Private Barter, Banter, and Backstabs

[Alwine Bergen]

. : Some Market Place : .
: Literally Could Be Anywhere : ​

Alwine adjusted the small pack on her back as she stepped carefully through the bustling marketplace. Her eyes moved deliberately over the stalls, searching for some rare herb that Katrine had asked her to. She hadn't needed to say yes. After all, it had been almost a decade since had Alwine arrived at Figaro Fortuna IV, and had never left.

And why would she? For a few years, life had been everything she had wanted to be. She and Katrine had reconciled, which was a fancy was of saying Alwine did no longer see her as an enemy to be killed. It wasn't friendship, not exactly, but it was mutual respect. And after Kat had Larentia and Alwine married one of the Bergen brothers and had Aethelwulf and Wulfric, the children had become inseparable, making them all welcome in both houses. Alwine loved it. She had a strong feeling that Katrine did as well.

But enough time had passed. Alwine had a very general inkling as to what was happening in the galaxy, and was still weirded out by the fact that time on Figaro Vortuna passed slower than elsewhere, so that it had been a decade for her, while four decades for the galaxy at large.

The chatter around her now was a hum of foreign languages and bartering cries, a steady reminder that the galaxy kept turning, with or without her. She paused at a stall shaded by woven fabric, the vendor's wares a mix of colorful roots and dried leaves. Kneeling, Alwine began to sift through the offerings, careful to still the slight tremble in her fingers. It was just another day, she told herself. Just a quiet errand. Just an excuse to leave her children behind for a moment, and then come right back.

She glanced up, scanning faces without focus. The crowd felt dense but familiar.

Yet somewhere at the edge of her vision, a movement, quick, almost imperceptible, caught her attention. A heartbeat, a flicker of something in the eyes of a passing figure made her pulse quicken. But when she looked again, the person was gone.

Alwine shook her head, forcing a small, tired smile. Nothing but shadows playing tricks. This was what the mind did when one became stagnant for too long.

Absolutely nothing to worry about.

---

Lirka Ka​

 

[Lirka Ka]

Lirka Ka possessed a particularly bad habit of chasing ghosts. Darkness knew she was certainly plagued by them plenty - it was not a cheap hobby, info brokers demanded much and spies were not exactly her forte. Yet that did not stop her, few ghosts remained in her mind from the woman-who-was-once-Lirka-Ka but there still remained one. One who had touched even her monstrous form in her fledgling state.

Alwine Bergen

It had been many years, oh so many years, but to a Sephi mind such decades were little more than droplets in a long and murderous life. That is why the wound felt so fresh, scorned by what should have been the beasts only friend. It compelled her to hunt, to seek, to satisfy the thoughts of what was and what could be. Command certainly wouldn't like it, by most metrics an Imperator of her standing should not have been indulging in such...petty ventures in the middle of nowhere.

Yet, her she was. In this teeming mass of unworthy life, it reminded her of some piddly parody of the great bazaar upon the Darklight yet these were people unburdened by the weight of duty, walking through their lives without ever having that inkling of their capability to be greater. It was repulsive, in its own way. But she was not here for the teeming masses, her pursuits were more focused today.

Even her massive form could be hidden in the thickness of life around the pair, she skulked, she stalked, she weaved between the dark and shadowy places of this bazaar. For her bulk, Lirka was always more agile than she let on. Till eventually, slit-lenses fell upon her quarry. A flash of wicked amusement beneath her helm - the best part about chasing ghosts, was when you actually found them.

Thump. Thump. Thump. Servos whirred, heavy metal footfalls thudded against the earth as the sea of people parted in her wake. It had been long, so long that Lirka had been broken down, remade, time and time again. Mordinae seemed like a distant prospect now, little more than the start of her dark path to damnation. Her form uncanny from what it was, but an artist always kept their motifs. But despite the many years, and her nigh-unrecognizable form, one thing had stayed the same - her voice.

As alien as ever, accent thick, behind it that certain malice of a murderer unrepentant mixed with the glee of finally seeing an old "friend".

"Hello, Wolf."

 

[Alwine Bergen]

Thump. Thump. Thump. People were running away and screaming. Alwine, was not. By the gods, she was back in the galaxy proper for less than an hour and already it was as though the clock had never ticked.

Alwine's spine remained straight as a blade as she crouched by the stall, her finger releasing the dried herbs she had held but a moment ago. She wasn't reading anymore. And her heart was not racing; she'd long since learned to train that reaction out of her body, and yet the tension that was pulling tightly between her shoulder blades could not, would not be denied. A very familiar, very specific kind of tension.

She stood. No rush, no need for sharp movements. She dusted her hands off her on her coat, first the left, then the right, because routine helped her keep calm and carry on.

