Herald of the Shattering

[Ryiah Tenriem]

The wind rushing through the trees, howling as it wove its invisible tough around and over rough bark with furious anger while gently caressing the delicate emerald leaves that hung from equally delicate branches, rustling wildly as the ground against the harsh texture of the very branches that kept them away from the unmerciful grasp of the wind. The snuffling of a large animal as it tread through the dense bush, fallen and dead twigs snapping loudly beneath it weight while the accompanying crack and rustling of the shrubbery that was in the process of being destroyed by the creature bulk joined the chorus. The twittering and whistling of some avian animals, small in stature, as the shouted across the expanse of nature that separated them, communicating in a language only they and their fellows could know. But above the background noises was the deafening in its purity, was the quiet peacefulness of nature. Oxymoronic in nature, the deafening silence roared loudly, overshadowing everything else.

The scant few leaves that lost their battle with the wind and flew directly at the figure that sat dead center of a clearing surrounded by high reaching trees, uncaring of the twigs that would surely be beneath her. The lone bird, covered by stark yellow feathers that shone on the veined sunlight that fought to seep through the gaps in the leaves as it began to breech the horizon to signal the start of a new day, that dove towards the head of the figure, only to fly pass the figure as they tilted their head to the left minutely, just enough for the bird to pass without any contact coming between the two living beings.

Everything and anything assaulted the senses of Ryiah Tenriem as she sat, cross-legged in the middle of the clearing, perceiving to the world around her through both her hearing and the echolocation granted by her tall standing Montrals - each one of the two equaling the size of her head, the world that she was currently deprived on seeing with her own eyes by the blindfold carefully wrapped around her head and four Lekku.

Clad only in her normal outfit of a single strip of cloth which served to covered her breasts while also being decorated with the teeth taken from the beasts that Ryiah had conquered in her hunts, a loin cloth and a belt formed entirely from beads of lapis lazu, painstakingly shaped, strung together with tags of bronzium hanging from each bead the majority of Ryiah's body was exposed to the warm air, in lines with her beliefs. Ryiah believed not in a single deity, or a pantheon of deities, she instead believed that each planet that supported flora and fauna, that supported nature, held within its core a singular and unique deity that governed life on the planet; Nature given intangible form. By exposing her skin to the world at large, Ryiah believed that she opened herself up more to those deities.

Shifting suddenly to her right, Ryiah's eyes snapped open, one a piercing blue the other a blood red iris set upon a black sclera that seemed to gleam with an inner darkness. Her lips curled back to reveal a row of pointed teeth that spoke of the lost history of being carnivorous predators that still remained encoded in the Togruta's genes. Her miss-matched eyes glared out at the trees in front of her even as they shifted from as a heavy presence of dread settled within Ryiah's mind. Her Silence had been broken and already she could feel the Demoness whispering without voice, taunting her ever patient and secure in success. And that fact, the destruction of her precious Silence where she could weep silently over her broken nature, where she could think for herself, ignited a roaring flame of anger within her breast.

"Show yourself." Her heavily accented voice snapped out into the silence, her inner rage seeping forwards so as to seemingly dripping from every syllable that fell from her lips.



[member="Darth Ferus"]

 

[Ryiah Tenriem]

2 meters by 3 meters by 5 meters. The thought passed through the mind of one Ryiah Tenriem as stared at the small enclosure that had served as her prison for the past – she cast a quick gaze towards her left where a series of singular marks had been carved using her nails and conducted a quick mental tally – two weeks. The thought momentarily stunned her enough that a quiet, husky and hoarse laugh dropped from between two chapped lips. She knew that she hadn’t miscounted, her tormentor took too much perverse enjoyment from taunting her with visions of the beautiful gold of the rising and setting sun of her homeplanet bleeding through emerald leaves to cast an array of alluring patterns to ever push her so far so that she would miss that sight, as such, she knew that it had been an exact 14 days since she had been caught and dragged into her current isolation. Any yet, it had seemed so much longer. So many hours of unending pulses of pain, both physical and mental, that it seemed totally inconceivable that only a fortnight had passed.

