Private Safe Haven in the Otherworld

[Onrai]

Tu'teggacha

Kiross

Solipsis was dead, and this meant but one thing: fracturing of the tenuous alliance that had made up the Maw and allowed it to remain a relatively stable region of the galaxy despite the warlordism of the individuals within it. Even now as the Maw forces left Tython, Onrai was calculating the next moves to be made - should she seek to make her move and forcibly seize control through her web of associates and the forces she had built up over many decades? Should she merely wait, bide her time and hope that someone or something came along to provide guidance to the discordant? Or should she simply wait and watch as the Maw descended into utter madness, knives long palmed slid into the spines of the unwary as they slaughtered one another in an orgy of violence and carrion to match no other?

Whatever the answer, the current actions she was to best take would be to begin construction of those who she could rely upon. And the vulnerabilities of one such individual were something she hoped to tap, to perhaps peel away at in order to gain someone who fit such special criteria.

Perhaps it would be genuinely beneficial for him.

As the spectral shade waited at Kiross's spaceport, the same way it had for many others who had come to visit, she considered how different this could potentially be in the long run. From what she had learned and managed to successfully divine about the tentacled creature who would be arriving, he was capable of exceptional cruelty of the sorts even Kaine Zambrano himself was allegedly not creative enough to develop. Yet beneath this vicious exterior was a core of fear that fueled his darkness. Deciphering the cause for that fear, and providing him with what would satiate it, would be the key.

The fires of greed will burn the weak
So we'll make freedom obsolete

 

[Tu'teggacha]

The death of the Dark Voice was a disaster for the Maw.

More importantly to Tu'teggacha, it was a disaster to him personally.

For his entire life, the Ebruchi had craved power, safety, and stability. He was no Mawite true believer. He did not care about burning the galaxy to make way for something new, or wiping out the hated Jedi Order. He wanted only to be in control, to ensure that no other could make him feel small and weak ever again. Each time he broke a slave to the will of the Brotherhood, each time he unleashed some dark new strand-cast creation from the depths of his laboratory, he felt a surge of satisfaction that bordered on ecstasy. He wanted to be great and powerful, so that no one could ever hurt or control him. He wanted to stave off his own past.

Solipsis had been the key to that desire, almost from the very beginning. When Tu'teggacha had finally taken his horrific revenge upon his own Ebruchi pirate clan, the wretches who had abuse him for his eerie gifts, he had been left adrift in the void, without purpose or hope. His life might have ended there, with what little satisfaction he could gain from torturing his torturers. Instead, he had felt the call of the Dark Voice, returning from beyond the known galaxy to dominate or destroy all that lay in his path. Tu'teggacha had sought him out immediately, and Solipsis had become his patron, making the Ebruchi his Taskmaster.

But now the Prophet was dead, and the Brotherhood was in turmoil.

What course did that leave for the Taskmaster to take? He had no desire to become one of the many warlords squabbling over the resources and planets of the Maw in the wake of this disaster; that would expose him to too much risk. What he wanted was a patron, a protector, who would value his skills and knowledge and guard them well. Rumor had it that mighty Darth Mori was on the rise, having seized the power of Solipsis's ritual at the moment of his death and wielded it well. Perhaps she could continue the Prophet's work, somehow hold together the unstable coalition he'd forged. Only time would be able to tell.

For now, however, the Taskmaster had gotten a different offer.

Tu'teggacha hobbled down the loading ramp of the shuttle he'd brought, the very same stealth ship that had rescued him from the Fatalis before it was destroyed. It was time to see what this Onrai could offer him, and how he could use that offer to secure his safety and grow his power. For if there was one thing he had learned, it was that only the powerful were ever safe, for the weak were subject to their whims. Glancing around the spaceport, the Taskmaster felt the cold chill of an unearthly presence nearby. That could only be the one he sought. He scuttled forward on knobby legs, searching for the one who'd called him here.

 

[Onrai]

“Welcome to Kiross, Tu'teggacha .” The spectral form of Onrai’s avatar slowly manifested before him as it seemed to congeal itself from the very shadows surrounding the world’s landscape. “I understand your motivations for coming. I am Onrai, the Mother of Notron, Queen of the Stars, and most importantly, she who can provide what it is you desire.” She said.

The avatar began to walk away from the tentacled interrogator, beckoning appendage motioning for him to join her as they traveled to a place of greater privacy. One of the many nondescript buildings within the Kiross metroplex, whose former militarized splendor had been reinvigorated by her followers when they had arrived on the planet, would serve as their meeting place.

“I already know what it is you responded for.” She said. “But tell me, so I may reiterate my proposed solutions.”

 

[Tu'teggacha]

As Tu'teggacha disembarked, looking around for the contact who had summoned him here, a voice from out of thin air nearly made him jump out of his skin. His host seemed to materialize out of every patch of darkness around him, the shadows of rocks and trees and buildings coming together like dripping blots of ink to create her form. This was the strange, eerie being he had come here to meet, and she was even more unsettling in person than the reports he'd read would suggest. She called herself Queen of the Stars, a proud and lofty claim. But if that indicated how powerful she really was, well...

