Private A Fever You Can't Sweat Out

[Hasuras Na-Gerra]

Verily didst the towering figure of Vahl's own champion stand by and bear witness to the workings of her Avatara's hands. That gaze of his beheld all with all the mercy and pity of twin furnaces. Vatres busied herself searing away the weakness within the tribes and Gerra watched with approval. Long had he thought the nomads of Vahl too disparate and bickering and lax, glutted like fatted vultures after picking clean the corpses of the Core Worlds. Vatres' fiery talons drug them back into line.

The bodies piled up at Vatres' feet one by one, her white hands now smeared with crimson. Blood sluiced down through the grooves in the obsidian altar and into the nearby troughs. Gerra crossed his arms and paid small heed to the screamings of his own kindred, even when Vahl set fire to the pile of bodies and he smelled the stench of sizzling hair and cooking meat.

Many of those gathered, even some of Gerra's own corsairs, look rattled by this display of raw strength and brutality seemingly backed by the Ashlord who stood by without comment. Those most afeared cast themselves down upon the walkway, pressing foreheads to the metal. Others kneeled.

"Vahl has spoken," Gerra rumbled, his voice deeper than the roots of the mountains and carrying easily through the hall.

The Vahlans repeated the words back in unison. Gerra grunted, then looked to Vatres. What had she meant, that one would rise a new Ember? Did she mean to consecrate a new Chosen in this very moment?

"Hm."

Vatrës Dhalis

 

[Vatrës Dhalis]

Vatrës watched as the survivors shifted warily, each wondering what would come next. Her onyx gaze swept them once, then twice. "Go forth," she commanded them. "Return to your tasks. I will send word to the other ancestor ships in the name of the Chosen. We will convene somewhere -- somewhere safe from the hated Jedi, safe from the enemies of the Vahla. And there we will plan our next steps. The first steps in generations on the way to the homeworld."

There was another kind of unquiet then, a kind of disbelieving joy. The joy of those who were offered something they had hoped for for years.

"One moment," Vatrës called. She descended the stairs, and she gloved her hands in flame until the filth of the unclean Vahla traitors' blood was gone, leaving her flesh pristine. The others continued to burn behind her. "I would speak to whoever maintained Inanna's records."

One of the priest-class raised a hand. Vatrës beckoned him forward. "I require access to the Chosen's databanks. All of them. All the records. You will provide credentials to the computer in Inanna's -- my quarters. The same will be made available to the Champion. He will... attend me there as well."

The archivist glanced toward Gerra, looming in the middle distance, and then bowed. "As you say, Avatara. It will be done. I will provide that information on a slate momentarily."

"Go with Vahl," Vatrës murmured, reaching up to brush dark hair from his forehead. "Be blessed, child." An absurd thing to say to a man twice her age, but he seemed to swell with pride. He left, following his fellows out, until it was just Vatrës, Hasuras Na-Gerra and his corsairs. Vatrës climbed the stairs, approaching Gerra. Her hand curled into the crook of his elbow and she beckoned him closer, straining onto her toes so that she could whisper what the goddess had conveyed to her. "The third from the left will betray you. The fifth from the right believes I am a witch and you are under my spell. He will try to kill me tonight. And the tallest one, the one dead-center? He is loyal today, but he envies your treasures and your fleets and your women. He plans to steal all of us for his own. Vahl leaves their fates to you, Champion."

 

[Hasuras Na-Gerra]

The warlord's eyes winnowed to slits at the words of the priestess. Others, perhaps, might question her or doubt or try to assuage the situation with a sophist's guile. Gerra was only a warrior and a smith. His answer to the problems before him came in the form of hammer blows and strength of arms, which seldom failed him.

"Very well," he rumbled in answer to the priestess' whisper, extricating his arm from her grip and turning on those who she had indicated.

Heavy footsteps carried him down the stairs, one at a time, as his words boomed in the chamber.

"You, you, and you. The goddess has seen your designs in the fires and revealed them to me," he raised his hands out to either side, "You are snakes and eels, biding thy time to strike the heel when back is turned. Here I am. Strike now, or I swear upon the fire that I will cook the flesh from thy bones."

