Darkness had looked at the dying man in front of him. More specifically, the man that he was killing. A man that had plotted to kill so many people, to kill his best friend, was dying so effortlessly.

It was sickening.

The sorcerer struggled and fought against the monster’s grip to no avail. Darkness tightened its tendrils around the man’s body until he couldn’t lift a limb. The man opened his mouth, maybe to let out a scream or a shout, but didn’t find the air within him to do so.

Darkness tried to forget what it was doing. It was for a good purpose. It was for the greater good. If it didn’t do this, things would only be so worse. Those weren’t lies, they were objective truths. But then why, when the sorcerer stared him in the eye and summoned a pillar of flame, did Darkness feel an overwhelming sense of relief?

The flame erupted out of the sorcerer’s hand and dissolved the wooden ceiling, seemingly bound for the heavens. Embers floated down to the ground, finding purchase on the bookshelves and burning anew. Fire caught throughout the rest of the room quickly, turning what used to be a study into a furnace.

Darkness fell backwards with a screech, black essence dissolving as orange light hit it. A bolt of pain ran through its being. It watched as its body shrank and shrank, the blaze overpowering its very existence.

In a bid for survival, Darkness ran away from the center of the fire, floating in a haphazard fashion towards the rows and rows of bookcases that extended into the back of the room. It found immediate relief as it reentered the murky shadows, but didn’t stop moving until it found the far end of the study. Once it hit the wall, it let out a long sigh, equal parts relief and panic. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go at all!

Darkness steeled itself, and peeked out at the chair where the sorcerer had been dying just seconds previously. The human stood up shakily, then coughed drily into his hand. With a mad-eyed stare, he surveyed the room. Blood dribbling from his mouth, flames flickering on his fingertips, and smoke rising behind him, he yelled, “Come out, Imperial assassin! You can’t hide forever!”

This was said in the human tongue, which Darkness couldn’t understand, but he was nevertheless intimidated. Just looking onto the scene made it feel like hiding in a corner somewhere and never coming out again.

The sorcerer grinned. “Well, if you’re not coming out yourself, I suppose that I’ll have to do it myself!” He pointed his hand towards a bookshelf. It, along with a nearby stool and stack of books, exploded into flame.

Darkness now felt it had plenty of motivation to escape this place before he ended up like that bookshelf. It ran through the maze of shelves, bouncing from wall-to-wall, looking for some sort of way to escape. From the frantic searching, it appeared that there was none.

The sorcerer had clearly constructed the room such that there was only one entrance and one exit. With fear, Darkness shifted its perception towards the single door that led back to the underground. In front of it stood a wildfire of bookshelves, crackling and spreading with each passing second. And in front of them all was a flame-wielding maniac that, through the power of deduction, was coming increasingly closer to killing Darkness.

Darkness took several deep breaths. It was small, barely the size of a housecat. It could get past the sorcerer unnoticed easily. The problem was getting past alive. There was scarcely a shadow present near the door, and the pathway was littered with light. Moving through the library as it was would be suicide.

Not for the first time, although maybe for the last, Darkness wished that Boggy was with it. If it could have hidden inside his armour this wouldn’t be a problem at all!

If only…

The being of shadows spotted a small wooden crate on the ground next to it. The top was open, but the sides were intact, if dust covered. An idea popped into Darkness’ mind, and almost as if by instinct, it crawled into the box and flipped it upside down. There was immediate relief as all of the surrounding light was shut away, and darkness reigned once more.

More importantly, Darkness couldn’t be seen from outside. With this, it could make its way out of the door without a problem!

“Come out, you imperial ape! If you think that you can hide forever, then you’re sorely mistaken.” The sorcerer growled as he paced around the study, checking every single nook and cranny that could possibly hold a human being. He turned the corner, and approached the box Darkness was hiding in.

Darkness held perfectly still. There was no reason that the sorcerer would check underneath a tiny box like this. There was absolutely nothing to worry about.

The sorcerer took a couple of steps into the hallway, then a couple more, and soon the thuds of his footsteps were well past where Darkness was. Very, very carefully, the box was nudged forward a couple of inches.

There was a sharp squeak. The sorcerer had turned around. He started walking in the other direction, making a beeline for the box. Everything in Darkness’ body told it to run away, to abandon this pretense of hiding and get away as quickly as it could.

