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 Posted: Sun Jun 25, 2006 3:06 pm
To help those who are a new to the shop, and for those who are curious about the shop's history and story as a whole, listed below are descriptions of Athan's battles in the past in addition to the current story arcs. Each story arc is posted and listed in chronological order with linked references to further, detailed writing about the events that took place. The Condensed Shop Summary  To understand what a Shadow is, you would first need to know how it was they came to exist. They were all once living beings -- humans, fae creatures, animals, and even monsters. Their downfall came when they crossed paths with a man named Doran. Over years, he had slowly become consumed by darkness and insanity. Initially, before true madness had completely seized his mind, he merely locked away his enemies within stones.
Fair enough for him to do so, you would think, as they would willingly do the same to him if given only half a chance. Unfortunately, that is not where his path of chaos stopped. He became so power hungry, so inhuman that he destroyed anyone that so much as glanced at him the wrong way. He locked them all away within precious gems and stones, trapping their souls and life energy in a miniature abyss for centuries.
Athan, who had been Doran's childhood friend, sought to stop him. Several battles between them ensued, but the struggle did not end with Doran's mortal death. He vowed to find a way to restore those that had been locked away.
The true challenge was bringing them back.
Despite his natural abilities at magic and spell-casting, he wasn't powerful enough to awaken them. At least not by himself. The stones were sealed with darkness, and his being an earth elemental did not aid him well in trying to break that seal.
Utterly desperate, he struck up a deal -- with a demon no less. In exchange for the ability to manipulate and use darkness as he needed to, he forfeited nearly all of his earth based abilities. To comprehend the severity of his situation, you must understand how entwined Athan was with his element, as most people from his world are. In essence, it wasn't just his natural given magic he gave up to right the wrongs Doran had committed, but also part of his soul.
Their bargain completed, Athan now had the power and ability to release the souls trapped within the gems he had managed to recover so far. Even so, it would take time before he was able to efficiently wield that power. That newfound strength still had its limits; he was hardly all-powerful, and unlike Doran he was not willing to completely give up his humanity for the sake of power. He could not return those souls to their rightful true forms without it killing him almost immediately, as to awaken them he had to transfer some of his own life energy to the gem to help it break free of its confines. However, he could offer them a second chance in a new form altogether.
They would only be a 'shadow' of their former selves -- creatures of darkness with no true memories of their previous lives, though some manage to experience brief glimpses of what once was. They are all bonded to Athan in some small way since he used his energy to bring them back to life, but they are heavily reliant on their soul bond with their guardian.
They are basically energy and emotional leeches. It doesn't hurt the guardian, though it might tire them out during strenuous times. Once they are older (teens and older) they actually form a more symbiotic relationship with their bond and actually share energy back and forth as necessary since their physical form cannot contain their own energy that keeps them alive.
Shadows and darkness are where they prefer to hide as they can blend in with it perfectly and not be seen. Naturally, they shy away from light as it is intrusive on their senses and would likely result in a migraine and one very irritable Fiend. The fact that they can so easily hide in darkness and because they are creatures of darkness, most Shadows are inclined to trickery and mischief. This is particularly so when they are children. Chaos seems to surround them at all times, but that is not to say they're all inherently evil per se, but they are troublesome to say the very least.
A slim chance remains that perhaps one day when they've achieved their final true form, that they might remember who they once were. The question is, will they want to?
Not everyone was an innocent bystander. Some very well may have deserved their fate. Some weren't even human. Unfortunately, there is no way of being certain who is who before they are awakened. Who's to say that one of those already lurking in their guardian's shadow isn't another Doran waiting to be unleashed upon the world? 
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Posted: Sun Jun 25, 2006 3:07 pm
It was just barely morning. The sun was still creeping up over the horizon and had yet to warm the remnants of the cool night air. He woke to an unfamiliar, deafening sort of silence. The sound of a bird chirping broke through the air and made him bolt upright to find himself alone in bed. He frowned at that and pulled on some clothes to keep the chill at bay while he searched for him.
By all rights he should have been in bed with him still, sleeping quietly in his arms or awake and watching him sleep with a vague, amused smile. He'd call him lazy for sleeping all day or handsome because of his green eyes, but he always stayed and watched over him if he woke first. He treaded into the kitchen when he heard the sudden noise of pans clattering and feet shuffling across the floor, but the silver haired man that stood there wasn't the one he was looking for.
"What are you doing here?"
"Making you breakfast," Doran replied with a smile that unnerved Athan. He'd seen that smile before. He was up to something, and he knew from experience that whatever it was would not be pleasant. Sadly, his dealings with his once close friend never seemed to be pleasant anymore. There was always a catch.