... she would certainly be a powerful patron.

The Taskmaster followed her when she beckoned, hobbling along in her wake on short, knobby legs. All around him sprawled one of the many huge military complexes that dotted the planet, places taken in the Mawite conquest and turned to the service of the Brotherhood. They would certainly be secure, and relatively private, which was good; Tu'teggacha did not want anyone, even his ostensible allies, to know that he was here. His search for new patronage needed to remain secret, lest his rivals use it against him. In this post-Solipsis age, everything was uncertain, and he did not want to give any threat an advantage.

"I am not a warlord," the Ebruchi explained, responding to Onrai 's request to tell her once more what he sought. "I have no desire to stand alone. I do my best work while under the protection of a powerful patron, someone who can shield me from the Brothehood's enemies. Once that was the Dark Voice, but he is dead now, killed on Tython. That leaves me in a... difficult position." Which was putting it mildly; everything he'd worked for was at risk in this time of chaos. "I am seeking protection, so that I may consider my work - my experiments - without interruption." He looked at her, tentacles fidgeting.

"I am told that you have something to offer in that regard."

 

[Onrai]

“To worry about the physical realm in such a way is meaningless unless one understands the truth of what lies further beyond.” Onrai said. “The core of your being screams to me that you are of fear. Your whole life has been established by a fear of rejection and vulnerability, a desire to ensure you can live a proud life comfortable in the lasting nature of your accomplishments.”

A crumbling noise was heard as from within one hand seemed to form a piece of worn parchment as fingers moved in horribly inhuman and boneless ways to flatten it. Onrai’s silvered eyes scanned the paper before once more crumpling it and throwing it elsewhere in the room, the small ball exploding into a wave of cool flame that licked across the floor of the room within which they were present.

“There was a Jedi once who said fear led to anger, which led to hatred, which led to suffering. The superficiality of this suggests the path of darkness is ladled with tormentors traumatizing the galaxy, but the truth is deeper - allowing fear to take root leads to one’s personal suffering, as the Dark Voice himself recently discovered. And you, young one, have allowed yourself to suffer enough.” She sighed as the flames still licked upon the floor, not burning or igniting either of the duo within the room.

“In your many interrogations, you have made men and women empty the contents of their minds before you. They have vomited forth everything from their childhoods to their deepest fears and fantasies. The question I ask you now is this: did they ever tell of the blasphemous gods who roamed within the dimension besides your own? Did they speak upon the glory of the Celestials and their abandonment of the galaxy to its metronomic fate of perpetual cleansing and corruption? Did the slightest sliver of truth lie locked away behind the barriers of mental fortitude?” She asked as the flames suddenly darkened, the shadows of the room growing to consume all light, all brightness.

“Or were they as hollow as the void?”

Tu'teggacha

 

[Tu'teggacha]

Tu'teggacha listened, but he did not understand.

What was all this talk about beyond the physical? Of course he was concerned with the physical galaxy, for he was a physical being, and the very physical lightsabers of the Jedi were currently questing after his rubbery head. They had nearly caught him on Copero, and again on Teta, close brushes with death at the hands of the galaxy's supposed peacekeepers. And that was to say nothing of all the times he had nearly been blown to smithereens in space, forced into the role of fleet commander by the will of the Dark Voice year after year. As far as he knew, he was the only survivor of the Fatalis's 250,000 person crew after Tython.

Nor could he follow what Onrai said about fear, not entirely. Certainly he was motivated by fear - it had been his driving emotion since his earliest memories, and it had always led him to self-preservation. If his faith in the Maw had been stronger than his fear, then his knobby body would be back in the Tython system, drifting frozen amid the wreckage while his soul fueled that dark ritual. Instead he had fled to save his own hide, rejecting sacrifice on behalf of others. He did not view fear as something he suffered from, but something that guided his actions in a dangerous and uncertain galaxy, and thus an essential part of him.

"No," the Ebruchi finally replied, answering the spirit's question about blasphemous gods and ancient galactic history. "The Brotherhood never cared about such things. They wanted me to hollow out the prisoners I converted into slave-soldiers, to empty their minds of individuality and fill them with faith. I did not go looking for arcane secrets among their thoughts and memories." Where was this line of questioning going, he wondered? Onrai was more mystically-minded than he'd expected, more philosophical. He had come looking for a concrete source of safety, but she spoke in riddles.

"What do these eldritch gods and ancient truths have to do with me?"

 

[Onrai]

“And that is why the impact of Tython will be but a fleeting memory across the vastness of the cosmos.”

