#{.dylan.}

A Perfect Soul (Part 5 of ??)

featuring Dylan Matherson & Andy Foster — characters from The New Ashton Chronicles, written & role-played by F.R. Southerland

( @normallyxstranger | @frsoutherlandauthor | www.frsoutherland.com )

© 2017, 2026 F.R. Southerland

original fiction (repost) | approx. words: 1544 | general warnings: death, blood, violence, murder | edited | reblogs allowed & encouraged

Part 1 // Part 2 // Part 3 // Part 4

The 21st century

It was a struggle to form his thoughts into cohesion. Light. Too much light. And the sound... The sound was noise. Why was there so much noise? 

It was difficult to make sense of everything when he’d grown accustomed to the darkness and Shadows for so long.  Everything assailed him at once. 

“Where—” His throat felt raw, voice rough from little use. The words nearly strangled him. “Where am I?”

The sudden silence unnerved him. He looked up and saw her. The witch who had banished him. But no, not her. A different witch, with red hair and a pretty face. A soon-to-be dead witch.

“A church.” She said, shattering the silence.

“Church.” A loud laugh rattled his chest. “Church. Holy ground. It would be holy ground. Yes. Yes, I… remember.” As if he could forget. The whole situation roiled in his head, too absurd to be real. 

He stared at her. “But… Earth? Is this Earth?”

She hesitated, then answered in a quiet voice. “Yes.”

He was free, really and truly. Well, except for the blood-bond from whoever had summoned him and the servitude to his Master, but those were simply details. Details could wait.

He stood, and moved forward on unsteady legs. He passed through the broken summoning circle. The woman’s aura blazed, and he sensed the magic. Yes. Definitely a witch. The others standing around remained blurred, unimportant. Only she mattered. 

The Shadows clung to him, black as tar and pulsing, then liquid-smooth as They trailed the floor with him. 

The woman didn’t move, even as he approached. Someone gave a warning, but the words were little more than a buzz in his ears. The witch countered. Only noise.

Witches had put him in the darkness. Witches had punished him. The laugh that came from him this time was sharp, cutting. The Shadows knew, the Shadows sensed his agitation. They struck fast as whips, grabbing the witch, shoving her back.

The world went dark as the Shadows enveloped him, the darkness clinging. His screams had no sound, the Shadows drinking them up. They were taking him away. 

His throat burned from screams and prayers, until he couldn’t make any other sound. The silence, like the darkness, stretched on endlessly.

Please don’t, he silently pleaded. Don’t put me there. Please, please. Not again.

He realized could hear something. The noise was unfamiliar, but it was something. The Shadows, through his will, began to search for the source. 

When They dropped him, he lost his balance. The ground was cold and hard and he struggled to his feet. The Shadows clung to him, wrapping around his arms and legs and torso. He stumbled, footsteps uneven, and fell, too weak to stand for very long. 

Strength. He needed strength. He needed souls. He needed to feed. Whatever this place was, whatever the time, that was the one thought that now dominated his mind, stronger even than the notion of his new freedom. 

Feed. 

He blinked rapidly, gaze searching, eyes adjusting to the light. After so much darkness, he may as well have been blind. Once adjusted, he noticed the building off to his left. The sound was coming from there. Singing. 

A church. A hard laugh broke free of his throat. Of course there’d be another church.

Souls were so bright and colorful and many that they burned through the walls. Some were pure, innocent souls and others not so much, but it didn’t matter. He was so starved he’d take anything, even the innocent ones he’d eschewed long ago. 

Slowly, with the Shadows help, he walked toward the light of a dozen brilliant souls. Within a few steps, he found a strength within him that he didn’t know he still possessed. 

 The Shadows pulled away from him and retreated to crevasses and corners, the places where They pooled the darkest. He could still hear Their whisperings, yet the singing drowned Them out.

