
“Everyone sees what you appear to be, few experience what you really are.”
「HEARTWORK」
Darth Maleva
New-Sith Space, The Deviant, 36 Standard Hours after The Dominion of Brosi...
Crewmen and women of The Deviant emanated a thick dread. The sight of Luminoth's engraved mask approaching them down a durasteel corridor was as nervewracking as the surrealest of nightmares. Stories and rumors floated around the ship about the obscured Sith Lord, half of them true, the other half fabricated horror stories. Not know what was the truth, what was conjecture, and was outright fib only added to the Dark Sun's eerie mystique.
The news of General Thissis' death and the now General Vaal's promotion had already spread across every kilometer of The Deviant. Whispers about Lumnioth's reasoning, method, and ruthlessness swam and slithered every private and obscure corner of the ship. Some said he melted Thissis into viscera with a glance of his true face. Others said he forced the new General to choke off his life herself. Someone in engineering started the rumor that Maleva and Luminoth had simply gotten bored and eaten him.
The simple, vertebra-sundering truth of Thissis' death was far less menacing in hearsay. So, what else was he to do than remain silent rather than clarify? Avernus wrote: 'It is better to be feared than loved if you cannot be both.' Luminoth would allow the rumors to germinate, and wither their confidence like weeds. Only fearless men were bold, and the more obedient they were, the easier everything became. Love also begets loyalty, a much stronger loyalty than fear, but one was much more practical and easier to maintain.
Out of every pulse on The Deviant, he had only managed to be loved by one. It was far from an intentional machination, but such sentiments rarely were. Despite his initial suspicion that the mutuality of the sentiment had been an intentional machination on the other end, time had quelled most reservations. Fortunate, that the womanly icon of these sentiments were the second godhead of The Devaint's widespread dread. It made the strings of his phantasmal marionette less prone to snapping. He tugged through her, rather than on the strings of the half-willing martyrs that held them afloat. 'He who builds on the people, builds on the mud,' Avernus told him.
The guards that stood sentinel before The Dark Lady's chamber were not immune to Luminoth's constructed presence, either. Luminoth could not sense even the faintest intention of protest as he moved between them and punched a button on the door control, sending it fizzling open. He strode through the sub-room, opening the second door as the former shut behind him. A paw masked by sable cloth removed the engraved facade from his face. Serpentine, blonde streaks danced loose as another hand removed the hood from his head. He placed the mask down on a wall-protruding table as he moved around a retaining wall into the main area of the dimly lit chamber.
The sentence-studdering timbre of a masculine voice, far removed from his own inquired: "I hope- I'm not- interrupting anything?"
A feigned pleasantry, but he'd inferred that she admired his soft tact, fabricated or otherwise.
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