A sigh came from the two silvered eyes, the only sign of light within the darkness. “If the attempt is to do as was done to Corellia, to Csilla, to Tatooine, then it was a strike performed in vain. A Lance senselessly jabbed at a hibernating wyrm that will nary notice the wound until he awakens and preens himself. The suggestion of Tython’s significance to the Jedi being such that their spine would be rent asunder is… narrow-minded to say the least.” She said, a sigh passing through her lips as the form of two worlds manifested - one intact, one shattered.

“The leadership of the brotherhood did not dig deeply enough, not into the true roots of what truly matters within the galaxy - and it is not what is so much as what may be.” The room seemed to collapse, its form shifting to the star-dotted gleam of a region of outer space unlike anything that had yet been seen.

“You ask what gods and truths have to do with reality. The answer is everything.”

Before the two was the barrier, the edge of the galaxy from which no man had allegedly survived. The barrier had no visible nature, yet its presence seemed to form a vast line painted across the cosmos.

Except for a sliver.

Onrai pointed her finger at what appeared to be a distortion, a darkness darker than the darkness of nothing. Behind bonds of realspace, there was but an essence that it emitted only describable as a sort of dark foam, an emission of the vast perversity of darkness that comprised whatever was behind the obviously well-sealed gateway to a place neither wanted to go to.

“The Father of Shadows. The demons speak of his name. One of the Immortal Gods of the Sith, he was the first to let the darkness enter him, reveal the truths of power and knowledge to him, and guide him to teach his brothers the ways of the Dark. Yet they bound him, the fallen one, within this great prison. Even though they have left this galaxy to its own devices, still he remains imprisoned with his kin, tormenting the generations who devoted themselves to him and scheming for the day that he might be loosed upon the galaxy again. The vile Nakhash is the single greatest threat to the entire galaxy, for none will be spared if he is loosed. The torments you have inflicted will be as though you were but a spawnling pressing upon a roach scuttling amongst the deck of your home-vessel.”

She paused for a moment. “Your fear compels you to seek safety among all other things. Safety I can provide you. But for me to be your patron, to bless you with what it is you desire most, you must understand why it is that I am as I am and why I do as I do. Only through an understanding of the metaphysical history of the galaxy can you be prepared to insulate yourself and ensure the safety you so desperately crave is preserved. For example, safety in the sterilized laboratories of the Old Ones.”

A Crystalline stone, half amber and half purple, was revealed, taken from within the darkness of Onrai’s avatar. As she raised it, the artifact glistened and another tear began to form in the fabric of reality, large enough for the duo to travel through. It was before them as though they were still upon a two-dimensional plane as Onrai offered a hand to @Tu’teggacha.

“You may wish to have some support for when we reach what is on the other end.”

 

[Tu'teggacha]

Tython, a fleeting impact? Either this spirit was truly mad, or her view of time and space was geological in scope. The battle of Tython had been the largest scale clash of armies and fleets since the end of the 400-year darkness, and surely one of the largest in galactic history. It had involved the forces of every major galactic power, and no few minor ones as well, dwarfing even the all-out warfare on Csilla a decade earlier. The outcome would surely shape the entirety of the era that followed. To look at it any other way was to either deny the obvious... or to take a much, much bigger picture view of reality.

Was that what the spirit was getting at? The Brotherhood's ultimate goal, after all, wasn't a military one but a philosophical one. They weren't out to dominate the galaxy, hoarding power and control like so many Imperial regimes. Even destroying the Jedi was only one small part of what they wanted. Their goal was to reshape reality, to finally bring an end to the repetition of the past - Jedi against Sith, Empires against Republics, over and over and over - that had continued across the galaxy for some thirty thousand years. Striking at Tython, the birthplace of the Jedi and of those dark-siders who'd become Sith...

... it was a worthy target, but not enough to accomplish their full goals.

Perhaps she meant to show him what would be.

The Taskmaster was an odd choice for that, to be honest. He didn't particularly care about the Brotherhood's goals. He aligned with them because they were powerful, allowing him an opportunity to practice his vile arts and engage in his despicable experiments. Still, if he could uncover whatever secret Onrai was about to offer him, some strange insight into eldritch gods and the nature of reality, that would give him a powerful bargaining chip right when he needed one. If the Brotherhood survived the death of the Dark Voice without collapsing into feuding warlord states, someone would rise to take over their mission.

And that person might be very interested in what Tu'teggacha had to say.

The spirit pointed at a strange blot in midair, like ink that had spilled on some invisible sheet of flimsiplast. The Taskmaster felt a cold when he looked at that stain on reality, that fissure into something beyond. It wasn't the kind of chill he felt on an ice planet, but something more profound, something in his very soul. Onrai spoke of Sith gods and bound demons, and the Ebruchi did not understand; to him, this was just mythology, the fearful scribblings of ancient religions seeking to explain reality. But that stone in her hand, the power that radiated out of it, that her could comprehend. He always recognized power.

"Show me, then," the Ebruchi burbled. He took her hand.

