They Come In The Night

[Cedric Grayson]

It had taken many months to find this place.

The few resources that yet remained at his disposal had been utterly expended on this hunt. Bridges had been burned and a handful of lives lost to acquire knowledge pertaining to the decrepit thing, but then everything had a cost.

Better the lives of a few gangsters than innocent citizens.

Ambria approached on the vector like a blotch of dust on his cockpit window. The Voidwalker shivered as its stifling presence washed over him. This world was dead, and the remnants of its final demise lingered like festering tumors within the realm of the ethereal. The actions undertaken upon this world had led to the very shaping of the galaxy, and so few knew of its real significance. Perhaps that it was better that they didn't. Knowledge was a dangerous thing, and certain knowledge was not meant for the minds of mortals.

To destroy the arch-enemy one needed to understand them. Only a few could stand to do so without succumbing to the temptations of forbidden knowledge; one could had to be careful when they stared into the abyss.

Thus the Voidwalker had opted to take this journey alone.

His vessel slipped through the dust choked skies as silently as could be managed. It was a sliver of midnight in an otherwise colorless sky, the engines throttling down to a low hum as it made the final descent toward a lake of blackened waters.

It was the only source of water for many miles, though that bore little importance as to the Voidwalker's choice of landing site. He wouldn't be drinking from these accursed tides.

The cockpit hissed as it came open. A warm dry heat immediately assaulted the Voidwalker, along with something far more sinister. The spirits of thousands bound into the lake's tides cried out as his coming; their combined presence smashed against his mental walls.

But the walls did not break.

Leather boots crunched as he fell onto the dirt. The Voidwalker cast a short look about, frowned, and drew his cowl forward. This was an evil place, and one he would be wise to avoid lingering in. His purpose lay only a few miles to the north in a series of old abandoned caves that stood as a vanguard for the hidden ruins underneath.

It was there that he would find his quarry. Such a powerful talisman could not be left unattended, lest it fall into the hands of those that would use it to bring about ruin once again.

Once he was satisfied his vessel was secured, the long walk began.

[member="Darth Abyss"]

 

[Darth Abyss]

The Talisman of Karness Muur was a price that Abyss eyes already long ago had set upon. During the creation of his armor, the cursed shell he linked his spirit to in his quest to transcendence, he had searched for the wisdom of Muur, the first sith to alter the art of essence transfer into its most unnatural form, the anchoring of a spirit to a lifeless object in utter defiance of the fragile laws of reality. In a secret laboratory below Korriban's desert he had found notes and scrolls documenting the spells used by Muur to archive the link of his spirit to his talisman, but not the artifact itself. Since then his agents had been constantly searching for clues, tidbits and breadcrumbs that slowly forged a hidden path through the emptiness of space that found its end on the dead world of Ambria.

The Phasma Class Infiltrator traversed through the atmosphere of the tainted world below, the small stealth vessel obscured from sight by a cloak of shadows. Once the ship drifted over the surface Abyss reached for the console, disabling any navigation systems. His sense in the force was sharp for many things, future, past, great minds but nothing he could hear echo clearer then the forbidden, ancient knowledge of the past ages. The Mindeater heard the call of the artifact, its seductive whisper overpowering the screaming cacophony of death that lingered upon every inch of Ambria.

His path lead towards the northern caves, the taint of the ruins below resounding through the dark stones between them. The ship began a slow descend along the black water flowing through the broken surface, reaching the ground not to far away from the cave's entrance.

From it the eldritch husk emerged, a rusty, broken construct of twisted alchemy, deranged magic, cold metal and unstoppable hunger for devouring every little piece of knowledge until nothing but the Mindeater himself would be left. The steps of the entity left no sound, and his aura was swallowed by the darkness of the world itself, his presence in the force shaped and formed to mirror that of Ambria through his mastery over trickery and deception. Like a ghost he walked over the dead stones, the staff in his right and the rune engraved book on his belt marking him as a mighty warlock that commanded the arcane arts. Below his mask, a piece of wood crafted in tribal fashion, and crown, an anarchic artifact composed of crudely tied together crystal splitters and metal bits, was the mechanical jaw of the hollow figure, fixed into a wicked grin of eternal mockery.

