Private Blazing Fire and Cold Metal

[Arris Windrun]

Ever since her little moment with Mercy in that underwater lab on Tython, Arris started to wonder if she had to explain her appearance to everyone in the Covenant.

What was there to say? She was a cyborg, which wasn't new. Though usually she had synthflesh and threads to cover her body from the neck down. Not anymore. Right where her neck and jaw met, the metal began, and it continued all the way down. In place of clothes, her body was cast in a flexible armor, shaped to her strong, feminine form. Her face had changed, too. The skin she wore was a bit fairer, and the shape less sharp. Then there was the dark bob, which had completely supplanted the blonde pony-tail that people had come to expect. Of all the things that hadn't changed, were her eyes. They remained the same. Cold, grey, and haunted with the certain lethality that screamed Arris Windrun.

She found herself within a palace on Empress Teta, a world now under her purview, ever since Mercy bestowed the title Princess of Empress Teta upon her - it was an insult, a tease, and a challenge. But Arris had neglected her duties to this burgeoning ecumenopolis to Coruscant's galactic southwest. There were many problems to tend to. Least of all, the fact that some (read: most of the aristocracy) were less than thrilled to find Arris Windrun on the throne.

Were she not a Triumvir of the Sith Covenant, their displeasure might've taken an active role when she finally arrived to announce herself. A great fleet of warships hovered above the heart of Cinnagar, led by Windrun's flagship, and a legion of stormtroopers marched through the square beneath the palace steps, a symbol of power and a quiet threat of retaliation to those who would oppose her.

Inside the palace, the cyborg lazed on the throne, cut from a single block of ancient stone.

She wanted none of it. Which is exactly why she took the excuse of inviting Varin Mortifer to the occasion, just so she might ask after his journey to ascension.

Varin Mortifer​

 

[Varin Mortifer]

VARIN MORTIFER

Equipment: Durum Mantle | Black Blade of Chandrila | Eye of The Dragon | Heavy Sith Mace | Cross Guard Broadsaber

Varin had arrived as requested on Empress Teta. The planet was not entirely familiar to him, so he opted to follow the troopers across the courtyard towards the palace. He walked up each step, the slight limp in his gate now having dulled to something almost unnoticeable if someone was not paying attention. When Varin arrived at the palace gates he stopped at the door, waiting for them to open, waiting for him to brace himself for whatever it was Arris could throw at him.

She was a bit of a wild card to Varin, and more importantly he did not know the best way to approach her. So he simply did as he had been raised, kept straight, walk with purpose, respond.

The flagships waited in the skies, looming over the people that the Covenant had bent beneath their will. His ship above slowly crossed the sky making its rounds, blotting the sun in certain places leaving a massive shadow to blanket whatever light would have touched buildings or grounds.

His hands placed upon the doors, and slowly he pushed. Slowly they opened, scraping against the floor as he stepped in, walking past troopers who seemed to straighten up their stances as he folded his arms behind his back.

The heat rolled off of him like a breath.

Then his gaze fell upon Arris, a slight squint as he sharpened his gaze to get a better look. Then he stepped closer, stopping a small distance away from the throne she sat upon.

“Arris, I see you have cut your hair.”

His gaze followed the stone work of the throne before it fell back to her once more.

“Comfortable?”

Arris Windrun​

 

[Arris Windrun]

Varin Mortifer
​

The cyborg perked up when there was a small commotion down by the entrance, and there he was, Varin Mortifer in the flesh. Stormtroopers had indeed snapped to attention. They were positioned around the flanks of the room, and there were more nearest the throne; they were there to police the small delegation of city officials and aristocrats engaged in a stalling conversation with her hand-picked, sycophantic advisors.

“Arris, I see you have cut your hair.”

Her brow raised. "I see nothing gets past you, big guy." She sat up slightly. "Everyone out!" Her command echoed across the hall.

Troopers closed ranks, coralling the delegation, and began to march, pushing them out, despite the protestation. When the doors closed again, Arris lazed back down and sighed. Her eyes now locked firmly on Varin, cheek resting in her hand.

"Not comfortable at all. So glad you came, though. Tell me - have you conquered a planet? Do you have a fancy hat for your efforts?" Netherworld, she was starting to sound like Mercy now... She had to dial it back.

"Tell me about yourself, Fire Boy."

A not-so-subtle change in conversation. What better than personal questions? She knew how much Ace loved (read: hated) it.

