Note: Yes, it's been months. Still, I finally got around to finishing this, so I guess that counts for something. Thank you all for waiting for so long to read my terrible prose.

Here goes.

The Crawler was satisfied. The intruders had been crushed, and the pieces of color that had fallen from the sky were now consumed by the darkness. Inelegance had been purged. His décor was once again immaculate. The nature of the universe, he soon found, however, left little room in one's life for such simple joys. If the Crawler had the time, he would have investigated the source of those disturbing lumps of color. There was still much preparation to be done, however, and so he pushed the thought into the back of his mind. Such trivialities could afford to wait for a little while longer. The invasion of the lands around him, however, could not, and neither could the Master. In the Crawler's honest opinion, both the invasion and his superior should find time to work on their patience. The time they both would spend doing that, at least, would allow him some time to rest. Melodrama, after all, was a very tiring process, and he did not have had the occasion as yet to recover from the exertion of all the dramatization required of the latest conquest.

Then, in his little pool of darkness that made up his lodging in this place, the Crawler felt a slight but frustratingly familiar tingle deep in the good blackness of his soul. He knew what it meant. One of his children had detected something foreign. And in this place, foreign was only one thing – anything that was not the darkness. Grumbling loudly, he roused himself out of his place, and reached out with his senses to look out through the darkness. As had happened before, he felt the change in the air. And as they had before, the green rocks started hurtling out of the sky. It was not just a few pieces of the things that came falling down this time, however. First a handful, then dozens of them descended to the ground, and soon there were hundreds of the things smashing themselves open on the surface of the world. The living darkness that coated the ground drew back before the rocks, exposing an ever expanding area of sand. The Crawler narrowed his eyes. Obviously, he was going to have to have a few words with the darkness. From the rocks burst forth creatures of hellish forms. Standing taller than even his suits of armor, they were clumsy monstrosities of grotesque proportions; flesh shifted incessantly under a diseased hide, and they lashed about at the air surrounding them with the boulders that were their right arms. There they stood, silent as the Void itself, while more of the rocks came streaking down toward the ground, cracking open to release their occupants to join the ever growing horde of monsters. The Crawler, of course, could not have that. He scowled for a long moment at the green fiends that were occupying his lands. Then he dispatched a group of his shadowy children to get rid of them.

The shadows were at first hesitant to step onto the exposed sand. Then, as more of their numbers rose from the black pillars that were all about, they slowly came out in small groups until there was a small army of them stalking about at the very edge of the darkness that was pooled on the ground. The two armies stood soundlessly staring at each other across that stretch of sand. There was an interminable silence, and the Crawler soon grew bored of it. At just the barest of his signals, the first of the shadows ran forward, and soon the bulk of his children were charging at the irritating enemy. Then there was movement amongst the ranks of the green monsters, and they thrashed their arms about, striking at the sand beneath their feet. Guttural moans rose from the mass of the creatures, accompanied by incomprehensible groans and phrases of words that formed a cacophony so intense as to make the Crawler clench his metaphorical teeth to hold in a non-existent lunch. The tentacles at their heads thrashed about angrily. Then one of them pounded at the sand a last time, and, with a lumbering sort of charge, it ran at the approaching tide of the Crawler's children. Its fellow beasts were quick to follow. Sluggishly, the mass of monsters spread outward, and soon the fiends were nothing but a solid tide that bore unfairly down on his children, picking up momentum all the while.

The two armies came together with a resounding crash, and the menacing hissing of his children mingled with the clamor caused by the enemy forces, almost drowning out the sound of blows and sword strikes that was the only indication that there was, in fact, a battle happening. Indeed, the two armies let out no cries of pain as they were struck, nor were there any grunts that indicated the amount of sheer energy being poured into the struggle. And in much the same way, neither soldier nor fiend let out a sound as he was crushed by a monster's arm, or was put down by a shadow's sword.

And so the frustrated roar by the Crawler could be heard by all present when the shadows were slowly forced into a grudging retreat by the enemy. Even in the distant battlefield, the earth shook from his fury, and the rusty clouds rolled and seethed angrily as he let loose a bloodcurdling scream of pure rage and hatred to travel across the land. The shadows stumbled about, dazed, as they felt the unbridled force of his displeasure. For a moment, they faded a little, then solidified into the darkest figures imaginable, and their eyes flared in a vibrant shade of crimson so vivid it reflected the fullness of the Crawler's vehemence.

