Nightmares in Dreamland

[Thuumal Xevshe]

I must be floating. Where am I? What Am I?

Thuumal Xevshe tried in vain to open his heavy eyelids. It felt as if he had been sleeping for years. Truth be told, he could easily sleep for several hundred more. Still, the floating sensation made his stomach lurch. He felt ill and worse, confused. Suddenly, pain-- intense pain. It began in his chest and quickly radiated throughout what felt like every nerve in his body. This wasn't ordinary pain; it was the kind of pain that shook a person to his core. It was pain that screamed out from the darkness until it rattled his soul like old decaying bones. He heard the pain and cried out in agony in response. As if the pain had listened to his cry, it quickly subsided and his mind drifted back to sleep.

I'm so tired...so...very...tired...

---- Sometime previously on an unknown world in the Kathol Sector ----

"If you don't find anything good, they whip you!"

Xevshe looked up from the burnt out ship wreckage and directly at the giggling human child to his right.

"I prefer to work in peace. Can't you find somewhere else to search?" Xevshe looked down at the wire mesh basket at his feet, which contained only a few small electronic devices. Thus far he had avoided the whip because he had been lucky enough to find working ship components. He couldn't explain it, but he felt drawn to working parts. He could feel them, as if they were a homing beacon helping him to navigate the jagged edges and sharp corners of the piles of refuse.

Of course, it would be great if that were the only feeling he had. Only days before, he had suffered a severe hallucination when he had grabbed a power core from the burnt out hulk of a quad-laser cannon. Suddenly, he felt himself standing behind the Quad-laser's final gunner. Time moved slowly as he watched the gunner's fruitless attempt to shoot down a pursuing proton torpedo. He felt the torpedo arc towards the turret and moments later he felt the fire and heat of the weapon's explosion. As the smoke and fire faded, he was back under the watchful eye of the Trandoshan slaver who eyed him suspiciously from nearby.

Xevshe was no stranger to his mind playing tricks on him. He had always had nightmares, and frequently saw spiders and insects crawling around him. He knew they were illusions when he would attempt to bat them away, only to find that they had evaporated into thin air. Occasionally he saw the terrible things in his mind. Wrecks, death, destruction,disaster and evil. These, however, he would often learn, were not illusions but experiences from other times and places, experiences that could have only occured hours or days later. It was too unreliable to be called precognition; he couldn't call the visions at will. Besides, this was something different entirely. It was as if he would be transported to the future or the past.

He shook his head hard. Today, he felt nothing. The longer the Trandoshans forced Xevshe and the other slaves to work, the less they found. Xevshe had guessed that anything valuable had already been picked clean from this ancient battle site. As he stopped daydreaming, he noticed the child was still present.

"Here, I'll help you!" The child pulled several items out of his own small basket and placed them in Xevshe's basket. He sighed. The innocence of youth. He and the child both knew if the Trandoshan slavers saw this, they would whip both slaves. Still, this boy, whom he hardly knew, was willing to take a lashing as his reward for helping Xevshe meet his part quota while simultaneously not meeting his own.

The day continued without further incident. But at night, the Trandoshans would come.

 

[Thuumal Xevshe]

As Xevshe groggily opened his eyes, he realized that his vision was blurred and flared like a lens...he couldn't see much of anything at all. He felt around frantically, reaching for anything to steady himself. What he really wanted was a way to stop the nausea rising in his gut from the floating sensation.

Where the devil am I?

And who am I?

After a few moments he felt a cot and some blankets. Okay, so not floating, he thought to himself. There was a ringing in his ears that he couldn't shake. His body felt numb for a moment before the pain began again. This time it was less severe, but he still winced as the sensation passed over his body. He closed his eyes again as the ringing got louder.

---- Sometime previously on an unknown world in the Kathol Sector ----

The alarm klaxons in the base blared loudly as Xevshe opened his eyes. He was lying in his bed at the slave camp again. Next to his bed stood the male child that had helped him earlier.

"Mister! Hey, Mister! Thuumal, wake up!" The child screamed at Xevshe, with a look of fear on his face. "They're coming! Get up! They're coming!"

Xevshe sat up and blinked a few times before running his hands over his face and the prominent reptilian ridges of his forehead. He slowly gathered his jet-black hair in his hands. Maybe this time it will be different. He quickly braided his hair and tied it in a top knot.