He pulled open the doors and stared. The congregation wasn’t very large—perhaps a dozen or so people. There had been thirteen witches there the night they banished him. He remembered that. It seemed right that there would be just as many souls here tonight.

A white-hot anger rose in him, soon boiling inside him. The music stopped. Someone asked if he needed help, but he never answered. There was no help for him.

The anger erupted from him with a harsh cry, a scream. Someone else screamed too, then others. And why not, when he violently ripped away every soul at once?

He’d used such a method only once  before, he knew. He remembered a village, an illness, everyone dead or dying. They had been the first souls he'd ever consumed. And now he took these with just as few scruples. The Shadows had given him strength when he had none, but They were nothing compared to these. He absorbed every last soul, felt himself return to something more than an empty, broken shell. 

The souls came with memories and knowledge, tiny bits and pieces of the last few years. Not everything that he’d missed in however many centuries he’d been gone, but enough to understand, to function. 

Afterwards, when starvation no longer warped his sense of being, he stood a bit taller and watched while the Shadows consumed the bodies. They’d starved too, after all. 

The world outside the church was brighter now, clearer, and he observed things with more understanding. There was much to see, and learn, and do. He couldn’t wait. For the first time, freedom was truly and completely his. 

Not once did he think of his Master.

A Week Later

The inevitable soul-sickness came but never went. As they had in the darkness, days blended together until he lost all sense of time. There were only souls and souls-sickness. 

Power and life pulsed through his veins. In his heart, guilt and pain warred with his baser, demonic instincts. 

He didn’t remember killing anyone recently, but there was blood on his hands, the scent of copper and rust in the air. There was something else in the air too—magic. Power. This place where he stood exuded some great energies and he found himself drawn there inexplicably. All that power didn’t come from the location alone—

There was a witch here.

It was her, the red-haired witch, the one who, in some way or another, had participated in his summoning. From within the Shadows, through a thin veil, he watched her, studied her. She wasn’t merely pretty, but beautiful. And so was her aura, for all the dark places in it. She had power, too. It made her aura bright enough to hide all the black marks on her soul. A dabbler in darker magicks.

She was brilliant.

He wasn’t sure exactly when he’d stepped out of the Shadows, only that he had. The cold followed him, the Shadows pooling like ink at his feet. For a time, he could only stare at her until he asked the one question that, despite answers, he could not fully comprehend,

“How—how long?” His voice came out rough, tight.

She looked bewildered.  “How long? What? How long since when?”

“Since…” but he trailed off. His head went back, eyes up at the sky. The light from the east softened the early morning. The sun would be up soon. A sunrise, after all this time—

“Since when?” she asked, breaking through his reverie.

He shifted his gaze to the streetlamp, watching the electric light. He took a deep breath. “Since I’ve been away…” His eyes went back to the witch.

Surprise colored her aura in yellow and gold. “I don’t know what you mean.”

He said nothing but stepped closer to her. When he was only a foot or so away from her, he stopped. Indeed, she had a beautiful soul, her aura making a halo around her head, red hair gleaming in its light. Gods, she had power. And so did this place. Power everywhere, in everything. He knew this place. Though time had changed it, destroyed the church that had once been here, the magicks that put him away still lingered. He grimaced.

“Years. It’s been years. I can still feel the power in this place. It’s—” The laugh came out all of a sudden. It was absurd, wasn’t it? That this was the place where the old church stood, where they sent him away. A power so strong it remained years and years later. 

When he stepped back, the Shadows moved up his legs and torso and wrapped him in Their chilly embrace. They knew his agitation, the soul-sickness, though They were far from a comfort. He closed his eyes, swallowed the lump in his throat. So long. He’d been gone for so long. “A long time. Such a long time.” When he looked back at her, there were tears in his eyes. “Must be.”

The Shadows tightened around him, but he didn’t pay them any mind. His attention stayed on the witch’s face, meeting her clear blue eyes. He didn’t look away as she approached. The Shadows, wary, drew back as she touched his arm. Her hand was warm, her aura blazing and hot and tempting. 

