March from Darkness | ✓ (to be edited)

TWENTY-SIX

DEMITRI

"Come on, bitch. Let's see why Liafeld likes you so much that you decided to agree to date a tranny for a year."

She growled, her teeth glinting, sharpening as she got to her feet, her hair casting shadows on the rest of her face. She charged me, trying to get me to move so she could take a swipe at me. I stood my ground and gripped the sword with both hands, deflecting her attack. Both of us were thrown back slightly from the force of the energy collision. My arms tingled with a slight electric shock from the impact.

Koralai snarled at me, swiping her sword in front of my abdomen in such a way that a bolt of energy flew from the blade. I managed to block it, but it sent a worse shock through my body, making my teeth clench as I deflected her next attack and swung at her head. She ducked, bringing her weapon down at my legs. I jumped over it easily, giving me the perfect opportunity to shove my energy through her shoulder and down into her abdomen.

She froze, letting out an ear-piercing screech of pain that overpowered the endless white noise that came from the energy levels in the room rather than the silence. I spun around, conjuring another ball and smashing it through the glass manually. The window did not shatter so much as it exploded outwards into millions of glittering shards. With Koralai still screaming, although it was beginning to sound more like gurgling, I threw a spark to where the ground should have been, incredibly relieved that, despite the vanta-black appearance, there was indeed ground.

Not wanting to risk her getting up again, I quickly formed two more swords, stabbing one through her throat and the other through the top of her head. I watched her mouth fall open unconsciously, black blood pouring from her lips and nose in rivers, falling from her head in streaks to paint her face and shirt and creating a horrible cacophony of hissing as the energy cauterised and seared living tissues around it. Her eyes, slowly turning grey as her breaths rattled out of her punctured throat, glared at me with such a hatred that I should have felt bad. But, I felt a numb kind of satisfaction instead, making me confused as to whether I should be happy or disgusted. She struggled to get up, but she stumbled; her knees hit the stone floors hard enough to send a new wave of shiny black fluids from her mouth.

I wanted to talk with her, maybe even thank her for being such a complete and utter bitch and causing me to end up here, but she didn't deserve that nicety on her deathbed. So, I conjured a small flame and jumped out into the blank void below.

The ground went down a bit further than I had anticipated, but I did land. I looked back at the shattered window; the green light slowly faded from view, and when it was gone, I ran.

The ground was dirt, littered with random patches of dry, rotted weeds or small flowers that blended almost perfectly with the dark abyss in which they resided. I kept my light low, going quite a bit of the time without it to not attract attention from whatever else might be here. This time, I was extremely glad that I made no sound on the hard-packed dirt.

I wasn't sure how long I ran for, but after a while, I conjured a flame just in time to stop myself from running into what appeared to be a lamppost. Upon further examination, I concluded that it was a lamppost, but a kind that I had never seen before. I stepped around it, ignoring the momentary desire to light it, and found myself looking at a... fountain?

Like every other piece of architecture I'd seen so far, it was made of stone; and, like every other thing in this place, it was falling apart, its missing stones akin to missing teeth and cracked jaws. Whatever used to run in it now sat, completely still and oil-like in both viscosity and colour, at the bottom of the basin. Some of it had splashed out at some point, staining, and apparently charring, some of the ground around it.