On the horizon the entrance into the caves began to come closer, until only minutes departed him from the object of his deepest desire.

[member="The Voidwalker"]

 

[Cedric Grayson]

The amount of time that passed during the Voidwalker's travels was difficult to tell. Time seemed to work differently on Ambria; there was no healthy cycle of change to balance out the nature of the world. It seemed as if the ash choked skies were ever cast and a murderous red light, the land itself having been scoured of any kind of greenery centuries ago. The lone Jedi walked through the land of the dead, though he bore its depravity as stoically as any knight.

The thought of simply folding the space about him to travel through the unseen lines within the netherworld and end up at the caves more quickly had occurred to him, but there was far too much risk in such an endeavor. He did not know of the foul warding that guarded the place, nor did he wish to expend any of his energies when he might very well need them later.

And so he had walked, just as his unseen adversary had done the same. He traveled in a similar way to the Mindeater, though the means in which he accomplished this varied greatly. His presence was eternally bound to be a simple wave in an ocean; it was more natural for him now to hide it away than to express it within the realm of the ethereal as most did. Thus it was that the two only came into contact with one another at the entrance of the caves; one bound in arcane bindings and various relics, the other shrouded in cloth that seemed to repel all light from its surface.

One bore a visage of a smiling demon, the other of the void itself.

The Voidwalker came to a halt ten paces away from this figure as he rounded a rocky crevice. The metal staff hanging from his back was in his hands within the fraction of a second.

"You're hidden from me. Very few people can manage that," he spoke, his voice like that of a gale of wind due to the distortion in reality caused by his trappings. The shrouded man tilted his head toward the cave; a rather simply hole two men wide and just as tall carved into the side of a craggy mountain.

No one was supposed to know of this place save for himself. This man no shadow.

"You come for the talisman?"

[member="Darth Abyss"]

 

[Darth Abyss]

It was a rare occasion that Abyss was surprised due to the third eye that allowed him to look far into the future, but when his supernatural perception suddenly lingered upon the figure of [member="The Voidwalker"] he felt a short, all to human, burst of confusion that raged in his chaotic mind for a glimpse of a second. Few could hide their presence from him, but even less masked it so masterful that even the echo of their birth was obscured in the endless river of time. It was a trait so far only his master and his acolyte brother, both council members of the sith assassins, had accomplished. Abyss wasn't even able to determine the alignment of the man he encountered, and the clothes that shrouded him allowed for little insight into his nature.

"What talisman? I came to enjoy the untouched beauty of Ambria."

His voice was more akin to incomprehensible noise than to words of a human, an distorted echo both in the physical realm and in the forcer that emerged not from the husk himself, but shaped from thin air around the two. Even without the twisted laugh that followed, a sound of the same nature then his voice only slightly more disturbing, it was clear that his words were the exact opposite of the truth.

The twilight of the dead world reflected in rusty steel of the arcane construct, the dim shimmer framing the wretched glory of his conduit to act in the mortal realm. Casually the husk moved forward, reaching inside his robe not for a weapon but for a small pipe formed of clay, shaped to mirror the head of a dragon. The small runes engraved into the trinket began to glow in crimson red, magic fire igniting the Korriban Incense inside the pipe. He locked the artifact between the sharp teeth of his mechanical jaw, a motion that looked disturbingly unnatural.

"I am Darth Abyss, often referred to as the Mindeater. It is always pleasing to meet another seeker of ancient wisdom."

He stepped closer, extending his right to offer the man a handshake. From his hollow eyes his slightly opened jaw smoke began to emerge, the unpleasant scent of the incense filling the air with vibrant arcane energy. Abyss had taken countless lives on the path of his dark fate, but he never had been a mindless slaughterer that preferred his saber over the might of words. He desired to seduce, corrupt, deceive and ultimately manipulate others into doing his bidding, not to dominate or destroy them.