Sorry, I broke my arm and while I kept writing I never got around to posting all of it.
Blackberry curled up on the bed on top of Sibyl and began to take a nap. It was tiring to dealing with Luna and he wanted to get some rest but he also wanted to be awake when Sibyl woke up. Plus he was a cat and sleeping on somebody was practically second nature to him. He would have never done it with Luna however because she almost certainly would have killed him or done something nasty to him.
It was a while later when Blackberry yawned and opened one eye to look at the clock. It was late already, a little after seven o’clock. He could still feel the warmed of Sibyl beneath him. The instability of her powers must be larger then he thought if she needed to sleep like this after only one transformation. Then she bolted upright, throwing Blackberry off the bed. Her eyes were wide and scared.
“That, that, what was that thing.” Said Sibyl with a scared look in her face. She was beginning to sweat.
“What? What is it?” Asked Blackberry.
Sibyl nearly jumped out of her skin and she fell back toward the wall. Finally she saw Blackberry and after a moment of extra panic she relaxed, “Oh, it is you. I didn’t remember for a second but I guess that really did happen.” Sibyl paused, “I don’t know if Luna introduced us or not. Do you have a name or something?”
“It is Blackberry,” Said Blackberry, “What just happened? You liked like you were scared out of your wits when you woke up. Strange because normally when people have nightmares you can tell while they are sleeping.”
Sibyl shivered, “I don’t know if I know. It was one of those dreams again, like last night. I was standing in school so I initially didn’t realize it was one of those dreams. Then I found myself getting drawn toward the roof. When I reached it I found that the door was already open. I walked out onto the rood and I saw a girl leaning on the railing looking out toward the city. I took a few steps closer to her before she turned to look at me. I, I, I don’t know but when I saw her face I knew something was wrong. She looked normal but I could just tell that she wasn’t. Then she spoke to me. She said, ‘Little Girls should be sleeping.’”
Sibyl’s shivering grew worse and she continued, “Then I felt the feeling of wrongness from her intensify. She turned and began walking toward me slowly. I wanted to move, to run, but I couldn’t. I was just too scared to run. Then she reached out and touched me and I thought I was going to die.” Sibyl let out a deep breath. “And then I woke up.”
Blackberry stared at Sibyl for a while. He was beginning to get worried but he didn’t want to voice his own fears until he had some certainty. “Are you certain that this was one of your projection dreams? That this was really happening someplace.”
Sibyl nodded, “Yes, I am certain. Real dreams never feel that vivid, that real. It was like I was actually there feeling and seeing everything.”
“Had the sun set yet during your dream?” Asked Blackberry.
“The sun? Yes, I think it had.” She paused to remember the best that should could. “Yes, when I reached the roof I remember that there was a halo of light barely visible from beyond the mountains. So it would have been just after sunset.”
“That is cutting it close then. I suppose it could be one but that is rather early for one to show itself. Plus it was only yesterday that Luna defeated the last one. Too soon, too soon.” Muttered Blackberry to himself.
“What is too soon?” Asked Sibyl.
Blackberry startled in surprise, “Sorry, I didn’t realize I was speaking. You remember Luna speaking about the Elder Darkness? They are the monsters that we fight and what you saw under the lake yesterday was one of them. I was trying to decide if this person that you saw was one of them.”
“And is it?”
“I don’t know. Usually an Elder Darkness doesn’t move into the territory of another Elder Darkness. Since we just defeated one of them yesterday it seems too soon for a new Elder Darkness to try and move in. Also they are only active during the night and immediately after sunset seems too soon for one of them, especially one that just moved into town. And then there is…” Blackberry paused not wanting to say it aloud which might confirm his own fears.
Sibyl shivered a couple of more times, “What Blackberry? And then there is what?”
“They, Elder Darknesses, they almost never take on human form. Forms that mimic humans or animals are certain possible but one that is initially is confused with a normal person that is extremely rare.”
Sibyl frowned, “You sound worried? I’m worried too, the feeling I got from that girl was terrifying. That monster in the lake, it didn’t feeling anything like this. This one was on a whole different scale.”
Blackberry frowned as much as a cat could. “I will need to feel it’s presence myself.” Blackberry ran across the room to next to the window. “Can you please open this so that I can leave. I need to get to the school before it leaves so that I can feel it.”
Sibyl moved over toward the window and pulled it open. Blackberry jumped out but before he left Sibyl asked, “Will you be alright? I don’t know what that thing is but it probably won’t hesitate to kill you if it sees you.”
“Thanks but I will be fine.” Said Blackberry and then he was gone. Sibyl was alone in the room. She was feeling cold. Not from the night air which was actually reasonably warm but instead from that feeling that she continued to remember. Every time she closed her eyes she could feel that smile which chilled her to the bone.
