Chapter 19
Time check: ?
"Every step, a new horror," I mutter. My companions do not reply. They can see the grim truth for themselves. For we tread upon a broken landscape, an endless graveyard of apocalyptic devastation. By every metric, the Keeper's realm is a dead world, a place where mortality and eternity meet. Among all the lies the skin changer uttered, that was its one truth.
This colossal ruin was once a city I think. A metropolis even, with capacious streets long abandoned, crumbling buildings and calcified bone bridges. Many strange monuments have symbols carved across their flanks. Some are no more than faded etchings while others pulse an ominous green. None of them are comprehensible though. Signs or warnings perhaps?
I glance at my brother. "Do you recognize any of this writing?"
"No," Revan admits and I sense disquiet at his own ignorance. "I have delved deep into our archives. Studied the eons between our founding to the epoch of the Order's glory. But in all my time researching the Sundering and the great wars that preceded it, these have never surfaced."
That gives me pause. "We are somewhere that predates our Order then? Our founding?"
"Amarinthe said this was a realm of elder powers. She was not exaggerating."
"Well I wouldn't recommend living here," Mysteel grumbles. She wrinkles her nose, surveying the dilapidation. "How the hell did anyone travel? I haven't seen anything that looks like a ship or speeder."
I do not know what to say about that. If there truly was a superior civilization here, it has long since expired. But there are glimpses of greatness in this lost paradise. The carcass of skyscrapers can still be glimpsed in the smog choked horizon, higher and prouder than any on the Throneworld. Beneath fleshy roots and rotten vegetation are snatches of artful pursuits. Cracked mosaics, sculptures chiseled from gemstones. All broken, but still gleaming after years of erosion. The aesthetics are alluring but like everything else, utterly unfamiliar to my senses.
Some creations have no analogues to our reality. I see rectangular constructs hovering in midair, with no discernible purpose other than to glow with ethereal fire. Multi hued amoebas blink randomly into existence, searing away chunks of undergrowth in a vain attempt to halt their defilement. There are stranger things as well, but even their mundane edifices - the swirling towers and soaring arches - would make our finest Republic architects weep with envy.
There was perfection here. A harmony of functionality and beauty which even my spartan tastes can appreciate. But like everything beautiful in this world, it all sinks slowly into the primordial mire. Gradually strangled into submission by the horror birthed from its ruined womb.
What spawned from these hallowed carcasses are truly repulsive. Pillars of blinking eyes and screaming faces gape at us as we walk by, groaning under the weight of crumbling edifices. Fleshy things ape the shape of trees, their branches a cavalcade of outstretched limbs over taut skin. The roads themselves are paved with red vines that pulse and shiver like capillaries. This city has become a riot of plenty, the endless proliferation of mutated flesh stretched over countless kilometres. I cannot begin to conceive how these occurred but I can sense its catalyst. The raw essence of Force flows through these mutated effigies. It strains and bursts at the fleshy seams, struggling to form even more obscenities.
Force emanations bleed from the very fabric of space as well, plaguing our surroundings with gravimetric distortions. Boulders the size of cruisers float in midair leaking globules of black liquid. Lightning rips into instantiation, only to crystallize into ice shards. And it is not only the physical, time itself is in flux here. In some zones we walk past, droplets of black rain fall at a glacial pace while some are frozen completely in midair. There are brothers and sisters in stasis, arms raised, their last expressions frozen in a rictus of dread. We cannot approach them, lest we are sucked into their temporal hell.
"But the question must be asked," I begin slowly. "How did this travesty happen?"
None of us have a good answer. All we can say for sure is that the cataclysm left a gaping wound, still vivid like fresh wine stains. Civilizations die, it is true. It is as inevitable as the mountains eroding or the death of stars. Only the manner of their deaths can come into question. There is infighting of course. Corruption. The brutal indifference of natural disasters or the might of conquering nations. These downfalls are mundane, repeated ad nauseam the moment one man proclaimed them self above all others. But this...this experience is utterly alien. An entire world undone by the Force, its inhabitants wiped out by the resulting death scream.
"What occurred could not have been a natural phenomenon," Revan confirms. "Only excessive application of the Force would leave such a permanent taint."
"A gross abuse of power," I growl and resist the urge to spit. The air is so saturated with Force overspill it leaves a foul taste in my mouth. "Yet I still cannot make sense of this fallout. What are we witnessing, brother? Why is this place so...malleable?"
For long moment, Revan treads in silence, collecting his thoughts. "We know at its core, the Force is an energy field generated by all living beings," he begins. "The rawest initiate can recite this fact, yet to stop there would do the subject a great disservice. As I told Ciras, the intricacies of the Force are infinite and its boundless potential is barely tapped by limited minds."
My brother glances beyond our immediate surroundings, towards one of the many anomalies in the distance. Of all the strange things plaguing this world, this one fills me with particular dread. For there are no pyrotechnics to see, no tears in the fabric of reality. Rather, I perceive it as a black hole, an entire jagged landmass devoid of light and where the whorls of Force overspill have no purchase. Its emptiness fills my soul with revulsion, not unlike the anathemas we carry and I quickly avert my gaze.
"In our Order, we have savants from different circles devoted to comprehending its true nature," my brother continues. "Hundreds of treatise and tombs are written on the subject each year. They are analyzed, debated only to be rejected after millennia of research. Our most enlightened call themselves Masters, but I fear they too are merely children stumbling in the dark."
I eye him cautiously. For all our time together, we have rarely discussed metaphysics and these revelations gives me pause. "Then what does that leave us with? Theories?"
"Theories," Revan muses. "Yes, I suppose so. For my part, I perceive the Force as an echo. A reflection of similar emotions congealing together like rivulets of water running down a cliff face. They form streams and eddies of anguish and desire, pools of hatred and torrents of pride. Since the dawn of time, these tides have flowed unceasingly through the mirror realm of the Force. And as the intelligent species of the galaxy prospered and grew, so did their hopes and dreams, their rage and wars, their love and hatred. In this way, the myriad of sentient species fed the Force, until its gestalt power held complete dominion over our physical realm."
I scratch my beard, trying to absorb what my brother is trying to tell me. "Did Master Vandar teach you that?"
Revan gives the slightest shrug of his shoulders. "We held similar views. But here is the crux of our theory. What we perceive is merely the certus of the Force, the tip of its infinite iceberg. Beyond the boundaries of physical space, unrestricted by time or causality, there is the obsucrus, the true dimension incomprehensible to our minds. It lies on the other side of dreams and nightmares, infinite in scope but without form or structure. This is the realm where hope goes to die, and by all accounts, it is an uncaring, chaotic pandemonium of souls."
"The Netherworld," I venture with more than a little sarcasm. "You really believe this place is somehow tied to it?
Revan nods. "It has bled into it. That is why this world has no constant."
"Rubbish. Pure supposition."
"There is evidence to support it," Revan insists. "Valia, a former Jedi theologian wrote of her near death experience. In her tomb Eternity's Gate, she described a place where spirits rive, in constant war, fighting over the raw stuff of creation that birthed them. Titanic hosts clash there she claimed, locked together in a conflict that is as old as the universe and can never be truly won. Vast armies rage and scream, each warrior formed only of the psychic energy of emotion, and each driven onwards by the whims of their imprinted memories."
"I've never heard of her."
"Copies of Valia's work are vanishingly rare. The Exemplar Host deemed the tomb heretical and she was executed for undermining the Order with radical thoughts."
"Of course," I mutter sourly.
"Other survivors had their own accounts," Revan continues. "Captured Sith would rave that the Netherworld is a constantly churning and reforming landscape, with rivers of boiling blood flowing through petrified woodlands under crimson skies. Other Jedi spoke of great stairways leading into the sky and joining themselves from below in an ever lasting loop, where castles made of bones and fortress of ichor stand amidst copses of limbs. Some even claimed to see the departed spirits of titanic god machines slumped in graveyard heaps."
