Well well, here we go with all the darkness again. I really wonder.

This is for CrapPishh's fanfic challenge, part A. I don't think it is any good, but I hope your emotions get "shaken" by it, somehow...

I changed the look of the Garden of Darkness a lot here. Apologies, but I must change it to suit the subject of my story.

. turn your face from the light .f

birth

I was moulded by the hands of Darkness itself. Shaped in evil's likeness, given the capability to kill, to strike terror, to destroy. Nothing more.

My soul—can I even call it mine?—is only a possession of something greater. Never, never free to go, just like the rest of my kin—tethered, bound to darkness, and I am but a minion, with the singular purpose of bringing death.

I was made to hate all of humankind, taught to fear them as servants of the Goddess, the Enemy. I was made to thrive on blood, to relish violence, to fear only light. Light was to be the bane of my very existence, every intangible shaft as real and painful as a dagger in a man's heart.

From darkness you came, to darkness you shall return. You will live a life of endless sin, and your sins will secure your place back to Hell. You will never know Good or real joy, only anger, hate and savage joy, joy derived from death and others' pain. You will never see the light of Heaven, for you will return to Hell.

You are only a puppet. Your purpose is to bring pain, anger, suffering. Of darkness you were constructed, cell by cell, into darkness you shall merge once more, when you prove unworthy and dysfunctional.

Subconscious messages embedded into my soul, rules I was to follow, to obey without question.

And so, out of the mires of Hell, into the Garden within the clouds, I was born.

life

From the darkness, into the darkness. The darkness was so beautiful, the light terribly ugly. Within my abode of thorny thickets, of sweeping shadows that held all light to a gap in the branches above, I served the purpose to which I had been made.

Humans came, foolish, silly humans who thought that they alone ruled every corner of the world, who believed themselves able to cross the garden, our garden, unharmed. My family and I made prey of them. I was gifted with claws, fangs that drew blood, and my tongue greedily tasted life's essence as it flowed warmly down my throat and made me feel whole. Every kill was a stain, and each brought me closer to Hell, to the dark that would reclaim me. Never once did I question this fate.

I saw humans take down members of my huge family sometimes when I was young. Useless creatures, I thought as I watched. So weak as to allow humans to defeat them. I felt no pity, knew no pity, scorned the light that danced between the leaves above. Pity and remorse were absurd, useless emotions.

I killed and killed, searched the area every day for victims. I thought I knew the vast Garden of Darkness well.

But no, I was so confident as to allow myself to get lost in its depths.

I suddenly realised that I did not recognize the landscape that surrounded me. No life stirred at all around my body as I ran, searching for a familiar pathway back to the hunting ground. Deprived of blood for a week already, my footsteps faltered in the deep undergrowth, my sight clouded.

I was a creation of darkness. I brought fear, perpetuated it, mastered it. But why did I feel so terrified now? This had to be terror, I knew, for I was uncertain of what might happen to me if I did not nourish my cravings soon—I did not want to be felled by something as simple, as trivial as hunger. And so I was afraid—

I could go on no longer. My last step faded in a whirl of exhaustion and my knees buckled. The Garden of Darkness was…so immensely vast…but to die like this was such a shame, to my cause, my entire existence…

I heard a rustle, but did not turn—so weak was I—muscles and soul void, thirst for blood unquenched and paining me now. For a moment, I guessed that it was my fellow—Hope! Something else I was not supposed to feel, for it was an emotion of Good, of the Enemy. How could I even try to know hope, to toy around with notions I was forbidden to contact?

Hope sank like a doused fire. Terror reigned once more—for it wasn't my kindred before me, but a human. Not one I could kill in this state, and even worse—a light wielder, one who could call upon the powers of the Enemy, and could kill me with a mere flick of a finger.

I hated the light, more of hated than feared. But now I feared it, feared with all my soul, for it would now spell my demise and return me to my place in Hell…

Gentle hands suddenly wrapped themselves around my tired figure.

How? Why—

I had been so ready, so ready for death, but not—this.

She held me up, looked into my merciless, dark eyes with pity. Pity? Was it possible? She was an ally of the Enemy, an owner of light. She knew that I was a creature of darkness. She knew that we were enemies, knew that I was made to wreak death—that she might as well have left my chained life to fade where I had lain.

I was supposed to hate her. She was supposed to hate me. When had that changed? Why did she pity me? If light was the enemy, why did the enemy help me?

"Are you lost?" she asked, and I turned away. She ventured through the hedges and thickets that surrounded me, holding me so carefully, the guide all the way, stilling my confusion with her confidence, until we had reached the hunting ground. The smells of stale blood stirred familiarity in me.

And I was helpless against what I felt next—gratitude. Gratitude! How could I be thankful to a human, I wondered angrily. How could I be grateful, in the debt of the Dark's sworn enemy? It was not right at all. Wrong. I was never meant to know Good. And yet I knew it now, true as sight or sound.

