Into the Dark

[Shang Tsung]

After a few weeks of preparation, the group had set out in the hinterland. At their helm, the sorcerer sat atop his horse and stared into the bleak horizon. How long had it been since he’d last been this far out into the Moors? Months? Perhaps a year? In his world, time was something that never changed, much like the force of gravity, but here in the Omniverse, both time and gravity were mutable concepts. Gravity could be upended by willpower, and time was something that rarely seemed to follow its own rules half the time.

Despite the dangers of the verse, the small war party had managed to deal with most of the fel creatures that lurked in the vile black. For the most part, what attacked them comprised mostly of feral beasts that knew nothing more than lust for blood and flesh. The ‘more intelligent’ abominations watched and waited, understanding that they would be at a disadvantage if they assaulted the convoy of soldiers armed with more than just grit, swords, and crossbows.

No, these (mostly) human soldiers had the Light on their side. It was an orange light, but to the eldritch beasts, it burned just the same.

Shang Tsung smiled as he looked down at his right ring finger. Despite the lack of direct sunlight, the ring still had a faint shimmer to it, and the faint orange glow never seemed to fade from its surface. It had taken him weeks of experimentation to craft the device from the samples he’d obtained from Sinestro, and then after that, he’d spent countless days learning the intricacies of the device. After drawing the connection between the ring and his own emotions, Shang had gradually mastered the most basic functions of the ring.

That is, he could use it to destroy things.

At the end of the day, that was what he wanted to take out of the artifact. He didn’t need some fanciful connection with a greater ideology or any sort of ‘deep’ moment of emotional epiphany. He needed more power, and he had found it.

Once he became master of the device, it didn’t take quite as long to craft a duplicate of it.

That duplicate had gone to Atelos, but for some reason, the Spartan couldn’t get the device to respond to his commands—spoken or otherwise. After a few afternoons that involved a lot of smashed furniture and choice words, the two allies decided to drop the experiment entirely. The sorcerer didn’t vocalize his opinion, but he was quite certain that the Spartan lacked the finer elements to control the ring’s power. Either that, or there was some sort of incompatibility between the device and the Grecian warrior due to the latter’s dual-personality.

After that failed experiment, Shang randomly selected one of the Spartan’s lieutenants in the garrison. Since a prime had failed, the sorcerer wanted to try the ring with a secondary. He had nothing against secondaries, but by their very nature, they were a little more… mutable. If the lieutenant had failed to properly ‘bond’ with the ring, Shang was certain he could have either reshaped the man’s brain or simply started to summon his own prefabricated ring-bearers.

Fortunately for the sorcerer, he didn’t need to take it to that extra step. With a little active coaching, Lieutenant Federov had been able to tap into the requisite part of his mind needed to will the power of the ring. After two days of struggling with the bull-headed Spartan, it was a relief for the sorcerer that this lieutenant had figured it out in an afternoon.

‘You need to want the power. Will power is all nice and pretty, but you have to want the results. Need them. Desire the ring’s power.’

It had taken some screaming and belittling from the sorcerer, but the lieutenant found the orange light within himself. Shang smirked as he recalled the soldier blasting him square in the chest with a condensed beam of orange hard-light. Lieutenant Federov had apologized a dozen times over, but Shang was too pleased to retaliate. After all, he had purposefully goaded the soldier to try and strike him.

Desire.

“Desire the power. Want the power.” Shang smirked as the ring glowed brighter around his finger.