Consolidation Litanies of the Dark Side: Defiance

[Dreadheart]

@Valia Muqai​

"The flower blooms in the barren. So does light blaze in the Darkness."

The words of Aola Cliyerslan Vilbolra echoed in the empty chamber, like ghosts of ages past, haunting the mind of the traveller lost in time and space. The very memory of her soft tone, a presence foreign now enough, as if she was met in a life long past. Any comfort was now turned into torment. Any serenity, into dread. Any love, once offered naturally, now perverted into blind hatred...
The durasteel walls, devoid of any shade but metal and the occasional dotting of the parasitic insects that fed from the flesh debris scattered on the cursed ship, a prison of mind and bone alike. It was in that narrow cabin -cell, in all respect but name- where memories fading and vague bombarded her mind, as if Regret craved to slither beneath the bone of the skull, into the caverns of her mind.

There was silence. No company but the oppressive aura ever-looming onboard; an encumbrance so heavily piled, it generated physical pain. Yet, after so long onboard, the septic artificial air became familiar to her senseless metallic lung, while the absence of colour and sunlight only added to the pale of her skin. Black veins appeared beneath the transparrent upper layers, marked with the doubt of whether they were a disease, inflicted upon her by the living conditions, or the sign of the Dark Side growing roots within her.

"Be the candle in the cellar. Be the star in the night sky."

The dim torchlights became the stars, and the gore the reflection of the moons made of lightning and plasma. Drifting into the void, the cursed hulk jumped from one place to another, stretching to the chains the Dark Crusade wrapped around the galaxy to yet another world, as Minos Sector descended into ruin. There was no Freedom, save for the ecstasy of mayhem, experienced beyond the bones, chained over pools of captives' blood, followed by weeks of exhaustion.

It had been long since the warship entered a battlefield. Months, even. And as life faded onboard, stagnation brought the urge for the battle thrill into the fighting pits, belowdeck. The more the stagnation continued, the more the losses in the pits, as the Sith could not resist the opportunity for bloodletting, and the Dark Lord did little to intervene. He chose to remain locked, chained upon his black throne, surrounded by the close circle adepts, while the rest pursued their own agendas.

 

[Roshia Chamiane]

"Peace" was an entirely foreign concept on the dreadful ship she was forced to call home. If it wasn't suffering through her master's relentless training regime, then she'd be going through the grueling body-possessing ritual that took place within the Sanctum during major conflicts of the Dark Crusade.

In the rare times without neither? There was still no peace. The ship had a constant oppressive presence that felt like a heavy, painful weight upon both her mind and heart that never went away, It made her want to cry, it made her irritated, it made her angry, she'd experienced all three one way or another. There was no way to escape, not even through death, which she knows well she can't even grant to herself.

Valia knelt on the durasteel floor of the narrow cell that she called her room, facing towards the wall. Dingy and gloom-filled as it was, that was the only thing she had to a "safe haven" upon the ship. Hiding away from the predatory gazes of the Dark Crusade minions and the only place she could recuperate her strength undisturbed unless she was summoned.

It was one of those rare, precious times again where she hide away in her little cabin undisturbed. Leaving her to the deafening silence and the storm that was her thoughts.

As time went on, Valia felt more of herself slip away into the abyss of the past. How long she had been there didn't matter, she didn't even think that anymore. In retrospect, her fight against the dark felt..... foolish. It was not something she welcomed nor ever wanted, yet she found herself in its embrace all the same. To embrace it back? Valia didn't know the answer. A part of her didn't, holding onto some vague, desperate hope of redemption and return to the light. Another part of her wanted to, motivated by either survival or otherwise.

She looked down at her hands and her arms. Her skin appeared paler than they've ever been, whatever sun-based tan she had gained was now long gone. Even in the dim lighting, she could see the dark veins beneath her tranluscent skin. Whatever caused them, she'd never know, Valia didn't even remember the last time she had looked into a mirror. Too fearful to see the full extent of what she had become, knowing how much of a broken mess her body had been.

Her hand plucked a metal knife from beneat the cabin's cot, one of the few things she had pilfered from a corpse and kept for herself. It was no vibroblade, but it was useful all the same. After looking down at it for sometime, her free hand moved to grip its blade and held it tightly. Letting it dig through the flesh of her palm, the tighter she held, the deeper the blade cut. It was painful, unbearably so, but she did not let go. Watching as her dark, sludge-like blood run down its hilt and onto the durasteel floor.

If her mind could decide, then she'd let pain do it for her.