Star Wars Rebels: A Gray Tale Chapter 105: SW Gray Tale 105: Waking Nightmare

A/N: Apologies for going back on my word of updating on monday and tuesday, but the thing was,

after much deliberation as well as reader's input (polls on patreon and discord), I have decided to shift the Perfect World Arc to sidestories instead. They will be posted parallel to main story for anyone interested to read it, and you can also read it in advance over at patreon where I have posted around 15k word of it and all.

(It is quite different in flavors and thes than Star Wars, being more a thriller with R18 and Horror, and to be honest, it would have felt like drag to people interested in reading Star Wars strictly)

Lets get back to alleyway now

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My eyes snapped open to the sight of Arachnae's underbelly, her shock prods jamd against my cheekbone and firing.

Electricity ripped through my face. My teeth clacked together so hard I tasted copper, and my whole skull rang with the high-pitched distress signal she was broadcasting on loop. She'd clearly been at this for a while, because my skin felt raw where the prods had been making contact, and her charge indicator was blinking the warning pattern that ant she was running low on juice.

Wait.

Who am I?

The question surfaced from sowhere deep, and for a terrifying mont I didn't have an answer.

I am Reva... survivor of the Jedi Temple massacre...

No. That doesn't make sense.

mories flooded in, overlapping and contradicting, each one demanding to be the real version of events.

I can't be... I'm male.

I'm Alex. Junior year of high school. My friends... dead? A face surfaced—blue skin, oil-stained bandana, warm breath against my own... an explosion? She was dead?... Mom? Why were we in bed, she's naked? W-what? Why am I inside her? Why does she have so many teet—

Sothing in my brain rejected the cascade of wrongness, and the na tore out of before I could stop it.

"Abeloth—"

The word ca out garbled, my jaw barely cooperating, but saying it made sothing crystallize in my head with sickening clarity. The woman who'd held . The woman who'd called baby, called hers, who I'd been—

Oh god. Oh god, I was—with her—and she was—

The dream fragnts reassembled themselves into sothing that made no fucking sense. The suburban hellscape that seed like hate child of so 90s sitcom and star wars. The woman with too many—why did she have so many—and I was inside her while she called baby and—what the fuck was that? So kind of psychic torture designed to break ? Make give in to despair so she could—what, exactly? What a psychotic bitch.

Why? Why ? How does that make any sense?

I'd hoped with every fiber of my being that she wasn't real. When I'd discovered this universe had Legends elents bleeding through, I'd spent sleepless nights praying that Abeloth was one of the things that stayed fictional. An eldritch abomination older than the Jedi, older than the Sith, older than recorded history—that was supposed to be soone else's problem. Luke's problem, decades from now, when he was a grandmaster with an entire Order at his back.

Is this a Lovecraft thing? Did I summon her just by knowing she exists? Is my ta-knowledge literally a curse that paints targets on my soul for cosmic horrors to find?

The thought made want to laugh and scream at the sa ti. The one advantage I had, the only thing that set apart from every other poor bastard in this galaxy, and it might be the very thing that was killing .

Arachnae fired again.

My vision whited out for a half-second, and when it ca back I was gasping for air, heart hamring against my ribs. She scrambled off my face when she registered the change in my vitals, chirping frantically, and for the first ti I could see beyond her tal chassis.

Black.

Everything was black.

My chest. My arms. My legs. All of it coated in sothing wet and gleaming that caught the distant neon and reflected it back in oily rainbows. The substance clung to like a second skin, and I watched in mounting horror as a thin tendril of it crept another centiter up my sternum while I lay there, helpless to stop it.

No. No no no no—

The goo from my mindscape. The thing that had been festering around the broken Ezra-star. It was outside now. It was real. It was on , covering , and I couldn't—

What the fuck is this?

My brain scrambled for explanations, for anything that made sense.

Abeloth? No, it doesn't feel like her... yet it does sohow. Her traces? So kind of parasitic STD she left with after doing... whatever she did in my head?

The armor I'd been wearing was still there underneath, I could feel the familiar weight of the plates against my skin, but I couldn't see any of it. The slick coating had spread across every visible surface, and the longer I looked at it, the more wrong it seed. The stuff wasn't just sitting on top of the tal—I could see places where it had seeped through gaps in the plating, worming its way toward bare skin.

