MRH and Tachi - ONLY

The air was cool and dark. Almost liquid in it's quality. A silent being drifted through the black air of her mansion bored. Her servants were under the highest mind-control spell she could create. Absolute loyalty to her wishes and desires. That left little room for fun. At least that was the case now. It had been several years since she had enjoyed giving them contrary orders. Torturing the nearby harbor village was something she did only when both moons were dark. Strolling to a nearby window, she pulled away the large drapes back enough for a sliver of the moon rays to enter her otherwise black world. Below her mansion, in the valley, was a bustling city. Those people were also growing boring. Life was boring here.

With a sigh, the dark blue figure walked stately into the inner recesses of her mansion. Down the central stairs into the depths of her home. The cool underground walls were misty cool with the illusion of moisture on the stone walls. Walls that were actually dry to the touch. Despite the still air here, her long blue hair stirred and swirled about her mixing with the black currents that filled her home. Reaching a particularly dark room, she entered and crossed to a bookcase. This one was spell-locked with her most important books. Pulling the one she had been studying for several months, the female villain settled into a floating posture and her orange eyes brightened so that their glow illuminated the text. Careful to not let her molten power escape and touch the book, she began her continued research, pausing only to try a few nuances of the possibilities suggested before her.

His home was built into a very desolate mountainside. It was difficult to ascend, especially if one were without wings. But his thick, black and dark red bat-like wings helped him in that---he simply glided over the rocky, twisting road and landed on the shadowed doorstep. The heavy pair of double doors were opened immediately, by two thin young human men with very pale, almost china-white skin. These two were among many of his slaves, whom he didn’t need to manipulate---they desperately feared him, and dared not second guess anything he said. And in return, he rewarded them accordingly. As he passed through the doors fluidly, stepping into the dark entrance hall, and they were closed behind him, he took off the eerily smiling bone mask to reveal a face just as pale---but more human---save the blood-red eyes.

To his left, on a hook, he hung the mask beside a large scythe. It was topped with the skull of a saint that was rumored to have stood up to the crippling shadow of death itself and walk away without having even wrinkled his clothes. Of course, that had obviously been a lie. The knowledge of the saint’s death had swept the land below his mountainous castle, and made his slaves all the more obedient. Turning away, he was confronted with the two young men that were always appointed at the doors when he was away, and as he strode across the entrance hall, he ran a hand in an assuring manner over their faces. They were swift, and had been with him for a long time. However, fear was still present in their blood. That made him smile a bit before descending through the door to the side of the entrance hall and down into a dark sanctuary. Here, it was absolutely silent, where only one’s heartbeat could be heard, should they be human.

But he wasn’t human. He had no beating heart. Standing in a pool of light that hung suspended in the air of a circular room, he raised both hands to it and closed his eyes, feeling its power meld with his own. One always had to practice their ability, lest they lose it forever. He practiced every evening, but wished he could find something else to do. Things seemed so... predictable. Even his human playthings were becoming somewhat stale.

Strange lights flickered randomly throughout the room. Like cracks in the air, rifts in the walls of space and time formed and disappeared. Every single rift let different light flicker through. Some were glimpses of purple lightening that shot across a blackened sky. Others were molten orange burning brightly in a sulfur-scented world. One particularly distasteful scene could be viewed momentarily where green leaves filtered green light upon green grass and green pond water. None of these were enough to create a sense of excitement nor adventure. Nothing was seen to tug at the heart strings of the caster of the unstable magic. The figure sitting in her luxury of liquid black air turned a disgusted glance towards her books. It wasn't worth stabilizing any of these rifts. At least not to her intelligent mind. She needed, craved, a new world that surpassed the wind-blown vessels of this land. Not a place where ships sailed on wind and water, but with power of another substance. A place where her own black wisps were free to linger and lurk about in silent corners and forgotten alley ways. It was the shadows that were her friends. The innocent night that thickened with her silent spies. It had always been and should always be. Just not in a place so complacent as these.

The princess turned slowly towards the door, seemingly to float towards it. In reality she walked as any normal mortal did, but with a smoothness that was only amplified by swirls near her feet. Heading into the cool corridor, she resigned herself to another hour of the same routine. Evening meal. Her body demanded that she be fed regularly and it was something she dared not miss. The effects were more trouble than it was worth. So she would play with time and space at a later hour, when her stomach was full and servants of little use had retreated to bed. Reaching the dark marbled dining hall, she paused at the threshhold of the large doors as one of her head servants announced to the gathered and waiting servants her presence. The glazed-eyed man thudded his staff against the floor drawing the vacant expressions of the perfectly poised servants standing in their places around the room. His voice, chilled and toned perfectly, exclaimed, "Her royal highness, the Princess of Disastor, Dispenser of Justice, and Protector of the Avengers, the lady Adrasteia."