The sorcerer stood above the box menacingly, staring at it.

Darkness tensed its essence, preparing itself to run away.

The sorcerer raised his hand towards the box. But before Darkness could make a mad dash for the exit, it noticed something baffling. Tears flowed down the man’s face.

“This was the same box that my apprentice brought down that day.” His voice crackled as he spoke to no one in particular. He brushed the side of the box, rattling the inside. Darkness hoped against hope that he wouldn’t move the box, that this touching moment would end with the sorcerer walking away.

Its worst fears came true. The sorcerer picked the box up, leaving Darkness exposed and evaporating. Thankfully, it seemed like the man was engrossed in memories, not even noticing the puddle of simmering darkness that was on the floor.

Darkness rushed away, trying to find some sort of protection before it entirely disintegrated. It popped itself underneath the first thing that it saw; a ratty old book that was more stain than page. It wasn’t the best cover, but it was better than nothing.

With nothing to lose, except its life, Darkness booked it for the door. Unfortunately, the sight of a moving novel managed to shake the sorcerer out of his nostalgia. “Wait, what? Stop right there, you… book!”

Just as Darkness managed to cross the door, a fireball whizzed behind it, hitting the floor in front of the entryway. The floor that was covered with runes and circles that did who knows what. That mystery was quickly solved when they exploded.

Darkness was propelled into the dark unlit tunnel, and after a second regaining its composure, it threw its disguise into the sludgy running water in the middle. It wanted to take a minute to bask in the refreshingly unlit tunnels, but there wasn’t any time. This point was punctuated by another fireball cutting its way through the smoke that was clouding the doorway.

“You can’t run away from forever!” The sorcerer burst through the entryway, eyebrows ablaze. He looked around in vain, but it looked like he couldn’t detect Darkness in the dark tunnel. The shadow being relaxed a little bit, but it knew that it wouldn’t last forever. As long as the sorcerer could shoot fire, there was a chance that it could die in a single hit. That was especially true considering Darkness’ size. Most of its mass had been burned off, leaving it the size of a small mouse. Forget a fireball, even a particularly strong sunbeam could destroy it!

Which made Darkness’ panic all the more intense when the sorcerer sent a wave of fire to his left, opposite of where it was standing. The hallway lit up like it was daytime for a second, destroying every shadow in its path.

The sorcerer turned to his right, and Darkness ran away. At the very last minute, it managed to turn the corner and get into a new tunnel, just avoiding the torrent of fire that erupted behind it.

Darkness sped down the new tunnel, making sure to take as many turns as it could. If it kept running through the hallways it would lose the sorcerer eventually. The problem was, what would it do after that?

It could always escape the underground, cautiously make its way back to Boggy. It didn’t need to live inside Boggy’s armor anymore, but it could watch him from the shadows. Protect him from knives in the night, make sure that he didn’t die.

That was probably the smartest idea. But even thinking about it sent a tingle of guilt down Darkness’ being. There was still a-- well, friend was a stretch, but an acquaintance down here. And if she died, Darkness probably wouldn’t be able to forgive itself. No matter how small of a loss it really was.

With a mental sigh, Darkness took a sharp left, making its way towards the room that Karla was locked in. It had a pretty good idea of where everything in the tunnels were. To its surprise, it had a good memory for places, even though it had spent most of its life in a single cave.

Every corner it turned, it feared that it might run into a stray fireball, but luckily the hallways were free of sorcerers. Darkness managed to make it back to the hallway with the bickering apprentices with ease, although it felt an aching fatigue ripple through its body.

“I’m telling you not to worry. The master’s got it all under control. After all, he wouldn’t mess the operation this close to the finish line, would he?” The male apprentice was lounging on the floor, wringing sewage water out of his robes.

“Not on purpose, obviously! But you don’t find it strange? There have been these explosion noises coming from over there, and the master has never been this late for his hourly checkup. There’s something weird going on here.” The female apprentice was pacing agitatedly in front of the heavy metal door.

“Explosions!?” The male apprentice sat up with urgency. “You don’t think that Intigo had another outbreak of cholera, do you?”

They both shivered. Darkness supposed that was an unpleasant memory.

