Insight for the Sightless (Faral & Illan)

The hunger was a beast all of its own. A monster far more ferocious, far more uncaring and single-minded than the Hollow it drove to the very edge of insanity. His world, his entire universe was darkness and the hunger. Nothing else existed, nothing else mattered. He could think and feel, but he could neither give voice to his feelings nor see the hell of his un-life. This inability to see the physical gave him a more keen sense of the ethereal, he hunted this way and in turn avoided being hunted. Sensing the faint reiatsu of other beings amidst the backdrop of spiritual energy and when that failed he found he was able to use his malformed vocal cords to emit a sonar like pulse of sound. It had served him well since he was reborn and now, as he stalked the dunes of Hueco Mundo it alerted him to the approach of something quite unlike what he'd come across before.

The trace of its reiatsu flickered for a moment, a sign of intent, of will that Faral picked up on. He recognized it; he had been seen, its focus was upon him. His barbed tail flicked across the sand as he turned toward the source of energy, a low hiss slipping between his jagged teeth and waited. He was sated, for now, his Hunger never slept but it was mere background noise. There was little point in combat for combats sake, he thought, and simply waited for the Hollows next move.

Then it spoke.

How long had it been since he'd heard anything other than a scream? How long had it been since...since...he became what he was? He could feel his other life in the back of his mind like fragments of a dream. Darkness and fear. Hearing another being address him seemed to stir these fragments and thoughts all too human thrust themselves to the forefront of his mind and before he knew what he was doing he pinged a pulse of spiritual power from his body; I think. I am. I understand.

Faral remained where he was even as the other approached, his long legs folded against his body, his elongated arms draped across what constituted his knees, the black clawed fingers resting upon the sand. The bone white mask tilted, ever so slightly, the bulbous ridged crest barely moving to the naked eye as his senses drank in the other. The closer it got, the more the Hunger bayed and demanded to be sated. Slicked in the soul of another, to devour and consume the very essence standing before him. Not so very long ago, although how long was impossible to tell in his state of being, he wouldn't have been able to resist it. They would have clashed and the dance of kill or be killed would have played out as it did thousands of times a day upon the unforgiving sands of Hueco Mundo.

The footsteps of his prey -no, he thought, this curiosity- painted its image in his mind. The vibrations of its rieatsu and the waves of sound rippling through the air to give him a rough, and by no means detailed, approximation of its shape. It was a quadruped, large, clearly a Hollow more geared to direct confrontation rather than subterfuge. What made it a curiosity more than anything else was its composure. Harbinger knew the same Hunger that fought him every second of every day must dwell in it as well, most could not refuse it. Their will was too weak, their mind too feeble to leash it, to bend it and make it kneel in subservience. Instinct was critical to any predator, Darwin's Law dictated the paths of all their lives in the end but to temper it with a keen intellect and a will to look beyond this kill and see the next thousand was what made the lucky into battle hardened survivors.

The questions sent a ripple of curios reflection through the monochrome Hollows reiatsu. Who indeed, he had been a man once. A man living in the dark, a blind rabbit in a world made to kill him. That man had a name and, he supposed he did as well. The secondary question demanded an answer first, it was the most important and its answer the foundation of what transpired next. The spine like tail fired like a crossbow bolt, the black metallic sheen of the blade at its end stopping just before impact with the other Hollow. Then, quite purposefully, it retracted slowly and Faral raised one taloned finger to the side of his mask and tapped knowingly. While all this happened his reiatsu never fluctuated, it remained calm and never betrayed his intent. Then he unfolded, like a terrible marionette that seemed to rise without end until he stood to his full height of nearly 8ft, arms ending in bone rending claws spread out at either side. Now he let his spiritual energy run rampant, the sedate colours roaring into vibrant reds and blacks that set the very air trembling around him and the grains underfoot to quiver. Then it was done and the power folded back into himself as his tail traced letters in the sand.

"FARAL" it said.

