He woke up with a start, sitting up from the supposed ground beneath him in this dark space. His gray, empty eyes were laced with slight fear.

Realizing it was a dream again, he sighed, his rigid posture relaxing. He ran a hand through his long, completely raven black hair, which smoothed out under his fingers.

It'd been a while since he had that dream.

At first it was a nightmare, reliving how he was created over and over again, down to the very last fiber of pain. But as he learned and grew accustomed to this place, he soon realized that was only a pinch compared to the beat downs he would receive, so to speak.

The clock struck 12 a.m. in a timezone his bubble of isolation- which he’d created for when everything got too much- so happened to pass by.

A portal opened, showing a shadowed street with barely functional light poles.

What a weird place to be summoned to.

He walked to the opened portal, peaking out at the street. 

It seemed like a small town, somewhere far out, with the spaced houses, little night activity, and roads big enough to host parties and still not trespass a property. They were notorious for summonings. 

He stepped out, letting the portal close behind him. A snort left him as the gravity of Earth weighed him down a bit, having been used to his realm’s shifting gravity. 

“Holy shit…holy shit it worked!” someone laughed in astonishment.

He looked behind him, noticing a boy that couldn’t be older than fifteen looking at him in amazement. He had on pajamas, which told the monster he wasn’t supposed to be out right now. A small notebook stuffed with random papers sat in the boy’s lap, and he had a circle of rope with wax to keep it down, around him. A bag sat outside the circle, and he guessed those were offerings of sorts.

“Are you sure you read the right name?” was his first question, his voice deep from having slept so long, “Shine’s language is dying. There are a lot of creatures in her books that sound the same. What I mean to say is, I am not a monster you summon for party tricks.”

“No, no, I know exactly who you are! You’re The Abyss! Shine’s Monster Wrangler!”

“Please ‘The Abyss’ is my mother, call me Void. Same name, just my own. Now what do you need?”

***********

Void pulled the shirt away from his chest again, rolling their shoulders and grimacing in discomfort. The bag had not contained offerings, but clothes. Clothes that Void could barely fit, and couldn’t care less for.

The boy had insisted to them that there was a monster around town. His evidence? People were going missing almost nightly, which was exactly why there ceased to be night activity when Void arrived. The Mayor put the town on a curfew to catch whatever might be lurking in the dark.

This little boy told the adults that he’d personally seen a person go missing. He was sitting on the steps in front of his house after dinner, and this woman was walking down the opposite street to him. He said he saw her glance at an alley, and right in front of his eyes, she was pulled by her torso into the darkness, without so much as a yelp. Scared out of his mind, he’d went inside.

He’d given Void the directions to where he’d seen it happen- not too far from their current location.

“Go back home, I do not collect human souls unless it’s dire,” the monster told the boy, who sighed in relief and left the circle, running home with a thank you to the Wrangler. 

While Void was viewing all the little town had to offer, his hearing picked up something in one of the alleyways on the left side of the street, coincidentally opposite to their current position.

His head snapped toward it, and he crossed the street with haste. The sooner this was done, the sooner he could go back to sleep.

When they reached the alley, immediately something struck them as odd.

There was absolutely no light seeping into this path, despite there being two fully functional street lights on either side of the opening.

Void could sense a presence in the shadows, yet he saw nothing.

He squinted, listening for anything, but it was silent as the dead.

 Suddenly, there was a thin light. Darkness cracked away, flowing into the light, akin to being sucked through a vacuum.

Black vine-like tendrils hooked around his torso, one stabbing through his shirt and skin, straight into his heart, and their body went limp immediately. He was slowly being dragged into the odd light. It seemed the creature was struggling, like it was fighting something to try and get him there.

‘Shit! What is that thing?’ Void heard Stephen’s voice exclaim as they tried to get the body to move again.

‘Eater, not conscious.’ Aster, the growing child informed, ‘Void, breathe.’

I can’t! He panicked.

‘You can, we are alive. Breathe.’

Focusing on the body’s lungs, Void willed them to intake the Earth’s air. It came as a gasp, and then the pain of their situation seeped in. He coughed violently, shielding his eyes from the light that grew closer. He realized that the power in their body had been fighting the creature, cutting at the vines, which took minutes to grow completely back together. It seemed to have a limited supply, as it only used the same ones attached to Void. He tried prying the tendrils off of him, but they tightened, and he was still impaled with one of them.

‘Aster, open a portal. Maybe we can drag it through to our realm and-’

‘Yes!’ It interrupted, knowing exactly what Stephen was suggesting.

Void fell through the concrete, right as he was about to get dragged into the creature’s mouth.

The monster wasn’t far, and Void realized it had stuck itself to the walls of the buildings, creating the illusion of shadow. As they fell, the creature’s body retreated, from the walls and back toward itself.

As soon as they returned to his realm, he felt the energy seep back into him, now able to use his own abilities. He pulled the vine impaling him from his chest right before he hit the ground, the monster coming down fast behind him.

With a rumbling thud, it hit a few feet away from him. Void staggered to their own feet, chest burning as it healed.

Any idea what it is? Void asked the two lingering souls, all of them watching the vines retreat into the limp monster.

‘Eater, I told you.’

And what is that exactly?

‘Usually a shadow that has a hunger for weak souls.’

Usually?

‘There are always exceptions.’

Void walked over to the face-down creature. It was covered by black hair and a cloak.

He tried kicking it, testing its materialism. His foot crashed right through the cloak. Void raised a brow in surprise. The cloak rose again, like an inflating balloon.

Void kicked at its head this time, and reeled back when it actually had substance.

‘Strange…’

So…exception?

‘It must be to accommodate the mouth, which has to unhinge to create a vacuum like that.’

So it has a face.

‘Turn it. Find out.’

Void crouched on the side of the monster and reached for its head. Grabbing a handful of its hair, he lifted the head, and watched as the body followed like a Forest Wisp. It had no limbs, no structure, but took up space under the cloak as though it did.

He looked at the face and almost dropped the head. The creature’s eyes were wide open, white eyes with black veins looking at them without blinking or shifting. It had a surprisingly human face resemblance beyond that.

He noticed a jagged rock from the ground beneath them, embedded into the creature’s forehead, black ooze flowing down around it.

Void had never seen the Abyss’ ground, he knew it was there, he felt textures of it sometimes, but out of all that the darkness showed him, it never revealed the ground. So he stopped wondering.

“Poor thing’s in shock.” Void reasoned out loud, before yanking the rock out of the monster’s head.

The white in its eyes subsided, showing black irises with gray sclera that rolled back almost immediately.

The monster’s jaw unhinged, and Void yelped in surprise when he noticed that the mouth held the same light that just tried to eat him. Before either Aster or Stephen could comprehend a thing, Void surrounded the jaw with shadows, effectively muzzling the mouth. He dropped the head right after, the body floating into place.

Void had seen monster forms very different from himself, but that one would never cease to be weird.

The creature’s eyes blinked, and it looked confused, scared.

It saw Void, sitting just spaces away, and froze.

Its expression seemed to ask, 'How did you do that?' or ‘What exactly did you do?’

"You look confused." Void tilted their head innocently.

The monster didn’t speak audibly, at least not in a way his ears could pick up without being a monster himself.

“You’re saying a lot, but your words are overlapping with the rest of the shit in my head. Can you try speaking like me?”

He settled down the voices to listen for this creature’s, but couldn’t place one. 

"Let's start with this; what's your name? The muzzle isn't tight, it’s just more to keep your jaw from doing what it just did."

Void perked up when he heard a prominent voice above the others.

“Come again? I almost caught it?”

It spoke its name, and Void caught it only slightly.

"Whisper."