Private Cosmic Dread

[Persephone Hero]

Coruscant
Jedi Temple
Open to Healers of the New Jedi Order

​

A shiver passed over her. Persephone grasped the soft gossamer of the silk tulle veil that draped her fragile frame, and drew it closer about her, the gown she wore underneath was too fine to warm her.

"Assume positions, younglings!" Persephone's cold broke as she flashed a hue of rosy red. Her neck craned delicately to scrutinize the group around her. She was definitely one of the older Jedi initiates here. . .

Falling down to her knees beside the others, she felt her heart drop with her. Something was amiss, noticing the deep beat of her own heart. It was the first time after the lingering phases of her night that she had been still. She thought she would find peace in a Jedi Temple, but the force here was strong. It was like a thousand whispers from a thousand years incessantly bleated her mind.

The hazy sunlight struck from the yawning mouth of the dawn through arches of immoderate length divided by even larger pillars in the Grand Hall of the Jedi Temple on Coruscant. It was morning mediation. Her days had become so structured now. Persephone had only been inducted, informally so, into the New Jedi Order for less than a week, and everything seemed so foreign to her.

Med, or more technically, Medical Droid 0004538, which she had not so creatively nicknamed stood in the background. He was assigned to keep a close eye on her at all times. The cellular activity in her body, more specifically, her cell's interactions with the midi-chlorians that lived within them were anomalous and chaotic.

"Shut your eyes now," The alien Jedi master instructed them.

Her eyes peered up at the ceiling, a sparing twitch betrayed her humility in the Temples grandiose stature, which seemed to rise to infinity, and only then closed them, trying to catch the breath that escaped her. Although the truth that it may have been holding her hostage left a chink in her general sense of wellbeing, it wasn’t enough to dismantle what she had stolen through that vulnerability, the freedom of responsibility of keeping herself. Had that not after all been the venture of her enterprise and what she so earnestly sought? Then how could she admit herself to the truth that she was still humming in dysphoria and felt no less desperate?

"Now forfeit all ties to the material." The voice echoed as if from a long distance away.

The truth availed itself to her through dreams, and that then was the reason why she stirred all night. They were something short of a casual nightmare, her future whose ambivalence rippled on even after the choices were made, and thereafter would wake into a lesser dream and have to make it all over. Even when she awoke there was no sudden click of inner harmony, only the sticky film of sweat on the small of her back and the flesh of her sealed joints. . . Persephone couldn’t guess what she did in her sleep, raving in tongues or setting the armoire that stood guard over the bed’s endboard in orbit around the room, but whatever it had been, she was so far gone in her short coma that it didn’t really matter.

"The tension in your shoulders. Rest them." Growing farther now.

She genuinely tried to do so. She wanted to give this a chance. She tried but panicked as an onset of a steady drip of anxious presentations steeped pressure over her skull, like a dark hand gripped her from behind. Her palms became cold pools for perspiration to collect.

"The strain on your brow. Let it go. . ." and then it was no longer the voice of the Jedi Master that spoke.

She felt a weakness, almost a swoon, and then she fevered, her eyes fluttered, and it was as if a wisp of mist began to steam out of them. Persephone used to think it was just an inborn optical illusion until her friend Yor made mention of it. It was as if the tears in her eyes were evaporating, but they only ever began with her eyes, soon those along with all the other pores of her body vapored out, into an expansive mist that floated over her flesh, a panorama of petals orbiting in them; images of broken glass in little gold sputters refracted light. No one noticed because all eyes were now closed except hers.

"The weight of yourself on the ground. Forget it. All crude matter. Now focus on your breaths. . .slow them."

It seemed the more she tried to stifle it, the panic, the more it grew beyond the power of her mind and her inclination to be able to conceal her usually adept ability to disguise it. She didn’t know if it was physical or a mental manifestation of the prison of her despair but Persephone felt herself reddening at the knowledge that if she were to stay still soon the whole of the hall would look like a nebula.

"Reach out, out to the reservoir about you. The pure energy of the force. Pull it in. Let it wash over you. Fall in reverie with it. . .what do you see?"

Her arms and legs tingled with numbness, her heart pounded, drumming from a deep intangible place within her. Her ears rang. The Force lifted her inches off the ground.

Persephone saw the void.

