A Perfect Soul (Part 5 of ??)
featuring Dylan Matherson & Andy Foster — characters from The New Ashton Chronicles, written & role-played by F.R. Southerland
( @normallyxstranger | @frsoutherlandauthor | www.frsoutherland.com )
© 2017, 2026 F.R. Southerland
original fiction (repost) | approx. words: 1544 | general warnings: death, blood, violence, murder | edited | reblogs allowed & encouraged
Part 1 // Part 2 // Part 3 // Part 4
The 21st century
It was a struggle to form his thoughts into cohesion. Light. Too much light. And the sound... The sound was noise. Why was there so much noise?
It was difficult to make sense of everything when he’d grown accustomed to the darkness and Shadows for so long. Everything assailed him at once.
“Where—” His throat felt raw, voice rough from little use. The words nearly strangled him. “Where am I?”
The sudden silence unnerved him. He looked up and saw her. The witch who had banished him. But no, not her. A different witch, with red hair and a pretty face. A soon-to-be dead witch.
“A church.” She said, shattering the silence.
“Church.” A loud laugh rattled his chest. “Church. Holy ground. It would be holy ground. Yes. Yes, I… remember.” As if he could forget. The whole situation roiled in his head, too absurd to be real.
He stared at her. “But… Earth? Is this Earth?”
She hesitated, then answered in a quiet voice. “Yes.”
He was free, really and truly. Well, except for the blood-bond from whoever had summoned him and the servitude to his Master, but those were simply details. Details could wait.
He stood, and moved forward on unsteady legs. He passed through the broken summoning circle. The woman’s aura blazed, and he sensed the magic. Yes. Definitely a witch. The others standing around remained blurred, unimportant. Only she mattered.
The Shadows clung to him, black as tar and pulsing, then liquid-smooth as They trailed the floor with him.
The woman didn’t move, even as he approached. Someone gave a warning, but the words were little more than a buzz in his ears. The witch countered. Only noise.
Witches had put him in the darkness. Witches had punished him. The laugh that came from him this time was sharp, cutting. The Shadows knew, the Shadows sensed his agitation. They struck fast as whips, grabbing the witch, shoving her back.
The world went dark as the Shadows enveloped him, the darkness clinging. His screams had no sound, the Shadows drinking them up. They were taking him away.
His throat burned from screams and prayers, until he couldn’t make any other sound. The silence, like the darkness, stretched on endlessly.
Please don’t, he silently pleaded. Don’t put me there. Please, please. Not again.
He realized could hear something. The noise was unfamiliar, but it was something. The Shadows, through his will, began to search for the source.
When They dropped him, he lost his balance. The ground was cold and hard and he struggled to his feet. The Shadows clung to him, wrapping around his arms and legs and torso. He stumbled, footsteps uneven, and fell, too weak to stand for very long.
Strength. He needed strength. He needed souls. He needed to feed. Whatever this place was, whatever the time, that was the one thought that now dominated his mind, stronger even than the notion of his new freedom.
Feed.
He blinked rapidly, gaze searching, eyes adjusting to the light. After so much darkness, he may as well have been blind. Once adjusted, he noticed the building off to his left. The sound was coming from there. Singing.
A church. A hard laugh broke free of his throat. Of course there’d be another church.
Souls were so bright and colorful and many that they burned through the walls. Some were pure, innocent souls and others not so much, but it didn’t matter. He was so starved he’d take anything, even the innocent ones he’d eschewed long ago.
Slowly, with the Shadows help, he walked toward the light of a dozen brilliant souls. Within a few steps, he found a strength within him that he didn’t know he still possessed.
The Shadows pulled away from him and retreated to crevasses and corners, the places where They pooled the darkest. He could still hear Their whisperings, yet the singing drowned Them out.
He pulled open the doors and stared. The congregation wasn’t very large—perhaps a dozen or so people. There had been thirteen witches there the night they banished him. He remembered that. It seemed right that there would be just as many souls here tonight.
