Eclipse Into Darkness
Chapter 2
The night sky crackled with cold air and tension. In the Vale residence, Solarian adjusted his suit’s damaged shoulder plating, still sore, less so after Lady Veil helped to heal him as he slept, from the exo-suit ambush that left three city blocks scarred. Lady Veil stood across the room, unreadable. An unusually awkward silence stretched between them.
Before either could speak, her communicator pinged.
“Another disappearance. Same location,” Veil said softly, eyes already distant.
Solarian frowned, replying “that place has been a maze of psychic nothingness and dead ends so far….”
Lady Veil’s shoulders sank as his comment was felt deeply within her mind, her confidence hurt by his words.
“Sorry, I am just frustrated… you’ll get the reading this time. I’m confident,” Solarian replied, trying to soothe the damage of his words.
Just as the pair were leaving their rooftop penthouse to go to the site of the next disappearance, Solarian’s communicator pinged.
The emergency alarms blared across New Lysoria as plumes of smoke curled over the skyline. Reports flooded in from the eastern industrial district — low-power exosuits and drones were attacking civilians, seemingly at random. Collateral damage spread fast.
In the operations room of their penthouse, Solarian stood already half-suited, his gauntlet lighting up as alerts streamed across the screen.
“This is a coordinated strike,” she muttered. “Timing’s too perfect. Another appearance of those cheap suits, and…”
“At the same time as disappearance number 13…” Solarian replied stoically.
He looked over at Lady Veil, who stood silently, eyes unfocused — sensing something deeper.
They looked at each other. Two paths. One decision.
“We split?” Solarian asked carefully.
Veil nodded once. “Same as before. We stay in . If either needs backup—”
“We call. Got it.” He leaned in, pressing his forehead to hers briefly.
“Be careful…” they said in unison as they split.
Drones swarmed the rooftops of the Industrial section of the city like metallic locusts, their infrared sensors scanning for heat signatures. Solarian soared through smoke and laser fire, blasting back a unit with a wide beam of concussive light.
“They’re not high-grade,” he grunted over comms. “Exosuit models are low-range — but more coordinated than before. Like someone’s testing formation tactics.”
He swept through a half-collapsing over, taking three drones with him in a burst of hard-light spikes.
Meanwhile, under the city in the cold tunnels, the soft, eerie quiet hung like mist. Lady Veil walked along the path slowly, eyes sweeping. It was too quiet.
The air in the tunnels shifted, carrying with it a distinct smell — subtle, warm, wrong. Her heart skipped, and the hairs on her arms rose.
Her communicator buzzed.
Solarian (over comms): “I’ve got this. No backup needed.”
A pause.
Veil, deep in thought already, replied softly, “Understood.”
She disconnected.
A shimmer moved at the corner of her eye. Veil could almost feel the echo of someone that had vanished.
And somewhere unseen, Madame Eclipse watched as veil observed the disappearance site. She scanned with her empathic ability, sensing something should be there- but nothing was showing.
Eclipse raised her hand, activating the same small device emitting subsonic frequencies just beneath hearing, but precisely tuned to Lady Veil. The same suggestions began to imprint on repeat from the device, as they had for days:
“The vanishing sing to you. You can’t find them and that causes chaos…”
“You feel compelled to come back. You’ll think it’s instinct. You’ll call it an investigation.”
“Control is better than chaos…”
“Seek calm…”
Then, the scent. Warm violet. Wood. burnt something. A touch of something impossible to place, not chemical, not organic, just something special. Becoming familiar.
Lady Veil staggered back as her breath hitched, her heart racing. The scent didn’t trigger fight-or-flight — it triggered stillness. Receptiveness.
And calm.
Behind her — Madame Eclipse stayed in the shadows, flawless in a violet cloak laced with shadowy flecks of darkness and silver. Her persuasion, psychic ability and the new device worked masterfully in harmony. All the signs were evident as Eclipse watched her prey.
“Another moment too late. Again,” Eclipse sent out that message in the violet, soft and hauntingly silky thread into the subconscious of Lady Veil.