"There is little...consistency in their recounts," I note. As we talk, I become aware of a strange prickling on my skin. The sensation is slight, but it feels like something is trying to burrow into me. The air feels heavier too, more oppressive. I try to ignore these irritants.
Perhaps that is the lesson," Revan counters. "Their recounts suggest that the Netherworld is timeless and ever shifting, a dimension parallel to ours devoid of consistency and unbound by the physical laws which govern space and time. It is a random instructed panorama of pure Force energy and unfocused consciousness, unfettered by limits of physics and undirected by intelligent purpose and will. In other words, the realm of souls exists far outside imagination, an impossible abstraction made real only by metaphor and the roiling emotions of mortal minds."
Revan waves around our surroundings.
"Can you not see the parallel then? This world is constantly reborn yet has never changed, eternally wracked by mutation though endless in potential. Our mundane senses cannot see, smell or hear its true form, so our minds constructs poorly understood analogues. Because to try and glean its true nature would simply drive us insane."
He stops suddenly, eyes narrowed.
"What is it?"
"Where is Mysteel?"
He is right, she is nowhere to be seen. I curse. We should have sensed her departure but fatigue and the detonation's aftershock have addled our awareness.
"She was by my side just moments ago."
"Back. Quickly," Revan urges.
I turn. That movement, that slight shift of the head saves me. Something red shrieks past. It narrowly misses my skull to pulverize the crystal lamp inches behind. An ambush.
There is no chance to shout a warning before something black and slimy slithers around Revan's neck. He is lifted off his feet and sent crashing into a wall of thorns. I try to intervene but dark shapes drop from above. Leaping from scaffolding and broken ledges to accost us on all sides.
Some are almost human shaped, with two legs and two arms, and the head they were born with. Most are not. Some are like insects, while others have been almost entirely swallowed by unspeakable changes. Slimy tumours with teeth and spiked bones bury the remains of half-glimpsed faces. Revan is being crushed by the most afflicted of them all. The tentacle strangling him is a bloated tongue, stretching impossibly long from its malformed head. The gut is a horrific parody of a second mouth, fanged and dripping with acidic drool. It opens and closes, belching out chunks of its own entrails.
Despite all these mutations, I still register their tattered robes, their rank iconography and weapons of office. More brothers and sisters, further down the path of damnation but sworn kin nonetheless.
"Desist!" I order. "We are not your enemy!"
They ignore me. The horde advances with blade and lightning tipped hands, rheumy eyes wide with desperation. Perhaps their minds have rotted. Or perhaps these wretches have seen too many betrayals and false hope to consider negotiations. Better to kill a potential ally than fall prey to those...things.
My blade flares to life and parries the swing from an afflicted brother. His head is warping, fusing into something unholy and I can see my disgust reflected back from multifaceted eyes. That revulsion fuels my next strike. I roar while swinging and my blade cleaves through his block, through most of his shoulder and out his midriff.
A blur of movement catches my eye. I turn, just in time to see a giant proboscis spear the meat of my shoulder. Pain flares, only eclipsed by my disbelief at the giant mosquito head staring back at me. The fact it is still attached to a human body makes this abomination infinitely more repugnant. I grab the offending appendage and snap it like a twig. The thing screeches, blood spewing wildly from its broken orifice. My next thrust ends its tormented existence as well as its bulbous head.
Behind the corpse, a figure darts in. I barely register the new opponent before a blade slashes across my neck, nearly severing it. My opponent spins and I briefly register a female face. Humanoid, with only the slightest traces of mutation.
She launches a blistering blade sequence. I give ground inch by inch, barely staying ahead of the onslaught. This one is fast and murderously strong. From her, I sense an emotion that far outstrips the pain and despair and one I have seen infecting the ruined souls here. It is rage. Mindless unbridled rage. Rage is the canker in our hearts that has existed since the first man murdered another. The living will never escape its influence and if we allow it, it will consume us just like all our traitorous brethren throughout the millennia.
Our blades lock and we jostle for position, trying to unbalance the other. Our faces are inches apart and I see her clearly for the first time. My blood runs cold. At a distance she looked almost untouched but now I see she is more damned than any of them.
Most of her robes have rotted away and she has replaced them with bones. Humanoid bones still glistening with half chewed gristle and smashed skulls matted with bloody hair.
My opponent sees my revulsion and it stokes her fury.
"S-stop looking at me," she gurgles. The wattles of her throat quiver, making her finger necklace rattle.
"Stop...stop, judging me,"
"Look! Look at what you do to yourselves!" I snarl. For a moment, the fury subsides and regret flashes across her ruined face.
"Do you think I want to do this?" she lisps. "Do you think I want to damn myself? There is no other way. Not here."
My opponent jabs at my open wound with sharpened claws. Agony erupts in my gut, greater than I have ever felt, greater than mortals can possibly endure. My legs fail, leaving me helpless on the looms large. Her fetid breath mists the air red. Spitting blood, I raise my hand and try to summon enough energy reserves to hurl her away.
Nothing. Not even a gust of wind. With a lurch of horror, I realize my body has short circuited, cut off from the roaring inferno of power that surrounds me. Those damned grenades.
The hag straddles my finger wrap around my neck, cold as a wight's and constricts with frightening force. I gurgle, struggling futilely against the inevitable. Beyond her, I see Revan being dragged inexorably towards the giant slavering jaws.
"Shh-shh. Just let it happen. Let me end your pain."
A black shroud begins to cover my eyes and I feel the last of my strength being leeched away.
There is a muffled roar. Both of us look back, surprised. Revan has jammed his palm underneath his tormentor's jaw, slamming it shut. Black bile gushes from the severed tongue and it slackens. Revan rips the writhing obscenity from his neck as its owner gurgles in pain. He pries the monster's mouth wider, forcing the discarded organ back into its gullet. The fiend begins choking to death on his own mutated tongue.
The remaining two monsters move to engage the new threat. Too slow, far too slow. My brother pounces at the first mutant and it barely manages to block the slash. A deft twist snakes Revan's blade under his opponent's guard and opens the fiend's throat. He sidesteps, just as the other thrusts clumsily. Revan holds his blade parallel as it lumbers past, carving his stomach open from groin to shoulder. Black guts and bile spew out onto dead soil.
My tormentor screams in outrage, releasing her grip on me. She surges up, roaring a challenge at Revan. Coughing, I lash out and snatch her foot. The fiend rewards my effort with several kicks to the face.
"Get off! Get off you-"
Revan shears her leg off. She shrieks and collapses onto the floor, clutching her smoking stump. The woman raises her lightsaber with a trembling hand and has it lopped off for the effort. The scream becomes a whine. Her fear is palpable as Revan towers over her, dark eyes boring into her shrivelled soul. At that moment, I cannot tell who is the greater monster.
"P-Please. Please," she begs, bulbous eyes wide. "I o-only did what I had to. T-To survive."
"That used to be true," says Revan quietly. He bends down and puts his hands around her bloated neck. "This will be quick."
As always, my brother is true to his word. But I doubt she appreciated the courtesy judging by her death scream. When the deed is done, he stands and glances at my wound.
"That needs to be tended to."
"I'm fine," I grunt and haul myself onto my feet. In truth my stomach wrenches with agony at the slightest movement. Internal bleeding is likely but I cannot admit weakness. We do not have the time nor resources to linger. Without another word, I walk past him and begin backtracking the way we came.
We turn a street corner, into what resembles an abandoned plaza. A flash of gold sweeps over rusty red and then I see her. Mysteel is trampling over a giant mound of bones. At the centre of the plaza is a statue, worn and draped with a nest of giant bloated vines. The vines bloom with scintillating colours and they entrance the eye, writhing with strange patterns.
More tendrils wave at Mysteel lazily, beckoning her the same way a carnivorous plant would entice a fly. Our sister complies, her movements sluggish. She seems oblivious to the threat in front of her.
