Betrayal, cruelly emphasized [Open]

[jadus]

WHO: Darth Jadus, Darth Marr, whoever else wants a thread
WHERE: De Chima, the moonbase
WHEN: 9:19 PM of July 27th and the three days following.
WHAT: Jadus is becoming human again, and it offends him terribly.
WARNINGS: Body horror

[[ooc: Jadus spent the Shimmer event slowly transforming into a giant, crinoid-like creature four meters across. There are five prompts bellow. Despite all appearances to the contrary, he is capable of communicating with others in all of these. Hit me up via PM, on plurk at PaleAntiquarian, or discord at CellarSpider#9984 if you have an idea for another prompt you'd like.]]

1.
As the sky darkened to another iridescent night, the entropic chorus of emotions grew to a piercing cry in his mind, and he joined them in screaming, voiceless and outraged. It could not have lasted forever. And it could never bring all that he sought. He had known this. But it had been so brief, so beautiful, so twisted, that in the moment he could not bear to see it broken.

The ash-choked roar of billions of unenlightened minds washed over him again, and he curled in on himself and fell onto the overgrown streets, dozens of limbs writhing and shuddering in seizure.

2.
He eventually took to the sky again, the air itself feeling heavier and more unyeilding.

By midnight, he became too tired to fly. He glided down into a park full of what once were people. He landed on a tree, his limp, two meter-long limbs dangling and draping over branches like carrion. His seething emotions were contained, visible to none. But the searingly dark aura he was projecting made his displeasure clear. It brought suffering and dread with it.

3.
Later, he crawled down, through the dying flowers of the transformed, finally coming to exhausted rest in a nearby pond, supported by the water. His translucent, red-oilslick limbs were beginning to turn pale and dull. He could feel changes beginning within his body again, and he knew what they would produce.

4.
At the start of the next day he lifted himself from where he had been placed to recover, by sheer furious effort. The action in itself was agony: his limbs were fusing together by tenuous threads of flesh and new blood vessels and armor mesh, shot full of sharp slivers of reforming bone and armor that had been subsumed into him during his transformation. Only the Force held him up, a misshapen, melting thing.

He returned to the forest grove where he made his experiments, setting down in a hollow between the roots of a tree. He lay there, twitching, half-blind as his body closed in around his senses again, and his eyes reconstructed themselves beneath a film of skin. His lungs and throat were barely formed, his mouth closed over, but patches of electronics rising through his maybe-face were broadcasting intermittent gasps of pain.

5.
The following day, his appearance was almost normal. His body still split open at the bending of joints, revealing raw flesh. He still limped from the needle-sharp pain of grinding nerves and bone, and his armor had no clean angles, only curves. But he was identifiably humanoid again. His stated justification for travel to the guards at the moon base: "Medical necessity."

The lower gravity eased the pain, and the terrible quiet of only a few hundred human minds surrounded by void forced him to understand how finite he was again.

Comments

2

[marr]

The time without Jadus was an almost welcome reprieve, overshadowed by the shimmering, threatening field and the looming threat of worse still. The sudden darkness was more intense than usual, and Marr knew it was not an illusion caused by its absence and sudden reappearance.

Jadus was displeased over something. Only their long association on the Dark Council, and Marr's own increased senses, allowed him to discern the subtle differences that separated Jadus' well-concealed and convoluted moods.

Marr wanted to know what had happened to Jadus, and so, sought him out. What he found was so far outside of what he had expected that Marr was truly, genuinely surprised, but only for a few brief moments. There was no denying that the thing in front of him was Jadus.

[jadus]

Marr was approaching. He wanted nothing to do with Marr. The man was too obstinate in his return to humanity. Too complacent, regardless of a Dark Lord's paranoia.

His limbs withdrew into the tree, curling and twining around each other.

[marr]

The writhing, fluid movements of those many limbs was so expressive, more expressive than Marr had seen Jadus since he was an acolyte or a fresh apprentice. Clearly he was unwanted, but Marr was undeterred.

"You're very expressive today, Jadus." An observation of the obvious, but one that he expects will get a reaction if Jadus is still capable of understanding speech.

[jadus]

Marr had no concept of what was lost. His limbs wrap around the branches, pieces of leaves and small twigs falling to the ground beneath him.

