Corey "Spirit" Briggs's Story

The first thing Corey saw when she woke up was nothing. All she could see was darkness, shrouding her left and right. It wasn't any old smoke cloud, she could tell. No, this has a heaviness to it. A specific kind, meant for draining, for changing.

If Corey hadn't known any better, she would've said that this was Soul Manipulation at work.

But, she did know better. She knew that Soul Manipulation was something difficult to master, she being one of the only ones in the Universe to have mastered so many aspects of it.

She also knew this kind of smoke. It was heavy, dark, pushy and confining. It was draining, and there was no point for Corey to deny it, she was feeling herself slouch under its pressure. The stink, the breath of the smoke, let her know it wasn't smoke in the first place.

It Was all Shadow.

She lifted her head, squinting, to see a dark mass. It was a soul, grey and rotten, bright as the sun even in the blackness surrounding her. It was a sad sight to see, and one of the downfalls of having Soul Sight -- Corey always saw the demise of once glowing souls -- but it was even sadder to see a soul she was so familiar with. She took a breath, and spoke out into the darkness.

'Nix...'

If it had been anyone else is Corey's position or place, they might have been surprised. Lost for words, scared even. But Corey was none of these things. She only calmly replied.

'I would've let you die,' she said quietly, in a calmness that brought shivers down most mortals' spines. 'I would have let you die in a heart beat. But I couldn't' She blinked, 'Don't get sentimental either, Nix. I mean I couldn't because it was not my choice. It was Spirit's. I was young when I became it, too young to remember. It controlled me, it decided my movements from then on until I could decide for myself. I was young too, you delinquent.'

That was what she called him, when she first formally met him, when she could remember, when her own vessel could teach. He was the delinquent, and the name suited him.

Corey could not say that she didn't foresee this. She knew that at one point darkness would become strong, even dimming the pure light. She knew that the Holder of Darkness had a blackened soul. That was always clear to her, as she used to watch the light of his life-force swimming around his vessel, grey and glowing, dark and unforgiving.

But she had not expected the Darkness to change the Holder's -- Nix's -- Soul into what it is now. It was not full. It was not glowing, or grey. It was the blackest of blacks, thumping and aggressive, with no mercy for anyone, or anything. It was a rotten soul, too rotten to consume or heal. It was beyond dark.

Still, Corey remained calm.

'Where did you take me this time?'

Corey let her neck snap around, giving the Delinquent a false hope that he could actually physically hurt her. However, her head wound back up, her face cold and hard, the only warmth she felt being a new eruption of blood on her lip.

'Sure it isn't...' She muttered. 'Well then,' Corey sank down in her spot, crossing her legs and shifting around, 'might as well make myself comfortable.'

But she, of course, was not going to simply sit. She could feel it; from a great distance, powers of souls were being sucked into the shriveled one in front of her... Even the tiniest traces of her own. It was obvious what Nix was doing.

But trying to suck up the other holders' powers was not the wisest thing to do, the Spirit knew that. Darkness, trying to hold the abilities of pure light, trying to convert the hottest of fires, trying to freeze the fastest of waters... It could not end well. Soul Consumption was not even something Nix had mastered, Corey knew that... So trying to pull off something so similar, yet different from it... It could only end in bloodshed, and not the kind that The Delinquent was hoping for.

Corey was also at another advantage, being able to see into and track his soul. Being in plain sight for her, with nothing to hide with, put Nix at a great trip. Now, Corey could watch his weaknesses closely, watch them expand with the more power he took in. She chuckled.

'You Delinquent,' she muttered, smirking.