Pull Me Under (Complete)

[Kuzo]

In a few days, the holonews on Dosuun would report the tragic fire at Blackwater Reach. A spark from a fallen candle that started it all. The death in that fire of the Baroness Irajah Ven and her staff. Such a shame. A tragedy. And then as new stories rolled in from across the First Order, it would fade from the public eye- forgotten and ultimately..... unimportant. A minor name, a bright spot perhaps, but those were after all the sort to burn out too quickly.

But here, in this moment....

She didn't know where she was. Red sands. Burning wastes. Black skies yet she could see, a white orb reflecting mercilessly down, though it cast no shadows. She moved because she had no choice but to move, something drew her on, something pushed from behind, and every step- every single one- something dragged down on her from below. Beneath the sands, something waited, hands grasping if her foot stayed too long in one place.

"Onward," she murmured, her lips cracked and bleeding, voice the barest croak. The word was snatched up in the howling winds, tumbled up into the darkened sky and consumed.

She didn't know how long she had wandered the wastes. It felt like an eternity already. How far had she come? Pausing for a moment, she turned to look behind her, down the length of the dune that seemed to stretch for thousands of kilometers while she had trudged up it. But when she looked back, it couldn't have been more than a hundred meters since she had started to climb.

"Onward," she muttered again, turning back. The sensation that someone would have reassured, agreed and echoed, flickered through her- but she heard nothing but the winds and the rasp of sand against her flesh.

The pause had been a mistake- she could feel the hands beneath the barrens grasping, pulling. They would drag her beneath, if she let them. If she stopped moving.

She wrenched her feet from their grip, first one, then the other. A murmur of disappointment reached her and was gone again, just as quickly. The hint of the voice was familiar, before it reached her ears and then ripped away again.

Again, she pressed on, the biting wind sheering glassine sand across her flesh always angled into her face, no matter which direction she turned. Beside the dunes, there were no markers. No indicators of how far she had come or how far she had to go. Beyond the dunes? She didn't know if there even was anything beyond the dunes.

Her mouth tasted of ashes. Throat torn from breathing in sharp sand (was that all? No, a knife, she remembered a knife. A knife and confessions).

A grip tightened, not on her foot this time, but around her ankle, and she barely got her hands out in front of her before she fell. Red sands filled her eyes, her mouth. Whispers filled her ears. Up and down ceased to function in meaningful discourse as she tumbled back down the dune, coming to rest in a heap at the bottom of it.

Slowly, she looked up, and realized that there were three sets of tracks- her tracks- up that dune. How had she forgotten that she had already tried to go up it twice before?

"Can anyone hear me?" She croaked, a sob caught between sand and pain.

Struggling to her hands and knees, she felt the grasping again from beneath the sand.

"Please....."

We hear you. Come out of the storm.

She knew that voice. It had been a source of comfort once. Of safety. Of stories and warm hands. Warm hands.

They grasped again from beneath the surface, and this time she didn't fight them, let them pull her under. Draw her down beneath the sands. She closed her eyes and took a breath right before the red sand covered her face.

Her father's voice.

​| [member="Cerbera"] | [member="The Slave"] |​

 

[Jairus Starvald]

"Our timetable has moved up."

"Why."

"She's dying."

"She... what?"

"Yes."

Cerbera eyed the holographic representation of Carach in front of her. "Where do you keep finding these people?"

***​

​

The stealth shuttle broke through the atmosphere of Dosuun, already angling for the estate beneath. They were supposed to arrive later tomorrow to pick-up Raj and finalize the transfer, but instead... they were here now. In the distance Cerbera could see the fire roaring and that made her purse her lips. Part of the deal had been the acquisition of Irajah's body for science. If her corpse was burning up in there that would complicate matters.

Then again.

If she died? It might cause an expansion of the sickness throughout the area - they would need quarantine and containment, but it could possible be a secondary avenue for her experimentation purpose. "Darling, I will need you focused right now, so no scenes or emotional outbursts."

That was relayed to [member="The Slave"] called... Slave.

Now a lab-assistant for Cerbera, she figured it would be good to have an extra pair of hands. They'd (hopefully) be able to contain the body, if it was still intact.

Make sure it didn't infect the entire planet.

That would be awkward and Carach would probably kill her, try to anyway.

[member="Irajah Ven"]​

 

[Darth Empyrean]

“There won’t”, he said coldly.

The Slave stared at the durasteel wall across from him, propped up by his white knuckled grip on the hilt of Ishtar. It hummed slightly from the movement of the ship, but it was easily overcome by the ever droning hum of the ion engines behind them.

His thoughts weren’t clouded, for once, entirely sober albeit the anger burning in his soul. He knew as well as any of them that the house was far too well kept to just ignite, not today, not ever. Someone brought this down, a punishment for something outside his control; something he couldn’t even begin to imagine. Yet while they sought punishment, he sought redemption.

Revenge implied he simply wanted even for what had happened, but something worse stuck his side. He never did say goodbye to her, never let her see him once more; just let a rift form where there was once nothing. It wasn’t her fault either, it was simply his inability to comprehend just how quickly everything was moving in a direction he couldn’t control, but it was something that held itself tight to his consciousness.

