Vega Van-Derveld
Dec 10th, 2002, 03:10:40 PM
The endless throng of trees had finally parted. Opening out into a clearing, the thickets of pine and fur had come to their eventual meeting with the cliff face of the mountains, leaving a circle of unplanted area around 10 foot square. Both the hunter and his prey slowed to a halt, with the former breathing heavily yet at the same time laughing. The inevitable was coming for the wolf he had been chasing, and he didn’t doubt for a second that he wasn’t the only one in the grove who knew that.
For a good hour he’d been chasing the mongrel and now, at last, he had no where to turn. From the beginning the beast had not had any assistance from any form of pack or family, but then this didn’t surprise the huntsman – he knew from experience that the vicious type of ‘wild’ wolf couldn’t handle such a structured society. None the less, removed from its element, the mutt had become a gentile thing and where once it had bayed at him it now shrunk from the blade he held.
The creature looked terrified. With its back paws as far back against the rock as they could go, it brought its front paws in and upwards to rock itself onto its haunches. In this position it looked almost human by the way that it seemed to cling to the wall for protection. It keened and whined and visibly squirmed about in a vain attempt to draw some pity from its capturer, but it was clear from the demonic glint in his eyes that he held no sympathy for the worthless thing. It had stolen a score of chickens from his farm and in the process had floored a member of his staff, permanently rendering him free off his left arm.
The creature looked terrified. Looked was the key word. Terror in itself cannot be quantified. A look of horror on someone’s face may be induced by the death of a loved one, or simply by a forgotten shoe lace (or something equally as trivial). In this case the fright upon the beasts face was not even as severe as this. In actual fact it was far from being scared, and closer to enraged…. But, of course, the farmer could see no such thing in the blonde muzzle, and continued to cackle with glee at the cornered Thing.
“Yer pelt’ll make a good winter coat once ah skin ya, Rover!” the man roared, straight from his belly, his body giggling all over with glee. It had taken five of his men alone to try and catch the guilty thing on its escape from his barn, and now he alone had it frozen in fear. Of course what happened next turned the tables, unbalanced the scales and dealt the seeker an entirely different hand.
A breathless sound like a sigh seemed to come from the wolf as its front paws lowered onto the ground. Its pale blue eyes moved from shying away to stare straight up at the one who had been in hot pursuit of it for so long. Dread drained from it in an instant, and was replaced by snarling jaws. No longer did it seem ready to flee, but instead to attack in any instant.
“Oooooh… angry are we?” bellowed the man, “Here doggi…-”
Cut short, he almost dropped the axe he held. Something was happening to the wolf. For a moment he was sure his eyes were deceiving him, but then all this was changed. The paws that tested the earth in front of the beast were becoming a good deal less … paw-like.
The Thing half leant forward and uttered another growl, jaws parting. As the gaping maw hung open the teeth began to recede, leaving only incisors and canines as sharp as razors. Dark lips slipped back into a thin smile which soon became pink, much like the rest of the wolves face. In his mind now he was unsure as to whether wolf was even the correct term for it. Where once the wolf had sat there was now this gruesome phantasm, this shifting thing with bones twisting at odd angles and muscles straining to form into correct patterns.
It became painfully clear what was going on within a matter of seconds, as the true form of the canine was revealed. Now the axe fell into the earth, and at its clang the eyes of the monstrosity raised, still a sharp cyan in hue. There sat a man – if you could call it a man, for he seemed more of a tower of heaving flesh – watching the hunter with the look of a spring about him; coiled and ready to helix at anyone moment should the man even twitch an eyebrow. Every single muscle on his body stood out perfectly, gleaming with perspiration from the chase. As he stood to two legs, arms hanging loosely at his size, truth finally irked its way into the hunters mind in the form of a tiny pang.
He was no longer the hunter, but the hunted.
“Axe?”
The surprisingly aristocratic voice barked and caused the man to jump. It was in moments like these, after changing, that Vega was a man of few words. His brain was still trying to fathom what was going on with his body, and this was only worsened by the fact that the darksider centipede was jabbing at him for being in such an uncivilized form for so long. Five hours today he had spent as a wolf, and this was over three times longer than he had tended towards spending a month ago. Increasingly, it seemed, he was growing fonder of his feral side.
“It is no fun if you do not have a weapon!” he said with a broad grin, which showed an array of impressively pointed teeth that looked as though they could tear the flesh straight from a live bantha with calm ease.
