Generally Considered Relative

“Captain, why have we stopped?”

“There seems to be wreckage up ahead. The aural sensors are going nuts and I have a bad feeling about this. I figured you would want to see it, Ma’am.”

“Miss.”

“Sorry, yes of course. Miss.”

“I’m on my way.”

K’tana snapped off the comm and scowled at the automated sliding door as it squeaked open.

*Piece of chud. Should’ve boarded a less trashy ship*.

The violet woman worked to quiet her chaotic thoughts. Memories flooded her mind with visions of crashed ships, being stranded alone on random planets and visceral rivers of blood flowing down *Tyrian* skin. The echoes from her past caused her skin to tingle and her knees to grow weak. She returned to reality - her full weight was now resting against the wall; her breathing was shallow and rapid.

K’tana took several calming breaths as she steadied herself and forced the silence to blanket her turbulent thoughts. Spite filled her system as she raged against her own mind, demanding to be in control once again. She finally managed to stand on her own and once again walk, if unsteadily, towards the cockpit.

K’tana’s movement halted abruptly when she passed behind the pilot’s chair, her green eyes flashing with curiosity. The black abyss visible beyond the viewpoint began to open up, revealing an intriguing sight that fully captured the Twi’lek’s attention. The parts of the ship she could see were coated in dark-reddish brown and streaky dollops of what looked like paint. As her vessel approached the derelict starship, the violet woman spotted the cause of the chaotic coloration and she nearly burst into a manic fit of giggles at the sight.

A few dozen thin metallic spikes jut out from random areas of the ship, each of them impaling several Humanoid forms. The stains that ran down the hull in dried and crusted streams made it obvious to the Twi’lek that the bodies had been driven onto the poles while planetside in order to give the ship its intimidating appearance.

"Well then..." she snickered as she looked at the stern-faced pilot, "that explains the *choddy* paint job."

He raised his brow and went back to reading his blinking lights and deciphering the sensors.

"Ma-Miss” he stuttered,” the sensor array is picking up life forms...but this..." The man shook his head, his eyes growing wide as his face grew pale. "It’s reading life forms throughout the entire ship."

"Then your stupid ship is broken", K'tana replied, brushing off the man's concern.

"No. It is not. There is something wrong with that ship. The aft is all wrong. It shouldn't be shaped like that and the engines have been blown apart. This thing should be drifting, not sitting perfectly still." The pilot's eyes shot back to the derelict spaceship and he shook his head. "The gravity drive and air support systems are functional and online and there seems to be distributed life on every single point of the ship, but nothing that resembles a...person, anywhere."

"*Karking* great. So what? Ghosts are running the ship? Next you're gonna tell me ya see deep space angels", she sneered. Not waiting for a response, the Twi'lek tilted her head towards the vessel and gave a wicked smile. "Let's go check it out! Someone has to be keeping it functional and I wanna meet their stylist."

K’tana’s wicked grin was accentuated by her lush lips and curvaceous mouth, its enticing shape making the smile all the more frightening with. It gave the pilot further reason to shudder but he obeyed his orders and brought the light freighter around for a better look. The Twi’lek’s grin continued to widen as she admired the mass amounts of frozen corpses stuck to the ship.

"This. Is. So. *Di'a*! Get me in there!" The violet woman's giggle and sudden exuberance made the pilot have second thoughts about working with the disturbed Priestess, but again he followed his orders and prepared to dock the “ghost” ship.

|-o-|

"No."

"You are seriously going to rebuff a direct order?"

"Ma-"

"Miss!"

"Miss! I am not going to get on that ship! If I die, you will have to fly this bird on your own. No one but me can keep this baby running."

K'tana stared the man down until he looked away and then shook her head, her long lekku swishing over her shoulders and flickering like the tail of an angry manka-cat.

"Fine. Whatever. Be a giant, quivering *frang*. Just don't leave without me or I will hunt down everyone you've ever loved and skin them, slowly, in front of you." Her eyes took on a dangerous glow as she spoke, but quickly snapped back to her excited gaze as the man nodded in acquiescence and he opened the docking bay door.

The pilot immediately began the lockdown process to shut it once more. He ran back to the cockpit to await her return. Or, he decided, until sometime within the next twelve hours when he would leave her - or her corpse - behind. He sat behind his chair and set his feet upon the console before quickly falling asleep.

|-o-|

The bottom level docking bay of the CR-90 was dark and oppressing. The sensation of being watched was not lost on K’tana. Her body tingled with excitement and anticipation of whatever was to come as she looked around the large open space, admiring its new décor.

Dark smears of dried, coagulated blood coated the metal walls in random patterns around the room. Emergency lights flickered white and red in a nauseating pattern that had K’tana feeling motion sick within moments. A faint gurgle of white noise could be heard over the intercom, as though someone was holding down the button while sitting in silence.

The grinning Twi’lek leisurely made her way up a long staircase. The stairs were onerous and caused the woman’s gait to become hesitant and unsure. Although her footing remained steady and the swish of her hips hypnotic, K’tana felt she could make a misstep at any moment. The flickering lights did nothing for her ability to see in the dim glow and yet she managed to make it up the stairs without taking a false step.

K’tana still wore her smile as she came up to the corridor of the main level. Hand-prints and besmirched and bloody fingerprints glissading over the new corridors had no effect on her disturbing smirk. Having decided to begin at the back of the Corvette, the violet woman continued on her path to what she believed was the aft and towards the engine room.

