Private Jungle Hunt.

[Darth Virelia]

"How I intend to break you..."

Tag - Phoebe Winsloe


The jungle breathed.

Thick with heat and the scent of rot, its breath rolled between vine-choked trees and mossy ruins, steaming from the cracked mouths of ancient stone like a dying world exhaling its secrets. The sun—molten, slow, hungry—dripped gold through the canopy in shafts that caught on insects and drifting spores, painting the air with motes of decay. Somewhere in the distance, a creature screamed and was immediately silenced.

Serina Calis moved through it all like shadow carved into flesh.

Every step she took was a whisper of calculation—silent, deliberate, and perfectly chosen. The soft crunch of leaf litter, the creak of tangled root systems, the distant ripple of water through jagged gullies—all of it painted a battlefield in her mind. No hunter would mistake her for prey. No Jedi would feel her approach. The jungle did not hinder her. It parted for her.

She was draped in a long, matte cloak damp with humidity, its fabric layered over the stealth-adapted bodyglove beneath. No lightsaber hung openly at her hip; it remained nestled in the small of her back, hidden beneath the folds of her garments like an assassin's secret. Serina did not need to announce her presence to the Force. She inhaled it. Drew it in like perfume over bare skin.

Rakata Prime. The forgotten birthplace of conquest and madness. An appropriate hunting ground.

She had intercepted the transmission hours ago. An X-wing. Old model, tricked out with bespoke modifications. Landed alone. Not Sith. Not a scout. Not smugglers either—too quiet, too clean. A Jedi. One of the younger ones, most likely. Newly minted, still green, still noble enough to make the mistake of thinking she was safe just because the Order didn't consider Serina Calis a "priority target."

The woman's lips curled at the thought.

Oh, how the Jedi undervalued obsession. They believed in balance. Compassion. Redemption. Serina had believed once, too—before she peeled back the galaxy's skin and saw nothing underneath but power. Power to be seized, shaped, consumed.

And now, she wanted this one.

She didn't know who the girl was yet—didn't care, not truly. What mattered was the aura she'd tasted through the Force when she came into orbit. Bright, bright like a match held too long. Passionate. Unfocused.

Young.

Impressionable.

Serina let out a slow breath through her nose. Her eyes half-lidded. She reached for that warmth, like a spider reaching for a thread.

"Come now," she murmured under her breath, voice velvet and sin. "Let me see what they've sent me."

She stood, stretching with a quiet, feline grace, her spine straightening one vertebra at a time. Her mind—sharp, analytical, serpentine—began to conjure contingencies. Ambush points. Weaknesses. Emotional leverage. This girl would have something to prove, Serina could feel it. All young Jedi did. And she would be desperate to win, to stand on her own two feet.

Good.

Serina preferred them eager.

One more step took her into the clearing, and ahead—between the trees—she caught her first glimpse of silver through the green: the hull of an X-Wing, scorched slightly from reentry, nestled in the thick moss like a sleeping beast. The grass around it had been flattened. No guards. No traps. The pilot had gone wandering.

Perfect.

The Corrupter of the Light allowed herself a breathless, indulgent smile, her voice a whisper meant only for the listening jungle.

"Little firefly," she cooed, eyes gleaming. "Let's see how brightly you burn before I close my hand around you."

And with that, Serina vanished again into the shadows—
—hunting.

 

[Phoebe Winsloe]

Phoebe was bored, and when Phoebe was bored, she did things that her superiors at the Temple would call 'inadvisable'. In this case, that inadvisable thing was flying her X-wing on a solo trip out to Rakata Prime to pick through some of the Old Republic wrecks.

Phoebe didn't exactly consider herself a galactic archaeologist, far from that, actually, but the ships interested her, and there was the chance to find a Jedi artifact from that era, but mostly it was the ships.

Given how there wasn't much left on this world anymore to present much of a physical threat, Phoebe had instructed D1-V4 to power down and run diagnostics on themselves and the ship. Hell, she hadn't even used any of the ship's stealth systems, though close to the border, it was still inside Alliance space, so Pheobe felt safe enough here.

There was still a twinge of the Dark Side about the place, but not enough to set off more than a general unease in the air, at least in the area where Pheobe had chosen to land and make her explorations.

Behind her was a path shorn through the jungle, unlike some Jedi who saw their lightsabers as a weapon, only to be drawn in the most severe life-or-death circumstances. Phoebe, on the other hand, treated her lightsaber as a tool; she'd made it after all, so it's not like she was disrespecting the creator's work and intentions or any of the other pretentious poodoo that she'd heard the last time she used it as an improvised fusion cutter for a large metal sheet.