Lady Veil whirled around, hands glowing — but paused. The scent deepened. Pheromones. Persuasion. Something in her resisted acting. She felt desire. She felt no need to do anything but remain still. Embrace the calm.
Eclipse’s lips curved. Another silky strand for the Lady’s mind to filter. “So much power... yet always a step behind.”
Lady Veil shook her head as she went to say something, but her voice faltered. Instead she simply stood, calm and felt another thread.
“Maybe the city needs protection…from faltering heroes who can’t stop a disappearance or find anyone who has disappeared…”
Lady Veil blinked. The phrase curled like smoke in her mind, nestling neatly next to the other thoughts deepening her insecurities.
Eclipse persuaded a different desire… and released her pheromones full bore. Veil’s pleasure was visible as the hero’s knees buckled. Eclipse was playing mind and body games with the distracted and frustrated Veil.
Another wisp in the continuing barrage.
“Maybe the city needs control, not chaos,” Eclipse said, persuading even more pleasurable desire, to the point that the nipples of the heroine poked through, and her knees buckled so severely she nearly knelt on the filthy floor of the underground tunnel.
A deep breath from the surprise of all the desires, Veil inhaled after catching her breath, Eclipse’s pheromones in the ambient haze around her — subtle, nearly invisible, but thick with excitement. The psychic air trembled.
Eclipse moved closer still in the shadows, enjoying watching the torment the professional, stoic Lady Veil was feeling. Flush skin, engorged nipples, shallow breath.
The looping device, the wisps of suggestion, the pheromones, the scent… all working in harmony to drive Lady Vail deeper into self doubt, fear, and frustration.
“Maybe some people aren’t meant to choose...Not if their choices lead to chaos.”
“The Heroes’ failures are causing chaos…”
Veil’s resistance was slow—her hands half-raised but her body otherwise unmoving. The shield that should have formed... didn’t. The desire, the excitement overwhelmed her already weakened state from the cold and the depth.
Eclipse was diabolically and slowly leading Lady Veil with these prior messages already laid in the groundwork from previous visits to this same site, furthered by her own use of her persuasion, desires, and pheromones.
Whispers played at the edge of Lady Veil’s mind hearing her own voice in a dream, saying things she hadn’t believed yesterday.
“Maybe there are those with more powerful mental powers than yours…” Eclipse said, repeating a previous, tingling message from each captive specifically left for Veil at the site of the disappearances. Eclipse was slowly, and expertly, furthering Lady Veil’s inner turmoil.
Lady Veil stood, hands at her sides, instead of into fight or flight mode from the influences of Eclipse, who stood in front of her in the shadows, a diabolical smile on her face.
Eclipse turned off the device with looping messages, kept wafting her pheromones through the air, and simply alternated two thought the remainder of the time Lady Veil stayed at the disappearance site with her violet silky threads-
“The heroes’ failures are causing chaos…”
“Control is better than chaos…”
Lady Veil eventually walked out of the tunnel where the disappearances happened in a very disheveled state. Hair askew, flush, the regality she normally carried looking more harried and frustrated.
Eclipse watched, an evil smile on her purple painted lips as she watched the heroine continue to unravel slowly.
The chamber pulsed with soft violet light. Deep beneath New Lysoria, in a facility forgotten by the city above, the air thrummed with subtle energy. Rows of equipment hummed — tech scavenged, repurposed, reborn. Around the edges, the vanished watched in silence.
Not prisoners. Not victims.
Converts.
At the center stood Eclipse, draped in her signature violet cloak, silver strands glinting faintly. Her presence alone silenced the room.
She turned to the one she had summoned forward — a wiry man with eyes sharp from sleepless work.
“You have achieved success,” Eclipse said, her voice smooth and magnetic. “The frequency is perfect. She heard what I wanted her to hear. She felt what I designed her to feel.”
The man knelt, eyes down, and replied softly, “it was your vision. I only aligned the tech to your instructions.”
“And it worked,” Eclipse said. She stepped forward and touched his shoulder, a rare gesture. “You are no longer simply one of the vanished. You are my instrument. You shall be rewarded. Rise. Follow,”
The man followed a step behind after scrambling to his feet.
