There was no way that he'd let that happen to him again.
A surprising sight made him forget that though, as he had found himself stopping as he'd come back to the camp. The sound of someone female talking to his son was enough for him to wonder what was going on. He was about to admonish the boy for talking to some strange girl, not merely because she might divert him from his training, but because he'd warned the boy about the dangers of such actions. That, when he pushed a branch out of his way so that he could watch the conversation, he saw a girl in a rather short and stylized version of a school uniform made him wonder if this was going to be a case of a someone involved in certain bedroom activities that were not for a little boy even to hear about.
But he slowly realized that she was giving information, and that his son had some sort of control over her. It shocked him to realize that she seemed to have some sort of connection to him, but he was absolutely dumbfounded to see her disappear.
And then, during his attempts to figure out how this could happen, he remembered stories he'd heard of martial artists who could call upon their chi to bring forth aspects of themselves to fight. Instead of mere projections, these were almost a part, or a reflection, of the practitioner. He wasn't sure if they were called 'Alters', or 'Stands' or something else, but he did know that the stories spoke of individuals who could call up this sort of power.
Oh, he wasn't pleased by the fact that his son's 'reflection' was apparently a raven haired brunette with long legs, but then there was not much he could do with that. Maybe, given time, he could turn it male, but for the time being, he'd have to work with this. As it was, he was proud of the boy for what he'd already accomplished. Managing to learn a martial arts technique, and applying steady practice to it all by himself was exactly what he wanted. With this little advance, the boy had started himself off to a life where his father could claim him as the best martial artist around.
Not that he was going to mention it. The boy was just learning after all, and he didn't want to mess up any chance for the boy to do more work, so that he didn't have to do it himself. But perhaps he could find ways to advance the boy's training without being obvious about it.
He was a martial arts master, so it wasn't like he would get into trouble with this anyway.
Only differing shades of darkness filled the cavern, and it was not merely because it was a sealed off place from the outside world. The collapsed sections were not merely the signs of geological movements. Silence was the only sound, without anything preventing anything from breaking it. And not even a single insect crawled across that floor, despite the fact that there was plenty of space around it.
Evil permeated the area, and life seemed to retreat in the face of it. It was of the welling sort, like a plugged up pipe that had been slowly leaking over time. Something instinctual made anyone and anything in the area know that this was not a good place to stay.
Then seal was broken, and something shapeless seeped out and stayed there, almost as if it wanted to go further, but wasn't able to. After it came a figure that stepped out into the dark and dreary surroundings without seeming to have any sort of difficulty with it. That being seemed to actually feel comfortable in that sort of situation, and was clearly a being of great evil.
However, the confinement had come after a deep weakening of the powers of what was coming from the broken seal, and the time of confinement had weakened it further. Just at that moment, power was at a premium, and it needed more to be able to regain the strength that it'd need to finish what it'd started all that time ago.
Standing in front of the oozing darkness, the figure standing there was:
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(Posted Sun, 08 May 2005 20:12)
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