The Lupine, seeing no response from the man, called the battleaxe up into his hands with the Force before throwing it out at the hunter, who barely caught it. Stumbling backwards, he tried to yell out a defiant cry, but found no air to speak with. A huge paw of a hand had clamped around his throat and was doing a damn good job of ensuring that he could make no sound at all. The hunter noted mentally in his delusion that even the fingers seemed to be muscular.
“You are very civilized on your farm, hey? The stable boy, he put up a good fight, yes! You are not so tough though, I am thinking, hey?”
It made little sense, and had Vega been able to hear himself he probably would have cringed, but none the less the farmer got the point. It didn’t matter what the man was saying really, he knew exactly what fate had in store for him. Trying to swing the axe to defend himself was impossible since his arms had clamped in their current position, hot with pain.
There was a sound like tonne of bricks hitting water, followed by the overwrought scream of the farmer. He collapsed to the floor; though found that the tall blonde figures hand was still holding him. The last thing he ever saw was the glowing eyes of his attacker before the whole world went black.
“Too easy!” proclaimed the Dark Lord aloud before he began to undress the man. To anyone watching it would have looked an odd thing, but it was for functional purposes only – he could not go walking stark naked back to the village, however much he imagined some of the female population would have enjoyed it. Therefore from the dead body he pilfered a pair of heavy brown trousers, pulled them on, and yawned loudly. A little white feather fell from his lower lip and he burped, relishing the returning flavour of the chickens the farm hands had so kindly provided.
Allowing for no further delay, Van-Derveld sprung from his static position into a run and lopped off back through the forest. At his pace it would take less than ten minutes to return to the hamlet. The Force surged through him at its highest intensity in the first few minutes after his change, and was amplified by the animal instinct lingering in his mind. He could move on two legs, or on all fours, and still double the speed of a force-null. His mind danced with too many thoughts to focus upon a true goal, though acquiring more food and inevitably flooring more people in the process seemed like an appetising course of action.
“It’s Bill!” a voice called from ahead, “He’s coming back! Look everyone, he’s got the blighter!”
A crowd amassed on the edge of the forest, watching the blur coming towards them. It looked like ‘Bill’, if a little… larger and somewhat better toned. None the less they could swear it was him, until the moment he cleared the greenery. He landed with a thud, which kicked up a cloud of dust around his feet, and grinned up at the people. One of the other farmers, brandishing a pitch fork, shoved the three-pronged tool out at Vega and yelled:
“He’s got Bills pants on!”
“I knew it wasn’t a wolf!” another shouted, followed by, “He’s a monster! A fiend! Kill it!”
As if propelled by a blast, the people scattered outwards, stumbling out of shock as Vega leapt upwards at the fork-wielding man. With the farmer tumbling backwards, the Dark Jedi rose to his feet and allowed the man to get up as he bounced his weight from one foot to the other (had he had a tail in this form it would have undoubtedly been wagging from side to side at this point). Before a word of protest or act of resistance had been uttered the Lupine scythed out the man’s legs from beneath him, and this time he landed in a far more painful manner. The others, by now, were tearing back towards their homes, and this pleased Vega.
He plunged one hand down against the old mans chest and instantly shattered his rib cage, puncturing his lungs. A final breath escaped his lips before his pitchfork was snatched up in the fiend’s hands and driven down into his gut, each of the three blades twisting around his innards and rupturing them one by one. With this done, Vega left the man for dead, though made sure to take the pitchfork with him as he strutted off to the barn.
Once inside he looked around. It was two storeys high – the first was open and littered with hay and machinery for agriculture. The second, above it, was a walkway just big enough for two that ran around the edge of the four walls, with joists criss-crossing over to connect them. He sniffed at the air. It stunk of damp hay and animal doings. This hazy brown smell generic to all farm structures was over powered by the scent of meat, which rose from the coops in the corner of the room.
Vega eagerly ran to them, and grinned toothily on seeing the remaining hens all flustered and baffled in their boxes. Whilst entranced by the chickens he neglected to reclaim the pile of clothes at his feet which he had originally left in the barn, though was in a barbaric enough mindset to reclaim his saber and shove it in the pocket of the worn trousers – much favouring the old fashioned farm apparatus as a means of killing the fouls.
“Herrre birdie, birdie, birdie…”
The time thereafter was filled with a lot of panicked squawks and painstaking flailing as one by one the poultry were stripped of anything edible. By the time Vega was licking the remains of the last bird from his lips his human nature was almost fully returned, though he thanked his feral side for choosing such a tasty meal. Satiated for the moment, he began to pick up, piece by piece, his clothing, and apply it to his stale frame. It was as he did this that he finally heard voices from outside.
“Where is he?” said one.
To which another replied, “In the barn. He’s been in there for almost an hour.”
