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 weren'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 either? 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, never leaving. 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, which she called her room, facing 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, she was the only place she could recuperate her strength undisturbed unless she were summoned.


It was one of those rare, precious times again where she hid 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 some other reason.


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 translucent 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 beneath 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 nonetheless. After looking down at it for some time, her free hand moved to grip its blade and held it tightly. Letting it dig through the flesh of her palm, the tighter she had, the deeper the blade cut. It was painful, unbearably so, but she did not let go. Watching as her dark, sludge-like blood ran down its hilt and onto the durasteel floor.


If her mind couldn't decide, then she'd let pain do it for her.

 

[Empor]

Pain...

The God of all things mortal...

Pain...

An angel of things so terrible, never graced by name, or form, save that of lamentation.

The blood dripped, producing a near-inaudible pop, upon meeting the metal of the catwalk. Strange shadows beneath her feet stirred. Scarabs, moths of six wings and crawling things that had yet to reveal their form, choosing to lurk behind shadow and hull, furthering to the already established Dread that consumed anything and anyone onboard the trice-cursed warship that was the Shadow's Avenger...

Drip... Drip... Drip...

In the deathly silence, the sound became strong enough to echo, though it did so through no power of its own, or the physics that had been long defiled and twisted by the Dark Side they resembled but mere caricature of what once was. Oh, no, the echo came from beyond, through the fabric unseen by the eye, yet sensed so violently, at times, as the Force wept to the very presence of the warship in Realspace.

Wings flapped, carrying with them an air of ether stirred. Though to no fault of the malfunctioning air conditioning of the cell, the air grew heavy; Thick and cold, piercing the pale skin like pinned claw that reached for the bone. Shadows motioned, in the Darkness, yet offered no presence through which to inflict Fear, or hint presence, for much had been endured oh so long a time, this change in the Force felt like a craving sensation yet to be experienced. Absence... Void...


Death.


As the palm bled, the leaking blood produced a thin smoke, as if reacting to the metal of the blade. Like a cloak, the world around her embraced her, causing the nerves that fed her corrupt mind the sensation of pain to fail, as if there was no more to offer but yield in stagnation. Her feet cold, yet sharing not the unseen breeze that made the hair spike and skin to shiver. It was as if her very feet had been drenched in water, which itself offered no tide, nor waving, but stagnation. Unseen bogs, stale in a place without time, pouring in to Realspace to embrace the soul that yet latched beneath her flesh...

Whispers sung a voiceless song, urging the woman to join the strange hymn.

Shallow, the bogs beneath, black the starless void...
Empty, the River full, Blind left of Breath devoid....

 

[Valia Muqai]

Time seemed to slow as the deep, seething pain continued to radiate from her hand. Dark blood dripped onto the steel floor and ran down her pale arm in slithering streams like plant vines. Valia felt nothing but the pain, it made tears well up in her eyes and her breath stop until her body forced her to take another. Yet, she didn't let go, not yet, even when her mind and body screamed at her to do so. Defiantly going against her own instincts the same way she went against Darth Eosfor's will.

She felt her perception of reality slowly become twisted, her skin feeling wind and her feet feeling cold water where there none. Whether due to pain, bloodloss, or something else entirely, Valia truly did not know. Embraced by something that she could not see, for a moment, she wondered if it was Kirki offering her a twisted form of comfort through her pain.

But, no, that could not be. It felt too different and foreboding. So close, yet paradoxically so distant at the same time. Those voiceless whispers, she did not join them, an angered hiss escaping her lips.

"Leave me alone."

Her words repeated until she realized that the pain had stopped. She noticed the thin smoke radiating from the leaking blood which made no sense to anyone that had a sane mind. That was when she finally released her grip around the knife, letting it clank onto the floor into the puddle of blood of its doing.

"Leave me alone." She hissed again to the unseen, voiceless hymm in the wind.

Valia stared at her bloody, shaking hand. The cut was deep and blood continued to flow even in the absence of the knife cutting through flesh. It was a slow, steady leak, which will soon begin clotting on its own. For that brief moment, a moment clarity washed over her mind amidst the darkness and lack of pain. Even though the pain, no decision had been made, by her or whatever other force she had expected to do so. Nothing stopped her.

She picked up the knife once more, thoughts racing through her head. There was no reason for her to be there, there was no reason for her to be their slave. Anger welled up in her chest as she remembered her failure two years ago-- failure to escape, either through a ship or through death. So many tries, all failure, no amount of defiance could force Darth Eosfor to kill her even when he held her very heart hostage. Was it fear of what came after that fueled her will to live? Was it innate instinct that did it like what that damnable doctor had said? Was it something else? So many questions that couldn't be answered.

"Leave me alone." Her lips muttered once more.

