The world is not as interesting outside the Chamber as she had hoped. It is full of wild beasties with dull imaginations who smell like dirt and have big, large moon eyes that are full of nothing. She has hunted them and stalked them and while she liked the fear in their eyes, it was not particularly difficult to frighten the stupid. There was no challenge, no goal, no game. There was no cat-eyed panther next to her beating her to the kill or outsmarting her or hissing insults when she messed up. She was alone. Alone. Alone.
It had been fun at first, but the novelty was wearing thin. Now she was bored—and when Ana got bored, she got destructive. It started small. Rubbing against a tree until it smoked and hissed and melted into nothing in the ground. That had at least made her smile a little. But that wasn’t fun for long, so she had gone back to hunting small animals. The bunnies and the dear and eventually a wolf she had seen prowling on the border of the meadow. It was more fun to hunt the predators. They never saw her coming.
She would follow behind them at night, blending into the shadows minus the sharp brightness of her eyes—emitting no smell, no noise. Then, when she was ready, she’d pounce. The killing part was varied and largely dependent on her mood. Sometimes, she’d tear out their throats with her teeth. Other times, she’d simply clamp down and let the acid do the rest. All the time, she left the bloody carcass behind.
Ana had no use for food. Hunger was an unknown sensation.
Tonight was no different, stalking some dumb creature, when the other caught her eye. Different. Strange. Ana pauses for a moment, tilting her head in contemplation before she used her shadow portals, one of them spitting her out rather abruptly next to the undead mare. “Odd,” she croaked in her husky voice, reaching out to touch the mare’s thin neck, not caring for manners or protocol. “You smell like the things that I kill,” not an insult necessarily, but also not a compliment. “Curious little beastie.” She stepped closer, holding back her acid as she nosed at the mare, sniffing at her unceremoniously. “Curious indeed.”
like the moon, we borrow our light
{I am nothing but a shadow in the night}