Landslide

[NightSister]

"I'll be back on Maena in a few hours," promised Aria Vale into a communicator, keeping narrowed eyes on the ship's control deck as she flew the craft through hyperspace. "What was that? Oh. Yeah, it was . . . it was certainly interesting."

It meant the meeting on Othrys where Aria had just found herself present, and interesting was certainly a word to describe what she'd found herself a part of. The gathering was not remotely the sort that the Sith Knight was inclined towards attending, but if nothing else it had been enlightening and Aria was intrigued enough in what it might lead to that she planned at least to pay close watch to what came next.

"Yes, I'll tell you about it once I get home. Okay. Talk to you then? Great. See you."

The push of a button ended the call with the faint sound of static. Still eyeing the vessel's direction, Aria took the communicator, which had been resting on her shoulder, and risked checking the screen for a few moments before she switched off the small device and dropped it into the pocket of her cloak.

clink

If Aria had thought enough of the quiet noise she might've realised the coin she'd unwittingly pocketed, resting now against her communicator. Gold-tinted metal, bearing two serpents in a circle on one side and a skull on splayed bones on the other. The design was impossibly intricate, and Aria would've appreciated it had she noticed the disk.

But she thought nothing of the sound. She had no reason to.

_____​

​

M A E N A
Weeks later

The day had been a long one.

Aria liked those best, of course. The days where she came home tired - those were the ones where something fun happened. Today it had been a morning of training (with [member="Matsu Xiangu"]'s help, though Aria's own brand of training - the physical kind - frequently proved just as tiring) and an afternoon with [member=Kaalia Voldaren] and [member=Darth Imperia] discussing both the Valkyries and the company they were running. Both were fun discussions - but both required great thought at times.

Not an unenjoyable day, but certainly trying.

So by the time she returned home, Aria had plenty to think on as she went about her business throughout the evening, but she'd retreated into her quieter state of being. Content with what had been done during the day, she happily relaxed once day slipped away for night to take its place. After all, she had no reason to be anything but relaxed. Right now, Aria Vale was untroubled.

Sleep took her easily.

[member="Darth Ophidia"]​

 

[Darth Ophidia]

Like mist rolling in from the vast oceans in a chill autumn morning to cover Glee Anselm's moors, Darth Ophidia strode silently through the sleek corridor of a house on Maena. A ghost, a whisper in a dream, something constantly sitting just outside the corner of your eye. Through the secrets she had hoarded, she was enveloped deeply in layers upon layers of snugly wrapped distractions, leading one to entirely ignore her presence.

Hands clasped behind her back, she turned a coin between the fingers of her black hand: Skull on a bed of bones; two serpents biting each other's tail - A coin old and worn, never circulated, yet sitting at the centre of her world. She had coined others of its like, but this one was hers and hers alone. Rattataki blood-money.

The ashen skinned assassin stopped outside the bedroom door of Aria Vale - The latest to get a coin of her very own, a coin that called for Ophidia even now - and she leaned her forehead against the metal of the door. There, she listened, not with her ears, but with the deep parts of her soul that drew on the primal power they called 'the Force'. She listened, and found that a girl was sleeping. The door did not open, yet Ophidia stepped through its metal and entered the room as if it were her own. She turned to the bed and looked at the figure resting there.

Slithering closer, she silently sat at the foot of the bed. Her eyes stared, unblinkingly at Aria Vale's face, and then slipped past the visage of this mortal world as she became a spectator of the young woman's dreams: A ghost, a whisper from the would outside, something constantly sitting just outside the corner of her eye.

[member="Aria Vale"]

 

[NightSister]

Before Darth Ophidia slipped into her mind, Aria's dreamscape was a beach, all black sand and smooth stone, darkened sea to its east and jagged fields of obsidian to its west. These days the beach lay in ruins, a crater of bare obsidian - in waking Aria still remembered how the air had disintegrated as explosion thundered across the landscape - but in her head it stayed untouched, pristine. Beautiful. Ever so gradually, the tide moved further up the beach, gentle waves becoming slowly stronger, more fierce.

