Splinter of the Mind's Eye

[Connor Harrison]

He only moved his eyes to follow the Priestess, not his head, as she rose and took her place behind his chair. Facing forward, Aerico this turn turned his face gently to the side, so his good side would show, were she looking down at him. It was clear now she craved to be in control, to be in authority, by leering over him where he couldn’t see.

"I want nothing but to one day find those that did this to me. I lost my humanity, I lost my future and I lost the memory of what it feels like to be powerful.”

She came back into view, and poured the tea to which he sat forward and smelt.

"I have no family, no allegiance and no mercy. The more damage I can do to those who think the galaxy is black and white, the better.” He took the cup from the stump and sipped it, wary of what it may contain. It was hot, but soothing, on his dry throat.

He placed the cup down and stood, the stiletto blade clearly in view on his right side.

"My blood?” He pulled the glove from his right hand and held it out. "Just tell me why you want it first. And what I want, I’ll take, regardless if it’s on offer or not and whatever Master owns it.” Then, he quickly moved his left hand up to reach around the back of the Caprine’s neck and grip it – firmly but also gently.

He looked right at the creature. ”Then again, you wouldn’t be here alone if you didn’t yearn to be…taken. Priestess.”

His voice was above a whisper, but it was a sharp as a blade as his staked his claim; what he saw as the first of many in this dark, nightmarish world he was starting to understand.

[member="Briga Tiin"]

 

[Ax'no]

“We seem to have the same goals,” Briga admitted nonchalantly, though revenge in this case seemed to be somewhat of a futile goal in the mystic’s mind. But perhaps she’d not encountered the hardship that Aerico had. And being part of the Sith, the Caprine would eventually have a line of enemies waiting to slip onto Iktotch and murder her in her wine-soaked sleep. But for now, she enjoyed the ignorance-is-bliss feeling of being slightly anonymous in the galaxy.

And then suddenly the aura surrounding the masked man grew colder. The downy fur on Briga’s back stood at attention – like a canine’s hackles - and a ripple of electricity went up her spine. At the same time she spied the blade, she heard his deep baritone warning her that he would take what he wanted regardless of her Master.

His hand gripped her neck, firmly but not trying to force her. At least not yet.

Her pupils dialated with adrenaline, but she did not move. The force user had a knife, he carried a dangerous and perhaps fatal disease in his blood… and worst of all, Aerico was touching her. It was that flesh upon flesh alone that could drive Briga down to her knees – not any weapon or any threats.

“You know me far too well,” she said in a hushed whisper. “But I am not yours for the taking.” She titled her head to the side, and her eyes narrowed. “You think you are the only one in the galaxy who can be cruel? You haven’t met the goddess Ax’no yet.”
And with that sentence, Briga used Crucitorn to increase the pain of Aerico’s scar tissue behind the mask. She concentrated on working her way into all of the nerve endings, causing a sensation as though someone were taking that blade he held and twisting it into his flesh between the mask and the long-diseased epidermis.

Hopefully the shock of pain on his face, his most sensitive and humiliating feature, would cause him to let go.

[member="Aerico"]

 

[Connor Harrison]

The Caprine wasn’t threatening, and he wasn’t going to harm her; he simply wanted to stay in control, but that soon went. From the eye socket under his mask, a warmth came and started to spread quickly up and down under the mask. The grey eye twitched and his face became stern, knowing what was happening.

Imagine an itch. A burning itch that was ravaging across fresh skin that you couldn’t touch or soothe. You couldn’t scratch it or douse it with water or creams, you just had to let it burn. Then take the itch and make it a deeper, painful intrusion of the skin and you’d be close to what Aerico started to feel.

His hand on her neck tightened, as did his whole body, as he tried to last out the sensation, but he couldn’t. With a hard expulsion of air from his mouth he let go of her and clenched his fists, backing away and seething through gritted teeth at the feeling he couldn’t repel. The one weakness he had; his vanity and his disease both attacked in one covert hit by the Priestess who was now the one in control. His knee went weak as he fought to stand upright and not give in to the fire that burned underneath.

Growls and frustrated grunts came from Aerico as he bent forward, head twisting and body tensing as if he was subjected to electro-shock therapy. There was nothing he could do to stop the feeling that his wounds were being pulled apart under the mask. His hand reached up to where the mask met his hair line and he pushed hard on his head, pushing hard to try and do something – anything – to stop this.

As an uncomfortable heat swept over him, his face red with holding his breath and straining to last out the pain, Aercio stumbled up and brought his hand quickly down from where it was on his face to hit the dangerous Caprine. A forceful backhand strike up and across her pretty little face, one lacking his full power, but one to hopefully stop her attack This gentleman’s backhand was the first and only time he’d do it to her – the next hit would be harder and less restrained if he had to.

