Lord Joyde The Madman: Heylo, everybody! How are you all doing?

Yes, yes.

Its 1 AM in the morning for me when I started typing this chapter.

We've heard, seen and experienced it all before.

Here's to hope I don't make too many mistakes.

As usual, since this is a chapter I'm typing whilst fairly very tired, please do take it with a grain of salt or three.

The real, edited version of this chapter will be available in roughly fifteen hours after its been posted.

You've been warned...

Don't mind me guys and girls! I'm just a line break...

The Day The Fire Nat-AHEM... The Day The Espers Attacked... - Early Morning - Croatian Coast (Rijeka) - Audrey's Point Of View...

"H-huh?" I muttered out as my eyes opened.

My head hurts..

Like really, really hurts.

Like hell and back.

"Oww..." My right hand, which I now realized was bleeding heavily, was nearly instantly placed on the left side of my forehead. I touched something wet.

Dark, almost blackened yet rich blood flowed freely from my apparently deformed skull. My left hand, which I was using to support myself, appeared to have a giant piece of metal stuck inside of my wrist. Yet, for some reason, I couldn't really feel the all that much of the pain?

No...

I...

I can *feel*, the pain.

Yet, I do not seem to be reacting to it as I normally would.

...

I guess it must be because of the adrenaline. My heart is beating so, so very quickly.

There are voices, but my vision is too stained with blood for me to actually see where they are coming from. Or who.

Suddenly, a warm presence slams against my right arm, the one which I placed onto my head. The presence, the strange touch yanked my arm away.

In fact, it yanked my entire, ravaged body away. I turned my head around as whomever or whatever began dragging me to somewhere and managed to grab a glimpse of my legs. At first glance, they appeared to be okay. No real wounds or protruding bones but... well, they were turned the wrong way around."-ISS! MISS! Can you hear me?" A hurried tone was ushered into my ears as some degree of reality returned to me.

Guess whatever healing factor the shadows gave me must've kicked in, finally.

Either that, or what life energy remains from my brother.. Never mind. Not the time."Ishhh.gg..." I tried to reply as I turned my head back around."Good enough." The enigmatic and mysterious voice replied."Listen; you've lost a lot of blood, your legs are ... still there and there is an open wound on your head. Somehow, you are still alive. Please do your best to remain awake if you wish to stay that way."

That is definitely not how you keep someone half dead calm, but I don't really possess the strength to counter. I'd say that the voice is... male? Not totally sure, my brain seems to be a little bit jumbled up."Shit, shes fading UHH... Oh, you probably wanna know what happened to you, right?"

Now that sparked my full attention as I turned towards the person, who from the shape of the body, was probably either a man or a really buff lesbian. The voice had no... voice?

Its like I'm hearing them without working ears... maybe they arent working and this is just the shadows helping me hear?

That seems plausible."A-anyways, you were in a taxi when these wierd people with super powers suddenly came along and attacked the city. Oh, do you know which city you are in right now?"

If memory serves, I should be in... Rijeka?

Somehow, I manage to nod towards the person, which seems to pour even more blood straight out of my skull."Ugh, don't move I-fuck, anyways it seems you were caught in some blast. Your car exploded and sent you flying... somehow you survived that and here you are."

Ah.

Espers.

I remember watching them do horrible things on TV.

Hell, we could've been the best of friends if they didn't nearly kill me just now. Or well, they could have been fairly decent slaves.

I am kind of an esper myself, right?

... wait a moment...

I cant use magic right now because my mouth isn't working correctly. No chants, no spells powerful enough to heal myself well enough to even stand.

Huh, my mana supply seems to be draining pretty quickly too... maybe my body is using it naturally to draw in void energy and heal me?

But... I ...

If the shadows come to my aid by force of will...

Then, even if my body is as ravaged as it is, so long as my brain still works...

I should be able to heal myself.

Closing my eyes caused my would-be saviors heartbeat to quicken. I can smell their fear, their hopelessness and enroaching insanity. The entire event was crushing them and I was this persons last claim to humanity before they went fully insane.

It almost makes me want to die just to see them shatter.

But... if the espers are here...

There is far richer prey to be feasted upon than one, measly human.

Hell, I'm more than a little interested in what esper souls taste like!

My focus returned, my mind stabilized, I finally called upon the dark via force of will alone. Strange purplish energies erupted out of my skull, etching themselves onto reality almost as if in utter defiance. Huh, this must be what Leo calls Psionic Energy... energy created by the brain to influence the world around the user.

Kinda like magic but... more..

Real.

