Sorry for the wait, I've had a bit of a stall where this story is concerned. This chapter didn't really help, it is really just a exceptionally short filling chapter, gives a bit of background information and gets ready for the big bit in the next chapter.
I was trying to make this a bit longer but then everything just sort of fell into place and bob's-your-uncle, the story is actually only going to be about five chapters long.
Chapter 3: Consideration
Yami was absently wandering around his territory considering the finer points of human stupidity.
His darkings had just reported to him. It had taken them a long time to determine what it was that Voldemort was doing. However Yami suspected that the reason behind this was that darkings were not overly intelligent and could be easily distracted. They had finally informed him that the non-human had recently been meeting with other Shades.
Yami had now been assisting Voldemort for several weeks; he had participated in twelve raids on wizard villages and observed several sessions of torture. It had been interesting, but this news was making an already wary creature rather paranoid.
Yami knew through a darking overheard conversation that Voldemort had nearly fifty Shades working for him in various parts around the island. This was nearly the whole Shade population of England. Despite most human myths there were actually not all that many Shades. They had large territories and didn't put up with another Shade in the area. Humans tended to believe that there were millions of them, largely Yami thought because of the darkings which humans couldn't distinguish from a Shade.
Voldemort was beginning to cross lines. This arrangement was starting to get very close to Yami working with other Shades and that was something that neither he nor his kin would stand for.
Yami wasn't sure exactly how he was going to deal with it. Still he had plenty of time. He was making his way over to the nearest human village. The wizards in the area had respelled their homes against him after a few days of terror and fury. The next time Voldemort had sent a human messenger to him requesting his presence Yami had given him a reply; by the time he returned the spells would be gone.
It had been done. Voldemort may have no understanding of the complexities of Shade politics, but he did understand that if he crossed them he was going to be in serious trouble.
Yami prowled through the village. He let his shadows wrap around the humans, their innate spells drawing out the energy supplying emotions.
He wasn't overly obvious about it. That would make the humans suspicious; it was just a generalised feeling of gloom. If he did this on only one human it would be practically useless, but on this scale the emotion was very enriching.
Yami flexed around absently, his darkings were skittering through the buildings tugging apart spells and drawing in the latent energy from them. Yami smirked and stretched out his shadows. In doing so he sensed a human approaching. His magic flinched away from this human for a moment. That was a sure sign of one of Voldemort's human servants. They seemed to be absorbing his tainting to a degree, nothing like the hollow feeling darkness that the non-human himself bore, but a lesser version as though the tainting was contagious and they were not yet fully infected.
Yami found an open clearing in the nearby forest and drew together into human form to wait for the messenger. The human plodded into the clearing panting desperately. Yami had specifically told Voldemort that any of the messengers who arrived via their teleportation spell would have delivered their last message.
The human took some time to recover; apparently he had been running for some time. Yami didn't press him, whatever Voldemort wanted Yami didn't want to wait and playing with the emotions of humans tended to make them confused and very forgetful. As strange as the situation was, the events that Voldemort offered Yami an appearance at were appropriately entertaining to warrant Yami not killing or tormenting every human messenger he saw.
When the messenger had recovered he tried to stand a little straighter. The Death Eaters were becoming more comfortable with his presence, but they maintained that natural wariness. Their irrational fear of the dark.
Still fear was good; Yami wasn't going to let them lose that.
"The Dark Lord requests that you come to discuss a new development."
Yami smirked; Voldemort had sent him a message once, summoning him to his presence. Yami had sent the messenger back with a reply, which came in the form of a Shade spell designed to create real bone chilling, mind numbing fear. Apparently Voldemort had learnt his lesson in manners.
"Very well." Yami said and rose, stripping back the layers of illusion and flowing out over the forest towards the distant house where the tainted human-who-was-not lived.
If you have any questions about anything, let me know. I've done this all in a bit of a sleep deprived blur so if something doesn't make sense tell me, otherwise I won't notice.
Watching an episode of Doctor Who; Silence in the Library, with the Vashta Nerada whole story lines involving Yami and those carnivorous little bastards unfolded. They might make it up, depends on how motivated I'm feeling.