#shadow officiants

[pixelzprince]

This guy is relevant to the clan lore in possibly the most menacing way possible, but he’s also a 15 year old Fae who wears terrible 80s windbreakers and we think that’s the most hilarious thing ever alkfdjs

Don’t judge a book by its cover-

[pixelzprince]

Circuit - Lore Fic

FINALLY!! This lore fic has been about two weeks  in the making now, and finally we can post it!

It’s a bit of backstory regarding Incandescent and Chill (and Wolvesbane, a bit) and the misadventures the thrill-seeking young dragons in the Hewn City get up to - basically an excuse to write a bunch of headcanons for the Shade. And let’s just say, when the most cursed city in an entire Flight territory is way more saturated with magic than usual.. something’s bound to go horribly wrong.

Warnings: Some mild horror themes, unreality/slight derealization/existential crisis stuff, you know. We’re dealing with the 10% More Eldritch Shade here after all. Also, mentions/implications of bullying, eugh.

Probably the darkest thing we’ll actually write out in our character lore, to be honest though things get better after this, it’s just a Not So Pleasant inciting incident-

With that out of the way, onto the show!

"So it's like, a ghost-themed biking group?" Chill had asked on the way to the venue. "Sounds.. kinda forced to me, to be honest." 

His neon friend let out a poorly stifled guffaw, briefly lifting a claw from the handles of her bike to hide her grin. "I don't think you're in any position to say that, Mister 80s band tees."

Chill frowned, clinging a bit tighter to Ink's shoulders as they zoomed through the night aboard the latter's tricked out three wheeler bike; Incandescent's parents hadn't allowed her to get a proper motorcycle, and all Chill had was his old mountain bike, though the Mirror couldn't truthfully say he felt all that safe clinging to the spiny shoulders of a Banescale for dear life on a vehicle meant for one.

Thus, he'd urged her to drive as slowly and carefully (the damage to his "coolness" didn't go unnoticed) as she could manage given her high octane lifestyle - giving them much time to talk on the trip. Plenty of time to sling banter and waste breath meant for more valuable discussions.

"Right, so... you really capitalize on that Halloween aesthetic?" Chill tried again, wording his question carefully to dodge Ink's edgy defenses; for how nice his friend could be, she was like a spring-loaded trap full of retorts ready to snap given the right ammunition. "Everyone thinks you're some sorta cult, but it's just for the rep, right..?"

Ink quirked a wry grin, teeth glinting in the low lights of the city. "Something like that." Her spines rattled with something akin to excitement, making Chill quietly yelp and adjust in the seat to avoid getting skewered. "Reputation's power, right?"

Chill fought the conditioned urge to shoot some witty sarcasm back, though his contemplation was interrupted as the bike came to an abrupt halt, worsened by the sudden prickling of scales against his arms.

"We're here," Ink supplied.

She slid off the bike, radiant scales glistening in the neon lights of the shopping center. Chill barely caught the discarded helmet slung at him, the weight smacking against his chest and knocking the air out of him. He called after her as he fumbled, "Heavy helmet for a hard head!"

Ink gave no indication that she'd heard him, merely striding off towards the parking lot of a nearby pizza place. Chill frowned, disappointed in the lack of acknowledgement. He shook his head as if to rid himself of the childish irritation, before hesitantly beginning to follow Ink.

He kept his head held low, eyes shifting around to observe the creeping murk of the city's almost unnatural darkness; even at only dusk, even with the piercing glow of dozens of light sources (the motorbikes' custom lights, the LED of the storefronts, the subtle hues of his own luminous capsule trait, his overwhelmed mind rattled off) the Hewn City's oppressive night seemed to leech as much warmth and luminescence as it could.

And this was Light territory; a shudder went through Chill as he dared to imagine what Shadow or Ice's expanses looked like at night, away from most sources of radiance.

Slinking past an unrelated crowd congregated by the road (they smelled of pizza, sweat, and ozone, probably some sports team, ugh), the Mirror soon reached his destination, a small group of dragons around his age, some younger, all gathered in the darkest corner of the parking lot.

How convenient.

