Mercy

Chapter ?: Taken by Darkness

        Blackening fingers gouged bark as Mercy's entire body tensed from strain, forcing her to lean upon massive trees as she painfully stumbled through the Dark Forest.
        Pushing off a tree, she limped forward until the pain, starting in her stomach and spreading down a leg, became unbearable.
        She looked at her blackened hand and concentrated to slow the spread. The Darkness moved and tore into her mindscape.
        She knew she couldn't fight it here. The amount of energy expelled would attract entities from all over the forest.
        Mercy cleared her mind to the best of her ability and looked around, making sure that nothing followed. When she saw nothing, she slumped into a tree and entered her mindscape.
        They hid in a house, her old house. Mercy lay upon her bed, The Shadow beside her attempting to stop the green energy that flowed out of her like blood. It spread its hands above her, bathing her in yellow light.
        Instantly, Mercy sat up, ignoring the searing pain throughout her body, and looked the Shadow in its large, glowing yellow eyes.
        "Can you hold The Darkness back? Keep it from impairing me? I just need to find a clearing so that we can fight it without company."
        The Shadow looked grim. It didn't want to show their position, rather for her to rest and regain strength.
        But they both knew they couldn't hide for long, in either world. It nodded.
        With a jolt, Mercy was thrust back into reality as a CRACK sounded behind her.
        She looked over her shoulder, and saw a pair of reflecting eyes.
        Pain be damned, she turned and sprinted as fast as she could away from the eyes, though the entity followed close behind.
There wasn't much to put distance between her and the being, and a worsening limp didn't help. She could hear it catching up to her. Soon its ragged, twisted breathing was audible over her own.
        She looked over to see the red mass a foot away, swinging a thick decaying arm at her head. With a gasp of pain, she ducked under the swipe and stumbled to the side.
        Attempting to outmaneuver it as much as possible, she jumped between trees, weaved around others.
        It caught up to her again, invigorated by the closeness of its prey. With a demonic scream, it leaped at her. Mercy ducked to the right and it soared over her, cutting her shoulder with a glancing swipe before crashing into a tree with the sounds of breaking bones and shattering wood.
        Mercy ran for a minute without hearing any sign of the creature following. Still, she continued, though slowed to a limp as the pain became unbearable.
        Another minute passed before she approached a steep hill, slid thirty feet down, and used her momentum at the bottom to roll over her shoulder and onto her feet.
        Then she saw a clearing. A gap in the forest, where starlight poured in. A mere hundred feet away, she sprinted forward with renewed strength.
        The Shadow broke. With a wave of impairing dark energy, The Shadow lost its battle.
        Mercy, overtaken by the tidal wave of energy, fell to a knee panting. Her eyes became wild, wide and at the edge of insanity.
        Behind her the decaying monster crashed down the hill with a ground shattering impact. It stopped for a moment, seeing Mercy on her knees. It could sense the dark energy emanating from her, and wondered if it was a trap. It decided it wasn't. It made a sound between a moan and a howl, and barrelled towards her.
        Mercy looked up at the clearing.
        If she could get there, she'd be okay...
        She didn't even notice the beast behind her as she stood up. She limped forward. In her eyes shone hazy hope, instinct, fear.
        The pounding claws of the Flesh became louder. Mercy stepped closer to the edge of the clearing.
        The Flesh got closer. Though she was not truly present, she could heard its popping joints and manic rasping.
        Fifteen feet away, the monster howled again. Mercy was two steps from the clearing.
        The Flesh reached out with one of its forelegs, its ten inch claws only feet away from the witch as she stepped into the clearing, under the moonlight.
        The beast slowed, turning and sliding along the dirt as it stopped itself from touching the clearing.
        Mercy turned and looked at it with a blank face. Their eyes met, green human eyes and dead reflective eyes. The Flesh growled a gutteral, damaged moan, slowly sleeked backwards into the forest, and kept eye contact as it slipped beneath the shadows and vanished.
           Mercy blinked and slowly came to, half smiling at her success in reaching the clearing.
        Looking into the midnight sky, she took a moment to appreciate the calm and quiet and closed her eyes as she breathed in the cool, clean air.
        A wave of unbearable pain pierced her stomach, and she fell to her knees with a grunt, clutching it.
        LET ME OUT.
        Mercy held back the ocean.
        MERIDIA WILL PAY.
        She pushed it back.
        I SHALL DESTROY THE GEM. IT WILL PAY FOR WHAT IT HAS DONE TO US.
        The Darkness surged, Mercy's entire body flashing with green light as it shattered the barrier. She tried to push it back, conjuring a new shield within her.
        In her mindscape, black tendrils wrapped around the dome shield around her and the shadow, constricting and cracking it. Mercy screamed in defiance as her outstretched hands shook and bled green energy.
        IT WILL PAY FOR WHAT IT HAS DONE TO YOU.
        The shield shattered, and the darkness ripped into her chest, into her heart of hearts.
        In the clearing, her body surged into the air, lifted by her chest above the treeline. She couldn't breathe.
        The forest around it began swaying intensely as a gale wind flowed in a spiral around her. Mercy's wide eyes turned pure black as it took her body.
         She was thrown into the ground, on her hands and knees. She tore into the ground with her fingers as her skin itched and burned, turning sickly, glossy, pale white. Her groaning voice deepened, twisted into horrible deformed rasping.
         Clothing absorbed into her veinless, hairless skin. Bones broke and reformed as her limbs lengthened, her naked body thinned. Her face, buried in the ground as she screamed, flattened and became a lipless, noseless, lidless pale mask. Her mouth widened into a screaming smile as her pointed teeth, gums, and tongue turned glossy black. Her hair vanished under her skin and the tips of her thick fingers morphed into points.
        Her cries calmed into hollow sighs as the entire body relaxed. It planted its claws into the soil and rose, on all fours, and turned its void-like eyes to the moon. A black grimace spread across its face before it burst into the trees.
        The Darkness had been released.