Private Infected Logic

[Darth Virelia]

"Killer Instincts."

Tags - Kyber

Kalinda turned in the viewport like a cauterized wound—city-lights veiled under storm-smog and emergency beacons, a world that had learned to whisper because screaming fed the plague. The shuttle descended through quarantine corridors and ion-scrub arcs, and when its ramp sighed open, Virelia stepped into a wind that tasted faintly of disinfectant and metal. Her armor drank the streetlamps and gave back only a disciplined glow: six violet facets alive behind a mirror-black mask; a heart-node pulsing serenely at her sternum; the split cape trailing a quiet comet-tail of crimson shadow as she moved.

Kalinda's relief line sat a block behind her—stacked duracrete, UV emitters, field medics working with the slow intensity of people who knew the clock was their enemy. Ahead, the "gray belt" began: half-evacuated towers, sealed tram tunnels, and the dull throb of containment sirens set to a frequency meant to rattle the instincts of anything that loved the dark. It made her smile behind the mask.

She had always appreciated the rakghoul: hunger given architecture. They did not pretend. They corrupted with purpose, replicated with a mathematician's patience, turned mercy into arithmetic. Honest creatures. If the galaxy insisted on contagion, why not claim authorship? She imagined lattices of obedience carved into the disease—choral commands braided through blood and bile until the plague knelt. Not that day. But soon.

The rumors said the killer stalked there—an "advanced robot," as if sophistication were a costume one could put on. Bodies recovered on the tram line showed filigreed incisions, thermal scoring clean as a surgeon's oath, power-cells harvested with ritual precision. Humans said droid and meant machine. She said droid and meant will without appetite—an ache she could correct.

She crossed an avenue littered with abandoned med-caskets and a toppled holo-kiosk stuttering a public health mantra. The air shivered. A sewer grate buckled; nails-of-bone raked the lip. Three rakghouls uncoiled from the darkness in a steam of breath and rot—grey hides scored with old cautery, eyes like boiled resin. They fanned to flank, a learned geometry. Virelia's cape settled. Her head tilted; the tiny violet runes across her breastplate breathed and dimmed.

"Beautiful," she murmured, as if admiring musicians tuning.

The Force unspooled from her like a silk leash.. A suggestion that hierarchy was comfort, that hunger tasted better when poured into a chalice. One ghoul stalled, head cocking with a child's confusion. Another hissed and crept close enough to smell her—ozone, cold metal, something like rain in old cathedrals. She let her taloned glove trace the air near its face, a touch that never touched. The pack's tension wired… loosened. Not obedience. Not yet. But the mind found the groove she offered.

"Later," she told them, soft as liturgy. "I'll give you a war to eat."

The last known location waited beneath them: a shuttered maglev depot, platforms drowned in emergency amber, rails humming with a residual ghost of power. She descended into the throat of it, the city's breath whistling through broken louvers. Footfalls echoed. Something watched.

"Assassin," Virelia said, voice smooth, amused. "You've made a mess tidy enough to impress me. Come out and be courted."

 

[Kyber]

Decades ago Kyber had been tasked to clean up a problem he himself caused on Kalinda by the incarnation of the Confederacy of Independent Systems ran by Darth Metus. He had released Rakghouls onto the planet originally to take out a few powerful gangs only for it to spread far quicker than anticipated. The containment effort was of course done sluggishly as Kyber had grown fond of the pests he had made and would always find some excuse to explain why he had not finished the job. Since the dissolution of the CIS he no longer needed to ensure the Rakghouls had to stay in one area not that he could afford to do such a thing without the support of the CIS.

Now days he would focus most of his attention to the study of both the art of controlling Rakghouls and the Stygian Arts, Such an endeavour of course requires fresh material and Kyber was very much a fan of hunting. Checking the network of cameras still functioning he would look for his next prey only to spot a far more dangerous predator. Effortlessly she had the respect of a pack of ghouls with but a finger something Kyber could not do without the use of machines.

It seemed today he was the prey for this violet spider was entering his den. Once upon a time Kyber was a brave and heroic soul willing to face any threat but that was long ago and now what remained was a coward he hid in the shadows striking without a sense of honour. Instead of Kyber appearing before who ever this dark lady was a Rakghoul covered in crude cybernetics that jutted out of its body would greet her. Its throat replaced with some sort of speaker.

From the shadows ensuring his cloaking device was activated Kyber spoke through the wretched creature a gargled combination of the creatures own voice and the distorted sound of a poorly maintained radio. "And who is The One that has decided to grace The One known as ths Viceroy of Kalinda with their presence"

As the creature spoke Kyber would slowly use the force to move a saber unignited behind his visitor, Resisting the urge to go for the kill away at least not before he knew what she wanted from him.

Darth Virelia​

 

[Darth Virelia]

"Killer Instincts."

Tags - Kyber

The cybernetically-scarred rakghoul shambled into the depot like a parody of her own ambitions—metal grafted to hunger, a patchwork horror, speaker crackling where a throat once had been. Virelia did not flinch. The violet facets of her mask swept over it, drinking in the grotesque form the way an aesthete might appraise a statue. When it spoke, a gurgled static married to guttural growl, she tilted her head, cape whispering as it settled.

Viceroy of Kalinda.

Her taloned glove rose, not to ward it off but to trace the air before the speaker-jaw, as if stroking the phantom of a face.

"A title claimed through infestation." Her voice was low, rich, a current of silk wrapped around steel. "How fitting. You wear authority like I wear perfume—through saturation. This world reeks of your indulgence, and I admit… I find it intoxicating."

She paced a slow half-circle around the cyber-ghoul, every step measured, her cape's crimson underside licking the floor in brief flashes. Her gaze did not need to search for the droid. She knew he lingered somewhere beyond the light, his cowardice hidden behind technology. He watched. He listened. And that gave her all the leverage she required.

"You have dabbled, I see. A child's first sip of fire. Machines fused to instinct, leash welded to throat. Clever… crude. You wished to master the ghouls, and yet they master you, don't they? You cannot help but adore them, because they make mockery of walls, law, and decency. They corrupt as I do. But unlike you—" she paused, turning her mask so the insect-eyes glowed directly into the ghoul's sockets, "—I have no need of toys to command reverence."

Her words licked the air with a licentious cadence, each syllable shaped not just for the droid's ears but for the ghoul itself, as though even monsters deserved seduction. She extended her hand, claws gleaming faintly in the emergency light. The ghoul shuddered, caught between implanted command and the invisible lure of her presence.

"You watch me, don't you? Hiding, cloaked, blade trembling to be drawn. How deliciously pitiful. Once, perhaps, you were brave. Now you haunt your own den like a rat who knows the trap has already sprung."