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Henri Ducard had feared the darkness since his wife and child had been taken… It stemmed, he supposed, from coming home to a dark house, those first few months after the deaths, and not knowing what to expect from the shadows that had never been there before.
There had always been a night light, one that his wife had proposed installed after their son had a particularly horrid night mare. Henri had slept with the little thing in his room after the night he woke, screaming, from a dream of his deceased family. For the longest time, it had seemed that they would eventually creep from the shadows, just to cause to him the same pain they endured before death.
The night that his sensei had invaded his room, calling him with a bellow like the devil's hound from his sleep, the enormous man had crushed the little night light, chuckling at his pupil-to-be's fears. "Yours is a fear that will benefit you in battle, my young apprentice."
o.o.o
In any case, Henri Ducard was beginning to feel the old twists of dread in his stomach. Before, when lying in his bedroom, he had had the luxury of eyesight. Now, as the darkness descended on him, he had not even that. The shapes twisted before him as he tried to vainly to focus.
Why does your enemy attack?
The wind whistled pleasantly through the open window, sending a wave of cool over the weary man. But to Ducard, it was the breath of a demon, wafting over his exposed neck….
Because it fears you.
His breathing hitched, and Henri found his heart beat thundering his chest. He was sinking back into the darkness, as his mentor had taught him to… Calling upon his fears to summon his strength… But he wanted only to evade that darkness. Wanted only to flee it. Light sank away way, little though there was, suddenly, Ducard was very alone.
Panic.
The first time his mentor had struck him, whilst he was blinded by darkness, Henri had reacted in rage, turning with the apprentice's wooden blade and striking out uselessly into the ebon surroundings.
Ducard thrust his arm out to parry a blow from long time past. His body screamed in protest, but he fought madly against the shadows… And suddenly the creature was upon him, wrapping it's clawed appendages about his limbs, restraining his movement. Henri cried out, feral like, in pain and fear, and struggled away from his attacker -
"Peace, Mir. Ducard!" the Healing Man said calmly, his stern body rigid as it anchored the fallen warrior to his cot. "Come back from the shadows, Henri, I am here. There is nothing to harm you."
Ducard slumped as the calm voice invaded the shadows in his mind, pulling him from the darkness. He fell back into the blankets, breathing heavily. There was a shuffling, and as Ducard regained his lost composure, the healer set a candle on the squat little table at his bedside. From that candle, he lit a stick of incense, which he left burning beside the candle.
"Is that derived from your herbs too?" Ducard asked in a monotonous voice, an edge of sarcasm just barely discernable.
"An inspired thought, but no. It's sage."
Ducard sighed, his eye lids growing heavy again, as the healer frowned over his disturbed bandages.
The pain Ducard had felt in his panic had emitted from the vicious gouge wound he had sustained during 'The Accident.' The Healing Man fussed over the wound now, removing the bandages in exasperation, though still preserving the mask of calm as he spoke.
"You've reopened the wound again, strained right through the stitches. I would think a warrior would have known better." There was a hint of amusement in his words, even as he threaded and sanitized a needle so to repair the stitches.
Henri didn't flinch once, meditating thoughtfully on a the scent of incense at his body was once again repaired. A question was aching at the back of him, though he refused to make it know, partially because he feared the healer's answer.
o.o.o
It was nearly three weeks since he had woken in this strange and tranquil place. Ducard lay, still too weak to leave his cot, deep in thought, meditating upon the darkness from which he had so franticly fled from the night before. It was humiliating to imagine now, a grown man, and a warrior of the shadows, fleeing from a monster from beneath the bed.
My fear is my weakness, and also my strength.
He had learned to build anger around fear, to harness one of the most powerful emotions in the universe to prompt the primitive, bestial side of himself that man had buried long ago. Now he focused on what he feared most - The shadows.
There was a straining in his heart, a fluttering that blossomed beautifully into flickering flames of fear. In his mind, he reached out to touch it, take it in his fist and breath life into it. As the fear grew within, he drew on the strength, sending waves of energy to his healing body, whispering the prayers his sensei had taught him long ago.
His hair was nearly an inch long now. A soft, chocolaty brown, touched hear or there with hints of blonde. A shrewd growth of stubble had been inspired upon his chin and just above his lip, the color of ginger. The warrior had acquired quite a set of lines on his face over the years. Weariness, most of them. Some grief, some stress. Most of them were premature, even for a man of his age.
The fear had become intoxicating now, and he had to work to control his breathing. His heart was once again racing, as he drew on what had become a drug over the years.
A pressure on his leg…
His eyes flew open, his fists balling against the menace that was -
TBC
