Private Refiner's Fire (Malum)

[Ashin Cardé Varanin]

THE SPIRES OF HELL - ATHELVAI
NOW INSIDE THE BLACKWALL

Ashin requested to meet Darth Malum of House Marr on a series of terraced landing pads that connected two twinned spires a thousand miles long. The air was thin, the wind strong and cold, and the fall unfathomable.

She stood at the edge and let that wind rip at her armourweave cloak and robes. Her feet never moved. She'd brought only a simple lightsaber and wore the Mask of Anger, which had no special powers.

The complex, ancient, terraced projections looked out over impossible layers upon layers of storm clouds. She watched them and thought of better days. This was a place of powerful memory. Lightning had left the spires' weird substance scarred, a good sixty years back now.

 

[Darth Malum of House Marr]

He had raised an eyebrow as he had received the summons, even as his heart bitterly bellowed at the inveitability that his mind would accept them. Yet, most unlike the scion of House Marr, it had not been curiosity that had so compelled him to take a course that may as well have been the height of foolhardiness.

It had been nostalgia.

To think now it had been years since he had taken the Lochris, at the summoning of another powerful Sith, that which one singular meeting on Fiviune had set him on the path he found himself on.

And that to this day, for all that he had, for all that he had accomplished, he could never claim with the surety of confidence that it had been for the best.

The board had been set out the same, invited, alone, to the den of another figure likely far more powerful than him, certainly far more experienced and wise than him. He remembered still, how distinctly he had feared that his future Mistress, had invited a lowly acolyte out into the darkened waste simply to kill him.

He supposed a Dark Councillor to be invited out to be killed by a former Sith Empress, somehow felt both more and less likely.

In the end, as self-focused as it was, if there was anything that was changed upon the board, it had been the relative station of the one who had walked from one board to the next. He was no longer an acolyte.

He was a Lord.

Yet, still, the Lord could not help himself, curiosity, nostalgia, a desire to prove... to one of the giants that he had stood upon the shoulders of, or to himself? The mind did not prove easy answer.

He stared ahead over the windy heights of the spires far below, they seemed architectural marvels, spears that pierced through the earth to rise ever higher and higher, unsupported, if one did not count the terraced landing pads, that in which in all honesty he doubted anyone who cared for safety would consider as much. The Lochris shuttered against the wind currents, as the landing gears deployed, and he struggled against the controls to bring ship and man to safety.

The gaze over the side at his heart in his mouth.

One might have struggled to see that there was ground at all, all the way down there.

This was no Fiviune... certainly not.

​

He stepped outside of his ailing, yet ever still reliable starfighter. Bedecked from feet to neck in black plate and steel, encrusted in rubies that shimmered in the cloudy air. At his side, sheathed, yet still prominently placed, the beskar hilt of blade ready and designed for war, was at this moment kept at equilibirum.

As, gazing forth, a scratch was felt at the back of his head.

She wore a mask too.

It was far more expressive than his own, the replica face of his great ancestor.

He felt the weight of the moment curl across his skin, the wind lapping up against his arms, as the hairs stood at rapt attention. He wondered if the Force itself demanded such theatrics, the wills of Force and Destiny conspiring even now, or...

...Or if it was the weight he himself put upon this moment.

There were few Sith that did not know the name of the Conqueror of Ten Thousand Worlds, that did not know the name of the rare figure who became Sith Empress, that did not know the name...

...Ashin Varanin.

It was a name whispered in echoes, a name known by all, even if a figure that felt entirely still elusive. Her rule had been seventy years ago, yet, she still lived, she pre-dated the ills of Kaine's Tenth Empire, the retreat in disgrace that was the fall of the One Sith in the Core, she was of a time before that.

Of figures that had become legends.

Figures like Darth Sidic, Darth Moridin, Darth Voracitos, Darth Adekos, Darth Arcis, and of course, Darth Vulcanus.

He felt the echo stir in his heart, a strange sensation, a blur, as it seemed his heart was stolen right outside his ribcage, only to return mere seconds later.

