Faction Blood for Blood | SO

[Helix]

Objective II
Equipment: Himself
Tags: Lina Ovmar / Lirka Ka / Darth Nefaron ​

As if to suit the action to his earlier words, the colony seized one of the metallic tendrils as it snaked down from above, giving it a tug to signal to the ship that he no longer wished to be here.

Predictably, Nefaron had beaten him to it, and been the first to escape inside the vessel. Now they lacked only Lirka, and Helix wasn't leaving without her.

The Aconite's droid brain responded, and it easily lifted him up into the sky. On his way up, he couldn't resist giving their opponents a jaunty salute. Let Strosius and the Empress' little hit squad fight it out. Both had failed; the Dzara wasn't being strangled in the crib just yet. The illusionist, the one they called Ovmar, in particular got a short, curt nod, a silent message falling somewhere between "Good job" and "See you soon".

The pirate corvette wasn't exactly designed for emergency evac, but it had performed well enough. Now to activate his last little surprise.

Helix sent a silent command to his forces throughout the facility. Makeshift bombs, clusters of Otherplasma reactors, were being wired throughout the place as they spoke. If it came down to it, the colony would bring the facility down on them. It would be a kinder end than whatever Nefaron or Lirka had planned.

The crude rad-bombs placed by his forces earlier would ensure that portions of the site were contaminated for years, if not longer. Given their hastily-improvised nature, he doubted the coverage would be complete, or even good, but one had to work with what one had. There was just one little problem.

"Lirka, you're on a timetable. We can bring your friends along, if you like, but I would get aboard sooner rather than later, if I were you."

Helix signaled the Aconite to shift fire, and to help cover the clanking brute's retreat. Lirka was still down there, and losing a third of the Dzara this early on would be an inauspicious start to their glorious future.

The three-barreled meson-pulse cannons swiveled in their flexible housings, sending precise fire down to bracket Lirka's path to freedom and shake up the remaining loyalist forces a bit.

As before, these were exceptionally accurate weapons, enough so to nail a single vehicle from orbit, but fast-moving, individual humanoids were quite another matter. If they actually managed to kill anything, it was from sheer area saturation alone.

The best he could do was try to provide a way out.

 

[Darth Carnifex]

This was not worth His time.

Carnifex watched with idle disinterest as the woman fought vigorously to avoid being devoured by the Godflame, His eyes tracking her much easier now that He'd seen where she was. The woman was clearly insane and delusional, throwing herself into the mix between two of the most powerful Dark Lords of the day. He crossed both arms over His broad, muscular chest and reserved Himself to watching the woman struggle against insurmountable odds.

That was, however, until she drew her blade. The crackling snap-hiss of not one, but two, lightsabers filled the air. In the half-moment since she ignited her blade, the Dark Lord's own lightsaber ignited with a vicious snarl of crimson plasma. He did not move as one might conventionally, rather, He the world seemed to pivot around Him as it's central axis. His blade slipped between her own and Prazutis' back, intercepting the trajectory of the blow and bringing whatever momentum had been put into the swing to a deafening halt.

His eyes bore into the all-red eyes of Ansisa, His expression never once shifting. Had she the wherewithal to look at His weapon, she wound find that He was barely holding it; the hilt gripped lackadaisically. Such a loose grip should not have been able to hold against the force of her swing, but it didn't even budge even if she exerted more pressure against His blade. The Dark Lord then breathed out, exhaling in what was an approximation of exasperation.

"Be a little more entertaining, meat. Is this really your all?"

Darth Prazutis | Ansisa ​

 

[Darth Prazutis]

The clash split the silence like a chime at the world's funeral. Crimson met crimson, sparks scattered like the blood of dying suns across the marble floor. The Eternal Father's saber held the strike that should have ended in the Mortarch's back, not through effort, but inevitability. The Dark Lord didn't turn. He had already felt her through the Dyad. Her pulse, her terror masquerading as resolve, the twitch of a mortal heart too close to the dark. "You mistake proximity for significance." He said, voice low, rolling through the corridor like pressure under the sea.

The air quivered then, and with it the very floor began to hum. Dust and cinders drifted upward, drawn toward the point of gravity that was Him. Every molecule seemed to remember its place in the hierarchy of existence, and she stood beneath all of it. Everything drawn to His majesty, everything frozen in living time. His presence swelled, unseen but inexorable. The light dimmed, as though the universe itself wished to avert its gaze. He turned slightly, the motion deliberate, His helm's gaze catching her reflection.

"Look at you." He said. "Clinging to meaning like a fly to glass." His gauntlet lifted. He didn't reach for her body, but for the space that contained her. The Force trembled as the very air thickened then. A wave of pressure attempted to crush inward, as though the world itself inhaled and forgot how to exhale. The stone floor spiderwebbed outward from His feet. The faintest touch of the Force, the faintest exertion from Him could attempt to drive her to her knees, attempting to snap every bone in her legs, hold her before the Eternal Father, the sheer density threatening to implode the air around her form.

