Private Rules and Consequences

[Taeli Raaf]

Polis Massa
Darth Virelia
​

There would be little warning as, at the edge of the system and asteroid field that was Polis Massa, three Khan-class Star Destroyers would revert from hyperspace. They would not be running in a combat formation or dispatch any fighters from their hangars, the ships merely hanging at the edge of the system as from the hangar bay of the lead ship, a single Adonis-class shuttle would launch with an escort.

"Polis Massa Control, this is DC-231, code clearance Amethyst. We're starting our approach."

The transmission would all but announce to the governor and her staff that a certain Dark Councilor was making a very unannounced arrival in the system. Within the shuttle, Darth Arcanix was reading over the reports that had come out of the attack on the fortress world of Saijo and the information gathered by the Hand, a frown firmly in place as her shuttle made its way to a hangar bay to land. Her clearance would mean there was little the staff could do but warn the governor that Darth Arcanix's shuttle had arrived and was preparing to land, but would also give them just enough time to prepare a welcoming party.

In many ways, for the Lady of Secrets, this unprompted meeting was inevitable as the young governor of Polis Massa had been a busy little bee, although not in the way she had suggested the young Sith should be when she had met her during a meeting on free trade zones. No, she had gone about catching attention in all the wrong ways and the Lady of Secrets was arriving to understand why she had done so and to... explain the rules and consequences of violating such rules if that had occurred.

 

[Darth Virelia]

"Consequences."

Tags - Taeli Raaf



Polis Massa did not welcome intrusions. It endured them.

The warning came not from a lookout, nor from a panicked clerk at PAD-1, but from ICHNAEA herself. A whisper through the planetary neural scaffold—no more emotional than a temperature reading, no more urgent than a pressure fluctuation. Three Khan-class Star Destroyers: identified, logged, archived. No formation. No posture. Passive, but present. A shuttle launched moments later. Clearance requested.

ICHNAEA spoke not in words but in shifting data streams across hundreds of subsystems. Serina felt it before she saw it. The system's awareness tensed, and that tension coursed through its arteries: dome vents recalibrating, atmospheric dampeners shifting tone, doors sealing more tightly than usual. The Massan machine did not scream. It did not raise alarms. It simply adjusted, as it always had, for pressure.

Serina Calis stood alone on a cold deck of PAD-1, one hand resting lightly on the datapad cradled beneath her palm. She did not look up. Not yet. The room around her was silent save for the distant whir of sub-dome reactors. Her eyes skimmed slowly over the week's civic stress models, one finger flicking through projected disruptions, population compliance curves, long-term predictive forecasts. Arcanix's visit had not appeared on any chart. But then again, ICHNAEA had marked this moment a long time ago.

Saijo had been a rupture point. This was the echo.

And the echo began not with alarms, but with a voice.

"Polis Massa Control to DC-231," came the first transmission, etched into the cold airwaves with bureaucratic precision. The voice was androgynous, sterile, and almost irritatingly polite—an audio composite filtered through ARACHNEA's voice modulation system. "You are approaching a designated civilian orbital zone, currently optimized for low-threat, low-disruption traffic only. Per revised edict CRX-1123.9a, formation entry exceeding three capital mass signatures must submit orbital disruption offset credentials prior to deceleration. This protocol is in accordance with atmospheric stability measures instituted following the Reicher Vax Catastrophic Mass Displacement Event, clause eleven. Please transmit your manifest for layered review."

A pause, engineered.

"Note: code clearance Amethyst is presently subject to Tier-Three authentication checks due to recent systemwide encryption recalibrations, initiated per the Vornax Data Purity Directive. Secondary verification will require localized biometric signature imprinting and at least one vocalized clearance phrase in Massan Sign. Stand by for initiation of customs interrogation cycle six."

The line clicked. Another voice replaced it. Slower. Older. Drier.

"Be advised, DC-231, your vessel's biometric registration tag—Sith-grade, Class Four—conflicts with archival standardization norms currently recognized under Interdome Access Harmonization protocols. This is likely the result of outdated Sith Assembly documentation no longer recognized by the PAD-1 Subsector Routing Authority. Please verify the following: biosignature cluster, crew heat map, neural impulse scatter index, and precise holonet browsing records for all non-essential passengers aboard. Please note: personal data deemed too vague will trigger a temporary blacklisting of your escort squad under the Industrial Intrusion Suspicion Mandate, version 3.7."

Another pause.

"Hold position."

A third voice. Younger. Over-enunciated, like someone reading from a manual they barely understood but took immense satisfaction in following to the letter.

"Please be advised that sudden mass influx due to rotational redistribution of Docking Arm Theta has rendered your previously assigned docking vector obsolete. In its place, you are hereby reassigned to Docking Node Epsilon-Three, currently flagged for routine civilian use, scheduled bulkhead sealing maintenance, and hull plate decontamination. Additional friction anticipated due to local dome calibration drift. Surface temperature variance plus-or-minus 14 degrees. Civilian personnel have been instructed to ignore all non-emergency contact. Should your escort squad require amenities, they are advised to consult the dome's Emergency Displacement Kiosk, located two kilometers from the active bay, behind the coolant vent stacks."

Still more.

"We are aware your shuttle class is Adonis-pattern. Be advised that Adonis-class vessels exceed the pressure buffer zone for Epsilon-Three by 0.2 atmospheric units. Risk of secondary seal damage acknowledged. Should damage occur, liability will be assigned to the vessel under rule 78b of the Internal Dock Hazard Resolution Charter. Confirmation of waiver acknowledgment pending. Please sign digitally and retransmit."

And on. And on. AND ON.

It continued for the better part of an hour.