Like a mosquito buzzing at the ear, the incessant cries of her words coming through were always prevalent. They never ceased, never gave way to a moment of resolve in the young man. There would be no forgiveness if he found evidence of who did this.

As an image of her laying in bed flashed in his mind, he shook his head and moved to stand, sheathing the whimsical blade with a quick flurry. Holding firm on the support above him, he waited for his new master to give a command, something, if not anything at this point to give him direction.

If she didn’t, he would, but it wouldn’t be in the best direction for any involved.

│ @Cerbera │ [member="Irajah Ven"] │

 

[Kuzo]

By the time they reached it, the entirety of the Blackwater Estate was in flames. The dark wood, the white stucco- the fire had been started in the Solarium and spread immediately to the library, and the old fashioned books that Irajah had been so fond of had fed the flames to a roaring that could not be sated by mere knowledge. It consumed at a frenzied rate, moments and memories, without a hint of chagrin.

From the air, however, as the wind shifted the smoke back and over the mountains, a lone figure moving down toward the waters that gave the estate its name could be seen. Too tall, moving slowly with something clasped in his arms, black soot in swathes across his body large enough to see from the distance. Away from the estate. Away from the fire. Headed down to the shore.

Samson, brought to life beneath her hands, now carried his master's limp body clutched tightly to his chest. He didn't care about the blood, just moved with a certain mechanical step, more as a man of clay in that moment than one of flesh.

But what then, did a golem do at the death of his creator?

*****

At first, it was almost a relief. The sand beneath the upper layers of the desert, where the blazing of the black sun couldn't reach it, was almost cool. There was no more biting wind. As she sank into the cool beneath the wasteland, beyond the held breath, for a moment, she was almost comfortable.

But slowly, it started to tighten around her. The pressure of the sand drew sharp and harsh, scraping skin from deeper flesh as she was pulled down through it. The cool shifted to cold, biting against the raw abrasions left, ever deepening, ever widening as the sand continued its work on her body. As the breath she had drawn at the surface grew stale, she started to struggle, but the gripping hands on her ankles and wrists only tightened, pulling down harder as she thrashed. A sound, muffled and muddied by the weight of earth and of suffocated breath died stillborn at her lips.

Panic rose in her and she fought harder, managing to free one foot as she kicked with all of her strength, making contact with something just outside of the edges of her awareness within the sand. It recoiled for a moment before snatching at her again, the others bearing down hard enough that she knew even another squeeze would shatter bone.

Even then, she fought. Already, the red desert above was forgotten. No room for knowledge beyond the moment. This tomb beneath the sands was all she knew. Her breath burning in her chest, she struggled until-

She gasped, reflexive action from an oxygen starved brain too newly dead to have yet accepted it, let along shucked off the limits of that suit of clay. Cold, harsh sand filled her mouth, her throat, and she started to choke, suffocating and drowning in a thousand miniscule shards of glass. The hands pulled faster now, flesh scoured down to the bone where it was too close to the surface.

It was an eternity to the bottom.

| [member="Cerbera"] | [member="The Slave"] |​

 

[Jairus Starvald]

[member="Irajah Ven"] | [member="The Slave"]

"Don't pout, Dorian darling, it doesn't become you." Cerbera chastised lightly, before refocusing her attention on the shuttle controls and the sensory output generated on the screen. It seemed that the situation was evolving - from the backdrop of the fire a single humanoid was limping away.

A close-up of the scene showed Samson walking with something wrapped in his arms.

"Now, the last thing we need are emotional outbursts and spur-of-the-moment nonsense, so none of that, please." The command finally came as she angled the ship to land and uncloak. Samson halted in his tracks, looking back over his shoulder, to the sides, then to the body in his arms.

"It looks like poor Samson is in a bad shape, you will tend to him, while I see to the Doctor."

The tone was firm, to the point and there was no leeway to be found.

It sadly could not be any other way. The Doctor was dead and Gideon was roiling under her skin, trying to escape and it would soon enough. Whilst that would have been a fascinating experiment... Cerbera hadn't played around with it yet. Depending on its infection vectors, it could very well be that she would be killed by it too.

Not a pleasant way to go.

The shuttle landed and the two would exit.

 

[Darth Empyrean]

Doesn’t become him.

The words echo’ed blindly as his mind cleared, passing through his less than focused mind as the ship came to its landing. He heard her command, and although his body moved into action as she instructed; there was a disconnect. A massive dissociation as the reality began to bear its full weight on him, all at the sight of a single object.

A charred, frail form carried in the man’s arms.

Emptiness took hold as his mind cleared, not out of a preparatory reaction to the situation, but out of a necessity. In a manner of shock almost, he simply threw himself from it all, his mind refused to accept what it could not. She wasn’t dead, and he wasn’t here. It simply couldn’t happen this way, not how he left her, not with how he was seeing her now.

As his legs brought him closer, each stride seemed to take an infinite time. Perhaps in the same way she was now, endlessly climbing through the sand dunes of the netherworld, he took walked his own punishment. There was a calmness to it however, with the sounds of the fire behind them falling quiet beneath a subtle buzzing, a faint breeze passing by his alabaster locks; all to end with the two finding themselves within inches of the body and the man.