 

[Varin Mortifer]

VARIN MORTIFER

Equipment: Durum Mantle | Black Blade of Chandrila | Eye of The Dragon | Heavy Sith Mace | Cross Guard Broadsaber

The room cleared as per her command. When quiet fell he saw the way she sat back in the throne. Her question on the progress made of the planet he had chosen to take.

He looked at her for a moment in silence.

“Have not conquered one yet, but my eye is set on one planet.”

He looked her in the eye befote he spoke.

“Metellos may have the best opportunities, not only for me, but for the Covenant as a whole.”

His hands slowly fell to his sides, loosely hanging as he took a more relaxed pose.

“Something tells me we may have to visit that planet, “uplift” their people to see our ways.”

Her next question left him stunned. She was curious about his late happenings, or perhaps something more. His head tilted to the side a bit, his arms crossed over his chest.

“What would you like to know?”

Arris Windrun​

 

[Arris Windrun]

Varin Mortifer
​

Metellos... A world just beyond the Covenant's strongest reaches, but still within the sphere of influence, as she understood it.

But yes, Arris was more interested in changing the topic. "What's with the fire?" She asked. "Is that biological... The Force? When did it start? Does it hurt? Tell me everything." Hell - she was fucking bored.

 

[Varin Mortifer]

VARIN MORTIFER

Equipment: Durum Mantle | Black Blade of Chandrila | Eye of The Dragon | Heavy Sith Mace | Cross Guard Broadsaber

She was more interested in his nature it seemed. More specifically his call to flame. He watched her for a moment, as if weighing how much to tell her, how much he would allow her to know. She was a Sith Lord afterall. But he supposed some information would not hurt.

“It was a ritual of binding. I have had it since before I could remember.”

He thought back, though he could not remember the ritual he could remember the moment his heart started beating, then the searing burns that followed. Pain all throughout his body, it should have killed him. A dark ritual used to save a dying child, suppose if he would die then adding a ritual on top of that would not have changed much of an outcome.

“You could say it's a combination of biological and The Force. It works as a tool, a weapon and even extensions of myself. Consciousness, smell, sight even feel. It flows through the flames and smoke like it were attached to my own nervous system.”

Then she asked about the pain. His gaze sharpened.

Does it hurt?

The question echoed in his mind.

More than you could ever imagine, at first…

“There's a reason I went to Mercy to learn how to harness the force into my body, to block out pain.”

He paused.

“Do you know physical pain, Arris?”

It was not a mocking question, it was genuine curiosity. Now that he got a better look, what once used to be cloth and synthflesh was now…alloys.

“Do you remember what it feels like to feel pain?”

The words echoed in the room as if the walls themselves were listening. No one had ever asked him if the fires hurt him. The truth was, they used to. They still technically did, he just learned to live with it.

“When the body is met with intense heat, you feel it for a moment. The nerve endings are seared shut, then the cold numbness follows. All you can feel is the oxygen being pulled from your lungs as you scream.”

He spoke from experience. The experience of what he felt from the binding ritual. The very same ritual that carved the ancient brands on his body.

Arris Windrun​

 

[Arris Windrun]

Varin Mortifer
​

The word 'ritual' had a way of pulling Arris out of her comfort zone. She had always struggled with the mystical side of the Force. In fact, she recalled a time that she, Mercy, and Vestra explored a floating ziggurat on Dagobah; how unbelievable that experience was to her.

But here Varin was, a man who could - at a moment's notice, she's come to discover - transform into some kind of flaming monster. As if his bullheadedness wasn't dangerous enough. To hear he went to Mercy to learn how to hide his pain? That reminded her of something else, too, when Tilon Quill taught her how to control pain during the great tournament on Ruusan.

Then, he asked her a question turn... It surprised her. "Not really, no. My implants can precisely control every hormonal and nervous response in my body... What little of it is organic, anyway." Her tone seemed a bit dour on that last part.

When he followed that up by asking whether she could remember, that hit harder. "No." It was all too muddled and vague. She could remember the emotional discomfort, but not the physical sensation - that went beyond pain, too.

His explanation of his own experiences was depressing to hear, but it didn't bother her. "Are you used to it?"

 

[Varin Mortifer]

VARIN MORTIFER

Equipment: Durum Mantle | Black Blade of Chandrila | Eye of The Dragon | Heavy Sith Mace | Cross Guard Broadsaber

There was something about her admission in not feeling or remembering pain that struck something deep within him. To Varin, pain was everything. A driving force, a sacrifice, a currency at times. It was the sign that he was alive, that blood still ran in his veins.

