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Post by Bedrovelse Hevn on Dec 11, 2020 8:09:13 GMT -8
Prologue.
THE INFINITY GATE
The Jen’jidai and sorcerer, Bedrovelse Hevn, has scoured the galaxy for years. Collecting artifacts of power and intrigue so that he may study, understand, and replicate their power. Every object of legend, every rumor of inexplicable power, and every name whispered in quiet terror was a target for his endless inquisition.
It began with an act of vengeance. Reclaiming the weapons and archives of his demolished brethren from the vaults of Muunilinst. He was convinced that continuing down this path would deprive his enemies of vital tools and secrets that could be used against him, while inexorably increasing his own strength in kind.
From combating spirits that haunted the Valley of the Dark Lords, to engaging with the God and Goddess of Dathomir, his spirit and connection to the universe grew. He sharpened his blade against Enclaves of Jedi, Dark Lords of the Sith, and the mighty clans of Mandalore. He grew as a warrior in both mind and body as the stakes rose and the boons of accomplishment did also.
Knowledge was a valuable and universal currency that he used to seduce even the extremely stubborn Nightsisters into cooperation. Secretive and stingy as they were, The Mother saw an opportunity to benefit her people by exchanging with him. They expanded his understanding and mastery of magic and sorcery. He educated and trained their finest to defend themselves from the likes of Jedi and Sith, for he harbored no love for either ideology. It took time, and sacrifice to gain their favor. Together they communed with the deities of Dathomir, a ritual accepting him as one of the tribe. The extraordinary experience gave him visions, leading him to technology he believed impossible.
The force drew him to the ruins of a star gate destroyed by the Jedi long ago. The Nightsisters filled in the blanks of the events that surrounded the annihilated pyramid. Once home to a massive gate that could instantly hurl a sentient being light years away to far away worlds, or emit a wave of energy that could erase them. It took years to decipher the riddle of how it was constructed and how it worked, but his passion demanded he see his curiosity through. His insatiable lust for discovery motivated him, elevating him beyond any expression of obsession he had ever known.
With the mystical prowess of the Nightsisters, his aptitude in Sith alchemy, and access to the journals of the great and mysterious Dark Jedi who came before him he went to work designing a new gate. The Mother agreed that he may use it first to achieve the shadowy end he refused to disclose, even to these closest of new allies. Afterwards its use would solely belong to the discretion of The Mother.
At long last his schemes had come to fruition. He had no desire to use the gate as a weapon, as those who came before saw fit to use such a device. He had no concern for how the witches plotted to exploit the tool after he had his way with it. This was the pinnacle of his alchemical achievements, and he had the witches to credit for getting him this far. His intent was to access a pocket of the galaxy that no sane creature would ever dare to tread intentionally.
The Nether.
His soul had been sent to Chaos many times before. The experience was as traumatic as it was fascinating. As a spirit he was at the mercy of the laws of the realm until narrowly finding a way to worm free of its shackles. He now had a way to defy death and explore it on his own terms. Prepared to battle the infinite wickedness within the plane as best anyone could be.
To seize back what was taken from him.
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Post by Bedrovelse Hevn on Dec 12, 2020 23:09:54 GMT -8
The Gate.
When Hevn got the message the gate was complete a foreboding disturbance grew inside him. His thoughts are clouded as he musters the resolve to perform the steps that came next. It seems all too sudden when his Infiltrator dropped out of hyperspace and Dathomir loomed ahead. He took the descent slowly, gazing out into the galaxy from the viewport. Taking in the vast emptiness littered with glimmering stars in solemn silence.
A long time ago he saw the worlds far and wide as places for conquering. Riches and victories to reap, as if it would prove his might. Now his pale sapphire eyes gleam with a sense of longing and wonder. The red planet consumes the view as his ship approaches. An angry, bloody red. An appropriate view to digest the preparation of an adventure into hell.
He could have played one last game of dejarik against his crew, but instead he focused on hammering the knot from his stomach. Out of his chest. Out of his throat. Finally pushing it from his mind and crushing it. The little ball of worries has no place anywhere near him this moment. There was no room for hesitation and even less for error. In his mind’s eye he glares down at the corpse of it. That last chance to back out and turn away. It smolders, ignites, and crumbles into burning ash. Swept away with one more deep breath.