And there Lirka Ka was.

Even if Alwine hadn't recognized the voice, the sheer presence would've given her away. Towering. Armored. Built like a monument carved by someone who believed subtlety was a weakness. Lirka Ka had always taken up more space than any one person should. It seemed time had only reinforced that trait.

But for all the metal, all the weaponry, all the monstrous refashioning… Alwine saw her. The echo of a woman who'd once been a comrade, then an enemy, then, perhaps, something in between.

Alwine tilted her head, expression unreadable. Calm, cold, sharp as mountain air.

Her gaze moved deliberately, dragging from the helm down to the thudding metal boots, then back up again. She didn't flinch. She didn't step back. She'd fought Lirka once. More than once. And whether or not they were past that now didn't matter. What mattered was that Alwine remembered how.

"Jatha'la rewt uss," a nickname not spoken in a decade, her voice just barely above a whisper. There was no fear in it. Because Lirka Ka was not someone she wished to fear. You didn't fear old ghosts. You acknowledged them, and then reminded them you were still breathing.

 

[Lirka Ka]

She did have quite the knack for making a mess of things. It came with the territory, really. One did not pave the path of enlightenment without at least making some modicum of a mess along the way. The rats around them scurried in her wake, and Lirka paid them little mind. Their lives were puny, irrelevant things in the wake of the mission.

Lirka Ka held no fear, what did she have to fear from Alwine Bergen ? Nothing. She had walked among dark lords and murderous backstabbers for years on end, and when dabbling in the likes of Carnifex - a wolf looked small in comparison.

The Once-Sephi was a show woman at heart, and presence had always just been a single part of that display. It was the fragilest of egos that demanded to fill a room, after all. In a sense both metaphorical and sometimes literal. Lirka began to pace, slowly. It was a predator’s gait, back, and forth, eyes never leaving her quarry. Their last interaction had been a violent one - even if the violence had been one sided. Lirka knew she personally would have desired revenge - but the monstrous mind of Lirka Ka did not work like most people.

Yet for all the great hyper violence of the Once-Sephi. Ghosts were not a thing to be slain, they were a thing to overcome. Lirka Ka had died a long time ago after all, in a forgotten war, on a forgotten world. Only the beast remained.

The nickname was met with a chuckle, airy and humorless. Relics were an amusing thing. When she spoke, it was a jabbing thing. For all the coldness she was met with, Lirka felt little need to reciprocation - she was outside of Sith space now. There was no politicking to be done, this was strictly for reasons both petty and personal.

“How the mighty have fallen. Lirka was rather fond of you, and now look at you…teeming among rats. Unbefitting of a warrior.”

She was here for curiosity, at the end of the day. The false-memories crammed into the Once-Sephi’s brain compelled her to seek out these fragments of the woman whose face she now wore. Even if they had been given the opportunity to meet before, as brief and bloody as it was. There was always a chance to dig deeper, and cut those little tethers that still remained till all vestiges were washed away.

 

[Alwine Bergen]

The predator's gait, the dramatic flair, the intentional provocation… Alwine noted it all, catalogued, and filed in the back of her mind. She let her arms fall gently to her sides, an almost bored elegance to the motion, like a queen entertaining court jesters rather than a wolf facing a monster.

But the stillness belied the monologue behind her ice-edged eyes.

She used to be taller, Alwine mused. Or perhaps the weight of all that performance has made her appear smaller. Heavier. Slower.

Lirka Ka spoke like someone who expected her words to sting. Like she expected venom to matter to a creature who had already walked through her own execution and come out the other side. The insult, that she teemed among rats, that she was no longer a warrior, was met with a single blink. No twitch of the jaw, no tightening of the shoulders.

Inside, though, the voice spoke on.

How often they say that. How often they see stillness and call it weakness. See motherhood and call it surrender. See peace and mistake it for retreat. She thinks I've fallen. They always do, until they're bleeding at my feet.

Aloud, her voice came soft. Controlled. A thing honed by years in the courts, and tempered by war.

"You mistake choice for failure."

She did not raise her voice. Let Lirka listen harder if she wanted meaning.

"I have built a life in which I no longer need to prove myself in blood or posture. I have known war. I have led it. I have bled for causes until there was nothing left but the cause. And then I walked away. That is not failure, Lirka Ka," Her eyes narrowed slightly, not in anger, but in faint disappointment. "That is survival. Evolution. It is the privilege of those who outlive the monsters."

A breath, shallow, thoughtful.

"But tell me…" Her head tilted slightly. "If she was fond of me, as you say… Why are you here?"

---

Lirka Ka

 

[Lirka Ka]

She may have, in all the technical terms, not been Lirka Ka truly. Yet to be trained upon one’s memories, a life born of flashed moments crammed into flesh to mimic another? It certainly made for picking up the old quirks. Though the beast and the wolf had met once before the moment of revelation imparted itself upon Lirka’s twisted form.