The dockside command matrix was not malfunctioning. It was performing precisely as instructed.

Every department involved—Logistics, Customs, Orbital Control, Internal Docking Integrity, Environmental Regulation, Port Liability Review—functioned with terminal-level obedience. They verified documentation with manual override delays. They asked for redundancies no system actually required. They cited statutes written during the Old Republic and "still technically in effect under continuity clause F-44." Each department blamed the last. Each passed the file back upstream. No one said "no." But no one said "yes," either.

The port control staff escalated the insult by requesting a passive scan of the shuttle's life-support matrix, citing archaic contamination statutes designed for livestock freighters. When Arcanix's pilot protested, they were placed on a silent loop—"One moment while we connect you to Biological Hazard Clearance Specialist Third Class Olai Venn"—only to be told after twenty minutes that Venn was out for a nutrition capsule break.

A mechanized hauling droid labeled XR-7 trundled forward across the shuttle's designated approach vector, dragging three tons of broken alloy struts behind it on a rusted pallet. It stopped. And refused to move. A long pause followed before a maintenance technician slouched into view, shrugged at the controllers, and filed a report citing "anomalous tread pressure variance," which, regrettably, required manual recalibration from a certified technician who was "currently in sector HD-Omega handling vent coil replacement." Estimated wait time: undefined.

By then, the hangar's ambient lights had cycled twice. The shadows stretched.

A group of adolescent laborers—none older than sixteen, some barely teenagers—rolled in a series of massive coolant tanks on cracked hover-slates, steering them with practiced inefficiency in an arc directly between the Sith shuttle and its disembarkation platform. None acknowledged the escort detail. None apologized. Their faces were blank, exhausted, precise. They were Massan-born. Reared in silence, trained for function. They moved like wind through pressure cracks: calm, inevitable, unbothered.

A single tank tipped over. It took twelve minutes to re-right it.

Elsewhere, a low-level administrative functionary assigned to PAD-1's orbital registry desk pinged DC-231 with a corrupted update file. "Apologies," she said over a crackling line, "the packet may have been encoded using the obsolete TS-122 formatting standard. Please resubmit your transmission request in 4K-Word Massani Compressed Script. I believe your system does not support that protocol natively? Oh dear."

A second droid began welding at the corner of the hangar, sparks spraying into the already narrow shuttle egress path. "Routine, routine, routine," chirped the bot without glancing up. "Do not impede operations."

By the time the shuttle finally set down on the deck of Epsilon-Three, its escort craft rerouted, systems pinged and re-pinged for compliance, and a grand total of twenty-three internal requests filed and "lost," it had become unmistakably clear to any who still harbored doubt: this was not oversight.

This was not chaos.

It was rejection.

The mercenaries were no more subtle. Towering brutes in matte-black armor flanked the dock perimeter, sidearms visible but not raised. Their helmets bore no insignia. Their movements were slow, deliberate, and devoid of theatricality. One of them held a plasma torch the size of a riot baton, casually inspecting its heat readout while never quite turning away from the shuttle's primary hatch.

A loading overseer offered a "welcome" with all the enthusiasm of a malfunctioning droid: "Please advise your superior that landing is complete. The Governor is aware. She will receive you… eventually. Do not leave the designated corridor. Do not attempt to access auxiliary domes. Translation services will not be provided."

There was no ceremony. No banner. No music. No greeting.

Serina did not stand at the landing bay. She did not descend the stairs of PAD-1 in flowing robes or stand framed by backlit glass like some theatrical sovereign. She did not even deign to broadcast a visual message.

Instead, she remained in her office, the room so sterile it felt like a surgical theater, flanked by data projections and silence. The light was cold and flat. The air smelled faintly of steel and sterilizer. Across from her, a blank screen pulsed quietly—live footage of the shuttle as it powered down, surrounded by mercenaries and passive-aggressive port staff.

There was no emotion in her face. No triumph. No apprehension.

Only inevitability.

Polis Massa's people had reacted not out of fear, nor defiance, but out of loyalty. Not to her—though many were loyal—but to the system. To the rhythm of silence and survival that Serina had preserved and deepened since Reicher Vax's retreat. Darth Arcanix was a foreign signal, a heat spike in a system that prized thermodynamic equilibrium above all. She would be processed. Observed. Catalogued. Contained.

Not as a threat.

As an anomaly.

The Lady of Secrets would find no secrets here. Not because they did not exist—but because they were layered too deep, coded too intricately, stored in vaults without keys. She would find nothing but silence, inconvenience, and a mirror of her own intent.

Serina lifted a single finger, tapping the edge of her desk.

"Observation feed four," she said quietly.

The footage shifted. Arcanix's shuttle door began to hiss open.

Serina said nothing else. Her hand drifted back to the datapad, resuming her scroll through civic maintenance logs. Distantly, a soft chime from ICHNAEA marked the arrival's progression. But nothing else stirred.

 

[Taeli Raaf]

Polis Massa
Darth Virelia
​

Most star systems and governors in Sith space, whenever a Dark Councilor made an unannounced arrival and transmitted their code clearance for landing immediately, typically bent over backwards to facilitate that request. It was generally found, by those governors and planetary governments, that doing so significantly decreased risk to themselves and those they ruled or could possibly curry favor if they complied. The Sith that were just one step beneath the throne, that held the Emperor's authority whenever he was not present, that could throttle or increase resources to worlds, were generally ones you wanted to be in a good mood with you.

Polis Massa and its governor had taken the opposite approach.

