Private Become The Storm [Kaila]

[Darth Carnifex]

The hour was late.

Night had already fallen on Echnos, a world that just a scant thirty-six hours prior had been the epicenter of what could have been the outbreak of a new civil war. However, the adrenaline of that moment had passed, and the world had settled back into the mundanity of it's prior existence. The workers continued to toil, the bureaucrats continued to tabulate, and the portmasters continued to see ship after ship come and go, bringing forth the wealth of Echnos to the Empire beyond. The streets were calm and peaceful amidst the clanking and banging of industrial centers that burned bright into the night with the fires of manufacturing.

Within the governor's mansion, all was quiet as well. The staff had retired for the evening, and only the governor's personal guard roamed the halls. They were on edge, unnerved. A shadow had unknowingly slipped among them, a darkness that they could not yet place; but knew within their hearts that it existed. But such fear came and went, fading like fog in the morning light. For the shadow had passed them by, the darkness that called to the yearning in their hearts slipped into the governor's office with nary a sound of mark it's passing.

Gloved fingers idly traced solid lines along the wooden surface of the governor's desk, the hand coming to rest upon the desk's center as a figure larger than most loomed above it. Lips softly moved in silence, a whisper carrying on the wind; imperceptible to all except for the woman who's residence the shadow now trespassed. Awake or asleep, she would hearken to the familiar voice upon the midnight air.

"We must speak."

Kaila Irons ​

 

[Kaila Irons]

Kaila stirred in her sleep even before her master's long shadow crept beneath the doorway into her quarters. Even asleep in her world of dreams and nightmares known only to herself, the deathly stench of the man from which all her dark hatred stemmed sent a shiver down her spine, and cold sweat through her pores.

She was... afraid, even in this state.

But it was not merely abject terror which Kaila felt, but primeval instinct, a simple response of evolution towards danger. Yet even asleep, she recalled the first words which her master had ever spoken to her;

"A Sith is not controlled by fear, fear is controlled by the Sith."

And even asleep, Darth Anathemous had since taken this lesson to heart. Fear was not something one runs from. For it demands violence.

"We must speak."

Golden eyes shot open, aglow with the fiery hatred of a woman betrayed and scorned a thousand times over. Lightsabers arranged upon nightstands about either side of the bed were flung to slender hands, knuckles whitening against durasteel and the midnight surface of shaped phrikite.

She emerged from a side door moments later, translucent silk gliding in her wake. She stopped just out saber's length from, her gaze tracing this shadowy form before her, before settling upon where it's eyes should have been, meeting his imaginary gaze with glare of fiery resolve, even as her chin rose so that she may look upon his towering yet incorporeal form.

"What do you want..." she demanded after a few moments of silence.

"...Carnifex."

It was the first time in her life that she addressed him by name. Not "My lord" nor "My master".

It felt... Good.



Darth Carnifex

​

 

[Darth Carnifex]

"Bold, are we?"

The rumble of His laughter reverberated through the floor. Darkness sloughed off from Carnifex's body, revealing the Lord beneath the facade. Regardless of where she stood in relation to Him, He always cut the striking image of a conqueror and tyrant. She may not be His apprentice nor in service to Him, but His very presence still elicited those same sensations; power and dread in equal measure.

Each movement, each subtle gesture rippled with strength, the Dark Side so intertwined within Him that it became impossible to differentiate where one began and the other ended. He was darkness incarnate, the viciousness of the Dark Side wrought in living flesh.

"I've come to see just where the culmination of your ambitions has brought you, what all of your machinations have amounted to. Surely you must revel in your freedom." He placed both hands on Kaila's desk, the whole thing bowing in at the center but not yet breaking under the strain. His eyes bore right into Kaila's with that same intensity that she had grown accustomed to, but this time it was sharper; more defined.

"Chiefly, I have come to ensure that you understand your predicament. Do not forget whom you serve, Lord Anathemous. You serve the Empress, you serve the Empire. Contemplate deeply on just where you stand next time you act fecklessly. Next time it will not be the Empress or myself who comes to your door, it will be the Wolf." He withdrew slightly, allowing the desk to recover. "The Empress' patience only stretches so thin. She still believes you have a purpose, as do I."

"Secondly, I think it's time we laid bare our antagonisms." He reached in and withdrew a small piece of metal bound within a cloth, placing it on the table before flicked it away onto the floor in front of Kaila. Inside was a piece of Mandalorian steel, emblazoned with a crest that would have drawn unknowable feelings from within Kaila just at the sight of it.

"Do you wish to know the truth?"

Kaila Irons ​

 

[Kaila Irons]

Anathemous didn't move a muscle, but stared observantly, almost unblinking. Carnifex had prepared her well for the life of a sith warrior, imparting upon her a hyper vigilance often used to deadly effect. It wasn't quite the passivity of Jedi, but perhaps something darker; The art of killing before being killed.