Infinite cosmic dread gripped her as her body floated higher, looking down at her hands in horror, she saw the light from her eyes, nose, and mouth bathe them in a halo, and from her fingertips there streaked that same pure incandescent force.

The light caught the attention of the others who now turned to Persephone in astonishment. Charged particles vised in a gray aurora that her mutability lent her peaked over her cape and captured the atmosphere just around her, burgeoning further out.

She began to scream as it lifted her higher towards the apex of the ceiling, swimming in the air, breast-stroking back towards the ground to no avail. The other younglings were the first to try and reach her but they were burned by the light and choked by the mist that now enveloped her. The next attempt at rescue was from the Jedi Master who although wore a pretense of calm was clearly shocked and disturbed. The moment their hand flung forward to reach out in the force to her, they hurled back like a magnet trying to attract likes.

The last man standing, Med, grappled his feet to the floor magnetically and advanced as he was pushed away from the storm and zero gravity that now raged outward from the dangling girl trying helplessly to save herself and spare everyone around her. A panel lifted from his hoisted left wrist and a syringe with a particularly thick looking needle ascended from it, the syringe instantly filling with a clear substance until the needle dripped with it. But Persephone's power proved too much for him and he simply broke apart, limbs flitting and floating, with each concerted step he took until only his calves remained suctioned the ground.

Persephone prayed she would just lose consciousness as she floated beyond anyone could reach, the nebula storm raging around her.

 

[Cassus Demici]

It was not difficult to sense there was a great disturbance in the Force, originating from the chief hall of the Temple, but Cassus had felt it keenly, felt the pounding of it so intensely he nearly fell to his knees.

He had been in the cafeteria after his morning mediation and exercises were done, but he quickly tossed his tray of food on the table nearest him and darted for the source of the pain he felt.

When he got to the scene it was bedlam, the bodies of younglings and a Master strewn within a miasma of pure energy, floating and unconscious, their signature in the force weakening. Med's chassis and limbs a mess splayed out amongst them.

His eyes darted straight for the syringe sticking out from Med's amputated forearm meters above the ground.

As Persephone ascended the air he darted for it with all the speed the force would allow him. He ran up to the pillar that stood nearest to his goal destination and then stepping his foot on it, and defying gravity walked up its side, pushed himself up, and used that momentum to take off. He had just reached it, but before he could lose the thrust of the first jump, he cocooned himself in more force energy and rocketed towards the clouded storm climbing more with every passing moment in the air he knew Persephone was at the center of. With all his power he vaulted up higher, breaking through to the barriers of force that shielded her and tried gusting him away.

He was almost there, his reserves of force power to propel him even higher were just about gone when. . .

From the nebula a face of pure humming force energy whipped out. It was in the form of Persephone, in pure agony. Her long hair floated above her as if she were submerged in water.

He grabbed the hand that shot rays into his eyes as he winced and turned away, his face burning, and grabbed it with one hand and quickly shot the needle with the other.

Seconds later, his hand scalding, they began their descent, at first slow, and then like a meteor raining down. Cassus quickly tried to use what energy he had left in the force to cushion their fall, but he was empty. . .he tried gyrating as they plummeted so that he would take the brunt of the fall. . .

 

[Auteme]

Persephone Hero | Cassus Demici ​

One moment she was walking through the halls of the Temple, the next the Force was screaming.

A deafening roar filled the vicinity; it took a moment for the Jedi nearby to mobilize. By the time they reached the meditation hall the Jedi there had begun to fall. Auteme, along with the few other Jedi with her, summoned the Force to slow the fall of the younglings and others before setting them on the ground. Her ears were ringing with the aftershock, as if sensitive to any more Force. The other Jedi went to aid the younglings. She couldn't sense anyone injured -- bumps and bruises, maybe a concussion.

She was most concerned about the man, holding the girl who'd been the epicenter of whatever had happened. It seemed like he'd stopped whatever it was. To cause such a commotion and radiate such power was a terrifying thing. Now, though, Auteme could only watch as it seeped away from the girl's body. The aftermath of the storm; watching the clouds roll away in the distance.

"What happened? Is she alright?" Auteme knelt beside the Jedi, sparing him a glance before focusing back on the girl.