 

[Onrai]

The moment the duo exited the portal's far side, the very form of existence went from feeling normal to feeling oh so wrong. The sky churned, the dim lights of dying stars and planets and moons stripped of life warped and twisted like looking through a sea of molten glass. Beneath their feet, the ground seemed to be almost fluidic, compacting itself into solid ground as pressure were applied to it and returning to a more mobile state when uncompressed. The portal behind them remained open, a loose end waiting for the opportunity to be reconnected from Kiross to this transial axis of mobility.

"Welcome to Dark Illathurion, what mortals like you know of as Otherspace."

Onrai motioned for the duo to walk, and walk they did, further across the landscape that seemed to tug at the sanity of Tu'teggacha with every passing moment. Their steps took them up wavelike dunes and over scorched earth. "This world is but one of countless thousands if not millions of planets left over from the time of the Old Ones, the spawn of the Soulworm and the ones who instigated the Empyrean Wars. So many claim that it was the Rakata who drove the Celestials from this galaxy, but that is... untrue, to say the least. No, the Old Ones were the instigators of what has left the galaxy in a state of self-operation, its custodians long abandoned. A few remained, only to eventually be slain. The Old Ones themselves were destroyed over time - Typhojem was slain by the last of the Force Demons, his heart the sole remnant of his presence. The shade of the Night Spirit was conquered by the Empress of the Eternal Empire, who was forever changed by the experience. I personally slayed Ooradryl with the mighty dreadnought whose reactors lie dead in the graveyard of space. And the last of them, the vile Mnggal-Mnggal, has been so broken, so harmed by the extermination of his presence on the world of Mugg Fallow, that his role in this galaxy is no longer a metric to consider."

Onrai stopped for but a moment before turning to face the Ebruchi. "A world like this is all but impervious to penetration, and there are many others sterilized by the wayward creations of Tharagorrogaraht, the Charon, that still populate this realm, though they give me a wide berth, fearful that I may be their fallen creator. If you desire safety, there is no safer place for you than this pocket of reality. Barring one... but I will preserve that for myself." A hand was raised, pointing towards one of the dunes. "Come and see the body of a dead god."

Over the hillock revealed one of the most bizarre sights - three gargantuan cubes, with the square of each facet easily making up more kilometers in each dimension than the length of a Star Destroyer. The cubes were all many tens of kilometers from one another, buried at different angles, but their sights were truly massive. Onrai smiled - here at last was the visual sign of her conquest. The cubes all bore great gaping holes within one of their facets, golden scales shattered and tarnished, and crimson flesh shriveled to a deathly grey pallor. It had taken the power of a star to destroy these creatures, and the evidence was plain. One of the cubes had landed flat on an intact face, the hole revealing it went all the way through the dead creature. These were Ooradryl and its remaining spawn, teams of former Sith-Imperials still established around them at base camps to probe within their carcasses.

"Ooradryl and his children, slain at my hand. Their power, their life force, all subjugated to my will. As they fell, I ascended. I was given the ability to bring what I wished to pass and to truly bless those who offered their prayers to me. So it was that I took the identity of the dead Onrai, the former Onrai, and achieved what no one else truly has: godhood. And yet, it is far more than any of the Sith believe. You bear as much a responsibility to your followers as they do to you. Fear does not equal worship, at least not from my experiences."

"But enough of that. The father is the nearest. Let us go and see." Onrai began to walk towards the nearest of the cubes, beckoning the Ebruchi to join him. It would be a multi-kilometer walk. If he grew thirsty during the trip, she would offer him a thermos containing fresh tea as brewed by her old associate Kay-Larr . No matter how much he sought to drain it, tea would still flow.

A nice gift.

 

[Tu'teggacha]

The Taskmaster was not a scholar. He did not pursue knowledge for its own sake, and cared nothing for truth or learning unless it offered him concrete benefits. All of his experiments and relic-hunting and research were targeted toward making himself useful to those who were strong enough to offer him power and protection. This little jaunt into... wherever Onrai was taking him would be no different. He would discover what he could from the strange, arcane secrets she had promised to show him, and then he would take that knowledge to whoever emerged to lead the Maw, proving his usefulness once again.

As soon as he stepped through the portal, however, he realized that it would not be as simple as he'd hoped. Wherever they were, the universe itself seemed to have been turned inside-out. The sky was a pallid void, the stars pinpricks of darkness against it, like little holes in a blanket. Everything felt wrong, somehow upside-down and backwards, and it wore on his mind like sandpaper upon the brain tissue. Every moment he looked at this twisted unreality nauseated and unsettled him... and yet he could not shut his eyes, nor tear them away from the vile, impossible things that were happening all around him.

Otherspace, the spirit said, and some bit of half-forgotten knowledge clicked in his mind. He had heard of this bizarre inverse dimension. A few travelers had arrived in it unintentionally over the millennia, usually due to hyperdrive accidents or unwise experimentation, and a few others had cracked open the figurative gates intentionally... usually with equally disastrous results. This was the realm of the Charon, a strange, nihilistic species determined to empty the stars of all life. In Otherspace, apparently, they had largely succeeded... and every time they'd broken out into realspace, they'd tried to continue.

