The Other Side of Darkness

The Strange City

Lelie smelled the magic before she saw it. The unmistakable scent of darkness. Blot. She threw herself off her bed and ran to the window. The sky was already darkening.

The demoness groaned and pinched the bridge of her nose.

"You gotta be kidding me." She opened the window and jumped out, landing and rolling on the grass to soften the impact before quickly standing up and running towards the dark cloud's origin. 

As she did however, the scent quickly began to change. She stopped in her tracks. This wasn't the same as the previous ones. It was sharper, more pronounced.

And it reeked of Maleficent.

A wave of drowsiness washed over her. She quickly shed her human form and sank into the growing shadows. Maybe if she didn't have a body, the spell wouldn't affect her. That seemed to work. 

However, everything else was quickly consumed by the dark blot cloud. The demoness began moving towards the magic mirrors that led to the other dorms. As she did, vines and mist began appearing all over the island. Random students that had been walking to class or studying collapsed and started snoring. They continued breathing, so she knew they weren't dead.

Yet.

She transformed into a human for a quick second to leap through the mirror to Diasomnia. Almost immediately she was hit with a wave of nausea and drowsiness. She quickly transformed back into a shadow and continued on. 

Needle-covered vines continued to slowly sprout from the earth, covering any surface they could. Being made of shadow (and the constant state of night being present in Diasomnia), Lelie didn't bother moving around them. Instead, she floated in darkness through the hallway and into the lounge.

She froze. "Oh gods." She sent a quick prayer to the dead deities. 

Covering the floor were the motionless bodies of students and faculty. She could sense them breathing like the students outside, but their bodies were so heavy with blot and magic she could feel they wouldn't last long. Either they would lose their hearts and bodies, or they themselves would be gone forever.

"How kind of you to finally join us."

Lelie flinched slightly and looked beside her. Standing there was none other than Malleus Draconia. His body was covered in black ink, as well as his clothes. He wore a dark purple and black robe that dripped with blot. 

Even for Lelie, the blot was a lot to handle. Luckily, since she was now close to the source, she could feed off his blot, allowing her to make a new body that could ignore the sleeping curse. Just to be safe though, she kept a lot of the blot raw, so her hair and limbs looked more like dark clouds of mist than body parts.

"Better late than never, right?" she purred, faking aloofness. That has always infuriated Maleficent. Between the Keyblade-Wielder's annoying levels of optimism and her nonchalant reactions, the fae would grow infuriated by the lack of fear she drew from them. 

She looked again at the sleeping students, now searching for Leviline's body in the mix. "Seems like I missed most of the fun."

Heartslabyul students.

The Scarabia heads.

Even the lion and his students.

No silver-haired maiden.

Malleus chuckled. "Oh, don't worry about that. I still have time to help you as well." The demoness glanced at the growing amount of blot around his hands. "In fact, why don't put you in a dream with the others so you too can experience paradise?" He flicked his wrist at her, but nothing happened. His brow furrowed in confusion.