Voices

[Azzy]

Faelice stumbled to her room a wreck. Her eyes puffy, even underneath the simple patch that protected the blind one. The dried paths of countless tears long since past marked her face, painted black by simple makeup disturbed beyond measure. Moving down, her neck shared a similar red colouration to her eyes, though there clearly was human involvement this time. An uneven mess of claw marks adorned her throat, the raised skin irritated, spots of blood starting to well along the marks that had carved an unintelligible story on her body.
The delicately placed ribbons stitched into her left arm were but the start of a matrix of crossed bruises that spanned from the tips of her fingers, and further under her sleeve. She slid the arm out of her robes, allowing the shoulder to fall off her back. The extent of the bruised hatchings became clear, spreading all the way up and around her left arm, mapping themselves across the left side of her chest, drawing to a close in an arc from just under her chin to the centre of her breastbone. A tightly woven lattice, the lasting remnants of what the Dark Side had to say in response to her actions. 


She looked down at her shaking arm, the hand that capped it off clenched tightly into a fist. Tears started to well up in her eyes again as a shadowy, ethereal voice grated against the inside of her mind, the persistent whispers of a moment past.


“Foolish. Wasteful. Rot.”


A low growl started up in her throat, choked and strained. A noise that was borne most often of dying creatures, the desperate and hopeless. A noise that cried out for help, but with the realisation that there was nothing, or no-one that was around to give her the solace she so craved.


“Broken. Worthless. Disgrace.”


The platinum haired apprentice shuddered, an uncontrolled response to her trying to quash the playback in her mind. Almost instinctively, her hand went to her left thigh, the knife that rested sheathed against her leg drawn out. She closes her eyes, and puts it to the inside of her left arm, the razor sharp point digging in, drawing out a bead of blood at its surface. 


The voice of a sorcerer grated against her, “Is this the next step?”


Her eyes opened, and the stripped down limb against her knife spoke of darkness and decay. Chunks of blackened flesh falling off the bone, that which laid underneath rapidly heading the same way. Barely a few moments passed, and all that was left of her arm were two fragile bones, a direct negative of the colour they should have been, and no less than a dozen thin, crimson bands that bound them together.
She spluttered out something between a gasp of shock, a cry of pain and sorrow. Her knife dropped to the floor. Faelice joined it moments later. Tears traced the painted pathways down her face again, the choked and suppressed sobs of anguish reverberating around her room, repeating over and over in a tone that mocked her effortlessly. Eventually, she managed to draw up the courage to look down at the damages.


Thin red ribbons, sewn into the skin on her arm. A complex lattice of deep bruises that spread up. The bone rightfully hidden beneath the flesh that smothered it.


Faelice glanced over to where the knife had fallen, a long look, unmoving for some time. She reached out for it carefully, but recoiled once again with near immediacy. The knife was… Rhave did something. He cursed it. He altered it. He did this to me. Simple thoughts swirled round her mind, ones that did nothing to make her feel better, to alleviate the pain, the fear that she was feeling. Eventually, she reached out again, getting further - minutely - but recoiled nonetheless. 


Her breathing shuddered with the building anger, the overwhelming fear. Ragged breaths taken in, short and panicked breaths given out. This isn’t right, the voice within her head said. Her voice, for once. Her narrative, the one she knew. Not that she was in a position to do anything with it. She sat on the floor, knees hugged into her chest, staring at the knife a foot away from her. Every time she reached out to take it, the voice of the sorcerer grated inside, no matter how much she tried to push it away.


“You get one life…”


“One body.”


“Do not waste the effort of your master…”


Faelice shook her head, over and over over, as if she was trying to expel the sorcerer’s voice that whispered inside it with the kinetic motion alone. It was unsuccessful. As it spoke, she drew a blade much more familiar to her into her hand, a cold metal hilt, imprinted with the presence of a woman that was both the very same, and cripplingly different. A blade of intense crimson, pure and refined sprung from the end of it, swung down towards the ground.


“Do not waste your life on this foolishness.”


She didn’t care that her knuckles slammed against the cold hard ground, she didn’t care for the pain that spread through them, nor did she care for the smoky smell that had started filling the chamber. Caught underneath her blade was a combat knife of high tensile steel, eight inches long, one of the two bladed edges bore a wickedly sharp serration.


Or at least, that’s what it once was. It was quickly turning into shapeless molten metal. No longer an implement of death, of destruction. No longer something she could have used to protect herself. No longer something that could plague her thoughts so absolutely. Her lightsaber carved a scorched groove in the earth, though the space was filled back with the boiling corpse of a betrayed trust. The weapon tumbled out of her hand, rolling in an arc on the floor, and her head stung as its low thrum pounded violently in her head. 