The three needed but little time to come to a decision. Gerra's reputation was known throughout the Vahla. It was not kind.

They charged him at once, moving around the altar in the middle of the room. Gerra let loose a laugh of delight as he in turn moved to meet them. All four of them were trained warriors, but Gerra had led Vahlan raids to victory time and again. And who were these but warriors, when he was the Champion? His fists struck like claps of booming thunder, enchanted by some obscene Sith magic that obliterated the feeble wards of his foes and their amulets of protection like a mace splintering wood. Bone crunched and shattered as Gerra delved deep into the Dark Side and smote the shatterpoints of their being. They landed blows of their own, one burying a dagger in Gerra's side, but his fist obliterated that one in the next moment, bursting the Vahlan open like a bag of red meat. Vitae exploded, sloshing and slopping onto the ground.

Pain flared through Gerra, but he only grinned wider and let out another of his huge and rumbling laughs.

"YES, GOOD!"

Another blow ripped the third and final foe clean in half with naught but the edge of his palm.

Crimson dripping from elbows to hands, Gerra turned to the crowd, then to Vahl.

He spread his hands wide, ignoring the wound in his side with the dagger still buried to the hilt in him.

"SEE NOW HOW YOUR CHAMPION DEALS WITH ENEMIES OF VAHL?" ​

His eyes blazed like twin stars and they swung to regard the crowd again.

"WHO ELSE SEEKS TO TEST THY MIGHT?"

Vatrës Dhalis ​

 

[Vatrës Dhalis]

The Avatara felt her pulse quicken as she watched the Champion go to work. Where some men crafted delicate glass from sand and some masterpieces from pigment and some beautiful music from only air, Gerra was no less an artist for the base source of his art. He wrought violence as fine as any intricate golden chain, spilled blood as beautifully as a sculptor chiseled beauty from marble. Her eyes darkened as she watched him, a warmth spreading from the shard to her chest.

The goddess, too was pleased.

When it was over, the Avatara descended the stairs, her voice ringing out: "You who have survived this test have witnessed Vahl 's command, and through that witness you are sealed to her. The death that these faced for their refusal to give the goddess her due was painless and quick compared to what will befall you who are sealed to the goddess and choose treachery."

She reached the bottom of the stairs and crossed toward Gerra.

"Return to your tasks and remember what you have seen. Find me the other ancestor ships and open the archives to me. Tonight we feast in the presence of the goddess herself!"

As the Vahla retreated from the room, Vatrës turned to Hasuras Na-Gerra and allowed her hand to go to his cheek. "You are magnificent, Hasuras Na-Gerra. More resplendent I am sure you have never been than with the light and heat of the goddess's flame within and around you. You shall be rewarded many fold for your skill and courage."

Vatrës circled him, surveying his injuries. One seemed troublesome. She pullednthe dagger from him and wove strings of fire to seal the wound and the cut inside besides. "Your blood is precious to the goddessz and to me," Vatrës murmured to Gerra as the searing pain of Vahl's cruel healing manifested in and around his wound. "We must endeavor to keep it inside you, where it belongs, no?"

 

[Hasuras Na-Gerra]

The crowd receded from the chamber, leaving Gerra alone with the Avatara once more. He grunted at her touch against his cheek, then again - gritting his teeth - when she drug the dagger from his side. The heat of summoned flames sealed the wound with a hiss and the smell of charred flesh. Gerra's lips peeled back from his teeth in a defiant, soundless snarl at the pain.

"Blood is blood," he replied. "They would need more than a paltry dagger to best me. My scars are but a map of my victories."

Turning toward the so-called goddess, though in his head he had simply accepted it - far easier this way - Gerra gazed down at her with eyes that would brook no other equal yet saw the Dark Side spirit dwelling within her as perhaps not only his equal but his better. Why else would he agree to serve? Her power outmatched his. Perhaps that was why. Or perhaps it was the long memory of his people and their sacred traditions he had been raised in that still left him in awe of her.

Or.

Perhaps he merely bided his time, as Sith do.

"What now? You wish to feast?" Gerra nodded, though his nostrils still flared wide and his heart pounded and his blood burned hot within his veins from the combat but moments before, part of him still spoiling for further fight.

Vatrës Dhalis