• This is the city. Large, noise and always alive. Pulsing with the vibrations of human activity. There is always lights to be seen in the city and always someone awake. This is the very nature of the city. Always something happening, even in the darkest corners and hidden areas that most people never get to see. And this is where I make my home. This is my hunting grounds. My feeding grounds.
    I walk the dark alleys and stalk the hidden backyards and underground passages. Always in shadows, shunning the lights from torches and the numerous fires in the streets. My black eyes forever looking at the people around me, searching relentlessly for a new victim. Peering into the very souls of those I see, reading their innermost dreams and desires. Searching for just the right one. One who has lost hope. One without dreams. One who desires nothing, but simple survival. The one who has all but given up life. This is what I do, this is what I live for.
    My black cloak drawn tight around my ghostlike frame, looking more like a shadow than a physical being. Hood covering my and hiding my black eyes from all who look upon me. The tattered end dragging along the ground with not even the whispering sound of a cat. It was woven from the very stuff of shadows and created by the hands of spirits. Dead women, who has been betrayed by loved ones and lured into death by promises of a better life. Women who all have died by my hands. Each new victim claimed by me adds a thicker layer of darkness. But each new death pulls me just a little further away from life. I am forever cursed to hunt and kill and by doing this, I only strengthen the death inside.
    Out of shadowy alcove she step, jet black hair flowing around her pale face. It is very obvious that she is painted to enhance her features. Her lips are dark red, meant to lure any man who looks at her. Eyes are framed in a shadowy dark hue, to bring out the bright blue color. A touch of red on her cheek, but this is from the chill autumn air. Her tunic is tight around her body, to make mens eyes cling to her curves. She is beautiful to the mortal eyes. Revealing just enough flesh to entice any one. The deep cut down the front shows just enough of her perfect sculpted breast and a cut down the side shows her slender waist and to perfect the impact, her thighs are exposed to the cold and to the eyes of men. She truly is lovely. But in her eyes is what I look for. There I can see that she dreams of nothing more than what is. Yes, she has no desire to do more than she does now. Her hopes have long been quenched by the eternal pressure of the city. Yes, this is her.
    Like a wraith I follow her down the dark alley and around the corner out into the streets. The bright lights of several torches stings my eyes, like embers stings the hand of the smith. I pull the shadows closer around me to shield me from the searing lights. She turns her head, knowing that she is not alone, but she sees only mist and shadows. Writhing tentacles of wispy smoke curls lazily out from the alley. To her, this is no threat. She sees nothing that can hurt her. She does pick up her pace slightly, sensing something isn't right. She hurries on to get out of the cold and to have a warm meal. I know she has just been paid for a service. The only way she can make a little gold. Selling herself bit by bit to strangers, who offers trinkets and a few pieces of gold for what should not be sold. She turns down another alley, into a doorway and down. I know that she is seeking out a safe place down there. A place hidden from view and watchers.
    As the door closes behind her, she has no idea that I am already in there with her. The smoke drifts after her, into the world below the streets. A dank air, filled with the scents of unwashed humans and the filth left behind by the lowest members of the human race. The darkness down here is almost complete and the shadows are everywhere. She doesn't know that this is where I am strongest, she doesn't know that she will never again see daylight. She turns a corner and enters a sparsely lit corridor, heading for an open vaulted square, only a hundred yards away. Now is the time. I will have to draw her into one of the dark alcoves.
    She hears a slight thump and a scrape to her left. She stops and I see a short blade in her hand. The knife she holds is nothing to me, but another testament to her unlife. She peers into the shadows, as if trying to dispel them. But she can't, instead she hears the breath of someone, something. A hoarse wheezing sound, like the sound of a drunk that is asleep. She steps forwards, the promise of maybe a gold piece or maybe something else forth a little gold to steal. As her foot steps into the dark alcove, she leaves behind the living world. As the shadows engulf her entirely she is no longer in her own world. She has stepped into my world of shadows. As she feels the ground disappear and the shadows come alive, she knows that death is upon her. She furiously swings her blade in arcs, but skilled as she with it, but it bites nothing. She opens her mouth to scream but shadows fills her mouth and lungs. Smoky hands closes around her throat and digs into her flesh. Her knees buckle under her as my hands draw her down. Slowly strangling her in this place of shadows, her life force seeping out from her eyes and is swallowed up by the shadows that is me.
    Death grips her and she goes limp, like so many others before and just like many others will after. Her beautiful form goes cold almost instantly, as the heat from her life is sucked into my cloak of shadows. I lift her up and throws her lifeless body back into world, spitting her out as a man would spit out a chicken bone. The dull thump her body makes as it hits the ground goes unnoticed. Her knife clatters to the floor besides her and a slightly jingle, her purse with a handful of gold. I leave her there and retreats back into my plane of shadows. Tending the wounds she did inflict on my form. Even though her blade didn't bite into flesh, it did hurt me. It is true that I do not bleed, but I still feel pain and I still need to mend the gashes that was made to my misty form. But with her essence now a part of me, I will become stronger still. With her now a part of me, I am now a little closer to loosing my own identity, one step closer to being nothing.
    That is my nature. Bringer of Death and dying a little each time. I am forever cursed to seek out those that are already dead, but still draws breath and die with them. Stalking the streets of the city. Hunting for warmth and blood. Forever damned. I am The Angel of Death.