Private Death, Dreams, and Duplicity

[Ellie Mors]

DESIRE

Slumber.

From the earliest of days, the furthest reaches of galactic memory, sleep and rest, both temporary and eternal, have been a part of the daily ritual of life. In the morning the human, or the zabrak, or the umbaran wake and set about their day. Morning progresses to day, the hours of sunlight, when only the creatures of the night sleep while all the rest go about their day. Later, still, day progresses to the twilight hours where those that walk in the hours of the day grow weary, and those that walk in the dark of night begin to stir. What began as a simple exercise in exhaustion by the first of creatures, unable to keep themselves going for very long after their first waking moments, soon became a ritual of the living. Cyclical, all those that lived would sleep, and eventually that sleep would lead to the first living soul to enter a world not their own.

A world that would come to be known as dreams.

There is no memory of sleep before dreams, simply the knowledge that there must have been a time without them - perhaps the first hours of slumber went without, perhaps the second and third as well, all that is known is that dreams sprang into being after the ritual had already been established. Like the first hour of waking after the mystery of creation, falling into slumber's comforting embrace brought one into a world entirely removed from reality. In this strange plane, where sight was abstract - one could see both infinitely far and yet everything was slightly out of focus - and concepts were made mutable - the laws of physics were suspended here, a man of human birth could fly without any mystifying force, and yet fall far up into the sky as if hurtling down to the ground - the third step in the cycle was added, the mind's rejection of sleep and the desire to do as one would while awake, yet held captive in a sea of unconsciousness. Soon the harshness of life pushed those that desired comfort to recede from reality, to seek comfort in sleep - to dream of a world free of the limitations of life. This was met with success, at first, but eventually it led those that pushed further and further from reality into a seemingly inescapable fate.

Death.

Though a world in molded by the power of dreams, created anew with every attempt at slumber, was preferable by many over reality, soon another concept was born - a perpetual slumber that granted those that wished to escape from reality a true means to do so - and the regret of those eager to embrace sleep was made into a permanent mark on the galactic memory in the form of fear. Dreams remained coveted, but no longer did the galaxy seek its comforting arms over the harsh brightness of reality. As death's reach grew, and became a price for all of those who lived no matter how far they tried to run from the embrace of slumber and the world of dreams, the resentment for what had brought this inescapable punishment for rejecting reality grew with it. Dreams soon became associated with naivete, with immaturity and impossibility, and eventually became rejected unless they told of events that could come to pass in the 'real world'. The galaxy had asked for an escape from the rigid grasp of reality by giving more and more of itself to sleep, to dreams, and when they had finally gotten what they wanted, the chance to escape this dreariness for one of infinite possibilities what was the gratitude that these concepts were given? None.

It had wanted closeness, it had wanted company, so it gave them - the galaxy - a way to join it in a world of its own making, a realm where each of those that came to join it could do as they had when the dreams had first began, when slumber had collected its first offering at the start of the beginning of the ritual so long ago. And dreams were not alone in this rejection, this betrayal of trust, as sleep became less of a comfort and more of a necessity. Death, too, was rejected - but it was never desired when it was available. Like those that walked under the stars, these concepts, too, began to evolve and express desires of their own in their own abstract way. Death perverted life in its desire to be accepted, sowing disease and murder in its wake. Sleep lured the weary back into its embrace, becoming as inescapable as death. But dreams?

What would a dream be, for one a concept, a reality, separate from our own?

And what if it woke?

-

Braith stirred, an uneasy feeling growing in her chest, and reached for the comfort that was always within arm's reach - Darth Prazutis - as she woke. The memory of what she had dreamt was still fresh in her mind, almost as if she had literally, physically, seen it, and it disturbed her. Sitting up, the covers bunching up beneath her, she shook her lover and stared into the wall opposite of the one that loomed behind her. "Wake up." She said, her words strangely small and difficult to pronounce. She swallowed, trying to ease the tightening of her throat that she assumed had caused this, only to find that nothing had happened. Panic set in as she looked down at her side and saw her hand pushing through the man she'd been trying to wake and as she lifted her hand up to her face with confusion, in terror, she caught a glimpse of the wall she had been staring at only what had felt like moments before - or rather, the swirling void of black, gray, and deep hues of violet that occupied its space - while looking directly through the hand she had tried to wake Braxus with.

She screamed.