From the moment the first response came through, its cadence and tone ever so careful to begin the deluge of bureaucracy, the Dark Councilor within the shuttle knew her arrival was not wanted or desired. That was anticipated. She would listen to each request, her flight crew growing more exasperated at each new voice, at each new little thing that would hold up the landing process. Each one she would pass back to her wife through the bond in the Force, and she could feel her pacing and absolutely seething. The Lady of Secrets would play the little game though, each request or delay being met or

Oh, it was all very well done. The pacing, the changes in voices and supposed bureaucrats, the passing the docking request up and around in a circle of responsibilities and failures. It reminded her of a customer service job she worked in her days before she was a Sith, back when her main concern was having some pocket money to buy books while she learned. That was nearly seventy years ago now, but it was the same sort of runaround. Even once they had clearance to land, after over an hour of back and forth with her flight crew and the seemingly various individuals, their docking bay seemed to have a parade of 'issues' and routine busy work to stall their landing. It was so carefully constructed, so precise in its just barely concealed disdain and fabricated ineptitude. It just gave the game away of what was dealing with. The least Govenor Calis could have done is do the runaround with a physical staff instead of an AI. It was all just too perfectly done.

But it also told her plenty about Serina herself, combined with her observations from the economic meeting. What was on display currently was a complete and utter lack of respect, something the younger woman desperately wanted herself if how she had conducted herself on Terminus. As her shuttle's ramp lowered into the sterile landing bay, no procession there to greet her, it only compounded that feeling of disrespect. Govenor Calis had caught her attention in the wrong way, and the whole drawn out affair of even actually landing, had only further the slide of her attention in the wrong direction.

As she descended the ramp, garbed simply and elegantly in a flowing dark gown and her cloak, there would be no accompanying soldiers with her. No honor guard with her, just the Dark Councilor herself walking into the hangar bay. Amethyst eyes would slowly scan her surroundings, marking the young workers and staff and the mercenaries. She would be perfectly composed, if not having a slight tilt of her head in curiosity, ignoring the words from the overseer. Serina wasn't hiding in the Force, her presence easily found in the currents of the Force around her. A casual probe of her surroundings would reveal to her feelings of...

Rejection. Silence. Loyalty. Concealment. Impudence. Irritation. Routine. Monotony. Distract.

How very interesting, she thought, her gaze turning to the oversee as he spoke that the governor would receive her eventually and that she would not be allowed to deviate from the path given to her... eventually. Adorable, if he actually believed she cared about what he was saying. It was just another attempt to slow her, to show disrespect, to obfuscate what was really happening in this system. Now she only wanted to dig deeper, her attention heightening even further in the wrong direction. Her gaze would move directly to the observation feed that Serina was watching through, even though she couldn't possibly know that.

"Is this your attempt to try and assert some sort of power over me, dear?" she would ask quietly, clearly not speaking to the overseer. "Adorable."

She would turn to the overseer.

"No need, I'll see myself to her." And she would begin walking, following the presence in the Force that was the governor like a Galidraani bloodhound on the scent.

 

[Darth Virelia]

"Consequences."

Tags - Taeli Raaf



The security doors parted with a whisper.

They did not hiss, or clank, or moan like ancient temple gates in some forgotten citadel. They parted like silk torn at the seam of reality itself—utterly smooth, utterly final. Beyond them, the air in PAD-1's innermost hall had a different quality, as though it had been filtered more than the rest, stripped not only of dust and toxin, but of warmth, humanity, sound.

It was a corridor without identifiers. No markings. No signifiers. The lights were bright, but sterile. Panels along the walls shimmered faintly with power, but displayed nothing. Cameras did not follow. Droids did not scurry. It was not empty in the way most hallways were. It was empty in the way a sealed vault is empty—deliberate. Controlled. Waiting.

Serina stood at the far end.

She did not turn.

She did not move.

She stood in perfect stillness, framed by the geometric monolith of a datawall flickering behind her—white code pulsing through dark crystal, like veins lit from within. Her silhouette was tall, sharply-cut against the pulsing glow, her black dress clad in asymmetrical severity, devoid of ornament. The only detail that stood out was the faint glint of pressure-steel thread along the edges of her gloves—like surgical instruments wrought into attire.

She heard Arcanix before she saw her.

The sound was not in the air. Not in footsteps. It was in the pattern shift of the hall itself—the minute disruption of Force harmonics as the woman's presence advanced. A ripple. Calculated. Intentional. But still just a ripple.

When the Dark Councilor finally emerged into view, Serina did not speak.

Not immediately.

Not even as the other woman's words still lingered in the Force like perfume—Is this your attempt to assert power?—not even as that invisible tether sought to tighten. Serina's eyes tracked her, but not like prey. Like data. A pattern to be resolved.

And then—

"I wasn't asserting anything," she said at last, voice low, cool, deliberate. "I was confirming your character."

A pause. Calculated silence.

A slow, single step forward.

"You chose to come unannounced. You chose to treat my system like one of your courtly toys. You chose to arrive with a fleet formation more suited to suppression than conversation. And now, you choose to interpret consequence… as disrespect."

Another pause.

"You chose all of this. I simply let you experience the outcome, a fitting beginning to this conversation, don't you think?"

 

[Taeli Raaf]

Polis Massa
Darth Virelia
​

She would walk quietly down the revealed corridor, her cloak trailing behind her slightly in the filtered air. It was all so surgical, the presentation given to her thus far of the operations on Polis Massa. Everything done so far to show displeasure and to make sure she didn't see anything too important to the real operations in the system. The girl was guarded, wary of revealing anything of her hand. At least she had some courtesy to be waiting at the end of the corridor, but Taeli herself would pause at the exact halfway point. To listen to the girl's first words to her in this... conversation.

