The zeppelin hung over the silent city, mist stretching up, fingertips of immaterial grey grasping for the tantalising glimmer of the stars. In the distance, Wil could hear the drone of similar vehicles, cutting steady paths through the night in their unceasing rotations. The Cold Crew he had been assigned with were unknown to him, speaking in low voices, revelling in the warmth of their cabin as they glanced out at the black skies. Tension trembled in the air, fear so tangible Wil felt as if he could reach out and touch it. Only he remained aloof from terror, a grin plastered across his dark complexion, green eyes glittering with a euphoric excitement. To most, he was insane. In truth, it was hard to argue against them, but insanity was not the insult they believed. Wil treasured his turmoil of emotions, his inability to labour in sorrow or be struck down by fear. He was a madman, he was a Diver. He had a job to do and reason was his greatest foe. Save for the Kvol, of course.

"Readings at zero, Wil," called out the leader of the Cold Crew moving silently behind him, "Perhaps they're not out tonight."

"Wishful thinking," returned Wil, eyes flashing as he turned to the leader, "What's your name?"

"Rober," the man nodded in respect to the Diver, "Thank you for what you do. I could never risk so much."

"Risk?" asked Wil, striding over to the leader whose hands were tight around the metal wheel guiding the zeppelin, "What risk?"

"Death?" offered another of the Cold Crew.

His reaction to Wil was more expected. There was disbelief, there was disdain. Ancient stigma against Divers held fast against the test of time. Every man and woman in the city below owed their livelihoods to the Divers, and yet so many refused them service in restaurants, so many would keep them from their sons and daughters. Admittedly, Wil had to confess he hardly appeared... normal, or natural. Years of close calls against the Kvol had left him riddled with pale scars, standing out against his dark skin. And the power he wielded, the Lightless, whispered beneath his skin at all times, pale lumincence that frequently shifted to black. An ever changing light marking him as one of scarce few cursed, or alternatively gifted, with a kind of magic that held true against the rapid progression of scientific understanding. Wil cared little for the discrimination he and his fellow Divers faced. His place was, after all, above the city and its people.

"Death and I are old friends," said Wil, spinning on his heel, his long coat whirling out behind him, "I savour every opportunity to speak to him again."

The member of the Cold Crew who had spoken snorted in a mixture of digust and incredulity. Wil moved directly in front of the glass door at the side of the cabin, at the base of the zeppelin. Suspending them in the realms of heaven and darkness was some of the most explosive gas ever created. The Cold Crews considered Divers insane but they jumped out of zeppelins instead of spending as much time surrounded by explosives as possible. Of course the rest of the city considered them all insane.

"Wait!" Rober broke Wil sharply from his thoughts, stabbing a finger down at the dial, encased in glass, implanted in front of him, "Readings spiking!"

Wil glanced over and his grin grew, hands slamming together in a clap that startled the entire Cold Crew at once. The dial was climbing steadily towards the red, reading elevated levels of Lightless power in the air around the zeppelin. It was a fairly modern device and Wil admitted some nostalga for the old system. Although it had caused hundreds of deaths, mostly Divers. Wil took hold of the edge of the door and jerked it violently open, cold air rushing eagerly in. The Cold Crew glowered at him in indignation as he moved to the precipice, holding onto the wooden frame, staring down into rolling black and grey. The mist dragging languidly past them soaked through his hands in seconds.

"We can't be certain its Kvol," warned Rober, staring at the dial as it rose more and more, rapidly reaching the section of the scale painted read. Grimacing, he looked over at Wil and shrugged. "Not sure what else it'd be though."