"Over there," I whisper urgently. Revan nods. We begin hurrying towards her, crunching over a sea of broken bones. Why are there so many damn bones? My answer comes when the pulsing vines unfurl like a curtain. They reveal a fleshy maw filled with half chewed limbs and rotten meat. Black fluids drip from a million needle shaped teeth. The leaves begin pulsing red with anticipation.
"Mysteel!" I shout but it is no use. Our sister keeps shuffling. The broken bodies of former victims crunch under her sluggish footfalls.
"M-mother?" Mysteel I hear her whisper. Her eyes are unfocused and her lips are trembling. Outstretched arms inch closer to the slobbering maw.
"Force, I've missed you so much."
Revan hefts his anathema while running. He spears the abomination in its centre mass before the fleshy appendages can envelop our sister. The thing shrieks like a woman. Its vines shudder before darkening and dissolve into a puddle of blood.
Mysteel rounds on Revan, furious. She punches and claws at him with a savagery I didn't know she possessed. It takes both of us to restrain her. "You bastard!" she shrieks. "Why did you do that?! Why?"
"That wasn't your mother, Mysteel," I try to explain. She bucks and kicks sending new waves of agony down my gut.
"It was her!" she insists, half sobbing. Revan snatches her wrists and glares at her. His baleful eyes wrenches Mysteel out of her hysteria.
"I've seen Thalia," he says firmly. "She had two arms and legs. One head. That thing was an abomination."
"But-."
"Remember Amarinthe's words," Revan orders. "Do not look. Do not engage. Trust nothing."
Mysteel takes a shuddering breath. Clarity returns to her sapphire eyes and she nods, chastened.
"She also said we should follow the light." I point to the distant horizon, towards the pillar of swirling light that greeted us when we first arrived. I have no idea what direction that is. None of our tools produce consistent bearings. "That...thing is the closest thing we have to a beacon."
Revan frowns. "I'm unconvinced she meant it that literally."
"What else do we have to go on?" I ask. Frustration must have bled into my voice for my companions give me strange looks. It is hard to remain composed with so much negative Force here. Dark tendrils burrows into our skin, always trying to find a chink in our psyche.
"I'm with Shiny on this, Rev" Mysteel says after an uncomfortable silence. "If we're going to follow her instructions, we might as well follow it to the letter." She looks at her feet. "I don't want to think what slogging through this muck will do to my boots though."
My brother looks to each of us but does not give voice to his thoughts. Reluctantly, he nods.
"As you wish."
Time check: ?
It isn't apparent where the city ends and when the wasteland begins but the thought occurs that the land is becoming less...solid. Forlorn towers become less frequent, giving way to strange menhirs worn by an eternity of corrosive winds. My boots begin sinking deep into spongy matter, and liquid pushes up to glisten on the surface. I see ferns and kelp-tubes threading around our feet now, each as black as nightshade and pocked with glowing phosphor-spines.
It is always night in the Keeper's realm. No dawn sun pierces its shifting clouds, and the only illumination comes from the strange light beacon that beckons us. Everything else is dying, undergoing a glacial decomposition that seems to have stretched through aeons. From time to time, phosphorescent mists belch from rotting carcasses and the bioluminescent fungi that sprout once they decompose. The only thing unaffected by this global decay is that damned black hole my brother saw earlier. Yes, I can still sense it. Even with our backs turned, its null essence tugs at my soul.
There are survivors of sorts in these swamps. No, that is too generous a word, more like bodies that have yet to realize they should expire. It is painfully obvious they are...were...members of the Order. Wretched brothers and sisters that have undergone the Keepers trials and have been found wanting.
Dialogue is fruitless. The groups we come across are babbling incoherently or walking in circles, oblivious to our questions. Some squat in accumulated filth, trying to eat their own fingers. A few have succumbed to their basest desires and rut in an orgiastic frenzy intermingled with ritual bloodletting.
It is hard to watch and hear these things, to see Jedi completely stripped of their discipline, their very identity. All things fear death they say, but I believe there is another fear that eats away at a Jedi's mind even more. We fear change, becoming the antithesis of what we aspire to be and having these abominations paraded before me fills my mouth with bile.
The worst are those Jedi with still enough sanity to perceive their damnation. Their horrified screams intermingle with the depraved laughter of souls driven mad. One man tries to pull away from the orgy of violence, only dragged back into the mud by his debauched companions. His face is contorted in the horror of betrayal before fallen Jedi rip it apart with bloody fingers, their own black eyes wide with rapture and hatred.
When Mysteel turns to help Revan grabs her shoulder.
"No," he says simply.
She holds that stare but only for a moment, long enough to hear the scream bubble away into muted gurgling then nothing. Abnegation feels like cowardice but I doubt intervention would make a substantial difference. We are not executioners and we simply do not possess the fortitude to cull this field of rabid dogs. So from then on, Mysteel follows miserably, eyes averted from the atrocities that unfolds every step of the way.
We encounter no one else in this wasteland, nothing sentient at least. Every figure I sense is a phantasm, silhouetted against the dying light of this world. There are creatures though, strange amorphous things that whimper within the foetid shadows of ruins. The greater intelligences hiss at us from their cover. Their hunger is palpable, only kept at bay by the anathemas that have become our aegis. We avoid conflict, but even at a distance I can see these horrors are hosts to powerful plagues, their jaws pink with scurvy and their eyes half-closed from the close press of sores. The largest of them seem to loom like bloated mountains against fiery cauldrons of soul-fire.
I have lost all sense of time and distance. Such things are meaningless in a realm that remakes itself to torment us. All we have is the beacon and thankfully, that vague reference seems to loom larger as we trudge in its direction. Or perhaps that is wishful thinking. But the trek is wearying and I hobble behind my companions, inevitably lagging behind. Revan glances back at me from time to time but says nothing. At one point, Mysteel stops and offers to support me but I shake her off.
"I can walk," I growl with unnecessary vehemence. I can see my words sting Mysteel and I feel shame. Yet when she turns away, I involuntarily touch my stomach. The pain is intensifying and my brow feels feverish. The mild tingling I felt earlier has become jabbing needles in my skin. Things are moving under it, incubating and waiting to bloom into horrid maturity. This must be how the changes start. It is the malignant powers of the Force worming itself into my bloodstream, chipping at my body and reforging it into something terrible.
He will betray you.
And there are the voices. They are astonishing – a nightmare-whisper wrenched into waking but given no form of its own. Many of them overlap, jostling with one another as if buried alive within some master rattle-bag of intelligence.
The Carrion Lord will bring agony to your galaxy. He is the Master of Lies and Deceit. You will be cast away for another, then another. His throne will be erected from the bones he betrays.
I know these denouements are meant to weaken my resolve, to break the cohesion of our motley crew. Knowing does not make it easier to resist however, and I remember the old resentments, the envy I always had for my brother.
With effort I wrench away from these dark thoughts and look to my companions. They do not seem as afflicted and that is worrying. Among the three of us, these...phenomenons seem to cause me the most distress. Perhaps it is because I am the most attuned to the emotions of others.
"We are being hunted."
"What?" My brother's voice startles me. I glance around for targets, but between the overlapping voices and bleeding Force, there is no source to pinpoint. "Are you sure? There are so many...distractions."
He nods. "Positive. I sensed their spoor when we left the city, and it has solidified ever since. Even with our blunted senses, their aura is palpable to me."
Mysteel glances around warily. "Should we hide?"
"Likely, they know the terrain better than we do. I do not want to be caged in a hole when they find us."
"Open ground then," I suggest. "Let them come to us."
Revan glances at my wound. My bandages are livid red and the flesh beneath has already become gangrenous. We have tried to staunch it, but even our combined healing expertise cannot make the blood clot.
Before Revan can pronounce his decision, Mysteel shakes his shoulder vigorously. "Rev, Shiny, look! Are you seeing what I'm seeing?"
She points to the distance. A man stands in the middle of the bog. A normal man, without the slightest hint of mutation from afar. He gazes off into the distance, unmoving, seemingly oblivious to the hellscape around him.
