The black wind

Yumemi spotted the unfinished game of chess atop the pedestal and remembered a conversation she had with Tsuke some months before. How he had described battle like a huge chess game and that only when all the pieces where in place would victory be assured. She went up and  examined the dusty chess board and realized the black queen piece was missing. Wheeling around she poked around his collection of metal and glass sorcery pieces till she found it. Secreted away in the back was the missing piece.

She grabbed it and examined it briefly-the queen piece was heavy and its crown glittered with gems.
           She placed it carefully in its place on the chessboard where it made checkmate with the white king. There was a grinding sound of cogs in the work and the chess board slowly moved outwards in an arc to reveal a deep recess in the pedestal. From within rose a black embossed dome carved with symbols Yumemi did not recognize. And she saw them shimmer for some time before she realized the symbols were moving over the dome. She gulped-these symbols looked very very old. But she steeled herself since she had to go through with her revenge. Thinking of Cameron and Crave made her feel angry again and she slammed her hand on the eye at the top of the dome.
                      The symbols stopped moving and glowed purple before a loud CRACK emanated from the eye splitting the dome in half. The halves retracted into the pedestal revealing a glitter from the hollow interior
Yumemi held her breath for a moment ..and saw a dingy old book with an black leather bound cover lying on velvet locked with a gold lock glittering with studded pearls. For a minute Yumemi looked at it with a sense of both awe and annoyance.
Seriously she could still not believe this mangy book was the dark tablet of power. Apart from its gold and jewelled lock it looked too frail and old to be considered worthy in her eyes.
Yumemi reached out to examine it but before she could a loud rushing wind blew through the room making her screech in surprise. When it had died down she saw the shadows in the room had blackened somehow more than before-and felt an ominous presence in the room.


“Good evening my precious Queen. How fortunate that you should come precisely when I require your-services”

Yumemi froze and saw a shadowy form walk out from the shadows of the bookcase. She knew that voice and a cold fear gripped her.

“Lord Cameron” she spat “You filth. You followed me!”

         Cameron smirked at her, running his hands through his unkempt hair. “Indeed. And how sweet of you to show me the place where the dark tablet of power is hidden. But Tsuke would be most disappointed after all the trouble he went through to hide it”
Yumemi who stood still with anger moved at the mention of Tsuke “Don’t you DARE dirty his name with you foul mouth you filthy son of a-”
“Uh uh uh no swearing my pretty mouthed queen. Especially since Tsuke and I are one now since he kindly lent me his flesh to move around in this realm-”
“DIE !!”
Yumemi screamed loosing all her power to fling a materialized black spear straight at this heart.
         Cameron stood calmly as the spear went through his chest with a sickening sound of metal on flesh. He raised an eyebrow at her heaving with rage and calmly pulled the offending item out of him.
Yumemi again felt cold fear engulf her as Cameron smiled wanly at her, examining the spear tip. 

“It appears without your shadowy counterpart, you don’t even have a chance of damaging me”.

                    He tossed the tip to the side before raising  a hand  so the shadows gathered from around the room. Waving his fingertips he coiled them around Yumemi and pinned her arms to her side, gagging her mouth for good measure. He then closed his eyes momentarily healing the wound before dusting himself off. Yumemi’s struggled and screamed through the gag uselessly and  Cameron walked forward  taking the book ,a triumphant look on his face. Feeling the leather that bound it before stowing it safely in his shirt, he flicked his hands and Yumemi twirled into a vertical position mid-air . Yumemi made even more struggles as  Cameron took a vial from his cloak and uncorked it . The vapor seeped into Yumemi’s nose till her struggles ceased and she floated limply ,her eyes fighting to stay awake.
           
       Cameron smiled at her and bent down to her ear and whispered ‘I hope you realize those symbols you broke could only ever be undone by a true mortal with the blood of Kuraizen’s royal running through them. If you-in your anger and recklessness and arrogance-had stayed put I would not have been able to open the seal let alone touch the sacred Dark book which is the source of dark power handed to you by the gods themselves.’
The oily voice slipped away as Yumemi felt true panic and foolishness-she was to blame-she had spoiled everything-

‘No’ she thought in a panic as her eyes drooped as tried to focus on Cameron’s face-it seemed to her that she could see Tsuke’s face marred with distress and disappointment as she fell into a deep slumber.
     
