Falcon Darkflight
09-19-06, 05:43 AM
It was a rivalry with the utmost intensity. Canen knew this. He felt it, every single tinge of excitement, every pump of his black heart.
Sipping the final slither of brandy from the bottom of a crystal glass, savouring its strong flavour as it splashed the lining of his throat with a warm tingle, he tipped his head back and allowed a rush to sweep over him. The feeling that coursed through his veins whenever he had faced his brutally tough adversary, it could have been described as an almost controlled hatred. The feeling of absolute abhorrence, controlled and focused and narrowed down into an emotion that had the force of such an extreme emotion without the spite. It gave Canen the fuel he needed to fight, to win.
Even more so now.
The bottom of the glass tumbler slowly touched the gleaming marble surface of the small table in the waiting room of the Citadel, a quiet, humble space that allowed a contestant to rest and prepare before their predetermined appointment in the arena. At this time Canen was sat alone, weaponless, for the monks would only allow such tools in the arena alone, a rather sudden change in attitude towards security, it seemed. Fair enough. After all, it would probably be easier to tear this place apart from the inside out, and one could never be too sure what kind of darkness would surface in these times.
Canen peered into the bottom of the empty glass, checking for any remaining liquid, and cast his mind back onto Kaiser. His memories of him had almost always been of war, of blood. The Silvet was a mass of complexes on the inside, much like a labyrinth. In mythology, tales of one who would work his way through the twisting maze, slowly learning the path as he went, testing each corner along the way to try and make progress, to try and find the heart were more often than not. This was not so different from his experiences with Kai. It had taken many years to figure the Silvet out as well as he had done, and yet there was so much more underneath that lay undiscovered, the far reaches of a "maze" of personality, history and legend.
This intrigued Canen. Why? He liked to know his rivals, how they behaved, what they knew, what they knew about what he knew, and so on. He could gauge himself against the Silvet, use his strength as a comparison to his own. But that wasn't the problem. The conflict lay in the fact that one part of Kai was the happy-go-lucky and somewhat predictable exterior, but the far deadlier part of him was the hidden beast, the very beating heart of that twisted maze. No matter how much he tried to compare himself to his counterpart, the Nocturn hadn't been there to see what new things the Silvet had accomplished.
But, after all, that could be a good thing. He needed the challenge.
He also reminded himself that Kaiser had likewise been absent for the majority of his own experiences. Canen, through various means such as the Lornius Corporate Challenge and most recently The Cell, had gotten stronger. This kind of strength was not a single definition: physically, mentally and spiritually he had gone all out and expanded his horizons, pushing himself to and past his limits with every droplet of strength he could muster. Canen had spent every waking minute in the aftermath of his defeats to learn and re-learn his strengths and weaknesses, to take everything he thought he knew back to school to learn it again. And again. Through his almost endless endeavour to better himself, he had reached a level of strength previously unknown to him, ascending, shattering the barriers he himself had erected, perhaps without knowing it.
"Canen, your arena is ready..."
The call came after what seemed like a lifetime. Canen rose to his feet, smiling as the last sentence raced through his mind. He had ascended. He had finally surpassed himself. Surpassed other people's expectations of him. Surpassed even what Gideon expected of him. After a lifetime of training, fighting, meditating and learning, after an age of pain, loss and blood, only now did he realise, did he understand what it meant to be a true Nocturn.
As the white noise portal whirled into life in front of him, inside a small beige stone cove, Canen stopped for a moment. He looked back at the puzzled monk, momentarily closed his eyes, and spoke softly.
"Tell Kaiser to come straight in. Don't keep him waiting..."
The monk looked further perplexed. "...What is so special about all of this, if you don't mind me asking?"
Canen simply smiled. "...unfinished business..."
With that said, the Nocturn fizzed out of view through the bright blanket, and the room fell back into preoccupied silence.
***********************************
The glowing orange and scarlet hues of the looming sunset lit up the horizon, a soft blanket of light falling upon the many silvery obelisks grounded on a wide stretch of tarmac that was secluded by a green belt of fir trees. A river of stone landing pads meandered through the docking bays of the airfield, each one sloping up to the open and empty cargo bays of the experimental airships that had often been seen passing over the dark palace of Valsoth, delivering their huge quotas of coal to power the ever burning furnaces of the black workshop.
As the sun slowly kissed the metallic airfoil surface of the buoyant vessels, Canen felt the lukewarm breeze of the dusk wrap him up in a veil, the sensation of touch the first sense to come to life in this magically emulated arena. The remnants of his body came together in a fashion similar to a mirror smashing in reverse, the fragments of flesh and bone fitting together like the finished product of a childs puzzle board. As sight, smell and hearing all followed suit in a sensory wave, Canen took the first stable footsteps across the stone decking towards the hangar area, his black coat whipping the chipped surface as it trailed.