"Thuumal, we don't have time!"

Xevshe began to lift himself off of the bunk, but it was too late. The door slid open and several heavily-armed trandoshan guards entered the room. Without saying anything, they grabbed Xevshe, the child, and all of the other slaves and drug them out of the room and out into the cold and dusty night.

After a few moments, one of the trandoshans of a clearly higher ranking began barking orders to the others. The trandoshans gathered up all of the able-bodied adult males, including Xevshe, and separated them from the larger group of captured slaves. One of the males, a wookiee, growled and attempted to fight back against the coerced movement. Xevshe looked up with hope in his eyes. For a moment, it seemed that the wookiee might break free. That illusion dissipated almost as quickly as the seven lethal blaster shots did into the wookiee's chest.

The trandoshans made a habit of waking the slaves up at night in this manner. As best Xevshe could tell, it was done to keep the slaves tired and confused. The loud sirens and blazing red lights of the interior alarms disoriented even those slaves who possessed superior mental fortitude. It was clearly a torture tactic. However, what came next was the real torture.

The largest of the trandoshan guards held a large metal stun baton against his shoulder. He walked up and down the lines of slaves, waiting for one to catch his eye. Xevshe tried to look down, but it was too late. The trandoshan locked eyes with Xevshe and flashed a toothy trandoshan grin. He motioned toward Xevshe and one of the other guards violently pulled Xevshe out of line. The guard threw him to the ground and kicked him hard several times. The larger trandoshan shouted at Xevshe in trandoshan.

"I don't understand what you mean you idiot!" Xevshe attempted to rise from his hands and knees. The guard, clearly taken aback by Xevshe's act of insubordination, stepped backwards and stopped shouting. Xevshe stood tall, his face as stoic as any other member of his species. The guard lifted his baton and swiftly struck Xevshe's stomach. The Falleen fell to the ground as the wind was knocked out of this body. Still, his face was stoic, not revealing the immense pain and nausea that began to fill his mind.

The trandoshan was done playing and began to savagely beat Xevshe. This happened every night to someone; the trandoshans hoped to maintain their rule by constant threat of physical punishment. Only, tonight was different.

After a few moments, a loud roar filled the air and a transport shuttle flew into view. It's landing lights blinded Xevshe as the shuttlecraft landed. His head was swimming, his ears ringing, his body aching from the mindless brutality that had fallen upon him. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, trying to draw all of his strength to prepare for what might become the final blow.

As the shuttle's ramp lowered a fat corellian man strolled out. As he looked upon the scene, he sneered.

"That will be enough." He said sharply. The trandoshan lowered his baton. A brief look of sadness filled the sadist's face, but it quickly disappeared.

The man had all of the trappings of wealth. The only thing that made more money than selling weapons to agents of war was selling slaves to the wealthy arms dealers and the dilettantes they wore on their arms.

"How am I supposed to sell the merchandise when you keep beating it up? The buyers don't pay extra when they don't get to do the damage themselves." He shook his
head as his judging gaze fell on the large trandoshan. The anger and resentment towards the slave grew in the trandoshan's mind, but revenge would come later.

"I'm here early to take your best with me. I've got a special order up. He's willing to pay triple if we can deliver quickly."

As the corellian surveyed the group of slaves, Xevshe got an idea. He took a deep breath, rose to his feet, and let his pheromones fill the immediate area. His olive green skin began to lighten to a more aesthetically pleasing hue. After a few moments, he gently spoke.

"Excuse me m'ilord." The words struck the otherwise silent night like a bolt of lightning. The corellian turned around to face him.

"No one said you could speak, slave." The man laughed, sucking in air filled with pheromones. Let's hope this plan works...

"Perhaps your buyers would find that a slave who is already familiar with the etiquette of the galaxy's wealthiest members could best suit their needs." As he spoke, the redish hue of his skin seemed to glow in the night. "Perhaps they might also enjoy a slave with a variety of," he paused for effect, "special talents." Though his face was calm and inviting, he recoiled inside at the thought of becoming a toy or decoration for some wealthy socialite. Falleen are not slaves. And soon, you will see.