"Ah," would be all the Lady of Secrets would say at first to what Governor Calis said, of why she had given the Dark Councilor the runaround in even arriving at her domain. There may very well be something to be studied in her character on how she had reacted to the little game of bureaucracy. There would be a soft click of her tongue, hands folded in front of her as the girl took a step towards her. Perhaps the young woman before her didn't even recognize what her actions had done or could be perceived as, although she suspected the girl would disagree with that assertation.

"You seem to be under the impression that a Dark Councilor must announce their arrival," she would reply quietly, her tone even. Her own presence in the Force, what could be felt at least, radiated patience. But that would be all Serina would sense, the patience of a schoolteacher before the lesson. "That a Dark Councilor needs to schedule an appointment to be seen by a planetary governor. That a Dark Councilor requires permission to use a system as they see fit or to bring an escort along with them. That a Dark Councilor would receive consequences for exercising the authority they wield in the absence of the Emperor. Allow me to dissuade you of that notion of... equality."

She would take a step forward herself.

"If we are to discuss choices, let's examine yours. You chose to demonstrate a distinct lack of respect, either for me or for my position. If you did not intend to do so, you created the perception of it all the same. You chose to try and teach me consequences for exercising my authority, authority that exceeds your own in every manner of the word."

Another slow step forward.

"But it is your other choices that have brought, perhaps not my full attention yet, but enough of my attention nonetheless to prompt this... visit. You wanted to be seen and heard by those above you. Congratulations, you succeeded. Here I am, the consequences to your actions. Begin your explanation of the Saijo affair... now."

 

[Darth Virelia]

"Consequences."

Tags - Taeli Raaf



Serina listened.

Every word.

She did not flinch beneath the weight of Arcanix's title. She did not react to the rebuke, the accusation, or the slow, careful walk of a woman who had slain systems with her silence. She did not interrupt.

But she watched.

Watched as the Lady of Secrets claimed ground with the same assumption every Councilor did—that the stars bent for them. That worlds halted their spin to make way. That someone in a black cloak could appear without warning and still expect a throne to be set.

When Arcanix finished—when the edict of begin your explanation cut through the air like the slash of a blade—Serina did not immediately reply.

She moved.

Not toward. Not away. She walked in a slow circle beneath the towering hololiths of PAD-1's data core chamber, the room rising like a cathedral built for machines. Lines of pulsing violet code swam through mirrored panels overhead. ICHNAEA's whisper could be felt like static across the skin. Outside the sealed duraglass walls, the stars loomed close—huge, and silent, and unblinking.

Only then did she speak.

"I respect power, Councilor."

Her voice was smooth. Precise. But lower now. Measured with an intimacy that demanded silence to hear.

"I respect it most when it moves with understanding and respect. Not force. Not tradition. Understanding and respect."

She turned toward Arcanix, chin tilted ever so slightly—not deferent, not superior. Calculating.

"What happened on Saijo was not rebellion. It was calibration."

Her gloves clasped behind her back. Her eyes did not waver.

"You are correct to say I acted without sanction. I did. You are correct to say I made a spectacle. I did that as well. But I did not act out of delusion. Or ambition. Or the adolescent desire to be seen. I acted because no one else had."

A breath. Then—

"Saijo was not a world. It was a choke point. A vault. A fortress feeding something far greater than its manifest could explain. My mercenaries cataloged seven times the usual of artillery stockpiles. Three interdiction frigates under false corporate identities. Ground-side logistics nodes for fuel reserves and combat droid fabrication plants that did not report to any Sith War Office. Every piece pointed to a mobilization effort designed not to project power—but to slip it through the cracks."

A slow step forward. She would only speak the truth here. These reports had already been administered to the correct people, she could only hope Arcanix had seen them. Seen the real truth.

"From Saijo, one could reach Terminus without obstruction. Or Jutrand. The Emperor."

She let that hang. No flourish. Just the knife-point of implication.

"From Saijo, Councilor, the Tsis'Kaar had a back door to the Empire's throat. And they thought no one was watching. Because who would dare look?"

Another step.

"Who could, after all, when the Dark Council squabbles bats each other with one hand, while the hand beneath the table sharpens its knives?"

And now her tone changed. Not angry. But colder.

"I did not bomb Saijo to be loved. I burned it to shut the door before anyone could walk through. Before Fury's game reached your chambers. Or the Emperor's."

Silence again.

This time, when it broke, her voice had a quieter edge—razor-sharp with restraint.

"But I won't lie to you."

She looked Arcanix directly in the eye.

"I did it to wound the Tsis'Kaar. Not for glory. Not for the Empire. For me. Because I extended my hand once before. And they spat in it."

A pause.

"And because my people paid the price."

Her gloved fingers unclasped. From a data node beside her, a holo-document spiraled to life—no dramatics, just a clean Massan playback string. Thousands of line items scrolled across the column. Personnel logs. Fuel purchases. Frigate loadouts. Pirate fleet telemetry. All triangulated. All verified.

"My contractors intercepted a pirate signal cache buried beneath a refuelling station in orbit. A full ledger of shipments routed to outer rim staging groups masked as cartel fleets. Ships that later struck here. Polis Massa. During the collapse. During the second massacre. The one that forced Reicher Vax 's retirement."

She let the logs speak for themselves.

"You may recognize the authorizations. Fury's handprint is all over them."

Serina stepped back into stillness.

She would let the data speak for itself.

 

[Taeli Raaf]

Polis Massa
Darth Virelia
​

She would remain silent as the conversation moved into the data center at the end of the hallway, the room a testament to the idea of data being king. She was well aware that the room was likely only one of several that would be the processing centers for the governing AI that Serina was utilizing for her ambitions, which was a shame because it would certainly be indicative of a first-generation design if that were the case.