Maybe this Ax’no would be the way into her world and taking the secrets her people had of the Force and those who abused it after all if it was the catalyst to her rage.

[member="Briga Tiin"]

 

[Ax'no]

Briga stayed still as Aerico’s fingers dug into her neck. She knew that the harder he gripped, the more pain he was experiencing. And this made her smile as she winced through her own discomfort. Finally, the masked force user let her go.

“There, there… feel it burn,” the Priestess growled. “That, my friend, is the fire of Ax’no upon your horrific face.” Just watching him writhe in agony, made the Caprine step closer to revel a little bit in his misery. And in her eagerness to witness his pain first hand, she allowed herself to get too close.

Whack!

With his strong hand, he slapped her, his knuckles connecting with her nose, causing her to reel backwards. For a moment, she had the wind knocked out of her, and when her hand touched her nose, it drew away red with blood. Her eyes stung with moisture, but she would not cry.

“How dare you strike the goddess!” she hissed, her claret-stained face a haunted mask of rage. In the cozy firelight, a stark cold battle was taking place. One of control.

Her outstretched hand shaping into a claw, Briga first tightened the screws on the Crucitorn inflicting blinding pain on the tainted side of Aerico’s face and with a subtle wash of mind control, she allowed him to believe the pain was moving to the other side of his face, signaling a spread of the disease and an obliteration of any semblance of handsomeness the human would have to the fairer sex.

[member="Aerico"]

 

[Connor Harrison]

Her words burnt more than the pain eating away at his skin he could not touch. His body was tense, the veins in his neck swelling as he did everything he could to stem the feeling that had swept over his body years before. Aerico didn’t understand how the Force worked, but he knew it had helped him. Why couldn’t he fight this now?

He went down to his knee. A trembling head raised to see her standing with a wonderfully raw mark across her face. It was then more fire consumed him – it was spreading, and it was moving under his skin to eat away at the rest of his face; the face that kept him human.

So this was it. This was how his future was going to be – nothing of Roman would be left after the encounter with the manipulative Caprine whore. Feeding off the sick, the naïve and the lost to fuel their own perverse, blind religion. Closing his eyes, Aercio trembled and held his breath, fighting to control the pain but submit to the fate that he had kept at bay for years – the Scourge plague was turning him into the monster he tried to hide.

Saliva spat from his mouth as he fought the pain. And so here, in this closed of tomb from the world, why should he bend to a cheap sorceress? She wanted to see how it meant to be cruel? She would get it.

Aerico sprang forward form bended knee and locked his hand around that delicate throat, pushing back with a face contorted with rage and a demonic look to those eyes, only imagining how mutilated and decayed his face was to her – little did he understand the way of a Force illusion – and pushed her back, knocking the tea over from the table and into the far chair.

In one motion, he pulled the stiletto blade from the side grip on his hip in his right hand and brought it up, the burning pain now being embraced and fueling the blind anger. Her long hair fell around his arm.

"We are the same,” his voice said, eerily at peace.

With that, looking in her eyes, he brought the stiletto forward and placed the tip by her ear and started to push down, aiming to cleave a nice open wound across her face, and jawline. Slow and precise, to hear the skin tear as much as possible and see the pretty Caprine face become ruined just like she had done to his.

[member="Briga Tiin"]

 

[Ax'no]

Aerico may have felt as though he was brought to Iktotch to die at the hand of the wiley Caprine female mystic, but he was not. As Briga watched him writhe in even more pain, wrought by her hand, she had a flicker of a vision that he was not someone she wanted to kill.

Not tonight.

But she had not expected him to pounce on her so quickly. The mysterious force user displayed a resilience that she'd admired. Her eyes bulged momentarily as his pale hand squeezed her throat, his eyes full of rage and almost insanity.

His mask and the stomach-turning disease underneath it were not that much of a deterrant to Briga. When she was an adolescent, she'd been whipped in ritualistic rites by the Elder Caprine - their devotion to Ax'no requiring her to pay penance as the representation of their goddess. She'd known hardship and pain like he had.

The two of them crashed into the furniture with his motion towards her. The blade he held was suddenly close - too close - to the tender skin of her face. He pressed the point of the dagger to an extremely soft spot behind her long ear and pressed stabbing into it. "STOP!" she screamed, before he could carve up her face like a harvest pumpkin.

"Why are you executing the one individual who can heal you?"

It was a desperate attempt as the tables had turned against her. Her divination told her he would be important to her - that much was true.

But would he believe her?

