I’m almost out… Rixxan peeked out from the corner she stood pressed against, unfortunately her best; the city was treacherously bright and full of sunlight, which in most people’s eyes was probably a great thing, but for Rixxan that only meant she couldn’t shadowmeld to hide herself in a tricky situation such as this. Mamlak was certainly bustling right now, guards having just infiltrated her and Icarus’ hiding place, there was a great deal of clamour among even the normal citizens who hadn’t been involved in the hunt for the tusk. Poor Icarus, she’d abandoned him and left him to face the guards alone by slipping out of the window of their room at the tavern. She could hardly fathom what they’d do to him now that they’d caught him, but she also wondered whether or not they knew of her. Most likely, they’d take him into custody and question anyone in the tavern, and the servants would make it clear that she had been with him… The bad part of that was that she stood out in this city of darker-skinned people, with her translucent skin and bright rosy eyes, not to mention her hair. She wasn’t really sure of the history of these people as far as what their qualms with elves might be, but it didn’t seem they were on particularly great terms… Then again, there seemed to be a general distrust of her kind in most places she traveled lately. Weren’t elves generally good-natured? I mean, I’m certainly not, but I didn’t think we had a bad reputation in every province of the continent… Either way, for whatever the reason, elves in this town were blatantly obvious.

Nearly noon was proving to be a terrible time to be out, as she made her way through back roads and paths on the city’s outskirts. She had to duck into crates and boxes, jump into a store twice, and just flat out stop dead and lay against a building wall in hopes that guards wouldn’t see her. She was making it out with relative ease, despite all that though. No one had pointed at her yet and shouted to send hordes of people after her. Maybe she’d make it out alright after all. As the guards trotted by, she exhaled a sigh of relief and stepped out of the protection of the awning she had taken cover under, and started quickly walking toward the city line. Just a few more metres and she’d be out of the city and could really start running from the authorities.

Two steps from the edge of the city, a sound resonated as a hollow metal object must have struck the ground behind her. Rixxan glanced over her shoulder before her eyes went wide, her head whipped back around and she surged forward into a sprint. One of the guards had apparently tripped or stumbled, and bounced his helmet off of his own head, sending the helmet rolling down the road toward Rixxan. That one guard stopped and turned to grab his helmet, dusting it off as he lifted it out of the dirt and replacing it on his head. He must have needed to readjust his vision, since by the time he noticed Rixxan she was already almost out of sight. He squinted, raising his hand to block the glare of the sun, and then barked for the rest of his unit to turn their attention and chase her.

Thundering of boots faded behind her quickly. Given the spread of the manhunt going on in the city, it was likely that some very un-seasoned guards were on patrol and luckily for her they were not fit enough to chase her for long. She was certainly faster than they were, even if they had no heavy armor on she would still be faster thanks to her lean leggy build. Still she ran until the noise had faded for more than a few minutes. This was nearly the edge of the kingdom’s immediate reach, but she was far from a road to anywhere, and wasn’t terribly sure what direction she’d gone. Hopefully not North… Transitioning down to a walk, she surveyed her surroundings as she scouted for danger and summoned her broadsword to her left hand. Deciding that the threat of capture was no longer immediate, she lazily held the blade so that it drew a line in the dirt behind her as she traveled. Probably not the best idea, to leave a literal trail that lead straight to her, but then again that had never crossed her mind.

In the direction she was headed, she heard noise. At first she couldn’t make it out, but it seemed to be something creaky and wooden, but also large. She gripped the hilt of her blade tighter and quickened her pace; if she was going to fight something she was absolutely going to have the first hit. A slight incline revealed the source of the noise, and Rixxan could relax. A caravan of nearly a dozen drawn carts and wagons, covered with cloth to protect those inside from the sun and possible onlookers. It didn’t look like they were the most savory type, which made Rixxan even more comfortable. The carts weren’t moving quickly at all, and she caught up to the first one in a few strides. After a brief exchange of words and coin, and she had secured travel in the back of a wagon, she learned she had indeed gone North through the sparse trees and terrain instead of where she needed to go, South toward Adeluna… This caravan was heading south, fortunately, though it would be a slow travel. That might be good, though, so the commotion can fade and I can proceed with a little more security and ease of mind. She climbed up into the back of the last wagon and pulled a cloth over the back opening as much as she could. There were enough crates that she felt like she had a good bit of privacy. A good deal of the wagons didn’t have a driver, and the animals simply followed in line. Rixxan took the shawl from around her head and bunched it up, propping it behind her neck. She leaned against the side of the wagon and sighed, folding her hands over her stomach and resting her eyes.