Eclipse stopped, the man knelt.
With a snap of her fingers, the vanished, clad in black, violet and silver, all moved with precision to the open space in front of Eclipse and knelt, their dark eyes gazing with reverence and adoration.
She turned to the others, her gaze sweeping over them — citizens, scientists, soldiers, and sensitives once lost to the city’s confusion. Now reborn in clarity.
“You all were chosen — not stolen. Your skills from your past, lost existence are necessary to help me fill my purpose. Each of you sensed it, long before I found you: this city isn’t broken by chance. It is broken by freedom without focus. Power without purpose.”
The crowd knelt straighter, listening.
“We are building something better. Control preferred to chaos. Truth from the noise. And you will be the nodes in that network.”
She gestured to a wall of new schematics — a grid of towers, each capable of carrying low-frequency influence across the city’s districts.
“When it is all complete,” Eclipse continued, “Lady Veil and Vanessa Pryce will no longer doubt alone up above in the city. The city will feel what they feel already. They will seek stillness. They will seek calm. They will crave direction. They will all choose control over chaos.”
Her voice dropped, rich with certainty.
“And they will follow...”
The disappeared nodded — no longer uncertain, no longer searching. They were not scattered victims. They were becoming something more.
A network. A chorus. An extension of Eclipse’s will.
She smiled.
“This is only the beginning,” Eclipse said, persuading obedience, and arousal at hearing her words.
“Stay,” she told the man kneeling behind her, as she moved through the kneeling acolytes.
“Ah… there you are…” Eclipse said, taking a leash from her pocket and placing the collar end around the neck of the woman kneeling. “You shall be useful in a new way now… you’ll regret ever trying to interfere with me, weak empath…”
Eclipse tugged the leash bringing the woman to the front of the group.
“Leashed and on display, that is what the enemy will become if they choose to fight…” Eclipse said. “To be used as I see fit… punished… humiliated…”
Eclipse took the woman and unzipped the back of her uniform and gave a simple command, as all eyes were on her.
“Remove your uniform, you will need to earn it back through service…” Eclipse said to the woman in front of the small crowd.
A hesitation, slow, but evident. Persuasion from Eclipse. Then, hands moved to remove the purple and black from her body.
“Good girl, empath…” Eclipse said. “This woman knows she has no chance to resist in the long term… yet she fought on… noble, yet futile. Let her be an example of what will become of dissent. The next time you see her, she will be fully reborn. In the image I have for her…But first, her penance for disobedience…”
Eclipse then turned and faced the kneeling audience.
“Resume…” Eclipse said as she dismissed the larger group.
“Follow…” the dominant told the kneeling man as she led the pretty brunette by the leash to a separate room.
As they walked, Eclipse whispered into the ear of the leashed, naked woman.
“You will become mine, completely,” Eclipse said as she placed a fingertip to the temple of the woman, causing her knees to buckle. “You will feel your strength increase, and you will do my bidding with pleasure. Tonight you will complete training… feeling pleasure, doing MY bidding.”
The chamber the pair were taken to pulsed with low, ambient light. Violet hues danced across steel and glass as Eclipse stood before her chosen two in this separate room.
Mira Halden, pushed to her knees by Eclipse, stayed still, leashed, breathing slowly.
Her attempt to resist the control of Eclipse, though brief, yet subtle, had not gone unnoticed. Her empathy had sparked against Eclipse’s influence. A weak flicker. A failure.
Kael Virex knelt across from her. Silent. Watching. Patient.
Eclipse’s voice cut through the quiet.
“Silly girl, you reached into me with your gift. You tried to test my mind,” Eclipse said with a smile as he stepped closer. “Do you know what I felt?”
Mira didn’t answer, but took a deep breath.
“Very little power to begin. Then, it was doubt,” Eclipse said, placing her finger on the chin, staring down with her silver eyes. “And fear. Yet still… knowing you were outmatched, you tried to use your power for resistance. But weak gifts make for soft blades.”
