Peering Behind The Veil

[Darth Carnifex]

​

​

Gravlex Med's Orbit
Aftermath of the Orbital Bombing

After the Sith Empire had pulled back from Gravlex Med, the entire planet was subject to precise saturation bombings to root out and annihilate the largest concentrations of the Anx civilization. Entire mountains had been gutted by thermonuclear rounds, vast firestorms engulfing entire savannahs and searing them down to the rock as they raged uncontrollably for hours.

Those who were not killed immediately were buried beneath unfathomable tons of rubble as entire mountain ranges were laid low by the destructive salvo from the heavens.

Meanwhile the Dark Lord watched the entire procedure from the bridge of his flagship, the Blade of Fate. In his right hand he held aloft a goblet made from the bleached skull of Karin Dorn, and every so often he would bring it to his lips and take a drink of the dark liquid that sloshed within. At last his murderous rage had abated, but he did not regret his previous orders to bring destruction down upon the Anx and their homes, it had been a justifiable retaliation for the murder and imprisonment of his envoys.

Now they had learned the price of their audacity. Those that survived would remember what had happened when they had dared to lay a finger on his people, and hopefully would not repeat the same mistake.

An adjutant milled about silently behind him, waiting patiently until the Dark Lord chose to acknowledge him. When he did, he bowed deeply and relayed this message, "She has arrived, your excellency, she is being escorted to the bridge as we speak."

"Excellent," mused Carnifex, "Make sure that her desires are met, I pride myself on my hospitality."

[member="Darth Caecus"]​

 

[Darth Caecus]

Desires? The masked figure had none, at least, none that his men could supply.

In truth, Darth Caecus would rather have not been there at all. Not yet. At least, that was what she had been telling herself.

But how true was that?

Every step had taken her slowly closer to this moment. From the moment she had offered her aid to [member="Darth Saarai"], each successive interaction had been pushing in this direction. If she had really wanted to stay under the radar, she would not have gone to the Black Library with them after offering the information. She wouldn't have stayed on Gravlex Med. Wouldn't have gone after the taken sith herself. It would have been far easier, after all, to simply offer them the information and go. Watch perhaps, assess. But not get involved. So why hadn't she?

Because, if she was being honest, she had already done all of the assessing she needed. Now was the time to make the choice, not to continue watching. Despite what she had told herself, her actions spoke of someone who wished to not remain at the fringes, and as she moved through the corridors of the Dark Lord's ship, she mulled over that.

​What did she want?

It was no easy question.

Certain things were ingrained in the clone. Certain ideals, concepts. Things that would have been alien to the original, stamped in perfect clarity by her creator for the very purpose of making certain that, this time, the woman wearing Kith Verloren's face did not end up at the helm of a galaxy destroying weapon.

How was it possible to not be lonely, and yet to seek out other Sith with a desire to not be alone?

The two feelings clashed inside of her uncomfortably.

Door slid open to reveal [member="Darth Carnifex"].

Still dressed in the grey cloak and robes she had been beneath the surface of the planet, dark, dry splotches of blood on the fabric, the figure strode forward to the center of the bridge. She hadn't removed her mask either, and had no intentions of doing so in a room full of strangers.

Of course, deeper programing might have other things to say about that.

With the barest shift to the cloak, the figure dropped slowly to one knee.

The voice, graveled and buzzing, distorted by the mask.

 

[Darth Carnifex]

He turned, finally facing [member="Darth Caecus"] for the first time since she had been granted access to the bridge. She still wore the same attire she had worn planet-side, while Carnifex had noticeable discarded his blood and gore-stained armor for something more simple and traditional.

"Ah, the Lady Irezka has finally arrived." One of the things that Carnifex had been unable to procure was a name to fit the face, or more accurately, the mask. He'd never seen her true face either, but that wasn't an uncommon thing among the Sith. Either for aesthetic or symbolic significance or just plain old protection of identity, Sith Knights and Lords frequently wore masks ranging from elaborate design to base simplicity. Carnifex himself had worn a mask or two on occasion, but it was usually reserved as a means to protect his face during battle. So he had opted to refer to her as Irezka for the time being, which was the Sith equivalent of the Basic word Enigma.

