Regular POV
Lucine clutched the handle of her sword and backed away, her breath coming out ragged.
Her throat felt like it was on fire, but she felt any thing BUT strong at the moment. She was afraid of losing control of her powers. The last hit she had thrown at Lysander was useless, but had increased in strength. If it had hit him, it probably would have hurt him worse than intended.
Damn... if I don't hurry and get this over with, I might...
For a moment, her expression turned into worry, but when Lysander appeared behind her, smirking, her face hardened and she whirled around to face him.
"You're not getting tired, are you? I was just having fun.."
After another powerful, yet useless swing of her sword, Lysander disappeared, laughing.
"Dammit, Lysander! Why won't you just FIGHT me?!" Lucine managed to gasp out with a strong voice.
"Poor Shyann. You can't hit me."
Lysander appeared before her, but she barely had time to react when his arms swung and his fist quickly pushed into her stomach.
"Ahhh...!" she gasped at the pain and struggled to keep standing from the powerful blow.
Holding her stomach with one arm, she clutched her sword again. Lucine's heart was pounding so quickly, though she wasn't sure why.
Lucine, what's going on...?
She heard her inner human's small, shaky voice. She was afraid.
Well, that didn't exactly mean she was, too.
"Why won't you stay in one place?!" Lucine shouted, turning in circles and completely aware of her surroundings.
Lysander's laugh, which was very annoying to Lucine at the moment, echoed through out the blank realm.
"Now, you know I can't do that. I rarely get chances to use my illusion magic. I'm able to use my maximum power here."
Lysander appeared, a little far from her, smiling at her with gleaming gold and sapphire eyes.
Lucine panted, and a familiar rage swept through her.
"Give me a fair fight, then!" she shouted, walking toward him with her sword in her left hand.
Lysander's sinister grin widened, "That's it... your aura's growing darker by the minute, Shyann. Come at me with all that rage! I'd love to see what you're going to do next."
He's wide open. Kill him.
Another voice commanded Lucine, which made her even angrier. She was focused on Lysander now. Her eyes began to cloud over and Lysander watched, interested. His grin faded and he watched dark, human like shadows emerge from Lucine's body. They moved quickly. Lysander didn't have time to make a run for it, or to disappear into the middle of nowhere.
The figures wrapped their arms around him. Lysander felt his body go cold and his eyes widened in horror. He tried to pull away from them, but they held him tightly.
Lucine's eyes were dark, no longer amethyst, but a deep plum like color. Her eyes held no glimmer, nor did her face have any expression. Lysander watched his blank realm be clouded in darkness with every step she took.
Meanwhile...
Rosalya panted, but continued on. Leigh was really hard to keep up with, you never knew when he would stop to pick up an intense amount of energy, and you never knew when he'd suddenly dart into the trees and appear again.
Leigh stopped again, and Rosalya put her hands on her knees , panting heavily.
She glanced up at Leigh, who was glancing around quickly, his bronze eyes scanning the forest.
"I'm sensing the portals appearing in 3 different directions. I think Lysander thought about us finding them and decided to keep changing where the realm itself is."
Which meant they needed to split up, which would give them better chances of finding the realm.
"We need to hurry so he doesn't have enough time to.. you know.."
Rosalya felt an intense amount of power then, and turned to her right, taking off into the forest.
"Okay! I'll call you when I find something! If you have to, freeze tiiiiiiime~!"
Leigh ran to his right after feeling another wave of Lysander's familiar magic and hoped Rosalya would call him soon.
The wave disappeared and reappeared to Leigh's left. He followed it and it disappeared again. He stopped and waited. When he turned, he saw a small black sphere circled with electric waves. Running toward it, he ignored it, only flickering his eyes in the direction.
When they were younger, Lysander and Leigh had played a sort of "hide and seek" game with the portal openings. Sometimes Lysander would hide the actual portal, while Leigh picked up the waves of the decoys. This one, Leigh didn't sense, so he was sure this was it.
"Rosalya, I think I found the-"
"Hey, Leigh, I think I found the- AH!"
Both vampires crashed into each other, right in front of the floating ball.
Leigh hurried to get off of Rosalya and he helped her up, sighing.
"Well, this is it. Hold on tight, sometimes 2 people will split up."
Rosalya looked scared, but wrapped her arms around Leigh's neck, "Where does the second person go?"
"Just hold your breath."
Back in Lysander's realm..
