Private Gates of Dominion

[Darth Virelia]

"A Dragon's Hoard."

Tags - Cin



The sky over Morrigal cracked like a jawbone split by war.

Thunderhead clouds hung low and black, grumbling with pressure and unseen violence, as if the heavens themselves were balking at what had begun to awaken on this forsaken world. From horizon to jagged horizon, nothing but scorched wind and slate-grey stone. Morrigal had no songs, no prayers, no voices left that were not carved by flame and ruin. It was a dead world. And soon, it would be made to kneel.

Darth Virelia stood alone at the edge of a basalt cliff, cloaked in an obsidian shawl that danced like ink in the mountain wind. Her eyes—golden, sharp, endless—were fixed on the valley below. Charred woods and volcanic spires stretched before her like the ribcage of some ancient god whose heart had long since gone quiet. This place, she had decided, would be her throne. Not a throne for comfort or glory. No, this throne would be a spear driven into the heart of the Velgrath contest.

There were no guards. No escorts. No sentinels with halberds or grand banners fluttering in the ash-wind. She had come without pageantry. She did not need it. This meeting required nothing but her—and the one she had summoned.

Cin.

Her ally. Her weapon. Her experiment.

She had called to him not with desperation, nor command. No chains. No threats. She had given him a choice, once. And he had followed. That was the foundation she would build her empire on—will, not obedience. Fire, not fear.

A tremor rolled through the ground.

She felt it before she heard it. That low, tectonic groan that wasn't from Morrigal's crust but from the sky itself—a pulse of pressure. The air warmed. The clouds stirred.

He was coming.

Virelia turned her back to the cliff, slowly removing her hood, letting the wind rake through her dark hair as she drew one deep breath and exhaled control like a lover's name.

Her armor—blood-dark, trimmed with volcanic silver—gleamed faintly in the dying light. At her waist, no saber. No blade. Only her hands, folded before her, and the Force—her weapon, her doctrine, her religion. Power not worn like armor, but exuded like scent.

She lowered herself to one knee—not in subjugation, but in communion with the rawness of the stone, her palm spreading flat to touch the volcanic ridge beneath her.

"Come, Cin," she murmured into the ash.
"Come see what we will make from bones and fire."

The thunder grew louder. Not natural. Not ambient.

Wings.
Massive ones.
A shadow was drawing near.

And Virelia smiled—not wide, not wild, but sure. She smiled like one smiles when a promise is fulfilled. When a sin returns home to its maker.

This world would have its fortress. The Fourth Legion would know its future was not in banners or bloodlines—but in vision. In the union of unshackled flame and patient corruption.

And tonight, it would begin.

 

[Cin]

THE SKIES OF MORRIGAL​

Virelia called. And a southern wind responded.

It tickled the stormclouds above, grazing them like gentle fingers over a dragon's scarred scales. It reached the newly-christened Darth, the briefest impression of a pleasant spring swirling around her. But all the same, there was the sudden sense of... pressure. Distant, rhythmic thunder, crackling louder and louder. The pleasant spring turning quickly to steaming summer.

Then Cin slipped through the clouds, a shadow against a shadow.

Since arriving on Morrigal, the Dragon had scarcely touched the ground. He danced hidden among the clouds, teasing them into shapes, blasting them apart with fire. He watched distant war-torn towns and Sith armies with a kitten's curiosity. He broke atmosphere, and slept in the empty space of high orbit. This was freedom. This was... him.

So when he landed in front of Serina, slithering to a whispered stop, no longer was he a bowed, wounded weapon. The creature before her was a True Dragon, pride and fire burning in his iron eyes as he regarded her. The runes that decorated his body, nor the scars from his time in servitude, would heal easily, but he was his.

And for giving the gift of freedom, Virelia had earned his power. For now.

Cin repeated her words in her mind, his voice scratching, but no longer painful to hear.

Show me.​

- Darth Virelia -

 

[Darth Virelia]

"A Dragon's Hoard."

Tags - Cin



The wind on Morrigal had changed.

Once a dry shriek across scorched mesas and jagged ridgelines, it now moved with weight—like something aware was riding behind it. The wind was no longer wild. It obeyed something. Or someone.

