dogs awaiting his call.

Pointlessly, the manna-spent man raised his shield as the spears shot forward. Try as he might, the shield and his body, no longer fully protected by the signature golden energy of his order, could not hold out against the onslaught.

The spears rained down upon him. Some crashed into his shield, shattering on impact but forming into liquid blood that etched away its metal frame; others were able to pierce through it, nailing the armor to the paladin’s armor shattering once more into razor-sharp shards that peppered his face and body; and others still were able to circumvent his defenses altogether, piercing into legs, arms, and shoulders. Where the spears pierced him, they shattered and re-coalesced, shredding armor, skin, and bone while simultaneously freezing it into place with the burning, blood-tinted ice.

In the end, all that was left of the man was a ghastly sculpture of exploding flesh and steel, frozen in time in a crimson-colored mural.

Face expressionless, Daniel turned to where Alice had been confronting the two other paladins. One was no more than a corpse laying on the opposite side of the small pool of water where the confrontation had begun; his head noticeably absent from the rest of his torso and nowhere to be seen. The other was thrashing wildly in said pool of water, limbs flailing upward as he was held under mere inches from the surface of the shallow pool, yet unable to escape the incorporeal arms that held him there.

After a few more seconds had passed the man began to still; giving a few more jerking flails before falling completely silent, eyes staring up from his watery grave.

Alice emerged from the pool, rising out of the ground she had phased into as she casually began walking toward Daniel. He too stepped forward to meet her partway, lazily slashing downward with his scythe as he passed over the downed paladin still moaning from tanking the corpse explosion. His moans ended suddenly and without an inch of compassion passing over Daniel’s face.

When Daniel and Alice met, he quirked an eyebrow at her, looking over her shoulder to the corpse bobbing in the water.

“Drowning?” he asked in a rather incredulous tone. “In a foot-and-a-half pool of water? Was that really necessary?” he finished, motioning to her razor-sharp, nine-inch claws.

Alice just tilted her head to the left and gave a shrug, her claws shrinking down into simple nails as she wordlessly pointed to the sea of exploded corpses and the statue of the man seemingly frozen in mid-evisceration.

“Hmm, point taken,” he stated flatly. “Though that is just the outcome of the most efficient spell I had available to handle the problem at hand. What you did seemed personal.”

Alice shrugged again and ran a thumb across her left cheek, the remnants of a cut falling away like ash. Daniel watched it all with a bemused smile on his face before giving an answering shrug of his own.

“Probably deserved it, then. Shall we get going?”

Alice nodded with a serious expression, and the two of them turned to face the now ‘almost’ abandoned camp.

The two walked among the tents, the newly-packed ground softly muffling their footfalls (though Alice needed no such boon) as they approached a large and grandiose-looking tent in the center. As they came closer, the two heard muffled chanting behind the closed flap. Without a moment of hesitation, Daniel and Alice stepped through, shadows springing out in front of them effortlessly to push the flaps open.

In the center of the elaborately carpeted floor, surrounded by a dimly glowing magic circle and religious and ritualistic themed implements, knelt a corpulent man frantically swinging an incense burner back and forth as he chanted quickly under his breath. When the two entered the tent the man’s breath hitched, and he let out a panicked squeal before flinging the burner aside and falling back on his hands. He scurried backward a few feet, careful to not break the magic circle, but desperate to put as much distance between him and the intruders.

“Well look who we have here, Alice. I do believe that it is Bishop Reinhold!” Daniel exclaimed in mock jubilation. Alice sneered at the name, and the middle digit of her right hand grew one of her terrifying black claws as she held it up towards the fat priest. The implications of her action seemed rather self-evident.

“You… you…” the bishop stuttered, a nervous sweat breaking out on his brow.

“You?” Daniel asked, quizzically.

“You Bastard!” the man roared, spittle flying from his lips. Both Daniel and Alice stepped back in unison, sporting twin looks of mild disgust down at where the spittle had flown.