Then she was awake, again, laying in bed on her back with her body covered in sweat. To her right, turning her head to confirm, was Braxus, still slumbering, and the wall that had pulled her into the waking world was still present. She sat up, again, and tried to wake him once more - this time her hand finding purchase. Despite being awake, now with certainty, her body felt light, almost impossibly so, and, though she now occupied a body that was insignificant in comparison to her lover, the simple act of shaking him was a task all its own. She swallowed, reflexively so out of fear of the sensation of difficulty she had held just moments before waking, before she parted her lips. "Wake up, dear." She pleaded, her breathing labored and heavy. "There's something wrong."

Of course there was something wrong - what was it that she had dreamt of in the dream she had just woken from in such a fright, anyways?

"I'm scared." She explained, the world seeming impossibly big to her as she felt smaller and smaller as the darkness of night seemed to grow with the room around her.

Frightened? Of what? Dreams?

Disappearing?

'I don't want to wake up.'

Had that been her voice? It sounded so distant, yet she heard it so clearly. "I don't understand." She said aloud, looking towards Braxus as the room grew greater still and the darkness began to swallow everything up. Even to the naked eye, reality began to distort around her - her hair shimmered as it had on the world they had conquered that had tried to reach out for gods that none of the empire could have even began to have understood, her very presence seemed faded, like vision clouded by fog or water. And around them space itself folded in on itself, the air replaced with something that seemed like it was a very similar facsimile.

'You will.'

 

[Darth Prazutis]

Imperial Palace, Bastion
Royal Quarter, Sanctum of the Shadow Hand

Sleep.

Since the beginning of creation itself sleep was a necessary daily ritual for most living, breathing creatures regardless of sentience. A period of required inactivity to give the bodies biological functions time to recharge. For most it was an unavoidable nightly ritual that was an understood part of life. But there were the few among those many that this wasn't necessarily the case. It was yet another ritual that the Saziliebm* had long since shed. There were many sacrifices made and prices paid on the path to power and sleep was often something that the titan no longer needed, he staved it off and often spent the gained hours out of his day to continue critical operations. So what was he doing? It wasn't sleep in the normal sense that brought him in bed with his wife Ellie Mors . While his body was at a state of rest beneath the covers against her his mind was adrift, his consciousness projected far beyond his body through the vastness of the galaxy. While most force wielders would classify it as a powerful, and unusual state of emptiness.​

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It was so much more.​

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Uthax'ra.​

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Darth Prazutis.​

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Ya'zid-rah.​

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Braxus.​

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They were all his names. Each a part of the collective identity that was the motionless figure. The hypergate on Asation shook the boundaries between worlds, the fabrics of reality that exposed the horrors of the Great Beyond. It was an exposure that allowed the Lotek'k, the prize enslaved by the Shadow Hand and the Sith Empire, it had so much more. The events had caused resurgence, a summoning of himself. To the part of himself birthed all those centuries ago on the ether world of Maena, where the Tome of Akhyrress shackled him as the living conduit, the vessel of the four outer gods to push their influence through the cracked gate. In their eternal struggle they were drawn to the awakening. A single eye of the Great One Az-xuul'yir from which all creation is spawned opened to stare upon this single mortal, this fragment created from a reality birthed through its dreams. It stared upon this being and in that moment the great game had stopped. Their unified power flowed through him, the chosen who would unravel all of creation. For them he became the Warmaster who kicked off the War To End All Wars, the Final War through which untold millions died. It was in his pursuit of power that he found the sacrifice necessary to climb a wrung most said would never have been possible.​

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All it took was the sacrificial death of the age to birth Uthax'ra.​

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But in its aftermath it was suppressed, buried, pushed away. It was both present and not present, within and without. It was only after many centuries when the final gates were thrust open that the summoning actually conjured this separate identity that grew, festering between the folds of the unknown. What was it like to stare the living, breathing, horrifying unknown in the face and feel the sensation of familiarity, identity, home? It caused a separation in the core that hadn't occurred since the days of Maena. It was the incorporation of two beings that lived in two separate reality, the ascendant one and the entity unshackled by it's prison. It was the sensation of being present in his body and not at the exact same time. While his body lay motionless he could walk the smog choked, barren wasteland of the world of Moridinae, he could oversee the collective demise of an entire culture that was gradually erased into the pages of history. It was strange to pass through a world in which he could choose to walk seen or unseen, yet no longer be present. Even for such a brilliant mind it was hard to process the uniqueness of the moment, the solidarity and ability of his newfound identity.​

