It was much as Etsu experienced. When Eld struck the beast with his scythe, head on into its cranium, he would experience a feeling of . . . nothing. A natural feeling. As if it he wasn't dashing anything solid at all, but simply cutting the air--and he'd fall through it just as easily . . .

There was a thick black cloud about them almost immediately. When Eld landing, however he managed to land, he would practically be swallowed by it, but he wasn't the only one. The darkness shrouded the entire path and blocked airways. It would be difficulty to breath. It would irritate the lungs and force coughing spasms for the entire duration of the mist's existence upon the path. Even being close to the dark cloud was to breath in the flecks of mist and cough--until it faded, that is.

Etsu coughed and tried to swat the dark mist away from her face. She mostly failed at it, though, and it took several seconds for this one to pass.

And there was also something more. A profound and sudden sense of fatigue, racing through Eld's body all at once. It was sudden, but not immediately dropping.

Eld landed rather harder on his feet than he'd intended; the scythe met with surprisingly little resistance and thus his legs were subject to the full force of the fall. It wasn't crippling--he was tougher than that--but it still hurt a lot. Combined with the effect of the dark mist and it would take him a minute or two to recuperate.

Except that he didn't; the energy he was certain he should still have wasn't there. He leaned heavily on the scythe, trying to catch his breath but completely failing.

Did I lose too much blood? His injuries weren't terrible, he didn't think that would have been a problem yet, but he could think of no other explanation for his sudden fatigue.

But regardless of his condition, this wasn't a safe place to rest. "We should...get going...before more appear," he panted. Even if he was exhausted, he'd push himself as hard as he had to so that he and Etsu could get to Hillcrest.

When the shadow was gone, Etsu felt the utmost relief in its defeat. She let out a sigh, and briefly considered running along with Eld again--but she couldn't really do that so soon. Especially exhausted now, running simply wasn't in her repertoire of abilities for the time being. Instead, she took a moment to survey her surroundings. She looked behind her. She looked to her left. To her right. Ahead of them. There was nothing. The shadows had retreated to . . . wherever they'd come from to begin with. Every time she glanced behind her, she was still so surprised to find the darkness gone. She allowed the light field to dim, and still found no creatures crawling about through the woods.

"They are gone," she reported with the utmost relief.

And then, to Eld's eyes, the darkness returned. All at once, it enveloped him and the world around him turned to shadows. Endless midnight. He'd be dragged to the ever darkening ground in a rush of fatigue.

It was sudden, the rush of darkness and shadows. It all hit at once, erasing the fainting feeling and replacing it instead with a fleeting one. There was wind. Strong wind. He'd have every feeling of flight all at once. Uncontrollable flight. It was as if he was falling. As if he'd fallen forward when the shadows began to take him, struck the ground, but instead of finding a solid surface, he passed through it, down past the earth and into the darkness. The everlasting darkness.

And yet, he'd be able to see, if he tried. He'd be able to see the inky blackness about him, as wind ripped across his body in his violent descent. Perhaps at first he'd think he was blind, but sections of the darkness might hold more gray than others, and were he to survey his own body, he'd find it perfectly visible.

The truth was, there was simply nothing to see.

Eld let out a sigh of his own when Etsu reported that there were no more shadow creatures around--the ones behind them had vanished, and if she couldn't sense any around then they were most certainly alone now. He tried to pull himself back to full height and suggest they get moving before that changed--

--and then darkness swallowed him. He had not fainted, and he'd feared he might from the way he felt. He was perfectly aware save for his sight, which seemed to have left him.

He was falling. That was the most prominent concern, one that erased all else from his mind. He flailed about, feeling for anything to catch himself on or at least slow his descent, but there was nothing. He continued his plummet, biting back a scream, his heart feeling like it would leap from his chest.

It was then that he noticed that he was not, in fact, blind--he could still see himself, see his limbs reach out in vain for something to hold onto, and the darkness surrounding him was not a consistent one. There were lighter areas and darker areas, as though it wasn't darkness so much as a void; there was nothing but empty space surrounding him.

Where he was wasn't an issue to tackle at the moment, however. Forcing himself to not panic, he focused on figuring out a way to slow his fall. Regardless of how empty his surroundings seemed, sooner or later there would be a bottom and if he hit it falling this fast he wouldn't even get the chance to find out where he was.

