Private Beginning of the long hate

[Diarch Rellik]

LOCATION: Nathema – Surface Ruins of the Diarchy Shadow Laboratory
TIME: One full day since losing contact with the Shadow Lab facility.
Inventory - Conviction - Blooded Seer Cloak - Spear

Diarch Rellik stepped forward from the ramp of his vessel. With Nathema being so close to the Sith Holy worlds he had arrived alone using a stealth ship. He had personally come to investigate one of his distinct Shadow Laboratories being destroyed. Once, this had been a place of precision and secrecy. Now it was a heap of ruble and dried blood. His ears and eyes strained to search for clues or noises of attackers on the horizon. All he received was dust rolling in listless spirals between cracked foundations and shattered walls.

The black and red cloak at his back whispered with the wind, the spear slung across his back and his golden saber Conviction dormant at his side. He paced casually, arms behind his back unless he needed to lift or looking at something closer. There was no real signs behind who might have been the attacker specifically. That and the mess of blood and ripped bodies. They were not cut down by a saber, instead it seemed to be some kind of metal blade with electro-plasma residue.

He crouched beside a gnarled ruin of a Diarchy herald's pauldron, it was twisted by something looking to inflict as much savagery and pain as possible. Than to his right, a crushed helm. Putting both of the items in his hands he tried his best to reach into the force and feel the lingering stench of what might have done this... It was feint, and different than most but it was there.

With renewed purpose he rose and tried to follow the trail. Hoping on a speeder bike he made way. Hoping to find whoever was responsible before they could leave the planet. With any luck, he would find them going to board their ship at the latest and strike them down.

Lirka Ka

 

[Lirka Ka]

It would not take long for Diarch Rellik to see the truth, his shadow lab had not been struck by attackers. It had been struck by an attacker. One beast, one monster that ran through men and left nothing but broken bodies in its wake. There was no shortage of monsters within the Holy Worlds, the Kainate kept quite the menagerie of freaks within their employ after all. Yet, today was a personal bout. A reminder. A test.

Lirka Ka was many things, but in her hearts of hearts she would always be a free agent. The Diarchy had made themselves known to her following the bout upon Serenno, and with being known came the unfortunate side effect of being seen. They were within her calculus now, and with that meant the claws of Lirka Ka would inch and track till she found what she wanted. Spies and infobrokers that would feed her what she needed, though it was truly anyone's guess how she had stumbled upon a facility that was supposed to be a secret and left it little more than a mass of broken bodies and rubble.

It was a statement, really. He'd see it, there was a path through a chaos. A tempting offering of answers whispered from the chaos. A trap? Maybe. Underhanded tactics were the motus operandi of the Sith after all.

For in the distance, in a pile of broken building and tower of shattered bodies. Sat Lirka Ka, patient. she mediated in the slaughter, caked in dried gore with her blade resting across her lap like some monk of imaginable cruelty. Waiting. She wanted an audience, and what better way was there to draw the attention of a leader than the merciless, and unrepentant, slaughter of his fellows?

 

[Diarch Rellik]

Inventory - Conviction - Blooded Seer Cloak - Spear

The speeder slowed to a crawl. Rellik did not dismount immediately. He stood atop the vehicle for a moment, eyes narrowing beneath the mask as the scene revealed itself in full. A tower of flesh and stone, the corpses of his own people twisted into a grotesque scene. A sub sect observatory that gave out warning signals to the Shadow Laboratory had also been destroyed. The feeling in the force had drawn him here.

Drawn him to the figure now sitting upon the pill of his work.... Mocking him. Seated as if she found a Jedi's peace in this slaughter. Pfffft typical. Another being of unpronounced power and purpose of course. Sith Another stain upon the galaxy. The new mandate did not matter to the Diarch. He did not need a Sith to be in his space to decide he wanted to kill them.

