Shadows of the Night

(Author's Note: Prereader: Moon_Fire     <-- Thank you)

           Time stood still, or at least took a few steps to the right, away from me as the entire world stopped around me mid fall as I hung in the air. I looked up and the doorway that had led me into this, empty place. I looked down, and jumped, I was on the ground. I gave a few tentative stomps, it felt solid enough, but no sound emerged from my strike. Looking up to take a look at the bland flat wasteland was also no longer an option. A great ring of mountains had form around me. They were a distance off, to take a guess I’d say maybe a mile, but I’m no good with those sorts of things and they could have just as well been twenty miles off and been all the bigger for it. Turning around, to get a look at them only furthered the head-trip, my mind now physically reeling in dizziness as the immediate area had become a small training field, and at the center was the… thing, that sent me here.

       I walked over to it, making sure to blink only a single eye at a time, and focused only on the mask suspended in black, which, due to my own darkness piercing eyes, looked incorporeal. As I approached the mask remained silent, as the rest of the world.

       Once I was within, roughly, six feet of it I stopped. It had sent me here, through the “training gate” it said, and waited. I briefly wondered what its name was, and even if it preferred to be called an it, or a she, or whatever.

       “My name is Caligo” the multiple tones and pitches making me shiver, it sounded like four or five people talking at once, it certainly gets bonus points for a cool voice, “you may refer to me by this, and may use masculine pronouns when referring to me.” He then lifted an incorporeal arm from within himself and the landscape shifted beneath me and formed into my tower shield as it strapped to my arm. “Your gifted weapon is not well suited for offense” he said in an almost bored sounding tones, “but it’s size allows you have a large amount of defense, as well as obstruction which will allow yourself time to better analyze a situation in battle and afford yourself a greater opportunity to turn the tide to your advantage. Well, let us not bandy words any further, as I have found that the most efficient method of training is to simply throw one into the thick of it.” And with that Caligo rushed towards, smoothly gliding along the floor as though on wheels.

       I immediately shadow walked behind him, by some twenty feet. I didn’t want to fight this guy, and I didn’t really have to either truth be told, and began to tell him as much as he ricocheted off, what seemed like, the air and came at me again while maintaining his speed. Spike tipped tentacles began to push their way out of his back and stretched out towards me, giving this Caligo guy an extra ten foot reach as they weaved about in the air in an attempt to intimidate me. It was working.

       He just wouldn’t let up, I kept on trying to talk to him, shouting for him to stop and talk this out, but he just kept silently coming. In fact if it weren’t for some of the spikes rubbing against each other, making a distinctive shhhinking sound, continuously reaffirming their existence despite their incorporeal nature, he would have been completely silent.

       Okay, let’s review the situation. Trapped in some nether world with a shadowed mask that wants me to help him bring balance to the world, rule over the absence of light, and is currently trying to spear me through in some insane attempt to “train me” despite my protests. It was time to retaliate.

       Despite what Kingdom Hearts would have me believe otherwise, a shield is not an ideal weapon. Its design is for defense, and while it may be used for bashing or for jabbing, it is ultimately rather unwieldy and can easily be surpassed by the elegance of a sword, spear, or really anything that was designed as a weapon. But the size of my shield did give it one advantage, besides providing excellent defense, it would make a weighty blow it I could connect with my opponent. I could just shadow walk behind him and… yeah, the only weak spot he looks like he had was the mask, being the only thing I couldn’t see through. There was always the possibility that they could be damaged and it was just my own eyes that let me see their more translucent side, but I’d rather not take the chance, I really didn’t want to get impaled. Sure I’d, probably, be able to heal it off, but that doesn’t mean I want to feel excruciating, scream inducing, pain. I needed to do this in one go, cause I wasn’t going to get enough time to redo it before retaliation occurred.

