Private Dance with the Devil

[Darth Nefaron]

And so we find her true weakness.

How far is she willing to go to have her victory?

In killing Malum, what will she need to sacrifice?
​

Nefaron ignored any slight toward his character, simply offering a quiet smile as Serina laid out her goals, outlining her red line in regards to the leader of the Tsis'Kaar. There hadn't been truer words spoken, but Malum's death was not a focus for the Corpse Lord. Not yet, at least. A more careful approach was necessary in order to fully remove the threat of Darth Malum and his horrid House of Marr. The entire bloodline would have to be eliminated, ripped up root and stem, and tossed into the flames.

"Do not mistake my intentions, Lady Calis. Malum will die, and perhaps I might even allow you that honor, but look at the bigger picture."

Turning away, Nefaron approached the central viewport, a large window that overlooked the vast wasteland of Anoat and its endless storms. He folded his hands behind his back and watched each chaotic bolt of lightning strike the surface.

"The reason Malum maintains his position is not through his raw power or skill as a combatant. He wields a weapon I find to be entirely foreign to the Sith, a disease I would see expunged. Do you know of what I speak?"

Nefaron gave her a moment, perhaps to consider where he was leading her. In the end, he spoke up regardless of any answer she provided.

"Loyalty. He has created a power structure that is loyal not only to him personally, but his pathetic family. The House of Marr must be destroyed along with its master. You could kill Malum tomorrow, and we would still be in the same position. I am working, no, poisoning Malum so that he reveals who he truly is. A man bereft of his friends and allies. A corrupt tyrant who had compromised every bit of honor he once had in search of power. Once he is isolated and alone, then you may strike him down."

The Dark Lord did not bother turning back, he simply continued to watch the turmoil of the world that he had made his own.

"I am not asking you to bow or kneel, I simply ask you to be patient. Continue your operations on Saijo and prove your strength. No one is rushing to provide Darth Fury with any aid, for to accept that aid is an admission of weakness. After all, you are not of our Order. To fall to an outsider is a mark of failure, and that is not something the Sith will tolerate."

Nor would Nefaron, for that matter. This also acted as a subtle threat to his newest Acyolte that she was not beyond his power to destroy, especially within the walls of his fortress. For all her strength and cunning, it was clear she was still exploring her connection to the Dark Side. He needed only to dangle her failure to contain the spirits of the past, show her that she was indeed still vulnerable to powers she had yet to master. Yes, she can claim to be corruption made manifest; she can claim that the galaxy will come to love her as much as it fears her, but in the end, there are powers buried in the dark places of the galaxy that she has yet to confront and master. Nefaron can show her the way, but she must continue to prove that she is capable of continuing on as his partner.

It was only after she had been given time to process what he had offered that Nefaron finally turned back to his would-be ally, the flash of lightning illuminating him briefly. Without light, he appeared to be little more than a floating set of robes, a darkness attempting to take physical form.

"You will have your battle. Malum will lie bloody at your feet. But only when I have made him a monster worth slaying."

TAG: Darth Virelia ​

 

[Darth Virelia]

"Try to keep pace, Nefaron."

Tag - Darth Nefaron
Mentions: Darth Malum of House Marr



The air in the control chamber was still, the silence given weight by the low hum of arcane machinery and the flickering of static-red light from the holoprojector. Serina stood motionless beside Nefaron, yet everything about her presence suggested impending violence—contained, sharpened, and ready to be unleashed at the first permissible moment. Her voice, when it came, was slow. Cold. It marched from her lips with the brutal discipline of a thousand boots in unison, echoing like the prelude to war.

"You misunderstand me, Lord Nefaron."

There was no disrespect in her tone—only brutal clarity.

"I understand what you're doing. I see the artistry in it. Isolation. Discredit. Humiliation. You want to gut him before the final strike. Turn his loyalists into nothing more than ash-covered statues, whispering regrets in a ruined throne room."

Her hand curled into a fist, gauntlet creaking.

"But I do not care. I do not care if he is ripe. I do not care if he is loved. I do not care if every coward in the Sith Order sings his name in trembling reverence and empties their coffers to see him kept aloft like some pantomime saint."

She took a single step forward, and the echo it made rang like a war drum.

"He is rot, and the Order—your Order—would rather cradle a bloated, dying thing than admit they erred. So desperate are they to salvage the investment that is Darth Malum—to protect the illusion that their breeding experiments, their noble lines, their empty Houses have yielded something more than mediocrity—that they chain themselves to failure rather than face the truth. The truth is this: he is an insult. A parody. A sack of breathless titles stuffed into a man who cannot even secure his own Third Legion."

