Private Petals Of The Dark

[Isobel Serraris]

PETALS OF THE DARK​

LOCATION — Zygerria, Ruins
TAGS — Darth Prazutis
PARAPHERNALIA — Armour of the Lost and Vesper et Aurora.

How many steps might one tread amidst the night before their vision begins to adjust, before darkness itself becomes no different than day? How many deeds can one commit before the lines between good and evil begin to blur beyond recognition. . ? Were such thoughts the fault of corruption , or merely the doubt that had begun to bloom within her soul? No, the Sith were evil--monsters devoid of any shape or form of remorse--and yet. . . one had stayed his hand when she dared threaten something innocent yet dearly beloved to him, a flower, whilst another pleaded for her to remain within his life, for she had become the only constant left to him. . . the only fragile glimmer of peace amidst a galaxy consumed by war.

Her psyche was ablaze with conflict as the rocks rumbled under the pressure of the Force. There was a calling beneath the surface, a whisper of old. . . daunting, familiar yet achingly foreign still--her senses could not determine it to be hostile or merely dormant, though none on this planet seemed graced with innocent. Her history holobooks had granted her enough knowledge about the Zygerrian Empire and their horrid slave empire, though it was not only they that blighted the past of this planet, there were... whispers of sorts, declaring it to be a remnant of the Rakatan Empire, of those horrid beings.

None of it reassured her that this journey would be safe, but knowledge was knowledge, and it was a power greater than any she had ever had her hands on before.

When the crevice widened into a narrow gateway, Isobel released her grasp of the Force, allowing silence to once more consume the vast and empty mesa (safe for her old spaceship). She inched closer to the gaping abyss that lay buried beneath the surface, her eyes seeking to adjust to the dark and stuffy atmosphere. . . But it could make out the flickers of reflections that seemed to shape--stairs? Her hand crept to the shoto-lightsaber at her side, before drawing it and allowing the red blade to pour from the emitter with a crackling roar. The red of its light revealed the path leading down into the ruins; steep, yet nigh on inviting her in. The whisper of the Force was near hypnotic, drawing her deeper with each second, until her senses were consumed and only the abnormal hymn remained.

The Jedi hesitated for what felt like a moment, before her boot slowly found the first step down, and then the other ,,

With each breath, she delved deeper into the ruins, until a light finally appeared further down; faint, yet undeniable.

The end of the pathway. . . or something else. .?

​

 

[Darth Prazutis]

There were wounds in the galaxy that never healed.

They sank beneath continents, beneath cities, beneath the vanity of younger civilizations that paved roads over mass graves and built empires atop bones they didn't have the wisdom to fear. Time buried them, sand softened their edges, and languages died before they could finish naming them. Scholars filed them beneath myth, superstition, or the embarrassed uncertainty of academic caution. But the Force remembered, and so did the Sith.

High above Zygerria's night-shrouded surface, the clouds split beneath the descent of Kainate engines. They came without ceremony and without broadcast, black shapes falling through the upper atmosphere like fragments of a murdered moon. The Skarnath-class Legion Landers punched through the dark in disciplined formation, their hulls swallowing starlight rather than reflecting it. Each vessel was a brutal wedge of armored black metal and crimson veined plating, its underside marked by faint crimson identification runes that pulsed through the clouds like the heartbeat of some descending beast. Heat shimmered along their entry shields. Gravitic stabilizers growled against the desert winds. For a moment, their silhouettes crossed the face of Zygerria's moons, immense and angular, before vanishing beneath the storm of dust kicked up by their own controlled descent.

They did not look like rescue craft, nor the familiar touch of explorers, they looked like occupation given wings. Within the hull of the lead lander, silence ruled. This was a ritual stillness deeper than the grave, a discipline bred into the Kainate's legions until even breath seemed to obey command. Rows of black-armored legionaries stood locked into grav-harnesses along the deployment bay walls, crimson visor-slits burning faintly beneath their helmets. Their armor had been dulled for night operations, every plate treated to drink light and reduce glare, yet each bore the sharp geometry and severity of the Immortal Legions of the Black Iron Host. Heavy weapons teams stood among them with folded tripod mounts and compact rotary blasters. Combat engineers carried excavation charges, seal-cutters, portable sensor shrines, and field containment pylons designed not merely to breach ruins, but to restrain whatever ancient machines might still be dreaming beneath the earth.