He knew that not feeling pain, or much of anything was a void in and of itself. He had the liberty of turning his nerves on or off. She did not.

When her question rang to him his arms slowly lowered once more, one arm pulled back the sleeve of his shirt to reveal some of the runes that were burned into his flesh, the ones that still pulsed like a furnace.

“Truthfully?”

He was never one to lie.

“No. Every day there's always something new. More heat, more hunger…just…more…”

The runes flared weakly producing a small flame that snaked its way up his wrist then balled into his palm.

“It does not hurt when I do something basic such as shaping. But the more energy I put into it, the more heat that builds. The more internally it burns. At least that’s what it feels like.”

His words hesitated for a moment.

“Its almost as if I can feel the pain of whoever falls victim to me.”

His voice fell quieter.

"And that fuels me more."

Arris Windrun​

 

[Arris Windrun]

Varin Mortifer
​

She leaned forward a little on the throne, curiosity's thrall, as Varin pulled back the sleeve. He explained in terms of heat and hunger, and that she understood. Arris Windrun was a fighter, a competitor. Before the Covenant, she flirted with risk and danger like every bad girlfriend she wished she had. It led her to Ruusan, it landed her in the Black Sun, and it etched itself deeper with each escalation.

But somewhere along the way... Arris Windrun grew numb. Not only to pain, but to the pleasure of being at death's door. The rush of the galaxy's imposition on her mortality.

"Why the hesitation, then?" She guessed at the shift in his tone.

 

[Varin Mortifer]

VARIN MORTIFER

Equipment: Durum Mantle | Black Blade of Chandrila | Eye of The Dragon | Heavy Sith Mace | Cross Guard Broadsaber

The small flame danced and slithered between his fingers as if it were alive. A small creature exploring his hand with a simple curiosity.

“These questions are rather new to me. Explaining in detail what I feel when I take a life or when I use the flame, it's not something I do often.”

With a twitch of his fingers the small flame snuffed itself. What was once an outpouring of warmth was now replaced by cold.

He looked at her, studied her for a moment.

“What happened with your body?”

The question came without hesitation, to him it was a fair ask. She wished to know about the flame within he, he wished to know what happened with her.

His arm relaxed back into place.

“Eye for an eye on the questions.”

Arris Windrun​

 

[Arris Windrun]

Varin Mortifer​

Arris found the demonstration of the flame far less engaging than their little conversation. When it seemed he would not elaborate further, she was about to lean back again and reclaim boredom's posture - until that question.

She smiled slightly. "You mean, why is it all metal?" She asked, knowing full well that's what he meant.

The cyborg thought back to those days. "I was a fighter - professional shockboxer. Back then, I was fast, and pretty slippery, but you gotta understand. It's a dangerous sport, and not many humans take part, let alone succeed. I was paid to be the underdog, yeah? People bet against a twenty-three-year-old human girl when she's going up against a Herglic or a Barabel," She laughed dryly.

That smile thickened. It used to be a bitter part of her life. Best forgotten, she believed. But since Corellia? She could finally see the nostalgia. She looked back down at him. "It started with implants. Those that kept me from passing out whenever I got overloaded." She made a zzzap sound. Uncannily accurate, thanks to her vocal emulator, which could mimic natural noises, too.

"Then I augmented my muscles, reinforced my bones. When I found myself too short of breath, I replaced my heart and my lungs. When I couldn't punch hard enough, I had 'em cut off my arms." She flexed one metal bicep and wiggled her fingers. "And when I couldn't think fast enough?" She tapped the side of her head. "Had a droid lodged in my grey matter. It catches everything I can't, sometimes makes decisions on my behalf."

Arris grinned and sank further in her chair, with the posture of an undeserved king. "Does that satisfy your price, Mr. Mortifer? Will you tell me what I wish to know?"

 

[Varin Mortifer]

VARIN MORTIFER

Equipment: Durum Mantle | Black Blade of Chandrila | Eye of The Dragon | Heavy Sith Mace | Cross Guard Broadsaber

Theme​

Satisfaction? Could a Sith truly know that word?

Varin did not respond, instead he acted. Both hands rose in front of him, palms up. Smoke spewing from his back that formed small shapes. Shapes that coalesced into something more.

A draconic being made of blackened cloud and eyes of ember, in his other palm a small flame representing a sun.

“A creature was bound to me.”

