It looked like he was vomiting blackness. After it hits the ground it starts to look like fog. Its floating towards me, towards everything around him. It feels cold, chilling. Its starting to cloud my vision, I almost feel like I’m back, back in the da-

“Good Idea bringing them here Khalid. Keep being useful and I’ll keep letting you live.”

Was that the lady in the dark?? How, I’m still in the real world!

“Help us get rid of the others, dark one. They’ll be disorentiated for a few moments, but they're well trained soldiers, and the woman especially is more than capable of adjusting her senses to this place. Kill them now before they can attack again”

What is Khalid saying...wait...did he pull us into the dark!?

“Did you pull all of us into the dark?! Is that even possible?!”

“The people near us, who breathed in the black smoke, yes they are all here with us here. Just like when you are pulled here by the dark being, physically none of us have moved. But mentally we are all here, and the dark being can kill them now, well kill might be the wrong word to use.”

She can kill people in here….kill me….

But Khalid has a way of forcing people into here, can he get out of here on his own too? If he can I need him to teach me how. I can’t be at the mercy of the dark lady everytime she pulls me here.

“Not my sister. I need her alive. Kill the rest, I don’t care, but not my sister.”

She was just about to tell me the truth. I need to know what’s going on between my family, mother, and the dark lady. What happened to me before I was...turned into what I am now.

Silence. It's rare for her to stay silent.

“I’ll let your sister live on one condition. If you agree but fail to do what you promise now, I’ll kill her the first chance I get.”

“First tell me the condition.”

If it's anything like the deal my mother made….could I kill someone for my sister? I already am for my mother….

“When you find the child, before you kill him, let Khalid bring him into the dark.”

What…. I turn my head to the direction Khalid’s voice was coming from. I can’t see him in the dark, but I can almost feel his surprise. He wasn’t expecting that either.

“What do you want to do with that kid? Torture him before I kill him?”

I’m not going to let this thing make it any harder for that kid…

“Agree or disagree, up to you. But your sister will start hearing us soon, her senses will have finally adjusted. The other soldiers not long after. That’s when I’ll start killing their minds. In your world they’ll be alive but trapped in their own bodies, unable to move, speak, even eat without help. It might be more merciful for you to kill your sister in your world too after that.

Or agree to my demand, and you can learn the truth from your sister. What does it really matter, I only hid it from you to make you more agreeable, so that I could guide you to your goal as fast as possible. Even if you know, you’ll still be forced to work with me, lest you never want to see your mom again and drop dead here, because if you refuse to work with me why should I bother keeping you alive. I’ll leave and you’ll die like you should have the first time your family killed you.”

I don’t have a choice. I guess I do, but I can’t choose to protect some random kid over learning what happened to me and my family. Plus she’s right...even if the truth is something that will make me hate the dark lady, if I ever want to see my mom again I need her to stay with me.

“Fine. Just do what you're going to do and let us back into the real world, so I can speak with my sister.”

“Khalid, take yourself, the boy, and the woman back. Leave the men here.”

So Khalid can leave this place...why didn’t he teach me that at first? Maybe it's too advanced for me right now… but I need to learn that trick from him.

The dark fog surrounding me starts to clear. It sort of disappears into the air, just like the dark on my arms did back when I fought Khalid. Slowly the real world starts appearing again. After a few seconds it's all gone. Back in the real world now. That was a lot less jarring then when the dark lady just throws me out.

I look around. My sister is about 5 feet away from me. I flinch instinctively, but….she’s frozen. Her jaw is clenched and her eyebrows furrowed. She’s staring at the ground around her. She’s surrounded by the bodies of her men.

I hear a thud next to me. I whip my head around and see Khalid down on one knee. He looks exhausted, he’s taking deep breaths and sweat is dripping from his forehead. Does using the dark take that much out of him, I guess it's just like how a few attacks make me feel exhausted too. But it seems like it's harder on him, maybe because I’m so...connected to it.

I turn back to my sister. I don’t want to make the first move. Without her men she’s more vulnerable, but if Khalid can’t help me I’m not sure if I’m strong enough.

I raise my arm to prepare to attack. Wait! My arms are still black! But how...wait, going into the dark, did it...re-energize me? Last time I was only able to keep the dark in me for a few seconds, by now it should be dissipating. But it’s pulsing through me, making me feel invincible. Is that what going into the dark does to me, gives me more of it to use?

My sister leaps towards me, the giant sword on her right arm only a few inches above my head in an instant. I dodge to the side, a casual dash launches me several feet to the left. When I’m like this I can’t lose.

Let’s see if I can combine my attacks, even if I fail the way things are now...she can’t beat me.

I pull my my arm back and cock it for a punch. Black lines start forming in the air...but wait, the black on my arms, some of it is coming off and...and adding to the lines around my fist! The new combined lines are bigger than any I’ve made before, not just bigger but….. louder. I can hear them...their buzzing. Almost sounds like they're about to burst, unable to wait to cut open something. The black on my arms starts to regenerate after a few moments, how many times can I repeat this attack before I run out of the dark? I don’t think it will matter...once should be enough. What used to be lines a few inches long are now lines at least a foot each, and twice as thick. From paper thin to a couple inches. And there’s just as many of them as before…. So this is what happens if I combine my two techniques..I wonder though, if I didn’t just get re-energized by Khalid could I even do this?

