Call of Darkness

An LLS Production

Dedicated to one huge fan, Serpentdragon

Prologue: Next to be Lost

There are two things you have to accept if you want to understand what's going on. First, the tough one.

Magic is real.

There's an entire world that exists alongside the everyday life of mankind. There are powers, nations, monsters, wars, feuds, alliances – everything. A lot of other things you've heard about in stories, and even more you've never heard of. Vampires. Werewolves. Faeries. Demons. Monsters. It's all real. You know that there are weird things out there. You've seen the evidence of them.

Maybe, if we said that people have the ability to sense and affect their environment in ways we do not really understand yet, you could accept it. Maybe you call it magic, and someone calls it ESP, and someone else calls it the Force, and some more people call it Psychic power, but it's not new. Maybe, there are people whose genetic make-up makes them better able to employ these abilities. It's a big universe; it's sort of arrogant to assume that we're the only thinking beings in it.

No one knows? Oh, lots of people know. The ones in the know, they just don't go around talking about it all that much. They don't want to get locked up in a loony bin for three months for observation, for starters.

What about regular people who see things, you ask? Like sightings and close encounters and stuff?

That, readers, is the second thing you have to understand: people don't want to accept a reality that frightening. Some of them open their eyes and get involved. Most of them don't want anything to do with the supernatural. So they leave it behind and don't talk about it, don't think about it. They don't want it to be real, and they work really hard to convince themselves that it isn't. You don't need to buy it. As a race, we're an enormous bunch of idiots. We're more than capable of ignoring facts if the conclusions they lead to make us too uncomfortable, or afraid. If misogyny, homosexuality and the fallacy of religion could be so simply ignored, monsters are pretty much just a step up.

Wait a minute, you cry. You're saying that a whole world, multiple civilizations of scientific study, advancement, theory and application, all based around the notion of observing the universe and studying its laws is in error about dismissing magic as superstition?

Not just in error. Dead wrong. Because the truth is something that people are afraid to face. They're terrified to admit that it's a big universe and we're not. Look at history. How long did the scholarly institutions of civilization consider Earth to be the centre of the universe? No one wanted to believe that we all lived on an unremarkable little speck of rock in a quiet backwater of one unremarkable galaxy. The world was supposed to be flat, too, until people proved that it was not by sailing all the way around it. No one believed in germs until years and years after someone actually saw one. Time after time, history demonstrates that when people don't want to believe something, they have enormous skills of ignoring it altogether.

Most of the time, the entire race of humanity is in denial. It's not a bad thing. It's just who we are. The weird stuff doesn't care about that – it keeps on happening. Every family's got a ghost story in it. Most people have had something happen to them that was impossible to explain. But that does not mean they go around talking about it afterwards, because everyone knows that those kinds of things are not real. For everyone. Every time. They just keep quiet and try to forget it. Unnatural things happen all the time; no one talks about it. At least, not openly. The preternatural world is everywhere; it just doesn't advertise.

People walk throughout life, determined to ignore it and get back to their normal life. Because it's terrifying. You find out about monsters that make the creatures in the horror movies look like cartoons, and that there's not a thing you can do to protect yourself from them. You find out about horrible things that happen— things you would be happier not knowing. Rather than live with the fear, you get away from the situation. After a while, you can convince yourself that you must have just imagined it. You rationalise what you can, forget whatever you can't, get back to your life. Things that hunt and kill human beings could be there among us without our knowing, and we ignore it. There are six billion people on the planet; a few could definitely disappear unrecorded. Gone. Just gone. No one knows where they are.

Where did they go?

Nobody knows. Nobody talks about this kind of thing. But all those people are still gone. Maybe a lot of them just cut their ties and left their old lives behind. Maybe some were in accidents of some kind, with the body never found. The point is, people don't know. It's an extremely scary thing to think about, and because it's a lot easier to just get back to their lives they tend to dismiss it. Ignore it. It's easier. Even with proof, there are just so many hoaxes. There's no point. Because it's too terrifying to acknowledge... do you believe everything you see? It's okay; you can say it. There's no such things as monsters... famous last words.