The corellian stepped closer to Xevshe, examining him closer. The man hadn't noticed the... beauty... of the exotic creature in the slave's sordid clothing. The man thought to himself, clearly enamored with the thought of producing a rare treasure for the galaxy's wealthiest collectors. The corellian didn't know what the creature was, and that instantly ment a pile of credits for the right buyer. As his lust for the credits he would soon earn grew, so too did the effect of the pheromones on his ability to think. Still, this wasn't his first nerf herd.

"Again, you will speak when spoken to." The man turned to the large man and quietly said a few sentences in Dosh. Then, he turned to leave via the shuttle. As he did so, his oblong head swiveled around like a toy doll. He took one last look at the exotic creature and smiled to himself at the thought of the price the creature would fetch.

"Have them, especially him, ready to go by sunrise."

 

[Thuumal Xevshe]

After what felt like several hours of unconsciousness, Xevshe's pain returned. He willed his left hand over his right arm. His arm was bandaged, and below he felt deep wounds. For the first time, he opened his eyes to see strange medical equipment around him. At least, it seemed like medical equipment, he thought. It's design was foreign, but he seemingly understood the machine's purpose. Long wirelike tubes connected to his body and pumped a clear fluid into his body. When it did, the pain subsided. His body smelled of bacta solution. Xevshe craned his neck to catch a glimpse of his quarters, but the room was too dark to see beyond a meter or so. Sound echoed through the room like a cavern, indicating the room was large. None of this felt right. How did I get here? How did I get hurt?

As he moved around, it was apparent he was restrained. In frustration, he gave a strung tug on the binding on his arm. His body responded with more pain, and he quickly gave up his futile effort. He slunk back into a restless slumber.

He awoke in shackles, suspended into a standing pose with his arms spread apart and his arms shackled tightly above him. There was a bright light in his face, and loud trandoshan music blaring from speakers set into the nearby wall. Despite the loud sounds, he could hear a child screaming and crying in the background.

Xevshe's heart sank. The trandoshans had already gotten to the child. He cursed himself and the universe that would let this happen. While he didn't care for children, especially non-falleen offspring, he wasn't evil. Torturing children was a line that shouldn't be crossed. He vowed to make this right. Somehow.

His arms were over extended, and as a result they ached a dull pain. The naked ridges on his spine cast sharp shadows on the wall. He noted that the ridges looked like the razor-sharp teeth of a predator about to swallow its prey. After what seemed like an eternity, the large trandoshan and his two cronies entered the room. The largest carried a bucket of water and a dirty rag.

"Water torture. How original." Xevshe said with a look on his face the showed how utterly unimpressed he was with his captors. "Clearly your boss didn't tell you that his 'magnificent creature' has can hold its breath? Ah, right. I forgot. Trandoshan...not too bright." He hoped that his insults would draw the ire of his captors, and that such ire would allow him to capitalize on a mistake.

The trandoshan was quick to anger. He splashed the putrid liquid onto the falleen's face. Xevshe retched. Whatever the substance was, it wasn't water. At least, not anymore. At least it wasn't something far worse. He regained his composure and continued to needle the guard.

"Is that it?" The trandoshan didn't let him say another word. In an instant, he drew a whip made of braided monofilament and razor wire, and savagely tore into the faleen's flesh. After a few lashes, Xevshe's blood began to pool on the floor. The pain seared him, and in an instant, he was back lying on the medical cot, in the present.

His hallucinations had always been a mixed bag; sometime malevolent, sometimes arbitrary, most often startling but not terrifying. However, these hallucinations were all too real. It felt as if he was in two places at once; damned to relive the pain of his shattered memory concurrently with the pain his body now felt. The blood pouring from his bandaged wounds stood as evidence of the truth of his strange feeling.

As the pain ebbed, a voice suddenly filled his mind.

Careful, you have reopened your wounds. You need to rest. More importantly, you need to live through your nightmare to fully comprehend the power within you. Rest. Answers will come, if you seek them.

"WHO ARE YOU?" He yelled. But there was no response. Only a heavy feeling of drug-induced sleep.

 

[MantisEsq]

((incorrect account - admin/mods can you delete this post?))