Yet it was true, Lirka had been smaller, she had been taller, she had been skinnier, she had been bulkier. For she was a malleable beast, flesh was but the confine for raw belief. Lirka Ka expected many things, and she expected nothing at all. She was a dancing duality that shifted between understanding and being lost within the meager mythos she had built for herself. The unraveled narcissism of a killer. That was far from uncommon in her new home - for what were the Sith but a menagerie of self absorbed murderers at the end of the day.

Yet the response from Alwine Bergen - or lack thereof, quickly reminded Lirka why the phantom-memories told her to be fond of this one. It was a kinship far from impossible to understand, though something far too distant from the mind of a beast so impossibly warped by war and time. Lirka made fellows with the likes of warmongers and genocidal tyrants these days - if one could ever truly have a friend in Sithdom.

She raised a clawed finger in correct, giving the woman a wag with that same humorless chuckle coming through her helmet.

“One can make the choice to be a failure.”

Lirka styled herself somewhere between a priest and a philosopher these days. Quaint.

“Perhaps, Wolf. I cursed you, back upon Moridinae when we last spoke. My understanding was fledgling then, my grasp of the cosmic truths like that of a child. You have picked the survival of the here, and the now, not the then. It is the fighters, the monsters, the worthy who scrap and scrape through muck and mire endless that rise above the unending encroachment of the Primordial Darkness that ends-all-things.”

And if she was either. She was certainly of the “mad” variety.

“Amusement. A test. Appeasement. There are many options, Wolf. Perhaps I am here to end what started upon hallowed Moridinae, perhaps I am here to offer you my hand so we may walk the path together. Or…perhaps it is far more simple? I desire to see a ghost.”

 

[Alwine Bergen]

There it was again.

That peculiar cadence. That meandering spiral of words that danced on the edge of revelation but refused to fall in. Alwine could almost smile. It was so very Lirka Ka . Or… whatever version stood in front of her now. Truth be told, she didn't care what name the woman went by, nor how many times she'd twisted her form into a new shape. This new Lirka still spoke in riddles and doom, still carried that same scent of theatrical violence braided with faux-philosophy.

Still enjoyed hearing herself talk far too much.

The Wolf did not move from her perch on the crate. Her arms remained crossed. Her chin, high. But her breath slowed, just a little. She listened. Not because she expected wisdom, but because even madness had its patterns. And because this ghost had asked to be seen.

Lirka had cursed her? Yes, well. So had half the galaxy. And Alwine had survived them all.

"You sound like a sermon."

Her words were dry. Soft. And in their softness, barbed.

"Or a guilt-ridden priestess seeking purpose in bloodletting and borrowed myths."

She tilted her head slightly.

"Did you come all this way to absolve yourself by offering me a path? Or to remind yourself that you still can be remembered?"

A pause. Long enough to border on disrespect.

"You speak of primordial darkness. Of survival. Of the worthy rising." Her voice dropped. "But Lirka… you came to me. So ask yourself this. What do I represent, that you needed to see it again with your own eyes?"

And still, Alwine did not rise. The crate held her just fine.

 

[Lirka Ka]

The droning self importance of a preacher gripped in the clutches of madness. Lirka’s revelation was something only for people of her monstrous ilk, those sadistic beasts that decided “the galaxy must suffer same as I!” - a belief that was lonely as it was boundlessly cruel. Yet Lirka Ka was a self serving hypocrite, always.

She let Alwine Bergen stay perched, Lirka was pleasantly content to stay a pacing predator till the moment came for the two to erupt into violence.

Something hummed from her marred helm. It must've been some form of amusement for she quipped back in ways far more becoming of the woman whose face-and-name she had stolen so long ago.

"A good one, I can only hope."

Evidently, by the wolf's rebuttal. It was certainly not. Lirka was not surprised, though perhaps ever so slightly disappointed. How much wiser this Galaxy would be if they'd only listen, how much mightier they would become in the impending rise of the End-of-all-Things. Alas. There was no teaching a savage the ways of the enlightened few.

"Guilt? Such a curious thought...I do not feel guilt, not anymore. You must understand, little wolf, my brain does not work as yours. This monstrous priestess before you to offer that in this "bloodletting and borrowed myth" there is the benevolent hand of a guiding mother, for all those lost things in the Galaxy."

The pause meant little to her. Sith adored their dramatic pauses, they oozed disrespect for her force dead lot often. It bordered on normalcy now, though that defiant spunk certainly reminded the Once-Sephi why her flash memories told her that the two had been associates in a time well forgotten now.