Darth Virelia stood at the epicenter of nothing.

No walls, no turrets, no battlements yet. Only a bare ridge of volcanic glass and cooling slag, perched above a faultline that pulsed faintly with unseen heat. This place would kill a weaker woman. There was no shade, no comfort, no sympathy. Only the threat of collapse, fire, and time.

And yet, here she stood. Black robes fluttering like the wings of some terrible thing waiting to unfold.

From above, the battlefield would look empty. Unclaimed.

But Virelia saw what others could not. She saw fortress lines in the stone. She saw watchtowers in the silhouette of craters, landing pads in flat-collapsed faults, artillery dug into lava-choked trenches. She saw a war cathedral built from hate and heat and human will.

Fort Avarice.

It was not yet stone and steel—but it was already real. In her mind. In her hand.

She did not sketch ideas. She imposed them.

As she crouched beside the edge of a molten shelf, fingertips to the crusted edge of an obsidian crack, she whispered in the ancient Sith tongue—gentle, quiet. A seduction of the stone, not a command. Not yet.

She didn't need to look up when she felt him. The air grew humid. Then hot. Then oppressive. A pressure behind her sternum that rolled like the aftershock of distant artillery. Her breath turned silver in her lungs. And when the shadow passed over her back, stretching hundreds of meters into the ash-choked horizon, she simply rose to her feet, slowly, hands still folded behind her.

Cin had arrived.

She didn't face him immediately. Let him look. Let him see her—one speck of black in a sea of grey death. No guards. No ceremony. Only her.

When she finally turned, her smile was subtle. A crescent moon caught in stormlight. Her voice, however, rang with the seductive clarity of molten steel being shaped into command.

"Welcome to Morrigal, Cin. She's temperamental. But she'll learn to obey."

The dragon's descent was silent for a creature of his size—an act of will, not biology. He had grown since their last encounter. Not in mass. But in sovereignty. He no longer moved like a slave tasting freedom. He moved like a sovereign tasting his domain.

Good.

She wanted him hungry.

Virelia watched as he touched down—gentle, smooth, deliberate. No unnecessary movements. No posturing. The great beast coiled atop the stone as if he were claiming it, sunless heat radiating from his hide. She stepped forward, slowly, the space between them shrinking like the pause before a final move in a game of strategy played with nations.

His mind spoke.
Low. Iron-edged.
Show me.

Her smile widened.

"Of course."

She lifted her hand—not to him, but outward, palm open to the dead horizon.

And then, she told him what she saw.

"The ridge below will become Hangar Tertius. Triple-shelled, with dual fusion vents for ventral launch. Protected from orbital strike. Yours, when you require solitude or skirmish. They'll build it for you, Cin. Just say when."

Her hand shifted left, over a natural basin of scorched rock.

"There—the forge. We'll weld alchemy to war. Blades that scream, armor that weeps, ships with nerves in their hulls. Not for beauty. For compliance."

She stepped closer, her tone lower now. More intimate.

"The barracks will run cold. That's intentional. No warmth. No comfort. They must fear the walls they sleep in. But you..."

She looked up at him, unblinking.

"You will have the Chamber of the Wyrm. They'll call it a cage. Let them. I'll carve a sunroof into the mountain for you to watch the skies. If they ask why, I'll tell them it's a test. But we'll know better."

She took one final step forward, standing just at the border of his breath, where the heat turned her skin red and raw and yet she did not flinch.

"I built Polis Massa with precision. A world of glass and data. But this…" she turned in place, slowly, arms spreading in rapture at the storm-wrecked horizon, "This will be built in rage and debt. Every stone will owe me its shape. And they'll learn, the moment they walk through The Spite Gate… that you cannot meet power with defiance. You meet it with reverence."

She turned back to him, slowly tilting her head. The wind danced between them now. Almost ritualistic.

"This world will grind the Velgrath to ash, Cin. But I don't want to win the Fourth Legion. I want to make it irrelevant. I want them to understand that by the time they try to take it back, it's already too late."

Then, at last, she reached out—slow, steady—palm up, inviting rather than commanding.

Her voice dropped—low, conspiratorial, intimate.

"Will you help me remind the stars what it means to serve something worthy?"

