I feed.

   The man I apprehend collapses a mere thirty feet from this large Park's entrance. A little further and I would have given up on him for fear of discovery. His ankle has given out and he is too exhausted to yell for help.

   Soon his breathing becomes shallow as his skin turns white.

   For a being that masses less than a microgram I need a suprising amount of hemoglobin to sustain me. In moments he is drained.

   Flush with new life I go back on the hunt. I am capable of feeding several times in the course of the evening.

   I take on the appearance of a small girl, deciding that my earlier masquerade as a lost volumptuous cheerleader from New Jersey was starting to wear a little thin. Besides, this smaller form is easier to maintain and will keep my victims off guard for a longer period of time.

   From a distance I'm sure I make quite a spectacle. A pretty pale eight year old redhead in a frilly blue dress skipping through central park at midnight. In a matter of moments I spot a vagabond, another one of the homeless that even in these dark times seek shelter in this place. I create the appearance of tears and by the excitation of enough redundant photons and air molecules I am able to approximate the sounds of crying.

   The man, looking to be in his late fifties and dressed in moldy rags shambles over to me.

   "What are you doing here?" he asks me. "Don't cry. I'll take care of you."

   Though the way he lunges forward with his hands betrays his interest as something other than Samaritan.

   His arms flow into me up to their elbows before he realizes I am not real. And then it is too late.

   My form is composed of hundreds of thousands of free-floating living particulates, each an individual single-celled organism whose cell wall retains the ability to absorb and emit light. Protein-based photomorphogenesis. In one sense I am a living hologram.

   Over the centuries I have masqueraded as many different people and many different animals. It is a simple enough trick. Though I have learned of late to do so in utmost privacy as public display of these abilities over five hundred years ago spawned many legends about me. To the best of my knowledge I am the only one of my kind left in existence, though this might soon change.

   The first of the great Sha'Daa' s portals has formed and soon a multitude of brethren will join me. Though I have grown lonely over the centuries for the company of my kind, I now feel less than welcoming at their imminent appearance.

   I arrived during the First Age as one of four advanced scouts for The Sha'Daa', obstensively as a bodyguard for the newly recruited Necromancer. At the climax of the great war we were all separated. I wandered for millenia causing destruction and mayhem wherever I could. It was a more primitive world back then. My actions helped maintain war and chaos for many years.

   But I was just one, and could only hold back the advancement of these irrepressible humans for so long.

   As the centuries passed I grew in strength and guile and even wisdom. For as I drained a human I also absorbed many of their memories and thoughts and so I became educated in my sensibilities and outlooks on life. At first I used my new found sentience as a child might a toy, revelling in hidden knowledge and the basest of human motivations.

   Yet, over the many years of my unending existence, a change came over me. And it was not long before I found myself only wishing to feed on those people who were infirm and aged and possessing a full lifetime of experiences and wisdom.

   In time I found I was able to ease their passage into death by speaking to them and forming images in their minds of the glowing towers of a spectral city and even loved ones long gone.

   And after one such person passed, a great man of high ideals who had been assassinated, I realized that I had come to love these humans. And with this knowledge came a purpose. To help them, and defend them as best I could from the evils in the world.

   I impale the stinking creature with thousands of my cells, each one diving gleefully through his epidermis and into his veins and arteries. In moments he is dead.

   To the best of my knowledge I suffer from a form of hemolytic anemia, though as a non-human entity this diagnosis leaves much to be desired. In short, I need a constant infusion of red blood cells to maintain my existence. And luckily enough for me, there are plenty of appropriate donors in the world to fill my plate.

   But lately things have changed. The Sha'Daa' has finally broken through and a great battle is almost upon us.

   There are those who oppose the invasion. I have sensed them. Soon I will lend them my support, though they not know it. Many will be their enemies, and on the sidelines, sometimes invisible, sometimes not, I will do my best to guard their flanks.

   For the moment, though, I hide my vigilante activities from all eyes, as I do not wish to be discovered by the Necromancer or his minions. Not just yet.

   I see three youths in the distance sporting small pistols. They have not yet spotted me in this thick darkness. I sense in their thoughts the desire to steal and kill. They have all committed great evil in the not too distant past.

   I smile in my mind and then take on the appearance of a suited overweight businessman.

   A rapist, a pedophile, and three murderers. This has turned into a most fortuitous night.

   The full moon peeks out from behind the clouds for a moment.

   They see me.