Belladonna’s vision turned black, as her eyes shifted in appearance. Their usual colour peeled back, revealing a pair of glowing emerald eyes beneath, with vertical slitted pupils.

When her vision returned, Belladonna found herself staring at... herself. The world had turned various shades of grey, with the shadows becoming heavy and moving like black flames, and looking as if they had been painted with a heavy ink brush that left streaks and blotches everywhere.

Besides this, every shadow seemed alive, including her own, and she could almost swear that she could see the faces of people, or something decidedly not-people, hiding within them. But Belladonna was too distracted to care much about those strange faces, as she lifted her hand and waved to herself.

She couldn’t help but giggle as she watched herself through the eyes of her trusty familiar, Beans. For some reason it was simply more amusing than anything a mirror could provide.

Eyes, Bond, Connect, Familiar, Vision. Those were the building blocks of her latest spell circle, resulting in a spell that allowed her to share Beans’ vision and see through his eyes like it were her own.

With a nod from Belladonna, which she could both feel and see which felt very strange for some reason, Beans whipped his head around and dove down the hole, and Belladonna nearly fell over in the process.

She had to stumble blindly and drunkenly towards the nearest tree, where she immediately hunched over and did her best not to puke, whilst Beans darted and wove his way through the intricate tunnels.

She couldn’t take the time to appreciate how amazing he was moving, how he squeezed and twisted his body with absolute grace and elegance, or how this tunnel would have absolutely been her doom thanks to some of the gaps Beans was having to squeeze and twist himself through.

Because if she took the time to appreciate that, then she would definitely throw up from motion sickness.

It reminded her heavily of the first generation of virtual reality machines. When it was nothing but a clunky box with a screen jammed inside, that you strapped to your face. Both in the fact that using this vision completely blinded her to anything that was going on around her, and that she got to experience movement without actually moving, which her body very much did not like in the slightest.

Those early gens were notorious not just for their janky controls, but for their motion sickness issues. Any movement not controlled by the player would immediately cause violent discomfort, which unfortunately many game companies at the time happily ignored.

Experiencing this hell, Belladonna really had to be thankful that they figured out full dive immersion eventually. Honestly she didn’t know why it took them so long to figure it out, and could only lament for those that were stuck with those dumb face boxes.

Focusing back on Beans, and trying to keep her lunch down, Belladonna endured the twists and turns of the tunnels for a few more minutes, before Beans finally entered a more open space. Through his eyes, she could see the dancing, living shadows, and soon saw herself emerging from them.

In Beans’ eyes, it was as if the shadows literally gained a soul, and she could see her face hidden within their depths, before she ever emerged from them. When she did actually emerge, it was not the appearance of her simply rising from the darkness, at least not through Beans’ eyes.

Instead it was as if the darkness became thousands of threads that rapidly wove themselves together, and took on human form bit by bit. For a few brief seconds, she had a body composed of living shadows, before they took on her regular flesh and blood appearance.

It was disturbing, and yet strangely enlightening at the same time.

Deactivating the sight, Belladonna’s cat eyes were replaced with her usual colouration, as the shadows lost their lively black fire and returned to simple shapes cast on the wall in the absence of light. But even if that was what they appeared like, Belladonna still looked at them in a whole new light, and she could feel the shadows themselves looking back at her as if they recognised her.

It should have sent a shiver down her spine, but instead it was rather comforting.

Still, even with her natural sight returned, the world was still devoid of colour, but that was because her dark vision had been activated from the lack of illumination in the tunnel. Fitting, that creatures seemingly made of shadows and darkness did not use anything to light their way.

Another defence mechanism against the usual adventurers, perhaps, or simply not something they thought about since they could see without. The same way that a human did not think about how they would echolocate their way around a room. Well... some might, but those people are strange.

Making her way through the larger tunnels, with Beans’ once more taking his perch on her shoulder, Belladonna moved with slow and silent steps. Her head constantly on a swivel as she checked everywhere around her, just in case they could leap out of the shadows the same way she could.

Her slow pace came to a halt a few minutes later, however, when she came to an intersection. Three paths, two in front of her and a third hidden in a slight crevice behind her. Had she been carrying a torch, the shadows might have hidden it completely from view.

That path stood out the most to her. Even if it was not an intentional design by these creatures, they seemed intelligent enough to make use of it. So, after marking the path she had entered down with her [Shade Claw] Belladonna made her way down the hidden path, which forced her to squeeze through sideways at first before it opened up.

The stench hit her first, the smell of rotten flesh mixed with the metallic sweetness of blood that was both fresh and stale. The simple fact that she could determine that blood was stale, or that it was that word that her mind chose to use in the first place, was not something that Belladonna considered at this point. 𝘧𝓇𝑒𝑒𝑤ℯ𝑏𝓃𝘰𝑣ℯ𝘭.𝘤ℴ𝘮

After everything that had happened, being able to tell the freshness of blood by smell was way, way down on the list of weirdness in her life.

The sound was quick to follow. Sounds of crunching bone, tearing flesh and smacking mouths as something disgustingly ate with its mouth open, echoed throughout the small cave and got trapped in the small tunnel.

But there was one more sound hidden amongst that, a few soft whimpers and gentle sobbing that sounded distinctly human.