Unwritten Verse
This was not his first return to Abregado-rae; the initial arrival after Throneworld might've amounted to something closer to mental triage. Battlefield here. Ruin there. Plague zones cordoned off beyond that. Sithspawn territory further still. Was there ever a more brutally honest map?
The silence here could not be easily compared to other Covenant holdings. Somewhere in the Core, some ecumenopolis hummed even at rest with traffic. Nothing of the sort survived here. From a tree line came a clicking, too patient to belong to any natural fauna. Residue clung to everything like a psychic film, impossible to miss once you learned how to listen. Panic layered over rage layered over desperation... those final incoherent thoughts still echoing where many died. Reaching for the Force in such a place felt akin to plunging a hand into black water; why volunteer to drown?
And then, the Empress' Peace. Lights had been strung where once only blood and ash could be seen. Corporate holosigns lifted over the graveyard, logo by logo. An economist might call the sight renewal; Lysander preferred the word acclimation. Dangerous now, profitable soon... the two conditions rarely stood so close. Cynicism or clarity? Well, the answer depended entirely on who stood to profit from the distinction.
Even without reaching, the Nexus announced itself. An entire repertoire of horrors moved within its current, authored by
Madrona A’Mia
and others like her who treated cruelty as craft.Lysander stood beside the shuttle, the Helm of the Twin Suns cradled beneath one arm, Nightstar conspicuously absent from his person. Somewhere beyond the perimeter another sequence of clicks stitched itself through the dark. No glance followed, for if whatever lurked within the brush craved his attention badly enough, it would have to earn it.
First his gaze found Varin. His battle brother's valor in the recent war had not escaped his ears.. though it still gnawed at him that he had not been there to stand alongside him. "Abregado has no shortage of open wounds. You could cast a stone from where we stand and hit three of them."
His emerald eyes then slid to Mercy. "How long has it been since you last set foot upon the Field of Blades, Master?" With the duties he once held for the Covenant, a wide gulf had often lain between them; there was truly no way for him to know.