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Shadow (The Clock Part 1)

"You know when you're afraid of something," the shadow's voice sounded behind me as I turned around, "Sometimes it could feel....almost too real....to oneself."

"What do you know about fear?" I growled, "What do you even know about me?"

"More than you think."

"You're just a clock," I shook my head, "You're just a wall in a cave."

"No..." The shadow smiled, "I am fear. And I know exactly what you're most afraid of."

Before my eyes, his body began to warp around like a weak tornado, forming and changing into something bigger than my own self. His height rose higher than an adult's size, and slowly, the blackened smoke around him interchanged and swirled into an arm, into a tail, into a snout, into teeth. My eyes widened as the sharp of a T-Rex filled my eyes, then flashed colors of tan and light brown. And when the body was complete, my heart ultimately froze.

"The truth hurts, doesn't it Shadow?" A bloody Lily whispered.

My eyes widened with pure horror, while at the same time, my jaws dropped open and my stomach did a flip inside. She stood tall, but her broken body and bloody exterior looked as if I was staring at a carcass, a T-Rex carcass.

"No....NO!" I felt tears spring into my face as I saw my dead mother glance back at me, as if staring at a devilish demon.

"Come to me Shadow," She whispered, motioning her head over to me with a calm voice of butterflies, "You don't have to be afraid anymore..." I stared at her body, trembling violently, then spoke quietly out of the goodness of my heart.

"I would have anything in the world to see you again mom," I whispered, "Anything to be with you.....but..." I took a step back with a choking voice of heartbroken terror, "You're not her."

"Shadow please....I'm your mother..." She took a step forwards to me with a slight grin.

"You're lying...!" I sobbed, backing up, "You're not Lily...."

"Ah....you are scared...."

Lily put her tiny arms down, and her eyes suddenly went black with a red dot in the middle. Her voice went from calming to painful, and a hum of anger streamed from her nostrils as the shadow spoke towards me.

"Oh Shadow.....haven't you learned about love?.....Perhaps, you should listen to YOUR MOTHER!!" She inhaled hard for a second, then let out a powerful roar, louder and stronger than anything else. The fire on the trees around me suddenly sprang away from its roots, and before I knew it, a newborn firestorm rushed at me from the sides of the shadow.

There was no avoiding it.

I felt a splash of the fire slam into my noggin, throwing my head down close to a whiplash, then pain burn through my body, like slitting a piece of melted metal through my organs. The sickly sweet aroma of chard flesh flew into the air, when I realized that I was literally getting burned. As the pain increased, I let out a horrible scream, feeling the side of my face melt away. I tried to hold my ground, but the force only pushed me further back, making my clawed feet slide in the dirt.

A huge fireball of heat struck me a few seconds after, and my feet left the floor in a matter of seconds. My body got thrown backwards into a bunch of other trees, then crashed all over the place, before rolling to a stop on the forest floor. I shook as my screams continued, and my vision blurred everything around me. The fire stopped flowing a few seconds later, and all I could see was smoke and steam uplift from my body. Half of it was blacker than dried lava, pieces of my scales and flesh ripped away to reveal my bone. Every movement I created was like being electrocuted and melted at the same time. I cried for so long, so much that I even believed that I ran out of tears. I tried to stand again, wincing as melted iron flooded through my veins, and only rolled over a bit to my side. I felt the ground shake when I finally made it to my wobbly feet, but even so, I had no chance to see what had come. The shadow's T-Rex body struck me by the belly, off my feet, and watched as I collided into the ground with another earth shaking smash.

I couldn't get up anymore.

The ground shook again with each footstep of the shadow, following up by a crushing stomp on my hip by his foot. I screeched on the ground, breathing harder and harder as my vision went even blurrier. He went for a first attack at my neck with a black and bloody jaw, but with a jerk of my head, I actually managed to strike his head. The shadow gasped as he fell backwards a bit, then growled me.

"So you want to fight back...." He sneered, then stomped over to my still smoking body, snatching me by the vertebrae. I couldn't do anything to fight back now, since my body left the floor seconds earlier after his pick-up. The ground swayed as he walked forwards, crushing my spine with fury as he dragged my tail around. I was in so much pain, so much that I couldn't move or breathe.

"This is what pain feels like Tyrannosaur...!" His voice rasped as he took two strong front steps. Then suddenly, I felt the world swing around me, and my body slipped out of his jaws. At first, I didn't know what he actually did, until suddenly, the left side of my body slapped into a huge wall of rock with enough force to knock out all of your teeth. My body literally quaked in mid-air, and pain sliced my body in half, tearing my muscles apart as I fell, tail following slowly behind. I landed on my back, completely silent and motionless.

I couldn't move at all...

Stars clouded my vision as I tried to see, but all I kept seeing was the shadow of my mother's side snatching me up from the earth to slam me into the wall again.

The second strike was like being stabbed by a Three-Horn.

The third was like liquid metal rushing in my veins.

And the fourth I thought shattered my skull.

On his last one, the pain was beyond extreme, and at that moment, I couldn't feel or see anymore, nor could I fight back. My body thumped onto the ground like a piece of dead meat, and my tail was the last to wobble to a stop, limb and motionless.

Then all went silent.

Through my weakly opened eyes, I could see him plant his foot into my hip, then draw a line of blood from the flesh. But I felt nothing.

No....I can't be....

"That's two down," He hissed in the distance, "And that was way too easy."

I died!....I began to cry in my thoughts, No....

My body began to get dragged on the earth by his teeth (by my tail), and as the area began to vanish with all the smoke and fire, I found myself in the darkness again with the cold slightly-deep water beneath me. It turned red when my vision lowered through my eyes, flowing down to watch, which I could guess was my or Whiteclaw's blood, to whom he carried over as well. He let go of his tail, then slowly walked off.

And then I realized that the darkness was swallowing me whole.

NO! I roared in my mind, Don't leave me in here!

With a small snort of darkness, the presence of the creature moved away into the blackness of the horizon, gone from my view.

And then it was quiet.

Deathly quiet.