Deciding that I liked this new or rather newly-discovered power, I willed the shadows around us to move from their natural posistions, raising into the sky in a very unnatural manner before descending upon me and swallowing both me and the person who saved me whole.

Within seconds, I was standing tall upon the shadow-crushed pavement. The sheer blackness of the situation around me only serving to further my power... I had this idea for a while now but, looks like the way my powerups work can be summed up like this: the greater the sin, the greater the reward.

Kinda like what you'd guess Lucifer to be like, or demons in general.

I like this idea.

I love it.

"Hn. So, your name was Elric. Twenty-four years old, CNC technician. I'll remember you for a while, considering that you saved me and all... your soul will surely offer plenty of warmth as its being digested." I rubbed the egdes of my exposed stomach with a maddening giggle.

It would seem that whatever the espers have done and are doing here is incredibly sinful. And there is nobody to take advantage of all the gathering dark. Or well, there was nobody, untill now.

I looked at my right hand again and noticed that I wasnt even in my Shadow Form."So much power, yet this isn't even my limit?" But I dont remember being this powerful... and as a very prideful person, I'm sure you can tell that this isn't something I'd think or say very easily.

...

Y'know, this combined with my strange, very Leo-like resistance to pain...

...

Did I get stronger by fucking my brother?

...

Well, I sure hope thats the case. 'Cause we aint stopping that anytime soon, I'm making sure of it once I get back home."On that note..."

Turning around myself, I noticed that the general area was strangely devoid of shadows with only a tiny bit of them covering the surfaces they should be covering whole. Light is the absence of Dark, just as much as Dark is the absence of Light.

After you take one away, it takes time for nature to return to its original state. Hmmm...

Perhaps I should not eat too much darkness then?

Oh who am I kidding; LETS DRENCH THIS PLACE IN LIGHT!

I began walking across the shattered city, consuming every single recently-killed soul in sight. There were so many butchered bodies strewn around, each of them killed in strange, yet wonderous new ways! Tortured and defiled and despoiled in ways that were, quite sadly, beyond even me.

Good thing that their torturers couldn't enjoy the feast they cooked.

Then again, cooks rarely get more than a taste of their own work before the table is set, no?

At that same time... - Japan - Nighttime - Yuko's Point Of View...

"Bye girlfriends!" Waving my friends good bye and deciding to retire for the night allowed me to finally distance myself from the thick, chemical-fueled air of Tokyo's night. In that same second, I realized that something was very, very wrong.

A short time after Leo's departure, I found myself craving human.. or well, personal contact with other people much more than usual. This caused me to seek out new friends and allies, most of which I found within the newly-established Trinity.

The Trinity is a union which consisted of my clan, the inhumans of Tokyo and the AI organization known as MAXIMA.

It is our job to defend and rebuild Tokyo from the insanity that has befallen our beloved matchstick city. Within the first week, we managed to annihilate the remainder of Human Ignorance groups scattered across Japan, as well as quell any form of xenophobic gatherings within the Inhuman society itself.

Things were, suffice to say, going decently well. With me standing at the top of the Trinity as a pseudo-Queen that has the power to veto, we have managed to so far avoid making any mistakes. This has caused our popularity to skyrocket and, though the world does not yet know the full truth, Trinity is one of the first Omni-Man organizations of the world.

Omni-man is the term the three geezers standing at the top alongside me decided on as a unified term to reffer to both the humans and the inhumans as, jointly.

Anyways, why am I telling you all this, my invisible friends?

Well, as I said, we are charged with the rebuilding and DEFENSE of Japan.

So when someone decides to attack it, we rise up against them.

Just as this line of though finished, five separate ships warped into the sky above my city."CITIZENS OF JAPAN! KNOW THAT YOUR DOOM HAS COME! YET, YOU DO NOT NEED ALL DIE! SUBMIT AND BE SPARED OR FACE THE PURGE AT THE HANDS OF THE EXALTED!"

The Exalted?

I feel a myriad of powerful, psionic energies enemating from each of the ships. Smiling to myself, I rushed into a nearby dark alley and transformed into my Chaos form, skin ripping and blood drenching the walls around me.

You see, after my brother returned to Italy... I've become rather bored.

And thirsty for a good fight.

"Time to slake that thirst with some good ol' fashioned SLAUGHTER! HAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAH!" My maddened laughter was a bit too dramatic for my taste, but honestly I couldn't care less at the moment.

There were enemies to fight.

And I was the first in line, waiting for a battle to be...

Joined.

Several minutes later... - Back with Audrey...

