[color=00aeef][i]It was so peaceful here.[/i] [/color] Drifting weightlessly in the quiet and the darkness, Droka did something that he often found himself unable to do; relax. It almost felt like swimming, only with the benefit of not having to worry about things like drowning or having his eyes exposed to bright light. Others might have been terrified, but for Droka the darkness had never been something to fear. For him light was something to be afraid and wary of, a belief that was only partially inspired by the fact that even just brief, accidental contact with his eyes caused him a great deal of pain. When one was exposed in the light, it... forced a shape on you. Made you wear a mask for the sake of the public even as they wore a mask in return. Only in darkness did people truly show who they are, when nobody else can see them. As a big yawn escaped him and his eyes started to close in order to try get some sleep, something... changed. Before he had just been drifting rather comfortably, but all of a sudden it felt like gravity had lightly grasped him and was pulling him down. Not at an overly fast or worrying rate but at a soft, peaceful sink. Annoyingly it was just enough of a sensation that the idea of actually going to sleep had to be scrapped. With a small grunt, he opened his eyes again and looked... well... [i]down[/i] wasn't really the right word, but it was the word that came to mind under the circumstances. Almost seemingly at random, the decent stopped as his feet touched solid ground of some sort. Before he had a chance to try and uncover the mystery of what it was that he was standing on, the shadows started to shift and transform into birds before his eyes, flying away into the darkness and leaving him standing on... As he glanced down and discovered that it appeared to some kind of stain glass platform that glowed with light, there was a terrible moment of fear that struck into his heart that the light would be too bright; That it would trigger a painful, horrible episode just by looking at it with the naked eye. Frantically his hands patted down his pockets and clothing, desperately looking for his tinted glasses out of a reflex to provide himself some kind of protection before it was too late. As the moments passed, his movements slowed alongside his pounding heart and his panicked breathing. It... wasn't bright enough to hurt him. It still took a little while for him to calm down. He still didn't look too closely at the ground through; Just because the glow wasn't bright enough to cause him discomfort at a glance, looking directly at it seemed like a poor idea. [i]"So much to do, but so little time..."[/i] ...And now he was hearing things. Great. "[color=00aeef]Are we really doing this? I'm really not a fan of the whole disembodied voice thing.[/color]" [i]"...Take your time."[/i] "[color=00aeef]That wasn't an answer to my question![/color]" Droka snapped, looking around to see if he could spy the source of the noise... and failing to see anything. It always bugged him whenever someone was talking [i]at[/i] him and not [i]too[/i] him. It just seemed rude... [i]"Walk forward..." "Can you do it?"[/i] For a moment, he earnestly considered just staying where he was and ignoring the mysterious voice out of spite... but all things considered all that would likely do is just cause more problems then it was worth. Walking forward, Droka jumped in his own skin as the ground started to shake... and three platforms seemed to magically rise out of it. On one rested a sword. On another, a shield... and the third and the one that drew his attention the most, a strange looking staff of some kind. [i]"Choose."[/i] Droka glanced around the platform again, vainly looking for the speaker before shaking his head and refocusing. The sword was quickly ignored because to be perfectly blunt, he didn't know how to use it properly and thus he was more likely to hurt himself with it then anything else. The shield held a certain appeal to him, but a shield alone seemed... a waste. The strange looking staff however caused him to step towards it, his curiosity peaked. [i]"Power of the Mystic. Inner strength. A wondrous staff of magic and sorcery."[/i] It was also a solid hunk of wood, making it something he was a bit more comfortable swinging around then a sword. Reaching out and taking it in his hands, Droka found that it seemed to be the perfect size for him to hold properly... even as the platforms and the other items on display disappeared. [i]"There will be times you have to fight."[/i] "[color=00aeef]I mean yeah but...[/color]" before he could ask what the mystery voice meant by that statement, movement caught his attention from the corner of his eye. Shadows seemed to be moving all by themselves against the dull light of the glass beneath him... and then one of them seemed to raise out of the floor, taking on a third dimension. Staring at its yellow, glowing eyes, Droka could feel the overwhelming obsession that made up its being; A never ending hunger for something that it desperately wanted but could never claim, driven onward in search of it anyway. [i][color=8493ca]At first, the newly arrived light was seen as a wonderful thing, offering new experiences and pleasures that hadn't been in the peaceful, dark world before. But the light was limited. There was only so much of it to go around. At first people took turns and shared, but soon there were those who refused to step aside and let someone else enjoy it. Greedily, they clung to the light, claiming it as their own and no one else's. People started to fight over it and during the fight they broke the world while shattering the very light that they had been fighting so hard for. While many fought, some turned away from the war over the light and returned to the comfort of the darkness for protection. Once the war was over, they returned to see the broken shards of both their world and the light... and then decided to work together to repair what they could. Too much was missing and lost to completely repair what things had been before, but from the shattered pieces of the dark world and broken light the children of Darkness remade their former home into something beautiful. But those who had fraught to claim the light for themselves still remained. Their greed and obsession with the light consumed them, preventing them from enjoying what they had and forever seeking to steal for themselves what should have been shared. Their old forms were twisted into that of beasts, they are cursed to mindlessly search for the remaining light to claim... only to fight over and destroy it again amongst themselves.