"Do you know what you are, insect?" He asked, each word falling like an avalanche of contempt. "You are the sound a gnat makes when it strikes the skin of a god."

The temperature shifted, cold, sharp, metallic. The Godflame bled through the seams of His armor, coursing across the black iron like veins of living magma. Arcs of red-black lightning leapt from His shoulders to the ceiling, attempting to scar the marble with burning devastation that whispered blasphemy. The air around her crackled; her silhouette shimmered against the stone as if the fabric of her existence strained to remain coherent under His focus.

"If I willed it." The Shadow Hand paused. "Your atoms would beg for the dignity of dissolution." Sound itself bent under Him, carrying the weight of finality. Around them, the corridor threatened to come apart. Chandeliers quivered on their chains; portraits blackened from the radiating heat. The walls groaned, and the marble beneath their feet attempted to ripple like molten glass.

Darth Carnifex | Ansisa​

 

[Ansisa]

Objective 1: Survive
Tags: Darth Prazutis Darth Carnifex

The impact shuddered up her arms, her gaze shifting from Prazutis' back to Carnifex meeting the gaze that regarded her with boredom his words should have made her feel small and the probably would have done, if she was trying to impress them, if she wasn't acutely aware of what she stood against. She was insignificant, a creature to be disregarded by them, one they could easily squash.

As if to drive her ruminations home, Prazutis spoke and the corridor around them responded, the very air quivering as he became the centre mass, ash and embers circling as the darkness stretched as he turned his head, she saw herself reflected in his helm, blood from her nose already drying, her expression set. She credited herself that the fear she felt was clear from her face.

As he lifted his gauntlet and the pressure around her returned, a weight pressing on her from all angles, holding her in place. His words rolling over her as the Godflame crackled again, cracking stone and searing the very air around them. Ansisa watched it leap from him, understanding the message, even without the choice words to drive it home. She still had some movement, enough to reach beyond the triangle they had formed, curling the force around a half shattered sideboard.

"Then why don't you?" It was a question, not a challenge. "You call me meat, insect, yet you hold back. I am insignificant, I am nothing. But you entertain me all the same. Why waste words when the power you hold is insurmountable in comparison to a nobody like me?"

Her fingers curled, the sideboard hurtling for Carnifex as her thumb shifted on the switch of her lightsaber, deactivating it, the barest of pivots shifted the angle of her blade under Carnifex's and flicked it back on, the crimson beam punching once more for Prazutis's back.

 

[Darth Carnifex]

The animal bayed nonsensical words, affirming their own meagerness in the grand calculus. What were her words if not wasted breath? Each verbalized noise an annoyance. Lesser language from a lesser creature, so far removed from either of them that it was like trying to interact with sea algae. But whatever annoyance, whatever vexation rose like bile in the back of His throat, it evaporated with the reaffirmation that they were merely following their nature; just as He would follow His.

"Indeed," was His response, a single word carrying with it all the weight of His derision and indifference.

When the sideboard came loose and flew towards the Dark Lord, He didn't turn nor seem to even realize it existed. Instead, His calm eyes watched Ansisa thumb off the activator of her lightsaber, the blade hissing back into the emitter. His blade was now freed to move as He wished it, though that was never in contention to begin with. The sideboard moved to strike Him across the back, but as it came within an inch's breadth from Him it met an equal amount of force pushing against it and shuddered to a halt before beginning to fall to the floor.

The Dark Lord had trained Himself to coat His entire body with a thin layer of Force energy. This layer reacted only to external stimuli, such as the sideboard that had been thrown at Him. When the object came within the layer's threshold, the energy released an equal amount of force corresponding to the kinetic energy and momentum that animated the sideboard's movements. This equal amount of force nullified that which gave the sideboard velocity, and brought it to a crashing stop before it could even touch Him.

In that same span of time, the Dark Lord's blade moved. He spun it up and then down, movements so quick they were a blur. He had but one target in mind, and with exceptional precision He struck it.

And lobbed both of Ansisa's arms off, each at the elbow.

Downward momentum kept His blade moving, and only a slight adjustment sent the blood-red plasma first through one knee, and then the other. The swiftness in which this action was taken made it so that the sideboard struck the ground behind Him at the same moment all of her limbs did, followed swiftly by her truncated body. Her lightsaber tumbled from the weakening grasp of her now dead fingers, only to be snatched up by Carnifex before it too could hit the floor.

With both weapons in hand, the Dark Lord angled Ansisa's own weapon towards her throat.

Ansisa | Darth Prazutis ​

 

[Darth Prazutis]

The sound of flesh hitting marble was a soft thing. Insignificant. It was barely worth registering against the roar of collapsing stone. Yet in the Dyad, He felt every movement of His nephew's blade, every inch of the clean surgical violence that had separated limb from limb. Carnifex's precision struck like a perfect note in the shared void between them. Still the Mortarch didn't turn. Through that connection, the Mortarch saw everything. The severed arms, the broken knees, the trembling stump of what still dared to think of itself as a warrior. Only then did He shift.

