Public A Lesson in Power

[Mercy]

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OUTER RIM
ZYGERRIS MINOR
YAVVEN'S HOLLOW

Yavven's Hollow was once a thriving and successful Zygerrian mining colony. Bringing in valuable ores and passing them onto the Zygerrian Empire that had rosen up after the Levantine Sanctum fell in that region of space. With no major nation keeping them in check, the Zygerrians sadly went back to their old habits. Because a thriving Zygerrian colony was one that ran on slave labor.

Surprising few tensions within the Zygerrian Empire slowly began to weaken their influence on the outskirts of its state. Planets like Zygerris Minor and the colony of Yavven's Hollow became lesser priorities for the slavers.

The slaves of Hollow saw an opportunity and took it. Without support from the Empire, the slaves began a revolt and set the region aflame. The conflict has been raging on for about a month now with no end in sight. The Zygerrians have the technological advantage, but the former slaves have the numbers. The first thing to go were the shuttles the slavers had used to ferry themselves back and forth from the automated space station hovering over the world.

Cut off from it they couldn't reach the communication array that would request help from their Empire. If they'd respond and send help was a different story.

Besides those two sides, there were spacers who were trying to profit from the conflict, smuggling in supplies and weapons to feed both sides. There were would-be warlords that were trying to take advantage and carve out a base of power of their own.

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This is what Mercy dropped herself and one Alcariel in.

Their ship was already gone, flying off into the air, and programmed to return on a per-established schedule. For all intents and purposes they were stuck on this world.

"Be thankful, little goblin." Mercy said lightly as she crouched down on the ridge that overlooked the burning colony. It seemed that for the day the fight was gone. But that didn't mean there wouldn't be festivities later that night. "I never had a Master until I was already grown and in control of my strength. I never had opportunities like this. I fought and scrapped my way to who I am today. I would have killed for a chance like this."

She turned around to face Sael.

"I will not intervene, but I will observe and be with you. If you face something I consider unfair, I will step in. Otherwise you are on your own. You know what you are supposed to do. Take control of the colony by any and all means. By the end of our trip, I want them to kneel for you. Show me you understand what domination truly is. Any questions?"

 

[Alcariel]

​

No answer came at first.

The air stank of smoke and old metal. Same as everywhere else war had called home. Everywhere else the destitute moved from plight to plight, never free. From their perch above the colony, the burned-out wreck of Yavven's Hollow stretched wide below, lit by fires, smoke crawled along the horizon in thin fingers.

Take control of the colony by any and all means.

As if domination were a lesson to be practiced, like handwork or posture. As if the weight of a thing could be measured by how many knees you forced to the ground. Something in her pulled inward, like a tide turning. She looked down, toward the scorched heart of the colony. It was full of those lost, squandering, helpless and hopeless: A world she could empathize deeply with.

RATTATAK, SLAVE PITS
PAST: WHEN MERCY FIRST FOUND HER

If her mother hadn't been born into bondage, maybe she wouldn't have woken each morning to the same burden. Maybe if her life had begun in anything other than chains, she might've learned something richer than survival. And maybe then, the fear wouldn't have grown so large. Fear of the next loss, the next silence, the next taking. Maybe, then, when it finally came, the vanishing wouldn't have felt so complete.

But all those maybes, stacked like kindling, did nothing to stop the fire when it lit. They didn't muffle the sound, wet and terrible, of her best friend's final breath clawing free from froth-choked lungs. Her only friend. Her truest friend. Nothing imagined could reach into that space and replace what was real, and dying, right in front of her.

Loss had never been so clear as an event until now.

She had always lived beside it—loss as a shadow, a presence, not a moment. It stood in the doorway with her. Slept curled behind her knees. Less food, less water, less kindness in a master's voice, less restraint in a master's fist. Less of the thread that tethered her to any notion of a future. And when that thread finally snapped, the sound it made was silence.

Who was she now that she had nothing?

She had feared the losing more than anything. But the loss itself? It left only a hollow, ringing thing inside her. A vast, waking emptiness that unspooled and stretched into the dark like a scream with no air behind it.

