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Part One
Level One
An opening gambit…
“Let me go. I don’t deserve this. I don’t belong here.”
“Two lies in one,” the creature hissed.
It leaned over her cowering form, burning eyes searing into her soul. Sometimes the Dark seemed human, other times he was entirely devil. His hands were always scaled, as were his arms. She did not know what the rest of his body looked like. She had closed her eyes against what she could not avoid seeing.
He touched her hair. She smelled it singe beneath the infernal heat which coursed through every part of him. Her arm ached from where the Dark had grasped her to drag her down into his depths. All around, the shadows danced. A dark fire kept all existence cold, and the wraiths of the void wrapped themselves around her legs like vicious cats thinking of sinking their claws into her flesh time and time again.
She had been in pain for so long she barely registered it anymore. His grip was just another blazing sensation among the many others vying to make her scream.
“It’s not a lie…”
But they both knew it was.
“There are innocent young women who are trying to survive in a world full of darkness. They may be corrupted and defiled, but ultimately they can always return to their innate purity…” He ran a long claw along the side of her neck, the threat of death ever present in his company. “And then, there are ones such as you. You sought out danger, and the dark, you who were born with the desire for self-destruction deep inside you. There is no escaping me, Hail, because you were born to be mine.”
He was lying. She knew he was. He was the lord of lies. But his words rang true in the very interior of what she had once imagined to be her soul. Was this what had been wrong with her, her entire life? Had she been born corrupted, made for the arms and use of the very worst creatures in all creation?
She trembled, even as a strange new warmth flowed through her. The creature’s claws ran down the back of her neck in what might have been a caress. The darkness was male and virile, it spread itself and it claimed new territory. There was not a part of her which would retain even a semblance of purity when it was done with her.
This was what all good girls should fear, and though she feared it, there was another impulse far stronger than the fear. It was something which sparked a need inside her which could only be fulfilled by the appetites of the Dark.
She would give herself to him, and he would hurt her. She would give herself again, and once more he would hurt her. There would be no respite. There would be no redemption. There would be nothing but an endless cycle of use until she herself was nothing more than a shade.
Unless someone rescued her.
But Hail knew she was beyond rescue. She had made enemies of all those who had ever loved her, liked her, or considered her merely tolerable. There was no returning to the world of love. There was only this realm of cruelty offered to her in its stead. A shadow of romance, a parody of love, a cruel mockery of affection.
Unless someone believed in her even though she didn’t deserve their belief.
Several units of time earlier…
Health 100
Healing 24
“Come on, limpdick!”
The bearoark stank of rotting flesh, and weighed in excess of five hundred pounds. It lumbered toward her at full speed, massive maw wide open, saliva strung between sharp teeth. It was an inescapable predator. But Hail was not here to escape. She was here to engage.
She’d baited the creature on purpose, set a trap of rotten fish and berries on a smoldering fire and waited until the stench brought the predator forth. It had taken less than an hour for the air to start to turn rank, not with her bait, but with the filth of the monster.
Its fur crawled with lice, big, thick-bellied creatures which could easily detach from it and start sucking her dry. The parasites on this thing were more dangerous than most hunting beasts. She’d smeared herself in offal tar to repel them, but she could see the parchment wings fluttering on some of them as they caught her scent.
The bearoark was what anybody in their right mind would call an abomination. Mostly bear, but not quite. Something unnatural had happened to it. It had retained the claws and teeth and massive mandible of a bear, but it had gained the eyes of a spider. Eight creepy, furry eyes beheld her across the skull of the thing, each blinking in its own time. In addition to the usual bear legs, there were an extra set of razor sharp claws held close to the body, but capable of zipping out and catching prey without warning.
