Flecks amongst the dross

[Julius Sedaire]

Within the spacious halls of Akure Executive, a single being worked late into the night, feverishly. Indeed, anyone coming into the workspace would be convinced the shii'do alchemist was a banshee animated by whatever went on in the space he occupied. Movements would look, to those outside, erratic and sporradic, untimed and uncoordinated. The junior staff alchemist, however had a plan very much so in his twisted and unhinged mind, he was just possessed by a singular purpose, for he had rather unwisely cracked a small crate from Korriban just earlier, and began reading a quite illuminating text within it.

That had begun the process really. Just those first few simple words.

From that moment on it was almost a burning compulsion to follow through with what lay in the pages of the dusty tome from the tomb. And he had read it cover to cover in a matter of days, barely rising from the empty husk of his office and workspace except to shove everything unceremoniously out into the hall way in a deranged bit of babbling about ley line access and proper conduits. He had then begun to take and mix his blood into black paint, covering the walls and floors and even ceilings in geometric figures, designs and sigils of runes and ancient sith glyphs.

This was just the start, as the sigils were painted in the blood mixed paint, there would be the occasional moment where Ostanes would slice open a finger and, reading from the tome in one hand with the chains from it's bindings dangling about his feet like some displaced specter's vestments, streak and smear blood across the symbol he had just drawn. Other times he would merely add dots and dashes and almost accent marks to the painted on drawings and forms, all in his own blood, paintbrush bit in between gleaming teeth and his form shifted to whatever he found he needed to reach whatever surface was being worked on.

In perhaps the oddest reaction to an utter ignorant of Alchemy or Sith Magic, the blood was absorbed into the paint and the walls, and eventually the Alchemist would step back, into the center of the room where a collection of writing and figures so dense as to leave no space detectable to the naked eye stood, an mirror circle on the top, which house nothing but blank ceiling space.

Having done that, he took gold leafing supplies from the hall, startling a maintenance droid, and began tracing leafing around some of the maddening script and objects traced into the room, speaking in what was slightly accented, but rudimentary Ancient Sith, tracing things in gold along here and there. Where the leafing touched, the symbol he traced would glow for a moment, before just utterly fading into the surface drawn upon and transfusing it with a faint but indistinct glow.

 

[Julius Sedaire]

As the last of the gold leaf was applied, Ostanes stopped, and began to absently mix the dredges of the substances together.. Black paint, his own blood, and the gold leaf... They slurried together with a pinch or two of the sand he kept at his side in a pouch from Korriban, from that simple trip upon a time when he had been there with his fellow Sith... The resultant mixture was the color of drying blood with streaks of black, glimmers and flecks of gold, and an odd shimmer about it. Anyone near the room would suddenly grow rather uneasy at the sensations coming from the room, as the chanting grew louder for a moment and Ostanes began to strip off the out layers of clothing, eventually standing in his truly natural form, no shape shifting illusions to 'protect' him.

With that done, the shii'do began to draw on his flesh with the dredges of his projects from earlier, covering nearly every inch of flesh with symbols, excepting at first both hands, then eventually even them. Pages in the book would be turned, glyphs from each paragraph and drawing exactingly drawn, or in some cases sliced into his flesh with the same little scalpel as before, the blood freely flowing over parts of his body, dripping onto the floor in random patterns and drabs. As he spoke, in a deep baritone cadence, the glow from the walls seemed to seep into him, the color as well, leaving him a glowing figure of painfully bright light.

At a certain word, the light seemed to become something more... Something different... Not wholly light anymore, but not darkness and shadow... A dim aura, a swirling of twilight, like the dusk colored caress of an evening sky about a beautiful sunset. The brilliant bright tones gave way to drab and dull, and then seemed to further leech from the walls and ceiling and floor to him, leaving them almost without paint, just bare durasteel and other fibers and materials. Meanwhile, the chanting grew lower, fainter, and the light in the room turned to darkness with the bared Shii'do alchemist in the center of the tendrils of blackened night now clinging to the circle in the middle of the large room.

From within the eddy of the storm of twilight, Ostanes smiled as his eyes finally opened, the iris and pupil utterly black, with flecks of black floating through the whites of his eyes as they rolled back in his head and he extended his hands almost spasmodically, a final word escaping his throat before the swirls of blackened tendrils collapsed into a ball centered in his chest and then rapidly expanded, the pressure of air in the room rising to painful levels before decompressing with an almost explosive thud and whoomph, leaving utter stillness and quiet about the workspace as the Sith Acolyte remained in the circle, bowing his head, arms still cast out and voice calmed in utter silence.