Behind them waited the specialists.

Shadow Mind archaeotechnicians in sealed black enviro-robes, their masks fitted with layered ocular lenses. Saaraishash observers with memory-needles, interrogation slates, and data reliquaries bound in black metal. Sith adepts of the Alchemarch stood apart from both, faces half-hidden beneath veils of red gauze and bone-white respirators, their gauntleted fingers moving in silent mudras as they tasted the currents rising from below. Every one of them had been summoned for the same reason. Contact within the Zygerrian Slave Empire had told them of the discovery, of what the Infinite Empire left behind. The Kainate ensured those who found the ruin were swiftly silenced, information of its location quietly swept aside so a team could be assembled to properly unlock the secrets within.

The Dark Lord of the Sith stood apart from the others for He required no harness. He stood unmoving as the Skarnath dropped through the last kilometers of atmosphere, immense and terrible beneath the bay's dim crimson lighting. Tonight He was clad not in the full hunger of His warplate, but in layered black field robes reinforced beneath with hidden armorweave and dark alchemical plating. The fabric fell around Him in austere, imperial lines, heavy enough to move like shadow rather than cloth. A broad mantle of blackened scalework rested across His shoulders, etched with barely visible Sith glyphs that drank in the red light of the troop bay, at His side hung His weapon, quiet and patient, radiating malice off its dark steel.

There was no mask to soften the dreadful intelligence in His molten eyes. No helm to make Him a symbol instead of a being. He stood as Himself. Darth Prazutis, Shadow Hand of the Kainate, former Emperor of the Tenth Sith Empire, Mortarch of the Dyarchy, sovereign terror made flesh. The dark side coiled around Him in vast, restrained pressure, held beneath perfect command. It filled the lander like the weight of deep water, pressing against armor, flesh, thought, and faith. It was a coiled storm held in check, fueled by the boundless depths of hatred. Zygerria was a place long remembered for the chains clasped around the oppressed, a Slave Empire so great it earned its place in galactic history. Long had the Zygerrians prospered at the hands of House Zambrano, and the goodwill earned ironclad connections to this very day.

Even now the Zygerrians provided unprecedented shipments of slaves vanishing into the stars, fresh bodies ground as fuel for the Kainate war machine. But the Dark Lord had not come to talk terms with the Zygerrians, he came for what lurked below, somethin far older. Older than the Sith as the galaxy now understood them. Older than most histories dared hold without collapsing into legend. The Infinite Empire. The Rakata. The Builders. A species of conquerors who had once bound technology and the Force together with a shamelessness even many Sith scholars mistook for madness. They had devoured worlds, enslaved species, bent hyperspace to appetite, and built machines that turned stars into industry and domination into engineering. They had not worshiped the Force as Jedi did. They hadn't inherited Sith doctrine. They had used it, harnessed it. Cut it open and wired their ambitions through the wound. Such technology was closely coveted by the Kainate wherever it was found, much of it sequestered within Malsheem and carefully deployed, once the Shadow Mind unlocked its inner workings.

The Skarnath struck the mesa with controlled violence. Dust exploded outward in vast concentric waves and stone cracked beneath landing struts. The night filled with the thunder of repulsorlifts bleeding power, the shriek of cooling armor, and the heavy mechanical groan of a war machine settling upon foreign ground. Around it, the other landers came down in sequence, forming a broad crescent across the plateau. Their ramps lowered before the dust had settled, red interior light spilling into the desert haze like blood from opened wounds.

Isobel Serraris​

 

[Isobel Serraris]

PETALS OF THE DARK​

LOCATION — Zygerria, Ruins
TAGS — Darth Prazutis
PARAPHERNALIA — Armour of the Lost and Vesper et Aurora.

Desolation plagued her in recent nights, the continuous void advancing upon her mind with each restless dream. Prophecies of the dark, of the vile sensation of blood upon her skin--of the conscience that was withering with each deed. Each image forebode a most grievous fate, one she had longed to extinguish with the brightest of Light. . . but was Ashla's blessing sufficient enough to forge a blade against this foe? Was the purity she prayed to still a constant, or merely another fragment of her imagination? Her faith was sufficient, it had bestowed mercies upon her where she should have perished.