Mira lowered her gaze further, the sting of disappointment like a slow drip of pain in her still reforming mind.
Eclipse turned to Kael.
“And you,” she said, voice warmer, “You’ve built the pulse array that now tunes Lady Veil’s mind to MY frequency. You serve with brilliance. With faith. With honor.”
Kael nodded, eyes flicking to Mira with controlled interest.
“As reward for you,” Eclipse continued, “she will serve you. Not out of lust, but as punishment for her. A wish to be a hero, now simply will be a prostitute for me, a reward for a job well done to you.”
Mira’s breath caught. But she didn’t speak. The suggestion had already settled inside her.
“Each time you are used tonight you will feel your personal resolve weaken. You will feel my power rise within you. Need to serve me, need to please me, need to serve me with honor…” Eclipse said, persuading Mira, sending out pheromones to excite her.
“You were both lost once,” Eclipse said, pacing between them. “Tell each other. Speak your old truths—so you may bury them, never to be spoken again.”
Eclipse looked at Kael, and waved her hand in a circle. As she furnished the room with pheromones, she persuaded him with strength, virility, dominance over Mira, enjoyment of reward.
Keal’s suit tented as his virility increased. Eclipse smiled.
She waved her hand over Mira, persuading arousal, obedience to Kael, and a desire to be a wanton slut and prostitute, as service to her Mistress, to become complete.
“Ahhh… that’s much better slut...” Eclipse said, petting Mira on the head. “This is what happens when one meets my control with attempted chaos…”
“Enjoy this whore,” Eclipse said to Kael, cupping his chin in her powerful hand.
Excitement, arousal filled the air. He started stripping where they knelt.
Kael looked to Mira and started his former truth, “I was a systems architect. Trusted. Feared. But I built for fools. For chaos disguised as freedom.”
Mira swallowed. “I wanted to help people. I even applied to the Justice Academy for this next year… I was told empathy could guide peace. But it made me fragile. I thought feeling more would make me strong.”
Eclipse circled them, her voice soft, guiding, reassuring, “no more illusions. You both belong here. Beneath the noise. Aligned in purpose. Attuned to my frequency.”
Kael crawled closer to Mira, a smile on his face, “I see you now. Not as you were. But as you should be.”
MIra nodded slowly, her voice low.
“And I see fully what I need to become,” Mira said, steeling the last of her resolve, her hand reaching out to caress the manhood of her partner for the evening, lust in her eyes.
Eclipse smiled, and told them both, “Good. Let go of the past. Relearn what connection feels like—guided, not chaotic. Let service to me become your clarity.”
The lights dimmed. Her voice remained.
“When obedience is chosen freely… it becomes devotion.”
The air grew thick with resonance.
“Tell me what you are…” Eclipse asked them both, knowing the answer.
“Yours,” they said in unison, Kael growing harder, Mira becoming more wet, both still on their knees, her hand working his manhood like a professional.
“And tell me WHO you are…” Eclipse asked.
“We are who you say we are, Mistress,” Mira responded, “Tonight I am a whore…”
“Use her well, teach her the place of a whore….” Eclipse said. “There can be no chaos in my control….”
The broadcast began with a slow fade from the network logo to Vanessa Pryce’s flawless face. Her voice was calm, polished, and trustworthy. The camera framed her in her clothes of sharp violet tones.
“Tonight, citizens of New Lysoria are once again left with more questions than answers,” began the blonde news superstar.
In their penthouse, Solarian stood by the loveseat, arms folded. Lady Veil sat behind him, eyes on the screen. Her hands were clasped too tightly, which he noticed.
Behind Vanessa Pryce, the screen showed footage of Solarian mid-fight—his armor scorched, his face strained, surrounded by wreckage, debris and carnage.
“Once again, Solarian stood alone against chaos, and once again there was no sign of Lady Veil until long after the incident,” Vanessa said, a calmness to her voice, inflection and pace.
Veil tensed visibly at the word ‘chaos’. Solarian saw the flinch, but didn’t look back.
“That’s not the full story,” he muttered.
Veil’s voice was quiet. “It never is.”
