Once, I had shared a body with the Betrayer, my own to be precise, as he forged his will into a blade that cut through anything. He had destroyed my arm and my shoulder with a single swing, as my body had not been able to withstand the forces.

Now he no longer was bound by me. He was not even bound by mortal restrictions. He was nothing but a will too strong to go on into the afterlife.

There was just one thing we had not accounted for. Everything happened with the speed of thought. There was no reality here, no physics. All around me shadows exploded into action, as our three opponents merged with those they had flooded my Demesne with, while Lily in her Mastiff jumped forward and the Betrayer advanced with a measured pace, meeting shadows with his blade, Kingsbane whirling back and forth in a stark contrast to the calm demeanor the man displayed.

He met with the man I had identified as Tongue, even if the situation was hectic and barely readable, but they went at each other shadow versus blade. Wherever Kingsbane cut, flakes of shadows drifted off. Kingsbane in the hands of the Betrayer was able to cut shadows. It was nothing new, I had seen it before, but my mind needed a second to catch up with what was happening right in front of me.

The Mastiff of Dread meanwhile tumbled with Heron in a mess of shadow and flame, and while I saw canine teeth chomping on the intruder, it was impossible to tell what was happening in detail.

I soon lost the ability to follow the fights as the leader of the group rushed at me, carried by a wave of darkness only his glimmering, silver mask stood out of. I jumped back but he followed me, a hollow screeching assaulting my ears as claws of darkness grabbed me, smothered me, drowned me.

[Breaker of Chains] exploded around me like an erupting volcano, splashing the shadows all over the place, leaving me in an oasis of light with the man rising up in front of me. His face mask switched again, from the dragon face to a man screaming in pain.

“The mortal coil still taints your soul and yet you dare defy me?“ the voice behind the mak switched to the voice of a little girl mid-sentence, then instantly back to a gruff male voice. “You dare not throw your face onto the ground in the face of the Darkness?“ He screamed.

As far as intimidations went, that had been up there. Still, I would give it to the Mad King, if it came to a comparison. I tried a smile, but it did not come out quite right.

“I don‘t even know who you are. But I will throw you out like the common thief you seem to be.“ I said with more bravado than I felt.

He was upon me in the blink of an eye, shadows once more reaching for me, his voice once more assaulting my consciousness. As I was without a weapon, I nimbly dodged the first wave of shadows slamming down on me, then...without a weapon?

These bastards had the audacity to attack me in my own Demesne, in my stronghold! My imagination was law around here, and I king of my own soul. You like the Darkness? I changed the time of day with a thought, banishing stray shadows, all those they did not bring, with a blazing sun rising over the horizon.

I grabbed a ray of sunshine, forming in my hand as a solid bolt, and hauled it into the mass of darkness before me. It tore a hole in it which lingered, before the rest of the shadows reformed again, filling the hole like molasses seeping from every side into the open space.

The fight turned into a twisted form of a children's game, as I was assaulted with forms and shapes of shadows and I answered with every kind of counter I could imagine. I slapped the arrows of darkness out of the air with homing rays of sunshine, bound massive, black tendrils with glowing chains, and drove the mass the man hid himself in back as the heat and the illumination of the sun above rose to searing degrees.

The mask in the shadows hissed and screamed in frustration, as I, more than under pressure, thwarted his attempts to catch me again and again.

“Futile! Useless!“ He screamed. “You worm! You don‘t even have a Dogma, you just delay the inevitable!“ A swarm of thousands of obsidian butterflies shot out of his hands, bursting through my defenses and cutting me to the bones, while I tumbled under the onslaught. Where the butterflies smashed into the ground they exploded into shards, covering the floor. I was bleeding profusely.

I hastily erected a wall of stone with my mind and heard the crystalline shatter of more and more obsidian breaking against it. I could use my Demesne against them, but I learned two hard truths in this very short bout. One, Skills always were king. They were truths of creation, while the Demesne just was a figment of my imagination, more or less. Two: What I had perceived as limitless was everything but.

At the moment, I could not see it because I was surrounded by physical darkness, but I could feel it all the same. The edges of my Demesne were...tearing up, blurring, and getting burnt and used up as I threw more and more against the attackers.

This had to stop. I was using too much of it and would be destroying myself without the servants of darkness lifting a finger.

Suddenly, a wave of invisible energy horizontally cut through the shadows, and the wave of darkness that was overwhelming me exploded into a black rain splashing onto the cliff. The wave passed through me with nothing but a cold shudder. I could see clearly again, and saw the Betrayer still turning in the movement of the mighty slash he had just performed. His enemy stumbled backwards, holding his breast as if trying to hold his innards in his body, but there were only shadows seeping out.