"Why, little wolf, you're a ghost. A fragment that has nestled itself into this twisted mass of memories crammed within my vat-grown head - yet, you are just one of many things I must thank. You were such a crucial piece to my understanding, who graced me with the knowledge of what may lie beyond the living world. Yet..."

She gestured, in a mock casualness that held little true kindness beyond it.

"We're supposed to be friends, aren't we? Old chums? Sisters born in bloodshed for a confederacy forgotten to the annals of history? Aren't friends supposed to chat, to understand, to see what possibly could have happened to bring to such a...pitiful state."

Even now, Lirka Ka craved knowledge. Even meager little things like this, she needed to know. The swirl of variables never ceased, and while Alwine certainly wasn't a major one in the grand scheme of Lirka's machinations. She needed to know, for what Lirka Ka did not know, would most certainly hurt her.

 

[Alwine Bergen]

Alwine's gaze lingered on Lirka, her expression unchanging, but her mind working in deliberate spirals, tracing the contours of memories and truths both shared and fractured.

Friends. Allies born in fire and bloodshed. Yes, those words held weight. They did not deny the years of betrayal, nor the violence that carved their paths apart, but they were not false. Friendship had existed. Not always constant, not always kind, but real enough to leave marks that even time could not erase.

She exhaled softly, the sound lost beneath the hum of the marketplace and the echo of their own history.

And here she stands, the ghost within the beast, seeking what most do. Understanding, clarity, the fragments that might make the whole.

Aloud, her voice was calm, deliberate, measured.

"You speak of ghosts, Lirka, but the truth is you seek more than phantoms. You seek meaning in the scattered pieces of a life shattered and remade, a mirror to reflect the parts of yourself you fear have been lost to the void." She stepped forward just slightly, a careful, purposeful movement, not a challenge but a bridge. "I understand that need. I have carried it myself, grasping at the echoes of what was, trying to piece together a self from shards left behind by war and choice."

Her eyes sharpened, the faintest trace of steel threading through their depths.

"We were forged together in blood and chaos, and yes, we were, at times, friends. But that was never simple, and it never was enough to protect either of us from becoming what we are now." Another breath. Another pause. "You came here seeking me not because of friendship alone, but because I represent a part of your own story still unresolved. A reminder of the life you might have had, or feared to have lost."

She inclined her head slightly.

"So I will not deny you that. But know this, jatha'la rewt uss. I am no ghost waiting to be exorcised. I am a wolf who has survived her demons by choosing to live beyond them," Her voice dropped, soft but insistent, "And that is the sight I offer you. Not a specter, but the living."

Raising her chin ever so slightly, Alwine allowed herself a little smile to the gargantuan beast. "You will have to excuse me," she said, "I do not remember what your drink of choice is. But there is a cantina nearby where we may sit and drink as we continue. It is clear you are not in any need for food."



Lirka Ka

 

[Lirka Ka]

Lirka's mind was a mishmash thing - memories both her own and those crammed into her head, flooded her senses, the cruel enlightenment of Rhand and the endless darkness of duty to the Sith worked in tandem with madness that scratched away at the edge of sensation. In that swirling pandemonium that called itself Lirka Ka, Alwine Bergen remained as a friend in some memories, a footnote in others. Yet it begged a most pertinent question to the monster that stood before the Little Wolf - did Lirka Ka truly have friends anymore? Did any Sith really have friends, or just a myriad of temporary self-serving alliances?

There it was. That funny word, truth. The metal goliath did not shift, she allowed the woman to speak. Whatever thoughts came to the forefront of the maelstrom today were private things - ponderings to be examined at a later time between Lirka and "herself". It had been a long time, the battlefields many, the loss great - had Alwine spoken a truth, buried beneath the many layers a monster of the Sith needed to wear to defend herself? Or was it merely wisdom, lost on maddened ears? Time would certainly tell.

Yet regardless of whatever feelings lay trapped within the layered metallic plate - it was a rare treat to be spoken to like a person rather than a mere monster. It was a scant treat Lirka rarely was gifted, and one more often than not gained through the careful manipulations of a beastly Once-Sephi that adored little more than to lie.

When she spoke, it was with remarkably few words for a self-styled preacher. A faint humor behind it all.

"It is never simple though, is it?"

It was apt - their lives had certainly been far from mundane, one merely needed to look upon the monstrous shadow cast by the once-Slavemaster General to know Lirka had lived a cruel, murderous, life in defiance of the mundane and the simple. Indeed, for now the woman she had once dubbed friend lived. And with that simple fact, Lirka threw her arms wide and laughed. Because it was never so simple.

She wasn't home now, she wasn't within the confines of the Blackwall. She did not dance upon the knife's edge of careful politics and hateful assassins, the Sith weren't here. Just meager, pitiful rats, that warranted no thought. And the Wolf.