At first Aria was walking towards the horizon, footsteps slow as they guided her through the waves, closer to the line that broke off the sea from the sky. The water was icy; above the water surface, slate grey clouds obscured the sun and a light breeze chilled the beach; but Aria waded past anyway. Not because the filtered reality had made her impervious to cold, but because the unspoken objective it gave her clearly mattered more.

But then lightning struck.
Jagged lines of brilliant white spidered across a suddenly darkening sky, crisscrossing through the air before they vanished again.

It didn't follow the rules of normal lighting because Aria wasn't remembering normal lightning. The lightning the day she'd been here before was her own. But in her mind it had become the sort that flashed through the air, the sort that could strike the ground at any moment, and that was what brought her running through impossibly dense water back towards the shore. The sea could've been solid for all the effort it took to walk through and the waves had become determined to entrap the girl fighting her way back to land.

She couldn't pinpoint the moment when the waves parted and she was back on dry land - seemingly it just happened.
But she kept running.

| [member="Darth Ophidia"] |​

 

[Darth Ophidia]

How easy it would be to stop her, to trap her in the waves - No, not yet.

Run deeper, child.

Like a seamstress-droid, she pulled folded up the fabric of Aria's dream and kneaded it like a dough. She did not alter what Aria was experiencing at the moment, but gathered up where she had been like a ball of material. With her spectral hands, she pulled the threads apart. She harvested the ocean and the lightning, and pocketed them as she drifted behind Aria and watched her as she ran.

Then, she began to stretch the ground under her feet, drawing out the beach and letting the ocean lick closer and closer to her heels while the lightning remained frozen in the sky, trapped in a constant rumble.

The ocean rose in a tall, black wave. Far too tall. It's rumble rose in volume and pitch until it was like a chorus of wails about to bear down on Aria's back. It cast a long shadow, eclipsing the beach and drowning out the white line of the lightning. The white foam bore down on her like a hundred pale, bony fingers reaching out to grab her shoulder, seize her wrist, pull at her hair.

Like a puppeteer, Ophidia pulled the wave, controlling it from the corner of Aria's eye.

[member="Aria Vale"]

 

[NightSister]

Shadow cast over the beach, black wave rising up as if it would consume the beach, the obsidian, consume everything. Aria kept running, just get away, just get far away, but the sand reached unending and the ocean always caught up. Lightning hadn't left the sky but she couldn't see it, couldn't hear it; all there was to see and to hear was the sea - a wall of foam and black water, ocean's rumble becoming a wail that filled her ears, sang unearthly and maddening into her skull as she fought to escape.

Just get away. Just get far away.

She wanted somehow to turn around, look behind her, as though there were something there even when there surely wasn't. If only there were something there other than the ocean chasing her (she was close, she must be close, the wave would crash down on the beach behind her and she'd be safe) but the rising wave covered everything but the slip of land she was running for.

So close. So close-
The ocean reached for Aria one last time as it came crashing into the sands.

Drowning felt jarringly real. Running had left her out of breath and she'd not spared it a moment of thought; she'd still been running when she had run out of time. Now waves and foam descended around her, boring into her, clawing at her. Aria had a moment to gasp, raw and ragged, before there was nothing left.

For a few moments, she couldn't breathe, couldn't see. The ocean's impact knocked into Aria; her breath caught, her knees buckled as she fought to stay on her feet and she all but fell forwards with the waves. She blinked and was blinded, she searched for air and found seawater.

But eventually the wave would surely subside and the pressure that trapped her beneath it would be gone and she would stand and she would run. Surely it would only take moments.

| [member="Darth Ophidia"] |​

 

[Darth Ophidia]

But the water did not recede. If anything, it poured in and the ground disappeared under her feet. The light would fade around her, as though choked. Even the rumble stilled as the water pressed on. What began as an omnipresent, even pressure of crushing waves tossing her about under the dark waves now became solid; became warm. Pleasantly, then not.

