06-28-2020, 11:28 PM
Her words hung in the air as if visible and glowing. ENEMIES And in his mind he saw the flash of scarlet and azure, red shadowed power against blue haloed determination.
The struggle that he haf taken a stand in years ago. Order had to exist. Chaos fleeing from an indomitable will and an iron fist. Had he not apprenticed himself to the man who had come further than anyone in history in uniting the world under one rule?
True, there was resistance. China and the US still held out, though the latter was finally crumbling. It was not a perfect order, and yet perfection was never an end state. It was merely a goal. As Sith apprentices overthrew their masters and advanced their cause, one or two steps at a time, so too would he take his steps in due time.
Malik was not his enemy. Malik was the extent he would go to. Was willing to go.
And he walled him off. Kept him caged. He studied the man, the rage and fire that churned and rolled behind his eyes. A part of him wanted to shiver. And yet a part of him smiled.
This ferocity was his own. Walled off and guarded. But his own.
He looked at the woman, the way her hair and clothes flowing around her reminding him of leaves or flowers on a vine, a stream down a riverbed, free and eternal.
A smile formed as he studied her, looked around to let this place wash over him. He recalled those words of Palpatine, part of them coming out as a whisper. "There is a place within you, a place as briskly clean as ice on a mountaintop, cool and remote. Find that high place, and look down within yourself; breathe that clean, icy air..."
Strangely, the landscape changed, knives of cold winds cutting through his shirt collar and mist feathering his breath. The three of them stood on a jagged icy peak, high enough the air felt thin, though their breath was not labored. Black oceans of cloud scudded a grey sky, light seeming to come from everywhere and nowhere.
Yet for all the dreary monotony of color, crystalline lattice, mathematically perfect in their chaotic growth, glowed behind it all, as of the reality was merely a curtain and for just a moment he could see the truth.
And he beheld Malik in all his glory, examined him as he burned with a fire hotter than the surface of the sun. Fiery ice fit to consume the world.
Was that the key? The image came to him and he smiled, wind swirling around him, showering him- them, in a cloud of sparkling snow. The heart of a reactor. The combustion of the engine.
He looked at her once more and nodded. "We are not enemies. That was my mistake." And with that, he walked into Malik, the man misting into ghost, the fading snarling grin of pure joy remaining burned into his mind.
And Marcus breathed, inhaling the sweet breath of life as if for the first time, felt the cold flow into his chest, the icy lava pump from his heart through his limbs to his toes and finger tips.
His scalp tingled.
He was whole and unafraid. He felt the cauldron within, the fusion core radiating its slow, steady, unending stream of heat, pulsing as if a heart beat.
He looked at the woman, peace and serenity easy on his face. "Thank you."
The struggle that he haf taken a stand in years ago. Order had to exist. Chaos fleeing from an indomitable will and an iron fist. Had he not apprenticed himself to the man who had come further than anyone in history in uniting the world under one rule?
True, there was resistance. China and the US still held out, though the latter was finally crumbling. It was not a perfect order, and yet perfection was never an end state. It was merely a goal. As Sith apprentices overthrew their masters and advanced their cause, one or two steps at a time, so too would he take his steps in due time.
Malik was not his enemy. Malik was the extent he would go to. Was willing to go.
And he walled him off. Kept him caged. He studied the man, the rage and fire that churned and rolled behind his eyes. A part of him wanted to shiver. And yet a part of him smiled.
This ferocity was his own. Walled off and guarded. But his own.
He looked at the woman, the way her hair and clothes flowing around her reminding him of leaves or flowers on a vine, a stream down a riverbed, free and eternal.
A smile formed as he studied her, looked around to let this place wash over him. He recalled those words of Palpatine, part of them coming out as a whisper. "There is a place within you, a place as briskly clean as ice on a mountaintop, cool and remote. Find that high place, and look down within yourself; breathe that clean, icy air..."
Strangely, the landscape changed, knives of cold winds cutting through his shirt collar and mist feathering his breath. The three of them stood on a jagged icy peak, high enough the air felt thin, though their breath was not labored. Black oceans of cloud scudded a grey sky, light seeming to come from everywhere and nowhere.
Yet for all the dreary monotony of color, crystalline lattice, mathematically perfect in their chaotic growth, glowed behind it all, as of the reality was merely a curtain and for just a moment he could see the truth.
And he beheld Malik in all his glory, examined him as he burned with a fire hotter than the surface of the sun. Fiery ice fit to consume the world.
Was that the key? The image came to him and he smiled, wind swirling around him, showering him- them, in a cloud of sparkling snow. The heart of a reactor. The combustion of the engine.
He looked at her once more and nodded. "We are not enemies. That was my mistake." And with that, he walked into Malik, the man misting into ghost, the fading snarling grin of pure joy remaining burned into his mind.
And Marcus breathed, inhaling the sweet breath of life as if for the first time, felt the cold flow into his chest, the icy lava pump from his heart through his limbs to his toes and finger tips.
His scalp tingled.
He was whole and unafraid. He felt the cauldron within, the fusion core radiating its slow, steady, unending stream of heat, pulsing as if a heart beat.
He looked at the woman, peace and serenity easy on his face. "Thank you."