A Lightshifter, a Shadowshifter, and a collection of dangerous drawings…
Moonlight glinted off the half-open window, casting a pale silver glow across the dusty desk below the weathered sill. The scuffed wooden surface was littered with numerous pencils and a plethora of papers. Some were creased, crumpled, scribbled and smudged. Some lay flat, smooth and crisp against the desk. Some were tacked to the wall around the dirty window, their edges swaying with the gentle currents of cool night air.
Each sheet of paper, even those that had fallen to the floor, held a drawing. Some were partially finished, lightly sketched gray outlines and others were intricately detailed in full color. But all had a sinisterly similar theme ~ Monsters. Masterfully drawn creatures resembling everything from horses and wolves to dragons and gryphons all stared out from their paper cages with the same deathly eyes.
Their eyes mirrored those of the wyvern-like creature coiled up at the foot of the bed. Smoky feathers tinged with venom-green hues cloaked its six wings. Wispy shadows floated about its serpentine tail like tendrils of black smoke. The beastly thing covered half of the queen-sized mattress. Yet its body draped across the rumpled blankets as weightlessly as any other shadow in the room, without adding so much as a wrinkle to the covers or a creak to the bed.
The young man in the bed slept soundly despite his nightmarish surroundings, but the swamp-green eyes of the Shadowshifter never blinked. They were locked onto another creature…
It was hardly the size of a hummingbird, flittering through the room casting ripples of unwelcome light across the walls in a vivid shade of gold-touched green that clashed against the murky stares of the monsters. Fiery feathers of starlight cloaked its entire form and its eyes shone through the shadows like molten emeralds burning from within.
The little Lightshifter folded his six tiny wings and landed on the desk without stirring a single paper. He studied the haunting artwork scattered across it as if desperately seeking some long-lost treasure. Though not a sliver of darkness in the room could touch him, a deep sadness clouded his vibrant eyes as he pawed through the scattered pages of the sleeping human’s life.
The Shadowshifter yawned and ribbons of black mist trailed out from between his jagged fangs. “Come on now, Skyvior. None of your tricks are going to get you a taste of light tonight.” He rested one taloned paw against the sleeping man’s chest. “We both know he doesn’t want you here any more than I do.”
Skyvior continued pawing aside one ghastly picture after another with increasing fervor. At last, a single sheet of paper caught his eye. It was pinned between the back of the desk and the wall, below the window. Hesitantly, he hooked one crystalline claw over the corner and gingerly slid the forgotten drawing from its hiding place. His eyes cast an ember-like glow across the discolored paper as he sat back on his haunches and studied it with a wistful sigh.
The Shadowshifter grimaced as if the radiance of his undersized nemesis pained his soulless eyes. “You would think being starved of light and reduced to such a diminutive size would be lessening your bothersome antics by now.”
He rose off the bed like a plume of smoke and slithered soundlessly across the ceiling to hover above the desk. At the sight of the old drawing, his grumbling broke into a guttural laugh. “Ah, so that is what you were after. Naturally.” His gaze shifted back toward the sleeping human and his lips curled into an ugly sneer. “If Val were not so slovenly, that one would have been thrown out with the rest of his amateur work long ago.”
It was true that, compared to the skillfully detailed artwork surrounding it, the drawing was relatively rough. But to one pair of longing emerald eyes, it was the most beautiful work in the otherwise grim gallery.
With less practiced but more passionate pencil strokes, a younger Val had created a dragon-like being with a coat of plasmic fire and burning wings spread across a starry sky…now the only page left in his vast collection of creatures that resembled Skyvior.
Silently turning his back on the scornful Shadowshifter still hovering overhead, the little Lightshifter nudged his tattered treasure off the edge of the desk. As it flittered downward, he let out a soft breath of emerald light flecked with golden embers that carried it gently to Val’s bedside.
The Shadowshifter rolled his eyes as the sketch came to rest on the worn carpet. “Really? Tell me you are not going to wake him in the Dreamscape again after all this time. Have you forgotten that he has forgotten you even there?”
Skyvior’s wings unfurled like rapidly growing branches feathered with flaming leaves so bright the Shadowshifter winced before baring his fangs in a threatening grin. “Very well, fierce little nightlight,” he growled mockingly. “If you insist.”
A river of thick black shadows gushed from the monster’s mouth with a bloodcurdling roar, spilling down the walls and trickling over the drawings in inky rivulets. Each drop of darkness took the shape of the monster depicted on the page it touched, then drifted away from the paper like a black wraith.