From the dark, ashen hands seemed to climb up over her body, fingers digging bluntly into her skin to hold her solid. They pulled and pushed, contesting each other for ownership of Aria. All the while new hands crawled from the encroaching darkness and clamped their clammy palms down on her form. Breath was not yet allowed her, not because she was submerged, but because a pair of ashen hands formed an iron noose around her throat and squeezed.

Was there air now? If so, she would be able to taste it, but not consume its life-giving relief.

Might she feel like passing out? No, she could not.

The world danced on the oppressive knife-edge of sleep and coma. What muffled rumble and subdued screams was left from the crashing waves was now being drowned out in the clicking and clacking, and cackling, crackling, crumbles of a thousand insectoid hands denying her autonomy.

Would she scream now?

Fingers stretched out in preparation to eclipse her face and draw her under to the other side.

[member="Aria Vale"]

 

[NightSister]

There was no light and no reprieve. Black waves took the place of the coarse sandy ground, beat down on her where they should have retreated to give her air. She tried looking up, tried straining through dark filmy layers of ocean and the salt in her eyes to spot the surface, to spot light.

Nothing.

The water hardened, solidified, warmed. At first, for just a few moments it was almost relief, something pleasant, just shy of being comfort. Then pressure intensified and heat grew-
Then there were hands, spidering up her frame then pressing down as they gripped into her form, vice-like. Hands pushed through the water, flailing to try and fight them off for the few moments she still could before her arms, too, were pinned into place by pale digits. Still more came, another and then another, crawling up her body and holding her down - they were digging into her shoulders, they were clutching at her throat.

Breath seemed so close, like there was air within her reach.
If only she could reach.

The world was hazy at the edges, as though unconsciousness was reaching for her, pulling her under. But something kept her at the edge where she should surely have fallen through, kept her searching for air that should surely have long evaded her. Breathlessness was binding, a perfectly molded shackle - and no matter how fruitless her grasp for breath was something wouldn't let her give up, wouldn't let her fail and succumb to coma no matter how much she wanted to, no matter how much she should've already done.

All she could be grateful for was that through the ironclad ocean that seemed limitless in every direction, through the layers of clicks and clacks and cracks and cackles that pierced her brain over and over and over, when fingers reached at her face she could deny to herself having ever cried out.

| [member="Darth Ophidia"] |​

 

[Darth Ophidia]

As hands pulled Aria Vale under, one would think she was safe in their vice grips, if a little smothered. One would be wrong. As the hands clamped down upon her form and finally swallowed her in their metacarpal oneness, there was a brief moment of nothingness. Or perhaps it was comfort? It was a moment of fresh air, at least. She could breathe, she could even move.

Crack!

And suddenly there was gravity. Like a piece of wayward dust sucked up by a cleaning droid with a humorously harmful appendage, gravity shifted as she was plunged face first towards a shifting abyss.

First, the darkness was like shifting velvet, but then it began to tighten into familiar silhouettes. In perfect unison, they turned around and cocked their legion head at her falling form. A quiver, then a grin. Infinite hands reached out and pointed at her as they broke out in a cacophony of taunting laughter. In tune with the laughter, the figures seemed to shift again. The hands split down the middle, once, twice, thrice, a growing infinity of times as the images multiplied and folded onto one another. Eyes spawned, eyes within eyes and the mouths housed another mouth like a hall of mirrors.

And the laughter; the taunting choir that laughed at the bare soul of [member="Aria Vale"]

One could not tell how far she fell, but once one began to anticipate a bottom, another face appeared. It did not laugh, but scowled at her before opening in a ravenously gaping maw that split the head of Matsu Xiangu in half, from which emerged a second, identical, gaping maw - And again, and again, the heads blended into an infinity of teeth, red lips and disappointed eyes. On her tongue(s) lay one unbroken thing: A gold disk, embossed with the face of a skull on a bed of bones.

