Everything was dark and it felt as though he were floating, although in truth he doubted that could be the case as to be floating one had to have a point of reference to judge from. There was none to be found at the moment. Just an abyss that cloaked everything and obscured his vision to the point that he wasn't even certain if his eyes were open or not. It hardly made a difference if they were, he decided, but the lack of confirmation either way was concerning. The last thing he could recall before the dark set in was burning, a flame reaching up from a sharp object embedded in his core and searing everything around it. But that wasn't the last thing he had heard, merely the last that he remembered feeling. The last sound to reach him was a scream in a voice oh so familiar, one that had stirred his very soul in how it echoed, and yet now he was alone and in silence.
Would it be like this forever, he wondered. What had happened to him? Had he bested Malum? Where was he? Who was he? A pause. A thought in his own voice yet without him thinking it. Something foreign and yet something also himself. What was that? Then as if he had blinked he found himself away from the abyss and instead in some sort of ballroom with a woman in his arms, although something was very wrong. The scenes were similar in many respects, such as the woman's features shifting far too much to be recognizable or even simply constant and a crowd of onlookers watching the two of them, but it was though each eye was playing a different version of the same event.
In one he and the woman were dancing, dressed in finery that at any other time would drive him to wretch given how expensive the garments must have been. The crowd of similarly fancily dressed onlookers were smiling as he twirled the woman in his arms and dipped her after a rather showy and impressive little dance maneuver, with himself leaning down to chase the woman's lips despite not making any movements of his own accord. In the other eye however the scene was not that of a ballroom dance but rather a massacre, with the woman desperately trying to claw her way out of his grip as his fangs descended on her throat with the crowd split between other such Sangnir and their terrified victims.
Another blink and the scene had shifted to that of him standing before an assembled table of what must have been his peers in some regard, all looking up at him as he stood and regaled them with some mute dialogue that was no doubt as profound as it was long-winded. In one eye the assembled guests toasted to his words, seemingly a gathering of Sith and military leaders that were praising him from some well executed campaign. In the other they were looking up at him with fear and terror, assembled around a guillotine that was already stained with the blood of the last event as he himself gave a thumbs down and nodded for the guards either side of the room to start the executions.
The scene changed once more with another blink and this time he was standing on the slightly ruined balcony of some grand and decidedly tall building, gazing down at a burning city with his hated foe writhing in his clawed gauntlet as he hovered them over the seemingly endless drop into the destruction below the building. In one eye it was Jutrand and his crushing grip was tightly wrapped around the throat of the corpse himself, Empyrean, making him watch as his capital world was reduced to ash for ever daring to poison the Sith with his presence. In the other it was Coruscant that had been set ablaze and the less familiar but nonetheless infuriating Valery Noble witnessed as the Galactic Alliance came crashing down around her.
As the scene started to shift once more he realized something constant about these dual visions. None of them had his mask adorning his features as it always did. In a blink instead of a new scene he saw himself back in the abyss of nothingness, staring at himself. Whereas he was burned, wounded, and without his adornments however, the figure across from him was as resplendent and whole as he had ever been. Not quite a mirror image but still a reflection it seemed. 'A perception.' His double corrected in his mind with his own voice. 'A perception of what you are to those around you. The good and the bad.'
The darkness around them shifted to the familiar sight of his cultists and soldiers praying together, united in their belief not only in the Dark Side but primarily in him. 'The High Priest,' Suddenly it wasn't his faithful that surrounded them but rather his cowed and pleading foes, criminal scum and heretics alike. 'And the Dark Lord.' He took in a breath, although the gesture hardly mattered it seemed as no air entered that he could tell, and looked back into the expressionless visor that he so often wore himself. "And, pray tell, who are you?" The masked figure inclined his head slightly, a gesture that he himself did whenever a question with an obvious answer was asked of him. 'I am you. I am Darth Strosius, High Priest of the Order of Wonosa, Sith Lord of the Sith Order, last of the Tenth Sith Empire, and new emperor of the Eleventh.'
He grimaced at his own grandiose titles, each seeming foreign despite being spoken in his own voice and all of which he had earned or chosen for himself. "You know that's not what I meant." He huffed with a roll of his eyes, earning a head tilt from his reflection. "You said it yourself, you're a perception. But I know myself well enough to know that you haven't been...here...forever. So where did you come from?" The reflection clasped his hands together before gesturing widely with the slightest bow. 'You made me.' The simple statement was about to draw another exasperated question from the original but before he could speak again the darkness around them melted away into the familiar scene of the Formos Cathedral, now lost to him forever.
'With every prayer.' The scene shifted to him standing at the altar before his faithful, giving some mute sermon as his perspective rapidly changed between his own eyes and that of the audience members. 'With every sacrifice.' A criminal was laid out on the altar as he raised his lightsaber, the priests around them chanting some forgotten words as his vision danced between his leering glare and the frightful stare of the victim. 'With every ritual.' Down in the Undercroft where his workshop laid he toiled away, pouring his own blood and all that he could muster with the Force into whatever alchemical project he was working on at the time. 'With each one and so many more, I was made.' It all clicked at once as the abyss returned.
"The reservoir." The power that he had cultivated and stored within the cathedral for so long, that which he had absorbed in order to gain the strength needed to fight in the Kaggath at all. He had brought it into himself so quickly without much thought, having so little time before Taeli Raaf stole Formos from him, and clearly now he was paying the price for his rushed ritual. 'Our bond is cleaner than you think.' With a blink he was staring down at his hands, one side was gloved and tattered from the duel while the other featured his gauntlet and the familiar tint of his visor covering his eye. 'I am all that you could be, all that you are believe to be, but you are all that you are. That I can never be. But together we can unite our strengths. Together, the potential can be the reality.'
His fingers on both hands clenched into fists as he steadied his breathing and nodded to himself. "And what insights do you bring to me for our future, oh being of the Force?" 'A sign, from our god.' Now that got his attention. Before he could ask further he felt as though his very being was melting, gasping for air as he felt himself dissolving and combining with something else. 'No more divisions are necessary, from now on I am Darth Strosius. Perception and Reality." Once more he was adorned with his mask and clad in his ornate robes as the scene around him shifted into some new abyss, something that was hard to look at and even harder for him to comprehend.
All that he could discern was the great monolithic yet unresponsive form of some powerful being, something so drenched in the Dark Side of the Force that it seemed to darken the otherwise colorful scenery around him as he reached out to touch it. Before his fingers could reach the pale visage that stared down at him however, he felt a tug on his being. He was being dragged away, the sight fading into darkness as he recoiled from the unwanted and undesired feeling. The next thing that he knew his eyes opened to reveal him drowning in a tank of bacta with the face of his murder standing just beyond the glass.
And He was furious.
