The Hungry Dark

Helix turned toward the man, wild-eyed with fear. “Your Magicks will do you no good here, Wizard,” he hissed. He flung an arm toward the vast, ruined hall. “What waits in the shadows here will not run. They will not give way to anything but the light; everything else, they devour whole.”

The Unbeliever stared at his guide with renewed interest, as though noticing him for the first time today. His purple eyes burned into the Elf's for a moment, forcing him to glance away, before he spoke. “You make powerful claims, Elfish. However, my strengths aren't given to light, and here in the vast Unconsciousness of All, you know the darknesses better than I. Tell me, then... what are we facing?”

Helix met the wizard's eyes nervously. “Hobyahs.”

The Unbeliever's eyes narrowed. “Remember, Elf; I am here as your guest. Your Mysteries are largely unknown to me. Tell me, what are “Hobyahs'”?

Helix spoke hurriedly as he turned back to the hall. “Hobyahs! Grue. Langoliers. The Hungry Dark. They're a nightmare that ends nightmares. Everything that is forgotten, they devour, to make room for other phantasms. The problem is, they don't see it that way; they just know they're hungry. Always. So, rather: everything they devour is forgotten.

“They avoid the light, any light. In the light, they are seen as beings, small and furry, and can be killed easily. In the dark, as best anyone can tell, they're a sea of teeth; untouchable and all-consuming. The end of all things imagined.”

“Then I suppose,” the wizard muttered, gesturing towards Helix's witchlight, “that your toy is our salvation.” His voice hardened; “Elf, I suggest you keep a steady hand for both our sakes.” He swept his arm forward, indicating that they should proceed.

Helix stared into the hall, his eyes and ears straining as he tried to pick out the Hobyahs. The air whispered around them, an incomplete silence as the shadows waited anxiously for their prey. After seconds that seemed like hours, he stepped forward.

His conjured light shone forth weakly and his nerves stood on end, but everywhere he looked he saw only the debris of the concert hall, long moldered with time. What few seats remained were slashed and marked with graffiti. The retaining walls of the balconies above had long since collapsed... or been forced... to the floor below. Peeling paint and patches of mosaic tile covered the walls. Within the globe of his “toy's” light, a run-down, long-forgotten opera hall displayed it's last remaining treasures; the tatters of a building once bustling, fallen to time.

“Tell me, Elf, if they eat what is forgotten, but also what is forgotten out of hand, why is the world itself not consumed?”

The wizard's sudden question startled Helix out of his skin. He paused for breath as his skin crawled, swinging his light around to see what else might respond. After several long moments, he turned back to his guest and motioned him forward.

“I don't mind answering your questions, but we don't have time for a conference in the middle of a roomful of Hobyahs. If we can keep moving, I'll tell you what I know.” Upon seeing the wizard nod, he turned back and started moving forward.

“Hobyahs are a forgotten force; few things remember they exist, and as such they're largely stuck living in forgotten places. Most dreamers don't think of them except as the phenomenon that occurs after waking; that vivid dream gone grey, details that seem so important quickly forgotten. They also live in the echoes of dreams long forgotten, the kind of things dreamers used to dream about but not any longer, archaic ephemera such as night terrors of sabre-toothed tigers, bubonic plague or drowning while chained to dozens of others... “ the sound of his voice comforted him as he made his way through the debris.

“Hobyah!”

Helix almost leapt into his ward's arms at the sound. One tiny whisper, so slight he could almost convince himself he had imagined it, reached him from the far recesses of the hall. He froze for a moment and swept the witchlight around. The tattered furniture and faded walls answered him back. After one interminably long, tense moment, he continued forward.

“The line between the eating the forgotten and what they eat being forgotten is almost... well... quantum.” He flinched at exercising his scientific knowledge in Elfin guise. “They consume indiscriminately if you find them, and if they eat you, you are forgotten. However, it seems that most who are forgotten are generally the ones to encounter the Hobyahs and be eaten.”

Helix finished his nervous explanation with no response. Seconds crept on like minutes, minutes crept on like hours, as the pair crept through the theater. His nerves frayed as his ears strained; his eyes ached as he searched the shadows desperately. His willpower stretched thin as he searched for Hobyahs while willing the witchlight forward. He felt faint.

“Hobyah!”

The Elf froze solid. The Unbeliever stopped short, studying him with vague interest.

“Elf, I think I hear the hungry dark.”