“How dare you do this to us, you demon!” Miraculously the man seemed to get some fire in him as he leaned up to his knees, one hand outstretched and pointing accusingly.

“We summoned you from your backwater world! We own you! And you think you have the right to not only disobey, but to attack us!?” the man’s jowls were absolutely quivering in contemptuous rage and his face was positively glowing red.

“Your judgment has been passed and-“

“Judgment?” Daniel’s tone was frozen steel and the mild amusement that had previously decorated his face and eyes had burned away entirely. The bishop squealed again as he caught the promise of jade-tinted murder flashing through Daniel’s eyes.

“You speak of judgment after what you have done?” his voice grew quiet, but the shivering priest dared not speak over him. Daniel kneeled down, right outside of the priest’s faintly glowing magic circle.

“No, Reinhold… it is you who has been judged. I have come merely to carry out the sentence.”

A dark circle appeared between Reinhold’s legs as his face lost all presence of blood.

“You and your ilk may have brought me and mine here, but you were simply signing your own death warrants. You all had no idea that you had already been weighed and measured; that the weeds of your corruption had grown into a stigma that the heavens could no longer suffer to endure.”

“Well…” Daniel breathed in a near whisper as he held out a hand slowly. When it came parallel with the barrier around the magic circle, golden light crackled and formed around his hand. A soft hissing could be heard as light wisps of smoke rose around Daniel’s flesh.

For an instant, the bishop smiled, thinking that he was somehow safe… but slowly that smile slipped into panic-stricken eyes. Daniel neither flinched nor pulled back from the crackling field of energy, but all around him the shadows grew deeper and deeper, concealing even the far sides of the tent in absolute darkness. Soon, the only source of light was the dim radiance let off from inside the weakly crackling barrier.

“… My good bishop,” Daniel continued, his mouth twisting contemptuously at the words. “The seeds of your sin have been cultivated far and wide. Now… it is time to reap what you have sown.”

As the bishop trembled, looking up into Daniel’s eyes as the darkness shrouded everything around them into absolute obscurity, he saw a face peek over Daniel’s shoulder. It wasn’t the face of the necromancer’s hell-spawned familiar, though. No, this was the face of a little girl, staring blankly with dead eyes in sunken sockets of bloodless skin.

A cloying scent had filled the tent, and as the girl made eye contact with him, a faint flash of familiarity passed absently through his terror-addled mind. The memory flickered there for but an instant behind the clergymen’s mud-colored eyes.

Then the girl let out a low, rattling breath and, almost as if in response, Daniel clenched his hand into a fist. There was a momentary flash of light and green-tinted energy, and for an instant the bishop was able to see everything around him. The tent was filled with the blank stares and gaping mouths of bloodless faces. Dozens of lifeless corpses were reaching out to him with emaciated hands as he felt a dreadful sense of hunger emanate from the scores of death-filled eyes.

Many men bore horrid and open wounds that could only be from bladed weapons while some women had dark bruising on naked, pale flesh. All of them were disfigured in some fashion with limbs twisted at irregular angles or bloodless intestines trailing along the floor.

The flash left a single, tangible moment of stillness in the air as the twisted mural seared itself into the bishop’s mind before the instant faded. Then all light was gone and the moment passed. The air was suddenly filled with raspy groans and rattling breaths before Reinhold’s screams of terror and pain shook the air.

Daniel and Alice stepped out of the tent. The screams of panic and cries for help grew more strained and wet by the second as the sound of rending flesh and hungry moans grew louder. Soon the scent of fresh blood permeated the night air, joining with the sickly sweet scent of decaying flesh.

Daniel took a few steps further from the scene and let out a deep breath, running a calming hand over his chest once more as he looked down at where his scar would be.

A hand reached out and grasped his shoulder with a gentle squeeze, and Alice came forward to stand by him with a knowing look in her upturned eyes. He gave her a gentle smile in return and she laid a hand across his own; laid a hand across his… across their heart.

The heart let out a steady rhythm as it beat for the both of them, stronger than it had ever been back in his old world; back on Earth, where this all began…