[i]There was no sudden teleport out of nowhere, no surprise attack from all sides; just the three knights slowly approaching her as they flickered like a light on its last legs, like a candle in the wind. Closer and closer they crept, their figures hunched over, their otherworldly selves even warping the light around them, making the air surrounding the three seem blurry and out of focus, even twisted. As Irina backed up, after she moved around the bench she had been sitting on, her heart would skip a beat when she pressed herself against the building only a few feet behind the bench, the brick wall feeling cold as ice, freezing to the bone. The two shades that were on the sides simply walked by the bench, but the one in the middle... he phased through it, flickering out of existence, then reappearing a second later. In the Vileblood's panic, she might not have noticed the alleyway leading away from the ethereal beings a good meter away, leading out of the street and to a different one. She probably couldn't escape the trio, not unless she called to her dearest Astraeus, but it would allow her a moment to breathe, to order her thoughts, to maybe think up a plan -- but only if she ran. Only if she ran for her life... ...and she'd have to do it quick, because her reckoning was only a few steps away. With the three so close now, so terrifyingly near, the stench of the beyond had gone from intoxicating to suffocating. The black knights were mired in it, reeked of it, exuded it. The only thing that could further prove they weren't human was the fact they cast no shadows, for they were shadows themselves.[/i]