First Reply Hioronedon Falls

[Darth Virelia]

"Pray. If that doesn't work, pray harder."

Tags - OPEN

Old legends spoke of a warrior named Hioronedon—human of birth, titanic in stature, and so relentless in battle that even the Lords of Korriban begrudged him a tomb among their own dead. The stories were sparse, brittle with age: a wanderer who carved his way to the Valley with nothing but a blade and a will, granted a sepulcher and ringed by ancient automatons whose metal sinew was stirred by the Dark Side itself. A man interred, and machines left to watch him rot.

And yet it was intact—one of the few resting places on Korriban that had not been gutted, robbed, or devoured by time. A rarity. A temptation.

Exactly the sort of thing Virelia coveted.

The young explorer inside her—the girl who once chased mysteries instead of empires—had never quite died. And here, in the dust-choked silence of Korriban, she felt that ember flicker with something dangerously close to nostalgia… or hunger. A discovery like this could sharpen her edge again, remind her of the ambition that once set entire destinies ablaze.

Reaching the planet had been its own trial, but finding the tomb without an excavation battalion was the true test. Korriban liked to hide its treasures beneath shifting stone and spite.

She chose a secluded valley for her camp, far from the routes where the Academy's aspirants trudged in their endless cycle of dying for a creed that deserved none of them. A faint regret tugged at her—she had hoped to see Tavis ( Adean Castor ), if only briefly. That acolyte was contradiction incarnate: distant and intimate, unknown yet familiar. A puzzle Virelia enjoyed turning over in her mind.

No matter. The tomb came first.

She hauled a crate of equipment from her dubiously sourced shuttle and snapped open its latches. An entrenchment tool gleamed within. Primitive work, but necessary. With a quiet exhale she began to dig out the foundation for her tent, each stroke sending dry red grit drifting like powdered bone. The heat pressed down like a living thing, eager to blister flesh, but her armor sealed it out. The mask shielded her face from the scorching light, leaving only the rhythmic crunch of metal hitting soil as she worked tirelessly toward her self-imposed deadline.

She had always been the maker of her own keep—the hand that judged, rewarded, and punished in the same breath. The idea of another trying to shape her, to "teach" her what only she could know, was an insult wrapped in presumption. Her discipline was a quiet, merciless thing; her will, a blade honed on solitude and stubborn, brutal persistence. That was who she was, and she would allow no one to redefine her.

The galaxy had tried often enough: whispering of compassion, urging her to kneel to empathy, insisting she spare concern for those forever flailing in the mud. But the moment she reached down with even a fraction of mercy, hands clutched at her ankles, dragging her into the same filth they had chosen as home.

Never again.

The loss of the Force—its absence like a phantom limb—made this expedition more punishing than any battlefield. But difficulty had never turned her aside. It was merely a whetstone. She would press forward, unearth the secrets of the Hioronedon tomb, strip truth from legend, and forge from its ruins the seed of her next ascent. Reflection had served its time; self-pity had been permitted its moment. Now the inevitable hungered.

The darkness must be fed. And she would not go gently.

She drove the final stroke into the trench and set the entrenching tool aside. With methodical precision she pitched the tent, staking it firmly into the scarlet earth she had carved open by hand. Korriban's furnace winds battered her, testing her, but her resolve stood like stone against the storm.

Yet even within that unyielding resolve, a quiet solemnity coiled. She knew what she sought to build. She knew the shape of her desires, the scale of her ambition, and the shadows trailing behind every one of her victories.

They were terrible things. Horrid things.

 

[Allyson Locke]

//: Darth Virelia //:
//: Attire //:

Korriban was a holy world — wrapped in mystery and legend, guarded by the pride of the Sith Empire. The King of Korriban ruled here, guided by the Empress' hand, and only those who were welcomed ever set foot upon its iron sands.

And yet, one who was very much not welcomed dared to dust her boots across it.

Allyson stayed in the shadows, watching — stalking — the exile as she wandered with that pathetic sense of purpose she always seemed to cling to. It was an irritation she'd hoped the war in the Core had wiped out. The galaxy would've been cleaner for it.

But the Force was never that merciful to her.

She groaned inwardly, drawing the bowstring back as she sank deeper into the dark. Shoot first and ask questions later had always been the rule… but today, she wanted answers from the exile. From the banished. Virelia was no longer protected by the Kainites; her leash was broken, her handler gone. And Allyson was more than ready to free the Sith — and the Force — of this lingering nuisance.

She tracked the woman's movements as she descended into the trench, watched her pitch a tent for some baffling reason. Something was off. Wrong, even. Allyson reached through the Force, expecting that familiar sickening corruption that clung to Serina like the stench of an unwashed dog.

But it wasn't there.

That piqued the Corellian's interest. Her eyes narrowed as she shifted, reading every movement, every breath, every tell.

It had to be a trick. Some ploy to fool whoever found her first.

Annoyance finally snapped her patience. The Force around the Corellian dissipated as she stepped forward, bow raised and arrow drawn to her cheek.