Dark gods, galactic cleansing... they were more than a little like the Maw.

Onrai told him about "Old Ones" and "Empyrean Wars" and civilizations predating the ancient Rakata, and the Taskmaster did not understand. The things she was speaking of were so unspeakably old that they were more myth than history, impossible for any mortal scholar to truly comprehend. Was the spirit that old, and that powerful, that she had fought with ancient gods? What did a being like that want, anyway? Surely her goals, her vision, must be measured in aeons rather than years... so why did she have any interest in him? The thought gave Tu'teggacha pause, and sent a shiver of fear down his spine.

But he was stuck now. He had no way to get out of here without her.

Over the crest of the dunes, she showed him another thing he could not understand. The three golden cubes, so large that it truly boggled the mind, were... well, he couldn't really even say what they were. Onrai called them gods, gods she claimed to have slain and usurped. Certainly they were covered in battle damage, wounds so large you could have built a town inside the gaping holes. Tu'teggacha could not imagine what the things would have been like when alive. To see them moving, breathing, acting, would surely have shattered even his resilient mind. It was a horror to know that such things could exist.

How had they been killed? What could produce such injuries?

Onrai beckoned him down the slope, toward the colossal hulks of dead godflesh... and the Ebruchi did not want to follow. He wanted to flee from this place screaming, clawing at his glassy black eyes, shredding his own mind with his gifts so that he would never again have to think on the impossible horrors he had witnessed here. But there was nowhere to flee to, nowhere he could go except where she chose to bring him. So he gathered his mental strength, forced steel into his rubbery spine... and looked at the sandy ground instead of the dead cubes, trying to shut the image of them out of his battered brain.

"You claim that you have achieved godhood," he dared to say.

"What does a god want with me?"

 

[Onrai]

“The same thing a god would want of anyone else. To guide mortals and provide them that which they need in life in exchange for their patronization.” She said, as the duo entered the camp, whose sense of normalcy seemed to at least for a time dampen the wrongness of the world and certainly of the dead god that was by it. A number of scientists milled about, and as they grew closer the entryway into Ooradryl’s carcass became visible - several scales had been removed and a hole bored away to reveal surprising thinness of the exterior. A simple metal walkway led up to the entry point. Onrai looked down upon the Ebruchi to see his attempts to avoid that which was around him.

“I’m not entirely surprised. The greatest fear mortals have is not the chitter of one’s tentacles spinning senseless tales, or the lash of the whip, or the beating of the blackjack. Nor is it starvation, dehydration, or even ruination. No, what mortals fear most is that which they cannot understand. The unknown gnaws at the psyche, tears at one’s sanity. The secret is to simply accept it for what it is and carry on - if I had not done that, my attempt at ascension would have ended in certain destruction.”

A familiar metal clank resonated as she took the first step up the stairway, a sane sound as Onrai’s hand was offered to help him up.

“Before, you had another name. Not the one instilled on you. The one you were gifted upon being spawned. What was it?”

Tu'teggacha

 

[Tu'teggacha]

Onrai spoke of a god guiding mortals, providing for them, in exchange for worship. It was not an idea that made sense to the Taskmaster. Did gods need worship to survive, like food for ordinary beings? If not, why bother with it? If Tu'teggacha were a god, he would be a cruel and arbitrary one. He would torment mortals at his whim, reveling in his power over them, giddy with vindictive glee to finally be in the same position as his childhood tormentors: able to do whatever he wanted to his victims without any possible repercussions. Let them scuttle and flee into the darkness for a change, terrified of him.

But knowing Onrai's logic told him much about her. For whatever reason, she wanted worshippers, mortal servants for her to rule and direct - but also protect. The Taskmaster could use that to his advantage. Was she truly a god? Tu'teggacha did not know; it all depended on how one defined a deity, he supposed. But he could not deny her power. She had rent open reality and guided him here, into this plane of horrors, with an ease that spoke of terrifying strength in the Force. If he made a show of deference and obedience to her, she might turn that power to teaching and protecting him, a great advantage.

There was no lasting loyalty in his dark heart, but he could fall in line for a while.

They walked across the sands for a while. It was hard to say how long; time, like everything else, felt strange here. It certainly felt like a long time to be averting his eyes, trying to block out the mind-rending sights all around him, but a pretty short amount of time to cover multiple kilometers on foot. However long it truly was, their journey came to an end at the camp built around the corpse of the cube-thing. Here scurried other mortals, scientists with their instruments rushing from task to task, seemingly unbothered by the nightmarish nature of this place and its eye-watering eldritch contents.

Perhaps they'd gotten used to it. Or Onrai protected their minds somehow.

Or perhaps they were all quite mad by now.