The large airships, moored by lengthy steel cables to their docks quite securely, seemed dull and lifeless up close. The hangar area, located behind the moorings, further discoloured the surroundings with a boring and sore grey scheme that did nothing to satisfy the imagination. Its structure towered over two of the silver ships, its rusted wrought iron doors slightly ajar with only a crack of darkness peeking through the gap.
Canen's eyes complained, sliding over the horrible terrain with disdain. Even he, the epitome of black, couldn't stand to see such mind numbingly ordinary decor.
But admiring the scenery was not something one came to the Citadel for. The reason for his disgust was simple: He couldn't find anything he could use to his advantage on the outside. It was mainly all flat tarmac, christened with the occasional airship that was too big to use in any form anyway. Their shape meant they were difficult to climb. The cockpits were locked. The cargo bays were empty and contained nothing of interest.
It was only when he headed into the hangar his emerald eyes lit up like two blazing fires of hope, strolling past the massive cargo vessels without so much as blinking another eye towards them. Putting all of his strength into his powerful arms, the Nocturn forced the creaking iron doors further apart, the rusting metal almost disintegrating on their buckled iron rails as they slowly screeched open. When the sliding panels finally came to a stop, the dusk's light poured through the gap and illuminated the hangar.
The first thing he noticed was the sheer size of the depot, which was easily large enough to hold two full airships side by side, and did. The airships in question were, or didn't appear to be, the same proportion as the other ones out on the airfield. Instead these were much smaller, about half the size of their counterparts and were moored to the floor with an anchor on each side of the airfoil via a set of interlinked chains. Their shape was also different: each one had a half spherical underbelly with a flat deck at the top, which overhung the forward tip of the ship. There was no cockpit. Instead, some sort of scaffold rails twisted around and under both vessels, giving the impression they were still under construction. Or deconstruction. Either way, these airships looked very similar to the experimental ones used by Alerar.
Canen paced around the hangar, and peered upwards. Above him, a metal plate about a metre in width served as a walkway on a 'first floor', level with the decks of the two airships without a handrail. There were many cables, hooks, pulleys and cranes hanging from the depot ceiling, all of which seemed to be used for hauling equipment up and down the scaffold.
"Perfect." Canen muttered under his breath. This was much more like it. It was clear to see that this was the intended battleground for his challenge, abundant with resources and tools to use. The plain, untrained eye would see that this was simply an airship hangar. For Canen and Kaiser, this would be a vast playground of pain.
"When a pencil needs sharpening, you use a razorblade to do it..."
Sipping the final slither of brandy from the bottom of a crystal glass, savouring its strong flavour as it splashed the lining of his throat with a warm tingle, he tipped his head back and allowed a rush to sweep over him. The feeling that coursed through his veins whenever he had faced his brutally tough adversary, it could have been described as an almost controlled hatred. The feeling of absolute abhorrence, controlled and focused and narrowed down into an emotion that had the force of such an extreme emotion without the spite. It gave Canen the fuel he needed to fight, to win.
Even more so now.
The bottom of the glass tumbler slowly touched the gleaming marble surface of the small table in the waiting room of the Citadel, a quiet, humble space that allowed a contestant to rest and prepare before their predetermined appointment in the arena. At this time Canen was sat alone, weaponless, for the monks would only allow such tools in the arena alone, a rather sudden change in attitude towards security, it seemed. Fair enough. After all, it would probably be easier to tear this place apart from the inside out, and one could never be too sure what kind of darkness would surface in these times.
Canen peered into the bottom of the empty glass, checking for any remaining liquid, and cast his mind back onto Kaiser. His memories of him had almost always been of war, of blood. The Silvet was a mass of complexes on the inside, much like a labyrinth. In mythology, tales of one who would work his way through the twisting maze, slowly learning the path as he went, testing each corner along the way to try and make progress, to try and find the heart were more often than not. This was not so different from his experiences with Kai. It had taken many years to figure the Silvet out as well as he had done, and yet there was so much more underneath that lay undiscovered, the far reaches of a "maze" of personality, history and legend.
This intrigued Canen. Why? He liked to know his rivals, how they behaved, what they knew, what they knew about what he knew, and so on. He could gauge himself against the Silvet, use his strength as a comparison to his own. But that wasn't the problem. The conflict lay in the fact that one part of Kai was the happy-go-lucky and somewhat predictable exterior, but the far deadlier part of him was the hidden beast, the very beating heart of that twisted maze. No matter how much he tried to compare himself to his counterpart, the Nocturn hadn't been there to see what new things the Silvet had accomplished.
But, after all, that could be a good thing. He needed the challenge.