"You know you're not supposed to be here."

 

[Darth Virelia]

"Pray. If that doesn't work, pray harder."

Tags - Allyson Locke

Allyson Locke.

The name slid through her mind like a familiar arrow—one she had felt before, one she had survived. How quaint, that fate still insisted on this rivalry.

It had been long since their last crossing, but intention? No. That never changed. Allyson had always moved quickly, bowstring pulled taut by grudges she mistook for purpose. And Virelia knew well that the Corellian would happily loose an arrow into her spine if given even a sliver of justification. She still could. A single arrow. One breath, one twitch, and this unfinished story would end in a neat red punctuation mark on the sands of Korriban.

Yet she spoke instead. How interesting.

Virelia turned the thought over like a coin between her fingers. Allyson Locke, restraining herself for words? For answers? For meaning? What a strangely fragile impulse for a woman who once wished so desperately to end her. For the one who had broke into her apartment on that accursed water world and tried to end her there and then.

A shame, truly. The quick death might have been… poetic. Sand makes an acceptable substitute for snow, and the grave is always patient. The sun pressed against her armor—one last coronation of light before the end, if Allyson wished it. To die here, on the sacred soil of the great Sith, felt appropriately grand. A fitting stage for the Tyrant Queen's final bow. Even the thought carried its own regal weight.

Virelia set down the folding chair she had hauled from the shuttle, unfolding it with an almost ceremonial slowness. If Allyson expected panic or flight, she would find only composure. Virelia lowered herself into the seat, spine straight, gaze steady, as though welcoming the arrow's kiss.

Some quiet part of her was ready—perfectly willing to let everything end in a sunlit instant.

But ambition had always been the hungriest organ in her body, and it refused the indulgence of surrender. It whispered of unfinished conquests, of futures not yet bent to her will. It would not permit her to die simply because she found the poetry of it appealing.

So a response would be required.

Words had never been her preferred shield, strangely enough for the talkative young girl, instead she actually preferred the use of Tyrant's Embrace, words are instead a sword, something to attack with. But if this encounter demanded poise over power, she would meet the moment with her own brand of elegance—even if an arrow hovered on the edge of deciding otherwise.

"And yet here I am," she replied, settling into the chair with a languid, unhurried grace. "Slipped through the Blackwall, back into the cradle that cast me out. A corruption that refuses to die, left to ferment in the dark." The metal creaked softly beneath her as she reclined, utterly unbothered by the arrow aimed at her life.

"I suppose I shouldn't be surprised you found me. Everyone seems to know where I am these days—except me." A low laugh drifted beneath her mask. "First on Chandrila. Now you, here. It seems the ledger of old debts has begun cashing its favours with remarkable enthusiasm." Her gloved fingers drummed once on the armrest.

"Sadly, I've no refreshments to offer. I quit drinking." A pause, almost mocking in its politeness. "Terrible timing, I know."

A gust of wind swept dust around her boots. She didn't bother to look; the armor would handle it. It always had. Only then did she raise her head, mask angled toward the source of the bowstring's tension.

"So tell me, Allyson…" Her voice dipped to something quieter.

"…how are you?"

 

[Allyson Locke]

//: Darth Virelia //:
//: Attire //:

Yep.

This was Virelia — Serina Calis.

Even without turning around, the steady stream of preaching was confirmation enough. That endless vomit of words, the righteous cadence, the need to be heard. Allyson didn't need a face to know who stood before her.

She stopped listening somewhere during the long, drawn-out confession about slipping through the cracks of the Blackwall. The cracks had always existed. People exploiting them wasn't new. Being from behind it in the first place made it easier — knowing how the system functioned was all it took to bypass it.

And now, with the damage left in the wake of the Galactic Empire's threats, it was easier than ever.

Allyson had spent most of her time skirting the fringes of the Blackwall, supporting its border policies. Tedious work — but it fed the Sith what they needed. Information always did.

Working for the Sith… it still didn't feel natural.

Serina kept talking. The words blurred into meaningless noise as the woman shifted her seat and rambled through the mess of her life. Allyson's attention dropped instead to the nanite-tipped arrow in her grip. Initially, she'd planned to make this reunion explosive.

But plans changed.

The armor told her everything she needed to know. Her cybernetic eye whirred softly as it assessed, the Force aligning with the data. The arrow lengthened in her grasp as she adjusted her grip, letting instinct and training guide her to the armor's weak points — shatterpoints. A skill learned just before the Kaggath, now ingrained after watching Valery phase through attacks she couldn't counter any other way.

The string loosened.

The arrow screamed forward, splitting mid-flight into eight smaller shafts — paired shots striking for each joint, with a final arrow veering straight for the throat of the armor.

"You never know when to shut up, do you?"

Allyson was already stepping backward as she spoke, melting into the shadows as the Force wrapped around her once more.

Another arrow formed in her hand. She remembered what Serina could do — draining the Force, hollowing it out. If she could do that, then energy wasn't off the table either. And even without feeling the Force around the Chadrillian, Allyson had learned better than to underestimate her prey.

