Eventually I give up trying, because there is simply no way to navigate, there is simply nothing to do. And so I allow myself to drift in these endless seas, seas which are not seas, and I hope that eventually the tide will spit me out on some shore somewhere. I let myself relax. And I let myself feel the nothingness all around me. Nothingness which is everythingness and everythingness which is nothingness. I let it lull me. And it does. 

I feel more and more at one with the void as this time which is not time goes on. I feel more and more lost in it, more and more found in it, and more and more swallowed by it entirely. I did not know that it was possible to be more swallowed by the void than I already am. But I find myself getting increasingly swallowed as this time which is not time goes on. I find my mind increasingly uncoiled and stretched out and doused in nothingness, doused in everythingness. 

From within the void I can feel something calling me. I can feel something pulling at me, reaching out and begging for me to reach back. And I am begging to reach back as well. I myself am begging to grasp and connect with this strange call. I don’t know what it is, this call, but I feel familiar with it. I feel more familiar with it than I have with anything before in my life. It feels like a mother’s arms wrapped around me. A true mother, one that cares and can be there for you when you needed it. It feels like a call to come home. 

And I follow it. I follow the call to come home. I wander behind it with my mind. And I find myself swimming through the void, not with my body but with something far older, far deeper than my body. The call, it calls to me. It calls to me. And I become one with it. 

I’m falling. I’m falling but I’m flying but I’m falling. I look around, and instead of the blackness, I see the gardens of the spring palace. The royal family are there but they don’t notice me. My heart jumps to my throat for a second as I think that I’m back on the Home Planet. But something feels wrong about this. I feel different. I feel so much more raw, so much more searching, so much more fragile. I feel like an open wound bleeding out into the sky. Much more so than usual.

“I’m proud of your skill at hunting wild beasts…” the Emperor is talking to the Prince. I remember this. I remember this. I was six years old, the Prince was nine.

“Your skill with the reverb bow has really improved,” his mother is telling him. 

I am silent. I am in the background. I am always silent. Always in the background. Always perfect and obedient and lacking any emotions of my own. 

Except I have emotions. I have always had emotions. And right now my emotions are shredding apart my insides as if I am being cut with serrated saw blades. I feel like I can’t breathe, even though technically I can. I feel as if I am drowning on dry land. But I always feel as if I am drowning on dry land. This is nothing new. I don’t know how I’ll survive this. I don’t know how I can find the courage to continue existing. 

The Prince is smiling at his parents. The Prince smiles a lot. With hair the colour of sunlight and eyes the colour of the sky, he is a perfect, shining summer day. And I am a dark and shadowed night in contrast to him. Unseen, unheard, unwanted. Existing not to exist but to serve the Empire.

But underneath all that I feel something else. Something I have not noticed before. 

There is a beauty inside me. A great, arching, reaching eternity. Skies and earth and dusk and dawn all at the same time. In my pain, there is glory, there is love, there is something that I cannot name. Something beyond everything I have ever known. Something that reaches deep into the very core of me and then reaches out into eternity. I feel it. And I realize that I’ve felt it before. I’ve felt it the first time. I’ve felt it the first time I have gone through this experience. And I’ve felt it every second of my life. 

This something, something unknowable, something unnamable, something eternally known within me is strong. It’s stronger than any of the Empire’s best weapons and as feral as the wildest beasts of the galaxy. It is aching, starving, and willing to do anything and everything to sate itself. Sate itself on blood. Sate itself on true justice. It is aching and hungry and its hunger is driving it mad, driving it vengeful, driving it more dangerous than any of the Empire has ever known anything to be. 

And it is growing within me. This feeling. This longing. This something, something I have known infinitely forever and ever. This something that I am just now finding out in these relived memories. It is growing inside me. It was growing inside me when I was a baby, looking for my parents and surrounded by enemies. It was growing inside me when I was a toddler, hungry for attention I was never given. It was growing when I was a child, hurting from a million wounds to my heart and soul. 

And it’s growing inside me now. 

This thing, whatever it is, whatever undeniable magic it has, it’s lonely. It’s achingly lonely. It’s screamingly lonely. It’s as lonely as I have been for my entire life and it has felt every single second of my loneliness. But at the same time, somehow, it’s more connected than anything the Empire or myself could ever even imagine. It’s connected to every single person from all of the Lower Planets. It’s connected to all the people who know pain, know hurt, who have suffered at the hands of the Empire. 

This unnamableness is me. And it’s also them. It’s also all the slaves scattered throughout the whole Empire. And it’s something far beyond all of us as well. Something far beyond us all yet irrevocably a part of us all at the same time. Something that we all are and something that no-one is. 

I’m lonely. I’m still unbearably, insufferably lonely. But, as I’m reliving this memory, I can see a power that I have never known that I have. 

I live out the rest of the memory, feeling every single thing I felt in that moment and, for the first time, seeing what I felt, understanding what I felt. With this understanding I gain a hope I have never had before. I gain an insight into my own power, into my own necessity, into my own inevitability. I have always been aware of this. I have always been aware of this but I have somehow never seen it. I have somehow never seen it in the way I am seeing it now. 

The Royal Family continues their blissful picnic, completely unaware of the silent, darkening mutiny going on right beside them. 

I’m back inside the void. And it’s darker than I’ve ever remembered it. Darkness beyond darkness. Darkness that is not darkness. Darkness that is calming, is beautiful, is beyond immense and awe-strikingly amazing and holding everything that truly exists in the love that I feel for my people, the love that my people feel for me. I can see through this void now and I feel something, something that connects me to the darkness all around  me and has connected me to the darkness all around me for all my life. I am one with the void. And that means that I am one with myself. Being one with the void means being one with myself. 