                Cameron looked at her unpityingly . Not surprisingly, the foolish girl had led her right to the tablet as he had anticipated. Tsuke’s mind was indeed very useful-it had helped greatly in analyzing her behavior . He held his hands out holding her bodily before commanding the shadows back to their place. As her thing weight settled in his arms he felt a speck of pity for her.
It passed quickly.
Her sleeping form would soon be tied up at the central palace. And he would contact Dorian to tell her he secured the dark tablet.

'It has finally begun' he thought swirling his cloak around him,clutching Yumemi and speeding through the door and its traps.

The sneak in the shadows.

An hour had passed before Lady Yumemi spotted the shades inside dim and got up from her hiding place gingerly. Her legs had cramped due to her sitting in the same spot for so long. Her cloak had stopped her from the cold but her face felt chilled. She slowly eased her legs out ,stretched and used her shadow form. The shadow form was a primitive form of dark magic-one that required deep concentration for novice users and was supposed to be a higher level form of dark-stealth magick. As Yumemi made her way through the archway-past the guards sticking to the shadows-and through the main hallway she recalled the training she had. It had been hard she though and made for  the furthermost room at the end of the building. She had not appreciated the tests-it felt like they were measuring her worth  through her dark magic powers-why weren't her governance enough for them? Though she had to admit-she never really felt in control since most of the government chose to keep her out of things they thought she was 'too young for'.
           She snorted at the memory as she made her way along inside the building.The same purple shades were hung everywhere ,there were whispers as agents met behind closed doors and along the hallways. Her footsteps made soft sounds against the black carpet but her clothes rustled too noisily for her liking. It would be easy to get caught but for hidden shadows in every part of the place. She passed wooden panelled halls lined with purple silk and black alike with statues of the the first black Widow agent Kumoha Bonde and his followers.
              Yumemi dodged each agent and flitted from shadow to shadow cursing as agents nearly stepped on her when she wasn't able to get out of their way in time. She peeked out around the next corner -checked it was clear-and then bolted for the second room door."Almost there!" she thought in some elation,although doubt had began to poke at the some of the anger she was experiencing.

Did she seriously want to kill Lord Crave?...He did deserve come up pence for his betrayal but death seemed too much.
Or perhaps too little. She wanted him to suffer the consequences before she decided what to do with him.

There was no doubt ,that the vile Dunlop was with him as well-she would have to contend with his interference.

                 And she didn't really know a way with which the dark tablet could make her a goddess,let alone the ritual for doing it. But the idea of being a dark goddess,beautiful,unmatched in rage and merciless was a temptation she loved to entertain.  The tablet was a powerful dark object ,heck she had held it with her own hands and felt its power pulse faint within.  She looked around surely,the moon filtering dimly through the window, before moving a lamp post alongside the wall. She screwed up her eyes-it was hard to tell in the dark and she traced her hands along the surface before she found what she was looking for. She grinned as her fingers brushed along the etchings of a black window spider hidden on a small stone in the wall. She placed her hand beside it for a few second letting her hand warm the surface.

                   Then a panel of wall no more than 6 foot height and 3 feet in length disintegrated itself beside the spider mark. Candles in brackets beyond lit the way up a hidden curved stairway ,gilt with bronze and black metal. Yumemi entered and turned placing her hand on a similar emblem on the inside of the doorway-the wall misted and formed itself back after her hand once again warmed it's surface. She hurried up the staircase passing both the first and second floor and breathed in some relief when she reached the third floor.
She also hated stair. She placed her hand on the wall near the spider emblem and opened the seal before entering the room and re sealing it-this time feeling the wall pulse under her fingers before she closed it. Entering Tsukes old getaway room-his bedroom of sorts-brought back memories of him in his life. His shoddy smile,his suffering though she hardly knew what it was to be taken over by your mind. Sometimes it did feel as though Tsuke and herself shared the same streak of insanity-when she told him that he has pushed her away,refusing to let her come closer. The place was just as he left it.Moonlight filtered through the only where a hammock acting as his bed was strung .

            A metal bookcase filled with every book imaginable-old ones new ones-some with leaves of pages sticking out and figurines. Shelves containing glass and metal bottles of poisons Tsuke used in his spy and necromancy  work. Tsuke had placed a huge round mahogany table in pride of place near the near place on the opposite side of the room .  A chessboard with a game still in play lay upon it.The fireplace was made of stone,beautifully carved and still contained a pit in the middle where Tsuke used to make his preparations for spells he did in secret.
If she remembered correctly the tablet could only be got if one proved themselves in the versed ways of dark magic...although she did not know what that meant.