-Broadcast-
The shadow wouldn't go in through the stomach. Moria tried the mouth.
Perona had suggested it, which was either creative problem-solving or evidence of how strange their situation had become—two pirates arguing about optimal shadow-insertion angles while standing in a tomb that predated most of recorded history. The female shadow worked better than the male one he'd tried first. They pressed it toward the parted lips and it moved inward, and he felt the familiar sensation of the merge taking hold.
He exhaled.
"Finally."
The shadow settled into the body. The integration completed with the specific quality he recognized from years of practice—a shadow finding its host, the body receiving something that made it more than a corpse. He waited for the activation that always followed, the moment when eyes opened and the zombie took its first confused steps into its new existence.
The lamps went out.
Not all of them—half of them, suddenly, as though someone had made a decision. The tomb chamber dropped in illumination and the remaining candles threw long shadows across the stone floor, and in the middle of this the woman on the jade bed opened her eyes.
Gold.
Her pupils were gold, which was not what zombie eyes looked like. Zombie eyes were blank or murky or wrong in any number of ways, but they were not gold and they were not intelligent and they were not looking at him with the expression she was looking at him with.
She sat up.
She stood.
She walked toward him with the careful movements of something relearning the mechanics of physical form—each step deliberate, the stiffness decreasing as she covered the distance. When she reached him and stopped, the air in the tomb had changed quality in a way Moria could not immediately name.
"Good preservation," he said, because he needed to say something. "Very little decay. The movement quality is already improving. Very promising."
The woman looked at him.
Then her arm went into his stomach.
Not through a wound. Through the flesh itself, the way shadows move through things, the way certain abilities interact with physical matter as though it is merely a suggestion. Her hand was inside his abdominal cavity before the pain arrived, and the pain arrived comprehensively.
Moria made a sound he would not have chosen to make.
She moved her arm with methodical precision—not searching blindly, but locating something specific. He could feel it in the way you feel something being extracted that has always been part of you, the specific horror of a thing being separated from the context it belongs in. Blood came with every movement. The floor received it.
"Perona—"
"Negative Hollow!"
The Negative Hollow materialized above the woman—vast, round-headed, all teeth and appetite, the largest Perona could produce. Its mouth opened. It descended.
Something hit Perona before it reached the target.
She was across the tomb chamber and against the wall and sliding down it, and Moria couldn't tell what had hit her because he was currently occupied with the situation in his abdominal cavity and could not turn to look.
"Get out," he said. "Perona, leave."
He was lying on the floor. He was not certain when that had happened.
The woman extracted her arm.
In her hand was a mass of black substance—the specific quality of compressed shadow-material, the fundamental stuff of his ability, something that should not have been removable from him while he was alive. He looked at it with the specific feeling of a man seeing something he had never expected to see outside of his own body.
She looked at it for a moment with gold eyes that had stopped pretending to be zombie eyes.
"Thank you," she said. Her voice was the voice of someone who had not spoken in a very long time and found the mechanism working better than expected. "For bringing this to me."
She swallowed it.
The reaction was immediate and total. The black substance did not disagree with her—it welcomed her, or she welcomed it, the distinction becoming immediately academic as the two integrated. Her skin shifted in color, the fair tones of preserved flesh giving way to something darker, blue-black, the shade of deep shadow rather than death. Her eyes burned red. Black gas moved from every opening—her eyes, her mouth, the space around her hands—twisting upward in columns that hit the ceiling and dispersed.
She shuddered once, deeply, the shudder of something achieving completion.
Then it stopped. She stood still in the dim remaining candle-light, and the gas settled into a kind of controlled emanation, and she looked more like herself than she had a moment ago—if this was herself.
Moria dragged himself.
His hands found the shadow instinctively, the reflex of years — reach for the fruit, use the ability, cut the shadow. He reached. He found nothing. The connection between himself and his Kage Kage no Mi (Shadow-Shadow Fruit) that had been present every moment of his life since he'd eaten it was absent.
He reached again.
Nothing.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Writing takes time, coffee, and a lot of love.If you'd like to support my work, join me at [email protected]/GoldenGaruda
You'll get early access to over 50 chapters, selection on new series, and the satisfaction of knowing your support directly fuels more stories.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~