Private The Making Of & Undoing

[Ellie Mors]

Villain​

FUTURE / / PAST

"Identity, it's a confusing thing. I can be born first.. only to be replaced by a 'sibling' that gets to experience my life instead; but then which of us is real? Does experience make the individual, or do we possess our lives even through that theft?"

The red glow of a star slowly being consumed by a supermassive blackhole illuminated the night sky, a grim future to a galaxy; one in which it descends to dystopia through the vain efforts of a galactic war to put a stop to a force of nature that they couldn't have hoped to contain. Few lived on here, now, and those that did knew they were only capable of doing so because that very force of nature had consumed itself in its madness and that their galaxy, and themselves, would slowly follow. A downward spiral into a gravity so great that it was dwarfed only by the hubris of the ones that had led to its creation in the first place - so massive that light itself, both of the stars and the force itself, could not escape its pull.

"What do I sound like, I wonder, when you hear me speak - through time, across space, do I sound to you as I do to myself or do you hear your own voice like an echo in your head?"

The sand walked across on the barren wasteland she was confined to, what had once been the vibrant metropolis of Denon, crunched audibly to her ears but failed to be heard by the one she spoke to. She had been walking for days, weeks even, with no end in sight. Land stretched on eternally in each direction, ending only at the horizon where she could not see over the curvature of the world, with echoes of what must have been ruins from some great war etched into the periphery of her vision. It contrasted greatly with the world her audience of one would have been familiar with, though faint traces of what she saw bled into what she said like ink on wet paper. She shrugged, though the gesture was lost on the one she had been questioning as she couldn't have been seen from where they were in relation to her.

"Across time, through space, who is to say this is even the right timeline? I imagine you'd ask something like that if I told you that this was what all your life's work would lead to -"

There was a brief pause, one punctuated by girlish, knowing, laughter.

"Oops, that was supposed to be a secret. Silly me."

She turned her head from one side to the other, then back towards the direction she was walking in.

"Is it worth the risk, though, that your instinct to doubt me could result in much, much, more than failure on your part - but on the collapse of that fantastical order I've heard you liked to harp on?"

She slowed down to dramatically kick the sand up into the air in front of her, sending a shower of greys and violet cascading down across the majority of her vision.

"How's about we cut to the chase - I imagine you'd like to know how to prevent this? Or maybe you just want to know who I am."

Darth Carnifex ​

 

[Darth Carnifex]

Remnicore, Khartsis Keep
Present Day​

The keep was quiet, only the muffled scuff of boot on stone carrying down the vaunted halls. Few walked along the corridors, often only the hunched silhouettes of cultists carrying buzzing red lanterns could be seen moving about the ancient stronghold. Beyond Khartsis' walls was a world devoid of life, a vast empty canvas of grays and whites where a cold howling wind cut deep to the bone. But Remnicore was not as lifeless as it appeared, a great monstrosity slumbered beneath the cracked obsidian and rivers of echoing silver.

A great dragon, a beast from another age, coiled through the labyrinthine caverns. His scales could be seen poking through the unearthed ground, his size so immense that it appeared to be without end. Whispers among the cultists proliferated a rumor that the great slumbering beast encircled the world, perhaps even multiple times. There was no way to verify what one cultist said to another, for they had only caught sparse glimpses of the great dragon as it slept.

It hadn't awoken since before it retreated underground as an adolescence, and so far it had not yet emerged. The Dark Father referred to it as Remnicore's guardian, an indomitable watcher. But the dragon was now the furthest thing from these toiling cultist's minds.

Their master had returned.

It was prophesized in their dreams, an encroaching shadow that woke them, screaming and sweating, with horrid nightmares. Signs were observed, bones burnt and divined. Ritual sacrifice took the lives of many cultists, many others died in their sleep; consumed by nightmare. Those that remained assembled for His arrival, a dark shadow from beyond the stars. His sleek shuttle came to a rest on the landing platform attached to Khartsis by a long narrow bridge. They bowed, they groveled, as He passed them by, the hem of His cloak dragging along the ground behind Him.

Though they paid Him every respect, every admiration, He didn't even look at them. They would eventually return to their toil, slinking into the shadows of the keep, back down into the abyss. Darth Carnifex, meanwhile, walked unaccompanied into the heart of Khartsis Keep. It was here that He had first discovered the mausoleum of Tor Valum, an ancient Sith Lord that had ruled Remnicore thousands and thousands of years ago. All that remained was a brittle desiccated skeleton, now kept in-tact through careful preservation and cybernetic reinforcement.

Tor Valum's skeleton was encased in a sarcophagus of obsidian glass and Sarrassian iron, suspended from the mausoleum's ceiling by thick iron chains. Opposite of the sarcophagus was a throne, one that had been assembled after the mausoleum's opening. Carnifex walked over to the throne and lowered Himself into its seat, both arms draped over the identical rests placed on either side. Mechanical arms, emerging from a cylindrical ornament bolted to the ceiling, maneuvered a crown down onto Carnifex's brow. Needles emerged from the skin-facing side of the crown, biting into the Dark Lord's head and burrowing down into His skull and lightly piercing portions of His brain.

Within Tor Valum's sarcophagus, a similar device activated and began to pin needles into what fossilized brain matter was left clinging to the inside of the ancient Sith Lord's skull. Fluid was transferred between both brains, Carnifex's eyes rolling back into His head as the world fell away and was replaced by darkness.

Endless darkness.

Denon, End of Eternity​

The Future?​

His eyes opened with a start, a rush of breath filling His lungs as He bolted up. His body ached, like it had been lying on the ground for over a hundred years. Looking down at His hands, he realized that they were mummified, sapped of moisture and left to harden under the baking sun. His joints were stiff, the body didn't want to respond to His commands, but with great effort He began to move. Rising up from the ground, He looked around at the devastation surrounding Him.

Thousands of bodies.

Perhaps millions.

He coughed, exhaling dust and bits of flesh that had rotted off and congealed in His throat. Now that He was standing, He could better survey Himself and His surroundings. In terms of Him, the body He wore was little more than a skeleton with pieces of dried meat clinging to the bones. Not even worms had feasted on the body, for even the worms had died. Only continual concentrated blasts of radiation had broken down the bodies at His feet, the entire planet poisoned with distronic radiation.

No matter how far He walked, there was nothing. All life had been extinguished. Even the heavens above seemed to be dying, the great fixture of a supermassive black hole swallowing dying stars filling the sky from horizon to horizon.

So it gave Him pause when He heard a voice on the wind.

Not just any voice.

A woman's voice.

He stopped and turned, straining to hear the voice that was now growing louder, growing closer. The voice spoke to Him, telling Him that this was all to come because of what He sought. He did not interrupt, He did not interject, He just listened. When she had at last finished speaking, He took His turn. The body's mouth opened, no teeth or tongue hiding within that skeletal jaw, but His voice nonetheless emerged.

"This is your future, not mine. I have seen the path." After a moment of silence, "Name yourself."

Ellie Mors ​