Private The End and the Endless

[Darth Vinaze]

After the events of Shatterpoint: Annihilation of Tython
Ambience

​

The fine white sand shifted beneath his feet in a constant plume, like being kicked up under water where there was not a drop to be found. The sky was an endless haze of shifting colors and stars that blinked in and out of the blackness as if time was unfolding across the cosmos unwatched by mortal eyes, unbound by mortal perceptions. The heavens swirled fancifully above, endless, timeless, so far out of reach from the void of the landscape.

But so too was the land endless, an endless maze of black rock, pure dark and featureless, but jagged to touch in the slightest. It could not be surmounted, so the trails of dusty sand were a man's only vehicle through the wasteland. With every rounding of a great black spire, another appeared. With every prick from the black stone, black blood flowed from wounds not entirely real. He alone, the wanderer, the only life here, was not real. How could it have been? Even in the Netherworld the Dark Lord had a grasp of the tangible, through the Force. But here it felt as though the force was not. It simply wasn't here. The absence of the Force, was nothing.

The disconnect was agony. He did not even know, as he stopped to stare into the swirling sky, who he was, or how he was. He looked down at his hands, his fingers, his legs and feet further on. They were not there either, yet he felt them. He left no impression in the sand even as he could feel his feet dig in and part it with each step. Why was he not here, and yet trapped here? Here? Where? The endless land was not a place, and even the things he could see were empty frames of reality. Shadows, more like. He tried to call on the Force to bring him back, to the battle, to the side of Darth Solipsis , but no screams came from him, not a word into the void.

Voiceless, disembodied, sullen with a pain so existential it could not be named even if it could be spoken of. A void in the soul, the body, and the mind. He trudged on. Rounding every obsidian outcropping one by one by one, forever onwards. He could not bring himself to look back, and so the wanderer never did, for to look back was to fear, and to fear was to be chained...

Onrai

 

[Onrai]

Darth Vinaze

Thoughts, concepts… anti-thoughts, anti-concepts! The transmogrification of Onrai from her once fully fleshy form had completed. For once, the limitations of mortality were unbound in a way she had never been able to accomplish before. Not the transference of her essence from Velok nor the rituals performed by her onetime love Silara to give her the body she now possessed had ever freed her from the bonds of mortality this way. She was exuberant! There was so much to learn, so much to do, so much to feel power over!

Already some of her followers had begun to view her as having attained a state of apotheosis, and she had no reason to deny them their belief - only reminding them that if there were those under her command who rejected it, they were not to be so foolish as to slay them for their ‘disbelief.’ Decades of servants from Nathema to Panatha had not remained loyal to her out of such petty reasons for nothing. As she reached out, savoring the lack of limitations in this plane as she further feasted on the dregs of the Kindred’s life force, a sense came to mind.

An intrusion.

Onrai’s attention shifted, her focus turned away as the slimy, oozing flesh beneath her hand desiccated and corroded. From the severed brains of these mighty cubes had knowledge poured to her - knowledge of things her mind was still barely able to process, let alone understand. Were she still fleshy, she would likely have been overwhelmed as her neurons continued to perpetually fire, her mind seizing up from such unfathomable information poured into it like a balloon strained past the point of bursting. The intruder - it was… he was… a Sith! Yes! Someone of the Maw, that much she recognized, though not any ally of Marlon Sularen that she knew immediately.

As she withdrew from Ooradryl’s husk, she exited the great hole in its side, bored by the Gorgon’s great prow beam weapons. She felt like a feather, floating through the infinite abyss of a world’s atmosphere, though the undercurrents of this place were aberrant to her in ways she could not describe. In time, she would, and in time, they would in and of themselves pollute her essence to be one with the innate Anti-Force of the realm’s being.

-

The trail of agony led the newly forged abomination to the source of the intrusion, as though she was a vornskr tracking down a Jedi. Yes, he was familiar yet unfamiliar. The bizarre inversion of his presence was something that yet made her unaware and unsure of things. He was not to be allowed to know of the power - it was not his to take - but the small sliver of mortality bound within her had a strange sense of sympathy for him.

“You. You are not supposed to be here, are you?”

 

[Darth Vinaze]

“You. You are not supposed to be here, are you?”

The words rang out, though he could not quite figure from where. It was the first and only thing he had ever heard, and every word seemed alien. You? Supposed to? Here? None of those had answers he could muster, for they lacked meaning in the endless.