Wil, the Lightless power pulsing pale beneath his skin, turned his gaze towards the city, only a few towers and spires stretching up from the blanket of fog. A church somewhere tolled a bell, the sound thunderous in the silence and an instant later, a crimson flare soared up from a distant street. Its light blazed like a sun through the shadows of the night, suspended over the fog, colouring it like blood, for a few fleeting seconds. Then a shape flickered across the sky. The flare was extinguished in the blink of an eye, the light snatched away... no, consumed. For a moment, Wil caught sight of the Kvol, as the light was swallowed into its broken body. Black strings, like veins, flooded out from its body, dragged back by the wind. It's eyes were jet black, although they danced white occasionally, at the whim of the Lightless power. Its main form was vaguely human, although limbs were twisted out of place at random. Legends named the Kvol many things. The most persistent called them Divers, who had taken too much of the Lightless and ripped themselves apart. Other stories placed them as demons, crawling out of the stars to bring down a plague of evil upon humankind and blight progress. Whatever they were, all knew their purpose. They were a scourge against the Gods. The Trinity of Six, a collection of deities, standing together in threes, had once blessed the cities and lands of the mortal world. But their power was drawn from the Lightless. And when the Kvol fell upon the Gods, they tore out their power. Two out of the six trinities were destroyed entirely, absorbed by the Kvol. The surviving four fled the mortal plain, giving only a single gift to help their people fight the great evil. They blessed a fortunate few with the Lightless power themselves, humans touched by the divine. The Divers. People whose only goal, only purpose, was to tear apart the Kvol with the very power they desired. Wil was one of those graced by the hand of gods, although he didn't feel exactly divine. He didn't give a damn for the Trinity of Six, he just wanted to kill some bloody Kvol and save a few lives as he did. Fortunately, that was all he had to do.

"Kvol confirmed!" shouted Rober, to Wil's side, "Get out their, Diver!"

Wil let out a laugh of pure euphoria, releasing his hold on the door frame, stepping one foot out onto empty air.

"What'd you want me to tell the Kvol?" Wil roared back to Rober, over the wind.

The leader of the Cold Crew grinned. "Give us back our fucking Gods!"

With a mock salute, Will spun round on his foot, looking at the Cold Crew and the zeppelin as he toppled out into the hands of death.

As the zeppelin swung on, Wil flipped over in the air, facing directly downwards. His hands were pressed to his side, water streaming across his face as he ripped a rift in the fog. The spires of the city towers raced up to meet him at a startling pace as he scanned gaps in the mist for Kvol. Nothing, the night was silent. But silence masked only breathless screams. Forcing out his arms and legs, he formed the shape of a starfish, in the air, increasing the drag enormously. In the distance, he could hear the howl of engines. The planes were coming, another modern invention. Disdainfully, Wil lashed the Lightless power around himself. Who needed planes when you could fly yourself? Wings, or rather a glider of white light, spread out from his arms, connecting his legs into a kind of tail. Wil looked closest to a flying squirrel, emblazoned by the Lightless, shifting between light and dark as he angled his body upwards and soared over the mist. It wasn't the most beautiful form he could conjure with the Lightless power, but only the common people cared for presentation. It gave him great maneovrability, and he could spin through the air to evade the Kvol when needed. True wings would need to be at least twenty feet wide to lift his weight, and no one alive could muster the strength to beat wings that size. He wasn't an angle of legend, but he was as close as the Gods could get. Around him, lights began to blaze, marking the rest of the Divers, falling from their own zeppelins. They favoured similar forms of flight as Wil and began to twist out in all directions. If only they could uncover the secret of the Kvol's flight, they could finally match the bloody creatures. But so far, no ancient knowledge or modern science had been able to unravel that enigma. Once more, Wil was thrown abruptly from thought as a Kvol slashed apart the sky behind him. Its signature, ragged scream was the only warning of its approach, but it was enough. Years of training and impeccable instinct allowed him to react with whole seconds to spare. Laughter echoing through the night, Wil spun sideways, and downwards. Though he could soar for a great deal of time, his gliding flight would not keep him high for long enough. The city was already growing dangerously close, but he could use that to his advantage. Behind him, bullets cut lines through the mist as the drone of engines became a scream and planes raced past him. They were still primitive vehicles, ungainly, with two wings and machine guns attatched to the front. Not only that, the bullets they fired could only wound the Kvol, not kill them. That was a task for the Divers. Wiping aside his Lightless for a moment, Wil allowed him to freefall and increase his drag. The Kvol, caught off guard, raced past and Wil seized its body as it passed overhead. Power slammed into him, but he remained steely calm. Ignoring its screams, he flipped over and drew on its Lightless, absorbing it so his skin brightened like a torch. The Kvol howled and flailed, as Wil laughed in madness and success. And then, a split second before the Kvol was lifeless, they connected with a cathedral.