His helm tilted by a fraction, an acknowledgment, not of her, but of Carnifex's work. The gesture of one titan to another, an unspoken harmony of destruction. But then the world darkened.

Not metaphorically.
Not poetically.
Physically.

The corridor dimmed as though some cosmic hand had closed around the sun itself. The shadows thickened, flowing up the walls and pooling at the Mortarch's feet, drawn to Him like worshippers desperate for the touch of their god. Embers drifted in the air, slow as dying fireflies. He gave no warning.

The Godflame erupted. Not as a bolt, as a wave, an expanding corona of crimson-black lightning that tore outward from His body. It was not thrown. It detonated. The sound was a violent crack, the air itself shattering as heat flooded the hall. The marble floor began to melt in rippling sheets beneath him. The storm slammed toward her broken form descending towards her, a deluge of blood-red lightning thick enough to illuminate even the deepest cracks in the walls. If the wave connected, it would swallow her whole, washing across her body like a tide of molten iron. Every nerve would ignite. Skin would split. Bone would glow crimson beneath flesh. Every point where Godflame touched would attempt to superheat, to sear, to cook her alive from the outer layers inward. A pain with no language for it. Pain that went beyond the physical, that drowned her mind, her spirit in agony.

But even before it struck, the heat alone scorched the air around her. Her blood hissed on the ground. The Dark Lord didn't step closer. He simply…extended His palm. Red-black lightning danced between His fingers like living serpents trying to escape. His next words were not spoken to her, they were spoken over her, like a curse carved into the laws of existence. "Look at you." The voice rolled through the hall like a funeral bell. Deep. The finality of an execution. "Crawling in your own blood…and still you ask why I hold back." He moved one step. Just one, and the floor bowed under His weight, sinking as if gravity itself feared to support Him.

"You are not worth killing." His gauntlet angled toward her again. Sparks dripped from His fingertips, splattering onto the marble and instantly vaporizing it. "You are a message." The Godflame surged, another wave of searing crimson arcs spiraling around His arm, the air vibrating with the energy building there. He didn't unleash it yet. He let her feel the pressure, the imminent threat of a second annihilating blast ready to fall on her broken body at the slightest whim. His helm turned, the eye-slits almost narrowing like a predator studying something beneath hunger. "You asked why I don't end you." A low hum filled the air as the lightning crawled higher, licking across His shoulders, winding down his spine, illuminating all the armor's sigils in molten red.

"Because ending you would require intent." He tilted His head just enough that she saw her own reflection in the obsidian faceplate, a mangled creature limbless on the floor. "You do not meet the threshold." Thunder cracked, the sound of the Godflame building. "Pray you never do." Just then He stepped back into stride beside Carnifex, the Godflame dimming to embers around His gauntlets. The marble floor cooled behind Him only long after He passed, leaving a blackened trail in His wake. He didn't look at her again. The Mortarch began to turn and start down the hall.

Darth Carnifex | Ansisa​

 

[Ansisa]

Objective 1: BBQ anyone?
Darth Prazutis Darth Carnifex

Ansisa had invited it. She had begged the question as to why they stalled, why they did not simply strike her down as the insignificant thing she was. And yet, when Carnifex's saber carved through her arms, her eyes widened in surprise. There was no pain, even as he carved through her knees a second later and she toppled to the floor.

Numbness spread up her limbs as she tried to crawl back to no avail, staring up at the titans that loomed over her, her own saber hovering at her throat. She was staring up at her end, and yet there was no fear, no weeping. Adrenaline kept the pain at bay, shock made her heart race, feeling like it was going to burst from her chest. Her breaths were short, ragged as she walked the line between awake and unconsciousness.

She watched the darkness swell before the Godflame erupted, the resounding crack rippled through her before the storm itself struck. Then she felt pain, then everything screamed. White hot needles danced across her skin as it tore open, blood boiled and flesh burned. Her body arched, a scream tore through her throat till there was no air left to feed it. Only then did the barrage stop.

Her head dropped to the side, her gaze tracking up the corridor she had tried to stop them in. Prazutis's words washed over her, but they were a million miles away as she blinked back silent tears. The twins had run through this corridor not two days ago, their game of tag driving half the servants mad. Her children. The children she had left with Quinn.

She had told herself she was doing this to give them time, to ensure they were safe, yet something in the back of her mind whispered another story. Malum had left her, left their children. She had come here to bear his punishment, to take it so that her children wouldn't. Her children would live.

And so would she.

Ansisa turned to look back at Prazutis, only to look away sharply when she caught sight of her half charred face. She'd never considered herself vain, but she did know she had been beautiful, she wasn't ready to face what was waiting for her in the mirrored helm.