A blunt hit on the head startled Rixxan back into to consciousness after a few hours. For a moment she looked around to try and find her attacked, then noted the box laying over her legs that had evidently come crashing down from the top of the pile in this cart. She wiggled her way out from under it and heaved it back to the top of the pile.

Ugh… I feel like some petty criminal… Rixxan shifted around in the back of the wagon, hoping to find a more comfortable seat where crates weren’t threatening to come toppling down onto her. Sadly the truth was that she indeed, in fact, undoubtedly, was a petty criminal. On a good day she was something more than petty but she hadn’t gathered up enough notoriety to be more than that. The crate at the top of the stack creaked unsteadily again and Rixxan heard the sound of wood sliding, threatening to crash back down onto her. As a precaution she braced it in place by angling her sword to lean onto it. Considering the blade weighed more than she did, it would most likely hold so long as the caravan didn’t take a tremendously sharp and quick turn.

For the next few days, Rixxan spent her days riding in the back of the train. She quickly ran out of things to do, found herself often playing with little fireballs and giving herself a light show with her different kinds of fire, blending the black with the brilliant typical flame to make a murky burnt umber fire. But fireballs grew boring after a day, and she moved onto trying to make little bracelets with scraps of twine and string she found. That effort was fruitless as Rixxan realized she’d never braided or done anything of the artsy variety ever. She ended up burning the misfit bracelets so that no one might ever find she’d created such mediocre things.

One night was a bit different. Rixxan had dozed a good deal of the day, and by the time the caravan stopped she could tell something was definitely off. The caravan people spoke in hushed whispers and seemed to give her strange looks, and they camped farther away from her than they had before. Whatever it might have been, they still fed her some of their foreign food and gave her a blanket to sleep under, pointing her to a tree that might shelter her in case of rain.

When she awoke, the first thing Rixxan was aware of was tightness in her chest and pain in her hand. And that she was sitting up instead of laying down. Rixxan felt an increasing sting in her hand and glanced at it, and then down at herself. The caravan people must have drugged her to sleep; she was tied up with her back to the tree they’d told her to sleep under, and they had stabbed her right hand to the tree with a piece of parchment in it. She growled and ignited her left hand, to burn the ropes off her body. With a pained grunt, she pulled the dagger from her palm and dropped it to the ground as blood seeped out of her hand. The piece of parchment was stuck to her by the dried bits of blood that must have coagulated while she was unconscious, and she peeled it from her skin. It was a wanted poster, for her. She raised her eyebrows as she nodded, considering the price they’d put on her head was more than she had ever truly had, and admired the artist’s rendition of her. They hadn’t gotten the nose quite right but to anyone in the area she was clearly the person in the picture. She continued to nod to herself, almost in admiration of the poster, then folded it up and slipped it into her bag. Her hand was not going to stop bleeding anytime soon, and she sighed, replacing her broadsword with her smaller one-handed sword. Until she could get to a healer, she wasn’t going to be playing berserker assassin.

She stood up and hooked the hilt to her belt, looking for a new option on getting to Adeluna. Her wounded hand wasn’t bleeding terribly, but it was still night and she was still tired. Recognizing a few landmarks in the direction she had come from, she wandered off the side of the road that was further from the city. It wasn’t terribly overgrown or dense foliage, but if she went a few hundred metres off the road she would surely be covered. As she walked she collected about an armful of twigs and sticks, and found herself a lower area that might not be so visible that she would have to worry about arrest.

Within the hour she had dug a pit for a fire (unorthodoxically done, by kicking the dirt and sand and digging with her shoes until she had a little pit about three feet in diameter to put her kindling in) and sat down on the ground. The dry climate in this part of the continent made the earth a bit more uncomfortable to sit on than the more temperate climate of the lower cities and forests, where the dirt would give slightly and not push back against one as did this ground. She lay her sword down beside her and took her bag into her lap to dig for something to cook. Some carrots and potatoes she had leftover, but she wanted meat as well. The caravan people had not been terribly keen on sharing their precious proteins, and she knew she would need it if she were going to be continuing on her journey on foot. She looked at the fire to decide whether it would be manageable if she walked off to find something. Most likely she would just take down a bird or large rodent and skin it, throw it on the fire in a pot of water with the potatoes and carrots and pray that it was a high-sodium animal.