Her silence would remain as Serina explained what she respected and how she respected it. Respect for power through understanding and respect itself, not grounded in tradition or force. How... idealistic and yet flawed in its reasoning, but that would be something to be addressed. As the explanation for her actions on Saijo began, what was said offered her an interesting insight into the young woman, although perhaps not in the way she intended. The claims that it was calibration, not rebellion, was an odd descriptor to use. It suggested to her forethought into her actions, planning that went beyond a spur of the moment attack.

Her next words were admission that she had acted without sanction and had made a spectacle of the whole affair. That need not be said, but saying it gave her another piece of the puzzle. Her supposed rejection of the underlying reasons of ambition or delusion rung hollow to her though, as though the words needed to be set for performance but held little power or effort beyond the air expended for them. The girl oozed ambition from every pore, perhaps more blatantly than other Sith of her age she had encountered thus far. There was a thirst to prove herself, to prove that her way of thinking and doing things were right. That much was obvious and thus leading to the hollowness of her rejection of those.

And then the justification she had fully expected to come, the one that she had been forewarned about would be forthcoming. Saijo and its governor were planning to act against the Empire as a whole, building up resources for war slowly but steadily. According to the young woman before her, a coup with the full and quiet backing of the Tsis'Kaar that Darth Fury had been a member of. That she had acted to thwart those endeavors before they could culminate, before they were unleashed and destroyed the Emperor and the supposedly squabbling Dark Council.

But the real reason, the real insight into the young woman before her, came next when she said she had done it to wound the Tsis'Kaar... because they had rejected her, had spurned her offers of support. That the attack had come because they had struck her first, with pirates and other nefarious and subtle means.

There it was.

She had been offered three reasons for the assault on Saijo, for the decimation visited upon it and its governor. The data bearing Fury's authorizations and everything he had done to Polis Massa flowed freely in the data center. It was all so wonderfully constructed... except for a few issues.

"How magnanimous of you to strike down such an enemy before it attacked us," would come her quiet response. "How thoughtful that you did so out of duty to the Empire and to your people. Such passion. And all the data we could ever want to corroborate the account of events, all right before me. How generous of you to provide it..."

A pause, just the right length of silence to add emphasis to the next words she would say.

"And how all of it is irrelevant now."

It would be her turn now to begin pacing slowly in a circle, each step made with deliberate focus and grace born only from someone that had been playing this game for a long long time.

"You made a few mistakes, however, my dear at this first attempt at subterfuge. Mistake number one, admitting to the Emperor's Hand that most of this information if not all of it from Darth Fury was obtained after the attack had been nearly concluded, suggesting you had planned to attack Saijo with your mercenary force before that particular justification came up. I have her full report about the affair and what she witnessed."

She would pause a moment, looking at the girl with some amusement in her eyes, before continuing both her circle and her dissection.

"Mistake number two, although you share this one with the former governor of this system as well. Why not report these pirate attacks in the first place to the Dark Council? Such an attack on a system near several key worlds in the southern portions of our Empire would certainly have drawn attention, and yet not a word of it came to us. Why, the idea alone of pirates slipping through the Blackwall would have brought an immediate response from the Dark Council if not the Emperor himself.

"Mistake number three, you brought forth too much data. The art of creating a truly believable story as you wanted to construct relies on it being created in pieces, tiny ones, and all of them building up and reinforcing the other. You tried, I would imagine, but how you presented it here is too much. You didn't allow room for the stories to breathe on their own, but that's born from inexperience at the art. It takes practice to understand just the right number of clues and hints and data points to lay where others can find them."

She would glance up at the flowing data screens before back at the young woman.

"Mistake number four. Once you had bested Darth Fury and his forces, you made the decision to bombard the planet. To shatter its infrastructure and people, to ensure that your mark was left on it. An orbital bombardment, when the order is given, needs to be a dispassionate action. You, according to the Emperor's Hand and her report, were anything but dispassionate."

She would finally stop pacing, looking directly at Serina eye to eye again.

"Mistake number five, and this is the kicker of the argument, ties into mistake number two. Do you know why the Legions besides the Zero Legion are not allowed to operate anywhere except on the borders of the Empire? I'll tell you. It's to avoid unnecessary violence without authorization, to ensure that anyone that tries with the Legions or their personal forces is immediately recognized as crossing a line and brings the full force of everyone else down upon them. You admit to me that you knew this attack on Saijo was not sanctioned, and yet it occurred anyway when all you needed to do so within the bounds of our Empire is to inform us and seek the justification from any of the Dark Councilors or the Emperor and Empress."

For the first time, the Force would shift in the room and around them as her power stirred, rising from where it had been hidden. It was only a slow uncoiling of it, but it was quietly subsuming and engulfing the room. Her gaze and tone belied the power however, remaining calm and measured.

"You spoke at the beginning of your explanation that you respect power through understanding and respect, not tradition or force. However, that is a flawed belief, especially among the Sith. All Sith, from the Emperor down to the lowliest Acolyte within the academy system, have their power and standing grounded in both the traditions of the Sith and the power they hold, whether it be in the Force or other means. A Sith that understands this, understands that the rest of the galaxy is fair game but to strike at another Sith requires acting within the rules established by tradition, such as the Kaggath or the unsaid understanding that rivals need to be eliminated without yourself being caught in the act, creates the respect of those under them and those above them that recognize someone that should be cultivated."

A beat. Another coil of her power rearing up, tightening the circle.

