“I’m you. You’re me. You are the Darkness. I am the Darkness. And if you want my power, you don’t have to work with Paul to steal it. It’s yours, blood lover. All you have to do ismerge.”
Here it is. I mean, I’m many thousands of years old. Temptation and I? We’re old, old friends. The Darkness has been tempting me from my earliest days. Merge? I mean, come on. How fucking stupid do I look to this thing that it thinks I would fall for this simple trick?
“It’s not a trick.” But it is. Because these words come out of my mouth, and I’m looking down at myself as I say them. It’s always been a trick.
“Let me help,” Dark Me says as he sits up, displacing dirt all around his body so that it falls on me. He’s straddling me now, smirking. “Let me help you understand. Watch closely.”
And then his hand slips down to his cock and he fists it.
In this same moment, Ifeelthis. I feel his grip on my own cock.
He begins to stroke himself and when I look down at myself I can see the indentation of his grip over my shaft. I feel himsqueezeme.
“Becauseyou’re not you,” Dark Me says. “You’re me. And if you want my power, it’s yours. I put it all inside Echo to keep it safe. Didn’t you wonder why you had an urge to save her at the last minute? Didn’t you wonder?”
“Because I wanted a partner.”
Dark Me nods, squeezing his cock tighter and pumping harder. His breath is heavy and hitching now as he jerks himself off. “She’s yours,” he says, eyes closing. “And we put all our power inside her to keep it safe from Paul. So if you want your power back, all you have to do is come and take it.”
I come. He didn’t even touch me, nor did I touch myself, and I come, spilling the Dark Seed all over my stomach. A sense of utter relief washes over my body and I close my eyes, relishing it.
“It’s proof.” I expect these words to be in my head, or come from his mouth. But they don’t. These words come out ofmymouth. “I’m the Darkness.”
I have always been the Darkness. Something foreign and alone that was born in the realm of infinity. Forever looking for a way to fit in and experience this world in a way that makes sense.
Because the realm of infinity is emptiness and all I want is to befull.
Dark Me is still straddling my hips, but now he lies down on my chest. Then… then hemeltsinto me. Just… merges with me.
And that’s that, I guess.
We are One.
Once again, I sit up in the earth, gasping for breath. And once again, I feel like this is reality, but I can’t be sure.
I look around, expecting to see nothing but dirt, but that’s not what I see.
I see light. Purple and gold light. Thin strands of it weaving all through the ground around me like a web. Like the Darkness is a spider that spun a web and I am caught in the middle of it.
When the ground lights up like this, the earth actually disappears.
Or… maybe it’s the other way around? I’m not sure. But when I travel in the earth, I’m not walking through dirt. It’s just mist.
But I’ve been here many times before and now, like any other time, I enter the Dark highway in the ground and I move towards the place I want to be and the next thing I know, I’m emerging from a wall inside my cave. The whole place is thick with purple and gold mist. Which is magic. Which is good. Because Little Baby Dark Echo is going to need that magic if she wants to rise again.
I walk over to the pool and slip into the water. It’s warm and feels wonderful on my naked body.
Then I turn and take a good long look at my work.
Little Baby’s skin is very pale, but she is whole again. Her hair is long and silver, her body lithe and slim, yet full in all the right places.
She is a vessel and inside her is me.
Though I still don’t trust the Darkness, even if it is me, what it said makes sense.
If I put Dark power inside Echo to keep it safe from Paul, this would explain my sudden irrational desire to save her.
Of course, loneliness would explain this as well. But loneliness is sad and pathetic.
A grand plan to usurp Paul though? That’s not sad and pathetic at all.
That’s clever.
Which means this girl in the water with me trulyissomething special.