Above them, the sky began to bleed red. Not from blood, but from sunlight filtered through poisonous clouds. The wind did not answer.

It obeyed.

 

[Cin]

She would be in control of everything, she said. The planet would obey, the soldiers would comply, the people would revere, the stars would serve. But not him, she said. He would be in control of himself. The cage was performative, the servants would believe one thing, but they would know otherwise, she said.

The Dragon's face didn't change, but the air grew hotter as the red sun peeked through the clouds.

He was suspicious of her. Cin didn't believe for a moment that a being so monumentally hell-bent on control would make him the exception. The spider continued to spool her silk around her captured prey, tying it's prey tighter and tighter. However... One didn't learn to be a spider by staying out of the web.

Cin rumbled something low, a pleased sound in the back of his throat.

'Dual Fusion'. 'Polis Massa'. 'Fourth Legion'. 'Velgrath'. These are not words I know.
​

The rumbling became choppy and clipped. A chuckle?

I understand... little, beyond my mountain. My former caretakers neglected to educate me, and the galaxy is too vast. But I think I understand you, Shadow-Rider.
​

He peered at her, his neck snaking down to bring them eye to eye.

Your ambition starves you. Hungrier than any chained dragon, fed only the briefest tastes of sunlight. I am not yours... But I am happy to feed your ambition, as long as you feed mine.

Lead me to the stars, and we will show them chains. Lead me to the defiant...

And I will show you kindling.
​

- Darth Virelia -

 

[Darth Virelia]

"A Dragon's Hoard."

Tags - Cin



Virelia did not interrupt him.

She listened—openly, intently, and with a stillness that was dangerous. It was the stillness of a mountain before eruption, of a knife just before it slides between ribs. But it wasn't because she bristled at being questioned. No, quite the opposite.

She savored this moment.

The dragon was not ignorant. He was aware of the web. And still, he spoke of walking deeper into it.

Good.

She did not look away when his burning eyes met hers, even as the heat from his nostrils made the edges of her garments smolder. The air warped around them, shimmering with pressure and barely-contained fire. And still, she stood close enough to feel his breath in her lungs.

He could kill her in an instant. That was the point.

"Then let us feed each other," Virelia murmured, voice silk on steel, lips curled into something between a smile and a snare. "Not because I demand it. But because you asked to be fed."

She stepped forward again, deliberately, slowly—until she was close enough to raise her hand and place it, open-palmed, gently against the side of his muzzle, just beneath one of the raw, scar-hewn runes that no longer pulsed with slavery. She didn't caress. She simply held. Not possessive. Not needy.

Present.

"You are right to be cautious of me, Cin," she said softly, almost with warmth—but her tone was layered. "I do not deny what I am. I am not a liar. I will rule this planet. I will bend armies to my will. I will bind the stars themselves into a crown fit only for me."

"But I do not chain beasts. I invite gods."

She let her hand fall, gaze still locked with his.

"You do not need to understand Polis Massa, or Velgrath, or the Fourth Legion. Those are games played by dying men in crumbling halls. I speak to you in older terms: freedom. Dominance. Revenge. You were born to be feared, Cin. They caged you because they feared what you might become if you ever learned what freedom tastes like."

She circled slowly as she spoke, not to stalk, but to frame the moment—hands folding behind her back.

"I need you to help me rewrite fear."

Her pace stopped again in front of him. Now, the tone shifted—darker, colder.

"The Velgrath will come for this world. The other Lords of the Fourth Legion think this is sport—strategy and banners, lines on maps and propaganda. But I see deeper. I see the truth beneath their games."

"They want dominion without sacrifice. Control without understanding. Power without pain. That is why they will lose."

She turned her hand palm-up, extending it again—not to command him, but to offer the choice again, just as she had on Ukatis.

"Help me burn the illusions. I will build Fort Avarice not merely as a fortress, but as a warning. The Chamber of the Wyrm will be yours, Cin. Not a prison. A throne. A symbol."

"There is an encampment north of this position, deranged cultists and madmen who need to be expunged immediately. That will be our first objective."

Her smile returned, darker now. Still beautiful. Still terribly calm.

