For those who haven’t read Chapter 1.

Please Enjoy

Soul and Maria exchanged glances of worry.

            “Are you OK?” Soul asked dryly.

            Maria slapped the back of his head, causing his helmet to echo, “Well of course he isn’t OK!”

            The stranger collapsed, causing dust to spread all around Soul and Maria. Maria kneeled and turned him over so that he could lie on his back and felt his neck for a pulse.

            Nothing?

            The stranger’s hand gripped Maria’s arm and he opened his eyes. His expression became a smile as his eyes turned completely black.

            “Soul, what the heck is happening?!” she exclaimed, struggling to break free, “I can’t get him off me!!”

            “Just- Just relax, please!” he replied anxiously, adrenaline making his head throb like a sore thumb.

            “What business have you paladins in this World? Why do you gallivant into danger so?” snarled the man in a double-toned voice, “You only bring trouble and destruction to all the Dimensions! You all should be punished!”

            His entire body tensed as a dark aura surrounded him and flowed to his side, revealing a black figure of energy. Maria’s eyes widened and her mouth trembled, panicking as she tried to break free from the human that still held a tight grasp on her wrist. There is only one entity in the universe that had this innate ability of strength and manipulation, and instantaneously its name rang a fearful resonance in their consciences.

            Darkness.

            “Soul, he’s trapped me! I can’t break his grip…” 

            “Just stay right there, I’ll take care of this…” Soul grabbed a scroll in his left hand and the handle of his sword in his right. Swinging both hands up at once, he untied the knot in the scroll with his mouth while aiming his sword at the Darkness.

            “Loyal dogs of Time, How dare you challenge me without even answering my questions? You all come and go and learn the arts of war, but if there’s something they don’t teach you, it’s respect!” it shouted.

            “Shut your mouth!” Soul retorted, flinging the scroll open and wrapping it around his blade. He chanted Winston’s words and the scroll was absorbed by the sword, turning it from lacklustre silver into a resplendent white. 

            “On the contrary, Paladin, I have no mouth with which to speak,”

            The sun, almost completely submerged beneath the horizon, was making way for the moon opposing it.

            Looks like it’s now or never.

            “Maria, look out!” Soul yelled, and swung his sword at the Darkness. It dodged the sidewards slash with a short jump and landed on the surface of Soul’s blade.

            “How repugnant. You still ignore my questions,” it assumed the shape of a human, retaining its ominous black veil, and held out its right hand to form a sword out of Maria’s shadow. Maria quickly became weak and stopped resisting against the grip of the lifeless body as her shadow twisted and turned around the Darkness’ hand, stretching into the shape of a simple sword. She collapsed.

            Soul looked from Maria to the Darkness, “Dirty tricks!”

            “So you agree that two-on-one is fair?” it replied, “No etiquette whatsoever-”

            “Etiquette? You lot roam all the Dimensions, taking them over by brute force, and you want to lecture me on etiquette?” Soul closed his fist tightly and stared directly into the Darkness’ faded eyes, “Then you claim that we bring the pain and sorrow, all the destruction. That we should be punished?! Ridiculous!”

            “Well then, state your business and this might be a little more pleasant for you…” it demanded with a smile.

            “Piss off!” Soul tightened his grip around his sword and raised it over his head, forcing the Darkness to jump out of the way. He turned the sword in front of him and stabbed at the Darkness. It held up its right arm in defence, making it expand into a black wall. Soul sliced, forcing his blade into the shield.

            “You can’t penetrate this, foolish paladin, it’s made of pure energy,” the Darkness chuckled from behind the wall, “Energy can’t be created or destroyed, but can be changed from one form to another…”

            Soul grimaced at the shield, forcing his blade into the energy causing it to swirl and fade.

            “What in the-?” the Darkness gasped. The shield expanded and curved at its sides, surrounding Soul’s blade. Soul continued pushing forwards with all his might, and eventually his eyes caught sight with the Darkness. The energy slowly formed into the Darkness’ hand, grasping the blade just inches from its head.

            “You look shocked, Darkness,” Soul started with a smirk, “What’s the matter?”

            “White Gold… You paladins are more educated than I believed… However-” the Darkness swung its shadow sword at Soul’s head. Soul dodged lithely, jumping back in recoil as his armour grinded the hard ground. Dust flew around Soul and the creature, and for the first time Soul noticed that he couldn’t feel anything.

            They don’t have… emotions? Soul thought as the dust cleared, This will be harder than expected, they must have changed since last time. I’m running out of time, the spell can only last for so much longer.

