In the world I traverse, there is a long corridor...a dark walled length of space that, in the mind's eyes, stretches on throughout eternity. Going down it is inevitable for one of my kind. For a being with any sort of power in this society, going down this hallway is as guaranteed as the fact that you blinked a few seconds ago, and are more than likely to do so again in the space of yet a few more.
Your footfalls are muffled, as you take the immeasurable series of steps, one foot placed firmly in front of the other...and though your knees shake, and there is no carpet to muffle the sound, the beating of your heart seems to drown out the sound of boots against floor. This is hostile, foreboding place, and the shadows seem to generate coiling tentacles, seeking to pull you in to become one of the many forlorn spirits that wail endlessly in a realm where no one can hear them, grasping in vain at the waking world, all about you...you cannot see them, but all the same you know that they exist...singing their dirge in tandem with the shiver that races up your spine.
Going down this corridor is an experience to test the bravery of the most courageous of souls...and only those who are mad or foolish do not quail at the undergoing of this inevitable trek.
Luckily, I am not all there myself...
A the end of this hallway, for indeed there is an end, there lies, as at the end of most such places with the dark flair for the dramatic...a grand, ornate door...decked with cobwebs that seek to shroud the ornate carvings in the wood of it...of figures in the throes of agony, gripped in the claws of creatures with elongated fingers and gaping, fanged maws.
This somehow is not as frightening if such a creature sired you. A birth from the shadows gives you the ability to stomach things that would make mortals tremble. Oh come now, in this place, there are no real mortals...for if there were, we would have killed them by now...and the few that come here with one of us are never one of us...never last but days in our grasp, for varying reasons.
The only mortals here were once-mortals, irrevocably changed by the shadows, twisted into beings more frightening than some of our own. And then...some of them are the wailing ghosts...unseen to all, lamenting with bitter tears the product of their own folly...nonexistent to the world...whispering adornments to the shadowy corridor...and the door at its end.
My fingers close about the gilded handle...and steeling myself, I take a deep breath, and I open that door, forcing a smile to my lips and hiding my mind, the rational part, the part that screeches in mindless terror...behind the glimmer of insanity that springs into my eyes. For here, is the central chamber, the place where the spider sits...the mistress of all in the heart of her web, and I, the fly, walk into her parlor. I expect not honeyed words or sweet seduction, for I know that she is displeased with me.
I daresay she plans to demonstrate her displeasure on my person, but I have been punished as such before. Freaks of nature and magic such as myself really have no place in any of the three worlds. Light, Dark, or Mortal...nay...I am a world unto myself, rotating around a lost sun, a sun that is fading into nonexistence, to leave me a wandering being in the infinite cosmos.
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It is hours before I emerge from her lair...shoved out by one of the many pretty things that bedeck her chambers, lovely adornments to her own sinister grace, all doomed from the start, though their minds are too clouded to seize upon that thought until the moment arrives, and death comes...not swiftly, but at her delicate fingertips, it is drawn out until they beg for an end, and when their wish is granted, their burning love and fervent devotion is the last spark of the light fading from their eyes.
I, however, am far from dead...on hands an knees I can feel the pains shooting up my limbs, and it is a welcome agony. A blurring gaze focuses on my hands...and they are stained crimson...what a lovely color, that brilliant red. Raising one to my lips, my tongue slips out to clean a finger, the coppery taste of my own blood is quite lovely, and brings the flames back into my eyes.
I'm smiling. I know I am, and yet I do not know why...and when I break into laughter, it is somehow not unexpected. Crawling over to a wall, I place my torn hands upon its shadowy surface, pulling my beaten frame back to a position reminiscent of standing...and with the power of my own blood, I create flame in which to bathe the door.
Its soothing heat shoots from fingertips, to dance and play in the cobwebs...fragments of shattered light, burning away the marks of hundreds of years held in one eternal moment in the skewed time of this place. Childish, you might say, but I have no intention of burning down the door. I am enraged...I am amused...I am hurt.
I am not an idiot.
Turning with as much grace as a person in my state can manage, I stumble down the corridor...my mirth still ringing down its foreboding length, maniac cackling making this place all the more sinister still. Oh gods above, blessed gods...
I can see the wailing spirits quake, and grow still, shocked to silence by my torturous ecstasy, the blissfulness that comes of the sudden loss of ones senses...I lock the pain away, as always, to be happy in my madness. This one has always been this way.
I tip my hat to a particularly mournful spirit...a woman this one, with black holes for eyes, shadowy-red tears coming from those gaping eye sockets. She is a beautiful creature, even in her destruction, and she reaches out a hand to touch me, and I kiss her fingertips.
"Alas, madam, this one cannot be lingering, for he is to be being lateses again, apologies from the Wit." And with a sweeping bow, that causes me to stumble, reminding me that more than one rib has probably been broken this evening, I finish the return trek down the corridor, which has been wondrously shorter than the sojourn down it.
There is light at the end...the hues of fire-lit lanterns cause shadows to dance and play on the walls of yet another chamber, though there is no door to this one. This is the hub for more hallways yet...all leading to more pleasant places. The black and white tiling is reminiscent of a chess field, and perhaps it was meant to symbolize the hierarchy in this place, and all too well do I know that I am a pawn.
I watch, as the shadows form living shapes and splashes of color as I approach, as though heralding the hero, though he comes back in wounded defeat, he is alive. I'm still watching the shadows...though one in particular catches my eye. A dark splotch, it stands apart from the rest, and as I take the needed steps closer, it materializes in my vision, to form a slight figure, standing in the light of the lantern, blue, pupilless eyes glowing like beacons in the darkness.
It is a comfort to know I do not imagine the worry in that gaze.
"Wit..." The feelings are echoed in the word, and he reaches out both hands to take one of my own, bringing it close to hold it against his chest. A momentary thought flits through my mind...seeing my hand so very pale against his ebon-black skin...that he is a shadow, and I have conjured him out of my memories and madness...to keep my company...but then his slight frame is against my own, arms wrapped around me...and even his meager weight causes me to lurch dangerously backwards.
The smile on my face turns from madness, to a very defined, distant sort of sorrow, even as my mind turns unwillingly from its protective covering...its shield of unthinking, loss of thought and rationality, to focus on this person that has entangled himself and his welfare inextricably with my own. He...is why I cannot fear the darkness...burying my fingers in his hair and drawing him against my hurting, beaten body, I can, for the first time in my existence, be unselfish.
Bloodied, swollen lips form an answer, even as tears come...as reality is almost more than I can bear. "Shadow..."
This darkness is my salvation.
I, Nadyris Rashaa, have never before had a dream like this...I can only think that it is but a herald of things to come, something important that I must play a part in. I have looked through the eyes of another...and found myself desolate, the realization that my salvation is a frail and fragile thing...and I know well that I am doomed.
But it was not I, but this other...this...Wit.