Finally, Phoebe had come to something interesting, cutting her way to a beach where sightlines opened up somewhat. Off in the distance, she could see something, a building, heavily damaged and decayed. She wasn't sure what it was used for in the past, but it was cooler than the jungles, even if it wasn't Republic shipwrecks like she had hoped for.

Swinging her lightsaber again, Phoebe started towards her new goal and whatever lay within.

Tag: Darth Virelia

 

[Darth Virelia]

"How I intend to break you..."

Tag - Phoebe Winsloe


Serina Calis did not move.

Her body was still as stone, cloaked in the mottled shade of the canopy—kneeling on a broad, time-smoothed branch of an ancient Rakatan fruit tree. Her breathing had slowed to a measured rhythm, syncing with the hum of the jungle's natural pulse. The branch beneath her was slick with moisture, but she did not slip. The cloak hung like shadow around her, melding with the bark, the moss, the vines. Insects didn't bite her; they avoided her like the edge of death.

Below, the red-haired girl swept through the underbrush with the crude violence of a bored child poking a corpse.

There she is.

Serina's eyes didn't blink, not for several minutes. The girl—no, the Padawan—was striking in a roughshod way. Not beautiful. Interesting. Compact strength, messy utility. A practical body in practical clothing, as though wrapped in the illusion of simplicity. No elegance, but muscle. A flame in motion.

And—Serina noted with silent satisfaction—she swung her saber like a wrench.

The weapon—a saberstaff, how quaint—cut vines and lianas with blunt, uncaring strokes, not the finesse of a warrior but the casual dominance of someone used to machinery bending to her will. She was neither afraid of damaging the tool, nor reverent of what it represented.

You treat it like a crowbar.

Serina tilted her head slightly, calculating vectors of potential seduction—not of the flesh, not yet—but of ideology, of spirit. How far was this girl from understanding the truth? How many cracks were already visible?

The Padawan reached the beach. Her movements slowed, drawn by the shimmer of ruins on the far headland.

Serina followed her gaze.

Ah. That.

She had seen the building earlier, with its crumbling facade and moss-caked pylons—a half-submerged Rakatan research archive, mostly collapsed, but with its sublevels still choked in energy fields long dormant. If the girl went far enough inside, the magnetic interference would trap her comms, kill her droid's signal, and blind any surveillance.

A cage with the illusion of discovery.

Perfect.

Serina drew a breath through her nose. The air was thick with plant decay and ionized spores from the sea wind, but under it, something else clung to her tongue. Salt. Sweat. Skin.

She could smell the girl.

Hormonal elevation. Pulse increased. Some combination of physical effort and adrenaline. Possibly excitement.

Serina's pupils dilated slightly, and her body uncoiled with liquid, predatory elegance. No sound. No tremor. She flowed down the tree like mercury, landing in a crouch. No rush. The girl was too distracted by her new objective to notice the tremor in the Force, the gentle disturbance of the hunt beginning.

Each step was meticulous.

There was no need to confront yet. Not directly. Not until the Padawan was deeper in, more alone, more off-balance. Serina wanted her thinking. Wondering. Beginning to feel watched. Not stalked—just… observed. Noticed.

Noticed in the way a flame draws a moth, or a trap draws a beast.

The Sith moved through the underbrush with patience honed through a hundred predatory games. This was not brute pursuit. This was architectural seduction. Lure the girl inward, deepen the tension, build the anticipation until it would snap.

The girl's presence was bright in the Force—unshielded, wild, untrained. She didn't even realize how naked she was, how she broadcasted her emotions like a beacon.

Serina tasted them.

Excitement.
Frustration.
The arrogance of isolation.

How charming. How juvenile.

No discipline. No fear.

She reminded Serina of herself once—before the veils had fallen, before the fire inside her had stopped begging to be understood and started demanding submission.

The Padawan moved closer to the ruin. She hesitated once, turning toward a grove to her left, as if unsure which way to enter. Serina seized that moment—just a flicker—casting the smallest ripple through the Force. A breath of pressure. A whisper of curiosity. Not enough to alarm. Just enough to guide.

The girl turned toward the main collapse.

Good.

That was the entrance she wanted her to use.

A broken stairwell led down into darkness. From that point onward, the jungle would vanish. The stone would close in. Comms would fade. She'd have only herself—and her instincts.

Serina crouched at the edge of the jungle as the girl disappeared into the gloom, the saberlight briefly casting her silhouette along the ruin's walls like a myth written in blood and circuitry.

She exhaled.

There was no rush.

Let the girl wander. Let her feel bold, smart, invincible. Let her probe those depths, thinking she was alone, thinking that no one was coming. That no one was watching.