Of those legends, he could only remember two who still wielded weight upon the galaxy, who were not dead and gone... Darth Carnifex, of course.

And... Darth Desmius.

The echo stirred once more, a fire in his chest, as a jackal's laughter filled his ears.

She was a true... figure of folklore, of fiction, a figure that existed in a galaxy that looked nothing like it looked now.

An immortal tyrant who had for the most part, given up her tyranny.

Apart from the curiosity, the nostalgia, the desires, that may have been the true reason he had accepted such invitation, that may have been the reason that despite all animosity he should have held for the woman before him, the animosity he did hold on behalf of another dear to his heart...

...The respect he felt still had him lower his head.

She was no longer an Empress to be bowed to, but knowing all this woman had accomplished, all that she had done for their people.

She deserved that much.

He tilted his mask back in observation, "...I have looked forward to this moment for quite some time, Darth Desmius." The wind warped words, but the waves pushed on still, perhaps for such a moment it deserved better words.

But there was always the possibility that soon it would be material beyond words that would do the talking for them.

Ashin Cardé Varanin
Mentioned: Darth Ophidia Darth Carnifex Darth Vulcanus Quinn Varanin

 

[Ashin Cardé Varanin]

On the lowest edge of the terraced platform, she watched the starfighter come down. There were many places to land here; her own ship, the yacht Lanvarok Whisper, was half a turn around one of the spires under the responsibility of her Massassi pilot (and language tutor, and tattoo artist) Jaccath. Out of sight, just in case. She knew relatively little about Darth Malum of House Marr . The forces that had connected them today, that had prompted her invitation, had been compelling but vague. He had station and influence, by all accounts, a player in Sith Empire politics at a level where she had few ties and only limited investment. The odd gift, for example, or formal appearance to bolster her daughter's machinations. Being a team player.

All that to say, other than what she'd seen in the great kaggath on Ruusan, she had no firm idea what this man was capable of, or when and why he used those capacities, or what if anything differentiated him from the other lords of high rank. As his was a name connected more and more to her daughter, there was value in finding out.

"These are the Spires of Hell. Here I trained the Lords of the Fringe. Forgive an old woman her home ground advantage."

She took the lightsaber from her belt and fired it up, burnt orange, just half-bled.

 

[Darth Malum of House Marr]

Malum smirked beneath the mask, his memories of days long past were quite often short, but the nostalgia was prescient as ever, though... he struggled to understand why, there had been more than a few words that had been exchanged between him and his Mistress that day on Fiviune ever so many years ago...

...There had been remarkably fewer during their last meeting.

The smirk faded from his lips, as he tilted his head in assent. The Lords of the Fringe were not a group he knew much of, their beginnings certainly, how they related to perhaps two of the most legendary Sith Lords the galaxy had known somewhat more likely... but other than that. All he knew was, how the project had seemed so... unSith.

"An Empire, a people on the defence are destined to fall," Malum answered back, as dark gloves gripped around the icey beskar, a sharp rattle along the sheath echoed the winds, as the black blade shined along the sun's rays, one leg back, the other forth, the Sith Steel pointed in challenge towards his immediate foe, "I seek to always fight my enemies where they hold the advantage." It made victory all the sweeter, the red plasma hissed as it ignited out the tip of the sword, before the entire blade embossed itself in blue flames.

Two paths laid out before him, to see what she would do, or to end this as quickly as possible.

He held no true belief that he could, one did not become monarch of the Sith without the ability and skill to kill, but to give her the initiative?

Well, one did not win being on the defence.

He extended his arm out to his side, the blade following suit as Sith Steel, red plasma, and blue flames hissed in the motion, as the masked heir of the Lord of Duty, considered his foe. A beat passing between them.

As starting from zero, the acceleration pulled his velocity forth, a steady drumming beat across the windspent metal, as he sought to cross the distance, a mighty swing, aimed to carve through flesh and bone.

Ashin Cardé Varanin

 

[Ashin Cardé Varanin]

Ashin stood vulnerable on the railless edge of the lowest terrace. The stance she settled into was plain two-handed Shii-Cho on the order of a Padawan's first day.