"Yes, little wolf, you most certainly are alive enough. I must disappoint you though, there is little booze left in the Galaxy strong enough for this withered hag. But please, feel more than welcome to indulge in drink, Wolf. There is much to catch up on over these long decades, isn't there?"

It would be a nice break from the endless machinations of duty and the enlightenment, after all.

 

[Alwine Bergen]

The bark of laughter echoed, and for a moment, Alwine could almost believe that the previous decade had not passed. That Lirka Ka was still the towering, terrifying woman she had once stood beside, and on occasion, against. The mess of war and rebellion, a glimmer of something like kinship had taken root, however crookedly.

Her lips curled into something that wasn't quite a smile, but it wasn't not one either.

"No," she agreed, voice quiet, but steady. "It is never simple."

It never had been. Not between them, not in the lives they had lived, and not in the truths they carried like scars beneath their skins.

The cantina wasn't too far from where they had stood. At five feet tall on a good day, Alwine cut no imposing figure. Next to Lirka, she looked like a child. And, strangely, she didn't mind. It was rare these days to feel small, rare to walk beside someone whose shadow didn't need her to step out from under it. It was… refreshing. In the private pieces of her life, the quiet parts she didn't talk about, the ones where her children's laughter echoed louder than any drums of war, she was the biggest thing in the room. She had months, probably less, before both her children overtook her in height. The thought should've bothered her, but instead it warmed her chest.

Inside the cantina, the scent of stale alcohol clung to the air like mildew, and the remnants of its previous patrons lingered at one of the corner tables. Neither of them paid much mind to the clutter. Alwine slid into her seat with the ease of someone used to scanning for exits, even in places meant for rest. Old habits didn't die. They calcified.

There was a time when she might have reached for a drink, a time when she thought alcohol might smooth the edges of memories too sharp to touch. Those days were done. She was no longer the little girl on Stewjon who just wanted to do the things her brothers were allowed to and she was not. Water and tea served her better now.

She met Lirka's gaze directly, fingers wrapping around the plain glass set before her.

"You may go first," the former Speaker nodded to the monsterous elf, "how many years has it been for you? What strange plots have you found yourself involved in?"

 

[Lirka Ka]

To truly reinvent was a grueling task, she could reduce herself down to primordial sludge time and time again, putty to be sculpted into whatever form evolved upon the last. To wear a different face between the decades - yet the mind would remain. The mind that was riddled with figments and ghosts, yet already a thing that had become veteran to Lirka’s own atrocities unending.

She may have stolen the name, stolen the face. The monster that wore the skin, making the role she was thrust into her own demon. Yet for all her prattling the through lines of the woman she was molded from would remain.

It could never be truly simple. For simplicity was death. It was the simple life that dawdled in comfort. The path was a complex thing, a winding road riddled with violence and suffering unending. Yet, for all the hyper-violence that Lirka’s grim revelations had come to require - here, far away from the Empire, she could see the brief glimmer of indulging in a small heresy. There was no harm in following the small form of Alwine Bergen to the cantina. Knowledge was a powerful thing after all, and while she didn’t deem the woman much of a threat it never hurt to have a better understanding about another variable.

So move the little wolf, and the metal looming goliath. It had been some time since Lirka had indulged herself in the muck and mire of a place like this - such vices were not quite her forte anymore. Alcohol offered little benefit, yet the potency of spice? Well that was vice with purpose, to open the mind, to engage the senses. Today was not a day for a batch of Neutron Pixie though.

Taking a careful seat, as if expecting the thing to fall beneath her weight. Thankfully it held up, she met the Lupine’s gaze with the cold emotionless glare of her slit-lenses. The helmet remained on. It seemed the Once-Sephi was still keeping some cards to her chest, even if she was to indulge her “friend”.

“The cycles are strange, to a Sephi mind. What is a year to a human, is but a drop in the puddle to my longevity…”

A quaint way to say, that through the many trials and tribulations of her life. She hadn’t really been keeping track.

“40, perhaps. Moridinae was many years ago now, a distant conquest, but the first step upon the Path. Another atrocity in a list unending. My birthright claimed, the throne of Thustra within my grasp and my father: the traitor, dead by my hand. A world that scorned my teachings, a dream realized to be but folly. The Empire crumbling as civil war erupted, my spawn lost in but a flash. All I had worked to build crumbling away. The way of the Rhandite called, pilgrimage to the holy world of Rhand as the Maw rose to light the Galaxy aflame. Csilla, the world destroyed. War unending, ousted from the Rhandites I found myself scuttling within the muck and mire of the Galaxy till I found myself in the employ of the Butcher King once more and the rising Sith. And after that well…”

Humorless coyness followed. Lirka did always have a rather peculiar sense of humor.