He saw Samson mouth something, but the words never seemed to meet him, and his only instinctual reaction was the way his body took him to assist Cerbera in removing the body from his grasp and moving him aside. There, his mouths moved desperate, perhaps even tears formed in his eyes as he attempted to explain something, but none of it made sense to the young man. He was speaking something foreign, despair made manifest through emotional rantings and revelations he couldn’t comprehend; all things that mattered little now.

Once more, the idle shape of her body formed beneath the covers as iconic eyes offered a come hither stare, all to fade as he blinked and began to work as his master had taught him; with no hesitation, no recourse.

He was a tool after all. He should behave like one.

│ @Cerbera │ [member="Irajah Ven"] │

 

[Kuzo]

It took a moment for Samson to recognize [member="Cerbera"] - the blank expression on his face, the unreality of everything that had happened meant that everything but the body in his arms only had the barest pressure against his mind in that moment. At first, when she tried to take the body, he simply gripped harder, the burned flesh of his hands and forearms cracking and oozing at the joints with the movement. He had plunged his hands into the flames themselves to retrieve her, and he did not give her up easily or quickly. It was only when he fully realized just who it was standing before him, and that she was the only one who could maybe- just maybe- put this situation to rights, only then did a glimmer of hope flicker in his eyes and he relinquished the form of his master.

"Save her," he demanded, eyes casting down at them both, the words somewhere between a command and a plea.

Something about him seemed to deflate as he let go of that specific burden, and he moved aside with [member="The Slave"] without further argument or initiative. Saving her body from the fire seemed to be the last shred of independent action left to him, and as they took control of the situation, the lost expression on his face only deepened.

"Be careful," he said tightly, as if any further insults could possibly be laid on the still form.

*****

She didn't lose awareness. That would have been a kindness, and there was no kindnesses to be found in the Netherworld- not for her, at least. Long past the point where the pain of flesh scoured from bone by the icy sands would have sent her beyond the sensation itself and into a blissful unconsciousness, she remained cognizant of every agonizing moment.

She didn't know how long it lasted. It seemed as new muscles were reached, new flesh scraped away, it would regrow above it and the cycle would begin again. She lost track of the cycle of regeneration and disintegrating meat.

Just as when someone spun around and around, finally stopping and watching the world still spin above them, so too did the sensations continue for a time after the hands finished pushing her up. Up? She had been dragged down, when had that direction changed? But her body had indeed crested above the surface of the sands again, and the sensation ebbed slowly, drawn back like a long knife just parting the first layer of skin- no blood drawn, no flesh truly rent, but a ghost of a cut left behind- a promise, a kiss.

Slowly, she rolled over onto all fours. Sand poured from her open mouth in a stream, as if her body was merely a pitcher that had held it for the duration of the journey. She coughed, once, twice, then reached up with a shaking hand to wipe at her lips with the back of her fist. Only the barest trace of abrasion, rough and raw but harmless, marked the eternity she had been devoured by the sands.

It wasn't strange now, that the ground beneath her was broken stone. The Netherworld cleaved to few enough rules, and the path it brought her on was not limited to such useless things as consistency. Here, the stone was grey, worn and curved- weathered by a thousand hands by a thousand years. Who had come before, and why they had walked that path? Beyond the wearing of the stone, had they left anything else to mark their passage?

Irajah stood, steading herself against the side of the narrow corridor cut into the mountain. The sides rose to the heavens- there was no where to go but forward. Holes, black as pitch, littered the ground along the passage, and she avoided each carefully, the sense of eyes watching from them pressing just on the edges of her awareness. Something waited in them, and she gave that the respect it deserved.

The stones grew rougher and darker as she pressed forward, as if for every kilometers passing beneath her feet, less people had tread that path to its completion. She eyed the holes warily, occasionally seeing the reflection of sclera or the flash of teeth for a single step before they again vanished.

The holes grew more numerous as she went, until the ground beneath her feet was nothing more than slender bridges of razor sharp stone arching over darkness. Not even a handbreadth across, she moved carefully over them, the sensation of movement beneath her growing stronger- the sense of vertigo from it increasing as she went.

She wavered, once, but reached out to the wall for support. Here, all of the stone was unweathered, the glasslike quality of obsidian parting the skin of her palm like butter. She grimaced, clenching her teeth and drawing her hand back once she was steady on the catwalk once again. The blood left on the black stone was stark in this place, but slowly it seemed to sink into the surface, swirling as if the walls were in truth water, trapped just beneath the surface.

The overwhelming knowledge that, if she hadn't pulled her hand back, the mountain itself would have gladly drawn every last drop of blood into itself and left her there, a husk, settled heavily on her shoulders. And to claim that giving up there, allowing that to happen, wasn't a temptation?

Irajah stood for far too long, contemplating the swirl of crimson in the dark stone to pretend it wasn't.

The decision to keep moving seemed to be what the Netherworld was waiting for, if that was how it worked at all. She still didn't know, and wasn't sure that, even if she did figure it out, the rules wouldn't change on her again simply because that *was* the rule.

Ahead of her, someone waited. She left the stone catwalks and mountain corridor behind, approaching it slowly. She frowned slightly, tilting her head. She wasn't afraid, though it towered to nearly twice her height. Bone and steel existed in the same space, the form wrapt in shadows that trailed down around it.

"I'm here," she said. As if she knew it had been waiting for her.