"You... what's going on?" Lysander was finally able to tear away from the dark shadow's clutches, but he was still trying to understand what was happening to Shy – who was definitely not the girl he was toying with minutes ago.
His realm was being consumed by darkness, which was eating away at it. This definitely wasn't good.
If his realm was torn apart, they'd both fall into space, or disappear into another realm that could not be opened or closed.
But at least his fear had awaken him on the inside – his regular self, not the one that wanted so badly to kill her for her blood.
"Shyann... listen to me! You might not want to destroy this place!" Lysander backed away.
It was no use. The girl walking toward him was silent, but had the intent to kill him. It was as if she was under some type of spell.
Lysander wasn't sure how he'd gone back to his regular self, but he was happy he wasn't saying anything more to make her angry, being in control of his body.
"Shyann – ugh!" The girl hurled her sword at him, it was quick while it sliced through the air – and created a large gash in his shoulder.
Lysander gritted his teeth and reached up to clutch his shoulder as dark red blood ran down his jacket.
Shy raised a hand slowly and stretched it toward the sword. A dark cloud in the shape of a fist emerged from her hand and stretched as well, snatching the sword before it could hit the ground. The fist brought the sword back to it's owner and Shy gripped the handle, rushing toward Lysander again.
Lysander was able to disappear and reappear again, but this time, Shy was too quick for him. Whenever he reappeared, she was there, swinging her sword and hitting whatever she intended to in order to injure him. Lysander had gashes and wounds to worry about in several places that were painful, but bearable. His leather jacket and pants were stained with blood.
The puppet that was Shy brought her sword up to lick the blood from it eagerly.
Trying to confuse her, Lysander used his power to duplicate himself so he was circling her.
Her face blank, her body moving in robotic, jerk like motions, Shy turned around, her dark plum eyes scanning the circle of perfect decoys.
Lysander's heart pounded almost painfully in his chest. She had already scanned over him, standing among the decoys in a circles, but he was sure she was getting closer to finding him. Lysander was getting too weak to make his illusions seem more realistic, and his opponent was showing him that she was far more intelligent than he would have liked.
Did she know that decoys didn't have hearts?
Shy moved, jerkily, again toward a decoy and put her hand on it's chest. Lysander was thinking of slipping away when she turned her eyes on him. She took off toward him with her sword above her head, but just when Lysander was turning to run, the blank space began to shake and break into pieces.
It shook again, throwing both Lysander and Shy off balance, but Lysander had recovered his balance again, but found himself standing on a white platform, floating in the middle of a black space.
He turned his attention back on Shy – she was already carefully jumping on the higher platforms toward him.
The other Lysander, the one he was struggling to let go of, the one hungry for her blood, wanted to create an illusion of a false platform so she'd plunge into eternal space, but the Lysander on the outside didn't want to hurt her. He wanted the other her to come back – the human part of her.
This part, the one he was battling, was anything but human.
Lysander felt someone ripping through his realm and turned in enough time to see his elder brother Leigh and his upperclassman Rosalya.
"Lysander!" Leigh landed on a plat form and Rosalya landed on another.
"Leigh?" the two brothers stared at each other, and Lysander heard Leigh's voice in his mind.
"You were a fool to give in, Lysander. Now look what you've done."
Lysander was already ashamed enough. He had never dreamed of wanting to kill someone, especially someone helpless like Shyann.. well... someone that had been helpless. His darker side had wanted this to happen, to see the darker side of her out of curiosity, but wasn't aware of what that could mean for the both of them.
Leigh looked away from Lysander and at the dark eyed Shyann. Her dark aura was growing. Lysander glanced over at Leigh again.
He'd never seen his brother look so worried, or afraid. Could it be Leigh... cared about Shy more than he thought...?
"Rosalya – take my brother and get out of here, please. I'm going to get Shy before this realm's consumed completely."
With that, Leigh took off, jumping down on the platforms toward Shy. For a moment, Lysander was afraid his brother was going to be killed.
"Leigh!"
Rosalya wrapped her arms around Lysander from behind and pulled on him.
"Come on, Lys, we need to get out of here."
"But Rosalya, what will happen to-"
"It's fine, Lys, Leigh knows what he's doing! Come on!"
Lysander was still worried, but created another portal to get them back to Sweet Amoris. The portal was small, due to Lysander being weak, and would proably only hold for another few minutes.