Faelice shrunk away from the noise, trying to pull herself into a corner. The room was small, though, and the noise utterly dominant in its presence. Try as she might, all her efforts to back away from the sound were met with no avail. It served as a painful background for the whispers that kept echoing in her head. The voice of someone that perhaps once she would have considered a friend, but certainly no longer.


“You have been broken…”


“You did not fix yourself…”


“You have broken yourself further…”


Her head started shaking again, a silent plea to stop. Naturally, they persisted. The grating within her mind ricocheted over and over, an exponential increase in their magnitude. An overwhelming cacophony from which there was no escape.


“No. No. No no no no no no no no. NO!” The fragile voice of the apprentice rose above the deafening silence of the room, but the same story could not be told within. Her voice barely breathed a whisper behind the tumultuous hellscape she was forced to endure.


“Fix yourself…” “No no no no no no no….”


“You are broken, fix yourself…” “No no no no no….”


“Fix yourself. This is unacceptable…” “No. No. NO!”


If possible, she shrunk away further, tears streaming down her face, poorly stifled, to the point that there was almost no difference being made. The prolonged crying had her starting to retch, dry heaving that led to more unnaturally hoarse sounding coughs and splutters. Pitiful noises, ones she never let anybody see, and that she tried at all costs to hide from herself too.


“If you are not able to…”


“Your master would be well within her rights to destroy you herself.”


The voice of the apprentice came out, resounding in stark contrast to the timidity she couldn't help but project. It spoke in her voice, though mocking and condescending. A twisted dagger to the mind, You are beyond repair. Take a look at yourself; shameful, weak, inadequate. What do you stand for? What is it you do?


The owner of the voice made no attempt to reply, the tears, the retching all intensified. Even if she wanted to reply, there were no thoughts coherent enough to form the words


The voice continued on, You can’t even give a defence for your actions. You can’t protect yourself against the whims of others - no. You gave yourself up to it. Willingly, without even a moment of second thought. It scoffed at her. Maybe your master should destroy you. Don’t resist, now - you’re good at that much. Give yourself up again, do something useful with the little value you yet have left. What else do you even have to give?

* * *

The voices eventually gave way to solace, a quietude that the exhausted woman had longed for, for what could have been hours. Alone in body, desperate to be given the same kindness in mind. The small and claustrophobic room had been abandoned, in favour of a sprawling grey chamber, one that extended to every edge that the eye could see, and infinitely past it.


She looked over the space, and… It all looked the same. She picked a direction, and started walking. Timeless moments spent on a pathway unmarked, one that could lead exactly nowhere, or be the start of a journey to everything. It was nice, being able to think in her own voice. Thoughts that she initiated, thoughts that belonged, truly, to her. It had been a while since she had been able to say with any certainty that her mind was clear like this. Unfortunately, she didn’t get to enjoy the thought for long.


Overhead, a long window seemed to extend out along the path that she walked on, following her even as she moved. A feature that seemed to be positioned around her, more than she was moving to follow it. As other windows displayed features outside of their contained room, this one just displayed a deep, inky blackness, as infinite as the grey expanse that surrounded everywhere she cast her eyes to.

Eventually, the halls started morphing into something notably different. The cavernous open halls narrowed, tightened into a single, direct path. It was subtle at first, but it quickly became notable. The darkness above carved a path below, scraps of floor breaking apart, and falling into a void underneath. Faelice stopped as she started to notice it happen, and she looked down at her arm. The ribbons were gone, but she remembered where they had been. The blind half of her vision had been restored, but she still looked around as if compensating for the lack of periphery and depth perception. There was no matrix of deep bruises across her arm now, but she thought there was a phantom pain she could feel. The collapsing of the floor… She shook her head. No, her arm wasn’t decaying, falling to pieces. It was in one piece. She was safe.


She turned around to see the extent of what was going on behind her, and tall statues now lined the path. She turned back her left shoulder, instinctively using the right instead even though she could see properly. More statues stood out, as far back as she could see, and more than simply adjacent to her walkway. There were rows upon rows of large stone figures, the same shade of grey as the floor, but so incredibly lifelike. Figures that had just appeared, seemingly out of nowhere, silently, and in an instant.