The figure only moved enough to look down at her. Mouthless visage cocked its head at her, eyes of burning coals watching.

"We've been waiting for you," came a familiar voice from the mouth of one of the shadows that seemed to constantly flow about it.

She looked down, noticing for the first time, that the shadows it cast did not match itself. All but one kept changing, shifting, as if the light and the very fabric of reality were shifting through the surface of a warm sea.

"Come," her mother's voice spoke from one of the shades. "There is much to show you."

​

 

[Jairus Starvald]

[member="The Slave"] | [member="Irajah Ven"]

With pleasure Cerbera noted that discipline held and Slave was not completely useless through the arrival of emotions.

Already the corpse of Ven was carefully laid down on the ground. Only for a moment did she shift her attention back to Samson, large, strong, powerful, there was a quiet terror inside of him that was festering, but this one would survive. Even if Raj wouldn't, the clone would not break.

At least, that's what Cerbera thought, but when had she ever been a people person?

"I will do what must be done to save us all, dearest Samson." Cerbera rebuked him, gently for her standards, before cutting both of the living out of her attention. Instead her fingers and nails dug into Raj's skin, prodding, feeling, making contact here and there. Eyes closed while she poured herself into the meat, skin, the dying cells collapsing under the weight of atrophy.

If there was one thing that Cerbera was good at? It was this.

Not lightsabers, only barely able to do a reasonable force push, mentalism focused around safe-guarding and manipulating her own thought processes... no, it was Alchemy that was her bread and butter. Anyone else would have been forced to bring Raj back to a laboratory, to consume essences to deepen their focus, maybe use a Talisman of Ensnarement to buff their powers. But all that Cerbera had to do was touch her, close her eyes and dig into the very essence of what Raj was.

From there?

Well, Cerbera would never lie to herself and claim it was easy, but it was simple in execution to her.

With a strict and firm hand she separated the foreign sickness dwelling inside the cells, multiplying, waiting in secret, hoping to merge together into a single mass. Once it reached critical, once a certain grade of mass had been achieved? It would have transformed and it was beautiful.

But this was not the time to turn giddy.

On the outside world seconds turned to minutes turned to hours, but Cerbera remained at her side. Around her Dorian presumably guided Samson back to their ship and it was only now.

That the Alchemist opened her eyes again.

"It is done." Sweat on her brow, beads dripping off her temples, hands shaking ever so slightly. "Now we go from here, back to where we came from, Dorian."

Her attention shifted from the corpse to the young lad.

"Ready the ship. I will be there with the corpse soon enough."

 

[Darth Empyrean]

The Slave nodded as he stood up from Samson in a quiet stance of passive behavior. The cold form he carried offer neither the body of Irajah Ven, nor the wounded figure that was Samson. None of the familiarity they had garnered for each other meant anything in those moments; all subverted by his apathetic response to the entire situation.

Its what he needed right then. To be nothing real, to not be a person; only the tool he was always readied to be. A person would see the trauma, see the entire cataclysm that befell those he cared for in even the slightest degree, and fall victim to its sadness in the form of anger or depression; but not he, for he struck a deal with the abysmal hole inside him that threatened to consume him whole at any given moment.

To offer it his infinite sorrow in exchange for the still face of a murderer. The unfeeling nature of a mother who killed her child. He was pleasure personified, but in those moments he was the reincarnation of control and focus, an idea so foreign to his entire being that every step seemed to shake his muscles from their very core and leave them torn asunder by emotion alone.

While those pained hormones tore at his body, attempting to pull deep from his very heart a mournful cry; his brain kept its authoritarian hold on the entirety of his muscled frame. There would be collapse today, only the ever forward vigilance of a man beaten down by life time and time again.

The ship would be ready, the only hope was that he himself was too when they were ready.

│ @Cerbera │ [member="Irajah Ven"] │

 

[Kuzo]

Beep wooooong?

The small, mournful mechanical query came from behind [member="Cerbera"] . The disappearance of [member="The Slave"] back into the ship had finally given the mouse droid the opening it needed. Nervous, frightened- down right neurotic- the fact that it had ventured out from the manor at all, let alone was approaching a stranger, was a testament to the loyalty the little unit. Bantam scooted back and forth on the path behind her, as if undecided. Ultimately it kept its distance.

But when the time came, it would follow the Sith onto her ship. If only because she carried Irajah's body.

And it didn't know where else to go.

*****

The shadows shifted, forming a cordon around her as she fell in beside the figure. Each step they took was an eternity- each stride covered kilometers across the broken landscape. And with each step, the being of bone and steel grew larger..... and she?

She grew smaller.

But still, and always, swept along in that shadow. To where and for what purpose wasn't clear yet.

It could come soon.

 

[Jairus Starvald]

[member="Irajah Ven"] | [member="The Slave"]

The soft whirr and the beep-boop tone of the little mouse droid was not lost to her.

In the middle of her stride she stopped, looking over her shoulder and noticed the droid. A little frown that disappeared once Cerbera realized this was probably one of Raj's, it would explain why it was following them inside and immediately stopped when the Sith Lord stopped walking.

The weight of Raj's body was reminiscent of a feather, she didn't seem to weigh much.

"Fine, you can come too." The Sith said, before turning around and resuming her walk. They wandered in and the ramp closed itself behind them.