Never-the-less, her brief moment of insanity driven and dark humour passed and soon Ryiah was left to her silence once more, the same thought running through her head as she stared at the stone walls with barred windows set high: 2 by 3 by 5, 2 by 3 by 5, 2 by 3 by 5. The measurements, so carefully taken, over the past few days, what with the Togruta having nothing better to do, ran on a never ending repeat within her mind, taunting her with the isolation that had been inflicted upon her, separating her from the wide open plains of nature that she so sought to once more claim as her domain. In the end, the old saying that she had heard during her time in invisible and gilded chains was correct: you never knew what you truly had, even when it seemed like you had nothing, until you lost whatever precious little you could claim as yours.

Once more within the span of ten minutes, Ryiah was broken from her thoughts, but this time not by a laugh that spoke of the mentally instability she possessed and feared to be worsening, but instead from the sound of the solid stone door in front of her, admitting the form of her physical tormentor. Red skinned with two black horns curving up out of the top of his bald head along with a long, vicious scar that reached around the length of the left hand side of his face and neck before disappearing behind his shirt, the Devaronian that stood before was an almost perfect match the images of devils she had once witness on the holonet, the images having been drawing my a primitive culture on one of the planets within the Outer Rim.

Crouching down to stare into Ryiah’s mismatched red and blue eyes with his own coal black ones, the Devaronian, Gol – she knew his name to be even though he never allowed her to address him as anything other than Lord, reached up with one gloved hand, blackened leather creaking loudly within the terse silence that filled the space between the pair. Two fingers extended, Gol ran them along the width of Ryiah’s throat as he leaned in close enough that he could whisper without his words being lost and his heavy, warm breath could be felt rushing across her soft, purple skin.

“So, my dear, have you learnt your lesson yet? Or do you still need to be taught the proper manners when it comes to addressing your betters? Hm?” Gol’s voice did not match the fierce appearance he held and yet, with the threat hanging heavy and clear, the slightly nasal voice came across as slightly intimidating, especially when coupled with the greedy and lustful eyes that raked across Ryiah’s figure.

In reply, Ryiah snarled out a series of trills as the four lekku that hung down towards the floor twitched wildly, insult after insult in her own natural language flowing from between clenched teeth as she spat a series of vitriol at the man who dared to lay hands upon her. However, her trills were cut short when Gol’s gloved hand whipped across her face, causing Ryiah to collapse sideways onto her hands as the Devaronian now loomed above her. Glaring at him from between her hanging lekku, Ryiah simply spat out a glob of red blood onto the stone flooring as the vividly recounted, envisioned and various ways she would go about getting her vengeance ran through her mind.

“Well, it would seem that you still need to be taught.” A truly dark smirk split across Gol’s demonic face at this as he raised his non-gloved hand, his right, to point at her, sparks of blue lighting already arching across his outstretched fingers, spitting within the quiet of the cell. “Scream for me, my dear.”

And scream she did as fork after fork of the hissing electricity surged forwards and into her body, sending her into a series of spasms as he muscles clenched and released from the surges of lightning, her back arching until her spine felt like it was going to snap and her voice screamed out until she was sure that she could taste blood welling up within her throat. Eventually, the pain dropped off and the heavily injured and panting Togruta fell to the ground, body still twitching from the electricity that she had been forcible and painfully introduced to once more and a small line of liquid, a mix of blood and spit, dripped from the corner of her lips to run down her cheek, leaving a pinkish trail behind, with every hoarse pant. Chuckling darkly at the sight, Gol simply slipped out of the cell with little sound, not that Ryiah could muster the effort to pay attention to him, sliding the door that entombed her shut once more.

It took her a good hour to regain full control of her limbs and breathing before Ryiah was able to once more prop herself up into a sitting position, letting her body simply slump limply against the wall as she wiped away the trail of blood and spit with a vicious swipe of the back of her left hand. Silently, she promised herself that she would one day enact her revenge as one of her eyes, the one with the blood red pupil and the pitch black sclera, shone with a malicious gleam.