The words spat out like rifle fire—each syllable measured, merciless, and final.

"He is not just unworthy of the throne. He is unworthy of death by any meaningful hand. And I intend to give him the 'duel' he deserves."

She moved then, slowly, circling the edges of the holoprojector table like a predator inspecting its battlefield, tracing the edge of the galactic map with a gloved finger. Her voice darkened with every measured word.

"Not the old kind. Not some ceremony of warriors, where honor meets fury and the crowd sings of victory. No."

She looked up at Nefaron then—eyes sharp, incandescent with rage honed by focus.

"I will gut him like a traitor in the dark. I will send a thousand of my soldiers to his doorstep—not masked assassins, not shadows—but proper legions. Men with rifles and orbital fire support. They will bombard his palace. They will turn his estate to glass. If he tries to run, I will have shuttles waiting to shoot him down like a diseased mynock clawing toward open sky."

There was a brief pause, but her breath didn't quicken. Her rage was refined, controlled—a furnace, not an explosion.

"There will be no duels. No last words. No audience."

She gestured in the air as if directing artillery positions.

"His guards will die first. Then his slaves. Then his mistresses, his advisors, his distant cousins—every soul within five kilometers will be reduced to heat and red ruin. His banners will burn. His name will be stricken from archives, from memory, from language. His voice will never echo again."

Another pause.

"And when I find him, not crouched in defiance but weeping, clutching the last fragments of a legacy that never belonged to him…"

Serina's gloved hand drew a slow line across her throat.

"…he will die like a common criminal. Executed without trial, without spectacle. No song. No elegy. Just a pulse of heat and a pile of bone."

A slow breath escaped her lips. For a moment, something almost like calm returned to her features.

"You speak of monsters worth slaying. I say we make a warning out of him."

Her tone softened—not in emotion, but in strategy.

"This isn't just personal, though it is personal. I hate him. I hate what he stands for. He's not a tyrant. Tyrants are feared. He's not a visionary. Visionaries are followed. He's not even ambitious. He is lazy. A lazy man in the seat of kings, propped up by inertia, by bureaucracy, by desperate cowards who'd rather keep a predictable mediocrity than risk the chaos of someone truly hungry."

She turned to face Nefaron fully, her stance not confrontational but absolute.

"You are Death, Lord Nefaron. You bring silence, oblivion, horror. I respect that."

She brought her hand to her chest.

"I am Pestilence. I bring ruin over time. I fester in the hearts of those who thought themselves immune. I will bleed the Empire dry of its parasites, and Malum is the most bloated of all. I don't want him to be a martyr. I want him to be nothing. Not even bones. Just regret."

Another step forward, close enough now that she and Nefaron could see the madness in each other's eyes—the difference between rot and flame.

"I will play along. I will pretend. I will meet his emissary and nod and smile and wear the velvet mask of diplomacy. But know this…"

She leaned close, voice like the hum of distant artillery—cold, patient, ready.

"If that man ever thinks he has a leash for me, I will garrote him with it. If he ever dreams of bending me, I will break him. And if you ask me, once more, to wait…"

The smile that touched her lips was not cruel, but it was not sane.

"…then I will wait until I am ready. Because I do not compromise my ambitions. Not for honor. Not for pride. And not even for vengeance. I will kill him when it matters. When it scars the Sith so deeply they bleed into my open hands."

She stepped back, her gaze still locked to Nefaron's, her armor gleaming faintly in the red glow of the map like the breastplate of a blood-drenched general.

"Let them love Malum. Let them cradle him. Let them whisper prayers to his glory."

Her voice became a vow.

"And then let me burn him. And every fool who stood behind him."

 

[Darth Nefaron]

"I wonder, my dear Acolyte, if that means you'll burn me too."
​

The Corpse Lord could not help but let loose a low chuckle. To say he stood at Malum's side was a mischaracterization of their relationship. Malum thought Nefaron to be a beast on a leash, one that could be controlled and loosed on the enemies of the Tsis'Kaar at will. In truth, Nefaron was the cancerous growth, the hidden disease that would spread to every corner of Malum's little Empire until it came crumbling down. Serina may deliver the killing blow, but Nefaron intended to render the House of Marr defunct, a dead bloodline that simply needed snuffing out.

But that avoided his comment. The Corpse Lord was fully aware that the Dark Jedi would turn on him one day.