The footage cut to shaky surveillance video—Lady Veil emerging from the shadows of the abandoned tunnel, the disappearance site. Her cloak dragged behind her, eyes vacant.
Vanessa continued, her tone unwavering.
“While Solarian pulled civilians from burning wreckage, Lady Veil appeared at the edge of the latest disappearance site—disoriented, disconnected, and detached ... ... ..seeming to show a loss of control…”
Veil’s hands clenched. Her breath slowed unnaturally.
“She’s not just reporting,” Solarian said. “She’s targeting.”
In her earpiece, Eclipse’s voice curled around Vanessa like the finest violet silk, purring “let them question. Let them wonder. Her unraveling is not chaos—it is clarity.”
“Some sources suggest the once-unbreakable partnership is beginning to fray. Is the city’s last line of defense... divided?” Vanesssa asked pointedly.
Veil turned away from the screen, looking out the window.
In the penthouse, the screen had gone dark. Solarian turned away. Veil remained still, staring at her reflection in the black glass.
“She looked certain,” Veil whispered.
“This is deliberate,” Solarian replied, nodding slowly. “And they’re buying it.”
Vanessa’s voice softened on the screen, with her closing line “Perhaps what we need is not unity... but direction. Our heroes’ failure is causing chaos…”
Another flinch from the heroine Veil who sighed deeply as she pointed out the window.
A crowd had formed below the penthouse.
“Protestors…” Solarian said stoically.
The red light above the studio camera flicked off. The broadcast ended and the former pageant queen made her way to her private office upstairs.
At her desk, Vanessa sat still. Her fingers curled slightly around the edge of the chair. Eclipse’s voice returned, smooth and approving.
“Perfect delivery, pet,” Eclipse cooed. “And tonight… you followed through. On camera… and last night, you obeyed in bed.”
A flush crept across Vanessa’s skin—not shame. Awareness.
She had obeyed.
After the previous broadcast, she had returned home and taken control. Her fiancé had no idea why she had been so dominant, so unrelenting. But Eclipse knew. She had whispered the idea into her mind and watched it grow.
“You see it now, don’t you?” Eclipse said. “You’re not just loyal. You’re mine. Fully. In voice. In
thought. In touch.”
Vanessa rose and walked silently to where the voice was coming from as Eclipse waited in the shadows and dropped to her knees.
“I did everything,” Vanessa whispered. “The broadcast. Him. Me.”
Eclipse stepped close, her presence inescapable. “You did what pleased me. That’s all that matters.”
“I was angry when he could not go any longer…” Vanessa itted. “When he finished each time I saw you… and I wanted more of you…”
Eclipse smiled as she got close and stroked the cheek of her kneeling reborn acolyte causing Vanessa to lose her breath.
“Tell me your new truth, pet…” Eclipse cooed.
“I don’t belong to myself anymore,” Vanessa said, her voice small.
“No,” Eclipse said gently, brushing her cheek. “You belong to something greater...”
Vanessa didn’t resist. Her breath hitched, her mind surrendered.
“You...” the woman said, breath catching, from her knees. “Someone greater… I belong to You…”
“You will speak when I instruct you to. Seduce when I command. Undress when I require,” Eclipse commanded.
“Yes, Mistress,” Vanessa breathed, face flush.
“You know your place, you offer deference…” Eclipse said. “You deserve reward… It has been too long since a mere woman has sated me…”
Vanessa moaned at the message… then crawled forward to claim her reward as Eclipse opened her cloak and pulled up her long skirt…
Through the bedroom window high above the city as protesters gathered below, Solarian was left to his own thoughts after leaving Lady Veil to watch the end of Vanessa Pryce’s broadcast.
The sky above New Lysoria was still bruised from the last wave of strikes. Smoke and soot hovered like a dark blanket. In the quiet of the empty room, Solarian stood watching the horizon.
Lady Veil approached, her cloak trailing behind her like vapor.
“You want to talk?” she asked, folding her arms, her empath skills knowing what her husband wanted.
Solarian nodded.
“You haven’t been the same. Since the first disappearance,” the hero husband said as fact.