And then it looked up.

Whatever lived in that emptiness had teeth.
It crawled outward, silent, hungry, and found others. Found their fear. And she could feel it. Not just see it, not just sense it, but live inside it, the way she used to live inside hope.

The guard outside, he feared becoming prey. That the punishment he dealt would return to him. That fear twisted him fast and ugly. His voice became bile. He struck first.

Her cellmates carried horrors of their own. Their pain rose up in flashes: one saw her own skin peeled back under sterile lights; another heard the keening cries of children taken in the night, tiny voices fading into the void; another smelled the fire, felt it lick his ankles, and knew it would come again.

And she—she felt it all.

It ripped through her in waves, these borrowed torments, these visions too large for any one heart to carry. She screamed out a single sound—a raw, shattering thing shaped like NO—but it wasn't just hers. It came from them, from the deepest cracks in each soul. That word—no—wasn't a refusal. It was a rupture.

And with it, something loosed.

They turned on each other. Turned into the versions of themselves their fear had always warned them they might become. Brutal. Unforgiving. Lost.

And at the root of it all, curled in the corner like something barely living, she held what was left of her friend. Her knees drawn in, her face buried in the blood-wet shoulder of the one person who'd ever seen her without wanting more from what little she was.
Something dark slipped behind her ribs.

It breathed.
She trembled.

It had learned to breathe through her.​

ZYGERRIS MINOR, PRESENT


The memory passed, deep and cold. She blinked the wind from her lashes and raised her hood.

"I don't have questions," Sael said. Her voice was low and small. "Just time."

She turned away from the ridge. The wind caught her cloak and tangled it around her knees. Still, she moved quiet and without ceremony. A silhouette dissolving into stone and dusk.

The slope was loose with shale, the kind that scraped skin and patience. She didn't care. She dropped into it, let gravity carry her. Down. Toward the colony. Toward the smoke and the noise and the restless ache of people trying to win freedom with calloused hands. She would not arrive as a conqueror. No banners. No commands. She would blend. Into the ash. Into the crowd. Into the places where people's secrets lived just under the skin.

Sael would listen. And their fears would come home to her.

The idea of it terrified her.

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Mercy
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[Mercy]

Alcariel

Mercy followed along without skipping a beat.

"Tick, tock." Mercy sang along as she fell into step with her intrepid Apprentice. "You ought to relax, live a little, little worm." The creature was so different from Mercy but their entire existence had begun differently so that wasn't a surprise.

One a noble, another a slave. One broke her own chains, the other replaced one set for the other.

"The only way to become strong, is to live and experience. To draw it all in and learn from what you experience."

This wasn't her modus operandi. Trying to teach someone.

Her first apprentice.

It was ridiculous really, but Mercy tried. Because she kept impressing her. So much power in such a feral little creature. A different kind of strength than what Mercy possessed but that was okay.

They all had their way of things.

"What will you do first? You have so many options... It must be overwhelming..."

Take control of one side, or play them all against each other, ignore them entirely and go for a third party?

 

[Alcariel]

​

Relaxing, living, strength — these were adjectives Mercy passed casually, but Sael understood none of them. Not really. She didn't understand how her mountain of a Master could lift her voice jovially in song, and in the same breath, give Sael instruction. She was unlike any other owner she'd ever had in every way. More than the way she spoke, the way she looked, it was the way she invested in Sael and encouraged her to evolve her pure survival instincts something more strategic, more self-aware.

While a dominator might have been the objective, Sael was unsure how to get there. She was a mirror. A siphon. She couldn't think beyond the need to better understand the situation she knew nothing about. This wasn't a household she served, it was a wartorn world where slaves like herself had the chance at acquiring the upperhand.

"I—" she started, and frowned, feeling a tremble of expectancy course through her shoulders. "Yes. Overwhelming. I think I need to get a feel for who is below first.

If you don't mind."

She'd told Mercy that she didn't have any questions, but she did now: "W-where would you start?"