Although K’tana knew nothing of ship design she noticed the moment she stepped foot into the sensor array and main reactor room that something was very wrong. Standing in the doorway, her gaze fell upon a sight that was as beautiful as it was disturbing. The room itself was awry and not built in the manner it should have been. Instead of a large circular room containing computers and excess amounts of tech surrounded by antiseptic white walls, the chamber was instead large, black and oval. Tapered spikes stuck out of the rectangular wall panels and pointed to a large sphere that hovered in the core of the chamber.

Encircling the black sphere were three large rings studded with triangular lights and more tapered black spikes. The rings moved in strange patterns of their own volition and seemed to defy reason as they spun and swirled in opposing directions, not once coming to settle or move in alignment with one another. The sphere seemed to suck in light as it pushed and pulled the surrounding rings in illogical patterns.

K’tana stood motionless, breathless, staring in awe and horror and unable to look away. The spinning of the rings wreaked havoc on the chaos of her mind. The blackness at the core seeped into the fragmented pieces inside her and wedged itself between the cracks. Her lekku twitched sporadically as she felt those cracks begin to expand and the darkness spread her sanity thin. The fragments and the spaces between rapidly eating away at her residual resolve and the permanent smirk she wore slipped from her face. She could feel the darkness writhing its way through the core of her being, consuming everything it touched and leaving her alone and with nothing of herself.

The Priestess’ beautiful green irises disappeared as her pupils dilated and swallowed the emerald orbs. She felt pressure well up behind her eyes before her vision began to blur and her mouth filled with the taste of metal. K’tana reached up and touched the warm, sticky liquid running over her cheeks and down her chin. Her fingertips came away coated in a thick black and red slime, as though blood and tar had managed to mix themselves together in her eyes and mouth before streaming down her face.

A high pitched wail echoed through the room around her and she felt, more than saw, the rings of the black sphere rotate and increase the tempo of their profane arrangement. As she realized the wail was a scream that was emanating from her own lungs, the pattern came to a sudden stop. The rings pulled into alignment and the solid sphere became a mirror sitting beneath the surface of placid black water. It hovered there in stillness seeming to reflect and absorb the light around it, rippling like thin liquid but remaining dense and opaque. The Priestess mouth snapped shut as she stood, unable to move or turn her face away.

Solid but shapeless silhouettes and indistinct shadows moved inside the black hole with patternless precision. As the woman’s black eyes tried to follow the motions the strain began to take its toll and she briefly squeezed her eyes shut. A moment later, K’tana regretted her decision as her reality collapsed in on itself.

Standing inches from K’tana’s face was the defiled corpse of her former Master. His skin was charred, cracked and oozing thick trails of blood. She could smell his putrid breath from where he stood. Jaek’s cold blue eyes stared through her, the flesh around his mouth peeling away as he bared his teeth in a horrific grin and cocked his head to the side. K’tana’s black and bloody eyes flicked towards a sudden movement behind the nightmarish figure.

Impaled on one of the spikes was a woman K’tana knew very well. Red *Lethan* skin concealed a majority of the blood that was pouring without end from gashes covering her body. A large black metal halo encircled her torso, leaving several feet between the inside of the band and her flesh. Narrow spikes protruded from the alien woman, appearing to be growing out of her skin and connected to the shadowy aureole. Amber eyes filled with longing, pain and hatred locked onto the terrified Twi’lek from deep within the sunken hollows of her former Mistress’ eye-sockets.

As Inarya shrieked in pain and rage, Jaek slid back into K’tana’s line of sight. His leering gaze and cruel smile shook the Priestess to her core, freezing her in place once more.

*You belong with us*.

Jaek’s voice resonated within K’tana’s skull and everything that remained of her sanity broke. She heard the Inarya’s screams of lust and pain as she twisted on the metal spikes and began to tear them out. More blood gushed from the other woman as the living and dead Jaek walked around his former apprentice, prodding her violet skin with his scorched fingertips. With each touch K’tana shrieked in pain. Visions beset her, the sensation of being consumed by flames overriding the reality of the derelict. Illusion or not, it felt real, utterly overpowering the Priestess’ awareness.

Memories of torturing the man who stood in front of her and then burning his chambers to ash came with a tidal wave of burning agony.

Memories hit her like a tidal wave of burning agony, carrying her back to the day she had tortured the man in front of her and burned his chambers with his eviscerated corpse inside. Although she could not move, she could stare at Jaek defiantly. As she did so more memories flooded her mind. Days of laying fully immobilized in intensive care, broken ribs, bruised and cut lekku, the oceans of tears she had cried when finally alone. All of it struck her like a lightning rod in a storm and her rage seeped away, leaving her alone with her fear and the hollow pit that had replaced her soul.

Inarya somehow pulled herself from the wall, her eviscerated and perforated flesh hanging off in gorey wet chunks as she walked, leaving bloody footprints on the floor as she approached. The *Lethan* Twi’lek smiled despite her state - or perhaps because of it - and K’tana realized she had been slowly backing backing away...towards the fissure in the centre of the room.

*You belong with us.*

K’tana faltered at the sound of the once-comforting voice that she had not heard in nearly a year and then screamed in horror as Inarya shoved her into the black hole just before the rings began to spin once more.

*I belong with them. I deserve this.*

|-o-|

The Arconan pilot woke with a shout. A glossy sheen of sweat slicked his face and chest. He brought his knuckles to his face and dug them into his eye-sockets to clear away the blur of sleep. When he could see properly once again he realized he had fallen asleep at the console and was stunned when he looked out of the viewport and saw that the derelict ship was gone. No wreckage remained and the sensors picked up no trail. The CR-90 Zephyr had simply vanished.

And it had taken K’tana with it.