Pain. So much pain. Why doesn't it stop?
Luca opened his eyes, but all he could see was a milky haze, tinged with red as he heard his blood thundering through his veins, throbbing against his skull like a cursed drum, pulsating down to his right hand and turning it into a white-hot mass of agony. He had a hard time focusing, and his head seemed to tilt on its own accord, a faint picture of concrete splashed with blood, HIS blood, tilting in his vision. With supreme effort, he brought his head back upright. He felt something warm and wet coursing down his face; he spat what part of it had gathered around his mouth and was mildly shocked to see more bright red blood fly away to speckle the concrete. Had his nose been bleeding before he...? His fevered eyes widened as he suddenly remembered what he had done. He was kneeling down beside the archaic and unholy symbols that he had so painstakingly drawn since...how long ago had he begun? The old blood that formed the intricate symbols stood darkly against the splatters of new blood that oozed from his dark hand, the hand he had stabbed though with his dagger, the final act of an irreversible summons. The pool slowly spread around his hand, even going as far as his other hand, which in his pain he had used to claw at the concrete like an animal; he saw the pathetic tiny scratches from his fingernails, which were now nothing more than bloody, jagged shards.
The blood continued to seep from his nose and drip down to the ground beneath his head, and Luca fought to bring himself more into focus. He had pledged himself body and soul to bringing this creature to Gaia, this being that he knew would help his people regain what they had so wrongfully lost. He had put so much of himself into this one moment that his small body was on the verge of collapse, and something as laughable as a speared hand was draining him of his strength as though he were nothing but a weak, pathetic human, or even a vampire that had the misfortune of a stake blossoming out of his pale chest. He must rise, lest his new friend think him unworthy, lest he choose a new vessel to carry out his deeds of liberation. His sister had called him mad; his gang was suspicious and concerned. Fools! Did they not realize that he was doing this for his kind, for all of them?! They would rise up and conquer Gaia, make it into what they wished it to be, the way it should have been all along. He must not fail them!
Sucking in his breath and spitting another spray of blood, Luca summoned his strength and tried to stand, the pounding in his head growing louder and his world tipping so fiercely that he almost fell. But at the last moment, he righted himself and stood there, cradling his wounded hand and watching the circle before him. At first, all he saw was the circle and the splashes of his blood off to one side. But then before his eyes it began to glow, the designs catching fire with an eye-piercing blue light. Mist swirled up seemingly from nowhere, engulfing both circle and fire in its embrace, and Luca watched in horrified fascination as his fresh blood was pulled into the circle, like drops of rain sliding sideways down a pane of glass, until the concrete was as clear as it had been before. The mist was tinged with red for just an instant, and then it vanished, dissipating and revealing a figure standing in the middle of the circle.
It was he, at long last; the form was unmistakable. The long robes, slightly tattered and impossibly old that draped the figure elegantly, the massive cowl like a yawning mouth, with two soulless white eyes surrounded by pools of black peering out from above a cracked and jagged mouth that seemed more like a scar than anything else. Lanky black hair crept out from the sides of the cowl like dead tendrils of some long-neglected vine, bordering a corpse-white face, and crowning it all was a symbol of a crescent moon, pulsating faintly beneath the cowl's peak. Two long, thin legs peered out from between a gap in the robe's massive folds, covered in pale fur and ending in a pair of cloven hooves. He was very much the same as when Luca had communed with him countless times before, but surely a bit more substantial. He knew what was needed for this apparition before him to become whole, tangible. He had to do what he had been preparing to do these many restless nights.
Pulling his frail body fully upright, Luca shakily focused on the hope of his people, his fevered eyes shining with elation. "It is done; we have succeeded. All that remains is for me to submit myself to you as your willing vessel." The head of the apparition moved slightly downward, the dead eyes fixed on the small dark elf. A voice emanated from between the cracked, parched lips; a voice filled with the skittering of insect legs, the whisper of dead leaves as they flee before a chill wind, and the slight gravelly crunch of bones being trodden underfoot. "And are you...still willing?"
"Oh yes!" Luca replied, drawing himself to his full height, ignoring the slippery feeling of blood dripping from his hand as he thrust his arms outward on either side of him, the very picture of willingness. "Accept my body, and together we shall liberate our people and bring Gaia to its knees, crying in the darkness as WE once were!" The cracked lips split into a grin, and the form of Nyx began to stride forward, the cloven hooves making no sound on the concrete nor leaving any marks as they walked through the caked blood of the ritual symbols. He didn't stop until he stood just inches from Luca, towering over him and watching the dark elf involuntarily shiver at the chill pulsating from his still ethereal form. A hand emerged from a sleeve of the robe, long and spiderlike with nails the color of bruised flesh, and at a small gesture, Luca found himself rising in the air, his body as limp as a corpse, his eyes fixed on Nyx even as his head seemed to loll to one side. The first small shreds of fear began to flicker through his mind, but before he could even acknowledge them, it happened. The dead moon eyes opened impossibly wide, and Luca felt as though he were being swallowed in their gaze. The grin turned maniacal, and with a sudden rush that sounded as though every drop of his blood was rushing through his head at once, Luca found himself falling forward, through the eyes and into darkness the likes of which neither he nor his people had ever known. He felt his small hands begin to move, though he had not willed them to, and as he looked down, he realized that the body he was looking down upon was not his at all. A pair of hooves was set firmly on the ground, but he himself could not feel the ground beneath him. The thin, pale hands refused to respond to his panicked commands. He felt trapped in a box, with nothing but a pair of twin holes to experience the world with.
But there was more. As Luca felt himself being alarmingly absorbed by the malevolent being, he suddenly found himself being afforded the most fleeting glimpse of the mind that had taken over his. He could see plans and ideas, and he saw with increased despair that none of them did, or ever had, included him and his people. "Wait!" he cried out, or did he, for as he shouted within the recesses of Nyx's mind, no sound issued forth that he could hear. How could this be? Nyx had promised him that he would help his kind return to the light, take what was theirs! But this...all of this that he was seeing... It was too terrible to imagine. These plans were not for dark elf conquest of Gaia, but the complete destruction of Gaia itself! This wasn't what he wanted! His people would be destroyed along with everything else!
As though sensing his dumbfounded shock, Nyx's voice sounded in the dark hollow that Luca found himself fading in. "Foolish elf," it whispered, with an obvious hint of amusement. "So eager to help, so eager to believe that a deity would throw himself so wholeheartedly to his petty little cause. Almost a pity you had to find out after the bargain was struck. As they say, live and learn...well, in your case merely learn. And now, Gaia awaits my hand to plunge it into endless dark." Nyx casually lifted his other hand to dust himself off before walking towards the door, ready to deal with the doubtless scores of dark elves that lay beyond, awaiting word on their beloved Don, of whom all that physically remained was a puddle of freshly shed blood. He casually stepped through it, leaving a few hoof prints in his wake, as though pleased with such a small display of tangibility.
No! Luca struggled and gasped inwardly, but it was no use; the powerful deity's mind was seeking to absorb him, swallow him whole like a choice tidbit, leaving nothing of the dark elf behind. He thought desperately of his kind, his family, his ever loyal sister, who would still be waiting beyond the doors, and would be greeted by a monster. Had he still had the ability, he would have wept furious tears for the way he had been so cheated, but he felt his mind losing hold, and no matter how he struggled, it was getting darker by the second. Cordell...what have I done? was the last conscious thought that flickered through his mind before oblivion rose up to meet him.