But for as many times and as many qualities with which He had forged her anew, so too had she honed the steel which He pulled from the crucible. She gave it... Artistry. And now she was once again something entirely different.

Not just a soldier. Sith.

Blood raced, yes, but so too did the mind. With every subtle contraction of muscle, every red searing glare and bitter twist of His lip, the young darth calculated a hundred ways he might strike, and at least as many ways to counter efficiently. To her faint surprise however, and perhaps even relief, He never gave her reason to test the math.

No, not while The Empress was in control.

Instead, idle threats were thrown, alluding to the gaps in her former master's understanding of His apprentice. She remained an ally to The Wolf, the spoils of Echnos being as blood in the legion's veins. More importantly however... There would be no repeat of the standoff. Not while Srina Talon remained at the head of this empire, ailing as it may be.

Yet it seemed He was not the only one in the dark...

"The Empress' patience only stretches so thin. She still believes you have a purpose, as do I."

Her deceptively catatonic features showed signs of life at last, eyes narrowing the barest inch at implications she did not understand, nor much appreciate. What purpose? He had no qualms threatening the lifeblood of Lord Lechner's expansion into the east, this beating heart of technological logistics which fed even neighboring Sluis Van with valuable technology. If this "purpose" was not to feed the Imperial war machine, than what was it?

What a coincidence, she thought, that He should see "Purpose" in her only now that she did not need Him.

"Secondly, I think it's time we laid bare our antagonisms."

"Do you wish to know the truth?"

And then finally, like an outdated joke, it came. The moment they had waited for oh so long...

A moment she had taken for herself. Without him.

The Beskar steel came to a hover just below eyelevel, the cloth quickly unwrapped and discarded with nary a gesture, leaving only gleaming chrome to catch the moonlight streaking in from a nearby window. Her eyes narrowed but briefly, yet in the end, she was hardly surprised.

"You trained me well..." she intoned "In finding truths long buried."

"You should have known I'd find it on my own."

Anathemous slid it back across the floor from whence it came, arms folding across her chest disappointedly.

"The barbarians of Mandalore do not interest me. Kaila Solus is dead, and that little girl is never coming back..."

"...It's... too late, to go back."

Clan Solus had betrayed her the moment she was sold to Him. Those memories were... sullied now. The knowledge itself was suffering enough to fuel her power, there was no use in reliving it now.

"This is my home now. The Empress gave it to me, earned my loyalty twice over."

"And you have nothing left to offer me..." she intoned once more, but somberly so.

In truth this... wasn't enough. With the loss of her trust in Malum, it was as if all passion had been leeched from her skin by the cold, monochrome dursteel all around them. A soldier without a war, an idealistic Imperial far removed from the cause. An exile of her own making. But what choice was there?! When all His gifts were poisoned so?

All she had now was hate. Cold. Dispassionate. But still hate.


Is this not what he wanted of her all along...?




Darth Carnifex

 

[Darth Carnifex]

His boot caught the piece of beskar as it skidded along the ground, now wedged between the reinforced terentatek leather and the cold floor. Moving His foot to the side, the Dark Lord levitated the metal piece into His outstretched hand. Gloved thumb idly rubbed against the faded insignia stamped across the metal, the faded symbol of Clan Solus. A faded icon of a faded legacy, a dying people consigned to slowly waste in the shadows. A far better fate than He would've liked.

"I trained you to be many things. A soldier, a scholar, a Sith. But never did I instill within you a desire for oblivion. Where you acquired that is beyond my sight." He turned the metal over in His hand, lightly tracing a hidden faultline invisible to the naked eye; a shatterpoint. "But you are only half correct, my young and naïve apprentice. The girl Kaila Solus is indeed dead, but I was not the one who destroyed her. To discover the culprit, you need only look into a mirror. Clan Solus did not sell you to be in my employ, you volunteered."

"The agreement struck with Cynthia Solus necessitated the conscription of Mandalorian soldiers to serve for a decade's tour in the Empire." Without warning, the Dark Lord crushed the piece of beskar in His hand. The metal, often touted as invincible, collapsed in on itself like flimsiplast as the Dark Lord closed His fist. When He opened it again, all that remained was a crumbled ball of jagged metal, which He then let fall to the floor.

"By the time I had taken your memories, you'd long forsaken the identity of Kaila Solus. Did you think your desire for the Empire's order came from me alone? You'd made your choice before you were reborn." He withdrew a small item from within His cloak, what looked to be a small holo-drive pulsating in dim blue light. He placed it on the desk. "And, truth be told. Your memories were never truly gone. I've kept them safe and secure for a very special occasion. I can give them back to you, if you so desire. But like you said, you've moved beyond such pain."

"Shall I destroy them for good?"

Kaila Irons ​

 

[Kaila Irons]

"you volunteered."