He trudged on, thinking now, trying recall things. Deep in the back of his mind he knew he wasn't suppose to be here. He was supposed to be on Tython. Or was this it, the culmination of the ritual? Perhaps this was the reward for having destroyed the Force, and he was supposed to be here. Was this the promised world of the Sith'ari? No, surely not, for though there was no Ashla here, there was no Bogan either. The promised world of the Rebirth would be darkness, yes, but not a void. There was simply nothing here.

"I do not think anything is supposed. Things simply are, aren't they? I am here, you are here. Here is the object, we are the subjects. I do not know who we are." he finally spoke out into the void, the words now falling out of his mouth like a waterfall where before they would not come up from his parched throat. Who was speaking to him? Who was he speaking to? This all felt to Vinaze as though it were a kind of madness, but he had gone mad before, and it had been significantly more delightful than this. In this grim world, as dreamlike as it was, he remained frightening lucid, anxious even. Madness was the mind accepting the horror of reality, but for the first time in a long time the fear seemed to creep upon him with no recourse, no laugh that could brush off the absurdity of it all. What was this place?

 

[Onrai]

Darth Vinaze

The being spoke. It responded to her. And it was neither aggressive, nor hostile, nor posturing. This was most unusual - it was not one of the chthonic monstrosities she had helped end, no, nor was it one of the… Architects? Old Ones? What was it they were called? So many names, so many faces used to refer to the same beings. No, this was not them, and it was not the Charon. She knew of them quite plainly, and this being did not have the spidery features or eight appendages that such a monstrosity possessed. It must be a wayward Darksider, brought here through some means or method she was yet unsure of. Onrai had not been an aggressive participant in the invasions of the Maw, as she believed there were yet greater paths to pursue instead of mere empire-building.

“I am…” The words came. Was she Vanessa Vantai? No, that was her from the before, not her from the now. Then what was she? Ooradryl? No, certainly not. Waru? Tempting, but no. She was not of the Kindred at all. She thought for a moment and pored over the memories she had accumulated. The beings she had slain were but a father and its spawn, equal in significance but inferior in glory. And it too had a father and a mother. Kopa Kahn? No, she did not envision herself as one steeped in the world of anti-concepts so thoroughly as to know the future’s past and the tomorrow of yesterday. Even the mother of this great creature was a many-named creature, one whose visages were infinite. The Soulworm. The Lady with the Locust Heart. Vahl. Via. The Goddess. Onrai.

“Onrai…”

Yes, that would do. Memories, fragmented and shattered came to mind, depicting the being - she oddly resembled the old form that she had once had, the one she had been born with and later had transcended into. Onrai - Queen of the Stars, Goddess of the Galaxy, and of innumerable other names. And between her power and that which she now had, she could truly be that being, couldn’t she? She could be Onrai and give those who devoted themselves to her the blessings of this place. Even if the name meant little significance to the one before her, it would in due time.

“We are in Illathurion. You would know of it as Otherspace. The name this world once had, I neither know nor recall.” Already the unreality weeping from the infinitely grander insides of the cubic cadavers resting on the world’s surface had begun spewing their unreality and perverting the natural order. The world beneath their feet shuddered with potency as Onrai finally left her travels along the world’s whispering wind and once more rested upon the shifting surface.

“How were you sent here? Do you remember anything of the life you had before?”

 

[Darth Vinaze]

"The Ritual." It was all that occupied, all he could think to say. The ritual to tear Tython asunder, the final victory of the Maw over the Alliance, the Sith over the Jedi. The End. But this wasn't after the end, it seemed.

"Otherspace. Not the real world, not the Nether. The ritual should not have brought me here. Or could it have?" he pondered aloud to the other consciousness out there in the void.

Vinaze wracked his brain for something, anything, of his past, of how he arrived here.

"I know... I know I am Sith. All I have ever been, or will be."

Onrai

 

[Onrai]

Darth Vinaze

Onrai looked at Vinanze - so it was true. The battle of Tython could very well have been a deathtrap. She was fortunate her involvement had remained somewhat minimal. The spectral being realized then and there that the chances of the Maw’s long term survival were, at best, minimal, and at worst, a foregone conclusion. It would fall, one day replaced with something new. Her estimates of the future were not the result of any foresight, but of her shattered mind’s attempt to compile the unfathomable knowledge of intelligences far greater than her own into her mind.

