A short thing I wrote in half an hour for BZPower's Flash Fiction Marathon, for the theme "The Dark Hunt".
There was nothing left for her here.
Shadow, yes, and the odd Matoran left for prey of some kind for something much bigger than she. But she was no longer a protector, and should not act as such against whatever Rahi was going to kill these unfortunate little souls. Letting go of them was much more difficult than she had expected to begin with, though.
The night was supposedly unwelcoming for Toa as she had been, but now she realised that she had never breathed anything more natural. Light was suffocating, bright, blinding. In the darkness she could be free to roam the darkness. She could be herself properly with no regard for the loathing that had begun to surround her perpetually.
People followed her sometimes. A large paw print, right next to a tiny little foot more like a Matoran's than anything else's was bound to be suspicious, especially with the blade marks that her arms had begun to leave. They had left quickly once they had either given up and gone to do something else, or found her.
Not many people did the latter, and even fewer survived to tell the tale.
She had been scared of the dark as a Matoran. Always terrified of some monster that wasn't really there and never really would be; always wanting another comfort to help her through the night. Nobody had really cared, but she had never put away a lightstone at sundown, and it was always replaced as soon as it had displayed signs of flickering out.
Aimless wandering.
Aimless thoughts.
Maybe she shouldn't think.
Maybe letting go was easier than she had thought.
Maybe in three breaths, it could all be over and she would no longer feel a strange attachment to these tiny, powerless creatures, and maybe the heavy-footed Matoran would finally stop following her, ruining the silence and stumbling along, completely out of his normal habitat.
Blank it out, blank it all out, and maybe nothing can permeate the sounds of your blood rushing through your head; nothing can drill through the psychotic state that you have driven yourself into; nothing can-
Rip.
Tear.
Scream.
Nothing.
But nothing soon becomes something, for nothing can be nothing forever. Whatever you think, there can be no lies that you can feed yourself without end; an endless feast of truth mixed with non-truth and a tiny bit of seasoning on the latter so that you will always prefer the taste.
There was a mask on the floor. It was shattered so badly, all it could be recognised as was a Pakari. She knelt down and sniffed it. There was no power in it. The corpse on the floor was something that her past self would probably faint at the sight of.
Nowadays, she could just turn away.
So that was what she did.
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