 

[Cassus Demici]

Cassus, breathing heavy and exhausted, just looked up at the fellow Jedi Knight in disbelief. Aching, his jaw hanging in shock, all words escaped him. A world of confusion reigned in his eyes.

"She's barely breathing," was all he could manage to utter as he held Persephone in his arms looking up at their savior from the ground.

The two Knights both then looked down at Persephone who despite her state, eyes still fluttered and within them there escaped smolders of light.

..::Later::..​

He stood over Persephone who lay dormant, reclined and encased in some transparent plasticene compound that looked like a glass crystalline solid. They were now in the middle of a solitary residence medical bay which seemed reserved for the more fantastic cases of the Medical wing. The case entombed her over her bed, it's weight assuring there was no escape. Breathing tubes and other medical equipment burrowed from under into a small aperture in her cradle, which was itself a slab of durasteel with some cushioning in the center and computer panels embedded in its periphery.

"It resists the force, creating a barrier around the reposed. Very old, very rare, quite powerful. Never had the need to use it before today. . ." The Jedi nurse explained to him later.

The air smelled of disinfectant and the room, although still retaining the styling of the greater temple, felt very sterile and least esoteric of all the chief residence of the Jedi on Coruscant.

Persephone's sleepfulness was not a peaceful one. She garbled speech and wailed, convulsed and tossed. He was told that when Persephone was first brought in, her unconscious state did not mean the force within her was yet quiescent. Medical gear and furniture lifted, floated and crashed. Cerebral barriers were pierced, minds filled with visions of disturbance. No one among the staff quite knew how to treat her.

Cassus leaned over to the walls of her bower, inspecting it. The structure arrangement made her face replicate in a bouquet of reflections as if mirrored in the stare of a many-eyed creature. He put his hand on it and instantly felt the force drain from him.

He felt for her, but he never asked to be a participant in this chaos. He was conflicted, ambivalent. He felt responsibility, the call of the Force had clearly laid him on this path, but he thought of his long history of taking accountibility for others in this way, and how it always ended in their demise. His thoughts drifted to his mother. . .

Soon a congregation of Jedi entered, sensing them approaching even before the mechanisms of the door clicked, unlocking, and swooshed open.

They were a mix of Master and Knights, at the head of them the Jedi Auteme that had spared him a few broken bones earlier. He had seen her around the halls occasionally but was never acquainted with her.

Cassus turned and bowed as low as he could manage, but even bowed was taller than any of them. He looked up at them gravely, humbled by the actions that had transpired.

They all looked at him, as if waiting for him to give his debriefing. They stood in the silence for a moment, only the beeping and signaling of the medical devices filling the vacuum of speech, before he began.

"She is a vergence in the Force, the likeness of which I have never experienced," Although Cassus had visited several loci in the force throughout the Galaxy none were as all-consuming, as electric as Persephone, and none of which he felt this connected to, or in his mind, trapped by.

He relayed to them all that had happened, that which he had felt prior to arriving at the scene, what he experienced and did once he got there, and that which he had heard from the Jedi Master who instructed the youngling's early morning meditation. He had it in his mind to say all that had transpired with her and between them in the past few weeks of his assignment to Persephone, but he hesitated and lingered a moment on it. He decided to withhold that information for now. . ."

"She's a great dang-. . ." He began but was cut off.

"The analysis of the Medical droid is coming in now," The nurse announced to them, interrupting his thought. The head of the droid Med had been plugged into a conduit to a nearby computer terminal and all information regarding Persephone and the incident that morning that could be salvaged streamed in holographs before them. Over a litany of vitals and medical readings there was a holorecording playing back from Med's Perspective the horrible happenings of the early morning.

But before anyone could really watch any significant portion of it Persephone began to open her eyes. . .

 

[Persephone Hero]

Void.

The only thing that existed in her unlighted world was the trilling of the medical devices in the room. She rose and fell with the sound of them, deep in trance and in forfeit of her mind, disassociated from her senses to such a scope that her body was made manifest instead with the restless limbo hiding beneath her consciousness.

Her well-favored features were adversely sunken, faded in the loss of her spirit which houseless, flung away into a distant, sadly content purgatory.

The trilling crept in softly, then louder.

