Death

Knowledge is a Tricky Thing for Kidnapped Shadow Girls

The skeleton was still moving, the world around me was exactly as it had been before I had realized. How could everything look so much the same, while being so different? How could I not have my new knowledge written all over my face, so that the skeletons simply had to stop and see what it was that I knew?

The world was filled with shadows. They existed without me, because even though I could bend them to my will, the shadows were unknowable and strange and nothing like me. I had taken them as companionship for years, and that was why I had been so alone. Not because of my weird obsession with death, but because I chose to lock myself away.

And that was only part of my revelation. The rest had to do with the demi-human in my mind. Or, well, the girl. Because, with all my idiocy, I had taken everything she had said as the absolute truth. And if one thing was a lie, then the rest of it was called into question, too. She had told me, back in the transport dimension, just about an hour ago, that she and I were the only two demi-humans that could use the shadows. That wasn't true.

Fiery Eyes, whom I did trust, seeing as how she wasn't a shadowy figure trying to trick me out of my own mind, had told me that all demi-humans could summon the shadows. So what was the other girl doing? I didn't know, but it couldn't be good. Plus, now that I thought about it, I realized that Fiery Eyes had never mentioned the girl to me. It was almost like she didn't know she was there, even with the girl's assurances that the evil reapers had stuck her in my head.

I had to get away from these skeletons, and quickly, before we reached the place that they were taking me. Starting, of course, with the one that was holding me. The shadows within me were already writhing in my chest, and I was holding them back. I could feel them pressing at the tips of my fingers, squirming down my legs and itching at my toes. They were of me, and yet separate from me, and all I had to do was... let go.

"Go," I whispered, and the darkness screamed out of my chest, rending the skeleton into nothing but chips of bone. My shadows weren't yet finished, though, and they whirled furiously through the bony chests of the remaining skeletons. I took a deep breath. "Return to me," I whispered, and there was a wrenching in my chest. I fell to the ground, my knees pressing hellish gravel into my skin, and the darkness was sucked back into my chest.

This was strange. My magic, my shadows, was more powerful when I pulled it from within myself. That was something to file away in the 'ol brain box.

But anyway, I had to get back to Fiery Eyes. I couldn't use the weird other dimension, because I had no idea where to exit. Even now, I had no idea where I was. Between a bunch of steaming lava pits filled with screaming, half-invisible, half-chromatic souls. "Where do I need to go?" I asked, looking up at the violet smog that passed for sky in the Underworld.

"Follow the darkness," somebody whispered. It was a quiet, sibilant, hissing female voice, and it sounded familiar somehow. I looked around, trying to find the source, but there was nothing. Nothing, that was, except for a thin purple string coming out of my chest and leading away into the hellish shadows.

"Okay," I said dubiously, and began to walk. Before long, it looked as though I was floating in ashy gray smoke, only the faint glow of the lava pits and the quiet screams of the tortured serving to remind me of where I was. The thin purple lifeline was drawn out into the distance, and with the fog enveloping her completely, I could only keep moving forward and hope that I didn't fall into a hole or anything.

After a half an hour of walking, I still hadn't found anything of interest. It was a wasteland, and I was exhausted. Believe it or not, it isn't easy to breathe when you're underground, even if you're supposedly dead.

I stopped. Was I dead? The shadow girl had said I wasn't, but she was a proven liar. It was possible that my time had come, and I didn't know it.

Since the shadows had been answering me lately, I decided to ask. "Am I dead?" I asked, and there was silence. Then, the sibilant lady's whispering.

"Death is not for you."

The purple strand in my chest brightened, and then thickened, until it was at least three inches in diameter. "Stop," I ordered, but the darkness didn't listen.

"Where are you taking me?" I asked, suddenly having doubts.

"Where do you want to go?"

"Well, I'd like to see the King of Hell."

I was swallowed up by the shadows and could see no more.