Private Diarch’s Courtesy

[Darth Virelia]

"Credits, oh credits..."

Tag - Diarch Rellik



The stars above Bastion did not twinkle. They watched—silent, cold, unblinking—like sentinels waiting for the next name to carve itself into history.

And from the void between them, she came.

The shuttle that descended through Bastion's upper atmosphere bore no markings. No escort. No heraldry save the shape of inevitability itself. A sleek wedge of obsidian and silver, matte-plated and mute, it did not announce itself to planetary control so much as it presented itself—its codes clearing every layer of security with pre-authorized precision. No fanfare. No threat. Simply presence. The kind that bypassed ceremony because it had already been decided it would be received.

Inside, Darth Virelia stood at the center of her private cabin, spine straight, hands folded neatly behind her back as the vessel shuddered slightly with final descent.

She was clad not for war, but for gravity.

Tyrant's Embrace shimmered beneath her high-collared travel cloak, hood drawn over her helm. Her silhouette was blade-perfect—symmetrical, severe, beautiful in the way of a glacier moments before the crack. Even here, among dark metal walls and ambient red lighting, she felt like the only real thing aboard the ship. A pressure point around which matter folded.

Her gaze—sixfold and glowing through the helm's forward lenses—fixed on the growing skyline of Rellik and Reign's capital from the viewport. It had changed since she'd last seen it, and yet the bones remained familiar: loyalist bastions carved from old Imperial ideals, recontextualized through a more pragmatic lens. Bastion had not bowed to nostalgia. Nor had Rellik.

That was why she'd come.

She didn't need another fanatic. She needed a sovereign. A peer.

Two years had passed since the Rakatan AI on Dantooine. Since the last time she and Rellik had stood back-to-back beneath a fractured sky, with data constructs screaming like spirits and lightning boiling the air around them. He had seen her then—before the title, before the armor, before the galaxy began to shift beneath her shadow. He had seen Serina.

Now he would meet Darth Virelia.

Not as a stranger, but as something worse: a memory evolved beyond recognition.

The landing struts deployed with a resonant hiss. A final tremor ran through the ship's spine. And then, silence.

Virelia stepped toward the ramp.

The air outside was cool, dry, and heavy with the scent of ionization. She descended with stately poise, the synthetic cape flowing behind her like a shadow given will. She had sent no entourage. No apprentices. No bodyguards. Only a single message days ago—encrypted, brief, unmistakably hers:

"Two years, Rellik. I believe that's long enough."

Now she came to collect on the bond forged in that crucible.

But this wasn't a reunion. It was a calculation.

The Velgrath had begun. The Fourth Legion loomed. And if Bastion aligned—quietly, cleanly, precisely—it would never be known as a supporter.

Only as to accept the inevitable.

Virelia paused at the foot of the shuttle's ramp. Let them see her. Let them feel it in their lungs—that subtle ache behind the eyes, the one that whispered:

You are in the presence of the future. Adapt. Or be rewritten.

She waited, helm tilting slightly, like a queen greeting the battlefield.

Let Rellik come. Let the conversation begin.

The war was already halfway over.

 

[Diarch Rellik]

Here, within the shadow of the Crucible's monolithic spire, even silence had weight. The towering obsidian archways of the private landing entrance stood flanked by two Preservers, still as statues. Robed in order to their standing in the force. One in deep crimson and obsidian armor stood horizontally to another in white with gold trim. Their helms were featureless, emotionless. They had trained their whole lives to become more than sentinels. They were the soul of the Brotherhood, tempered into steel.

Rellik had requested the landing to be directly into the Crucibles hanger for this reason. He had read the report that Serina was at Serenno. Read the reports on her rise through the Sith order. Although he believed they were on amicable terms for the most part, they were still... equals. A hard ranking to get within the mind of the Diarch for those that belong to the "Sith" and "Jedi" dogma's. He would not hide behind his guards or walls but he did not want any zealots of Serina's new rank to cause a galactic incident. Better to catch and release, like a wild animal.

- Nodding to the two guards the doors hissed open and the man stepped unto the hangar landing bay. Seeing her again in all of her viper like glory.