 

[Thuumal Xevshe]

Xevshe awoke bruised, bloodied, and broken. In his delirium, he could no longer tell where he was, or what timeline he was hallucinating into. In his psychotic panic, he feared that everything he was experiencing was a dream. A nightmare... in his dreamland, it seemed.

He saw the large trandoshan approaching his bed. He didn't know what was real. The trandoshan picked up Xevshe's limp body with an audible grunt. Xevshe could tell that he was being taken to a ship, but little else. The pain was extreme, the counfusion intense. His heart pounded. Not long thereafter, the trandoshan tossed him down onto a hard durasteel bench.

After a few minutes, he felt the ground lurch beneath him. It took all he had not to vomit from the sensation. He looked up and saw numerous giant spiders dangling from the ceiling. He didn't recognize their species, his vision was too fogged for that level of acuity. Suddenly the spiders dropped down onto him. He tried to move his limbs to swat the spiders away, but his body would not move. His whole body felt numb. As the spiders began to wrap his body in thick silk. His anxiety swirled in like soup in his head. He had to do something, and fast.

A new voice filled his head, this time more distant. Not human or trandoshan. No, this voice spoke in falleen.

He won't make another jump.

He opened his mouth to scream and the spiders flooded into him. He coughed and gagged, but it was no use. The spiders were suffocating him, and he could feel them burrowing away at his insides. The pain was intense, the fear even more so. So this is how I die, he thought. His thoughts drifted to Falleen, the jewel of the universe. Then to his exile and banishment. He felt shame and anger.

His self-pity was interrupted by the first voice in his head again.

Just one more jump. He will not be healed until he can know what happened.

 

[MantisEsq]

Xevshe awoke several days later. His pain was less intense, though his wounds still fresh. As he regained consciousness, he sat up and frantically batted his hands over his body, attempting to remove the illusionary spiders. When he realized there were none, he gave a great sigh of relief. His mind felt fractured; his soul trapped between two concurrent timelines. Concurrent, yet at the same time...linear. As if one time belonged to the past and another to the present.

The bench he sat on shook gently, as he felt the familiar feeling of returning to normal space from lightspeed. So I'm on a ship, he thought. Where am I?

Suddenly, he heard the mechanical sounds of the ship's boarding ramp lowering. He turned to face the door. Several trandoshan guards came in and swiftly dragged the falleen to his feet. He made no attempt to resist for he feared that another beating might be his last. His mind was too confused to develop a plot or plan. It was a strange place for a falleen to be. While not as cunning and tactical as some other races, Falleen were masters of political moves and intrigue. To reach that status, members of the species had to become master of themselves and those around them. To be in control was to understand, to plan, and to manipulate. Unfortunately for Xevshe, his mental state made it hard to do any of those things right now.

Mercifully, the trandoshans weren't interested in harming Xevshe further. When they exited the small shuttle craft, it was clear to Xevshe that they were aboard a much larger transport vessel. A slave ship taking merchandise to market, it seemed. While the interior was grungy, it was somehow well maintained. This puzzled Xevshe, who's mental image of a slaver's ship in wild space was anything but well maintained. Clearly the head of this operation had some standards.

As they descended into the interior of the ship, it was clear that those standards did not apply to the slave quarters. Thick with grime and dust, the floors had clearly never been cleaned. Parts of the walls had rusted away, revealing jagged durasteel daggers guarding exposed wiring and electronics. The lights were a dim yellow. Xevshe wondered if this was intentional, an attempt to psychologically weaken the slaves with perpetual twilight, or perhaps, more likely, the result of having never been cleaned or maintained. After a short time, the small group arrived at Xevshe's new quarters. The automatic door slid away, slowly revealing a dark room full of terrified, sometimes glowing, eyes. The room was packed; with only a little space to move between rows of broken down bunk beds. The pungent air smelled of blood, vomit, and all manner of biological waste products produced by the myriad of alien species inside the room. While Xevshe's eyes burned for a time, the trandoshans seemed unfazed, as did most of the slaves in the room. How typical that the trandoshans are used to living in filth.