Some were lazily leaned against their bikes as makeshift lounges, while others stood almost like guards, alert and scanning the area. Chill caught the eye of one of the latter category, a Nocturne with strikingly patterned scales. Their eyes widened as their gazes met, before they scowled and turned away slightly. They muttered something to their companion, a rather anxious looking Fae who was half coiled by the tail around a metal-studded bike just a tad too big for them. The Fae looked almost as out of place as Chill, wearing a brightly patterned hoodie and trying to look tough, though the amusing juxtaposition did little to reassure him.

Just what kind of crowd was this-?

Ink tugged him over, draping an arm over his shoulder in a gesture that, outwardly, may have seemed protective. Chill frowned and glanced up to see the mischievous, "I'm dragging you into shenanigans" grin that betrayed otherwise. He wilted under her conniving gaze, silently resigning himself to whatever hazing or crimes this so-called "biking club" had in mind.

Vandalism? Petty crime? He couldn't say he was up for it, himself, but he hoped whatever the group of off-kilter rebels had planned would at least be fun in the moment. Anything but bike racing, at least...

The wind began to pick up a bit, drowning out some of the quieter chatter around him. He allowed himself to relax, if only a tad bit; perhaps they were just.. hanging out. Loitering was a crime in some places, right? Passive crime, "safe" crime. Chill, figuring that the others had no interest in hanging out with him, distracted himself by counting the treasure in his pockets, wondering if he had enough to get himself a slice of pie. He may have been half Fae, but anyone, enhanced Mirror senses or not, could smell the thick, syrupy scent of apple cobbler wafting through the air from the pizza place.

It was all... so passive. Boring, but pleasant.

Of course, something had to give.

After what seemed like ages of tense stillness, Ink spoke up suddenly, her voice rumbling like a foreboding storm cloud, which Chill felt from where he was currently hugged to her side. Of course, the calm before the storm was over.

Despite everything, her voice was a tad comforting, a familiar sort of "danger" instead of the alarm bells that had initially screamed from every other corner of this place. Chill clung to her subconsciously, glaring out at the others and trying to tune out whatever was said, to just focus on the pure tone... dissociate into the void, or however the halfhearted joke went.

Despite his efforts, a few words slipped by, "Summoning" and "power" and whatnot. Part of the ghost gimmick, he assumed. He shuddered from the sudden, brisk breeze that whipped by, though instead of being hugged closer, he was abruptly shoved towards the center of the crowd.

A yelp escaped him as he stumbled to regain his bearings, his claws painfully catching on some uneven pieces of concrete. He hissed, swaying, before he  glanced around to see what he'd missed in his half-attentive musings. 

When had they formed an actually cohesive circle..? And around him specifically..? He looked back at Ink for explanation, though she averted her gaze. The wind rushed by, now deafening. It'd picked up unnaturally quickly, and Chill soon located its source, a growl ripping from his throat as he once again met the eyes of the Nocturne.

Airborne Parchment?! Where would they get something like that? Instead of using the windbound material for its intended purpose of bringing life to drawn objects, the supposed leader of the group was merely willing forth elemental gales of wind into existence. They didn't seem to have much hold over it, but control wasn't the intention, merely... power.

"What are you doing?!" Chill hollered. He snapped out of his stupor, storming towards the amateur spellslinger. Their eyes seemed to widen a fraction, perhaps in shock, though before more words could be exchanged, their previously awkward Fae companion leapt into action, shooting forth and headbutting Chill right in the stomach.

It wasn't a very hard hit, rather a precise one. Capsule dragons were known for their vulnerable stomach area, and sure enough, Chill reeled back, hardly able to prevent himself from crumpling to his knees back in the center of the circle. He was freezing and burning all at the same time, battered by brisk winds and the uneasy sort of thrum that rippled through the earth itself.

And yet, finally, through the gale, voices rang true. "We've never done this before, true.." It was a tinny, raspy voice that grated on Chill's ears. "But but but!! Someone naïve was needed to call forth the Shade. Call forth, not use as a vessel. He won't be hurt."

"So he's the flippin bait you mean?! Can it with the sugarcoat." A painful shockwave rattled Chill's senses as Ink screamed from somewhere above him. "And you've never done this before? He's a test dummy if anything-"

Her hands are blazing with light, undoubtedly, as she growled, "You said you knew what you were doing."