Look, you're your own ideal example. You've seen things you can't explain away. You've suffered for trying to tell people that you have seen them. And you're still arguing whether or not magic is real. Because you don't want to believe it.

Scared? Good. That's smart. You run into something you totally don't get, and it's scary. But once you learn something about it, it gets easier to handle. The world is getting weirder, every single day. If you know your fairy tale monsters well enough – and of course you do – then you remember that fairy tale monsters can be defeated.

Monsters exist; you don't need fairy tales to know that. But fairy tales tell you how to kill it.

Yet, sometimes... sometimes, even fairy tales don't end happily.

My boots slipped and slid on the tile floor as I sprinted around a corner and toward the exit doors to the abandoned school building on the south-west edge of Neo Domino. Distant streetlights provided the only light in the dusty hall, and left huge swaths of blackness crouching in the old classroom doors.

I carried the carved wooden box, about the size of a laundry basket, in both my arms, and its weight plus that of the comparatively lighter DuelDisk made my shoulders burn with effort. The muscle burn quickly started changing into deep, aching stabs. Damned box was heavy, not even considering its contents. Inside the box, a bunch of floppy-eared grey and black puppies whimpered, jostled back and forth as I ran. One of the puppies, his ear already notched where some kind of doggy misadventure had marked him, was either braver or more stupid than his litter-mates. He scrambled around until he got his paws onto the lip of the box, and set up a painfully high-pitched barking full of squeaky snarls, big dark eyes focused behind me.

I ran faster, my knee-length black duster swishing against my legs. I heard a rustling, hissing sound and jerked left as best I could. A ball of some noxious-smelling substance that looked like tar went zipping past, engulfed in yellow-white flame. It hit the floor several yards beyond me, and promptly exploded into a little puddle of hungry fire.

I tried to avoid it, but my boots had evidently been made for walking, not sprinting on dusty tile. They slid out from under me and I fell. I controlled it as much as I could, and wound up sliding on my rear, my back to the fire. It got hot for a second, but the duster I had slapped on kept it from burning me.

Another flaming glob crackled toward me, and I barely turned in time. The substance, whatever the hell it was, clung like napalm to what it hit and burned with a supernatural ferocity that had already burned a dozen metal lockers to slag in the dim halls behind me. Stars.

The goop spattered the wall beside me. I flinched nonetheless, lost my balance, and fumbled the box. Fat little puppies tumbled onto the floor with a chorus of whimpers and cries for help.

I checked behind me.

The monster dripped lava all over the tiles. One had escaped the carefully placed Compulsory Evacuation Device trap set up by Youkai, and it was hot on my tail, slowly plodding down the halls in long strides. As I watched, it reached a dripping hand to rip a hunk off of itself and hurled it with a basso roar, and it combusted mid-flight. I had to duck before the noxious ball of incendiary melted rock smacked into my nose.

I grabbed puppies and scooped them into the box, then started running. The Lava Golem spirit made real groaned. Squeaky barks behind me made me look back. The little notch-eared puppy had planted his clumsy paws solidly on the floor, and was barking defiantly at the oncoming monster.

"Dammit," I cursed, and reversed course. I made like a ballplayer, slid in feet first, and planted the heel of my boot squarely on the Golem's nose.

Fun fact; if you can see spirits, they can see you. If you can touch them, they can touch you. What I'm getting at is that for everything they could do to you, you could return the favour. I'm not heavily built, but no one ever thought I was a lightweight. I kicked hard enough in a place it wasn't dripping melted rock to make it screech and veer off, throwing its weight back. It slammed into a metal locker, and left an inches-deep dent for the price of one melted sole.

"Stupid little fuzz-bucket," I muttered, and recovered the puppy. The puppy kept up its tirade of ferocious, squeaking snarls. I pitched him into the box without ceremony, ducked two more flaming blobs, and started coughing on the smoke already filling the building as I resumed my retreat. Light was growing back where I'd come from, as the flaming missiles chewed into the old walls and floor, spreading with a malicious glee.