Just as he and Rosalya were pulled back into the world, Lysander yelled for his brother to hurry.
Leigh heard the whirling sound that indicated his brother and Rosalya were back home, but didn't turn his attention away from Shy for a second.
She was only a few plat forms away from him now. She had paused and her sword was down by her side, she didn't intend to kill him.
"Shy, come back! We need to hurry!" Leigh stepped closer to her, then turned around quickly to see if there were enough platforms grouped together so they could get out.
Unfortunately, the plat forms kept moving and were growing meters away from each other by the second.
He turned his attention back to her again.
Shy's eyes were dark and her expression was blank. Her dress and jacket were torn, showing skin, and she stood completely still, staring up at him.
Leigh reached a hand out to her, but she didn't take it. For a moment, he forgot what he was supposed to do to calm her.
Grabbing her, Leigh placed her on the same platform as him and held her close to his body. His hand cupped her cheek. Her body was cold and her skin was pale.
"Shy... what happened to you..?" he already knew, and was angry at his brother for every hit he'd placed on her. He'd caused her destructive, mysterious dark side to awaken,
He placed his forehead on hers and hesitantly placed a soft kiss on her lips.
Moments passed before he felt her squirming. Leigh opened his eyes slightly to see she was flushed and her body heat had returned. He smiled against her lips at what he saw. Lucine's eyes were shut tightly and she was struggling to get him away from her.
Leigh pulled away and Lucine gasped for air.
"That was longer than necessary!" she glared at him, her amethyst fire in her eyes burning again.
Leigh felt a relieved smile cross his lips before grabbing her and pulling her up on a platform with him.
"Damn!" he scanned the dark space. The plat forms were too far away and the portal was shrinking.
Lucine thought quickly, jumping behind Leigh and focusing her magic so that her wings would appear. With a large flap, her pure white wings unfurled and spread. She tightened her grip around Leigh and took off, flying as fast as she could – Leigh and Lucine were zipping through the dark space now.
Lucine shut her eyes as they drew nearer to the portal. Just a little more...
They passed through the portal and Leigh turned around so that when they landed, he'd break her fall.
They were sent crashing to the ground in the forest back at Sweet Amoris just as the portal closed and Leigh groaned at the pain in his back.
Lucine opened her eyes. She'd done it! She had gotten them back safely!
Looking down, her eyes widened.
Leigh was in pain – he had flipped them over so she wouldn't get hurt...
"Ah – I'm..sorry about that.." she quickly got off of him and was relieved to see that he was able to sit up.
"Shy – Lucine, are you alright?" he asked.
Lucine nodded and felt her cheeks burn scarlet, " I... I'm not back to normal yet, and … I.. I think you deserve a thank you... so.."
Leigh's eyes widened as Lucine took her face in his hands and bravely kissed him.
There was a quick, bright flash as Shy appeared, in her regular clothes.
Her cheeks turned pink and she pulled away.
"I'm sorry..." she said again, and Leigh gave a half smile before reaching up to brush her hair out of her face.
"It's alright. I'm just happy you're safe, Shy."
Rosalya appeared, running toward them.
"Lysander's back at the nurse's office. He's fine, of course. Are you two alright?"
Later...
Shy took a sip of her drink and stretched.
"Wow, it's been a long day." Rosalya sighed in content.
Leigh rested his chin in his hands, glaring over at Castiel, who was on stage, tuning his guitar.
Lysander was sitting at the same table at them, surrounded by fan girls, but he barely glanced at them.
Leigh knew he was annoyed and just wanted them all to sit down so he could apologize to Shy properly. He'd spent the last few hours apologizing, and Shy had kept telling him it was fine, but fine wasn't enough for him.
Castiel started playing, and the girls immediately ran to crowd the dance floor.
Lysander turned and grabbed Shy's hands, getting on a knee.
"Shyann! You have to forgive me! Please, I'm so sorry, I don't know what came over me... it's just-"
Lucine snapped and in a flash, took Shy's body over. Her silver eye turned amethyst like the other and her hair darkened. Jumping out of her seat, she snatched her hand away from the surprised Lysander.
"Dude! What the hell do you want me to do?! I already told you it was fine, dammit! What – are you going to sing me a damn song?!"
"Oooh, you know, Lucine, that sounds nice! Why don't we sing it instead! A duet!" Rosalya hopped out of her seat.
Lucine turned her fiery amethyst glare on her. "Shut up, Rosalya!"