“I see the lines of history few would ever be able to know. That the ambition of the Maw will see its destruction is a foregone conclusion, and thus my followers will retreat here for now. A battle lost for the Dark, but the war never ends - until the End.” The spectral form of Onrai shuddered and shifted, looking like a distorted hologram that sucked in radiance rather than made it.

Yes, there was much that came before her. The Pool. The Font. They were more than just a spectral demesne? They were real? They were power. One could take such power. No, all who took such power suffered an inevitable damnation. But who could? “We can find out…” she said to herself, steeping in the madness of a mind expanded far beyond its limits. She looked back at Vinaze, attempting to stay focused as the spectres of maddened memories gnawed at her like vultures claiming a cadaver of carrion as their own.

“You must come with me back to my new home.” She said, clearly and succinctly. Perhaps the Force had brought them together - but there was no Force here. She could feel it, an emptiness or a void. No light, no dark. For all its unnatural nature, she felt… comforted.

And in time, she would feel a lot more.

 

[Darth Vinaze]

What did the other voice mean? He could not quite tell. This... thing, entity... it lived here? It knew of the ways here outside the Force? Vinaze's interest was thoroughly piqued, and not solely because she offered a way out of this eternal maze.

"You are so sure that we lost? No. It can't..." but he knew it to be true, feeling it deep inside that they had indeed failed at Tython. Otherwise... he would be standing at the side of Solipsis, with Khamul, and Kyrel, victors for the Sith.

"yes... yes I suppose it was a battle lost." he resigned.

"I know not who or what you are, but if you would deliver me from this strange, waking nightmare, I would follow you to your new home."

He reached out, his body still an incorporeal shadow. He could not even tell where this Onrai was. She was more of a half-remembered thought deep in the mind than in view, but he knew if he willed himself to reach, he could grasp her, or she could grasp him.

Onrai

 

[Onrai]

Darth Vinaze

“It would be my pleasure.”

The shadow form clasped the essence of the enigmatic Sith and began to pull. The initial fortifications around the great Kindred cubes had begun to be established, and there was at least a place to return to for the time being. Across the surface of the world they went, the sensation of wrongness ever building until the top of the first cube emerged over the ridge of the dunes. Tarnished, cracked, and pitted as the shell of scales was, still the shine of its platinum sheen was visible in some areas. Obviously the great hole blasted through them by Onrai’s dreadnought was still evident, the sign that the creatures had been slain, or at least brought to submission as much as one mortal could give.

“Once, these creatures were the spawn of the Soulworm, the son of one of the ancient gods and his own identical sons.” The memories, once scrambled and disoriented, began to reform - she knew of these creatures before her transition after all. “Now they are limp and lifeless husks, memories to be tapped and consumed to unveil the past and divine the future.” She gave a sigh as the full size of the cube was unveiled, easily the size of a Star Destroyer - and it was not the only one. Two other cubes lay some several kilometers away. Around all three, prefabricated buildings had been emplaced which seemed like mere ants compared to them.

“Do you know who these creatures were?” She asked. One of the distant cubes seemed gilded with golden scales, while the other of them shone with an electrum hue.

 

[Darth Vinaze]

As they traversed the plane, Vinaze's feeling of uneasiness grew. There was practically nothing that scared the man in reality, but this otherworldly place and the being that seemed to be a strange kind of psychopomp left him utterly disoriented, grasping for something, some kind of understanding, that was not to be found.

"These cubes? Or what made them? I... could not say either way." the ruins of the civilization around them was as alien as could be to Vinaze, but even though he was a far-traveller, his many pilgrimages had always confined themselves to worlds of the Sith. Whoever, or whatever, was before him now, rang no bells. But he knew as well as any Sith scientist the changing of things, both its inherency and its necessity, and the power in it.

"I do know that in death, things give us more than in life. If these spawn are givers in death, then I say let us take all that we can, no? What is it you take from these cubes, Onrai ?"

 

[Onrai]

Darth Vinaze

“I can…” Onrai said, in response to his statement of not being able to say so clearly as to who created the cubes. “I can see it now… The Soulworm rendered fecund at the hand of Kopa Kahn. Four maleficent offspring there are, each great, each monstrous, above all who come after. One, the Left-Handed God, deigned for greatness and was consumed in his avaricious foolishness, his relics playthings for lesser beings. One that creeps and crawls, the Night Spirit, slain, her daughters long scattered to the wind, though the ancient gateway yet held value. One, the father of the Kindred, asks the great Ap’aci for girded plates, he who fathered the terrible three: Uthoqquan, Waru, Nyeegath - one forgotten, the others mine. And lastly… the pernicious spawn, formless, ageless, shapeless, Mekal, of pestilence and plague, cursed with the eternal hunger that befits the cancer god.” The identities of the four were yet vague - she both knew and did not know who they were, their existence having rendered her former fleshy state truly nothing in comparison. Was she revealing too much? Or too little?

