Somehow, the shadow had inherited this deer's lust for wandering. Of course, the shadow already knew everything there was to see; she had both Vazi's and the deer's memories at hand to understand, but she simply could not keep still. She needed....she needed to inflict, to harm, to strangle, to choke. She needed victims. Everything needed to burn, everything needed to die. They needed to feel this void inside them, the emotional death, the nothing, the immodest, shameless desire writhing inside her. Shadows clung to her fur, her eye nothing but a dripping void, the tears hissing as they hit the forest floor. The mist did well to hide her, her edges twisting like a dark smear. She hated this place like she hated everything, but she found herself wandering this place more than the others. There were....memories...here. The jaguar cub, the eaglet, the wolf-cat, the...stories. She stared up the giant tree where the deer had once sat, weaving gentle and fantastic tales with her voice and her magic. The audiences had been honest and patient, their eyes wide, lost in her magic. The cat with bright blue eyes, the brave one up in the tree who denied her character, the shadow king....the lion and the dragon who inspired her for her second tale. The little monkey and their father, curled up next to her cub.... All of them and more. She could see them as clear as day around the tree in their respective places, hardly waiting for the next twist. The shadow wanted to set the tree on fire and burn it to the ground. "......."

@Fisher @Fallah

Fisher and one of his very best friends, Fallah, had returned to Cetus for a bit of hunting and games. He was really starting to enjoy her company, and unlike Black who, while he was one of the best barkfriends ever, was entirely landbound, Fallah could climb just as well as he could. Within minutes of entering the misty forest, the pair had made for the highest branches and started to bounce from limb to limb, playing a variation on tag that was thrilling.

Fisher nearly caught a squirrel up in the trees but wasn't quite quick enough, and abruptly he slipped from his branch and fell a good few feet to nearly his horrible death. Thankfully his claws caught a branch and he clung to the tree's limb for dear life, scrambling up back on to a safe perch with a nervous cackle of laughter.

"I'm fine!" He called up to Fallah, wagging his tail-- but then something curious caught his eyes. A pure white, ghostly shape... of a deer. A familiar ghost, a shape that seemed to call to his heart. He leaned over his branch and peered down, trying to figure out where he had seen the white doe before...

Fisher barked down at her after a moment, "Hello?" He realized, slowly but surely, that this was the storyteller... The one who weaved his nightmares, and shaped his reality... The one who kept him strong when he was alone, and he felt a tingle down his spine, wondering why she was here once more, silent and still in the mist.

@Clover

It was tag, basic and simple. The duo wove between trees and ducked under limbs, climbing far up. A squirrel appeared and Fallah's noodle friend went after it. He missed, he slipped, and he fell. Fallah gasped quietly, still persuing the squirrel. "I'm fine!" Laughter slid from the lynx's maw, then she dropped down, seizing the fisher's prey in her own maw. She had gone forward, but her friend had stayed behind. Fallah slowed, then turned, then made her way back to Fisher. Following his gaze, she peered down. It was the light doe. Fallah remembered her image well. Though it had been cycles ago, it felt like yesterday. The squirrel slid from Fallah's maw onto the branch the two stood on, "Story teller... The shadow and the shadow king." the cat murmured. Fisher barked down to the doe, and Fallah jumped down a few branches to investigate the creature. Did she have another story? "speak"

She heard voices behind her, movement, and her ear swiveled instinctively towards the noise. She smiled hollowly, a fake motion of her lips, and she turned around, her eye glinting a hint of red under the hissing black void that draped tears of sludge down her face. These were creatures who'd met Clover before....heard her first story. How delightful. She'd crush those pleasant memories for them and burn them to a cinder, and move on to crush their souls. But first....perhaps she could give them both a good scare. Slowly she started walking towards the two gems who called out to her with their soft, weak words, and she started to laugh low, her voice echoing in the mist, bouncing off trees, surrounding them both. The void from her face traveled in rivulets now, pouring down her face into her laughing mouth. She called to the shadows that cloaked her form and made them writhe like mad snakes towards them....and reached for their own shadows. Her manipulation was weak by this point, she knew, hardly having experience with them this late in her life, but she could easily make them stark and noticeable even in the diffused light of the fog, standing before the two of them. If they remembered the story.... "How delicious," She said, her curling and smokey voice so deep, so unlike Clover's pathetic, disgusting, simpering voice. "Two more shadows to rip and conquer for my army. I do hope you two like Canis, for that will be your home." "......."

