Vision Of Escaflowne Fan Fiction ❯ Shadow War ❯ Shadow War 5 ( Chapter 5 )

[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]

Dilandau drifted, weightless within Selena’s mind. He had no physical body to keep him grounded, though he fashioned himself a transparent, mental counterpart, thinking about his body floating weightless, curled up with his knees tucked to his chest, encircled by his arms. He pretended he was still in the real world, garbed in his heavy armored uniform, even in sleep. That was one advantage to being a completely mental entity: the armor had no weight. He was a ghost, pretending to close eyes he didn’t have to get sleep he didn’t need. He rationalized that mental fatigue had nothing to do with physical limitations and that sleep was necessary to recoup energy lost in thought. It was also an easy way to pass time, which he had in mass quantity now.
He could catch glimpses of what Selena was thinking at particular moments when she was awake. It was easier to infiltrate her mind when she was at rest, let his own thoughts rule for a few brief hours. Dilandau liked to scare her and watch her reactions to the things he did. Sometimes he showed carnage he caused during the war, other times it was a concoction of fantasy and violent desires which he put on display. He was getting rather good at using his imagination.
He allowed himself to leave the sleep state, looking around the black void. It wasn’t really black, nor was it a void. That was the way he preferred to see it. He found it more acceptable than the grassy fields of fond memories Selena kept at the forefront of her mind. That plane made him feel hazy, like he was out of place. It made him forget his situation and the dangers that accompanied it. He had almost lost himself there once. No, the void was a much better setting to preserve his sense of self, even if it was less natural.
Somewhere close he could hear a new voice, stronger than his own in Selena’s mind. It was not her, the undertones were darker, lacking the high morals she thought with, lived with. A creature, less than human, more than animal, was with him inside her head. “Who’s there?” he called into the blackness, stretching until he felt his foot find the imaginary floor. “Hiding is impossible.”
Laughter, dark and sneering leeched out of the darkness around him. “Oh, but I’m so good at it,” came the raspy reply. “After all, I’ve been hiding since my birth.”
“What. . .?”
“I have been so many people and things. It’s hard to tell where the facade stops and I begin.”
“Who are you?” he shouted, turning on heel as he felt something brush the back of his neck.
“But then, it was easy enough to tell the difference between their deaths and mine,” it said thoughtfully. “Even though I played each one of them, their deaths did not give me pain.”
“This is nonsense,” Dilandau muttered. But beneath his disavowal of the words, a knot of dread was forming in the pit of his stomach.
“My death was much different. You gave me pain beyond anything I had ever felt before. Took my life in a slow dance of twisting metal.”
“Do you speak to Selena or me?” he asked cautiously, knowing the answer.
“The girl has killed no one. Except for perhaps you. But the job is not complete yet, might never be. She is weak, and now so are you, Dilandau!”
“I do not die so easily,” he stated calmly. “I remember you, now.”
“Not really,” the voice hissed. “You remember that boy I killed. That which gave you reason to kill me. But you do not dare think of my face.”
It was a true statement. He was thinking about Migel’s face instead of the striped creature with the hollow green eyes that strangled his soldier to death. “You have no face!” “Are you afraid I will come out of the dark shadows you have constructed around you? I could, you know.”
The whole idea of Zongi being there was wrong. Zongi taunting him was even more so, considering where they were. Yet, the other’s confidence, with his words, his threats, quickly undermined his own. Dilandau felt the hair on the back of his neck rise. It wasn’t right. “You are no one! Nothing!”
“And now, so are you!” it accused. “You have no face to call your own, no form. You are just as faceless as I was in life,” It calmed, “That is quite ironic.”
“I remember who I am.”
“As do I. I remember who BOTH of us are. And because I remember, I will take what is left of your life, and the life of this girl in order to live again.”
It was Dilandau’s turn to laugh, if nervously. “You can not take life without a body.”
“If there can be a body without life, then surely there is life without a body. That is what you are, isn’t it?” it cooed.
“You tell me, all knowing freak of nature!” he called mockingly, giving a deep bow to the shadows. “If you can take life from me, then it must work both ways.”
“No, I’m afraid it doesn’t.” And with that, the shadow descended upon him, staring coldly through his soul with hollow green eyes.