First Contact

I cast the modified Holy Bind directly over Lord Nightshade's chest, where it rapidly tunneled through until it reached his mana core, granting me the strange ability to perceive it through his opaque form. It was a lightless orb of unbelievable darkness, with not even the slightest hint to show that there was a thread of rampaging light slowly tearing it apart. In a sense, it was breathtakingly beautiful, in the same sense that a weapon capable of mass destruction and death would be. 

Truth be told, just from seeing the sheer concentration of darkness within it, I had a hard time believing that any amount of light could threaten its stability. Nevertheless, I withheld my disbelief and slowly started chanting words to channel one of the floating spheres of ghostlight through the mana link I had established. 

At first, I had thought it would be easy: just feed the ghostlight through the link slowly and let it work its magic, right? Nope. The mana link started hungrily trying to absorb the entire sphere the moment it so much as got close, and it got very close to stealing a massive chunk of it too. I only managed to blurt out a stream of words to hold it back at the last moment, letting the sphere of ghostlight leak out a slow, steady stream that was greedily absorbed through the link to feed straight to his core. 

When I first saw the tiny threads of ghostlight swarming toward his core, I couldn't help but think about how pitifully insignificant they appeared next to the sheer concentrated darkness of the sphere, to say nothing of the power it exuded. 

However, when the first of the ghostlight tentatively made contact with the sphere, I nearly died.

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The darkness of his core seemed almost stunned for a moment when the ghostlight tunneled into it, before it spontaneously flared outward, traveling at ridiculous speed through the mana link as it poured toward me. Distantly, I heard Lord Nightblade screaming something, while Lord Nightshade instantly seemed to pale as nearly half the darkness of his core left him to make its way through the mana link… to me.

The world seemed to slow down as the immense power coursing through the mana link weighed on me, seeming to slow time with its sheer presence. I could see Lord Nightshade's mana core as it weakened drastically and faint cracks seemed to form on its notably smaller surface; a clear sign that he was dying. 

A moment later, all of that incredible force slammed into me. I expected immediate death, but surprisingly, I didn't die... my body tore apart, muscle and bone ripping as they desperately tried to contain the rampaging power. 

It took no more than an internal glance to see the reason for my survival: a large amount of ghostlight had manifested seemingly out of nowhere, gently coating the darkness as it attempted to calm the volatile energy. It was beautiful, the benign, ethereal light melding through the darkness to form a symphonic bond. 

By now, half of my body had been ripped to shreds, forcing the rest to contain an ever-growing pressure. Even with the presence of the ghostlight, I was rapidly reaching my limits. It was very obvious that if something didn't happen in the near future, I would be following Lord Nightshade into a different kind of night. 

Suddenly, a voice forced me out of my reverie. It took me no more than a moment to place it as Lord Nightshade, then another to understand what he had asked and execute it.

With my fading strength, I mumbled a few words, commanding the simmering mess in my body to return to Lord Nightshade. Somewhat surprisingly, it did so as soon as the words left my mouth, leaving in a steady rivulet back through the strained mana link to reach his mana core.

Then I fell forward into endless darkness.