Her voice would echo across the corridors towards Dorian.

"Dorian, darling, set course to Home, please. I am gonna sit with the body in the hangar, make sure it doesn't suddenly explode on us or anything." It would be just her luck to shift her focus for a second, just for Gideon to suddenly unleash and cause all of their deaths at once.

That wouldn't be pleasant.

At all.

 

[Kuzo]

The Netherworld was strange. Things could shift, from one moment to the next, like a dream. A nightmare. There was no strangeness to the shift itself, merely a naturally occuring aspect of the landscape and reality. It might be jarring or even horrifying, but there wasn't confusion. From one breath to the next she would be somewhere else and the options were simple.
​Stop and stare and allow the strangness to consume her.

Or keep walking and accept.

The shadows lengthened, and finally she stopped, looking up at the mountain before her. Of course, it wasn't a mountain of stone and ice. But one of bone and steel.

A mountain of pain.

The figure that had walked beside her all the way, the towering figure of razors and agony and glowing embers had stilled and offered an endless landscape. Though the white sun in the red sky was still, his shadows still roiled, changing, murmuring.

Climb, they said, the voices shifting and blending from those she had known at one time or another. People she had cared about. Some dead. Some, alive still she knew. Climb. Reach the top and you can leave this place.

That was all? After an eternity in the desert, drowning in the sand, all she had to do was climb the mountain and she could go?

"To go where? Where does it lead?"

To where ever the mountain decides you belong.

She reached out, grasping at one of the outcroppings. With a hiss, she drew her hand back, blinking in surprise as she looked at the line of split flesh across her palm. It was a shallow cut, not enough to draw blood- she hadn't put her weight on the stone yet. Leaning forward, she studied the terrain closer. An arch of sharp bone, edged and gleaming. Eyes slid and she realized that every hand hold, every place that would allow her to cling to the mountainous figure was just the same. The shadows murmured and shifted.

"And what happens," she said slowly, "if I don't climb."

You remain.

Irajah never had been very good at staying still.

No matter how carefully she placed her hands, how carefully she moved, something bit into her with each new movement upward. Most of the cuts were shallow, shy of drawing blood, but sometimes she had to grip harder to keep her balance as the being beneath her shifted, or to pull herself up to a new ledge. And those....

Occasionally she would find a long, curving spike, jutting out from the surface. The tip sharper than belief, but the sides surprisingly smooth to the touch, slick and sleek. She paused next to the first one, frowning, not understanding what it was or what it meant.

That confusion didn't last.

She met with the first person a third of the way to her goal. Until then, she had struggled in her climb in silence, the mountain shrike offering a thousand small cuts- but enough that bled for her to be able to look back and mark her passage upward.

His voice sounded, and she almost lost her grip, startled. The blood on her left hand already made the hold treacherous, and it took a moment to recover, the sense of vertigo waxing and waning before she could open her eyes and risk a look. She had reached one of those curving spikes, and she hadn't seen the base of it from below. But now, beside it, she could see it clearly.

"You're dead," she said softly, more as a mantra, a shield against the familiar face that stared at her than with any real conviction.

The Sith from Coruscant smiled unpleasantly at her.

​"So are you."

She had never learned his name. He had been the first time she had killed. Self defense- no- to save [member="Ghorua the Shark"], her friend's life, not specifically her own. Sure, he had threatened every person within reach, but that wasn't why she had pulled the trigger that day. That wasn't why she had caved in half of his chest with a slug from the Herglic's gun.

He was impaled, hanging from the mountain. His hands tried to grip the spike, and she understood now why the sides were satin in their smoothness. She could see where he had tried to pull himself forward off of it, only to slide back to its base. The rust of dried blood went halfway up the shard, slowly deposited layer by layer as he had tried, and failed, to free himself.

"Did you fail to climb the mountain?" She asked hesitantly.

"No. The blind never get that chance."

He opened his eyes then, turning his head fully toward her. Where she remembered the ruby of his eyes as they had laughed down at her that day on Coruscant, she saw nothing but an inky blackness. From sclera to pupil, his eyes were entirely blotted out.

"My sins," he explained, voice hissing. "Written across my eyes. I died with them fresh, knowing full well of each and every line. Every person I killed, every time I let blood for my own gain or desire. I cannot see you, but I can read every line."

Uneasy, Irajah clung to the side of the mountain.

"But I killed you, and I don't have any lines like that."

Again he smiled, pained as he tried to grip the spine hard enough to ease the pressure of it where it jutted out from beneath his ribcage.

"Then killing me wasn't a sin. But that doesn't mean you won't see them." He tilted his head up, indicating the expanse of the climb still ahead of her.

"You will. No one who climbs this mountain makes it to the top with eyes unclouded by the Writ. You're no different. Tell me, which sins do you think you'll find? What will they write across your eyes, Irajah Ven?"

She didn't answer him. Forcing herself to climb again, his laughter chased her up the mountain.

​​

​

| [member="Cerbera"] | [member="The Slave"] |​

 

[Jairus Starvald]

[member="Irajah Ven"]

There were a couple of options open to them, well, her and none of them were exceptionally comfortable.

