The first day, the Darkness would not relent. She had the sword in her hand, the sword that she had created from the very Darkness itself. She had challenged the monsters, and the voice in her head kept insisting that it was she who was the monster. It made no sense, but she was too busy to think it over. Thinking, she had decided, was inherently bad. The worst things happened when she thought. That was when all her fears popped up. That was when she was her parents, her friends, the few things, returned to plague her mind. There was one way to defend herself from that, and it wasn’t the sword. It was not thinking.
Her heart had turned to stone. Whereas she had previously spent the years in the Darkness with a warm and beating heart, it had done nothing to save her, nothing to protect her. A warm and beating heart was a weakness. She had to kill it, and thus, she had demanded the stone to grow over it. Once she was free of the Darkness, once she knew how things outside of the Darkness were now that probably so many years had passed, she would not feel it. She would not gaze at new things in wonder. She would not permit herself to become excited, to bubble, to… To feel
love. Feelings, were a weakness. When you felt things towards people, you merely gave them the tools to hurt and harm you. Here in the Darkness, there was only her heart of stone, her Sword of Darkness, and the monsters that had to be defeated.
She knew how to kill things. She excelled at that. Her sword was her weapon now, as she had not found any daggers within the Darkness. But she had adapted, taken in all the lessons she had been given prior to being tossed into the Darkness again. The Darkness would test her, the Darkness would not relent, but she would destroy the Darkness and set herself free.
There had been nothing that first day. Only the same inky blackness in every direction. She had swung her sword anyway, swung it forward, stabbed the air, walked forward. Always forward. No more circles, no more going back. The galaxy continued without her, she knew, and she continued without it. There would be no sleep here, no need to rest, so she cut her way forward and pressed on. Sooner or later, she knew, something would give. Something would nudge. And she would use and abuse it when it did, she would claw her way out screaming and kicking.
She was tired. She was so tired. She was tired of the tears, she was tired of the fears, she was tired of fighting her warm and beating heart that tried to fight against the stone that she had placed around it. She did not want to feel anything. In order to not feel anything, she had to press forward. No thinking.
The second day was no longer a lonely one. The day before had been a challenge not to think, but the second day had given her the means to do so; she fought as apparitions appeared in front of her. Nothing from her real life, nothing that she had seen with her own eyes or in the memories granted to her by her grandmother, who was apparently very much missing from the Darkness at present.
The second day was also full of
him. Him, whom she had confessed her heart to, back when she had one that worked. He jumped at her from the Darkness, always laughing, always looking at her with those blue eyes. “You promised me,” she almost cried once, and “I lied” was the reply. Sometimes he would spring at her all alone. Sometimes, he was accompanied by other creatures, other monsters. Every time, she stabbed him with the Sword of Darkness. On some basic, animalistic level, she knew that it was not him. No. The real Gerwald had appeared to her with Katrine, when they told her she had been used. These fakes were merely an attempt to seal her in, to make sure she never escaped.
She would escape. Days, years, centuries. She would not remain here. The last time she had left was because she had been permitted to leave. Now she would force her way out.
And constantly, all the time, the voice whispered in her mind. The whispers had changed now. It tried to tell her that she could leave, that she was all right. But she knew it was just more trickery of the Darkness. There were no kind voices inside her head; perhaps, there never had been. Memories of pleasant times blurred and became a lie of the past. There would be no place for lies. Not anymore. She would make it out, and she would start again. If the Confederacy still existed, she would leave it. The Unknown Territories, her original destination when she left the CIS space the last time, were still her goal. You could always find something in a place that had nothing.
It was an eternity before the second day ended. Things were becoming more and more tangible now. The creatures that tried to constrict her to the Darkness no longer vanished. She could smell their blood. She could feel their meat and bones as she stabbed them. Was it a day? Was it a century? She did not know. The reek of their rot reached her nose and she delighted in it. If things were tangible, it meant that things were becoming less of the Darkness. That was what it had to mean; there were no alternatives. She would not have any alternatives.