“It is as one who consumes the sap of the tree, or the blood of the beast. Yet I could take from them all for eternity and still not have enough.” She said, motioning to a moving stairwell that had been built and which led up to a smaller hole voted into the cube’s flesh. “Let us see if Ooradryl will share his secrets with you as he did the Maelibi, to the Fellowship of Kooroo, and to countless others.” She beckoned, heading up several stories as the sense of wrongness and unreality only further spiked.

 

[Darth Vinaze]

He would follow, as he had to, as the creeping feeling that forced him from looking behind swelled. There was only forward, into the darkness. Even the deepest of his black meditations, in depths of Exegol, Korriban, or even the Maw Cluster, had only reached so deep into knowing the Gods and their dark secrets.

He had given up searching for the truth in The Mother when he had pledged himself to Darth Solipsis. He had long imagined that when the Sith'ari would rend time and space at Tython, killing the galaxy and birthing it anew, that there may be an opportunity to see the divine in their truest form. Had it finally come to pass, even for him alone? Was he so lucky? What awaited him?

Onrai

 

[Onrai]

Darth Vinaze

At last, the duo reached the walkway leading into Ooradryl’s lobotomized cadaver. The great platinum scales were thus made evident, thick crimson ichor oozing and weeping from between them in perpetua. Through the hole, pinkish flesh could be seen, seemingly somewhat thin - yet also seemingly somewhat thick. Onrai would walk in, shortly to be followed by the Sith Spectre. The hole through the outer flesh seemed to be thick enough that unlike its appearance, walking through the cavernous tunnel bored into it took what seemed like a couple of minutes.

Inside Ooradryl was where things began to take a bizarre turn. Though the creature was but a couple kilometers externally, the tunnel opened into its expansive interior, a maze of twisted flesh that formed bridges, pools of ichor, sessile tentacles that mindlessly perambulated, desiccated and slimy cysts of various shapes and forms. From one side to another seemed to span dozens if not hundreds of kilometers, a sheer physical impossibility. What they witnesssed gnawed at the mind, even as it was a most benign trait in the perverted guts of the dead god-beast.

“Magnificent, is it not?” She said, giving Vinanze the opportunity to soak in the sheer non-Euclidean anathema he now stood in. She did not know of his past attempts to commune with the one known as the Mother, whose own history and legends became more evident and whispered upon her mind as she stood within the cube’s churning hulk that even now still pulsated with life despite its death.

 

[Darth Vinaze]

"Wonderous, even. I am amazed it took defeat for me to finally arrive at this place." He looked around the inside of the gigantic corpse. Could it really have been a dead god of some kind, for what else lived in this realm beyond? Could a god really be dead at all, or simply asleep? He had asked himself the same question when he had died, wondering if the divinity of the Dark Side had given him greater strength. At a time he was certain it was so, but now... too many questions had arisen.

"The energy of this place. I have felt it, calling before, across a veil unpierceable. I always knew there were things beyond the Son, and the Mother, but never could I have voiced it. The Sith never truly understood my work in searching for Abeloth. It was intangible, untenable to the grand design of the Sith. This... Ooradryl... how has this fate befallen him?"

Onrai

 

[Onrai]

Darth Vinaze

In response to his awe at the vastness of Ooradryl’s hollowed innards, Onrai could not help but give the vaguest approximation of a smile. Yes, things were certainly coming together in her mind - the knowledge, of who she now was and what had once happened, finally was known to her! At least in such a way that she felt able to answer his questions within reason. In truth, she was amazed too at what had brought him here - was it the Maker? Was it perhaps the perversity of the attempted ritual on Tython? Or was it maybe that his own lust for knowledge had in death drawn him across the veil? She knew not, only that he was here now.