With an effort, she lifted her eyes open but they quickly closed again. She waited a moment and then reattempted the exercise. It took several efforts before they began to undulate more freely, shaking the weight off of them and becoming aware of her surroundings.

Persephone couldn’t tell where she was. Dizzy, she lived in a tug of war now with her reality that coated all things in a nebulous haze. She couldn’t even guess at the number of days she had been here. The tube up her nose and the IV needle in her arm began to paint the picture, however.

When she became conscious of her enclosure, Persephone's first instinct, feeling very claustrophobic, was to bang against the confines of this casket and try and break free. But she closed her eyes instead and took a deep breath, and collected the selfless mettle she always scrimmaged together, realizing that for the first time in a long time, under this giant crystal geode slab she felt like she wouldn't lose control. As if it absorbed a small part of what plagued her.

She suddenly remembered with great agony and gritted teeth, what had transpired earlier. All readable auxiliaries to keep up her typically masterful art of discretion and deceptive restraint had been all but incensed, floating up, and thinking she was in the final throes of her affliction; when she was submerged in ego death that even now had not left her, and that devastation, the horrendous yodeling into infinity.

The thought of it tore apart at her.

Persephone looked at her reflecting portrait in the crystal casing. There, to match Persephone’s face was Cassus's peering in above for what Persephone had guessed was at least several moments until he came realized in to focus and the apertures of her eyes materialized his profile in full within the crystal. Its unexpected appearance was devastating, causing Persephone to convulse, her face petrified and her eyes, previously fatigued to wan creases blossomed into saucers, the green within them revived in a sparkle that held in it the power and variance of a grove of olives. Her chest dripping and rising at the behest of her skipping heart, he felt as if he was caught naked.

She then looked out to the congregation of Jedi standing beyond him. A fair-faced Jedi Knight was being handed a datapad by a Medical droid.

"The younglings . . .?" She asked but with a nod of the woman's head, Persephone was reassured they were alright.

She looked back to Cassus.

“I'm so sorry. . .” But Persephone didn’t know if that was truthful, in fact, it felt like a flat out lie as she spoke it. She needed to unload on someone right now, unravel after keeping up appearances for so long, even in the face of horrendous suffering that she’d internalized. It was still the antithesis of her nature to put herself at the mercy of someone in this way. Their eyes communicated tacitly as most things occurred with them.

"What's wrong with me?" Was all she could think to ask, looking at the Jedi Knights and Masters collectively. It was a question she'd always been terrified to ask, a question 16 years in the making that had finally culminated in this moment.

Auteme​

 

[Auteme]

Persephone Hero
​

"Do you mind if I get a moment alone with Persephone?" A few of the masters had been worried that Persephone's... troubles, would continue when she woke up. The rest were healers or medical staff. All listened to Auteme in their own way, giving her space to approach the girl. She'd be a fool to have missed the fear and struggle that wormed away in those eyes.

Auteme sat down by the crystal. "Hi, Persephone. I'm Auteme. I know we haven't met officially, but -- I try to keep up with the students and classes. I teach a few, actually, and I can't wait for the day I get to teach you."

She smiled, but her expression turned solemn a moment later. "I know you're scared. I get it, really -- you know, when I learned I was Force sensitive, my first instinct was to wonder how much I might hurt people. I mean, I'm a history nerd. The Sith have always done damage to the galaxy and the Jedi haven't always been the best at stopping it. To be apart of that select few who have an incredible gift; a gift that could damage or save, given a little push in either direction.

"But you're here, at the Jedi Temple. If there's any place in the galaxy that you'd be able to find help, it'd be here. There are people who want to help you. I'm one of them." The smile returned. "Do you think you'd be alright if you came out of this old thing?"

She tapped the crystal.

 

[Persephone Hero]

Up until now the shades had been drawn and the windows sealed, but upon the arrival of the healers and Masters, hoping fresh air might settle the mood and the sun shed some light on the situation, they were opened by the nurses just enough to let both fronts of energy percolate.

She turned away from all the gazes, the many sets of eyes in the room all on her, scrutinizing.

Coming in through the gossamer lens of the curtain's stitching with the fresh morning zephyr was the vestige of a living sun on the crystal before her. The dalliance of its light never faltered, only spread what it abandoned on the stone surface to impress new silhouettes over it. Persephone likened its contorting shapes to the basin of a parched Naboo teacup that her mother and hers would leave every evening in the sitting room of her home here on Coruscant, always wanting of a seer to merit its portents.