"When the others march on Morrigal, they will see your wings blot out the sun. They will see your fire break their fleets, your scream tear through their Force-stitched battle-chants. And they will learn what it means to trespass in a place guarded by a dragon who chose his chains—and holds the keys."

She did not move closer. She didn't need to.

Even gods deserved to pretend they had a choice.

The wind picked up again—this time rising in a hot column from the faultline below them, the world itself shifting. Somewhere beneath Morrigal's crust, the Dark Side groaned, stirred, and flexed. She would build her war cathedral here. She would grind the Velgrath beneath her heel.

 

[Cin]

He spoke too much, he knew.

It was... difficult, for the Dragon to puzzle his thoughts into words. For years, they ran unbridled in his mind, raw feeling, raw fire. To refine pure energy into something others could understand was exhausting. He would have to practice more.

Virelia didn't indulge him his curiosities of the world, at least, not yet. He wondered, briefly, whether she didn't want him to know about the games she played. To tell him would be to relinquish control. But what was the fun in being fed the answer? Why not hunt it himself?

"There is an encampment north of this position, deranged cultists and madmen who need to be expunged immediately. That will be our first objective."

Cin's lip curled into a snarled smile. He had his moments of stillness, of thought, where one might forget the fire in his soul. But in moments like this... it was very hard to miss the Dragon. Considering the Darth a moment, he unfurled his wing, giving her a pathway to his back. There was no iron-wrought collar to hold onto, this time. Only burning scales, and her own balance, would keep her in the air.

He only spoke one more word in her mind, harmonized by the psychic impressions of panic-stricken screams and licking flame.

Kindling.
​

Once she found her footing, Cin dropped off the cliff, twisted in the air, and shot like a dart towards the north.

- Darth Virelia -

 

[Darth Virelia]

"A Dragon's Hoard."

Tags - Cin



She said nothing as his wing unfurled.

She didn't need to.

The offer was not just a gesture—it was a declaration. A predator baring its neck not in submission, but in acknowledgment. There was no collar this time, no rune-binders, no muzzle carved of slagged iron and coercion. Only fire. Only freedom. And Serina Calis—Darth Virelia—stepped forward with the poise of one who had always known this moment would come.

Her boot met the curve of his shoulder without hesitation. She moved like a shadow that had been waiting to be cast. Up she climbed, not hurried, not arrogant, but with the sensual confidence of a queen mounting a throne that had always been hers. Her hand did not grasp for reigns, nor claws, nor horns. Instead, it simply slid along the scorched groove of his spine, fingers brushing the edges of half-healed runes like a lover caressing old scars.

He was hot beneath her. Not warm—hot. Living magma. Risen storm. Serina's black cloak flared behind her as she found her balance and stood, the wind catching its hem like wings of her own. She was not riding a beast. She was riding a myth.

And when he spoke—

Kindling.

She smiled. Not coy. Not cruel. But a smile of pure, unrepentant satisfaction.

"I thought you'd never ask."

The words bled like perfume into the air between them, and then the world dropped.

The wind howled around her like a chorus of falling angels as Cin twisted off the cliff's edge and tore toward the north. Virelia did not flinch. She leaned into the momentum, a silhouette of black and violet against the thick clouds, the folds of her garments snapping like war banners at her back. Below them, the terrain screamed by in flashes—rock, ash, smoke. Morrigal had no kindness to offer the weak.

But that wasn't what she'd come here to find.

She closed her eyes briefly—just long enough to reach out with her mind, her will sinking into the cracks between thoughts and certainties. She tasted madness below them. Felt it seething. The encampment she'd marked like a cancerous node was little more than a heretical smear of half-Sith zealots and tribal warlords who had mistaken ancient power for divine favor.

They would burn for that mistake.

"Make them suffer," she murmured into the wind, not even certain if she spoke aloud or through the Force itself. "Make them see what obedience should look like."

She extended her arms slightly, feeling Cin's fury build beneath her, a rumble like tectonic plates preparing to scream. She didn't try to temper it. She didn't want to. His rage would be the hammer. She would be the hand that guided it.

Together, they were not justice. They were not vengeance.

They were the consequence.

And tonight, the sky above Morrigal would burn.

 

[Cin]

The only forewarning of their doom was a sudden southern wind, and a subtle whistling noise.