He also reminded himself that Kaiser had likewise been absent for the majority of his own experiences. Canen, through various means such as the Lornius Corporate Challenge and most recently The Cell, had gotten stronger. This kind of strength was not a single definition: physically, mentally and spiritually he had gone all out and expanded his horizons, pushing himself to and past his limits with every droplet of strength he could muster. Canen had spent every waking minute in the aftermath of his defeats to learn and re-learn his strengths and weaknesses, to take everything he thought he knew back to school to learn it again. And again. Through his almost endless endeavour to better himself, he had reached a level of strength previously unknown to him, ascending, shattering the barriers he himself had erected, perhaps without knowing it.
"Canen, your arena is ready..."
The call came after what seemed like a lifetime. Canen rose to his feet, smiling as the last sentence raced through his mind. He had ascended. He had finally surpassed himself. Surpassed other people's expectations of him. Surpassed even what Gideon expected of him. After a lifetime of training, fighting, meditating and learning, after an age of pain, loss and blood, only now did he realise, did he understand what it meant to be a true Nocturn.
As the white noise portal whirled into life in front of him, inside a small beige stone cove, Canen stopped for a moment. He looked back at the puzzled monk, momentarily closed his eyes, and spoke softly.
"Tell Kaiser to come straight in. Don't keep him waiting..."
The monk looked further perplexed. "...What is so special about all of this, if you don't mind me asking?"
Canen simply smiled. "...unfinished business..."
With that said, the Nocturn fizzed out of view through the bright blanket, and the room fell back into preoccupied silence.
***********************************
The glowing orange and scarlet hues of the looming sunset lit up the horizon, a soft blanket of light falling upon the many silvery obelisks grounded on a wide stretch of tarmac that was secluded by a green belt of fir trees. A river of stone landing pads meandered through the docking bays of the airfield, each one sloping up to the open and empty cargo bays of the experimental airships that had often been seen passing over the dark palace of Valsoth, delivering their huge quotas of coal to power the ever burning furnaces of the black workshop.
As the sun slowly kissed the metallic airfoil surface of the buoyant vessels, Canen felt the lukewarm breeze of the dusk wrap him up in a veil, the sensation of touch the first sense to come to life in this magically emulated arena. The remnants of his body came together in a fashion similar to a mirror smashing in reverse, the fragments of flesh and bone fitting together like the finished product of a childs puzzle board. As sight, smell and hearing all followed suit in a sensory wave, Canen took the first stable footsteps across the stone decking towards the hangar area, his black coat whipping the chipped surface as it trailed.
The large airships, moored by lengthy steel cables to their docks quite securely, seemed dull and lifeless up close. The hangar area, located behind the moorings, further discoloured the surroundings with a boring and sore grey scheme that did nothing to satisfy the imagination. Its structure towered over two of the silver ships, its rusted wrought iron doors slightly ajar with only a crack of darkness peeking through the gap.
Canen's eyes complained, sliding over the horrible terrain with disdain. Even he, the epitome of black, couldn't stand to see such mind numbingly ordinary decor.
But admiring the scenery was not something one came to the Citadel for. The reason for his disgust was simple: He couldn't find anything he could use to his advantage on the outside. It was mainly all flat tarmac, christened with the occasional airship that was too big to use in any form anyway. Their shape meant they were difficult to climb. The cockpits were locked. The cargo bays were empty and contained nothing of interest.
It was only when he headed into the hangar his emerald eyes lit up like two blazing fires of hope, strolling past the massive cargo vessels without so much as blinking another eye towards them. Putting all of his strength into his powerful arms, the Nocturn forced the creaking iron doors further apart, the rusting metal almost disintegrating on their buckled iron rails as they slowly screeched open. When the sliding panels finally came to a stop, the dusk's light poured through the gap and illuminated the hangar.
The first thing he noticed was the sheer size of the depot, which was easily large enough to hold two full airships side by side, and did. The airships in question were, or didn't appear to be, the same proportion as the other ones out on the airfield. Instead these were much smaller, about half the size of their counterparts and were moored to the floor with an anchor on each side of the airfoil via a set of interlinked chains. Their shape was also different: each one had a half spherical underbelly with a flat deck at the top, which overhung the forward tip of the ship. There was no cockpit. Instead, some sort of scaffold rails twisted around and under both vessels, giving the impression they were still under construction. Or deconstruction. Either way, these airships looked very similar to the experimental ones used by Alerar.
Canen paced around the hangar, and peered upwards. Above him, a metal plate about a metre in width served as a walkway on a 'first floor', level with the decks of the two airships without a handrail. There were many cables, hooks, pulleys and cranes hanging from the depot ceiling, all of which seemed to be used for hauling equipment up and down the scaffold.
"Perfect." Canen muttered under his breath. This was much more like it. It was clear to see that this was the intended battleground for his challenge, abundant with resources and tools to use. The plain, untrained eye would see that this was simply an airship hangar. For Canen and Kaiser, this would be a vast playground of pain.
"When a pencil needs sharpening, you use a razorblade to do it..."