She stood up and walked for a bit, making sure to keep eyes on where her fire was so that she wouldn’t get lost. Desert rats were a bit larger, and tended to burrow in holes that were more visible to the naked eye… And Rixxan had just tripped over one of those burrows. She stumbled a step and heard the noise of a disturbed animal beneath the ground. Once she realized what it was, she wasted no time and re-ignited her hand to light a small stick to a smolder that would produce a good amount of smoke, then tossed the stick down the hole. It would only be a matter of time now, to wait for the rat to come out of the hole.

Rixxan returned victorious to her fire, with more sticks bundled in her arms and a dead rat hanging from her usable hand by its tail. The fur of this animal was thin, and wouldn’t take long to burn off if she set it over the fire to sear. She dug string from her bag and rigged some of the sticks to make a spit she could use to cook it while she prepped her vegetables and found water. Once she had the vegetables ready in the water, she sat back while the meat cooked, and thought about her recent past.

She probably shouldn’t have abandoned Icarus. Who knows where they’d taken him, what they were doing to him. What if they didn’t think he was the main culprit and they thought he was her accomplice? Would they torture him to try and get information on her? Icarus himself hardly knew her, as she hardly knew him in any way more than on the battlefield and in the bedroom. They simply had the awful bad luck of running into each other in the middle of things where they were both sent on the same assignments by different people. Sure, they would always try to kill each other in the beginning–after all, they were each other’s competition–but he didn’t seem like he meant it… Not anymore than anyone else would if someone got in the way of anyone else making tons of silver and gold. Rixxan sighed and rested her elbows on her knees. I should go save him. It’s kinda my fault he is where he is. Damnit. She tipped back and exhaled, then laid flat in the dirt. The texture of this ground was much like the feeling she got from sitting on it, coarse and unforgiving, but with the sun having set hours ago, it was not warm or burning, it was cool and refreshing. After a few minutes of laying down, she moved over to the roasting spit to rotate the meat and cook through the other side, then sat back down.

She looked in the direction of Mamlak, then rolled her eyes and cursed herself for her newfound change of heart.

Icarus coughed up a bit of blood as he glanced around the cell, his hands bound behind his back while he sat in a chair.  Directly in front of him sat a man, an interrogator on the other side of the table.  His "questioning" had been aided by a pair of guards wiping sweat from their brows and wrapping their hands in cloth as their knuckles had become inflamed and the skin had broken in a few areas.  At this moment, the chair he sat in had no seat and he was tied to it, stripped naked with his legs tied to the chair legs.  The knives hadn't come out yet, as he was likely to refuse to speak even if they had cut him in half and they knew it.

How long had the beatings been going on? Hours? Days at this point? Probably.  Every time, they would continue these interrogations until he was nearly unconscious before dragging him back to a cell with a bed made of straw and a strong breeze wafting an equally strong odor of shit and piss from previous detainees.  It was likely he would give in to illness if he wasn't blessed with a considerable constitution, but eventually, even he would fall.  At least he would die with a bit of dignity, unable to be forced into submission and unwilling to give Rixxan up to a probable death alongside him just to save a few extra beatings.

"Where is your friend?" the man asked, probably for somewhere near the hundredth time since their sessions had began four days prior.  He didn't care.  Icarus didn't even pay attention to his words any longer, simply choosing to remain silent despite the will to be an absolute prick, still able to force a smile through it all.  At last, he seemed willing to speak and for the first time in days, the interrogator seemed to be excited, as though he may have broken through to Icarus.

"I think you're getting soft on me.  You've barely threatened me at all today.  Maybe you realize it won't work or that just maybe I don't know.  Maybe I was honest and I've been used as a scapegoat for a failure of the guards to defend the Tusk, going so far as to recover it myself," he paused for a moment, licking his lips and leaning back, exhausted by the days thus far. "Ever wonder why I didn't fight back? I could kill all of the guards in this city, but instead, I handed over the Tusk I was paid to recover and you repay me like this?"

The interrogator looked bored, given he had heard a similar explanation on the first two days several times throughout the sessions they had together. With a nod to the side, one of the guards pushed the table aside as the other brought the interrogator a knotted rope.  This was a new thing, a new toy that Icarus was unfamiliar with.  No matter, he would endure simply because there was no other option.  His affirmation of his resolve was the last thing that went through his mind as the interrogator whipped the rope around to build force before swinging it directly under the chair, striking him firmly in his manhood.