A white-hot anger rose in him, soon boiling inside him. The music stopped. Someone asked if he needed help, but he never answered. There was no help for him.
The anger erupted from him with a harsh cry, a scream. Someone else screamed too, then others. And why not, when he violently ripped away every soul at once?
He’d used such a method only once before, he knew. He remembered a village, an illness, everyone dead or dying. They had been the first souls he'd ever consumed. And now he took these with just as few scruples. The Shadows had given him strength when he had none, but They were nothing compared to these. He absorbed every last soul, felt himself return to something more than an empty, broken shell.
The souls came with memories and knowledge, tiny bits and pieces of the last few years. Not everything that he’d missed in however many centuries he’d been gone, but enough to understand, to function.
Afterwards, when starvation no longer warped his sense of being, he stood a bit taller and watched while the Shadows consumed the bodies. They’d starved too, after all.
The world outside the church was brighter now, clearer, and he observed things with more understanding. There was much to see, and learn, and do. He couldn’t wait. For the first time, freedom was truly and completely his.
Not once did he think of his Master.
A Week Later
The inevitable soul-sickness came but never went. As they had in the darkness, days blended together until he lost all sense of time. There were only souls and souls-sickness.
Power and life pulsed through his veins. In his heart, guilt and pain warred with his baser, demonic instincts.
He didn’t remember killing anyone recently, but there was blood on his hands, the scent of copper and rust in the air. There was something else in the air too—magic. Power. This place where he stood exuded some great energies and he found himself drawn there inexplicably. All that power didn’t come from the location alone—
There was a witch here.
It was her, the red-haired witch, the one who, in some way or another, had participated in his summoning. From within the Shadows, through a thin veil, he watched her, studied her. She wasn’t merely pretty, but beautiful. And so was her aura, for all the dark places in it. She had power, too. It made her aura bright enough to hide all the black marks on her soul. A dabbler in darker magicks.
She was brilliant.
He wasn’t sure exactly when he’d stepped out of the Shadows, only that he had. The cold followed him, the Shadows pooling like ink at his feet. For a time, he could only stare at her until he asked the one question that, despite answers, he could not fully comprehend,
“How—how long?” His voice came out rough, tight.
She looked bewildered. “How long? What? How long since when?”
“Since…” but he trailed off. His head went back, eyes up at the sky. The light from the east softened the early morning. The sun would be up soon. A sunrise, after all this time—
“Since when?” she asked, breaking through his reverie.
He shifted his gaze to the streetlamp, watching the electric light. He took a deep breath. “Since I’ve been away…” His eyes went back to the witch.
Surprise colored her aura in yellow and gold. “I don’t know what you mean.”
He said nothing but stepped closer to her. When he was only a foot or so away from her, he stopped. Indeed, she had a beautiful soul, her aura making a halo around her head, red hair gleaming in its light. Gods, she had power. And so did this place. Power everywhere, in everything. He knew this place. Though time had changed it, destroyed the church that had once been here, the magicks that put him away still lingered. He grimaced.
“Years. It’s been years. I can still feel the power in this place. It’s—” The laugh came out all of a sudden. It was absurd, wasn’t it? That this was the place where the old church stood, where they sent him away. A power so strong it remained years and years later.
When he stepped back, the Shadows moved up his legs and torso and wrapped him in Their chilly embrace. They knew his agitation, the soul-sickness, though They were far from a comfort. He closed his eyes, swallowed the lump in his throat. So long. He’d been gone for so long. “A long time. Such a long time.” When he looked back at her, there were tears in his eyes. “Must be.”
The Shadows tightened around him, but he didn’t pay them any mind. His attention stayed on the witch’s face, meeting her clear blue eyes. He didn’t look away as she approached. The Shadows, wary, drew back as she touched his arm. Her hand was warm, her aura blazing and hot and tempting.
“Let me help you,” she said.
And he did.