            “Paladin,” Soul jumped and pivoted in mid-air. The Darkness was right behind him and he wasn’t prepared to defend himself. Soul recognised that it no longer had a right arm. “Paladin, paladin, paladin…” it paused and tapped its foot for a few seconds, “Oh, you stupid paladin. Do you not realise that our kind don’t heal that easy? Just goes to show that-”

            “Enough! I’ll answer your questions!” Soul demanded, held up just centimetres from the Darkness’ sword. “If you will answer mine, and give Maria back her life force,” – his voice lowered – “I will cooperate with you fully,”

            The Darkness smiled again, “Excellent. A parley. Well then, what are you doing here? Make it snappy, or I’ll finish you off then use your girlfriend’s energy to repair the damages that you’ve caused,”

            “She isn’t-”

            “That is none of my concern, answer!”

            “We’re here to investigate what you lot are up to. We are surprised that you’ve escaped the Reverse-Dimension and we don’t plan on returning the Tear Pendent.” Soul cringed as he addressed the Darkness.

            “Interesting… things may be a lot different to what we initially thought. Well, I’ll answer your questions later. You two are a pair of nosy travellers, you know that? No harm whatsoever!” it bellowed, starting to laugh, “You’ve promised to cooperate. Now, I’ll return this woman’s life and take you with me. Any objections?”

            Soul looked down in frustration and shook his head slowly.

            “Excellent.” The Darkness chanted unintelligibly as a dark aura formed around Soul, binding him. “You know, X would probably be interested in hearing your questions,”

            Soul struggled against the tight barrier, “You promised, Darkness! Give her life back!”

            “Ah yes, you are no longer of any harm to me now,” It muttered under its breath and the sword dissipated into swirls of darkness that surrounded Maria’s hollow body. “COMBINE!” it shouted, and the swirls danced viciously around Maria with the appearance of a tornado. One by one, the swirls once again inhabited her body.

            “Well then, paladin, time to show X what I caught,”

            Soul stared at the Darkness in disgust, unable to move a muscle against the aura.

            It assumed its shapeless form and expanded around Soul. In an instant, Maria was isolated with the homunculus next to her.

OMG LOOK HERE BECAUSE I KNOW FOR SURE PEOPLE WILL MISS THIS UNLESS I MAKE IT BLEATINGLY OBVIOUS!

For some reason, the first paragraph won’t paste in, so here’s a PICTURE VERSION of it! Hurrah~! Clicky clicky

When their mystical vertigo halted, the paladins stood up and stood their ground.

            “We’re right in the middle of it…” warned Soul.

            “I don’t see anything though…” replied Marie in almost a whisper. The ground was dusty and red, and littered with animal remains, as if at some time ages ago there was once water and life here. How the Shadows could survive this foreboding place was beyond the paladins’ comprehension.

            As far as the eye could see, there was clearly nothing where they were sent, so they decided to scout the area one at a time, letting one stay in the middle while the other searched around the one left behind. When it was Soul’s second time scouting, Marie noticed a strange fluctuating in Soul’s shadow. Concerned, Marie took a quick glance behind her and realized that the idea of either of them having a stretched shadow perpendicular to the sunlight was alarming.

            “Soul!” Marie called, “We’ve been trapped!”

            But something was wrong; Marie just couldn’t get her words out. Her voiceless pleas made the echo of Soul’s boots hurt her ears. At any cost, she needed to get his attention. Marie grabbed her sword and unclipped a latch in its sheath that divided it into two. With all her might, she made deafening clanging noises that quickly got Soul to turn around.

            “What on Earth are you doing?” he asked with a slightly raised brow.

            Maria’s voice remained silent as she pleaded with all her might that Soul would notice what was happening. Soul looked around himself in worry, trying frantically to recognise the problem. Maria’s shadow crept closer and closer to her, eventually crawling up her legs. She was turning into a darker tone and started to freeze up as if she were stark naked on a snowy day. Soul looked at Maria, slipping into a trance, and finally it clicked.

            Soul reached for a pouch and revealed a handful of red dust. Chanting, he tightened his grasp on the dust, a warm aura surrounding him. The shadow was no further than Maria’s hips before Soul exhaled a strong gust of breath, releasing a vermillion light from his grip that tangled in the air like a rope and struck her. The shadow, competing with the light, reluctantly returned to the ground and separated from Maria, causing her to gasp for air.

            “No probs, Mary. Just look out, right? They haven’t left the building yet,” he explained.

