I stood enclosed by my masters knights, the strange undead thralls wielding swords and maces. Their weapons so primitive and yet also effective. We marched down into the underground Dawn Sect facility on Lios beneath the city. My master’s seed had been encased there hundreds of years ago.

The Draugur’s were the frightening masters and manipulators of death. And my master was the most frightening of them all. I remembered my life before the academy, escaping the seed pod at my master’s behest. Told to run, hide, and live. So that he may call upon me eventually.

Hundreds of year’s had past and I had eventually taken a new name after borrowing so many different faces. This Jessica I now inhabited, was a simple creature. Her nature was brash, underlined by her career driven motives. She wanted power. To be powerful, to have all men and women bow before her.

But deep down where I hid, lurked, and waited. Slowly manipulating her focus, her means. Making her yearn for the one I loved and followed.

I was Shra’anan, my masters puppet.

We had already claimed all those worthy of becoming a shade, when the Grav’nion had breached Lios’ atmosphere. The pulse of dark magic seeping through every atom as it hunted and hungered for those that could, would, embrace it.

I could feel my master’s beckoning call, like a siren’s song. Pulling at me to go deeper down. Making my two minds squirm as the distance between us and he—whom we loved—shortened.

Now we will be reunited, and the master’s god will once again reclaim their rightful place in all branches of the universe.

“Shades our master awaits,” I sang, as the elevator doors dinged onto a cacophony of rolling gunfire. The eight shade knights with their chitinous black bone armour formed rank and shielded me from the incoming waves of berinium bullets.

“Attack!” I yelled out. The knights snapped their black boned weapons free and charged into the facility with their shields raised. Churning the place up into a maddening torrent of mutilated corpses and bloody painted walls. I laughed merrily as they slaughtered the men and women who were trying desperately to defend themselves.

I guessed that being so far underground had shielded them from the dark magic.

It mattered not. The earth, skies and seas, may be life’s territory. But death would touch upon everything in the end. Whether it be a mountain or a honey bee. My master would make this domain kneel for what came in the end.

For I had seen the great one’ visage, and his might.

This novel is the work of Rhys Thomas. If you are reading this and it has not been published by Rhys Thomas, then this work has been stolen. Please report this to Amazon and me at email: [email protected]