How long has it been doing this? Since the Hett fight? Since before?

The constriction I'd been feeling since waking up after the Tusken camp, the tightness I'd attributed to healing injuries—had that been the goo the entire ti? Had it been growing inside for days while I walked around thinking I was fine, making plans, talking to Obi-Wan, pretending I had any control over my own situation?

Were my actions even mine?

The thought sent ice down my spine. I'd been crueler than usual during this mission. More ruthless. The way I'd toyed with Vect, the casual brutality with the stormtroopers, the deliberate psychological destruction of Reva before I'd even started the physical fight—had that been , or had sothing been riding my nervous system and tweaking my impulses toward darkness?

How would I even know? How would I tell the difference between my own anger and sothing else using my anger as a mask?

I tried to move, tried to push myself upright, and my body refused to cooperate.

The signals were going out, I could feel that much, but sothing was intercepting them before they reached their destination. Every muscle fiber I tried to engage t resistance, a pressure that tightened when I strained against it and refused to give ground. The sensation was the sa constriction I'd been feeling since waking up after the Tusken camp, but amplified a hundredfold, and now I understood why.

It's been holding this whole ti. I just didn't realize how tight the grip was because it was letting move within certain boundaries.

I managed to roll my eyes downward, and even that small motion required effort that made the muscles behind my sockets ache.

A shape crouched in front of , three ters away, and it took my brain several seconds to parse what I was looking at.

The proportions were wrong. The limbs were too thin, the torso caved inward like sothing had scooped out the contents, and the head hung at an angle that suggested the neck had given up on supporting it. Black goo dripped from the eye sockets in thick ropes and oozed from a mouth frozen in a silent scream, pooling on the ground before flowing outward in my direction.

Reva.

That was what remained of her. The coating on my body was coming from her, or from whatever process was dissolving her from the inside out. She was the source, the origin point, and I was apparently the destination.

What happened? How did we go from touching her face to—whatever this is?

The gap in my mory yawned like a black hole. I rembered the flicker, the vision of my gauntlet around her throat, and then nothing until the nightmare with the woman. Sothing had happened in that blank space, sothing that had kicked off this entire situation, and I had no idea what.

I needed to understand what was happening at a level deeper than surface observation. I needed to see the threads of Force and energy that connected us, needed to find the chanism so I could figure out how to stop it.

I reached for Hyper Perception.

The world expanded for a fraction of a second, my awareness pushing outward to encompass the texture of the stone beneath and the electrical hum of dying signage in the distance—

And then sothing flooded into .

Energy poured through the connection between my body and the Reva-thing, and I recognized it imdiately as living Force. But it was wrong, muddled and dark, like soone had taken clean water and mixed it with oil and rot. The goo seed to be consuming it as it flowed, siphoning off pieces even as the rest seeped deeper into my flesh, and I could feel my own living Force beginning to curdle at the edges where the two streams t.

What the fuck? Cosmic horror parasitism wasn't on my nu today.

The sensation was indescribably violating. Foreign energy worming its way into the core of my being, carrying fragnts of soone else's pain and rage and despair along with it. I caught flashes of Reva's emotions—her hatred of Vader, her guilt over the younglings, her desperate need to make it all an sothing—and each flash left a stain on my own psyche that I could feel spreading.

It's not just consuming her. Is it... using her to get to ? Using her living Force as a vector to corrupt mine?

The realization made want to vomit, but my stomach muscles wouldn't cooperate any more than the rest of my body.

I recoiled from Hyper Perception, pulling my awareness back to baseline, and the flood of foreign energy slowed but didn't stop entirely. The connection was physical now, the goo creating a direct pathway between us, and I couldn't sever it just by closing my ntal eyes.

Okay. Okay, think. You've dealt with weird Force shit before. You survived—

What did I survive exactly? There's sothing I'm not rembering. Sothing important.

The thought nagged at , but I couldn't chase it down. Whatever had happened between the Hett fight and now was locked behind a door my brain refused to open.

Doesn't matter right now. Focus on the imdiate problem.

The threads of goo inside my body had reached my shoulder joint while I was distracted, curling around the ball of the socket before continuing their advance toward my chest. I could feel them probing at my nervous system, mapping the pathways, and I could feel my own living Force darkening further with every milliter they progressed.