The pain he sensed was excruciating, causing his vision to fade and all feeling beyond the absolute devastation his body felt at its most sensitive location was lost.  Again, the interrogator asked, cursing at him in his native tongue and again he struck as Icarus forced a defiant laugh despite the obvious pain he could scarcely tolerate, much less hide.  Still more hours, still no progress, and the interrogator at last gave up for the day, having him returned to his cell.

In the night, Icarus heard the voice for the first time.  It was like his own, but there was something different about it, almost as though the voice were intertwined with feral animals of a nature he couldn't describe.  They spoke to him, pleading to let them help him.  Mentally, he refused.  Icarus had killed far too many demons and even as wounded and exhausted as he was physically and emotionally, he would not give in.  He knew there was no chance these demons would simply aid him; everything came with a price. The last thought he had was wondering if Rixxan had gotten away and if she were still safe.

Funny how even now, he still wanted what was best for her, even if it were nothing more than survival for another day.  

Smoke billowed up from the dying fire as the last embers sparked and went dark. Rixxan was packing her bag and reorganizing her materials. She suited up with her dark shawl and coverings to hide her light skin from recognition. For now, she did not need her weapons, as they would only hinder her in getting back to Mamlak in time, and she returned them to the ethereal realm from which she had summoned them. Once all of her supplies were prepared, roasted rat and all, Rixxan headed towards the city under the safe cover of darkness. It was fortunate now that the caravan had barely made it from the North side of the city to the South side, so she had very little distance to cover in order to get back.
Shadowmelding was a wonderful ability when it came to this sort of situation. Guards were out in the woods with torches, not many, but enough to be a hindrance. Luckily as long as she stayed out of the light, the torches actually cast longer shadows among the trees and made it easier to sneak by the sentries who were no doubt looking for her. She would have laughed at them if she wasn’t worried it might attract attention. As she got closer to the main entrance of the city, she began to try and listen more to the conversation of the watch, as she would need to find where the city kept its prisoners so that she might free Icarus from the dreadful situation she’d left him to be enveloped in. From the darkness behind a gate, she listened to a group of men sitting at a nearby table with a map.
“How’d an elf even get away, to begin with? Shoulda stuck out like a sore thumb, they’re practically white as ghosts out here,” a gruff, hardened voice asked, followed by grunts of agreement and bewilderment.
            A different voice, younger and smoother yet clearly less intelligent, responded, “It doesn’t matter the elf even got away, first o’ all. We’ve got the Tusk back, we’ve got the guy locked up in south prison. I betcha, ‘e just had the elf with ‘em and it probably doesn’t even ‘ave anything to do with it. Could just be a tramp ‘e picked up in the alleys.” Another chorus of agreement sounded from the men at the table, before the same voice continued, “They’re just wastin’ all our time out ‘ere.” Wood groaned under what might have been another body joining the table. The men were clearly drunk and not terribly enthused with their assignment. Unfortunately for them, they had just insulted Rixxan’s pride and ego by essentially claiming she was not capable of having anything to do with the theft of the Tusk because she was an elf.  She peaked out from behind the gate where she had taken up hiding, and observed the area that the men were in. An elongated picnic table about twenty metres from a guard lodging, about nine guards in mainly leather armor. A few had pieces of clunky chainmail and steel armor, but there was not a single metallic chest-piece in the group. Too easy… I can’t justify killing such incompetent drones. I will just have to have a bit of fun and scare them.
The darkness made it even easier. While unraveling the bandages on her hand, Rixxan walked up to the table and sat on the edge, still melded in shadow. Only one lamp lit the far end of the table, and wasn’t strong enough to light this end. Given that her hand was still bleeding an absurd amount, she would use it to get their attention before teaching them how wrong they were. Palm down, she stretched her arm over the table, directly in the center. Large droplets of blood ran from the edges of the wound and followed the wrinkles in her hand to pool together into a drop big enough to cause a noise upon slapping the surface of the wooden table. And as it did, the nearest guard looked to his left and stared at the dark substance for a moment before returning to his conversation with his comrades. Rixxan twisted her mouth in impatience and shook her hand lightly to cause a faster fall. This time, as the guard looked for the source of the noise, his movement caught the attention of a few others.
“Wassat?” One of them nudged the closest guard, who shrugged and reached over to the substance and stuck a knobby hand in it, then brought it back to his face and smelled it. Rixxan grimaced, as the man shrugged and offered his hand to the next seated guard, who without hesitation also smelled it and could not identify it. As usual, Rixxan was surrounded by idiots.