The camp was of a decent size. A hundred strong, huddled in tents and foxholes, just beginning the process of digging into the surrounding cliffside. Their enemies would rule the surface, they figured, but the caves underneath would be theirs. Their goal was to create a latticework of crossing tunnels and quarries, full of switchbacks, choke points, and secret entrances. A wealthy strategic position, to their promised master.

A shame they'd been found out so soon. They'd only just begun to carve into the cliffside, creating a single, shallow cave. Not nearly enough to save them from him.

A panicked scream was cut short as something large and impossibly fast swooped into the camp, leaving behind half of their southern sentry. Alarms went up, and people began to tumble from their sleeping quarters, stumbling towards their armory tent. The tent that Cin had decided to perch upon, and lazily work a piece of cultist cloth from his teeth.

"Sith attack! A d-dragon!" Shouted one, then another, then another, as the panic spread. This was not Ukatis... but it seemed his kind had a reputation on many planets. Cin's serrated smile curled into a mocking grin, backlit by an inner glow.

Dragon? Where?
​

Others with weapons came. Blaster bolts stung his sides. Well worth the pain, he figured. Cin simply slithered into the armory tent, curling up amongst the armament. Then, with the slashing of his tail, and beating of his wings, he scattered the weapons all around. Tibanna cartridges and blasting charges rained on the cultists, who rushed to arm themselves. Cin just smirked, and exhaled.

Then the world was fire, and tibanna blooms, and blasting charge explosions. Weapons combusted in quickly-shriveling hands, limbs lost to the bombs, then to the heat. Debris and flame littered the rest of the camp, setting tents ablaze, and causing those at the edges to scatter. Fire also covered Cin and his rider, but the Dragon merely shook it off, watching those fleeing with cat-like curiosity. That hunt would do well to occupy him, while Virelia's fortress was being completed.

But first, his head swung around, molten eyes dialing in on the shallow cave this cult had begun constructing. A group of them had fled inside. He casted a brief look to his rider. She was in charge, after all. She could choose their fate.

Obedience, or suffering?​

- Darth Virelia -

 

[Darth Virelia]

"A Dragon's Hoard."

Tags - Cin



Virelia did not speak.

She simply stepped from Cin's back in a slow, controlled movement that was almost regal in its economy of motion. Her boots touched the blackened earth like the echo of a gavel. The fire curled around her robes but did not consume her. The soot clung to the hems like oil-slick lace. And in the wake of the blaze, she stood untouched—veiled in ruin, draped in firelight, the eye of the storm with lips curled in something close to amusement.

The camp had already begun to fall apart. Screaming, scrambling silhouettes clawed their way across melting tents and bleeding sandbags. But Serina saw none of them. Her gaze was locked upon that cave mouth. That insult. That wound.

The cultists thought they could dig in.

How sweet.

She turned, slowly, a queen surveying a failed suitor. Her violet eyes met Cin's molten gaze, and though he was the monster, and she merely flesh and bone, it was she who wore the expression of dominion. She didn't raise her voice. She didn't need to.

"They hide," she said, like a tutor speaking to a student with promise. "They believe earth is sanctuary. That because they burrow into stone, they can escape consequence."

Her hand lifted—not in anger, not in haste, but in an elegant curl of fingers as if conducting an orchestra.

"They are wrong."

The Force moved like oil set to boil. She didn't need to reach into the cave. She simply pressed—a pulse of will, a suffocating tide of presence, seeping into that shallow cavern like smoke under a doorframe. It coiled into the cracks, snaked around the ankles of the frightened, and reminded the flesh beneath the rock that the void had found them.

And they would never be clean of her.

A soft, amused exhale followed.

She turned her body slightly, gesturing toward the cave mouth with an open palm. She didn't look at him again. She didn't have to. Her power was the kind that assumed compliance. That inspired it not with force, but inevitability.

"Collapse it. Let them dig themselves graves."

Then, after a breath, as if considering a poetic garnish, she added—

"Leave one exit. Narrow. Just enough for a single desperate soul to crawl free... and tell the others who truly rules Morrigal now."

Her eyes gleamed with something deeper than cruelty. Not rage. Not sadism.

Design.

