In the beginning there was blackness, but Danyael was aware of his presence in it. He called out at first, then when he heard nothing call back he used his actual voice. “I know you're there.” a force that may have been his voice resonated throughout the emptiness. “I know you know.” another voice replied with an amused croon. “You haven't been quite yourself these days, have you?” the voice asked him. It was a joke. But he wasn't laughing. “Well... alas, that part of you will always remain.” the voice jeered, referencing Danyael's lack of humor. “I see you've come for help.” it changed the subject.
“Help would constitute assistance from an outside source. You and I are now one and the same.” Danyael corrected, or so he thought. “And yet we still remain, on several levels, separate – thus classifying me as, as you would put it, an outside source.” the voice, now a presence, corrected. The nephilim lord couldn't counter it as he, amusing as it was, recognized the presence was indeed right. “Then yes, I suppose I need your help.” he acquiesced.
The darkness swirled around him, folding in on the presence until it became the presence – a single, featureless being identical in height to him. “It's been too long.” the presence said, both praise and sneering evident in its tone. Danyael nodded in agreement, “And for that, I apologize.” he opened his arms to the presence, now a being, inviting his hands to its. “You don't need much from me. Just a pinch will do.” the being, now a person – identical to him in everything but two features: his 'eyes' reflected the very cosmos of the omniverse itself and an entire host of brilliant wings reached out into infinity. Danyael nodded again, “A pinch is all I need.”
The person still looked somber. “You won't entirely be in control. In fact, you won't be in control at all. All I can guarantee is that you won't hurt any of your friends.” letting Danyael think over the option. Needing only a moment to consider, he provided his answer. “That's all I ask.”
In the living world, the three dementors closed in on Mary and Danyael. They approached much like predators circling their prey before the final pounce. Their languid forms swaying in all directions before they suddenly swooped for the warp elemental, only to be halted by a sudden screech unlike anything heard in the living world. The shadows themselves began to quiver and twist until elongated, reptilian, skeletal limbs began to pull themselves from the shadows, oozing with an ichorous substance that could only be considered the very life's blood of existence itself. They began clamping their way up the tower, tearing up chunks of the mortar as they made their way to Mary and Danyael until they were finally upon them.
Danyael's limp frame, at first, remained still; shallow breathing and all. When the limbs reached them, they darted passed Mary and began to lift Danyael, wrapping around and penetrating him, almost lovingly pouring around him in a passionate embrace. And then Danyael's eyes snapped open with a deafening roar. But it wasn't a voice. It was something else. Power. Pure, vocal power. And then he was gone without a trace. His sagging head rolled up to look to Mary as a cacaphony of hisses and whispers spoke one word, or possibly a plea, of warning: “...Away...”
The dementors looked around, sniffing out essences and traces of power. And then the same shadowed hands clamped hard around their faces, smashing them together with such force, they nearly shattered into a single mass. Serving their only function, to steal life, they began sucking away at the already lifeless face of Danyael, only for the Nephilim Lord to send something back into them. The dementors sucked back, but the nephilim lord continued feeding them more and more. More dementors began to show up, snared by the essence of his eerie trap. And when enough had gathered, the phantom limbs exploded in quadruple the numbers rivaling the dementors themselves, yanking and shredding away at them with such aggressive ferocity that when he was done with them, the wraiths were little more vanishing essence. Because the dementors were never physical, it was just as suiting that the living darkness itself be an appropriate weapon. And an even deadlier predator.
Danyael's form, all this time, wasn't in control at all. It was as if he were the puppet and the living darkness the puppeteer, existing through him to extend its powers across the battlefield. Vanishing in another blast of speed, the storm of shadows that was Danyael rained down on the army of dementors, the phantom limbs hammering down in rapid fire as blurred lightning bolts, battering down and slashing at them with an undying vitality. All the while, Danyael's form hovered amidst the chaos, eyes black as the shadows themselves, looking deep into the emptiness.
