Private Proving Under Fire

[Darth Virelia]

"The aura of command."

Tag - Darth Kharnaz


The sky above Morrigal boiled.

Storms born of ash and atmosphere loomed far beyond the northern ridgelines, coiling black smoke into shapes like skeletal hands reaching for the heavens. Morrigal did not know peace. Not yet. But soon—it would forget rebellion. Serina Calis would see to it.

And today, one of her weapons would prove whether he could command not just power… but others.

She moved through the unfinished corridors of Fort Avarice with a sovereign's gait—measured, precise, unhurried. The walls rose around her in various states of completion: permacrete panels half-sealed, durasteel skeletons exposed to the wind, engineers and droids scrambling to obey whispered schedules etched in blood and deadlines. And everywhere her eyes passed, soldiers snapped to attention.

They felt her coming before they saw her.

The chill of order. The gravity of command.

Behind her strode the Shistavanen.

No longer a gladiator.

Now garbed in deep crimson duraplate segmented with matte-black lines of military rank, his fur pulled back into neat cords, his twin sabers clipped with martial pride. Not a brute. Not a berserker. But something harder. Tighter. Forged.

Kharnaz.

He marched in step behind her—not as a pet, nor a student, but as a weapon now tempered for the next stage: application.

Ahead, the great gates of Fort Avarice yawned open. Troopers in newly issued matte-black fatigues stood in parade formation—three rows deep, two flanking columns—helmets gleaming, rifles shouldered, eyes forward. Their boots struck the permacrete in perfect unison, the sound resonant and rehearsed.

They had been drilled for days in anticipation of her arrival.

But they did not raise their eyes to her.

They dared not.

At the head of the line stood a junior officer, spine straight as a pike, sweat beading behind his brow beneath the visor. He saluted as she approached, hand stiff and flawless.

"Platoon Aurek-Six, reporting as ordered, Lady Virelia."

She stopped just before him. Her gaze flicked to the edges of the formation, then back to the officer.

"They look prepared."

A pause.

"Are they loyal?"

The officer didn't hesitate. "Unto death, my lady."

Serina smiled. Brief. Subtle.

"Good. Then today, they will kill for me."

She turned then—flourishing her cloak with a single precise motion—and faced Kharnaz. The wind caught her hair, streaking it across one eye. She made no motion to brush it aside.

Her voice carried with calculated resonance.

"You have learned to master the self. Now, you will master others."

She stepped forward, boots echoing between the ranks.

"In the hills to the north festers the last remaining stain upon this world: a deranged cult calling themselves the Crimson Pyre. Fanatics. Poisoners. Murderers. They have resisted our consolidation of Morrigal since my first ship broke the clouds. No more."

She began to walk—through the ranks, not around them—forcing the soldiers to brace as she passed. Her presence was like gravity, each step heavier than the last.

"You will lead Aurek-Six against them. Not as a saboteur. Not as a duelist. But as a commander. You will take this force, crush the cult utterly, and bring me proof of their destruction."

She stopped at the edge of the parade square and turned once more.

Her voice sharpened.

"I do not care how you do it. I do not care how many fall. I do not care if you burn the hills to the bedrock."

She raised her hand, and a small holoprojector snapped to life beside her. The cult's encampment appeared—hastily erected spires of bone and steel, defensive pylons, half-buried mines and emplacements carved into the hillsides.

"Their perimeter is tight. Their numbers are smaller than ours, but they fight like madmen. You will not earn this with brute force. You will win by being inevitable."

She looked to Kharnaz directly now—eyes blazing with violet certainty.

"Lead. Adapt. Destroy. And return to me with their commander's head."

The holoprojector winked off.

Silence fell.

She did not offer a speech. Did not inspire the men. That was his task now.

This was no longer his proving ground.

This was his war.

She gestured once toward the officer at the front of the formation.

"They are yours now."

 

[Darth Kharnaz]

Kharnaz marched behind his mistress. At last he was allowed to be unleashed on the galaxy. No more would he hide in the shadows, looking only after himself. He had a greater purpose.

Kharnaz stood in new armor, a sign of his new alliegance. Kharnaz had used the facilities on Pollis Massa to create it, imbuing his blood into it when he worked at the forge. No longer id he stand in a forgotten warriors broken armour, but now he stood in his strength made manifest. His hair too was tied back, reflecting his loyalty. He was not Kharnaz the gladiator anymore. He was Kharnaz the Sith.

He eyed the troops as Darth Virella spoke to them. Well trained and high tech, they would be a formidable force. But Kharnaz would show them that the force, in the hands of one such as him, would be far more powerful.

He listened intently as she turned to speak to him, answering only at the end.

"They are yours now."

He bowed his head

"It will be done, my mistress."

She turned to leave, leaving the men to him. Kharnaz walked around them, sniffing them.

They were loyal and well disciplined, but they lacked passion. Kharnaz had fought with others before. In the pits sometimes teams were made. Gladiators all had a passion, borne out of desperation. It is amazing how hard people fight when they have the threat of survival.