Nearly all of the slaves had some form of binding on. The more enterprising, and by implication more dangerous, slaves were completely locked down. As Xevshe surveyed the room, he saw hopelessness and sickness and smelled death. Those here would not be long for this world. He could feel their pain, both literally and empathically. The trash of the universe being taken to the refuse pile, full of innocence and lost potential. It was in that moment that he comprehended the weight of his life's poor decisions and the effect that exile from falleen had upon his current situation. Regardless of what the feudal elders that banished him may have thought, he would return one day. He would show them that their punishment made him stronger, and that his experiences off of falleen, while inferior to those he may have had on the planet had he stayed, had made him fit to return and rule the planet.

He sighed. In all actuality these fantasy fever dreams would never come true. They were the final thoughts of a man condemned to live out the rest of his life as property of another. Or worse, of a man who's limited source of labor would shortly, and fatally, be extracted to support the lifestyles of those in a master class of unknown aliens who couldn't care less what their lifestyle cost him. Though his brain still ached from the experience of the visions, the fatalism creeping into his mind was quickly becoming the real nightmare. And this, he supposed, was how a master broke a slave. Would it break him?

 

[Thuumal Xevshe]

After several days of malnutrition, his body had grown week and his healing stunted. The visions had vanished, and it had been sometime since he felt his mind splinter. He had finally begun to believe that these events, while having an unmistakably dreamlike quality, were indeed the presence. Pain could do strange things, and perhaps the mental splintering was the only way his fragile mind could cope with the sheer brutality that had been inflicted upon him over the past few weeks.

From what he could tell, the slave ship had stopped several times over the past few days. Refueling, probably, or selling a few bits of "merchandise" in a foreign port. Today would be different. He had a feeling. He couldn't explain why, only that the dreamlike state had worsened. It was a most probable prelude to what might become a final, permanent psychosis. His dreams of escaping had all but vanished, his hopes crushed. As impossible as it was, he had not, however, accepted his situation.

As he waxed philosophical about his mind the eventual return of the illusions, he was interrupted by a gentle tugging of the sleeve of his slave uniform.

"Hey mister! Wake up!"

His eyes drifted down to the eyes of the child who had saved him from a beating only days ago. The child's face was bright, well nourished, and clearly unharmed. So the little scamp had escaped the fate Xevshe had feared and fallen into. Children, it seemed, were much better and learning to survive when their world was ripped away. Some of them, anyway.

"Why hello there." Xevshe smiled, not hiding his relief that the child was essentially unharmed.

"Heya Thuumal. Looks like you got in a fight with a gundark...and lost..." The boy's voice trailed off into a giggle. There was an almost ethereal glow surrounding the child, but Xevshe reasoned that anyone who was happy and healthy here probably looked the same to a slave who was badly injured and suffering from hallucinations. He shook off the thought.

"Not a gundark, I'm afraid. Just an overcompensating, uncultured lizard who wouldn't win in a fair fight with me." The child attempted to suppress a full laugh, but failed. Clearly, the child was unimpressed with Xevshe's boasts. Had his verbal fencing really become this dull and unconvincing?

"It's okay mister. You won't be here much longer. Someone is coming for you." Xevshe blinked twice. Someone was coming? Who? How could the child possibly know this while he was trapped in the same cage as Xevshe. He must have not been doing a good job at thinking without betraying his thoughts because the child spoke almost immediately. "It might be a little...crazy. And it's probably going to hurt. And you're not going to be whole again for a while. Not ever, probably. But they will heal you and open your eyes to the truth behind your nightmares." Xevshe was fully stunned. The child spoke with an air of authority and certainty that was almost comforting. Almost.

"Wh..wha...what do you mean it's going to hurt? I'm not going to be whole? What twisted games are you playing? How do you know about my nightmares?" His voice grew more frantic, "Who are you."

"Answers are coming." The child smiled. "But you might want to hold on to something."

Before Xevshe could react, the ship made a loud roar. The impact shockwave rippled through the ship from its weakest points outward to its edges. Those near the impact point were dead instantly. Those further away, like Xevshe, would need time to recover. The weak superstructure of the ship crashed down around Xevshe, as the air began to be sucked out of the ship with an almost instantaneous effect. Miraculously, Xevshe was alive. He struggled in vain to pull himself through the wreckage, but the escaping air left his lungs in moments. His final thoughts were of home. So *this* is how I die?