"You have such a way with words, so vivid and full of grandeur that you manage to conceal the darkness that threatens to consume you. You walk a thin line, Lady Calis, be careful that you don't devolve into madness for the sake of your dreams."

As the pair spoke, a droid approached and offered what amounted to a bow. Sleek black and multi-armed, the droid was a vision from a twisted nightmare. Its surgical appendage appeared to have dried blood from past experiments, but that was hardly surprising given the master it served.

"My Lord, My Lady-" it began, a singular red eye seemingly scanning them both before fixing on the Corpse Lord, "-a shuttle has been prepared. As requested, master, a sample of our latest batch of toxin has been secured aboard for use by Lady Calis."

"Seneschal, you've ruined my surprise for the fair Lady!"

Nefaron offered mock fury but waved off the droid, who was more than happy to return to his duties in the laboratory.

"I thought a welcome gift might be prudent. Let all the galaxy know that Darth Nefaron is nothing but generous to those in his service. Allow me to leave you with one final bit of knowledge before you depart."

Nefaron gestured for Serina to walk with him, the pair making their way back to the main turbolift as they made the trek to the main hangar. The Corpse Lord's hand remained folded behind his back as he walked, making him appear the wise old master when in truth he was something far worse than that.

"Malum's death will not scar the Sith. One could hardly call him that, considering he has forsworn many of our teachings for his own bastardised set of pathetic morals. You are pruning the branches, so to speak, removing dead weight from our order so that we might move forward. This is not the first time a heretic has taken the Sith mantel and twisted it, but we have always survived. Our destiny is to carry out the grand design, to at last destroy our ancient Jedi enemies and usher in a new, dark era. Malum will never live to see that day. You have come to ensure that is the case for me, and so I must thank you for that."

When they arrived in the hangar, a shuttle was already warmed and prepared for the Dark Jedi, a new ally of the Corpse Lord and bringer of death to countless systems. But Nefaron had one last gift to offer his newest ally.

"When the time comes, Lady Calis, I will make your death quick. Should I prevail, of course. But we have much to do before we can turn our blades to each other's throats. Anoat is open to you until then, and I will call on you again when the time is right. For now, enjoy my gifts and bring terror to this pathetic galaxy. Warm an old man's dead heart." ​

TAGS: Darth Virelia ​

 

[Darth Virelia]

"Try to keep pace, Nefaron."

Tag - Darth Nefaron



Serina stood beneath the gleaming curve of the shuttle's ramp, a sculpted silhouette carved in defiance and confidence, her armor a deep, brooding black that drank the sterile light of the hangar and turned it into something sultry and dangerous. Each step she took reverberated through the hangar like the ticking of a bomb. The hangar, the droids, the dark steel—all were irrelevant set pieces compared to the electric tension that hummed between her and the Corpse Lord.

She turned back one final time before boarding.

The air between them was heavy, pregnant with prophecy.

"Then let us call this what it is," she said, her voice low and rich as poison wine. "We are not master and acolyte. Not truly. We are two vectors. Two infections. You, old death, patient and methodical, the rot that gnaws silently through the bones of empires."

Her head tilted slightly, the corner of her mouth curling upward, a smile that promised either affection or annihilation—perhaps both.

"And I? I am the fever that follows. The lust that sets hearts to madness. The broken mind that dances as the world burns."

She began to ascend the ramp, slowly, deliberately, hips swaying in rhythm with her boots like a metronome set to the cadence of war.

"We will kill gods, you and I. Not out of piety. Not for destiny. But because we can. Because they built their thrones on lies, and we are truth wearing human skin."

She paused at the top of the ramp, one hand on the frame, body turned slightly to silhouette her form against the open shuttle. The barest flicker of the Force coiled at her fingertips, sensual and threatening all at once.

"I will accept your gift. I will bring war in lace gloves and veils of perfume. I will seduce their fears and chain them to their own expectations."

She turned her head fully, locking her violet-slitted gaze on Nefaron like the crosshairs of a sniper scope.

"And when the time comes, if you think yourself clever enough to bring about my end… I only ask that you try with your full strength."

Her voice dropped, silken and honeyed with menace.

"I want to feel you struggle. I want to hear the great Darth Nefaron roar against the inevitability of me."

There was no arrogance in her words, no insult. Only promise.

Only respect.

Only certainty.

Only truth.

Then simply:

"We ride, ride to apocalypse."

She vanished into the shuttle, the ramp sealing with a hiss like the whisper of a guillotine descending.

The engines screamed.

A storm gathered over Anoat once again.