AN: New story kinda, sort of a rewrite of my other. Might be its own story, might be taking some ideas and concepts from the other to add to this. I don't know where I'm going with my other story, yet. I still have an unfinished chapter I've kept for years. Good possibility I might post it. The muses right now are flowing for this one.
Combining parts of all the Riddick movies, stories, comics, universe, etc., filling in gaps, and writing what I think would happen future or otherwise.
Anyway, hope it's an entertaining read. Enjoy and please Review! Thanks.
Title: Chronicles of Riddick: Edge of Fury
Rating: T -language, violence, explicit scenes
Disclaimer: I do not own or in any way am a part of Riddick and their respective parties.
Summary: Of course, they were gonna' try to kill me - So, the question ain't what happened? The question is...what happened to me? I needed a way out. Some new place, or maybe just an old one. How they get so close? How'd I let them blindside me like that...Her, Kyra...Jack. The best way to a man's heart. Love? Laughable. So, why I'm not? Somewhere along the way I lost a step, got sloppy...What to do? How do I get her back?
Blindsided - It's always the punch you don't see coming that puts you down...
The miasma of death unfurling the only light I've ever accepted in this arcane existence. Jack, Kyra, whatever, the hell, the kid was calling herself. She felt good in my hands, even in the throes of death sipping its fill of her essence. It couldn't steal away how right her body felt against mine. Noticed it back in Crematoria, when I had her pressed against the barred wall. Hands wedged over her head between my lethal grip, my other, holding her up between the apex of womanly thighs. How well it fit - No. Shouldn't be thinking about that, now. Not now, not with the kid like this.
"I thought you were dead." Her weak voice whispered, eyelashes feathered, closed against pale cheeks.
"Are you with me, Kyra?" The painful words escaped a voice barely recognized, though it was mine.
I didn't know myself, anymore, at that moment and for once the beast inside as silent as the darkness threatening to completely overrun me. Deathly silent, it too felt the breaking cords of a kindred predator being erased out of being. Another animal, something like me.
First time feeling consumed by loss. First time for everything.
Cradled in my hand, her head crowned with sleeked brunette hair as life poured and puddled into a ruddy pool around her body framed in their black tattered robes. Her green eyes cleared, free of the Necromonger influence. The eyes of the kid, Jack, I'd known all those years ago in New Mecca on the planet Helion Prime. The same faith I didn't deserve then, or even now, shined through and wrenched all the more at the black, insidious stone whose beat faltered inside. Not for me! Not again...
A final clenched hold on life as she gasped and spoke words that still haunted nightmares to this day. "I was always with you..." A rattled gasp of air, blood seeping from the corner of petaled lips. "I was..."
The beauty of her light sifted through my hands; unattainable, as her head lolled to the side and I knew she was gone. The beast in me made a wounded sound, like it too was dying and on the verge of following her toward that great celestial echelon. Emotions played on my face, but I couldn't believe any of it. Kyra, really gone this time, and no amount of busting in to save the day was going to bring her back.
Dammnit, kid.
Better to believe that Kyra was a trader, once again. She signed up with mercs the first time, then. Now, Necromonger conversion. Better-yes, because then I could resent the street rat, and I wouldn't have to feel and deal with this fuckin' sick sense of loss. Twice now, the kid done saved my immoral ass. Back on that ship, the Kublai Khan, killing that psycho bitch Chillingsworth who wanted me as part of her sadistic art collection. Back then, I got a glimpse of the kid's animal side. Thought I could save her from being something like me, though. Dropped her off with that holy man, Imam-Abu al-Walid; he was more of a chance at a normal life, a better life, than what I could have provided for the kid.
Look how great that turned out. If, only, I kept her with me.
Now...now, with a hole bored straight through; a lethal spike impaling her nubile body after taking a spear into the back-side of that bitch Zyhlaw to save me. Once again, the kid proved what I always knew deep down in the crevice of my being, that she was mine.
Always, mine.