Serina stepped out of the foliage, upright and regal now, her cloak brushing the damp grass behind her. The edge of the beach glistened with salt and foam. The crashed X-Wing sat silent in the clearing behind, and the droid within was still deep in diagnostics—completely unaware that its owner was being curated like a specimen.

Serina turned her gaze toward the ruin, and this time, she let her presence bloom.

Not a scream. Not a shout. Just a taste through the Force—like velvet stretched over razors.

She didn't need to be near the girl to whisper. Not in words. In pressure. In sensation. A single thought planted in the base of the Padawan's skull, deeper than language, softer than breath:

You are not alone.

She smiled, not wide. Not pleased. Just… ready.

It wouldn't be long now. The ruin would do what she needed it to. The girl's stubbornness would pull her ever deeper. And once she was sealed inside—once she realized that the silence had teeth, that her heartbeat echoed too loud in the dark—Serina would descend like a dream turned rotten.

The kind you wake from sweating.

The kind you want again.

And when their eyes finally met—when the Padawan looked into the void and found Serina there, waiting—there would be no battle.

Just an invitation.

One the girl would be dying to accept.

 

[Phoebe Winsloe]

Phoebe could feel the pull towards the ruins, but dismissed it as her curiosity; after all, it was the only structure that she could see. Before getting too close to the ruins, she stopped to centre herself in the force, and felt some of the intense curiosity diminish. However, Phoebe just assumed that was just because she was regulating her own emotions, not accidentally brushing off the light touch of another.

Deactivating her lightsaber, Phoebe pulled out a small hand lamp; the bright green of the blade would have cast a false hue on everything, and the omnidirectional light would make examining things difficult.

Stepping down into the ruins, Phoebe was surprised to see how well the material was holding up, after so many years, she expected to be digging. Still, it was best to be cautious, and so pulling out her commlink, Phoebe tried to send a quick message to D1-V4.

"Diva, mark the location of-" But before she could get much farther than that, the squeal of broadcast feedback overwhelmed the transmission, and Phoebe had to cut her comms before the squeal could hurt her ears, or let something know she was here.

"Frak."

Phoebe considered heading back, she could still see the light flowing in only a few minutes of walking back. She could run, send the message, and be back quickly, but there was that pull of curiosity that kept tugging at her.

“Frak.”

Phoebe kept moving deeper into the ruins, unsure but excited about what she might find down here.

Darth Virelia

 

[Darth Virelia]

"How I intend to break you..."

Tag - Phoebe Winsloe



She felt it.

The moment the girl reached for her commlink, the feedback scream had been expected. Designed. She'd subtly realigned the ruin's local electromagnetic field with a microburst from the Force—nothing strong enough to damage equipment, but enough to leave a stain of dissonance on her frequencies. Serina had worked with the locals of Polis Massa long enough to understand that silence, when sculpted carefully, was not the absence of communication.

It was control.

Now the girl was trapped in a cage that looked like opportunity.

Good.

Beneath her hood, Serina's expression was one of indulgent amusement. Her body leaned against a vine-choked archway just beyond the last natural light, arms folded, one leg curled casually behind the other as though she were waiting for a late lover. She did not approach yet. There was no need to. The ruin was already doing it for her.

Every step the girl took echoed. Every movement, no matter how cautious, chased itself down the narrow corridors with a ghost's tail. The material had indeed held up. Rakatan design was stubborn, intrusive, almost imperial in its defiance of decay. This place had not died so much as slumbered—hungry and still.

And now it had company.

Serina let herself breathe. Not deeply—just enough to taste the air again.

Jasmine moss. Ionized copper. Sweat. Fear. No, not fear yet. Not quite.

The Padawan was still curious. Still bold. She thought she was in control. Thought she was regulating her own emotions.

How adorable.

Serina had merely brushed a finger along the strings of the girl's spirit. Nothing overt, nothing crude. Just the gentlest pulse of interest—not her own, but made to feel like the girl's own. A low murmur in the back of the mind, suggesting:

Keep going.
You're close.
Someone should see this. Someone should understand you.

She wasn't manipulating the girl directly. Not yet. Serina was merely shaping the context of her curiosity. A nudge here. A whispered rhythm there. Subtle Force modulation tuned to warmth, admiration, wonder—none of it hers, but all of it woven from the same emotional frequencies that humans craved when young, unformed, lonely.

That was the trick to seduction.

Not to inflict yourself upon the subject. But to become a mirror that offered a better version of them. A version they didn't even know they wanted until it was already taking root in the dark.

