Ozymandias
Somewhere in the Galaxy...
Theme: X
The Galaxy had long lost its luster to the monstrous Darth Empyrean - foregone was the sensation of soft skin on soft skin, feeling the warmth of a hearth fire, or a long morning laying entwined with
Srina Talon
. The Emperor knew nothing but pain and grief after his death, never able to escape the constant surge of pain that threatened to cripple him at all times. Some assumed he no longer felt anything in death, but it was wrong - he felt his death in perpetuity. He was a man who had been dying for years, forever cast into a hell of his own making.
Srina Talon
. The Emperor knew nothing but pain and grief after his death, never able to escape the constant surge of pain that threatened to cripple him at all times. Some assumed he no longer felt anything in death, but it was wrong - he felt his death in perpetuity. He was a man who had been dying for years, forever cast into a hell of his own making.
It was what he had come to deserve, he imagined, but it was the nature of his pursuit. He had been born a slave, a creature with no name or autonomy, forever sold between master. His only constant as a child was a chain, and for many years he had thought he had escaped those metal clasps - but he had only exchanged them with a different kind. The pursuit of power he had sought dragged him into a hole where he couldn't see what he had, and for that he had lost it all. Subjecting his family to a horror that only he should suffer from.
Were there any hatred that fueled him now, it was hatred of himself. Were he personified outside of himself, he would long have cut himself down - but his mission was not done. He would see his final days in the Galaxy bring to fruition his long held dream of freedom for all peoples. He had become known as the Breaker of Chains, but he had yet to break the greatest chain of all.
Yet knowing this, knowing his drive towards this goal, did not save him from the longing that ached at a heart that had long since failed to pump blood. He craved the sensations the living took for granted. More than that, he craved mundanity, where he was not the Emperor but just another man with a quiet life. Once, he couldn't understand why Velok of Tuula had chosen to hide himself away in a family home in spite of his power, his wisdom, his drive. Now, more than anyone alive, he understood what his once friend had done in a way he could never had understood as a child.
Power for the sake of power was a punishment in delay. It would cut them all down eventually, but Velok had escaped before he had ended as Empyrean had.
In days where that longing took hold of him, he allowed his willpower to spread throughout the Galaxy to find some unfortunate soul. With a great pressure he would drive their soul from their body and possess them, turning their eyes black as their bodies began to fail. Few mortal beings could sustain themselves biologically in the face of a willpower like Empyrean's, and thus these bodies would fail in a mere few hours. They would die, but Empyrean would live his mundane life for a few hours at a time, leaving a deep scar in the families he tore apart.
Selfishness was something he would never escape, but that was simply the oxymoronic nature of his power. To be so strong as to subsume the very body of another being, but too weak to drive the passenger from his own soul. It only made him more disgusted with himself.
Today, he had overtaken the soul of a young woman, blonde and thin. The spaceport was overwhelmed with the ramblings of deals and cargo being loaded, but attached to the space port was a cantina filled with criminals and smugglers. There was smoke in the air, and the dimply lit stage and tables shrouded most of the dealings in the most reliable form of obfuscation - darkness. With dimmed sunglasses covering the black sclera of his temporary body, the Emperor found himself a seat at the bar and ordered himself a drink.
It would taste terrible through someone else's mouth, but it wasn't the taste he was after. Only the experience. The sensation of the cold on the glass, even filtered through another, reminded him of his life. It reminded him of why he was fighting, and where it would take him. For now, he would simply enjoy a cold beer in a muggy bar. Uncomfortable as it was, it was infinitely more tolerable than his actual existence.
