At the Beginning of the End Version 6
Photoshop Manipulation by The Real Cie
In unity were we well met
But that was before
My soul was crushed by the duality
Of everything and nothingness
When my soul was still filled with belief
In things spiritual and mystical
Now nothing is left but pain and sadness
Within this empty human life
You were perfection
I was lucky to find you
In a life full of suffering
You were a gift of great auspiciousness
I was destroyed when I lost you
And now all I have
Is loneliness
And nothingness
Eternally
Ondina Rvaga
Regent, Lost Zecor
Notes for Nerds:
This is one of the story poems for Team Netherworld's WIP,
Fetch.
The story, at its core, is Cthulhu Mythos fan fiction combined with elements from an original Star Trek episode (The Lights of Zetar) which gave me nightmares from the time I first saw it at the age of ten years old.
Ondina Rvaga is a reluctant princess of Western Zecor on the planet Zetar 6. She spends her time working in a laboratory, using her empathic gifts to heal the victims of her violent and sadistic brother King Qweh if she can, compassionately dispatching them to the realm of spirit if she cannot.
The people of West Zecor love the Princess Ondina and know her to be kind, but they also realize that she does not have much power to help them. Her brother is extremely powerful and controls the armies of West Zecor. Brutal soldiers happily do his bidding.
Ondina is miserable in her existence. She does not expect to find love. She had been expected to marry her twenty-four-year-old half-brother, Prince Qweh, when she was twelve years old. She was resigned to her fate, believing herself blessed until she discovered Qweh's true, brutal nature. At that point, she used her healing gifts in reverse and destroyed her reproductive organs so she could never conceive an heir for the corrupt regime.
Qweh knew that Ondina loved her people and couldn't bear to see them in pain. Over the years, he reveled in watching her suffer as she attempted to heal those devastated by the brutal attacks of his armies.
After Qweh groped her during a scouting mission, Ondina attempted to commit suicide by jumping from a precipice. She was encouraged by the spirit of Serab's twin brother Joub to repair her injuries. He promised her that someone who would bring the love that she could never have imagined was about to enter her life.
Days later, Serab was apprehended by King Qweh's lackeys and brought to Ondina as a joke. The king laughingly postulated that the tiny Serab, who stood approximately five feet three inches tall, replace Ondina's previous bodyguard, who had been slain by Qweh in a fit of rage. Ondina, however, did not see the suggestion as a joke. She claimed Serab as her bodyguard and assistant and treated him with a compassion which he had not thought possible from a member of West Zecor's wicked royal family.
Serab and Ondina were smitten with each other from the start but initially attempted to keep their feelings in check.
When the ill-advised sorcery of King Qweh under the direction of Yadira, High Priestess of Nyarlathotep, caused the demon sultan Azathoth to trigger the small sun in Zetar's binary star system to begin consuming the large sun, the majority of Zecor's residents fled to other worlds. Ondina, Serab, and Ondina's longtime friend and caretaker Xegran along with Qweh and his most devoted lackeys were still on the planet when the gamma rays rendered their spaceships useless.
Ondina had planned all along to take herself, Serab, and Xegran through a gate to "the realm of the Yellow Sun," a peaceful, primitive world many light years away. Qweh demanded that Ondina bring himself and his toadies along as well. When she refused, he beheaded Xegran and brutalized Ondina. Serab was slain when he stepped in to defend his beloved. In spite of his protests, Ondina dispatched his spirit and that of Xegran to the Realm of the Yellow Sun.
Although Qweh and his lackeys were unable to invade the new world, they were not doomed to an inevitable death. Utilizing scientific and mystical abilities taught to him by the powerful High Priestess Yadira, Qweh caused the astral bodies of himself and his companions to form a community of pure energy; for all intents and purposes, a giant, malevolent brain. The hive entity sped away from the doomed world, leaving Ondina to her fate.
The traumatized Ondina believed herself to be at fault for the death of her old friend and her beloved. She tenderly lay each of their bodies in state beside her and spent the next six hours dying with only her regrets for company. She resolved to stay well away from Serab forever so that Qweh would not punish her by harming him in future lifetimes.
The heartbroken Serab never forgot Ondina. In lifetime after lifetime, he attempted to find her, although he forgot the exact nature of his original purpose.
Serab was reunited with Ondina during his most recent lifetime, although they did not encounter each other in the flesh. He was, for all intents and purposes, part of the spirit world. Although his body still lived, he was no longer able to function properly through it. Gerry was a Fetch, an Irish term essentially describing a ghost which has a body that still lives but through which it is temporarily or permanently unable to interface.
Ondina had reincarnated as Pepper Baiij, a troubled woman with strong mediumistic abilities which she tended to write off as delusion. Pepper knew who Gerry was. Along with his brother, Paul, he was a well-known musician whose work she admired.
Pepper was the only person who could help Gerry, who was being pursued by Yadira Root. This left Gerry in a precarious position. On a good day, Pepper believed strongly in her abilities and in Gerry's affection for her. On a bad day, her self-deprecation caused her to believe that she was merely insane, and/or that Gerry was yet another cad who would use her to get what he wanted and then leave her high and dry.
The story is far from finished, although it has, sadly, had to be back-burnered recently. These story-poems are, I feel, a valid form of keeping it viable.