The Tongue, his enemy, yelled in pain while he flew back in a panicked retreat: “The sword can cut everything!“

The other battle looked much more dire. Lily, in her Mastiff of Dread, was thrown around by Heron. The Mastiff was a psychological weapon and measure of Demesne-defence much more than a force to be reckoned with in a real battle. She was being suffocated by the shadows, but the cut of Kingsbane had given her the opportunity to get one more precious gasp of air.

Wordlessly, the Heron kicked Lily off the cliff and swept over to the side of the Tongue while he materialized a scythe of shimmering silver in his hands. A real weapon, intimidating and massive, brought to the limbo with a Skill, just as I had brought Kingsbane with [Hidden Sheath],

The Betrayer laughed his arrogant laugh. “This is the difference with you bottom feeders of the darkness. You choose your weapons by their appearance, while my weapon chose me.“

He ignored the retreating Tongue and answered the scythe of Heron with a counterblow of his own, catching the curved blade on his, lifting it out of the way, metal scraping over metal, and before the Heron could have moved, the Betrayer ended his fluent, seamless movement with a thrust to the heart of Heron, who still was busy controlling his long weapon.

Kingsbane exploded out of the back of the cloaked man, Heron gurgling a scream while he fell back. The wounded servant of darkness now turned to the man I was fighting with, their leader, and yelled to warn him. “Look out, Lord Sombran!“

“Fucking imbeciles.“ The mask in the mass of shadows before me hissed as he turned to see his two godling underlings on the backfoot, while the Betrayer slid across the cliff with his black steel pointed right at him.

“[Soul Wrench]“ he murmured and immediately the Betrayer slammed to the ground, held by invisible forces, screaming as he got turned and twisted.

I was on him immediately, cracking the cliff under the force of my jump, my fists were wreathed in golden sunlight light stolen from the sky above, and I slammed them into my adversary with all the speed and force I could muster, using the moment of distraction to the best of my abilities.

I tore the darkness away with my bare hands, smelled the burning stuff under the searing heat of the light. Sombran screeched, trying to get anything between me and him, but I was faster. This was my Demesne and I moved with the speed of a thought, and my thoughts were fast and angry.

“You like to play with souls?“ I sneered. “[Murder of Crows]!“ I put my hands around his mask, trying to hold him into place. Where normally the crows would have exploded out from the shadows under my cloak, they now rose up from the branches of the trees in a cacophony of cawing, flapping of wings, and the dancing of the lights they now were, here in my Demesne. They did not take the shape of crows. They did not need to. A thousand balls of lights, souls of Ravenrock every last one of them, shot out from the sky from the branches of their silvery wind-oak tree and slammed into the man in front of me. tearing, cutting, smashing, and burning him and his shadows to pieces.

It was the last straw, they tumbled back, harrowed by the souls, and got sucked back into the Gate they had come out of as if someone had pulled a plug only the shadows would get pulled into.

Panting, I stopped as I saw them retreating. My Demesne still was a mess. What I had felt before, that the edges were tearing up, that I was using the very essence of my Demesne to fuel my fight, was actually visible. It looked less real, foggy out there as if my Demesne was a painting and I had ripped out parts to throw at them. The holes were filled with the fog of limbo, my created reality further bleeding out into the nothingness.

“Damn them all.“ I cursed at them. “That will take a while to repair.“

The dog poked me with his giant head in the belly and spoke with the chipper voice of Lily as she looked up at me. “We have a way bigger problem, Hannibal.“

“What is it?“ I looked where she was turning her mastiff head to, and I immediately swore up a new storm.

The Gate still was open.

“Neither I nor he can enter another Demesne like this.“ Lily said, meaning herself in the gestalt of the Mastiff or as a physical entity, in the case of the Regicide.

“Damned gods, we had them beaten!“ I shouted.

“You still have, boy. You still have. I have no idea what the day has cost them, but they must be weakened.“ The Betrayer had pursued the retreating enemies to the Gate. “I cannot enter. I cannot even touch it.“ He spat.

„I need to find a way to close the Gate.“ I said, looking around as if catching the glimpse of a random object would inspire me with a solution. “They now know too much about me. I cannot let them come back...“ I stopped. Stood still.

I could not let them come back. But that was too little. I could not let them get away with this.

“Oh no, they will pay. They have left the backdoor open? Well, see what will follow you through, then.“

I had to write a few messages.