Private Birth of Evil

[Amara Zambrano]

Bad Bad Bad​

She could still taste it, smell it.

Putrid iron, coppery and sickly sweet, in its viscous red ichor. Black walls around her in an unlit hall, stone beneath her feet, and the disgusting filth dripping down as the only source of light. Screams that came from every direction, silenced one by one with the nightmarish squelch and pop that made them disembodied - it was just a dream, only a dream, but it felt so real. Memories of someone else's life, echoes of a distant past that didn't belong to her, haunted her every moment while she slept. Terrifying as it was, however, she'd lived with the scene for the last two and a half decades, ever since the woman she'd lost half of her lifetime to started killing. It was how the sith lord had coped with all of the murder, with every face she killed, none of them she could remember: because they all went to her instead.

-

Dromund Kaas was exactly as she thought it would have been from the holos she read and the holocrons she had consulted. Her mother had made it out to be so much worse than it appeared to be, like a desolation absent of whatever it was Braith thought made a world livable. It had been scarcely two weeks since Amara had made certain the nation she lived in knew she wasn't the dead strandcast that had taken her name and borrowed her face for a time, Vesta, but the steps her fallen sibling had left, faded as they were, were ones she'd nonetheless been retracing and to the cradle of the Sith it'd taken her. That wasn't entirely accurate, however, because Kaas itself wasn't the cause of her arrival - Darth Carnifex was.

"Amara Zambrano."

There was one last point of security left before she'd cross the threshold into a world that there was no coming back from, and the final bit of information she'd needed to give was little more than a string of words - a name, her name. There wasn't a verbal response to what she'd said, only a subtle nod and a gesture for her to continue through. A tall, towering really, steel door slid open for her to walk through and into a hall that wasn't quite so different from the one in her dreams. This was where her heart would have lurched and pulse quickened, only the thing that occupied the cavity in her chest was an object of gem and stone and the veins that branched out like roots through her body had no 'pulse' to speak of. In the back of her mind she knew this was something that should have caused her to turn back but if it gave her pause then she didn't show it. There weren't any familiar sounds except the echo of her footsteps as she walked down the hall, no blood dripping from the walls, and like staring down one's fear and finding it less intimidating than expected it only emboldened her. The tiny piece of her that had recognized the start of a terrible scene was silenced by the calmness that finding her nightmare absent from the waking world brought her.

Then, at last, she was there.

"What do I call you? Cousin?"

-

"She's here." The disembodied voice of Irina, Darth Ananta, said to the Dark Lord of the Sith.

"The other Vesta."

 

[Darth Carnifex]

Bountiful regality paved Amara's path through the Citadel, grand mosaics carved into every bare wall, flowing tapestries fluttering from every one that was not. Everything was edifice, everything was monument. To past glory, to future conquest, to the splendor enjoyed in the moment. But it was a mask, one that could barely conceal the darkness that lurked just beneath the surface; like a predator waiting in gloomy waters. The eyes of the guards watched her every movement, but it was the gaze of the unseen that was felt more keenly.

The door to the Arcane Library was a monolithic thing, twin doors each exquisitely decorated with symbols and fetishes that evoked the mysticism hidden therein. As they opened, Amara would find her eyes engulfed with the sight of the library, the endless bounty of knowledge that now stretched before her in all directions. An orrery of immense proportions hung from the ceiling above, tracking the movements of the celestial sphere around Dromund Kaas, with the sun Dromund at the center of the contraption.

She would find the Dark Lord waiting for her further in, several tomes of arcane lore spread out across a large table, the wood carved from the wroshyr tree of Kashyyyk. A partial symbol had been left etched into the wood, one that had once adorned the Jedi Temple on the planet where the Silver Jedi had headquartered. That it now resided in the hall of the Dark Lord of the Sith was evidence enough of that temple's ultimate fate.

"Thus she comes," intoned the Dark Lord, rising from His seat to stand before the much smaller woman. "The living image of she who was not meant to be, whose time in our world had always been a fleeting notion." He studied her, His gaze not necessarily malevolent, but intense all the same. She was like Vesta given new life, but there were so many small, almost unnoticeable, differences that set her apart even at a glance. The Dark Lord was an excellent reader of expression and posture, even those that were brought on subconsciously.

