In The Shadow Of Conflict

[Xevek Nekonis]

In The Shadow Of Conflict, One Shadow Consumes Another​

A single cloaked figure scrolled through silent metal corridors, his bare feet making so sound against the artificial flooring as the dark coloured cloak swayed around his ankles. His face was cloaked in shadow, hidden from view by the cowl that was drawn up and over his head. Just as no facial features could be discerned, so could no physical features as the folds and layer of the cloak settled across his form in such away that the outline of his form was obscured and hidden. As a result of this, anyone who had the chance to lay eyes upon the man could not tell anything beyond his gender, not even as to whether or not he was armed and prepared for combat.

Eventually, the figure would be joined by a second, similarly cloaked figure, although this one was without the cowl hiding its face. As such, in the low lit conditions of the corridors, the second figure could be seen as a tanned Zabrak with thin, strangely red hair that was swept back into a ponytail, leaving rounded horns to surge upwards as if they were hunks of pale rock emerging out of a river fire. The second figure was around average in height and, as such, it could be recognised that the first male was taller than the average humanoid. Lines of tattoos twisted their way across his skin, accompanied by a fine layer of extremely pale scar tissue.

The two would walk together in silence, the second following the first as he lead them on a twisting path, however, eventually, the first male would breech the silence, his voice kept low and quiet, yet the deep and gravelly tone still easily carried in the silence. "Have any been this far in, yet, Strok?"

No response would come for a few seconds, long enough for the pair to travel another couple of meters, but it did eventually come. The second male's voice was by no means as gruff as the first, yet it did hold a slight growl to it. "No, none. I do believe that it is still only myself and Lord Ferox that know of the Mask outside of yourself, Lord Lykos."

As the first would grunt in satisfaction at the answer, the pair would continue on for a few more minuets, silence once more reigning between them, before they would come across a blastdoor. Stepping forwards, the cloaked male would pull back the hood of his robes to reveal the face of Darth Lykos: tanned skin; deep, tortured received scars; black tattoos; malformed skull along the right side of his face; empty right eye socket and dark, ashen grey hair and all. Bending down slightly, his burnt orange eye would become level with a retinal scanner, rather outdated but still useful technology, for a few seconds before a low tone would ring out and the blastdoors would open slightly, enough for one person at a time to step through.

Pulling the hood of his robes back up once more, obscuring his facial features again, Lykos stepped into the room beyond the doors with grace and immediately approached the platform in the center of the spacious area. Along the walls, turrets tracked his every movement, directed by the array of motion, heat, sound and environmental sensors that were concealed out of view. Hovering above the platform, held in place by a force field, was a Mask carved out of bleached bone in a shape very reminiscent of a skull.

Slowly, Lykos would pace around the Mask, looking at it from all angles, including the Force, before he would speak, his voice echoing in the chamber. "I know that you can see me. I am no fool, My Lady. It matters not what words you tempt me with. I shall not bear the Mask. Not 'till you enter the realm of Nath. Do not reach out to me again." His final words echoing behind him, Lykos immediately left the room, the doors once more sealing behind him as a strangled, barely-there, ethereal scream of rage would sound out behind him.

Half an hour later would find Lykos within his quarters within the forward base, looking out of the transparasteel windows at the view of the planet Athiss bellow. The base had not been crafted by the Sith Assassins, rather it had been made centuries on the past by a long dead version of the Jedi Order and Galactic Republic that had wished to study the planet bellow. The Iridonian had only seen it fitting that the Assassins make use of the base since he and his were soon to be investigating the planet so that he would be able to find the Temple the writings had spoken of. Of course, what none but Strok and Darth Ferox knew was that he had already ventured down to the planet, not in pursuit of the Temple but in pursuit of the relic now sealed away within the base, the Mask of Vele.

Sighing, turning away from the view, Lykos pulled the datapad containing the information of the Temple he sought and began to read through it again. Maybe there had been something that he had missed that would narrow down the location of the headquarters of this rumoured Sect.

 

[Darth Abyss]

Darth Abyss had heard the call of his acolyte brother, [member="Darth Lykos"] that ordered all those somewhat loyal to the Sith assassins to the world of Athiss. Why exactly was beyond his knowledge, but the Lykos was one of the few sith Abyss had something akin to trust to, mainly because he believed that everyone who had to suffer through the training under Ophidia and survived had to have a high level of skill. Strength and intelligence. He never had been to heavily involved with the assassin, his connection had more to do with his master and acolyte brother than with work he had done in their name. Still he respected the organization, as they other than many sith groups understood his desire to stay in the shadows and act from there instead of burning and breaking the galaxy in one big storm.

The base he walked through seemed old, guessing from the architecture somewhere in the time of the old, old republic, maybe during the war that followed revans disappearance and reemergence, maybe a bit later. The way the republic build military bases was reality stagnant, and pinpointing the right timeframe was borderline impossible even to someone like him that saw himself as a historian of sorts. It wasn't really important anyway, the base seemed like just one step of a bigger plan the other Sith lord had, a plan he would hopefully learn soon enough.

