Private When the Light Doesn't Come

[Efret Farr]

Desperation lured her further into the swamp like a siren’s song that she couldn’t hear but which still gripped her heart and tugged it along. She followed its invisible will lest the pump be ripped clean of her chest.

Long blades of grass and frilly fronds brushed against her legs as she cut a path through the thick mud and humus. Nirrah flew ahead, soaring above the marshland and dodging the rare tree.

Soon—or maybe not so, for time didn’t seem to flow here, stagnant like the water around her—she had reached a spot where she no longer felt her usher’s presence. She had only just noticed when another urge surged into her, this one allowing her to stand still.

She screamed.

At the image of Elias she still saw so clearly in her mind’s eye.

At the happiness that eluded her.

At herself for not being enough.

Months of frustration exploded with the pressure of having been contained for just as long.

Critters of all kinds skittered in the underbrush, their auras retreating from around her in a halo. Hope followed suit; Efret felt its distant warmth pulling further away, still there but almost gone.

She took a deep breath, drawing ancient, earthy musk through her nose. The air scratched against her lungs, almost painful, burning, but she paid it no mind and screamed again.

A cloud of isolated fog rose up from a fern-like shrub in front of her a few meters. Efret blinked, trying to understand its provenance. It was a cold morning, but such a small pocket of condensation shouldn’t have been forming, let alone drifting slightly into the clear, crisp surrounding air.

No.

No, it wasn’t fog. It was smoke.

Irregular rings bloomed on the foliage, opening little portholes that viewed the otherwise obscured young fire burning orange and yellow.

Efret stepped backward and looked down at the peat underfoot.

Had she caught it?

She reached out both physically and energetically to the Force to smother the flames, but recoiled when something shifted in her mind. Her consciousness almost cracked as it settled along the fault scarp, straddled between reality and…nightmare. Her face contorted in confusion.

The scab on her mind over the wound that Malva'ikh Dralidok had cleaved during, and even after, their first encounter, had begun to weep recently on Woostri, but now blood seeped from it anew. A hairline cracked, then two, three, more, and then the dam breached—not with the terrible tremors of an outburst flood but the effusive dread of impending overwhelm.

A vision was coming, coalescing in the space between here among the waterlogged grasses and somewhere else, somewhere broken, somewhere in untold agony, somewhere clamped in a young but cold and domineering iron grip.

Somewhere Core-ward.

She saw the form as it began to nucleate, not from her perspective, but from Nirrah’s as across the clearing from where she set on a leafless branch. Brushing her mind gently but urgently, Efret bade the convor to stay where she was. Her skin crawled across her muscle fascia like bugs over bark even as she watched a humanoid appear.

Mercy​

 

[Mercy]

Efret Farr

It was like a mountain slowly unfolding from the mists.

Large, solid mass, that grew. But every move showcasing a touch of the human it made up, the carve of shoulders, the swell of arms. Hips fracturing between mist and flesh.

And then it opened it eyes.

Amber, burned bright, and hot.

It was looking around, taking in the scene, but it was hard to witness... anything in this state. Finally the burning fire settled on Efret herself. There was no recognition and the mind that was inside the apparition was cloudy, one might almost say stormy. A tempest in constant flux. It was open, one could brush their mind against it, but they'd be liable to be pulled into the chaos.

"You are loud..." The mountain sighed as it stretched. "I should not be here, this is not my kind of scene."

Again those bonfires in the mountain looked around.

"All swamp and moss. Disgusting." Back to Efret again. "I am asleep, I should be resting. Why have you drawn me here?"

 

[Efret Farr]

The fire and its smoke formed into flesh and the sinew it encased. The details that formed struck her in their entirety despite her physical distance from the figure. It to be should have been foggy, and not because of the smoke.

This was a vision. In her mind's eye, she wasn't limited by her degree of blindness.

She stood her ground not out of bravery nor naivety. She felt the Darkness coursing through the figure like a second blood, sticky and viscous, and saw it, too, burning behind its eyes like the holes burned through the fronds below.

Fire burned in Efret too, but her warmth was compassionate rather than quietly threatening.

She stood her ground out of caution that, should she step back, she might further offend the figure. What she felt for this unknown woman’s Darkness wasn't quite fear; it was respect stopping well short of approval.

If you didn't respect the Dark Side like a Nexu, you were at danger of falling victim to it. Neither have to be particularly hungry or enraged—their very nature was to be hostile and consuming.

She rose a closed fist to her chest.