"You may call me Kaine," He paused for a moment, "You gave the name Amara to the guard, is that the name you have chosen for yourself?"

The shadow beneath His feet seemed to move all of it's own accord, undulating in discordant patterns across the floor and walls; always accompanied by the same distinct presence. To Amara, it would have been like standing in the presence of not one, but two beings. But, to her eyes, there was no one else around. Only the Dark Lord and His shadow. The shadow that grinned morosely, whose form was more substantial just beyond the periphery of her sight.

Amara Zambrano ​

 

[Amara Zambrano]

"It's what belongs to me."

Absence of confirmation was generally taken as soft-denial, but in this case there was a bitter undertone to her words that suggested it wasn't quite so much a rejection of the name as it was unsubtle discontent from a spoiled wretch for not having what didn't necessarily belong to her for any meaningful length of time despite not having suffered any from it. It was why she was here, after all, given how her covetousness had drove her to such lengths as tracing a trail set by her facsimile in an effort to recover a legacy that was never hers in order to make it her own. A library was, for this reason, quite the suitable meeting place: it was the wealth of knowledge amassed over an uncountable set of eons that she knew she'd never find herself looking through in earnest, uninterested in the body of the journey as long as her eyes were set on the prize far at the end of the road laid out for her.

"..But, yes, it's the name I've given to myself." She admitted several seconds later.

-

"Quite the mouth on her." From the depths of the Dark Lord of the Sith's shadow the witch-turned-Sith whispered to him. "Entitled, too." Irina added, scrutinizing the young woman.

-

Amara knew, even if only vaguely, why she was here but that didn't make it any easier on her as she wrestled with how to phrase what it was she wanted from Darth Carnifex . "You met her, Vesta. Didn't you?" She asked leadingly, almost rhetorically given that she already knew the answer. From experience she knew that simply being family didn't afford her any more interest from the rest of her family than the random passerby on the side of the road - her own father had been more interested in empire-building when she'd woken from her coma than being a dad for her, something that had changed rather sharply as of recent but not something that didn't linger in the back of her mind still as a reminder for situations like these. "Before she became that.. thing, I mean." Amara clarified, suggesting a period before her shapeshifting 'sibling' had been consigned to a monstrous existence devouring everything in reach.

"My mother gave her everything, a life for a life, when she knew she was going to die - I want what was meant for me."

-

"Ah, there it is. The little harpy wants to use you to get what her clone worked so hard for and was given."

If she had a body to laugh there wasn't a shadow of a doubt that Irina's shade wouldn't have been cackling, though the sensation of an urge to do so was surely felt by Kaine as their thoughts were shared ever since she was discorporated. It wasn't lost on her that this was the daughter of the very being she'd tried to take root in - Braith - very much so ripe for the taking as her mother, then, had been. Circumstances had changed, however, and she was much more interested in maintaining the cycle Kaine had, as Carnifex, perpetuated than she was in destroying civilizations.

Instead of consumption another thought occurred to her instead.

"We could use her."

The desire for embodiment was floated, an impassioned Amara with Irina - Ananta - as her shadow, as she had been for decades now behind Carnifex, a conjured mental image shared.

"Keep her close, unlike her rebellious twin."

 

[Darth Carnifex]

"I did, I had known Vesta since she was created. Her will was unmatched by most, even at the end. She chose her fate, she never once let others choose it for her."

His form radiated power, a veritable font of the Dark Side in it's own right. But there was something darker in that swirling maelstrom, some infinitely more ancient than the man -- who many called a God -- that stood before her. He hearkened to that ancient darkness, letting it coil around His form like a lover's embrace. In His mind, her voice cooed and coaxed with a malevolent cognition all it's own. It advised Him, even directed Him, but it never controlled Him. They were symbiosis.

In His mind's eye, He beheld the woman once known as Irina; Darth Ananta. Her slender, beautiful form encapsulated by shadow. His hands intertwined with hers, becoming almost indistinguishable. He listened to what she said, absorbed it into Himself. Together, ensorcelled within one another, they mused upon the existence of this discarded child, her ambitions, and the potential she bore therein.