 

[NightSister]

For a few moments, she could breathe.

Just for those few moments, the burning pressure, the suffocating discomfort were gone and she could move, she could breathe. Aria gasped, desperate to taste the air that had hung just past her reach and for a few moments she could hungrily inhale the oxygen surrounding, exhale heavily as she tried to recover comfort-

Crack!

A few moments ended.

And then she was falling.

The darkness enveloped, thick like a blanket - and she fell and she fell and she fell, wrapped up in the heavy unending blackness as it shaped, becoming figures, outlines that she recognised somehow though she couldn't yet put a name to the silhouettes. Rows upon rows of hands pointed at her, clawed at her - laughter broke out, layers of mirthless mocking laughter that seemed to surround her, enclose her. Then hands split, split again, doubled and tripled and folded into a splayed digits and there were eyes and there were mouths, one within another within another.

Laughter filled her brain, the sounds of laughter that taunted her weakness flooding her thoughts until concentrating seemed painful and she could only fall, only stay limp and powerless as the abyss kept on going and going as though it would never end.

There was a moment, just a moment where she thought she might have reached the end (not the end, the laughter wouldn't leave her and the faces refused to disappear, but when her feet had a surface they could run and they would run and run until her legs gave out beneath her) but then the faces became familiar again, morphed into Matsu Xiangu.

No, no...she looked so disappointed, like Aria had failed.

Matsu split down the middle then reformed from both halves and kept reforming - and each Matsu glowered still, again and again.

"Why?"

She could barely choke the word out, throat tight as she tried to look anywhere but the endless Matsu Xiangus. If only she could run. She wanted to run from here until she sprinted out of this world altogether - but she couldn't.

"What are you doing here?"

| [member="Darth Ophidia"] |

 

[Darth Ophidia]

The Matsus opened their united mouths wide, her tongue welling out like a monstrous slug, searching blindly for something, someone: Aria. Pale hands forced their way out of the dark, as though tearing through a film of utter obsidian. Red fingertips left trails of blood and brain-matter wherever they touched, and souls cried out in torment as they were crushed under the monstrous hands.

The phantom Matsu, still splitting and peeling endlessly lunged up and wrapped her tongue around Aria's falling form, crushing her against the gold disk as the jaws slammed shot. The saliva tore at Aria's atoms, etching their way through her skin, her eyes, burning away her hair. She was not chewed, but dissolved. Not entirely, of course. She was passed down under a crushing pressure and left on an invisible slab, floating in an utter blackness that slowly turned to blue, purple, red, gold, then a blinding whiteness.

There was nothing around her now, only white. The ground, the sky, it was all monotonous; an unbroken monochrome of the outmost alabaster. There was a sound, faint at first, then it increased in magnitude. The ground shook as it rose in a disharmonious pitch; it was sharp as a vibroblade, piercing the ears, yet deep as wild togruta drums, shaking the ground in tribal intensity.

