Descent

[EmKay]

"I can't... I..."

The words echoed through Rhoujen's mind. His frail, broken mind. The events since Druckenwell will have that effect on someone who was, only a few months ago, fresh in the galaxy after years in the labs on Bestine IV. Those labs that dictated his life, told him what he would and wouldn't do, how he would be used as a tool... a weapon... how he would be brought to heel to whomever this Benefactor was, and do that stranger's bidding and his, or hers, alone. He felt like a caged animal, he had to escape...

"We had to escape," came the venomous tones of Sigma which drowned out every thought that Atretes had, "do you remember what it is to escape?" the venom turned curious... and cruel. The curiously cruel tones dumbfounded Atretes, and drew him deeper within himself. He felt like he was suffocating. Drowning. Choking. A desperate clutch onto consciousness slipped, and the young man's mind was lost within itself. So Rhoujen's body on Roon went still and quiet. Oblivious to the world. Disconnected from the treachery, manipulations, and troubles of the galaxy.

Thrown into something much worse.

"Let me remind you how to escape," Sigma called out through the smothering darkness, "Escape from weakness."

A light. A light in the distance. As stupid as it may have seemed in normal circumstances, desperation threw Rhoujen into a maddened state where what may have been an obvious trap or ruse drew him in as easy as a poisoned steak to a starving man. The light never drew closer. The area never illuminated. The darkness went on, and the unreachable light tormented Atretes with the lie of hope. Dangling ever on the horizon, never wavering. Never coming, never going. Then a small, echoing sound resounded across the plane. It grew louder, more coherent, until Atretes was so exhausted from running that he collapsed to his knees and fell prostrate. He gasped for breath that never came, the air seemingly sucked from the space around him. The sound was recgonisable now. It was Sigma.

Laughing.

The floor began to quake, the light began to draw nearer, and as hope rekindled in Atretes' spirit, the light simply flickered and vanished before it grew close enough to illuminate what was around him. Then the ground began to crumble around him. The young man tried to stand, but his muscles screamed in protest from his previous exertion. As he strained against his exhaustion pinning him down, the grown finally caved away until Rhoujen was sinking into a pool of molten something. Whatever the unidentifiable substance was, it seared his skin and brought more anguish than he'd ever before experienced. His cries were muffled as his head sunk into the incinerating liquid, and his last moment was of unimaginable pain pouring into his middle through his mouth.

Then it all went black again.

And he wasn't dead.

He was crouched on the ground again, that light taunting him as before.

"Let's try again, feeble one." came Sigma's voice. That maddening, all-encompassing voice. Atretes winced, curled up, and then before he knew what was happening the dark twinkled into lights, and he was in space. The initial comfort of being in an identifiable environment was destroyed when his skin began to tighten, his organs shuddered, his lungs imploded, and within ten minutes he died of exposure to a vacuum.

Then it was black.

And Sigma repeated,

"Let's try again."

 

[EmKay]

"Do you remember anything from before you decided to be a brigand?" Sigma asked, as Atretes drifted in a black sea, aboard a small canoe that flowed with wherever the current took him. It was a welcome reprieve from the countless ways the apprentice had been tortured, dismembered, melted, crushed... yet survived it all. Atretes looked into the inky waters and thought, and saw his memories projected onto the waters. Aside from vague images of medical equipment, he remembered next to nothing. He could feel Sigma paying particularly close interest on the further back memories. Flashes of cold and dark, faceless feelings. The ambience changed then, and the boat vanished. Atretes slipped into the water and sunk down, down, deep into the blackness until he felt like he was floating. Sigma's voice echoed in his head.

"Let's relive life, then." he said, his voice not as cruel for the moment, and Atretes hit the bottom of the ocean. Then he felt wet. Not immersed, but saturated. It was then he realised that it had begun to rain. He felt small, lost, alone. He looked around him and saw unfamiliar city streets, felt the chill of the autumn air of whatever planet he was on creep into his bones, felt the misery of being abandoned come over him. What was his name? Where was he? Where was his mother? Father? Brother? Family... they'd left him. Why...

"Cursed." some voice said. Who was it? Where? Why could he hear it? Could others? Why was he being looked at with such disdain? Where was he? There were so many questions, so much confusion... why? Why was he hated? He tried to walk, but his legs felt frozen. Then someone stopped in front of him. Who was it? He felt himself being picked up, wrapped in a blanket. It was warm. Comforting. He let himself fall asleep in the warmth.

...

Beep.
Beep.
Beep.
Beep.

His eyes opened. Where was he? It was clean. He was clean. He was also on a table. There were wires under his shirt. What was that beeping? What... why... he was sleepy... he fell back into a deep sleep.

"Sigma." came the voice again. He was confused. Then the vision faded and Atretes was standing on a cold steel floor.

"So we've been here before." he said. He felt the air channel a feeling of an affirmative.

"I survived." again, the affirmative, and Atretes nodded to himself, a kind of resolve coming over him that made Sigma smile, "If I did it once as a child I can do it now." he said. The air grew with a kind of electricity, and he felt the voice echo in before it made itself known.

"Let's try again, then."

 

[EmKay]

There was something comforting about the fire, even if this was a Force-fueled dream made by a crazy second consciousness. He sat there, in a stone-lined sloped circle, watching the flames flicker with visions of memories. Things past, things present, and things that were so unfamiliar they had to be future. Sigma indulged his musing. Allowed him this moment of respite. He looked to the ground and saw a cylinder. It was a lightsaber, though far different from the simple tube-and-blade Norongachi had allowed him to borrow.

"What's this, then?" Rhoujen asked the air, and a figure who looked like him but was somehow yet undeniably different than him seemed to flow out of the nearby stone column and lean against it, flashing a frown and a wry grin at the confused young man at the same time.

"You'll need a weapon if you're going to survive. You're not a child anymore, after all." came Sigma's voice. A contorted, more hostile version of Atretes' own. It was strange talking to someone who was yet was not you, but in this world stranger things had happened. With a decidedly reluctant shrug, Rhoujen grasped the lightsaber beside him and stood.

"I suppose I should get on with it."
"I suppose you should."

Atretes frowned, and Sigma merely disappeared back into ethereal omnipresence. Then the world around him turned from verdant greens and dried, died, and withered away as though generations passed before his eyes faster than ever imaginable, to shades of brown and grey. A state of death. Dried grass littered where there were once vines, and sun-bleached trees stood as reminders of what once was. Atretes took a deep breath, and the dry air immediately parched his lungs, causing him to cough. He shook his head at how much detail Sigma put into his suffering and looked around him. There was a small town nearby. Domed houses, run-down. The doors weren't even advanced, the sliding mechanics replaced by rotting boards that looked like driftwood. He approached, cautiously.

The first building he entered was, happily enough, the most useful... if the most surreal. Sitting on a table was a little girl, swinging her legs to-and-fro, and playing with one of two braided pigtails formed of her dark brown hair. As Atretes opened the door, she looked up at him with amber eyes and gave a little smile.

"Hi, Mister." she said in a typical girl's voice. Atretes was taken aback at what a girl was doing in a place like this, but he waved hello and she slid down, her shirt ruffling in the sudden air rush, then settling back over her pants that led down to bare feet. She then rocked on her feet from heel-to-toe and watched the man curiously.

"You don't talk much, do ya?" she teased, then went on "I suppose you're lost. There's a cave nearby, you should check that out." she said, then with a giggle she skipped past him and was... gone. Rhoujen stared at where she was, right in the doorway, and wondered what in the seven hells of Corellia was going on here.

 

[EmKay]

[Thread Canceled, consider nonexistent]