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What Flynn was saying made a lot of sense. To attack them all at once would certainly be faster, but it would increase the odds of them sustaining damage. To split them up was not only going to ensure success, but minimize risk. The problem was timing. That was essentially the crux of the issue. Did Az want to spend a lot of time hunting each and every person down? In truth, he enjoyed the idea of that option because it meant he would get to spend a little more time building bonds with Flynn. But that was, he supposed, an entirely selfish point of view, which meant he basically wiped it the moment the notion surfaced. Time was, to use a cliché, of the essence. Every minute he wasted was a minute that someone else had the chance to get their hand on the cure, on the research pertaining to the cure.

Of course, that didn’t mean there were not ways to ensure Flynn did not come to harm. Az had been a vampire for years. He could frankly shrug off a lot of serious injuries. He was fairly certain that, no matter how suped up Paladins were, they didn’t have the regenerative powers of vampires. “Actually, that gives me an idea. Follow my lead.” He said when they were face to face again, only to turn on his heel and lift his arm enough to gesture with one hand in the direction he was walking. Their trip down the hall was a quiet one, footsteps muffled as if weighed down by the somehow physical burden of the responsibility on their shoulders. It was when they reached the bend in the hall, which would take them into a warzone, that he held up his hand again to motion for them to come to a halt. He then half twisted so he could peer into Flynn’s eyes once more.

When I give you the signal, I want you to break cover and fire in the direction of the soldiers quickly. They are going to most likely be shooting erratically, so be careful not to move too far away from the wall. His mental voice poured into Flynn’s mind so as to not make any sound.

It was quiet after that, and Az could hear the thumping of the Paladin’s heart in his ears. He centered himself on that sound, letting the rhythm of it ground him the way a person might have used a metronome to enter a trance-like state. Suddenly the air itself seemed to thicken. And it was as if darkness had coaelseced into a black miasma. Which was to say that the lights in the hall began to falter as the area became blanketted in thick, living shadows. It was as if dusk had rolled rapidly in and the are had become a starless, new moon night. It was, in fact, so black that the soldiers could not make out their hands in front of their faces. To each of them, perhaps, they felt that despite being relatively close, in that kind of dimness, they might as well have been miles apart. The shouting began a moment later. Some seemed to think they had gone blind. Those ones rubbed at their eyes. Others screamed that they were under attack, and began firing their weapons (much as Az had predicted) in all directions.

A few managed to shoot each other, which led to the scent of blood and the sound of lungs working overtime to try and breathe past blood filling them.

The phenomena was contained to the space beyond the bend in the hall, and yet the area immediately around Az and Flynn was still normally lit. That illumination could not penetrate the wall of pure blackness. As if there was a blank space in the world where the soldiers should have been.

NOW! Az commanded. And it was at that moment, the tangible tenebrosity began to fight back against the men who were shooting blindly through it. It formed spikes which slammed through bodies, claws which began to tear at flesh and clothing and hair and bone. It was like a pitfall trap, but it came from all sides and flailed madly in on itself as if attempting to snuff out every ounce of life inside. It was a cage of death. It was a box of darkness. It was death.

And when it began to clear away, what was left was almost unrecognizable as the strewn out and bloody corpses of humans. Some of them still twitched and struggled for life. Others looked almost as if the skin had been stripped from bone. They were little more than a collection of wounds, of gashes, of gouges, and empty of life. Az pushed his hands into his pockets as he began down the hall. He whistled to cover the sticky sound of him tracking over blood and internal organs which had been spilled all over the floor, and then he gathered up a card from what had once been a commander. He held it up for Flynn to see. “Ready to move on?” he asked.