emile fischer

Xaash: Silence

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Everything is chaos. Everything is pain. Everything mixes and sweats fear. A flood of thoughts, rapid, heavy and as precise as heartrending penetrates his skull and refuses to escape. They pile up, not letting his mind rest for a second. The flames ignite the rustic wood, the cries stir the dead jungle, the tears mingle with the gray rain. The roar of a lightsaber, the creak of a stone slab, worst of all, the judgment of the dead. The next moment, a young boy smiled at him, a very small being with long hair. Yes, it's him. She knows it, even if here nothing needs logic. And then this sound, incessant, which repeats itself again and again. This cyber-sound, cold, cruel and tinged with red. A sound has no color, but here it does. Then his heart empties and yet now peez three times his weight. A ball of lead, poisoning his body and destroying his hopes. And… She… is there. Her voice rings out... like an echo in the Force, the heartbreaking sound of her pain, her terrible pain... when she understands. Destroyed to the core, she whispers in her broken voice, as if it were a bad dream that she refused to accept, imploring another choice, an ounce of pity: "  …Nope…  »

Turning around in her blanket, sweating and panting, the poor girl is exhausted. His closed eyes flutter, his heart panics, his brain smokes, and when finally a crash of thunder makes Dromund Kaas tremble, Xaash wakes up.

The first word that comes to mind is "  why  ?  ". Why her mind will never let her rest  ? The pain of emerging from an atrocious world, of finally leaving it, to realize that one's own existence, which one has just joined, is beautiful and indeed atrocious, but it is real and constant. Like the next chapter in the sad book that's been left on the shelf for too long, the context is slowly coming back. It remains only to analyze the message of the dream, and wait for the cruel day, once again, to rise.

Xaash wasn't going to expect anything. Especially since on Kaas, day and night were forgotten. They weren't much different, a bit lighter for the day, perhaps. She got up, dressed in her beautiful Eternal Revanite outfit, and left her chambers.

Kaas. What a strange planet. Damp, dark, warm and yet so blue. Its dense jungle, covered with lianas, mushrooms, all kinds of critters. Its sky, an eternal ball of clouds punctuated by lightning. And the city, modern, lost in its center, stranded like a ship on a world that is not its own.

The young child knew the city well, but had also wandered far enough in the forest to never get lost. After all, she was born there. His body had hatched in the sands of Korriban, 18 years ago, but his spirit, as stirred as it was, had really emerged in the darkness of this jungle, 5 beautiful years later.

The beginning of his nightmare. The same as everyone really. It all starts in flames. Those warm, deadly, untouchable lights that she watched for so long devour the rest of what she was before her eyes. As she knelt, these demons of light feasted on the crumbling debris of her greatest failure.

The anger she had unleashed on the jedi camp. Eternal hatred towards the lesser partner. The Force itself had trembled before his fury, and caused every being in the city to turn back to the same point. Without understanding, everyone had felt the disturbance. At least that's what Zash had told him.

All this invaded his mind, incessantly. Shaking your head, blinking your eyes and breathing in the air that escaped her didn't change anything.

Impossible… to… escape it.

The Black Temple area. After a long ruminating walk, full of restless memories, jostling each other at full speed, Xaash had finally reached an isolated place, lost, but full of spirits from the past. Here, besides the former dead, the only people who could hear him scream his rage were nothing more than prey. Crazed slaves, looters, and hermits, all recluses of the Sith world, all doomed to die tonight. If the young woman couldn't silence the chaos in her head, which seemed to want to explode at any moment, maybe she could relieve the pressure… through blood. She had to find a cure, and fast.

By passion...

The smoldering migraine, the exaggerated breathing, the leaden heart, the incessant hissing, the sharp tremors, the rising tension in his veins. She was going to implode. It all had to come out.

I break my chains  !

Without thinking further, Xaash shot like an arrow towards a group of demented workers. They had done nothing. The poor slaves had long lost their minds, and were trapped in a loop of aimless work  : digging and digging, all day long, near a column of cut stone. But nothing could prevent the terrible child from hurting them.