With the low whine of the speeder cycling down the Diarch had arrived. Stepping off his bike he walked forward. He unlatched the Spear on his back in one smooth motion, the weapon thrumming faintly. The warden was ready to stand its ground and so was he. In his right hand ignited Conviction in a deep gurgle and a hiss of golden fire.

"You don't belong here." A step forward. "You and your kind do not belong in the galaxy anywhere." Another. "So before I cut you down and reclaim this ground in the name of my people tell me, how did you find this place?"

He paused for just a moment.

"Stand. Speak. Or I begin removing parts"

Lirka Ka

 

[Lirka Ka]

Lirka was an artist. Death was her art. Some Sephi were sculptors, others were painters, but she had ascended to something so much more. Diarch Rellik may have thought her a stain, but perhaps she would be given the chance to prove just what she was. The next step.

In her grim display of broken bodies and ruined architecture, there was the void. The pulsating sliver of voidstone placed within her helmet, coupled with the monstrous Once-Sephi’s own force-dead nature. One of the many freaks that inhabited the Order had decided to come assail the Diarch and his work, it seemed.

For a time, after he spoke, the sentinel did not move. Then Lirka rose, slowly, with a precision that oozed a most coordinated malice. Then she spoke, words humming out of her helmet’s modulator with distorted crackling.

“I could say much the same about you and your ilk, Diarch.”

She laughed, a horrible and humorless thing.

“Ye’ who preach of order, yet bring about only stagnation. Your bout upon Serenno was bold, slave of order. Yet now you are seen, by beasts you would much rather be unseen.”

Lirka did always think rather highly of herself after all. The Diarchy represented an interesting variable after all, a useful variable at the end of it all. She just needed to sink her claws in and put them to their violent work.

“Such a poignant question, isn’t it?”

The great-machete crackled to life in her hand, sizzling electro-plasma filament lining the songsteel blade.

“Perhaps you built too close to the sun, perhaps it was merely blind luck…or perhaps, Diarch. You were betrayed? Sold out, loyalty fickle in the face of great power and primordial truth. Though…I suppose we’ll never know, will we?”

She took position now, a defensive stance. It was a test, for even in battle Lirka Ka was an always prodding thing. Coveting understanding of friend and foe alike.

 

[Diarch Rellik]

She mocked him and in that moment, Rellik decided he was going to carve the sound of her voice into his memory. Sith were always so good at goading. The bait had been laid and he would take it. Perhaps one of his worse character traits but he did not care. He only wanted to watch this null of the force burn. He didn't speak right away. Let her fill the air with her barbs and pretense. Let her try to provoke meaning from mayhem. He watched her rise with all the theater of a pretender god

"You know my name. My title. But not my purpose. Order, is a byproduct of what I want. I want to kill all Jedi... and Sith. But you're not here for philosophy, are you? You want to test me. Bleed me. Feel something through the haze of your Force-deaf sickness."

He lifted his spear and pointed it at the monster.

"Knowing your kind if there was a traitor, you have already flayed them and disposed of the body."

Than with a quick flip and to gauge the speed of his opponent before getting close he flicked the spear into a throwing stance and flung it at the Sith.

Lirka Ka

 

[Lirka Ka]

Few things described Lirka Ka so succinctly as meaning from mayhem. She was a servant of disorder, a worshipper of the suffering brought about by a galaxy in endless chaos. The preacher of a Darkness Primordial, and every wretched example of what the Diarchy fought to eliminate. A new breed of Sith, a worse breed of Sith. The teachings of every damnable world she had set her feet upon melded into one horrible belief. Now, that belief had twisted into tormenting Diarch Rellik and seeing what would come from it.

“Order is stagnation. Order is death. Order is the shackles that bind the worthy to the weak, and drag both down to the abyss.”

She grinned beneath her helmet. Death. Glorious death. Let them try, the dark would reap it’s beauteous bounty in their failure just as much as their success.

“Lirka Ka is philosophy manifest, the dark path of true. Always two, Diarch. You will bleed, but perhaps you will humor me along the way with your lofty ambitions.”

