Darkness was enraptured. The light that was sprayed across the walls, illuminating almost all of the room in its blueness. To anyone else, it was a dreary monotone that quickly lost its allure, but to the creature that lived its life in black and white it was like a whole new world.

It crept closer, towards the giant glowing orb. It felt like a sort of gravity attracting it to the object, like a moth that flew near a flame. But much like the moth, Darkness instinctively knew that flying too close would end in danger. There was no beauty in this world that held no danger.

Friendship, too, held its own dangers. Even as Darkness had found everything that it sought, the memories of the past couple of weeks seemed to pound at it. Boggy had been the most beautiful thing in Darkness’s life for the longest time, but the relationship had been too lopsided. His friend had become his caretaker, and the guilt had driven Darkness to the brink.

Staring at the sheer blueness of the room, Darkness’s thought seemed to switch. It went from wallowing in pain to thinking about its pain. Absentmindedly swirling through the air, Darkness thought, for the first time, how it could fix its problems.

It had never had any problems to fix; or rather, it had never even thought to change its situation. When it had lived its life in fear of light, Darkness had accepted that as its existence, and wallowed in the depths of a cave, scratching drawings into its walls. Until Boggy came and changed everything. Darkness had never done anything like that.

But even with everything that it had ever wanted in its sight, it was clear that there was more necessary. Just looking at light wasn’t enough for Darkness. It had to make something out of it.

And that was when something clicked. Darkness had to work to solve its own problems. It couldn’t continue to just sit around until somebody asked it to do something.

There was another click. This one was audible. It was followed by a whir, and a bang, and a couple of other strange, innocuous sounds. All of them came from the door, which was now slowly creaking open. A plain orange light trickled in, creating a barrier against the blue which pushed against it.

Darkness panicked; it hadn’t expected to be interrupted in its contemplation. Trying to find some hiding-place, it scrunched itself against the wall next to the door, blending as well as it could in plain sight.

In walked the oldest human that Darkness had ever seen. To be fair, it hadn’t seen too many humans, besides the ones that were walking around down here, but this human was covered in wrinkles. Darkness itched to get a closer look, but stood back as it saw a familiar face follow the man inside.

It was Karla. Her body was scrunched up in a ball of light, which seemed very similar to the orb that Darkness had been analyzing just previously. She seemed to be in deep discussion with the old man, neither of them even looking near Darkness, much to its relief.

Darkness almost jumped off the wall as it realized that they were actually talking in the monster's language. Even the human! Darkness hadn’t even realized that any human actually knew the tongue of the monsters.

But as they conversed, the human gave a hand gesture, moving the bubble that Karla was trapped in. It shot into the large, shining orb. A scream of pain or terror, Darkness couldn’t tell, echoed off the small, enclosed walls of the room.

Darkness inched its way up the wall, trying to avoid any attention until it was flat against the ceiling, far removed from any of the eyeballs that were inside the room. The old human, seemingly done talking to Karla, turned around with a haughty inclination of his head and closed the door behind him as he left.

And with that, the room was empty save for the two monsters. Darkness listened as Karla cursed and swore vengeance against the human With each passing second, it grew increasingly awkward. Darkness doubted that Karla would want to see it. After how angry she had been when she flew away, Darkness had no doubts in its mind that she hated it with a passion.

But… could it really just leave her here, stranded and in obvious pain? Darkness struggled on the inside, trying to find an easy answer to the problem that was in front of it. After a brief struggle with its conscience, and a swift loss, the answer was obvious. Darkness let out a breathless sigh, and drifted downwards, falling into Karla’s sight.

The bird looked as though it was experiencing gravity ten times over, sprawled down at the bottom of the blue orb, muscles twitching as she tried to move. Her eyes were glazed over, but her beak still managed to work out curses. “You-- you stupid sorcerer! I hope that you get eaten by a blood worm, and get a wand shoved up your--”

“Hello.” Darkness’ raspy voice cut through her words, and Karla started. As much as she could, anyway. Her eyes turned upwards and widened as she saw the amorphous blob of black floating above her.

“What…” Even in obvious pain, she managed to put an obnoxious look on her face. “How did you get here?”