“I mean, I don’t think that the master would mind if we checked what was happening over there, right? I mean for all we know, we would be killing him if we didn’t.”

“Yeah, that’s absolutely right! And if we do find that the tunnels are flooding again, that’ll give us enough time to run away.” Another shudder from the male apprentice, as they ran down the halls towards where the sorcerer was trying to exterminate Darkness.

The apprentices abandoned the door to Karla, leaving the door with the sphere unguarded. Darkness couldn’t help but feel like this was too lucky, and put its guard up. Very cautiously, it poked a single feeler underneath the door and looked at the situation on the other side.

It was immediately struck with how beautiful the color was once more. Darkness lost itself in the blueness of the sphere, staring it at with wonder. If only it’d been able to see it its entire life.

Sadly, it had to be shaken out of its admiration by a shrieking bird. “Darkness? Is that you?”

Darkness mentally prepared itself, and brought the rest of its body into the room with the sphere. It looked like the only danger here was being yelled to death by Karla. “Yes. I failed. I couldn’t kill the sorcerer.”

Unexpectedly, Karla just sighed. “That’s what I hoped. If he’d died and this sphere was still here, I could have been stuck here forever.” She kicked the sphere, releasing a magical blue spark into the air. “So how are you going to get me out of here?”

Darkness hesitated. “I don’t know. I don’t think I can.” It felt embarrassed to say that out loud.

Karla stared at him for a moment. “Then why did you come back?”

“...Huh?”

“If you don’t have a plan to save me, then why did you come here? If you got here by yourself you could have gotten away. Why didn’t you leave while you could?” The bird seemed to be genuinely curious why Darkness hadn’t left.

“I didn’t… want to leave a friend behind?” Darkness wasn’t entirely sure it would call her a friend, but it was the easiest word to use. “It would make me feel bad?”

There was a moment of silence as Karla digested that. Her eyes squinted, as though she was trying to perform a complex calculation. “But why didn’t you--”

Her question was interrupted as the sorcerer’s loud shouting permeated the room. “What in the hell were you doing?There’s some sort of spell trying to kill me, and you go looking for a burst pipe? I never should have let you doddering fools join me!”

“But sir--”

“No buts! Go check every inch of the tunnels, and if you find anything don’t come back until it’s dead.” There were two disappointed exhalations, and then the pattering of footsteps as the apprentices ran down the tunnel.

In an urgent hushed voice, Karla said, “Alright, I guess that we have a little bit of time before we get found.”

The door to the room started making familiar grinding and clanking noises.

“Never mind, we have less than a minute. Are you sure that there’s nothing you can do to get me out of here?”

Darkness racked its mind for some sort of solution to the problem. It couldn’t destroy the sphere, obviously-- it instinctively knew that touching it, especially as weak as the shadow was, would be harmful. There had to be some way!

To its horror, the door clicked open. Darkness tried to move out of the way, but it felt frozen to the floor.

The sorcerer looked into the room with surprise. It looked like he hadn’t been expecting his would-be assassin to be standing next to his most treasured secret. He also hadn’t been expecting his assassin to be nothing more than a blob of black.

A grin grew on the man’s face, and he threw his hand in front of him. Even though Darkness moved away as quickly as it could, it realized that there was no way it was going to outrun the fireball. But in its frantic panic, it realized that it could hide from it.

Darkness was incredibly small, which was perfect for melting into the small cracks that were embedded into the surface of the stone floor. With a momentary struggle, it stuffed most of itself into the floor, hoping that it would be enough shelter to prevent its death.

There was a loud whoosh as the fireball flared above, searing the small lumps of darkness that hadn’t quite managed to fit into the cracks. Not enough to cause any serious damage, but enough to send a jolt of pain through Darkness’ being.

The fireball flew straight and true, aimed exactly where Darkness had been not a second before. And a second later, it slammed into the blue orb that held Karla.

The orb gave way only a little bit, a dent forming where the flame made contact with the magic. But that was as much as it gave, and sparks flew as the two forces collided. The orb grew a more brilliant blue, and a high pitched squeal deafened everyone who had ears.

The noise stopped abruptly, along with the light show. After a second of silence, Darkness peaked a sneaky tendril out, curious what had happened.

The sorcerer let out a relieved chuckle. “Oh, that was close. I thought that it was going to--”

The orb exploded.