He was talking, she could feel the deep hum of his voice, but she couldn't hear the words, only the rushing of blood and ringing in her ears. The pressure that loomed over her drifted away and she relaxed as she felt him leave, turning her gaze now to Carnifex, to the blade that loomed over her neck.

 

[Darth Carnifex]

For a second, a deafening silence descended down upon them as the burning stench of her ruined flesh continued to smolder in the air. Then, both lightsabers deactivated with a snarling hiss before withdrawing into the confines of the Dark Lord's armored robes. That was the lack gesture that the Dark Lord would perform, as His cloak sunk down around Him and obfuscated His sihlouette with that of voluminous grandeur.

He said nothing, His facial expression never shifting, before turning about and following the Mortarch down the hall. Soon, the Dark Valkyries returned and followed suit, forming a loose square formation behind their Lords and Masters.

The doors to the throne room shunted open with a pressurized exhalation, the icy-cold breath of the Dark Side rushing in as the two Dark Lords of the Kainate finally made their arrival. Prazutis walked ahead of Carnifex, appearing first through the threshold, though the Eternal Father was not far behind.

"Apologies for my tardiness," rumbled the velvety bass of Darth Carnifex, "There were matters to attend to, that have now been rectified."

Ansisa | Darth Prazutis | Srina Talon
Quinn Varanin | Jorryn Fordyce | Darth Avida
Lysander von Ascania | Darth Caedes | Kasir Dorran
Ivalyn Yvarro | Trayze Tesar | Eira Dyn ​

 

[Hasuras Na-Gerra]

Time passed.

In the wake of fire, there is only ash. And through the ash, a lone figure strode. His heavy boots trod soft soot under heel. Eyes intense and golden as sunfire looked upon the charnel house of the throne room antechamber from beneath a juvenile terentatek skull, which he wore as a helm. They beheld death. Death and ashes - the ruined remnants of House Marr.

Gerra, tall and proud in his raiment of alchemized armor, did not shy from the wreckage of battle. For was he not a pirate who prowled the stars stripping ships and worlds both of their riches? He had seen the aftermath of many raids and they all carried the same foul stench. His destroyers still hung in orbit over the planet, but it seemed some accord of peace had been reached between the Marrans and the Kainites. He strode these halls now only as a favor to Revna. He promised he would search for survivors of her house. Though, from what lay before him, he suspected there would be few enough.

The smell of burnt hair and smoldering meat filled his nostrils and his lips curled. He narrowed his eyes as a half-charred corpse moved amid the carnage.

Slowly, the Vahlan lowered himself to a knee beside the figure. She appeared to be a woman, a Chiss - or had been once. Now there was hardly anything left of her. Someone had hacked off her limbs and then burned her alive. It was a wonder she still drew breath at all.

Reaching out in the Force, Gerra found her presence - expecting a thin thread of life to which she yet clung. Instead, he found a wellspring of power.

Curious.

"You have not yet given up the fight," he rumbled, more to himself than the ruined woman. He doubted she could still hear him, her wounds were so severe.

"The Force is strong in you."

He could not imagine. what drove her to cling to life so fiercely. He had seen those with wounds less grievous give up their ghosts. What was it she lived for? Revenge, like as not.

The Hasuras' eyes flashed as he reached deeper into the Force, beholding the shatterpoints that coruscated across her body. Fracture lines. If he poured in Force into them, he might kill her. But so too might he hold her together long enough for bacta to do its work. He channeled the Dark Side into her, lending her his strength. Then he knelt further down and scooped her off the floor with his gauntleted hands. She weighed nothing to him and the trek back to his shuttle was not so far.

Carrying her in his arms, he began walking back the way he had come. The Lady Revna would wish to see this woman, whoever she was, and witness firsthand how the Kainite treated her people.

"Hush now, warrior of Marr," he rumbled softly, "A new dawn will come. And you'll rise with it."

Ansisa

 

[Mercy]

Location: Fiviune
Allies: Arris Windrun
Direct enemies: Darth Nefaron | Darth Strosius
Opps: Anyone standing in her way, Helix | Lirka Ka
New opps?: Revna Marr | Lina Ovmar | Varin Mortifer

Strosius managed to grab her arm. At that range, missing would have been impossible.

That was where his luck ended.

Pitting raw strength against Mercy was a mistake. She had no refined Force tricks, no storms or illusions, just the brutal efficiency of a fighter who knew how to amplify her own power until limits stopped existing.

"Oh, buddy..." Mercy drawled, her skin still cracked and smoking from the earlier lightning. "Never wrestle a mountain."

His saber came down hard. On anyone else it would have cut clean through from shoulder to hip. Mercy caught the blade mid-swing. Her hand sizzled, the smell of cooked flesh thick in the air, but the agony only deepened her grin. With a low growl she shoved back, trying to seize his wrist and drive that burning weapon straight through his skull.

As their grips locked, muscles strained and bones groaned. In that instant Strosius would feel what true, monstrous strength felt like. No summoned hordes, no storms, just Mercy herself, unrelenting. Lightning still crackled around them, but it was her that blazed brighter, her skin glowing with blue light as she tanked the storm head-on.