“…That’s classified information. The Emperor doesn’t like news getting out past his Blackwall.”

 

[Alwine Bergen]

Alwine did not interrupt as Lirka Ka spoke. She listened to her friend and enemy of old. Like most of the galaxy, Lirka had passed four decades to Alwine's ten, and from the elf's words, she could understand that none of them had been peaceful. And still, Lirka would live many more decades to come, if not more than that. What would it look like, when the weight finally crushed the giant woman beneath it? The galaxy would survive her breakdown, but would she?

There were so many names and places that Alwine could not place, but that did not matter. Had Lirka been anyone else, the Lupine may have attempted to offer an embrace of acceptance, but she already knew her friend would, at best, scoff at the notion. Lirka had gone through the decades with every wound and attack marking her, if not in body, then always in soul.

It was almost comical to consider it. She was certain that if she mentioned it, Lirka would scoff and then punch a hole in the wall to prove just how not sensitive she was. Everything about her still radiated the sort of brute strength Alwine had never cared for. But maybe it was motherhood and not battle that had changed how she now viewed it. Those walls didn't look quite as proud and mighty anymore, just old, and tired.

"I admit, I understand little of it," she eventually said, "Many of these names you have used, these places."

Alwine had dedicated so many years of her life to just run away from Stewjon and get as much of the galaxy in as she could, only to end up building many years into making an idealistic version of it instead, keeping what she had thought was good, and refusing to let the bad parts of it inside.

"But I understand that at least one part of you has not changed over time," Alwine said, taking a sip from her drink, "Why, after so much time, do you still serve emperors? A woman of your might has everything she requires to answer to none."

 

[Lirka Ka]

Peace was a lie.

Peace was stagnation, peace bred the complacency of weakness - the Dark Path scorned such things. Lirka was not made for peace, her fractured and marred mind did not allow for peace. For the silence allowed the specters to claw at the back of her mind, and memories not-her-own to assail her vision. 40 years of violence, 40 years of war. 40 years of strife unending. It was like a drop in the puddle, there would be plenty more battles to come.

For the war against the Primordial Darkness was a battle Lirka did not intend to lose anytime soon. So, she would walk her Dark Path evermore until reality fall back to whence it had come, and the End-of-all-Things would be upon them. It was a quaint question, its answer clear. Lirka had lost her mind, a long, long, time ago. She was but a functional madman, gripped in zealous sadomasochism born from a world of nigh unimaginable evil. The monster that festered and prattled like an ever persistent preacher - for it was not a complicated thing for how Lirka Ka lost her mind.

“Then, I shall rephrase in simpler words. War, battle, the Endless Struggle of existence manifest. Loss. Collapse. Everything I had built is gone, the dream I fought so hard for? A meaningless thing; the wishes of a dead woman. My children? Dead. By my blade or otherwise. I have lost everything, time and time again. Yet I rebuild, for the cycle is endless. Darkness swells, and I am there.”

A hiss of depressurization before she answered the woman’s question. Why Empires? What kept Lirka Ka so enthralled in the grasp of tyrants and murderers? What kept her stalking in the shadows of Carnifex? She removed her helmet now - the foulness of her visage laid bare, an uncanny thing that could only have been made, not grown. Pale purple-pink skin, sickly and unnatural. Yet all were secondary to the writhing raw meat of the brand upon her forehead, evil radiated from the mark of the Kainate. The vestiges of her “marriage’s” power radiated from the thing still, red as if it had just been pressed.

“-“suffer not an Empire to live”, isn’t that what they had us prattle on about? Why? The answer is not difficult: What is the purpose of the state if not to perpetuate suffering? To herald upon the catalyst of misery so that the strong shall rise up in the wake of their agony. There is no better tool than the Empires, no better tool than the Sith. Yet, it can be even simpler than that. I am enabled to do as I wish, the strong may do as they do, the weak suffer what they must. I owe much to the Butcher King, for without him I would be but a pitiful, scuttling, thing trapped within the Galaxy’s endless mire and muck.”

Of course, she’d neglect to mention just how much love compelled her. Not that pathetic, human, love. A love that only a true monster could understand, the horrible, repugnant, love between tyrants and murderers. The adoration of evil that enabled Lirka do as she pleased, to plot, scheme, and kill. To walk the Path uninhibited - of course, Kaine was not the Emperor anymore.

“Empyrean would make me a commander of men once more. For his Eternalists perpetuate the endless conflict I so desire, his Empire is a monument to misery - so long as the Sith thrive, the strong have a chance to prove themselves worthy. Yet, perhaps this gives you a misunderstanding - Lirka Ka answers only to the Darkness beyond Darkness, and if the grim path of survival demands listening to Emperors, so be it.”