The landing, when it finally came, was unbelievably soft. Slowly but surely, the wind died down. Gravity tugged at his feet in the most unreal of ways, and rather than dragged to a hard surface by his face, his body would hunch over as the tips of his toes touched first, then the balls of his feet, and finally his heel. Inevitably he would stand on his own two feet, feeling only a mild state of fatigue, but otherwise fine. The wind by this point had completely stalled. It was non-existent and the world was stagnate, much the same as the world Eld knew before Galaens. The parallels were uncanny. It was bleak and lifeless and on the darker side of grays: everything was obsidian or near it, though no single object, not even the surface on which he stood, actually had any defined image to it. It was as dark as the rest of the world and blended in accordingly.

It was all so . . . bleak. So empty. To any others, the darkness would have been harrowing. It would have horrified them. Shocked them with agoraphobia and sent them into a compulsive need for walls. Such an empty expanse could not house the human heart.

But this expanse was not lifeless.

No . . . Eld was not alone here.

Eld could come up with no way of slowing his fall; piteously, it seemed he was doomed to plummet to his death, a conclusion he was forced to consider more and more the further he descended.

But the stop did not come with the violent abruptness he had anticipated. As though gravity suddenly decided to be selective, his feet were pulled below his head, causing him to bend and twist, and his toes touched solid ground. Not that he could tell it was ground, other than by feel--the darkness below him looked no different from the darkness all around him.

It was dull, depressing, downright despairing...it reminded him too much of a place he knew all too well. But because of that, he was much more equipped to deal with it than most.

For that reason, he quickly regained his senses and came to a conclusion: someone else was there. "Hello?" he called out, hoping that this person could tell him where he was and how he ended up here.

The first thing he might see of the girl was the obsidian color of her skin. It ran up her toes, her calves, her thighs, her hips, her skinny waist, modest breasts, her arms, her thin throat, and young face. She couldn't have been older than seventeen or eighteen, in human years, and had the most frail and dainty of appearances. Average height for a girl, perhaps, but thin like she'd been starving for a week. She was far from anorexic, but the subtle hints of bones, on her ribs and hips especially, were readily visible.

She stood at five feet and four inches tall at most, but hunched over with her back and shoulders. Her thin arms dangled before her, and a pair of red eyes watched out beyond, stared dead into Eld, at his body, his mind, and his soul. They were wild eyes--alarmed and aggressive.

The girl was at least a dozen feet from Eld, and appeared into--stepped from the side and into--Eld's peripheral. Though entirely naked, her appearance was far too outlandish for it to be remotely erotic, and her position, hunched and staring with feral interest.

Her short black hair was a ruffled mess, and on top of her oddities, she was horned--but not proportionally so. A single, small horn rose from the left side of her forehead and inadvertently parted her hair. Two pairs of horns, fashioned more like claws, rested upon her knuckles. They were natural growths and bore all the sharpness of a predator's utilities, though her physical build was one that depicted something or someone more . . . human-esque . . .

While he received no verbal reply, a shadowy figure stepped forward. He...wasn't really sure what to make of her, as he'd never seen anything quite like her. She vaguely reminded him of the shadow creatures, but other than a few horns she looked human for all intents and purposes--far more so than the giant he'd just vanquished.

The way she looked at him unsettled him far more than her appearance in and of itself. He raised his hands, showing they were empty in an attempt to be placating. "Hello?" he repeated. "Can you understand me?"

He really hoped she could--he was still winded from fighting as well as the fall, and he always preferred to avoid conflict if possible anyway.

For a moment, she was silent, just staring. The muscle beneath her left eye twitched and her fingers went jittery for a second. Soon enough, she parted her lips to speak, and soon a familiar voice filled the darkness:

Who are you?

Her voice would have echoed throughout the endless darkness were there surfaces for the sound to reflect against. Her lips moved, but the voice that filled this world was not one that originated from her. The three words all looked as if they were spoken; it looked like she physically made the sounds that filled the world, but they were simply that: sounds that filled the world all at once. There was no single direction from which her voice came. It was soft and hazy and carried on each speck of inky blackness this world had to offer.

Most notable, however, was the distinct aggression in her voice. It was as if she already hated Eld for everything he is, was, and ever will be.