"Silence," a third, cool voice intercepted. It reverberated much stronger than the rest. "It has already begun. The artifact will draw the Shade near."

The Shade? 

Chill's eyes stung as he forced them open, and he instantly regretted it. His surroundings were awash with too-bright colors, the dragons around him more like blobs of light against the pitch of his surroundings. Alarms blared in the back of his disoriented brain, and he bared his teeth, trying to stand. His claws uselessly scrabbled against the suddenly slick concrete for some purchase, and by the time he managed to stand, he could faintly see something somehow darker than the existing murk rising from the cracks.

Liquid dripping upward, unburdened by the constraints of reality.

And all fell silent, as if the world itself paused to gaze into the void.

He watched it for a moment, himself, mesmerized by its headache-inducing, impossible blackness. It swayed in an inviting, inquisitive manner, hardly blotting out the dull panic slowly igniting in the Mirror's bones. Only the very edges of its fluid form seemed to reflect light, almost like a cartoonish outline that barely detracted from how otherworldly the substance was. 

The Shade..

A quiet, almost breathless whisper shook the stillness, "It worked..."

And Chill's world exploded into white hot pain, impossible fireworks set aflame behind his eyes.

~~~~~

A pulse. A pain. A thrum of negative power. 

A shockwave cuts through the souls of all in the crowd, invasive and calculating and yet erratic all the same. Wild to their perception and coiling and thriving with an intelligence beyond this world. It.. analyzes them, down to the core, samples their magic and minds, and then it's gone. 

The all-encompassing murk seems to draw in all light like an amorphous black hole. It's fluid and yet like plasma, burning and freezing, hollow and yet dense. It moves with a weight that's not quite physical, though fearsome and ancient all the same. Though as soon as the display of eldritch un-energy begins, it stills, settles, coalesces in the center of the circle in a more manageable form.

The summoning worked... or so they'd thought.

The Nocturne stares, captivated. The now useless parchment drops limply from their claws as they breathe, "Oh... Lightweaver.."

Ink breaks the stillness with a snarl, "Orbit!" and in an instant, the Banescale's upon the summoner, a tangle of claws and spikes and conflict. The summoner has no chance to react, the air knocked out of them as Incandescent crushes them prone to the ground and screams in their face, "What did you DO-"

They manage to whisper, "The summoning worked," though their heart's not in it. They cast a forlorn gaze towards the semi-solid insubstantiality. Their poor artifact, perfectly crafted to contain traces of the Shade... lost to this blunder. "At a cost..."

The sentiment sends Ink hysterical. "At a cost?" She devolves into wordless screams, all fight leaving her as she weakly shakes Orbit, who stares into the tearful gaze hollowly. Others break from their frozen state to attempt to break up the fight, life and energy, albeit a tense sort, flooding back.

Life cannot be paused for long, after all. The elements, however dimmed they may be, quickly resume their presence.

Ignoring the halfhearted tussle, the Fae from before hops down from his perch, silently striding past the "fight". His palms flare with magic, bright and cold and merciless, matching the shine of his eyes. Gone is the awkwardness, even in the face of the Shade itself.

The insubstantiality, which has collected into the form of the Mirror that it claimed, raises its "head" slowly, shakily in a false show of weakness. Its eyes, the only spots of light on it, blaze like searchlights, betraying its true strength.

The Fae speaks, that raspy tone adding a hint of menace to his words, "A failure.. another failure." He bares his teeth and snarls, "An expensive failure."

Another? The impossibly lightless plasma inches back, fan-like crests pinning back as it gazes into the wild eyes of disappointment and scorn. The Shade does not know fear... but all this creature knows is the impulse of fight or flight humming in its hollow core.

Something akin to a heartbeat pulses in its "chest". Quick, fearful, hardly present. Move, flee.

The fighting's died down, Ink dragged away from Orbit's huddled and silent form, and all the Banescale does is scream into the sky, into the speckled night. Yet the darkness she screams at is nowhere near the impossibility of the Shade which has claimed her friend.

Fear. The heartbeat stutters. Run.

Elemental ice, wicked and glowing, freezes the spot where the being had been mere moments before. The Fae spits a venomous string of blights, at the summoning, at the lost artifact, at the waste of time. But the residual darkness staining the ground isn't the Shade he'd aimed to erase.

It's already long gone, fleeing through the gaps of reality itself, through the tear from which it arrived.

