One Word Prompts

Dark - Ceremony of Shadows

"Please, no! Stop! Please!" she screamed as they dragged her across the room. She thrashed futilely, unable to wrench her wrists from the iron grasp of the two men who escorted her.

"You don't have to do this. I'll be good. I won't ever step out of line again! Please!"

Her words fell on deaf ears. The men and women standing around the edges of the room did not look up from their preparations. None looked twice as she was tossed into the magic circle drawn in soot and inscribed in stone.

She scrambled to her feet, pressing against the magic boundary, tears streaming down her face. "Don't do this. Please!"

Around her, they began chanting, the words old and deep, their meaning grim and bloody.

She banged against the invisible barrier, as helpless as a lamb tied for the slaughter. Unable to do anything more than watch in horror as their chant lit the sigils inscribed in the ground around her.

The circle flashed red as their spell activated, their chant done.

Pain rocked her body. It pressed in from all sides. Seared through her skin. Shattered her bones. A pressure she felt to her core. Crushed her soul.

Her whole being was compressed, smaller and smaller, until there was nothing left.

Her vision went dark. Reason and thought left her completely.

For an eternity, there was just pain and darkness.

She didn't know how much time passed. She didn't even know if time had any meaning at all anymore. But eventually, her consciousness returned and the pain subsided.

Where she was? What her status, dead or alive, might be? She had no idea.

From the omnipresent darkness that hung around her and the complete weightlessness she felt where her body should be, she feared it was the first.

Was that it then? Cast aside by her coven? Sacrificed for some dark ritual?

Was this the afterlife? This empty blackness her fate? Was this what the rest of eternity looked like?

She scowled. No. She refused. This darkness couldn't be everything. She wouldn't let despair take her. It didn't end here.

Resolute, she put one foot forward. Did she have a foot? Was there a ground to push off of beneath her? She took another step.

Unable to see, no landmarks to sense, even if she could, she could only rely on the sense of movement around her as she plowed forward. Could only rely on the potentially imagined sense of movement for evidence that her efforts had any effect at all.

But there had to be something out there.

And she would find it.

She didn't know if time still passed here, or if it did if it passed linearly from one moment to the next, but it seemed another eternity passed before she found any result from her efforts.

"Oh, ho?" A voice from the dark ahead of her asked. "What's this? A mortal's soul? Here?"

"Who's there?" she asked. She looked in every direction but still saw nothing.

"And not mad yet? My, how rare!" There was amusement in the voice's tone, the words spoken the way one pointed out a strange beast to a child.

"Where am I?"

"The Plane of Shadows, child," the voice answered. "A place no mortal should be able to enter and from which no mortal has ever returned."

Her heart sank. Was she trapped then? Doomed to live here forever?

"Don't despair just yet, child. After all, you've done one impossible thing already, finding your way here. Perhaps it will be the key to doing the second."

She shook her head. "I don't know how I got here."

"Not at all?"

"A magic circle?" she shrugged. All magic centered on such a construct. She couldn't remember now the details of the spell. And without that, how could she even begin to craft the counterspell? "I was an offering for something, I think."

There were thousands of such spells. Thousands of things to sacrifice, to sacrifice to, to ask in return.

"Hm..." the shadow shifted, circling around her. "I wonder about that. If you had been offered to something, I imagine the intended recipient would have taken you."

"How do you know I wasn't?"

The shadow chuckled. "Because you have not been devoured. Rather, here you are. Wandering freely, like a torch in the dark."

"Why am I here then?" she asked. "If I wasn't an offering."

"Perhaps, just your body was meant as a gift to one of my kin? But, no. We do poorly in your world, even in your forms. Unless...." she could hear the grin creep into his voice. "How would you like to learn of our magics?"

***

They watched with bated breath as shadows swirled around the sacrifice's body, devouring the glowing, crimson sigils.

What powerful spirit had answered their call? They could hardly contain their excitement.

The plan was foolproof. Find the spirit from the shadow realms with the greatest affinity for the offered body--a body that already had an astounding affinity for shadows as it was--and bind it with magic to their will. The spell they wove around the body had been designed with their quarry's nature in mind. No denizen of shadows would be able to resist them.

It would be the perfect soldier. Impossibly strong, unquestioningly loyal. The soul of one of their initiates was a small price to pay in comparison.

The shadow possessed body stood, rolling her shoulders as she settled into the unfamiliar form.

"Welcome," the high priestess said, offering a polite bow of her head to the summoned spirit. "I trust the form we have provided you is to your liking?"

"To my liking?" The subject chuckled, shadows swirling around her shoulders, pulling at the natural shadows of the room, drawing them into her orbit. She raised her hand, willing the shadows forward. "Yeah, you could say that. You could even say it's exactly the one I was hoping for."

The shadows surged through the room, consuming all they touched. The other participants scrambled back, all making a mad dash for the door.

She spared none of them, just as none of them had spared her.

She laughed over their screams. Time really did flow differently between the planes.

How many eternities had she spent mastering shadow magic, just waiting for someone to summon her back? And not a single second had passed here.

Her master had told her it was possible, but she hadn't wanted to get her hopes up. Hadn't expected to get this lucky. Couldn't believe how easy her revenge had been.

Laughing, she strode out over the bodies of her tormentors, shadows licking at her heels.