~She is eager to define herself as a person, to not just be a shadow of who was made in her image. This want can be guided, can be sharpened. We will not lose her like we lost the other.~

"All that Vesta was is now yours, Amara. Her legacy, whatever remains, is yours. There are those in this Empire and beyond who recall Vesta's face, who have memorized the sound of her voice. They will try to find in you what they could not in Vesta." It went unspoken, but the implication lingered. She could, if she desired, manipulate others into doing what she wanted, taking advantage of the memories others held of Vesta. But Amara was not Vesta, she never would be. Just as Vesta would have never been Amara. So it goes.

"I desired in Vesta someone who would follow the path of our bloodline, but she chose a different path and died because of it. Her destiny is not your own, your hands will forge a new one. Just the same, in the aftermath of Vesta's destruction, I accumulated what effects of hers I could obtain. I've kept them locked in vault ever since. It it my belief that they are yours now."

Amara Zambrano ​

 

[Amara Zambrano]

They'd shared the same sight, at least for as long as she'd intended to kill - and towards the end that was every waking moment, eventually every second leading up to her death. Their death. "I saw." She said, quietly. It wasn't something she'd shared with Darth Prazutis , only her mother knew as if she somehow understood what it meant to be linked to something entirely other that was still as much as it was apart. In her dreams, at least, that's what she'd tell her, but in person Braith said little, if anything, at all to her. This was the most she'd heard of Vesta Zambrano from anyone who wasn't actively trying to kill her. Every last chance Vesta had to choose something, anything, that wasn't decided for her she did.

She'd watched her kill herself for it.

"No, it isn't."

In her heart she knew there never was another Vesta, there was no legacy she was set to inherit. She was hers, unique, alone, and they both were in their own ways. One chose it for herself, the other repulsed everyone else because she resembled something they hated or loved and lost. Amara yearned for what she had spurned, but she didn't understand it anymore than a child understood wanting what another had - envy. The love her parents had for her, the respect and admiration the dead had for that thing as she killed them and consumed their very essence, and the desire others had to keep her close even when she pushed them away - all of that came naturally to her, like she was made to be loved. Only the crystalline thing that had supplanted her heart was shared between the two, that and perhaps some DNA.

"But I will take it anyways."

Amara was born lame and alone, she could see even her cousin preferred the wretch that died over his own flesh and blood, or at least that was what her heart told her, its dark vice holding her together where the organ she'd been born with had rotten away. She'd lost lovers over petty spats here and there, it was always the same; another man, or woman, even just a friend who was too close for her to be comfortable. There wasn't trust, she was incapable. Eventually she was alone, like she was here and now, making a deal with someone else to guarantee she'd get something in return for a payment of some kind in the form of work from her.

There'd been a space between them, it hadn't been necessary for her to walk so close as she started to now, but the gap was bridged in a few short steps. "I just want.. to belong." She said, looking up at Darth Carnifex like a lost child to an adult - or a starving animal to a beast with scraps hanging from its teeth. Amara would play house with her parents, find people who'd pretend to be her friends, but it'd still ring hollow to her if she couldn't take back the life she'd watched another live for her through their own eyes. "If what you have of hers will help then I will do anything."

"I already told my father, I won't leave like she did. I want what was meant to be mine first."

With her father she would've sealed the deal with something like a hug, some form of affection a child gave to their parents to throw him off balance so he'd give her what she wanted. She recognized the craven eyes of a predator when she saw them, though, and his eyes told her that Carnifex wouldn't be moved by something so contrived.

"Whatever you want." She offered.

That was the only language the man would understand, and it helped that it was the only one she was familiar with. "Anything."

 

[Darth Carnifex]

~She knows not what she offers,~ crooned the mischievous shade, a sumptuous whisper in the Dark Lord's ear. ~So eager, too eager. A most willing servant.~

The Dark Lord stood motionless for a moment, smoldering eyes evaluating Amara as she stepped in close; too close. Had His Crownguard been present, they would have stepped forward with weapons drawn. But the Dark Lord had dismissed them prior, allowing the young girl to have her solitary audience with Him. Though, it was not truly solitary, as the shadow in His ear made evident.