Not like she’d be accepted much anywhere else - she was barely even accepted in the Empire, her’s was a tenuous relationship with many: save the Kainate, though all would be put a launch pad for her growing ambitions.

“It all must seem strange, to a mind unenlightened. Tell me, Alwine, have you lost enough in this life to herald about your own catalyst same as I?”

 

[Alwine Bergen]

Alwine's eyes narrowed as Lirka Ka insisted on simplifying. That had not been her intention. What Alwine had not understood were the names and locations mentioned, but she'd comprehended the intention behind them well enough. But she did not reprimand Lirka for thinking her the fool for it. As was all too often the case, silence served her better in this than words.

Even if she had wanted to say anything, her throat sealed as the hiss of the helmet released its seal. This, was not something she had expected in any kind of way. Had she ever seen Lirka's face before? Part of her mind was certain she had, but she could not recall the event during which it happened. She didn't even remember the details of it.

But what was revealed now bore little resemblance to the towering woman of her memory, blurry as it were. The pale purple-pink skin looked sickly, as if whatever vitality had once lived there had been bled away long ago. The lines of her face were not the etchings of time alone, they were the marks of something made rather than born, shaped with a cruelty that cared nothing for external beauty. Alwine's gaze was drawn, inevitably, to the brand upon Lirka's forehead, raw, angry, and writhing as if the flesh had never healed. She didn't need to feel its power to know it was foul; the air itself seemed to sour around it.

For a long moment, she simply looked at her, her drink halfway to her lips and forgotten. Memory and present overlapped. The giant woman she had known in the chaos of youth, fierce and terrible but undeniably alive, and the thing before her now, wearing that same stature but carrying something colder, heavier. It was as though the weight of decades had pressed Lirka down not into the earth, but into something deeper, darker, and far less forgiving. Whatever had been taken from her in body had been replaced with an unyielding force in spirit, but Alwine could not decide if that was victory or defeat.

She let the moment breathe, resisting the instinct to avert her eyes. There was no kindness in pretending not to see. "You have changed," she said finally, her tone stripped of judgment but not of meaning.

Still, while she could agree with almost nothing of Lirka's words, the intent was clear. All she could give to that was a simple nod. After all, there was nothing the Lupine could offer the Elf. She was no longer part of any organization, nothing that could give different opportunities. And even if she had… She already knew Lirka would mock it and then reject it.

"I have lost," she echoed the words, her voice gentle as she considered how to lay it out to the other one. The story Alwine had ended up choosing for herself had not been one of legends, nor would she try to polish it into one. After all, what she had ended up with, had been far better.

"My pack was lost to me, still while with the Confederacy," she began, "Later I found out that we were never truly a pack at all, for the blood that connects siblings was not blood that flows through my veins. After you almost killed me, my body was left broken, dependent to pain killers, just to stand. It was Godwine who helped me break the habit and heal, and I married him. We had two cubs. And now Godwine is gone from this galaxy and I am a widow with two children."

She did not have to give Lirka more detail. She knew the elf would understand the implications beneath her words. Alwine had loved Godwine in a way she had never loved another. And her children… Gods, her children.

"My oldest one will soon be old enough to go into the galaxy and carve her life," she added quietly, "That this galaxy would treat her as it had treated me is my biggest fear."

 

[Lirka Ka]

Lofty arrogance, at the back of every word from the once-sephi's twisted mouth was the prickly annoyance of someone who thought ever-so-highly of themselves. The long years and endless tumult had turned Lirka Ka into quite the "little" narcissist - even more so when dabbling with the unenlightened mind, for those who did not see, did not understand, her truth - well...just how bright could they really be? In the Once-Sephi's mind, one either reached the precipice of enlightenment and took the plunge into damnation, or they died in miserable, pitiful, ignorance, upon a path they did not know they walked.

So many times, So many faces. Lirka Ka had changed time and time again, and she would continue to change. Such was the horrible transience of existence upon her Dark Path, one could never stay the same too long lest they invite stagnation and annihilation into their form. This face, with all its disgusting uncanniness, would fade in time. The foulblood would be remolded, and with each morphing, writhing, recreation the blackness of Lirka Ka's soul would inch across her features. The words of Alwine Bergen reached her ears.

Change.

The corner of her mouth twitched, an inferno barely contained in but the slightest spasms of nerves. It was the wrath of madness, and of a pitiful monster that for no matter how highly she thought of herself, would be assailed by judging, hateful eyes for time immemorial. Change. Of course a ghost would consider her "changed". Her words seeped from her thin lips like venom, a reminder, a statement, a warning all the same.

"Have I changed?"