"A survivor. Still unchanged," I remark. "Mysteel, wait!"
Too late. Our sister steps off the path. I follow but Revan does not. Mysteel at least has the good sense to approach warily, looking for the slightest whiff of falsehood. But no, this one seems to be what he appears. An old man with wispy strands of hair clutching his mottled scalp and skin as weather beaten as gnarled root. His robes are as ancient as he is, fraying at the edges and bleached from exposure. The man glances at us. He appears distant, as if his vision is caught between different worlds.
"It's okay, we're not going to hurt you," Mysteel soothes, raising her hands. "We-"
"I know you," says the man hoarsely. His voice is as dry as parchment, drained of all hope or joy. It is the voice of one condemned. "You were there from the start."
Mysteel looks startled. "W-Who are you? What are you doing here?"
"I am...I was to bear witness."
"Bear witness to what?" I venture.
The man turns his glassy stare at me. There is something...familiar about him, a mournfulness in his demeanour that strikes a chord. "To everything that he did," comes the eventual reply. "For every victory, every atrocity he committed, I was there. And for a time, I even believed he could drag us out of the quagmire despite the odds, for his capabilities have always been unmatched. But in the end we failed him and because of our sins, he failed us."
Mysteel and I look at each other uneasily.
"I don't understand you, brother. Who failed you?"
The old man does not seem to hear me. "The Sith will win," he continues miserably. "We have let ourselves become so weak while they have marshalled their strength. All our attention was put on petty squabbles so when they played their hand, we could not stop them from tearing us down. And though they will burn out their souls to remove us, they will be the victors, a final conclusion to the Great Game."
He lets out a sigh that sounds more like a death rattle. "But I should not be surprised. You only have to see how their emotions eclipse ours in the other-realm."
The voice is leaden with grief and I feel a pang of sympathy. "It's okay, brother," I assure him and place a hand on his shoulder. "What you saw were only visions. We will-"
The man lurches, surprisingly quick. He grabs one of the anathema shards buckled to my belt and pushes me away. Mysteel tenses for an attack but he is backing away, his stolen weapon pressed against his own throat.
"There is no victory, only different kinds of defeat. Tell him that." For the first time, he glances at Revan. He watches us at a distance, heavy cowl rendering his expression unreadable. The man averts his gaze almost immediately and in that instance, I sense the most profound regret. "And tell him...to forgive me."
"Wait!" Mysteel shouts.
The anathema rips his neck open. The exit wound gushes blood and we are drenched in fountains of it. The man collapses. His body immediately begins decomposing, turning to ash before our eyes. His blood does not.
Mysteel trembles, her face spattered with dark viscera. "What...what the hell just happened?"
I grasp for words of reassurance but there is no solace to give her.
"Every step, a new horror," I mutter.
Time check: ?
We reach another bog, but unlike any I have ever seen. Its liquid is a sickly yellow slime, a bubbling primordial soup that stretches on and on. Strange landmasses jut out from all the putrescence. They never seem still, shifting and shuffling their tantalizing forms.
"What in the-"
To my horrid fascination, I realize they are bodies. Mounds of flesh pressed together in lurid embraces, slithering slowly, engaging in some perverse form of copulation. Some are almost human shaped, with two legs and two arms, and the head they were born with. Most are broken things, resembling nothing but an amalgamation of body parts that a child tried to shove together. I try not to shudder as we walk between these morasses of quivering flesh, their bodies fused with the writhing arms and limbs of others, until all that remains is a half-glimpsed face. I risk a glance and see that the faces gape stupidly as we pass. A vestigial recognition response making their jaws twitch as they rut in a pit of their own filth.
"Don't look," Revan orders sternly. I tear my gaze away and resume shuffling with some effort but it is getting harder to ignore my surrounding. Choirs of new voices crowd my thoughts, whispers of the night that only dared be uttered alone. The cries of ecstasy between lovers, the scream of anguish from a murderer's blade. If only there was some-
"Exon."
I pause at the sound of my name. That voice..I know that voice! It is one I have yearned for, a sensual whisper she only uses under the bed sheets. So against my better judgement I turn and amid the smoke and filth, a body emerges, pale and vivid.
"Celeste?" I gasp.
My lover smiles. It is her, as real and perfect as in my dreams. She is naked, moisture dripping from her porcelain skin and pooling between her breasts. Her lips are parted in a sensual gasp, aching with desire.
"You have come to the end. Bled and sacrificed more than the Order can ever demand of your. It is time to and take your reward."
She extends her hand.
"Come Exon. Come join me in bliss."
My mind is cloudy. Her scent is intoxicating, a sensual musk that prickles my skin like a lover's touch and which masks the coppery taste building in my mouth. Unbidden, images of carnal pleasures swim past me, acts of depravity my deepest subconscious wished to enact on her and which I shamefully buried.
You can have it. You can have it all. All you have to do is submit.
Force I wanted her, more than anything, I wanted to loosen my inhibitions and give myself to this perfect creature for all eternity. To fuse our souls together, and do all the things that the Order denied us, it would be transcendent.
I begin raising my own hand.
"Brother! What are you doing?"
The voice, his voice snaps me out of my torpor. During my trance, I have strayed far from the path and am now waist deep in the filthy bile. Consternation is etched across Revan's face. Behind me, I can hear Celeste hissing, a sound that sends shivers down my spine. "I-"
"This is the test, brother!" he shouts. "Do not let these Force mirages ensnare you! Look!"
He points to the remaining anathema belted to my thigh. Celeste's hand is near it, stroking my leg…but it is not her hand. Now I see a slimy tentacle burred with quills and covered with blinking eyes. It caresses my skin, leaving trails of black puss. I recoil in horror.
"Do not listen to the Carrion Lord. Take your-"
My roar echoes throughout the swamp as I plunge the anathema into Celeste's chest. Black blood spurts from her chest and she screams. My condemnation is louder and I rip the shard from collarbone to waist.
"Get out of my head," I snarl.
Celeste staggers back but she isn't dying. She is dividing along the line of the blade wound. The thing aping my lover splits from hip to the throat. Then her skull parts too in a vertical line, like a pea-pod dividing. Flesh tears and shreds apart like fibrous matter. The anathema, unseated, falls onto the bloody earth.
I stare at the thing in horror, barely aware that my companions are pulling me back. Celeste is on her knees now, opened from the waist like a bloody flower. Sprouting limbs turn black and scaly. They grow bristles and thorns, stretch out like the legs of a giant arachnid. Scorpion tails twist and thrash like a nightmare wreath as they grow out of the open ribs. Stings glitter like knives. She is still, somehow, laughing.
"What in the hells is that?" Mysteel gasps.
"Ignore it! Get to the other side!" Revan orders. The ground lurches suddenly, making us stagger. The entire swamp is shaking. Quivering in anger at our presumption. Corpse mounds shudder violently, sloshing viscous liquid off the quivering obscenities. Their strange droning intensifies, becoming a choir of gasps.
We are suddenly easy prey, hampered on all sides by the hundreds of deformed bodies. Without warning, mangled abortions surges from the flesh piles. They grab Mysteel's lekku, pulling violently. She stumbles backwards where a dozen more pink tentacles reach out. Dead bodies begin pulling at her clothes, clawing her arms and legs. Their moans become more urgent as she screams.
Revan blade whistles, ripping away the limbs and heads closest to our sister. I reach into the mess of roasting flesh and pull her free.
"Thanks," she gasps. "That...that was too close."
"Faster!" Revan urges.
Now the other chimeric abominations are rising up too. They limp towards us, moaning, reaching out to grab at our necks and drag us into the quagmire. This is bad. The crowds are almost inexhaustible, a half-living wave of insentient meat that clutches and throttles. We wave our anathemas, slashing wildly with them. Deformed heads reel shrieking and some puppets burst into flames at their proximity but the masses press on regardless. These monsters are fearless, impelled by a greater will than their dread of oblivion.