But the third day…
Emerald eyes opened into a warm and sunny planet. The sky was the clear blue, that one special hue that would always make her feel at home. There were forests, and lakes, fields of food and animals in the farms. She knew where she was eve without needing to be told. This was Endelaan. Not the real Edelaan, but Edelaan nonetheless. When her ancestors ruled it, they had called their empire the Empire of Infinite Darkness. Perhaps that was why, while she was inside the Darkness itself, she found a link, a connection to that place.
Again her heart threatened to beat. She swallowed it down. This
felt real. This did not feel like the Darkness, and yet it did. Real… Not real… Real… Not real… Which was it?
The capital city lay deserted. She walked through it, realizing only now that there were clothes on her body; the same clothes that the natives often wore, rough spun fabric draped around her form. It wasn’t practical for someone who wielded the Sword of Darkness, but it would do. She knew where she was going. The voice in her head told her to leave, to turn back, to go forward, to claim her throne. She ignored it. That voice had plagued her for years now, or centuries, or… She didn’t know how long.
Her heart beat.
She screamed, willing it to stop. Willing the stone to return. It would not. There was nothing here that she could stab, nothing here that she could kill. She was home, she was on Endelaan, and yet she was alone, without even monsters to remove, people to stab, something to slaughter. Endelaan was a place of ghosts now, of distant memories.
Somehow, she had entered the Forbidden Temple. Her face was wet with tears as she looked at the empty thrones, knowing of the paths into the caverns below that were hidden behind them. Endelaan, waiting in the corner of the galaxy, waiting for a rightful King and Queen. Endelaan, for which she had wanted to be a shield and sword, had vowed to protect even if she could not lead. Endelaan, dead and dying, void of the blood such a place needed.
She had failed.
She had been in the Darkness too long. Her brother was dead. Her parents did not want to come back as long as she lived. For her choices, for all the things she had done that had made her ultimately weak, she had killed Endelaan. The one place in the galaxy that mattered to her more than herself, the place where she had feared to come and step foot on because she was inadequate. Gone.
She looked at the empty thrones and knelt, her head bowed low. The Sword of Darkness felt heavy in her hands. The voice inside her head had gone silent; another sign of her choice being the right one. After so long, at last, she had made the correct decision.
Scherezade lifted the sword, and stabbed her heart.
Emerald green eyes snapped open. The sky was blue and purple. No, not sky. Ceiling. She had seen this ceiling before, but the memory was a fuzzy one. She supposed the Darkness would not let her, would not let her leave. She had stabbed her own heart with the Sword of Darkness and perhaps... Perhaps, instead of releasing her, she had been sucked back in, deeper this time. There could be no other explanation.
There were people here. She could sense it before her vision snapped into place. Her eyes moved towards where their presence came from and she saw them... Katrine and Gerwald, in a moment of caress.
We totally had you fooled.
I sold you to Avarisa.
Our beautiful son.
Everyone was in on it.
Scherezade roared as she jumped from the bed, the monitors that had been strapped to her ripping away. This was them, this was truly them. Not the random apparitions that she had killed time and time again in the Darkness, but the them that had come to tell her what they had done. The ones that had fooled her. Trapped her. Sold her. And now she had been spat back to them, put at their mercy.
Fire burst form her hands as she took another step away from the bed. They would hurt her again. Sell her again. Use her again. She would not let them. The voice inside her head tried to whisper, tried to talk, but she would not hear it. Chair after chair in the room Combusted as the fire left her hands, hitting everywhere; walls, wardrobe, bed.
But it was not enough. It was never enough. When faced with one, a sword was enough. With two, she needed more weapons. Scherezade turned around and ripped one of the legs off the bed. She held it high above her head as the pole turned into the Sword of Darkness - another confirmation that she was still trapped within it, another confirmation that she had to kill them again and again. Another confirmation that her heart should be stone. This was not a place for those who's heart could beat.
The Sith Warrior knew who must die first, and she launched at Katrine, her
Sword of Darkness ready to mutilate her chest and cut her heart out.
[member="Gerwald Lechner"] [member="Katrine Van-Derveld"] [member="Aston Jacobs"]