"The belonging you seek," spoke the Dark Lord, breaking the silence. "Is not something that can be given, it must be taken. You have taken this first step, and Vesta's legacy weighs upon you now. In time, we shall see if you were worthy enough to receive it."

He stepped past her, the power of His presence washing over her in His wake. "Come, child, I will relinquish what was Vesta's to you." They would travel to the vaults deep below the Citadel, a plummeting chasm traversed by grinding lift. The vault door would only open to a true scion of Solomon the Black, a legacy that both Darth Carnifex and Darth Prazutis held. Much of the vault's interior was locked away, but sequestered in a small chamber was a single chest.

Unlocking it, the Dark Lord drew back the lid and stepped back. Whatever was inside was Amara's now.

Amara Zambrano ​

 

[Amara Zambrano]

"It's empty."

That wasn't strictly true, there were an assortment of things that others might've seen as important - or, at least, prodigious in their creation. Vesta had made a handful, nearly a dozen, things of note during her life, whether they were intended as the bane of this Jedi or that Sith or a tool all alone. Inside the chest, however - a lightsaber, aptly named the needle, a sword that she recognized as the one that took the Sith's own life and survived the destruction of Exegol, and several other sentiments - was not something that could stitch herself back into the lives of her parents. They were objects that were useful under specific circumstances, maybe even more broadly in the case of the weapons, but she wasn't looking for power that she could hold with her hands.

She knew, as much as Darth Carnifex did, that none of Vesta's personal affects would give her what she wanted, and she doubted she was the kind of person who could find as much use in them as the strandcast had, particularly the objects that seemed keen to feed on her very life even at the modest distance she kept between herself and the things inside. "I don't know what I was expecting, to be honest, but I thought.. I guess I hadn't realized so much of what made her so strong was, well, inside of her." She said, suddenly sounding unsure of herself. Amara had came all this way to try to find a faster way to reaching the impact Vesta had left on others: the kind of awe Darth Prazutis had when speaking about her, or the wistfulness Quinn Varanin had seemed to carry in her eyes when she had heard her name, but this exercise in envy seemed like little more than a lesson in and of itself.

"I'm sorry, really, I actually really appreciate this, but I just thought maybe I'd find something as meaningful as the heart she left behind."

Her hand had found its way to the fabric covering her chest, fingertips resting against her exposed sternum - curiously scarred, maybe only subtly so though not quite noticeable enough to see until she'd suggested that the organ of her dead 'sister' had came into her possession. It explained the quiet presence that lingered with her, like a shadow that seemed altogether small and yet somehow too large for the person it was cast from, though it seemed she only understood it as something that gave her the lease she'd needed to experience life as everyone else did. "I saw it through her eyes, you know." She rambled, her ears growing a little red as she rethought all of this. "Every life she took, I mean."

"Even her own." She muttered, leaning down to reach for the lightsaber.

She glanced over to her cousin, a man that towered over her quite easily, and wondered if maybe he'd ever been in her shoes. 'Probably not,' She supposed, inwardly, before examining the oppressive presence of the weapon she held gingerly in her hands. "Say, Kaine, if you were me.. What would you do now if the only thing your, er, sibling left you was a crystal wedged into your chest and you wanted more?"

 

[Darth Carnifex]

The Dark Lord watched quietly as Amara went through all that physically remained of the hallowed Vesta, taking in both her surprise and disappointment in silence. There had not been much left to recover following the Battle of Exegol, only just a few scant objects that couldn't even fill a simple chest. There wasn't even a body to take back and bury with all the honor and dignity one such as Vesta deserved. Only monuments and dedications could bear some resemblance to the woman as she had lived, but nothing could ever replicate her.

"It is a belief that many fall victim to, that greatness springs forth from what you wield or what you wear. You will find that many Sith cling to this error, covering themselves in gilded splendor and believing it a fair substitute. Power is a reflection of the self, something that you will come to fully understand in time."

He pondered for a moment in regards to her question, looking within Himself to find a suitable answer. In truth, there was none He could give that could best relate with the young Amara. His path had been laid differently than the one that now stretched before her, and He'd never had to grapple with such existentialism. There had only ever been Him. Cloven in two once, yes, but always Him. His siblings had never been anything other than familial relations, and perhaps such a question might've been better posed to Mordecai Zambrano or Saeth. Not Him, not the eldest.

