The Umbra World

Umbra Hunter

"Don't move!"

Drake stopped moving at once while the strange demon folded identical pairs of near-transparent wings into the thick, rotten hide on it's backs. It was a thin creature of wasted leathery skin stretched over elongated bones. The grey skin around it's mouths pulled tautly across two rows of sharp fangs which dripped viscous yellow pus. It stank to high-heaven.

Drake staggered backward in fear as he hide behind Shinigami who was not even bothered.

The creature smile didn’t touch his eyes. Something wasn’t right. Shinigami could taste strangeness on the unexpected visit of Normak. The most powerful demon on Shinigami Island.

"Mundanes are not allowed to be here?" Normak sprawled it's fang as he spoke.

"He is with me and will be with me until he leaves" Shinigami stated but it seem like it didn't go well with Normak. Normak was well meaning even,he said to protect the island from invasion of any worlds of the Umbra World, so,he deemed it fit that he had to kill the mundane to stop this. And then both of his eyes were pitch-black now, and his jaw had unhinged, stretching his mouth open almost comically wide. Rows of sharp, yellowed fangs were wreathed in pink-red, near auburn, flame.

The creature, whatever he truly was, breathed explosive fire into the air and it caused smoke that started to make Drake to cough.

With vexation Shinigami threw his arms forward, he was already taking a liking to the mundane young boy, Twin beams of Thor's Lightning got generated on his arms—a trick he'd picked up years ago from some of the secret, unpublished epics by his mum,demon lilth—burst from his palms in wicked, electric-blue arcs and strucked Normak in the chest. It paid well to be a Nephalem in charge of some of the most powerful tomes in existence.

The lightning bore into the creature, and with a flick of his wrists he wrenched him a staggering step to the side, using his own momentum against him, and hurled the bastard through the woods and out into the open space.

Drake who had almost lost consciousness from coughing due to Normaks smoke watch as the event unfold. He was surprised to see the kind of power Shinigami really exhibited. "Maybe he was truly a Nephalem" and seeing the demon creature, he pinched himself,slapped his cheeks heavily as if he expected to wake up from some dreams.

Shinigami cracked his neck and shrugged. It had been a good few months since Shinigami used such devastating, yet satisfying, Thunder lightening. Like the god of thunder, really.

“What in the hell is that?” Drake screamed.

Shinigami turned noticing there were other demons roaming around and could attack Drake anytime,he casted a spell which turned into a protective shield above and beside Drake.

"Don't leave this circle for any reason!" Shinigami ordered,he then ran through the heat of the atmosphere, leaping over the woods remains, and out into the air. The place was alive with other demons fleeing or gaping at the torrents of black smoke and pinkish-red flame escaping Normak.

Normak had been thrown clean across the sloppy water lounged area and into the woods. He lay slumped and laughing against the crumpled branches of tree. He felt no pain.

Another blast of superheated energy seemed fitting. Shinigami hurled a bolt of power, red flame wrapped in crackling lightning, as fast as thought- blurred and was suddenly standing six feet to the left. Shinigami's bolt struck the tree branches and sent it crashing across, spinning to a screeching stop on a wood against the wall of a Shinigami's cave thirty feet away.

His body began to jerk and twitch as he crumpled, folding in on himself, growing smaller and smaller until he vanished entirely. Normak was gone and this sent a wave through other demons roaming, they ran away immediately.

Shinigami walked back to where Drake was watching in astonishment.

When he got there the shield disappeared. Drake had finally confirmed Shinigami was not lying after all. No human can do what he had just done.

"Let's continue...I need to show you around"

Hoping to avoid Shinigami and exit the island by whichever way he didn't quite thought about, he lagged behind as they crossed through a scrubby parts, its poisonous grass burned brown by radiation.

His attempts were however futile.

******

Seconds turned into minutes and minutes into hours,hours into days and days into months. A year passed, and a score of the second, third , forth and fifth year which was few days way to elapse. All of Drake's try to leave the island were all futile.

Staying with Shinigami for five years and training with him on how to kill Downworlders who prove to be his enemy and a whole world of trouble while waiting for the time to leave the island and go back home had fine-tuned his survival instinct.

Drake learnt all the plethora of martial art skills, focus - concentration skills, the chi techniques and also medicinal abilities from Shinigami.

Drake eased himself down onto the cold ground and held his hands to the orb of fire. A biting wind rustled the leaves in the canopy overhead and shook penny-sized drops of rain loose from the trees. The water sizzled as it struck the crystal-blue glow of the flames.

‘He hasn’t slept in three days overly because he is super excited that he will soon be back home to Delta city and his family. Sitting on his left was Shinigami, his breath a warm mist against the cold. ‘he didn’t even feel tired – just wired, you know? Like he could tear these trees out of the ground or … or fly, or something.’ He rubbed at his eyelids, and his body shook. Shinigami thought for a moment he was crying, but no, it was laughter. Shinigami didn't for a moment showed Drake his true form.

‘It’s messing with my head Master. What if this is how it starts? Did the early umbra hunters not sleep when they first got turned? His voice dropped to a whisper. ‘Am I really now an Umbra Hunter?"

Drake shuffled his cold feet, encased in a pair of sodden, muddy island-fibre, closer to the warm blue blaze emanating from the sphere of fire Shinigami had hung in air with his demonic power.

Drake was feeling an intense surge of spiritual energy. He had drank from a mortal cup earlier on. Shinigami summoned Angel Micheal and his blood was drenched into the cup, Shinigami also drenched his blood into it. Making Drake a special breed of Umbra hunters,more fast and skilled having trained with the the only Nephalem. The strongest member of the umbra world with extraordinarily abilities. Drake was now an Angel-Nephalem hybrid.

The early umbra hunters were turned when they drank from the mortal cup of which Angel Micheal and a mundanes blood where in and also from the reproduction between them.

After the ritual of making Drake an umbra hunter was completed......

Shinigami grabbed Drake's wrist, turned it over so the white, vulnerable flesh of his inner arm lay bare under the moonlight. Traceries of blue vein mapped the inside of his skin, carrying angelic blood to his heart, his brain. Drake felt his knees buckle. There was something in Shinigami's hand, something sharp and silver. He tried to pull his hand back, but his grip was too hard: He felt a stinging kiss against his skin. When he let go, he saw an inked black symbol like the one that Shinigami said keeps him in a human form. The something he would usually call a stele.

Just below the fold of Drake wrist shinigami used the sharp silver like stuff he called a stele to draw another one that looked like a set of overlapping knots. And then another one on his chest,it was painful but he managed. The one on his chest was the Umbra's hunter rune, the mark was shining as if it had been etched with phosphorescent ink. As Drake watched, it sank into his skin, like a weighted object sinking into water. It left behind a ghostly reminder: a pale, thin scar, almost invisible.

He was amused with the abilities he had gained.