Zillah

Shade huntress

It came upon her in a dream, a foreboding presence invoking dark feelings and the emptiness of the Beyond.

It came upon her in a dream with its teeth gnashing and talons extended, alien screams piercing her ears, ichor stinging and burning like a corrosive acid.

It descended with her in its numbing embrace, the personification of fear, and loathing, and madness, stealing her away into the Void to feed on the essence of her spirit.

But oh, she was so strong of will that lashing out at the creature was instinct - as soon as she was able to act - and she bit and she clawed and she tore into its flesh, splintered its bones, wrought havoc in their descent. They crashed through the earth with the fury of the unconstrained sun, an impact the likes of which caused rifts to split in time, minute fractures in the continuum that splinter outward like webs, wicked and cruel as the creature howling into the abyss. They clashed like ancient titans, rending the earth and boiling the oceans, leaving their savage marks of combat carved in the ground. A minute, a month, a millennium, but truly, how long does a dream last?

It is when she wakes that she realizes her dream may not, in fact, have been a dream at all but rather her mind working to interpret and rationalize what has happened - what is happening - to her.

Escape.

Rage bubbles to the surface, fueled by desperation and the drive to survive.

I am myself.

She wrenches herself from the creature's grasp, violet lightning arcing along the edge of her talons. The rifts bend to her will, here in the Beyond, and she Sees, for the first time, that the Shade itself has come to devour her. That she is strong enough, bright enough, powerful enough, to draw the Nothingness to her and lure it too close.

I will not be taken by you.


***


Reaching through the shadow of darkness sends a spike of chills down her arm and along her spine. Grasping clumsily, talons sink into dry earth as she hauls herself from the depths of the Abyss. More lightning crackles along her fur, the buzz of pure magical energy a thrum in the back of her mind and deep in her chest. She's breathless, gasping as the tendrils of darkness fade away and she's suddenly alone at the foot of the Pillar of Eternity.

It came for her, the Shade, and it tested her will and stretched the boundaries of her power. It bit into her spirit and left her marked, and stronger for it.

But above all, it left her unrecognizable and forever changed.

Gorgeous beautiful backstory written by Skysamba