There was no one else with her, alone in the prison cell called her room. Only the embrace of the darkness to keep her company. She breathed deeply and was met with the humid scent of the bogs, stale and almost rancid. It was then Valia realized she had one more chance to remedy her failures. One, that was all she could give before all the flickering light within her soul is snuffed out.

"One more.... Please, free me from this prison and all this pain. I ask for nothing else, that is all I want."

Valia held the knife with both hands, shaking profusely as she quietly muttered her words, a prayer almost, to whatever god that listened. Something she had never done before even as a jedi, but she was truly desperate.
She aimed the knife towards her body and pressed it agaist the middle of her chest, against the soft flesh beneath where her sternum began and cutting through the soft fabric of her clothing. A flurry of emotions going through her, but her mind remained focused on her goal not letting anything stop her.
"If I fail, for the last time."
She took a deep breath.

"Then let the galaxy weep for the monster it made..."

With all her strength, Valia plunged the knife through her chest.

@Dreadheart

 

[Empor]

Resistance.

Defiance.​

Submission.​

Too long had she stared into the Darkness. Too long, had she wept of a life not her own bestowed upon her by forces wicked and corrupt. How long would she last? How much would she endure, before her finally yielded to the primal instinct of facing the lesser known horror than standing onto what is foul and indestructible?

Finally...

She looked into the Darkness, and called out a nameless hand of salvation. A faceless patron of faith. A presence, lurking beyond the Dark.

And now...

Finally...​

The Dark answered.


As if flooded by black mist, the presence lurking near revealed itself. The world blurred, as blood poured out the gaping wound left by the knife. Her legs drenched in black bogs. The hull caging her given way to the unreal expanse of the shallow swamp, spreading across the flatness of the plane, beneath the starless sky. A place of Void. A place of Death. Barren of all but the shallows and Absence. There was cold. Freezing cold, and yet, her breathing produced nothing but a void in her lungs, as if her inability to draw breath made little impact.

A strange feeling usurped the flesh. A familiar feeling. As if reliving the same moment experienced numerous times over, now again in the very same place that existed beyond memory and without material mark, to hint its existence in the retroactive chord of her Life. A Blind realm, never to be seen by the eyes of Reality. And yet, it was now, strangely enough, that she was carried to this moment, as if before her mind refused to acknowledge....

But it did... The very sensation of it sparked glooming voids in her cerebral cortex, her nerves sparking as if reacting to a known horror. A familiar Darkness...

Blood...

There was no blood.

The wound blackened, emitting black essence.

Her palms wrapped around a metallic object, too familiar to require her eyes to identify...

Her hilt.

Not the daemonic instrument of destruction wielded onboard the cursed warship. It was her own. The one her old self used to carry...

Her old self...

Roshia... That was the name....

Was it forgotten? Or burried deep beneath layers of torment and despair?

"How many?"

The voice carried a sense of Dread, for it served a perfect reflection of her own. Calm, and steady, as if no toll weighted her. As if none of the horrors and torments and suffering had happened.

"How many must die for your Chains?"

 

[Valia Muqai]

The sharp knife slid through flesh with ease. Slicing through skin, her diaphragm and impaling deeply into her heart with little resistance. There was a burst of pain, her instincts urged her to take out the knife though it was futile at that point. Her head spun, vision darkening, she twisted the knife with the last of her strength before reality faded into darkness.

There was someone- or something there with her in the darkness of wherever she was. Valia realized the knife in her chest was gone, leaving only a stab wound that regularly gushed out her lifeblood, which dripped down to the dark bogs that her legs were submerged. Her lungs moved to bring in air, which was a futile effort as none came, yet she did not choke or suffocate as she would expect.

It profoundly confused Valia, at the same time, relief washed over her. If that was death, then she accepted its will. Whatever it wanted from her. she would submit to it. For she considered it better than going back to the living hell of her existence under Darth Eosfor.

She placed a hand over the knife wood. There was no longer any blood, but instead replaced a strange black essence that radiated from it like smoke from a flame. In her other hand, she held something.... Her old lightsaber, the one she had built as a mere youngling and used up until her demise, where she had lost it to crueler hands. The sight of it surprised her as much as it brought deep pain within her.

Roshia. That name didn't feel like her own anymore, it felt like a stranger that she had met many years ago that was beginning to fade from her mind. She had nearly forgotten, willingly or otherwise, that she IS Roshia. The Jedi Padawan, a promising future knight of the Jedi Order, whom they had expected greatness from.

"No one must die. No one will."

She answered to the voice. It sounded like herself, a younger untormented version of herself. Whether it was from her mind or someone speaking with her she could not know. Either way, it sent a cold chill down her spine.