She wasn't about to bring Slave to Dashoban. His earliest experiments had left her wanting with his ... ambition - oh, the artifacts forged with her assistance were powerful, but they were too much. Enough that each time Dorian had spend himself too much and needed breathers in between. Which was hardly the thing expected from lab assistants, no, Dashoban and the Forge were not for him for now.

Maybe later.

Once he grew more powerful and gained some sense.

That left her with another option, the preferable one. The old site of her first excursion into the Netherworld - the gate was still viable, stable and above all there wasn't anything sensitive to be discovered there.

Which was why she had chosen Home, the only one he knew.

A few seconds later the little mouse-droid beeped into cargo bay. It kept its distance towards the strange figure, but the presence of Raj's body was enough for it not to flee immediately.

Boop teeeeep?

Cerbera looked up, not too impressed.

"Yes, she is gone now, but we might bring her back yet." Not that it would be the same Raj.

 

[Kuzo]

She kept climbing. She didn't look back, though the interaction disturbed her. Not on its own, but because of the implications. Of who, or what, she would meet on this mountain.

There was no surprise when the next form came into view. She had been expecting it. The corrupt and shattered form of the man she had killed- for his own good, or so she had been convinced at the time-

"You said- that - you couldn't."

Irajah paused in her climb. She had been hoping to move on past him without stopping. Skin blackened by dark side corruption, she could see his jaw fracturing with each word he spoke.

"My hand held the blade, but I did not kill you. You were already dead."


After the fact, she didn't even remember taking the knife. It could have simply appeared in her hand by sorcery, for all that she was aware of it. Her fingers were made of nothing more than chill air, the warmth and weight of [member="Darth Prazutis"] enveloping. His hand both weighed down and simultaneously buoyed her.

Her eyes never left the roiling gaze of the man beneath her knife.

She had cut through human flesh too many times to count. But this was different. This wasn't the precise deliberation of a scalpel, applied for the sake of healing through a momentary incision. The only reason her hand didn't shake was because of Braxus.

Irajah didn't realize it, but she was silently reciting, her lips forming the words but never uttering a sound, part of a promise she had made five years ago.....

I swear to fulfill, to the best of my ability and judgment, this covenant:...

I will respect the hard-won scientific gains of those physicians in whose steps I walk, and gladly share such knowledge as is mine with those who are to follow.

I will remember that there is art to medicine as well as science, and that warmth, sympathy, and understanding may outweigh the surgeon's knife or the chemist's drug.

I will apply, for the benefit of the sick, all measures which are required ....

All measures which are required.....

There was more to the oath, but there she stopped, repeating the words, stillborn on her lips.

All measures which are required.

She must have pressed down then. Though the support and weight of Braxus's hand was immediate and tangible, she had no sensation that he was forcing her hand. The knife drew across, guided in part by her, and in part by him. She swallowed, her throat tight, the rest of her body shaking.

But her hand was steady.

"You were right. You could have saved me. You were so close to finding the cure he sought."

"It wouldn't have helped you, even if I had stayed. I held the blade, yes, and I can never take that back, but he was the one who killed you. I've made my peace with you, so why are you here?"

​"Because I'm not waiting for you."

From there, however, the bodies grew thicker on the mountain. And these.... these she could not deflect, even if she had wanted to. It seemed that no matter how she climbed, they were always above her, always waiting. Telos Scarin. Lukas Pashmi. A half dozen forms ravaged by the Gideon virus, infected by her hand. In search of a cure that she had never found. At each she stopped, because she had to now, the mountain side smooth and featureless at each spike and requiring that, in order to keep climbing that she must use them to continue her upward journey.

And at each, they asked her why. And she had no answer. But by the time she had clambered over them, their hands plucking weakly at her, a line of dark words filtered across her gaze. As promised, the lines of her sins. Each time became harder than the last. But she gritted her teeth, pushing their cries from her mind. Pushed the feeling of their flesh disintegrating into blood and raw tissue beneath her hands and feet as she pushed upward. These were voices, faces, that she had already sacrificed once.

But each one made the continued ascent harder. Her vision a touch more obscured, the slick layer of blood and ichor on her hands and feet making every motion upward more precarious. But she could do that, leave them behind again because she had already agreed in her own soul that they were not worth as much as she was.

So it was with a certain triumph that, when she looked up again, she could see the top of that mountain. One more shadow waited between her and the summit. But what was one more shadow now, after everything she had forced herself through?

"Irajah?"

She froze.

No. That wasn't possible. Every face, every voice she had encountered was one of the dead. If he was here that meant-

A renewed energy filled her and she pulled herself up beside the spike.

Boo.



​[member="Cerbera"] [member="The Slave"]

 

[Jairus Starvald]

[member="Irajah Ven"]

Time passed as it often did, but eventually the ship landed and gave way to a hangar. Cold durasteel and filtered air that spoke of depth beneath the sun. Cerbera exited easily with the little mouse-droid in tow and the corpse clinging once again closely to herself; it could not be done any other way.

Already two qo'saarai stepped up.

Curiously and inquisitive, they knew this hadn't been part of the plan. But the expression on their master's face tipped them off that now was not the time for penetrating questions.

Instead Scarra offered to carry the burden.

It was eagerly shared - not because it was heavy, but because Cerbera had other things on her mind right now. This was going to get complicated and she didn't like that at all. Should have been easy. Controlled environment, kill her without too much pain and immediately transfer her body over.