I feel a claw rake through robes. The cut is shallow, barely a scratch but my left shoulder suddenly becomes dead weight. Poison? I would not be surprised if the congealed filth under their nails acted as a paralytic.
Another webbed claw grabs my leg, making me stumble. Cursing, I pull myself up only to find myself surrounded by wights with rancid mouths full of half chewed meat. They grasp at me, and my blade shears off limbs with a vengeful, desperate fury. My counterattacks are clumsy though, weighed down by reflexes stunted before the skirmish even began. Adrenaline is the only thing keeping me upright.
I manage to slash away an outstretched hand, cleave off several heads in furious sweeps. The flesh horrors ignore my efforts, climbing over their fallen in an inexorable wave of slack faces crawling with maggots. My movements become more bogged down, snagged into a thickening slush of clutching fingers. I decimate five more vile creatures before wet things wrap around my arms and legs. That is how I am brought down. Roaring defiance. Crushed as their combined weight drags me under the mire.
Even bereft of sight and sound, I struggle like a wild animal. My primal will to survive refuses to succumb to this injustice. It cannot end like this. I have a career. A woman. Then the last pockets of air leaves my lungs. The cold sensation of death that hounded us since arriving surges to embrace me. This is it. Mission failed.
The pressure subsides suddenly. I can move. My body bursts out from the foul liquid, raking in lungfuls of air. Dimly, I am aware of more mutilated bodies surrounding me, now twice dead. It is my brother. He is decimating the monstrosities with his brutal efficiency, buying precious seconds for me to find my footing. Mysteel is at his back, slashing and swiping the fleshy nightmares trying to flank us.
"Brother, can you fight?" He spares a microsecond to glance at me between strokes.
"Yes!" I growl, trying to stand. Then the pain shoots up my gut and I collapse to one knee. "Damn it all, no!"
Revan grabs the scruff of my robes. "Sister, withdraw. Back the way we came." he orders. Mysteel gives a tight nod, too focused on staying alive to correct him. My brother cleaves the nearest flesh-thing in two and begins dragging me behind like a discarded toy. Giant fetuses shamble towards us, barricading our path. Revan and Mysteel's blades rise and fall. It is impossible to miss. Each swing fells another foe, but always there are more. Force, it is like walking through tar. Worse, their movements have adopted a mania, like a dying man trying to crawling to water in a desert. Our advance becomes a crawl until the press of bodies becomes impenetrable. We can go no further.
Gurgled laughter hounds us. We glance back. The Celeste thing is still growing, peeling back the rest of its falsehood. Her backbone has sprouted tall like a calcified tree trunk, growing weird branches that look as if they are composed of arm bones. Her ribcage opens like skeletal wings. I see organs pulse and grow in them, smearing tissue and sinew across the reshaping skeleton.
Celeste new head buds and unfolds, slowly turning up from a bowed stance. Mouthparts chatter. Huge multi-faceted eyes twinkle and glitter, iridescent. An orifice blooms with jagged teeth. It grows obscenely large, wide enough to fit a bantha whole.
"You cannot deny me. I know the shape of your desires. The shameful things you want."
Its sibilant voice sends shivers up my spine. Fear is not a state I am accustomed to but at this moment, I can admit that it has found purchase. Revan glares at the abomination and points his blade at it. "I rescind my previous order. That is the locus holding this rabble together. Eliminate it."
"How?" I gasp.
"Do you still have the anathemas?"
I nod weakly, handing him the satchel. We retrieved many shards but only three functional grenades. Revan glances at Mysteel who dodges a shoulder charge from a corpulent humanoid before decapitating it with an elegant pirouette. Even in this muck, our sister is by far the most sure footed among us.
"Sister, can you get close to deliver this payload?" Mysteel sees his intent and gives a curt nod.
"I can damn well try!"
"Then run. Leave these cretins to me."
My brother lobs her a grenade while simultaneously severing the hand trying to strangle him. Mysteel catches it in mid leap. She somersaults and kicks off the nearest corpse, then leapfrogs over another. Legions of rotten hands reach out and try to snatch her, but our sister is too quick. She jumps over shoulders, grabs overhanging vines and propels herself closer to the Celeste thing.
The towering monstrosity shrieks as Mysteel lands fifty feet from her. The scream becomes a shockwave, kicking up torrents of filth. Mysteel cartwheels to the right, narrowly avoiding the barrage that rips her flesh puppets into thick bloody gobbets. Mysteel finishes her manoeuvre by whipping an anathema shard. One of Celeste's milky eyes bursts and she shrieks in agony.
"The mouth!" I shout. Around me, I can sense pale fingers squeezing my flesh and the foetid stench of decay grows more pungent. I do my best to ignore them, trusting my brother to hold them at bay. "Aim for the mouth!"
"I know! I only get one shot at this!" she retorts. The Celeste thing has sprouted several barbed tails and slashes them wildly, half blinded. Our sister dodges a wild cut, darts away from the savage follow thrust before ducking another decapitating strike. Mysteel grips a anathema spear in her left. She uses it to riposte an attack, slashing off a spindly appendage.
The behemoth screams and the sound is akin to a hundred baby wails crashing together. Black bile gushes from her wounds, intermingling with sickly white bubbles frothing from the bog. Enraged, Celeste's thicker root tentacles pound at Mysteel with earth shaking tremors, but our sister is always just out of reach. She darts between lumbering attacks like a vicious wasp, delivering vicious stings and slowly closes the distance to her true target.
A noxious cloud belches out of Celeste's giant maw. Mysteel is engulfed. She gags as the filthy fog burns her skin and clogs her lungs. For the first time, our sister mistimes a leap. Celeste snatches her by the waist with a writhing tentacle.
"Mysteel!" My dismay distracts my brother. He glances away from multiple opponents just in time to see Mysteel enveloped. The distraction costs him. Freakish claws and tentacles envelop his hands. Abominations with bulging cheeks vomit half digested body parts over his face. I can only watch in horror as my brother is dragged underwater a by a wall of quivering bodies.
Celeste's hateful laughter peels in my ears. I turn and see Mysteel squirming against constricting tentacles. The monstrosity lifts its prey high, dangling her above its slavering maw. She is toying with its food, squeezing its fear out. Savouring it. With a gasp, Mysteel manages to wrench her sword arm out. She slashes, severing the flesh clutching her. The she plummets into Celeste's giant maw just before its rotten teeth slam shut.
"No!" I roar and reach out, impotent, as if sheer defiance could alter Mysteel's horrific fate. Celeste emits a screech of triumph. It swivels, boring its vile gaze through me. I have never felt so vulnerable.
"Annoying cripple. This. Will. Hurt."
But then it shivers. The monster's fleshy appendages jerk erratically. Lissom skin bulges and pops out like a balloon, punctured by faint purple rays. Hundreds of eyes widen in sudden terror.
"No!"
When the body explodes, I am braced for it. The shockwave blooms with incandescent fury, incinerating the quivering monstrosities closest to it. Globules of corrupted meat spatter against my face before curling into blackened husks. The mutated freaks not caught in the blast radius simply collapse, flesh puppets cut from their strings.
I see bubbles forming where Revan fell. Then like a wraith, my brother rises slowly from the foetid bog, displacing piles of rotten meat. He coughs violently, vomiting mouthfuls of vile liquid.
"Are you all right, brother?" My voice is hoarse. Without the surge of adrenaline, I lack the strength to even move to his side.
Revan manages a weak nod. Wordlessly he picks me up, dragging me towards the centre of the destruction. Surrounded by a pile of guts and half eaten corpses is our sister. She is on her side, caught in her own fit of coughing. Revan reaches down and helps her up as well.
"Well done."
Mysteel takes the hand, groaning. Her golden sheen is gone, completely obscured by blood and digestive fluids. "Eww, I am not doing that again."