She reached out again, just enough to create the feeling of presence. Not menace. Not dread. Just presence. Like the flutter in the stomach when eyes linger a little too long across a room. The invisible itch between the shoulder blades, not of danger, but of attention.

Serina knew exactly how that would feel to someone like her quarry.

The girl was already headstrong. Already emotionally raw, impulsive, self-assured in the way only the very young and the very talented could be. A perfect candidate. Jedi were always so eager to be seen as mature. As competent. But they were trained to suppress the very instincts that gave them power.

What they truly needed—what she could give them—was permission.

Serina stepped forward, just one measured pace, letting her boot echo lightly across the stone before stilling again in silence. Not enough for the girl to hear. But enough to create ambiguity. Did she just imagine that? Was it a trick of the ruin?

Let her wonder. Let her start to like wondering.

The Sith let her cloak slip back just a little, baring one shoulder to the cool subterranean air, her posture loose, unthreatening. She closed her eyes. Reached further. This time, she laced her touch in the Force with something else: approval.

The kind a teacher never gives often enough.
The kind that says, You're doing well.
The kind that says, I see you.
The kind that says, You were right to come alone.

If done subtly, the girl would never notice the shift in her emotional landscape. She would merely find herself more comfortable in the silence. More attuned to the unseen.

Serina's mind sharpened around that axis. Already, she was constructing the approach. The ruin would go deeper soon. The Padawan would reach the first chamber—the atrium with the cracked star-map dais and crumbling stone benches arranged like a lecture hall. It would be the perfect place to speak. To make her presence known not with sabers drawn, but with eyes and voice.

Voice was important.

Serina's voice was a weapon far sharper than her blade. When she spoke, it was with the weight of velvet soaked in oil, every syllable dipped in the gravity of seduction and certainty. Her words didn't ask—they offered. They allowed. And once allowed, they lingered.

But not yet.

First, she had to lay more groundwork. Her fingers twitched once—barely—and she sent one more suggestion into the Force. This one was more primal. A single emotional undertone, like the hiss of a silk sheet falling in the dark:

You are being watched.

And not as threat. Not as predator. But as witness.

Someone was watching her. Admiring her. Not for the Jedi she was pretending to be. Not for her parent's legacy, or the Order's hope. For her.

Her body. Her mind. Her flame.

Serina didn't even need to know her name yet.

Because it wouldn't matter.

Names were for equals.

This girl would know hers soon enough. And when she did, when she finally turned and saw her—not as a shadow in the dark but as the inevitable center of the room—she would understand.

This wasn't a chance meeting.

It was fate.

Designed.

Orchestrated.

Engineered.

And by the time she realized she was being unraveled thread by thread, by the time she understood the hunger curling in the quiet corners of her own mind—she would be grateful for it.

Serina Calis smiled, and moved deeper into the ruin.

The game had begun.

 

[Phoebe Winsloe]

Phoebe ran her handlamp over a series of carvings in the wall, which were different from the ones she'd seen on the way in and on the outside of the building. Pretty interesting to her, so Phoebe pulled out her datapad, still unable to get a signal to the outside. She marked the location on the wireframe map her datapad was creating using its accelerometer and took an image of it to have someone examine later.

At this point, the disappointment of not finding any Old Republic-era wrecks had been completely eclipsed by the excitement of new and interesting things Phoebe was finding around every corner, and the satisfaction coming with every new insight and discovery was addictive.

It was almost enough to make her miss the sensation of being watched, almost, but she did catch it, just barely. Phoebe didn't feel any malice or fear, so that ruled out any wild animals that might have found a home here.

Maybe it was the building itself?

Phoebe knew that the former inhabitants of this world incorporated the force into their technology, very heavily in fact, so maybe it was some security system? She shrugged it off. This was GA space still, so she figured that anything here that didn't belong was also GA like her.

Moving into the first real room, finally, she'd taken a bit of a run around looking at every nook, collapsed hallway, and crack she could shine her light into.

Phoebe was impressed, unable to suppress a quick gasp of awe as she took her first look around the room, some sort of hall, the stone benches, and the lectern. Maybe? Gave the massive room an almost cathedral-like appearance. She was lost in the architecture before coming to the conclusion that this was a lecture hall. And suddenly the feelings of being watched, the urging to learn all made sense now.

Or at least Phoebe came to a conclusion that she liked that made sense.

She assumed that this was a place of learning, one steeped in the force, of course the force would urge her to learn. It was like a clay mug used many hundreds of times slowly being infused with the flavour of tea, the force here was infused with the essence of knowledge and learning. It was no wonder she was feeling the pressure to explore more, and the assurance that she was doing well when she did.