“Some believe that the Dark Side brings forth that considered ‘unnatural,’ but those creations barely scratch the surface of what lies beneath. You speak of the one known as Belot, the daughter of the Soulworm, pure as she was born, only to be debauched and defiled at the hand of the Father of Shadows and his servants - their whispers ever touching her mind. A sibling, if you can believe, to the beast whose innards we pass between. She is in a better place now.” Celestials and beings like them could die. The death of Nyeegath long before these cubic creations had been laid low was proof of that, so total an erasure from existence that no trace remained of him but shared memories.

And now to tell the tale.

“He and his remaining sons met me as I entered this place at the helm of my dreadnought. I was offered such potent perversities that would make lesser beings go mad at the sliver they may yet be achieved by mortal hands. But why speak of what they offered? The masque of their words was not enough to survive the forward weapons of my vessel, and at a great cost, they were slain, their husks crashing to this world where I supped of the power within.” She thought for a moment and decided that now, above all other times, was the best to perhaps tempt the wraith into alignment with her.

The two traveled further into the husk - it may have been hours, days, or years, but the trip to the great severed brain-tumor of Ooradryl was quick, seemingly reached in mere minutes despite the cavernous and continental scale of the cube’s malevolent innards. Onrai placed her hands on the mass of cerebral flesh as she began once more to tap the memories of the creature, whose lack of resistence nigh-assured her that he was no threat. Her form shimmered and returned to that of the robed blonde who had once conquered the mighty Kindred, the inky blackness seemingly drying into smaller and smaller blotches before evaporating entirely to reveal her nigh-human form as she opened her mouth, and from it came words and a cacophony of voices that were in no way her own.

"Come to us," the first sang buoyantly. "Hear the ancient tales of great Uthoqquan. Here are fortuities none have ever seen or tasted, endless knowledge beyond the enterprise of man for you alone to have. Shed your anxiety and made-up dreams of the light and float with us in the endless oceans of Oozultharoum."

"Come to us," the second inveigled seductively. "You know me. We belong together. I will extend to you the fulfillment of those deepest hidden desires which you have long sought. This and more, for all the riddles of the flesh are manifest to us and are yours for the taking. Come now, become as one with the wondrous Waru."

"Come to me," the third laughed liltingly. "For I am the incomparable Ooradryl and you have no reason to fear me. Free your mind from the untruth of good and evil, go beyond such mundane matters and I will bequeath to you a thousand uncharted worlds to rule and lifetimes to explore. Am I not your destiny who has guided you these long years, the reason for your very being?"

The most potent of temptations that had been laid upon the ears of the mortal-now-Onrai herself made themselves known to Vinaze, an ethereal offer for things beyond his wildest dreams - things the being in front of him could, perhaps, fulfill.

 

[Darth Vinaze]

As the voices called out, Vinaze realized he was being met with a choice. Funny, but he could not recall the last time he had done so. Everything, for years, had seemed to unfold before him in a manner he could have only ascribed to Fate. Now in this strange otherworld, seemingly a result of his ill-fate, he was offered more than just the way things were and would be. He wasn't sure what to make of it.

As Onrai's form shifted, revealing herself as the woman she once was, Vinaze felt as though he could do so too. And with an anxious breath out, his immaterial shadow coalesced into the past, first into the twisted form he'd possessed when he had ascended to the title of Darth Vinaze, then to the natural visage of a young Derleth Par, a man forgotten by time. The Umbaran stood there, revealing his truest form to Onrai. So much had happened since he'd been that man, and as he stood listening to the calls from all around him, he wondered if he could be Derleth Par again.

The first set of voices was strangely familiar. Perhaps they had called to him from beyond before, or perhaps they simply aligned with his sentiments. Knowledge beyond reality, beyond the Force... it had always held a sweet taste for him, but the mundane realities of the Eternal Struggle of Jedi and Sith had always drawn him back to the land of the living, even in death.

The second set of voices was a stranger kind, but yet they offered something too. Indulgence in desire, in a physical sense it seemed. Vinaze was not sure what exactly they meant, for his desires in the living world had always aligned with the Sith. He had thought himself to have achieved his life's goal when he had proclaimed Solipsis the Sith'ari. He was still unsure what had and would come of that great quest he'd embarked on, and that great crusade he'd supported. Perhaps it had all failed. Perhaps he should indulge?