So, this is the shit that normal people felt when they cared? Damn.
It didn't register to me, the flood of wetness from my eyes as my gloved hand raised to shield my face from the truth of it all - Selfcondemnation? Maybe. The patent of it being an inclination toward the girl - Love? Laughable. So, why wasn't I laughing? Seated down upon the grand Lord Marshall throne (Look who came all' from the back of the bus an' shit). The lifeless body of Kyra at my feet like a sacrificial lamb to the slaughter, while the fuckers began to fall to their knees in reverence.
Fuckin' cry, me? Never. Yet, even inside, I couldn't deny my animal's pained whine at the only beauty we ever truly wanted, snubbed out way too soon.
"You keep what you kill." I could hear the words ghost pass my busted lips.
"THRESHOLD! TAKE US TO THE THRESHOLD!", they shouted, my army of half-dead monsters.
Here, now. Me, Richard B. Riddick, fuckin' new Lord Marshal. The 7th one entitled to this maniacal legion of Necromongers - Someone to' put a crown around my head, someone to' put a noose around my neck. Ok, more nooses than crowns.
..But why didn' I see it?...
..because of her...
Riddick stood an immobile mass of muscles, a statue, an ever-present guard on one side of the small rounded, glass case. Black-tinted googles perched upon stubbled bald head, no need for them with the low torchlight inside the inky marbled room. The subtle rise and fall to the great expanse of his shoulders, barely seen, held more than his usual dark leather armor around his torso. Guilt. It was something new, an acrid taste, he couldn't accept. His flexed fists tightened more at the feeling, clamped tightly against the hilts of his wickedly-curved blades by his sides.
Inside the modified cryo-chamber, encompassing the slender, athletic form of the girl, Kyra, what she looked like before her conversion. Her brownish-red curls in a cascading halo around her head, as the garments she wore from the triple-max prison, Crematoria, fitted her body. He wouldn't see her in their Necromonger garb of black-tattered, ceremonial robes, despite protests and much to their disappointment.
Even then, they could see he wasn't to be one to embrace their religion as their previous Lord Marshall had done willingly so, with open arms. Fuck them and their religion, what left of his beast seethed lowly.
His silver mercurial eyes drinking their fill of the girl who looked only to be sleeping amicably, than in death's embrace. Laid atop a cloud of white, satiny fabric, hands resting peacefully beneath her small breast. Eyes ever closed and chest ever stilled. The girl's intricately made shivs in enteral slumber beside her unyielding form. The words Jack B Badd engraved on the belly of its hilt.
"I haven't seen you in this antechamber for weeks since the girl's death. Now, you've stayed that post for the past several days." Aereon's haughty voice spoke as the whisper of her form displayed out from the very air to solidify on the other side of the glassed-in girl.
Her blues taking in the hard figure of a broken man, a once upon a time convict from Butcher Bay. More human than animal as the weeks ran into each other. No beginning or end in his lust for blood, womanly flesh or dram, (Not necessarily in that order, either), as he sought to repress events that landed him as Lord Marshall of this fleet in the first place. Kyra's death, the one memory he wished he could sponge away.
Aereon's light steps ascended the raised dais and rounded the glass case in the dim-lit depressive room, serving as the dead girl's mausoleum.
"Been busy." His deep reply, never taking his silver orbs from the sleeping figure.
"From the dried-blood drenched on your Ulaks, and stained upon your clothing, I can say the new Lord Marshall is fitting in quite well." Her soundless steps passing her close to his worship-podium; A girl he could never have or ever will. "Convert, kill, or just plain kill."
Sated from recent slaughters and adrenaline longed cooled in his blood, the convict's dark, rumbled reply. "Killed a few mercs. The ones who slaved out Kyra back on the planet, Lupus 5."
"You mean the tasteful display of heads you have adorned all over the great hall of Necropolis?" Aereon asked with a rueful smirk as she dared to walk closer to the dangerous man. "Did you even give them the option to be converted? Does Lupus 5 still exist?"