She was building her war machine—not just in obsidian and steel, but in fear. In reputation. In legend. Each scream a chisel. Each charred ruin a signature. These cults, these fools, would not simply be defeated. They would be rendered narrative—twisted into the foundation of her myth.

Cin would have his flame. His hunt. His pleasure.

And Virelia would have everything else.

 

[Cin]

"Collapse it. Let them dig themselves graves."

That, he could do.

"Leave one exit. Narrow. Just enough for a single desperate soul to crawl free... and tell the others who truly rules Morrigal now."

That... was a little more complex.

Intelligent eyes studied the opening to the cave. He could see them all inside, huddled against the far wall, crouching in alcoves and praying they remained unseen, but they were hardly his focus. Instead, he scanned the structural support of the ceiling. The wind-scorched lines that kissed the edges of the canyon. And he found an angle.

Cin drafted a deep breath, and the dancing flames around them flickered. Then, he blasted the lip of the cave, using the Force to refine his blaze into a superheated prong of energy. He buckled the stone with his heat, causing it to crash down, sealing off the mouth of the cave, leaving only screaming cultists behind it.

The Dragon studied the situation again, creeping closer to his handiwork at a thoughtful gait. He picked a spot toward the middle of the rubble, and sent a message to Virelia.

This may take some time.
​

Scarred runes along Cin's back began to glow a burnt orange, as he gathered as much Force energy as he could. Then, he released.

It was no blanket of flame he casted, like he had so many times before. A jet of blue plasma, so perfectly sharp it appeared solid, began to bore into the rock, melting a hole into the center. Slowly, it began to turn stone to liquid, though the process was slow, and inefficient. The Dragon had to squint his eyes, as the light nearly blinded even him.

Was it worth the effort? Probably not. But Cin found he enjoyed the theater of it.

- Darth Virelia -

 

[Darth Virelia]

"A Dragon's Hoard."

Tags - Cin



Virelia did not interrupt.

She watched.

Watched as the dragon moved with deliberate, calculated weight—less like a beast, more like a siege engine that had grown a soul. She took a slow step forward, arms folding behind her back, fingers brushing the edge of her crimson-trimmed cloak as she observed him work. The plasma beam hissed as it carved, vaporizing stone into ghostly vapor. The wailing heat pulsed against her skin like a lover's breath—fierce, close, constant.

And she relished it.

Virelia admired many things. Precision. Efficiency. Control. But above all, she admired will—that rare, serrated clarity that cleaved through fear and compromise like a blade. Cin had it. He was not perfect, not refined. But he did not hesitate. He decided. And then he made the world obey.

It was beautiful.

After several minutes of silence, the Darth approached his flank, stopping just out of the blast radius. The molten edge of the tunnel bathed her in flickering gold, but she paid it no mind.

Her voice was not loud, nor sharp—it slipped in like gravity, undeniable and smooth. "You have finesse."

A simple compliment, yes. But from her lips, it was no idle praise.

She let the words settle between them, as the magma hissed and the edges of the cave dripped like candlewax. Then: "Most would simply shatter the wall. A fireball, a quake, a scream. But you… you understand precision. Symbolism. Spectacle."

Her tone thickened—soft, but not gentle. Velvet over wire. "You didn't bury them. You sealed them. A distinction many would miss. But not I."

She took another step closer, this time uninvited. But Cin did not rebuke her. Not yet.

Her gaze swept the molten borehole, the scarred runes along his back. Then upward, toward his jawline. Not possessive—curious. "I know what they carved into you. I know how they tried to own you with language and chains. But what I don't know…"

She tilted her head, voice now laced with quiet intrigue. "...is what you were before them. Before the mountain. Before your name was shouted in worship and whispered in fear. Who was Cin, when he still belonged only to himself?"

She paused, thoughtful.

"Or perhaps you've never belonged to yourself at all."

There was no mockery in the question. No cruelty. Only razor-sharp interest—genuine, focused, seductive in its intensity. Serina Calis—Darth Virelia—was many things. But when she hunted truth, she did so not with blades or threats, but with fascination. She wanted to know.

Not to understand him better.

To control him better.

But also—perhaps, just perhaps—to give him something those cultists never could.

A mirror. A choice. A voice.