Tyrant Queen of Darkness

"Young blood."
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The chamber had been prepared with her usual precision.
Stone walls rose into darkness, their surface scarred by Malachor's storms, but polished smooth where her attendants had set their tools. A long table of blackened alloy dominated the center, its surface swept bare save for a single holopad and a chalice of red wine. To one side, a scattering of mechanical parts—deliberately placed, unassembled—waited as if abandoned mid-project. They were not abandoned, of course. They were bait.
Darth Virelia stood at the head of the table, her presence filling the chamber with the inevitability of a tide. Tyrant's Embrace clung to her frame, its alchemized plates gleaming with a faint, unnatural sheen that caught the violet fire of the chamber's sconces. The armor was more than protection—it was testament. A resonance of will and domination, the echo of souls bound and bent into the steel. Every movement of it was quiet thunder, each joint articulating like the hiss of a blade being drawn.
She did not sit.
The mechanic would be brought to her soon enough, and when they entered, they would see her exactly as she intended: a figure immovable, waiting not with impatience, but with the poise of someone who already knew how the conversation would end. Her questions had been prepared hours earlier, carefully sequenced, though she would depart from them at will. Precision was useful. Surprise was necessary.
She allowed herself a sip of wine, savoring its bitter weight before setting the chalice down without sound. Malachor's air was dry and acrid, but the taste grounded her.
This was no ordinary interview. The Dark Court did not recruit blindly. Every new addition had to be weighed like a coin, inspected for flaws, tested for strength. A mechanic was not a warrior, but she valued them more than most warriors ever understood. Flesh broke. Steel endured—if shaped correctly. The Court needed hands capable of more than maintenance; it needed vision disguised as pragmatism. Someone who could coax loyalty from circuits and miracles from wreckage.
The holopad blinked once. A quiet signal: the mechanic had arrived at the fortress gates and was being escorted down. She tapped it once, dismissing the notice. Her gaze shifted to the unassembled parts on the table—scrap metal to most eyes, but with one or two unmarked pieces that required insight to place correctly. She intended to watch closely whether the mechanic noticed.
The chamber's heavy doors groaned faintly on their hinges. Soon they would open. She stood utterly still, armored gauntlets folded behind her back, her breathing calm, her presence coiled like a serpent at rest. She thought of all the others who had sat in that chair before—the smugglers who thought charm would carry them, the killers who mistook obedience for loyalty, the scholars who drowned in their own words. Most had failed. A few had surprised her.
She wondered, as her violet eyes fixed on the door, which path this one would take.