The Infiltrator touches down atop a plateau of dusty brown rock. The bloody red moss reaching like outstretched fingers trying to apprehend the outsiders who did not belong. As he exits the cockpit he sees Alpha and Mad Claws gearing up for battle.
“Weapons will be unnecessary.” Hevn waves a dismissing hand toward the pair of baffled warriors. His grim expression confounds them further. He chose not to reveal the nature of the visit to Dathomir beforehand. Chose not to include them in any way of his work on the gate.
“They’ve already surrounded the ship, Hevn. They don’t look all that pleased.” The Shistavanen growled each word with contempt. The golden halos fixated on Hevn demanding answers.
Hevn stifles a sigh that creeps up. Looking at them both preparing to go to war for him. No matter the enemy. No matter the orders. They always followed. Rarely failed. He struggles to accept the possibility they are his friends. Could such a thing be said of those employed in his service? To those he commanded with an iron fist? They were men he trusted above all others. Always had his back. Even if there were credits in it for them at the end of the day. He always assumed their loyalty to be out of fear of his wrath, rather than faith in his path.
“You have both served me well.” The statement was firm, and foreign. Hevn rarely offers his subordinates compliments of the verbal variety. A drink, or a night off was far more commonly his show of appreciation or gratitude. The Shistavanen and Catharian races were difficult to read as far as facial expressions were concerned, but as their noses crinkles and eyebrows contorted the disbelief was plain to see.
“I have one final task to complete before I release you. See my ship safely to my bunker on Geonosis. I have left you both a small fortune on which to retire comfortably.” It was the most Hevn could muster as far as farewells went. He breaks his gaze from them to descend the ramp toward the ground below, leaving the men in a stupefied silence.
The Nightsisters had arranged themself in an ominous circle around his Infiltrator. He could see pale, tattooed faces buried within the hoods of their dark cloaks. One squared up with the ramped stepped forward to declare, as she looked past Hevn toward Alpha and Claws, “They must go!”
“And they shall,” Hevn replies in a grumble of ire and warning. He could feel the tension in the circle rise as he challenged the witch.
“The Mother tolerates your slithering, forked, lying tongue Bedrovelse…” the witch hissed as her eyes narrowed with suspicion and disgust.
“There is no shame in your fright,” Hevn interrupts her with a cool jab. The Nightsister’s frustration rose, but she decided engaging him any further would be a waste of her planet’s precious air.
The witch locked eyes with him for a moment longer before turning toward the caves. Her sisters fell into formation, maintaining the circle around him as they ventured into the darkness. Her steps were quick and silent. Gliding over the cool rock beneath their feet as Hevn’s strides push her faster and faster. When the grace of the sun abandoned the tunnel, the witch held her palm out in front of her. An orb of green fire churned within her grasp, illuminating the way ahead.
The circle broke as they formed a line with Hevn at the center. His hand dipping down to his belt to grasp his lightsaber, and unclasping it. He grips the hilt and ignites it. The dragon’s mouth screams as the pearly white blade erupts from its belly. The witches behind him halted as they summoned their own green orbs of fire. The witches ahead turned to see Hevn’s terrifying scowl gripping every feature of his face. He let the dark side of the force pulse from his body, using his senses like a radar. If the witches were going to try anything stupid, their opportunity was close at hand.
The procession wound their way into the heart of the mountain. With the sound of soft steps and the hum of his saber accompanying them in the faintest of echoes.
“The time is nigh!” The shout came from ahead of them. The Mother preparing her clan. One by one ahead of him, the green lights extinguished. As his turn came he deactivated the lightsaber, hissing as it retreated back into the jaws of the dragon and its mouth snapped shut with a click.
Torches surround the room in which his precious gate calls home. Flickering as he and the witches entered. The Mother stood in front of the gate. An upright ring of metal and stone. The materials alternate in eight chunks of the twenty foot structure. Ancient Sith and Nightsister runes were carved deep into the bits of stone. Chrome colored cables rooted out from the metal, all stretching toward a platform of steel before the base of the ring. There are two squares etched into the steel of the platform. The Mother had already taken her place at his left.
