Private Holy Roller

[Hailyn]

Holy Roller

The door shut quietly behind her, her pointless clothing shrugged from her shoulders as the amphistaffs and tsaisi writhed around her featureless body. The night was young, and yet the age the Empire found itself in was teetering tenuously between its twilight and final hours. Her hair, if one could call it that anymore, was a combination of the more common understanding of such a human feature and the serpentine tools of war carried by the Yuuzhan Vong; her body, or what it had become, was empty, devoid of feature. Nakedness would have inappropriate in a more traditional form, but she had shaped the vessel she lived in with the express purpose of purging her of that baseness.

For the moment that she was alone, serpents coiled around her torso notwithstanding, the faces she wore faded away as she prepared to put on the one she'd reserved for the man that had taken to her, and she to him, some decades past in another life. The memories of their time together within the wild space of the Kathol Outback in Aing-Tii captivity was still present in her mind, what swirling amalgamation of consciousness that it was, but it was an experience she'd watched another live through - like all other things in her life. Even the name she wore felt ill-fitted for her, both the 'birth name' she had abandoned and the title of Sith she'd chosen more recently, and with all of her faces torn from the being beneath she felt like she could truly be alive - as fleeting as that moment was, the smallest face sewn back on as Braxus walked into the hall.

Soft, scaled, fingertips reached out to stroke his cheek fondly, her face contorted into a pleasant, if not possessive, smile - and yet inside she still felt so separate. "At long last I can call you my own, man of Maena. I walk the stars and I swim through the blood of your enemies to come home to you each and every day.. perhaps more crude than the visions I had idealized when the present day was a future far from reach, but it is love all the same." She whispered, leaning towards him to leave him with a kiss on his lips, the serpents around her hand pulling back with her hair to keep from getting in their respective faces. Pulling back from the momentary embrace, however, the words within - no longer bound by such trivial things as mortal consideration and empathy - rose to the surface. "Isn't it?" She asked, her expression suddenly shifting, and deep behind the windows that were her eyes she swelled with raw uncertainty.

"What use is it, all of this, if I am to lose you - or you, I? I am not like you, like them either. Death for you is a gift, an afterlife awaits that you can escape from if you so choose - but if I face that fate there will be nothing but chaos for me. I fight because I desire you, I wish to keep you, here, with me, but conflict draws me closer to something that I cannot conquer, even for you." She whined, the dominance she might have exuded in public fading away to the static crackling of a voice with no effort to mask its true sound - itself like the discordance in music. "I am not even.. real. You see me as a woman, as a person you can touch, feel, and love - but who am I? What, dare I say, am I? A dream? A creature born from some desire for something more, some greater purpose?" The woman prattled on, her words elucidating her point in a literal fashion - syllables like notes seen as they are heard, colors flowing from her like a kaleidoscope and distorting the world around them.

"Yun-Ne'Shel the Yuuzhan Vong have taken to call me, for the manner of my physical birth; Balagoth and Nogras I have been dubbed by the Primeval for a part in history where I was two very different people, a destroyer and a creator; and you call me Braith even though it was a name given to me by primitive men and women who thought I was their deity incarnate."

"But who am I? Beneath all these faces, these masks, this facade, who is the woman that desires to be yours, and you to be mine?"

"Is it love if you don't know me?"

 

[Darth Prazutis]

Location: Inner Sanctum
Tags: Hailyn

I D E N T I T Y​

Quiet.

It felt like a soothing breeze on a hot day it enveloped the whole of the sanctum even through distant halls with nothing but the occasional subtle patter of patrolling Crownguard and the sound of ventilation pushing air into the complex maintaining a comfortable temperature. In the privacy of the sanctum he no longer wore the thick plate of war, runed robes, or attire befitting his high role at the apex of the sith-imperial pyramid, he wore no artifacts or trinkets flowing with power everything meticulously chosen for some sort of symbolism, or purpose they would serve. Inside these halls he was stripped down to his basest form of flesh. A body so refined it might've been sculpted out of stone if it wasn't so distinctively organic, the epitome of physical perfection given form in the giant. Even in his base form the man known far and wide was something to behold for his body told an intricate story to those with the ability to see and decipher it. The sun kissed skin was covered from head to toe exposing the innumerable scars from a lifetime of conflict. Some were more subtle than others perhaps due to the sheer amount of time that passed, or perhaps the method in which they were healed. The scars ranged from sizes both small and large many of which on their own resembled blows that he undoubtedly should've died from. Each one told a story and collectively they spoke towards his truth.

Over the scars was a detailed work of art in the form of tattoos that told a story much like some sort of scripture or ancient text. To nearly all who laid eyes on it they were virtually indecipherable. But they spoke more to the truth of the man who bore many names. They were a unique blend that a rare few would recognize as Sith tattoos but others? They were distinctively of Maena and the experiences that turned him into the person he was today. The beautiful tattoos including foreign words, symbols, and depictions that spoke to his legendary accomplishments, family, those who touched his life. To those of the world it painted the legendary tale of Ya'zid-rah Yog-Suuli Glaaki the Undying, Ya'zid-rah the Shattered. They told his his experiences from the very first days in service to the things he was remembered for as the Slayer of the Kr'ylland Six, First Trident of Udum, Bloodsoaked Desecrator, Blighted Bulwark, all the way to his fate as Warmaster. It spoke of the complicated story of one of the biggest figures of the golden age of a world forgotten by the known galaxy immortalized on his skin.

