Friends On The Other Side

[Jairus Starvald]

EMPRESS TETA​

[member="Thorn"]​

​

Every world, city, place of urbanization had its margins.

Places where the law crept away into the shadows and hoped that it wouldn't be noticed by what crawled by. Empress Teta was no different in that regard. In fact... it had more of that than most planets. Not surprising, its entire culture was steeped in occultism, Sith ideology and other madness.

Jairus felt at home.

But sadly home was not embracing him as much as the Sith embraced it.

That would have to change.

While the Krath had been decimated many times over, they always seemed to find a way back to prominence. Right now a stream of them, a flow, an element was making it rather difficult for him to embed his people into the fabric of the city. The background noise was drowning and the Krath were already sipping at it.

They would have to be dislodged.

Jairus studied the building from the rooftop of a nearby surgeon's shop. It was closed for the night. The warehouse on the other side of the street?

Bustling with activity.

 

[Mav Halo]

[member="Jairus Starvald"]​

Like a predator set loose amongst a herd, the Apostate cut a clear passage through the milling crowds of the Cinnagar citizenry. Moving with a will and a singular purpose towards her destination. Scarcely batting a soot marked eyelid as the indignant looks and half-bitten curses she left trailing in her wake. And why would she?

The Loth-Wolf didn’t concern itself with the opinions of sheep.

No, Thorn’s mind was better preoccupied with the much more pressing issue at hand, namely that of achieving her goal and putting the stinking cesspool that was Empress Teta behind her as quickly as possible. From the ornate duracrete cladding to the very sharp vertical lines it cut into the skyline many leagues above her head, the sprawling ecumenololis seemed to be designed to put the former Seeker on edge at every twist and turn.

The subtle presence of the Krath, with their mocking parody of the Sith culture , only served to further add insult to injury. In turn fueling the fire that burned in her breast as she closed the distance on the warehouse, tossing the trappings of stealth aside as she simply cut a path straight towards the front entrance.

Two unremarkable looking thugs, cocky and loud in the reassurance their obvious massive builds lent them, sought to bar her entrance. Whatever mangled words of bravado they levied in her direction falling on deaf ears as she barely paid them any more attention than she had anyone else thus far. A consideration they failed to see as a blessing in disguise as the first one moved to lay hands on her when it became clear she wasn’t about to heed their warnings.

The first thug was on his knees, choking and clutching at his ravaged throat before his colleague even realized what had happened. Barely having time to open his mouth before Thorn’s short bladed knife had found its second target of the evening, planting itself between the man’s shocked and uncomprehending eyes. Rammed with enough brute force that it was simply left there; The Sith Seeker not even deigning to expand the necessary effort to retrieve her weapon as passed them both, stride unbroken, pushing through the brass plated doors and beyond.

The screams would begin in earnest but a few seconds later.

 

[Jairus Starvald]

[member="Thorn"]

She fights with the spirit of the young. Nothing held back.

Jairus had followed the sudden stride of a newcomer through the streets and raised his brow. Then, of course, all hell broke loose when she just ripped open their throats and puncturing the bone of their forehead without even so much as breaking their thread. "Seems Teta enjoys making things.... interesting." Jai murmured to himself before dropping off the roof, maneuvering with practiced ease, before landing on the ground. Knuckles scrapped the rough duracrete and the Sith pushed himself off.

Moments he walked past the two corpses growing cold.

A flick of his hand ripped the knife out of their skull. The squelch was distasteful, but the white handle made out of... bone? Maybe. Felt good to the touch. Balanced even for his large hand. The corridor held about three more corpses.

The room behind it was large- oval and it held a makeshift altar in the middle of it. A dismembered body, still bleeding from its cuts, on top of it.