But the moment in which they had cowed before the Crawler's ferocity had been fatal. For it was in that one moment that the fiends had sensed weakness, and they had acted upon it. In that one moment, the faltering line of his children had been broken, and, as they reeled from both shocks, the monsters had moved in amongst them, flailing about with their arms, and the shadows had fallen before them. With every strike of the fiends, another shadow had shattered, its seemingly solid husk breaking into tens of thousands of pieces that soon faded, leaving behind a thin trail of smoke that was all that remained of his child. And with each stroke of the fiends, the Crawler's anger grew; and the children sensed his rage, and their attacks grew less crisp. And yet the monsters gave them no opportunity to recover. The beasts pressed in, laying about them with their arms, and continued with their grisly massacre.

Finally the Crawler could hold it in no longer. As the last of the shadows were obliterated, he raised his face to the sky. Mustering all the hate and anger he felt for this new enemy, he let out a terrifyingly long snarl that spoke very eloquently of his exact feelings. Then from the sky came a chuckle, soft at first, but quickly building up in sonority. The mocking laughter continued for a long moment, and, for the first time in a long while, the Crawler's mind grew hazy as a mindless rage filled his thoughts.

There was never too perfect a victory, the Gravemind felt. And, while he watched the corpses of his soldiers reanimate themselves and stand back up, he indulged in a little self-congratulation. One's own morale, after all, had to be kept up, in whatever method was at hand. The earth shuddered under the feet of his soldiers, and he sighed. The tantrums of the enemy were starting to get boring.

He idly watched more pods streak toward the ground, to smash open on the sand. Thousands of infection forms spewed out, and the ground was suddenly nothing but a moving carpet of green flesh. There was, of course, nothing for them to take over, but the Gravemind thought they looked rather beautiful writhing around like that. Spore from the pods quickly spread over the sand, and the Gravemind felt that familiar tinge of anticipation that always came with a new infestation. As he watched, the sand shifted as the Flood spread.

He patiently waited for the hive to grow, and kept himself busy by releasing spores to help in certain areas where the growths seemed weak. There were attacks, of course, but they were nothing major, and easily beaten off by random sorties. The skirmishes probed for weakness, and the enemy found none. The darkness that tried to envelope the hive pressed in for a while, but it too made little progress. Throughout it all, the ground did not stop trembling as the other entity continued with its tantrums.

It was one particularly average day, much like all the others had been, when the Gravemind's patience finally paid off. Under the bloody skies, the sand bulged, and it heaved. A portion of it rose momentarily, and it stayed that way for a while. Then out of the ground burst forth a single unhealthy looking tendril. For a moment nothing else happened, and the single stalk swayed lazily in the still air. Then, all around it, a writhing mass of tentacles erupted from beneath the ground. From their base came spilling out a green cloud so thick it was almost a wall on its own. The cloud spread out across the sand, and soon it was competing with the darkness over the honor of covering the sand. But it did not stop there. The cloud kept spreading, even into the darkness itself. Amidst the tentacles, the sand gave once more, and a cluster of unhealthy looking bulbous growths came rising up over it. Under the blanket of the cloud, the growths pulsated as they gave birth to new life, and the Gravemind smiled in triumph.

The waves of hatred that he soon felt emanating from the other entity, however, very nearly made his tentacles shrivel. It was a feeling he himself had quite often felt, but the Gravemind thought the enemy really went overboard with his, as the ground shook as though a sudden quake had taken hold.

'Who are you?' the other entity roared. The Gravemind scoffed. Of all the questions he could have asked, that was the one he chose? The other entity, obviously, was an amateur.

'I am peace,' the Gravemind replied, mimicking the slow baritone the other entity spoke in. It was not too difficult. It was, after all, one he himself had so often used. 'I am salvation.' Then he grinned. If the opposition was not going to try, he decided, then neither was he.

'You impertinent fool,' came the reply. 'Do you not know who I am?'

'I do know you are a bodiless voice who has an unhealthy love for the color black.'

There was again another angry roar. 'Don't overdo it,' the Gravemind cautioned.

'I am the Nightcrawler, leader of the Darkness, Lord and Creator of the Shadows, the tormentor of souls and first and greatest commander of the Corruptor, leader of the Great Corruption, Prince of the Void and consumer of a thousand worlds. You are no match for me. Go now, while you are able to.'

The Gravemind chuckled, the laugh travelling far across the land. 'I seem to be doing quite well. Let's keep our threats realistic, shall we?'

The Crawler snarled. 'Come, then, and face your doom.'

Postscript: Even as I read back on this, I realize that the two, charming characters that they are, seem to roar and shout a lot. Then again, they have never done much else in the games, either. At any rate, there will probably be a couple more chapters, then I will end this.

Until next time.