Her brow knit and a small frown formed. The figure might find the sincerity on her face equally disgusting as the landscape.

<Sorry.>

The tinny, feminine voice of her interpretation unit could have been heard at a reasonable radius in the marsh if anyone had been there to hear it. Mercy, however, was not there—not really—so she only saw Efret sign.

<Didn’t mean.>

She hadn't meant either. It was only natural to apologize for their unintended effects, even to one such as this figure.

Of course, she had meant to be loud, but not to disturb anyone. That was why she had come all the way out here.

She emphatically hadn't meant to conjure a vision of any kind, let alone one of this mountain.

Mercy​

 

[Mercy]

Efret Farr

Burning flames flicked down to the fist to the chest and then returned to the face above.

Brows furrowed.

There was a memory, even in this sleeping state. A memory of an angry girl, practically feral. A princess. Who had to attend lessons that she was not interested in. Which bored her to death. A princess who wished to fly and would leap off of cliffs to dive into deep waters. Who climbed trees and plucked berries and wrestled with boys and wished to kiss girls.

A princess who was told to conform. Whose fingers bled from having to rewrite lessons a thousand times as punishment. Whose hands smarted from rulers smacking them.

Until they perfected the penmanship, the embroidery, the 'which fork must be used here' and also... the application of half a dozen languages. Including one that was a touch more interesting to her than others. The princess did not enjoy speaking, but she enjoyed using her hands. She enjoyed the communication of the body in a way that explained utterly why she had thrived under the Echani people when she studied with Quinn Varanin and Spencer Varanin and Ashin Cardé Varanin .

So it was not strange that the princess enjoyed hand-signs too. Secretive, almost like a code.

She rose a closed fist to her chest.
<Sorry.> <Didn't mean.>

And it was so rare to find someone polite.

"It's fine, girl." The mountain huffed and shrugged its shoulders. "You seem miserable." Mercy looked around, the image flickering in smoke as the giant slept.

"This entire place seems miserable. Why are you here? There are nicer places in the Galaxy."

 

[Efret Farr]

<Miserable, yes.>

Warning tingled at the top of her spine even as honesty flowed out of her fingers. This mountain didn't seem like one she ought to be being polite to, or confiding in, but doing both felt so good. So relieving. So right. So she followed her instinct.

<Past come-here because want not disturb anyone.> And so that she wouldn't mar her opinion of a subjectively more beautiful place.

She paused a moment to look around the marsh as if to punctuate her next point. <No-one here. You not here. Not physical.> Then the likely answer to their shared metaphysical situation came to her. <Think I Force yell. Bring-here your consciousness somehow.>

The last time she had Force screamed had been in Theed immediately after the Netherworld had swallowed Elias. She didn't remember it herself, but she was told that its effect had been constructive rather than destructive though it had been fueled by fusion-hot grief. Ornamental flowers potted in rectangular planters throughout the city square had sprouted new growth rather than withering. But here, upon reaching unwittingly for the same power, she formed a mental connection with one of the Darkness' agents.

Panic gripped her heart and squeezed, but she managed to keep the discomfort off of her face.

<You Sith?>

Mercy​

 

[Mercy]

Efret Farr

Truth to be told what Efret was saying was rather gibberish to her.

Not because of the sign language or anything like that. She could interpret that relatively well, even though it had been decades since she last had to use it.

No, she just didn't have much truck with all this floaty boaty Force magic shit. But that wasn't Farr's fault, so Mercy tried her best to listen, she was much more open-minded while she was asleep anyway. The desire to wrench people's heads off when they inconvenienced her was muted in the moment, at least a touch while she was in deep sleep. She had better things to do.

Like rest.

<You Sith?>

"Worse." The mountain responded after a while. "A Sith can be reasoned with. I am a monster, who does as she pleases, no matter the obstacle, no matter who will hurt because of it."

Worse because she didn't have a structured belief-system that could be exploited or explained.

Whatever popped up in her head, Mercy simply... did. Because she desired to.

"And you?" Mercy's nostrils flared, she breathed in, taking in the scent of the ethereal. "You have light. But its muted, fucked with. A Jedi, but different. What are you, dream-summoner?"

 

[Efret Farr]

Worse.

Efret's mind shuddered. She had seen many of the heinous things that the Darkside begot; she didn't want to even imagine worse, but apparently she had accidentally summoned it anyway.

The response she gave to the mountain's question was still truthful, but molded with caution.

