“Why do humans fear the dark? Is it because it’s unknown, is it because they can’t see it, is it because they don’t know it? Perhaps it’s because they’re ignorant, there’s no need to fear the dark after all. No, what they need to fear is what’s in it.”—an inhuman philosopher

A single glass tube lays shattered. Broken glass is scattered, and liquid slowly coats the tiled floor of the forbidden research sector.

Silently standing just outside the tube is a looming figure, with rotten, desiccated, skin and bloodshot eyes, its complete stillness brings an almost sense of peace to the surroundings.

The viscous liquid’s flow is the only movement in the scene, for the creature does not move.

Hours pass and the liquid spreads further.

The figure turns its bald and barren head and looks at another of the tubes, and smiles.

The monster makes a noise, before hunching over and coughing violently.

The figure reasserts itself and looks back up to see an almost perfect mimicry staring back.

Faster than the eye can see, the creature moves, and glass shatters. Another figure is swept out with the slowly moving liquid and stands up in the spreading puddle of liquid.

They look at each other and smile.

Then a sound comes out; To call it, laughter would be to mock the very idea of it.

The sounds of shattering glass ring out into the night.

The crescent moon looms high in the sky, laughing along with them.

…

Alex rouses to the booming sounds of explosions and a stampede. He starts wiping the sleep out of his eyes.

‘Is it already breakfast? I must have overslept.’

Alex gets up and pats off his clothes.

‘I’ll need to get some new ones soon, these are starting to get dirty, and I don’t want to live on hand-me-downs from Reynold.’

Alex looks to the window.

‘It’s still dark out, is breakfast early today?’

Another explosion rocks the room, dust, and debris falling from the ceiling.

‘This doesn’t seem normal, even from the standards of an academy with meal plans that include trampling other students to get better food…’

As Alex stretches his arms out, still trying to get his body awake, the door to his room bursts open. The startled Alex jumps a bit and the black scales where his eyes would have been met the bloodshot, wide-open eyes of a desiccated corpse.

‘What the-‘

Alex only has moments before the thing leaps at him, which he uses to back away from the creature. The thing, having grabbed only thin air, lifts its head to meet Alex’s ‘gaze.’ It then tilts its head as if appraising him.

‘That’s creepy as heck.’

Alex grabs the broom in the corner and holds it handle towards the creature, and brush behind him, at an angle to the ground.

‘I’m glad that they have a broom here, I don’t want to fight that bare-hand-‘

Alex’s thoughts are interrupted as the slowly circling creature spots an opening, it lunges for Alex’s neck.

Alex swings the broom handle and slams the creature into the bedpost. Both a creaking and crunching sound can be heard in the room.

And then Alex’s broom breaks in half.

‘Damn it.’

The remaining part of the broom in Alex’s hand swings past the creature, Alex adjusts his grip and starts edging around the thing.

That was just before it starts screaming.

Alex, unnerved by the unnatural tone, lunges towards the creature and stabs it through the throat with the broken tip of the broom handle.

The handle punctures the thing’s neck and goes through it, and then the bed. The creature struggles for a while, before falling limp. The blood continues to pulse out of the humanoid’s throat, soaking Alex’s bedsheets crimson.

‘What the heck was that?’

Alex releases the broom. He marvels at the macabre sight made by the creature pinned against the bed, slowly staining his room red.

‘Hmmm…’

Alex kneels down, making sure to avoid the growing puddle of blood, and looks closer. After scrutinizing it for a few moments, he realizes something.

‘This thing isn’t it really similar to what I saw in those tubes earlier. I didn’t get a good look at them, but it has the same desiccated skin.’

Alex becomes a bit shaken.

‘Did it get out or something…’

Alex remembers his conversation that he had earlier this night with the professors.

‘Did my constitution maybe mess with it, just like it supposedly did with the wards?’

Alex stands up and continues thinking for a few moments before shaking his head.

‘Not like there’s not much I can do about it now even if it was; besides, there are more important things to focus on…’

Alex looks over to the broken doorway.

‘Are there more of them out there? I definitely remember seeing more than a couple of tubes. What’s happening with the rest of the academy?’

Alex goes over to where he dropped the one half of the broken broom. He then walks over to the still bleeding corpse, puts one hand on the creature’s hand, and the other just above the brush of the broom.

He starts to pull it out, and a squelching sound engulfs the room. Alex then jerks it the rest of the way and becomes showered in a spray blood.

Alex shakes his hand to get rid of some of the blood there, but only succeeds in spreading it to his already-stained clothes. Alex wipes where his eyes would be with his sleeve.

‘Oh, it must have become a habit…’

He feels foolish for a moment, before looking down at the two pieces of wood in his hands.

‘They’ve served me well so far, let’s hope they’ll continue to do so.’

Alex starts walking towards the broken door and into the hallway.

His gruesome figure, dripping with blood, and with clothes stained in it would put even an experienced warrior at unease, and probably give a child nightmares. Not due to the blood, no, there is plenty of that on the battlefield, but because of the mix of the blood, but the complete ease of Alex despite it.

Though to Alex, it was a really trivial matter, one that didn’t go beyond simply needing to buy new clothes.