Shrouded in his typical tattered black robe which had quite a few new damages, cuts and burns, he moved towards Lykos quarters, so he could ask the assassins leader personally what was going on. His face hidden behind his mask he moved like a shadow, silent and unseen until he reached the door. With his right he knocked two times before entering without waiting for an answer. Lykos might was leader of the assassin but they were both lords of roughly equally strength, so he saw no need for being overly polite.

"Lord Lykos?"

His voice lacked any emotions, the hunger to know what he didn't carefully hidden behind a mask of apathy. No one needed to see how far his obsession was gone by now, no one needed to know how much it haunted him to not know something without the possibility of learning it from a book or text in his library.

 

[Xevek Nekonis]

The datapad that Lykos had been scrolling through, as he had been searching through the previously gathered data in the hopes of finding the Temple spoken about in the chamber that had housed the Mask that now sat within the depths of the forward operating base, had long since been set aside and now sat next to a corner atop the desk that was pushed off to the side of the cramped room. Having stripped himself of the robes that he commonly wore, now laying where they had landed when the Zabrak had tossed them onto the bed, Lykos currently stood in front of the transparasteel window that offered him a view of Athiss; clad only in a pair of leather, armoured trousers, a sheathed sword at his hip and a basic set of leather armour that rested on his otherwise bared torso. With his head bowed forwards to the point that his chin resting on his chest, eye closed and hands clasped behind his back - the cybernetic arm clearly visible now that the robe that usually covered had been removed - Lykos was stood in a pose reminiscent to how his Master had stood on occasion.

When the door behind him would open after two quick knocks and a cold, stoic and emotionless voice would speak out into the silence that he had been stood in, Lykos did not move beyond raising his head slightly so that his now open eye could stare directly at the reflection of the Sith that had entered his current personal room. His lack of action was not born through arrogance nor through the belief that it would be impossible for a situation to occur in which someone could enter and strike him in the back as some could have guessed. Instead, it was born from a sense of abnormal serenity, an all encompassing tide of emotion, that stilled his body as his mind was delving into the mysteries, waves and ebbing flows of the Force as he sought to gleam a sight of the future using the techniques crafted by his ancestors. That, and the fact that he had know that someone was approaching and was ready to act at the first sign of danger. After all, one could hide their sounds as much as they liked, but their scent was what would give them away.

"Lord Abyss." Barely had Abyss finished addressing him when Lyos spoke up himself, for the identity of the one that sought to disrupt his private moments spent in thought had already been acknowledge. After training himself in his senses for these specific situation, Lykos did not need long after meeting someone to recognise and memorise their individual scent.

As the two words, barely louder than a whisper, would fade to silence, Lykos would not speak up again. Instead, he would be staring past and through the reflection of Abyss at the slowly rotating planet of Athiss below him. Somewhere, lost within vegetation and cold sands was a Temple that had passed beneath the gazes of Sith and Jedi, Empires and Republics, alike since times long since past. A Temple that had once housed the populous of a group that held the same ideals as Darth Lykos did, ideals that revolved around operating within the Shadows and bellow notice. The ideals of true Assassins who were practitioners of the Dark.

"Doutir fej sharee?" The words would be muttered in a language that was a mix of guttural and harsh syllables and rolling, rumbling growls from within the chest and back of the throat alike, the language that Lykos had been brought up on, Ul'Zabrak, High Zabrak, the language that prefaced and birthed the commonly known and more recent Zabrak, the language that was now solely spoke by historians of Iridonia and by the Blod'Ru, the Nomad Clans, of the Wild Plains of the desert Planet. The three words he had uttered were simple in meaning, translating simply to 'where are you'.

Turning his gaze away from the view before him, Lykos would turn to face Abyss directly, allowing his Acolyte Brother to gaze directly upon the malformed right side of his face and right ocular from where bone had not been properly reconstructed, his missing right eye and long, dreadlocked ashen hair that was woven around jagged Orat horns. "Lord Abyss," the repeated words would hang heavy in the air for a moment before he would continue, "what reason has compelled you to seek me out?"



[member="Darth Abyss"]

(EDIT NOTES: Nothing big was changed, not really, just retagging you as a matter of cutesy to let you know that there were a few changes.)

 

[Darth Abyss]

Abyss heard the other lord mutter in a language he didn't know, and while his mask amplified the ability to comprehend unknown words it wasn't very effective without any prior knowledge about said language. He could only guess that it was the language of [member="Darth Lykos"] race, the zabrak, but beyond that he couldn't figure out anything about it. The mans behaviour didn't really surprised him anymore, Lykos was an eccentric even more than Abyss himself, and it was borderline impossible to see beyond the mask the zabrak had chosen today.

With a small smile he noticed the mans stance, hand clasped behind his back, mimicking the stance their master Darth Ophidia often chose. It was a behaviourism that both men had implement in themselves, as Abyss often chose the stance when teaching his apprentice.