“Let me help you,” she said.

And he did.

Can't Blame a Demon for Tryin'

featuring Andy Foster & Dylan Matherson — characters from The New Ashton Chronicles, written & role-played by F.R. Southerland

(@normallyxstranger | @frsoutherlandauthor | www.frsoutherland.com)

© 2019 F.R. Southerland

original fiction (repost) | approx. words: 550 | general warnings: language, suggestive dialogue | largely unedited | reblogs allowed & encouraged

It didn’t really seem to matter how many wards she put up, or how many sigils she drew on her wall--Dylan always managed to get inside her apartment. Usually, it was when she was around. Inopportune moments, mostly. The middle of the night, having just gotten out of the shower, settling down to enjoy an entire pizza herself and suddenly having to share–-those moments.

When she walked into her apartment, arms laden with grocery bags, to find him rummaging in her kitchen, all she could do was give a resigned sigh. “Shit. If you’re going to break into my place, the least you can do is help me put away the groceries.”

A streak of orange flew out from beneath the couch and darted for the still open door. The kitten moved too fast for Andy to shut the door, and with her arms full of bags, it was hopeless to catch her. “Vivi, no! Godsdamnit. Dylan.”

“M’not the one leavin’ the door open, love. Don’t blame it on me.” He moved lazily from where he’d paused, munching on a handful of Doritos. His expression was more than slightly amused, and it only grew more obnoxious when he saw the annoyance and frustration flash in Andy’s aura. She always did have such a lovely one. It went so perfectly with her temper and the sharp look she directed at him.

He pretended to be put out by the implication of that look. “Fine, love. I’ll get her. Hang out.” He passed through the shadow and out into the hall. Andy took in a deep breath, watching as he retrieved her cat from the end of the hall and walked her back, cradled against his chest.

“Almost had it there, huh?” Dylan sing-songed, rubbing the kitten behind the ears. Vivi started to purr. Andy could hear her even standing several feet from him. “Almost got away.”

Andy rolled her eyes and the door slammed shut with force behind Dylan. She stepped to the kitchen and deposited the grocery bags onto the cluttered counter and took her cat back from him. “What are you doing here anyway?” she asked as Vivi wound herself in Andy’s red hair and nuzzled her neck.

“Came to visit m’favorite witch, o’ course. Why else would I be here?” He immediately began to rummage through her purchases.

“I can think of a dozen reasons. None of them good.”

“A dozen?” He repeated, mock surprise in his voice. “Why, you only need one. And it ain’t good. S'bad. Dirty, in fact.” And then Dylan flashed her that wicked grin of his and grabbed the box of Cheez-its from the bag.

Andy gave a smile in return, tight-lipped and sarcastic. It was tempting, she had to admit that, but no. That was a closed chapter of her life. “Take your snacks and go. And next time, text me for a booty call like a normal person, so I reject you with a series of emojis. ‘Kay? This face to face stuff–I’d rather not.”

“Well, you don’t have to be facin’ me–”

“Dylan no."

He just continued to grin. “Can’t blame a demon for tryin’.”

A Perfect Soul (Part 4 of ??)

featuring Dylan Matherson — a character from The New Ashton Chronicles, written & role-played by F.R. Southerland

( @normallyxstranger | @frsoutherlandauthor | www.frsoutherland.com )

© 2017, 2025 F.R. Southerland

original fiction (repost) | approx. words: 1213 | general warnings: death, blood, violence/torture | largely unedited | reblogs allowed & encouraged

Part 1 // Part 2 // Part 3

Unknown (1816-??)

Living darkness.

He’d never known anything like it.

It lived, it breathed. Frigid air surrounded him, pulsing, panting. It had teeth. Many teeth, many mouths. Multitudes. Not an it, he realized, but a They. They tore into him, ripping away flesh. And a tongue to lap up all the hot blood that cooled too quickly. They devoured him, feasting on the soft bits inside when They ripped him open. They ate his screams too, swallowing all noise. They even drank his tears.