That attitude, though, changes at the view that greets him.

‘Did that thing do this?’

Alex looks out on corpses, some clearly being attacked in the back, others with their throats bruised and now lying on the floor, others completely eviscerated their organs being on complete display.

Alex counted 5 in total but had no doubt that this scene would be elsewhere in the academy. Many probably were found while sleeping or just awake and were killed in their rooms.

Alex feels disgusted and mournful at the scene, but also confused.

‘Aren’t these people mages, I don’t think that kind of thing should have been able to kill this many without at least an injury… but when it intruded on my room, it was completely unharmed.’

Alex suddenly shifts into his duel wielding stance, both parts of the broom point down to his either side.

‘Unless… that’s not the one that did this.’

Alex franticly looks around and listens intently.

Alex quickly turns his head to his left.

‘I think I heard something from over there…’

Alex starts to walk in that direction before stopping.

‘Wait… should I really be doing this right now? Isn’t it more important to inform the professors, though I doubt they haven’t been already…’

Alex continues his pause.

‘Even more, do I really need to risk my life more than I already have?’

Alex starts to turn around before pausing again.

‘Though, I don’t think I can really die, not with me time traveling every time I do. Though I somehow doubt it’s actually that, and I haven’t done it recently…’

Alex hears a scream.

An explosion rocks the school once again, and one of the walls starts crumbling.

‘…’

…

A few minutes earlier, a group of five students face off against three abominations. Among them is the student known as Able.

‘We’re really screwed here, aren’t we.’

Able looks over to the corpses of his fellow compatriots. One, in particular, catches his eye, hew was the one who had tried to make a run for it, and whose body now decorates the once drab hallway in one of the gruesomest manners.

‘Now it’s more like a scene Hell.’

Able looks back to the creatures, who are slowly circling them. The students respond in kind, closing any openings that the abominations were trying to find.

‘The only reason we’ve survived so far is because a few of us had our staves, and the rest of us are now ‘borrowing’ them from the deceased… but they’re only really useful as a bludgeon at the moment; otherwise, we wouldn’t be in this mess.’

Able sighs while keeping up the formation he and the other four students were making.

‘Magic doesn’t seem to work right now, maybe it’s because of those things? Every time one of us starts casting a spell, it goes haywire.’

Able looks at a few of the larger blood spots.

‘And a spell gone haywire is a death sentence.’

“We can’t let this continue, like this we’re just going to die of exhaustion,” a haggard feminine voice says from behind Able.

‘That sounds like Olivia…’

They had gotten into the formation out of necessity. The timing had not given them the opportunity to see each other’s faces in detail. Though Able roughly knew who was left, it gives him great comfort to know that his girlfriend survived.

Able almost makes the mistake of looking over his left shoulder to look at her, before noticing the approaching creature and batting it back.

“And why should we do that? You’ve seen what happens the moment we try to run, they’ll be on us like dogs on a rabbit,” says a more masculine tone.

‘And isn’t that Godert? He’s right, though it would be a fair bit more gruesome than those dogs would ever be.’

Able sighs, and then gives his own two cents, “I have to agree with him Olivia, it’s a better bet to hold out until one of the teachers comes.”

“I doubt we will be able to last that long…” another unidentified voice speaks.

‘That doesn’t mean we should run to our deaths, though…’

Able does not voice his thought. He knows by now that the other students have all but accepted their fate, only holding on for fear of death instead of hope for survival.

“How about we try to make it to a room then, a chokepoint could work?” Olivia says, airing a possible solution to their predicament.

The whole group shuffles, and the conversation is put on hold for a few moments before continuing.

‘If we make it, that might just work…’

“I don’t have a better idea, any objections?” says Able, excited at the prospect that they might actually survive.

“Nope.” Says the first-year academy student.

“Let’s do it.” Says the third-year senior.

“It’s better than just sitting here like ducks.” Says Godert.

“Well then, does anyone object going towards my room?” says Able

A chorus of assent follows, and the group starts inching towards their destination.

It might seem ironic that the students were returning to a room that they had left to fight the abominations, but they had only left in the first place because they were working under the assumption that their magic was still working and would require more open space to function correctly. Now, those rooms provided a crucial function, a choke point.

As the group inches closer and closer to anyone that might be watching, their coordination is clearly lacking. Still, the rag-tag formation functions appropriately to ward off the three abominations.

They inch closer and closer, and Able’s heart pounds in excitement.

‘We might actually make it.’

It is then that disaster strikes.

One of the creatures lunges at Olivia, and like usual, she bats them away with her staff. It is what came after that which is the cause of the disaster. The students, and the formation that they had created, work under the assumption that the creature will repeat their classic lunge attack, and they are not wholly wrong. What they had failed to account for, and what had led to their downfall, was that the creatures were learning. The students must have assumed that with their appearance, unnatural speed and strength, and possible magic-blocking properties that they were like animals, but it was a fallacious assumption. While her staff is occupied with one, another takes its place. This dual attack takes Olivia by surprise, and with her staff(bludgeon) already occupied, she takes the full frontal force of the creature.

This then causes the entire formation to fall apart.

A scream pierces the damp air.