Shade vs Dokuto

The Shade walked through the city, its inhabitants barely noting his existence, too caught up in their daily lives to care. It was these that had poisoned this land. The Shade remembered when he had first arrived at this place; it was a clean, pristine area, with cool rivers and mighty valleys, but now that had all been worn away by the march of the insipid idiots that treated the earth like a plaything. They had leveled the mountains and built towers from their corpses, they redirected rivers to suit their needs, and at some point the ocean became nothing more then a pond to dump their garbage in. All around him, the trees grew in neat rows between the buildings, the grass that remained was shaped in quaint little squares. No longer could you find the wild livestock that used to roam free; the cows, pigs, and chickens were all penned and exploited for their products.

The Earth had been raped, the dirt ground remorselessly and the stone blasted out of the way, all so that these people could get at the diamond and conductive minerals for below the surface. Shade remembered when the undead of this land had been a threat, but no longer; safely inside their city walls, the civilization chugged on, burning up the land around it. Outside was only a wasteland of rock and sand, everything else having been taken for use. The wild beauty of the land had been chopped up and reformed into a passivity that disgusted him, but soon that all would be gone, and the land could be returned to its natural beauty, the Shade had made sure of it.

He advanced along one of the outer walls as the sun began to set, avoiding the patrols and secreting himself away in one of the highest towers. There he removed his bow from its pack and notched an arrow. Feeling the natural wood between his fingers, the Shade prepared himself. He looked out over the battlements, taking careful aim at one of the patrols.

Three arrows flew swiftly and three bodies now lay on the battlements, the patrol for this area taken care of. The Guild Leader would figure it out soon enough, and the Shade had little time to put his plan into motion. He navigated down the side of the tower, landing with a thump on the battlements before beginning to prepare his bombs. They were special, constructed from the innards of a creature that none within the city cared to remember. It had used to be a terrible daemon, its stealth unmatched and its ability to detonate a terror among the fresh pilgrims. But those concerns were locked outside the city walls, until now. How ironic was it that their corpses were about the be used to fuel a frenzy that would last the entire night.

So, the Shade laid his explosives throughout the wall, connecting them with the conductive redstone that would allow him to trigger them remotely. Off in the distance, he could see more guards rushing this way.

'The city watch has always been pretty paranoid about the wall, haven't they?', Shade thought to himself as he prepped the last charge before throwing himself from the top of the wall, landing on the ground as the sun sank below the horizon. He began running as the guards reached the charges, but they would never remove enough to make a difference, already the countdown was far too close.

The concussion ripped through the wall, scattering the remains of the guards, the stone blocks landing in the surrounding cityscape, the cloud of smoke lasting only a moment before being carried away on the wind. Already people were gathering, the Shade using them as a chance to make his getaway, for soon the frenzy would begin, and these plebeians who had gone far too long without a taste of fear would find it the only emotion they knew, as the world was ripped from beneath their feet. Already the reanimated corpses had begun pulling themselves from the ground in response to the silvery moonlight. No one knew why this happened, only that it did, the dead roaming at night before burning in the harsh rays of the sun the next morning.

But daybreak was far away, and the killing would last the night through, long enough for the Shade to put his plan into motion. There were things that needed to be done, but the people of the city would not notice in their panic to survive; right now the Guild Leader's highest priority was to repair the wall, giving the Shade more than enough time to put the finishing touches on his project without anyone noticing.

The Shade ducked into his subterranean dwelling, sealing the heavy iron door behind himself with a satisfying clang. Already, the citizens were in a panic, some taking to their houses, others suffering a gruesome death at the hands of the undead hoard. Reconstruction of the wall had begun, but the creatures of the night prevented any real progress, there were just too many. It was perfect.

In a box off in the corner, the Shade kept the seeds of this world's resurrection, simple objects that held an incredible potential. He reached in and began removing chests, simple wooden things normally intended to hold the random junk that people deigned to carry with them, but might need later. He grabbed a few, and then descended below until he reached the column. It was a pit, filled to the brim with water, the inside edge lined with chests nearly two-thirds of the way around. But there was something odd about the position of the boxes. They were phasing through each other.

Apparently, if you placed crates in just the right configuration underwater, they would begin to shift and slide through each other, distorting the time around them. The Shade had experimented with this previously and had almost been caught, which is why he now required the distraction. The effect was gradual, growing exponentially stronger the more that were intersected, giving the authorities time to locate them. The Shade had burned his last attempt, quickly draining the pit and setting fire to the chests, the last of them being reduced to ashes just in time. He had told them that he was experimenting on the undead, and they believed him.

