Entombed. (Semi-conscious stream of thought/Labyrinth of memory-woven illusions)

[Gildarts]

Hi there! I’m Christa Adams.. Sometimes they’d call me “Breadcrumbs” in my time in the service, for many reasons, not just the whole marksman deal. I was a great tracker. Could have tracked down my own fate if I had wanted to. Only thing is, now it is staring at me in the face. Or well, something like that. Currently, I sit miles and miles underneath the waves of the ocean, imprisoned in stone. I wish I could’ve seen this coming with my scope. The stone left my brain a little… Concussed? Is that the word? I’m a little hazy down here.

I’m taking this time to reflect. I don’t remember a lot of things, and I’m pretty sure that Behemoth guy took a whisk to my brain. I do remember Katia, dying in my arms for the second time. God, I’m such a fuck up.

I sent out a distress call to some person named “Klaud” but their face doesn’t come to mind. I don’t even think they picked up. Could’ve been the wrong number, think they’d come and risk their life for a stranger? Yeah, I’m not so sure either. I’d do it though, not much to lose anymore. Plus, I’m motherfuckin’ killer.

So this is reflection time part two. I’m tryin’ to sort out my memories. Fat chance I’ve got of actually doing it but uh, I have all the time in the world now. Who knew that becoming immortal would suck so bad. Primes must have it rough. I personally wonder if they want to die sometimes. I, however, want to live. That’s why this struggle will never end. That must be why I’m still alive, despite being a fucking statue at the bottom of the fucking ocean…

Outside my body, I tense. I struggle. I mentally extend myself. Something happens. A turbulent whoosh extends toward the direction I’m facing, but nothing else. I can barely tell anything happened, save the teeny bubbles that were churned.

My eyes narrowed, or well, they were frozen open, but I willed them to narrow to help me focus. If I was trapped in stone, I was going to try and break out. That’s just who I am. I’m Christa Fucking Adams. What that means? Well, I’m having trouble summoning that, memory mumbo jumbo and all that. But I will say, this is testing my patience, something that the torture I endured for over a hundred days when I was held captive by the Empire never did. It was there I learned to savor the pain. This is just… Friggin’ prison. Nothing fun or entertaining about that.

Maybe though, I can still my thoughts. Get out of here, or maybe now I have the time -all the time in the world, really- to sort my fucking motherfucking bullshit out. Yes, my name is Christa Motherfucking Adams, and I’m not really sure if that is true. But I’m willing to start from there to find out.

It is like they teach you at bootcamp, or whatever. Basic training they warn you against psychological warfare, but how do you stop a real life psycho with magic illusion and spellery from invading your brain? I’m pretty fucking stubborn and even I couldn’t fucking do it.

All I have is my gut instinct. Telling me what is right and wrong. I have to start with the basics.

The known faces. I remember I bitterly hate the Empire. Stormtroopers slaughtered my parents at a young age and nearly killed my sister Katia. Am I even sure that’s her name? Yeah, maybe. I don’t know. Tasted familiar on my stone turned-tongue though.

Okay, so that was true. I was orphaned at a young age. Raised and trained with skills of the military resistance on my planet. Then we took it back, or tried. That’s when both me and my sister ended up here. The Omniverse. I tried to start a new life in Coruscant. It was an easily accessible verse, and I didn’t hate the Empire enough yet to stop them. I remembered how I’d tragically killed my sister. The depth of pain surged in me. How could my emotions lie? This also had to be true. The truths were getting suspicious and then I remembered what I had learned long ago. Lies were best when woven with truths. It made them believable. It made them real. Somehow, I had to fight that.

But how does a simple minded sniper do that? I’m a soldier, marksman, leader, and sister. Not some fucking time-twisting monk.

I couldn’t physically closed my eyes, but I allowed my mind to close, focusing harder. A face, handsome, adorned with a nest of sable hair came to mind. I didn’t know this face. Though my heart suddenly leapt at him. Then, the leaping accelerated with fear. This man didn’t have a name. I was surging with fright now. Who was he? Was the the man who had killed my parents? The image of a stormtrooper helmet slated over his face like a transparent mask. Immediate hate surged in my gut and hot fury made me fish for my rifle, which was nowhere in sight. Of course it wasn’t, I’m sitting at the bottom of the motherfuckin’ ocean.