I ran for the front doors of the old building, slamming the opening bar with my hip and barely slowing down. A sudden weight hit my back and something pulled viciously at my hair. The chains dangled with a tinkling crash as the other Golem, this one a Grinder Golem, started tearing at my neck and ear. It hurt. I tried to spin and throw it off me, but it had a good hold. The effort, though, showed me the Lava Golem heading for my face with a glowing fist.

I let go of the box and got out of my duster, leaving it in the claws of the gunmetal-grey Golem. Falling hard, I slammed the base of my skull hard against a row of metal lockers.

A burst of stars blinded me for a second, and by the time my vision cleared, I saw both Golems dive towards the box of puppies. A searing blob was flung at the wooden box, splattering it with flame.

There was an old fire extinguisher on the wall, and I grabbed it. My steel golem attacker came swooping back at me. I rammed the end of the extinguisher into its nose, knocking it back, then reversed my grip on the extinguisher and sprayed a cloud of dusty white chemical at the carved box. I got the fire put out, but for good measure I unloaded the thing into the other two, creating a thick cloud of dust. Even if they were technically inanimate they needed eyes, and the cloud would at least hide me even if the foam did not quite match up to melted rock.

I grabbed the box and hauled it out the door, and then slammed the school doors shut behind me. There were a couple of thumps from the other side of the doors, and then silence.

Panting, I looked down at the box of whimpering puppies. A bunch of wet black noses and eyes looked back up at me from under a white dusting of extinguishing chemical.

"Holy fuck," I panted at them. "If Yamamoto didn't ask us for this, I'd be in the box and you'd be carrying me."

A bunch of little tails wagged hopefully.

"Stupid dogs," I growled as one of them flickered under my Sight. I hauled the box into my arms again and started hit-footing it toward the old school's parking lot. I was about halfway there when something ripped the steel doors of the school inward, against the swing of their hinges. A low, loud bellow erupted from inside the building, and then both Golems came stomping out of the doorway. Both automatons were freaking tall even in the open spaces, and the Lava Golem looked really pissed off while the Grinder Golem... had no expression. Both being at least eight feet tall, and they had to weigh four or five times what I did.

As I stared at it, a circle glimmered at their heads before they leapt at me with a completely unfair amount of grace. I'd seen slobbering beasties before; my friend had that kind of life where he dragged us in weird shit that happened and we could never explain where it came from. Over the course of many encounters and more than a few years, we had successfully developed a standard operating procedure for dealing with big, nasty monsters.

Run away. Monty Python is a classic.

The parking lot and the waiting Honda were only thirty or forty yards off, and I can really move when I'm feeling motivated. The Lava Golem bellowed; it motivated me.

There was the sound of a small explosion, then a blaze of red light brighter than the nearby street lamps. Another fireball hit the ground a few feet wide of me and detonated like a cannonball, gouging out a coffin-sized crater in the pavement. The enormous fire monster roared and raised a hand to slam me like a pancake, and possibly fry me extra crispy.

"Youkai!" I screamed. "Hurry up!"

The passenger door opened, and an unwholesomely good-looking young man with white hair, tight jeans, and a black leather jacket worn over a fishnet-shirt-thing poked his head out and peered at me. Then he looked up and behind me. His jaw dropped open.

"Hurry up!" I screamed.

True to form, Youkai drew a card as the Honda shuddered to life. The headlights flicked on, and the driver gunned the engine and headed for the street. For a second I thought they was going to leave me, but he slowed down enough that I caught up with him.

Youkai leaned across the car from his perch on shotgun and pushed the passenger door open. I grunted with effort and threw myself in. I almost lost the box, but managed to get it just before the notch-eared puppy pulled himself up to the rim, evidently determined to go back and do battle.

"What the hell, Chase?" he screamed. His white hair, shoulder-length curling and glossy, whipped around his face as the car gathered speed and drew the cool autumn wind through the open windows. His scarlet eyes were wide with apprehension. "What is that?"

"Drive!" I shouted at the driver, clinging onto the box of whimpering puppies into the back-seat.