A͑̋
Ā̈ͪͫͪ͂̔-ͣ̏ͤͪ̓́̈́ ̌͐ͤ̉Ả̶͗̊-ͧ͋̀ͩͨ͐́ ͆̐͑̑ͣ͘
̑ ̧̓̿̄ ̨ͤ͑ ̵̑̽̌̑͛̏ ̄̌͂̒̓̈ͫ͘ ͗͟ ̨̄̆ͣ̇ ̛̊͌ͮ͗ͫͨ͒ ̃̀͘ ̆ͥ̂ͫ̈́̅͝ ͌̓̄ ̉ͩ̆́ͫ̇ͦ ̕ ̿ͦͣͪ̆ ͒̐ͬ̂̓͋̚ ̎͑̂́ͯͫͥ ͋ͥ̃̔́ ͑͗͠ ̵͊ ̐̋̾̄̒̐͘ ̿̿̌ͧ̑ͪ ͘ ͦ͂̂ͥ̂͂̀ ̵ͥ̏ͪ͒ ͐̐͗͌̄̇ͧ ͦ͊̍ ͪ ̴A̶ͬͣ̿̓̌͆Rͫ̉̐̈̈́I͐ͪͥ̀̐͗̐Ả
̃͆͂̊̇A͆R̸̓̐̐̊̐̑͌R͗̍ͧͦ̀Rͯ̅͐̓̆̽́̚R̋ͫͯͧ͜Aͮ̋̿̂A͌A̡ͣͥA͌̾ͫA͌ͭͬ̀ͥ! ̋ͪͤ̈ ͗͐ͫ̐ͫ ̕ ̒͆̀ͥͥ̐ ̽̎̑́ͮ̔ ͐̇ ͯ̍͗ ̊͊̇ ͒̈̆ͯ͐̆ ̔͗̾͗҉ ̄ͮ̐̏ͯ͞ ̉̾̈́̀̉̍͌ ͊̎̓͌ͦ
͗̔ͩ͐́A̶̿̓̿ͣͥ̚K̐̿̅̔ͩ̉̀̚K̀̈́̄ͬ̿̅̚!̀ͧ̾̐̌̚​

[member="Aria Vale"]​

Hello​

 

[NightSister]

She was crisscrossed with lines that snaked red and something greyish, and each ghostly white hand that reached for her had a touch that lingered, dug beneath, left a sense of wrongness that festered like maggots under her skin. It felt unnatural, wholly wrong, and she couldn't get away from it and she couldn't change it.

And Aria fell still, downward, downward, downward.

The Matsus didn't speak. These Matsus were silence amidst the maddening wail of layers upon layers of pained screams, silent as she swallowed Aria against a flat disk made of gold. Her cry of confusion dissolved in the gaping darkness and she was scorched through, disintegrated until all that was left was the part that could feel the pressure that pushed her into an empty blackness.

There was nothing
Nothing
Nothing
Nothing
Nothing
NOTHING

Until sound rose up through the endless white of nothingness slowly then burst through the surface, sent tremors rolling across the ground. Inwardly, Aria recoiled. Inwardly, she was blind and searching, determined in between fighting to keep the noises from driving her mad for some semblance of normal. But outwardly, she wanted to run.

She had to run.
Some part of her mind had crossed from optimism into stupidity, had decided that if she ran far enough the smothering white would shift into reds and blues and greens and blacks, that the shaking and the rumbling and the wailing would fade out of earshot. That if she ran far enough, she'd find normal.

So she had to try and stand up.
She had to try and run.

[member="Darth Ophidia"]​

 

[Darth Ophidia]

Aria was free to stand, and to move. In fact, in a way, she was already standing. As the white became more and more intense, all sense of up and down merged into a singularity. If she wished to run, then she would feel the smooth, hard, sensation of marble under her feet. Yet, the white was unchanged. The beat did not go away or decrease in intensity. If anything, it heightened with every step and every turn until it was suddenly cut by a singular word:

Hello.​

​

When the word faded, the silence encroached upon Aria like a thousand needles that could only be kept away by this voice - This strange voice that she would feel lacquered with familiarity, or recognise outright as her own.

​

Hello!​

​

Once again, it was Aria's own voice, cut with another detail: Her lips were moving, pronouncing, her lips expelling the words with air from her lungs and vibration from her vocal cords. They proceeded to curl into a smile, as if a thousand fingers pulled her mouth into a vicious curve.

Please open your eyes. Look at me.​

She would be able to see herself, her hands, her feet, her skin and the brown curls framing her face. Yet, at the periphery of her eye something sat, staring at her from a deep, dark place in her psyche.

Look at me, [member="Aria Vale"] .​

​

What would she see? Brown curls, kind eyes, bright face, weak soul.