Sibyl looked down at her own shaking hands. This fear, it wasn’t the fear of dying, it was the fear of being completely powerless. When she had looked at that girl she had thought that there was nothing that she could do about it. And that made her furious. Hadn’t she just gotten what she had wanted from Blackberry, the strength to no longer be powerless. She wasn’t going to accept that feeling again.
She glanced momentarily at the door to her room. Her parents were certainly home by now and if they caught her they would certainly not let her leave the house. So she looked back at the window that Blackberry had left through. It was a small window but she was a small girl and she was easily able to crawl out of it. Outside there was a thin ledge running along the building. She managed to get her feet onto it just barely, avoiding the fall down to the alley below.
She was painfully aware at that moment that she lived on the fourth floor of the apartment complex. There was a rain pipe a few meters down the ledge and she managed to shuffle over there. She grabbed onto the pipe in relief and then did her best to try and climb down the pipe toward the street. She managed to make it to the second floor before the rain pipe creaked and snapped. It fell off the wall with Sibyl hanging onto it. It crashed into a pile of trash cans and Sibyl let out a muted moan of pain.
It took her a few moments of laying among the scattered trash to realize that she was still alive. Not just alive but she felt alright. There was a trickle of blood from a scrape on one of her elbows but otherwise she was totally fine. She marveled for a second before standing up and dusting the trash off of her. Despite having just fell almost two stories into a bunch of trash cans she was feeling great, better then she had felt in, well, ever.
The crash into trash cans had been loud and Sibyl began walking out of the alleyway before anyone would notice. The school wasn’t that far off and she should be able to get there not long after Blackberry if she walked quickly. There was something strange to Sibyl about walking alone through the streets during the night. She didn’t think she had ever done that before. Usually the only walking she had really done was walking to and from school and even that had sometimes been strenuous for her.
She was just beginning to feel the sweet delight of real freedom when she began to feel something else. That sickly threatening presence. About a block from the school she could feel it, a miasma so thick she was having trouble breathing. It felt like she had never recovered from her sickness at all. Then there, across the street from the school she saw Blackberry.
She approached Blackberry but he was just standing there frozen, like a statue. Eventually she got just up next to him. The feeling of evil had gotten thicker the closer she had been getting to the school. “What, what is that? How can something be that wrong?” Said Sibyl.
The only sign of recognition that Blackberry showed was that he spoke, “No, it is too soon. Far too soon. None of them are ready yet. There is no way that they can deal with a Shadowed Soul yet. And this, this one, this is beyond all of my predictions.”
Sibyl hadn’t even been looked at Blackberry and Blackberry hadn’t been looking at her. They had both been looking at the school, toward the overwhelming presence that both of them could feel. “What can we do about that? Is there anything that we could even do about that?”
“No, it is impossible. All of us would die. I would be suicide to even try?”
A voice came from behind both Sibyl and Blackberry, “You two are just going to let that thing be free then?”
Finally both Sibyl and Blackberry turned to see Luna Star and Joy Lamb standing behind them. Joy looked sheepish, “Sorry Blackberry. I felt something strong and evil in the direction of the school so I called Luna. She said that we would all be meeting up outside of the school. However I didn’t realize how powerful this thing would be before we got here.”
Blackberry just shook his head in defeat. “Yes, we have to let it go. Even if we went in there then there would be nothing that we can do about that thing. It is leagues above anything that you have fought before. I was hoping never to encounter something this powerful. We need to turn around and head home Luna, you aren’t strong enough to beat this one.”
“I know.” Said Luna with a firm certainty, “This close even I can feel the presence of that monster. If I can feel it this strongly I can only imagine what it must feel like to the rest of you. But that is my school. What will happen if we just leave it there Blackberry. Think about the people who might die, people that I know. I can’t let that happen. So I’m going to go in and fight that monster.”
“If it was only a monster then I wouldn’t be this firm. Inside there is not just an Elder Darkness, it is a Shadowed Soul.” Said Blackberry in fear. Luna thought that was the first time she had ever heard him sound scared.
“A Shadowed Soul?” Asked Luna.
“Yes, a Shadowed Soul is an Elder Darkness that used to be human.”
“I see. Then that is all the more reason to enter. The two Elder Darknesses that I faced were very not human and I think that is why there weren’t any casualties. But if this one used to be human.”
Luna stepped past Joy, Sibyl, and Blackberry and stood near the edge of the street. “None of you need to follow me but I am heading in there. I’m not going to stand by with that person in my school. All of you need to decide what is most important to you.” Luna slammed the tip of her bat against the ground. “This city, those inside it, my friends and schoolmates, they are what is most important to me.” Then Luna stepped onto the street, walked across it, and passed through the school gates.