The Mother was only a head shorter than him. Her robes were an abyssal black that could have melted into the shadows around them. Her skin is milky white. Tattoos crossed her face in what could be described as slashes. As though a rancor had mauled her, though no harm had ever come to the soft, round, shape of her face. She is built heavy and strong. Broad shoulders and hips that holstered thick arms and legs. Her hair was braided back, falling into the shadows of her hood. Her eyes violet and quietly menacing. The kind that looks through a person, and swim with intensity. Her age was impossible to determine, but she was neither a girl nor a crone. A warrior who rivaled him in a melee, and a sorceress who far surpasses his abilities with magic.
Stepping into his designated place beside her, he knelt. The Mother gasped teasingly, a hand over her heart. “You need not grovel and bow, Bedrovelse!” Her laughter was ghostly. A spirit far off in the woods. A sound that raises the hair on the back of your neck and makes you wonder if you’re truly safe.
“Your children would have it so.” Hevn’s glance darts sideways towards the witch who callously greeted him at the ship. The Mother responded with a shrug of indifference, and a look in her eyes seems to ask if he was really all that bothered.
Hevn removes a dagger from his belt. Broad and curved at the end, its pommel decorated with a dragon much like the emitter of his lightsaber. Metal on metal screeches as he digs the tip into the platform upon which he kneels. With each flick of his wrist a symbol was carved, like the strokes of a paint brush, into the canvas at his feet.
The Mother reaches toward the ceiling of the cavern with both hands stretched into the air above her head. Her ghastly white fingertips begin to shower green sparks. She begins to chant and sway. Her hands began to dance above her as her body bent from side to side. A singing tree in the wind. Fiery green lines began to spider web across the ceiling above her. She was carving her own runes, in her own way.
Hevn joins in her song. Not that he knew the words she sang or what magic they weave. A deep bass heavy hum rumbles from the back of his throat as he mutters in ancient Sith. Infusing the marks with the deep darkness within him. As he finishes his carvings in the floor he turns the blade toward his index finger. The first droplet of blood surfaces before running free and starting the flow. He presses the finger into the carvings and traces them, filling the marks with blood as metal burrs bite into flesh like the teeth of a saw.
“Pain and anger mark the way. Grief and sorrow bind my fate. The darkness within will open the gate.” Over and over he mutters the words, in chorus with The Mother’s chant.
When at last her marks above flicker fiery and green, and his were stained bloody red, they cease their chants. Hevn rises to look at her. Pale sapphires staring into her glittering amethysts. She nods slowly, smiling as wickedly as ever. Hevn’s ever present scowl stays firmly in place to meet it.
The Mother’s voice cracks the air like a whip. An ear piercing shriek. A bird of prey descending to kill. A torrent of emerald lightning crackles down at her call.
Hevn’s lips part in a guttural roar as he tears his palm open with the dagger and extends it into the lightning. The bolts of emerald electricity seems to home in on his wound. Jumping inside his body, and as it did The Mother’s essence poured into him as well. Her life flashes before his eyes. Brief glimpses of clarity are overrun by a flood of feeling. The one that dominated them all was loss. A grief born from her slaughtered clan. A genocide that all but erased her kind. He saw her intention for the gate. The hope born inside of her when she heard his plan to build the gate. An escape route if invaders ever came to do as they had to Dathomir many times before. A way to jump safely to the stars to a place they could find peace and sanctuary.
“Imdtonizi!” Hevn’s free hand extends toward the gate as he invokes the dark side of the force. The runes beneath his feet burn on the floor. The heat in the runes begins to boil the blood. The blood rises in red smoke around him. The lightning pours into his weeping hand. He inhales the smoke surrounding him.
“Imdniji!” A beam of vermillion light races from the palm of the hand aimed towards the gate. He traces runes of stone worked into the gate in a clockwise motion. “Imdniji!” He calls again.