That wasn't what got Jai's attention though- instead it was the battle in full-swing. Some dead were already on the floor, some still twitching with wounds and trying to rise. In the middle of it all was one Thorn, a woman and young. She fought with nothing held back, ferocious and hungry... or perhaps Jairus just wished to see himself in her, because the snarl of teeth and the pacing of feet felt familiar to him. Almost as if the Sith Lord knew her from something.

Some of the Krath detached themselves from the mania of the battle Thorn was waging.

Instead they opted to go for the new threat- maybe it was less dangerous.

Mistake.

 

[Mav Halo]

[SIZE=9pt][member="Jairus Starvald"][/SIZE]

[SIZE=9pt]The ritual, such as it was, was in full swing as Thorn made her entrance into the supposed inner sanctum. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=9pt]Her eyes quickly adjusting to flickering candlelight of the warehouse turned covert temple. Strategically placed to create heavy, forbidding shadows and add another level of theatrical cliche to the proceedings. As if the ornate robes, bronze masks and ridiculous chanting wasn’t enough. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=9pt]The head priest was the first to notice her. If his mouth was already stumbling over the barely recognisable syllables of the old tongue, the sight of a bloodstained interloper was enough to entirely derail his feeble attempts at issuing a blackened speech to his assembled congregation. A bastardised parody of one of the older, Nadd-based heresies no doubt. Trying to tap into the power that had forged the Krath into something capable of ravaging the galaxy so many millennia ago. [/SIZE]

The Apostate snorted.

There was no threat of that here. No real power. At best, the assembled cultists were nothing more than feeble minded children playing dress up. At worst…

As a sea of masks turned in her direction, Thorn was already shifting her weight almost absently to the side. A war sword cleaving the air the Apostate had occupied less than a heartbeat ago. Her hand snapping out to catch the topknot of the cultist assailant as he staggered off balance from his swing. Yanking his head back with a clinical, ruthless cruelty that was punctuated by a equally vicious downward guillotine blow to his exposed neck. Dead before he even hit the floor. A quick, merciful death in gratitude for the weapon he’d so kindly delivered into her awaiting grasp. For her misgivings on the cult thus far, the blade was exceptionally well balanced, if a little overly ornate for her tastes.

[SIZE=9pt]She allowed herself the luxury of a few practice swings while the rest of the cult looked on with shock and horror behind the blank, featureless masks. The palpable, raw fear they projected in the force stoking her temper. Worthless[/SIZE][SIZE=9pt]. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=9pt]The blade lashed out and a second body joined that of the first, their head hitting the ground a morbid second before their body moved to join it. Trash[/SIZE][SIZE=9pt]. Seven of their members dead and she hadn’t even broken a sweat. Yet they had the audacity to style themselves after the Sith? [/SIZE]

[SIZE=9pt]Her fingers turned silver as her grip on the sword tightened. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=9pt]She might have been an Apostate, but this was a blasphemy she wouldn’t let slide.[/SIZE]

​

[SIZE=9pt]***[/SIZE]​

​

[SIZE=9pt]Only when the blade was finally sheathed, skewered through the head priest’s heart and into the wall, did Thorn let the embers of her rage subside. Her anger temporarily sated and drowned by the blood so freely shed, yet hungering for more as she turned her baleful golden gaze on the huddling, shaking mass of figures that had retreated to the far end of the temple. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=9pt]Good, it seemed she had their attention.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=9pt]“You have something that does not belong to you.[/SIZE][SIZE=9pt]” Her voice was clipped, impatient as it was rough. The voice of someone unused to bandying words when actions could speak much louder. Her lips curling back across prominent canines at the effort it took to issue each word. “[/SIZE][SIZE=9pt]A holocron. One of great value. Surrender it and I might allow those of you still breathing to leave this place, refuse and...[/SIZE][SIZE=9pt]” [/SIZE]

She jerked her head towards the cooling pile of bodies behind her. The motion causing her to notice that they were no longer alone. A second interloper had made their way into the sanctum, slipping in unimpeded on her blood soaked coat tails no doubt. Not that he would’ve found much resistance. Unlike the terrified throng that labelled themselves Krath, this man was the real deal. A true Sith.