As soon as the Sith weapons began to roar, the first man kissed the column in front of him, pressed against the stone by a bar of red plasma which did not force to pass through his vertebrae, then the rock itself, all while less than a second. His smoking torso rolled back before hitting the ground. The second didn't have time to analyze. His face had already received the fatal slap of the laser. His astonished gaze, lost among the dead, followed the movement and crashed into the damp earth. One by one, sometimes two or even three at a time, they fell under his wrath. The last member of the group, a young man, died instantly from a simple push of the Force.  ; a simple charge of hatred, provoked by a screaming little girl, swords back, head forward, is enough to take his life. The smell of blackened flesh, the sound of torture, the feeling of absolute power, the call of blood...

Slowly, Xaash cocked his head to the side, mouth open, one eye hidden behind his dark veil, the other tinted bright red. The red of the Enraged Force. The red of the Unleashed Force. It was just the beginning. Nothing had changed. Chaos was still inside her. She did not give up.

A little further on, another band was waiting for him. And another over there. A slew, on the other side, a group closer to the steps, from all around the cursed temple, the living were swarming.

With hatred leading to hatred, the young sith entered the carnage ball.

A man was lifted into the air by the throat, then swung over his comrades. Another received a saber in the chest. His colleague charged, unsuccessfully when the sword returned. The next smashed his skull against his neighbor's in a long, crackling crash. A fugitive flew to a tree branch and remained there impaled at neck level, swinging like a hanged man, losing his liters of hemoglobin afloat. The others lost their lives in a whirlwind of scarlet light and a hurricane of agony. But more arrived as reinforcements. Poor fools. When the beast turned to them, staring at them from its small, bright crimson eyes, one arm reaching back to retrieve the Sith weapon that was still flying and spinning into its palm after decapitating their friend… it was too late. The snap of the saber against his glove, the nimble, clawed fingers covering him, the instantaneous charge at their frail little bodies. This nightmare is enough for some to free them from their spell... to plunge them back into a completely different dark spell. The horror.

It takes time for a life to develop. It all starts with a painful childbirth, then a childhood full of love, rigorous work at school sometimes, then a job, all mixed up with various problems, crazy adventures, beautiful moments, tragic lessons, pleasant holidays, a nice wedding, sometimes followed by other deliveries. A life always remains so full of stories, and remains so dreamy about those that remain to be lived... None of this crossed Xaash's mind when each body fell at his feet, staining his body with mud and blood. dress and her boots. Not even for a moment. It may seem unfair and tragic, cold and thoughtless, but any thought of the berserk sith was blocked. Focused in one place. His own nightmare. And those dead, restful eyes wide open in her wake, however many, old and innocent, could never haunt her. Not even that baby, a long time ago.

No, it still wasn't over. The carnage escalated. These men, who were worthless to anyone now, were being butchered over and over again. In a simple whirlwind of fury was now sweeping over an old man. The wrist and he screamed, the forearm and he screamed, the shoulder and he cried, the head and he was forever silent, and the belly, just in case. The next, a gotal, was thrown far back by the violence of the saber thrust, but was pulled towards the weapon again for a second strike at an already dead alien. Little by little, the gestures were made with less reflection, and more relentlessness. Their deaths had no purpose, except to bring down that thing inside her...that dark demon that held her inside her own head.

Five runaway slaves also lost their heads. Lined up, those fools. When the saber was far away, Xaash didn't bring it back to her right away, and held it at bay like a drone, ready to decapitate anyone running around. It was too simple, and it took a young worker, armed with a blaster, to shoot death himself in the shoulder to get his attention.