Her expression shifts to distress. "My clothes, I just bought these! The cleaners will never get this crap out of it." She sniffs. "Wait, is this actual crap? Dammit, I am literally getting shit on!"
"Forgive me, sister," I gasp over Revan's shoulder. "This is my fault. I should not have wandered off."
Our sister aborts her tirade and sighs. "It's okay, Shiny. We're all high as fuck out here." She gives me a curious look. "So, what did you see this time?"
I grimace and look away. "You don't want to know."
Time check: ?
Every step is agony. I can no longer walk and Revan is forced support me, one arm slung over his shoulder. In better times, I would not have countenanced this. But the embarrassment of being assisted like an invalid cannot compare to the pain flaring in my body. The flesh-change froths under my skin like sea foam. It will not be long now. Hateful voices hiss more urgently in my ears and the terrible heat in my blood spikes.
When he stops, I cannot tell how much time has passed. I open my bleary eyes and before me is an steep incline of rock, jagged and uncompromising. The wall rises up and up and it takes me a moment to realize we are at the base of a mountain.
"We made it," Mysteel breathes. "All that's left is to climb this bitch and we're home free."
If Revan shares her optimism, he does not show it. "I'll carry him," he declares and begins rummaging in his supplies for rope.
"Leave me," I grunt. "Better some of us reach the Keeper's sanctuary than none."
Revan ignores me. "Wait for us at the summit," he instructs Mysteel while binding my arms over his shoulder. "Don't wander off for any reason."
Mysteel casts a doubtful look over me. "Really? You're going to climb with a sack of bricks strapped to your back? No offence, Shiny."
"Don't worry. I've done this before. Go."
She gives a weak laugh. "Rev, I know you just want to look at my perfect ass while climbing. I don't mind, but don't get too distracted."
Our sister rubs my head for luck and gives me a sympathetic look. "Hang in there, sweetie."
With a wink she grabs a handhold and begins her ascent effortlessly, vaulting from foothold to foothold and disappears from view within moments. Revan starts his climb but he does not possess our sister's flawless dexterity so our progress is glacial, hampered infinitely more by my dead weight. Yet he bears the burden without complaint, pursuing the arduous task with the same measured focus he pursues all things.
I wish I could feel more gratitude for his efforts but all I feel is frustration. I cannot remember the last time I felt so helpless, being hauled around like a sack of potatoes. I am my brother's protector dammit, not the other way around.
"You won't make it with me," I gasp after much silence. I wince with every sudden jolt of movement. The mountain seems keen to mock our efforts. Sharp edges bleeds my brother's hands for every inch of ground. The wind howls, flensing our torn robes and frequently upsetting his precarious grip. One misstep, one loose rock is all it takes to become wet smears.
"Just put me out of my misery."
"Shut up, Exon."
"Article 3 passage 7," I slur. "Never let compassion override practicality. When the upkeep of an asset outweighs their benefits, the commander must severe their losses lest their detrimental effects become compounded."
Revan slows momentarily and glances over his shoulder. "You read my book."
"Only the parts I didn't use for toilet paper," I chuckle wetly. "And I don't need to read a treatise to understand when something is a lost cause. So why-?"
"I am not your brother only when it is convenient," Revan cuts in. His voice is strained with the effort of hauling more than twice his body weight. My brother always had a cadaverous aspect, but now his face looks positively exhumed. "And I do not subscribe to the philosophies of our cosmetically challenged brethren."
"Who-?"
"The Sith."
"Hah, they are that," I laugh. The sound becomes a painful cough in my chest. The shuddering is so violent, Revan halts his ascent. It takes me a minute to compose myself.
"But this never ending war with them...it is futile." Blood drools from the sides of my mouth as I speak. "I have come to the conclusion that the spectre spoke true. The Sith will win this pointless war for they only have to wait for us to fail."
"That is your delirium talking," my brother abdomishes. "What did I tell you about listening to the lies of ghosts?"
"And yet the best lies have a kernel of truth." I murmur. "Everything succumbs to entropy in the end, just like these so called elder powers and we are so much less than them. Those brothers and sisters out there, I have no doubt they were great Knights before being dragged into this nightmare. The best of our breed who succumbed to their own worst qualities the end."
Another bloody cough escapes my lips. "And that...that is the point of the Keeper's trial I think, perhaps the secret Amarinthe tried to prevent us from learning. Our Order will fail, brother, just like so many of our brethren failed when the stakes were highest."
Revan is still for a long moment before wordlessly resuming the slow ascent. The winds howl louder now and it sounds so much like laughter. "Tell me Exon," Revan wheezes eventually. "if this outcome is so inevitable, why do the phantasms of this accursed realm spend so much effort trying to convince us of it?"
I pause. "To taunt us with the truth."
"Perhaps," he concedes. "But this is what I believe. They fear us. They fear what would happen if we ever chose not to believe their stories, for they know we have the power to prove them wrong."
That takes me aback. "I never thought of it that way," I admit.
"We are free to choose, brother," Revan says more quietly, pushing against the currents with indomitable patience. "That is the purpose of this test. To pit our beliefs against the sirens of doom. Let these aberrations hurl their insults, their empty threats and temptations. I will treat all of it with the contempt that it deserves. And if what we endured is the worst these monsters can hurl at us then I pity them for I have yet to do mine. We shall show them the power of brotherhood, Exon. We shall show them the power of our faith."
I nod weakly. I do not know if I truly believe Revan's words, but to see his defiance in the face of such inescapable ruin is a victory in itself. After that, I try not to distract him and we ascend in silence, one rock at a time.
I shift in and out of consciousness and dream terrible things. In them, I see metal clad monsters killing on a burning world. To my horror, they are killing Jedi, laughing as they gun us down, taunt us as they flay the skin from our faces. I scream in rage at their atrocity, powerless to stop them as the shrieks of my kindred reach a crescendo. And behind the monsters, something towers over them greater than us all. It is...hell's teeth, that thing is-".
"We're here, brother."
My eyes snap open. Mysteel is waiting for us at the precipice. She extends a hand and pulls us over the final hurdle. Her expression is not reassuring.
"The Citadel?" I whisper.
"See for yourself," she replies grimly.
I look around blearily and what little hope I had gutters out in my chest. The reward for reaching this point is paltry, just another desolate cliff face. Eroded cairns form a jagged circle but they are barely more distinguishable than the wind blasted rocks surrounding us. I force myself to look past this disappointment and notice we are not standing on a plateau but upon the lip of a much larger pit. A pit large enough to swallow an entire starship.
"This isn't a mountain..." Mysteel mutters. "It's...it's a volcano."
She's right, partly. I do not believe the chasm we stand atop is a natural phenomenon, but the product of strange scientific manipulation. The pit itself seems bottomless but I can detect a murky green liquid bubbling at its deepest recesses. That is not what interests me though.
Seven thick bridges are level with us. They rim the circumference of this pit, meeting at the epicentre where I see a glass dish. The dish is massive, its size a match with the satellites orbiting the Thoneworld. And it is this thing that swallows the light, gulping the raging torrent of power pouring from the heavens.
"How...how is it doing that?" I wonder aloud.
"Why is it doing that?" Mysteel adds.
"Forwards," Revan says grimly.
We look at each other uncertain then approach the nearest bridge. Its construction is smooth, a slab of bony walkway jutting from beginning to end. There are no handrails but it looks solid and wide enough for two to walk abreast. With cautious steps my companions begin to cross. The air here is electric, positively saturated with Force overflow and each step closer to the centre feels like trying to approach a star.
"I can't...I can't go any further," I pant.
"Just a bit further, sweetie," Mysteel soothes quietly. "We've got to get a better look."
By the time they stop, the pressure becomes stifling. Any closer and I fear our bodies will be incinerated. Tears flow from my weary eyes but I blink them away. When I summon up the strength to open them though, I bear witness to something I cannot comprehend.
"What fresh hell is this?" I mutter.