Our driver, the flame-haired Satoshi, glanced into the rear-view mirror, and his eyes widened. "Holy shit, Princeton."

He floored it as Youkai clambered out of one window so that he sat on the door, chest to the roof. The card dangled in one hand. He was about to loose a strike when another fireball was flung it at the car.

"Look out!" Youkai hollered.

Satoshi-san must have seen it coming in the mirror. The Honda swerved wildly, and the fireball hit the asphalt, bursting into a roar of flame and concussion that broke windows on both sides of the street. Satoshi dodged a car parked on the curb by roaring up onto the side-walk, bounced gracelessly, and nearly went out of control. The bounce nearly threw Youkai out from his perch on the closed door, and I started wondering what the odds were against finding a soft place to land before I grabbed his ankle and hauled in.

I braced him with a hold on the leg, nails digging into the denim, and as the Golem snarled again, Youkai pointed the card at it.

"Meteor Flare!"

Whips of white-hot fire streaked from the card face into the late night air, illuminating the street like a flash of lightning. Bouncing along on the car like that, I expected it to miss. However, the burst of flame took the Grinder Golem right in the belly. It screamed and faltered, plummeting to earth. Give it up for Psychic Duelists; a little bit of direct damage made real was excellent offensive projectiles on par with actual magic. Burn damage cards were still the primary attack method of the Arcadia Movement for a very good reason.

Satoshi swerved back out onto the street. The Fiend started to get up. "Stop the car!" I screamed.

Satoshi mashed down the brakes, and I clung on as Youkai nearly got reduced to side-walk pizza again. I hung on, but by the time Youkai regained his balance, the Golem hauled itself to its feet.

My on-off boyfriend growled in frustration and aimed carefully. "What are we doing? We lamed him, let's run!"

"No," I snapped back. "If we leave it here, it's going to take things out on whoever it can find. And the summoner as well."

"But it won't be us!"

I glared at the Psychic Duelist, who huffed and held up another card until wisps of smoke began emerging from its surface and lightning crackled the length of his arm. Then he let both Golems have it right between its black beady eyes.

The fire hit it like a wrecking ball, right on the chin. They exploded into a cloud of luminous sparkles of scarlet light, which I have to admit looked really neat.

Duel Spirits or holographic monsters made real, things like that don't have bodies as such. They create them, like a suit of clothes, and as long as the Duelist's awareness inhabits the construct-body, it's as good as real. Being shocked by a Raigeki was too much for it to support. The body flopped around on the ground for a few seconds, and then shattered into a mass of sparkles that dissolved into the night

A surge of relief made me feel a little dizzy, and Youkai slid bonelessly back into the Honda. "Allow me to reiterate," Youkai panted, a minute later. "What. The hell. Was that."

I settled down onto the seat, breathing hard. I buckled up, and checked that the puppies and their box were both intact. They were, and I closed my eyes with a sigh.

"Kaido says they're Cromwell's work," Satoshi said. "The dogs are apparently blessed or something like that."

"Shinamori!" Youkai snapped. "You almost got us killed!"

"Don't be a baby. You're fine."

Youkai frowned at me now. "You at least could have told me!"

"I did tell you," I said. "I told you at the Ace of Spades that I'd give you a ride home, but that we had to run an errand first."

Youkai scowled, but his eyes were alight with the thrill of high-risk endeavours. "And Cromwell?"

"Bloody traitors," Satoshi growled. "Keep an eye out for the Soaring Eagle, I got it to do recon work-"

"Incoming," I cut in as the sound of wings fluttered.

From outside the car, the voice drifted in as the silhouette made itself seen in front of the car. "I see you managed to steal back the hunted dog-spirits," the voice murmured, outside the car. "Face me, thief."

"Man, that is some bad speech," I commented as my hand lingered on the door handle. "Did you read too much Tolkien, or were you just taking a book out of Fate/Zero? Because outright demands are so old-fashion-"

A card sliced past me, and a cut bloomed on one cheek as it fluttered onto the ground. Rock Bombardment, it read.