"Now I am going to-"

Crack your skull open like a piece of rotten fruit.

But the words never came. Her senses flared. Nefaron was slipping away, her wings failing to impale him fully as his shuttle began to rise. The realization hit like a gut punch, wiping every trace of amusement from her face.

"You fool," she spat, kicking Strosius back to gain space. "He's getting away."

Her wings snapped wide, pulling her into the air. She launched toward the shuttle, a streak of red and gold against the smoke, the wings lancing forward to catch it before it could escape. For a moment she almost reached it, the tendrils stabbing through the hull, but momentum died too soon. The shuttle broke free, engines screaming, and climbed toward the void.

Mercy fell.

She tore through the roof again, smashing into the crumbling floor below. The bombardment had left it weak, and the impact cracked stone and steel alike.

"For fuck's sake," she hissed, dragging herself up through the debris. "I said I was here for the undead wretch... and you attack me. Twice. Are you stupid or suicidal?"

Her eyes locked on Strosius again. Fury burned away the pain. Her muscles swelled, cords of power rippling beneath scorched skin as she squared herself for the next fight. If she couldn't have Nefarion, she would take what was left.

 

[Srina Talon]

Alvaria: Darth Carnifex | Quinn Varanin | Jorryn Fordyce | Darth Avida | Darth Prazutis [/USER] | Lysander von Ascania | Darth Caedes | Seela Leini | Kasir Dorran | Ivalyn Yvarro | Ansisa | Eira Dyn | Veradun Sharr
Location: Alvaria

____________________________________________________

Jorryn Fordyce seemed to want to learn as much as Srina had initially suspected, though the Empress feared there wouldn't be much more to educate her with. Alvaria was screaming so loudly that it was pressing on her mind, begging her not to deny the inevitable. She was every bit the monster that the Kainite claimed to be, worse, when the situation called for it—But that was the difference.

When the situation called for it. When, required.

This was like shooting fish in a barrel.

The throne room had gone deathly still whilst the Empress sat with her eyes closed and a pulse of power ran through the crystal network she had created, repeatedly, relaying information back to her. She kept Lady Fordyce present not only for her instruction but because it wouldn't be safe outside these walls. The people would eventually attempt to mobilize, and already outside influences were making themselves known…. None would ask which side of the fight they stood on. Not now.

She felt a burst of air fill her chest when the Second Mirror opened his eyes and Kasir Dorran was with them once again, awake, and alert enough to respond. Srina heard the call of "Mother" and the words that followed, which momentarily caused her fierce expression to soften. So—

He had not forgotten.

<<Leave this place…>>

The command was simple and filled with more than words. It held the pressure of agony, the kind that was brought to the surface by way of knowing a population had been decimated for nothing. Quinn Varanin and Trayze Tesar made it to the throne room and were subsequently directed to her personal ship that was waiting at the end of the landing pad. Whether they chose to listen or not—Srina gave herself the moment to witness the terror of babes, before having them secured, fulfilling the only role for them she could in the moment. Safety.

"When we are done, Lady Fordyce…You will ensure the younglings have what they require."

Nothing would get through her and survive.

If only the mother had listened.
​

Srina saw everything.

She watched Ansisa rise like a distant ember amid the ruin and witnessed as gods metaphorically crushed her between their hands, mistaking destruction for order. The glass reflections in the crystals had shown her every angle, while the phylactery around her neck echoed with the taste of a baseless kill from which no joy was derived. For one exquisite, awful moment, the Empress of the Sith saw through a thousand lenses what it meant for a mother to die alone in the dark.

The violent echo reached her before they did.

Not dead…Yet. Not yet. But her life hung like a thread just waiting to be pulled by the smallest hands.

The doors finally groaned open, hissing, as crystal that had jammed the gears shattered. Their delay had left her with too much time to think. Too much time to stew. A breath of cold pressure stirred the broken black shards around her whilst the Empress remained still as stone. The two Lords of the Kainite entered like a storm coming home, wearing the stench of copper, and bitter old credits. Their shadows fell across the marble floor and tangled with the lattice-work of her creation.

The crystals hummed with recognition. Resonating.

Sensing their nearness.

Her head bowed, white hair cascading over her face, until a tremor started. It began not in the ground but somewhere deep in her chest. It was a note, too low to hear, a vibration that only the crystal understood. Then came the voice beneath her voice, the one buried, hidden beneath the flawless veneer of calm and untouchable strength.

It was a scream.

Slow at first. Subsonic, so deep that it rattled even the long dead from beneath Alvaria's crust. Some of them might have even pressed out of their graves. The black glass made of the blood of the slain also responded, thousands of jagged spires bending, singing, answering her anguish. The sound climbed from the pit of her soul to the vaulted ceiling until it became unbearable. The air itself began to distort, and the walls wept black dust…Starting to crumble.