"I freed myself. Those chains are no longer necessary, they will hold me no longer. My death has been long overdue." Valia gripped the lightsaber hilt firmly in her hand. Her voice was resolute and confident, much like how she had been as a jedi.

 

[Empor]

The reflection observed. She said no words, though her gaze spoke tales. Tales of pain. Tales of struggle. Tales of a lifetime lived in vein, for a purpose found in Death. And yet, even in the Shallows of the Netherworld, that purpose remained ever a mystery, furthering the meaningless apparent in what was perceived a journey stray from the path beset and besieged by nightmares and malevolence.

Chains...

The reflection pointed out. A word marked out of all others, as if it served a key, to the chamber deeper into the mind lost in darkness and Regret.

Pitty the hound who sees the chains, ignorant whether it drags the chariot, or held by a leash...

The shallow waters stirred. Shadows, beneath the blackness of the surface, slithered and vanished in the same, undeclared, uneventful manner in which they appeared, most before acknowledgement or recollection. The reflection extended a hand. The same black mist, dominant in the bleak dimension, emitted from beneath the skin, as if it was but a mere illusion.

Chains do not release you from Death.

As if a choreographed motion, the reflection's fingers curled ever so slightly. In utter synchrony, from beneath the shallow bogs, a long chain ascended, as if held by invisible hands unseen by all. The links were forged of the very mist that engulfed the Shallows, black and foul, condensed enough to resemble something similar to solid matter, without though disturbing the ethereal nature that dominated the bogs. The one end of the chain poped from beneath Valia's chest, as if it, too, was but a mere illusion, hinting to the chain being nested in her very heart.

The far end, after slithering in the invisible grip, made its way back into the bog, as if to trace the path to the reflection's own entity...

Chains Bind you in Death. Free you, of Life.

The reflection stared. Its eyes offering a hollow sensation, soulless and unmade, yet never taunting.

Three pieces is the toll, to walk the River. One of Heart, beating and drenched in Life. One of Pentacle, burried with a Spade of Defiance. And one of Sword, cracked and yet reforged by pain and Loyalty. Only through these three, will the shackles of Death weight you no longer.

The chain lowered to the reflection's hand. As it did, the mist that formed it reshaped into a most familiar knife. A blade, which no long ago had tasted Valia's own blood, yet here, now, it was stainless.

Do you wish to walk with Death? Or taste a Life of Torment, yet again?

 

[Valia Muqai]

That resolute confidence only lasted for no more than a brief moment. Her mind became shadowed with doubt, confusion, and desperation once more. Valia's eyes appeared distant and empty as she struggled to comprehend the ethereal world around her. It felt real and unreal both at the same time in some strange paradoxical perception of her increasingly broken mind.

She looked down at the slithering chains, tracing it from the shadowed figure to her chest. Her free hand pressed to over it, yet she found only stillness where a heartbeat should be. Valia couldn't understand what it meant, why, and how. Death was the freedom she so desperately wanted. It should have freed her from any chains. What was happening?

"Death is my freedom. It should be nothing more, nothing less. There is no price for it!" Her voice was shaky and desperate as she yelled out her words. Equal parts pleading and protest.

Valia stepped closer to the reflection and knelt down. Lowering herself down into the bogs as she did so. She gazed up at it, not fully understanding what she was looking at other than knowing it was there, whatever that 'it' may be.

"Please, please... just let me go. I should have died at Karideph years ago, for good. But they forced me to live, I don't know how, but they did. It wasn't my choice. It was not what I wanted." Valia continued her pleas. A once proud jedi reduced to groveling at the feet of some unseen being. She no longer cared how pathetic it might be.

"I can't go back. I am dead, I've plunged the knife into my own heart, and they can not save me this time." Tears began to roll down from her eyes. They felt like tears, at least, who knows what they were.

Valia looked at the pristine knife in the being's hand. She reached up and took hold of it with a shaky hand, appearing ready to repeat what had brought her there in the first place.

"If I must do it again to keep myself from coming back, then so be it, I will do it."

Valia paused. She remembered the chains from moments ago, nestled within her chest. In her rattled mind, that was what held her down, chaining her to a life she did not want. She could not cut through the chains with knife, but she could sever the part of herself they held. Like a trapped animal willing to gnaw off its own limb to get free.

Without another word and with newfound purpose. She plunged the knife into her chest once more, seeking to make the preexisting wound bigger. Completely forgetting about the lightsaber hilt she held and now focused on tearing out a part of herself.

 

[Empor]

Price

Price​

Price​

The very word heavy with meaning, in manner perhaps too twisted and occult for the one who uttered them to realize. In the carnivorous world of the Nether, black of fate and absent in hope, yet so desired by numerous to experience, ignorant of what truly lied beyond the chasm of reality the mortals called so simply, and yet true in darkness and in faith, Death. The reflection simply observed, not reacting but merely staring in eyes gradually soulless and hollow, as if whatever devilry preserved the fallacy of appearance lost its meaning the more Valia descended into desperation. A path walked by countless, yet diverted by none...