The final voice, singular, deeper, greater, called to him in a way no one ever had. To supersede good and evil was to break the dichotomy of light and dark. Though it had been years, he could never forget the blood oath he'd sworn on Ziost to uphold the Sith Code in its truest and literal sense. Though he wondered from time to time if he really did, through all his actions that led up to the Sith'ari, he had never once questioned whether or not he was a Sith. He was, with certainty. But Ooradryl, the very undead god in whos brain he stood, offered a truth otherwise. How could it be? His reason for being was the Dark Side, and its extinction of the Light. Vinaze had believed until now that there was only one way to do that, through violence and conflict and might making right. What did Ooradryl offer, he wondered?

The voices were all strangely enchanting, their songs lending to their words an inimitable grandeur, each as true and blessing as the other, but Vinaze remained skeptical. Nothing came free, and his life had thus far been a series of payments in life and limb for the progress of the greater good of the Sith. He'd paid in bone and blood and soul, for Voyance, Kascalion, and Solipsis, but never himself. Was this merely a long awaited award, or was he about to sell himself blindly to his new savior, as she seemed to be, or do a dead god from realms hitherto unknown?

"You were offered this power, Onrai . What did you make of it? What do you make of it still?" he inquired. He had to hear it from her to truly know, and even then he knew he could still be decieved...

 

[Onrai]

Darth Vinaze

Onrai observed the shift in Vinaze's form, pondering over whether or not he could be given that in due time. Perhaps - was she able to give such? She wasn't sure. She thought so - she had made bodies through alchemical and manipulative processes before, but she wasn't that person anymore. No, creating a body was something different. Something more trivial in action. Perhaps it was something she could do, depending on the circumstances.

As the echo of temptation ended, Onrai gasped, the touch of the foul creatures' memories having momentarily overcome her. Her fleshy form cracked, darkness oozing out from between the crevices until once more her being was consumed in total darkness, eyes once more blank and irisless white voids that looked around for a bit before cocking their gaze on Vinaze himself. He had asked her a question, and in truth, she was unsure of how best to answer it, or at least a part.

"I made of it the same thing that anyone would have - that it was within their power to give, but not something they ever would. None of the servants of the cults of the Kindred received such blessings, and yet Ooradryl and his spawn clearly had the ability to do such magnificent things. Were there not cults that existed to this day which offered the cubic Old One supplication, sacrifice, and reverence? It was why I chose to slay them and claim their power as my own rather than serve them in hope of things as yet ungiven." Such was the honest truth. The powerful beings of otherspace were almost universally malignant, unimaginably powerful as they may have been. That three of the four had given in to the supplications of the Ancient Ones and sought to claim their place among the Nine Thrones was but a sign of their nature, and Onrai was far more benign in her sense and sensibilities.

"As of what I make of it now... their offers are true. And unlike them, I have no reason to restrain such. There is a reason that I - who I was, and who I am now - have had followers. Those who have served me for decades and maintained their loyalty, to the point that as they have formed families, still they serve me. My approach is unique, and in contrast to those whose empires have risen and fallen, I have survived and those who serve me have been minimally impacted. In the Maw, I have lost nothing and only further gained power, influence, and resources where others have squabbled pettily. In short, I am trustworthy."

She looked at the humanoid form of the disembodied wraith, made manifest in the dimension courtesy of his own force of will. Her hands firmly clasped his spiritual shoulders, and for but a moment he would feel her essence at the gates of his being, an immense burden of blessing held back through his own resistance.

"And I can offer you all those things, and more."

 

[Darth Vinaze]

"I am unsure. Being unsure is unsound policy, it has failed me before." Vinaze shifted on his feet as he overlooked his old body. He'd been a strong young man, but he'd given that up for strength of a different kind.

"This... place... you must forgive me for thinking that I am being presented with an illusion, or perhaps I am at the gates of death surrounded by dead gods." In such a way he felt honored to know that death for him, true death, could be among such great beings of the Darkside. But they were really dead, and Onrai had killed them. She alone remained.

"and what is it that you could possibly give me on top of the wildest dreams these voices would indulge me in?"

Onrai

 

[Onrai]

"It has failed many before." She said plainly, in response to Vinaze's comment. She listened as the Sith Lord speculated, pondering over whether the truth of all he saw was falsehood - or perhaps that he had ended up in the Netherworld as opposed to another dimension. "I do assure you though that everything you see here is very, very real." Her hands were still on his shoulders, the pressures of a blessing yet accepted waiting to be brought forth. "And you ask what it is I could give you atop the blessings of Ooradryl, Waru, and Uthoqquan?" She said, before leaning in close to the Sith spectre's ear and whispering a single word.

