Letters to Lucilla #2: Mecum omnes plangite
03 Jun 2022Cycronos
My dearest Lucilla,this morning, the trap finally slammed shut. And what an expert trap it was!
If my insides weren´t currently hurtling towards SagA at lightspeed, I´d gush with sheer admiration for the evil genius behind it. What a truly marvelous feat of theatre and deception, what an exuisitely insidious orchestra of fear and pain, what a minbreakingly final crescendo of absolute dominance!
Whoever did this knows me so well it boggles the mind. What horrible intelligence would know when to strike so surgically and brutally, that even the literal bloodbath I was forced to endure now seems like child´s play in comparison? What monstrous will would bide its time for 6 months, only to quench the budding life inside me at precisely the moment I allowed myself to feel safe again?
Even the most promethean of minds would struggle to answer that, and mine is a far cry from what it used to be,
A far cry....Farcry. The name of the ship that got me here. The first one that wasn´t an experiment in engineering or a stepping stone or a prototype. The Farcry was a labour of love, built with purpose and precision, a clear vision from start to finish, truly an extension of me, my newfound will, my newfound....well, „love“ if you will.....
But now it´s gone. Mercilessly torn to shreds by the very ship I used to escape from Purgatory.
At fucking Beagle Point of all places!
The image will haunt me till the end of my days. Suddenly, there it was, hovering in space, right in front of my cockpit. The Greybird. No lights, no pilot, no sign of life. Just the Greybird.
While I stared at it in horror, frozen on the spot, it calmly deployed its Railguns and then opened fire.
I don´t know if you´ve ever seen what destruction short range blasters with superpenetrator rounds can wreak at point blank range, but long story short, the Facry was ripped to shreds in one single, brutal salvo.
With suddenly nothing but a Remlock Suit between me and the Black, what choice did I have but to transfer over to the Greybird, which, surprise, surprise, welcomed me with open arms. Well, open hatch, but you get the point.
Since then I´ve been a prisoner in my own ship, forced to watch as some program executes jump after jump and takes me back to Purgatoy, kept company only by the same three ancient greek letters on every screen. What started it all, now ends it all. How fitting. Tse.....
I´m sure you were dying to know how I actually managed to escape, and what I´ve been doing since then, but I guess those burning questions faded as quickly as my hope out there at Beagle, didn´t they?
What´s left but to lament my fate, while I slip deeper and deeper into madness?
I know fear, I truly do. I know it from the smallest trickle to the most gushing torrent, from the smallest wave to the tallest tsunami, from gross to subtle, from actue to chronic, from superficial to existential. I have felt it all. I was forced to feel it all, no MADE to feel it all in more than one sense of the word.....
And yet what I feel now defies all description. There is something to it, some quality that is so intimate, so inescapeably close and brutally intrusive, and yet so utterly devoid of any humanity, that calling it „mindrape“ would be like calling a cyclone a gust of wind.
And I know its name: Shame.
The shame of being forced to admit, that ultimately I am absolutely powerless in the face of the empire´s titanic might in all it´s horrofic glory. It´s now proven beyond all doubt, that I have no choice but to completely, utterly and most intimately submit to their dominance.
Not pain, not fear, not torment, not horror has ever been able to get to me like that. But shame always could, and they know it. Seems they were finally ready to simply exploit that, no, seems like I was finally ready to be exploited that way.
The very thought makes me hurl, well dry heave now, since there´s nothing left I could projectile-vomit out.
If they can get me at Beagle, then for me the entire galaxy is Purgatory.
This is it, my transfomation into a ghost is complete, all that´s left inside me is echoes of the past, condensed into a silent death wail, that is stuck in my throat. And crushing it.
I do still carry a sidearm....
Hac in hora sine mora
cordis pulsum tangite
quod per sortem sternit fortem
mecum omnes plangite
Eternally yours
Cycronos