When she turned around, he dropped the gun at her feet and started to run, sorry. Xaash reached out and froze him in place. Trembling, he was already praying to his gods and ancestors, but no one could help him anymore. He already felt the fear of death in his belly, the pressure of the Force on his body, the hatred of the one who exercised it behind his back. crack  ! His wrist snapped and the back of his hand stuck to his forearm. crack  ! Two or three ribs punctured his lungs. crack  ! Again and again the ugly sounds of bones bending and giving way, until the ball of flesh that was once a man, and now beyond the feats of the best contortionists, fell back into the mud, truly desolate.

The child inspected his wound only briefly. She had nothing. The blow had barely grazed her. But a different cry called out to him next. A cry of pain, of anger, not of physical suffering. A man, old and bearded, jumped on her from the height of a statue. He did not approach his target, but remained frozen in the air in turn, above the boiling fury. Pain swept through him, too, his guts twitching like snakes, the skin of his belly stretched like an eraser, and following a final moan of desolation, his upper half joined the twisted corpse on the ground…probably his son.

Xaash reminded her of her saber which was waiting for her in the plants, and went back to work. Still, still more, she was not relieved. The voices in his head did not tire. She jumped on a group sleeping a little lower down, in a tent. The bloodstained fabric ignited at the brief touch of the hot blade, and the tent, like a funeral brazier, lit up the night for a brief moment. On the left, a last brave man searched a crate in search of a weapon. He couldn't back away far enough when the Force brought down a Sith column on top of him. In agony, the poor fanatic spat out his guts. His head, shoulders and arms protruded only from the giant rectangular rock. He begged for mercy while trying to get free when in front of her, a child advanced step by step towards him, her lightsaber tracing in the ground a sinister smoking trench, aligned with her neck.

And then came the silence. A silence that no one could appreciate. A silence that Xaash, like the dead, did not hear. It was over. Only she was left. She, the jungle and the corpses. A perfect illustration of what she had become in spite of herself. But that wasn't the kind of silence she was looking for. Stepping away from the fading inferno of the tent, Xaash had failed to silence his thoughts. His dream and his constant worries returned to the charge. Advancing on the few stone slabs that left the temple and its courtyard, his face was lost, pinned to the ground, focused on the sound of his boots against the rock. When his foot landed on the last slab of the path to the forest, a slight dizziness and a low sound stopped him. The stone was wobbly, and had just tilted slightly, producing a heavy but discreet creak. And it only takes this slab for her to lose herself, to allow herself to be swallowed up in the sands of her mind, and by the remorse of the past.

The secret slab. The next vision of his dream. Those sabers she still held in her hands, those mythical and sacred weapons… weren't hers. They were his, but at a heavy price. It was she who had taken them on that decisive day. Sneaking into her parents' bedroom, she had borrowed the family's arms for her usual excursion. She still remembered the noise of the heavy flat stone which, like a safe, revealed to her a treasure that she had admired since so young. Just like the one on Korriban had unveiled the Dark Council. She hid it in vain, her dreams reminded her of it. His nightmare was probably right. She was responsible. Not only hadn't she had the strength to lift that damn beam and those blocks of stone, but maybe her parents could have avoided the tragedy…if she hadn't stolen them. And although her own weakness haunted her even more, and from the start, this new idea seemed logical. Maybe they wouldn't have had time to go get them, maybe they would have lost… after all the incident had been so fast, she had heard it… It doesn't matter, if she had been more great in the Force, she would have saved them. Of that, she was certain. It was her fault, and she hated herself for it  !

Fleeing from pain and tears at first, the young Sith took a few steps home, but she was far too depressed. Holding her head like a lunatic, without even being touched by a spirit from the temple, her sight blurred, her lungs panicked, her heart seemed ready to give out… After only a few meters, she dropped her swords on the soft ground, and let out a long heart-rending howl. A cry of rage as much as of distress, while raising his face towards the neutral sky, his arms outstretched on the aisles. Simultaneously, the Force escaped from his body. Sweating from her pores, from her flesh, from all around her, a wave of destruction exploded, and disheveled the surrounding trees, leaving the mark of a beautiful crater in the mud, and a broken sith in its center.