[member="Aerico"]

 

[Connor Harrison]

Her scream was nice to hear, she still bled like everyone else - she wasn't immortal and he wanted to make her see that, but he bit his lip in frustration when she offered to help him. To heal him. His eyes softened, and he held the tip of the blade on her skin. A tiny fleck of crimson blood started to dribble down her cheek.

It would be so easy to carve her face in one swift action. The hand twisted the blade as gentle as a feather, to let her know he was deliberating it.

"How?”

A question he asked with a tiny amount of hope. What would he be like without the disease? Would he be...weaker?

Stronger?

He kept his grip on her, the back of the chair against her and in in front, waiting for the answer that pleased him.

[member="Briga Tiin"]

 

[Ax'no]

“You will have to trust me,” Briga said. “Our fates are entwined somehow. My visions do not lie.”

She gulped as the blade sat on her skin, the tip a stinging reminder that Aerico could slice deep into her fair skin at a moment’s notice. Her voice cracked as she spoke next:

“Darkside healing is powerful. Mixed with traditional Iktotch and Caprine medicine, I am sure that I could find some type of… if not, cure, than palliative treatment. But your disease is also a powerful weapon. Healing you would only reduce the power that you have to wipe out entire planets.”

The horned mystic slowly reached up and clasped her fingertips one by one around his hand, the same way she’d peeled his own digits off of her wrist fifteen minutes ago. She began maneuvering his hand away, carefully, hoping to not enrage him again. Briga could try and thrust Aerico away with Telekensis, but she trusted her precognitions which put her squarely in an alliance with the mysterious, diseased force user.

Her amber eyes filled with pity, perhaps an emotion he was familiar with from other female species.

“If it’s compassion you want… even love… I will give you one of my maidens.” Not one of the three that were her favorites, but another lovely servant she had in mind. She reiterated: “She'll serve you faithfully, lie in your bed and stay with you until you tire of her. I can only imagine that part of what you seek is companionship.”

Like dismantling a bomb, she was carefully weaving her motion of lowering the knife with her soft words, and a little mental push from the Force to affect Aerico’s psyche, ease his fears, have him decompress and eventually put the sharp blade down.

[member="Aerico"]

 

[Connor Harrison]

Even as the Priestess spoke, her words full of raw fear and worry, even as she gently tried to move him, Aerico didn’t look away – but he did comply. Slowly. The hand came away from her throat. Then, the blade pulled back, the pin-prick wound all that was left on her face.

He would gladly take something – anything – to help ease the moments he wished he could pull his mask clean off to feel the cool air on the broken skin and nerve, but doing so would probably kill him or at least floor him with pain. There would be a way to do it, one day. There must be.

He brought his hand to his face, feeling smooth skin and his features still in one place. Inside, he was relieved.

"If you patronise me again, Caprine, your throat will become a waterfall of your blood. I promise you.”

Two steps were taken from the Caprine, and with a quick wipe from his glove on the blade to take her blood, Aerico sheathed it as the burning in his face subsided, but still itched.

"Love comes from claiming a heart. Not by giving out a whore for the night. No woman shall have me who doesn’t want me for who I am. Who I have become.”

Love was alien to him, and something he doubted would ever come his way. It would take something divine to make him experience love for another. He turned away from the Caprine, walking back to his red chair and walked around it, as if plotting a business deal.

"So fate brought us together and nearly tore us apart. Tell me, Caprine, who you really serve. It’s not just Ax’no, is it. You speak as though you envision yourself as something greater than this,” he waved his hand, ”deity, one day.”

With a little turn on the heel, he rested an arm over the back of the chair and looked on, oddly, rather calm and intrigued again at this creature. Nothing like starting death in the face to make you feel more alive.

[member="Briga Tiin"]

 

[Ax'no]

As soon as the point of the knife was off of her pale skin, Briga’s hand went up instinctively to feel the wound. It was small, but a droplet of blood wet her hand. She wiped it on the bodice of her dress.

Aerico likewise raised his hand to his face as though reassured the mask was still there. Briga was tempted to issue another snide remark but the situation had just de-escalated. Then as he threatened her with blood waterfalls, he almost surreptitiously kept some of her blood. The Caprine was highly superstitious so this caused her almost as much anxiety as the knife to her face.

But again, she’d gotten him to calm down. Let him take a little of your life essence, Silly Goat, the mystic rationalized. But she could ask him questions still, right?

But first to answer his.

“I do not only serve the goddess. I am the goddess. The blood which has stained your glove is the blood of an immortal deity.” Briga sighed. “The Master I serve is merely a means to an end so that Ax’no can return to the galaxy and bathe it with ice and fire. The waterfall of blood you mentioned? Ax’no will bring a tidal wave of blood from the Wild Space to the Deep Core.” She drifted towards the fireplace again and stoked it with a wrought iron poker.