            He’s right, Maria thought, it’s only a matter of time before it emerges.

            Both of the paladins stood their ground, clasping their swords. The vermillion glow around Maria was fading, revealing specks of red glitter all over her armour.

            “Sure, just don’t you dare call me-”

            “Mary-!” Soul yelled.

            A crack in the ground expanded into a circle, and a dark figure with long claws came into formation.

            “Shadow!” They exclaimed.

            Soul drew his sword and cut through the air a few times. He charged at the Shadow with his blade behind him, preparing for attack. The Shadow dodged his erratic slicing, jumping over him, only to be split in half by Maria close behind. The Shadow burst into streams of darkness that swirled out into nothingness.

            A flush of relief overcame both of them.

            “That was too close,” Soul puffed.

            “Yeah…” Maria agreed, and turned from Soul,”…And if you ever call me Mary again, I’ll beat the stuffing out of you, Soul,”

            “Whatever Mar-” Maria scowled at Soul, and although he couldn’t see her expression through her helmet, he could feel her negative energy, “Eh, I mean Maria…”

            Her expression became a smile, “That’s more like it,”

            “I guess this is our queue to be more careful,”

            “Something like that. It seems we’ve become rusty over the years,”

            Soul chuckled, “Oh Maria, you make it sound like it was so long ago! How long is a year anyway?”

            Maria paused and took off her helmet, her straight black hair spreading down her back in one full tumble, curling at the ends. Her eyes were a beautiful green and her smooth skin was slightly tanned. She looked down doubtfully, “Honestly Soul… I don’t know….”

            Soul’s heart sank at her expression. He had one true weakness that would plague him in any battle: his ability to feel emotion. All it took was one decent look and Soul felt one hundred times the emotion of his company. The eyes said it all, and he often wondered if it was how he got his name. If anything was certain, it was that he didn’t know how he was born or named nor even remember his own childhood, and that he felt depressed and severely homesick.

            What is a home, anyway?

            “Hey now, don’t do that to me!! You’ll give me a heart attack if you start showing me your face like that again!” he joked – hopefully she would take the facade.

            “Let’s not get facetious, Mr. Libido,” she snarled. Soul felt his mood lift.

            It worked.

The sun dipped just above the horizon as they continued their patrol. It was at a dangerous angle to be waiting for an attack from their foes who they know take complete advantage of the shadows. Nevertheless, they had only defeated seven more Shadows – no closer to finding out what their incentive was.

            “It looks like we might need to patrol through the night…” Maria groaned.

            “Probably. Those damned creatures will probably flock at us at night, but,” Soul explained, “we would probably be better off retreating halfway through sundown,”

            “Understood. They’ll be omnipotent at night,”

            Plus, the only minions capable of proper communication are the Darkness. If we wait until night, we’d just be setting up our gravestones, Maria mused, if we could capture one of the Darkness and torture some intel out of them, we could quickly find out what’s been going on. But until then, we’re stuck in the dark, she smirked, There’s no other way… we need to utilise the gold feigning spells…

            “Right, it’s my turn. Take a break, Soul,”

            Maria stood up and assumed her position fifteen paces from Soul to patrol a circular path. Soul sat and looked in every direction that Maria couldn’t, occasionally sipping from the reservoir strapped around his shoulder.

            The sky turned a brilliant orange that blended with the horizon, casting shadows across the few clouds that remained in the barren world. A small gust of wind was picking up around the paladins, kicking up dust clouds that buffeted their armour. Maria fixed her helmet back on to protect her eyes, and while she adjusted the eye guards, a strange shape came into focus.

            “Soul… Hey Soul!” she called.

            Soul got up and turned to Maria, “What’s up?”

            “What is that over there? I can’t make it out, but it doesn’t look like a Shadow or one of the Darkness,”

            Soul raised his hand above his brow, extending his view and protecting his eyes at the sun that directly bombarded them. In the distance, with a little bit of strain, a dark human shape was emerging from behind the heavy dusty gales.

            Maria and Soul assumed their basic battle formation, one next to the other with swords unsheathed in preparation for what was to come.

            The shape finally got close enough to form a weak human wearing a worn out shirt that was soiled by the dust and track pants tied by a thick rope of cotton. His expression was horrifying – as if he would drop and die any moment – with dark widened eyes and a scarred mouth. As he got closer, a fresh cut in his cheek came into view.