The spear flung, it was a wise move. Despite her bulk, Lirka was always faster than she first appear, she dashed forward and to his left. The whir of mechanization and the whine of servos followed the power suits every move, with the roaring crackle of electro-plasma filament she twirled the great-machete in her hands and brought it out in her own probing blow, a quick hack of the blade towards his side.

“You understand me less than you think, dear Diarch. I would never waste such an asset. Never remove such a rot, festering within.”

Lirka Ka loved to talk, that was most certain. Even as she brawled, she’d find time to drone on in her own obnoxious taunting way.

 

[Diarch Rellik]

Lirka's machete hissed through empty air where his side had been, close, but not close enough. The spear he had thrown embedded into a bulkhead behind her, humming faintly with residual Force energy, waiting to be recalled.

"You talk as though you've invented darkness," he said, his voice low and cutting as a vibroknife. "You are not philosophy manifest. You are the result of starvation mistaken for appetite. Decay pretending to be evolution."

Rellik let his left hand twist upward, palm opening. With a violent snap, he recalled the spear back to his hand not to strike, but to draw her eyes to the arc of its return. A distraction. The real move came an instant later. With his right hand, he unleashed a precise pulse of Force Lightning aimed at her legs. A test to see if she was even able to be hurt by it and hopefully to slow her down. The quick movement of her first attack caught him almost off guard. His true goal was rhythm. To interrupt her tempo. To own the cadence of this battle.

Lirka Ka

 

[Lirka Ka]

Already the dance had begun, and all Lirka could do was laugh in simple bloodthirsty elation. A new foe, a new rat to wrangle in her claws. That was the game of it, they were a slippery sort, now came the matter of catching Diarch Rellik

Yet, Lirka Ka battled with words just as much as she did her blade. The battle of belief was an endless thing, and her fervor was a zealot’s lunacy.

“Invented? Far from it, I have merely pierced the veil. My eyes are open, and now I can see the Darkness beyond Darkness.”

It was a fool’s errand to try and convert the foe, yet Lirka Ka would gladly be a fool if it meant even the slightest glimmer of a chance to bring another lost soul onto the Dark Path of power.

“I am she who has seen the future, I am she who understands the one cosmic fate. I am manifestation of the Dark Path to survival - you? You are just another would-be-savior, heralding the lost to their oblivion. True evil.”

The irony of her calling someone else evil was not lost on her, indeed, that was the silent punchline of it all. She listened to the whistle of the spear through the air, awaiting its strike before lightning crackled against her leg. A roar of pain, sprinkled with the welcoming huff of agony. She was a conductive brute, that was undeniable. Yet, it would take more than that to slow her down: with pain as her motivator, her destructive pleasure, she swung the blade around again - the wicked spike at it’s back now aimed to try and slam itself against the Diarch’s form, trying to make good use of the length of both her arms, and weapon itself.

 

[Diarch Rellik]

The machete came in with a murderous arc, and this time Rellik didn't evade, he stepped in to meet it. Conviction rose to intercept, golden blade locking against the crackling filament-lined songsteel of her weapon.

The impact was harsh, their weapons grinding together in a spray of sparks. He leaned into the bind, trying to force the machete's path away, but her sheer size and the leverage of her weapon gave her the edge. Slowly, inevitably, the blade slid down along his guard until its edge bit into the gap at his right shoulder.

Metal screeched against saber, then gave way. The machete carved a hot, shallow trench through synthweave and skin, an inch deep, the pain immediate and white-hot.

Rellik's teeth clenched, but no cry came. Only a sharp exhale, the hiss of pain drawn in like breath before a strike.

"Better," he growled, voice edged in challenge.

His left hand snapped the spear upward from his side, driving the tip toward the seam beneath her arm where her plates met, a close, punishing thrust meant to force her back or draw blood in kind.

Lirka Ka