She couldn't be more wrong, but thinking that she had figured it out made Phoebe feel more comfortable, and let some of her mental defences slip, just a little, but leaving her more vulnerable to outside influence.

Tag: Darth Virelia

 

[Darth Virelia]

"How I intend to break you..."

Tag - Phoebe Winsloe



She had stepped into the heart of it.

Serina watched her from the broken mezzanine, body half-veiled in the jagged curve of an arch long since fractured by time. Her cloak hung open now, deliberately loosened, dark silk catching in the low light cast by the girl's lamp as it flickered off the room's ancient crystalline inlays. The folds of the fabric clung to her form like shadows made intimate with flesh, and where it fell away, her silhouette was a study in calculated asymmetry—elegant, dangerous, undeniably feminine.

Her eyes never left the girl.

She could see it all. The way her expression shifted, first with wonder, then relief. The relief that came when a lie nestled comfortably inside an open heart and called itself truth.

A lecture hall. A sanctum of learning. How quaint.

Phoebe had misread everything. Not because she was foolish—but because she needed the mystery to be benevolent. She wanted to believe the Force was guiding her. That it wanted her to grow. That her instincts were correct. That someone, somewhere—perhaps even her late-night holocalls to Coruscant—had finally given her permission to matter.

How sweet.

And how perfectly, utterly wrong.

Serina's smile was slow and cruelly soft, a secret unfolding behind velvet lips. She stepped forward. One single step, letting her heeled boot click against the cracked stone with a sound so deliberate it shattered the room's illusion of solitude.

A cathedral without clergy. A lecture hall without a teacher. No longer.

"You're half right."

Her voice cut the silence like silk drawn across a blade—warm, feminine, low, but wrapped in something colder. Something unyielding. Something ancient.

She stepped fully into the light now, letting her presence—so carefully veiled until this moment—bloom. Not overwhelming. Not aggressive. No, Serina didn't arrive as a wave of darkness. She arrived as a gravity well. Quiet. Inevitable.

She descended the stairs of the mezzanine one slow step at a time, letting the cloak trail behind her like smoke, her eyes locked to the girl's back as she moved. She did not hurry. She didn't need to.

Each word was laced with just enough Force to carry more than sound. Suggestion. Texture. A knowing pressure, like lips too close to the ear.

"The room was meant to teach, yes. But you assumed the lesson was yours to shape." A pause, and then a gentler tone, laced with indulgent amusement. "That's the mistake they always make. The architects. The invaders. The Jedi."

She reached the floor of the hall. Every step she made echoed with regal purpose. Not a predator, not a monster. A presence. A professor entering her forgotten classroom, and finding a single student who had wandered in without permission—and without understanding.

"There's a beauty in your assumptions," she continued, circling now—not close, not touching, but wide arcs around the girl, letting the Force she exhaled twist just slightly against the air. "You think the Force urges you to learn. That this temple was built with benevolence in its stones."

Her voice dipped.
"No. It hungers."

She walked behind the lectern, let her fingers trace the worn edge of the stone, slow, intimate, like one might touch a scar across a lover's back. She didn't raise her voice. She didn't need to.

"And so do I."

A beat of silence. The room settled into the new truth: she was here. She had been here. Watching. Learning. Waiting for this precise moment when the girl's mental defenses—assumption, safety, self-satisfaction—cracked open just wide enough.

Serina's gaze drank her in.

She did not leer. That would have been crude. But there was something unmistakably carnivorous in her attention. Not lust—not yet—but curiosity made physical, almost tactile in the air.

The kind of gaze one reserves for a puzzle that shouldn't fit, but might, with just a little pressure in the right place.

"You're brave," Serina murmured, letting her tone shift—appreciative, almost affectionate. "Stupidly brave, maybe. But not stupid. You followed the scent of knowledge into the dark and convinced yourself it smelled like safety."

She stepped forward, now letting her presence press just slightly. Not to frighten. To comfort. To nestle around the girl's aura like a cloak being wrapped around her from behind.

"You've been misled," Serina said softly. "But not by me."

She tilted her head. "By them. Your teachers. Your Order. The men who whisper serenity and passivity into your ear, as though taming your instincts were a virtue."

Another step. Closer now. Just enough. Just near enough that her scent—a blend of ozone, temple spice, and something floral and wild—might register.

"Tell me… did they ever teach you how it feels to be seen for what you are?"

Her voice dipped again—lower now, meant to resonate in the girl's chest as much as her ears. A question asked not just aloud, but into the Force itself.

You are not a mistake.
You are not unfinished.
You are not alone.

Serina let the silence stretch just long enough to become unbearable. Then she moved again, not into striking distance—no, no weapons yet—but into conversational intimacy.