"I cannot answer with total certainty, Amara. The circumstances you face have never been mine own. But you are your own now. In the shadow of who and what Vesta was, yes, but she is gone and you remain. Your own destiny is charted by your actions. Seek to be more than Vesta, not just a pale imitation, but Amara in all her splendor. In time, when the galaxy looks upon you, they will see no one else but Amara reflected back at them."

Amara Zambrano ​

 

[Amara Zambrano]

It was like wiping the board clean and starting over again from the beginning, only instead of knowing what to do she only knew what not to do in order to continue moving forwards. The lightsaber she'd picked up fell from her fingers, slipping from her slackened grip as she stood back up, and she felt the muscles in her shoulders loosen at the uncertainty Darth Carnifex admitted to. For all the ego a Sith, particularly those at the top of any given hierarchy, tended to maintain it was particularly obvious when they were being truthful when what they said went against what would feed their egos most. Dark Lord of the Sith and unsure what she ought to do?

She grimaced, half a smile out of genuine appreciation and the rest a bit of a pained expression drawing from how pointless this entire exercise seemingly turned out to be.

"Thank you."

It was an empty gesture, she guessed, but the man had willingly given up quite a bit of his own time to let her peruse the personal affects he'd scavenged from the dead strandcast she was so envious of. There wasn't anything she could give him in return, either, after her rather hefty promise to total loyalty - something she assumed he understood she'd always been willing to make, as obsessed as she was with her family, but one that now she wasn't able to back away from given how much weight she imposed on her own word. It was rather difficult to garner affection and attention when someone wasn't sure if she was lying or not, after all, so swearing herself meant, in no uncertain terms, that she owed him whatever it was he wanted from her. She'd wanted something in return, though, but beggars couldn't be choosers.

Amara sighed.

"You'd think being the actual child of my parents would mean it'd be easier to live up to the expectations people would have of me."

She left the other half of the gripe unspoken, it was obvious that she felt she wasn't living up to her own expectations of herself. Maybe it had to do with running away from the life her family had set aside for her, or maybe it was more nuanced than that, but it was difficult for her to accept that there was something she wanted and hadn't achieved regardless. "This must be a wonderful first impression for you, huh? Vesta seemed like someone that managed to impress everyone, meanwhile I don't even know where to start."

She glanced down towards her feet, then back up towards her cousin. "Maybe I can start with finding out what you want from me in return. I don't think I want any of her things, honestly, but I still owe you anything you want from me." There was something resembling contemplation that shifted her expression, albeit subtly, but a slight shrug of her shoulders suggested whatever it was didn't bother her for more than a passing moment. "Just keep this between us, I'd rather not have my parents think any less of me than they already do."

 

[Darth Carnifex]

While He displayed sympathy towards Amara's position, He did not offer her condolence nor false hope. That was not His way, His way was of power and strength. As He had told her, if Amara wanted to amount to anything in the eyes of the galaxy, as well as His own, she would have to build it herself. Seize it, bend it, shape it to her will. Such was the maxim of the Sith, a belief that the Dark Lord steadfastly adhere to with utmost faithfulness.

"They expect Vesta," spoke the Dark Lord after a moment's pause. "But, you will give them Amara. Shatter their expectations, just as you shatter the limits of what you are and who you can be." His blood was rife with those who circumvented the expectations foisted upon them, Himself included. His own parents had no greater ambitions for Him than someone they could wield like a tool or a weapon, and had planned the same for His siblings. He killed both His mother and father, just as much for their lack of vision as for their abuses against Him. In His summation, even if they'd each been given a century of further longevity He doubted they'd even come close to how far He'd risen.

"I will maintain the secrecy of your time here, cousin, but in exchange you will strive to become who you are meant to be. You can learn from Vesta, her triumphs and her failures, but you can nor never will be Vesta. Beyond what remained of her possessions, little as they were, I will also give you the tools necessary to begin your journey. That is how you will repay me, Amara. You will become more." The gateway to the vault opened again, and the Dark Lord turned away to walk back through it, allowing Amara to follow behind Him.

Amara Zambrano ​