The Grip of Echoes

[Derriphan]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cYjyIhCizg

Malachor V, Ruins of the Tainted City

Eerie light colored the strange scenery in a ghostly green, grey dust glowing in the eternal twilight like a fading sun. Derriphan's search finally brought him here, the place he had so desperately tried to find in the last months. At first he had tried to force his way here through violence, cracking skulls and threatening scum week after week to no avail. Only when he realized that the clue he was following wasn't the product of chance but a carefully placed path to follow he began to make progress.

It already annoyed him enough that his creators had simply left him to rot on the smuggler moon, but the knowledge that it in truth was merely a game or test he had to play against his will made him utterly furious. Instead of trying to get answers from the typical scum, Derriphan began to interrogate the mystics, the cultists and other fanatic beggars of the lower levels. They quickly told him that the symbol of the hand wrapped around a broken world could only lead to one place alone. Malachor V, the lost and forgotten realm of a being they all refused to name. All they could tell him was that "his hand is endless."

As he stepped out of his ship, he was greet by a feeling of subliminal dread, gnawing at the very core of his mind. It was a darkness he had not thought possible, a darkness to which the derangedness of Nar Shaddaa was a single raindrop in an endless ocean. Wrapped in a wide grey mantle, his head hidden below his ski mask, and with his faithful shotgun tightly gripped by his hands, he marched towards the ruins before him.

What waited before him was twisted piece of art, born of mass delusion and blind fanaticism. Trash and junk pilled up into monuments, into a city that first grew to infinity and then seemingly crumbled into a broken mass in a single heartbeat. His vibrant green eyes took in his surrounding, unable to truly decipher what this place was or had been. The utter size of the place should've made it impossible to find something without even knowing what he was looking for, but the last standing tower, a black spire piercing into the darkened sky, eminated another kind of darkness then the world itself. It was sickening sweet, seductive, it called for him with a thousand voices in a thousands tongues he couldn't even begin to comprehend.

Silently the clone carried himself forwards, always glancing upwards towards his goal. So far he had not meet a single soul, and not even the sith that now ruled this part of the galaxy had taken notice of his presence, or if they did they had not begun to care.

[member="Darth Vesper"]

 

[Ras'kala'han]

The Prophet's hand is endless. Here, Darth Vesper had learned the bitter taste of loneliness. Deprivation. Defeat. Here, he had laid humiliated and deformed, and when his enemy vanished from the Galaxy and fell from every radar, he had been denied even the closure of revenge. This ruin was more than a ruin. It was an open wound. It was his greatest failure.

Of course he would revisit it, often. His anger was his sword. His grief was his shield. Here, he could sharpen them, and armor himself more fully in the power of darkness. He dreamed, in his mind, of the hollow Sith rising from some grave or distant moon, coming for him. What would he meet with? Not the Sith he left dying on the Tainted City's concrete, hauled away by his allies at the last moment, choking on air. He would meet someone with knowledge. With power. With conviction.

Dressed in the bare minimum - tight-clinging black slacks tucked into boots, his heavy greatcoat open to reveal a simple, sleeveless tunic - the thin, silver-haired Sith closed his eyes and reached out with his emotions. Reached out with his invisible presence to touch the places he knew, the places familiar to him, standing, arms crossed, atop a precarious tower of ruins and rubble, laden with jagged edges, torn metal, broken glass - and at the same time, soaring through the city in spirit.

Here, my fortress once parted the clouds to travel through the air, and here - here it lies now in ruins. Here, during the festivals I once painted murals on the walls of the city with commoners, and here those commoners were massacred by Imperial troops. Here, the foundation was laid. Here, the bombs fell.

Then, a pause. Here, a presence. Here, life, in defiance of all odds. A person. A flicker in the Force.

Vesper cocked an eyebrow. He had assumed, with all reason to, that the Cities were dead. This was unusual - looter? Or something else? His spoke words, and as he did, he whispered out with his will, with the power of the Force, and beckoned.