"Not my faith." Riddick shrugged lazily, not caring, face void of any emotion. "Death is what they do for a living. Me? I just kill to survive."
"Or to exact revenge," Aereon added insightfully, her eyes glanced down to the crystalline shrine. "For no other reason, than, for a preserved, lifeless body you obsess over."
The thunderous growl from Riddick's throat came seconds before the razor-sharp, wickedly curved Uklah, even with dried blood, bit against the elder elemental's throat.
"Tell me this...why you' still here?" A Purr most enticing in his words, but a deadly ripple beneath the surface. "The story's over. Zyhlaw's dead. What's stopping me from adding your breezy ass to my collection?"
"Because the bounty won't come down unless the blade comes down." A coy curl came to the side of the elemental's wizened old lips, reciting words from when she found herself in this predicament before.
"One bounty down...more just to follow." The hard press of his blade nipping deeper into flesh. Flustered, she pulled her flowing cream-colored shawls close as if to ward him away.
"Dramatics, really," She huffed, "One need not calculate what the girl meant to you, Lord Riddick." Puffed-out like a proud peacock in her usual grace, to hide the fear he knew he instilled in the older woman. He could smell the taint on air. Before, she settled knowing eyes upon him. "Did I say, the story was finished?"
He cocked his head to the side, silver shines studying the strange being as she walked from the kiss of his blade against the thin skin of her throat. Her body flowing in and out of view as if a disturbance of wind disrupted the airy being. "They say wherever an elemental goes chaos is sure to ensue. Only that we ever get involved when the need is dire to do as such...For the balance of all humanity."
Riddick barked a laugh, loud and menacing, not an ounce of humor in the eerie sound. Not this shit, again. "How bout' you find yourself another dumbass to manipulate, I'm through playing the hero in your faery tale."
Aereon's blue eyes scanned around, the shadows of the room giving birth as his scantily clad consorts appeared from the deep recesses. On hunt for the insatiate attentions of their Lord Marshal. A few, she recognized, similar in size and looks to the girl, Kyra. No doubt, these women were gifts from Commander Vakko to his sovereign weeks ago. His offers, Aereon seeing through the ruse, just a distraction to keep the new Lord Marshall busy and sated for the time being. While, he, Commander Vakko ran the Necoromonger armada toward the Underverse, destroying and converting as they went. And was the one really in control of power.
The three women ambled the few stairs and surrounded him, hands and bodies shamelessly touched and pressed against him suggestively, vying for his attention.
One was an alluringly-twisted Necromonger consort in a painted-on red dress, with metal skullcap that pierced the lovely flesh around her scalp. Three spikes, two at either side of the temples and one at her widow's peak. She favored the dead girl the most in outward form and appearance. Her graceful hand whispered against his strong jawline, pulling him to face her enticing beauty - If, for none other, that it reminded him of her.
"Come on, Lord Marshal," The woman's voice a sinful caress, while the other two continued their explicit pursuits upon his body. Her other hand slid slowly down the length of his thigh to the hardened bulge forming. "...you promised to play."
Without another word or thought to the older white-haired elemental, Riddick's lips curled wickedly and he allowed the seductively dressed women to pull him down the staired dais and away to his sleeping chamber where more of his prizes awaited his notice.
"I never said you were, Mr. Riddick...the complete opposite in fact," Aereon spoke to his retreating form as they sauntered from view down the vast torch-lit hall. A necessary evil he was, if, but for a pawn. The 30-year-old prophecy, not greatly known by him and many others, was far from being over. Her eyes skipped down to the serene form of the girl, Kyra, unchanged since her death weeks ago.
Except...as Aereon stared hard in mounting frustration like she was missing the answer to the very universe itself. Probability was known, outcomes thoroughly calculated. Why wasn't-
The older woman's wizened, blue eyes went wide. She watched in fascinated-awe, as ever slightly, a twitch came to the girl's brow.
"Now, what are the odds of that?"
Up Next: Kyra and the Underverse.