Evelyn, the long braid worn down her back, the thin scar delicately placed over her eye. Her body muscular in exactly the way that made her deadly, exactly the way that made her intoxicating.
Vayek, the nine-fingered pureblood. Jewellery that looked like it had been meticulously and painstakingly emulated from his form of flesh to his form of stone. A look carved on his face that wore a light concern, with eyes that seemed to follow her.
Temekel, her master. Long flowing robes, her arms crossed deep within the sleeves. The shapes of dormant amulets hung at her waist, and a sightless monocle covered a once mangled eye.


More spanned the spaces beyond, figures she knew the identity of even at a glance, but none she knew so well to say if they were immaculate or otherwise.


Hozan, a mess of hair that looked wrong in the grey tones rather than ginger hues. His face scarred, and an expression that only looked down on those that might walk the path beneath.
Trakaton, straight backed and proud, adorned in heavy armour with the characteristic cloak wrapped partially around his form.
Sarias, her circlet pristine against her forehead, her left hand extended down to the side, telltale signs of cybernetic fingers etched into stone, more polished than the natural counterparts the statue had effortlessly captured. A sithhound sat what would have been inches away from the outstretched arm, if the scale of the statue wasn’t so overwhelming and massive.


Tucked into the back, behind figures she knew so well, were ones that occupied the recesses of her mind. Sith that she knew of, but didn’t see with the same understanding as the Sith within the powerbase. Statues that were falling apart a little, but depicted regal, ancient figures. Figures that, whilst familiar, bore slightly different markings and anatomies than the pure of this age.


Faelice tried to carry on walking, to explore some of the other figures that decorated the crumbling hall. A few steps, and her pace slows. A handful more, and she’d barely move faster than a crawl. She looked down at the floor, and where her black robes normally parted with her steps, they were growing stiff, rigid. They were lightening, too. Grey stone looked as if it was enveloping her form, a tight and unbreakable hold on her body. It was, as with the other statues, an immaculate recreation of what the apprentice wore.


A bead of red caught her eye, intense and vibrant. She looked down at her arm, and sprawled across it once again were the unnatural lattice of thin red ribbons, the ones that stood mostly on their own, but formed pathways through her skin. Even in the darkness, she could see the blood welling up against both sides of every stitch. Constellations formed against the pale skin, close to forty startlingly bright rubies making their presence known. The blood red ribbon was no longer the feature, here. It was something much less in her control.


She looked up, away from the blinding light that pierced through the veil of darkness, a lurching feeling hit her stomach like a suckerpunch from the shadows. She turned, still encased in the stone, unable to move. Nothing seemed familiar to her. She looked down, or up as it now was, and high above her head were the almost visible specks of the statues she had been surrounded by just moments ago. Her head started pounding as blood rushed from beneath her stony flesh to her pale head


The floor beneath her feet started to open, or, that’s what it felt like. A dim light started to shine underfoot, Faelice at the centre. Several long seconds pass, and it opens up further, the light growing stronger, yet nothing that lit up more than a few feet past her face. Darkness still presided around everything else. A yellow disc, easily twenty feet wide eventually came to sit underneath her, unmoving as the woman stared down at it, and then it shifted. Its body, hidden in the shadows, started forwards.


Faelice didn’t have much time to look at what it was, or who it might have been. A crack resonated from beneath her, and instantly her eyes shot to her feet. Another, and she felt a microscopic shift in the grip she had on the floor. 


If there was a third, she didn’t clock it. Gravity had come calling, and she was powerless to do anything but scream. Her body wouldn’t respond to the call for movement, and the statues came ever more into view. Her eyes scanned their faces quickly, and as ever, one caught her attention more than the rest. Her chest felt heavy, all of a sudden, even barring that the stone weighed more than the fleshy undertones it had replaced. 


A whisper, caught by the wind, barely left Faelice’s mouth. “Ki aki, I’m -”


The quiet voice got cut off just before the almost statuesque figure of the apprentice impacted the ground. 




A sheen of cold sweat covered her body, silent tears streamed down her face. Her heart pounded in her chest, in her throat. Her right hand went habitually to her bare left arm, layered ribbons provided something tangible to occupy her hand, the action occupied her mind. Though the quiet corner of her room hid her from view, it did nothing to hide the grating words of the Sorcerer scraping around her mind, the thrum of the lightsaber - never turned off - a violent explosion in her head. 


The fleeting moment of quietude and solace that the dream-turned-nightmare had given her had expired all too soon, and nothing would seem to return the feelings to Faelice, hard as she might have been trying. 


This would be yet another in a long, unbroken sequence of sleepless nights. It certainly wouldn’t be the last.