And the pain—oh, the pain. Ripping, tearing, excruciating. His only relief came when he died and it took an awful long time for him to die. He lost count of the deaths after a while. He stopped counting the seconds between agony and that sweet relief.

This was the punishment the witches deemed fitting for his crimes.

He measured time by how often it fed. Minutes, hours, days—time became little more than a vague notion. There was only pain and no pain, alive and dead. Then the Darkness feasted on him less and less, until They no longer did at all.

That was when he lost all sense of time.

Eternity stretched on, crawling at the pace of a snail. They moved around him like slithering serpents. The cold numbed him. He missed the brief warmth of spilled blood, the only warmth he’d felt in so long. He missed the distraction the pain caused. Now, there was nothing to occupy him but his thoughts, fracturing more with every moment he remained in this lightless pit.

He thought of the witches who had tricked him. Their faces were all a blur, except for her, the witch who he’d wronged. He could still smell the incense from the church—damp earth and blood. Or maybe that was something else.

He thought of his Master. Cruel smile, all pain—but familiar, simple. He found himself longing for the abuse, the torture, the release. His Master would need to eventually summon him. He’d bring him out of this. In time, he thought of his Master as his salvation. He’d damned him; maybe he’d save him too.

He thought of Elizabeth. Her smile. That had been his light for so long, remembering that. Here in the Darkness, not even that could cut through it. He was forgetting, he realized. Forgetting her. Forgetting himself.

Darkness circled him, wrapping about his torso. They slithered around his arms and legs. He leaned back into it, closed his eyes. If he imagined, it was almost an embrace.

Hunger gnawed at him. He hadn’t consumed a soul in a long time. He weakened, starved as he was. He had never gone so long without feeding; He couldn’t stand it. He needed it, like he needed warmth and air and light and people and touch and life. He craved all these things and more.The Darkness embraced him again. It whispered.

listenlistenlisten. Do you hear Us? He lifted his head. “No,” he lied, words swallowed up. “I hear nothin’, see nothin’, know nothin’, am nothin’.” He blinked into the dark.

He hears. He hears. He hears Us. The whispers were hissing snakes around him. What do We do? What do We do? “Leave me alone. Leave me alone or let me die. Save me. Kill me.” He started to laugh. And the laughter didn’t stop. The Shadows whispered, incoherent, but They slipped away and left him to laugh.

He laughed until he cried. And then he didn’t stop crying. He might’ve cried for days, weeks, eternity. He may have screamed, too, but the Darkness swallowed up the sounds.

He stopped thinking, or else his thoughts would make no sense. He stopped breathing, or else his lungs would collapse. The weight of the Darkness, at one point, became crushing. Bones broke and cracked and crunched. Ribs stabbed his lungs. He couldn’t breathe. The cold filtered in through the cracks in his skin to penetrate his organs. It chilled his blood. And the entire time They whispered to him.

They whispered and soon Their hissing became a welcome thing. When he could speak again, he told Them everything. He told Them about Elizabeth, about his Master, about the souls he’d taken, every detail of his long existence. The Shadows went quiet then, never whispering back, but he was certain They listened. Even if not, he talked on.

The sound of his voice disappeared into the Darkness, but it didn’t stop him. He talked, and talked, until he lost his voice, throat hoarse from overuse.

And when he ran out of words, he sang. When he ran out of songs, he laughed. Then he cried again. When there were no more tears, he screamed. It was only after that the silence returned, and so did the whispers.

He cried in relief. Soon, he came to understand the Darkness, just as They understood him. Sometimes, he talked. Sometimes They did. Mostly silence reigned. And the silence was worse than anything, worse even than the whispers that began to sound like taunts and laughter. They reminded him he was alone.

They were all he had.