The recollection of visions echoed in the back of her mind, the visions that got clearer and clearer with each breath, with each step she took down the endless slope of stairs. A crimson blade, the feel of eyes staring back at her as she looked upon the abyss. . . Not even the glimmer of warmth of a certain Sith's warm embrace could blur what the Force prophesised--of the nightmare that poisoned her psyche with darkness.

The noise that drew her here was louder than before, a crescendoing drum of countless new instruments . . . distant still, though drawing nearer to the motif. The low notes echoed of the dark, of a tune heard before yet altered to be more insidious. Her heart thundered swiftly within the confines of her chest, no longer a gentle base upon which the harmony--or cacophony--was permitted to flourish. Flashes of red, of numerous advancing shadows, forced her vision to drown within the sea of darkness. Her scleras burned agonisingly as she rubbed at her eyes in hopeless remedy, her ignited lightsaber slipping from her grasp and striking against the stone below. Its thud echoed throughout the cavernous stairway.

Frantic pants left her lips in continuous rhythm, begging for this to be a moment's lapse. . . Why now--when her boots could barely stand on these fragile and crumbled stairs? When her presence was overly visible to whoever may be out there, be it fauna or be it the Zygerrians themselves. "A red lightsaber, countless silhouettes. . . I know! You need not burden me with the same vision again." The words were muttered toward the Force itself, toward the unseen entity corrupting her with fractured glimpses of what was yet to come. The only matter that remained was the endless cycle of imagery repeating before her eyes: crimson light and advancing shadows alike. Yet she remained dormant, unable to move within the vision, unable to uncover anything beyond the scarce fragments she had already been shown.

A rumble shook the narrow entryway as the thud of ships landing outside thundered through the passage, forcing the young Nabooan to sway and lean against the stone wall. Crimson blade, an army of shadows and. . . yellow eyes with a red rim staring back at her through the abyss; this figure was not. . . an illusion. Yet neither did it stand before her--not beyond the confines of her mind's eye. Tall. Dangerously so. And composed in a manner that unsettled her more than her worst fears might have. . . For a fleeting second, it almost felt as though some unseen link bound them to the same dreadful thoughtscape, before the feeling slipped and her vision violently returned to reality.

Dread gripped her very mind, as Isobel hastily reached for her lightsaber, nearly losing her footing upon the stairs, before rushing deeper into the ruins below.

​

 

[Darth Prazutis]

The Kainate deployed.

Legionaries moved first, silent despite their armor, fanning out rapidly establishing kill zones across the mesa. Sensor teams marked the various approach vectors. Heavy weapons crews established overwatch positions among the stone ridges. Combat engineers drove black pylons into the ground, each one unfolding into tripod arrays that began tasting the soil for buried energy signatures. Shadow Mind personnel emerged behind them beneath field hoods and sealed masks, releasing spider-like probe droids that skittered over the broken rock and vanished toward the crevice. No wasted motion, no shouting or the business typically attributed to such scenarios no, this was different. This was akin to the careful tightening of a noose. It contained a cold, clinical precision the way that the operation unfolded, each part seamlessly carried out after the other.

Then the Dark Lord of the Sith descended. The very moment His boots touched Zygerrian stone, the night seemed to dim around Him. It was as if the shadows grew deeper, bolder, longer in the very presence of this tyrant. Darkness come alive. The wind moved across the plateau, carrying dust, heat, and the faint mineral stink of ancient rock disturbed after too many centuries of silence. Above, the Skarnath engines cycled down into a low, predatory growl. Right at His side, the ranking field commander dropped to one knee, an Umbaran. "Perimeter establishing, your majesty. No resistance. Probes have located the breach. Descent path confirmed. Recent disturbance along the stonework." The Mortarch's gaze moved across the mesa, towards the black wound in the earth.

The crevice yawned open beneath a shelf of fractured stone, narrow at first glance, but wrong in its geometry. The surrounding rock didn't look merely split. It looked carved. There were shapes along the edges, half-swallowed by erosion and sand, that lesser eyes might have mistaken for natural striations. The giant knew better. The lines weren't Sith. Not Jedi. Not Zygerrian. They were older, less elegant, more arrogant in their simplicity. Rakatan. The realization moved through the gathered Sith like a silent current. One of the Shadow Mind technicians approached, bowing low. "Supreme Excellency, preliminary readings indicate nonstandard alloy traces beneath the surface. Energetic residue is inconsistent with Zygerrian construction. There are harmonic returns from below, but the pattern does not align with known Sith ruin matrices."