Faral dipped his head in acknowledgement of the compliment and settled down again onto his haunches, he kept track of the other Hollow in his own way as he moved and gazed unseeing and unreadable while he spoke. Then the hollow swelled in his sight, a raw display of power that almost scrambled what modicum of senses remained to him. Panic was not an emotion he lent credence to; panic got you killed, panic made you stupid and impulsive. He merely observed the rise in power and noted that, indeed, this Hollow was at least on par with himself. It was done, the rumbling roar of reiatsu wiped from the existence as if it had never been. The world around them seemed more silent than it had ever been without the screams of power.

The Hollow filled this silence with words, moving and animated he laid out a proposal and like a macabre gargoyle Faral listened. Trust had been rare when he was among the living, it came at the terrible cost of vulnerability and in this un-life vulnerability made a meal of you. Still, he thought, as something grated at the ragged edge of his senses, there were far more terrible things in the sand of Hueco Mundo. Monsters among monsters who no single Hollow could ever hope to stand against. The path to power, to dominance, to the utter subjugation of any and all lay in facing those titans eventually. Soul Reapers didn't concern him, they came, they went. They were little better than children crushing ants with a stick to sate their own ego and sense of self righteousness. Only the stupid courted their attention without utter confidence in success, no matter the circumstances.


Are we of like mind, Faral?

They were, in so far that they knew the terror of the road ahead and the hunger for greater power to face it. His tail raked a semi-circle behind him as he rose onto all fours, his legs jutting out, bent-kneed, on either side of his body and he gave a methodical dip of his head and a tremor in his spiritual presence. Then, almost like he had just remembered, pointed a claw toward the Hollow and then turned it palm up questioningly. Who are you?

The bite of the claws was a curious thing. He was sure he had felt pain since his death, he must have in all the vicious fights he'd walked away from but as he looked at the ooze of red it didn't feel the way he recalled. The pain he knew, the wracking bone deep shaking of the soul, came from the broken shards of his human existence. A pain like that, the essence of it, would never be washed away by something as trivial as death. An image flashed in his mind of lying in the dark while the cancer ate him alive and the poison-made-cure burned his blood until it boiled. This? It was like watching an ant burn under the gaze of a hot sun through a magnifying glass. He knew, academically, what it may be feeling in that moment but that was as far as it went. This pain was little more than an alien mind empathizing with something it wasn't capable of processing.

A burst of rieatsu came from Illan, it carried the meaning well and taloned fingers curled up the underside of the beast Hollows forelimb. They bit into fur and found flesh. As one they drew blood and with the sand as their parchment, the flow of crimson sealed the compact. Farals aura pulsed with brief excitement and agreement; The conquerors road. There wasn't any other way forward but a path strewn with blood and gore until they made a throne from the fallen and the damned.

Faral cocked his head at the question and let out a slow his of air from between his permanently bared teeth. Rest was a fickle thing among the dunes, and safety as fragile as a soap bubble. Only the monsters in the deep desert could rest easy, there were so few who could challenge them if Farals sense of their power was even remotely close. For ones such as he and Illan, they could be attacked at any moment. Even the weaker of their kind could over power them if their numbers were great enough. Thankfully with a little luck and senses attuned for life below the sands, the blind Hollow had found a place hidden from the surface and as yet undiscovered by potential predators.

He stood, his frame rising and then hunching over slightly and with a hand motioned for Illan to follow. One of the entrances wasn't far and from there they could discuss their next move. Faral set himself on all fours and set off at a loping gait, all the while unheard sound issued from his mouth and painted a madmans landscape in his mind.

The deeper they went, the further the sounds of the calamitous storm became until it was but a hollow rumble and the pressure of silence pushed in around them like a womb of stone. Faral lead his companion deeper and deeper, along long travelled paths and tunnels, up sheer rock-faces and through darkness until they came to what had been his home since he was able to maintain rational thought. The space was large, almost spherical in its proportions.

Where did these tunnels lead? Faral cast unseeing eyes toward a deeper set of tunnels. The writhing mass of Menos below should have been answer enough to that question, although perhaps Illan had not gone so far in his explorations of Hueco Mundo as he. They were between the surface and the underworld, where their future wandered ponderously in herds of pure destruction.

The Hollow cocked his head at that and a calmness settled across his reiatsu. He approached a sloping wall and carved the words of their union upon its surface. If they were smart, if they grew powerful, they may yet outlive the stone etched motto.

Respice Finem