It was pure, blind recklessness that delivered Wil from the pale hands of death. And luck, ever loyal to Wil’s scarred form and foolishness. The Kvol struck the cathedral first and, weakened already, was torn apart. The final shreds of Lightless power within that foul creature rushed out and Wil absorbed it eagerly. In the blink of an eye, Wil released a detonation of Lightless. All he had absorbed from the Kvol, all he possessed by the will of the Gods. To any other Diver howling through those uncaring, wreathing mists, he blossomed into a blinding flash of light and colour. A firework, an implosion of pure, untethered power. Wil managed a scream, or perhaps it was laughter, as his power rent apart the cathedral. Stone and metal ripped from the spire, slate shattered into thousands of deadly shards. The skies roared with sound and Wil shot through the gaping hole he’d blown into the building. The cathedral had once been a sacred precinct, where the Trinity of Six had gathered to revere their followers. Wil hoped they wouldn’t be too irritated at him cleaving through its spire. But he had no time to think of those long absent divinities and their lingering touch upon him. Pain lashed through his shoulder as something struck him. His half controlled dive turned into a wild spiral, his vision darkening, the pressure against him climbing rapidly. Streets rushed up to meet him, he drew a great rift in the mist and broke free of its veil. Dew kissed cobbles were revealed below him, stunned drunks watching in slumped positions. Concentration, in the face of absolute adversity, was a quality unique to Divers. Unique to him. For every million souls left lonely in that sprawling city, only a handful could have survived in that instant. Even if they were all Divers, if they all possessed Lightless. Wil’s skill flourished from the Lightless, but it was not that beautiful, scarring power that kept him alive. With the last of his power, those final threads of changing colours and light, Wil threw out the Lightless. A thousand strings rushed out, attached to his back. They sought purchase on the soot stained walls, the flickering candle light in the weary street lamps. A thousand threads of power attached to the street Wil plunged towards and, as if they were that elastic substance so new to the city of Taruisa, they slowed him. One by one, as his power ran out, they faded. But, one by one, they slowed his descent. Not at the speed that would have killed him in a second, as most inexperienced Divers would have done. Not so slow he was still crushed against the shining cobbles. Perfectly ushered to a stop, allowing him to touch down, light as a feather, as if he had not plunged himself out of a zeppelin and through a cathedral. Well… almost perfect. Somewhere, he’d made a miscalculation. Or perhaps he’d simply run out of Lightless too swiftly. No one could fault him, he’d been rather preoccupied when he created those threads of light and colour, to slow him. Instead of dropping him, static, onto the street, his threads all vanished at once and he dropped the last few metres in free fall. Catching himself by instinct, he rolled forward and immediately regretted doing so. His injured shoulder connected with the stone and he let out a choked hiss of pain as he rolled unsteadily to a stop, ending up flat in the street, staring stunned upwards. For a long time, he just lay there, breathing in long, staggered breaths. And then, he began to laugh. Slowly and then faster and faster, as if the laughter was running free of him and he could not restrain it. Ignoring those shadowy figures who retreated in fear from his broken form, he laughed on and on, eyes vacantly gazing up into the mist. He hardly noticed the cathedral spire steadily teetering and toppling down, the clouds of dust that mingled up into the mist and the misshapen Kvol that slid in the throes of death down the collapsing cathedral walls to end up just metres from Wil on the street. He lived on to kill more of those bastard creatures, he’d dive again. And though the pain was consuming his consciousness, every laugh wracking him with breathlessness, his blood pooling around his ragged hair, he was still able to laugh. He would live on.