Suddenly, the Falleen was floating, naked in a dark void. The pain was extreme, worse than anything he had felt up until this point. The floating sensation made him sick again, as the nausea returned in full force. He tumbled head over heels through the void, unable to control any part of his body or his movement. He felt weak, broken, and ready to die. After a few moments he saw a white beam of light in the distance. It slowly traveled until it bathed his entire body in white light. He stopped moving and suddenly felt safe, at peace. As the beam of light hit his forehead, he instinctively blinked, expecting a searing pain from the bright light. The pain never came. As the light hit his head, it exploded into a million smaller beams of colored light. The rainbow filled the void and enveloped his body like a protective blanket. His pain was gone.

Suddenly a familiar voice filled his head again. It was the child's.

We've arrived.

As Xevshe floated peacefully, a dark shadow appeared on the horizon. As it slowly moved closer, Xevshe began to make out its quadrupedal body. The object shimmered in and out of existence, as if it were phased between multiple dimensions at once. It appeared to be covered in thick, stone like plates. The plates were covered in unrecognizable hieroglyphics. As the creature drew near, Xevshe saw that these runes were etched into the creature's thick armored plates. It had a number of tongue-like appendages which whipped about in the air from what Xevshe could only guess was the creature's head. It was unlike anything that he had ever seen before.

It approached his floating body closely, the tongue-like appendage passing gently over his face. The voice returned to his mind.

Welcome, outsider. We are glad you are feeling better.

Was this telepathy? Or something else? Xevshe opened his mouth to speak.

You need not speak.

Xevshe was confused. He began to sweat. What did this creature want. His fear grew palpable, and he began to excrete pheromones unintentionally. The being immediately picked up on his fear.

We mean you no harm outsider. Those who did harm to you have been dealt with.

Suddenly, he became aware of his biological response. He had often used his pheromones to inspire different emotions and desires in those he wished to manipulate. Was he somehow communicating with the pheromones? He concentrated on his desires to know where he was and who the mysterious being was. As if by magic, the creature understood the biochemical message. It responded in kind.

We are the servants of Those Who Dwell Beyond the Veil. We rescued you from those who wish to enslave your essence. You do not yet know it, but you are safely aboard our vessel. We saved you because we believe you may experience the universe as we do, in part at least.

Xevshe's fear evaporated. He realized that the feelings of calm were triggered by the being's pheromones. It was his first experience as the victim of such manipulation. He questioned it immediately, but was compelled to believe the being.

Your mind is splintered. Your visions stacked one upon another. You are experiencing time-as-it-is...consecutive, yet concurrent. Present, but flowing from past to future. We have encountered few who understand as we do. Your mind is untrained; it cannot yet process what you feel. Your essence is not centered. In time, you will learn to control your movement and experience.

The falleen had no idea what this strange creature meant, yet at some level its words made sense. Still, why was this happening?

The creature, apparently still reading his pheromones, answered immediately again.

Those with the gift experience things in and around our home sector. As we drew deeper into our territory, your visions grew stronger. Strong enough to disrupt our healing of your wounds. You began to experience the events preceding your healing while you experienced your present state. We have arrived at our destination, and thus the visions have subsided. Your walk through time is over, for now. We have restored your body as best we can.

Xevshe immediately felt grateful. The creature's explanation was still above his head, but it made some sense to the falleen. He did feel better after all. He examined his body, and noted that his wounds had healed. The being's generosity had almost certainly saved his life, he reasoned. Of course, Xevshe was cynical. There would clearly be a price for such assistance.

 

[Thuumal Xevshe]

(retconned)

 

[Thuumal Xevshe]

The Aing-tii stood beside him silently, and made some alien motion. Xevshe had never warmed to the creature's lack of humanoid expressions, though he had begun to feel a sense of kinship with the strange being. Their minds and biology were not at all alike, but the falleen could see himself learning a great deal from them. Xevshe was sad to go.

It is time.

Xevshe frowned, but nodded. He stood up and bowed slightly toward the creature, one final time. He had come with nothing and would leave with only the ill fitting clothing on his back. The Aing-tii had provided for him up until this point. It would be up to Xevshe to start his life again.

"Will I ever see you, or this place again?" He asked. The creature did not respond. Before Xevshe could say anything more, he disappeared with an audible pop as the air rushed to fill the space where he had once stood. A soft wind blew, and just like that, Thuumal Xevshe's new life had begun.