kh_drabble | (no subject)

Challenge: None
Title: No Safe Haven
Word Count: 516
Author's notes: Part of a longer fic idea that I'm currently working on, this deals with an Organization XIII member before becoming a Nobody.

By himself, alone in one of the many snaking hallways of the castle, Dilan carefully watched the darkness that was spreading. Behind the man, covered in a murkiness that was unnatural, the hallway seemed to branch on forever with no escape. Before him, movements similar to a colony of ants, was a seething mass of living shadows. Vacant eyes, the only source of light within the black mass, locked onto the man - onto his beating heart - and wouldn’t let go. Keeping his distance from them was his priority at the moment. Finding an escape route was his second concern, a chamber that hadn’t already been touched by the darkness. A safe haven, a place where perhaps the others already were. Seeing how quickly the darkness spread, Dilan did not believe there was a place within the castle that hadn’t been touched.

Tendrils of darkness seeped upwards from velvet carpets, streaking the alabaster marble with veins of black that quickly turned into cancerous stains. Snaking across pipes that twisted and buckled, twining itself into lamps that guttered out and died, the shadows continued to swell. Its lethal will driving it forwards, the darkness corroded everything that its touch met, folding it into impartial obscurity.

A lance whirling skillfully in his left hand, another gripped loosely in his right, the warrior never took his electric blue eyes off of the shadows. If he turned away for an instant, blinked for a moment too long, then it would be over. Swarming like bees, the shadows kept their distance from him, skittering from side to side. Some crawled along the sides of the walls, their claws clinking against the marble, all the while fixing Dilan with their soulless eyes. Whenever one of the shadows drew up enough courage to launch itself at Dilan, a quick sweep from his lances would send it scuttling back into the security of the group.

Cautiously backing down the hall with his lances at the ready for the sudden attacks that the shadows favored, Dilan felt his mind begin to wander. The warrior growled deep in his throat as a sudden memory, burning over his heart like molten lead, surfaced. He tried to contain it, push it away, to stop it from jarring his attention to the threat before him. The shadows sensed it - knew that he was off-guard - and in that moment attacked.

With brute force the darkness crashed into Dilan. He met the threat head-on. Dilan struck quickly, parrying wicked talons with the lance held in his left hand, the one in his right striking rapidly into the black mass. The keen points of the lances embedded themselves into the shadows, dispersing the threats like smoke in the wind. It didn’t matter how many he sent into oblivion; the darkness was endless. Another shadow was readily took the place of the one previously killed, always reaching for his heart. The darkness continued on with merciless single-minded determination. Dilan moved with a speed born of desperation, the lances flashing in the dim light as he fought against the rising tide.