Literally half the battle in moments like these was to see a Sith Lord bearing down on you, a young man with a reach advantage, clad in items of substance and moving fast, and master your own instinct to step back. To dodge, to shrink, to let your inbuilt biological instincts recoil from the impending collision. It was the precise survival instinct you faced if you stood in front of a repulsor train and felt the shiver in the trackway through your boots.

It wasn't dissimilar to standing in the radiative rubble of a black hole's accretion disk and facing down the end of all things. If memory served.

The blazing sword met her lightsaber and seemed to bite into the plasma blade but not through, as if the saber was tough wood. The stark heat of their impact surged around and through her armourweave gloves.

She moved in to push against the lock, less a step and more a shift into another settled stance, ideally before Malum could shift from a rush to a stable configuration. Whether or not she broke his balance she aimed to follow with a firm slash to bull him toward the edge himself — get this young man wondering, at a survival-instinct level, about that endless fall.

Darth Malum of House Marr

 

[Darth Malum of House Marr]

The clash of red plasmaed steel against that of its orange cousin, shuttered across the pavillion, the wind once the antagonist against the warriors atop the precicipice of the horizon, now finding itself the victim. Blowing away as the intensity of interlocked blades seemed to form aa twisted energy all to themselves, masked warriors clad in darkness.

When they moved mere fingers, life was extinguished.

The once Empress revealed nothing outwardly, as his velocity was brought to sudden stop, a deecelerating impulse resouding as his form ceased motion, all momentum of body transforming from the soles of his feet to his hand, clashing against another. Yet, always in revealing nothing, something was revealed.

She stood firm, unflinching, against all the weight, strength, and velocity that pressed down upon her.

No, it was more, she absorbed all that had been thrown at her, only to counterattack.

It was not a traditional one, but few held the temerity nor the courage to step toward a flaming blade, one whose pale blue fire so sorely wished to lick forward at a foe that was only inches away.

He echoed the movement, yet, to move in one direction and be stopped, the weight of the motion still sang behind his ears, she was faster, her blade pressing against his, breaking for a swing, but kept at bay with a lock, as her feet glided across the metallic ground, to encircle him, and place him with the an edge of oblivion behind.

Yet, the ruminations of cornered lions had not yet taken hold.

Not when the jackal laughter still echoed his ear, he might not have had the Graug's anatomy, but an idea did pierce itself deep in his mind, as the ring began to warm around his fingers, and he breathed a hallow breath forward, through the fire, across the mask opposite.

As the flames suddenly surged forward, remincient of the belching smoke and inferno of the Seven Day Emperor.

As his free hand, flicked up into its grip, the obsidian glass Shikkar, dipped in Devaronian blood poison, struck southwards.

Aimed for neck.

Ashin Cardé Varanin

 

[Ashin Cardé Varanin]

The blast of fire was sudden and startlingly powerful. It broke the blade lock and Ashin's stance entirely, jolted her back along the precipice, warmed her uncomfortably through her armourweave robes. As the fire shoved her, a traditional shikkar out of nowhere scored a line down the Mask of Anger.

If not for the blast, the glass blade might have tested itself against her black armourweave. In that destabilized moment, still finding her feet, Ashin remembered a moment from the grand kaggath, when Malum had tried several attacks at once. A tendency to use against him if he didn't learn the lessons of experience. But also a risk she should watch out for.

She found a new stance just outside blade range. "Check your edge," she said, suggesting that the glass shikkar might have taken damage against the metal mask, and took her left hand off her saber's base to make a fist.

She aimed for simple, efficient, and multiply unsettling: to grip his neck and yank him off the edge.

 

[Darth Malum of House Marr]

The teeth grit as the mistake revealed itself immediately, in a bid to gain space, he had sacrificed the ability to end the battle then and there, she withdrew in the face of the flames, as his Shikkar struck down, tearing down a grisly line across her mask, as the glass shattered across her face. First blood was his, in some sense.