The distaste was obvious, and was almost enough for Darkness to leave and run away from the room as quickly as it could. But it steeled itself and looked into Karla’s eyes. “I don’t know why you hate me, but I can’t leave you here. I’m going to help you escape.”

She scoffed. “Really? You’re going to help me escape?” She shook her head, a jerky movement. “And how are you going to do that?”

Darkness paused. It hadn’t considered that question. “The human can turn it off, can’t he?”

“Probably.” Karla sank down a little bit. She cast her gaze down to the floor. In a quiet voice, she said, “I don’t think that we can harm him, Darkness. When he got me in that orb, there was nothing that I could do.” Defeat sounded clear beneath the words.

“That’s a lie. Surely there’s something that we can do.” Darkness argued, desperately looking for a plan.

“Like what? I don’t even know if this orb will disappear if he dies. He seemed pretty set on using it.” Karla let out a long sigh. “Besides, even if we manage to get rid of the orb, then what? We’re trapped in a small room, underground, surrounded by guards. Let’s face it, Darkness. We’re screwed.”

Darkness couldn’t believe what it was hearing. It sounded so… not Karla. Never in a million years would it have thought it would hear those words coming from her mouth. Despite itself, it felt angry at the bird. “What, so you’re giving up just like that?” Its raspy voice came out a little bit more quickly, the closest it had ever come to furious.

“Yes. I’m giving up.” Any fight that was left in her evaporated. Her body relaxed. After a moment of hesitation, she said, “Listen, Darkness. I’m sorry about the things that I said that day. I didn’t really mean it. I planned on giving you the magical shinies, but after Edie yelled at me…” She averted her eyes. “I just blew up I guess. I’m not looking for an apology or anything, just… sorry.”

Those were exactly the words that, not thirty minutes ago, Darkness would have given anything to have heard. But not now. The apology filled Darkness with a fury that it never would have expected to feel thirty minutes ago. “Stop it.”

Darkness felt cold, an oddity for a being that never felt temperature. Karla looked back up, confused. “What? I just told you I’m sorr--”

“Stop being so-- so weak.” Darkness fumbled for the words in its anger. “I’m glad that you don’t hate me. I really am. But you need to get out right now, so be more-- more like you!”

Karla rose a little. Her beak was upturned, and her eyes narrowed in hurt. “You think that I’m not like myself? What’s that even supposed to mean?”

“You don’t need to be mean. Just stop being so defeated.” Darkness finally figured out what it wanted to say. “The Karla that I know would never be defeated, not in a thousand years!”

There was a moment of silence. When Darkness looked back into Karla’s eyes, it saw a familiar glint in there once more. “Yeah.” She said quietly. “Yeah! What am I doing, moping around like this?”

“Exactly!” Darkness felt its body vibrate in excitement. “We’re getting out of here, no matter what we have to do!”

Karla screeched into the air, a note of pure enthusiasm and rage. “Let’s kill that bastard!”

Darkness paused. The liveliness it had been feeling sapped out of its body. “Well, we don’t really need to kill anybody, do we?”

“What are you talking about?” Karla snarled. “That human was the one who got us in this situation in the first place! He wants to do something bad with all the energy he’s collecting from me, and I’d rather die than let him have the satisfaction.”

The black blob shifted its mass uncomfortably. “Well, it’s just that… do we really have to kill?”

“Darkness, look into my eyes.” Karla raised her face and spoke directly to it. “You can get out of here, can’t you? I don’t know how your strange body works, but you can get out of here, can’t you?”

Darkness nodded hesitantly.

“There’s only one thing that can be done.” She looked somber and serious, as though this wasn’t the first time that she’d heard the speech she was giving. “Life can be taken and given. I don’t know why this choice was given to you, but it’s one that you have to make. If you let that human -- that monster -- do what he wants with this orb, do you think that he’ll avoid harming civilians? Innocents? Boggy?” She leaned forward with every question.

Physically and mentally recoiling, Darkness processed what Karla was telling it. This couldn’t be. There was a human who was going to hurt Boggy?