...and now she was going to have to raid the gorram Netherworld itself for her soul.

Great.

Just absolutely perfect.

 

[Kuzo]

[media]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDbfOdvFBrA[/media]​

"No, no no nononono-"

She pulled herself up on the spike, hands going gingerly to the child's chest, not touching the spot where the mountain burst through, then to his face. Pale blue, far paler than it ever should be.

"No, no, this isn't right- you're alive, no you can't be here-"

"Why did you send me away?"

His voice was small and plaintive, not accusing, but with that hint of suspicion he'd worn as a mantle, always. After what he'd come through, before she had opened her home to him, she had never been able to blame him- strived to make sure that she didn't take it personally. Sometimes she had failed, but she had always recognized that he'd had it so very hard in such a short life, and that the suspicion even when aimed at her, wasn't about her.

This time, this time she deserved it and a thousand times more.

"I'm sorry, I'm so, so sorry," she whispered, hand cupping the boy's face. "I've looked for you. I never stopped looking for you-"

"Why did you send me away?"

Her fingers pulsed, useless and helpless just above where the spike jutted from his pale, too thin chest.

"You're bleeding, I need to get you down from here-"

"Why Mom?"

"I wanted to protect you," she whispered, voice breaking. "I- I didn't know how to get away from them, but I knew- even before I understood it all, I knew they would threaten you, to keep me.... that they'd hurt you, if they thought they could. I couldn't.... I didn't want to send you away. I thought- I thought I was keeping you safe."

She clung to the side of the mountain, the slow breathing of the shrike creature forgotten as her hands fluttered helplessly. She clung to the spike, elbow hooked around it, oh so careful to not put pressure on him where it exited his chest.

"I needed you. And you sent me away."

Somehow, she managed to curl herself around him, trying to find a way to lessen the pressure of the spike through his body.

"I'm not going to leave you again," she whispered fiercely against his hair. "I'm going to get you out of here. I'll figure something out. I don't know how yet. But I will, I swear it."

He nodded weakly, closing those golden eyes.

"I believe in you. You can do anything."

She laughed, unable to help it, but there were tears in her eyes.

"I found you didn't I?"

It had taken going into hell itself, but she had found him.

She looked up at the top of the mountain, so very close, and then back down at his face. A sob welled up in her throat, but she didn't know exactly why. Carefully, as gently as she could, she pulled her attention and actions into figuring out just how she'd keep that promise to him.

*****

The sun hadn't moved. In the days, the weeks it had taken her to climb this far, the shadows had never moved. She knew, logically, that time was passing. She simply couldn't measure it in meaningful pieces when it was spread forward into eternity.

No one leaves the mountain who cannot climb off of it for themselves.

Her mother's voice spoke from Boo's shadow, but Irajah ignored her.

No one leaves the mountain who cannot climb off of it for themselves.

Her father's voice spoke from Boo's shadow, but Irajah ignored him.

Every time she thought she could finally position herself in a way that would allow her to draw him off of the shrike's mountain, she failed. She lost her grip. The foothold she was bracing against crumbled and she had to let him go, his body sliding back down. He would cry out, and unable to keep causing him pain, even if it was to save him, she lowered him once more. The black lines writ across her eyes obscured an uneven handhold and she lost her grip on the mountain, forcing herself to stop- again and again, something stopped her, prevented her from removing him from the mountainside.

By this time, she could barely see, blinded not only by the lines of her sins, but by tears. Tears of anger, of frustration, of pain. Each failure brought a redoubling of effort, but also a weakening of her grip on the mountain. On the last one she nearly fell herself, only just catching that descent at the last moment. The chasm yawned, hungry and waiting, beneath her as she dangled for a moment.

Breath choked in her chest as she pulled herself back up.

She had enough strength left for one more try...... or for the final summit. Not both, she realized as she clung to the side of the mountain, her face flat against the rough stone beside his.

She could stay here, until her strength gave out and she lost her grip. She didn't know what would happen if she fell. Would that be it? The last chance? Would she die in truth, dashed against the stones? Or would she simply be broken there, unable to rise, unable to climb, to stare up at the last chance to keep fighting until the end of time?

You can't take him. Not and make it to the summit.

She didn't know whose voice that was. Mother's. Father's. Or her own.

Hands shook against the stone and she pressed her face against the top of his head.

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry Boo."

"It hurts."

​She bit back a sob, voice shaking as she reached out, hand straying to where the spine erupted from his flesh.

"I know baby, I know. It's not going to- anymore, o-okay? I'm going to make it s-stop. I-I p-promise, it won't ever hurt again."

There was space. Space to reach in beneath the breast bone, between the spike and the that crest of bone. She could feel his heart flutter beneath her fingers.

"I love you, Boo."

"I love you too, Mom."

Tears hot against his hair, instead of pulling this time-

She pushed.

She didn't know if he was truly dead in this place. If he could die, not feel the pain any more. If there was any chance for peace. But if she were going to climb, she refused to leave him here, like this. He gasped, just once, and then was quiet.

A fox, when caught by a hunter's trap, will take its teeth to its own flesh and fur, gnawing away at a part of itself to find freedom. It doesn't want to do it, that paw is not something it wishes to leave behind. But the alternative is to wait for the hunter.... and his gun.