We are within meters from the so called beacon. Now I can see it is not made of actual light but a riot of glowing phantasms. There are murky faces stretched taught over spectral skin, their expressions a rictus of agony. Echoes of the Force I think, the last imprint of a warrior's psyche before it dissolves back into the Well of Infinity. We are taught about this phenomena. I have even witnessed such during my descent into the Halls of Shame, but never in such numbers. Never have I seen a literal sea of lost souls.
They plunge, crashing and dissolving and reforming in an endless storm. Shrieking ghosts clash in an endless cacophony, adding to the torment of those lost and forsaken. And amid this riot, shapes rupture cloud-bursts of other screams that haven't yet been cried aloud. They coalesce, forming scenes, moments of events that invoke stirrings of memory and yet feel equally unfamiliar, like reliving snippets of life from another person.
"It can't be..." I whisper, too quietly for my companions to hear.
But it is. Before me, I see a scene that has been recorded and broadcast to the entire galaxy repeatedly. Except this projection is much more vivid, like stepping back in time to bear witness into fate's weft itself.
It is Exar Kun, delivering his infamous speech in the Senate, the one that forever cursed our Order to infamy. In person, he looks demonic and his spiteful words against the Republic drum ire from everyone witnessing it including mine.
The image changes, and I am transported to another scene. Here, I see a bald man being struck by a masked revenant. The man collapses at the revenant's feet, a smoking ruin where his jaw used to be. Even writhing on the floor, I can make out a strange tattoo imprinted on his forehead.
My surroundings change to the outdoors on some strange alien world. The revenant appears again, or is it the same? His aura feels altered. This time he is front of a horrified Twi'lek. She is screaming, tears running down her cheeks as the revenant beheads a Wookie.
The scene shifts again. This time I am in a dark throne room where a blonde youth does battle with a black armoured knight. A Dark Lord watches the duel from his throne, yellow eyes glinting under a backdrop of burning starships. Then the images changes again, now too quick to follow. On and on and on. Snippets of history clashing with moments that haven't yet happened, that won't happen for half an eternity. Grinding against events that took place back when the earliest creatures exhaled water and – for the very first time – took in lungfuls of air.
Despite all the warnings, all my weariness, I stare enraptured. It has never been more obvious that the frail laws of physics which so coldly govern our material universe have no power here, those binding codes fracture into their separate fictions. Here, time itself goes to die.
My companions do not seem see the unfolding portents in front of us. They do not share my wonder and horror. "You think this is some sort of test?" Mysteel wonders. "Do the Keepers want us to burn ourselves on this...thing to get further?"
"No," Revan says flatly. He turns away. "Whatever it is, I'm quite convinced this isn't the beacon we're looking for."
"Well that's it then," Mysteel sighs and sags to the ground. "We came all this damn way and there is no Citadel in sight. What a waste."
Her words jar me back to the present. The truth is bitter but this has all been for naught. All the injuries suffered to reach this desolate rock was merely another stepping stone to our demise.
"Amarinthe gave us false hope," I rasp and tear my gaze away from the mirage of images. I would punch the nearest cairn in frustration, but I cannot even lift my arms. "We will die in these wastes, chased by ghosts of our own devising."
Revan ignores our dismay. He is staring back out to the horizon, studying something intently.
"I have been a fool," he says suddenly.
"Well I didn't want to say anything but yeah... trying to find a place called the Impossible Citadel was a shit idea," Mysteel grumbles, flicking dirt off her clothes.
"I missed a sale today and now I'm going to die a virgin. Unless..." she gives Revan a hopeful look.
"That is not what I meant," Revan says flatly. He turns to address both of us. "We have been approaching this the wrong way."
"What other way is there?" I cough. "Amarinthe told us to follow the light. We did, and all we have to show for it are a parade of failures."
"We have been using our own realm as a frame of reference." Revan gestures around us. "But this place...it is a hell scape of allegory and dreams. We must use their rules and revise what constitutes a beacon here."
Mysteel scrunches up his face in confusion. "What do you mean?"
"Amarinthe said we would be like wayfarers at sea," Revan explains. "In her analogy, the beacon she spoke of would be a lighthouse. And what is the purpose of a lighthouse?"
"To guide ships," she offers.
"Yes, but it also prevents them from crashing onto its shores. It tells them to steer clear."
Mysteel and I glance at each other, confused. "Are you saying... these horrors we encounter are ships?" I venture.
"Figuratively, brother. Figuratively," Revan says impatiently. "And in the same vein, the lighthouse will be something they avoid."
Understanding slowly dawns upon us. "Oh like these...what did you call them. Anathemas?" Mysteel asks.
"Precisely." Revan favours her with a nod. "Every species can boast fables of their earliest ancestors making fire to keep the night terrors at bay. These anathemas push back the dark so it stands to reason that the Keeper's fortress would reside within the greatest locus of null space."
He turns back to stare at the horizon. "So where then, is the place these monsters fear the most? Where is the strongest source of this oblivion effect?"
"There," I croak, raising a trembling hand over his shoulder. "I have sensed its emptiness since we arrived, brother. We all do. It is antithesis of existence and it frightens me still."
Revan nods. "Then that is where we must go."
Mysteel opens her mouth, probably to complain but stops. Reality is changing, becoming thicker with Force overspill. I feel my brother's shoulders tense at the sound of strange droning, like the herald of a insect swarm.
"Shit, did we trigger an alarm?" Mysteel wonders.
There is a sudden shift in the air, a displacement of pressure that makes my ears pop. At first I cannot tell what happened, but then I see it. A...slit, a slit is opening in midair across the very bridge we're standing upon. It resembles a wound, like somebody is cutting into the very fabric of space-time. From this spatial lip, a giant boot appears, then another. Five giant figures emerge from the disintegrating tear in reality, their silhouettes smoking with Force residue.
"What the hell?"
The newcomers are immediately recognizable as Massassi. I have never laid eyes upon a real one, but their red skin and distinct mouth tendrils are well documented. The Massassi are riding deformed albino carcasses, naked hairless things knuckling on all fours. I see spine growth on their backs, clinging to outsize bones. The rest of their bodies are riddled with parasites and black clouds of flies hover around their tumour riddled faces. They snarl at us, fanged mouths stretched into impossible slacked jawed lengths.
The central Massassi breaks from the ranks. This one rides no mount yet towers over the rest. He a titan, a cadaver of truly monstrous proportions and repugnant in its majesty. Every movement carries apocalyptic menace, and the spirits of this world recoil from its path. He stops fifty paces from us. A red hot sword rests on his massive shoulder, more cleaver than blade.
"Yourselves. Identify intruders."
His words are not Galactic Standard, yet somehow my mind processes them. He is speaking at a fundamental level, a communication understandable to all sentient beings like weeping, rage or laughter. The voice rumbles with a cadence from another age and has become as alien as his speech patterns. When he breathes, yellow-green steam vents from his blood specked mouth. Revan steps forward, one hand resting on his weapon.
"Whose territory are we intruding on?" he asks.
The Massassi grunts, his seamy eyes narrowing from under the deep shadow of its threadbare cowl. His armour is indescribably ancient, encrusted with weight of aeons. Fleshy barnacles sprout from its cracks while entire sections have warped and fused to become true flesh. The blood, the Force, the deaths of this world – all of it has magnified and redounded upon this engorged vessel.
"Despoil realm your kind this presence with."
"Our kind?" Mysteel echoes confused.
"Flesh. Mortal shells you free not have. To trod on is forbidden sacred ground."
The air crackles. I see giant flies buzz closely around him, mobbing him, crawling over its instruments. He swats a few away, letting their fat bodies splat against the ground.
"Them Queen to the bring. Judge let her their punishment."
At the command, his riders whip their beast mounts. They howl and charge across the bridge, knuckling on all fours. Bones jut out from their mutilated backs and through entrails exposed bellies, yet these horrors manage to lumber towards us with astonishing swiftness.
