Mad Sounds

[Jairus Starvald]

It started with an itch.

The tip of her nose started to feel all scratchy. Annoying when you are just in the middle of a meditation session. She had been trying on altering the molecule structure of a little piece of metal - without actually looking at the metal, by operating on pure instinct only. It had been going... well, it hadn't really been going well, but that wasn't the point. The point was that the scratch broke through any concentration she might have had.

Cerita opened her eyes and looked around the room. It felt... different somehow. The edges and curves all wrong. She bit her lip, trying to locate the source of her discomfort. Dissero's location. She looked back at the metal shard, before shaking her head and putting it away for now.

There were more important things to do right now. Standing up she looked around her little cabin one last time, before leaving it in search for [member="Dissero"] and the source.

The closer she came the stronger she was affected. A chilling feeling creeping up and down her spine. Shadows at the edge of her vision just to dissipitate once she looked.

Remember. When a person tries to influence your mind you should reinforce your walls?

But how?

Focus on a singular thing. Compact your entire concentration on it. You will find that Sith and Jedi will have a more difficult time trying to sneak through your mind. It's all about focus.

A huge purple flying unicorn. She started to count the feathers of the wings, noting the fine lines of the horn... and slowly Cerita distanced herself from the fear.

 

[Dissero]

The residue of Force Fear clung to things like distractions as a morning mist might cling to the leaves of a tree or dust might to the adornments on shelves. Vile, corrupting, the essence found the fringes of Cerita's mind and seeped in. The feathers on those wings began to whither and molt, skin grew a sickly green and pulled taut across bone. Her whimsical vision putrefied before her mind's eye and turned on her.

Somewhere beyond the hull of the ship, a minor miscalculation in their jump smashed into them. Then again...and again. Asteroid field. The ship shuddered and bucked, falling out of hyperspace with an unexpected jolt, emergency klaxons blaring.

Pressure seals broken. Cabin pressure destabilized. All personnel please evacu-

CRUNCH.

The sound of rock mass against metal hull was a symphony that could make one's blood freeze in their veins.

There was only one sound worse than that ... the woosh of precious oxygen escaping through an open gash in the ship.

[member="Cerita Sarova"]

 

[Jairus Starvald]

[member="Dissero"]

Fear is the mind-killer.

Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. It starts small, like a pocketed, black core in the depths of your gut, it festers there, but it never ends as such. It always grows larger and larger, growing in intensity... that little black core festering yellow, spreading through your nerves and freezing you in the midst of action. Your body betrays you. Worse: your imagination betrays you, summoning increasingly worse visages that feeds that same fear.

In front of her that little spot of joy melted away. In its place a grinning horsey skeleton, instead of eyes there were two empty, shadowy sockets that pulled at your gaze.

"I will not fear." Cerita whispered to herself, but already she could feel that core inside of her grow. It hurt, that fear, it felt like a white-hot blade swiping at her guts, looking for stimuli. Nausea started to rise, bile pilling up at the back of her throat- "I will face my fear, let it pass through me and where the fear has gone... there shall be nothing."

"Only I remain."

Her cheeks turned damp as the Apprentice reinforced her mind, putting up wards just as her Masters had taught her, until finally it was only her own mind she could hear. The fear was still there - a silent storm pounding at her shields, demanding to be let in, but it was a distant echo in the face of a much larger concern.

The alarms ringing... oh, feth.

Cerita started to run. Not away from the fear, but towards the source of it. That's where [member="Dissero"] would be, or so she hoped.