Now, rather than just deshadowing dark alleyways, I decided to follow a path directed by the wonderful sounds around me. Gunfire and screams, blood splattering across the walls...

It was all so...

Euphoric.

Yet, it could use a little of ... touch, to it.

My, touch. To be perfectly exact.

This is how I happened upon an alley leading straight into a shootout, a rapid fire zone between two sides: one human and one esper.

Smiling to myself, I walked straight into the two sides line of fire.

Now, perhaps it was the shock of seeing their bullets stopped in mid-air.

Maybe it was the shadowy hands reaching from the ground.

Or maybe it was the fact that a young, creepy looking girl in tattered clothing walked into the middle of a warzone.

Either way, everybody on both sides stopped firing. And just as their paralysis began turning into utter confusion; they saw me smile.

"He... ehehe... hehe..."

Men and women alike shivered on both sides as I extended my arms towards each and began calling upon every single shadow, magic, physical and voidborne alike to collapse into two, sigular spheres just slightly above each of their designated palms.

"Ehe... hehehe... ehehe..."

They all began to run, their bodies screaming, their minds twisting and turning them all away from the danger as shocked espers rose up shoddy psionic barriers and human soldiers threw every bit of cover they had infront of themselves, all acting with an almost... hive-like mentality as they worked to protect themselves from me.

Yet, it all amounted to nothing. The endless hunger of the void channeled itself through me and onto reality, shattering it with a sickening, resounding crunch as the darkness reached its critical mass.

The people were shaking, shivering now.

I could almost taste their fear.

... I will send each and every last one of their souls, SCREAMING INTO THE VOID!

Their broken bodies.. no, nothing but skeletons and ashes will remain, littering the streets as both invader and defender alike lay dead, soulless upon the ground of war.

A final tone of laughter echoed throughout the suddenly brightly-lit street, my mind filling to the brim with ecstacy as the voids power rushed through me and whispered into my very darkened soul...

"Withering Exaltation."

A name.

The name of the spell I had just cast upon my unwilling, horrified audience as the unnatural brightness was suddenly forced to give way to the eternal dark.

There...

There were no screams.

Just the infinite blackness of space and time, twisting unnaturaly around me for the briefest moment as hundreds of souls were devoured within an instant, sacrificed to the endless powers of the Void.

In all the books of dark magic that I bought so far, one line stood above all others: The Void is a hungering beast. Fight it and it will fight back like a caged animal. Accept it and it will only devour you.

... feed it and the Void shall feed you back.

True to the books, as I sent these hundred souls of esper and man to the hungering void, I could feel its energies entering this reality for the sole purpose of feeding themselves into me.

The energy infused me, taking over my body within an instant as I found myself unable to hold all of the power within my human form, causing me to adopt my Shadow Form by force alone. I found myself glowing in darkness, my eyes twisting yellow, like my brothers, full of gold and power unending.

I used to envy eyes like these.

Now, they are mine.

My pink-colored hair became almost violet in color, the very threads of hair glowing unnaturaly, etching into themselves the imagery of deep space. Glowing stars and hungering black holes could be seen, animated, within the length of my hair.

Which seems to have extended itself to be, ahem, ass-length.

My outfit remained the same, apart from the fact that the shadows it was made of were far, far thicker than before. This.. is...

"Incredible."

Hmm...

If I were to guess, I'd say that my little intimate event with Leo was .... a key.

It opened a door I didn't even know was locked or existed.

I think that I wasn't supposed to open it quite yet. Maybe this is the power I should have had as the Queen of the Afterdark?

...

Is this why Arsene decided that the risk of waiting so long to make me a candidate was worth it? Because of my proximity to my brother and, in turn, to Chaos, he estimated that my powers would grow much more quickly than any of the other candidates?

Or perhaps there is an interaction caused by Void and Chaos coming so close together that I am currently unaware of? Hmm, I shall have to ask him once I see him next.

And the best way to achieve that... is to accomplish what I came here to do in the first place: Kill Millicia.

... that said, perhaps I should enjoy this delightfully horrifying feast first?

After all, that little bitch isn't going anywhere but souls do tend to... expire, somewhat quickly if left undisturbed.

Yes.

I think I shall indeed take my time and enjoy what is currently on my table!

Don't mind me guys and girls! I'm just a line break...

Dayum, its been so long since Audrey was in a chapter.

Yuko too but shes been mentioned, at least.

Hope you liked it, more coming soon.

Hopefully after I get some nice, LOONG SLEEP.

Anyways, read and review! And Good Morning/Day/Night to you all! ADIOS FOR NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!