As they were now, there were not enough chests to disturb anything of note, but as the Shade began to place more and more of them in the ring, time began to act strangely. Some of the chests he placed disappeared before reappearing once more, sometimes he would move back a step, forgetting what he was doing at the moment before remembering his objective, and sometimes he would begin to sink through the floor before snapping back up to the proper level. It was all horribly, amazing strange. Until finally, he stood at the end of his ring, staring at the last link to be laid. This would complete it, this would complete everything and usher in a new age. One without the putrid hominids that called themselves adventurers, but instead filled with the wonder and natural beauty that waited in the world around them. He slowly eased the last chest into place and watched as it settled in among the others.

He could immediately feel the tension. It was like a violin was being played just outside of hearing, nearly audible but just out of reach. He ran back up his staircase, repeating some stairs several times due to what he was now calling "lag", before emerging out beneath the stars, which were jittering back and forth. It was working, his plan was a success, he could feel the tension growing. Some of the towns people paused in their struggle, before even the undead stopped, halted by the pure oddity of the sensation which resonated throughout the city. Then the zombies all turned at once and began to walk towards the house of the Shade, ignoring the other people around them.

Shade realized their intent, they desired to put a stop to the loop, knowing full well what it was doing. It was sad that they failed to recognize the source of their retribution. Drawing his sword of the keenest diamond, the Shade made his way towards the entrance, slaying several skeletons before slamming the door shut behind himself and severing the wire that could be used to open it. He wouldn't be needing the door , whichever way this turned out. The tension still rose, reaching a high crescendo, each step becoming a challenge, some of them passing through the floor. He fell several times, before suddenly appear back on his feet, somehow avoiding actually falling. But eventually he made it back down and, pulling his crystal blue armor out of a waiting chest, taking off down a long hallway.

At the end of a hallway was a large room, in the center of which sat a small structure made out of an incredibly dark stone. It exuded an aura of ancient ages come and gone, its dark surface dully reflecting its surroundings. The Shade made his way inside and turned to seal it with more of the same stone from within his pack. As he did so, he caught sight of the guards running down the hall, their bodies jerking backwards, then forwards as the struggled through the lag. It was too late, the Shade sealing himself away and donning his armor, if he was going to die, it was going to be taking down as many of those putrid people as possible. He began to hear the sound of pickaxe on stone, already cracks beginning to form in obsidian as one of the guards pounded away with his diamond pickaxe. Closer and closer he came, the cracks growing larger and larger, light beginning to seep through. Then the tension washed away and the pounding stopped, the light suddenly turning to darkness.

The Shade paused for a moment, unsure of what was going on, wondering what had just happened. After several minutes, he simply could not bear it any longer. Setting his sword to the side, he began working with his own pickaxe, tearing away at the obsidian, until he broke through to the other side. The only thing he saw was darkness, stretching away in every direction, as far as the eye could see. It was perfect, and the Shade was excited to begin his work. He quickly removed a bucket from his pack and dumped its contents out into the abyss. Just as he planned, the water kept flowing, and flowing, the bucket never emptying. Eventually the world would fill with water, and he would have an ocean in which his island would sit. Already he had started the island, setting the pouring bucket on its side and removing clods of dirt from his pack. Tons and tons he kept taking out, the dirt seeming to come from nowhere as he began to build a small platform on which to stand, the earth somehow defying gravity in a way the water was unable to.

But while this work occurred, a pinprick of light began to glow in the darkness, before widening into a vermillion doorway that floated off in the distance. In a moment the Shade noticed it, and his stomach dropped through his knees. From out of the doorway emerged a figure, his from strangely transparent, his right hand grasping a sword made of dark obsidian that flickered and danced with hellfire. His face was pale white, his eyes tiny black dots, light those of a mole's, his body defying the gravity as handily as the freshly placed dirt.

The Shade stammered," D-D-D-Dokuto, you swore off this world, you vanished into the hell, claiming that you would never return, saying that you would lord over that place and ignore this one. Why are you here?" Dokuto seemed to notice the Shade for the first time and responded, a scowl crossing his pale complexion.

"Yes, I did say that I would make my kingdom in the hell, but that did not mean that I would leave this world to be revenged by you who would break the very laws of the nature you sought to restore."

"This is mine now!" the Shade spread his arms, attempting to encompass the darkness," all mine! There is nothing you can do about it! I will rebuild this world, and I cannot allow you to interfere."

"I see", Dokuto brandished his sword, "then I must terminate you once more", and without so much as a twitch, he lunged at the Shade, flying through space, whilst Shade raised his own pure diamond sword in defense.

The two blades met with roar that dwarfed even the bravest of thunder storms.

But their charge was broken apart by another, greater one, as Mutar and the First Lord came barreling into their reality. Both Shade and Dokuto could only watch as the titans from another realm tore at each other, reality flickering and shifting between them.

Then one of them did something unspeakable, and everything BROKE[/url][/b].