Private Brought Into Darkness

[Darth Virelia]

"Endless War."

Tags - Darth Nathrax

The shuttle cut through the smog like a scalpel, a black wedge slipping into the open wound of Artus Prime. Slag fires licked the horizon. Ore-haulers lay on their sides like broken beetles. Somewhere below, a drill site had become a battlefield: miners in hardseal, mercenaries in mismatched armor, and hired witches who mistook anger for power. The ground shook with shaped charges and cheap artillery—cheap enough to spend, loud enough to feel important.

She liked the noise.

Virelia stood in the open maws of the ramp as the wind knifed past, cloak snapping, armor humming with a low, predatory purr. Violet light bled under the mask's lenses—an electric promise. In the backwash of the engines her silhouette was a dare: poised, unhurried, utterly at home in ruin.

"They said he was a warlord," she murmured to no one in particular. "Warlord is a generous title for anyone who fights to be seen." A fingertip traced the rail, idly, as if tasting the metal of a stranger's teeth. "But some rumors deserve to be seduced into becoming true."

The ramp kissed cinder. She stepped into heat that clung like want, particulate ash stippling polished pauldrons, turning the white of her breath into smoke. Ahead, an elevated conveyor ran like a spine over the scarred plain to a processing tower shaking under mortar bloom. The warlord's banner—crude, clever—hung from the tower's ribbed flank: a -sigil burned into synthcloth with the same obsession a child might scorch initials into bark. Possessive. Hungry. Announcing a claim to a world that did not love anyone.

She smiled beneath the mask.

The first squad that saw her tried to take cover and failed at it. She did nothing—no gesture, no flare—only let her presence lean. Knees found gravel. Fingers forgot triggers. Fear, properly tuned, does not look like panic. It looks like obedience that believes it was its own idea.

Blasterfire traced ragged constellations through the haze. She let it write its nonsense and walked straight through, trailing silence behind her like a train. When a bolt came purely by chance too near to be polite, she shifted its path with a thought so lazy it was almost affectionate. The shot curved away and cut a warning glyph into a stack of ore crates. A handful of men swore. One laughed from disbelief. Their hearts changed tempo. She filed the tempos away.

Close now—close enough to feel the thing that had drawn her. Not a person yet. A pressure. A weather system of will. It rolled out from the tower's core—compressed, violent, badly leashed—and every time it flared she could hear structure break somewhere inside. Floor plates. Ribs. The bright chime of discipline failing in someone who had only ever commanded by being louder than the room.

"Ah," she said softly, delighted. "You are real."

Her gauntlet brushed a dead man's pauldron as she passed. The corpse twitched, jostled by an explosion across the yard. She didn't look. No need to confess interest to the dead. She had a living thing to catch.

At the base of the tower a brace of militia blocked her path with all the doomed gallantry of a last-ditch plan. One of them—for once, a sensible one—lifted an open hand instead of his rifle and shouted over the war, "Identify yourself!"

Virelia let the request travel through her. Then she tilted her head as if considering mercy. When she replied, it was with the tone reserved for lovers and verdicts.

"Darth Virelia."

It struck them in different ways—some flinched, one laughed again (a brave man, or a stupid one), two lowered their muzzles without understanding why. She stepped between their barrels as if slipping into an offered seat, and they parted because she had already decided that they would.

Inside, the tower smelled of hot metal and wet copper. Stairwells spiraled up like throats. Somewhere above, something screamed with power and then cut off abruptly, as if bitten. She unsealed her mask. The air was terrible. She breathed it anyway. It put a film on her tongue like a promise.

"Warlord," she called, voice lilting, intimate, as if they were already alone. A shell burst somewhere close enough to shake rust into slow, red snowfall. "You have made an entrance. Now make a choice."

She began to climb, unhurried, every step a lover's hand on a bruise.

"I've come to invite you to the Dark Court," Virelia said, eyes bright as a sin. "Or to demonstrate why you should have asked first."

 

[Darth Nathrax]

Then forces clashing around the tower were a mix of droids, mercenaries, and trained troopers in various armors. One figure stood out among all of them however, a tall black blur on the battlefield. He was mounting a one man assault on the tower, one guided by a palpable malice and lust for blood. That was the easiest way to track him, feeling his power though the force. As the distance between the two of them grew shorter, that madness only became thicker in the air.