Not that the answer would matter. Whatever it was Mercy would do, surely Sael wouldn't be able to accomplish the same approach.

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Mercy
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[Mercy]

Alcariel

"That's the wrong question, little worm." She said affectionately and patting her head lightly while looking past her to the colony coming into view.

They still had a walk and a half to go through but she could smell it already.

Not just the background scent of the world, but the particulars of this conflict. Blood, pain, shite, agony. But also hope, triumph, dreams made real.

"You are not me. You will never be me. Except in the ways that matter. By the time I am done with you, if I am successful? You will be proud, hard, you will find joy in life and live it to its fullest." Then she withdrew her hand, having ruffled her hair to amuse herself.

"I would go down there... I'd walk through haphazard fortifications. I'd grab and shake people until their leader appeared. Then I'd slam that leader through a wall. And I'd keep doing it until they broke. I'd take control... I'd set them against the other side, help them, encourage their worst instincts until they would no longer recognize themselves."

A shrug.

"And by the time I would be done, slave would become slaver. But they would all serve me."

Gods, she wished she had been her Master in her youth. She would have loved to do something like that for her own training.

Maybe she wouldn't have been just a simple brawler for so long.

But that is what Mercy was trying to correct here. Her own past through Sael. To teach her domination and control early, so she would never be stuck a lackey to someone unworthy.

"What does your instincts say? Do you want to overwhelm them? Do you want to infiltrate them and corrupt them from the inside? What sparks joy? This is your adventure, goblin."

Alcariel

 

[Alcariel]

​

Mercy cemented the truth Sael had already considered. There would be no mimicking her Master's method. Mercy could tear through a settlement like a warhead wrapped in flesh. Sael was not built for that. Where Mercy was a landslide, loud, elemental, impossible to ignore, Sael was the shadow it cast at dusk: slight, overlooked, and clinging to the edges.

She winced at the brutal detail, because it was not unlike the treatment she'd received before. She'd done nothing to deserve it, except being born to chains. She knew the helplessness of being small in a world built for giants. Of being hurt not for what she'd done, but for what she was. She'd dreamed of power before. Who hadn't, in chains? Of one day rising up, cracking bone and spilling blood until her abusers begged or gargled out their last breath. But those fantasies had always collapsed under the weight of her reality. Her hands were small. Her body was thin and quick and birdlike, built for slipping through bars, not bending them.

Mercy offered her more than revenge. A power, yes, but not the kind that burnt itself out in rage and vengeance. It was something else. A chance to be powerful just for the sake of it.

When she finally spoke, it was quiet. But not soft.

"I want them to beg me for safety. I want them to think I'm the only one who can stop the screaming in their heads."

She tilted her head. The glow caught in her eyes. Her desire hot, spreading like a flame.

"Not because I'm scary. But because I know what's scary to them. I want to own them without touching them. That sparks joy.

I will need to infiltrate. Get close and feel what they're afraid of. I can sense fear from here, but not enough detail to do anything about it."

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Mercy
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[Mercy]

She had discovered early on that Alcariel was a shrinking violet. Soft and scared from the years pressing heavy on her. Yet she had a merciless streak in her, the touch of nightmares rooted deep in her soul.

Mercy knew from experience former slaves often fell into three rough categories.

Your paragons, who wished to save those from a similar fate.
Your regulars, who just wanted to hide away and make sure they never got enslaved again.
Your nightmares, who wanted to wield power over others, to compensate for the power that had been held over them.

It was to her delight to discover Sael was the third category. The first one would have been useless to her. The second... well, that could go either way, you could shape a living creature into many different things. But that third one? Oh, it was wonderful. She smiled at her response, giving her understanding that Mercy approved.

Again lovingly ruffling the apprentice's head.

"You are a delight, my darling, I am so glad I found you." Mercy believed in positive reinforcement to teaching people. Sometimes you needed to be hard, but when they did well? You ought to let them know.

A soft hum.