Veil didn’t flinch. She took a deep breath.
“You think I don’t feel it? I know I’m not at my center,” Veil replied, leaking frustration.
“You’re... distant,” Solarian said. “Even when you’re here, it’s like you’re listening to something else.”
She hesitated, then contradicted, replying “I am still me, Solarian, but the frustration is growing, and I can’t tamp that down.”
He looked at her sharply.
“So then do what you must to help get yourself back to center,” Solarian suggested strongly.
“The relic. The Wellspring. It focused me when I first awakened my gifts. Truth, and healing, and balance. It was the one thing that kept my mind… mine as my gift developed,” Lady Veil said hopefully.
“Do you think it can help now?” Solarian asked, looking deep into his wife’s eyes, who seemed a bit darker, something he chalked up to her frustration and the darkness from the late evening.
“I have to believe it can,” she said as she turned to him, her voice steadier. “If I can reconnect to that source—if I can feel it again—I’ll regain my center...”
Solarian stepped forward and took his wife in his arms.
“Then I’m going with you,” he stated.
“No,” she said gently. “This has to be me. Alone. You well know the relic is for empaths only…”
Lady Veil made her way to the site, not far from where they were in the city.
The ancient shrine lay nestled in the ruins in the oldest part of New Lysoria. Ivy coiled through stone and old script, glowing faintly as Lady Veil stepped into the sanctum. Her hand hovered over the smooth surface of the Wellspring—a crystalline relic that hummed with living light.
She reached out and made .
The pulse was immediate. Familiar. Comforting.
Yet… somehow….off…
The light felt different now. Violet-tinged. The thoughts that flowed back into her were not entirely hers.
“…failure is chaos…”
Her breath caught.
“Oh…” the heroine replied, sensing a connection to the words somehow- however she was unable to place that connection.
The relic continued its work as Lady Veil concentrated on the connection with it in The Wellspring, messages coming to her.
“…calmness and peace lie in surrender…”
“There are powers greater than your own… seek their guidance…”
She tried to pull away, but the relic held her hand gently, insistently. Memories rose—her failures, her moments of doubt, her exhaustion.
But then something shifted. The hue changed after an imperceptible amount of time for the empath.
Beneath the echo of Eclipse’s influence, her true core pulsed—faintly. She focused. Pushed back. A shadow of that core emerged.
“Yes…,” she whispered.
The light flickered.
Her shadow core anchored to the pain and the truth of her role—the healer, the protector. Not
perfect. But evident.
Later that night, Veil stepped back onto the rooftop garden. Solarian turned and paused. She moved with clarity. Her look was steady.
“You look…” Solarian started as he intently looked at his wife. “...better…”
“I feel more grounded,” she said looking back at the muscular hero.
“Not perfect, but more centered,” she said. “For now. I shall return there again.”
Solarian smiled faintly.
“I’ll take your feeling better…” he said. “And we will work on this together… as always…”
“As always, my light…” she responded almost reflexively.
They stood side by side, watching the city breathe, ignoring the protest below. Tomorrow’s problem. Tonight, relish the positive from the relic at The Wellspring.
Solarian uncoupled, and prepared for bed.
“I need a moment to center after the connection with the relic, I shall not be long, my light…” Lady Veil said to her hero husband.
Veil remained alone. She walked outside to the garden’s edge, resting her hands on the cool railing, staring into the dark skyline. She shivered a moment, feeling as though she was being watched. She breathed deeply, hands up and extended for a few moments, her hands eventually finding her center core at her midsection.
She exited the garden and prepared herself to Solarian. Once ready, she sidled into the large bed and took her husband into her arms and took a deep breath, sending energy.
Solarian sighed a cleansing, relaxing breath, a smile across his face feeling more connected to Lady Veil once again.
Lady Veil continued to send her husband empath energy as she held him from behind.
Softly, in her mind, she whispered to herself as she looked at the back of her husband, “…calmness and peace lie in surrender…”
A faint pulse shimmered through her irises—just for a second.
Violet.
Then, like a citizen a day in New Lysoria, it simply vanished.