These men did not have that. They have never seen real combat before, he could smell it. They reeked of overconfidence and complacence. Their training was never truly dangerous. They did not understand real danger and as such did not have the drive he needed.

He would teach them. He would turn these soldiers into warriors. Before the assault he would make certain that his men had that all important flame within him.

He turned to the commander.

"Why do you fight, soldier."

The officer frowned, not expecting the question.

"To serve your Mistress and expand her will, sir." He replied.

"Wrong."
Kharnaz outstretched his fingers. The officer tugged at his collar, then pulled at it. He started gasping as he found it ever harder to breath. Kharnaz lifted him up, his feet struggling futilely in the air."

"You do not fight for any individual any more. Nor do you fight for a cause, or a family or any other tradition. You fight to survive."

The man gasped, his face turning blue. Something popped in his neck.

"The enemy out there, they fight to survive. That means they will be viscous. A cornered animal is the most dangerous. If you are to have any hope of killing them you too must have the same driving force."

The man went limp, his eyes rolling back. Kharnaz dropped him to the floor unceremoniously.

"You must fight to survive. Every attack, every defence, every shot fired will be to keep you alive. Not just from the enemy, but from me. I will not hesitate to kill any one of you. Only with fear at your back will you be able to overcome them."

He looked out to the army. To their credit they remained as stoic as ever, but Kharnaz could smell the fear coming off them. Good.

"I will lead the attack. Myself and two thirds of the army are to go with me, in a frontal assault. I expect high casualties. I gurantee that a death by blaster will be far worse than what I have planned for you if you fail. The other third will attack from the rear, trapping them. Finally I want multiple flamer squads. We shall burn them out."

He looked out. They all understood now.

"Get to your transports. We strike at night. "

Like a well ordered machine the troops moved, preparing for the assault. The commander lay forgotten in the mud. At night the war would begin.

 

[Darth Virelia]

"The aura of command."

Tag - Darth Kharnaz


From the high balcony of the bastion wall, Virelia watched it all unfold.

The wind tugged at her cloak, making it ripple like black flame against the high metal ramparts. Morrigal's harsh wind was laced with ash and dust from the north—carried from the ever-burning pyres of the deranged cultists who still infested the hills. In the distance, her sensors could already taste the madness, the erratic heat signatures, the occultist architecture rising like tumors from the hillsides.

But her eyes were not on the horizon.

They were on Kharnaz.

She did not interrupt his speech. She did not correct him. No immediate adjustments were made to his decisions or tactics. This was his moment. His test. Not merely of violence, but of command.

And what a curious beginning it was.

She stood in silence as he executed the officer. Not with ceremony or theatricality, but cold utilitarianism. There was no elegance in the method—just a predator's certainty. A lesson etched in a bruised windpipe and dropped like waste into the dirt.

For the soldiers, it had been a wake-up call.

For Virelia?

It was data.

Her arms folded across her chest as she shifted her weight to one hip, her eyes narrowing slightly. Every beat of that interaction was recorded. Not just by droids—by her. Personally. She studied his tone. The tension in his body. The decision points.

He used fear.

That was not new. Fear was a currency the Sith minted with ease. But fear alone did not hold an army. It galvanized. It inspired performance in bursts. But long-term?

Fear demanded maintenance. Constant presence. Constant threat. It was expensive.

Her gaze tracked the soldiers as they dispersed, moving with rigid formation toward their transports. She noted their posture—tense now, more alive. Good. They'd remember what failure meant. The weakest among them would shiver and sweat.

But not one had looked back at the body in the dirt.

That told her something else.

It worked.

For now.

Her thoughts slid like a blade between strategy and psychology. Command was an art. She had studied it not only in books and simulations, but in flesh—across dozens of worlds, campaigns, prisons, laboratories. Soldiers were variables. Commanders were formulas.

Kharnaz had chosen one of the darker ones.

She spoke then, softly, to the comm embedded in her armor. The link was encrypted, routed through multiple AI relays. But the voice was private. Intimate.

"Impressive."

Her tone was flat—but not devoid of meaning. She rarely praised. Even rarer was her attention without critique.

"His instincts remain brutish, but focused. The troops now understand their place on the board. He has begun to play the role."

She turned from the edge and paced slowly along the upper parapet, her gaze never breaking from the departing convoys.

"He plans a two-pronged maneuver—blunt assault with flanking pressure. Classic and effective, but reliant on morale and timing. We'll see how well he adapts once the chaos begins."

She paused.

Her voice dipped into thought.

"His flame squads are well-considered. Fire demoralizes. It disrupts cover. But if the cultists have biological wardings, we may lose momentum to madness, not gunfire."

A flicker of distaste ghosted across her lips—not at him, but at the unpredictability of the cult's final redoubt. She had seen their rituals before. Living men lit like torches. Children armored in bone. Whatever faith they served, it was not coherent.