She knelt before him and he beckoned her to stand, "You've been quite an interesting creature to observe. No one knows your name, no one knows your face... Except for perhaps Lord Saarai. Which makes me wonder, how did you and the Peacock meet?"

 

[Darth Caecus]

She stood with his motion, preferring to not be kneeling before him, but understanding the protocol and the necessity behind it. Sometimes, playing the roll given was the only way to move forward. She had nothing to prove, insufficient ego to chafe at bending the knee. She had insufficient information to judge them in truly relative manners, so she had no investment in unnecessary challenge.

It wasn't really an answer. Not in a way that gave him anything to go on really. But it was enough to be not an egregious evasion, merely keeping certain privacies.

Caecus. It could mean a number of things. Blind. But equally so the Unseeable. Secret. Just which meaning she had chosen it for was unclear.

She watched him from behind the mask, weighing what she knew against the man before her. He certainly towered. God-king. Butcher. He wore both those titles as heavy cloaks on wide shoulders. Heavy title by far, to be called Dark Lord of the Sith. A thousand years and more of weight, the eyes of every sith below waiting, watching. Knowing that it was only time until a mistake was made, a weakness shown. And then?

Blood.

It always ended that way.

Or at least, it had in her era. But that was a long time ago, and in truth, she could claim no ownership of it. Not any longer.

[member="Darth Carnifex"]

 

[Darth Carnifex]

"Caecus it is then." An even more ominous name than the one he had given her.

He gestured behind him, indicating the grand theater of destruction that was taking place just beyond the viewport. All over the surface of Gravlex Med blossomed beautiful flowers of fury and devastation dealt by the fleet that still lingered in orbit, the results of which were viewable from space. "Tell me, Caecus. What does the scene before you make you feel, mountains atomized by vindictive flame and tens of thousands reduced to cinders in the blink of an eye... Would you not agree that it is glorious?"

Carnifex often considered himself a purveyor of misery, drinking in the suffering of others like a dehydrated man drinking water from a well. He often meted out such suffering personally through his unwavering hatred of the Jedi Order, inflicting injury and death upon their members for his own sick perversions. He preferred such intimate methods, the devastation of a planet was a sight to behold and all, but nothing could beat the connection a torturer had with the tortured. By the end of it all Carnifex often knew more about his victim's bodies than they knew themselves, having taken great lengths to explore every inch inside and out before finally ending their agony-wracked existence.

"The Dark Side swells at the loss of so many."

[member="Darth Caecus"]​

 

[Darth Caecus]

She had seen it. From other view ports throughout the ship. The cherry red glow, died down from the white hot plasma of the first moments of hell.

croaked the voice from the mask.

Perhaps she should. If her creator had had his way, she would have wept, surely. But she had rejected that influence, that outside desire to change her base nature. It wasn't to say that Kith never felt anything. But this raised little in way of emotions.

That did not mean she did not have thoughts on it, however. While he had asked specifically for her feelings, she offered what she had instead.

The cloaked figure shrugged. Even with the distortion of the mask, it was clear that the person beneath it, while they saw it as wasteful, was also not particularly invested or upset by the waste either. Resources that could have been utilized with a more surgical approach. Flood the tunnels and wait until their herd mentality bodies floated to the surface, drowned and pale faced. But to set fire to the very mountain.... for the sake of.....

Pride.

That she did not understand.

[member="Darth Carnifex"]

 

[Darth Carnifex]

He chuckled, "Undoubtedly there would be many who agree with you, but they don't understand."