"Come to me."​

​

[member="Derriphan"]​

 

[Derriphan]

The path through the ruined city had left a strange impression on the clone's mind. Now matter how far he got, he didn't found an answer that offered a satisfactory explanation as to what purpose this place had served. Of course people had lived here, but in between fallen stones and rising mountains of rubble his eyes caught glimpses of altars and shrines, of paintings and sculptures, each one more absurd and deformed then those before it.

Despite the unsettling sensation that crawled over his skin with every step, calling him to move forwards, he forced himself to stop as the green that poured through the slits of his mask meet a picture on a wall that had not fully given in to the temptation of time and decay. He assumed that it had once looked much alike the one that had lead him here, only that cracks in the stone transformed the reaching hand into a grotesquely distorted claw piercing into a shattered world.

"Come to me."

Suddenly there was yet another whisper, another call, louder than the distant echo of the spire. The weapon in Derriphan's hands jumped around frantically, trying to find a threat that wasn't there for him to see. There was not a single hint of the being to which the voice belonged, only the faint twilight and dust dancing in the wind. Taking in a deep breath, the merc calmed his nerves. Maybe it was simply his mind playing tricks on him, paranoia hiding in the back of his mind, born from the darkness of the dead world he walked upon.

The alternative was far more horrifying. Maybe there was someone, or rather something, still alive within the dirt, maybe even the thing that held enough power to command countless people to construct a city sized symbol of its corrupting influence. His steps carried him further, but this time his weapon never lowered as he moved, always searching for a target in the distance.

As he moved around a corner, it finally found it. A far away figure, towering above him from a seemingly endless pile of rubbish. Keeping his weapon locked on the figure he walked slowly, expecting to be ambushed at every meter of the way.

[member="Darth Vesper"]

 

[Ras'kala'han]

[member="[/FONT][/SIZE]Derriphan"] was not the only one with concerns. As his senses crept outwards, Vesper too felt the distinct 'taste' of the darkness the city was embroiled with, the singular flavor of its perversion. The mark on the ruins. It could only be one being - person was hardly a word that applied to the hollow, yawning wellspring of living darkness that laid this latticework. One monster, one perversion, one wound in the fabric of the Force - though in a way, he was another.

[member="Darth Abyss"].

He sighed, shaking his head. Part of him had hoped that the specter had been extinguished. He had heard rumors of the figment challenging Darth Carnifex, the Sith Emperor, to a duel. No, that would not have been enough. Abyss was both the spider and the web, he was the symptom and the disease. A hollowness that pervaded. Something that would not die unless pulled out by the roots. And he was doubtlessly waiting to make his play for power.

This time, he would have to move first. Hopping down the precarious, multi-razored tower of garbage he had been balancing on, Vesper found himself a suitable square. Narrowing his eyes and bringing his will to bear, stone moved in a tortured grind against stone, and a simple structure wrenched itself from the low Earth. A throne, unadorned and unmarked. Vesper lay himself in it, cocking his head at an angle, rested against one arm.

He would wait for the object of his interest. Wait, to see who else had answered the silent and sonorous call of Malachor. Who else was touched - no, scarred - by the endless hand. And he would greet [member="Derriphan"], when he came, with a few simple words.

"Tell me, fellow traveler, what brings you to the corpse of a city?"

 

[Derriphan]

"Don't move. Who are you?"

The merc spat the words out, a mix of confusion and suppressed fear resounding within them. To underline that he wasn't interested in doing smalltalk, he aimed the weapon clawed into his gloves at the man before him. It did little to hide that the sight of the figure transforming the trash and rubble around him into a throne through sheer strength of will scared his fragile mind. Could this be the thing that had ruled this place before its downfall? Derriphan didn't had the answers once again, but the show of power made it impossible to rule it out.

Normally his faithful gun brought him some sense of control and calm, but even his infant mind, just barely awoken to the greater forces that truly ruled over the fate of the galaxy, had been able to decipher that it would most likely fail him should it come to a fight. The man before him was vibrant with energy, similar yet different than that of the spire. At the same time it was a single drop in the vast dark ocean that was Malachor while also shining through it like a blacklight. He was yet to meet a sith, but the tales he had heard in the fifthly bars of Nar Shaddaa at least shared some pieces with the strange figure.