She resumed her pacing.

"He relies too much on fear. That will need refinement. A weapon can be sharpened with terror, yes—but an army?" She exhaled through her nose. "An army needs purpose."

She came to a stop at the far end of the parapet. Below her, the transports hummed to life. Dozens of engines, dozens of lights, cutting through the growing gloom like a phalanx of judgment. The assault would begin under the shroud of nightfall. Just as planned.

Her fingers tapped a subtle code against her vambrace.

Dozens of hidden sensors across the battlefield—tactical droids, encrypted spy-nodes, subdermal biotags—came online. She would watch everything. Every movement. Every command issued. Every failure. Every victory. Every death.

Because this wasn't just about Morrigal.

It was about the Fourth Legion.

This world was nearly secure. The cult's eradication would be the final act—removing the last trace of irregular resistance. Once done, Morrigal would be Virelia's forward operating base for the Velgrath contest, the great imperial calculus of might and merit. She would not win the Fourth Legion.

She would make winning irrelevant.

With a functioning fortress. With a loyal army. With a commander at her side who could turn survival into conquest.

Her voice returned to the comm, still quiet.

"He needs to survive this."

A pause.

"More importantly… he needs to lead. Not command. Not kill. But lead. If he does that… I will give him something no master ever gave me."

She turned now, stepping into the descending lift as the wind howled behind her.

The gates of Fort Avarice began to close.

"A future."

And far to the north, in the hills where the mad still chanted in blood-soaked shrines, fire and fate both waited for their reckoning.



The hills screamed.

They always did, beneath the breath of Morrigal's black moons—high, ululating, ancient cries that echoed off jagged stone like the voices of dead gods gnashing against the silence. Some said the wind carried the voices of the First Fire, others believed it was the bones beneath the mountain weeping ash and memory.

To the Crimson Pyre, it was music.

Atop a broken bluff of vitrified stone, lit by flame that burned green and gold, the Prophet crawled.

He had no name—not anymore. His bones were bound in rope and leather, his skin a map of burnt scripture and self-inflicted rites. His eyes were milk-white, one torn nearly in half from a previous communion. His limbs twitched with divine seizure as he scuttled forward, naked and bloodied, toward the fire that danced atop the altar of split iron. Smoke billowed around him, thick with spice and sacrifice.

"They come. They come with metal mouths and hollow gods. They come to burn what cannot die."

His voice was not loud. But every cultist heard it.

Dozens encircled him, kneeling in the soot. Their armor was improvised, fused from bone and techscrap, etched with symbols that radiated despair and ecstasy in equal measure. Some bore flamers cobbled from broken plasma coils, others crude rifles or jagged swords. All of them were marked.

With brands. With ash. With pain.

Across the encampment, fires danced high into the sky, casting mad shadows across ruined shrines, charred effigies, and massive hanging cages swaying in the wind. From within those cages came the muffled sounds of prayers—or screams. To the Pyre, it was the same.

Life was agony. Pain was the flame. The flame was eternal.

A drumbeat began.

Slow. Rhythmic. Beating on the stretched hide of an enemy officer captured a week prior. Each thump sent dust pluming into the night air. Each beat was answered by whispers, then chants, then screams.

"Ash to ash. Blood to bloom. Burn their bones, and make them truth."

A priestess stepped forward now, tall and thin as a spine ripped bare. Her helm was a welded grate, her robes black with soot, her fingers clawed from years of ritual fire-handling. She carried no weapon—just a torch made from a broken rifle barrel. The flame atop it danced with a life of its own.

She raised it high and turned toward the western hills.

"The tyrant sends her beast. The beast will gnash. The beast will howl. But he does not know…" she hissed, voice like cracked glass, "the fire is already in us."

The cultists howled in reply.

Some beat their chests until ribs cracked. Others bent backward until bones snapped. Some fell into seizures of holy madness, vomiting up ash or speaking in tongues none could translate. Madness was not a condition here. It was a weapon.

And they had used it well.

Already, the approaches were seeded with traps—flesh mines made from the bodies of their own martyrs, pressure glyphs woven in blood-ink, wards that screamed through the Force with confusion and agony. The hills were ready. The shrines were awakened. The Pyre was lit.

Behind the altar, six figures stood chained to spears of blackened iron—fresh captives, twitching with barely-contained terror. One was an officer. Another a medic. One was just a boy, not even in uniform. They would serve a different purpose.

As the Prophet rose, his mouth stretched wider than seemed possible, lips tearing, blood running in thin crimson ribbons down his chin. From within, the heat poured—not breath, not words. But heat.

"Let the fire take us," he whispered. "Let it show us the shape of death."

And as one, the cult began to burn.

They did not die.

They burned—willingly. Their skin blackened. Their nerves ignited. Their spirits screamed into the Force, not with fear but joy. They became beacons, their pain stretching across the hills like pyres of psychic agony.

And in the northern dark, the wind changed.

The Flame saw them now.

And it hungered.