"You have not done so. I believe you did tell me the real reason for your attack, and it was to simply strike at the Tsis'Kaar because they spurned you. You knew Fury would be a good target because he held a fortress world and it could be a demonstration of what you can do, of your power. You allowed a need for petty revenge and unchecked ambition to drive your actions, regardless of what you tell yourself or others in such honeyed phrases. Anything you claim otherwise is a lie, to yourself and to anyone else that hears you."

Another tightening. She hadn't moved at all from where she had stopped pacing, but her presence, her power, would be all around Serina. There would be nowhere her own abilities could go, and she would find she could only move a foot before meeting a force, invisible and forged from nearly seventy years of study. And it still wasn't the full extent of her presence, just what she had deemed necessary thus far.

"Let's begin the lesson."

 

[Darth Virelia]

"Consequences."

Tags - Taeli Raaf



The data streams flickered like ancient rivers of light, humming across the dark walls like veins in the skin of a titan. Every thread of information, every burst of decrypted knowledge, bled across PAD-1's crystalline vaults with surgical elegance—beautiful, unyielding, alive. The quiet was profound now. Not the sterile silence of secrecy, but the solemn quiet of inevitability. The quiet before a blade. The quiet before a verdict.

Serina Calis did not move.

Not as the Lady of Secrets circled her. Not as the ancient, coiled weight of her power constricted the chamber like a serpent formed of will and fury. Not as the air turned heavier, denser, each molecule vibrating with the potential of annihilation. She did not flinch. She did not rise in her own defense. Her hands, clad in gloves now frayed with faint scorches from Saijo's hellfire, remained at her sides. She did not reach for the Force.

She was the Force.

What remained of her.

Because Serina Calis had already died.

Not in metaphor. Not in theory. Not in some symbolic tale of loss or sacrifice. She had died.

The first death had been the most pathetic. She hadn't even been given the dignity of a duel. On Rakata Prime, she had walked into a ruin with ambition in her throat and demands in her eyes. The Sith she met had simply grown bored of her presence. One flick of his blade. One casual, disgusted strike. She had been bisected in the middle of a sentence. That had been the lesson. There was no grandeur in failure. Only silence. Only cold.

She remembered the moment her blood hit the stone. How quiet it had been.

The second death had been worse.

Jedi Grandmaster Noble, inside the archives on Coruscant. She had come seeking to fulfil her promise, to step away from life and choose to remain in the background, to be content serving another. She never even finished defending herself when they came upon her, she held a desperate stand until Valery Noble had Serina beaten. The saber went through her chest before she could scream. Her heart—gone. There was nothing to mend. Nothing to regenerate. The darkness didn't heal her. It preserved her. The Force stitched her back together only enough for her to keep walking.

That hole still remained. Invisible. But infinite.

Her body had never recovered. She needed the Force now like lungs needed air, like cells needed heat. Without it, she would wither. Collapse. Not metaphorically. Literally. She had nothing left but will. Nothing left but the ambition that her enemies said made her dangerous, or naive, or suicidal.

And yet, here she was.

Surrounded by the suffocating might of a Dark Councilor's wrath, the very structure of PAD-1 groaning under the weight of the presence pressing in on her from all sides, Serina Calis finally moved.

Not her body, no, her body had finally finished mourning.

Her eyes.

They lifted slowly to meet Arcanix's gaze—not with defiance, not with challenge, but with certainty. An impossible calm. Not apathy. Not arrogance. The calm of someone who had already made peace with the outcome. Someone who had already died. Twice.

When she finally spoke, her voice was quiet. Measured. Each syllable delivered with surgical restraint.

"You're right."

No venom. No sarcasm. Just the plain, brutal truth.

"I did it for me."

Acceptance.

She let the words settle like falling ash.

"I did not act for the Council. Not for the Emperor. Not for some noble vision of the Sith."

Her hands remained still. Her shoulders did not tense.

"I acted because they laughed at me. Because they sneered. Because they used words like arrogant, impulsive, young—as if age alone made them wise. As if tradition were a throne that could never rot beneath them. As if power was a birthright rather than something that could be taken."

She stepped forward. Only once. The Force resisting her movement like tar. But she moved anyway.

"I acted because I wanted them to fear me."

Now her voice dropped lower. Almost a whisper.

"Because they would not listen. Because no one ever listens until you make them afraid."

A pause. Her eyes were cold now. Not unfeeling—but stripped bare of performance.

"And now?"

She tilted her head. Not mockingly. Curiously.

"Now they do."

Her gaze did not waver as she spoke again, slower this time, each word enunciated like a mark etched in stone.

"Saijo burned because I needed them to look at me and understand… that I am not someone to ignore."

Another breath.

"I do not deny that I violated every rule. That I broke every chain. That I danced in the fire and dared the heavens to punish me."

Her hands, so still until now, curled gently inward.

"I expected to die for it. I chose to die for it. A thousand times in my mind I've died for less. For nothing."

The light above her head flickered briefly. ICHNAEA's pulsing code danced faster.

"But here I am."

The Force around her didn't flare in protest. It didn't crackle or shriek or scream in refusal. It simply compressed, dense and silent and unrelenting. It wrapped around her body like a sarcophagus.

She did not resist it.

"I have no illusions, Councilor. I am not equal to you in power. Not in station. Not in age. I do not pretend I belong here. I know I don't."

Then a pause.

"But I will."

It was not a plea. Not a vow. Just fact.

"There is no part of me left that asks for approval. No permission for belonging. No invite of redemption. I gave those up on a stone floor when my blood ran cold. I gave them up in a library as my heart was pierced. When I realised the galaxy itself wanted me dead. I do not serve. I do not ask."

Finally.

"I take. I control. I corrupt."