@Fallah @Fisher

Fisher froze as the soft white form of the story teller twisted into blackness, shadows writhing out of her body. The shapes twisted and rose before Fallah and him, straining for the shadows under them. A shiver crawled up his spine and he sank his claws into the bark he stood upon, watching the blackness in the fog twist around, appearing almost solid in the diffuse light.

The voice of the King wove through the air, sticking to the fur in his ears. For a moment, he regretted not hauling his armor up with him, not wearing the protective gear that could protect him from a monster like the King. His nightmares struck him in the chest, struggling to decipher fantasy from reality. Was he dreaming? So many times he had this dream in the mist, where his friends and family were stripped from him, killed before his eyes.

Not this time. He bared his teeth at the lurking shadows, hissing a familiar phrase, "I will never bow." He reached for his magic, sparks flying from his cracked gem, and he pressed his flank to Fallah, keeping her close. He would push the King away with his own magic-- it had worked on the King of Blood, it would work for the shadows as well-- if the shadows had a gem to push on. Ah, but Fisher did not understand how his magic worked, and he did not understand that the shadows were not real.

He only knew that he had to protect his family, no matter what the cost.

@Clover @Fallah

There was something different about the deer now. Shadows danced- not that was Fallah's imagination- no- wait... There were really faint shadows there. Fallah's fur stood on end. The deer turned, her eyes smudged in darkness as it oozed from her core. She spoke, not in her voice, but in the voice that Fallah and Fisher both immediately recognized as the shadow king's voice. The story flashed in her mind. The shadow collected beings, then was offered to be freed by the shadow king if he bowed, but he wouldn't, and eventually he found light, but he... he ate it... "The shadow held the light in its mouth carefully, so carefully." Fisher pushed into Fallah, and she leaned against him, then jumped down, closer to the deer. She looked at in right in the eyes, "No matter how carefully the shadow carried the trusting light, in the end, the shadow ate the light. The shadow consumed all." Fallah retold the story from her memory. The old memory that had shaped her entire life, "Maybe the story wasn't made up-" she said, looking back to Fisher, "- but a true story about an internal struggle." Fallah turned back to the deer, "You swallowed her. You swallowed your light and now only the shadow remains. Can the you that is the light find your way out, or has the you that is the shadow consumed all?" "speak"

She could see that the smaller one was scared of her, pushing back his friend, his coat crackling with energy that had nowhere to go. She remembered when the mustelid originally spoke those words, how foolishly happy Clover had felt, and she would turn those quiet, brave words into something they screamed with tears in their eyes, till they bowed because their knees were broken. Then the bigger cat spoke in soft wonder, and the shadow just smiled. "The shadow did swallow the light..." She said, walking closer to the two with steady, slow steps. Their shadows still lay in front of them both. "The star was so sweet and kind, and everyone loved her, but her soft words weren't enough. She was weak from her love, she was broken from her fall from up above. She never put up a fight." The deer's mind just sat and watched in her pretty prison, eye turned away from the dream. She was frowning. What, is any of this untrue, my sweetling? The shadow whispered to her. She didn't respond. That's what I thought. "The shadow told her to rest, and she did. And now the sweet storyteller is dead and gone. Her grave lies deep within the dark, nevermore to rise, and the shadow took on the King's mantle. She's mine, just as you two will be, soon enough." She manipulated the shadows before them to writhe and scream soundlessly as if suffering unimaginable pain, and the shadow just grinned like a cheshire cat surrounded by sludging ink, all the while walking towards the both of them. When she stepped on their shadows, with a brief, sudden motion, their heads were chopped off, and the two bodies slumped down. "Bow to me," She said softly. "And I will promise you sweet release." The dark was coming for them, surrounding the two gems, hissing as they approached. "......."

@Fallah @Fisher

Fisher wasn't a story teller-- he was a live, breathing hero. At least, in his head. He was the main character, the one who the myths and legends would be told about. He had fought countless Kings, even a demon of a creature that he thought the true King of Shadows... Or at least, something descended from it. The only thing he could think as he clutched his perch was that the tiny, shadow-melting doe bellow looked nothing like what he had imagined a king to look like. Big, sweeping wings, flying above all, squawking sharp, biting empty words, asking to be taken down by his lightning.

