Tyrant Queen of Darkness
"A war on the self."
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Reina Daival
The tank hummed with low, viscous resonance. The kind of sound that settled into the bones and whispered stay.
Deep beneath the surface jungles of Rakata Prime—where the canopy above choked out the stars and the ruins of the Infinite Empire bled power into the roots of the world—Darth Virelia stood alone with her prize.
The chamber was circular, obsidian-walled, smooth like a sanctum carved from volcanic glass. Bioluminescent flora—genetically tailored to Virelia's aesthetic—glowed in delicate spirals up the walls, casting the entire room in shades of violet, rose, and violent gold. The only illumination beyond them came from the tank itself: a cylindrical structure of dark transparisteel shot through with thin veins of circuitry and ritual etching. Alchemical seals pulsed in concentric rings across its surface.
And floating in its heart, suspended by a gel-like medium of soft green and gold, was Reina.
She was not bound. Not physically. No straps. No cuffs. Her arms drifted at her sides like she were dreaming underwater. Her head tilted gently downward, eyes closed, hair fanning out in a slow, aimless ballet. The nutrient-saturated medium clothed her better than any armor—it seeped into every pore, numbing, preserving, preparing. A chrysalis in the making.
She hadn't spoken since they arrived.
Virelia didn't mind.
The Sith Lord stood barefoot on the polished stone floor, arms loose at her sides, her armor peeled away in layers until only her long black underrobe clung to her lithe frame, parted slightly down the middle where her skin shimmered faintly with the residue of Force-charged incense. Her hair was unbound, cascading down like blonde ink. The air around her was warm, heavy with floral scent, and laced with a subtle electrostatic thrum that made every breath feel… intimate.
She watched Reina float in silence. Studying. Savoring.
This was no longer about breaking her.
That had already happened.
This was about shaping. About guiding the pieces into something sublime. Something that could bloom under careful hands.
"You always did look better in stillness," Virelia said softly, more to herself than to the girl in the tank. "Not the brittle kind—no. That frantic, jagged little edge of yours was always so exhausting to watch. But this…"
Her hand drifted along the outer glass, fingers trailing as if to trace the curve of Reina's cheek without truly touching. The connection was all imagined. All manufactured. And yet—utterly real in her mind.
"This is the silence you never gave yourself."
She paced slowly, each step unhurried, predatory in its grace, her violet eyes never leaving the form suspended in fluid. The alchemical sigils responded to her presence—low pulses of purple energy crawling across the glass in slow syncopation with Reina's faint heartbeat.
"You would have died for them, you know. For the people who forgot you. For the ones who feared you. Even for the ones who broke you." She exhaled with a wistful sigh. "You wanted to be a Jedi. Wanted it like a child wants praise. But you were always too honest to fit in their little temple games."
The lights dimmed slightly. Not from power loss—there was no such thing here—but as a cue, a rhythm Virelia herself had set to underscore her rituals. It made her voice seem closer. Lower. Wrapped in velvet.
"I'm not going to hurt you, Reina. Not in the way you understand. No torture. No scars. I don't need to twist you. I'm going to teach you what it means to feel again."
She leaned in, lips brushing the outer tank, leaving behind the faintest bloom of condensation.
