Barriss Offee: Mind Eclipse by Jade Gretz

https://www.deviantart.com/jadegretzai/art/Barriss-Offee-Mind-Eclipse-1327532384?file=1

Barriss Offee: Mind Eclipse ANIMATION

The Mirialan’s Refraction

The tattoos upon Barriss Offee’s cheeks were not merely ink; they were a tally of silences kept. Each black diamond etched into her golden-green skin represented a geometric discipline, a shuttering of the soul against the chaotic noise of the galaxy. On the moons of Prazut, where the atmosphere was a thick, violet soup and the gravity felt like a lover’s persistent tug, Barriss sought the ultimate silence. She stood at the edge of the Lake of Lustration, a body of water so still it looked like a sheet of obsidian fallen from the sky.

She was a vision of severe grace, her dark hood pulled back to reveal the sharp, mathematical beauty of her features. Her eyes, blue as a dying star’s core, scanned the horizon. Behind her stood Elian, a local scholar whose skin was the color of wet parchment and whose eyes had long ago succumbed to cataracts, leaving him to see the world through the vibrations of his cane. He smelled of old paper and damp earth, a scent that Barriss found oddly comforting compared to the sterile, metallic odor of the Jedi Temple.

"You are staring at the center, aren’t you?" Elian’s voice was a dry rasp, like wind through dead grass. "Everyone stares at the center. They think the secret is in the middle of the expanse. But the middle is just where the water is loneliest. The secret is in the shore, where the pressure of the land meets the surrender of the liquid."

Barriss did not turn. "I am not looking for secrets, Elian. I am looking for a reflection that doesn’t lie. Every mirror I’ve looked into for years has shown me a traitor, a healer, or a ghost. I want to see what lies beneath the labels."

Elian chuckled, a sound that ended in a wet cough. "Then you have come to the worst possible place, child. This lake doesn't reflect what you are. It reflects what is dreaming beneath it. And for five thousand years, the thing in the deep has had a very dull imagination. It dreams of mud. It dreams of the slow, tectonic grind of the world’s teeth. But today... today it is dreaming of something new. It is dreaming of diamonds."

Barriss felt a prickle of cold at the base of her spine. It wasn't the cold of the Prazut wind, but a localized, predatory chill. She looked down at the water. The obsidian surface was no longer flat. It was beginning to curve, warping around her reflection as if the water itself were trying to lens her image into a concentrated point. The black diamonds on her face seemed to pulse in the dark water.

"Do you feel that, Elian?" she whispered, her hand drifting toward the hilt of the lightsaber she no longer officially carried, yet could never truly discard.

"I feel a change in the pressure," the old man said, his sightless eyes widening. "The air is getting heavy. The lake is breathing out, which means it must have just finished breathing in. Tell me, Barriss Offee, do you feel beautiful? I have heard the Mirialans value the symmetry of the spirit. Is your spirit symmetrical?"

"My spirit is a fractured glass," Barriss replied, her voice steady despite the sudden, rhythmic thumping beneath her boots. It was a heartbeat—slow, massive, and subterranean. "It was broken by a war that asked us to be soldiers when we were meant to be lanterns. There is no symmetry in a slaughterhouse."

"Perhaps," Elian whispered, "but there is a terrifying beauty in the void left behind. Look. Look at the water. It isn't reflecting you anymore."

Barriss leaned over the edge. The scholar was right. The image in the water was no longer her own. It was a face, yes, but it was miles wide, a pale, iridescent mask rising from the crushing depths. It had eyes like tectonic plates, shifting with a slow, grinding intelligence. And on its cheeks, echoing her own, were black diamonds—not tattooed, but formed by the absence of light, twin abysses that threatened to swallow the sky.

The Leviathan, the Aclis of the Deep, was waking. It had been a legend used to scare the miners of Prazut, a myth of a biological god that predated the Republic, a creature that fed on the psychic residue of sentient thoughts. For millennia, it had found the thoughts of the locals unpalatable—crude dreams of hunger and survival. But Barriss Offee was a delicacy. Her mind was a complex tapestry of high-minded betrayal, agonizing guilt, and a crystalline desire for purity.

The water began to hum. It was a sound that didn't enter the ears so much as it vibrated the marrow. Barriss felt a sudden, sharp tug at her consciousness. The
...(more at https://www.deviantart.com/jadegretzai).
For more supergirl, chun li, batgirl, tifa, lara croft, wonder woman, rogue and much more, please visit my page at www.deviantart.com/jadegretzai - Thanks for your support :)