"Breakfast," Athan grumbled as he folded his arms over his chest and squinted at the man suspiciously, "Since when do you cook?"
"I've never been adept at cooking, but I've found that breakfast is the one meal I can cook well," Doran replied cheerfully as he idly glanced over at the dark haired man. "Besides," he went on before pausing briefly, "I thought you'd need some cheering up."
He stared quizzically at the other man. Cheering up? Why would he need to be cheered up? He was in a perfectly good mood aside from having woken up alone in his bed rather than with his lover at his side. The way Doran smiled sadly over at him as though he held the knowledge that could potentially break him and cause him to need someone to cheer him up made him sick to his stomach. The scent of sizzling food didn't help the sudden wave of nausea either.
Doran's expression shifted to one of concern and worry as the color visibly drained from Athan's face. He sighed wearily as he met his friend's eyes, "I thought the b*****d would at least tell you he was leaving.."
"L-leaving?" Athan choked out, brow furrowed in confusion as one hand moved to grip on the counter in front of him, "Who's leaving?"
"He's gone, actually. I saw him as he left," Doran murmured in a soft voice as he averted his gaze towards the food he was cooking before glancing towards Athan with a startled look when the man sagged down to the floor despite his firm grip on the counter to support him. He set the pans of cooking food aside and rushed to his friend's side to pull him into his arms. "I'm so sorry," he breathed as he idly stroked the man's hair in an effort to comfort him.
Athan's shoulders shook as he pressed a hand to his face as though to suppress the tears that threatened to overflow. "No!" he cried out as he shoved away from Doran in a sudden movement. His green eyes glowed bright with anger as he darted out of his reach and out the front door. He went towards his house, but upon finding it entirely empty of his scrolls and other things of importance he stored there he couldn't hold back his tears.
"He chose another path... even after you did your best to save him the way you did me."
"You're a liar," Athan hissed from where he was crouched on the floor, "He may have left me but he is not so weak. Not like you." He glared pointedly at the other man with a fierce, angry expression. He had not lied when he'd told him he'd lost another to darkness. He knew that Doran was still meddling with what he shouldn't. His aura was tainted by it, visibly stained.
"That anger isn't meant for me," Doran replied calmly as though to placate the other man. He stood out of his way when Athan darted by him and rushed out the door, slamming it at his back as he stalked back towards his own home. He simply watched him flee from the yawning emptiness that filled the room he stood in and smirked faintly in the darkness.
It had been all too easy to be rid of the other man. He'd have Athan to himself again, and together they would reign in darkness.
–
He laid crumpled on the floor where he had collapsed. He looked very much like a rag doll that had been tossed about and then carelessly abandoned. His eyes opened slowly and he drew in a deep breath. There had been a sudden jolt of something that had sent him reeling back into the wall, stumbling and cursing as he slid down to the floor while he clutched his chest. It felt as though he'd been stabbed, yet there was no wound that he could feel nor was there anyone around to commit such an act of violence against him.
He was alone. That much was for certain.
He had locked himself away in his study down in the basement below his home and refused to come out. He had been attempting to search for him, his love. He'd never been terribly good at scrying, but it wasn't something he was incapable of doing. One moment he'd caught a brief glimmer of something and the next he was tumbling to the floor and writhing in pain.
Athan stood with a mumble and pressed one hand against his face as he stumbled towards the tall mirror situated on the wall to assess the damage from his fall and perhaps discover the source of the stabbing pain in his chest. What he found left him breathless. He carefully peeled back his shirt to leave it hanging off of one arm as he stared in the mirror.
A blue, circular sort of design had appeared on his skin. It pulsated and shimmered faintly in the dim lighting. He'd seen that mark before. It was the design that his lover always called forth when he was working with magic. He swallowed thickly as one hand shot up to trace the design that burned it's way into his skin. It's appearance meant one thing: his betrothed was dead.
He cried out raggedly and tore his hands back through his hair on a sort of keening sob. His lover hadn't just left him. Things were more complicated than that. There had to have been a reason. He must have known that something was going to happen to him. Something bad. His eyes snapped open and he stared vacantly into the mirror before him for a moment as a strange sort of calm settled over him.
He drew in another breath and shrugged his shirt back into place. He left his study for the first time in days. He climbed up the staircase and fully expected to find Doran there waiting for him, watching. He'd called down to him several times in an effort to coax him back upstairs, but Athan hadn't listened. The fact that his once good friend was incapable of going past the wards placed at the top of the stairs was enough to confirm his belief that he was meddling in things he shouldn't and that he was indeed tainted by it.
Athan left the door to his home swinging open. It hardly mattered to him that someone might venture inside and steal his belongings. Material possessions meant nothing to him. Everything that he had loved and felt made his life worth living had been stolen from him, and he suspected he knew who was the cause – even if he had no way of proving it.