"What...?" Kaila murmured, eyes narrowing with bitter skepticism, then widening in horror.

"That's impossible... one of countless lies...!"

Yet there he held it, the truth, and the means to destroy it for good. She blinked, staring up at him with uncertainty, the ringing ✱snap✱ of destroyed beskar still ringing in her ear. One could almost confuse it for the drive being crushed in front of her very eyes.

She had spent years searching with near obsessive zeal, and the moment Kaila thought she knew the truth, she told herself that the memories were sullied, useless. This was not the sort of suffering which built strength, not something to be fought and overcome, pushing one beyond their limits. They were just... sad. Pathetic even.

But if he was, for once, speaking the truth... than the words of Varys Amun were false, the footage recovered by Ansisa missing vital context. Even the words she had told Ala Quin , a lie.

Everything she knew, was still a lie.

Her gaze could not settle on either Him or the drive, darting constantly between the two.

"Why are you doing this...?" her voice quivered.

"Why now...? What do you gain from this...?"

"What do you want from me?!"

She could not rightly come to a decision. Nothing had gone to plan, it wasn't supposed to be this way. It was all wrong! Had all this been for nothing?! Half a decade of careful searching and patient waiting. She'd nearly given up hope so many times, and now it was right here in front of her. But was this real or another trap?

Anathemous did not know what to do.



Darth Carnifex

 

[Darth Carnifex]

"It no longer matters what I want from you, Darth Anathemous." The use of her formal Sith moniker struck hard like an iron gong. "All that matters now is what the Empire demands of you. You say that you are loyal to the Empress, professing to show only her allegiance. Continue to do so, maintain your fidelity. There will come a time in the future where your first instinct will be to turn away from the Empress, to forsake her just as you have forsaken me. Resist this impulse, remain faithful to the Empress."

The Dark Lord didn't elaborate on what exactly He was referring to, and even if she asked He wouldn't tell her. That was strictly between Himself and the Empress, a conspiracy theirs alone to know. "But there can be no more outbursts as like what transpired here. It is unacceptable. These are not games we play, as the Lord Marr might indicate. We are building the future."

He gently tapped the holo-drive. "And despite what you might believe, I have never directly lied to you. I have omitted the truth, I have stretched it. But I have never fabricated. The truth of what you once were lives here in this drive, but it is not who you are now. Had you remained that girl, you would have died with your family. Through my will have you been remade, strengthened, and though you may cast scorn upon it, it has made you into who you are now."

Turning away from the desk, the Dark Lord left the device where He'd placed it. "I am returning the choice I'd taken from you. Someone whom I love had stressed to me the importance of choice, and reminded me that I had given her the freedom to choose. So what will you choose to be, Kaila?"

Kaila Irons ​

 

[Kaila Irons]

Forsake the empress?

What foul future where they brewing in which they believed she would turn from her so quickly? Her worries had been shifted in an instant from the past unto the future, and the roots of uncertainty spread from new soil.

She watched Him turn away, leaving His "gift" upon the desk, and it was then He uttered a word she had never once heard upon His lips; love. Kaila had long doubted that such feelings could be borne of His black heart, so certain that Saryn Zambrano , her one and only friend now long behind her, had been deceived into His marriage for which she had lost all trust them. But if the words of His lover, whichever they may be, could inspire Him to reveal these truths after so long, Perhaps He truly was capable of such feelings after all.

But it was too late to take back now.

So what will you choose to be, Kaila?"

"I..." she glanced up at Him, uncertainty soon kneeling to a quiet resolve.

"...will be Anathemous. Dark lord of the Sith."

It didn't matter if Ala would appreciate this decision or not. She may not have chosen to be sith before, but she had chosen to become Anathemous of her own free will upon these shores and declared it for all to hear across the battlefield.

Her declaration would be reaffirmed. This is who she was, and there would be no changing it.

Despite her regrets.

"If I may ask of you one thing... My lord..."

"...tell Saryn that I am sorry."



Darth Carnifex

 

[Darth Carnifex]

"Prince Saryn understands the ruthlessness of Sith politics, though he loathes it. He's gone to Cantonica to pursue other interests for the time being. Whether he returns to the Empire will be a choice of his own making, but in all things he continues to spread the influence of the Sith." He didn't answer her as to whether or not He'd do what she asked, but it was doubtful she'd ever draw such an affirmation out of Him regardless. Still, the Dark Lord spoke true when He said that Saryn had left the Empire, just as it was true that Saryn would always work to benefit the Kainate.

He started to walk away, His long cloak dragging behind Him. "The Empress and I will continue to work towards a new future, Anathemous. In time, you may find yourself given a hand in shaping this future, or you may find yourself on the end of a blade. The boy Malum stands in opposition to this future. The madness of the serpent infected not just Strosius, Anathemous. It runs deep in that entire lineage. Be mindful and remember what I taught you, it will save you."

Kaila Irons ​