 

[NightSister]

Movement was easy as breathing and entirely impossible. Every step seemed to disappear, become absorbed by the undending clear white that went across and left and right and up and down all at once. She could've run a mile or a metre - distance didn't exist. Nothing existed but the brilliant blinding white and the beat that rose out of the ground.

Hello.​

​

Everything was quiet too suddenly. Still, like death. Somehow it was worse than the noise.
She stopped, stood almost unmoving. That voice, she knew that voice.

Hello, Aria's voice said at someone else's command.​

She smiled.​

She wasn't smiling.​

​

She wanted, again, to run. To not see what was happening, to not know. To close her eyes and make the world go away. Maybe if she closed them long enough, she'd open them to normal. Force, where was normal?

Aria liked things that didn't make sense. They fascinated her.
But she hated this.

So she retreated into herself. She closed her eyes, shut out the infinite white. Maybe if she closed them long enough, she'd open them to normal.

Please open your eyes. Look at me.​

But something stared into closed eyes. Something willed them open. Something wanted her to see.

Look ​

at ​

me​

Aria​

Vale​

​

The words forced her eyes open.
She looked.
She saw.

It was her, and she was weak.

No.
No.
NO.

It wasn't her. It couldn't be her. She reached, tried to grip onto this thing that wasn't her. Tried to seize brown curls, tried to dig in nails, tried to tear into strips this thing that wasn't her.

[member="Darth Ophidia"]​

 

[Darth Ophidia]

As Aria reached out to grip, rip, tear and rend the self she saw on her outside: This bright-eyed young woman with kind eyes that wore weakness on her sleeve. Aria's hands tangled in the curls easily and pulled them apart like air. The hairs dispersed like loose feathers in the wind, leaving only a warm, fading softness enveloping her hands.

Yellow shone down on her from above, warm, comforting. All around her, white strands of grass sprouted from the solid nothingness and bloomed into a verdant green. Trees unfurled from the grass like an origami art installation, and on the horizon there was The Jedi Temple on Ossus. The air was summer warm and fresh, a gentle breeze caressing Aria's skin through the dark curls. Laughter in the background, the voice of a familiar master demanding focus from the younglings and smiling under his authority.

A pair of soft arms wrapped around Aria, not aggressively, no - With love. A body pressed against her back, head nestling into her shoulder. The arms wore beige robes, loose fitted. Curls like those she had torn apart draped around her neck as weak arms, kind eyes, a gentle smile, wrapped itself around her in a tight hug.

It was good; it was okay.
It was a lie.
She could stay here, stay safe.

[member="Aria Vale"]

 

[NightSister]

Weakness came apart in her hands, all the sudden light as air and crumbled to dust.
Too perfect - far too simple.

It should have been satisfying. It wasn't. It should have hurt. It didn't. Instead, questions. Uncertainty. Numbness undercut by something curious and almost guilty. It was warm, but the depths of why shivered.

Finally the nothing left and she was surrounded with something, but it was the haze, the blurred edge to emptiness. Warmth, yellows, greens, finally something that was not white and infinite, finally something she could reach out and look at and touch. But she was staring at her hands, wondering whose invisible blood they wore.

She felt confused. She felt weak.
Her mind liked the word weak. It wanted to cast the word against her thoughts like a branding iron of ice cold.

Weak- no. Aria had killed the creature that was weak. No sounded like a chant in her head but it was always quieter.

She wasn't. She couldn't be.

The girl could only tear herself from her thoughts when she felt arms around her. Arms that cared. She blinked and now the grass and green and Ossus and laughter and voices she could recognize rose into clarity. Safety. Comfort.
It didn't feel right, but it did.

Every part of her wanted to bury into weak arms and smile, and she did, nearly entirely. She moved tension aside and relaxed. She almost managed to smile back, ever so faintly. Nearly. The part that didn't fall in with nearly craned its neck around to look behind her.