“You’re all even stupider than you look, and that’s pretty bad.” She said, terminating the shadowmeld as she started a flame around her working hand. Her gaze was not on them, but on the fire that danced around her fingers and seemed to pull light out of the air with its black aura. She turned her head to them and tilted it to the side, and using her blood-soaked hand removed the covering from her head. “I’m an elf, if you didn’t get the hint from the magic and everything else.” She slipped off the side of the table guards rushed to stand up, but as she did she put down her burning hand on the table, incinerating it and leaving the guards at gravity’s mercy. They toppled onto each other, their tankards fell from the air and spilled ale and drink onto them, and altogether they became even more despicable. Unimpressed and frankly bored with them, Rixxan pulled her cover back on, and turned to walk away. “If you follow me, I will kill you. If you tell anyone I am here, I will also kill you. Have a nice night, gentlemen.” Rixxan waved as she walked away, as the men shuffled to try and recompose themselves and decide what to do.
Rixxan re-wrapped her hand, simply for the sake of pressure. The blood had seeped through the bandage itself and was dripping slowly off her fingers, but not enough to be of any worry as far as her health went. If the unintelligible oafs were right about anything, it was hopefully that Icarus was locked up in the south prison of the city. She found a building with some stacked boxes and scrambled up to the roof’s edge, and had to jump a little to successfully reach it. As she did, she must have offset the boxes and sent them tumbling. The noise was definitely enough to draw attention of anyone nearby, so Rixxan flattened herself onto the roof and wriggled to the center. Nothing came in the following moments but silence, long enough for Rixxan to confidently feel it was okay to stand back up.  She surveyed the area, and considering she was already in the southern section of the city, assumed that any large building with a similar construction to the guard house she had just visited would most likely be the place where Icarus was being held. There was a clone of the guard house about a kilometer away, and what looked like three or four guard houses combined and sloping down into the ground halfway between her current location and the far post.
            Approaching the prison was too easy. A mass of guards posted in the front, and few on the sides. The building clearly continued underground, and was lined with a few windows placed nearly along the ground. Approaching from the side, Rixxan didn’t think it necessary yet to use any tricks to hide. She slinked up to the building and peered through a window. Inside, a below-ground room revealed a lackadaisical guard leaning back in a chair with his feet propped up on a table, some sort of leaflet in his hands, facing away from her. While she figured her luck would eventually run out, she accepted this as another opportunity for her to succeed. She melted the bars out of the window and pulled them out, carefully placing them on the ground beside her to avoid causing any noise disruption. Once the window was clear, she sat down and slid herself through the window.
            She hadn’t prepared for the drop onto a hard stone floor, however, and the noise caught the guard’s attention. He jolted up and turned, nearly toppling the chair, while drawing his weapon, but in his sloppy approach Rixxan had already stepped forward and caught up to him. He swiped at her, but she ducked without much thought. As his arm continued the follow-through of the failed attack, she grabbed his wrist as she stepped forward, her back towards him, and bent his arm backwards from the wrist while pushing on his elbow. The useless weapon hit the floor as the bone in his forearm cracked, and the man yowled as Rixxan released her hold. He was not the keeper of the keys, she noted as his yowling and writhing brought about no clinking metallic noises that would have been produced by a hidden ring of keys. She rolled her eyes in distasted and walked down the hallway that led down, into the depths of the prison, leaving the man to scream and be found by his comrades. Surely they would be upon her soon, but she could most likely find her friend before that. A trail of blood falling faster from her trembling hand became bolder against the gray of the stones than it had been in the dusty dirt outside, but Rixxan didn’t notice it.
            Icarus’ cell would likely be the farthest in. Rixxan had her own opinions on how to store prisoners and criminals. Some prisons think that keeping the more dangerous people as far in as possible is the best way to keep them locked up, but it actually just makes it harder to tell if they are still locked up or not. As predicted, Rixxan found the farthest cell was occupied, but she couldn’t tell exactly who the occupant was. Either way, if it wasn’t Icarus, and the occupant proved dangerous, she could always just kill them. No big loss, and she would continue searching for him. She started a hot flame and pressed it against the lock of the door for a few moments, and pulled it away to reveal what should have been a melted mess of metal. Instead, the lock sat unscathed and unharmed. Rixxan growled. Would she actually have to find a key?

