Their ten­drils of shadow snake over you, twist­ing, turn­ing, grab­bing, stretching.

The room is stark bright, but these enti­ties, what­ever they are, absorb it all.

Arms of shadow hold your hands tight; two more, your legs. You hang in midair, slowly rotat­ing, spin­ning. You can’t move.

You don’t want to admit it to your­self. You’re tough. The tough­est of tough. You have the big burly mus­cles, the threat­en­ing stance, the pierc­ing gaze…

But you’re scared.

You’re scared of these ice-cold shad­ows that snake them­selves over you, which hold you so tight, even despite your most pow­er­ful struggles.

Fear.

Min­utes or hours ago, you were over­flow­ing with power, and now, you have none. As effort­lessly as they absorb light, these shad­ows absorb all of your power, and soon, you are afraid, they’ll absorb you too.

What would it be like to be eaten by a shadow?

The largest of the shad­ows looms closer, its dark­ness infect­ing the very air, thick­en­ing it to where you can barely breathe – or is it your lungs, so heavy from fear?

It sur­rounds you, slowly, a bank of pitch-black fog in an oth­er­wise bright room, and then–

Through the shadow, a voice.

It is not a strong voice. It’s the timid, fear­ful voice of a cry­ing girl, chill­ing in the empa­thy it trig­gers as it is in the words it speaks.

“It is time,” she cries, “for the evil monologue.”

Sud­denly, you can’t breathe. You spasm, but can’t get free. The more you strug­gle, the more you fade…

You don’t under­stand: how will you hear the evil mono­logue if you aren’t alive?

And just as sud­denly, it stops. You gasp for breath.

“Vul­ner­a­bil­ity. Help­less­ness. Defense­less­ness. Pow­er­less­ness. That’s what you are. That’s who I am.”

Who she is?

That rings a bell. A very bad bell.

“Yes,” says the phoenix; you can hear her tears, but for her, you have no sym­pa­thy. You hate Phoenixes. Always have, always will.

“But there’s noth­ing you can do about it, is there?”

And then she whis­pers: “And noth­ing I can do, either.”