"Your name," she said, silk wrapping iron. "Tell it to me."

Not a demand. A pull. An invitation designed to feel like surrender was a gift. Her voice, her presence, her scent, all carefully calibrated—manipulating not with pressure but with atmosphere.

A trap sheathed in velvet.

Her smile softened. A warm smile now. A teacher's smile. A lover's smile. A liar's smile.

"Because if you don't offer it… I'll have to choose one for you."

She tilted her head ever so slightly.

"And I suspect you'd rather keep that little piece of yourself, before I take everything else."

Not a threat. Not really.

Just…
inevitable.

 

[Phoebe Winsloe]

Phoebe turned, surprised by another voice in the ruins that she thought were abandoned, and a chill went down her back as the realization sank in that she was never alone. She reached for her lightsaber, but didn't do anything with it yet, just drawing comfort in feeling the weapon's weight on her hip.

At this point, Phoebe was feeling like this whole thing was just some elaborate show put on for her benefit, and that unsettled her. Who would think she was important enough to put on something this elaborate? Well, Phoebe supposed she was about to find out as the crazy lady started to rant.

She actually paid some attention; there were good points brought up, especially about her need for the mystery to have a benevolent answer, right up until the mystery woman went on to the 'lies of the Jedi' spiel. That was enough to snap Phoebe back to reality, as if gravity had been pulled out from under her feet.

Phoebe snapped up her lightsaber and ignited one of the blades, pointing it at the other woman, refusing to allow her to close the gap and get within reach of her.

"Why don't you start with yours?" Phoebe demanded when her own name was asked.

At this point, there was no way the young Jedi would let anyone know anything about her as she set her jaw in that stubborn Corellian style and prepared to dig in. Her mind slammed shut like a blast door on a spaceship with a leaky hull.

Tag: Darth Virelia

 

[Darth Virelia]

"How I intend to break you..."

Tag - Phoebe Winsloe



Serina did not flinch.

The violet blade flared to life with its familiar, undisciplined hiss, casting a harsh glow across the cracked stone floor. It illuminated the distance between them, a shimmering line of defiance—of false certainty. Of the fear hiding behind bravado.

And Serina… only smiled.

Slow. Wide. Pleased.

Like a silk-gloved knife drawn lovingly from its sheath.

The saber didn't bother her. It never had. Not when it was raised in anger, nor fear, and certainly not when it trembled—however slightly—with the weight of inexperience behind it. It was a shield, not a sword. A wall the girl had thrown up because her words had done what no predator or creature in this ruin could.

They had gotten in.

"You're trembling."

Serina's voice didn't rise. It descended—like warm breath over the skin of the back of the neck. Intimate. Precise.

She took a single step forward, letting the edge of the saber's light lick at the hem of her cloak, then halt as she did. Her hands remained at her sides, relaxed, empty. Unarmed. At ease. As though none of this mattered. As though the blade wasn't a threat, but a piece of furniture that had been rearranged without her permission.

"I gave you the truth. A precious thing. And you draw a weapon." She tilted her head slowly, studying the girl—not the saber, not the posture, but the way her jaw clenched, the flicker behind her eyes. The storm brewing in her aura, messy and loud and so very open.

"Not because you disbelieve me," she purred, her voice softer now, curving like smoke, "but because you do. Just enough. Just enough to be dangerous to yourself."

The smile on her lips never left, but it changed—darkened—turned ever so slightly from indulgent to hungry.

"You're clever. I know that. Even if you wear that stubborn little scowl like a shield, as though it will save you from the shape of your own thoughts."

She took another step. Still outside the reach of the blade. But closer. Just enough to let the tension stretch taut again.

"You want my name?"

Serina let her eyes meet the girl's, and held. No masks. No illusions. Just pure, refined, suffocating presence. The kind of gaze that didn't just see—it read.

Her voice dipped lower. "You'll get it, little ember. When you've earned it. Not before."

She began to walk now—not forward, but around the room, slow, graceful, letting her cloak trail and her boots kiss the stone with elegant, echoing cadence. Her movements were feline—composed, circling, giving the girl space not out of deference, but out of design.

 

[Phoebe Winsloe]

"No. No, you didn't give me the truth." Phoebe said, glaring at Serina. "You gave me poison, poison smothered in honey so that it went down sweet."

As Serina cericled Phoebe she spun slowly in place, keeping the verdant blade pointed at the other woman, a warning as much as it was to comfort herself. She knew that she should take this moment to strike or scramble, especially as she felt those piercing eyes look straight into her soul, as if every mental defence Phoebe could muster was no more than a pane of transparisteel to her.