And then…

Silence.

Srina lifted her head.

Her eyes, once burnished gold, had gone dark at the edges. Amber bled into onyx…So black that corruption seemed to be infecting her at an amplified rate. Her voice, when it came, was soft and full of air—Too soft for what it contained.

"You…", she trailed off, speaking to Darth Prazutis first, because his was the first visage she beheld on the other side of the door. Everything within this room…This was her domain. "You have made this a habit…Of destroying things that belong to me. He was mine—She was mine."

There was no inflection of accusation, no plea, just fatigue that was too vast for words. She slowly pushed herself to her feet, and the crystal that had wrapped around her wrists snapped and shattered even though it was quite durable. Srina descended the throne's steps one by one, slow, as if wading through one memory or another. The hem of her black traveling gown brushed the shards, and wherever it passed, they brightened, absorbing her fury. "Always the same…"

"Always another corpse, another mother, another lesson written in blood for me to translate into something useful."

Because slaughter itself carried no message. Not, when the intended ears were no longer around to hear it. Her gaze passed over the Mortarch first, sharp enough to wound, but that wasn't anything new. The white-haired woman was known for her hawkish expressions that could kill a man faster than any blade. Eventually…She found his nephew behind him. The Butcher King. The Eternal Father.

The man whose voice had reached through the phylactery, only moments before, whispering of forgiveness. She crossed the distance between them, and for a moment, her hands raised, and both men might feel a slightly uncomfortable pressure at their throats. "I could wring your necks…"

"I should."

But it relented almost as quickly as it happened, so fast, that it might have been the effect of uncomfortable armor. Instead, she met Darth Carnifex in silence until the last step brought her face-to-face with his chest. Not for the first time, she exhaled. Slowly. The scream had left her hollow. Her head inclined, and a crown of white hair brushed against black armor as she let it rest against him. Lightly at first…But the weight increased. It was not a gesture of affection, but the forgiveness he had asked for in his absence. Her voice was achingly quiet…But they wouldn't have any trouble hearing.

"You will tell me this was necessary. That…This is what must be done. That he was weak, that she was weak, that a slight must be avenged…That weakness must be culled."

She breathed in, ignoring the weapons that Darth Carnifex had hidden on his person that could cut into her just as easily as the mother of Malum's children. The crystals behind her hissed as if offended by the lie that had yet to be spoken…"And I will listen…", she uttered, because in part, he was correct. Weakness was a cancer that the Sith Order could not afford…But who determined that? They were wounded, without clandestine information, and she would have to rely on her own spies until the Tsis'Kaar could be replaced. The Kainite had their own. "Because that is what I do. I listen, I remember, and I put the blood on my hands to keep Civil War from ripping through us."

Her fingers brushed against his, lightly, at first, before they threaded through and tightened in warning. The Force shivered, and through it came the promise of what would come after. "But later…"

"Later…I will remind you what it means to hurt me."

Srina stepped back, the mask of composure falling on her face like rain, her tone returning to calm precision. Her fingers remained with those of the Butcher King, and the crystals around her seemed to settle. Obedient, if nothing else. She could not mourn. She could not stop, breathe, or lament the travesty. She could only…Build. Only the work, mattered.

Only the work.

"You will allow Commonwealth Ships entry to handle humanitarian requirements, and your march against House Marr ends tonight. You have repaid any indiscretion tenfold. While you sew chaos, you forget that I have a job to do. Instead of dealing with the Tsis'Kaar...I have to be here."

She sighed. Weary. So very…very tired.

But the fight never ended.

"I will notify the assembly that Alvaria requires a new governor."

 

[Darth Carnifex]

The Dark Lord leaned into the pressure that briefly flirted with His neck, the light in His eyes brightening for just a moment before it and the sensation both faded. Her soft, silver hair pooled against His armor as she leaned forward; warm flesh pressed against cold, heartless metal. His hands, large enough to crush her without difficulty, gently cradled her and engulfed her in their warm embrace. He pulled her against Him, letting her body slip into the grooves of His own, comfortable and familiar.

"Will is everything," He breathed, soft as satin. "There will be many who say what happened here was meaningless, without merit. Did so many have to die, did Alvaria have to bleed and burn? Such questions are worthless, all that matters is what was done. What I have done. What we have done. All else can be discarded." His hands slipped into her own, fingers intimately woven together. With each breath, He tasted all that she was; Empress, Mother, Protector, Avenger, Destroyer, Terrorizer.

Srina Talon.

She stepped away from Him, though their hands remained connected. His eyes continued to look directly into her own, never once wavering. He listened to her commandments quietly, nothing betraying His true thoughts. "Such is your word, Empress, and it shall be heeded. Consider my thirst slaked for now, though one can never be too certain as it when it shall arise again." The point had been made regardless, and the hammer blow had struck where He willed it. It mattered little what came after, He could leave such ambitions to lesser power-brokers.

