Tyrant Queen of Darkness
"Let it be known."
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Taeli Raaf
The stars outside the shuttle's viewport were silent—fixed, cold, and apathetic. Much like the woman watching them.
Darth Virelia sat alone at the apex of her private cabin, cocooned in the ambient hum of cloaked systems and life support, shrouded by curtains of obsidian cloth that diffused the sterile white light into dim violet glow. Her hands were clasped behind her back in perfect stillness, and yet the air around her pulsed with restrained violence. Even within the vacuum-sealed sanctum of her ship, the Force twisted in tight coils, pressing in on the frame, whispering against the walls.
She was not afraid. But she was angry.
Sluis Van.
The name tasted like rust.
It was not the planet that brought bile to her tongue, but the woman awaiting her there. Darth Arcanix. One of the three Dark Councillors. A historian dressed as an ruler, a scholar who wore supremacy like perfume—light and cloying, until it strangled. Virelia had once admired the idea of her. Had once thought that perhaps Arcanix could be… not a mentor, never that, but a necessary star to sling her orbit around until she was strong enough to collapse it.
That illusion died long ago.
It died on Polis Massa, when Arcanix arrived uninvited, cloaked in lectures and clinical superiority, dispensing her "lesson" like a judge breaking a child's toy to make a point. Virelia remembered that moment too clearly. The slow ruin of her plans. The careful condescension. The implication that Virelia had done all this work, all for nothing.
It had died again, more recently, aboard the Darklight. In front of the Third Legion. In front of her own subordinates.
She hadn't snapped.
Not then.
Because Virelia did not snap. She sculpted. She buried. She refined.
And now, she returned—not to grovel, but to bend. Just slightly. Just enough. Because the game required it.
Arcanix's support was not necessary to win the Velgrath. But it was necessary to end it before the others realized it had already begun.
The cabin lights dimmed again as the shuttle approached the orbital platform. Sluis Van was a bastion of industrial sprawl—rust-streaked rings of orbital docks tethered to the planet by skeins of traffic, like synthetic veins choking a dying world. There was no grandeur here. No majesty. Just function, mass, utility. That was why Arcanix chose it.
Not for its power.
But for its proximty to the Velgrath.
The perfect place for a queen to hold court behind iron veils.
Virelia rose.
Her armor shifted with her—Tyrant's Embrace unfolding from repose into silhouette. Taloned boots hissed against the plasteel floor. Her cape flared slightly behind her as if in protest. The helm sealed into place with a magnetic click, violet eyes igniting like open wounds in the dark.
Before she stepped toward the airlock, she paused.
She looked into the mirrored obsidian of the viewport. Saw not a woman—but an inevitability. She let the hate rise. Let it bloom, quietly, like a dark flower in her throat. But she did not allow it to break her stance.
A compromise. A sacrifice. Not of pride—but of tempo.
The hatch hissed open. The ramp extended into shadow. And Darth Virelia descended—not as a challenger, but as a shadow collapsing the light ahead of it.