A knowing smile came over the Lupine as he looked towards the immense double-doors of the barn, a brow lofting. The presence outside seemed familiar and he was eager to see which of his acquaintances – or enemies – had tracked him across such a vast expanse of wilderness.
“… Come in,” he purred.
For a good hour he’d been chasing the mongrel and now, at last, he had no where to turn. From the beginning the beast had not had any assistance from any form of pack or family, but then this didn’t surprise the huntsman – he knew from experience that the vicious type of ‘wild’ wolf couldn’t handle such a structured society. None the less, removed from its element, the mutt had become a gentile thing and where once it had bayed at him it now shrunk from the blade he held.
The creature looked terrified. With its back paws as far back against the rock as they could go, it brought its front paws in and upwards to rock itself onto its haunches. In this position it looked almost human by the way that it seemed to cling to the wall for protection. It keened and whined and visibly squirmed about in a vain attempt to draw some pity from its capturer, but it was clear from the demonic glint in his eyes that he held no sympathy for the worthless thing. It had stolen a score of chickens from his farm and in the process had floored a member of his staff, permanently rendering him free off his left arm.
The creature looked terrified. Looked was the key word. Terror in itself cannot be quantified. A look of horror on someone’s face may be induced by the death of a loved one, or simply by a forgotten shoe lace (or something equally as trivial). In this case the fright upon the beasts face was not even as severe as this. In actual fact it was far from being scared, and closer to enraged…. But, of course, the farmer could see no such thing in the blonde muzzle, and continued to cackle with glee at the cornered Thing.
“Yer pelt’ll make a good winter coat once ah skin ya, Rover!” the man roared, straight from his belly, his body giggling all over with glee. It had taken five of his men alone to try and catch the guilty thing on its escape from his barn, and now he alone had it frozen in fear. Of course what happened next turned the tables, unbalanced the scales and dealt the seeker an entirely different hand.
A breathless sound like a sigh seemed to come from the wolf as its front paws lowered onto the ground. Its pale blue eyes moved from shying away to stare straight up at the one who had been in hot pursuit of it for so long. Dread drained from it in an instant, and was replaced by snarling jaws. No longer did it seem ready to flee, but instead to attack in any instant.
“Oooooh… angry are we?” bellowed the man, “Here doggi…-”
Cut short, he almost dropped the axe he held. Something was happening to the wolf. For a moment he was sure his eyes were deceiving him, but then all this was changed. The paws that tested the earth in front of the beast were becoming a good deal less … paw-like.
The Thing half leant forward and uttered another growl, jaws parting. As the gaping maw hung open the teeth began to recede, leaving only incisors and canines as sharp as razors. Dark lips slipped back into a thin smile which soon became pink, much like the rest of the wolves face. In his mind now he was unsure as to whether wolf was even the correct term for it. Where once the wolf had sat there was now this gruesome phantasm, this shifting thing with bones twisting at odd angles and muscles straining to form into correct patterns.
It became painfully clear what was going on within a matter of seconds, as the true form of the canine was revealed. Now the axe fell into the earth, and at its clang the eyes of the monstrosity raised, still a sharp cyan in hue. There sat a man – if you could call it a man, for he seemed more of a tower of heaving flesh – watching the hunter with the look of a spring about him; coiled and ready to helix at anyone moment should the man even twitch an eyebrow. Every single muscle on his body stood out perfectly, gleaming with perspiration from the chase. As he stood to two legs, arms hanging loosely at his size, truth finally irked its way into the hunters mind in the form of a tiny pang.
He was no longer the hunter, but the hunted.
“Axe?”
The surprisingly aristocratic voice barked and caused the man to jump. It was in moments like these, after changing, that Vega was a man of few words. His brain was still trying to fathom what was going on with his body, and this was only worsened by the fact that the darksider centipede was jabbing at him for being in such an uncivilized form for so long. Five hours today he had spent as a wolf, and this was over three times longer than he had tended towards spending a month ago. Increasingly, it seemed, he was growing fonder of his feral side.
“It is no fun if you do not have a weapon!” he said with a broad grin, which showed an array of impressively pointed teeth that looked as though they could tear the flesh straight from a live bantha with calm ease.
The Lupine, seeing no response from the man, called the battleaxe up into his hands with the Force before throwing it out at the hunter, who barely caught it. Stumbling backwards, he tried to yell out a defiant cry, but found no air to speak with. A huge paw of a hand had clamped around his throat and was doing a damn good job of ensuring that he could make no sound at all. The hunter noted mentally in his delusion that even the fingers seemed to be muscular.