... No, uh. Whatever the story teller had changed into, it was immensely more scary than that. So much so, that he didn't really know what to do. For a moment he was paralyzed, listening to Fallah and the doe trade longer, elegant words. All he wanted to do was scream, lash out with violent claws and electricity coming out of his fur. That usually didn't end well, and in fact, he held back for that very reason. He didn't know what she was capable of. So instead, the mustelid watched, fur bristling, as the shadows morphed and he watched his own shadow's neck be cut and flop.

Then the shadows came for him, personally. His instincts told him to flee from the dangerous magic, but his head told him that, for Caves sake, shadows weren't physical. They couldn't hurt him. He bared his teeth, a different kind of magic surging through his body for a moment. His eyes glinted with a hot, burning fire and his pupils grew wide, his vision cutting through the shadows with greater ease than before. They weren't real, he told himself, body against the warm, safe feeling of Fallah's coat.

"We will NEVER bow!" He snapped again, pelt fluffed up to make him look something between a blow dried noodle and an oversize pipecleaner. "... What do we do, Fallah?" The fisher cat hissed to his friend, struggling against the urge to rush her down and chase her off or flee for the safety of the mists.

He usually trusted his gut, but for some reason, he found himself wanting to hear the story. Wanting to know his role. He was waiting for the story beat that gave him chance to play the big hero, to fight the brave fight... And right then, he found himself staring at as husk of a innocent story teller, unsure if what she was saying was true.

@Belladonna @Fallah

The deer replied that she had, in fact, eaten the shadow. Fallah hummed lazily in response. Fisher pressed into her side, and she could feel the electricity from his body travel through her fur, making it stand on end around him. The lynx shivered at the sensation, so unused to the sharp feeling of electricity in her water-based element. Looking towards her friend, Fallah decided she needed to be calm for him. With a smirk, she took on this personality. The deer said the storyteller was dead. Shadows crept up around them. Fallah's eyes darted around the room, but then promptly landed back on the deer. She asked to bow to her and promised sweet release. Fisher snapped, saying he would never bow and Fallah's smirk grew to a smile. He then turned to her and asked what to do. His dependence on her, somehow, made her feel powerful, "In the story, the shadow that swallowed the light became the night. He became powerful because the light shone through him. If the light is truly dead and extinguished... what can we do? It's just a shadow, still." Fallah looked back to Fisher and smiled, "Shadows can't hurt us!" she called boldly, looking back to the deer as the shadows closed in, "But they can be silenced." she hissed, her coat glowing with a blue magic, daring the shadow to come closer. If the shadow king... er queen wanted a fight, she had one. "speak"

The shadow just smiled, a hollow motion, assured of her inevitable victory over these two foolish souls. She would break them and make them recant their gallant, brave words, and she would take them and lay their bones in Canis. "My...don't you remember the story?" She said, her words sickly sweet as her shadows wrapped around their legs now, slick and cold, staining their fur. "The only thing the shadow did to lead all those fools to their deaths was their words. You cannot touch a shadow, and a shadow cannot touch you...." She grinned now. "But you cannot silence what you cannot touch." Now the area they were in became dark and darker and darker, till no light reached the three of them at all. She felt so at home here, and the shadows that had already been at the two brave souls' feet were climbing up now, their cold, sick touch hissing as they climbed. She turned her attention to Fisher first, for daring to say he would no bow. She would break him first, and with him broken, so would Fallah fall. "Now let's tell a story about you, little Fisher, hm? Someone whose story beings with his first and certainly not his last mistake; someone who is too stupid to think up a better name than one that belongs to his entire species. There is nothing unique about this Fisher, nothing at all, as he makes mistake after mistake, never realizing not only that everyone he meets pities him for his reckless stupidity, but even the caves hate him from day one. Did you not recognize the signs, poor Fisher? That the very heart of our world tries to kill you and drown you since infancy? No one cares for you, Fisher. Not Leon, not Makyna, not Fallah here, who clings to you in selfish need, and not Black. "......."

@Fisher @Fallah