Even as a flared annoyance broke his mind, her neck missing the blood that should have flowed, her form missing the struggling shaking of a body forced under the influence of that particular blend of utterly galling poison.

His red gaze flicked for barest moment towards the hilt without a blade, open palm as it fell from his grip, down the way below.

He idly hoped none were walking near the perimeter of the spires.

As he blinked.

Feeling the claw enclose itself around his neck, red eyes widened against the phantom grip, desperate glanced pervading forward against the foe before him, his orbs bulging against sockets, as her hand was formed in fist.

And within that grip, beyond the witness of regular sight, his neck stood.

His stomach tremoured, as he was lifted off the edge, without the certainty of the platform at his feet. Whatever he had last eaten swirling uncomfortably within the organ, as by instinct his free hand, fell to gorgetted neck, a useless bid to break from invisible, ethereal hand, greaved legs pushing against the air, desperate for stability, desperate for ground, as only air now existed around him.

The ruminations of cornered lions begun thusly.

The flames faded from his blade, Sith Steel and red plasma everstill hissing at every motion, popping, crackling against the world and wind around it. As new sensation spread across his form, desperate commands issued, a will supreme if even frantic demanding the obedience of the world around it.

As the lightning roared itself to existence, a thunder booming across the air, coiling its white web across the blade, as he aimed it forward.

Launching it in all rapid fury against the foe, that threatened to toss him off the edge.

As his form held in reserve, what was necessary to survive what opportunity this would offer.

Ashin Cardé Varanin

 

[Ashin Cardé Varanin]

This was a place of powerful memory. Lightning had left the spires' weird substance scarred, a good sixty years back now.

"These are the Spires of Hell. Here I trained the Lords of the Fringe.

Ah, nostalgia.

Ashin aborted the yanking choke, leaving Malum to grapple with his own balance and momentum and the abyss as desired, and caught the lightning sizzling from his sword on her raised lightsaber.

She took the opportunity to set her stance and get back in a two-handed grip, and none too soon. As often as not, a Sith Lord's lighting carried not just electricity but a sense of a shove or impact; holding against it settled her hard into her stance. This time her stance held.

She rather wished she could have spared the attention to give him a Force push and really send him tumbling out into the endless fall. But a more interesting way occurred to her.

Lightning still hissing around her blade, she took a limping step — her old bad knee acting up — and did her level best to tackle him. Down, the pair of them, down between the paired spires into a dizzying fall, impossibly far. Clouds upon clouds for a thousand miles and more.

 

[Darth Malum of House Marr]

He greedily breathed a fresh new wave of air, as the claw at his neck was reproached, through watery eyes, bearing witnessing as the lightning was caught in his opponent's blade, he could pay it little mind at the moment, even as he absentmindedly expected the move. It was either that, or a move to dodge the energy made manifest, redirect it, or if one was bold enough, attempt to power through the destructive power.

He supposed any of the approaches might have been reasonable for a Sith Lord of such reputation.

As he himself, felt the wind rustle against his armour, pushing him forward, such that the momentum of gravity dragging him hellwards, was joined by another force acting to its perpendicular, gliding him ungracefully upon the metal platforms once more.

As he exhaled with a force that made him delusional enough to believe he could see the wind blowing out of his frigid masked lips.

He took in another lungful of air, feeling the blood flowing through his veins, his bleary gaze snapping towards the hiss of sabre, knowing, despite whatever condition he was in, whatever weight he felt at his neck, following through across his chest, his enemy would not wait for him to recover.

He was right.

The lightning coiled around her blade, as she was advancing upon him - limping towards him - it was that limp that became all the more curious, had the lightning struck further than he had thought? The question passed his mind, as quick as it came, the weakness identified - the circumstances mattering little - her advance destined to toss them both off the edge.

Unless he stopped her in her tracks.

Still upon the ground - she held the advntage - but the battle remained ever still in flux, its outcome far from determined.

And being on the ground, offered its own opportunity.