 

[Darth Virelia]

"Pray. If that doesn't work, pray harder."

Tags - Allyson Locke

She had endured worse butcheries.

The impact at her throat struck like a hammer blow, as for a fractured instant she remembered Woostri. The helpless rasping, the sensation of the world narrowing to a thread of breath. But this time there was no tearing, no ragged wound, no water to drown her. Only the precision of Allyson's craft: paralysis blooming through her joints as the arrows locked her in place, each strike unavoidable without the precognition she no longer possessed.

A pity. The Force might have spared her this humiliation.

Air came shallow and broken. In and out, in and out, a mechanical rhythm forced through a narrowing conduit. Another woman might have panicked; another might have clawed at the instinct to survive. But Virelia felt no such urgency. The desperation that once animated her had long since been bled dry by failures, betrayals, and the slow erosion of certainty. She would have let death take her years ago, had the darkness not insisted she continue.

And now it insisted again.

A cold jolt of will, forced breath back into her lungs, kept her fading mind from slipping under. Always the same internal war: the girl who begged for rest and the Tyrant Queen who refused to fall. Serina Calis. Darth Virelia. Names built like fortresses around a single, unanswered question:

What was she supposed to be?

Dead or alive? Kind or cruel? Human or something fashioned in spite of humanity? She no longer knew. That was the cruelty of it.

Part of her wished Allyson would finish it. Part of her wanted to see Allyson drown in her own blood. Another part longed to scatter into the red winds of Korriban and be done with it all. And the last—the darkest, most honest part—hungered to rise and burn the entire planet to glass simply because she still could.

But none of those desires mattered. Her wants meant nothing. She meant nothing.

She was utterly powerless—stripped of the one thing she had spent her life chasing: control. She had clawed for it through rage, through fear, through ambition sharpened to a razor. And every time she reached for it, it slipped from her fingers like water. Hatred hadn't bought it. Discipline hadn't earned it. The Force had abandoned her long before she abandoned it.

So she chose the only path left to her.

She stopped fighting.

The frantic breaths softened, spacing out into something slow, almost gentle. The edges of the world blurred into stillness. Silence, true silence, spread through her mind, drowning out the panic, the old compulsions, the instinct to survive at any cost.

It was easier to breathe when she didn't resist. Easier to exist when she no longer demanded meaning from the pain.

Her entire life had been a series of brutal refusals—fighting every wound, every loss, every truth that threatened to shape her. Always trying to deny the hurt rather than inhabit it. Always forcing herself to stand when she should have fallen. Now, for the first time, she simply let it happen. And the surrender felt… different.

She had always feared surrender. Surrender meant stillness, and stillness meant death. She remembered too vividly the old catatonic collapses—the moments when her mind slipped into silence and her body followed, threatening to end her entirely. That was why she never allowed herself rest, never permitted a single breath of ease. If she stopped moving, stopped fighting, stopped forcing herself forward, she would vanish. But this surrender felt different. It was not the stripping away of her will, nor the familiar descent into helplessness. It was something subtler—a corruption of surrender, the discovery of control precisely where control should not exist. For the first time, she found poise inside her own powerlessness.

Her recent conversations with Darth Prazutis flickered through her mind. His disappointment had been unmistakable—he sought kindling for ambition, someone who would devour without end. Yet she wondered now whether that appetite had ever been meant for her. Endless greed: who did it truly feed? Her rivals? Her illusions? And then there was Helix . Their long-awaited reunion had revealed no cosmic purpose, no hidden truth, no divine justification for what she carried. Just the simple, brutal reality that she carried it because she must. Because there was no grand answer waiting behind the curtain.

The shrine had taught her the same lesson. She had gone there seeking revelation—longing, perhaps, for the Dark to choose her, for the galaxy to name her special, for someone or something to claim her as worthy. She wanted love, admiration, beauty. She loved aesthetics not out of beauty for its own sake, but because she longed for someone to look at her and call her beautiful. She hoped the shrine would grant her destiny, mark her as chosen, provide the path she had never been given.

But the truth was disarmingly simple.

There is no grand fate for her. No lover waiting in the dark. No galaxy that desires her triumph or her survival. She exists in spite of everything—of life, of the Force, of the laws that should have broken her long ago. Every role she had claimed was a projection, a silhouette cast larger than her shape: ruler when she was no ruler, conqueror when she was no conqueror, schemer when she was no schemer. None of it arose from an authentic hunger for power. It arose from a single, quiet desire: to control her life long enough, fiercely enough, that someone would reflect the lie back to her and call it truth.

Vanity had been her crown all along.

Breath after slow, deliberate breath, she coaxed what little air her throat would permit, each inhale scraping like gravel through a cracked conduit. Her lungs trembled. Her vision pulsed.

Still—she forced her head the slightest fraction toward the voice.

A ragged whisper slipped past the arrow lodged in her throat, thin but unmistakably hers.

"I have a… nasty habit… of saying what I want."