He silently waited for the man to answer, but his own quietness was not shared by the ruins around him. Instead the spire was growing louder, like it was refusing to allow the stranger to speak clearly. He still was unable to understand the echoes, but they clearly had a distaste for the man that they didn't had for the merc himself. Even without the words, the command within them was unmistakably to kill the other, a task the clone wouldn't execute without further questions. For all he knew the spire could quite as well be his enemy as the figure before him.

[member="Darth Vesper"]

 

[Ras'kala'han]

Vesper's lip curled briefly, and the voices of the planet - if the planet it truly was - whispering, whispering in his ear told him to hurt this man before him. This wretch, who was so bold as to dare to point his petty weapon at him, who presumed that he of all people could make demands of him and threaten him, the susurrance of the city told him to humiliate him, to lash out, to teach him the limits of what could be inflicted and what could be endured, and leave his prey twitching but alive on the pavement, helpless in anticipation of a lifetime of nightmares that he might one day take his vengeance in full -

And the Sith breathed. Running a hand through his silver hair and regarding [member="Derriphan"] through the gap between two fingers, Vesper considered how wrong this all was. That this planet was suddenly exerting a sinister will, rather than its usual aimless despair. That the city, empty, had somehow subtly been reconfigured without the notice of those involved, the moment their eyes had turned away, as though something had been waiting. That the two travelers would stumblе across one another, as though by coincidence, on all the vastness of such a massive planet.

It had his fingerprints all over it. He could see it even now, stretching out from that one wasteland wandered - a hair-thin thread attached to a clawed, armored finger, the smirking creature lying in wait in the shadows, as though asking him "What are you going to do now, cripple?"

I'm going to play another round of your game. Same rules. Same battleground, even, if you wish it. Winner take all.

When he raised his voice in reply to the question of the being before him, it was with all the weight of the Force's persuasive power behind him. A pulse of sheer, domineering will, accompanied by a contemptuous gesture with his left hand. "Lower your weapon."

"Who am I? Several steps out of your league, for starters. I am... the custodian of Malachor, presently. Someone charged with making sure that these ruins sleep, and stay asleep. So when something wakes up here, it concerns me. Pressingly. Now then, my friend, care for an introduction? The more detailed, of course, the more unpleasantness we can avoid."

 

[Derriphan]

Derriphan's mind had nothing to offer in response to the mental might that hammered into his head by the will of the stranger, and yet the weapon trembled in his hands as the spire issued a command of its own, once more prompting him to fire on the man before him. It wasn't the fear that got him, but the feeling of being lost and without control not only over his surroundings but himself, the feeling of having no agency in this fight of power, the feeling of being merely a pawn in the hands of beings in a way he couldn't even fully understand.

"BE QUITE"

The clone stumbled backwards, and the weapon dropped to the ground, as a hint of pungent yellow flashed through his green eyes while the words were sprouted towards the spire with almost unnatural volume. Catching his footing he came to a stop, breathing heavily like he had just physically exhausted himself. The flash of yellow had already faded as the straightened himself up again and looked at the stranger before him, his mind trying to work out what to tell him. It was no question that he to tell him something, or else he would share a fate with the rubble throne he sat upon.

"I ... I am Derriphan."

Derriphan. To the clone it was a word written on his tank, but to [member="Darth Vesper"] it could easily be something else. Derriphan, Devourer in the old language of the Sith, like a certain, ancient kind of spawn created to leech away the essence of living things.

The merc reached into his pocket and pulled out the crumbled piece of paper, showing it to the stranger. Drawn on it was a strangely shaped hand, held over a half broken world shrouded in a ghostly green fog.

"This brought me here. This and the search for answers."

By now Derriphan was honestly considering if his desire for answers was strong enough to keep him from just making a run back to his ship. The fact the he remained locked in place answered the silent question to himself.