[member="Darth Ophidia"]​

 

[Darth Ophidia]

As Aria craned her neck around to see what held her so lovingly, she would for one moment see her own smile - weak - hear the wordless mutterings of her own soft voice - weak - and smell the summer-scent of days gone past before- haah. Like a breath of air, the face and arms burst into a swarm of fluttering wings that swarmed her vision, streamed through her senses. Colourful butterflies gave way to pale-winged moths that caught fire in her eyes.

The fire spread to everything at once as the Elysian vision turned to fire and ash. She was still on Ossus, this she would see, but the forests were fires and the fields were salt and ash. The sky was a sanguine hue streaked with the tails of corpse-fires. On the temple steps sat a woman, Atrisian, with delicate arms of forged metal. Black hair trailed down her naked form while she inspected a minute skull. The trail there to was littered with the naked, dirty, crawling bodies of Jedi Aria once had known and respected. Some she still knew and did not respect.

The hellscape was broken by the crack of a whip raking over Aria's back, rending flesh and drawing blood. A devil with skin of bone kicked her side and urged her to keep crawling through the mud towards the Atrisian queen of dark and death: Darth Yaomo.

[member="Aria Vale"]

 

[NightSister]

It was her face, but she wouldn't see it.

It was her voice, but she wouldn't hear it.

No. No. Like a chant in her head as Aria tried to look past and then - gone. Nobody's face to not see and nobody's voice to not hear. It was seared in her mind like battle scars but when she looked, it was gone. There were wings in its place that flapped, beat in unison, a heart pulsing feather-light as they swarmed her. And they burned. White-hot and like thousands of needles.

They're in my eyes, THEY'RE IN MY EYES.

But she could still see herself.
Weak.

Her vision smoldered, ashes. She could see now but she still saw fire. Ossus shouldn't have looked like this. It did anyway. Forests with canopies made of flame, fields that black and white with ash. A sky that seared.

It was beautiful.

She hated it.

A path of Jedi who crawled through the dirt. These weren't strangers either. These Jedi were her past. These were Jedi she recognized.why did she have to recognise them?it just made it worse.
I knew you. I knew you. I knew you. I betrayed you. I left.

And the path stopped at Matsu's feet.

You shouldn't be here.
Why are you here?
Please, leave.
I just want to leave.

Her flesh tore. Her back tore. It stung, and she clung to it. It distracted her to think of the pain. It almost made sight easier. Pain was the path to power - it was Matsu who was so fond of saying that. Oh, Aria wished she could feel powerful. She wanted to stand, to run. Part of her wanted to run forwards so she could only stop running away. The other just wanted to leave.

She tried to stand, to run. She was kicked. She fell.
She had to crawl forwards. She didn't want to. She did it anyway.

Aria ached to lie down and stop, or to stand and run. But she didn't stop before she reached Matsu.

When she did, stopping was all there was left she seemed capable of.

[member="Darth Ophidia"]​

 

[Darth Ophidia]

The moment Aria looked into Darth Yaomo's beautiful corrupted eyes, she unzipped. She would feel herself being turned inside out and see the world enveloped in red as her last shred of a goal remained just a hair's width out of reach. The universe seemed to swirl in a pair of mirrored waves that tossed the reds and blacks into chaos.

Then suddenly, reality became taut again as though someone had gripped her by the four corners and stretched her like a leather about to be cured. Knives scraped the inside of her skin as needles rapidly drew thread in stitches after stitches through her periphery, then further tightened her against a rack she could not see.

What could she see?

Around her the reds and blacks turned to purples and blues: To a sky unfamiliar.

All around her were groans and the cracking sound of whips, like a rhythm in concord with her own heart.

whip-crack! - thu-thum - crack! - thu-thum - crack!

If she looked down from the sky above, she would find herself in the seat where Matsu had been sitting. But rather than comfort she would find pain: Stakes driven through either palm and the skin of her back stitched to the lining of her throne. Her eyes would not close; her lips would not seize smiling. In turning her head, she would find hot irons pressing against her cheeks.

[member="Aria Vale"]