"For Peace is a Lie, Empress," a glimmer of amusement flashed through His eyes. "There is only Passion."

Srina Talon | Darth Prazutis | Quinn Varanin
Jorryn Fordyce | Darth Avida | Lysander von Ascania
Darth Caedes | Seela Leini | Kasir Dorran
Ivalyn Yvarro | Ansisa | Eira Dyn
Veradun Sharr ​

 

[Darth Prazutis]

The pressure closed around his throat, not with the violence of an assassin, but the naked ache of someone who had forgotten how else to grieve. Power cinched like a noose, and the world itself would have choked beneath it, but the giant simply endured, unmoved. His head didn't incline, His breathing didn't falter. The only sign He had even registered the act was the slow brightening of the glow behind His visor, like an ancient predator lifting its gaze.

He didn't tear it away. He allowed it, as one allows wind to pass over stone. The Mortarch listened as she spoke, the litany of exhaustion and duty falling from her lips like scripture recited not out of devotion, but necessity. He did not interrupt, didn't offer defense or denial; he didn't regard the accusation as something requiring either. He simply stood amid the wreckage they had authored, an unyielding monolith carved from centuries of violence and victory, watching a sovereign carry the weight that only rulers ever feel.

When she finished, His helm inclined a fraction, a gesture neither submissive nor dismissive, merely acknowledging that He had heard her, and that her words mattered insofar as they bore consequence. "There has never been a time in my life when death was not the price of empire. I have walked death's path since birth." He said, voice low, resonant, stripped of flourish. "Not the symbolic death of ideals or institutions, but the honest death of bodies, cultures, bloodlines, worlds. I have ended civilizations with less consideration than some men give to the execution of a criminal. I have erased dynasties with the same detachment a banker applies to debt." He did not say it with pride or malice, but with the composure of someone who understood the arithmetic of power at its most fundamental level.

He stepped toward her, slow, deliberate, the air bending in recognition of the gravity that preceded Him. "What was done here was not passion. It was not indulgence. It was correction. A threat to the continuity of our dominion was excised as cleanly as a surgeon removes diseased tissue. The method was brutal because the infection was deep." His gaze shifted briefly to Carnifex, not for approval, but alignment, two forces that had waged war for so long the act had become second nature. "Weakness, apathy, divided loyalties, these are not inconveniences. They are futures waiting to destroy us. I have seen entire empires devour themselves because they hesitated to cut out what endangered their order. I will not allow that fate to repeat itself."

There was no apology. He spoke as one who had long transcended the need to justify slaughter. "You mourn what might have been. That is your burden, because you still believe in the possibility of what these people could become. I do not. I have seen too much death to be seduced by promise. I believe only in what is, and in what must survive the century to come. If they had the strength to survive, they would've. If those I've struck down have the strength of will, they shall walk the path of pain and emerge stronger for the lessons I've taught them." His voice softened, not with comfort, but with a cold recognition of the shared horror they bore. "You are angry because this blood belongs to you. And it should. You are Empress. All blood shed beneath your reign belongs to you, whether spilled by your hand or ours. That is the privilege and punishment of sovereignty."

He stood beside Carnifex then, not as subordinate or counterpart, but as the other half of a machine built for conquest. "We will heed your command, Empress. Humanitarian aid will arrive, governance will be restored, and the narrative will be written cleanly enough to satisfy those who still pretend order is gentle." He turned His helm back toward her, the molten glow behind the eyes pulsing with quiet finality. "But understand this. The moment you cease requiring death to secure your dominion is the moment your dominion begins to die."

There was no threat in the words, only fact, the sort spoken by a being who had watched centuries of worlds prove him right. "You will hurt us later." He said, echoing her promise without irony, "And we will endure it. As we have endured everything else." His gauntlet flexed at His side, the faintest tremor of Godflame running along the seams of the armor like a sleeping storm stirring, still dissipating from its earlier wrath. "For now, Empress, we build. On the bones of what could not be saved, and what was never worth saving."

Darth Carnifex | Srina Talon​

 

[Srina Talon]

Alvaria: Darth Carnifex | Darth Prazutis
Location: Alvaria

____________________________________________________

The crystal structures that Srina had created still hummed, synchronized with her, breathing as she breathed. The pale woman did not turn away from Carnifex's touch, and her lithe form settled into the cradle of his hands with the instinct of something that had done so a hundred thousand times before. Pieces of a whole, falling into place. Her eyes, dark as pitch, seemed to soften around the edges, but it was clear that corruption thrummed freely in her veins. It was the strength that she often kept hidden, buried, beneath duty, poise, and layers of ice. The sharp edges of the Butcher King's armor should have caused discomfort—But instead?

Her pulse slowed, and the dark wave within her temporarily stilled.

His words settled like dust along the edge of her jaw.