If he could die and be free of the torture, he would. The Shadows helped with that. They tried to break him again. They tried to devour him. It was futile. He lived on. And on.

His Master never summoned him, though he thought he heard his laughter among the Shadows. Salvation never came. No one came.

He crawled through the darkness, then he didn’t move for lifetimes. The hunger, the weakness, the isolation left him a shell. It was the Shadows that pulled him to sit up, the Shadows that held him. The Shadows whispered to him. He didn’t have the strength to fight, but he tried. There wasn’t much to grab onto, to push against, but he tried. Screaming, he fought and he fought hard and in the end the Shadows—

—the Shadows relented. The Shadows backed away. They stopped Their whispers and Their laughter and the following silence loomed. He stood. He stared through the Darkness, seeing nothing.

“Show me. I want t’know. Everythin’.”

The Shadows didn’t respond.

“Show me!”

Show him. Show him. They grabbed him and pulled him in. And this time, even as damaged and weak as he was, he listened. Even if it took the last of his strength, he listened, and he learned.

He adapted to the Shadows and They to him. He learned how to move Them, to coax Them do what he will. They resisted at first, but soon gave in. The Shadows joined with him, became him. He was Shadow and Darkness. There were times when he didn’t think they existed apart from each other.

And in what passed for time, he learned that he was more than demon, more than Shadow, more than anything.

Light. Light!

For the first time there was light—real light. And air? Air! He breathed it in, gasping, his lungs working properly for the first time in years, lifetimes. The light blinded him. He couldn't see. White filled his vision. He blinked rapidly but the world remained blurred.

Noise, muffled voices. Ringing in his ears.

Warmth washed over him—warmth, oh the warmth.

It took a long moment for him to understand, to realize—

He was free.

A Perfect Soul (Part 3 of ??)

featuring Dylan Matherson — a character from The New Ashton Chronicles, written & role-played by F.R. Southerland

( @normallyxstranger | @frsoutherlandauthor | www.frsoutherland.com )

© 2017, 2025 F.R. Southerland

original fiction (repost) | approx. words: 1150 | general warnings: death, blood, murder, violence/torture, abuse/toxic relationship | largely unedited | reblogs allowed & encouraged

Part 1 // Part 2

1745 

He did as he asked. He did what his Master wanted. He collected the souls, he killed the innocent, and over time, he hardened himself. 

“The soulless aren’t meant to feel,” Tomas told him.

“Then why do we?” 

His answer was a hard blow that knocked him off his feet. He tasted blood and he laughed. “You don’t know the answer, do you? And it infuriates you.” The next blow shattered bone. 

Somehow, he still managed to grin, to challenge, to ignore the death threat from years ago. The bones mended, the flesh healed. He knew his Master would kill him if he continued, but that was all part of the fun. And maybe a final death would mean a final freedom. 

But his Master wouldn’t give him up. He liked having someone to torture and hurt and crush beneath his boot. Someone he could use for his own pleasures and cast aside when he no longer needed him. Someone who was completely his, completely beneath his rule. A slave. It was the prolonged suffering he liked. Death would be too easy. 

So he challenged. Provocation and anger was all he had left. 

1759 

Soultakers did not truly sleep, but there was a sort of dreamless slumber. When he woke from it one night, there was a fleeting feeling that something had bothered him. The tears on his cheeks confirmed as much.

The sleeping woman in bed beside him wasn’t so affected. He left her to sleep and went out to the streets. 

Darkness and nothing but. At this hour, the humans slept, but there was something there, something tangible and real and it had drawn him out. 

But it had fled, little more than a feeling, leaving him to wonder if he was going mad.

1777 

There was a girl with a familiar face. He followed her for days before he realized what made her so familiar to him. 

Dark hair, dark eyes, and a smile that brightened her entire face. 

When she turned to look at him, his breath caught. He was frozen. Elizabeth, back from the dead. Her aura was so bright, so good, so innocent. 