"How will you get close to them?" Mercy asked finally, curious, but also wanting her to think about it. "You could cause a distraction. Draw them out and then slip in, pretend you were among them all this time." Offering one option. "You could draw the other side in, have them attack you and then get them to save you."

She waggled her fingers.

"A secret third option? What do you have, little worm?"

 

[Alcariel]

Sael's skin prickled under the praise. It pooled under her ribs and coiled tight. Recognition, maybe. Or pride. Something sharp and hungry. She smiled, faintly, teeth barely showing, as Mercy tousled her hair again. She had no idea what her hair looked like now, other than messed, but it didn't trouble her. Appearances never did. In Mercy's care, she had access to hygienic basics at least. Something she'd not been afforded in her previous life.

​

Her Master's mind worked faster than her own. Option after option spilled out, like a deluge. Sael felt disappointment creep in and consume the brief flash of pride that had existed moments before; her imagination, her cunning, was not so well forged.

She made a noise while she considered, to assure her Master that she was truly considering the options. She needed to get closer to the camp, to understand the fear, to immerse herself, but perhaps she didn't need to be physical straightaway. She could always pretend she was an escapee from the Zygerrians, tell horrible fears and plan suggestion to take root. But something about playing the slave again brought a distaste to her tongue. She did not want to go back to that.

And how could she depend on anyone to save her? She'd waited her whole life for that. Mercy was the first, and likely the last.

"Hmm." She said again, a little louder then crouched again, elbows on her knees, fingers steepled in front of her lips. She felt the colony, stretching beneath them. Everything down there throbbed—anger, desperation, ambition. Hope rotted at the edges.

Then, quietly: "I'll send them a dream."

She tilted her head, eyes unfocused.

"Just… a flicker. When someone's scared enough, when their mind's already halfway to breaking, I can… push. Make them see something. Hear something. Just enough. Especially if they're unconscious. The subconscience will be unprotected and raw in the night."

A slow smile now, strange and thrilled and quiet.

"I'll pick someone close to the centre. Someone they trust. A leader. I'll make them dream of me. A warning. A prophecy, maybe. Something they won't admit out loud, it will make them sound fanatic and crazy with nothing to see, but they can't forget me when they wake up."

Her hands spread, like laying cards on a table.

"Then I'll show up. Just like the dream. Like it came true."

She looked up at Mercy, all innocence and menace in one orange stare.

"They won't know if I'm real, or if they dreamed me again, but they'll listen."

Abruptly she stood and marched toward the colony, somewhere she could get a better vantage point, but still be close enough to actually feel the individuals within and not the general clump of emotions. When they reached a place she felt the thrum enough to tug at the undercurrent of a web she slowly built with each step, she stopped and closed her eyes, and nodded to herself. Power thrummed softly at her fingertips, tugging her attention to the northeast quadrant of the colony. The beast inside snarled, its appetite whet.

"There," she murmured, eyes half-lidded. "That one." Sael slipped into the loose lotus position and lowered her head. Her fingers steepled against her lips. Her breath slowed.

***

Inside the rebel encampment, that one was Velyn Turren. Mid-thirties, ex-miner turned rebel quartermaster. Not a fighter. Not brave. But respected. People came to him with problems. With needs. With doubts. He listened. He helped. And that made him perfect. He was the access point, the gateway to many concerns that stretched beyond his own. With a single touch, Sael would have a glimpse into the fears he held beyond just his own.

Velyn had just laid down. His shift was over. His hands still stung from crate-work, splinters under the nails. His thoughts were slow, heavy, like rocks being rolled into place. Sleep came fast. And into that space, she crept in like smoke beneath the crack of a door. She was careful not to introduce anything new, simply traced the threads that already existed — the most painful ones were easy to find. He was a man who used the past as fuel for a brighter future. And so, she started her machinations like a memory.....

......He was back in the mines. Collar still hot around his neck, knees in dust. Someone screamed two tunnels over. Common enough. A voice of a brother, a sister, a fellow worker, and then sounds of scuffled violence. Then the lights began to flicker. Not the harsh fluorescents they used in the shafts. Something softer, redder.