“What do you plan to do with my blood, Aerico?” she asked.

[member="Aerico"]

 

[Connor Harrison]

This Caprine was a mysterious little beauty indeed. Aerico turned his head a little, a sly smile forming on his lips. She was manipulative, dangerous, fragile, powerful and deceptive.

"I thought you served a goddess. Now you are one? Make up your mind, Caprine."

He folded his arms on the chair and watched her stoke the fire. Bringing up his black gloved hand, the blood of the Caprine was gleaming on his finger across the material.

"Oh, this? Nothing. I’m not an alchemist." He sucked the blood of his finger quickly. "See. Gone. My disease will destroy the cells and your blood absorbed into nothingness."

Aerico watched her and contemplating. Maybe her allegiance to the “all-powerful” Ax’no would serve his desire to wreak a vengeance across systems; to carry out what he started with the Black Sun. Embrace power. Obtain wealth. Seek status. Destroy those who think they are better than he.

”I’ll help you if you help me. I feel we could be mutually…beneficial in our desire. Obviously your Master is a fool, that much is clear to try and contain you. I don’t want to be a Master to anyone. I want to see the orders and cults out there who fight for control and then pull them apart from the inside. Find the weak ones. Find the blind leaders."

He smiled at her. He knew what to say.

"Build a better world from the ashes of theirs."

[member="Briga Tiin"]

 

[Ax'no]

Still holding the poker, its end now scalding hot from the flames, she withdrew it but did not look as though she were going to wield it as a weapon. Likely the Caprine was just letting it cool off before she placed it back in its holder. She began to say she was not the blind leader he sought to destroy, that her precognitive visions made her, in fact, incredibly lucid and prescient. But suddenly the poker dropped from hand and landed with a clatter onto the stone floor. Briga put her clawed hand to her forehead, and for a moment, resembled an overly dramatic actress in some type of tawdry holo-panto.

But from the way her eyes rolled back into her head, showing the stark white sclera, eyelids fluttering, Aerico would know she was having a vision. She muttered something under her breath in Caprinean and then opened her eyes, sighed deeply, but her hands trembled. Whatever she’d foreseen had shaken her to the core.

“Some disturbing news has come to light just now. While my Master is not a fool, he is not the ultimate means to an end.” She hesitated for a moment. Briga normally enjoyed sharing her visions right away, not just for the attention it brought to her, but for the reaction and possibly interpretation of others. But the divination she’d seen had pained even the mystic’s stone heart. “My Master, the one I'm beholden to and who I serve... we will part ways not too long from now. When that happens, I will seek you out. You and I will then systematically convert the unbelieving into believers. I know that’s what you want too, but I need to know..."

"What exactly do you want them to believe?” Briga was curious as to Aerico’s tenants, whether they were personal or for the masses and how much they aligned with the Church of Ax’no’s.

[member="Aerico"]

 

[Connor Harrison]

Aercio didn’t run to help, or gasp, or lurch forward in urgency when the Caprine had her little moment. It was wonderfully entertaining but fascinating to watch her experience what sounded like a vision. Her senses seemed to cut out, and her body seemed to be devoid of life for a few seconds. When she returned, the Priestess or Goddess, or whoever she was, emerged full of life and urgency.

He looked up at the ceiling as she spoke, trying to work out if she was simply fobbing him off. Out of her depth?

"I am on Utapau, a world in the Outer Rim. You can find it. If your visions tell you we have a shared alliance, then you’ll find me. If not, you’ll prove you just wasted my time. Lucky for you I’m not in a rush."

Dragging his hand across the top of the chair, he walked around and stood in front of it.

"They can believe what they want. What I want to show is that no matter what you believe, nothing can save you from the real power out there; the ones who cull the weak and fuel the strong. It’s time to cut away the dead flesh from this galaxy and remind them that carrying a lightsaber or butchering innocents doesn’t grant you a free ride."

His allegiance to the darkness that stirred within was apparent, and it was clear with the hint of malice and excitement in his voice that Aerico wasn’t going to sit back and watch those who broke him do it to others. He turned and scooped up his coat, holding it over his arm.

"Make sure your Master hurts. He doesn’t deserve a wonderful creature such as you. Thank you, Caprine."

Threading his arm through the coat and pulling up the collar, and pulling the waist around over his blade, Aerico gave a lingering look and turned for the door, not giving her an immediate chance to talk back. He started for the way out of the fantastical lair and through the baying crowd of singers and drinkers for the pathway out into the night.

[member="Briga Tiin"]