When had he slipped into the fray? Obviously early on, judging from the blood stains on his attire. Clearly not a friend or benefactor of the Krath, yet she did not recall having such a figure listed amongst her potential allies when she had set out on this quest. A rival for her prize or someone with a bone to pick with the cult?

[SIZE=9pt]Tt. Either way, such inattentiveness was a fatal error, one she had thought the Black Convent had trained out of her. It seemed her anger had gotten the better of her in more ways than one. A mistake she was keen to rectify.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=9pt]“For yoursake, I hope you do not have business with these people. One more body on the pyre will make little difference at this point.[/SIZE][SIZE=9pt]” [/SIZE]

 

[Jairus Starvald]

[member="Thorn"]

She would find him crouched next to one of the corpses growing cold.

Squinting at them.

Especially at the wounds that had caused them to expire. Ugly, gaping raw and angry, she had not so much sliced through them as much as ripping straight through and forgetting all the rest. Effective, no doubt, but not efficient. If she wasn't tired already, she would soon be and had there been more cultists? That would have been here end right there.

It was the fatal mistake of many proud predators.

Thinking that a herd of weaklings could not touch her, not when she ripped so easily through their numbers. "One more body...." Jairus mumbled softly as he rose up, hand flicking out and then squeezing shut in a fist.

Behind her the cultist she had been speaking to (one of the only ones still here, as most of them had fled the moment she turned away) cried out.

Knees shattered from sudden blunt trauma.

"Mine?" He stepped over the corpse. "Yours?" That last bit resonated in her mind, the wave like the smoke bellowed by a serpent still half-asleep. But oh so ready to wake up at a moment's notice if beckoned. "You killed those I was going to kill myself. Part of me is satisfied at a job acceptably done. Part... is still hungry." A shrug followed and it felt as if wings uncoiled within the Force.

Expansive.

Expanding.

"Which part should I listen to, Seeker?"

 

[Mav Halo]

[SIZE=9pt][member="Jairus Starvald"][/SIZE]

[SIZE=9pt]Thorn was dispassionately on as the cultist screamed out, the brutal display of telekinetic violence scarcely registering in the wake of the carnage she had already wrought. Her only concern now, was handling this interloper before the cultist succumbed to shock from his injuries. Not out of care for his welfare, the man was as good as dead the moment he saw fit to strap one of those ridiculous masks to his face, but for the information he had yet to render to her. If the Holocron was not with this particular cult, then the man would point her in the direction of the next, and so on and so forth until she had her prize in her hand. But first..[/SIZE]

[SIZE=9pt]Her gaze shifted and locked on a matching pair of baleful hues. [/SIZE]

So the man was no friend of the cultists, yet certainly no friend of hers, either.

It seemed the enemy of my enemy was more often than not your enemy as well.

A set of blood flecked teeth flashed in the candle light. Mirthless,derisive and without care for the morbid scene she had painted across the length and breadth of the warehouse. The enveloping approach of his presence in the force seeing hers contract, folding in on itself as it wrapped around the Apostate. As impressive as his technique seemed, one that would most certainly have cowed those uninitiated in the lesser mysteries, Thorn had little taste for such parlour tricks. Instead she sought to gather her presence tighter around her, layered like folded steel, and sharpened and honed to a blade-like perfection.

[SIZE=9pt]“[/SIZE][SIZE=9pt]Have a care not to choke yourself with such unchecked gluttony.[/SIZE][SIZE=9pt]” She replied curtly as she reached out her hand, fingers curling around the weathered hilt of the war sword she’d seen fit to discard scant moments ago, ruthlessly pulling it from the mangled body of the false priest. If he sought easy prey, then the man was mistaken in his choice of targets. “[/SIZE][SIZE=9pt]These… [/SIZE][SIZE=9pt]cultists[/SIZE][SIZE=9pt]… All share such a trait, all have either paid the price or will soon enough. A wise man should take heed from such a lesson.[/SIZE][SIZE=9pt]”[/SIZE]

 

[Jairus Starvald]

[member="Thorn"]

A rumble deep in his chest.