"Why should I trust you? Why should I even give a moment of thought to anything you've said when you tell me the people I've known and trusted all my life speak lies, and bring not even a shred of evidence?"

Her words came off just as much as a rebuttal, a weak one at that, as they were self-assurance. Phoebe had started to recognize that she'd flown too close to the sun here and now she needed to find somewhere safe to land before her wax wings melted.

Tag: Darth Virelia

 

[Darth Virelia]

"How I intend to break you..."

Tag - Phoebe Winsloe



Serina stilled.

The smile on her lips didn't fade, but it did refine—sharpening into something thinner, quieter. Less indulgence now. More focus. The way a musician might pause just before a crescendo, fingers poised above the strings.

The girl's defiance pleased her. Not because it was effective. Because it was fragile. Cracked porcelain painted to look whole. The kind of rebellion born not from strength, but from fear that she might already be convinced.

Serina took in her words with a stillness that was almost reverent. Not responding immediately—letting silence answer first. Letting the echo of poison smothered in honey swirl and settle in the air like incense.

She stepped to the left, slowly, boots whispering across ancient stone as she resumed her arc—but slower now. Closer. Not challenging the blade's warning, but existing just within its glow. Her presence a constant, inescapable pressure. Not choking. Cradling.

"Poison, is it?" Serina purred, voice a breath away from mocking, but never crossing the line. She sounded curious. Invested. "Sweet girl… If what I gave you tasted sweet, then the sweetness was already inside you."

She stopped then. Leaned in, just enough for the shadows to play across her face—half-lit, half-lost. Her voice dropped low, intimate.

"You wanted it."

There was no accusation in the way she said it. No cruelty. Just certainty.

And then she turned, gliding away from the saber's edge again, making space—graceful, theatrical, precise—arms lightly spreading at her sides as she faced the chamber in full, letting the ruin see her as she raised her voice slightly, not for volume, but presence.

"You ask why you should trust me," Serina said. "A fair question." She looked back over her shoulder now, gaze smoldering with calculated gravity. "But a better one would be—why do you trust them?"

She pivoted then, not stepping forward, just facing the girl fully now. She no longer circled. She addressed her like a teacher, like a woman inviting the younger to open a door she'd never been shown existed.

"Tell me something, Padawan." Serina's tone was velvet laced with iron. "Was this trip sanctioned by the Council? Did your Master instruct you to come to a forgotten planet, alone, without escort, into a ruin known to radiate Dark Side energies?"

A long pause.

"Or did you do this because you were bored?"

She didn't need an answer. The Force already gave it to her. She saw it in the girl's posture, in the flicker of guilt that tried to disguise itself as defiance. She felt the tremor in the air when she said the word bored—as if it struck a chord that hadn't been named aloud.

"You risked your life—your training, your place—because no one was paying attention to you. Because they shuffle you from lesson to lesson and give you crumbs of wisdom wrapped in chains. Because they won't trust you, not fully, not ever, unless you become the thing they already expect you to be."

Serina's voice became honey now—dark, rich, impossible not to follow.

"Tell me. When was the last time one of them looked at you and saw you? Not a Padawan. Not a daughter of someone important. Not a future Knight to shape and polish. You."

She stepped closer now, gently. Not threatening. Her voice low again. Slow. Languid.

"When you meditate, do they ask what visions you see? Or do they ask if you followed the procedure?"

Another step.

"When you build your saber, did they ask why you chose that design? Or did they just nod and tell you the form was acceptable?"

Closer still. Her tone dipped into something heavier—something like disappointment, but laced with warm invitation.

"You're not a person to them. You're a process. Chained to an archaic and byzantine system."

She finally stopped, no more than three paces away now. Still outside striking range, but close enough for the heat of the saber to tickle her cloak. Her eyes—molten, ancient, endless—met the girl's again. And for a moment, there was no seduction, no performance. Just quiet, quiet truth.

"But my chains, dear apprentice..."

Silence followed, as she prepared to bring about the full power of her words through the Force.

And then Serina's voice curved again, like silk drawn over naked shoulders.

"My chains are beautiful."

 

[Phoebe Winsloe]

For the first time, Phoebe felt her commitment stumble, just a little, but it was enough to let a thin tendril of doubt slip into her mind. In this moment of weakness, she let her lightsaber down, the one ignited green blade now pointed down towards the floor in front of her rather than pointed at Serina.

The whole spiel had been unsettling to Phoebe; it was like the other woman had been there the entire time, watching over Phoebe's shoulder as she struggled to be noticed for who she was rather than just being another padawan.

The doubt wiggled in even deeper.