As he turned to him, and asked for his reasons of being here, Abyss took a moment to think about his answer. He had eyes and ears everywhere, and the force did the rest, but the real reason why he was here was simple. He was here, to find out why Lykos was here, and why there was noticeable assassin activity on this seemingly unimportant world. When he set foot on Athiss he quickly felt the presence of something dark, and the fact that he could feel it from so far away already allowed him to figure that it was the presence of an artifact or relic of sorts, the only thing he could sense even over a great distance.

"It appeared to me that something is about to happen. Both my agents and the force told me as much."

He stepped to the window, now looking in the surface below and away from Lykos, trying to pinpoint the location of the presence, but failing like had when he landed on the planet.

"I can feel there is something hidden away on this world, a object that echoes through the force, calling from a faded past. But it is not calling for me, Lord Lykos, in fact it seems to actively resist my attempts to hear it clearly. I can only figure that this object is your reason for being here."

 

[Xevek Nekonis]

A low hum would be all the response that Abyss would receive to his words before silence would fall between the two Assassins. Unlike if he was in a situation where his words might be important, situations where alliances would need to be forged based upon the words chosen along with the specific mask he would use to converse, Lykos did not feel the need to speak more than he would need to. For the Iridonian, silence was something that he preferred over baseless, meaningless and mindless chatter. That was not to say that he held no leanings towards long lengths of speech, indeed, he probably was guilty of doing so more often than not. But, he did not group long speeches with chatter in the end. As such, the silence would remain unbroken even as Lykos would move himself from his silent watch at the window to move over to the desk of to the side.

Still, eventually, the silence would have to be broken, as the question put forward by Abyss, unasked as it was, hung heavily within the air. As such, a heavy sigh would rumble out from the Zabrak's throat as he would pause in shuffling through the flimsiplast on the desk, beginning instead to steadily tap one of his clawed fingers against the metal, the steady beat filling the small room. "I'm surprised, Lord Abyss. Not at your ability to sense such truths from this planet. I have no doubt that yourself, or many others, have such an ability to discern such facts through the Force. Even if I, myself, do not hold such a skill." Lykos held no reservations revealing such a fact to his fellow Sith as, in the end, he did not foresee it as having any negative repercussions. "No, indeed, what I am surprised at is the fact that you cannot sense what is contained within these very walls."

Turning around to stare at Abyss fully now, Lykos would shift in place, subconsciously grasping his hands behind his back once more. "You are correct, what you sense is what had brought me to this place. But, it is not an item as you so believe. Said item is locked away within this very structure. 'Till I can find a way to remove it from the presence of those that may well be foolish enough to listen to its whispers. No, what you sense is a place. A building. A temple. From what little I have discovered on it, it served as the home of a Sect of Assassins years past. Before the loss of information within the 400 Year Darkness. Anything else seems to have been lost or purposefully removed. And I only know this much from stumbling across the relic contained here. I know not where it is, I know not how it looks nor what state it is in nor what information, if any, may have survived the sands of time. Yet, I do seek it."

Falling silent once more, Lykos would cock his head in rumination before nodding slightly. "I would, if you will permit, ask something of you, Lord Abyss. I..."

Whatever it was that Lykos was about to say would be cut off immediately as a wave ran through the Force. Immediately, his hand would fall to his sword, drawing it from his sheath, while a snarl of anger would pull at his lips. The feeling of death and betrayal ran strong within the Force.

"It would seem that some Assassins have seen fit to try and usurp those above them. Will you assist me in erasing this scum? In delivering them to the embrace of Nath and relieving them off their lives?"


[member="Darth Abyss"]
OOC Note: Just remembered about this when I remembered about the Mask of Vene. Hope that you are still okay with, maybe, continuing this.

 

[Darth Abyss]

Abyss extended his senses through the force, searching for whatever was hidden right here in this complex, but while he was able to feel something, it did not call for him. His relationship to artifacts was special, it had reached a level that most sith couldn't comprehend, and with it he wasn't just able to tell to sense them, but to listen to then finer details in their echo. He could say exactly if a object was meant for him or not, and while he was a collector, he respected what the force told him.

Then he reached out for the temple, and now knowing what it was, it became far easier to him to pick up on the whispers in the force that told about the place. It was strangely obscured, but he had little doubt that he would be able to unravel the mysteries around it, once he would be close enough to touch the ancient stones with his own flesh.

"I see now. The temple will not be able to keep his secrets hidden from me, of that I am certain."

The next piece of information was worrying. Heretics inside the assassins were dangerous, as they traversed the shadows alike the two sith lords. While they could easily kill warriors and soldiers from out of the shadows, other assassins would need a different approach to be brought to their end. They would have to pull them out of the darkness, where they would be able to kill them. Neither Abyss nor Lykos were really warriors, but as two lords that stood on top of the organisation they still stood far above anyone else that could try to interfere with their business.

"You have my blade, brother. No one will rule over the assassins besides the council as long as there is even a drop of passion inside me."

[member="Darth Lykos"]