The Wizard's voice barely registered. Helix could not move. His eyes ached as he scanned every inch of the shadows around them. He struggled to hear anything over his own racing heart.

After long moments, he moved forward again. One step at a time, as he swept his light around; back and forth and back again. He inched yet again, another step, and his charge moved with him. Seconds turned to minutes as he stood there yet again, ears aching to hear something. Anything.

“Hobyah!”

Almost a whisper, a tiny, squeaky gremlin-voice came to them from somewhere toward the back of the theater. Before Helix could even start sweating, responses rolled back from all around them.

“Hobyah! Hobyah hobyah hobyah! Hobyah HOBYAH!!!”

The susurrus rose to a din in seconds. The Unbeliever pulled his coat tight around him as he looked around, while Helix cupped his hands around the witchlight, willing frantically on the edge of panic for it to be brighter. The light flickered.

Something flew past Helix's head, crashing behind the Wizard. Part of a theater seat. “Hobyah!” came to them from all around, an ocean of frenetic chattering that ran together like the ebb and tide of an ocean. Something else hit him square in the chest, knocking him to the floor. “They're trying to kill the light!” he yelled back. “If we have no light, we're finished!!!” The witchlight pulsed as his fear distracted him.

“ENOUGH!” The Unbeliever flung his coat open. Arcs of power stretched out into the shadows as far as Helix could see, like an afterimage of lightning in the darkness. Tittering erupted all throughout the theater, mad giggling from tiny creatures. The Elf's heart sank as the Wizard's efforts proved futile.

The Unbeliever pulled at the darkness as he stood, then swept his arms in and pointed directly at the witchlight. Nothing happened for long moments as the giggling and whispering continued. Helix began to wonder what is was like to be unmade as he got back to his feet.

Shadows crashed in around them without warning. The darkness of the theater coalesced into pitch blackness. Glowing grey arced back from the shadows into the Unbeliever and out of his fingers as he stared at the witchlight, which suddenly flared and pulsated with radiant grey-white. Helix looked around, confused, at what appeared to be a solid bubble of light, a stark delineation between the witchlight's glow and the complete blackness around them.

The giggling stopped. “Hobyah hobyah!” came back to them from the pitch blackness as their unseen foes whispered among themselves.

“Elf, I suggest we move while we can.”

Helix nodded nervously at the wizard's suggestion, and began to creep forward again. The doors of the old Sanctum seemed miles away as they inched across the theater. “Wizard, I thought light was beyond your power...” he muttered, the question apparent.

The Unbeliever chuckled distractedly. “It is cheating, Elf. I am not creating light, I'm simply directing all the ambient light from a certain distance around us back into your cantrip. Everything I'm using to protect us already exists.”

“So there's no actual bubble? No... force field? No shield?” Helix stared at the sharp difference between darkness and light around them as he moved forward. He put a finger out to poke at the demarcation.

“Helix, I would strongly recommend against that.” The Wizard stated flatly. “There is nothing there. If these things are as quick and as ravenous as you say, you could lose your finger as quickly as you put it out there.” With that, Helix pulled his hand back and began to look for the doors in earnest. Sweat dripped down his brow and he wiped it away.

Realizing that this had been the first time the Unbeliever had used his name, Helix felt bolstered. He moved forward nervously, but with renewed purpose. As if to offset the ebb and whisper around them, he continued lecturing his guest as he searched.

“There is literally no discernible body when they are in the darkness. You can hear them, whispering and giggling amongst themselves, but there is nothing to act against out there. Were you to enter the darkness, you would not merely be eaten; you would be torn apart. Destroyed. Yet, in rare instances throughout legend where Hobyahs face the light, they appear as tiny beings, a foot or so in height, with large mouths and eyes, and fur all over, standing upright. Details vary past that.

“Reports are exceedingly sparse throughout history even in the realms of dreams. However, it seems that many agree that the terror exists not in the individual, but in the many. Nor does it exist in the known, but in the unknown. A Hobyah unseen may as well be a tornado in the night, but nobody to my knowledge has seen a Hobyah alone. The strength of one is unknown...”

His eyes and ears strained against the darkness as he searched throughout the remains of the opera house. His nerves were frayed and he longed for nothing more than home, like some Halfling in the rain... but he could do nothing but move ahead in his task. His Oath had been given and, even were he better given to computers than cantrips, he would sooner die than give up. His chatter soothed his nerves in the quiet...

(Obviously, this is just a fragment. I'm yet to figure out how to get here, and I know what will happen next but I'm still working it how to tie it together.)