You would have benefited from it. Either he would have understood, or he would have been subsumed, like the pitiful wretches dotting the park. Either would have been satisfying.

[marr]

That reply is enough to give Marr pause, to think it over. "Perhaps, or perhaps there would be nothing new I did not know from my time without a body," He countered. Jadus clearly had been changed, physically, but not mentally as far as Marr could sense.

That didn't mean the changes weren't there; Jadus was an expert at guarding his thoughts and mind, even if his current body was expressive in its own unusual way.

[jadus]

You appeared as human to those who saw you. He did not have attestation for this, but it was near-inevitable. Clung to it.

His movements slow, at rest again. Still inflexible.

[marr]

Marr inclined his head. "During the time I manifest myself in a visible form, yes. But I was free from my body, and did not spend all my time confining myself in a coherent form."

There were times when he missed how connected with the Force, with everything, he had been. He had held strong to the boundaries of his existence, to the 'self' that defined him as something separate from the Force. But that hadn't meant he had been blind to that which lay beyond the edges of his being.

He'd looked deeper and deeper into the Force, seeking understanding.

[jadus]

Bending to the past and the limitations of others, he insisted. Marr had wasted the coherency he'd retained after death, his words merely confirmed what had already been known.

This body is being unmade. He could feel it beginning, and it would be loathsome. I do not wish to speak to you until it is done.

3- EVEN MORE BODY HORROR!!?

[compostabelle]

[ Jadus was being followed- or more accurately he was attracting company. Abominations forged from carrion birds are settling in the trees expectantly. Now and then a black swarm would loop overhead with a cacophony of cries. There's a tickling sensation as dozens of tiny fish and bottom feeders come to nibble at his shifting, wasting flesh.

She comes out of the underbrush, looking like she missed the mutating effects of the shimmer itself, but still with some hideous creature perched on her arm. It has many teeth, though not necessarily where one would expect teeth to be. At the moment, she is stroking along rows of glistening canines that erupt from the back of its head.

And she stops to look at the great, suffering creature that Jadus has become- tips her head as if just as expectant for a meal as anything else on the scene. ]

Aaahahaha, look look look, hello hello.

[ She comes to kneel by the pond, and lifts out one of his limbs. ]

Loooook look look, look at you. Radial and pretty and ready to clean. Much better, much, much better like this.

[ Her fingers prod along the limb, seeking out the first hints of bone- the tiny calcified shards that are beginning to form in the middle of his soft flesh. ]

Does it hurt? Do you want to go home how? You can let go of your pretty, pretty body. You can let go, we'll all take care of you.

YES PERFECT

[jadus]

[His limbs roil the water, fending off the nipping mouths with an electric current that makes his body steam. It dissipates as the Maiden approaches, letting her close. The limb curls weakly around her arm, shivering with pain.]

If I am eaten, the Porter will impose its will more quickly. I will die, and awaken as human. I do not want this.

[compostabelle]

[ She lets out a little sigh and frowns. He's right, of course. There will be no true death here- only a speedier return to a cramped prison. How frustrating that she can not offer her usual mercies. ]

Mmmh. She'll take away your cilia and your s-symmetry, symmetry. Rude as per fuckin always.

[jadus]

[He relaxes a little, limbs uncurling, settling on the surface, the spines arrayed on his central core scraping softly against each other.]

I was mutable.

[One limb arches, a branching tip flaring open. It had just begun to bifurcate in the final hours.]

There was little purpose to my actions, but I would have changed forever.

[compostabelle]

[ Dang. That's dope. She considers his reply and his spine quietly for a moment. ]

The p-purpose of a fully aerial echinoderm being introduced to this environment is self-evident.

[jadus]

[He thought on it, the stillness aleviating some of the pain of bone slivers weaving through his flesh.]

I could discern patterns of action, lessons to learn from unmaking the human form, [And rejected enlightenment in others, clinging to their flesh as if their bodies were themselves.]

But I did not see a reason to become this. What did you see?

[compostabelle]

You would, uhm, fit, I think. Nnnh, hhhhhah, yeah you would fit where the circles are broken. Filter-feeder filter feeds. The sky is dirty here.