(([@Jewels] is Shakti, of course.))

Casara Talbot passed through the checkpoint separating the East End from the West, feeling impatient at the delay it invariably caused her.  As a courier, she crossed all over Enigma several times over the course of a day, and a good number of the guards knew her on sight.  Some of them -- mostly the nicer ones -- were perhaps a bit less thorough when they screened her.  But it wasn’t nearly as fast as the tunnels.  For that matter, the streets as a whole were sometimes slower than the tunnels -- not to mention they had far more /people/.  She focused on keeping her breathing even.  She nodded to the guards on duty that she recognized, as they finally waved her through.

Adjusting the strap of her bag, she made her way into the West End, checking the address on her clipboard.  She knew the location, and before long she’d made her delivery.  It was early afternoon by then, and she’d been running around nearly nonstop since that morning.  It was time for a break, and some lunch, and she needed to get groceries for home anyhow.  In addition to the things she got for herself, she grabbed a bag of butterscotch candies after noticing they were on special.

The young woman tucked a stray lock of blonde hair back under her cap before unwrapping her sandwich.  When she reached the apartment building that was her next destination, she still had a third of it left.  She went right past the elevator and up the narrow flight of stairs near the back of the building.  She never took elevators, not unless she had something with her that couldn’t be easily maneuvered up the nearest staircase.  Elevators were small, which wasn’t so bad, but if there was someone else there, or if they got on after you did, there was absolutely nowhere to go.

In the sharp light of the stairwell, she caught glimpses of it watching as the lights overhead threw her shadow first behind, then ahead.  Cas had long ago learned that it was best to pretend she couldn’t see it, always lurking nearby.  After all, no one /else/ could -- at least not most of the time.  If they could, it was time to run, run, run -- before her Shadow, her curse, claimed more lives.

It didn’t like to move. There were so many beings in passing that it was difficult to brace for all of them, particularly with the limitations Shakti had. Its world ended where light encroached, and the one who carried it with her did so enjoy the light for that reason. Hell had made Shakti a being of paranoia, and without a body, there was no other sensation for it to have except those of its own mind, and it was a fragmented mind in the best of times.

It had the sensation of moving blindly, able to peer through holes in its own darkness here and there, where shadows might linger. Every living thing it passed was a threat to it and the one who carried it, but it could not act upon it lest she make good on her threat to end her life in the light and bury it in this limbo for eternity. At least, that’s how it felt. What the anchor didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her, though.

It’d keep preying on small and weak things while she slept, and be more devious about its protection in the future. Nonzero risk was too much risk, after all.

It waited in the dark.