Mirth? The wakening of hunger yet untapped? Difficult to figure out as those eyes burned just a shade brighter at the display of... apathy. There were things that Jairus inspired in those around him.

Fear, pain, anger.... love. The soft flittering of wings against his skin and he could almost feel her at his side. Almost. Then it was gone again as the moment demanded attention, demanded retort. "You kill sheep and think yourself a wolf, seeker. It blinds you to the ocean's depth around you." A sigh as the presence slowly shrunk as if those same seprentine wings folded back into themselves.

"You are nothing but a distraction."

Not worth his wroth.

Behind her more had peeled away, until some simply froze in place. Beads of sweat trickling down. Fear in their eyes as their muscles did no longer answer them.

"What is it that she seeks, followers?" Jairus murmured softly past her. Silence, one breath, one heartbeat. Then- "The Holocron of the One. He Who Turned. His Shadow brings salvation to us all." All at once. Six voices responding in synced unison to the question posed by the Sith Lord. Head tilted, pondering that answer for a bit, wondering if he cared.

But maybe the fact that she cared was enough.

"...is that so?"

 

[Mav Halo]

[member="Jairus Starvald"]​

​

Her lip curled back further.

"I kill pretenders. Fools playing at games they do not understand. Attempting to invoke a power that aren't worthy to speak the name of." She gestured towards the profane altar of black marble that still held its most recent would be victim hostage as if to illustrate her point. The corrupted, bastardized Sith runes engraved on its surface in gold, platinum and bronze an unbearable affront to everything she had been raised for. Everything that had shaped her up until this point. Even if they did not stand in her way of her goal, her prize, dispatching these idiotic cultists would have been reward enough. "Do I revel in this task? Aye, as you would have no doubt in my place had you arrived but minutes earlier."

Thorn rested the back of the war sword against her shoulder, the shear length of the two handed weapon looking almost out of place against her stature, almost belying the ease and effortlessness in which she had wielded it. Almost. Those baleful, sulpherously golden eyes flickering towards the remaining cultists as they found themselves dominated by the Sith master. A flicker of distaste lurking in their unfathomable depths in the manner in which he peeled back their mental defenses like an over-ripe gaju onion.

She bristled.

"What I seek is none of your affair, Kraygerys." The last word was practically spat from her blood flecked tongue, her skin flashing a silverish tone as she stepped forward warningly. He might have dwarfed her in terms of experience and perhaps even power, but she she had not earned the title of Satchi without surmounting such obstacles before. "You wished to see this splint of the cult crushed, here it is. Broken perhaps not by your hand, but broken all the same. Your business here is concluded. Take your leave."

 

[Jairus Starvald]

[member="Thorn"]

His hand waved away the equation.

"You are no better than them. Arrogant, subsumed by dogma, fully convinced of your superiority." He didn't acknowledge her competency, because in his mind flowing through these cultists like a scythe was the bare minimum of being acknowledged by him. If Thorn had difficulty doing even that? Then she wouldn't have had a place in his considerations whatsoever.

Would Jairus have enjoyed slaughtering them?

A thought to analyze later. He wouldn't have had a decade ago, but the corruption of the Darkside dominated and perhaps part of him did now. The controlled cultists took a step back, leaning against the wall.

They spoke.

Unison.

"The eye of the One sees its secret!" Then. They slumped down and crumbled in a heap. Not yet dead, but shallow breathing. "A bantha does not command a terentatek. You issued a challenge." He took a step towards her, the cowl escaping the edge of his brows during the moment. "Now enforce it, Woyunoks." Small one.