He turned and saw a girl standing in the dark. Younger than him. Deep red skin. Irisless eyes too bright for a place without light.

"You're setting yourself up to fail," she said, voice like velvet dragged across glass. "You think this ends well?"

He tried to speak. Couldn't.

"They'll turn on you. When they win, they'll decide you're part of the problem. That you took too long. You didn't save enough people. You are responsible for the delay in their victory. The blood of their families is on your hands. You started this and you can barely finish it." The collar around his neck tightened. "And they will force you to become what you hate in order to survive.

Again."

The collar broke. Fell, useless. But his limbs stayed frozen. Her hands looked as though she were playing a harpsichord through the air; had it been her to undo the chain around his neck? It had to be. She was his salvation.

"There's another way."

She stepped forward now, and he wanted to scream. Not from fear. From knowing.

"When I come, listen to me. Remember this. I will be the only way to save you from your worst fear — the endless cycle that will see you dead and nothing."

She touched his chest. And the world went black.

***

Sael opened her eyes. There was blood at her nose, a faint trickle. She licked it away without comment.

"It's done," she said. "I will find his equal in the other camp. Do the same thing. Be the same prophet."

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Mercy
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[Mercy]

Alcariel

In truth what Sael was describing already went beyond what Mercy could or even would do. It was her talent, the one that Mercy was doing her best to nurture, even while she didn't have the exact skill set to bring it to bloom. It's why she had reached out to Spencer Varanin . Back in the original Sith Empire days she had been considered the prime mentalist of her age, who had taught many others who became small or big problems in their own right.

A more formalized approach to mentalism would be a boon to the girl. Instinct only got you so far, at least that is what she was told. It was easy to rely on sheer instinct when your entire skill set revolved around beating shit to pulp.

She followed Sael and sat down on one of the rocks overlooking the colony. She sat down and disappeared, mentally anyway. Her mind projecting elsewhere and leaving behind only the shell. After a moment she reached out and gently draped a blanket over her. Her lithe form had already started to shiver.

Somewhere Mercy knew that she was coddling her.

But while their origins couldn't have been more divergent, there were similarities. Both had been born in a place their souls knew they didn't belong. She a princess who was to be a brood mare for a noble dynasty. Her a slave, meant to toil for the pleasures of others until her body gave out. She keenly remembered running away to the Sith Academy. Mercy thought she'd find her purpose there. Instead she only found more disappointment and ran away once more.

She would not treat Sael the way those teachers had treated her. Perhaps it wouldn't turn her into a weapon to wield, but Mercy wasn't looking for a weapon. She preferred her own two fists for that.

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​

Sael's voice drew back into this place and Mercy glanced over her shoulder.

"Then inspire them. Set their souls aflame, the same way you did for me during the tournament." Mercy murmured softly. A bit thoughtful about the kind of power the little worm possessed. "Let them only think of you and the path you pave for them. That is what sets us apart from them. They are meant to follow, you are meant to lead. There is no shame in that, you are not allowed to feel shame for that. Revel in your power, in your might, that is the only way to grow stronger and larger."

Then a smile.

"Perhaps a little challenge. For the slavers... do not find their leader. Find their weakest link, the fragile one, the one they all consider a liability. Inspire that sickening creature into acts of greatness. Turn him into that which they follow. That is what domination is. To take something and shape it into your needs irrespective of what it or those around it want, little worm."

 

[Alcariel]

​

"Very well." Sael frowned. This entire activity was challenging enough, but she had no leg to stand on to argue against her master. If a challenge was delivered, a challenge would be accepted. She didn't need to ask why. She understood. Mercy wanted proof that Sael could shape, not just frighten. That she could twist something pitiful into something powerful — the way her own trajectory appeared to be shaping.

"The weakest link," she repeated. "They'll be afraid. That makes him pliable."

With her agreement, they moved. There would have to be a lot of movement between the camps, between her two envisioned legionnaires once she got into their heads. If nothing else, the sheer amount of physical effort of moving from place to place made her hungrier for power; desperate to find a way to expand her range.