The alternative is death.

Irajah climbed.


[member="Cerbera"] [member="The Slave"]

 

[Jairus Starvald]

[member="Irajah Ven"]

A practiced eye would notice the rift hanging suspended in the air before the kneeling silhouette of Cerbera.

The eye would notice the strange shifts in color disfiguration as the rift softly hummed and vibrated out of its own accord. Like a rainbow, but whose saturation had been turned all the way down and all the light had to work with was these... not-colors twinkling, shaping themselves according to involuntary movement. Nothing to be said about the whispers getting closer the closer you got the rift and right now?

Cerbera was practically touching it, so close.

Her eyes closed, focused and concentrating on the body in front of the rift. There was still residual energy... still a tether attached to her essence, but every second it was dwindling and it would not be long before it was gone completely.

But it was enough for the Sith Lord.

She latched onto it, firmly, with purpose in mind and then quickly rose up. There was already a vague map being drawn before her eyes, she stepped over the corpse and into the rift itself. She burned, forces tugging at her skin... trying to rip her to shreds while every single atom in her body was heating up and cooling down. Without preparation Cerbera would have been dispersed throughout the entirety of reality. But this was Cerbera and say one thing about her, say she was prepared for everything that could and would come up. Her mind reached out across that tether, once again firmly brushing now.

"Darling." The tone was cold, smooth, even as she burned it was completely and fully in control. "You are not alone any longer."

 

[Kuzo]

It was more than simply leaving behind the boy. An integral, measureable part of herself was left behind on that mountain, though the ramifications of that would only unfold fully in the weeks and months to follow. Despite the deeply metaphorical nature of it, Irajah was aware of the spiritual bleed she left behind her- the trail from that final spike and the young face on it and the summit.

Clinging to the jagged stone, cold winds whipped at her. It had edges like blades of ice, and she could feel the strength leaving her, seeping out from a wound she could never properly see but would feel the hollowness of for the rest of time.
​She'd reached the top of the mountain- but what happened now.

She tried to call out, to ask the shadows, but her voice was ripped away. Torn from her lips and tumbled along with the winds. So she clung there, shivering. She had no where left to go, no further to climb, but there was still nothing for her here. No salvation, no moving on. Without the piece of her soul that buoyed, well, the promises of her family ghosts remained unfulfilled.

There was no salvation here for her.

And all she could do was wait.

Wait to die. Wait to live. Wait until she grew too dizzy from the extravasation and slow drain of spirit.

That was where [member="Cerbera"] would find her. Clinging. Doggedly unwilling to fall, to let go. To give up. But being unable to find a way off of that mountain alone.

"I am here," she whispered, against the cold stone. The jagged edges cut into her lips, but she murmured it again and again, in response to that tug on the string. A mantra.

"I am here."

[member="The Slave"]

 

[Jairus Starvald]

[member="Irajah Ven"]

Whose assistance would you enjoy most in the depths of hell?

The bright light that burns just in the shadows, pushing them away through its intensity? Or the corrupted void that made those same shadows shrink away in fear? Both options were valid, both options plausible in their own way, but there was only one option that fit Cerbera. She emerged from a burning hole in the air, ripped through the fabric and allowing entry from beyond. First a neat and stylish boot of terentatek leather - skinned from a living animal, its pain still resonating within the leather as imprisoned essence desperately tried to claw its way out - an arm in gloves and then the lady herself pushed her way through.

There was no color here, none that she could see. Only low-light vision with saturation all the way leveled out, until there were only hints of graytone washing the entire scene clean from anything that resembled judgement.

"I am here,"

The Sith Lord's head tilted slightly as she listened to the mantra repeated ad infinitum, over and over again, a desperate attempt to hold her essence together while its very existence here caused it to be ripped apart. After all, Irajah was not here in the flesh, she had not crossed the barrier between life and death with her body intact. As Cerbera walked (hissing through her teeth at one particularly bold spirit) she mused about it all.

"I am here, darling, just hang on for a little while longer." Soon the mountain slope rose before her - time was meaningless here, as was effort. Two steps could cross continents, five-hundred only a single street.

All that mattered was intent.

The strongest will could impose theirs on this realm, if they knew how. But it became harder when you were not here in the flesh. It was the meat, the Force imbued deep inside, the presence of spirit enforcing it, that allowed for manipulation.

The musing was interrupted.

Cerbera looked up and came face-to-face with a guardian.

All teeth, snarling. All eyes, burning. All claws, cutting.

She scowled back.

There was no time for this.

 

[Kuzo]

Just as it had shifted from figure leading the dead to the mountain itself, so now was the Shrike guardian. There was a way that the dead that came here found redemption.... or failed it. Outside influence was forbidden. Either the soul would find its way or it would remain forever on the mountain.

And this soul?

It had turned away from redemption instead of embracing it.

It had shown her the victims of her life, her choices. And she had climbed past them all.

"Take her now and there is no absolution."

The voice didn't come from the creature itself, but from one of its shadows.

"Taking her now will mean that should she return, she will be punished, rather than offered the chance to set it to rights- as will you."

The shadows shifted, voice changing between words. [member="Cerbera"] was not dead, not a spirit it truly had any power or influence over. It could not physically stop her because it had no physical form of its own. But it could promise. And it would remember.