Xaash stayed there. Motionless. Eyes closed, heart open. The nose pointed towards the clouds. And finally, after a long time, such suffering, and after this complaint to the stars… little by little, his breathing calmed down. Her face lost its wrinkles  ; his muscles, their tension. The voices…slowed down.

A tiny cold spike hit the corner of her fiery cheek. Then another, followed by a multitude of small wet impacts. The slow, calm and reassuring drizzle came to comfort her. The sky, from the top of her box, sensitive to her pain, wept for her. The teenager cradled by the rain let her face caress, keeping her eyes closed, and let a tear roll down her cheek, too.

Although chaos fell within her, this tear was in no way a sign of joy. The unleashing of the Force had relieved her, but the Force had not freed her. The rest of his dream still swirled around his mind, like a swarm ready to swoop. She let the rain cool her skin, like a marble statue praying to the sky that sizzled with light before growling with empathy. Finally, Xaash half-opened his eyes, now permanently marked red. Then her lips, adorned with her simple sharp tattoos, parted to let out a fragile, jerky exhalation. What a gentle rain...

The rain. His brother liked it. Damn, what did he miss… She had only known him for the first three years of her life, but he was so adorable. So happy. Watching him hop happily in a puddle in front of the house seemed so natural back then. Today… she would give anything to relive those simpler pleasures.

He was blond, his hair smooth and silky, quite long for his age. Her delicate nose, her tender cheeks, her shy eyes. How did she remember all this  ? She had no idea. He had left so young… A year before the fire. Sith took without asking, parents offered without hesitation. For the future of the Empire. That was also what she was raised for. It was more than an honor. But what she had learned, a few years before leaving for Korriban... This sound...

The noise still echoed in his head, like the voice of a phobia. There was no colder way to announce a death. A computer… a list…

Since then, the young boy came to visit her a few times, in the best of his dreams. Enough to keep him from forgetting his facial features. what was the worst  ? Dreaming of harsh reality, or diving for a moment in paradise, only to emerge destroyed  ?

The young woman remained there for a few more minutes, then moved away from the center of the small crater. His cursed sabers left the mud to join his belt, and the rain intensified slightly. The Sith retraced her steps. She climbed the granite stairs again and walked fearlessly towards the temple. From a distance, the huge dark structure looked like a mountain, cut a little straighter. Its simple shapes, its claws pointing to the sky, its old marks… It was a veritable palace of misfortune. A fortress of desolation.

It was no coincidence. Fate was playing with his nightmare, reminding him of it with every look. A fortress... like Jahnelthra's promise.

The Ice Princess had disappeared. The little white kitten she had met in the tombs had slipped away. The one she had gotten to know mostly over the past two years at the academy, and who had managed to explore her personality better than anyone…had flown away.

She remembered the pact they had made. Become Sith, both of you, at all costs. Xaash had succeeded in sharing his dream with a strange creature from elsewhere, and of a different original ambition. She who wanted to share a fortress… The strong moments they had lived together. The trials they had overcome. The secrets they had shared. Legendary stories and splendid discoveries. They had mutually… changed. Both. Accepting, without adopting too much, the strange difference of his alter-ego. The blinding light of one, against the misty darkness of the other. When she remembered their sudden meeting, Xaash sometimes smiled. If she had known at the time the sweet consequences of his mercy… she might have dealt the deathblow. Out of fear of trying… or out of refusal. This girl… had become important to her. A strange friend. No… more than that. Troubled, the word hesitated to surface in her thoughts, it escaped her. Its meaning, more than the word itself… Had she reached this stage  ? Why was her heart so heavy  ?

…Sister.

Her sister… Jahn… had left her. Following the last and painful stage of Korriban's decisive tests, Jahnelthra had bade him farewell a few months ago.

Having become Sith, the two young women had nothing more to learn from the red sands. And despite all their friendship... all this time past... Xaash had a destiny, and the echania had another.