~~~~~

Find safety.

Get out of there. Away. Far away.

But where..?

~~~~~

The fragment of Shade rematerializes in the subway. From the darkness itself, it's ejected, the ambient Shadow element of this world rejecting its unnatural presence and leaving it to sizzle in the fluorescent, buzzing lights of the few operational signs in this district.

And yet, it relaxes, collapsing shockingly solidly upon the cold, smooth pavement.

It's silent for once, the normal hustle and bustle of the city having been driven out by recent damages done to this railway. Even the usual stragglers, kids like Ink's club, who normally loiter around the "spooky abandoned subway" for kicks have long since either gone home or to the park to camp out.

Not even the most daring of delinquents would test their luck napping in the hollow depths of the earth. Not in Light territory, especially.

They say Light, for all its pristine brightness, hides something eldritch. The brightest lights cast the darkest shadows after all.

Perhaps, this is that something.

With that thought, the insubstantiality lets out a cry.

Get to safety. Hide.

It manages to stand, first shakily onto all fours, then to its hind legs. It limps towards the darkest corner, baking in the light, before it stumbles and trips to its knees again, gasping. The air passes through it, not that it needs to breathe; nonetheless, it curls up and forces itself to inhale and exhale, if only to replicate the life that it'd sensed all around it just minutes before.

Breathe.

It scrabbles at its chest its claws finding little purchase in the slick, incorporeal material making up its form. Frictionless, there's no way to scratch through to tear out the artifact inside, now bound to its metaphorical core.

It’s alive. ALIVE.

Yet the mere contact sends it reeling, light shimmering from within and just barely reflecting off its body, enough to outline its limbs among the tangled darkness, to give some definition to its form.

It’s… I’m real. I'm alive. I'm real.

The tentative balance of energy and nothingness snaps, allows life to win over, if only slightly. He remembers, his eyes glowing not with a pure, absent white like before, but with a blend of violet and fiery hues, a rapidly shifting twilight twinkling in his gaze.

Time releases a breath it'd been holding since the threads of reality first snapped.

They'd summoned The Shade, of all things. They'd tethered it to an artifact, which had tethered itself to him. He could still, if only faintly, feel his own magic humming beneath the oppressive gloom which coated (comprised?) his form, but it was.. contaminated, thoroughly so.

His poor excuse for a heart thumped once more, only seeming to beat prominently when he was struck with powerful emotion. He held his paws to his chest, focusing on that sound, willing it to continue, to prove he was still of the living realm.

Yet the heartbeat stilled soon enough, merely the erratic pulsing of a cursed artifact attempting to keep the Shade in check. To keep things in balance, in control.

The altruistic part of him was glad that such an artifact was now useless to that group. With such potential, to control even a piece of an otherworldly horror... he didn't even want to imagine what it could be used to bring about.

Petty crimes, he at least hoped. Petty crimes deluxe edition, don't get caught.

A bitter laugh escaped him, distorted and crumbling in the umbra. No need to worry about crimes now, at least. Their power... it was his now... it was him now. 

Or perhaps he was its. 

He waved a claw, watched it seem to flicker as if already cutting through atoms in the air with a single gesture, leaving smoky afterimages behind.

As the memories of the past thirty or so minutes flooded back, he realized, he can do just that, he has done just that, slipped out of the physical plane and just moved, perhaps faster than light for a moment, even. 

So that's what teleportation really was.

The childish part of him would've relished in the idea of obtaining cosmic power, like some sort of superhero, though he knows better. His own magic fights constantly within, a storm of elemental energy caught in an endless cycle of extinguishing and reignition, with the artifact in the center, regulating it all.

He's no superhero, and this is no origin story.

He stared at the high, arching ceilings, at the darkness that would've once strained even his Shadow element eyes.

He's no superhero... he's just a circuit.