He took in a heavy breath, holding it close to his chest, he was in no stance she would recognise, even as he leaned ever slightly forward. If there was anyone who would recognise his oncoming action, it would be her... bemusing as it was that he could count two empresses that he had committed this deed to. His fingers curled tighter around the beskar hilt, as the plasma hissed as it began to extinguish, planned to leave a much shorter blade.

Perfect for his purpose.

His masked vision narrowed upon the knee.

As he breathed out.

And in a burst of speed he was off, intentionally lowering his centre of gravity, as he felt every step cascade along the ground, his hips rotating forward, the origin point for all that he was to throw at her, building up the momentum of speed. As the teachings of the Echani Empress filtered through his mind.

His free hand stood open palmed, his fingers and thumbs curled very slightly out of the way.

To palm her weakened knee, with all force of an advancing body, his shoulders meeting her oncoming tackle with full force, to stop her in her tracks, avoiding her blade, and sending her crashing into the ground.

As his other hand, gripping the beskar hilt of a Sith Sword.

Would embed itself in her chest.

Ashin Cardé Varanin
Mentioned: Srina Talon

 

[Ashin Cardé Varanin]

In the moments before their charges collided, Malum deactivated his interesting weapon — from energy-augmented longsword to a more inert short sword — and Ashin twisted to guide its thrust clear with her lightsaber. The Sith blade skidded along her saber and its edge along her left shoulder, shearing armourweave and drawing blood.

A heartbeat later came simultaneous impacts. His sword's crossguard on her saber blade was one; his hand on her bad knee was another. But the main concussion was their mutual attempt to get low and tackle.

This body, which she'd stolen from Delila Castillon, was of average height and weight and of a certain age, not built for moments like this. Malum had a little height and reach and mass on her and an awful lot of youth. He had great strength in the Force and no problem throwing that energy around. Ashin wrapped the Force around herself protectively for the critical moment, her speciality and her first real usage other than the choke, and let his momentum win the contest with ease.

She skidded down the lowest level of the terraced protrusion and got up to a crouch. Her bad right knee, as ever across multiple bodies and lives, was not doing so well. A cane of black, glossy, knobbled wood drifted from a nearby corner and she took it in her right hand to lean on it, switching the saber to her left. She tapped the cane's tip on the edge of the precipice.

"First blood to you. Not badly done for one with so much fear commanding him."

 

[Darth Malum of House Marr]

It worked!

His heart soared as two opposing wills followed by forms struck each other, in the primal, primeveal form of warfare, oh for surety the blades had clashed, he had struck too once more, mistimed as it was, feeling as the seemingly... alive, buzzing, steel struck across armoured cloth, and embedded itself across flesh.

The bone was saved, but only just.

When the greater prize, was pushing ever forward - with the full weight of his form, wielding it as warhammer - and striking through the obstacle before him. In a battle of wills, in a battle of forms, as he exploited the weakness of her knee, and sent her scampering back, she made no noise in her flight.

But skidding to a halt, as masked red eyes gazed forward, feeling the Force seem to shutter around the smaller body opposite him, she might have thrown an invisible shield forward, masked her pain beneath a mask both physical and metaphysical, but the pulling of the cane forward, the switching of her hands, her low stance.

She could not hide all of it.

Nor could he let up the momentum.

His hand swung forward; the blade protruded at her skull, as with a snap-hiss the red plasma ignited and kissed the air.

"Amusing, imagine how quickly I could beat you without that fear then." He replied in melodic echo, even as the inkling of doubt was placed in the back of his mind... what fear?

And how did she know about it?

His feet surged across the ground - supported by the Force seeming to make him a blip in vision - as he crossed the distance between them with blade outstretched a swing aimed to take out the opposite shoulder, cross into chest, and then exit out the hip.

Ashin Cardé Varanin

 

[Ashin Cardé Varanin]

"...yes."

Ashin's voice was dry as bone.

Whatever the complexity and impressiveness of the rush, she met the resulting strike with a simple block, only one hand on the saber. What with the cut on her left shoulder, that block shouldn't have held against the sword's mass or the strength of Malum's arms. It held anyway. It held like he'd just hacked at solid phrik. She was quietly very proud of that.