Her dreamy little mind hadn't betrayed her. Traveling, discovering, exploiting, getting rich… Nothing surprising. But his future was so far from Kaas. Her ambitions… so far from her…

Jahnelthra had chosen simple but pure words  : she hoped that their paths would cross again one day. For Xaash the uncertainty was unbearable. Yet, was the presence of the Snow Kitten compatible with the ambitions of such a purist sith?  ? His abandonment was perhaps necessary in the end. And yet, he terrified her. What she didn't know was that with each of her cruel abandonments, the tomcat always comes back.

That's the reason. That's why her dream had led her here. Why her mind couldn't be quieted. Why her heart was so empty, yet so heavy. Despite all his Sith pride, despite his infinite darkness, despite his destiny, the truth always prevailed...

He missed her.

He missed her so much.

Her broad radiant smile, her crazy stories, her adorable nonsense, her dazzling hair, her captivating eyes, her delicate gestures, her graceful voice, her soft whispers, her furtive but warm and relaxing hugs. Anything that would have been a nuisance before, she wanted back. That love, that happiness that had been wrung from him by fire and violence long ago, was irreplaceable…but Jahn…surely was too.

Still walking slowly towards the temple, Xaash once again came across witnesses to his evil handiwork. Their empty stares, their blood spilled by the waters, their appalling calm, their chaos frozen by time.

Silence reigned supreme in the yard, and the child of the jungle became one with his surroundings. Yet the silence… as empty as it seemed, was laden with words. Xaash had long mastered this mute and melancholic language, which few people could understand… Jahnelthra, sometimes… when she listened.

Silence, but never nothingness.

Climbing the last steps lit by the two blue moons and the neighboring planets, Xaash advanced into the mouth of the great Black Temple.

Three months ago...

The braziers crackle, the black ghosts dance on the hot walls, and She is there. She is victorious, once again. She always wins. Beneath her feet a poor acolyte groaned in pain. His knee is severed, his vital fluid spilling over the pale sand of the enclosed arena. An arena made for victory, an underground arena, Korriban's final test arena.

In his hand the lightsaber growls impatiently. But she does not give him this pleasure. He can still grumble, he will be thrown to the tuk'ata soon enough for his failure. So close... so close to becoming a sith...

A little further on the circular arena, his colleagues, his rivals, the other students of his promotion kiss the sand. A few are still alive…they try to hold back their moans. The others, the corpses, are scattered. A foot bites the line of the circle, but nothing is attached to it. One arm, no, two, have been out of the arena for a long time. The owners are dead, their carcasses feed the critters outside. They confronted the young woman first.

Seated around the circle of death, the supervisors, donning their ceremonial bures, attend and judge their latest creation, their best pupil. Proud, the creature pulls back, and awaits the finale, the crowning glory, what it fought for. His new title. But nothing comes… then the black door opens. The fight is not over… There remains an adversary… A target stands between the girl of the sands that she is, and the woman that she must become.

And in that moment… she understands. His heart gives out. His hand is shaking and the lightsaber almost slips. No… they don't have the right. They can't do this to her  ! His eyes moisten, his lips quiver like never before. She refuses to believe it. It's just another bad dream...

Not her... not like that  ! …Pity  !

His opponent steps elegantly into the arena. Her friend, her dear friend, the one she loved so much, the one who remained to her, did not stop until she had crossed the edge of the circle. Her face is a reflection of hers, her pain a mirror of her grief…even if she is the only one to perceive it.

The young child does not stop shaking when fate seems to be established against her will in front of her. Her mouth vibrates, her breath gets lost, and everything she manages to do…everything that comes out of her person…and that reaches her sister a few steps away…everything in her voice…that simple word, speaks much more than any other word. It is the refusal, the immense pain, the eternal pain, the tears of his fractured heart, faced with this ironic destiny. A simple word, which in this language of silence translates so much. A broken being, a torn soul, faced with the identity of its ultimate adversary, against whom it was going to have to fight, until blood and tears  :

"  …Nope…  cried the echania.