UGH. I couldn’t tell who this guy was, but I knew he was bad news. Plus, I fucking hate stormtroopers. Killing my parents and then killing my sister later? Coruscant was a bad call, but I thought otherwise when we moved there. Didn’t know there were other safe verses. I didn’t know a lot of things, only that the top tier of Coruscant had great security cameras so that I could keep an eye on my sister when out on jobs with the military. No, I hadn’t joined my enemy. This was a separate, lower tier ballgame. Still, they paid me enough for me to support my family.

Suddenly a blond man with pointed ears appeared in my mind. I didn’t recognize him. Though his face was familiar. Standing next to him was a dog that looked more wolfish than domesticated. Had my hands been mobile I would have scratched my skull. Everything was so confusing... I wondered at this point if I could take this free time and sleep. So far, things were pretty inconclusive. I found out I hated one guy, didn’t know his name. Called Klaud, didn’t know his face. Elf guy with a wolf must’ve been some stray commoner I met once. Was it in the Omniverse, or prior to?

It was all a blaze, like I was trying to find a needle in a frustrating fucking haystack that was lit on fire. Eventually, I felt like it would all burn and I was just along for the ride. That’s what curses were for though. Yup, I was eternally cursed. And I blame Omni for it. Welcoming me into this world as a worthless secondary? What a jackass.

I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had a drink. Tasting alcohol made my stomach knot. Maybe I didn’t drink. I really didn’t have a good grip on who I was, maybe I never would again. The one thing I knew to be true, other than my name, which I was pretty sure about, was that swearing on my tongue felt pretty damn familiar.

Well, at least I could start somewhere.

Fuck. This. Shit.

[Gildarts]

I honestly wondered if it had been easier if I had just been killed by the falling rocks, rather than the stone angels freezing me and making me become one of them. I couldn’t see, nor feel, to know if I had wings mounted on my back. I had to guess no, considering I wasn’t the type of person who got “wings” symbolically or physically. But maybe I’m just not that inventive or don’t view myself that way. If I could shrug now, I would, but I’m a stone angel, paralyzed forever more. Poe’s raven would’ve snickered at me.

But why had Behemoth, that smarmy bastard, spared my life? This was much more painful but it wasn’t really that personal, though I’m pretty sure I’ve stared at the face of evil, when they tortured me in Coruscant after Katia’s death and… Well, their reason was to get me to talk. For Behemoth, I had already done his bidding.

A secondary’s curse was death, he’d given me a Prime’s burial. It struck me as odd, but I tried to rationalize that some people, especially that douche, were just fucking sociopathic psychos. What was I even to do for the next hundred or so years? Drive myself insane with my own thoughts? Or maybe, this was to punish me or make me realize something.

God? Omni? Whatever the fuck rules this place other than the armies of idiot, privileged primes, if you’re out there, what am I supposed to gain from this experience? I’m literally fucking entombed in a statue, and then encased by an ocean.

I thought came to her. One that scared her shitless. One that was scarier than death, pain, or even losing herself.

The definition of hell is as follows: “On your last day on earth, the person you became will meet the person you could have become.”

I had no nerves to feel, and yet, I was chilled to my very soul.

Miss opportunities came flying back into my mind, fleeting ones, I had a power for leadership and never used it for good. Some memories came back in jumbled balls, there was no sense to be made out of them. Pyramids, a forest, a speech that came from my lips to an onlooking crowd of faces all looking to me for hope.

Oh my god. I’ve been such a fool. Everything I have done up until this moment has been aimless and for nothing. I once envied, hated, and scorned primes for actually doing something in this world. Even if this place is just some sort of replica copy of a true reality, it is still real and that makes people’s suffering, and my own suffering significant. I’ve wasted my time here chasing ghosts, Katia, and I could’ve been saving people. Their lives always wasted by primes or secondaries who have nothing left to lose. Secondaries like me, who don’t care who they burn to get their prize.

All this time I’ve been a fool. Daisy alone, would have approved.

Shame surged in me. If I ever got free. I’d change the entire fucking Omniverse. I’d lead people for the causes I believe in, and restore justice.

And I promised myself then, I would prevail.

[Gildarts]

Who am I to speak of justice, when I’ve killed many people from a long distance away, never giving them the chance to look their killer in the eye? Well, I can’t just run from my merciless past, but I have to trust that I did what I had to do during those times of war, suffering, and unbearable frustration. I’m not sure if there’s any other way than that life, but not killing every threat I face is probably a good start. Though, that’s not me either. Me. Christa Adams. Who is that? What does it mean? Is it merely a name? Is it my experiences and personality woven together in a body that is now forged of stone?

If it wasn’t stone, I’d be dead. Maybe there’s something to say about that. Bottom of this hellish ocean. Fire would’ve suited me better. Fire is who I am. Not ice. Though, I bet my targets would’ve said differently about my heart.