"Accept it?" Tu'teggacha scoffed, his tentacled mouthparts spluttering wetly. "I can't even understand what it is." He was a being who craved control above all else... and understanding is a kind of control, the ability to recognize and categorize what one is seeing. This thing before him, a dead god if Onrai was to be believed, defied categorization. The Taskmaster could not understand how it fit into the galaxy he knew, could not reconcile it with his knowledge of the cosmos. It was too vast and strange, and thinking about it made his temples pound and his glassy black eyes threaten to bleed.

Her question took him off guard. It sent his mind spiraling away from this bizarre plane and back toward his childhood, toward the wretched years of crawling on his belly through trash compactors and ventilation shafts, scavenging for food and fleeing from his own people. "I don't remember," he told her. "I was very young when they named me Accursed One. What came before is... lost to me." It was only half true. He was a master of the Memory Walk, perhaps one of the galaxy's most skilled practitioners of it. He could have used it to delve into his own memories, to discover forgotten truths about himself.

But he did not want to. He wanted that past to stay forgotten.

He took her hand and ascended the stairs.

 

[Onrai]

"Let me seek to aid you..." Onrai replied as they took their first steps into Ooradryl's carcass. “The Old Ones were the children of the children of the Celestials. Already touched by the darkness, the Soulworm spawned them as itself in microcosm, each formed from its dark essence. Ooradryl was the third of the vile brood, brought into the world naked and only gilded by the pyramidal Ap'aci. His hunger for the life-force of the galaxy was without measure and he created three spawn in his image. As his brother said, 'Am I not this? Will I not swallow up you and my hoary siblings as delicacies before the grand feast of all the blood-drenched worlds in all the blood-drenched universe? And then shall I have none left to devour but myself as another who did as such, eating his own tail, endlessly. For that is the way of the worlds…'"

The inside of Ooradryl was even more maddening than the outside. As the duo looked up, great webs, masses, and lengths of dead flesh filled a space that seemed far too large to be that of the mere multi-kilometer cube they had been outside a mere few days ago. So too did the gaping hole that pierced the dead god's flesh seem to span many miles. It was as though a great space existed within the body of the fallen entity that only showed itself when one was within his flesh. As they further walked down a pathway, the scent of staleness and sweet rot came before them as the duo came upon a pool where crimson ichor still wept from a wound slashed into the wall of the cube's interior flesh.

"Surprisingly lackluster." She said. "The essence of life is not contained within this liquid. Its purpose yet eludes me - perhaps it is a sealant, a way to keep the wrongness within this broken body from spreading beyond the corpse."

Onrai paused for a moment, recalling the feigned ignorance of Tu'teggacha as she sighed. "Falsehood will get you nowhere with me. You may as well be honest - you both desire the power I have and fear that it may be turned against you. The least you could do is come forth with your name instead of claiming you forgot to remember to forget."

 

[Tu'teggacha]

Onrai sought to explain the nature of these dead gods, these Old Ones, but her words made little sense to Tu'teggacha. She spoke of strange eldritch names, Soulwyrm and Ooradryl and Ap'aci, and of feasters upon worlds, and of a universe drenched in blood. It was the kind of talk that the Heathen Priests would have used in their preaching, written into the Gospel of the Hidden Maw, and no doubt they would have argued with Onrai about the true nature of the universe and the so-called gods within it. But the Taskmaster did not deal in arcane myths and ancient horrors. He did not care for history or legend...

Only for the present, and how he could twist it to his advantage.

Of course, his present was getting steadily worse. The Ebruchi felt his head spin and his stomach revolt as they stepped inside the cube-thing's dead carcass, a fetid expanse of putrid flesh. From the outside, it had seemed unfathomably huge. From the inside, it was simply impossible. Though he had no sensors to confirm what his eyes told him, Tu'teggaccha was reasonably certain that the Old One's corpse somehow had far greater volume than its exterior surface area could account for. It defied every law of physics and nature, and his mind revolted at the thought that this thing had once lived.

The sickly-sweet scent of rot began to overpower the general odor of stale desiccation, and the Taskmaster soon saw why. Somehow, a part of the fleshy wall was still oozing blood into a great pool. It should not have been possible; the thing must have been dead for aeons, and should not have had any such fluids left within its flesh. It ought to have rotted away entirely under any normal conditions. But Tu'teggacha was beginning to grasp that the word "impossible" had no meaning here. The reality he was accustomed to was distant and powerless while he walked the strange pathways of Otherspace.

Onrai spoke of the blood's purpose. What truths did she seek from this corpse?

She caught him in his lie, calling out his dismissal that he might know his old name. "Perhaps I could recall it," the Taskmaster admitted, "if I delved deep into my oldest memories, with the aid of the Force. But I do not see why it would matter. For all my life, during all the meaningful things that have ever happened to me, I have been Tu'teggacha. My old name has been dead since before I could walk." As dead as this god-beast, nothing more than a corpse he lugged around in the deepest recesses of his memories. "I seek advantages for the future, not to dredge up irrelevant pain from the past."