His style expended power constantly and without discrimination; that was not to her taste. Her countermove was no Force Storm or other warping of reality, no transformation into juggernaut, no ritual to rival Vitiate. Not today.

The downside of moving that fast was you had to anchor a lot of weight on your front foot to stop. No way around it. And while his armor gave redoubtable protection in the torso and so forth, it offered almost nothing farther down.

Before the proper moment ended, she thunked the tip of her cane conclusively down at his shin and the top of his foot. It was only a cane. It would hurt like hell.

 

[Darth Malum of House Marr]

It drew from him a blink; the shuttering of gaze beneath eyebrows - as the words - as the single word, held an icey harshness to make his heart skip a beat. Near make him skid to a stop, but the momentum was far to prounced for that outcome now, for a Sith the death of an ego was perhaps the most useful fantasy, for an Order that so often verbally sparred as they did actually spar, the pain wrought by words alone were a weapon wielded with the precisions that most surgeons envied.

His deflection of her accusation was meant to bring about an impase, or at the very least another riposte.

Not... that, singular wrord.

Fear... she knew - she believed, that he was fearing something, but even in the mid-motion of sensation, as time seemed to slow and he was exiled into the depths of spongey greymatter, he could not find it within himself to confidently declare to know what it was she was speaking of, nor, if he was meant to make to take the declaration as a compliment.

She did; after all, all but admit that he was her superior...

...How strange the admission felt.

Hark to the fears then, there was little recourse to be found, he feared extinguishment by her blade - but who would not? At least he did not flee, meeting it blow for blow, he fear falling off the edge - but who would not? Still, stubborn feet held him possessively grounded, he would not allow himself to be given into her desires without fighting with all being.

He feared her?

Did he? Respected, certainly, unnerved, possibly... but fear? His mind was empty in answer.

Though she gave him ample reason to think of the answer, as his blade smashed into her own, he blinked again, staring through masked eyes in pure bewilderment. It was as if his blade had struck a stone wall, but in reality, it was simply an arm - an arm attached to a shoulder bleeding - a should beheld by a form that already had a physical inferiority plastered across it...

He hissed a serpentine hiss, copulated with a wolflike yelping growl, as the pain richotetted across his foot and shin, armoured boots and greaves absorbed much of the pain, but blunt instruments so often held within the capability to inflict an agony beyond skin deep, as every instinct demanded a withdrawal.

But there was no victory in retreat.

Out from beneath this vambrace, his free hand flicked, as another obsidian glass blade emerged around his fingers, stabbing forth for her still unburdened shoulder, as his Sith blade struggled against her lightsabre.

And an irrational haze brought across by a pain that had his leg shaking - mask against mask - he aimed a headbutt against a foe that stood so close.

Ashin Cardé Varanin

 

[Ashin Cardé Varanin]

This was Malum's second time producing an off-hand shikkar for a sudden strike, and he'd certainly been fond of multiple shikkars in the Grand Kaggath. Ashin flicked the cane up casually to smack the glass blade away from her shoulder.

And, limping just half a step left, turned her lightsaber off.

His short sword, free from the bind, hit her mask in lieu of the headbutt. It rang in her head like a bell, and she knew she couldn't trust her hearing for the next little while. Incident to their closeness and his move for a headbutt, his chest struck her uninjured shoulder and she went with it, turning. Now he had her back to the next terrace level, a long metre-high ledge of impossibly ancient spirestuff, which wasn't ideal. The pace just now was fast, fast, fast.

"Thoughts, Quinn?" she said, as if her daughter was watching concealed, someone whose opinion — by all accounts — Malum was more likely to value or fear than Ashin's. She fired up the lightsaber in a tight guard to take attention.

And under cover of that burst of light and sound, insinuation and threat, did her level best to thwack the cane into the side of his left knee.

