Without further ado, this is:
Shade Within
The summonings had pecked into their
target. Bhaskara was able to tell from the way the darkness quivered
around him, the magic words echoing into them, transformed into sound
in ears far, far away. It took less than a minute. His foe melted
from the deepest shadow, one inky and black and somehow solid.
The city lived on around them, lights
twinkling in windows visible from their rooftop like stars in a night
sky, distant, but seemingly within reach. But Bhaskara knew in a few
minutes they wold be out of reach forever. Itzal silenced the lighted
panes with a wave of his hand, the entire city suddenly dark around
them, its inhabitants immediately terrified, in fear of being
infected with the darkness, the madness of the shade. But there was
no need. Though Itzal could take them all in an instant, that wasn't
what he was there for.
“It's a once in a century thing, a
summons from a mortal.” Itzal's words slunk into Bhaskara's ears
like oil into water. They slithered around his head, wrapping around
his brain, worming their way in. He shook his head, eyes still
closed, black on black on eternal darkness. An uncharacteristic grunt
followed. “Strong boy. The average mortal has only to hear my voice
and fall moon mad. You have the willpower of three, maybe four.”
“You know who I am. And you know that
statement is false. As always, you speak to hear your own voice, to
make others hear it as well. Everything you say is a lie.” Bhaskara
said in hushed tones. Even so, his words carried far into the night,
borne upon the wind of the rooftop.
“Oh, not everything. Very well,
Baskie, I admit, there hasn't been a mortal like you in a thousand
years. Not since Lucasta has someone been able to suck up so much
darkness. Have you summoned me to take the path he took as well?”
A bead of sweat ran down Bhaskara's
brow. Lucasta the Demon was the greatest hero since the darkness had
begun shifting, three thousand years before, and the greatest villain
as well. A thousand exorcisms had taken their toll, the combined
shade he'd taken in from those he'd saved driving him mad. In the
end, he turned to Itzal of his own will. Infected by shade greater
than any had been able to hold before, his acts had been atrocious,
the lives he'd taken in the tens of thousands. One man could save a
thousand, but he cannot save himself. To fall victim to that which
you hunted and exterminated for so long, so infuriating, humiliating,
so inevitable. And yet, it seemed such an inviting end...
“No.” He swallowed.
“Then why summon me? Don't tell me
you think you have the might to end me? Perhaps a couple hundred
exorcisms ago you'd have the strength, but now? I can see the
darkness nestled within you, feel it squirm as I poke at it, hear it
calling back to me. Why don't you show me your eyes, Baskie?”
The words were spoken with a silver
tongue, Bhaskara imagined. Slowly, his eyelids lifted. Most mortals
would have been repulsed instantly. No white remained in his eyes.
Darkness sloshed back and forth, his body literally filled to the
brim with it. He could feel it, a poke here, a poke there, as it
tested the confines, looking for a way out, as it always did. It
exhausted him, how it never ceased moving, always active and always
teasing away at him.
With blurry eyes, he took in the sight
of his greatest foe, the reason he had devoted his life to saving, to
self destruction. It was almost anticlimactic. Itzal was dark to the
last. Black hair, black eyes, black clothes. Yet it was all mounted
upon skin palest white, bleached from the way sunlight refused to lay
upon him, from the way a bulb would fizzle and shatter while he
walked under it, from eternity lived in shadow.
And he knew it was like looking in a
mirror that showed both what you were and the opposite. From thirty
years of cleansing people of their madness, absorbing their darkness,
his own body had changed. Hair once blonde has gone black, eyes once
blue turned into pools of shade. His white suit was handsomely at
odds with it all, clean gloves upon nails now naturally black and
white shoes over white socks.
“I feel no need to make small talk as
to whether or not I have the strength to end you. I will or I won't.
And there is only one way to know.” He pushed off the wall of the
taller building, squaring his stance and readying himself.
“Then we will talk no more. But know
this. I will enjoy taking you for myself, and I believe I will get a
certain pleasure from watching you tear this city you once protected
into shreds, the blood of innocents coating your hands. My first
move.”
Itzal flicked a hand toward Bhaskara,
reaching out his tendrils, reaching to take back what was his. The
shade in Bhaskara reacted instantly, pulsing outward and slamming
against the walls of his mortal being. He rocked forward, falling
onto his knees as pain exploded, streaming across his body like water
upon a pan. His body shook with it, his skin rippling as the force of
a thousand nights tugged at his seams. His agonized scream echoed
into the night as the moment seemed to stretch into eternity. But
finally Itzal sneered and his hand fell back to his side. “Detestable
humans. Always eager to go past their own limits.”