By now the thunderous retribution from the heavens had quieted, and silence had descended across the ravaged landscape. Probes were then launched from the Blade of Fate to then monitor and record the destruction left in the Empire's wake, transmitting everything they saw back to the command ship which then appeared on a nearby holoscreen for both the Dark Lord and [member="Darth Caecus"]' viewing pleasure. The landscape around the Ozlyn Gox was a shattered ruin, the mountain eviscerated and torn open like the carcass of some bloated beast. The savannah where the Empire had initially landed was scorched and rotten, the trees blown to smithereens by the bombardment until all that remained was grass-less earth and seared rock.

It didn't end there.

Prior to and during the extraction the Dark Lord had commanded that the other Anx cities be subjected to bombardment as well, although they were purposefully not as severe as the annihilation of Ozlyn Gox. However, because of the Anx's nature to build their cities beneath earth and stone, much of the native landscape had to be wiped away before they could go any real damage to the cities beneath. All over the planet mountains had been blown open, entire ranges reduced so crumbled ruin to appease the Dark Lord's penchant for cruelty and destruction.

"This was not merely an affront to me, Lady Caecus... It was an affront to the whole Empire. Let the Anx stand as a reminder to any who would dare entertain the notion of lifting a finger against the envoys of the Sith, let them reflect on the carnage that has been wrought to those who defy the will of the Dark Side. That is the purpose of this 'profligate', to let all know that the Empire does not award slaps on the wrists for the murder of its people. And I have no qualms on reteaching this lesson to those who refuse to learn."

 

[Darth Caecus]

He was greeted with silence, but then, it might be expected. From what little was known, the masked sith was not prone to unnecessary chit chat. She had offered her disagreement, but felt no need to continue.

Caecus was not the debating sort.

In truth, they did not have to agree. She had no skin in the game, so to speak. While it was not the route she would go, neither did it particularly affect her one way or the other. She understood, intrinsically, that this was not something either of them would change the others mind on. Even things that were, she would rarely consider it worth the investment. She gained nothing, and lost only energy and time on a fruitless debate.

So she stood in silence. Even without being able to see exactly where she was looking because of the mask, the mask itself remained trained on him.

All of this was information. Weighed and measured. One more piece of this puzzle that was the Empire of the Sith.

In her predecessor's day, with rare exception, the Sith had been unable to work together long enough without ending up at each others throats to make something like this stick. But that had been 500 years ago, and, she hoped, they had learned.

No, she had no desire to argue with the man in front of her. There were far more reasons not to. Far more things gained.

While she would not hesitate to disagree if he asked her, she had nothing to prove.

And all too much to lose.

[member="Darth Carnifex"]

 

[Darth Carnifex]

​The silence dragged on, the absence of conversation becoming an unbearable pounding din as the only sounds that graced it were the occasional scuffle of boots, an awkward cough, or the thundering of one's heart pumping in their chest.

Carnifex was, suffice to say, at somewhat of a loss. Typically those who disagreed with him would go off on their own miniature rant about why they thought this way, why they were in the right, and how Carnifex was just some glorified butcher. But Caecus? Yes, the Dark Lord knew she disagreed, knew she disapproved of his heavy-handed methods of meting out his own brand of perverted justice, but unlike all the others she merely gave her initial disapproval but offered no more comment nor argument.

It was interesting.

And that was what led to the Dark Lord to stare out of the warship's viewport, seemingly lost in the distant destruction as the emptiness droned on. Then, finally, he broke the silence, "Who are you, Caecus? Why do you wear the mask?"

[member="Darth Caecus"]​

 

[Darth Caecus]

Kith was more comfortable in silence most people. She did not love it, crave it, the way the original had. But it was perfectly comfortable as a place to sit. While other people felt a need to fill the silence, finding it strange or awkward, she had no such urge.

So it did not surprise her when he broke it first again. For a number of reasons. Partly because he was the one who had wished to speak with her, partly because it was simply a very typical thing for speech capable sentients to do.

She mulled, for a moment, on his question. It was not as simple as a two or three word response. As in all things, she was conservative, choosing words carefully, leaving no extra. If she could make herself understood in three words, she would never add a forth. It distilled everything she did and said down to its essence. No wasted step, no wasted effort, no wasted breath.