 

[Darth Malum of House Marr]

Of all what occured in the fast few moments, that which his mind hyperfixated upon, was perhaps the oddest of them all; the fact that his mask, replica as it was of a far greater mask, was not smashed into pieces in a bid to gain temporary advantage. There was of course an emotional regard in which he was thankful, no one wished to be the cause of their most famous ancestor's face being smashed into many sharp pieces.

Though he imagined the great Darth Marr would not have likely minded his descendant taking such action if it brought him victory.

No, no, in reality it was far simpler of an explanation.

No one wished for shards to puncture their eyes, nor fragments embedding themselves onto their face.

His feet and shins were given momentary relief, even as the stinging echoes of the initial strike pervaded across skin and flesh, yet, it was his off-hand that was made newest victim, the obsidian glass raining across them both as she struck it with the cane, once more the deceptive, if still fragile Shikkar blade, breaking before it made purchase with his opponent's skin.

He wondered, if she knew what agony awaited her if the poison dipped blade kissed her skin.

It would explain why she was always quick to avoid it, even if it meant giving up ground to other avenues. His main hand struck forth by instinct alone - instinct and unexpected momentum as she withdrew her own blade the last moment, and coinciding with his head's motion, had struck her masked face. It hd been a calculated risk upon her part, one which had unfortuntely succeeded, overexteneded as he was, it was not the plasma that splashed upon her face, but rather the Sith Steel merely glinting off the edge of the mask.

Still even if the business of end of a broadsword had not made full contact, with his arm thrown behind the attack.

It swung with the force of a bat.

She might have forestalled his advance with her iron wall, but as his chest pressed forward and struck her shoulder, she was in flight once more, - the opportunity provided to continue his attack, to incorporate what he had learned. Already his feet lent themselves to the offensive, one primed forward, the other, injured, behind. A running leap to break the wall, while the other hand, prepared a surprise.

Only for hers to finish first.

A heartbeat passed, as her name left her lips.

She was...

...Here?

The denial immediately launched itself into his face - he could not feel her, it was a baldfaced lie - the snap-hiss of lightsabre alerted him back to the fight, even as the doubt festered.

As the anger, clouded.

Respect for this woman, this warlord, this once Empress had been a tree that had grown in his youth, as he had learned, as he had read, the histories always had a sense of... being altogether clinical of one's accomplishment, making them marble statues who were unalive, scientific, cold, analytical in all their actions.

Anger at this woman, had grown recently as of late, a fruit born of that tree, poisoned, rotting, Malum was no stranger of hatred towards those of the past, those that had failed their people.

But one who had abandoned their own child?

One who would in this moment, use his friend, their own daughter against him?

Anger, was the incorrect word to describe the narrowing of his red orbs behind the mask.

"Do not say her name." He relented in low hiss.

From the peripheral of his sight, he saw the cane surge forward, his surprise forgotten, as he raised his off-hand in answer, the gauntlet emerging alive in golden light, as he surged forward, throwing the weight of his feet, hips, and arm forward, as his main hand struck, the Sith Steel alight in the sheen of the red plasma, striking in a motion that sought to leave nothing ahead, straight as an arrow, aimed to embed the tip in her chest.

Ashin Cardé Varanin
Mentioned: Quinn Varanin

 

[Ashin Cardé Varanin]

Ashin's cane-thwack rebounded off a personal shield of some unfamiliar kind. That large and heavy sword acquired its plasma extension and came for Ashin's chest with Malum's total commitment behind it but in a one-handed grip. Her back against the wall, saber up in a tight left-handed guard, Ashin had no room to backstep.

She took pride in the elegance of simplicity. In this case, basic leverage. A quarter turn to the left and his augmented blade hissed along her lightsaber very close to the blade emitter. Her shoulder ached but the motion was small, a guiding rather than a block. The long sword jutted past her over the metre-high next level of the terrace.

Her counterstrike was similarly simple. He'd concealed three or four shikkars around his person during the kaggath. She'd broken two. Without a gesture and face-to-face, she did her level best to impose a crushing force around him, just for a heartbeat.

On the theory that nobody - no matter their power, no matter their indefatigable prestige - enjoyed broken glass inside their clothes.

Darth Malum of House Marr