But she found that like a moth nearing the sun, she hung in a disconsolate loss with the meaning of it, and turned in over on herself from the disillusioned promise of that glistening pattern that light posed her.

Glad that someone could sense her unease with all the members present, the Jedi Knight with the datapad excused them. The room cleared and the woman at the head of the congregation of Jedi behind Cassus approached. Persephone was thankful for so many peering eyes to be relieved of their subjugation of her but was nervous to have Cassus leave.

She thought maybe if Cassus had been with her this morning, this wouldn't have happened. In the weeks he had been with her she had grown to depend on him, probably too much. A surrogate to her older sister who she was now unable to see. The Jedi Order recommended that Persephone take a break from her family indefinitely. She would guess probably because there was so much turmoil within it that it only activated her symptoms.

Auteme introduced herself and Persephone took an instant liking to her. Her kind eyes teemed with light, her presence was soothing and her concern genuine. But beyond that, there was a strength in her that Persephone found easy to envy.

Persephone gave a nod at the question delicately posed to her, but as she nodded yes her mind was screaming no and a pang in her heart heightened. Whereas before she was unnerved to be stuck in this thing now she was petrified at the thought of being exhumed of it.

"I think we can try," She spoke, betraying her instincts again. This may have been a temple of some of the most powerful beings in the galaxy, but even the most fortified place was nothing if you were a thrall subject to carry your woes heavy on you like a wet cloak.

A medical droid approached at the behest of the Jedi Knight and worked the controls at the edge of the bed. A metal claw lowered from a compartment in the ceiling and slowly lifted the giant crystal case.

The fresh air descended on Persephone and she felt dangerously light again, holding onto the bed railings, having been conditioned that the atmosphere held no sway over her and she'd be subject to float away again. But she looked at Auteme for reassurance and braved her fears, sitting up her stiff muscles getting exercised.

She gave the room a quick sweep then turned to the woman, in their eyes was a world of discourse. Persephone didn't have to say much to relay the tentative doom that had enveloped her life this past year, if not since earliest recollection.

"I just want to know how to stop this," the young girl pleaded, motioning her hands to the invisible force that enslaved her. She resolved herself to never knowing why this was happening to her. She already explored every possibility out over the many years she suffered with this affliction. She availed herself to the likely truth that the origin didn't matter. The only thing she cared about knowing now was how to get rid of it.

Yet no matter what this Jedi healer had to say, she had little hope. This had just been a way of life for so long, she didn't believe she would ever be okay. She didn't even dare to dream it. She would be content to lie under this rock for the rest of her life.

Auteme​

 

[Auteme]

Persephone Hero ​

Auteme bit her lip and nodded to Persephone. The unfortunate truth was that she didn't have any answers for the girl. For Auteme, it was a mind-killer -- without an obvious answer, there was no course of action to be taken. Of course she wanted Persephone to be safe and happy, but what could she do? This wasn't something that could just be healed away or talked out. She had faith in the many studious healers and Jedi but it wouldn't come easy and there was nothing concrete to offer now.

A look of despair flickered across her face as the crystal rose from its place, only to be repressed. At the very least she could put on a brave face. Right? Or would that simply delay the inevitable, since Auteme's words could do nothing?

No, no, they could do something. For a brief moment she could alleviate the stress that plagued the girl, however small and meaningless that might be. Even as the warmth returned to her smile she couldn't help but wonder if she was avoiding the problem. She just wanted to make Persephone happy.

Auteme dodged the question, instead leaning forward with a different offer. "Let's go for a walk. Don't worry, we'll avoid everyone. The Temple's big enough that you could hide for a week before anyone found you," she said, before her voice lowered to a conspiratorial whisper. "And I know a few secret passages."

The Temple's interior had a ton of little corridors hidden in the walls, a relic from the time of the Empire, when this had been the Imperial Palace -- even before then, there were records of how Jocasta Nu could find her way into the Archives undetected even with a full Imperial lockdown.

She stood and beckoned the girl towards the exit. "I know you're scared. But we've got to get past the despair, right? Let's do something fun. For a little while."