Around the room, the black-dressed forms bowed their welcome to their mistress. With ease born from years of looking stately, Adrasteia crossed the room. The air itself growing darker from her mere presence. A single light source existed here. A globe full of molten power she had provided herself. As she neared the table where it sat, her eyes took in the details of the meal before her. Purple butterflies decorated her fine black china and each was placed exactly half an inch from each other on the black laced table. Coming to a standstill beside her black steel chair, she let her attention filter down and over towards the feet of those standing ready to serve. Perfectly humble with healthy posture that she preferred, it was the scene of utter and complete harmony. Everything was to her liking. How could she do that which loved, playing judge and lusting after those who sought revenge for perceived slights, taking the lives of others and twisting them until the energy of her victims was flowing between her fingers, or just causing chaotic fun in general when her world was overused and played with till dry and dusty?

Hideously tired of life as she knew it now, Adrasteia did the one thing left to her. To fill her role as perfect by hiding her discontent. Playfulness could be found later. There was another world out there waiting for her to blunder. She had but to find it. Taking her seat with the same restrained passion she had clung to all day, she let her molten lamb's glow fall on her face. Purple skin so dark it was almost midnight blue, she blended in with her surroundings, swirling air, and satin clothing. A meal would do her good. Then back to her books she could go. There was more research to do and a world to change. How, after all, could she uphold her nickname as Nemesis if she wasn't hurting someone with freewill left in them?

He fell into absolute darkness immediately. It seemed to expand infinitely, and after a moment his feet lifted from the floor, immersing him into absolute silence and absolute blackness. The orb in his hands had darkened as well, and in the surrounding oppression became a deep bluish tinted with red as though letting off some form of heat. It flashed as Zeken widened his eyes a bit, wordlessly commanding the orb to show him the various worlds so near his own, but just out of reach most of the time.

Stars seemed to begin to blink into light as Zeken looked up and away from the orb. His wings unfurled and caught a draft that seemed to raise them, and his body, above the floor that didn’t seem to exist and through the ceiling that was no longer there. Various worlds blossomed into reality around him, surrounding their suns, followed by their moons, of varying color. Some were dark, devoid of light, and others were bright green, as though they held nothing but plantlife. Some were a barren red, and when he would study one through the orb, he would find black-skinned creatures that resemble demons scavenging the parched ground eternally, baking under the oppressive sun so near their world.

Some were very small, and not worth his time at all. He needed diversity, he needed to find a place to go that wouldn’t bore him after just a few years. Some had varying colors. Some were green and blue. But they had no humans, no creatures similar to what he might be, what those in this world were. Darkness prevailed during the night, and only the life of animals existed at any time. Other worlds were extremely barren, like a rock, but far too large to be simply that. Zeken twisted, revealing more worlds, but each too small or to barren to bother with. His wings clamped tight to his back again as his feet found solid ground. The pinpricks of light faded and the worlds closed off again. The silence and darkness slipped away like ink, and was replaced by his sanctuary and the soft glow of the light that flickered back into existence at his presence.

The orb of light faded from his hands and as Zeken turned, he found one of his young human servants standing at the door. When he turned his dark eyes on the human, he bowed low in apology for meeting the creature’s eyes without being spoken to directly. Zeken stepped forward fluidly, his shoes making no noise as he walked, and as he went to the door, he paused to run a hand down the human’s face and show his teeth in a small smile. The human looked down, shrinking back, and Zeken moved away, back upstairs and into the front hall, up the second flight of stairs that branched left and right. He went left, passing other pale-skinned humans that bowed low at his presence and stepped away so he could walk unhindered. His intention was to go to the library and find books that might give him insight on other inhabited worlds.

After all, he, like a very select few others, was feared world-wide here. It’d be much more entertaining and useful to find another world, and perhaps even reconnect with an old friend in the process.

Back in meditation chambers with another book in hand, the air grew more dense and black around the dark creature. Her hair molding with the air itself. She had found what she had been looking for. The perfect combination would unlock this world. Long ago some mage had taken a particularly special interest in a place named after the dirt humans stood on. Surely a place called that was worth just that. However this book had suggestions between the lines. A place she might find more interesting than she first supposed. Yet that mage had created a barriers and shields, traps and mines. There was no way to access this Earth without carefully navigating the labyrinth that lay before her now.

Summoning up all her energies, Adrasteia began working. Using what clues she had in the book to guide her part of the way, she guessed with the rest. Occasionally an explosion or nasty magical backlash almost got past her guard. Still she pressed on, until, finally she was rewarded with a rift into that dimension. Looking through that small scar in space before her, her glowing orange eyes brightened in anticipation. It looked like an interesting world. She pushed the portal closer to get a better look.

On Earth in a park, children were playing for the last few minutes before they had to go inside for the night. Behind one child, a sliver of black formed and opened. A dark being with flowing long hair glanced through at the children, her eyes focusing on the carefree attitude of the one she was right behind. Laughing, she swirled away. Startled the child turned around and stared into the night. The others walked over confused. He pretended nothing was wrong and laughed it off. Later that night though, as he tried to sleep in his room alone, the little boy remembered the haunting laugh and curled tightly under his blankets with his bear clutched close.