Anyway, regrets remain in the past. They don’t make me, and I won’t allow my mistakes to define me. Not when I didn’t know they would haunt me with remorse. I don’t regret it. Who I was. It is that person who allowed me to survive, to get here. This is good, I’m emotionally building. But I am still completely paralyzed. Helpless, like I’ve felt my entire life. Force can’t get me out of this one. I can’t battle my way out of becoming stone. I wonder if anything will come of waiting out the storm.

Spells are like magic, right? They have to either have a cure or… Uh, they can wear off. Maybe the saline water will even help, like when prisoners urinate on their iron cell bars to rust and corrode them. I’m sure it’s worked in the past though, the idea of being pissed on because I’m a stone didn’t exactly appeal to me.

Bottom. Fucking. Line.

I have to escape.

Or I would drive myself insane. No one could hear my screams, it wasn’t even worth it, not that I was wasting air. Not that it would actually make a sound beyond the rattling of the cage that is my mind. Pissing on the bars wouldn’t work on this escape plan. What the even fuck!?

I felt more helpless and frustrated now than ever before, except maybe the torture. Except maybe the moments I shot my sister and didn’t miss. I always had “great aim” when it counted. And those had counted the most. My own blood was spilt. God, had I always wished it had been me. Who am I kidding? There’s no way to change the past. And I’m not even sure there is a God. If there was, he’d be laughing at me right now.

Well Omni, are you laughing?

I challenged him, because that’s what I do. I challenge things, people, chance, and fate. You always do when you’re pulling the trigger when it can end someone’s life. You challenge yourself to get the job done. I can admit to being a bit of an asshole, but sometimes strength just comes off that way whether people like it or not. Dominance isn’t about making friends and I’m not noble. I’m a soldier down to the bone. I had to become this in order to live.

Beyond the darkness of my evolution, I still have hope. If I can figure out how to get out of here… I don’t know quite what I’d do, but I’d give myself another chance. Reload this game of lives and death and change my aim to match the winds. I would fight more, love harder, I’m not sure if I’m capable of being kinder, but I’d even give that a shot too. So far, up until now, death has been the only kindness I had the power to grant people.

But… What if… I could grant them freedom instead?

Coruscant, the Empire, have always been corrupt. I’ve never fought much for the little guy, other than when it was myself. I don’t know where I’d begin, if I am honest with myself. I’m not even sure if I’ll ever get free. But it will all start with escaping this stone coffin.

I was buried alive, trapped, sent to walk the plank, whatever you want to fucking call it, but I’m here. Within the form of a statue, replaying all my past memories in no specific order, trying to see what’s real and what is fake. Trying to see if I can be saved, trying to know if mine is a life that deserves redemption.

First. I need to break out.

To survive one more time.

[Gildarts]

How do you escape this though? You can’t even MOVE! So, I considered the raw pain. The raw sorrow. The rawness of emotion that has cut me so deeply throughout my life. The agony. The torture. The resentment of the idea of death which was a weight I carried on my shoulders far too long. I’m a warrior. I fight despite the pain. If anything, this suffering is the reason I took up arms in the first place. It is still within me. I’ve borne my strengths from it. Made myself impenetrable armor. And by that, I mean I am the armor. Pain can’t hurt you if you are the pain. Fuck, I have to focus. Can’t get sidetracked, though, I do have the entire span of lifetimes to wait up in here.

Ageless. Isn’t this what every woman wanted? Commemorated for her beauty? I had only once fallen in love and the man died two days later. I watched as the guts spilled from his stomach, he had been completely eviscerated. Carelessly, I went after him. His body was cold by the time I arrived. It isn’t much of a story. I cried as my hands tried to press in his organs into his filth, you know, septic and all that fun jazz. I wouldn’t let him die, so I shouted to a vacant corpse of a man I once knew. Life ends quick. So I have to protect my own. Do what I can. Katia, I couldn’t save you from myself. I was too quick to fire. Such a chink in the armor that I am. The chink that ends you in this forever fates of life.

I’m sorry.

I didn’t have bullets at my disposal to make my peace now. Lucky I didn’t too, who knows what kind of poor decisions I could’ve made, from murder-rampage, which I’d done before, or would I finally overcome mankind’s wonderful self-preservation measures? If I could pull the trigger of a gun just one more time, would I choose to end my own life?