Mysteel throws her spear at the lead Massassi. Her aim is perfect and the missile tears through the rider's throat. Dead hands swerves the mount violently and both careen off the narrow walkway.
A second rider charges her but I have no time to watch. The Massassi riding the largest beast is hurtling towards us. It has three faces, each an overlapping horror of black eyes and lolling tongues.
Revan shoves us away at the last second. He thrusts as the beast charges by and the weapon bursts an eye. The beast screams and it hurtles blindly towards the giant beacon. Rider and beast are suddenly immolated by greenish flames as they pass through the threshold. They scream as the fury of congealed spirits render their bodies to ash.
We roll awkwardly to the ground. The impact tears open my wound and I cannot stifle my anguish. Revan tries to prop me on a nearby rock.
"Stay here, brother. We-"
A fanged spear tip bursts through his left shoulder. A length of rope juts from his shoulder back to the Massassi holding the weapon. Harpoon. The rider turns his mount and my brother is ripped away, dragged bodily through the dirt. His captor drags him close and tries to ensnare him in a barbed net. Grunting, my brother frees his sword and severs the rope with a savage swipe. He rolls away from the netting and surges to his feet. The Massassi brings his hound close. It gnashes and rakes furiously with giant claws. Revan can barely avoid disembowelment, swiping and dodging just out of reach.
In the microseconds between swipes, Revan finds his opening. A well timed thrust ends with his lightsaber through the hound's gullet. The mount rears, throwing off its rider. Then it clamps down on Revan's arm, nearly ripping it off. My brother grits his teeth and rummages violently until his blade cuts through something vital. The beast collapses on top of my brother, limbs twitching. Revan curses, heaving with all his might, trying to throw the dead weight off.
The displaced Massassi has regained his footing. He surges upon Revan with a wickedly curved blade, intent on the kill. There is little my brother can do to avoid the thrust.
Mysteel's lightsaber shrieks towards them, spinning like a golden disc. The Massassi swerves aside at the last moment, narrowly dodging the projectile. Mysteel takes full advantage of the distraction, leaping and tackling the Massassi to the ground. They wrestle violently before our sister manages to roll on top of the Massassi. Her energized gauntlet blade flares and jabs down separating head from neck. Panting, Mysteel wipes Massassi blood from her face.
"My thanks, sister," Revan says breathlessly.
"Don't call me - ugh, nevermind." Mysteel takes Revan's hand. Together they manage to drag him out from the crushing weight. They barely have time to rip the harpoon from his shoulder before the ground starts shuddering. An earthquake? My confusion is broken when I see the giant shadow eclipse them suddenly and totally.
"Brother! Sister! Look-"
They turn surprised, in time to see a massive blade whistling towards them. The rune-marked metal ignites inches from their faces. Its concussive force sends them flying across the blood-soaked sky. They crash solidly, tumbling several meters across the bridge before slumping precariously close to the edge.
A massive shape lopes across the tortured rockrete, its blazing red eyes fixed on its prey. The leader has held back until this moment, silent as a statue. Now it is an unstoppable force. This giant is not fast, but when it moves, it feels like the world itself shudders in awe.
Mysteel is motionless, an ugly gash bleeding over her perfect staggers upright, knees trembling. The Massassi advances on him with deliberate certainty, hand raised. By the time he has entered melee range, the cleaver has flown back into his meaty grip.
They rock and swing around one another. The Massassi is far greater in stature, a swollen creature of this realm, and Revan has to push himself to the limit just to make contact. My brother is already wounded from many earlier fights – I can see the infections pulsing their way around his body – but somehow it doesn't slow him.
One strike cracks the giant blade away, and my brother powers into the opened gap, landing a fist on the Massassi's face. Revan jabs another wound into its veined thigh before darting away from the counter swing. As the blade screams past him, Revan spins, slamming his lightsaber down against a gap between its armor. The impact is horrific, jarring arms to the bone and yet the blade barely scratches its flesh.
The Massassi shrugs his massive shoulders. He backhands my brother, a blow that crushes him into the floor. When the giant leans down to pick him up, Revan kicks between its legs. His opponent stumbles, just enough for him to roll away. The Massassi turns ponderously and presses his assault with metronome rhythm.
None of its attacks are quick or furious, only inevitable. But each pendulous swing of the enemy's blade is more than lethal, unleashing forces that cracks the rock they stand upon and against which my brother's protection is as potent as parchment.
I can see that Revan is exhausted. He has already killed so many, fighting for hours, pouring all his defiance out at this wretched world. His anathemas has been rendered defunct, his robes is pitted and broken. Still he fights, keeping himself erect, maintaining that rolling, menacing gait that is the natural consequence of so much remorseless physical conditioning.
But he cannot win. Despite all his efforts, all his savagery, this thing has weathered it with soul sucking indifference. It feels like assaulting a living mountain, albeit one that gyrated, thundered and brought down the fires of hell. At that moment cold certainty descends upon me. If any of us were to have a chance of survival, one of us would need to dare the impossible.
I stand, and nausea threatens to consume me. Bones grind and my flesh screams in protest, but I do not let their weakness stop me. With pure will, I force my body towards the duel step by agonizing step, gaining speed.
Let them do their worst. For I will do mine.
Revan hangs precariously at the threshold again, hammered to one knee. One more swing and the titan will push him into the steaming fluids.
I crash into the Massassi as he raises his cleaver. The brute outweighs me handsomely but somehow my momentum knocks him several steps back. He grunts, surprised.
"Brother!" I shout, heaving the Massassi back another step. "It is up to you now. Take our sister and go!"
Revan reply is lost amidst screeching phantoms and the grunts of our struggle. The plateau was slippery with blood by then, dragged down from the unholy rain, and it fizzes and pops against the ever-kindled flame. I use that to my advantage, pushing, letting my opponent slide ever closer to the chasm lip. The Massassi rumbles. He drops his weapon and pummels me with rusty gauntlets. A fist shatters my shoulder blade. Another breaks my cheek. The world spins around me, and sharp pain spears up my right arm as something new snaps. I can feel blood gushing in my mouth now. The brute is killing me faster than I can push.
I don't care.
With a roar, with every fibre of my being, I heave. A sudden gust of energy explodes from me, a hidden iota of Force I didn't even know I possessed. For a moment, even this juggernaut is taken aback. It loses its footing and tilts with the slow timbre of a mammoth tree being felled.
"Exon!"
Revan's voice is cut off by the howling winds, by the infernal choir witnessing our plummet down the chasm. Something beyond exults, ready to welcome another victim into its cloying embrace.
Yet despite their mockery, despite all the accumulated anguish, my soul finally knows peace. My last thought is of a duty fulfilled as I am finally swallowed by the mauling darkness.
Authors Notes:
First off, sorry about the long wait. I've been swamped with other things. And this chapter also had a lot of different components and concepts I'm not used to writing about. But I always knew this story would take time, and hey, it's all about the journey not the destination. I'm not in any hurry to finish it, but to enjoy the ride. I hope the readers do to and hopefully the length of the chapter was worth it.
Speaking of the chapter length, I am trying to keep this sojourn into crazy town relatively short in terms of number of chapters. While it is critical to the greater narrative, the Triumph is where the meat of the story will be and I want to get back to that.
I've posted new stuff on my deviantart page (rogermein1 . deviantart . com). Feel free to check it out!
As always again, thanks to all my readers. Any feedback would be great. As always, please spread the word if you like the story so far. Thanks!
Responses to reviews:
RevJohn1171 chapter 18 . Feb 10, 2019
Thanks! It was important to establish that Revan and co are in mortal peril. And what better way to show it with grizzly deaths! Hope this chapter was more messed up than you can imagine =).
LeonCaboose chapter 18 . Jan 31, 2019
Thanks as always! Really glad to have you reading this story.
r4PT0rian chapter 10 . Jan 24, 2019
Glad you liked the chapter! Hope this one lived up to your expectations. Things are only getting worse for Revan and co, aren't they =)?