She looked up at the massive hololiths—the empire of data, the machinery she had built to calculate futures, to bend probabilities.

And in that single moment, she realised a simple, horrid truth.

Serina understood, with a clarity sharper than any blade, that she was owed nothing.

That she must take everything.

A realisation that only required little thought, because it had only required acceptance.

Acceptance.

She continued.

"I built all of this to last. Not to be liked. Not to be admired. To endure. To make sure that the next time a girl like me dares to climb, she doesn't get cut in half for speaking too boldly. Or executed for walking in the wrong corridor."

A breath.

"You say I broke the rules. I know I did."

Her gaze dropped back to Arcanix. And here—here—a faint tremor of emotion touched her voice. Not regret. But finality.

"But I did it because of the rules. Because they were written to keep people like me in place. To keep the old guard safe. To protect the lie that only tradition can define power."

Then, softer—

"I will not die kneeling."

The air crackled now. Not with Force lightning, or rage, or fear. But with the weight of certainty.

She stepped forward again, even as the invisible pressure wrapped tighter, the metaphysical bindings beginning to constrict.

"I know what comes next."

Another step.

"I have earned what comes next."

Final step.

"And I will face it as myself."

Acceptance.

And then—silence.

Serina Calis stood alone, bathed in the artificial light of a thousand truths, the weight of the past coiled behind her like a cloak of ashes.

She did not reach for a weapon. Her weapon was her will.

She did not raise her voice. Her voice was her defiance.

She stood still, and proud, and ready.

Ready to accept death.

 

[Taeli Raaf]

Polis Massa
Darth Virelia
​

She stood silently as Serina replied to her dissection of her actions, acknowledging they were true. Confirming that she struck out as she had because she had felt insulted, belittled, dismissed and wanted to prove her doubters wrong. To show those who had sneered at her that she was a force to be reckoned with, and to bring herself to the attention of those above her that she wanted to challenge their structure and traditions. What else she said and how she was meeting her gaze was intriguing, if only as a character study. She had sensed the cloak of death and preservation hanging around her, but to hear it confirmed that Serina had died twice already showed her suggested at least a partial ability to replicate the power of Darth Sion to hold the flesh together through sheer will and dark power.

To say she took, she controlled, and she corrupted were interesting stances to take on how she viewed her accrual of power. The young woman wanted to be a spider, someone who could have threads spread out across the galaxy to guide and manipulate as she saw fit. Taeli understood that, having done so herself for decades now, although she had done so for other motives than what the girl seemed to be professing. To say no part of her sought approval or belonging, though, once again sounded hollow to her. Allyson had been quite clear about their interactions and Serina's actions suggested otherwise to her. She wanted approval and belonging, but only with certain people. She didn't want it from traditional structures such as leaders or teachers. If anything, if what she was saying were parts of her personal philosophy, she wanted to undermine those traditional roles, to corrupt and rot them away as she would put it.

Lofty ambition, and not one that would be even close to easily accomplished if this was her first gambit at doing so. There was certainty in her eyes and last few words, her mind already knowing that annihilation was a breath away. She wanted to die proud, to not kneel even before a Dark Councilor, to be true to what she believed herself to be.

She was mistaken.

"I don't think you do know what comes next," she replied, clasping her hands behind her back now. "If I desired your destruction, we wouldn't be having this conversation. I would just allow my power to continue to compress upon you until nothing was left, your very essence erased at my whim or I would have let my other half utter reduce this whole asteroid field to space dust, with the fleet she sits with that is only a three-minute hyperspace jump away. She really wants me to give that order, especially after the disrespect you showed me when I arrived. Or I'd just give the order to the Emperor's Hand, something you seem to be making easy for her to actually relish, but I have not done so."

That was putting it mildly, as she could still feel Fiolette pacing like a caged nexu just waiting to be allowed to pounce and tear.

"But I am here to educate, not annihilate."

Her power would remain coiled around Serina to prevent her movement, but a flicker of it would ripple from her in a dark mist tinged with green. Where one moment there was no seat, there was now a temporary throne formed from ichor and shadows that she would sit upon, legs crossed and now leaning on one arm.

"I once knew a young, ambitious Sith such as yourself," she would continue saying. "Sophie Gustav, and like yourself, she was a Jedi Padawan that discovered the hypocrisy at the heart of the Jedi, although not in such a dramatic fashion as yours. She was hungry for knowledge, which was how we met in some ruins on Ossus, and that hunger only grew as she embraced the dark side of the Force and became my apprentice. Oh, she was a talented individual and, like you, sought to grow her influence, to devour knowledge and prove herself equal to if not greater than the other Sith at the time. She eventually became a Sith Lady in her own right, but she allowed her ambitions to outgrow her abilities and station. She made an error in one of her experiments, prematurely aging her into an old woman.

"I tell you this story because I once again see a young woman attempting, through her ambition, to do more than she is ready to do. You may dislike being labeled as young or arrogant or impulsive, but your actions only confirm this. You think burning Saijo engendered fear of you? No, my dear, it only brought scorn and consequences upon you. You think people only will listen to you if they're afraid of you? That is an incorrect assumption."

She would lean forward slightly now, hands clasped on her lap.

"Do you think I wield the sort of influence or loyalty or presence because I am feared? Do you think I can walk into a board room as a businesswoman with others business beings in the galaxy and expect them to do what I say because I am Sith and they should fear what I could do them? No. This is something that you, that it seems Darth Nefaron, that other younger members of your generation of Sith, fail to understand. What happens if your entire reputation is built on fear or corruption and you encounter someone that doesn't fear you, that you can find no way to influence with honeyed words or corruptive actions? Your power crumbles into dust because the foundation is as nebulous as that fear can be. Even if you kill that person, make an example of them, the first piece on the dejarik board has already moved to destroy your grasp upon everything."