Well, I guess that doesn’t fucking matter, because I don’t have a fucking trigger anyway, eh? How’s that for cheap. No ammunition but my wits. And even those seem to have slipped. Some of the memories in my head aren’t mine nor are they even real. But I don’t just get to choose which ones those are. Or… Do I?

I could recreate myself to what I believe is right and true. Into what I want to believe. And what better place than this to start?

Maybe.

First, I had to try Plan A. Which was uh, focusing on raw emotion as a way to break out. The way I see it, the more human the less stone I’ll be able to be. Emotions are human. If this is a spell binding me here, then I may be able to find the chink in its armor. Maybe.

Or maybe the illusionist Behemoth, the dastardly monster, had thought this one up too. It may not have been real. It was hard to tell what was anymore. The last time I had gotten free from his illusion was by calling the mirage’s bluff. Can’t exactly do that here with my hands (or rather) muscles bound in cement or whatever.

No grenades, no weapons, no gunpowder. In this moment, THIS is who I am.

Now, again Christa. Ask yourself the ultimate question, because dying isn’t an option, quite literally. Ask yourself.

What will you do to survive?

[Gildarts]

Well Adams? Your clock may be ticking. Isn’t this what you live for? I beat on myself a little, but what person in their right mind doesn’t? Time. Time to focus. Time to get through this. Survive, just like I always have, without my parents, without my sister. Here I was, always thinking it was my job to protect her, and it was. But how many times did I have to fail it to see that my purpose could have been greater?

The definition of Hell once again returned to me.

But I’m not dead yet. And I can still become who I had the potential to be. I wouldn’t take the title savior, but rather liberator. From death, from oppression. For my people, the secondaries, taken from home and treated like slaves by all Primes because of birthright? Who the fuck was I to respect titles like that? I, who had surpassed death so much more than being an immortal would grant me.

It was time to break out of this prison. Time to dredge up the memories and make them worth something. With every memory, the pain would cut deep. Daringly close to cutting apart my soul. But that had already been done by Katia’s death, so what more exactly did I have to lose?

It was my turn to take all the pain in my life and face it. And I had a purpose. After this, I would be stronger. After this, I would stop wasting the time those who had died on the battlefield for me had granted me through their sacrifice.

Time to start inflicting emotional pain. Time to break out of this stone shell. It was time to reclaim my life.

As though I had taken a knife to my own skin, the rush of blood oozed out as I thought about the very first tragedy I could remember. The screams of two little girls that were forbidden. Now, I granted myself the ability to scream. With the momentum of a whip, the pain didn’t hesitate mid-air, but came ruthlessly down like truth to reality. They collided. My pain became real.

The flood of pain and sorrow and anger and resentment of the stormtroopers who had come into my childhood home and killed my parents did not ever cease to a dribble. The waters came and washed me away, they did not cleanse my sin like a biblical flood, but merely allowed me to feel them wash over me with every wave. With every granule of corrosive acid. Toxic. The leak wasn’t to be contained. Not when  I allowed it to feast upon my flesh and have at my soul. This was how I would free myself. I know it sounds silly, but this torture would either be my way to freedom from the stone curse, or, it would be my liberation so that I could forgive myself for all I had done. Maybe, it could be both.

Katia and I had escaped that one, survived. Left our parents on the floor because dead caracasses couldn’t save anyone. Two little girls had lived in a scenario they’d been out numbered and outskilled. Never should anyone underestimate humanity, or a little girl desperate enough to kill to protect someone they loved. I had never changed from that little girl, that is where the killing began. Maybe by accepting this though, I might be allowed to finally grow up. Finally stop hiding behind the same weapons that killed my parents and sister, and play a different tune. I doubted that I’d ever give up my bullets and gunpowder, I was just too good at them. But, I could stand to give peace a try before I turned to my artillery of war.

I could change. I didn’t have to be powerless without my guns anymore. I was winning, the tormenting agony was temporary, as I thought it would be. And by accepting it, I stole the power it once had over me. I was going to beat this psychological warfare. One lash at a time.

I readied the “whip” knowing there were pages of memories more to go. Was God even watching? Or in this moment, did I get to choose finally, that I was my own God? The choices we make define our own reality. If that isn’t God, then who or what is?

[Gildarts]

You would think, that when you're hit with a bullet you feel the hot, molten lead immediately invading your flesh. But no. You're dosed with adrenaline, testosterone, and endorphins released into your blood helping you to survive through the fight, fear, and yes, through the pain. Shock cascades and your mind remembers the reverberating memory of a gunshot's echo. But surely, the bullet didn't hit you. It couldn't have. It never hits you wrong. Battles are a game of inches. Such is war. Such is chess. Such is trust. All are battles.