The slavers had thrown up their camp like they always did: Quick and proud and wasteful. She let herself feel through the Force. The Zygerrians were easy to tune to. Loud minds. Sharp. Cruel. Like every master she had ever experienced; with no exception for Mercy, either. She drifted among the outer walkways, unseen, light-footed. Workers barked orders, guards shuffled in bored patrols.

It was easy to find the leader — they felt thick, proud, haughty in the midst of already elevated confidence. But she needed to find someone the complete opposite of Velyn Turren. Someone dismissed. Maybe even hated.

And then she felt it. A flicker. Self-loathing. Shame. And deep under that, wanting, wanting to be more. It was a feeling she knew too well, for it mirrored her own; as though someone had peeled away her outerlayer and injected her insides into the shape of something obscenely different from herself: A Zygerrian technician crouched near the base of a comms array, fumbling with a heat-splicer. His fur was patchy along one side of his face, seared from a past burn. His armor didn't fit. He winced when someone shouted nearby, shoulders hunching before the voice even reached him.

"There they are." She whispered, knowing Mercy remained nearby.

The others barely spared him a glance. A slaver, yes, but not a respected one. He was the tech, the runt. The one who got ordered to fix things no one else wanted to touch. He looked up as another officer passed him, muttering something cruel and inaudible. The tech didn't reply. Just kept working, eyes downcast. His fingers trembled slightly.

Sael leaned into the feeling.

The boy—he wanted to be seen. He was terrified of it, but the desire sat there like a fever, just waiting for permission to burn.

She whispered, not aloud, but a brush to the space between his pointed ears: They don't see you now, but they will. I see you.

The boy froze. His breath hitched. He looked around and saw no-one.

Not yet, she sent gently. Not yet. But soon. We will give you what you need.

He shuddered. She could taste the spike of fear and wonder. Perfect.

"We will have to wait for nightfall. He'll need to dream, like the rebel."

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Mercy
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[Mercy]

Alcariel

She couldn't see what Sael was doing, but that was part of the exercise. In this moment Mercy couldn't guide her, correct her, she could only trust that the young girl had her shit together.

"Let's not waste daylight then." Mercy murmured as she offered a hand for Sael to pull herself up with. "You have laid the seeds. But they will not accept the image come the next day. Not if their minds are clear, if they are unfrazzled and steady." Slowly stretching herself as Mercy glanced back towards the encampment.

"You need to create chaos for them. Loss. They need to be hurting by the time you reveal yourself. They need to be desperate."

And that way the imagery that Sael was conjuring would only confirm to them what they craved for.

There could be no alternative beyond Sael. It was her, or it was death.

"You know how to be quiet, you knew that all along. But I have taught you how to kill, you have your weapon." An alchemized dagger, wicked, sharp, forged on the Pomojema by Mercy herself. "Create an ambush? Lure some people from both sides in and get them to murder each other? Cause an explosion that takes out a wall, forcing them to assign extra guards and cause exhaustion?"

Mercy shrugged.

"The colony is your oyster, my little worm. Be creative, enjoy yourself."

 

[Alcariel]

​

It felt like Sael's brain shorted out. She glanced down at the dagger Mercy mentioned and felt a tug at something behind her ribs. She couldn't imagine gutting — no. Yes she could. She could imagine gutting a Zygerrian. A slaver. Someone who hurt those that Velyn swore to protect. She could skin a cat.

But the cats were bigger than her. Stronger. Seasoned. Used to combat. How would she get close enough to injure without herself breaking The only way would be to lead with fear, and when they were immobilized, caught in their own nightmare, she'd strike.

"Hm." She'd never done that before. "Chaos and confusion seem prudent. I could slip in amongst that but I..." her face scrunched together. "I think I want to save that for later. Leave each of the leaders to create that and I'll intercept later.

An explosion paired with mysterious bodies from both sides might create the same effect.."

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Mercy
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