Nathrax was a force of nature on the battlefield, a weapon honed like a scythe, cutting through people like so much chaff. He spun, jumped, and somersaulted his way up the tower. Every room he went into became a killing field, his expertise with a lightsaber apparent from a mastery of Ataru.

As he entered into a large one banquet hall in the tower, the Nagai smiled under his mask. They were ready for him, he could sense it. dozens of bodies waiting for him, blasters at the ready. His hands stopped just before opening the door, he heard the voice of something different. A voice like milk and honey inside his fractured psyche. Was this some new chem side effect? No, this was another Sith...

"Warlord," she called, voice lilting, intimate, as if they were already alone. A shell burst somewhere close enough to shake rust into slow, red snowfall. "You have made an entrance. Now make a choice."

"You speak to me in a voice from far away, yet I cannot feel your essence... Such subtlety is admirable," Nathrax said, his voice ragged and hoarse, but not without it's own charm. "Perhaps I should come to meet you in person, rather than continue to cut through the rabble?"

Nathrax was never going to say no to more slaughter, but he did need to stop playing with his food. To that end, he clutched his hand, a set of needles ejecting from his armored fingers. He jabbed himself in the neck with these needles, stims flooding his body like a river of fire. Eurphoria overtook his senses, colors became more vivid, and sounds assaulted his system!

"Yes! Now let the bloodshed begin in earnest! Cower sheep, for the blade of slaughter comes!"

It was unclear who he was shouting at, or why, but he yelled nonetheless! The wiry man kicked open the doors, and charged in, his force-enhanced speed and reflexes only pushed further by the stims. He leapt from target to target, cutting them down with with his shoto and longsaber. Not a single bolt or slug landed, and soon the banquet hall was a horror scene, bodies and bits lying everywhere.

"I've come to invite you to the Dark Court," Virelia said, eyes bright as a sin. "Or to demonstrate why you should have asked first."

"Come then stranger, by all means... I am willing to hear about this Dark Court of yours."

Nathrax was unaware that his exploits were being measured by a far more intelligent predator. One that stalked and skulked her prey, rather than killing them on the spot.

 

[Darth Virelia]

"Endless War."

Tags - Darth Nathrax

Applause cracked once in the doorway, slow and unhurried, a lacquered sound against steel and blood. Virelia did not hurry to cross the threshold. She let the massacre breathe. Let the room register the contrast between his storm and her tide. Her visor was unsealed; violet light licked the edges of her irises like phosphor. Ash stippled the dark gloss of her plates. She stood as if the carnage had been arranged for her—tasteful, competent, promising.

"You move like a blade that believes it is a wind," she said, voice warm enough to melt the chill in a corpse. "Ataru rarely keeps its feet long enough to think. You have taught it to think while airborne. That pleases me."

She stepped around a collapsed table, fingers trailing the lip as if drawing a private sigil. Shards and spent casings rose at a thought and pirouetted, aligning into a neat helix before drifting down again. Discipline, demonstrated without insistence. "The chem chorus in your blood is loud," she went on, as if discussing a vintage. "Useful, to prime the world into the right colors. But it is not your god. You are. I offer liturgy befitting that truth."

The Dark Lady halted an arm's length away, close enough for the low hum of her armor to register as a purr. Her words softened in the way silk softens—a friction that invites more of itself. "The Dark Court is not charity, nor is it a leash for strays. It is a pact that turns appetite into jurisdiction. It is where warlords who refuse to be domesticated learn to be inevitable."

She lifted her hand, palm open—no compulsion riding the gesture, only the poised promise of it. "You will keep your name. Your banner. Your method. You will bring me your corner of night and swear it by oath and cut. In return you receive armories that never go unfed, hunts curated to your taste, and the protection of my shadow so that small men with large signatures stop imagining they can contain you with paper."

Virelia let the ruined hall paint her reflection in a hundred warped surfaces. "Service is simple. Tribute in materiel or in fear—both spend well. A tithe of obedience when I call, not because I cannot act without you, but because I prefer my victories to taste of talented company." Her smile eased into something intimate. "And indulgences. I write them. You cash them. When the galaxy clucks about restraint, you will have writ in violet ink that says otherwise."

She paced once in a slow half-circle, studying him as one studies a living weapon one intends to keep razor-honest. "You are a scythe. Alone, you harvest. With me, you choose the harvest. Whole provinces. Whole myths." A beat, then the gentle sting of a test: "Or do you prefer to be a rumor that burns bright and dies on an invoice, remembered only by quartermasters and widows?"