 

[Onrai]

Onrai continued to stare with milky white eyes at the pool of syrupy ichor. That the inner tissues of Ooradryl still wept indicated how long and tenuous the process of postmortem was for an Old One. Her attention however was soon brought to the visible nausea and pain Tu'teggacha was suffering. A moment of kindness occurred as Onrai took his hands, her eyes closing.

“Close your eyes and focus.” She said. “All you must do is accept it. You do not need to know how it works, or how the mortal laws of physics are defied, or any of the countless other things that gnaw at you. Just accept that it exists as it does and carry on. When you do, the pain will cease. That is why those scientists are able to study his remains without going mad.”

Standing there, she would wait for him to finally attune himself to where no longer the pain of shattered reality gnawed at him before they moved on. Calcified tentacles protruded from the dried flesh and small pools of ichor still existed within the mass as the duo continued to walk through the pathways within Ooradryl’s carcass. As they treaded along, their steps continual through the organic tunnels, bridges, and walkways, soon they would notice a great sea of golden goo within a gully that was at the top of the carcass, suspended there in defiance of all known laws of gravity.

Or was it?

Were Tu'teggacha to peer at the holes running through the sides of Ooradryl, he would see the surface of the planet. In their walk through the carcass they were standing on what would have been the top of his body, defying gravity itself as their feet stood upon the fleshy floor like a fly clinging upside down on a roof.

“And yet, your past is directly responsible for your future. The satisfaction you feel from tormenting others. The need for the protection of a powerful patron. The eternal fear that one day, you might displease the wrong person who will end your existence and leave you but a speck of cosmic dust in the waste of universal history. That pain from the past is always present as who you were. To truly live in a future without the sword of the unforgiving Kopa Khan hanging above your head. Let go of that fear, and your detractors will have nothing to exploit. You will be immune to all assailment.”

 

[Tu'teggacha]

All you must do is accept it, Onrai told the Taskmaster.

Well, that was easier said than done! At the beginning of the day, Tu'teggacha had navigated an environment that made sense. He had taken his shuttle down to a Maw-held planet and walked through a military base, all things he had done a hundred times before, if not a thousand. But now, mere hours later, he was walking through the cube-like corpse of a putrefying god while the stars shone black in a stark white sky, and everything he had ever taken for granted was being turned upside-down. And he was just supposed to accept that, to reconcile this impossible experience with what he knew of reality and his place in it?

But he could not go on like this. His mind would break, or he would die.

So the Taskmaster did as the spirit asked. He squeezed his glossy black eyes firmly shut, and he focused his mind as hard as he could on the present. In his thoughts, he tore apart the higher logic that told him the rules of the galaxy, shoving all such knowledge into the back of his brain. He eliminated the questions why and how from his vocabulary. When he opened his eyes again, he looked around him with the innocence of a child; he assumed nothing, contextualized nothing, merely observed as if this were his first day in the galaxy and he knew no better. With such an open gaze, he could accept the bizarre truth all around him.

The nausea did not fade entirely, but it became... bearable. For now.

The Taskmaster followed Onrai away from the pool of divine lifeblood, winding his way through the impossible architecture of an eldritch god's innards, forcing himself not to think too hard about what it all meant - for him and for the galaxy. When they paused, he had to focus all the harder... for he could not help but notice that gravity itself had seemed to reverse, and the ground he had once walked on was now above the top of his head. A different pool of arcane fluids, this one gold in color, hovered before him now... or did it merely rest in one of the folds of the dead creature's flesh? What was up, and what was down?

The Ebruchi tried not to think about that, either.

Accept it, Onrai had told him.

He was trying.

The spirit spoke of the fear that lay behind all his actions, the fear that came from the way he had lived since his earliest memories, keeping to dark places and avoiding the predations of the strong. "It is my fear that keeps me alive," the Taskmaster argued. "Fear reminds me to look to my own preservation, to recognize that I am not strong enough to stand alone. What would I be without that fear? If I tried to rise as a warlord of the Maw, to stand among the likes of Zachariel and Kyrel, they would tear me apart in an instant. Instead I am useful, and my usefulness keeps me from being destroyed."

Those who found him useful gave him power, authority, protection.

He could wield those things to torment the weak.

Revenge on a cold, uncaring galaxy.

 

[Onrai]

“That is survival in contrast to thriving.” Onrai pointed out as her and @Tu'teggacha’s sojourn through the carcass of the deceased Old One continued. “Of course you cannot stand alone. Fear demands that you always find the most comfortable of positions, that you remain there until you no longer feel it quelled within you and find yourself forced to move on. Without fear, you would to your enemies be far more dangerous than you consider yourself to be now, where your satisfaction over them is only achieved through controlled circumstances. I would not recommend attempting to ride as a warlord - mortals typically should not as it leads to such a waste of resources.”

As they reached one of the edges of Ooradryl’s carcass, the broken remains of some of the armored plates literally within arms reach as well as a multi-kilometer drop to the world’s surface below if one fell out of the remains, she grasped one of the particularly longer shards of damaged material and pulled, breaking it away.