            A similar noise echoed through the prison, and Rixxan’s mouth dropped. That was surely not an echo of her own growling. She stepped back towards the wall for a moment to listen again and see if the noise would happen a second time, not paying attention to the rest of her surroundings. Briefly, the door of the cell shook slightly. Rixxan’s attention snapped away from the previous noise to the door, just in time for it to fly open and smack her square in the face. She crumbled to the floor in an unconscious heap in the small space behind the door. It had flung open and struck the wall with enough force to become lodged in the stones, which would now hold it open until it was pried out. In spite of her condition, her hand continued to bleed, and the river of blood would soon travel down the lines of the stone and pool on the stones.  

Icarus coughed as he attempted to sleep, hanging inverted by his shackled ankles over a small pit of bone from those that had been in the cell before him and not seen the light of day again.  He painfully winced as something came from his chest and expunged itself from his body, splashing upon a skull below him.  When his eyes opened and he glanced down, he could see blood mixed with something black.  It seemed to him that the blackness that had been in the blood that was spat up was moving on its own.

As he watched it, Icarus saw as it seemed to rise slowly from the bones, gaining size and becoming a rolling mass of darkness.  The whispers came again, stronger, to the point they were deafening and he could no longer think.  The polluted mass of black that rose from the ground covered his face, choking him and darkening his vision, forcing him to lose consciousness quickly. Within his dreams, he saw visions of the past, bringing him back to the worst moments of his life, even those he had forgotten. 

(OOC: Plot: "As Light Fades" continues this dream sequence, still in progress.  From this point on, Icarus is possessed and his alignment has shifted to TE).

With no trace left of Icarus, the beast of darkness that had come to claim his body growled in an otherworldly tone. The creature could sense life nearby, elven by the taste of the magic on the air.  The scent of her blood spurred it into action. Swinging once to gather momentum, it grasped the chain fastening it to the ceiling and tore itself free, roaring as the flesh it wore as a mask cracked, small fissures of darkness erupting on the flesh of its face.  The cracks healed as it ceased its roar, smashing a fist against the door, only causing a rattle.

Finding no immediate success, the creature wrapped darkness around itself, hardening its skin into armor before ramming at full speed into the door and slamming it open. The thump of the door striking another drew its attention, causing it to turn its attention to the door and wrench it free from the wall, exposing the person that had been rendered unconscious by the creature's escape.  Magic gathered in its right hand and it prepared to suck the essence from her, the elven woman incapable of fighting back.  Bringing its right hand close, immeasureable pain seized it as it was forced back by its own making efforts.

You can have me but you will not f*cking touch her, a voice from beyond the darkness shouted, deafening the beast and stunning it with the utter defiance.

Even from within, Icarus was forcing his will upon the beast, imprisoned within his own soul all the while.  It would not harm her.  He would not permit it and using an extension of his will, he forced it to expend its own essence, healing her bloody hand rather than draining the life from her.  Caressing her face as the last measure of his own will, Icarus forced the beast to run away, unable to feed upon her as it intended.  

With that, the light that had been Icarus faded into the darkness that had consumed him, replaced by a demonic entity far more powerful than himself though using his flesh as its own.  Even dressed in only simple pants with no boots nor shirt, the creature was more than capable of getting itself out of the prison and slaughtering anyone that stood in its way.  Icarus' scent lingered nearby, however, and the creature became curious, seeking it out to discover where he could be.

Sniffing the air, it caught sight of a locked wooden door with a guard sitting out front.  Focusing for an instant, it teleported from far down the hall into the air less than a foot away and brought a clawed hand down, cleaving the man's head from his shoulders.  In the spray of blood, the creature opened its mouth and breathed deep, draining the fleeting essence from what had been a guard only seconds before.  The beast slammed the door open and found Icarus' discarded items that had been taken from him upon his incarceration.

Taking a moment to gather the belongings, the beast clothed itself to better fit the part.  It was too weak at this point to be able to reveal itself to everyone and needed to continue the charade behind the dead flesh of the greatest demon hunter that had lived.  At least, that was true until it could gather more essence to sate its hunger.  Thus, in search of more victims, it stalked the halls of the dungeon, roaring in fury as it hunted.