There was comfort to be found there, dark, and rotten truths that were cold in the wake of such wanton cruelty…But it was there. Dangerous, real. An eternal anchor in a sea of screaming dead, for Carnifex knew that her eyes did far more than see. The Dark Lord had the advantage of knowing her almost better than she knew herself, second, perhaps only to Empyrean. He knew what she held back. He knew the pains she took, the temperance expressed, even when he couldn't understand her reasoning. There were hours, days, and months' worth of conversation in one action…In one embrace, where he enfolded her, without thought or remorse. Just one.

One moment—That kept her from imploding.

Her fingers curled tighter through his, weaving together with practiced inevitability and acceptance.

It would always end this way.

"You have done what you will do…", she murmured after a long moment, her cheek touched with a shocking smear of red, likely from contact with his armor, "—And I will do what I must do."

It was simple to claim agency for a massacre when neither of the Sith Lords in the throne room with her had to return to court with news that an entire system had been destabilized. Not by Jedi, nor enemies, but by their own in a fit of bloody vengeance from godly creatures who never forgot or forgave a slight. Her shoulders rose and fell evenly, finding control in the aftermath. It was strangely quiet now…Save, for the crystals singing back to her. There was no one left nearby to scream.

When she pulled back from Darth Carnifex and her feet touched the ground, the last of his calm slipped from her body. The room seemed to remember in that moment that she was not just weary.

She was holding on to an ocean inside her ribs.

It was also in that moment that Darth Prazutis chose to lecture her about death. The temperature shifted by degrees while she remained still as stone, air thinning, as pressure began to build once more. Slowly, she turned to face the one who repeatedly took from her. The movement was slow, exact, and Echani-perfect. Lengths of snow-white hair whispered in a wind that didn't exist, and her voice cut through the room like the quietest thunder.

"One of you speaks of passion, while the other claims there is none to be found. Choose."

She was not a child for wisdom to be imparted; regardless, the intention. Srina did not ask for a sermon, and given current events, it would be wholly unwise to attempt one. Her head tilted, and eyes of endless night seemed to fill with stars, one by one, appearing as if she had become something breathtakingly unholy throughout this day. "You misunderstand me… I do not mourn for weakness culled, nor, will I weep for the loss of the Tsis'Kaar. They were finished the moment the Malum of House Marr disappeared…."

A breath fluttered through her, elegant, as always.

"Perhaps, the moment Ophedia was slain by her children."

She drew the hand of Darth Carnifex up while watching his uncle, slowly, pressing his large palm to her cheek in a way that was not unpossessed. Her tone deepened, changing from something distant and airy to filling the room not with volume, but gravity, like the grinding slowness of a planet turning. "What I take issue with is your presumption…You act as if you are the architect to my thoughts. To my grief. To my intent. As if you could possibly understand…"

Every moment that she was required to be here, dealing with this complication, was another moment that her presence was denied elsewhere. They left ragged, ugly wounds, where she would have utilized precision. Not every threat was worth their time. Not every threat, not every slight, required obliteration. "You do not know me, Darth Prazutis . Even through the echo of your nephew…You do not know me. Do not speak as if you do."

The two Sith Lords with her drew a long-suffering sigh from her lips. They were both right and wrong in a day and age that had modernized, changed, since the last Empire had fallen. No. There were some threads that would always remain a constant, but the truth was, beyond all things, that if the Sith Order wished to remain a nation—There had to be some level of what was in their namesake.

Order.

"I do not desire the lie of peace.", she murmured, soft once more, though her appearance remained both beautiful and fearsome. She kept the hand of someone who could kill her with half a move close, never afraid, only focused. Both on her words and on the death that still rolled through Alvaria…She could feel it. Lives, swirling down the drain. Disappearing. "But—"

"If either of you feels ready to resume the mantle of Emperor of the Sith…Challenge me. Take it. Until then… I do expect that you will, at the very least, understand that I will not be the caretaker of every graveyard you leave behind."

Death had its place. They were Sith—Not Jedi. None present would flinch from that truth. They culled weakness, excised rot, and ripped out tumors before they could metastasize. But if all they left behind was ash…They were not preserving strength. They were strangling it, starving it.

Srina did not object to what they had done; she objected to the inefficiency of it. Alvaria could have been brought in line through Malum's disappearance. It was the perfect opportunity to provide correction and bend the people of this world to the will of the Order. It was possible that this new fear could still be manipulated in their favor, but it would be far, far more difficult to sway loyalists. The capital was a wasteland that would need to be rebuilt, with the system in a state of chaos, with untold resources lost…And more opportunities for their enemies to spread filth, lies.

"You may think that you ask nothing of me when you spill the blood of our people like wine on the floor…But you do. You ask it of me, over and over. It is my burden. I will carry it…But do not pretend that the cost is small or that the way forward is without consequence."

Carnifex...He would feel the profound distance in her touch. Something, akin to sadness...But far more complicated. She spoke of a consequence that, regardless of how she felt about it, the Empress would likely become…

For all of them.

None would be spared if her anger actually made itself known. Nothing, and no one.