Fighting Shadows

Slowly and carefully Mateus walked over the rough ground in the dying light. He could hear the various Spirit Beasts setting into their nests for the night. The sky above the cleft was still burning with sunset brilliance, but the cleft was buried in darkness already, and minute by minute descended into silence.

Suddenly Mateus felt his hair stand on end. Something was watching him. He stared around him in the darkness, trying to find the threat, but it was hopeless.

After a moment, a second creature joined the first, watching Mateus from the dark. Quickly his heart started pounding from danger. One beast is a danger, but two can mean a pack, and that would mean Mateus is dead.

Mateus no longer worried about the uneven ground and took off running. The nest by the Sky Queen was too far away, he needed to find protection now!

His foot stumbled in a crevice on the ground, and his ankle gave a sharp spike of pain. Mateus fell forward, and a burning line was raked down his back from the darkness.

As the smell of blood filled the air, eyes appeared in the darkness, glowing in desire and ridicule. Give up your pitiful struggles, they seemed to say, don't you know you're already dead?

Mateus glared back fiercely at the eyes, daring them to come closer. He might be injured, and look like easy prey, but Mateus had his sister to get back to. No matter what, he wasn't going to die tonight. He put his back to a tree, closed his eyes, and waited for them. He could not run anymore.

As the eyes drew closer, glowing in satisfaction - they seemed to think he had given up. But Mateus was gathering his essence and pouring it into the little bird tattoo. Hopefully she had an ability he could share - it was his only chance to preserve his life.

Cold energy like liquid ice poured into his blood from the tattoo, and instinctively Mateus pointed his hand at the nearest eyes. A shocking blue glow shot from his hand, lighting the darkness and rushing the beasts within! Desperately they tried to dodge his attack, but ice wrapped them wherever the light touched, turning the creatures into statues.

A sharp, enraged roar exploded from behind Mateus, the alpha of the pack, and a sharp pair of claws slashed at his legs. His concentration broken, the light vanished from Mateus' palm, and the surroundings descended into darkness again.

Mateus gasped in pain, the alpha still had its claws buried in his flesh, and in desperation Mateus decided to attempt an Entrapment.

If a Contract was an agreement between equals, an Entrapment was simply a cage. The Beast is sealed into the human's body, kept alive through essence but unable to escape. A Entrapped Beast can only be sealed for at most two weeks, and the human cannot use their abilities.

Gathering his essence, Mateus sent it into his legs, rolled it into whips covered in thorns, and lashed out at the beast! With a yowl of pain it tried to withdraw, but Mateus didn't let it.

Lash by lash, piece by piece, Mateus bound the beast in green restraints. With every struggle the thorns dug deeper into its flesh, and Mateus felt a sharp satisfaction. The pain you gave me, I'll return it tenfold! With that thought, the whips dug into the beast's body, wrapping it's muscles and bones until it hardly breathe without agony. Finally, the whips plunged up under its ribs, and wrapped its thorns around the heart.

The beast froze in horror, every pulse of its heart digging the thorns deeper. At this moment, Mateus only had to squeeze his essence and the beast would die. Instead, the whips burst into brilliant glow, filling the beast with light from the inside, and dragging it into his flesh.

Though the beast wanted to struggle, to kill this prey, to remain indomitable for life - it's heart was bound by thorns, and there was no point tempting death.

The essence whips transformed into chains, binding tightly to the beast without hope of ever being free, and it stayed quiet through the process. As the Entrapment finished catching the creature, and Mateus was ready to sigh in relief, something unexpected happened. The chains vanished, and a spiked collar took their place.

As green lines appeared on Mateus leg, glowing in the dark, they didn't form the tattoo of Entrapment, a chained cage, but Dominance, a small collar. A Dominated Beast has willingly given up everything to the master - their power, abilities, physical strength and even their lives. A Dominated Beast can no longer live outside its tattoo, and should the master die it is bound to follow.

No beast is willing to be dominated. This tattoo is one that exists only in legends. After fighting so long, struggling so fiercely, Mateus could not believe this beast was willing to be dominated. It didn't make sense.

Shaking these thoughts away for later, Mateus slowly pushed himself back to his feet. Carefully he felt his legs in the darkness, and found that they were surprisingly healed. The pain from his back and ankle were gone as well. If not for the blood on him, it was like he had never been hurt.