"Oh!" Eld instantly recognized the voice as the one he'd been hearing since leaving Galaens. In a way, this was comforting, as it meant that he was not going crazy--or possibly it meant that he was now hallucinating visually and tacitly as well as aurally, but he was less inclined to believe that.

"I'm Eld." It was clear already that she didn't like him, which perhaps made sense if she was in some way related to the creatures he'd been fighting, but it wasn't as though he'd wanted to fight. "Who are you?" He tried to keep his tone friendly; the last thing he wanted was to antagonize her further.

It wasn't lost on him that her voice seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere all at once. If she was somehow connected to this place, all the more reason to try and avoid conflict; he might very well need her help in getting back to where Etsu was.

Eld . . .

The girl dropped her tone just as she did her left shoulder. If she bent at her knees, her hand would have been flat upon the dark surface of their standing.

Eld's name was whispered twice, thrice, and again, as if she were trying to memorize and make sense of it. If only for a brief moment, her eyes dropped from him. Those scarlet eyes stared, instead, at his feet, but only for a hot second. In no time at all, she was turning her attention to Eld's face again. Her eyes were half shut, her brow was lifted aggressively, and the corner of her lip was raised. Her teeth were bared, but only slightly. They were sharp, easily sharp enough to cut through a human being's flesh without the slightest difficulty, but not too misshapen compared to a human's: just subtly edged, yet fitting together perfectly.

As a raspy growl escaped her, she let loose the question:

Why do you still live?

She didn't answer my question. He decided to let that slide; he wanted to avoid agitating her, after all.

Besides, her question gave him some pause. "Why?" he asked mildly. "Should I be dead?" It was all he could come up with; the question itself could have meant anything from a philosophical one to simply wondering why he wasn't in the belly of some shadow beast right now.

It also showed his own way of thinking; to him, someone didn't need a reason to not to be dead. Rather, it was dying that should have a reason to it--there was little he hated more than senseless violence...

Before, she had hesitated before speaking--perhaps mulling over something or the rather, thinking of the words to say. This time, however, she was quick. Blunt. Painfully so.

Yes.

And it was with this that she took speed all at once. She bent at her knees, set her left hand upon the darkness below, and pushed forward with both her feet and hand. The girl's right hand drew back as she burst into a sprint for Eld's person. Her speed was impeccable. She was faster than any of the creatures Eld and Etsu faced before, and had many more weapons at her disposal. The claw-like horns upon her knuckles, the single horn upon her forehead, her bare hands, her feet, and her teeth. Not to mention, she was sentient in her own right: talking, thinking, and feeling, much unlike the previous creatures that acted upon learned instinct.

She'd clear the distance between them quickly, and by the time she was nearing Eld, her right hand was already thrown out for his throat. Her intentions were to kill him, and trying to cut out his throat with the horn-like claws upon her knuckles would be evidence enough . . .

As he feared might happened, she attacked; he had little doubt she was related to the shadow creatures he'd been fighting--perhaps even responsible for them. But nevertheless she was different; she was sentient, and could communicate. He still wanted to avoid fighting if he could.

Just before the hand (and claws) reached him, he leaned and stepped to the side, avoiding it by a small enough margin that it could have been attributed to luck--at least, were it not for the fact that he seemed unperturbed by it.

"Why do you want to kill me?" If he knew the answer, he'd be better equipped to convince her to stop.

She did not reply. Talking was all but out the window now that she was poised to kill. It was as if some animal instinct and drive took over--but it'd soon be that way for Eld probably, too. It was often hard to think enough to speak whilst in battle. Thinking, speaking, feeling--in combat, it was all mostly an afterthought. Especially in such impersonally personal combat. Neither Eld or the shadeling knew each other; there were no feelings but enmity, but to fight called for direct involvement of their bodies, and soon, Eld might not be able to get away with a simple dodge.

Eld's inquiry was punctuated with the shadow girl's slash. She'd jabbed forward, and Eld moved to the side--but she reacted quickly. She dug her heels into the ground, anchored herself quickly, and swung out the same hand she used for the first attack in a wide arc, and easily in the area to slash Eld across the throat.

The throat. She kept going for the throat. It was absolute quickest way to end an animal's life. If done hard enough, it was almost painless to boot--and the shadeling, though not particularly strong, had hard--and sharp--enough claws to take Eld's head clean off if he weren't careful.