Inches. That's the difference between life and death on the battlefield. The millimeters between your finger and the trigger propelling the lead that will deliver death. The centimeters between the debris shattering mid-air and spearing your eyes. Blinding you in battle and inevitably leading you to your helpless demise. To be sightless and with a gun is not the end, but against an army, you're a liability to your own platoon. They'd sooner shoot you for slowing them down, for being a torture session away from delivering the enemy key information to overthrow the entire operation. Our goal, always to win the battle. Some men, I have had to put out of their misery. Not for the operation, but for their honor. That they could live their last moments in peace knowing my bullet was an act of wordless compassion they didn't have to ask for. A warriors death. Inches and it wouldn't have had to be that way.

They died for the cause, willingly sacrificing their lives, souls, and ideal. On the battlefield, the game of chance and inches. The freewill you acted on was usually impulse, muscle reaction. Dive to the right into the dirt to dodge the explosion of a grenade and you fall into a stream of bullets, a trail of automatic gunfire.

Somehow you avoid it, crawl for your life behind a rock that's just a little too short to cover you, and bullets slash through your flank and any appendage sticking out in the enemy's line of sight.

Inches, like I said that's the difference... Of man, ethics, and justice. The difference that separates the sides, opinions of mankind and it's cultures. The difference that makes us fight to the death rather than unite. The gray that makes our choices wayward wanderers who have no idea who they are in the scale of things. They can't just see they as individuals are soldiers and pawns, because they see life first person. It is their senses that immerse them into their lives that will be slain by the end of battle.

So you see, it's the inches in life that make us who we are. The small circumstances, the small life experiences that change us, that define us. It all comes back to inches. And it all comes back to my finger on that trigger.

Listen to me! I sound like a damn philosopher! Really, I am nothing but a unjust murderer constantly on the edge of my next kill. It's like I hunt for my own need for blood. To think thinking about all the times I've been shot could've jogged that thought. How entertaining in my time of desperate isolation. How has pain become my entertainment throughout my life? Suffering, learning, surviving. A constant survival. I was desperate enough to become the fittest, even at the cost of my soul. How can I evolve beyond that cycle, so that the chains no longer bind me?

First part, pain. I have pretty much got that one down. Next I have to learn. I knew enough to allow me to live. But that was all. That was my definition of living. What a sad thing indeed. I had only ever survived. What a waste of years. A vague sensation sparked on my lips, like a forceful tickle. There was no face, but I'm sure I was remembering –no, feeling– a kiss. Even in my agony, my heart was... The survivalist in me told me that this pleasure was weakness, distraction.

It seemed the survivalist's cycle was a die hard habit, one that wouldn't be broken so easily as a bone. It was rooted within me just as deep, an unavoidable skeleton.

I was submerged back into the memory. Mud spattered over our stained uniforms on the battlefield. And I saw his face. It was not the first man I had killed, nor would it be the last.

He was praying, "Please lord, take me into heaven." The medic had shaken her head gravely, saying it would be slow, painful, and inevitable. She could do nothing but sit by his side and watch him die.

I walked over. I told him, "Let this bullet be your ascension." Delivery to heaven. May as well have been adorned with lead wings.

There was no hesitation. I didn't even flinch when the gun kicked. Didn't blink. I was a monster back then. Still am. I am capable of mercilessly killing my enemies and mercy killing my allies. When you hesitated in no-man's-land you didn't return, and you were no man either.

I felt it again. That sensation. The want. The affection. The kiss, so familiar. Lips that had spoken to me before, but the voice was null and gone. Evaporated from my memory just as the sight of their face. I wasn't even sure if it was a male or female's. I could take my guess, though. Whatever the memory was, it had held on strong, even as a fragment. There would be no glass slipper to this ending though, I'm a beast in a fairytale, painted a stone angel by a villainous fiend. Stories, choices, and lives intermingled together with death. Yet all too often terrible and purposelessly, rather than as old friends.

My name is Christa Adams, I have been a deliverer of death, life, and freedom. And my inches of this rope compared to the size of the cliff I helplessly dangle, are officially running out.

I sigh and wonder how that sliver of amazing emotion has been wiped nearly perfectly from my mind. It was likely that the owner or those lips was likely dead. Perhaps Klaud wasn't coming after all. Perhaps I had been sentenced to an eternity of Hell, all because of a few inches.

But I won't let my fate be defeated by a few inches where I lost my fight. No. I'm so much more, than a few inches of good luck, skill, and chance.