Envelopment in Darkness

Finally, darkness enveloped him.  There was no more black sun, not a trace of a grain of sand.  No noise.  No feelings, no warmth.  There was no sound, no light, only nothingness.  It gripped his heart and tugged on it like in so many different ways he knew not what to think.  Part of the Abyss pulled him like a confused baby confronted with the curled fingertip of a stranger.  A place which held absolutely nothing now had a partner in blackness, something of equal emotional absence that he could have considered it kin. 

Then there was the other side.  It was a side that reached up from the farthest depths of hell like a beast that had been starved for the last half of eternity.  He could hear its snarls and rumbling stomach, feel the wind of the vacuum inside its mouth just waiting to be filled with his very consciousness.  For it could only be satisfied by the magnitude of mental energy that was the human soul.  But was he really human in this domain anyway?.

“It’s time.”

He reached behind him and pulled out the Sword from its scabbard.  It screeched along the top metal guard of the casing, cried out in excitement like a child with a new toy.  Its passion for battle would soon be fulfilled, and as it let out its scream it flowed into the man, channeling through him a deep, black glow that surrounded his body, penetrated deep into his skin and into the very center of his marrow.  It pulsated, resonated, hummed.  The man, no longer a man, but a product of his environment and an entity of the Abyss itself, arched his back and grimaced, knowing all to well the feeling that was going to come in only a few seconds.

It came far quicker than that.  The dim black glow that surrounded his body exploded into non-light, and he clenched his teeth, grunting as the burning sensation filled his veins with blood that boiled, his lungs with breath that steamed.  His skin turned from a delicate olive color to sheer black, and for a moment he blended in with the background of the Abyss like a performer at Vaudeville.  His clever Masquerade held for only a brief moment before the definitions of his body once again began to contrast with his background.  Through the darkness emerged two legs, coated in black scale armor, spikes protruding, curved downward from the back of his calves.  An ebony breastplate followed, extending over his hips and hanging just below his waste with plates that overlapped each other.  Up and up the blackness went, consuming him in the black casing that he knew would protect him in the days that came.

Flexible gauntlets now hid his hands from view, both of which gripped the Sword at the hilt as though any looseness in his muscles would cause his only form of offense to vaporize and disappear.  The Sword loved every squeeze, the anticipation of striking something building its mysterious personality into a frenzy. 

And then the helmet burst from the darkness, two red, glowing eyes sending rays of light in every direction for a few moments before it subsided into two fiery embers firmly implanted in its visor.  There was no human protruding from this armor now.  It was hidden deep within black armor, protected by the Sword of Shadows.  It would take a force of immense proportions to touch him now.  A force like the Darkness.

There he stood.  No longer the man that was known to the world above, the world he had already begun to forget.  He stood there, ready for the fight of his life once more, as the being he always had been, always would be, and finally was again.  Instinctively, familiar words rolled off his tongue, over his lips, and out of the grates of the helmet into the world around him, echoing into eternity. 

“I am the Hero to Sins and Shadows.  En guard, Darkness.  Thy time hath come.”