Of course it fucking was!
My gaze flicked briefly across the room again, taking in the heightened aggression, the lack of control, and the way even those not yet involved seemed…restless.
Agitated and far too close to the edge.
“Not enough to kill them,” Torin added, quieter now, more certain.
“But enough to…”
“Drive them fucking crazy!”I finished with a growl, already turning away from the fight as though it had ceased to interest me entirely. Because this didn’t feel random.
No, it felt…Deliberate.
My gaze swept over the chaos as the violence spiraled further out of control, bodies colliding, voices rising, something feral threading through it that did not belong within my walls.
So, I took the quickest course of action to sort out this shit and called upon my demon side to do just that. The word didn’t come from my throat alone. It tore free from something deeper, something darker, my voice layered with the unmistakable edge of my demon as I roared,
“ENOUGH!” The command struck through the space with a force that had nothing to do with volume and everything to do with power. At the same time, my hands spread slightly at my sides, fingers flexing as if something far darker answered the call.
The shadows responded instantly.
But they didn’t creep, nor did they crawl from me.
No, instead…
They exploded.
A violent surge of darkness burst outward from me, sweeping across the floor in a wave that swallowed the light as it moved. A rolling fog cutting through bodies, through movement, through chaos itself, as though none of it had ever existed.
The effect was immediate, as every single one of them dropped to the floor. Not gradually, but all at once, their bodies forced downward as my darkness seized control. Their knees brutally met the stone as their hands braced the floor. Then their heads all snapped back with a force that would have broken the necks of mortals.
There were at least twenty of them that had been affected by the poisonous plant, and each of them was now forced to hold their mouths open. With a flick of my wrist, my shadows drove in.
It wasn’t gentle, nor was it subtle as my darkness poured into them, forcing its way past teeth and breath alike. Quickly fillinglungs that no longer obeyed their owners, choking, consuming, dragging something out from deep within as their bodies convulsed beneath it.
Then…It surfaced.
A thick, unnatural hue of violet began to seep from them, drawn out in strands that twisted and curled through the air like smoke being ripped from a fire. The remnants of whatever had been forced into their systems now being torn free, stripped away without mercy.
Belladonna.
Or something close enough to it.
The shadows coiled around it, tightening before crushing it entirely, the substance dissipating into nothing as it evaporated into the air, leaving only the aftermath behind.
Silence then followed.
The shadows withdrew just as quickly as they had come, retracting back toward me in a smooth, fluid motion before sinking once more beneath my skin. As though they had never left.
And what remained…
Was order.
The bodies stayed where they had fallen, breath ragged, eyes unfocused, their systems purged so violently that none of them was in any state to rise again anytime soon. The chaos that had consumed the room moments before was now reduced to nothing more than the aftermath of something far more controlled.
I lowered my hands slowly, the last remnants of shadow slipping back beneath my skin as though they had never existed at all.
“Find the source,” I said, my voice calm now, measured, though it carried no less weight for it.