No wasted words.

It came after a long enough stretch of silence that if she were going to answer at all would have been coming into question.

Even the sith had fought against the woman who had first worn her face. Yet the intrinsic programing of 'I am Sith' that had been imprinted on the clone meant that there was no where else she truly felt she belonged. But Darth Molior, the first Kith Verloren, had gone so much farther in her plans than even the Sith could tolerate.

She was not sure, if he knew, that she would be welcome here.

[member="Darth Carnifex"]

 

[Darth Carnifex]

That was unsatisfactory.

He turned and faced the masked Sith, his eyes boring directly into her own. "The galaxy is chaotic and ignorant, the mewling masses writhing in anarchy without a firm hand to guide them. I do not care what they will accept or what they won't accept, when the Sith rule the galaxy they will take what is given to them and will be thankful for the privilege or be destroyed for their insolence." The Dark Lord was a firm believer that the Sith were destined to rule the galaxy, steering it towards a galactic golden age of prosperity and absolute order no matter how many millions had to be annihilated to achieve it. He was willing to go to any lengths to achieve his goals, and no sacrifice was too great.

"So what they might think of you is inconsequential to me, and I will play no more games." His tone was deathly serious, his features devoid of humor and fiercely angular and harsh. He cast a quick glance around the bridge, which had fallen silent in the wake of his rebuttal.

"Clear the bridge."

His tone brokered no argument, and the with uncanny swiftness the officers and technicians dropped what they were doing and moved to empty the command deck until only Carnifex and Caecus remained. The privacy would perhaps prove to be liberating, for there were no longer any prying eyes save his, no ears to hearken but his own, and his voice would echo with finality: "Remove the mask."

It did not sound like a request.

[member="Darth Caecus"]​

 

[Darth Caecus]

She knew it was coming before he ordered it. And she had no intention of complying with his desires here. While she recognized his authority, the head of this great, heaving monster he was creating- this Empire that she was still debating what, if any, her role would be in moving steps beyond this one- she did not trust him.

Perhaps that was naïve, and she knew it. After all, what Sith could truly trust another? And yet, that desire was there. It bothered her, that hypocrisy in her own psyche. The duality of knowing she could not trust because that was in part what it was to be Sith, and yet to need it on a level as equally base as that. It seemed a struggle not worth entertaining and yet....

When the words came, there was no surprise at them. She had known they were on the horizon.

What did surprise her was that, without hesitation, she reached up and unsnapped the straps that held her mask in place.

Enough so that when she lowered the mask, there was a frown on her face. Pale skin, golden hair, eyes the colour of the sea after a storm. Not, perhaps, what most people would expect behind the crackled voice and insectoid mask.

In truth, there was little risk in being recognized. So few people had seen the face behind Omega, after all. And this woman, Caecus was so much younger and very much alive instead of the cold stillness of Darth Molior.

Still, the face of Kith Verloren gazed up at him, emotionless but for the small frown on her lips.

She hadn't intended to take off the mask.

"Satisfied, Lord Carnifex?"

Without the vocoder, her voice was quiet, calm, cool without being cold.

Why had she taken off the mask?

[member="Darth Carnifex"]

 

[Darth Carnifex]

There was refusal, outright rejection of his desire.

He could feel her on the verge of resisting.

And then, suddenly.

Compliance.

Confusion enveloped both of them. Carnifex had sensed her reluctance to comply with his demands, he had already prepared a counter in preparation for it as well. But then she removed the mask without hesitation, her body working autonomously from what her mind dictated.

"Interesting" was his response, he approached her and reached out to touch her face for a closer examination. "Hold still," was his next command, and a part of him doubted that [member="Darth Caecus"] would resist. Something had sparked to life in her with his forward command, something ingrained into her psyche that made it impossible for her to resist him. His words had become sacrosanct in her presence, and it mystified the Dark Lord.