[/color][/i] His grandmother had told him that bedtime story once and it had always stuck with him due to how it was so... different from the other bedtime stories. Now he understood why... One of the shadowy figures darted behind him. Panic seizing him, he grappled his new found staff and blindly swung around... and caught the emerging creature right in the side of the head with the strength of the fearful, causing its shadowy head to break as its body faded away. His heart was pounding in his chest, his senses seemed to be sharper then he ever remembered and the world seemed to slow to a crawl around him as the desire to live kicked him into overdrive. Droka was not a natural fighter, but his shadowy foes weren't either. Despite having an advantage in numbers, they tended to stay back in their... well, flat form and move about, only exposing themselves whenever one of them believed it could get an attack in against his side or back while the others distracted him. This made them predictable and allowed him to whittle down their numbers from the original five down to one surprisingly quickly. The final creature seemed to disappear completely for a moment... only to suddenly find itself encountering a strike to the head as Droka took a wild guess that the damn thing was trying to get behind him like the others had. As it faded away, Droka found his hands shaking slightly as he breathed heavily, his heart still racing and his senses stretched to their limits as the adrenaline pumped through his veins. [i]"The closer you get to the Light, the greater your shadow will become."[/i] Jerking his head violently from side to side, Droka looked around panicked as he expected more creatures to appear. But the new contender didn't come from outside of the platform. By the time he noticed that his own shadow had taken on a life of its own and started to materialize into what was honestly a large hulk of a creature, Droka found himself slowly starting to back away from it. This... wasn't something that he could defeat with a hunk of wood... because as much as he hated to say it, the creature growing in front of him was... a part of himself. The envy of those that got to live without fear of the light causing them great pain... the anger about being the one who needed to spend all his time in darkness and shadow because of something he couldn't control. To see how much was there was... humbling in a surprising way. Droka saw the darkness that was about of... well, his own inner darkness creeping out from the behemoth, quickly consuming the platform as more of the smaller creatures started to appear. He... he wasn't prepared for this. He couldn't fight this! His backpedal backwards suddenly came to a stop as he found the edge of the platform. Turning his head to look down, he saw the darkness that he had once been happily drifting through before he landed here. [i]"But don't be afraid."[/i] With only a moment of hesitation, he leaped off the platform and embraced the darkness that had protected him all his life, leaving the fading light of the platform to be consumed. [i]"And don't forget. "You hold the mightiest weapon of all." [/i] The fall lasted forever. The fall lasted no time at all. Either way, soon the light of the platform had been left far behind and Droka found himself once again drifting through a comfortable darkness, feeling tired as the stress of combat passed and his body started to relax. The last thing to loosen being the grip on the staff he had chosen. With a soft sigh, his eyes finally closed. [i]"You are the ones, who will open The Door."[/i] ...................................................... With a groan akin to a waking cat, Droka's eyes opened. He was laying in bed, his blanket having been tossed off sometime during the night by his own movements. Still half asleep, he turned his head to have a look at his bedside clock and noticed the time. It was somewhat later then he normally got up on a school day, but that was the benefit of holidays; You didn't get into trouble for doing that sort of thing on a public holiday. Stretching out and making more feline like noises, he considered the possibility of just rolling over and going back to sleep... before a sigh escaped him. He had things he needed to do and his parents would be annoyed with him if he didn't get them done. Feeling pangs of regret already, he rolled out of bed in order to start the day. .................................................. Getting changed, having breakfast... it didn't take all that long. Walking by Sandlot on route towards a store he had promised to visit to pick up a few things for his mum while she was at work, he couldn't help but frown as he noticed Seifer of all people. He really didn't want to have to deal with Seifer and his goon squad of all things today, but since he seemed to be busy beating up Vivi odds were good that he could just slip by and be ignored by the bully.