Julius Sparrow stood in a squared stance in the middle of a dimly lit street.
Across from him stood a woman in a tight black vest, and a black motorcycle helmet on her head.
Blades in both hands.
One red, one gold.
"Hand over that blade…It doesn't belong to you." The woman finally spoke in a cold bore.
"Why's it in my hands then?" Julius retorted in a tone as smooth as bourbon, and as detached as space.
"You're a child, why throw your life away for something you haven't the slightest clue how to use?" The woman asked in a regal tone that stretched like a long, golden vine.
"I went to a lot of effort for this," Julius responded calmly, his tone like the fluffy illusion of a cloud.
"A waste." She responded.
BANG
She quickly threw herself forward, her feet churning forward with the speed of a factory machine.
Julius didn't pull back, refusing to give her any more space he shot off to match her blade.
CLASH!
Sparks scattered at the contact of blades, illuminating one black visor and one tense face in a flash of orange.
Both faces exuded silent strength.
They pushed off, both equally stepping back before charging in to exchange blades.
Julius swept cleanly first, only to be met with a golden blade catching his diagonally in an attempt to masterfully sweep the blade over the woman as if pulling a raincoat around her.
Julius faltered an inch, his radiant ruby blade grinding cleanly along the golden blade before it swept in the air like a baseball player hitting a golden run.
PARRY!
SCHING!
The woman quickly recovered from a semi-awkward angle, her golden blade snatching forward toward the kill when suddenly-
Her blade passed through clean air.
Julius was in the air, upside down, his legs tucked inside himself as if a giant used him as a ball.
The woman's golden blade continued to her far right side, as if she were a baseball player sending out a home run.
She whipped her helmet to her left, only to see a gripped red blade swinging clean toward her.
Julius has fought all sorts of things in his deeply unnatural youth, "thanks to a chuckling masked friend" Julius would say…
Mudrats, humans, spiderlings, Hydra's…
Julius fought demi-gods, with the strength of giants, at the age of 16.
How? Because he was smart? Because was prepared?
No! He knew how to hit and not get hit!
If his understanding of how the human body could move wasn't above all else, he would've been caught and eaten by mudrats long ago in a dark murky forest and never seen again.
SCHING
The red blade swept cleanly through the woman's body.
Julius continued with his momentum, his tucked body like a ball, spinning over before landing cleanly with the footplant of an athlete.
"Checkmate," Julius concluded professionally without another thought.
Until he turned over…
The woman's neck had a black gap like a void, emitting dark smoke where Julius swept through her neck with his blade.
Above her neck, her helmet was like a blurry picture completely made up of black smoke.
Julius watched with narrowed eyes as the smoke very quickly dissipated, the gap filling in almost instantaneously as the helmet returned to normal and the figure took a breath as if suddenly being woken up.
Julius watched with a dark expression.
A shade.
"I thought that might be the case, that sword and that mirror tattoo…" Julius began in a quiet tone, too quiet.
"The sun goddess, Amaterasu." Julius sighed softly.
"You know what a shade is?" The woman asked with surprise.
A shade was a technique known to few, it was extremely complicated, seen as a combination of magic only a few could understand, let alone actually practice.
It involved rank six shadow magic, and rank nine sun magic, manipulating shadows to use as a corporeal form by transplanting a tiny amount of consciousness.
Then manipulating the light of the sun to pull completely away from the form, to not destroy it.
How could a mortal know about such a thing?
Amaterasu's eyebrows tightened with thought underneath her helmet.
She sighed, pulling off the helmet and letting it roll on the floor before dissipating into black smoke and fading away.
Instantly a river of majestic straight black hair collapsed into view, as well as soft cheeks and sharp eyes like two black wells of ink.
"Now you see, child, you are not fit to wield that blade." The woman emphasised in a dangerously regal tone like a plank of grand oak beginning to creak.
The night washed over the sky, painting the streets in a quiet black that was barely illuminated by small streetlights.
"Who decided that?" Julius asked like wings in the air, indifferent and uncaring for anything.
"Your god." The woman replied, lowering herself from her straight almighty posture and into the wide reading stance.
"I bow to no one," Julius replied coldly, with a flair of flame in his tone as he mirrored her stance.
BANG!
Amaterasu set off, sword sweeping in one clean, vertical arc.
"Shin." Julius worded nonchalantly, pulling a dark red card from his pocket, with white trim.
As Amaterasu closed in, Julius tossed the card in front of him before clipping it into two with his red blade.
F L A S H
A torrent of blinding light, far greater than the light from the crushed token, illuminated the entire streetlight as if daylight appeared for a single second.
Celestial bronze
It was a material, an ore, that was capable of generating its own mana.
Julius's red crystal blade was made out of this material.
The card he used, "shin", was a talisman.
A talisman was essentially a vibrational circulation of mana stored, allowing people to essentially sell magic in a bottle, or in this case a card.
Julius had used them before when he fought a Demi-god.
Actually, that Demi-god used the same weapon Julius was using now, back then Julius used his own weapon against him.
Though now, Julius could use this method for himself.
"AAAARRH!" Amaterasu seemingly cried out in pain as half of her form flickered like black flames.
Julius immediately pushed forward, closing in on the weakened god when suddenly, his red blade began to rise as he readied another white-trimmed card when suddenly-
"AARRRGH!"
A cry like a banshee made Julius stagger, a great pain in his ears disorienting him for just a moment.
When he turned behind him, he saw a second black figure.
This one was far darker than Amaterasu, like darkness itself.
It had a cloaked body, completely in black, with a head like a black candle extinguisher, though tall and more pyramid-like.
The strange, tall head had all sorts of short, writhing black tentacles weakly wriggling around it.
Its body was humanoid, with broad shoulders, leather chest plates and leather shoulder pads.
The shoulder pads had this strange round design, completely pitch black, although from the faded colour they looked to once be white.
The figure was collapsed onto its knee, its other leg sunken into a pool of shadow in the street underneath it.
Its body writhed, the tentacles writhing with it from the reaction to Julius's light magic talisman.
"AAARRGHHHH." It howled in a distorted whail.
It had woken up in a collapsed bookshelf, in a grand library that seemed endless, with long grand carpets.
It stalked the library for days before one day, a purple-blue oval portal opened up.
As soon as it opened, the outside contact of the world stirred up a new sensation in the thing, something it didn't know it had before.
It could sense presences, it was actually drawn to them.
The feeling was like a glass ball of red liquid that stirred toward this sinister presence it felt.
The dark creature stepped through the portal, following this attraction, entering a school hallway with linoleum floors.
Instantly the sensation doubled, as it felt attracted to two students fighting in the hallway.
They were both tall, one on the floor with silver hair, the other with hair like spilt oil.
This was the one that the creature felt a dark attraction to, sensing a sinister presence like it had seen a devil.
Though as it was about to approach, the black-haired one threw down a metal device like a microscope.
Immediately lightning exploded out, catching the creature and sending it into agonising pain as if immediately scattered from the building and fled.
It roamed for a night, following this inner sensation like a compass guiding it to one sinister presences one after another.
Murderers, monsters, politicians, some human, some mythical.
In a night it consumed fifty entities.
And now it has found its way back here.
For Julius Sparrow.