"Golems? Really?" I snorted, my mouth on autopilot. "So you're just playing around with dumb muscle."

In the box, the puppies whimpered, flickering in and out of existence. They were...

"Duel Spirits," Cromwell agreed. "The Queen will be pleased if I were to present her with such offerings. I would then claim my place within her Court."

Damn, another one like these guys. "You're scared and stupid and hurt and you don't know what they'll turn you into." It must be so tempting for them, to have all the hurts healed – psychic and psychological and physical – but you can't be human if you don't hurt, and sooner or later they'd forget who and what they'd been... so easy it made me itch, so easy that I was afraid that I'd do it one day and not be myself anymore.

That maybe I already gave myself to the spirit in my head.

Scared, stupid, and young. Like Tenjouin Michiru, lost to the winter cold and never found, stolen off into the night following Shimotsuki Setsuka's tail. Ryuusei, spirited away somewhere before everything went to hell.

I still couldn't think about that without feeling like a failure. Like it was my fault, like I could've helped, that if I'd mastered any power conferred by Rei I could have saved him instead of letting my friend disappear into some random dimension of Duel Spirits. Rex still had nightmares about that time. For his eighteenth birthday, our friend disappeared; of course Rex would have nightmares. Hell, I still did.

Still, Cromwell mentioned the Queen... "Queen?"

Cromwell smirked. "The Winter Queen shall favour me."

Bingo. Kaido said that their fates were linked; if Shimotsuki was somewhere, Ryuusei would be close by. If I could get to Shimotsuki... "Do we Duel, or will you come quietly?"

A scarlet hawk, the Soaring Eagle above the Searing Land, perched on the Honda with a soft caw. Satoshi readied a card, prepared to burst out and tackle Cromwell if needed. Youkai drew another card.

After considering, Cromwell put the card away, instead combing his brown bangs to one side and producing a DuelDisk. "So, you guys must be one of those investigators hired by Special Investigations in Central. I've really wanted to meet one of you guys. I'll be treated like a king once the others find out about my win."

I rolled my eyes as I stepped up. "You haven't won yet."

"Duel!"

Cromwell: LP 8000

Chase: LP 8000

"Draw!" Cromwell called. "I'll special summon Grinder Golem [3000/300] on your side of the field, while I special summon two Grinder Tokens [0/0] to my field. Now, I play Creature Swap to exchange one Token for my Golem. I can't attack this turn, so I'll end my turn here."

I frowned at the large golem facing me, prepared to strike me down. With nothing left to live for, here we make our stand... so was the way of the Infernity.

"If I win, you'll come with us quietly, Cromwell." I stated. "You win, you get to leave with them. But... why would anyone want to join with them?"

"I'm saving my own hide," Cromwell snorted. "The Courts are obviously the better choice compared to staying in this putrid, broken world. If I can join in, I'll be on the winning side."

"You'll lose," I answered.

"Why? Because you have heroes?"

"No. Because you lack conviction." I drew the sixth card. Wave-Motion Inferno stared up at me. "I set a card, and play Card Destruction," I declared as I discarded five cards to draw five. "Activate the Spell, Double Summon, to summon Infernity Mirage and Shadowpriestess of Ohm [1700/1000]. Activate Spell card, Wave-Motion Inferno. I send it to the graveyard to discard my entire hand."

"An empty hand? You've just ruined your chances," Cromwell scowled.

"I tribute Infernity Mirage [0/0] to special summon Infernity Demon [1800/1200] and Infernity Necromancer [0/2000] from my graveyard." No response, no Extra Veiler, Lady Luck was on my side. "The effect of Infernity Demon activates; I search out the Continuous Spell, Infernity Launcher from my deck and activate it. I then use Infernity Necromancer and special summon the tuner monster, Infernity Beetle [1200/0] from my grave. I tribute your Grinder Token first to activate the effect of Shadowpriestess to deal out eight hundred points of burn damage to you."

The urumi held by the Shadowpriestess lashed out, painfully striking Cromwell.

