“Not on my watch!” The Nightstalker growled and when the Witch Doctor didn’t react, he grabbed his shoulder and shook him. Lightly at first, but then harder until his eyes slowly opened.
“What?” The word was slurred, his gaze unfocussed.
“You won’t fall asleep. We have to stay alert. Wake the fuck up!” It was annoying that the Witch Doctor didn’t take this as serious as the Nightstalker did. They couldn’t fall asleep, couldn’t let their guard down. There was a demon somewhere around and they had to catch it. Or kill it.
The Witch Doctor yawned and stretched. “Come on, you stay awake and I sleep. I think that’s amazing teamwork.”
Baring his teeth at the shaman, the Nightstalker snarled.
“That sounds like a ‘no’. Fine.” The Witch Doctor stood up and stretched again. “Bully”, he muttered and looked around. “It is too dark for me to see anything how am I supposed to be of any help? I could as well sleep.”
“No, because you’ll take too long to wake up in case the demon appears. I had to fucking shake you.”
With a sigh, the shaman agreed to stay awake. But as soon as he was sitting again, back leaning against a huge stone, his eyes drifted close.
The Nightstalker snarled but decided to redesign their teamwork: they wouldn’t work together by searching for the demon side by side. Instead the Nightstalker would use the shaman as bait. That was a form of teamwork, too, and he wasn’t sorry to use the Witch Doctor in such a way. It was his own fault for not staying awake as agreed.
With a last look at the sleeping creature, the Nightstalker vanished into the night. He walked as far as possible, until he could barely make out the form of the Witch Doctor. Then he crouched low and waited, not once looking away from his bait, not even blinking.
He felt the demon before he saw it, the sensation of utter darkness even during the night. He didn’t want to chase it away, so he crept closer as silently as possible. He was very slow but as soon as the demon stepped into his field of vision, he propelled into action.
The demon was too dumbfounded by the sudden appearance of the Nightstalker to flee and it was just a matter of seconds before it was captured. The Nightstalker was strong enough to defeat it, he didn’t actually need someone else. Which was good.
Because the Witch Doctor didn’t wake up.