<Wounded years ago on #Jedha. Darkness attach me. Can't release.>

She had thought its influence over her effectively gone until a few months ago, when meeting with another Jedi struggling with a similar taint had revived hers. Since then, she had managed to quell the nightmares and quiet the urges that it planted underneath her skin while awake. But those things too seemed to be on their way back again, with a vengeance if conjuring a real-time Dark vision was any indication.

<Left #NJO for different reason.>

Even still, Efret considered herself a Jedi. One's identity as one wasn't tied to any faction. It wasn't even tied to one's struggles with the Darkside, especially not if it was imposed on one by another. It was tied to the Lightside of the Force. Everything else ebbed and flowed. That did not.

<Now alone.>

She felt safe in saying that. Neither woman seemed to know where the other physically was.

Mercy​

 

[Mercy]

Efret Farr

She listened impassively and her image flickered.

As if the mountain was laughing or shuddering, it was difficult to decide which it was. It was looking at Efret with interest, and didn't interrupt her even once, until they were done speaking.

"Fear not the Dark Side." Mercy finally said, the tone not quiet her own. She didn't speak like that in the waking life. When she had all her faculties and knew how to code-switch. Right now Mercy didn't have the ability, she spoke from the deepest recesses of her heart, from the ancient past when she was a Princess of an Imperium.

"All it is, is passion and hunger and desire." The mountain shrugged. "Use it to achieve your ambitions by any means necessary. Do as you please, let no one stop you."

Head tilted.

"Why should anyone be allowed to tell you what to do or not to do? Are you not your own Lord? Do you not have two hands to squeeze and twist and rend? Can you not use your teeth to rip?"

The words would surround Farr.

In the waking life Mercy had been referred to as a charismatic figure. Someone... who drew people to her, by force of will, or otherwise. It was worse in her sleep. When her golden arm, which had earned her the moniker Star-Arm, was unrestrained and effected everything around it. Feeding into the worst habits of those around it.

The mountain leaned in.

"Do you like being alone?"

 

[Efret Farr]

Being told was all it took to compel her to not fear the Dark side.

It was as if another siren call overtook her, this one wholly unlike the first. That had been like a fire lit under her feet, compelling her to walk on to avoid burning herself. And all the while on her hike out here she had felt the fringes of heat not up the backs of her calves but inside her ribs—beyond uncomfortable but somehow also enchanting.

Yes, pleasing to the Darkness that lapped at her mind.

But this, this was like something with enough bass to excite the very air she breathed. Whatever it was gave her a second pulse, a tiny but terrible beast stirring in the voids of her organs, building up the daring strength to claw its way up her trachea.

"Do you like being alone?"

<No.>

Her fingers almost moved of their accord. No, entirely.

What? How?

<Now not alone. You here.>

Her other hand became a puppet to an unseen force too. No, not unseen. It was herself; these things she meant to say. She wanted to be understood by this monster. To become like her. The very presence of such a mountain would inspire the valley that looked up at it to rise, hopeful to meet its grandiose, geologic gaze. What power it held. What defiance. What weathered stability.

Her own disbelief melted away. She no longer pretended to resist who she was allowing herself to become.

<Your name what?>

As if the grave she had dug for what Light yet remained inside her wasn't deep enough, what she said next ensured that the walls were too high to climb out of.

<I-am Efret.>

Whatever dwelt inside the mountain reached out and throttled her.

Somewhere, somehow, Malva'ikh was smiling.

Efret Farr had finally fallen.

Mercy​

 

[Mercy]

Efret Farr

The Mountain smiled and moved forward.

Every step it took was a geological event.

Outside of her dreams when Mercy moved the ground trembled. But inside of them, the Mountain was like a tectonic shift, the planetary plate shifting with every move. Around them the scene shuddered as it attempted to contain the mind of Mercy, when she was so pleased and happy. "You are right, you are not alone anymore."

The monster declared as it stood in front of her.

Large hands, carved for violence, settled on Efret's shoulders with almost gentle nurture.

The connection only deepened with that mental touch. Just as in the waking world, when Mercy touched or was touched, the recipient gained full knowledge of the strength coiled deep inside of the hungry creature. It would happen now too. Like a lightning bolt surging through Efret's body, revealing the potential within Mercy.

"Efret..." Mercy whispered warmly. "It is a pleasure meeting you, daughter of valleys. You are coming home... where you are meant to be."

Then she smiled.

"My name is Mercy. Empress of the Core... and to you... I will be guide, teacher if you wish, and above all... friend. Tell me where you are, Efret. I will lead you to your people and you shall never be alone again."