It didn't matter if the Lupine didn't want to judge, didn't mean to judge. Lirka would see it that way, always. She expected to be loathed, to be reviled for the grim path she walked. To see otherwise would be to invite an impossible variable into her cruel calculus. For what else would a figment of "her" past do but hate the existence that was thrusted upon her?

"Or was I merely burgeoning, trapped. Smothered beneath the meaningless history of a name forgotten by all but one. Have I changed, girl? Or have I finally become me - this name is my own now. The ambitions of a dead woman no longer shackle me, the empty quest of a would-be-queen coveting a throne she never deserved. I am not changed. I am free."

Perhaps that is why she had hunted the woman, to sit here, in an environment not unlike the ones she had seen in the flashes of false memory. And spit in its face. To rebuke what she had been, the woman whose name she wore as a veneer. A drape cast over her being that had been hammered, slashed, restitched into what the monster wanted to be.

She leaned forward now, the table groaning under her weight. There was a madness behind those eyes - impossibly bright with color that only could've been dyed. Loss. It was more information, it feed the Once-Sephi's endless lust for information, but more importantly: it fed her sadism, to even hear about the suffering of others brought upon a zealot's elation to her mind. For it offered the chance to extend the guiding hand of the Dark Path - or, in more petty ways, a chance for Lirka to scorn and mock the darkest moments of her foes.

Family. An empty notion. Lirka had her "children", but they were but extensions of herself grown in vats and tubes, crafted monstrosities lost to time. Her kin were long gone, she had made sure of that when she sat herself upon the throne of Thustra. There needed to be but only the Kas that Lirka allowed to exist.

At the mention of the pain she had brought upon Alwine, a sadist's mocking smirk crept across her wretched features. Yes. She had done that - and she relished it. To think such a thing laid the Lupine low was almost humorous; the fragility of life unmodified was a joyous reminder of the necessity of Lirka's writhing mass. Where pain had become less an obstacle, and more a pleasurable thrill to be chased.

Then, the smile faded. Love. Love brought about disgust. The love of mortals was repugnant, repulsive. A tether to the world - Lirka's love was that between murderers and tyrants, a violent, selfish, and bloody thing. The only sort she could tolerate - a friend may have extended good wishes to her loss, but Lirka left only silent repulsion at indulging in something so quintessentially human.

She loomed now, closer. Another twitch at the mention of the woman's spawn, she cared little for the creatures. They were not relevant variables in Lirka's rise, but she would be a poor scoundrel if she did not find a way to twist the knife. Lirka's remaining spawn had carved her way, and Lirka had forced her child's hand to walk much the same miserable path she had. For there was one, undeniable truth that the Once-Sephi knew she could share. Her words hummed now, oozing self importance and malice.

"I offer to you this little truth then, mother-of-wolves. For as long as Lirka Ka walks this Galaxy, evil exists. Darkness swells. One day your spawn will taste the tests of Primordial Darkness - and they will rise above, or fall into the well with the rest. The guiding hand of Ka will exist, always. The necessary, and boundless, evil of true survival."

 

[Alwine Bergen]

Alwine's hands wrapped around her glass, feeling its cool weight like a small anchor in the storm of Lirka's presence. The words, the malice, the self-importance… They rolled over her in waves, but she did not flinch. She had known darkness, had carried it close enough to feel its teeth, and still she survived.

She thought of her children, of their small hands and voices echoing through a quiet home she had fought for. Lirka's proclamations of inevitable suffering and the guiding hand of Ka seemed almost quaint against that. The galaxy could bend, the Empires could rise and fall, the darkness could swell… But her pack, the one she had built and not merely assumed she had been born into, her own flesh and blood, would not be pawns in any of it. They would carve their lives and make their own choices, not be forced or pulled into something beyond their control.

It was almost absurd, really, to hear it all laid out so theatrically, as if the universe itself had been designed for Lirka's amusement. The Sephi's words dripped with the conviction of a madwoman who had no other companion than herself.

And yet, despite the horror, despite the rage and cruelty she radiated, Alwine felt a strange… calm. She had lost, yes. She had endured. But she had chosen differently. And in that quiet choice, in the soft insistence to protect what she loved rather than dominate, she knew something that Lirka could never grasp. Strength was not measured in fear or suffering. It was measured in what you refused to surrender to.

Her eyes followed the movement of Lirka's, catching the twitch of that infernal smirk, and she let herself imagine a world where her children would face trials and emerge, unbroken. A world where she, too, could face monsters like Lirka and still remain wholly herself. The thought was both terrifying and exhilarating. And in that moment, Alwine understood fully what it meant to endure, to rise, to choose. To be free in a way Lirka never could.

"Very well," was all she gave in answer. That, and a little smile. Alwine raised her glass to Lirka. "To the future, then, and all that it brings."

Lirka Ka