I drift into another memory. I find myself back in the body of my child self. This time I am ten years old. The Prince is thirteen. He’s thirteen and he is a spoiled brat, just like he always was, just like he still is. The Emperor and the Prince walk in front of me. We are in the chamber where the World Stones are kept, the void all around us. There are guards flanking the tunnel as they always are, strong and sturdy despite all the madness constantly around them. I feel pity in my heart for the guards. I always do. It’s not fair, it’s never fair, that they have to do this. 

I feel all the feelings that went through me ten years ago, when I was but a young child. I remember having to mask my misery, as I always did. I remember having to put on a carefully-guarded blank face, and having to will back the tears that fell inside my throat instead of down my cheeks. I remember being ten and wanting to be seen, wanting to be heard, for who I truly was. I remember being ten and having to still fight myself into obedience even though I had obedience ingrained into me for my whole life. I remember it not ever getting any easier to obey. 

I remember the enchantment and the insanity of this place though. I remember looking at the World Stones and longing, longing, longing somehow even more than I have ever longed before. I remember being absolutely entranced by what I was seeing. I remember not seeing it, not really seeing it with my eyes at all but rather feeling it with all of my whole body and with none of my body at the same time. 

“The savages of the Lower Planets used the World Stones to cause much destruction,” the Emperor is telling the Prince. I’m listening to him. I’m listening to him because I have to listen to him, in case he calls for me, but most of my attention is going towards the Stones themselves. 

“They used the Stones and the magic they gave them for great and evil acts,” the Emperor continues, “they were savage beasts, monsters in need of taming. They fought war after war with each other, throwing the galaxy into chaos.”

I remember this small bubble in the void, and looking through it as a young child. It made me somehow feel less alone, being in the presence of the World Stones. It made me feel as if … as if there was hope for me. As if there was hope for my poor, hopeless, friendless, drifting soul. As if there is something out there that wants me, that needs me, that loves me desperately. And it’s a deeply addicting sensation. I remember myself becoming overcome by it in such a joyous way. I feel, all over again, myself becoming overcome. 

And it’s mesmerizing. It’s mezmerizing. It’s oh so utterly mesmerizing. 

And I know why now, looking into the memory with the new perspective that the void is giving me. I remember why I felt that way. These Stones. These small, scattered, rough, dull, unassuming pieces of rock, they’re as close to my heritage as I have ever been. They’re as close to my home planet, to MY home planet as I have ever been. They’re as close as I have been to all the other Lower Planets in the galaxy, to the other people fighting and living and dying under the same boot that crushes me. 

All the people call to me. All the enslaved and exploited people all throughout the galaxy. They have been calling to me ever since I was taken away from my homeland, they have been calling me even before that. The songs of my heritage, of all of our shared heritage, the screaming and the writhing of our heritage, it has always been flowing through my veins and dancing in my gut. I could always feel it. It’s just that in this twisted chamber, that feeling is amplified, is created into something that I just cannot ignore. And with the power of retrospection, I know exactly what is going on here, despite not knowing at all what is going on here. 

“I can’t wait to be Emperor so that I can teach the wild beasts their lesson,” the Prince exclaims, all blue eyes and bright hair, smiling up at his father. 

“Being Emperor is not just about revenge, young one,” his father explains kindly, “you have to be willing to put the needs of the Empire before needs of your own.”

I look at the Stones again. And I think of how very much I want them, how much I want to be with them, even if it destroys me. And I don’t let anyone hear these traitorous thoughts. 

The void around me seems more familiar than it has ever seemed before. I feel as if I can reach through it just as it is reaching through me. And so I do reach through it. I reach out through it and it reaches back to me. I think I might be able to find my way through it. I think I might be able to find my way through but as I reach out, I find the void still unnavigable. And so I let myself fall through it and I let it fall through me. 

I am immersed in memory after memory after memory, all throughout my nightmare of a childhood, my burning coal teen years, and my lying-in-wait adulthood. I feel all the memories that have built up in my mind, carving me into a great and terrible creature full of power unknown and fury untamed. I live through all the memories that haunt me and I feel all the emotions locked inside of me, the emotions that I have never gotten a chance to express, the emotions that have never gotten a chance to leave me. 

I realize that it’s all still with me. The entirety of my past, with all its horrors and all its glory as well as all its unendurable trauma, it’s all inside me. And it’s all been inside of me all along. Every second that I hurt and screamed inside, every second that I held back tears, every second that I rebelled silently, it’s all inside me. It never left. Age might have made me stronger but it did not make me any lighter.

And I have to remember it. I have to remember everything that I have ever been forced to endure. And I have to keep it with me, always, like a flame warming me in the deepest winter. But I have to let go of it at the same time. I have to let go of all of it and I have to give it up to the void, so that the nothingness can take it, so that it can take it and turn it into the nothingness that it should have been to begin with. I have to keep it with me and I have to purge it out. And I can do both. And I know how I can do both. 

I realize, in my remembering, that the void has been with me always. The void has seen everything that I have seen. Every heartbreakingly unfair scene. It has heard everything that I have heard. Every sharp and hate-filled word. It has felt everything that I have felt. Every horror that my heart was ever dealt. And it has thought everything I ever thought. Everything I could not have forgot.