“You are very civilized on your farm, hey? The stable boy, he put up a good fight, yes! You are not so tough though, I am thinking, hey?”
It made little sense, and had Vega been able to hear himself he probably would have cringed, but none the less the farmer got the point. It didn’t matter what the man was saying really, he knew exactly what fate had in store for him. Trying to swing the axe to defend himself was impossible since his arms had clamped in their current position, hot with pain.
There was a sound like tonne of bricks hitting water, followed by the overwrought scream of the farmer. He collapsed to the floor; though found that the tall blonde figures hand was still holding him. The last thing he ever saw was the glowing eyes of his attacker before the whole world went black.
“Too easy!” proclaimed the Dark Lord aloud before he began to undress the man. To anyone watching it would have looked an odd thing, but it was for functional purposes only – he could not go walking stark naked back to the village, however much he imagined some of the female population would have enjoyed it. Therefore from the dead body he pilfered a pair of heavy brown trousers, pulled them on, and yawned loudly. A little white feather fell from his lower lip and he burped, relishing the returning flavour of the chickens the farm hands had so kindly provided.
Allowing for no further delay, Van-Derveld sprung from his static position into a run and lopped off back through the forest. At his pace it would take less than ten minutes to return to the hamlet. The Force surged through him at its highest intensity in the first few minutes after his change, and was amplified by the animal instinct lingering in his mind. He could move on two legs, or on all fours, and still double the speed of a force-null. His mind danced with too many thoughts to focus upon a true goal, though acquiring more food and inevitably flooring more people in the process seemed like an appetising course of action.
“It’s Bill!” a voice called from ahead, “He’s coming back! Look everyone, he’s got the blighter!”
A crowd amassed on the edge of the forest, watching the blur coming towards them. It looked like ‘Bill’, if a little… larger and somewhat better toned. None the less they could swear it was him, until the moment he cleared the greenery. He landed with a thud, which kicked up a cloud of dust around his feet, and grinned up at the people. One of the other farmers, brandishing a pitch fork, shoved the three-pronged tool out at Vega and yelled:
“He’s got Bills pants on!”
“I knew it wasn’t a wolf!” another shouted, followed by, “He’s a monster! A fiend! Kill it!”
As if propelled by a blast, the people scattered outwards, stumbling out of shock as Vega leapt upwards at the fork-wielding man. With the farmer tumbling backwards, the Dark Jedi rose to his feet and allowed the man to get up as he bounced his weight from one foot to the other (had he had a tail in this form it would have undoubtedly been wagging from side to side at this point). Before a word of protest or act of resistance had been uttered the Lupine scythed out the man’s legs from beneath him, and this time he landed in a far more painful manner. The others, by now, were tearing back towards their homes, and this pleased Vega.
He plunged one hand down against the old mans chest and instantly shattered his rib cage, puncturing his lungs. A final breath escaped his lips before his pitchfork was snatched up in the fiend’s hands and driven down into his gut, each of the three blades twisting around his innards and rupturing them one by one. With this done, Vega left the man for dead, though made sure to take the pitchfork with him as he strutted off to the barn.
Once inside he looked around. It was two storeys high – the first was open and littered with hay and machinery for agriculture. The second, above it, was a walkway just big enough for two that ran around the edge of the four walls, with joists criss-crossing over to connect them. He sniffed at the air. It stunk of damp hay and animal doings. This hazy brown smell generic to all farm structures was over powered by the scent of meat, which rose from the coops in the corner of the room.
Vega eagerly ran to them, and grinned toothily on seeing the remaining hens all flustered and baffled in their boxes. Whilst entranced by the chickens he neglected to reclaim the pile of clothes at his feet which he had originally left in the barn, though was in a barbaric enough mindset to reclaim his saber and shove it in the pocket of the worn trousers – much favouring the old fashioned farm apparatus as a means of killing the fouls.
“Herrre birdie, birdie, birdie…”
The time thereafter was filled with a lot of panicked squawks and painstaking flailing as one by one the poultry were stripped of anything edible. By the time Vega was licking the remains of the last bird from his lips his human nature was almost fully returned, though he thanked his feral side for choosing such a tasty meal. Satiated for the moment, he began to pick up, piece by piece, his clothing, and apply it to his stale frame. It was as he did this that he finally heard voices from outside.
“Where is he?” said one.
To which another replied, “In the barn. He’s been in there for almost an hour.”
A knowing smile came over the Lupine as he looked towards the immense double-doors of the barn, a brow lofting. The presence outside seemed familiar and he was eager to see which of his acquaintances – or enemies – had tracked him across such a vast expanse of wilderness.
“… Come in,” he purred.