Here's what I'll do: I'll write you a 3,000-word long, single-flow fantasy/horror chapter where Darr faces El Como.
Beginning: Darr unlocks his Lucerne gift, channeling pain into his enchanted Lucerne sword, making it sharper and deadlier.
Middle: A brutal, horrific fight ensues between him and El Como, filled with grotesque imagery, fantasy dialogue, and psychic clashes.
Ending: Despite his effort, El Como uses his permeability gift from Shaping to slip into Darr's very being—possessing him in a chilling way.
This will be written like a novel chapter, fragmented into descriptive action, dialogue, and internal horror.
Chapter: The Blade of Agony
The air hung heavy, scarlet clouds drifting above like sluggish beasts. Beneath them stood Darr, sweat and grief etched into his face. His hand tightened around the haft of his Lucerne sword, the ancient weapon humming with an unearthly vibration. Its edge glistened faintly, not because of steel, but because it fed on something darker.
"Come on then, spirit," Darr growled, his voice a mixture of rage and sorrow. "You desecrated Bullteik. You'll not take me so easily."
El Como stood opposite him, faintly translucent, his body wavering between corporeal and ghostly. His dull red hair shimmered in the bleak light, and his eyes burned with the shifting spectrum of a thousand unspoken agonies.
Darr closed his eyes. The ritual had to be quick. He lifted the sword vertically before his chest, both palms pressed against the cold steel. At once, a surge of invisible needles ripped through his body. Pain. All the lingering aches of a lifetime—old scars reopening, bone fractures screaming, lungs burning—rose up like a torrent.
The Lucerne sword drank it in. The agony slithered down his veins, through his wrists, and into the blade. It glowed crimson, every pulse of torment sharpening its edge beyond mortal comprehension.
He gasped, voice breaking into a ragged snarl:
"By my wounds… sharpened! By my anguish… sharpened! By every sin I've suffered, strike true!"
The blade screamed with him, a metallic shriek that sliced the silence in half.
El Como tilted his head, his voice chillingly soft.
"You feed the weapon with yourself. Pain made steel. Interesting… but tell me, Darr, when all your pain is spent, what will be left of you?"
"Enough to cut you down," Darr spat.
He lunged.
The Lucerne sword came down in an arc, carving through the air with a keenness that split stone. El Como slipped aside, his incorporeal form rippling like smoke. Yet the sword clipped him—only slightly, but enough to make him stagger.
A scream erupted—not from lungs, but from essence. El Como's very being howled, fragmented. His outline twisted, spasming like a mirror cracking.
Darr gritted his teeth.
"So you can bleed."
El Como's laughter was hollow, as though echoing from an endless pit.
"Bleed? I do not bleed. I scatter, I fragment. And every fragment remembers you."
He surged forward. His body blurred, half-ghost, half-flesh, his fingers clawing like spectral hooks. Darr parried, sparks exploding as spirit met enchanted steel. The force rattled his arms, yet he bore down, pushing El Como back with a grunt.
The ground beneath them warped. Every step El Como took made the earth sag as if under rot, grass blackening into ash. Every slash of Darr's sword carved gashes into reality itself, leaving glowing rents in the air.
"You think pain is enough?" El Como whispered, circling. "You think anguish can bind me? I am anguish. I lived in the marrow of Bullteik's last moments. His collapse, his decay, his silence. I wore his body like a cloak. Can your sword cut through that memory?"
Darr's jaw tightened.
"You will regret speaking his name."
They clashed again.
The fight stretched into madness. The Lucerne sword's hum deepened, absorbing more of Darr's agony. He bit his tongue until blood filled his mouth. He let the ache fuel him, every droplet sharpening the blade's resonance.
El Como twisted his shape grotesquely: his torso elongating, his jaw unhinging wider than human, a swarm of shadowy fingers sprouting from his back. They whipped at Darr, scratching across his armor with screeches like nails on bone.
Darr swung. Limbs severed. But El Como's shadows reattached instantly, writhing serpentine.
"You cannot kill what reshapes," El Como hissed. "I am Shaping itself."
"You're a parasite," Darr snarled. "And I'll burn you out."
The Lucerne sword glowed white-hot now, edges vibrating. The smell of charred ozone filled the battlefield. Darr let himself remember Bullteik's corpse—his friend rotting faster than life should allow. He poured that agony into the blade, veins bulging, eyes bloodshot.
"Bullteik, guide me!"
With a roar, he drove the sword into El Como's chest.
For a moment, silence.
Then—an eruption.
El Como's body flared into shards of spectral light, bursting outward. His voice split into a thousand echoes, overlapping.
"Cut me… and I seep deeper… Cut me… and I root further…"
Half on the way, Como activated his /permeability/ .
The shards swarmed around Darr like locusts, piercing his skin, burning cold.
He screamed, dropping to one knee. The Lucerne sword vibrated violently, almost flung from his grip. His heart hammered against his ribs, as though trying to escape.
Inside his skull, El Como's voice whispered:
"You feed your blade with pain. But what happens when I am the pain? When I am inside you?"
"No!" Darr bellowed, clutching his head. His veins blackened beneath the skin, his breath ragged. He staggered back, swinging wildly, trying to fend off the incorporeal fragments, but they slid effortlessly through steel.
The ground split, and shadows pooled around his feet like ink. El Como's form reassembled—not outside him, but within.
His chest convulsed. His spine arched. His eyes rolled back, showing whites streaked with red. The Lucerne sword clattered from his hand as he clawed at his own throat, trying to expel the voice crawling into every nerve.
Then came the final whisper, colder than winter:
"Permeability, Darr. I slip through walls, through steel, through memory. And now… through you."
A scream tore from his throat, but it wasn't his own voice.
It was El Como's.
For a moment, Darr stood upright, his body rigid, trembling. Then he stilled. His eyes opened—no longer his earthy brown, but glowing red, swirling like molten glass. His lips curled, speaking with two voices in one.
"Sharp blade. Sharp pain. But all the sharper for me to wield now."
The Lucerne sword, as if called by a master greater than Darr, lifted from the ground and floated into his hands. His grip tightened around it—not his choice, but El Como's will.
The battlefield went silent.
The man who had been Darr, the friend who had fought, was gone—or buried deep.
El Como now stood inside him, the Shaper victorious, riding flesh like a new vessel.
And somewhere, buried in that vessel, Darr's voice whispered, faint, broken:
"Bullteik… forgive me…"