And she's doing all this through what—her spit? Her essence? Is this Abeloth's version of leaving a hickey?

A hysterical part of my brain noted that for an eldritch abomination older than civilization, she was remarkably horny. The dream fragnts I still carried suggested she had very specific ideas about what she wanted from , and none of them involved just eating my soul and moving on.

Of all the cosmic entities in the galaxy, I had to attract the kinky one. Lucky .

I wanted to slap myself for the inappropriate humor, but my arms weren't cooperating with slapping any more than they were cooperating with anything else.

Focus. This is not the ti.

I can't go down like this. I refuse. There has to be sothing I can do.

My body was compromised, locked in place by the parasite's grip, but my mind was still mine. Mostly mine. And where there was mind, there was a connection to Force, however tenuous.

Force to separate myself from this thing. Force to push it out. Force to—

The threads reached my thigh and started crawling inward toward regions I really did not want them exploring.

Oh HELL no. Absolutely fucking not. I am not getting tentacled today.

The surge of indignation cut through my horror like a knife. Being consud by an eldritch horror was bad enough. Being consud by an eldritch horror in a way that had distinctly uncomfortable hentai overtones was a bridge too far.

I gathered every scrap of Force I could muster and pushed.

The result was pathetic.

A weak ripple of energy spread outward from my core, and the threads inside shuddered, paused for a fraction of a second—then resud their advance like nothing had happened. The effort left feeling drained in a way that reminded of the early days after transmigration, when I couldn't wobble a spoon without exhausting myself.

No. No, that's not—I should be stronger than this. I've been training for months. I had power during the fight. Where did it all go?

The answer seed obvious when I stopped to think about it. Whatever power I'd been running on since waking up after the Hett encounter had been borrowed, and borrowing from parasitic entities apparently ca with brutal interest rates.

I tried again anyway, pushing harder, and managed to create a small bubble of separation around my heart. The threads recoiled from the barrier I'd established, and for one precious mont I thought I might actually be able to force them out entirely.

Then my strength gave out and the bubble collapsed.

The threads surged forward to reclaim the lost ground, moving faster now like they'd learned from the setback, and despair crashed over as I realized I didn't have the power to see this through. I could slow the process, maybe, buy myself a few extra minutes of existence, but I couldn't stop it. The gap between what I could do and what I needed to do was simply too large.

Why?

The question bubbled up from sowhere deep, carrying years of accumulated frustration with it.

Why is everything about my transmigration such a complete fucking ss?

If I'd been given normal Force abilities, normal access to my potential, I wouldn't have had to hide and wallow in misery while Vasha was taken. I could have stord Scarif the day she was captured, carved through the Imperial garrison, and had her back before dinner.

But no. I got a broken soul, a faulty transforr that scrambled every attempt to use the Force properly, and the privilege of watching other Force sensitives do casually what I had to nearly kill myself to achieve.

Every single bit of growth I'd managed had been clawed out of the universe's unwilling hands. The Resonance technique I'd speed-run to impress Obi-Wan? I'd almost fried my own nervous system developing it. The healing I'd perford on Herana? It had stopped my heart and left vulnerable to whatever nightmare I'd just escaped from. Even my Hyper Perception, my one reliable ability, was now compromised to the point of uselessness.

It was like the universe loved to see despair after giving the slightest taste of hope. Dangling the possibility of success in front of , then snatching it away and laughing at my expression.

Even now. Even fucking now.

Things had been going fine. I'd made a plan to rescue Vasha. I'd worked my ass off for months to beco just good enough to survive the missions ahead. I'd rescued Leia, eliminated Reva, gotten ahead of the tiline for once in my miserable existence.

And then this goddamn parasite ca in to shit on everything, and even after all I'd done, I was still too fucking weak to defend myself.

The rage built slowly, fed by years of accumulated grievances and the foreign darkness leaking into my living Force.

No.

The word wasn't a plea this ti. It was a declaration.

No, this won't fucking do.

If this godforsaken galaxy was so intent on giving the middle finger, then I wasn't going to play by its rules anymore.

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PS: I have 3 quizzes tomorrow so I am a bit muddy in the head right now.

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