ORIGIN

Canis was no different than it'd been the last time he was here. Black paws carried him in whispered steps over the stone, the black cloth 'cloak' draped over him. It was almost more like a bathrobe, really, or a monk's robe: a sleeveless swathe of stained black loosely and haphazardly wrapping his form. He still wasn't sure why ne was meant to wear it, but he didn't really care.

Blue eyes sought the Collector, picking through every shadow of Canis as he came. He'd obeyed: spreading shadow through Polaris, its defiling corruption darkening the rock.

The Black Dog came to a halt. The Collector had come to him, last time; why search fruitlessly when a summons would do-? He stood up a little straighter, and called out in an indifferent, rasping voice: "Collector."

Black took the halberd in hand, inspecting it closely. It was cool to the touch, and the moment his fingertips touched its surface, the whispers that already plagued him seemed to double in intensity. Almost deafening, for a moment, they receded to something like subconscious: not impacting his actual hearing, but reaching, instead, directly into his mind. Oh, the other whispering still accompanied him, yes: but this was different, this was worming its way in little black threads into his mind.

For a moment, he was confused, distracted. There was too much thought, too much sensory input all at once for the single-minded hound. The whispers outside him, always pressing for his attention. The whispers in his mind, now, more violent, more chaotic than the others. The touch of the halberd, and his desire to inspect it. And the information that, apparently, he'd been wearing this cloak upside-down.

One thing at a time.

Black leaned the halberd carefully against a building made of bones, and slowly pulled the black cloth free. He turned it upside-down, inspecting it, and-... Ahh. That... That was a waist-tie. And those were sleeves... Whoops. Slightly embarrassed even past all the chaotic corruption, he put it on correctly. Then he looked around, and turned his mind back to the weapon.

Void-Whisper.

He took it back in hand, inspecting it. The tip was a tall, spearlike point that turned into an elegantly-curved axe head. The back of the axe formed a sort of hook. To stab. Or to crush, and break, and slice. Or to pull, he noted, slowly, turning it this way and that. He tried to reach for his magicka, to look into the weapon's past, only to find that it was... gone. His link to arcane power, it seemed, had been severed by corruption.

For a moment he tested that, feeling through his own magic, looking for the final spell--the lifesaving spell--that Dawa had given him: and he found it gone. A brief moment of mourning coursed through him like a wave, unexpected sorrow, and he spoke aloud. "I have lost your magic, one-who-has-died. I am sorry." A strange admission, without context for any who might have been eavesdropping and, it seemed, without any relation whatsoever to the new weapon that he had taken up.

He didn't stop to explain himself to thin air, however, instead directing his sorrow to the long-gone spirit; and then he turned, and paused.

The whispers still taunted him with images of old war, and the promise of knowledge beyond the light, if only he plunged fully into the darkness. The thing was, Black was fairly sure he was already there. Was this a cost, then--the price of this power? Eternal, maddening murmurs? He set himself against that, deciding to visit, now, the altar to try and meditate for awhile. It wasn't far, after all.

But the halberd itself-... Its whispers were more abrupt, yet more subtle; an icepick half-hidden among the others, a sudden urging to find prey and to kill. Well, he did have to eat. Perhaps he could sate this desire, as well as physical hunger, through his hunting.

Black lifted the halberd, eyeing it, and then paced deeper into Canis, lifting his nose to search for prey. Long habit reached for the shadows, attempting to draw them about him as he searched.

He felt the heft of the weapon in his hands. He swung it, once, lightly; tested its weight and its balance. The Black Dog was still learning his own feet, though he was mostly used to being bipedal, by now--but his hands, a weapon, even carrying anything at all, was still quite new to him.

Kill. Strike. Tear.

For a few minutes he wandered Canis, stepping carefully around the bone piles and clusters of fallen rock, marvelling at how well he could see in the darkness. The pool of shadows, rather than cloak the entire cave, seemed to move with him: a bubble of not-light that he used for his hunt.

Violence calls. Chaos demands. Give in.

When at last his nostrils caught the scent of rat, he picked his way to the pile of bones where they lay. He still studiously ignored the whispering itself, though he could pick words from its incessant susurration often enough to know that it would be difficult to handle without frequent meditation. At least the weapon, he could set down.

The rest of them, though--the magic whispering that followed him about in an audible sense--spooked the colony of rats hiding here. At length one took a chance, fear driving it, and bolted out in front of him. Black reacted not with practiced precision but instinctive reflex, bringing the halberd down axe-first. It caught the rat across the back--not an instant kill, and he took note of that grimly. He never aimed to cause unnecessary pain. But the halberd's whispers, in his mind, rose up into a clamor--urging him to more, praising him for the kill. And the rat, its red fur stained with blood, twitched and squealed on the rock, its back broken and much of its body severed and crushed.

Black stepped forward, and pressed the point of the halberd down, quickly, to finish it. The squealing stopped.

He knelt, and picked the dead rat up by its tail, inspecting it. Where the blade had touched it, the edges of its fur and flesh had darkened. Corruption, then..? He wasn't sure, but it was not dissolving yet, and so he turned away with the meal in hand.

He would consume it on the way back to the Altar, and there he would sit for a time and meditate.

And try his best, in the meanwhile, to ignore the halberd's whispers.