"There," the human said softly, ready to lower me. But then, I realised that my hunger was not yet satiated…

Her neck was in my reach, I suddenly realised. For those seconds, instinct for survival washed everything else out, and I snarled, leapt, frenzied with the promise of nourishment, swallowed deeply and delightedly the warm, salty liquid that flowed from the open skin on her neck, as she fell, screaming, neck torn by my jaws.

Idiot.

Triumph caught me first as I felt life return to my limbs and I stood over her dead face. I had so easily destroyed a light-wielder's life, without a fight, without pain.

Then guilt suddenly came as I looked at her face, the one that had smiled at me, the first face ever to have smiled at me. Guilt pierced me, deep and sharp, so painful I thought I really had been injured. She had helped me, and…I had taken her life…

How could I feel guilt?

How could a servant of the Enemy, of light, help me?

I was puzzled, angry, uncertain—I didn't know, didn't understand. All my life, I had learnt to think of humans as the enemy, to hate light, and I had obeyed without question, believed every unconscious word of the command.

But if they truly were the enemies, if light really darkness' enemy, she would not have spared a drop of mercy, would simply have killed me, or left me. Her action had suddenly thrown me, everything I believed, into disarray, turned everything around, made it all a mess.

Suddenly, I doubted my purpose, my life, everything I had been instructed to do. Kill, bring suffering and pain. Never see the light of Heaven. What if everything I had believed were untrue, like humans' mercilessness was? Then Heaven…Heaven…

I hated my fangs, claws and thirst for blood, tools only for destruction, curses to me now. Why did I only live to kill, only to be returned to Hell and darkness when I was "unworthy and dysfunctional"?

I didn't want this fate to which I was helplessly and absolutely bound. I had realised how much I longed not to be a creature of the dark, to have a fate outside of the dark path down which I was now headed, not to be, forever, a puppet and minion of the thing that had controlled my life since birth.

Might I even try to break out of it? I wanted to go to Heaven after I died. But hadn't I sinned too much already to be allowed to? Every life I had taken had sealed me further to my fate. My last sin, the killing of my saviour, had ensured that already. Was I trapped, truly? Was there no way out, for I wanted to escape, to leave this future, to take a new, different path…

death

Slowly, carefully, I crept towards that hole in the hedge through which all the humans had come, through which I now saw hints of light filter. What was light, in actuality? I had to see for myself, see if it truly was something I should hate.

Light was to be the bane of my very existence. I was to fear it, hate it right from the start.

Right from the start, I have been told lies.

Then, finally, suddenly, I took a step through, and saw the truth outside.

It was amazing.

My flesh was already beginning to sting, but who cared?

It was beautiful, heartbreakingly beautiful. When had I learnt that I had a heart? That human girl had shown me.

Now, it beat with life, true life that I didn't want darkness to hold power over. It beat now for the unworldly, astounding, pristine beauty I saw, just beyond the entrance I had turned away from so many times.

Clouds. Clouds, things I only saw as patchworks through the branches, filled the blue sky. Sky. It was so wide, so much wider than the darkness in the Garden. And plants, the same that had surrounded me all my life, painted in full brilliant colour, revealed to my eyes only now. Only now, in light.

I was burning away. A creature of darkness, I was ever harmed by light. Just as light casts shadows away, the sunlight was scouring my flesh, the darkness that I was made of. But I felt no pain, for I was held in awe, and I wondered how I could ever have hated this wonderful thing. Light.

It didn't matter if it took my life now; it was in payment for every sin I had committed in that dark life of mine, a plea of forgiveness to the Goddess, for every life I had ever taken.

Then my eyes faded and I saw nothing. And yet, tears were falling; I could feel them, my soul could feel them…And I wished I could apologise for all the wrong I had done throughout my life.

I'm sorry…

And my soul, truly my soul, rose into the wind, the chains of darkness lifting from it. A soul like any other, not condemned to Hell, not a puppet held by the tangled strings of my old existence.

I was crying, crying for the first time, for joy. Who cared if I hadn't been forgiven? This was forgiveness enough, to see light, to realise what I hadn't known for so long.

"I forgive you."

The voice…of the Goddess?

She had forgiven me, and in those words, that simple sentence, I suddenly realised that she was no Enemy at all.

I had broken free. I was not in Hell, for Hell could not be so bright. I was in Heaven. I was one with the light, with the sun; not its foe, not its hater. Redeemed, saved from my fate. Had it really happened? Was I unbound from what I had been tied down by all my life? It was all so hard to believe—

Free.

Why had I not seen, not understood earlier? I had turned from light, imprisoned and ignorant of the bars that had held me, unknowing of what could have been, the life that I might have had if I had asked to be forgiven of the darkness earlier.

I had been a prisoner of darkness, so long. And finally, I had been unshackled, unbound from it—by light, by the thing I had been taught to hate since my creation, but now loved with all my heart.

There were a lot of long, convoluted sentences here…hope you could bear with them.