Kressara had lost. No matter how hard she fought, she still lost. Now here she was laying out cold on the floor of a cell in a ship bound for another place she’d likely never been. Kressara groaned in her sleep and stirred slightly, visions flitting in and out of view from behind her eyelids.
“What happened?” Her mind wandered as images began to form from memory.
Raphael materialized before her.
“Oh yeah...HE happened.”
And then someone taller but just as regally beyond her birthright appeared. Lord Blood stood behind Raphael with this ‘I told you so’ smirk on his lips.
“I almost forgot about you…”
The royal pair faded and in their place Kressara saw herself standing with blood on her stolen armor and a vibroblade in hand equally as drenched. She looked fierce and determined to...to do what? The memory was fuzzy once more. Her image changed from a battle stained survivor to the innocent farm girl she used to be. She was standing before a field of endlessly tall crops, far taller than they actually should have been, with a smile on her face.
“I look creepy when I smile…” Kressara mused and felt herself being sucked into this dream distorted memory.
There she stood before herself, dressed as she was now in her crimson smeared armor, staring uneasily at the younger copy. She was haunting...unreal...something beyond her concept of good and evil. She had something inside of her that made Kressara’s skin crawl unlike anyone ever had before. She didn’t dare speak to herself. Her eerie copy lifted a hand to point somewhere behind Kressara, to which she turned and saw fire engulfing the farm. Smoke rose to block out the sun, leaving it all a grey and red nightmarish scene.
“...I did this…” The real Kressara muttered out loud and a giggle from behind sent an unsettling chill up her spin. She turned again and just inches from her vision a void, malicious, happily grinning face was staring her down. Terrified, Kressara stumbled back as her strange duplicate began to chant, “I did this. I did this. I did this. I did this. I did this.”
“Stop!” She yelled at herself, but the chanting only grew louder as the voice strained and rasped.
“I DID THIS! I DID THIS! I DID THIS!”
“LEAVE ME ALONE!!!” Kressara screamed and ran past her croaking copy who then began to give chase. Just barely within reach Kressara leapt into the crops and fled a ways, only to realize that she’d quit chasing herself as soon as she stepped foot into the fields. Kressara peaked over her shoulder as once again the smiling girl stood still, just grinning at her with those mad eyes.
“
She is your anger, my daughter.”
A voice both calm and impossibly loud echoed throughout the warped memory.
In the distance away from the farm Kressara heard a child crying, wailing for someone to find her. The sounds though faint twisted at her heart. Kressara against all her better judgement followed the sounds to a clearing in the crops that rose up forever above her head. A little girl was hunched and caterwauling for someone to show her the way home, her long flaxen blonde hair drenched with the tears she was leaking that somehow pooled over the ground at least two inches high. Stepping into the puddle which rapidly spread to cover as far as Kressara could see, she called to the child.
“Who are you?”
The child didn’t respond, only crying and begging as if she couldn’t hear Kressara speaking.
“
She is your fear, my daughter.” The loud voice from before resonated. “
She will not hear you...like your hatred, she cannot save you.”
Kressara thought for a moment before answering the voice, “I need saving?”
The feminine voice answered, “
Don’t you know? You out number yourself.”
“Where are you?” Kressara inquired.
“
Wrong question.”
Looking back to her wailing self, Kressara decided to leave behind the personification of her fear to find the source of the voice.
“How do I find you?” She tried rephrasing and the voice laughed a beautifully entrancing chuckle.
“
You already know the answer to that one.”
Kressara waded through the ankle deep water of the surreal dreamscape, a forest of crops as tall as towers growing all around her. The wind here was cold, yet it didn’t chill her. It blew and somehow the leaves of the stalks remained still. No ripples danced in the wake of her steps through the water. Kressara looked behind her where the clearing in the field had been to find only more endless foliage stretching on into infinity behind her. The urge to panic and cry for help almost overwhelmed her, but the memory of what the voice had told her rang through her mind so loudly that she spoke it to herself out loud.
“Hatred and fear cannot save me...This place is beyond emotion.”
And suddenly it all made sense to her. This was no fever dream...it was an out of body experience. Kressara reached out to touch the empty air before her, focusing all of her mind on the odd wind that blew against her.
“Show me…” The wind stilled and Kressara called again, “SHOW ME!!!”
—((((Begin Force Sensitivity App: 391/100 WC Requirement.))))—
The walls of foliage shook violently, the water sloshed as the ground trembled, and the wind blew in every direction all at once. Chaos unleashed from the darkness overhead and razed the field to the ground, giving way to light, then to darkness, and to light again. Kressara screamed and fell to her knees, eyes wide as they could be while she witnessed a galaxy from on high descend upon the earth. She felt innocence, knowledge, peace, chaos, suffering, and numbness all at once. Gasping she fell madly in love with every aspect of it and fell against the shallow water in all mending heartache. She grasped her chest, heaving for oxygen that simply didn’t exist anymore, yet praying that never again would she be free of this place. She learned the true meaning of the force in these eternal, fleeting moments.
It was euphoria...discomfort and helplessness that eased and empowered her. It was wild and unbound by any living thing, yet it sustained her as if she somehow belonged to it.
—-((((Force app pause))))—-
“
Do you know me now?”
Tears streamed down her cheeks that blurred her vision and screaming herself hoarse Kressara answered, “I KNOW YOU! I’VE NEVER KNOWN ANYTHING SO TRUE!!!”
—-((((Force app resume))))—
The stars took the shape of black birds and flew simultaneously at Kressara, striking her with fatal, powerful blows. Each hit was a breath that offered relief until every star in the night sky resided within her body. Massive black feathers formed from the darkness and all the madness was silent. In the wings of a massive crow Kressara lay still, just the sound of her breathing audible until the voice spoke for a final time.
“Rise, daughter. Inherit the future.”
With a strained gasp Kressara shot up from the floor of the jail cell covered in sweat, shaking uncontrollably, and dehydrated from crying. She was no longer trapped within her subconscious mind, but what she learned from looking within would change her life forever. Kressara believed in the force now more than she believed in her own existence, and she would live for the chance to feel that indescribable presence again. She lifted her hand as she had before in the dream and closed her eyes, exhaling unsteadily. She could feel it now. She could feel the force in the cell all around her. Kressara smiled genuinely, sobbing with joy as if she’d only just now woken up from a dream that lasted all her life. The force danced around her in celebration, comforting her aching body.
—-((((Force sensitivity app: concluded. 391/100 WC requirement.))))—-