He crept into Doran's house silently. The darkness that permeated the man's home was like a tangible thing that undulated and swirled around him as though trying to coax him along, beckoning and pulling him forward. The shadows danced across the walls as though fleeing the silver shine of moonlight that spilled in through an open window.
There was a figure, half-illuminated there next to the window, but mostly he was bathed in shadows. His back was turned but somehow Athan could see the rather smug expression that was plastered across Doran's face.
"I knew you'd come to me eventually... though I never thought you'd be the sort to stab a man in his back."
An eerie sort of smile crept up onto Athan's face as he stared pointedly at the man's back as his hand tightened around the hilt of the dagger that was in his hand. "Actually," he spoke up before clearing his throat briefly when he seemed to choke on the words, "I was waiting for you to turn around."
The silver haired man turned around slowly and tilted his head to the side as he peered over at Athan. He looked shaken. Pale. His hands trembled slightly but his grip on the dagger in his hands was quite firm, but still rather unsteady. He took a step towards Athan and smiled faintly at him in the darkness that shifted and moved around them. "Are you going to kill me?" he asked simply before laughing when his once close friend merely smirked broadly.
"You don't have what it takes," he breathed against his ear as he leaned in dangerously close, "To kill another man." He opened his mouth as though to speak and continue his mocking tirade, but his words were cut off suddenly. A small, wounded noise erupted from his mouth as he stared at Athan in disbelief.
"Then it's a good thing," Athan whispered harshly against the other man's cheek, "That you're not a man." He twisted the knife that was lodged firmly in Doran's stomach sharply with a faint smirk on his face. "You're a monster, and what you have done.. is unforgivable." He sank down to the floor with him and bit back a sort of harsh, manic laughter that threatened to well up in his throat.
"I know you were the cause of his death.. even if it may not have been your hands about his neck or your knife in his heart," he went on, "I have no way of proving it... but you are the cause." He sighed and pulled himself to his feet as he stared down at Doran who writhed uselessly on the floor, blood pooling around him and dribbling at the corner of his mouth. The shadows that had lured him into the home seemed to be shuddering in horror at the fact that their master was dying there in the middle of the floor while clutching futilely at the dagger that Athan had thrust into him without a second thought.
He meant to leave him there to die alone, but some morbid part of him wanted to watch as he gasped for breath and the color drained entirely from his face and spilled all over the floor. He took a few steps back to avoid getting the sticky red mess on his shoes before his eyes caught sight of something there in the darkness.
On the desk near the window Doran had been standing at were several gems. Some of them he recognized immediately -- like a small disk of hawk's eye that sat there shimmering in the moonlight innocently, an odd shaped piece of mystic topaz, pearls of various sizes, bloodstone, and an assortment of other semi-precious and rare stones. What was Doran doing with stones like these? He was the one who worked closely with earth magic.
He frowned and glanced idly over his shoulder as the man gasped raggedly, lips moving as though to say something, but Athan had no interest in trying to decipher what it was he was saying. Instead, he reached for one of the stones curiously. Incidentally, it was the hawk's eye he picked up first. He gazed at it for a long moment before dropping it suddenly. He watched it roll to a stop on the surface of the desk.
"What have you done," he breathed in a low voice. Those stones weren't just stones. There was something inside of them. Voices screamed out in absolute horror and pain. They were trapped. He paled visibly and gathered up all the stones with shaking hands. He knew what these were. He had originally helped Doran with the first spell, but that was before he saw the error in it. That was when his friend had truly fallen.
"I will undo what you have done," he told the dying man on the floor who's eyes had taken on a glassy sheen to them, his mouth still twitching and moving as though he were trying to whisper to him. He glanced back towards him one last time when his body seemed to fall completely still. The shadows stopped dancing and the silence of death permeated throughout the house.
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Posted: Sun Jun 25, 2006 3:09 pm
"This should do nicely," Doran taunted as he snatched up the emerald pendant that hung about Athan's neck. "Though in all honesty," the man went on in a mocking voice as he watched the dark haired man struggle for breath, "I ought to stab you and leave you to die bleeding on the ground. Like you did me, remember?"
He bent down low so that his face was hovering only a few inches away from Athan's. "No," he whispered harshly as he grabbed the man by the hair to force him to meet his gaze, "This is a fate much sweeter than the one you bestowed me. You will be the last person to ever receive such a kindness from me. Be thankful."
Athan scoffed at that and laughed, a half hysterical sort of noise that seemed to rattle Doran enough that he let go of his death grip on the other man's scalp. "Go to hell," he managed in a strained voice that gave way to a coughing fit. He wasn't sure how long they had been fighting, but there was one thing he was certain of. His energy was waning quickly and he wouldn't be able to keep it up for much longer.