"H-How? How did you know?" Phoebe asked, the disbelief strong in her voice, her jaw no longer set but feeling like it was hanging slack.

Her interactions with the knights and masters had been far below lacklustre, lessons feeling stiff and robotic, so many padawans fighting for attention that unless something made you special, you were lost in the crowd, and even then, padawans were two or three to a master. Serina was right, she'd come out here because she was bored, and hoping that she'd find something to make a master take interest in her.

Phoebe felt like she should stop listening, turn around and just walk away, but there was a tugging in her gut and her mind that wouldn't let her, like a soft finger on her cheek prompting her to turn and look at something she wanted to avoid.

Now the thin tendril of doubt had thickened and felt like it had wrapped around something in her chest, squeezing, making it hard to breathe, making her heart beat faster as it struggled to pump blood around her body. That slight tremble that Phoebe had been trying to ignore had gotten worse, and she had to deactivate her lightsaber, held in a white-knuckled grip, before it sliced into something important. She even had to sit down on one of the nearby tumbledown stones, lest she risk falling over.

Trying to take a sip of water, Phoebe ended up spilling more of it on herself than getting it into her mouth, and all she could do was mutter and repeat, "How could you know? You can't know." over and over.

Tag: Darth Virelia

 

[Darth Virelia]

"How I intend to break you..."

Tag - Phoebe Winsloe



Serina didn't move immediately.

She let the silence stretch again—lush, slow, almost sultry in its pace. Her eyes drank in every moment of the girl's unraveling, not with triumph, but with appreciation. With delight. This wasn't a victory—it was a blossoming. A first crack in the shell. The tremble in a cocoon before it splits.

The saber extinguished with a telling hiss, and Serina heard it not as a sound, but as a breath—Phoebe's first gasp of vulnerability being exhaled into the world. She'd stopped pretending. The wall had dropped, just enough for the wind to slip through.

And Serina was the wind.

She took a slow, deliberate step forward. Not predatory—intentional. Every movement she made was a promise: I will not hurt you. I will not rush. I will not judge. I see you.

The water spilled. The girl sat. Her breathing trembled. Her voice cracked on disbelief.

"How could you know…?"

Serina crouched then, lowering herself with a regal, almost feline grace, until she was eye level—still leaving a whisper of distance, but close enough that Phoebe could feel the gravity of her presence. Close enough to breathe in the faint, intoxicating trace of her scent—temple incense, lightning ozone, and something human and soft and rare.

She didn't answer right away. Instead, she reached slowly into her cloak, unhurried, and pulled free a small object—a datapad, ancient in design, metal-framed, cracked and polished by time. Not threatening. Not a weapon. She turned it on without looking, and the holodisplay flickered: images of other temples, other ruins. Old texts. Faded images of Jedi and Sith alike. A tapestry of pattern.

"I've spent a lifetime watching your kind," she said at last, her voice lower now, like a confession spoken over wine in a shadowed room. "Studying them. Their systems. Their failures. Their patterns."

She tapped the screen once. It shifted to a scrolling list of names—names that meant nothing to Phoebe.

"Always the same structure. A flood of bright children. A starving pool of Masters. Not enough hands to hold the hopeful. And so, they sort. And label. And forget."

She looked up, and this time her gaze was not piercing—it was soft. Almost tender. The kind of look one gives to something found adrift.

"They don't see you. They see statistics. Rotations. Recommendations from holoprofiles. But they don't look into your heart and ask, 'What burns there?'"

Her hand didn't reach out. It hovered—halfway between them. Palm up. Offering nothing. Asking nothing. Just… there.

"You came here because you're starving. For meaning. For contact. For someone to say, 'Yes, you matter. Not what you'll become. You, right now, as you are.'"

The words were velvet over truth. Each syllable rolled like warm silk over raw skin. Meant not to dominate, not yet, but to wrap.

And then she smiled, the kind of smile that cut deep and sweet at once. That made your chest ache in ways you didn't know it could.

"I knew," Serina said gently, "because I've been you."

A pause. A breath. The datapad screen dimmed, and she let it fall away beside her with no ceremony. Her attention was fully on Phoebe now, gaze luminous and still.

"I remember what it's like to sit alone in a room full of teachers and wonder why they speak to the others longer. Why their compliments never reach your ears. Why no one asks you the questions you ache to be asked."

She tilted her head. "And I remember what it's like to run into the dark because you hope—just hope—that something in the galaxy might find you first, before they do."

Another breath. And now, finally, her voice slid into something more licentious—low, lush, intimate. A single note of hunger under the gentleness.

"I found you, Phoebe."

Her voice caressed the name like it was a gift, not a title.