Nobody in the room was prepared for the supernova that came next. Every person in the room is tossed as sound itself ceases, light sucks into the center of the gate, and it explodes to life. The light was blinding. The sound was deafening. The force that tore out from its activation shook Hevn’s bones before throwing him like a rock into a pond.
There was no pond. Only the stone of the cavern. A trembling mountain to catch him. An unforgiving wall of stone to break his flight. His brain rattles inside of his skull. Consciousness comes and goes second by second. Pain floods his body, from the back of his skull to the base of his spine.
Jen’jidai.
The men who trained him taught him pain. To resist shock. To fight on, forever. Nothing could stop them. He was one of them. One of the best. Ever.
Not even the savage scream that erupted from him woke the Nightsisters. While their deaths were a part of his consideration, it was The Mother beside him he crawled toward. He groans in agony, pulling all of it inside of him. It doesn’t numb it. He feels the fire within stoking itself. Burning brighter. Stronger and hotter. It does not ease the struggle. Shaking the fog is no small task. The bite in the back of his head makes it so difficult to focus.
Jen’jidai!
Compressing the anguish. All of it. To the center of his brain. Containing it all to muster the words. The feelings. The force to his aid. The Mother’s hood had fallen. He swings a leg over her closed ones. Sitting atop her thighs. His agonized form slumping into her. His forehead pressed against hers. His hands slide to the back of her head. “Shiba…..wake up.”
Hevn was no Lord to her. Not as Alpha, or Mad Claws saw him. He was a student. A disciple of magic she trained to be a great sorcerer. While she always called him by the name he gave her, his chosen name, he always called her by the title elected by her people. She was the Night Mother. He was a guest. An unwelcome one at that. A visitor that did not belong. A snake whose promises her people did not trust, not matter how bad she wanted them to be true. She was wise enough to see that his intentions, however selfish, were genuine. He always traded fairly when mutual gain could be accomplished. She saw it. She saw him.
“Please.” He begged as the pain brought tears flooding to his eyes. “Wake up.” He begged as guilt tore his soul apart. “Shiba, please, wake up.”
Sorrow. The seed of Hevn’s darkness. The seed of his power. The desperation and guilt. The pain the filled his skin, and bones, and muscle. All of it was nothing by comparison. His mind, his heart, his soul bled. This was a victory they were supposed to share.
“AHHHHHHHHHHH!” Hevn screams as the light pours from his hands.
Shiba’s essence still invigorating him, his own power surging with the flood of his emotions, all fueled into the dark side of the force.
‘The dark side is a pathway to abilities some consider to be…..unnatural.’
Not a Nightsister. Not The Night Mother.
The gaping wound in the back of Shiba’s head stitches itself. Connective tissue knitting together through sheer force of Hevn’s will. The light, his power accelerating her body’s healing power.
“I…..I was…..” she stutters as her violet eyes open and flutter to life.
“You need to save yourself, and then you need to save them.” Hevn groans as he rolls off of her. Sucking air through his teeth in a hiss as he slumps against the wall of the cave. The tears that escaped him were still wet upon her forehead, and her face. She looks between him and the gate trying to catch up to the moment. Trying to comprehend.
“You can fix this.” Hevn barely had the strength left to utter the words. He hisses pain through his teeth as he gets cozy with the cavern wall. Staring at the gate, their victory, he could have smiled, but does not. It’s Shiba his rolling eyes fix upon, and terror fills her gaze. Looking upon her Sisters.
“I….I’m sorry.” Hevn’s teeth clench as the apology grinds out. The light from the gate stinging his clouded eyes, spinning from the impact of being thrown. His brain rocks back and forth making him sick and dizzy.
Shiba gets to her feet. She supports herself on the wall of the cave as she begins to invoke her healing magic. A hoop of bright green energy manifests at her feet. It rises and falls, from head to toe, going to work healing her.
“Bedrovelse!” She shouts. Pointing toward the gate.
It was then he noticed it too. The gate was not the source of the blinding light. There was a shape within, standing before the gate, emitting it. The shockwave had not come from the gate itself, but the being who had crossed through it. A Diathim. An angel.
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