Even now he could see the forge-light on her skin, flickering from times long past. The natural pose she struck that was both inviting and poisonous. He glanced at the weapon on her back. The same one she forged before him.

"Serina Calis." he said first, just to watch the name echo off her new silence. "Your presence always preludes significance. For what do I owe the honor of this visit." Finishing his words with a small bow that moved his cloak out of the way to show he was at least armed with his saber Conviction. "Your new armor looks as expected. Beautiful and powerful. I hear there is a new name that goes along with it." Flashing her a devilish smile similar to ones he did so long ago after she sliced sentinel droids in half with ease.

Darth Virelia

 

[Darth Virelia]

"Credits, oh credits..."

Tag - Diarch Rellik



The Crucible's air was heavier than she remembered.

Not in atmosphere, but in meaning.

As the twin Preservers parted and the obsidian doors hissed open, Darth Virelia remained perfectly still atop the shuttle ramp, framed in shadow like a statue come to mock divinity. The crimson and gold of the guards did not intimidate her. They were beautiful, certainly—sculpted devotion encased in purpose—but they were not meant for her. They were meant for what others assumed she might bring.

She brought nothing.

She was enough.

Her head turned slightly as the man emerged—Rellik. Still taller than most, still clad in that weather-worn elegance of a sovereign who didn't need to posture. His saber, exposed by a courteous shift of the cloak, was less threat and more punctuation: I remember who you are. Do you remember who I've become?

Then he spoke her name.

"Serina Calis."

And just like that, the illusion cracked. Just for a heartbeat. The name curled through the air like smoke through glass—anachronistic, misfit, intimate. She let it echo, let it linger, a knowing silence pressing behind it like breath on skin.

Then she descended.

Each step was soundless—taloned boots whispering over durasteel with the restraint of a predator that chose not to pounce. Her cape coiled in slow waves behind her, tendrils of synthweave mimicking the hush of approaching thunder.

She stopped a polite distance from him.

And then—slowly—her helm disengaged with a soft hiss. Six violet eyes folded closed, segmenting backward into her armored collar until only her true face remained.

Golden hair coiled in deliberate waves down one side of her cheek. Her skin, pale and impossibly smooth, caught the forge-light just as he'd remembered—but now with a sharper gleam. Sculpted by will. Hardened by evolution.

And her eyes.

Blue suns ringed in violet. Lit from within by the storm she now was.

She smiled—subtle, curved, deliberate. Not the warmth of a friend. The smile of a woman who knew what her smile did.

"Diarch Rellik," she said softly, her voice silk layered over command. "You wear time well. Fewer rulers can say the same. They fade. You... concentrate."

She stepped closer, one pace only. Enough to show trust. Enough to violate every security doctrine written since the Clone Wars.

"And I do appreciate the directness," she continued, tilting her head. "It would have been so easy to hide behind titles or courtiers. But you came yourself. That tells me this is still the man I met on Dantooine, not some myth hollowed out by duty."

Her gaze slid briefly toward his saber.

"Conviction," she murmured. "Still carried at the hip, rather than the back. Still unignited. A statement. One I understand."

Her smile grew—knife-sharp, almost teasing now.

"Yes," she said. "There is a new name. One I took, not inherited. One I crafted, as I once did that blade you remember."

She turned slightly, allowing him to see the haft of Ebon Requiem, mounted across her spine like an unspoken sentence.

"I am Darth Virelia now."

Pause. Breath. Not arrogance—invitation.

"But it pleases me that you remember who I was. Not many do."
Her tone dipped—cool, cultured, laced with heat. "Fewer still are allowed to speak that name without consequence."

Another beat of silence. Then:

"As to the honor of this visit?" Her eyes glinted like sunrise on a scalpel.

"I've come to speak of inevitability. Of order, of ambition, of wars not yet declared… and of how Bastion might help shape their ending."

A faint smile curved her lips. "Privately. Without zealots. Without ceremony. Just us."

She inclined her head in rare courtesy—earned, not given.

"After all... no one else alive knows what we both saw that day in the ruins of Dantooine."
Then, gently—licentiously, and with a wicked softness that knew the effect it carried:

"Would you walk with me, Rellik?"