       Shadow walking a final time, Caligo coming at me all the while, I clenched my hand, made sure the arm straps were tight, and waited. The only effect my change in tactics did for the floating mask was for him to spread out all of his tentacles and have them all come at me once I was in range. I raised my shield, holding it parallel to the ground, cocked my arm back by the elbow, and took a single step, taking me the distance in half the blink of an eye as I let my arm fly, smack center into the featureless face of the wackjob that sent me to this, admittedly neat looking, place. The hit connected as well as continued through the mask, cracking it in half. The darkness composing his body vanished like a puff of smoke.

       A sigh of relief passed my lips as my chest began to relax after seizing up in all the… excitement. Now all I had to do was call to the shadows and port myself back to anywhere but here. I stood there, waiting. Then I waited some more, and then some more. My heart rate began to rise in panic, it couldn’t be happening. I couldn’t be losing my powers. It was just like every dream I’d ever had super powers in. I be flying and shooting laser beams for a few minutes, but they would slowly disappear into nothingness. And now that I actually had some in real life it almost seemed too cruel that the one completely and utterly awesome thing that had ever, and I was almost certain would ever, happened to me was happening. I busted out the fallen knee stance and screamed to the heavens.

       “Humph, quite the drama queen” a familiar multifaceted voice echoed. As I began to rise, wanting nothing more than to vent my frustrations upon anything I could wrap my hands around, an ectoplasmic arm came out of the mass of shadows that were under the control of the newly reformed mask and patted me reassuringly on the shoulder. I quickly recoiled from the unwanted touch.

       “Why can’t I shadowport out of here?” I wanted my voice to sound tough, but the slight growl was marred by the raised pitch due to my frustration.

       “Your ‘shadowporting’ as you call it, does work. The problem is that you just can’t run out of your mind. Even if you could the result would be you taking your brain out of your protective skull, and even you wouldn’t come back from that.”

       “What do you mean I can’t run from my own mind?”

       “Well, I may have been a bit theatric when I said I was taking you through ‘The Training Gate’, when I actually meant I was taking you deep within your own mind. This whole world is actually my own construct from the part of your mind that I now inhabit. You won’t get back out unless I let you, and until then your body is under my control.”

       “If it’s under your control, why even bother with me at all? Shouldn’t you be trying to take over the world or some other contrite plot like that as the new overlord of darkness?” My voice no longer held any high pitched quaver and was now completely filled with sarcastic condescension.

       “Again, I am not the one who may take the mantle of the dark sovereign. I was created to be an advisor to those who take on the mantle. For, as you have clearly surmised, it is normally under the control of those of a less than ambivalent nature, and is normally replaced by an upstart. In fact I’m rather lucky to be active for a three or four hundred year stint. My last sovereign had the longest go that I had yet to see, second only to the very first sovereign, before losing connection to me. That was about one-thousand years ago”

       Okay, chatty bloke, but if I were trapped in a mask with no one to talk to for a thousand years, I’d be dying to talk to anyone.

       That certainly put things into perspective. As much as I wanted to throttle this guy, I just couldn’t help but empathize with him. I’d been trying to leave the second I met him, and all he really wanted was someone to talk to, and control the absence of light. I let out a long and exasperated sigh, I was going to try and do this one more time, “Do I really have to do this, or can I get someone else to take over the mantle, surely there’s someone more qualified to rule over the element of darkness than me? I don’t even know what it would entail, let alone anything I’d have to do.”

       “Very few are willing to personal inadequacies, let alone to give up positions of power. It is your refusal to take a power you don’t understand that I will not do this. You have the potential to be even greater than the first dark sovereign. You will bring about a new age of darkness, the like of which no one has ever guessed.”

       Dam it, now I know how Potter felt when he got the Philosopher Stone out of that mirror while the guy who wanted it was right next to him, screwed.

       What followed after this was just a basic Q&A session while I was getting used to the fact that my life was clearly going to no longer have any semblance of normality. Besides, it could be worse, I could be bald and have a big nose.

       Caligo was most interested in my ability to command shadows, turns out that he normally gifted those who took on the mantle of Dark Sovereign with a nearly identical set of powers, and was quite surprised at this turn of events, having never seen the like before, in this world. I explained that I’d gotten my powers and was in fact from another world entirely, and really just about everything. It seemed to be taken in stride by him rather well, though he did seem a bit disturbed when I mentioned that his world was thought to be nothing more than a small girl’s entertainment.