"Truth."

She pulled back as the milky white orbs seemed to stare into a soul within his soul. "That which has been gleaned from the dead god-beasts tells much, reality long concealed. Answers to that which few have known and fewer still are aware of today. You see yourself a Prophet to the Sith'ari? To Solipsis? Then let yourself tap the wellspring of infinite gnosis I now possess. Abeloth is dead, though vestiges and remnants of the Mother's essence may yet still remain. Here her brother and nephews yet lie, dead and anti-rotting. There are more of her siblings that may yet be found, though Typhojem and Thargorogaraht are yet no more. Listen to what I say to you. Learn of the hidden truths of this place and supplicate yourself to my teachings. And when the time is right, you will go out among the stars in new flesh, a suitable guide for the fallen Fossk. Though he may not know it, his journey has only just begun - though the path he walks may lead him into the arms of Those-That-Cannot-Be-Freed, and he will need to be weaned away from the most desperate of measures only the Way of the Dark would lead him to."

Darth Vinaze

 

[Darth Vinaze]

"Truth? I have known truth, in visions from the Bogan which led me to the side of Darth Solipsis. All I have seen here with you is more uncertainty. You speak of things that are beyond me, so I have no doubt that you are indeed powerful, but this cacophony of truths being offered seems more to me like lies, illusions..." Vinazes body followed Onrai's in dissolving away until he was as he should have been, the shadowy spirit left as a remnant.

"I cannot join you, Onrai. Not while I am uncertain, not while there is a chance I can yet serve the master I am sworn to already." He surveyed the ruins of the great dead god around him. There was something here to be learned, but it could not be so just yet. When he had locked away the devil Kascalion, the master he had once served and given it all for, it had been a sense of finality. But Darth Solipsis, the New Sith Order... he did not even know what had become of them. If Onrai could give him passage back to life, or the real world, or whatever was the opposite of this strange, Forceless place, he had to return.

"If you would allow it, I wish to return from whence I came. There is much unfinished business in what little life I may have had left in my lingering spirit. Though I may be dead by the standards of mortals, I am not ready for the void, not yet."

Onrai

 

[Onrai]

"You are less hasty than most to disregard these revelations." Onrai said to him in response. "But I suppose you deserve knowledge delivered plainly to you. Abeloth was the spawn of the Soulworm, who was the spawn of one of the Celestials. These dead-yet-living godforms were also her spawn, of an earlier and infinitely more malefic brood gestated through the foul coupling of the Soulworm with Kopa Kahn - yet another spawn of the same Celestial who had crafted her. For now, that is what you deserve to know of your past encounters with the revenants of divine bloodlines." She said, the knowledge delivered plainly and without the grandiosity of esotericism. There was more she could say, the grandiosity of galactic history yet unspilled upon the opened canvas of Vinaze's bared soul.

But not now. Now was the time for the future to speak instead of the past.

"This is my prophecy to you as to the truth of what you see, and do not forget it - Solipsis will die and his great empire will fall. The Three of the Maw are false, their emanations based on the hopes and corrupted prayers of perverted faiths allowed to decay for millennia. They will not save it from destruction at the hands of the Galactic Alliance. When that time comes, as the ancient oracles of Illathurion once uttered, 'flee, and think not to stand fast, nor shame to be chicken-hearted.' Your preservation will come before that of territory and resources, and you will do what you must to survive." Onrai said, turning away from him within the husk of Ooradryl, an amber and amethyst stone raised as a bladelike finger sliced into a wall of flesh next to them, the split revealing the swirling energies of a rift that would allow Vinaze's tortured spirit access to the material plane of realspace once again.

"But take heart - for light always becomes shadow and the most nurtured garden will one day be filled with blight and desolation. Kaigann Fossk will yet one day walk among the living again. When he does, the banners of those who once wasted blood and steel in circular slaughter will stand beside him, and the very heart of the Alliance will be plucked from its breast. The world which you fought over will belong to him once again. And there, upon the ruins of the temple, the blood of the light will be sacrificed. On that day, will see each other again, and you will know that all I have shown you and offered you is truth. From there, you and others must guide the emperor with your sibyllic words and ensure that whatever power he sups for does not yet seek to consume him. For that, I will help you, as there are greater things at play which I will tell you of when once more we reunite."

She motioned to the rift she had torn. "Now go, do as you must."

Darth Vinaze