Please, please don’t let him see her. Please don’t let him want her. He didn’t dare look behind him, to where his Master spoke with a shop owner. He kept his gaze on her. She wasn’t Elizabeth, he told himself. Elizabeth was dead. She’d been dead two hundred years. 

Her smile turned to a frown of concern, a little line between her brows. “Do I know you, sir?” 

He shook his head, too quickly. “No.” The words strangled him. “No, you’re mistaken.” He turned away and quickly retreated. It wasn’t her. His Elizabeth was dead. He’d have to remember that. 

It would be easier, less painful, if he’d cut out his own heart instead it ripped from his chest at the sight of her. 

1816 

The blood was still wet and warm on his hands. It hadn’t even been necessary, after all—the man was already dead. He’d taken his soul, put it in a nice little bottle, at his Master’s request. 

But there was something about spilling the blood that felt good, that made it real. He prized the blood now drying on his hands. He rubbed his fingers together. It turned tacky beneath his touch. 

A loud gasp disappeared into shattering glass. He turned to find a woman behind him, broken glass at her feet. A pretty woman, fair hair in a braid, her face white, with an aura that shone through the darkness. 

“What have you done?” She hurried forward, crouching by the dead man. She touched his face, his chest, her hands now coated in blood too. “Matthew? Matthew?!” 

He could hear his Master’s voice in his head. Kill the woman, too. 

He didn’t. He stayed. He watched her clutch at Matthew’s corpse, watched her cry and scream. “My love… my love…” 

He wasn’t sure why he stayed, why he felt the need, but the compulsion kept him there. Grief was a powerful emotion and her aura burned with it.

When she lifted her red-rimmed eyes and glared at him, he saw the flash of anger consume her aura instead. It brightened, turned red, and surrounded her in a blazing heat.

That was something.

“Why?” Her voice was tight through clenched teeth. Her fingers curled in the bloodied fabric of the corpse’s shirt, and she didn’t let go, only tightened her grip. 

“S’what I do, love.” 

The red of her aura punctuated with black, with white, with a multitude of colors as fear and realization came to her. He knew she saw what he was, saw his black-eyed stare. And she feared it. 

“Demon. Monster.” Her words were a hiss. 

He liked that, having it acknowledged. It certainly beat lying. “That’s right.” He expected more fear. A scream. Something. Instead, her eyes narrowed. Her body shook with rage. “You will pay for this,” she vowed.

The laughter bubbled out of him before he could stop it. 

“I will end you!”

He turned with another laugh. It seemed very unlikely she would. 

Several days later, she had trapped him by luring him to the church. He realized it too late when he found himself immobile. The binding symbols—there were so many of them, multiple energies and magics and forces combined together just to hold him. 

He did a quick count of the others as they arrived. Thirteen. Witches, all of them. A coven—a powerful coven.

The woman stepped forward. Her vengeful words were a whispered hiss, a curse, an angry testimony. The other witches joined in and soon the chant shook the rafters. Their magic took on a tangible form, souls becoming a collective energy. The air buzzed with power he had never beheld before.

He screamed. He raged. He pushed back with his own power but to no avail. He even begged, cried, called for his Master.  The woman bared her teeth at him in a cruel smile. She held up something in her hand, a red jewel. It pulsed with an unnatural glow and then released—

The explosion of power rocked right through him. The light was the brightest thing he’d ever seen—first red, then fading, fading, to blinding pure white. There was no escape from it. It tore him apart, from the outside in, light working its way through his pores and deep down into the pit where his soul had once been. He couldn’t say how long that torment lasted, how long he was blind, deaf, dumb, dead.

Clarity began to return to him slowly. The pain subsided. He was whole again. Alive. But the light had gone. There was only inky darkness and a frigid cold that seeped through skin and bones. The darkness breathed. The darkness lived too.

He laughed until he cried, and then finally screamed as the darkness began to devour him.