"It wouldn't." Prazutis said. The technician bowed deeper then. "The site may still be partially active." At that, the Dark Lord smiled. It was a cold, slight thing. "Of course it is." He walked toward the crevice. The legionaries parted before Him. Sith adepts lowered their heads. Probe droids clung to the rocks, their lenses reflecting His passing in fragments of red. As Prazutis neared the entrance, the whisper beneath the earth became clearer. A buried hymn of ancient engines and dead masters. The faintest glimmer of metal beneath the ages of time. It wasn't alive in the way a beast was alive, nor conscious in the manner of a waiting spirit. It was memory fused into architecture. Hunger encoded in stone. The residue of a civilization that had once believed every living thing in the galaxy was material awaiting proper use. The legacy of the Infinite Empire.

He stopped before the opened stair. The darkness below was thick, swallowing the red glow cast by the Kainate lamps. Far beneath, almost beyond sight, there was the faintest light. Someone had already gone deep. The young Force presence moved within the ruin's throat, the giant acutely attuned to its movements as they delved deeper into the earth. The commander waited at His back. "Shall we retrieve the trespasser, supreme excellency?" Prazutis was silent for several breaths. Then He spoke. "No." The answer carried down into the wound. "They have already opened the first door. Let them continue. I will deal with them." A few of the nearby soldiers remained perfectly still, but the adepts understood. Prazutis turned slightly, His molten gaze moving across the assembled force. "No explosives beyond the first threshold. No uncontrolled cutting. No broad-spectrum ion discharge. Nothing ancient is to be destroyed unless I command it. If a mechanism activates, it is contained, studied, and silenced. If a chamber seals, it is mapped before it is breached. Threats are handled with precison not carelessness."

His eyes settled on the adepts. "Ward the entrance." Then to the Shadow Mind teams. "Record everything." Then to the legionaries. "Two squads with me. The rest secure the surface." The commands moved outward with instant obedience. Pylons activated around the crevice, projecting faint crimson fields into the dust. Sensor drones descended first, vanishing down the stair like metal insects crawling into a corpse's mouth. Legionaries followed in pairs, rifles angled downward, helmet lamps narrowed to thin red beams. Their boots found the ancient steps with measured care. Prazutis remained at the threshold for one final moment. The Dark Lord descended the steps into the darkness below towards the presence within, His senses attuned to the individuals presence. The giant flooded the ruin below with the darkness of His presence, like the event horizon of a black hole, drowning it in such depth that pinpointing the Mortarch's exact location made it incredibly difficult to whoever lurked below, and He stalked like a predator towards them.

Isobel Serraris ​

 

[Isobel Serraris]

PETALS OF THE DARK​

LOCATION — Zygerria, Ruins
TAGS — Darth Prazutis
PARAPHERNALIA — Armour of the Lost and Vesper et Aurora.

A guiding light, a lantern wielded within the cavernous depths of the ruin, that had been the calling of Ashla. . . Not to leave her in the clutches of Bogan, leave her to the perilous nightmares tormenting her vision--to blight her core until it flowed through every last part of her system. Hopelessness held her chained as its whispers slowly registered within the withering environment of her mind. For there was no saviour awaiting her in the abyss, merely the cold hands of death and misery gripping her skin until they were marked and acheing with each step.

Had her lady forsaken her, truly?

Isobel had pondered it countless times in the past--whenever the hollow agony settled within her body and thought,,, to feel her faith slipping with each journey throughout the vast galaxy. Mayhaps it was justice, for seeking out the tools of her foes for the sake of 'knowledge', a punishment firmly enforced by the absence of Light. And yet, , , part of her doubted that she may be met by Bogan's arms at the end of this trail, for as dark and fiery as her visions had been--they did not possess the grandeur, the fervour that the raw Force might utilise.

Her leather boots made soft thuds against the stone steps as she descended even quicker down the flight of stairs. The Nabooan's pace was swift and ceaseless, not permitting a single moment of weakness even as her breaths grew shallower and quicker--one, two, one, two--a never-ending chant that shaped the sole two pillars upholding her reckless rush. . . When that rhythm briefly faltered, the round tip of her boot clashed against one of the stones and her pace faltered for an instance. Bel felt like prey being hunted, and to stop now would mean her demise. . . So, run!

