OBJECTIVE: 1 [Belly of the Beast]
LOCATION: Humbarine City [Belltower]
SITH ALLIES:
Mercy
SITH ENEMIES: Imperial Scum/Faithless - Iron Covenant? [
Siv Dragr
]
Srina gave Mercy a sidelong glance when she claimed to have informed
Arris Windrun
of their movements, but the barely-there kiss to the crown of her head let the topic rest.
For now. The pale Echani could be notoriously stubborn, and as much as she wanted to press further into the nature of what the remains of the Triumvirate had discussed? It was too late. She had descended upon Humbarine with one purpose, one goal, and it was too late to roll back the clock.
When the red-haired woman drew her wounded hand close, Srina pulled back, knowing instinctively that her battle-sister would try to mend what was broken.
“Don’t—”
But Mercy had already opened her own flesh without a thought. Warmth spread through her hand slowly, threading itself beneath torn flesh, sealing the injury with what felt like a firebrand. It always felt strange when the Titan opened a vein on her account. Not because the ritual itself was unusual anymore, but because Mercy never seemed capable of giving anything halfway. Power, loyalty, violence—she offered each with the same startling certainty, as though pieces of herself were inexhaustible resources rather than finite things.
“I did it myself. The curse requires sacrifice…The lives of the hunted and the blood of the hunter.”
Eyes of yellow-gold lowered briefly toward the wound. Her healing had been accelerated ever since Coruscant, but each new instance seemed to jumpstart the process. She sighed while watching Humbarine begin to darken beneath the eclipse. Shadows lengthened between skytowers while civilization began to unwind with the pressure that was being placed on it. Confidence was replaced with procedure, and procedure, with desperate attempts at control. It would never be enough to keep dread, true fear, from taking root.
Afterall…Fear did not respect borders or armor, and it
certainly didn’t bow to puppet governments.
Her quiet hum seemed to have taken on a life of its own. The melody never truly left, merely fading into the background before surfacing again. It slipped through her thoughts as naturally as breathing and pressed outward to find her children, near and far, the obedient and the defiant. Those who called her Mother and those who spat on her name.
They were hers whether they liked it or not. “My children will survive…”, she offered eventually, jaw tight, but accepting of the truth that adversity would make them stronger.
“…I have left them no other choice.”
The corner of her mouth twitched faintly before she shifted to rest more comfortably against the larger woman’s shoulder. Watching the lights flicker across evacuation routes below…
“...You always make it sound so simple.”
Mercy
always did that. She took impossible things and cut them down until only a single truth remained. Either they endured, or they did not. Either they rose to the occasion, or they were swept away by it. Srina understood exactly how her battle-sister came to these conclusions because it was in their nature. Sith were not gentle creatures. The galaxy itself was not gentle. Her fingers shifted within Mercy’s grasp, quite small in comparison.
“I refuse to measure the worth of my people by whether they survive what might be the worst day of their lives.”, the words came soft, almost disappearing beneath her song.
“The strongest among us have never needed me….They would survive with or without an Empress standing over their shoulder.”
She existed, primarily, for the others. For those who did not fit. The forgotten. The overlooked. The ones still waiting for someone to notice they were there.
“…By that logic…You should have let me stay dead on Coruscant.”
A ghost of a smile touched her mouth at the thought of
Darth Carnifex
and
Mercy
inevitably finding new reasons to antagonize one another. Her thumb brushed absently across the golden wedding band on her finger in a gesture that had become habit long ago. Whenever her thoughts drifted toward Coruscant, they inevitably drifted toward
Darth Empyrean
as well, and the things she still had not told him. Could
never tell him. But that…
That was something to handle when she wasn’t focused on turning her enemies into a bloody mural.
The alabaster woman slowly sat up and, with her stretched, invisible threads connecting her to the dead left behind in the stairwell. She had
contained them,
drained them, and pressed what was left of them into the stones of this tower. There were varying runes etched into the area that were linked with the lives she had taken, fueled by her own blood spilled. It was a complicated
ritual that echoed the effects of a
phobis device…But with
something else mixed in.
Hate.
Her seething, loathing hatred for every Imperial that brazenly walked this world and any other.
Mercy told her not to hold back, as if that had ever been an option. Her pupils seemed to expand and fill with darkness, black as pitch, while the malevolence of her work welled beneath her skin. Her curse wouldn’t create violence, no, but as Humbarine City continued to degrade…It would amplify what was already present. The rot they tried so hard to hide, the monsters, they all hid. The demons that would turn brother against brother in the most violent of ways.
She paused, abruptly…Not sensing anyone in particular.
It was quite the opposite. Something was missing, and her mind’s eye wouldn’t let her see past it. The sensation came from behind them and reminded her, crudely, of reaching the end of a sentence only to discover that a word was missing. There was a hollow place where instinct told her there shouldn’t be. It was puzzling, but absence had shape in a galaxy where the Force existed. The silvery woman was so entrenched in the darkness she wove that she could hear the careful placement of boots among corpses.
Every step vibrated in her bones.
Someone or something was climbing a staircase to
nowhere that was littered with enough dead men to convince most sensible beings to turn around. Srina felt…Curious rather than cautious.
Perhaps, to her folly….Because a sonic blast erupted from the shadow of the stairwell, and the world became a pressured mess. Stone fractured, cracked, and the railing beneath her ceased to exist. For a singular instant, awareness disappeared beneath a deafening wall of compressed sound and the blaster fire that followed close behind it. Srina didn’t resist the blast. The force of it tore through where she had been and carried her sideways into open air. Black silk snapped violently as white-gold hair scattered in ribbons behind her, bullets, filling the space she had occupied. Without her there?
They just slammed into Mercy’s back.
Her body jerked to a stop when it reached the end of Mercy's grip. Suspended against the side of the bell tower, black silk snapping in the wind, Srina found herself staring back into familiar eyes that would bleed amber soon enough. There was no alarm to witness, no panic or pain, just…Mercy.
“Take what you need from me…”
Primrose lips parted slightly, giving one simple whisper in the sudden chaos of sound and stone.
"…Sestra..."
Brent Warnel
Emissary of Strife