“The boy you knew is gone,” the Shadowshifter gloated as the phantom drawings slithered away from their paper prisons to gather around him. “This is what he has become. This is what he has chosen over you and your precious Author.” His eyes turned toward the lone sketch lying on the floor. “But by all means…go on and wake the last beast.”
Skyvior glided away from the desk and hovered over the missing page of Val’s life. His breath rippled with a burning tangle of green fire that threaded through every pencil line of the forgotten drawing, lifting the rough image off the paper as a starry silhouette. The flickering image drifted upward, then whirled into a galaxy spiral overhead before erupting into a shower of golden embers that fell across Val’s face like a softly glowing rain.
Both shifters hung back tensely as the glittering light receded into the young man’s closed eyes. His lids, heavy with sleep, slowly blinked open. A tousled lock of blond hair fell across his forehead. He sat up stiffly, blinking several times before taking in the sight of the Dreamscape with a ragged breath.
One uneasy glance around his room and Val’s gaze settled hard in Skyvior's direction. “I remember this,” he whispered, getting up on shaky knees as recognition cleared his bleary eyes. “I remember…you.”
A burning thrill of hope surged through Skyvior as the young man slowly lifted one hand and reached it out toward him. But it turned into a stabbing chill when that hand passed straight through him as if he were mist…and rested against the hideous muzzle of the Shadowshifter looming behind him.
Skyvior's light faltered like a candle flame against a cold wind. His fiery feathers trembled with a deep shudder and he shrank away to land weakly on the old desk. The frigid sensation of Val’s hand passing through him stung like hoarfrost gathering in his chest. He folded his wings around himself in a vain attempt to lessen the burning chill.
As invisible in the Dreamscape as he was in the waking world, Skyvior could only watch while Val stroked his enemy’s spinous face.
The Shadowshifter eagerly flared his nostrils to breathe in the shadows that began streaming from Val’s fingertips, his beastly form growing larger and more defined with every vapor of human darkness he absorbed. Muscles swelled across his body like boiling tar. Spikes and talons lengthened into lethal black blades. Feathers shuddered with cruel pleasure as he cast a wicked sideways smile in Skyvior's direction.
That smile faltered when a searing light sparked in the little Lightshifter’s emerald eyes and a starlike mark of golden fire ignited on his forehead. He reared his head with a surprisingly deep growl, and a simultaneous crash of thunder and lightning split the sky outside. The shadows shuddered as a fierce gust of wind threaded with streaks of star fire tore through the open window with a vengeance, ripping the drawings from the wall and sweeping the desk clear.
Val was wrenched from the Dreamscape by the deafening crack of thunder, mingled with the startling blast of wind and the rustling of papers being swept across the floor.
Practically falling out of bed and groping in the grayish morning light, Val staggered to the window and slammed it shut with a string of muttered curses. Heavy raindrops started spattering the glass as he slumped into the chair by the desk, glaring coldly at nothing in particular.
Finally, heaving himself to his feet, he gathered up the wayward papers and tossed them back onto the desk in careless piles. Then he sat back down to hastily sketch the rough outline of a new art project ~ an image flickering in the corners of his mind where elusive inspirations lurk, threatening to vanish if not captured quickly by the artists they haunt.
Val was utterly unaware of the weightless beings perched on either of his shoulders, now mirrored in equal size. Both watched intently as his latest creature took shape under the rhythmic strokes of his pencil, waiting to see what picture he carried from the Dreamscape into the waking world.
Once the pencil stilled, yet another monster had been made. This one mirrored the form the Shadowshifter had appeared to him in that already fading dream. He even drew a hand resting against its muzzle, searing the moment into Skyvior’s heart like a cruel brand.
Val stood up and shuffled toward the hall, only to be stopped in the bedroom doorway by the crinkling of paper under his bare foot. Dejected emerald eyes peered down from his shoulder as he stooped to pick up the wind-tossed page. He cast one glance over the old sketch before crumpling it up in his fist, crushing a Lightshifter’s heart inside the folds of a forgotten dream.
“No need to hang your head, little light,” laughed the sinisterly smiling Shadowshifter. “It is just another human. They all turn out the same.”
🏔️💫Lightscript Legends💫🌲 is an ongoing series of bite-sized stories and sip-on-the-go serials. Click here for the full list of published episodes and subscribe to get new installments in your inbox!