Yet, he was partly disappointed. He had expected a face from his past to be looming behind that insectoid mask, but instead there was this girl who he had never seen in his entire life. She was young, vibrant, and with beautiful eyes.

"I do not recognize you, Caecus." He paused, a bold thought taking root in his mind. "Tell me of your origins, and leave no detail hidden. This I command."

 

[Darth Caecus]

She didn't pull away from his touch, but even without the command she would not have. It wasn't a threat, and while she prefered to keep distance, both physical and emotional, it was not a bother. Simple predilection after the strange situation she had come into existence in, reinforced by the very nature of the subject.

Her frown deepened however at his next command. It was clear that while she was following his instructions, she was not in some sort of thrall. She still had opinions about all of it- about him- and yet she answered.

"I was cloned from a fragment of Kith Verloren," she responded succinctly. "She was better known as Darth Molior in her time, before the Gulag Plague. She was.... a remnant. A hold over."

She paused as if considering.

"She was the architect behind the Omega Crisis."

Again she stopped, frown intensifying.

"I was created by a Sith named Ignus. I left when it became clear that he did not..... want what he had actually created, but something far different."

These were details she had no desire to share, or even go into detail on. It just skirted the edge of his command. She did not hide it, but she did not elaborate either. It was.... personal.

[member="Darth Carnifex"]

 

[Darth Carnifex]

Ah, that explained it.

"I had never met Darth Molior during the Omega War, but I saw the extent of her actions after the war." The death of the One Sith was a violent one, the massive behemoth lashing out in all directions as it was torn apart from both without and within. Carnifex had left before chaos and anarchy had fully engulfed the crumbling state, casting off his previous moniker of Vornskr in favor of his current Darth title -- A symbolic gesture of his new path, one that has led him to the position of Dark Lord at the head of a newer and stronger Sith Empire.

The revelation that she was created by Ignus was an interesting one, for no one had seen the Mirialan Sith Lord since before the transition from the Ascendancy to the Empire. Carnifex had never fully trusted the man, he was too much of an idealist for his liking.

And now he was probably the only other person in the whole wide galaxy that knew the secret of [member="Darth Caecus"], and the Sith Lady seemed completely surprised by her inability to prevent herself from submitting to the Dark Lord's commands. Most likely meaning that Ignus had failed to inform her of her conditioning, an oversight that Carnifex planned to use for his own machinations.

"This is an interesting development, nonetheless. Hear me, Darth Caecus, you will serve me and the Empire in all things, you will ensure the survival and continual expansion of this great Imperium. When the enemies of Order rear their heads, you will work tirelessly to ensure their destruction as an arbiter of my wrath."

 

[Darth Caecus]

There was only one thing it could be. Kith knew she was a clone, that certain things had been hardwired in, rather than allow for the vagaries of fate and experience to dictate what path she would take. The few she knew about had never particularly chafed, because they were simply an ingrained part of who and what she was. She knew she was a Sith, for instance. It had never been a question as something she had understood intrinsically from the first time Ignus had uttered the word.

But this was different.

For the last year, she had been beholden to no one. While occasionally [member="Darth Saarai"] would ask something of her, it was always that- a request. He treated her as an equal. And she had left her creator's care long before any hint of this back up had been revealed. Up until the moment she had decided to leave, there had been no friction to indicate a need for it. Because as soon as she realized how very wrong all of it was she had given no chance for it.

The other parts she knew had been nascent since her awakening. This, however, broke with the person that she had slowly been growing into in the last year. Discovering it this late in the game made it difficult to reconcile.

And yet.... she would have to.

"As you command.... it shall be done."

She had not yet known just how deeply she had wished to declare for this fledgling Empire. But now?

The decision had been made for her.

Oddly, it did not make her hate [member="Darth Carnifex"]. She didn't know if it was the conditioning itself that prevented it, but she felt no particular anger toward him. He had found a tool.... that the tool was her, well.... no, the person she was angry at was long gone. And far beyond reach.