Even before the doors to the private chamber quietly slid open he could feel her waiting. In a place that was sacred to them and them alone where there were no further distractions. The doors quietly slid behind him as he moved gracefully to close the distance between them. In this moment he was no longer accompanied by the dominating presence that oppressed every room, the face that was so impossible to read and the uniqueness of the Lord of Lies that offset so many., he wore no such things as he approached Braith and stood before her with mere feet between them. He stood as her soft, scaled hand reached up to caress the skin of his cheek accompanied by her affectionate words recognizing the precious moment between them. The distance between them was swiftly closed as they wrapped each other in an embrace accompanied by the kiss she placed on his lips. Yet it was in his nature to read others and to read beneath the spoken word at their hidden truth, and this was a woman he grew accustomed to reading. The words that followed spoke to the matter of what she had struggled with and in the privacy of their moment such things as empathy were tossed to the wind. She knew he wasn't like most that he didn't need to be handled. As she pulled away the woman he knew as Braith's expression shifted.

Then came her truth.

It all spilled forth in a voice that was absolutely foreign to everyone outside of the four walls around them. It came forth in the tone of a whine and the crackling of voice that in anyone else, he would've pegged as the speech of a victim. But he carefully listened the vulnerability she exposed like a sensitive nerve ending. In anyone else it was in his nature to dig, to push and prod to find and expose these nerves manipulation was an art form he mastered to move people around like puppets, to get the reactions and perceptions he needed for some far fledged purpose too complex for them to see. It was his predatory nature to take advantage of such things but he was pulled against that in this moment. In that moment he understood her struggle and it only proved that in the galaxy he found someone who was going through something similar, someone going through the same struggle.

The struggle of identity.

In his own life he too experienced the agony in losing your very identity. It was a warning he had been given on Maena as he pushed to shatter limitations that others placed on him, driven by his own lust for power and knowledge. Even now he could hear the distant warning his friend, brother, and mentor Arudes gave him about the price of such things and what he would lose in the process. Even at that very moment he already sacrificed so much just to stand where he did, and it was a warning ultimately went unheeded. When the Last War that ended an age came to a close and the dust settled on a world rocked by the turbulence of his own agony, when the dust settled he had lost the last thing that he clung onto: himself. There were names that he was called Braxus, Ya'zid-rah, names and titles others called him and something that was supposed to be for them but it all seemed so separate. It was a world that was his home but it became unrecognizable. "I am a piece of the puzzle that no longer fits anywhere. No matter how familiar the place I no longer fit. I've lived in places on Maena you couldn't possibly comprehend. I've seen things beyond what ones eyes can register. I've tried a thousand cultures, a thousand civilizations and I've traveled thousands of miles and I do not belong in any of them. I am lost. The more I travel the more I meet and the more agonizing memories I create with heroes who fade into history. Why do I remain? Why me? Maena takes the best of us but spares me....why me? Day by day I wait for the inevitable end I know will come. It is the fate of all who dwell here to die on its bloodied soil by the blade of another. I am a dying breed...the last of a generation long gone." Words he recalled saying. Yet he remained while others died and at the time lost, adrift without an identity to call his own, on a world now scarred by the consequences of his actions, it led to his departure.

There were differences in their experiences that was true and her words outlaid those differences in specific terms. They were conceived in this world through different origins and as a being of flesh and blood he came into the world with things she didn't. While he was born with an identity that he continually shaped she came without one at the very start. In the very beginning she was left with nothing but the names, the roles that others heaped on her to suit themselves, to fulfill a void in their own lives, but these weren't hers. It was something even he was guilty of after all he knew her as Braith Achlys, the woman he'd met in the Kathol Outback during their time with the Aing Tii. It was only just recently that he had been exposed to the revelation that was the truth of what she really was, having to explain such things from the entity to something that was an extension of her. Perhaps it was his own selfishness in coming to terms with it that he kept calling her by the name, the person he knew her as. But could he be blamed? A lifetime spent shattering barriers and shaping the world around him that became his, he dominated every aspect of the world and possessed a unique ability to inflict change on the highest level. He had already nearly lost her once and it was his refusal to let go of her, to the person he knew. Even now as she spoke of what her fate would be after death he could feel the hidden distate at what losing her would mean. Most recently it was the union between these two aspects that ultimately pulled him towards acceptance. But everything was still so very new, he nodded at her words and the question she ended with.

"I see you." Braxus said taking her hand into both of his own he felt it beneath his palms. "I didn't before. I fell into the same trap and clung stubbornly to the one that I knew. I have experienced the agony of what you have felt, the struggle for identity. But in many ways...my experiences pale in comparison to what you have gone through. Identity is a precious thing and in my origins it was something I was born with, a thing that I at one point lost of my own volition. Left with the roles heaped upon me by others.." He paused as his fingers started to lightly caress her skin. "But you didn't have the ability to let go of something that was never really yours. Left with only expectations of others and bestowed face upon face through their own perceptions, without something to call your own. Identity is shaped by own hand through our own perceptions, experiences. But yours are built through the masks that you have create and cling to because for you, you believe that is all there is." Braxus continued to trail his fingers all the way up her arm to her shoulder and finally to caress the side of her cheek. What a terrible existence to struggle to matter, to stand on ones own merits. To feel as if you don't truly exist.

"You are very real." He softly said in plain terms that she mattered. It was uncharacteristic for him to speak so softly to anyone. Words spoken low were typically cutting whispers yet this was something different. "You are not like me, like them. You are something beautiful, completely unique to this world. Someone born through the amalgamation of the flowing music of creation as opposed to the crudeness of living beings. The fault was mine in clinging to love of the person you were, when I should have been seeing you." Braxus finished allowing the silence to sink in.