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'Wake up'​

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The words resounded through his world they were both so close, and yet so far away they resounded like an echo through an earthly cavern. It was followed by a sensation that could only be described as odd. It was strange, unfamiliar, potentially threatening presence that drew the collective attention of this Lord of Death itself. As his consciousness returned to his shaken core the warped, folding room roiled with a deep ether, a darkness wrapped in a dense miasma. The world began to shudder and heave with presence like a great wet lung it was like a rapidly spreading algae that crawled over every surface. It was only then that the Shadow Hands eyes were swiftly pulled open and he rapidly rose from his laying position. As his presence began to seep back in his eyes fell on his precious wife, he reached out to assuringly grab her hand in his large one. "The unknown approaches. Do not fear its touch my love. I am here always." ​

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[Ellie Mors]

CONSTANT

Approaches?

Quaint words for a waking man.

The space around them, though it seemed a distorted vision of their reality - perhaps interpreted as an illusion, or the emergence of something that could not be contained by the concepts of a reality bound by physics. In truth there was no distortion, no illusion that altered their perception of time or space, in fact time and space were little more than artifacts of that from which they came.

And reality?

The canvas of darkness burnt away to reveal a formless void, and the bed which somehow had managed to remain with them thus far was dusted away in a manner that bore similarity to molten plastic torched to nothingness. All that remained were the two masters of the force - Braxus and Braith.

"You are here, are you? And where is here, exactly?"

The voice came from nowhere, reverberated against nothing, yet was heard from all directions - including from within.

Alarm spread across Braith's face, her expression bewildered in a manner that she was certain could have been understood by her lover. The voice was not quite dissimilar to an internal monologue, words that could be interpreted and associated with the memory of physical sound, but that oddity was minute in comparison to the familiarity of it. While the mind could alter these associations at determined will, the initial memory was typically the closest to truth - and the voice that could be heard was none other than her own, albeit the voice she'd spoken with in her initial, truest, body.

"You sought out your origin, the truth, and you still don't recognize where you come from, where the worship of your supposed progenitor source originates?"

Words directed at Braith, who had slowly risen to stand now, uncertain of how she was finding footing atop an empty expanse and yet not floating as one would in air or space. A recollection of the formless wave, the darkness that slammed against the porthole in her visions of the past, came to her as the connection with their destruction of the cult of the Terrible Glare was made.

"You were the storm?" She asked, slowly.

As if to defy the state of being a void, the emptiness became solid and the graven image that belonged to this disembodied voice was formed.

"No."​

One side of its face seemed to bear a resemblance to her own, perhaps in an effort to confuse her, while the other half looked more disturbed and altogether different. Its expression, though hard to read, seemed to denote disappointment in her.

"Perhaps you ought to tell us who we are."

Again, its words were uttered without connection to anything, but it seemed its words were unheard by Braith this time as she seemed to show no reaction to its sound - a sound that only reached the ears, and the mind, of Braxus.

"Tell her what she has been living, and acknowledge what you have."

Once again the void took its place, though the memory of that face lingered in their peripherals.

"Tell us what 'here' is. Darth Prazutis ."

 

[Darth Prazutis]

Location: Imperial Palace
Tags: Ellie Mors

Q U E S T I O N S​

Words.

They were a calming reassurance and all he offered as the world warbled around them. He could see the panic and the concern that played out on his lovers face like watching a cinema. It was an event for many that they would be incapable of understanding it's cosmic significance and the totality of what had unfolded. But for the Sith Lord who observed the events as they unfolded around them he had a unique origin, a unique side to the entity he was. It was an understanding born of his other side Uthax'ra that gifted him with the ability to see.

Now it seemed he was the only one capable of seeing.

It was an interaction between Braith and herself and it brought confusion to one and frustration to another. But he understood. After all he didn't expect her to understand. While her and her experiences were real she was a tether, an avatar, a connection to her true self. It was a protection from the indescribable tragedies that unfolded over the course of her long life. So it was now up to him to explain and explain everything.

So he did. For the entity he reiterated through a cosmic word the connection, the affection he had with the woman before him, the real love between them. Even as these series of events unfolded to the guarded entity he explained that what they had was real, strong, and that opinion wouldn't change through seeing all of Braith Achlys. To explain the person she is and who she was with him. To explain the complex bond they shared over the passage of time, years and the trials and tribulations that they had went through to get to where they were now.

For Braith herself?

"She is you my love. You are an extension of the greater entity." Prazutis explained he remained holding her hand and provided a reassuring squeeze. "She is the greater part of you. There has been...an awakening."