There wasn’t a single place in the Underground that Darkness couldn’t reach. There was nowhere that the old sorcerer could hide from it, besides the sunlight. It had inspected all of the defenses around here as well; most of them seemed to rely on a physical body, and weren’t built for a creature that could float and change its shape at will.

In short, this was the perfect opportunity for Darkness to repay the debt that it owed Boggy. Darkness steeled it's resolve, which gave its figure a rather blocky appearance. It took a nervous breath, and said, “I can do it.”

Karla nodded, as though his reaction had been inevitable. “Good luck.” With that, her entire body slumped to the bottom of the orb. Darkness approached her in alarm, but quickly realized that she was just fast asleep. It realized that she must have been holding her exhaustion at bay for the entirety of their conversation, and felt a pinch of guilt.

But now wasn’t the time for guilt. It was time for action. Darkness swirled itself around the room, taking one long, last look at the blueness. If things went wrong, this might be the last time that it ever saw the beauty of a color. It felt a tinge of sadness at the thought, but was mostly satisfied that it had managed to see it to begin with.

Begrudgingly, Darkness floated towards the door. As cautiously as it could, it sent a small tendril of its essence underneath the door, checking doubly to make sure that nobody noticed it. The guards were still outside, but they were preoccupied, busy arguing with each other and not paying attention. Even if they were, Darkness doubted that they were on the lookout for unusually dark shadows on the walls.

With all the grace of the night, it slithered underneath the door, making it as far away as possible from the inattentive guards before retaining its natural shape in the air. It shook itself a little bit; conforming itself to a different shape for too long gave it cramps. It had dealt with the cape because it allowed it to be with Boggy, but it dreaded the day that it had to go back into it.

Darkness floated down the hallways, wary of danger around every corner. It prepared to hide or run away at the first sight of any magic, but none was present. The dank, disgusting tunnels of beneath were barren of any life, except for that of the sorcerers who called it home. And Darkness just spotted their leader in the distance.

Orange flame blossomed directly above his hand, which he held to the roof. It just barely licked the top of the tunnel, making scorch marks on the ceiling. The old human turned his head to look behind him regularly, as though he were positive that somebody followed him. Darkness was sure that it hadn’t been seen; it was probably just another facet of the sorcerer’s insanity manifesting itself.

Darkness followed the man down the hallway, slinking into the shadows and staying a dozen meters behind. It instinctively knew that this wasn’t the time to act.

The sorcerer grew increasingly more paranoid as he walked down the hallway. He moved in more erratic patterns, almost zig-zagging on the narrow pathways at times. Darkness felt a shiver of fear run down its being; had it been found?

Almost suddenly, the sorcerer took a right. Straight into the wall.

He passed through, disappearing into nothing. Darkness stared at where his prey had been standing just moments ago, uncomprehending of what had just happened.

It ran to the wall that the wizard had passed through, and gently probed it with a small tendril. To its great surprise, it passed through the wall as though it wasn’t there at all. Darkness pushed its entirety through the wall. An illusion.

It stopped in its tracks as it saw what was in front of it. Dozens, no, hundreds of glowing circles, all of which seemed to glow slightly different shades of blue. Darkness could have spent all day simply looking at the colors, but it reminded itself that it had a mission. It slowly drifted over the circles, all of which shined menacingly, hoping beyond hope that nothing would happen.

Nothing did happen. Darkness relaxed a little bit and looked around. The room that had been hidden was clearly the human’s private quarters. There was magic everywhere, not a single natural light source to be seen. It was filled with leather-bound tomes, all of which seemed to be as thick as Boggy’s head.

Darkness shook itself. There was no time to gawk around. It looked around once more, this time focused on finding the old human.

There! Sitting on a leather chair in the corner, reading a book with leisure. Any paranoia that he had had evaporated. In this room, he simply looked like any other old human, just enjoying what years he had left.

He didn’t notice as Darkness crawled around the room. He didn’t notice that the shadows around him seemed to get darker and deeper, holding the very essence of the night.

He noticed when Darkness put his body around the man’s throat, slowly squeezing it. And then, a surprise to both the murderer and the about-to-be-murdered, a cold raspy voice sang into the man’s ear.

“Teach me how to use magic.”