The figure moved around Varin in circles, as if searching. It slithered across the floor, it snaked up his leg. Tendrils slowly drifted towards the throne but would not pass the first step to the seat.

“Ignati, said to be the first dragon. The Eater of Suns.”

The shape slithered around his waist and up his chest to his other hand, jaws open wide to swallow the flame in his other hand.

“Not much is known of this being other than he was born from a planet that went through hundreds of years of blood sacrifices and Sith rituals. He gives my home planet life, and for that he is our God. A child of Bogan himself.”

The flame snuffed as the jaws clamped over the last bit of light, ending the life of the small flame.

At the same time the smoke dissipated off his body, then his hand slowly picked up and pointed at his head.

“He lives in here with me. Speaks to me all the time. I rarely get to sleep, I rarely know quiet, meditation is but a precious commodity, and prayer…he seems to feed of off.”

His hand relaxed back to his side.

“I was dying, merely months after birth. My Father's only son, his first born, and his heir. He was desperate.”

He thought back to the story his Father had told him.

“Darth Mortifer was his name, and he began a slow and painful ritual that bound a dying God to a dying child. My body keeps Him alive and He keeps me alive.”

He fell silent for a moment.

“I do not remember the ritual, but I remember the pain, the screaming and the crying. The confusion. The first question I ever thought. Why not let me die? And the answer was simple."

His arms folded behind the small of his back.

“I was born to rule and to conquer.”

Arris Windrun​

 

[Arris Windrun]

Varin Mortifer
​

Back to the impressive puppet show. Arris watched as he told his story through an act. She felt a woman in her court watching a man from a faraway land describe the myths of his people. But this was his past, the pain, the qualities, the burdens he carried. She couldn't fathom it really - to her, what he described were merely words. Arris Windrun did not even know what a Sith truly was until Tilon explained it to her on Ruusan. Even then, it took her longer than that to understand it.

The finality of his words, however...

"So that's it? You're a monster to fulfill some bargain with your god?" A crude bit of paraphrasing, she knew it, too. "We're born hungry and unaware, Varin. Everything else is some amount of circumstance or choice..." And the allocation wasn't always fair. "We pick it up when we begin to think."

She straightened up again. "I'm actually glad I never had a relationship with my parents. They housed and fed me until I was old enough to live on my own." When she was about thirteen.

"I think if this thing you describe is a god, or some kind of higher being, then it was saved, not you. You are the hand that feeds it, yeah?"

It wasn't the most eloquent way of saying 'that thing belongs to you, and it owes you rent.'

 

[Varin Mortifer]

VARIN MORTIFER

Equipment: Durum Mantle | Black Blade of Chandrila | Eye of The Dragon | Heavy Sith Mace | Cross Guard Broadsaber

Her words fell upon him and he fell silent for a long while, chewing on what it was she said. In the end, he really was a weapon, tool used to carve out the galaxy and bring upon it scars that permanently placed his name in history.

But was it his name or was it someone else's? That question always ate at him.

“To have that kind of relationship with family, some form of bond, it's a curse.”

He looked to the floor as his voice dropped with those last few words.

“My bargain is not within Ignati, it's for my family that I could not save. A promise that I made. Ignati may have saved me all those years, but I live and breathe for that promise.”

His head lifted, his eyes meeting hers.

“Though it is a curse to have a relationship with parents or family, it gives me something to fulfill and maintain.”

He fell quiet once more as if he were thinking.

“You may not feel or remember physical pain…but have you lost someone close before?”

His question hung deep in the air, his gaze fixed to hers. It may have been a question that overstepped boundaries, but he did not care at the time.

In the end, everyone felt some form of pain.

Always.

Arris Windrun​

 

[Arris Windrun]

Varin Mortifer
​

She accepted his answer. If only because she hadn't a way to compare to it, but it did sound to her at least that his was the right assessment. To be a vessel for a father's ambition - as she took it, anyway - was a disgusting fate to her.

Really, there was little for her to add, and so she was quite satisfied with that line of questioning. Only to have him ask his own.

That question struck her immediately. Metal fingers dug into the armrest of the stone throne, scratching grooves like they were a pair of claws. Her chin rose, her jaw tightened, and the Force rippled with grief and anger - the kind that some associated with Windrun's sudden, violent outbursts.

She exhaled sharply, settling both physically and in the Force. Dark bangs fell to the side as she tilted her head.

"Yeah, I have." She answered softly.