When the narrow pathway slowly straightened and opened into a wide chamber plagued by thick shadow, its walls lined with faint sigils glowing amidst the suffocating darkness, a breath of relief finally drew from her chapped lips. Her pace slowed at last, her lightsaber casting a gentle golden glow across the veiled chamber in search of hidden mechanisms that might lead her further onward--pillars, bricks, shattered crates. This could not possibly be the end of the ruin. If it was. . . then she would be trapped here, left to the mercies of what sort of monstrous presence awaited her upon the surface above.

The muffled buzzing of droids drew her freed hand away from the ancient walls and toward the secondary weapon settled beneath the sash of her armour. . . The crimson blade ignited violently alongside the golden one, both readied to be hurled toward whatever tool of destruction sought to strike her down, or obstruct the path onward. . . wherever it hid itself. Her hands lay restlessly upon the marble of her hilt, constantly sliding around, before twin red lights sharpened her senses, drawing her eyes to them--their path was rapid and unpredictable, as they approached her within seconds. Vesper was hurled toward one of them, the red blade spinning around akin to a tornado before slicing the drone fiercely--and circling back to her hand..

The second proved more troublesome, akin to some pesky little rodent refusing to perish no matter what one tried to be rid of them. "Curse these metal good-for-nothings--" The complaint had barely drawn itself from her lips, when the droid delivered a violent shock against her side. A frantic yelp echoed carelessly throughout the open chamber, drawing the last bits of the intruders' attention upon the 'foreign presence'. Her hand shot up without thought nor regret, crushing the machine beneath the immense pressure of the Force before carelessly throwing it aside. . .

The scuff had rendered her oblivious to the ever loudening marching of legionaries, as another set of blood red lights shone upon her from the mouth of the stairway. "Careful. . . I am not your foe. Merely , , ," For a second the girl trailed off, "One you may call unlucky enough to wander into an ancient ruin," In accordance with her claims, her hands slowly drew up in 'surrender', still it could be noted that the Nabooan made no move to extinguish the lightsabers within her grasp.

​

 

[Darth Prazutis]

Down through the stairwell in a disciplined stack came the Immortal Legionnaires of the Black Iron Host. They were heavily armored in Taral-type Sith Trooper Armor each carrying a specialized kit for the benefit of the squad and the assignment they'd come for. Some were equipped with the KCR while others chose the KSG. Their speech came out as scrambled garbling as they softly spoke to one another, each emerging into the room of debris, they spread out training their weapons on the woman who stood at the farthest portion of the room. When one did finally speak it came through a mechanized annunciator, a guttural rumble "Don't move or we will put you down. Extinguish the lightsabers and put them down, very slowly one at a time." Further beyond them above the stairwell, there was more sounds of movement, the fall of boots that foretold the presence of more soldiers and something else that slowly descended while this encounter unfolded.

Each footfall came like the echo of booming thunder in a stormy sky, as the figure entered crimson light from above it cast a deep looming shadow that seemed to span the length of the chamber below. It's very presence caused the shadows itself to grow deeper, longer, they seemed to leap off the walls in wispy fog like entrails. The Dark Side grew to suffocating levels in the room as its strength seemed to choke out everything that remained. The legionaries reacted to this presence to clearing a path, keeping their focus on the woman, they took strategic positions in the event a conflict were to break out. It ensured they could have overlapping fields of fire to split the womans focus on too many directions, to more easily terminate. Finally at the landing above the shadow emerged, a titan whose size engulfed the whole entry. The figures eyes blazed with molten fury that burned like twin suns, each cutting through the darkness and landing hard on the wanderer below.

"Interesting." The Dark Lords voice was a deep commanding baritone. "This ruin has been hidden for thousands of years. We have done much to keep its discovery hidden, and we find a mysterious wanderer lurking within." The Dark Lord seemed to draw in a deep breath then. "The Force is strong with you." He clasped His hands together calmly, while carefully observing the mysterious woman in the beginnings of a Rakatan installation, fresh from the destruction of droids whose debris was scattered across the room. "Tell me your name stranger, and tell me, what do you know of what lurks below?" The Dark Lord questioned, a careful probe to find out more of what the woman knew.

Isobel Serraris​