            “Oh- Oh my God… Now I’m seeing… mirages…” he muttered, almost inaudibly, “Looks like… I really won’t make it. Oh God…”

The cloud rolled calmly over the dark sky, the full moon piercing the eyes of those below. Ever since the last equinox, that large, white circle hadn’t been so bright. The elder swiftly checked the almanac by casting his long finger over the ambient colours, stopping on the appropriate date. With a stroke of his long, black beard, Winston chanted a short spell that summoned two paladins before him. Both were almost identical, except for a blue and red ribbon that each wore around their left shoulder, respectively; they swivelled and bowed at the knees before the sage.
“I apologise for calling you so abruptly, but there isn’t much time. The lunar patterns don’t match the records anymore…” Winston said, hastily.
The paladin wearing the red ribbon was coarse in speech, “That must mean those damned creatures are among us once again!”
“Inevitably,” replied Winston.
“So you wish for us to track them down…” sighed the paladin wearing the blue ribbon.
Winston picked up on her lame reaction to such a dire situation.
“Marie, this is no simple matter. We are not just experiencing one alteration in the lunar track… I have been tracking this down for three months now and I’m certain that I’ve seen the moon appear four times full.” Winston explained. The warrior with the blue ribbon looked down, afraid that she may have offended the sage. Winston noted this and swiftly put his hand on her shoulder guard.
“It’s OK Marie,” he comforted, “you will have to track them down, but this is very much a dramatic change from our situation before. Please understand – and this goes for you too, Soul – that we may be facing more than a few simple Shadows in the time to come. Masses, warriors, masses! On top of that, I have a strong feeling that we have the Darkness working against us,”
Soul swallowed nervously as he looked down slowly at Winston’s explanation. The Darkness are among us, too? he thought. He looked towards Marie making the same gesture and could feel her sharing his thoughts. The Shadows were one thing, but the Darkness were another. They both knew that they could easily slay the likes of a simple Shadow with a simple slash of their swords. The Darkness were harder to vanquish, requiring that their swords be coated with white gold imbued with white magic. Winston was a very observant old man, noticing every gesture they made before him revealed all of their thoughts.
“What you both need to do right now is relax,” Winston said cheerfully, “I will cast a spell over your swords to refurbish them from all of the battles they have suffered from already. As for the Darkness, I have prepared for you both a spell that transmutes stone into white gold. It only works once, for about a day, so keep it for emergencies,”
He showed the paladins how to use the spell, demonstrating that they need to wrap his prepared scroll around their sword and chant a spell that they had to memorise.
Marie was concerned with her temporary protection from the Darkness, “You made it out as if there are myriad Darkness and Shadows – we’ll have to properly prepare our blades sometime,”
“That’s right, Marie, but we mustn’t be hasty. We need to figure out why they have come back and how,” Winston explained.
Soul was quick to reply, “Yeah, we knocked them into a Reverse-Dimension the last time I checked. There isn’t much escape from infinity!”
“And they are probably back to retrieve their Tear Pendant, thus regaining their strength to return to their havoc wreaking scheme to take over the Main Dimension in order to gain the ability to travel to, and take over, other dimensions.” Marie lectured blandly.
Winston was pleased with their enthusiasm, oblivious to Marie’s sarcasm, “Sure, they could be back to do all of that. Then we have the fact that they cumulated so many minions and, as Soul said, they escaped from the infinite confinements of the Reverse-Dimension,” Winston looked up at the dreary walls of his cave-like environment and mumbled something inaudible to Soul and Marie. Blue symbols appeared on the wall and floated into the air. They began to ripple and rotate, and eventually spiral into a fireworks display of smaller circles that spread out around them. Between Winston and the Paladins, one circle remained larger than the rest. The sage closed in on the circle and pointed out a region which turned red, fighting with the blue light in the air.
“Before anything, you need to brighten up this segment of the Main Dimension – you can’t afford anything following you into the other dimensions…” Soul chuckled at his use of the word “brighten” but quickly became serious when Winston scowled at him. “We’re going to need to take haste, here,” Winston walked through the circle, causing it to become slightly distorted, and waved his hands over the Paladin’s swords to fix their cracks.
“Prepare yourselves,” Winston warned while taking a few steps backwards. Soul and Marie kneeled simultaneously, bowed their heads and closed their eyes. The wizard waved his hands up to make all of the circles floating in the air disappear, and then clapped his hands with great force, interlacing his fingers. The echo of the clap travelled through the dim room and danced around Soul and Marie’s heads. Winston’s hands released slowly as if they were clasping invisible fists and released a white light that engulfed the two warriors

“Good luck,” whispered Winston with effort, bringing his hands together again with difficulty.