I launch my fist at my sister, with the black inside of me I can feel the air rush by me as my fist does. My fist moves faster than my eyes can track it. The black lines launch at my sister as if I fired them out of a cannonball. Way faster than before. They cover the several feet between us instantly. I might actually hit her before she can cover herself in me- WAIT! What am I doing?! This could kill her! This must be what happens when I let the dark into me, use it to empower me damnit. I can’t let her die now! The thing, this dark is turning me into some monster. I open my fist, last time I was able to cancel an attack like this. Damnit! Its not working, maybe I can only do that before I launch them.

I hear a giant burst of air, like something exploded. One of my black lines disappears. But I don’t see any blood. Another explosion, and another. I can’t believe what I’m seeing. My sister is destroying them with her right sword arm, no wait with both her right and left arms! So she can transform both just like some of her men could. But her two swords are smaller than when she was just using one, I guess she had to send some of the metal to the other arm. But they're still twice as long and big as a normal sword is, and she’s still swiping them through the air like they way nothing. The black lines are all gone. She didn’t take a single step back, she was fast enough to take them out without even needing to move out of the way….. I wonder why she chose to cut them instead of block them with her metal skin. Maybe she wanted to prepare for an att-

Her left sword disappears in an instant, and her right arm starts to change. Agh! I leap to my left, I cover a lot of ground in an instant again. I’m bleeding from my side. What looks like a 12 foot long spear just stabbed me. So she can change its shape too. This spear is thinner but much longer than the sword she had before. She dashes towards me. I think I only have one option now, one way to get her down without killing her. I dash towards her too.

In a split second I get right in front of her. Her eyes panic, and her right arm starts to morph. It’s now a small dagger, oh, her left arm is too. I pull back my fist and land a blow square into her stomach. She didn’t have time to try and stab me, but I can feel the metal under her shirt. So she can armour herself this fast. I hear the air rush out of her mouth and she’s thrown back several feet. She hits the ground and starts tumbling for another few yards. Even armoured the punch I hit her with should put her down, I was able to put Khalid down with that in his little bubble word, and he’s supposed to be invincible in there.

When she finally stops rolling, I can see she’s wincing in pain. I hear her breathing, but it sounds painful.

The black starts evaporating off my arms. I feel like weights have suddenly been added to my body, my legs give out and I hit the ground. Hard. Ow. I lift my head and see Khalid staring intently at me, I wonder if he’s impressed with what I just did.

If I can be this strong consistently then….but right now I feel exhausted. I overdid it. Even with the extra energy Khalid gave me when he brought me into the dark, I think combining my attacks was too much. I don’t feel the dark at all. Even if I wanted to use it right now I don’t think I could, I’m completely spent.

“Listen boy, we’re an hour away from Talsin by train. She and her men damaged the train too much with their miracles. That’s going to take us at least half a day to walk. We’ll need to rest first, we won’t be able to make it there the way we are now. Let’s see if her men had any food or water on them.”

“What about my sister, I need to make sure she lives. I need answers from her.”

“I can help her with the pain with my miracle, but beyond that it's up to her. Miracle users are more resilient. And she’s quite strong. If anyone could survive a punch like that it would be her. But beyond that...you just have to hope. Our main concern should be how we will restrain her once she’s recovered.”

He’s right. She’s way too strong to just tie up with some rope we can find on the dead men….not dead, but injured men.

“What about these men? Are we...going to leave them here?”

“There as good as dead, we can’t help them. Even I can’t undo the damage she did to their minds.”

So they're just going to lie here until they die of thirst and hunger…..I don’t have it in me to kill them….but the idea doesn’t make me want to vomit like thinking about killing use too,the dark….what is it doing to me.

“I may have a solution, it shouldn’t hurt your sister too much.”

“And what is the solution?”

“I can try and trap her in a dream, if she’s very strong willed she’ll be able to break out of it, and I believe she will. But it will at least give us some time, maybe even a few hours. And even after she breaks free from it, she should be disorientated, we won’t have to worry too much about her killing one of us for a little while.”

Sounds like a perfect plan. But what did he mean by hurt her?

“A dream doesn’t sound painful? How could that hurt her at all?”

“I can’t create a dream to trap her in, but I can pull something recent from her memory and trap her in that. The farther I go back the harder, and I can’t go very far back before it becomes too much for me. In the state I am right now, I can barely stand up straight. I’ll have to pull the memory of her fight with you. And my miracle will make the pain she feels in that fight...very real feeling.”

What?! That sounds like torture! Feeling that pain for hours over and over….I can’t let him do that to her, she’s my sister.

Khalid’s expression changes, he looks sympathetic towards me. I must be showing my concern on my face.

“I’m sorry, if I could do better I would. But the alternative is do nothing, and then she wakes up and either you recover enough by then to fight her again without killing her, or she kills us. And I won’t come back….”

He’s right. I can’t believe I’m about to ok torturing her…

Khalid starts limping towards her. He took my silence as a yes. He hovers over her face, and blows into it. I see my sister stop breathing for a second, then start shivering all over.

“The shivering is good. That means it's working.”

Staring at her being tortured….my sister being tortured.The dark lady is the reason this is all happening. No, my mother made the deal with her, it's her fault too. But she did it to save my life….or maybe not, my sister did make it sound like...like….

I can’t spend time thinking about this now. I need to search the men for food and water first.

I look over at Khalid and can tell he’s thinking the same thing I am. It’s going to be a long walk to Talsin.