       I was in turn informed that my duties were to really just to do as I pleased, to a large extent. What normally had happened was that the Dark Sovereign would gather vast amounts of power and try to wage war against those who served under light, and fire, in hopes to imprison it it and make darkness the dominant world element. Completely extinguishing it would not work as a new avatar of the perspective element would be chosen, making all the previous work done worthless. Keeping the ruler of the opposing element under lock and key, all the while alive, was preferred. This was the norm, with exceptions few and far between.

       My revulsion at the thought of trying to slaughter others for some so inane seemed to please Caligo. I also learned that the Elements of water and earth would normally act as an ally or at least not an enemy as they were known to keep things in “the dark” as it were, though mostly it was earth because of its, normally, non-translucent nature. And also that in order to properly establish myself I’d have to set up a palace. I didn’t quite like that term, so it was amended to fortress or base of operations, basically a place of power where I would be at full strength, this was usually done underground, far from the rays of any sunlight, again, another connection to the earth. But the main thing that would have to occur would be to fully regain the power of the dark sovereign.

       Caligo was actually a half brother of two entities. While he was one of the mind and hidden ways of that nature, which explained his control of shadows themselves as well as the mind trap I was currently in, his counterpart, which he referred to as his sister, was the one who “gave birth” to these abstract concepts and shadows to make them  capable to interact with the physical world. In short they worked something like a power ring, like from the Green Lanterns, and while the sister, had vast amounts of power, she was unrefined and it took the power of Caligo to focus and make use of it.

       I asked why she wasn’t with him if that were so inseparable and near useless without each other. To which he replied, “The fault lies with the last sovereign of darkness. Enraged at the lack of care for the darkness, the sovereign became emotionally unstable. This sovereign too was like you, already gifted with powers before the mantle was given to them, and in a jealous rage against those who coveted the light sought to blot away the sun by bringing the moon into a constant state of eclipse.” This was starting to sound eerily familiar. “The sovereign of light came and used a collective source of power that completely surpassed the sovereign in terms of magical ability. The sudden increase of magic ruptured my connection from the sovereign and my sister counterpart, and we have been apart ever since.”

       Okay, that was just far too specific, “Caligo, was the last Sovereign of Darkness Princess Luna?”

       He gave a surprised gasp, “Indeed she was.”

       “And why exactly do you refer to them as past sovereigns and not use more familiar terms?”

       “That is something I would rather not disclose.” He said as his voice took on a harder tone. Well, I certainly knew when to leave well enough alone, well usually, at least this time I was.

       “So I can’t fully take on the office until you reunite with your sister. Do you have any idea where she is? What’s her name anyway?”

       “We have always been linked, and I can feel her even now, I know she’s been subdued, but landscapes tend to change dramatically over a thousand years, so I could not guess on exactly where she is. As for your second question, due to our… ephemeral nature, we tend to be re-imagined every so often. This normally occurs with a new sovereign taking the mantle, though it is not always a dramatic change. Suffice to say, I do not know what my sister is calling herself now, but when we last met she called herself Somnium.” ‘Geez, these guys have some weird names. Reminds me of Greek, or maybe Italian, whatever, not important, shouldn’t judge.’

       “So, what exactly is the plan from here then?”

       “Simple, you will be trained to better use your current powers. But fear not, I will keep your body functioning in the real world and supplying it with all the necessities it requires for life.”

       So, recap, I’m half-officially the sovereign of darkness, something I’ve just recently come to, kinda, accept. I basically get to decide what that means, and a little mask that floats in shadows has me trapped inside my own mind while he, admittedly, takes my body out for a spin. Yeah, things could be going better, but at least they could still be worse. That last thought almost seemed to take on an ominous toll as tentacles sprouted out of Caligo’s back and he began to rush me again as the landscape morphed into twisted hillsides.