Two Can Keep a Secret

[Kuzo]

You could ask him, she teased gently against his mind. For a moment she turned it over. And then he felt the brush of a nod.

I'll try to keep him alive so you can rifle around when I'm done, she promised.

It wasn't, he would understand, an idle thing. While the intent was never to kill her subjects, things happened. Pushing people to the edge of the Nether was not without risks and she had lost as many as she had been able to draw back. She hoped that the more information she had, the more her success rate would improve- killing them was certainly failure here. Even if it was necessary, sometimes, to sacrifice for knowledge.

She depressed the needle, the serum flowing through his IV and into his blood stream.

"Your heartbeat will slow," she explained softly. "Your core temperature will drop. You'll shiver, at first, but then feel warm. Just at the edges of hypothermia, really. But the cold will protect your brain and other organs as they start to shut down. I will be monitoring your vitals closely. Your blood pressure will start to drop- that is where some people start to panic at first. The blackness at the edges of your vision is to be expected..... once you are there, on the edge of consciousness, I'll find your memories of the Nether....."

And she would open them wide.

[member="Seamus Valik"] [member="Jairus Starvald"]

 

[Seamus Valik]

He lay still and forced himself into a state of calm. It wasn’t easy in the least but he did manage it. He could feel it after only a moment. The serum bled into his IV like an oozing worm slowly pushing itself through the tubing into his waiting blood stream. The creeping cold she spoke of crawled through his body. The frigid waves numbed as they moved and though he tried he couldn’t stop the shivering that slowly began to wrack his whole body.

His eyes grew heavy as he lay there and his thoughts grew sluggish. His breaths started coming in quick rapid succession as his body tried to gain more oxygen from his thickening blood. It was pain, but not of the usual sort, it was pain of mind that couldn’t bring the bodily reaction and the environment into congruence. His mind knew what was happening, but his body told him something far different. It all began to slip. His blue eyes slowly fluttered closed and his heart began to beat slower and slower until darkness took his vision and he felt as if he was floating.

His mind went astray, or perhaps it was his soul, he would have debated that for days at one time, but now, in this place, it didn’t seem to matter. He drifted into the darkness passing out of thought and time to wend and wander in the featureless depths of the unknown. Slowly memories slipped into his mind and he thought first of Spark Finn and Talon Vosra before the idle thoughts were pushed away and he found himself staring into an all too familiar alien landscape.
His hand gripped the ledge of the cliff dirt and grit dug under his nails as he held on for dear life. His feet hung out over a black endless void as he looked down and realized it was a terrible idea. He looked back up and pulled with all his might until he could fling a leg up. He rolled away from the ledge and unto his back breathing heavily and staring up at the roof of a giant chasm. Slowly, he sat up and looked around to find an altar or perhaps a sarcophagus with a heatless blue fire raging on top. Where was he? He didn’t know.

The memory slipped away and he felt the tug of something drawing him. It was subtle at first but as he drifted it became insistent, hungry, very hungry. He tried to pull away. To reach for anything at all, but he was alone, and there was nothing to hold him.

He stood in front of the altar and waved a hand by the blue flames. There was no heat. No fuel for the flames. They simply were but for what purpose and from what source he couldn’t say. He put his hand closer and then with a deep breath thrust his hand into the fire hoping to be fast enough to simply see what would happen. Rash, it was true, but sacrifices were needed in some cases for knowledge.
His hand went in and froze as if grasped by a powerful hand as tendrils of flame raced up his arm and seemed to burn into his very essence. Thoughts of every wrong he had ever done surged through his mind as he felt doubt and fear and emotion slowly burned from his thoughts. Memories died in flashes and pain ran through his spirit. He saw Jedi, Sith and countless things in between all burn away in his mind’s eye. Voices of long dead being whispered in his pain wracked mind, consolations, forgiveness offered, and promises of everything being ok if he would follow the path of balance and reject the extremes offered by the adherents of Light and Dark. With a start he felt the flames retreat and leave him to collapse to the ground smoldering blue mist.

He called out. The memory of pain enough to cause his body to feel it all over again. He could see a plane now. Slowly pulling him faster and faster. The netherworld had found him. It wanted back what should have never gone free. And for the first time in a long time. He felt fear.




[member="Irajah Ven"] [member="Jairus Starvald"]

 

[Kuzo]

She felt the shift, the darkness. It was like a cold gate, the metal delicate but chill to the touch, opening and letting in a familiar sort of breeze.... familiar in all the wrong ways.

Irajah breathed in deeply, her eyes closing as she felt it.

It was always there. Just a half step away if someone knew how to step, just how to turn their head. Of course that was the trouble, wasn't it? Most people didn't even know to look, to glance over their shoulder at the twisting shadows waiting.

"Why is it always so distressing?" She murmured softly, her tone absent and distant. She needn't have said it out loud, but there were the words anyway.

"In every subject, it's a terror." She was no exception. The time in the Nether had irrevocably changed the small, dark haired woman. "It is struggle and fear, always."

Irajah watched through the Force, her mind dipping into his, seeing what he saw. Feeling what he felt. It was right there at the surface, and she could sift it through her fingers like a soft, fine sand. She could drop it on the moment, but grains would stick to her fingers if she didn't brush it off carefully and she knew it.

"It's always the struggle between self and a landscape bent on ending that self."

Everything was being recorded. Even as she dipped into his mind, his experiences, she kept half of her attention on the monitors. One of them started to beep softly.

"His blood pressure is dropping too fast," she muttered, hands moving to adjust the fluid drip. It needed to be low but if she could keep it maintained at a place that would keep his mind conscious to see, that was what she needed.

Something shifted, and her attention snapped back to Seamus.

"So you're one that got away."

She knew that feeling all too well.

Leaning in, she murmured softly in his ear. It was hard to tell if they could hear her or not, at least consciously. Subconsciously she knew her words were having impact, were heard by the processes of the mind. She simply never was certain of the effect.

"How close until you can't escape," she whispered, watching the monitor. "How far can it reach and let me bring you back? Hmmmm. How much can it take.... and still bring you out again?"

If he survived, he would not be the first that she had taken back from the Nether, right on the brink. And if he died, well-

He would not be the first then either.

[member="Seamus Valik"] [member="Jairus Starvald"]