“Talk no more, you said. I told you,
you just want to hear your own voice.” Bhaskara said, pushing
himself up. His body was still aflame, a dozen cuts bleeding dark
fluid where the shade had actually managed to leak free, seeping into
his suit. But he forced himself forward, into a deadman's run at his
foe.
For a second, they spun with each
other, frenzied action erupting upon the deserted rooftop as they
punched and kicked, blows coming close to landing, but never quite
connecting. It ended abruptly as Itzal called a wave of darkness
crashing upon the roof. It pooled on Bhaskara's back, forcing him
down. The darkness kneeled beside its attacker.
“A mortal has no power, no strength
to stop me. It is foolish to come to blows with someone like me. But
I've yet to meet a human that I wouldn't call foolish.” Itzal
sneered, dark intent and desire for suffering marring his pretty
features.
Bhaskara spoke through the pain,
panting as what felt like the weight of the entire world pressed down
on his back. “Nine hundred and ninety-nine people I've saved from
you.”
“Don't you wish you'd managed to pull
through and save just one more? It would have been such a nice
number.”
The last of Bhaskara's strength drained
from him. He collapsed from his hands and knees, letting the weight
of the shadow force him against the rough brick of the building. It
pressed into his face, rough but somehow comforting.
Itzal cradled his cheek, running a
thumb over it before viciously digging into his flesh with a
talon-sharp thumbnail, sending blood spilling onto the rooftop. He
chuckled. “Heh. Even the strongest fall in the end. But I'll be
gentle. I'll leave some spark of you alive, so that you can watch
every man, woman, and child you come across be torn limb from limb.”
The transition was smooth. Beginning at
his thumb, Itzal turned to pure shade and slipped into the gash in
Bhaskara's cheek. In short order, he was gone, having absorbed fully
into the exorcist. The shade upon Bhaskara's body followed, leaving
him laying there.
The dark ran through him, corrupting
him, twisting and tainting and turning him inside out until his mind
was like shards of glass tread through by a crowd, fragmented and
scattered. And in each tiny bit of him, the darkness took root,
spreading through his body, mind and soul. Images of bloodshed poured
into him, turning into much more than mere pictures. Impulses, urges,
wants and needs and desires for murder and suffering beyond even his
already darkened ability to comprehend. The fight was short.
You are mine.
The voice echoed through him. But his own voice answered.
“No.”
Like a vice suddenly swung to close, he tensed, shuttering down his
body just as the darkness erupted in an attempt to escape. He pushed
himself onto his elbows, a shivering, manic laugh falling from his
mouth.
What have you done, Bhaskara?! What
foolhardiness is this?! He could
feel Itzal's panic, his frenzied attempts to escape.
“Do
you know the reason I only performed nine hundred and ninety-nine
exorcisms? It's not because I lacked the strength for the thousandth.
I just wanted it to be the pinnacle, the greatest feat of my life. I
am the thousandth, and you are my prey this time!”
He
opened a chink, a tiny opening. Itzal sprang at it, pouring out of
him, darkness dripping from his blackened skin. He tried to crawl
away, but Bhaskara grabbed at him, slipping his hands around the
slippery throat. “Oh, no you don't!”
Bhaskara
opened himself, pulling his foe into him, the same strength that lent
him the ability to save nearly a thousand people now giving him to
power to absorb, to consume Itzal. With a strangled cry, the demon
was sucked back in, trapped.
Foolish Baskie! All you've done is
delay the inevitable! I will dominate you and consume your mind
regardless. Trapping me inside yourself is only giving me what I
want!
“No.”
Muscles stiff, Bhaskara turned toward the edge of the roof. He
tottered, unsteady and stumbling, toward open air. “This is the
end, Itzal. For both of us.”
Stop! Let's talk!
“No!”
Bhaskara broke into a sprint, running toward the edge, toward death
and victory. “Like you said! No more talk!”
He
flung himself off the building, spinning and twirling in ecstasy, his
victory filling him. The world blurred as he fell, lights
reappearing as he passed, twinkling and turning the city into a mad
whirlwind of light and dark, light and dark. Faces at windows flashed
by, brick turned to stone to concrete and finally, the concrete he
smashed into.
Pain was instantaneous, but swiftly
ended. He sucked in one last blood-laden breath, then, the world
bright and beautiful around him, he died, the shade within dying
alongside him.
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