Hands carefully shoved brush aside, feet moving with an almost unnatural silence over the ground as he neared the place he had tracked his latest victim to. It was a forest, in a realm called something along the lines of Delji. He didn't really know for sure, and he didn't particularly care.

 

      What occupied his mind at the moment was the woman just ahead. She had emerged into a clearing and seemed to be in a hurry to get somewhere. Such a strange one she had turned out to be -- seeming so timid, but hiding a fiery will inside. Our serial killer had never guessed what she knew, and where she was heading, or that at this very moment she was playing mind games of her own. What he saw was the platinum haired woman with the eerie grey eyes he had come to know and deceive so well. What her friends of the Pride that lived on the lands saw was the sleek midnight panthress that was her true form, sending out a quick call of distress to those she knew could succeed where she couldn't.

 

The minute he set foot into the clearing, the illusion faded to show the creature, that once friendly gaze filled with hatred as it stared at him. In the same instant he realized something had somehow gone very wrong, and lashed out at her with all his mental abilities. He never saw her as she collapsed, as someone had shown up, and quickly taken her to the safety of a protected room. It would turn out she'd only suffer the effects for a few days, then gradually go back to normal, with only some loss of recent memories suffered.

 

      Another was present before he knew it, this fact brought to his knowledge by a sudden pain wracking his form. The particles that made up his 'body' were quickly demanded to depart, dissipating into the air around him as he reverted to the transparent spirit he truly was. Not a trace remained to point toward where he was, and he would be safe until he could see to it that wretched panther woman met her end. Or so he thought.

 

     Before he could flee, a sudden tightness surrounded him, a very alien feeling considering the lack of such in normal circumstances as a spirit. What were essentially chains tightened painfully around him, prevented him from moving as he realized to his horror that the man in front of him was staring right at him, was responsible for this.

 

      The words exchanged between the two were nothing but a blur in his mind as time passed, two words out of the entire thing thoroughly shocking him. Kill you. He had become arrogant with his power and corruption. He had thought himself dead in all aspects already. It had never crossed his mind that he could still be rid of in other ways, beyond the mortal death he had experienced.

 

     At the height of the pain and what had grown into sheer terror, the chains suddenly dissolved as he fell to the ground, the faint solid form he'd taken somewhere along the way on its knees. Tears streamed down his face as everything he had done sunk into his mind. His mind. Not the one run by insanity. His words tumbled over each other as he pleaded to be allowed to live, though half of him wanted to die, just like all those innocent people..

 

      The man managed to get some idea of what had just happened, and did allow him to go free. The chains would stay with him to return any time the evil thoughts did, however. There was just one thing neither of them had quite expected that would shed him of this precautionary enchantment in the future.

 

     As time passed he learned to deal with what he had done, however much it still haunted him, terrorized his dreams. He occupied himself in learning to hold that solid form for increasingly long periods of time. He taught himself to make the form more than just a shell, to give it a heart and blood and lungs. The whole process dominated his life, as he experimented with the power he held, and finally he managed to make the 'perfect' solid form. He would hold this form even as headaches and nausea grew from the effort, until he would eventually pass out and awake to find the particles dispelled.

 

      One day, however, as he stumbled into a vacant room, turned out very differently. The pain had grown to migraine strength, and he felt that familiar dizziness. He collapsed on the bed and watched everything go black, also something he was used to by now. The difference would come when he woke up hours later, pushing himself up to sit. Eyes soon widened as he realized what he had just done. He'd pushed himself up.. which meant he was still in that solid form. His first reaction was to panic, and try to flee into the spirit form. This attempt accomplished nothing. He was still sitting there, with all the appearances of a 'normal' human. The panic soon gave way to amazement. Was he.. alive?