 

[Varin Mortifer]

VARIN MORTIFER

Equipment: Durum Mantle | Black Blade of Chandrila | Eye of The Dragon | Heavy Sith Mace | Cross Guard Broadsaber

The moment she stiffened his gaze sharpened, not out of worry for her lashing out, but from recognition.

That's what he was looking for.

Pain. Everyone feels it in the end.

“Even beneath all of that metal and augments you told me, you still feel it don't you? The burn in your chest, the stones in your guts. You wish to lash out from it, to throw that coal at someone so they too can feel that pain, only you cannot drop that burning coal. It sears your very being, melds to you, eventually becomes you.”

His voice fell quiet once again before he spoke.

“I lost my family, but I could live with losing my mother and my Father, as much is it still pained me to see them fall. But when my sister bled to death in my arms, begging me not to let her go, begging for warmth. I had to watch her.”

His fingers tightened over his sleeves.

“...she would have been sixteen by tomorrow.”

Varin's gaze remained on her, cold and calculated. Like a statue that stared into you instead of at you. The weight of the room now vastly different than it was minutes ago.

Arris Windrun​

 

[Arris Windrun]

Varin Mortifer
​

"Enough," Arris demanded, disgust in her voice. "You are answering a question I didn't ask." The cyborg rose from her throne and walked down, her metal feet echoing with every step.

"And you do not know me." Her voice wasn't raised, but it stung with irritation. This was not a line of discussion she would have with him.

She stopped at the bottom, hands on her hips, looking up at Varin.

"Got that?"

 

[Varin Mortifer]

VARIN MORTIFER

Equipment: Durum Mantle | Black Blade of Chandrila | Eye of The Dragon | Heavy Sith Mace | Cross Guard Broadsaber

Varin's eyes narrowed toward her when she shut down the conversation. The grip on his arms slowly loosened as he began to understand, a slow breath leaving him.

“You asked for everything.”

He spoke deeply, but it was not cold.

“Perhaps it was too personal, I get that. But you wanted to know me better, understand me. This is how it is done.”

He paused.

“Pain and loss bring people together. I had come to learn that long ago.”

His eyes stayed locked to hers, daring not to look away as he spoke.

“I will not apologize if I overstepped, but offense was not my intention. My intention was to hit common ground. I will not pry into your private affairs, that is a promise. Whether you choose to accept that promise is up to you.”

Another slow breath as he looked down at her.

“What else would you like to know then?”

He did not challenge her, not in her own throne room. Not over a simple conversation that went a little too deep for her liking. So he dropped the last bit, ready for her to pick the next subject.

Arris Windrun​

 

[Arris Windrun]

Varin Mortifer
​

"Everything is a stretch of what I asked," she retorted.

But then Arris frowned, followed by a light sigh. Her brow softened, but that did little to change the mood in her eyes - or lack thereof. They were always cold and impersonal, lacking a certain lifelike quality.

"I thought we were playing a game. Question for a question - eye for an eye, your words, not mine."

The cyborg rolled her neck, though there was no muscle to stretch, just synthetic fibers and flexible steel. It seems her choice in company ran deeper than at first glance, a complicated and emotional man. Was it mean of her to think that she liked him better when he took swings at Mercy? Or bulldozed through walls?

Hands left her waist, crossing over her chest instead. "Pain and loss tear people apart, big guy." Rox, Nilira, Acier, and Kirie all came to mind in their own way.

"I don't need your promise. Just..." She waved her hand dismissively before tucking it back over her arm. "Forget it."

 

[Varin Mortifer]

VARIN MORTIFER

Equipment: Durum Mantle | Black Blade of Chandrila | Eye of The Dragon | Heavy Sith Mace | Cross Guard Broadsaber

His head tilted ever so slightly after she waved away her sentence.

“I have never been truly good with social interaction, if I am honest.”

His head turned a bit more, a small crack echoing from his neck as a small grunt left him.

“Most people don't expect questions or words like that from someone like me.”

A small quiet laugh left him.

“Sometines I take things too literally.”

His voice stopped as he looked at her again.

“Why did you change your appearance? If I may ask. I'm sure it's a question you have gotten quite a bit, but last I saw you looked different.”

He waited, thinking on the question before continuing.

“And if that question is too much then I guess…what caliber are your guns?”

A genius deviation from the previous topic, a question that she likely never saw coming, certainly one he didn't see coming and thats what made it so brilliant…at least he hoped.

Arris Windrun​