“Remember that this offer is unique - I am a god. What I do not know, I can find out. Yet despite this I still offer you security within my demesne, my patronage, and perhaps more if your loyalty wins out over your need for leverage.” She said, handling the slice of golden plate like a child playing with scissors, completely ignorant of its potential sharpness.

 

[Tu'teggacha]

Walking once more across the husk of the dead giant, the pair of them reached the... edge? Skin? Scales? Tu'teggacha wasn't quite sure what to call it, and he tried not to think about it too hard, lest the nausea and mental strain return. Vertigo already played on his senses at the sight of the colossal drop back to the ground only a few meters from where he stood, making his stomach do summersaults. Although he didn't feel like he had walked a distance that would span multiple vertical kilometers, he had already learned that distances inside the god-corpse did not match up with distances outside it. Reality was different here.

If he fell, though, he was sure he would fall the entire vast distance.

It would take him thirty long seconds to hit the ground.

Swallowing hard, the Ebruchi tore his glassy eyes away from the drop and turned back toward Onrai , who was fiddling with a sharp chunk of the giant corpse's outer shell. She wanted him to let go of his fear, claiming that would make him more dangerous to his enemies... but the Taskmaster was little concerned with such things. He was not truly a power player, with rivals he wanted to strike down. Being hidden and protected was all that he desired; if he stepped fearlessly out of the shadows to strike at his foes, he was placing himself at risk, assuming responsibility for his own safety. That did not remotely tempt him.

But here he was in a different dimension, in the presence of a spirit claiming to be a god. He'd better not anger her, or he might find himself stranded here forever, with no escape from the madness of Otherspace. The thought sent a surge of panic through his rubbery flesh, and his mind went immediately toward the kind of action he always took when faced with such a situation: appeasement. "I do seek security and patronage," he said, and that much was true. She spoke of loyalty, and he could offer that... to a point. He had done all that the Dark Voice had ever asked of him, after all, even putting himself in danger.

But in the end, Tu'teggacha was only truly loyal to himself.

"What do you ask in return?"

 

[Onrai]

“Then that you shall have.” Onrai made it clear to Tu'teggacha that that she would indeed provide him with what he asked for. The piece of Ooradryl’s carcass remained in her hand as she began to knap it firmly against the splintered edge of the plate it came from. Small shardlings of whatever bizarre material the scale was made of fell down the exterior of the hole as the shard seemed to grow further shaped like a blade.

“I will provide you a facility on Kiross from which to interrogate people as well as to further your experiments in. You will keep me aware of what it is you do there, and should you begin something clandestine, know that I will know.” She stated, focusing as the scale soon found itself turned into a small golden blade, fit for a dagger. “And as for what it I desire from you?”

She turned to look at the facial tendrils of the Ebruchi. “You will learn the truth of the galaxy. You will understand many things mortals were not meant to know. You will be taught of everything that has been forgotten, of universal truths even Solipsis himself knew nothing of. And when your studies are complete, you will begin preparing for the day the Father of Shadows breaks free of his prison and seeks to expand his control of mortals beyond the realm of his perverse pocket dimension. The Dark Lord’s actions at Tython may have already damaged the seal upon it.”

For once, Onrai seemed visibly concerned.

 

[Tu'teggacha]

At last, the other shoe dropped. None of this had been about the Brotherhood or its aims. Onrai had her sights set on something far stranger, far more esoteric, than the Mawite vision of galactic cleansing. She spoke of a great seal that locked away some ancient god, presumably one far greater than the one upon whose corpse they stood, and how that seal had been damaged by the Dark Voice's ritual. Plausible, the Taskmaster supposed; Solipsis's actions had wrenched reality in ways it was not meant to bend, and even if that power had failed to unmake Tython, it might have done unseen damage to the galaxy itself.

But Tu'teggacha felt fear creeping back up his spine, kicking his self-preservation instincts into high gear. Onrai's price for all the aid she could offer, the knowledge and fresh base of operations she had promised, was aid in standing against this "Father of Shadows" she kept speaking of. In the present, when the dark god was a distant threat at most, that was an easy bargain to make. But if the Father was real, and if he really was going to break out and become the kind of cosmic threat that had given the celestials pause, then wasn't agreeing to fight him was akin to messy suicide? What chance could they have?

"You offer much," Tu'teggacha finally replied, "but you also ask much in return. If this... this demon god breaks free of a prison made by the ancients, what hope do we have against it? How do you propose to fight this Father of Shadows if it escapes?" Although strong in the Force in his own limited way, a true master of telepathy and the Memory Walk, the Ebruchi was hardly a warrior... and he doubted his talents would work against a primordial being of deepest shadow. What could he possibly offer that would help Onrai's struggle against a being of such incredible cosmic power? He could not imagine.

Perhaps the spirit was mad, to think they could resist this thing.

Perhaps, if its prison truly was opening, they were all doomed.