Somewhere in his senseless euphoria, Wil must have succumbed to the pain, for he awoke hours later as dawn touched tones of crimson onto the horizon. The rolling walls of fog were drawing back, the final tendrils of mist clutching at the crooked chimneys. Though Wil could make out the drone of engines high above, the sound of gunfire no longer rattles over the rooftops. The Kvol had been fought, the Divers fallen and the zeppelins retreated for one more night. Gaze distorted, his shoulder aching painfully, Wil pushed himself up and turned towards his wound. The sight was far from pretty. A dark stain covered his torn clothes across his left shoulder, a jagged piece of broken slate thrust deep into his flesh. The Lightless power was slowly returning to him, imbued back into his body by the very essence of the city. It had healed the wound as best it could, a subconscious process that, although it occurred agonisingly slowly, had saved Wil’s life far more than once. And judging by how he reeled unsteadily in his feet, and the river of blood tracing down the river, it had done so again. Even so, the wound was still grievous and though he was no longer losing blood, until the piece of slate was removed he still faced infection. Naturally then, he raised a trembling hand, gripped the broken slate and tore it bodily from the wound. A ragged scream broke free of him as he staggered backwards, slamming against some nondescript door. Lightless flared around the wound, now bleeding freely again as Wil’s gaze grew dark once more.
“Fu-“ managed Wil before pitching forward, back into unconsciousness.

When Wil awoke for the second time, the streets were no longer silent. A woman, holding the reins of a towering black mare, nudged him experimentally with the heel of her boot.
“You alive, Diver?”
The customary distaste for Divers was audible in her voice, but unusually dulled. Wil stared up at her and then grinned, moving slowly to his feet. Though he stumbled as he did, the woman offered no assistance. Instead she watched him guardedly, grip tight on the reins of her horse.
“Reckon I’ve got a few more Kvol to kill yet,” he said, voice ring out like thunder in the quiet streets.
“I’d get out of here,” muttered the woman, refusing to meet his gaze, “Divers aren’t welcome on these streets anymore.”
Wil shrugged. There was nothing to say to that that hadn’t already been said, by someone far more intelligent than he. Blessed by the Trinity of Six, cursed by the fickle jealousy of the masses. Without another word to the woman and her horse, he turned away and moved down the street. Judging by the first streams of golden light whispering over the misshapen rooftops, it was just past dawn. The woman had been right, under any other circumstances, he would’ve been off the streets long since. No sense surviving the Kvol only to be bludgeoned down by some bitter fool. Sparing a glance to the cathedral, rubble scattered across the sacred circles around it, his grin grew. Picking out the shape of the dead Kvol among the ruins, he walked to it and kicked into its twisted corpse. Long since dead. No surprise, he had thrown it into a cathedral. A cathedral that now had not only lost its pillar, its spire, but also had a worrying crack webbing across its eastern wall. That, however, was a problem for someone else. Many other people in fact. He did managed a slight grimace at the thought of all the arguments against the Diver bound to sprout from this incident. An unfortunate mistake, they happened. It would spur on the numerous investigations into other means of killing the Kvol, but Wil was confident they’d come to nothing. They had born no fruits so far, the most successful invention in even wounding the Kvol had been the machine gun. But even that could only turn away a Kvol for a time. Only Divers could kill them, of that Wil was certain. And so, alone and wounded still, he made his way into a shadow dressed alleyway and left the crumbling cathedral behind him.

They began soft, as they always did. The whispers, the gentle cries of lost discontent. They were unintelligible, or perhaps they simply spoke a language Wil did not understand. Regardless, he could make no meaning from them. As he strode through the shadows, ignoring the occasional muttering of an early riser, the whispers grew in force, louder and louder. Wil paid them no heed. They were familiar now, having haunted him every day for over a year. He was already set apart from the rest of the city for the divine curse upon him, the Lightless. But those malicious whisperings distanced him from even the other Divers. He was entirely alone amongst the populace of the city there. Only he was driven down the city streets by their taunting, enigmatic speech. They emanated from the shadows, those that wrapped and wreathed around him like dark bonds. The longer Wil stayed alone on the streets, the stronger they grew. Only whisperings at first, then voices as loud as his own, and then howls of animalistic fury driving him faster and faster towards his home. Everyone he had spoken to called them nothing but the shattered mumbling of his madness. He reckoned they were right, no one could doubt he was insane after all. Most of the Divers were, but him especially so. Maybe that was because he’d lived so long. To get past thirty was a stunning achievement for a Diver and he’d added a decade onto that. Carrying on through the winding streets, he let the laughter of the shadows wrap itself around him, drowning out the contempt of the people wandering aimlessly past him. Only when he threw open the aged door of his shared home, leaning precariously out into the street, did he finally leave those accursed cries behind him.