Saipher, level 104 Sage
Rewards: Genin and Chuunin versions of Manda + LP
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Creepy…

Chills ran down the battle hardened spine of the sage as he penetrated the darkness, eyes wide open, hoping to catch a glimpse of life, of light, or just of something. But the harder and harder he looked, and the more he attempted to hone in his chakra in order to decipher the maze of darkness ahead of him, the more he would get lost in this world of hate and darkness.

The black void in front of him leered and howled, placing all possible weight a human can handle folded by ten, stacked neatly and pressed down with all the care in the world on that which was Saipher. Each step further into the darkness felt like a plunge into hundreds of feet of frozen water engulfing you, the pressure of the waves pressing your lungs in, making you feel as if life was robbed of you at the slowest, possible rate.

And even then, when all the vital energy in your body was leeched away by the creature only known through visual recognition as Black, a trickle of life force remained, enough to allow you to recover and feel all over again. Rinse, repeat; rinse, repeat; every step further the sage would take, the dreaded feelings toting razor sharp claws would rip away at his soul and make his very sanity strip down and face, nude, the truths that lie behind dark curtains.

And to think, this dark palace ruled over a sunny day. Just hours ago, Saipher’s intrigue would spike to record highs when he was allowed entry into “the vault”; the namesake given to the shinobi elite’s shadier side, the vault housed some disturbing shit, the kind that would make even the worst special jounin torturers cringe, stutter and eventually puke a limey green substance.

With an outstretched hand, Saipher would peruse whatever he could feel for, as his eyes had been rendered pretty much useless, unless he were to hold whatever he wished to view inches from his nose. And even then, when he felt the ailments of becoming cross eyed afflict him severely, things still would not clear up, often leaving the Kaguya nothing more than a name or a small drawing, placing reliance on his knowledge and his imagination. He soon grew tired of fighting the darkness and attempted to find a light…

Oddly enough, nothing in his jutsu arsenal that ideally produced light worked. Even his ever powerful Rasengan, the rotating fury taught to him by none other than the Flash himself, rotated silently in the darkness, giving off its traditional blue hue at a limited radius of a few inches, leaving the rest to be swallowed up by darkness itself. He sighed once, twice, three times, and resumed his search.

His last attempt was hoping his satchel was on him and well enough stocked with the basic essentials any shinobi, regardless of rank, should always carry proudly. Hope would be entertained only for a few seconds until his dominant hand found no more than the hilt of his Kusanagi and a few official papers for accessing the vault at his disposal; the rest could be found resting atop his desk in his humble abode, laid out in front of his usual garb, waiting to be equipped.

Good timing on the wardrobe update

Then again, who needs stars, kunai and matches to a super secret library? Only geeks would get paranoid over a little darkness, a little silence, a lack of life, a lack of assurance…only geeks, weaklings, people with everything to loose, right? Right…

Saipher would nod in the darkness, unconsciously agreeing to his own pathetic reasoning, a logic based purely on elevating one’s esteem higher merely by placing himself above otherwise demeaning and silly things via simple comparison. Indeed, very apish. Oooh oooh, ahh ahh.

Not surprisingly, the biggest name in the vault was none other than Orochimaru’s, his makeshift sensei and one of the few to legitimately instill doubt into Saipher’s frame of reference through sheer presence. In fact, referring to Orochimaru as his teacher was a sketchy use of terminology, for it seemed the sanin merely took to Saipher’s power, often offering him items or techniques that would boost his strength through the item itself, and not the actual growth of the user.

What. The. Fuck.

As memories of Orochimaru and their previous battles played out in Saipher’s head, it occurred to him for the first time that everything he though regarding the sanin was purely fabricated, appearing in his conscious as a selection, a foreign one. One single gasp would escape his mouth as he came to a quick conclusion that the vault’s hellish darkness was inspired by more than sheer architecture.

“Genjutsu…”

The words would slither out of his mouth, carefully tossed around his sharp tongue before finally released onto the auditory realm. As if expecting some sort of reaction from the darkened room, he would grunt and twist his face in disappointment and annoyance, two negative emotions equally attributed to the incessant darkness that would “blind” his vision, and the growing idea that someone indeed was fucking with him, and had laced the vault in a fat layer of genjutsu even the sage could not brave completely.

And then he heard it.

One, two, three, four…

And then he heard more than just it; he heard them.

Tens. Hundreds. Thousands! Saipher’s previous gasps continue to be shamed on by the next ones, growing larger, louder and containing more and more shock as the count grew. ”What count” you say? The slithering of course…the slithering of those in the room. What was previously labeled as nothing more than an empty room swallowing and defeating the sage through the power of sheer solitude would soon evolve into something more slimy, wet, and full of as much life as the sage himself…

Snakes, they were god damn snakes. There were snakes all over the floor, and they were climbing on him. Slowly but surely, the snakes grabbed on for dear life, sinking their baby claws – still sharp as a razor – into the sage’s clothing, into his skin, into his soul. Within seconds he was poisoned, poisoned and covered, covered by the snakes.

“SNAKES!”

Here come the fucking snakes.