Down he spiraled onto a tiled rooftop, where he quickly hid behind a gargoyle, disguising his wings to look like as if he was part of it. Looking to the side he saw a platoon of soldiers, but it was not one of his armies. There were probably more of them, for he could hear the screams of civilians and of his soldiers. He stared down at them and wondered what person was powerful enough to raise an army this large. Intelligence had told him that there were only small guerrilla groups, or those that have been giving him the information either had not known, or they have been giving him the wrong information.
He pushed off of the gargoyle and flapped his wings once, bringing him on top of the statue. They dissolved and he drew his sword which reflected in the sunlight. Enemy soldiers begun to take notice of them, but too late. He jumped and aimed and landed upon a group of soldiers, then slashed two others with a sword. They were not well equipped for the fight at all, and only leather armor protected them, which did little to defend them. Their spears snapped like twigs, and their swords bent in half when he swung again.
Suddenly Vincent felt that something was terribly wrong. Even the most pathetic rebel group he had encountered in the last year was more well equipped then this. He tried to step back from the soldiers, but something had caught his foot. He took a 200th of a second to look down, as vampires can, and saw what made him panic.
The soldiers that he had cut down, and those that he had landed on, had turned to a black goo. His sword had caught in the broken weapons, rendering it useless. The fake soldiers stabbed at him now, but they broke and dissolved before his eyes, sticking to him. He tried to use his Shift abilities, but something was inhibiting him from using them.
Too late he realized that this was a Drider trap, a demon that turned things into what its pray would recognize and try to kill, but the object would dissolve and trap its pray, then reel it in to bite its pray to inject poison that would dissolve its insides within hours to seconds, depending on the Drider's preference. Vincent had not fought one of them before because they rarely crawl out of the cracks that lead from Hell, mostly because they have enough pray.
He felt the goo solidify slightly and felt it being move. He fell back and further got stuck in the goo. He struggled, trying to get out if it, but it was useless. He heard a laugh and a heard a icy voice hiss "Now what do we have here? The lord of you pathetic Shifts? What a catch indeed. My partner will be pleased that I have caught you in my web." He struggled harder and the voice developed into a shrieking laugh "You honestly think you can still escape?! Ahahahahaha!! Nothing can escape from a Drider's web, except a husk!" He was turned over, and saw the most most grotesque thing he had ever seen so far.
The Drider was beautiful, but its face seemed all wrong, for it looked like patches of different people's faces, all of which were different colors of skin. The Drider, in fact, looked like it was different parts of people! Down to the torso was human-like, but the main body was a spider's. Its eyes were pink and silted. It grinned with wicked delight, showing its pearly white needle-like teeth.
It ran its clawed hands over his armor, screeching all the way. "You know," it began, "I always wanted children. Your armor would keep them nice and safe until they hatched and devour you from the inside. My partner would only need you for a day or two." It bent down lower towards him, opening its needled mouth wide. The good totally solidified, so that Vincent could not move at all. His stomach turned over. He was about to become a Drider nest.
When it was about to clamp down on his mouth, it shrieked in pain and arched upward in pain. It stumbled backwards into what sounded like a wall, and shrieked again. There was a muffled shriek, a spatter of something, then a thud. Silence.
Then he heard rushing footsteps, "Oh gods, is he dead?!" he heard someone gasp. He heard someone mutter an incantation, and the Drider's goo web evaporated around him. He sat up almost instantly. He sighed in relief as well as the others that had saved him.
"Thank goodness...." said a hooded man, sounding relieved as he lend against a wall.
"We all thought you were Drider food!" said a hooded woman, but she sounded like she was in her teens.
"I actually came close to being a carrier of its eggs." said Vincent as he stood up. He saw that there were at least five others that were there, all hooded, and all had a different shade of color. He shook his head and laughed "I was also about to be taken to the leader of this rebel group that is attacking our fair city." he said in a serious tone.
"We know of this enemy." said a man with a staff. He young as well, but acted aged. "He was Kuroshi's right-hand man, second to only that son of a demon himself. His name is Hojin Ty." The man turned around and asked "Do you know of his goal?"
Vincent thought. Normally people would go into hiding when their master fell, so it could be something suicidal. But why would he recruit demons like Driders for a suicide battle? Unless....
"He knows that his master is not dead." Vincent replied finally. The hooded people gasped. It was known to only three people that Kuroshi had not truly died. "Where is he?" one of them asked in a hushed voice
"He is one of the ten thousand black marbles that reside in the quiet waterfall that is in the palace garden. He is sealed in nine of them, all of them separated so he cannot be revived." he said as he picked up his sword. "I don't know how Hojin knows that Kuroshi is not dead, but we must stop him from reviving Kuroshi." He glared at the hooded people. "Who are you people?"
The one that sounded like she was in her teens, took her hood, and uncovered herself. Her skin was as black as the night, and her ears were not rounded, but pointed. "We, my lord, are of the Drow Clan."
**********************************
Tomoe lit a lamp in the dark hidden room. The light revealed a lavish room, filled with everything that a person would ever need in order to survive. Nami stared, looking around everywhere.
"My Lady," she begun seemingly out of breath "Was this made just for you?"
"It was." Tomoe replied and smiled. "Vincent made it himself. It is not in the palace designs at all, and he, I, and now you are the only ones who know about this place. He even learned how to make wards made of magic, and spells that renew food, water and air, so we can live here forever and no one would know about it, for the palace cannot be burned now." said Tomoe.
Nami was utterly flabbergasted. "He must really care for you if he put this much effort into assuring your safety and well-being. So unusual of a Lord we have." It was quite unusual. In the past a Lord of the Shifts could take any woman as a wife, and would only take another if that woman died.
"He is... quite unusual." said Tomoe in turn "Being a spirit in the Humani realm does change someone after a while. What else do you have to do other then to study the world around you and its inhabitants?" This was true. Most Shift had never seen a Human, but every once in a while you would hear legends of their great evil, or goodness.
Nami scratched her head and was about to ask if her Lady would like some tea, but then the question died in her throat when she heard a bang of a door being knocked down above where they were. Tomoe blew out the candle in the lamp and they fell into darkness.
A Wolf In The Dark Community Member 
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