Valia begged. A warrior of faith brought low. A champion of Light drowned in Darkness...

As she picked the knife, the palm that held it reacted to the motion of her hand as if it was made of mist, distorted by her momentum like smoke dancing against the wind until being consumed by the Dark.

All this, the reflection observed in silence.

Finally, she did it.

FLASH

White and momentary, as soon as the knife blade struck deep into her chest. A shard of pain inexplicably touching the depths of her dying senses, like a glimpse from a lost world that craved to return.

FLASH

The knife plunged again. A scent, burning and despicable, familiar coalgulated blood, rotting on the catwalk.
The reflection reached to Valia's shoulder, and she hold her firmly, for once, hinting to whatever entity masquaraded behind it having presence before Valia.

"The toll must be paid. The end is not nay, yet. Not before the Chains are broken."

Simply to listen one's voice speaking back is unnerving. More so, the very fact the voice this time belonged to an entity wishing to replicate it so perfectly, yet deliberately allowing the reflection to wither and distort enough, all the more evident it was but a facade.

The more she carved herself with the knife, the more the black mist emitted from where blood should spill out the now gaping wound. But, instead of intestines and torn bone, what Valia found beneath was black void, as if she herself was little different than the reflection before her. Bodies, barely conceptions of mind, like the stuff of dreams adopting a myriad shapes only to represent a shell of what the mind beheld, losing their meaning the more one spent time past the dream itself.

FLASH

The vision became blurry. The scent of naked metal ever-stronger in her mouth. A familiar sensation of the unstable and unsanitary life support tubes. A cacophony of beeping noises birthed from beyond the Darkness, as the reflection degraded more and more, as if consumed by the once barren, fading dimension, fading indeed the more Valia's senses returned to her.

Her hands numb by the restraints, keeping her against the operating table.

"Serve Death. Or the Chains shall never break." the voice now became twisted, corrupt; As if the entity unmasked itself to Valia in a time vision had already been lost, the more her eyes embraced Reality again.

"Specimen 6-1-3, stabilizing..."

"Apply anesthetic. Prepare for transfer."​

"Compliance."

Voices blurred as the mind spinned in a chemically enduced limbo.

 

[Valia Muqai]

Valia felt the sharp pain lance through her chest where she had plunged the knife, enough that it made her vision flash white, or so she assumed the cause of that flash. She pushed through the pain, plunging and twisting the knife through flesh even as the pain became more intense and the flashes happened again. Her nostrils picking up a scent that had become all too familiar to her.

No matter how much she tried and how much she attempted to dig into her flesh and inside. Nothing. Her knife cut nothing, her hand clawed at nothing, only dark mist that poured out. Valia wept in frustration as her plan failed, the dread of realization washing over her like cold water that she would be forced back into the world of the living once more. Denied another death by the thing that stood in front of her.

She only stopped once she felt hands grip her shoulders, looking up in despair at the reflection in front of her. Its words will forever be etched within her mind, a constant reminder that even her own death had a price and there was nothing she could do otherwise. The knife fell from her hands as they slumped down, moving them felt impossible. Another flash, Valia could taste metal and air being forced into her lungs, though that made little sense.

"Why?"

Was all she could mutter. Valia would never know the answer as the world became more and more blurred. The sensation of tubes down her throat became more apparent and she could hear distant, rapid beeps from beyond that seemed to get closer. Even when she knew it was futile, Valia resisted with all she could, desperately holding onto the afterlife as if trying to make a dream last forever even it degraded more and more each second. One last flash and Valia was forced back into the realm of the living.

---

Valia's eyes shot open, their color an intense yellow-red instead of their usual violet. All she could see was the blinding lights above her. Her body felt utterly battered, sore and bruised as if she had been beaten by Eosfor himself. Her lungs burnt like she was breathing in fire as the life support tubes forced precious oxygen into them, she felt the kick of her heart against her sternum, heavy and unsteady, pounding too hard but not quite as rhythmically as it should be, synced with the beeping that invaded her hearing. Enough to pump the lifeblood that her body had been deprived of for who knows how long.

Her mind was disorientated and confused, instinctively choking against the life support as she once did years ago. Yet, in her brief moments of consciousness, she felt and overwhelming sense of anger and rage, against the one who had denied her death and the ones responsible for bring her back into the living. Valia thrashed against the restraints that held her down, whether intentionally or unintentionally, she exerted her powers through the force and tore away the buckles that locked the restraints on her hands.

Before she could grab anything within reach. The anesthetic took hold, Valia fading into unconsciousness once more.