From the Abyss, a New Darkness is Born - Kashyyyk - (Closed)

The jungle was unforgiving to the majority… so he must create himself an animal. He would mold into a force, no a predator, to make this spontaneous and lucrative place his new abode. Doing this wouldn’t be easy, no; he would have to work his way up on this food chain. Learn first the ways of the jungle, the rules of the hunt, to some the rules of survival he supposed. Then he would grow, create new rules, and as fate would have it become the king of it all. He would conquer all of it with patience, with addiction, sick, sadistic addiction. Smaller inhabitants at first, slow moving, weak. It got him the protein and energy he so direly needed. Then larger, quicker mammals and then lizards and water beasts. He could see himself moving up the imaginary chain as he sat in wait for his first victim. A hunter never dared question the taste of the prey, knowing full well each meal could be his last. Taste was not in the sense for a true hunter, but in the satisfaction of knowing the meal you bring in was inferior to you in the arts of the hunt. No, he remained patient… waiting for not only the first meal of his day, but for the one who contacted him through force on Korriban. The real reason he was here. A voice, vague at first, but then clear… so powerful, could be heard racing through his mind, echoing the same terrifying calls. First of the plague upon darkness, then the fight between the plague and the true darkness itself. Then the faded words that pulsated through him to this very moment, “D’xun is power, Skor is power”.

He couldn’t help but poke around curiously at the message, greater in meaning even than that of the location, the first meeting place for him and power to greet each other with open arms. Or for that matter this character who seemed in his message like the ventriloquist, and Clint the doll. His power was obvious, though his intentions with Clint were mysterious. Soon enough his questions would be answered though… Soon enough. As for the riddled start to the message… The plague, was it the light side? No… no light sider could present the kind of threat evident in the message to the true darkness. They had been enemies for eons, the Sith and Jedi, and its stalemate of sorts was no different now. But maybe... just maybe they had done it. He had heard neither here nor there of the Sith or his former master in years, and even he couldn't deny the fact that there were rifts in the force beyond his comprehension. His most primal instincts forced this theory from his mind, he needed food.

It was already mid day in the musty jungles of Dxun. The demon moon was at full transition around its sister stars and lights from a not too far off sun shot rays down into the canopy, illuminating various parts of the dark, moist underbrush. It was here that the most dangerous of hunting occurred, for the darkness could hide many a creature in its vast space. The sun, although potent, could only do so much to brighten the ground with the thick brush obstructing its view. The top of the canopy had turned a golden brown, tanned from the exposure to UV rays above. This dried the leaves, giving them even better dew collection during the nights, only to be stolen away by the thief that was the sun hours later when the light shown through again. The evaporation was so thick in most of the brush that the tops of the trees were sometimes shrouded by a mist of vapors in the air. It was on days like this particular day, that things got even darker than normal. One relied on vibrations to navigate the deadly bottom of this forest now, and regrettably Clint wasn’t the only one with knowledge of the vibrations sent by prey through the piles of dead leaves and top soil.

The tree he sat in was large; as he was roughly thirty feet off the ground and still had no way of seeing the top of its skyscraper of a physique. He sat crouched, knees bent and poised for attack on a particularly thick branch for how low to the ground he was. Its exact circumference was hidden from him by the darkness, but he knew it was more than enough to support his weight. A slight creak came from the damp, brownish red bark every few minutes as it inched closer and closer to death. The tree was probably ancient, dating back to the first days of life on the moon itself. The branch he perched on didn’t budge, but decided to make this oddly disturbing sound every so often as he dug the soles of his boots into the soggy bark. His shoe bottoms had left perfect imprints by now, as it had been a good hour of waiting in the same position. Each time he sank deeper into the “skins” of the tree it would give a slightly more anguished creak, almost as if it was being personified by some outside spec of intelligent life. Foolish… keep on task.

Mushy bark was a great generator of sound reflection, giving him a heads up on the exact size and shape of each creature that passed by. His cowboy hat leaned up against the large main portion of the tree, giving him a good measurement of how far he was away from escape in case something else was coming down from above. His ghostly white ear touched the soggy mush in front of him just in time to hear a slight disturbance below. Something was walking through the brush, but not a small animal for his dinner… no this something walked far too carelessly to be of that nature. It must be much more dangerous than he anticipated, for surely a larger predator would have ambushed it by now. Listening closely now he got a closer inspection of what the creature was. Two legged, obviously… humanoid of some sort, perhaps lost? He was still unsure of just what was headed towards him, inching ever so close…. Probably just twenty feet in front of the branch now. But then something unlike his canny ability to read figures through vibrations, something he had never felt before. It was like he was some type of apparition, watching the events take place from the third person. He could see the figure materialize through the bush, vague from darkness, but it was there. He peered auspiciously at this new character, a human of sorts if he saw right. It turned its head, also concealed by a hood, up towards the tree to the exact spot of Clint. How was this possible? Darkness shrouded him completely; he was a mere shadow and from this distance none-existent to the naked eye. Awestruck by this figure, he tried to gasp for a bit of air to keep him calm during this dangerous endeavor. Air always cleared his train of thought, making every decision easier than before. To no avail, he was still in this third person point of view. Was he dead? No, he could feel the rhythm of his heart, beating like a drum… thump… thump… eerily steady for his predicament.

The dark figure in the underbrush looked up, pulling down the silk shroud and keeping his attention on Clint’s body. Two red balls of dying fire appeared from under the hood, a demon…. No… a devil! The figure spoke in riddles at first, perhaps in a foreign tongue, but then he could understand… quick and to the point, raspy, dry, and haunting in tone.

“Diabolus... Diabolus... the cogs have been set in motion my boy. It is your time now, fore light has penetrated the darkness. Anarcus has been slain, Skor is long since passed, it is only you left to reform. It is your destiny, Diabolus. For the sake of the darkness, you must rise up and lead. You must be the predator!”

A bead of sweat hit the thick, bushy brow on his face. Confusion, fear, and disorientation were all gone. Now only one emotion remained, curiosity. No time to think however, as he had just been returned to his body and the figure of vibrations, gone, leaving without a trace. What exactly was this messenger of the darkside? Clint would probably never know. But before he could dwell on these intriguing topics something overtook him. Extreme mental fatigue combined with weakness of the muscles. He could feel his limp body falling from the tree, paralyzed by some unforeseen force. He waited for death now, falling through the muggy air. He waited for the thud and then the creatures to carry him away. He waited for the apparition to take him back to the underworld where he would pay his debts to society in peonage for the infinite wall of time ahead of him.

Darkness was no more. His pupils shot open, but alas, it was not the world he had left mere seconds before. Flames could be seen all around, illuminating the dark sky above. Creatures of this desolate waste could be seen far above him, flying eerily close to his head. Angels of death, the foulest of all the underworld embraced him in their condemned wings. For a few faint seconds he felt as if he had finally been returned home, but then something raised the hairs from behind his neck. A ringing noise flustered his eardrums, penetrating through the deepest reaches of his soul. Then came a voice, one produced purely of everything evil and putrid, even more so than the underworld his body had been cast down to.

"Not yet, Diabolus, not yet."

With that his eyes opened, in front of him no longer were the fiends of the underworld, but a shadow like figure, standing directly ahead of him through the mist. He could not decipher whether the being was man nor beast, but what he could decipher that it was of pure evil, pure hatred.