Private In Search of Nothing

[Hailyn]

D E E P · S P A C E

900 ABY​

the apparition​

Whether it was the break of dawn that saw her meandering out from the laboratory that had been keeping her alive or the nights that leveraged onto her the feeling that it was simply time to move on from where she was at the time, there was always something there pointing her towards an uncertain future like a compass with all of its cardinal directions stripped away. Nar Shaddaa, Nal Hutta, Fhost, and Metalorn - she'd moved to each world from the former, and sometimes further still into the galaxy beyond, but only ever on the intuition that there was something else, somewhere else, that she needed to be in order to live on as she had. Now, years into her time with the underworld, a different feeling set in that was reminiscent of the one she'd experienced every time before in that she felt it was time move on.

Only now it wasn't to preserve the status-quo - it was to change, to venture into uncertainty.

Smuggling goods from one planet to another or getting paid to make dirty money 'clean' could only get her so far, a distance that generally measured itself in however many months rent it could afford her, and it was a line of work that was, inevitably, unsustainable. Out in a ship that had carried her and cargo through uncertain routes in space before, Amara wasn't entirely certain what it was that she was looking for - only what she wasn't. Marauders, space-pirates, and all the other sorts that'd ransom her back to the group she wasn't planning on returning to, were exactly the sort that'd roam so deep in space between systems out in this kind of uncharted darkness. It was here, out in the silence of the void, that she cargo freighter she'd been piloting simply stopped, as if time around it stilled like calmed waters after every last wave and ripple had settled down.

"What in the.." She muttered to herself, getting up and out of her seat in order to go out to investigate.

Pulling her emergency environmental space gear over her on her way towards the air-lock she couldn't help but feel that future uncertainty quickly approaching - her intuitions confirmed the moment the door to the empty space beyond revealed to her what was waiting, and the rift that tore her from the very real space she'd been in before and threw her into some other place entirely different.

Onrai

 

[Onrai]

Otherspace

Within the void of otherspace, Onrai had been relatively hard at work. Ignorant to the rest of the galaxy, her presence had successfully spread throughout the torpid dimension. Planets were colonized, resources were reinforced, and her fleets and vehicles filled the landscape. Her growing presence had been directly responsible for the growth in dimensional rifts leading to otherspace - agents of hers' were dispatched to transfer raw materials from the realm elsewhere in order to work with the things they didn't already have.

It was one such rift, out in the voice of deep space, that Hailyn had come across. Deep space rifts were key to keeping anonymity, but this one was a bit too close to a given hyperspace lane for comfort. such was it that someone had been able to sense it, discover it - and enter it. There were no boundaries, no warnings or information indicating it was wise to keep away.

As Amara entered, the realm of otherspace was a swirl of colored lights yet was bereft of the millions of stars one would expect to see while gazing into the void. It radiated a sense of wrongness - yet familiarity. There was no up, no down, no familiarity, to say the least, though for what it was worth, her ship had been drawn into the singularity as well and now floated a short distance alongside her.

Company would soon be approaching. It was a dulled cube, coated in what seemed to be bronzium. The cube was large, the size of a corvette, and it bore within its insectile plates a malevolence that seemed almost living. As the cube traveled closer, its size dwarfed the individual young woman, and its facet facing her formed a maw that widened, seeking to devour her and her method of travel whole.

 

[Hailyn]

Powerlessness had been a choice, a conscious decision, made to shy away from a family that could only ever seem to gravitate towards violence. Certainly she had relatives, distant and close, that had tried to remain peaceful in the face of the tyranny of their patriarch but it never kept them far enough away from the blood that soaked their name that they weren't, at least once or on occasion, subject to the consequences of the actions of their bloodline. Evading taking on the name, shedding even her ties to the last remaining family that could say that they genuinely loved her, Amara had thought she might've escaped that generational curse - one that started with a Kaine and Braxus, the latter her father.

The silent void that she thought was going to pull her into certain death, if not a long and silent one, ushered her towards - or perhaps it towards her - a massive cube. Vertigo and a total sense of inversion had already sunken into her by the time she had realized that the trajectory of she and the object were inextricably tied together at the very instant she'd taken notice of it. The only sensation she could understand or interpret as sane or right was the light compression of the environmental suit that was wrapped around the entire surface of her body like a smooth canvas, and even that wasn't entirely certain given the chaotic nature of the pocket of space that she had accidentally slipped into.

She didn't scream when what looked like jaws opened up on its approach, no one could hear such a shrill sound in the vast emptiness of space, but she did flinch as its malevolent aura crashed into her like the heat from the stars.

'Kark.'

It was the only word that entered her mind before she was consumed by the vessel.

Onrai

 

[Onrai]

If there was something that defied reality, the inside of the creature that had devoured Amara and her ship would be it. It seemed to be endless, constant fluidic space. Tentacles from impossibly massive walls of flesh moved and undulated, pulsing as the woman and her vessel were drawn ever further into the depths of the construct. At the heart of it was what could only be described as an anti-star. It was something that radiated such blinding senses of existence and dread, yet where a star was an ever-present sphere of fused gas, this was a void, a blackened object whose emissions were anything but sensible.

It seemed fast and slow at the same time, but eventually both Amara and her ship were drawn into the nothingness and all-encompassing etherea of the sphere. For what seemed like an eternity, there was blackness, nothingness, a conscious unconsciousness that seemed impossible to awaken from.

And in a flash, all of that changed.

-

When some stable semblance of reality returned to the woman, she would clearly observe around her a landscape that was familiar: a planet. The surface of the world seemed to be solid and dirty, yet her body was half-submerged in its fluidic embrace. Her ship as well proved partially impaled in the muck - with no easy way to be freed. Above the pallid plains lay space every bit as flowing as that which she had been pulled through within the cube - a cube whose decayed and damaged cousin laid on the world's surface what seemed to be kilometers away, a great gaping hole piercing through its insectile plating from one side to the other as it rose above the landscape like a great pyramid plucked from the surface and left on its side. Two other smaller and visible cubes were much further away on the horizon.

While there was no obvious sign or evidence of life within this twisted hellscape of a land, small spires and metallic structures glistened from the aberrant light that illuminated this realm, one present everywhere and nowhere. Smaller lights on the structures flickered with power and purpose, suggesting that there were indeed living beings on this planet.

And at a place near the foot of the cube and a starwell that led to a tunnel bored into its impossible hide, a shadowed entity smiled at the arrival of a familiar presence.

Hailyn