Cromwell: LP 8000 → LP 7200

Chase: LP 8000

"I tribute Infernity Beetle to special summon two more Infernity Beetles from my deck." I continued. "I tribute Infernity Demon, Infernity Necromancer, and both Infernity Beetles to inflict eight hundred damage to you per the effect of Shadowpriestess. Now I activate Infernity Launcher, tributing it to special summon Infernity Demon and Necromancer in the graveyard. I use the effect of Demon to search out Infernity Mirage. By banishing Stygian Street Patrol in my hand, I can special summon Infernity Mirage [0/0] from my hand. Then, I use the handless effect of Necromancer to revive Infernity Beetle. I tribute Demon, Necromancer and Beetle to inflict twenty-four hundred damage to you."

Cromwell: LP 7200 → LP 4000 → LP 1600

"By tributing Infernity Mirage, I revive Demon and Necromancer once more," I announced as both monsters reappeared on the field. "Tribute both of them to use the effect of Shadowpriestess to finish you off."

Cromwell backed away slightly before the Shadowpriestess lunged at him, her urumi viciously striking him, the sound carrying into the night.

Cromwell: LP 1600 → LP 0

Chase: LP 8000

"Traitor," I hissed as Youkai got out of the car, cable ties in hand to handle the likes of Cromwell. Maybe my boyfriend kicked him for good measure; maybe not. Who knows what could have happened to elicit that snort of pain from a downed Cromwell.

Youkai glared at me once Cromwell was safely belted into the shotgun seat, now in the back row. "Where are we going?"

"Back to La Castle."

"Why?" Youkai glanced at the wooden box of yapping spirit puppies. "What about those? The local Rose Witch could protect them, right?"

"Misawa," Satoshi patiently said. "Yamamoto could get these guys integrated way better than you, no offence. And we've got a lead, we've got to secure it before Cromwell does something stupid like fling himself off the next high-rise."

Youkai rolled his eyes at the box. "Anything else you're neglecting to tell us? Ninja wombats or something?"

"I wanted Princeton to see how it feels," Satoshi commented.

"What's that supposed to mean?" I snapped.

"Come on, Princeton." Satoshi rolled his eyes. "You're wealthy, you've got connections, and you've got your own pet spirit. You didn't need me to give you a ride home. You could have taken a cab, called for a limo, or got your D-Wheel. Hell, you didn't even need to ambush Cromwell tonight."

"Oh? Then why am I here?" I shrugged. "Doesn't look like you showed up to bushwhack me. I guess you're here to talk."

"Razor intellect." Satoshi commented in a droll tone. "You should be a private investigator or something. Oh, wait..."

"You going to sit there insulting me, or are you going to talk?" I interrupted. "I don't care about the funny politics of the Duel Spirits that think it's okay to kidnap kids and whisk them away. I need to find Ryuusei."

"Yeah," The flame-haired Pro Duelist sighed. "That. The Courts want to throw down."

I snorted. "You do remember that technically we're at war, right? The Courts always want to throw down with the Movement."

"If you like, you can pretend that I'm employing subversive tactics as part of a fiendishly elaborate ruse meant to assure our victory," Satoshi snapped. "Atlas and you both, you're wild-cards. So be that, and hear us out later. We need to do this, and we don't even have all the information we need because Psychic Duelists that fight for the rest of the world don't think it's worth it and keep jumping ship."

"It's a big universe," I said. "No one can know it all."

Inside, I almost wished it were not so.

I talk to monsters.

Oh, silly me. I forgot to introduce myself again, and I've left you in the dust as I charge along with the narrative.

My name is Kannazuki Seika, or Seika Kannazuki to the English-inclined. I don't think there's anything quite outstanding about myself... except that I attend Duel Academia Queens, the only all-girl Duel Academia in the world. Queens is set up in Neo Domino City, the heart and birthplace of the rise of the popular game, Duel Monsters. And, I am the adopted daughter of the Fudo family, of Fudo Yusei and Izayoi Aki.

My Nii-chan and my oldest friend disappeared two years ago, disappeared by spirits into the darkness...

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