"I offered you everything in the world. It could've been just like old times," Doran whispered as he took a step back from Athan who was still lying in a broken heap on the ground, "But no. You had to ruin your chances. You had to go and ruin it all." As he spoke the emerald pendant in his hand began to glow, and all the while he continued to prattle on endlessly.
Athan could just barely make out the words anymore. Everything was fuzzy about the edges.
"I think I'll even keep this as it is. A pendant," Doran teased as he crouched close to Athan who had taken on a semi-transparent quality as his very life force was slowly being drained away from him. "That way I can all ways have my best friend with me," he laughed, but that laughter was cut short suddenly.
A bright blue-tinted flash of light burst before his eyes, causing him to drop the pendant.
Athan scrambled up off the ground and grabbed up the emerald with more energy than he thought he had to spare. The spell was only half finished. It would give him just enough time to do what needed to be done. He called forth several different runes midair and whispered an incantation under his breath for sleep.
Doran laughed as he flailed out blindly towards the other man, stumbling as he did so. "You can't stop me! This isn't over! This isn't the end!" he cried out, shrieking as Athan managed to hit him with the spell, blinded as he was. He felt his energy fade just as the other man had only moments before when he'd attempted to lock him within his emerald. He collapsed to the ground but he was not dead. He was merely in a deep, trance-like sleep.
"You're wrong," Athan rasped, voice wavering slightly from exhaustion, "You should be thankful... that I am showing you... this last kindness." With the very last of what little energy he had left, he opened a portal and dragged Doran inside. His victims would spend eternity trapped within a gem; he would spend eternity trapped within a void between two dimensions.
He fell to his knees, pale and shaken as the portal winked out of existence. He barely had enough strength left to move. He wasn't entirely sure he could. He felt himself fall to the magic-scorched ground.
His eyes slid shut. He took a breath. And then went still.
Time crawled by slowly, and the world seemed to fade to darkness. His green eyes opened, but he saw nothing but a vast emptiness. It was as though he had been shoved into the void rather than Doran. He felt no pain, though. The gash above his eye was gone. There was no stinging ache from where his head had been bashed against the ground and no finger shaped bruises at his throat.
His brow furrowed in confusion and a frown tugged at his mouth. He was fairly certain he knew what was going on. He was dead.
"Not quite."
Startled, Athan glanced up to try and find where that familiar voice was coming from. It was a voice he hadn't heard in so, so long. Decades. He drew in a shaky breath and tried to speak but a pale hand pressed against his mouth to silence him.
"Shh. I haven't got long."
He swallowed thickly as he reached tentatively to touch the other's face and hair. He moaned fuzzily as he found himself enveloped in pale, pale arms. He was filled with a different kind of pain than what he'd felt earlier when he'd battled Doran. This was more than just a physical hurt. It was the pain of loss. Loneliness. Longing.
"I'm afraid you've still got a long path ahead of you. As have I." The being smiled gently and idly stroked Athan's hair. "And when we meet again, neither of us will remember this conversation either, but even so, after this you'll know what your purpose is. I think you already know, though. Don't you?"
Athan sighed and leaned closer into the warmth the other radiated. It was always so cold. "I.. have to fix things," he replied fuzzily, "Things are... unbalanced."
"Exactly, right."
He tightened his arms about the phantom-like being. He didn't want to leave yet. He didn't have the will to return to a world without the person who mattered the most to him.
"But you must," a voice whispered against his ear gently.
Green eyes filtered open when he felt a faint drop of wetness against his cheek, startling him a bit. Tears? Another hit his face and he flinched before jerking up right to find himself staring up at the moonlit sky with one hand clenched around his pendant. It was just beginning to rain.
The battle was hardly over. He closed his eyes and listened to the rain fall with slow, even breaths. It was the beginning of an even greater challenge.
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Posted: Tue May 15, 2012 9:57 am
Several months after Twilight Designs was established as a shop, and Athan had released several Fiends, a mysterious presence began to plague his guardians. That presence turned out to be none other than Doran, the very man that locked away the Shadows. He was none too pleased to find that Athan was undoing his handiwork.
Go here to read how Doran was defeated for the last and final time.
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Posted: Tue May 15, 2012 4:04 pm
This is the current story arc of the shop.
Another mysterious entity has begun stalking guardians, but this time the attacks seem focused on Athan and those closest to him. The attacks are more vicious than they ever were before and much more direct. Doran has previously been locked away for good, so the identity of the current antagonist is a mystery.
Due to the massive size of this story arc, the updates and clues are located here in this thread.
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