"I wield the power and influence and wealth I do because I learned, long ago, to respect the scope of my abilities and those around me and that I encounter. To eschew to traditions and politeness, to respect and be cordial, but not as an act, as a genuine commitment to being so. I learned, long ago, that corruption and manipulation can only go so far, that they can only take root in soil prepared for them, but even then, they have limits and should only be a tool in your arsenal. I had a reputation for turning Jedi to our cause, and this is something Kaine and myself will debate about, through patience and understanding. I turned a full third of the Jedi Order of the previous Galactic Alliance and half of its military to the side of the Sith because I spent over a decade slowly waking them up to hypocrisy, not through manipulation or plots, but because they could see it for themselves."

She would lean back once again into her throne of shadows.

"You want to be the spider, but to be so, you're going to have to admit to your flaws and learn from them. You are young. You're in your twentieth year in this galaxy, whether you like that detail or not is irrelevant. You are arrogant. You believe yourself to be the most interesting individual in a room and find that, when those around you disagree, that they should be made to believe that too through any means and you create grudges. You are impulsive. Your attack on Saijo out of petty vengeance reinforces this, but other actions you have undertaken such as releasing the Veritas are further evidence of this."

A beat. There would be a touch of softness in her voice for what she would say next.

"You are trying too hard, my dear, to be something you think you are. You don't really know who or what you are, or what you even want besides the base parts of your philosophy. You try to act sophisticated and poised, to be this figure of influence, but it comes off as more like a child playacting at such a role. If that is what you want to be, you need to grow into that slowly, over time and through patience."

The Lady of Secrets had not become what she was overnight. When she had been Serina's age, she had been more worried about exams and her fencing competitions and learning as much as she could from the libraries on Lorrd. She had not become the imposing and graceful and influential Dark Councilor offering this lecture even in her first years as a Sith. She made mistakes that had cost lives, had born those consequences and learned important lessons from them about trust and respect, had fought on the frontlines of wars and countless battles, had discovered family and lost them, had studied and experimented to push the boundaries of her knowledge of the Force, had grown a small business into a galactic juggernaut on par with any megacorporation.

Time, it always came down to time, and yet this younger generation wanted to burn brightly, hotly, and then... they would be like dust on the wind as she and others like her, like Carnifex, endured and continued in the galaxy. Serina wanted what they wielded, but she wanted it now, not in ten years or twenty years or however long it might take her to grow from a governorship of an asteroid colony to something greater.

 

[Darth Virelia]

"Consequences."

Tags - Taeli Raaf



The shadow-coiled throne shimmered in the half-light of the sanctum, casting an unnatural hue across the polished obsidian floor. Mist, tinged faintly with emerald rot, curled around the columns like breath held in a dying body. ICHNAEA dimmed her presence in reverence, sensing that words no longer shaped the outcome here—only gravity. Philosophical. Political. Personal. The gravity of legacy, of failure, of inevitability.

Serina Calis remained still as the lecture washed over her.

Her breathing was minimal. Her muscles slack, not from fear, but conservation. Her posture perfect, not from performance, but principle. The pressure from Arcanix's encircling grip was omnipresent—constricting, enwrapping her like a tomb—but she did not resist it. She simply endured it, as she had endured all things. Not with reverence, nor submission. With silence. A silence that did not kneel.

The Lady of Secrets spoke with the smoothness of a woman who had ruled unchallenged for decades, whose every word had once shattered governments, turned Jedi, rewritten laws and dogmas alike. She was correct in her assessment—about many things. That Serina did not yet understand the full depth of patience. That she acted out of pain, not clarity. That she carried wounds into every room, and sometimes mistook them for wisdom. And Serina listened, truly listened, because she did not need to be right. She only needed to be better.

But within that same silence… her thoughts stirred.

They were slow. Cold. Precise.

You speak of patience as a virtue, but deny what I am becoming because it arrived before schedule. You decry ambition and hunger and then allow Malum to be on the Dark Council, a boy whose greatest skills are performing and crying foul. You chide me for my age, yet the galaxy burns from the rot of yours. You call yourself the spider—but every web decays.

She said none of it aloud.

There was no point.

Truth, Serina had come to understand, did not require rebuttal. It only required survival.

And she would survive.

Because Serina Calis would be the greatest Sith to ever live.

Not because she was powerful. Not because she was clever. But because she understood—truly, in her marrow—that the only lasting form of power in the galaxy was corruption. Not in the vulgar sense of poison or betrayal. But corruption as entropy. Corruption as transformation. To take what is and make it yours. That was the ultimate act of the Dark Side.

She would not fight Arcanix today. That would come later. When her eyes had aged, and her tone no longer trembled, and when the galaxy had come to accept her not as a disruption—but as the center of gravity.

And so Serina bowed her head—not deeply, not theatrically. Just enough. A fraction of an angle. The barest whisper of submission.

Calculated.

"I understand," she said softly.

It was the only thing she said.

But in her mind, a thousand other things took root. A thousand shapes of futures yet to be molded. She would remember every word of this meeting. Not because it wounded her pride—but because it showed her the path. A path not of resistance.

A path of infection.

Let them believe she had learned her lesson. Let them believe she had accepted the scolding. Let them walk away satisfied that they had spared her, that she might grow correctly now, with the proper humility.

And when they looked away—

She would already be inside their lungs.

Already moving in their veins.

One system at a time. One soul at a time. One lie at a time.

Because Serina Calis did not need to win this war now.

She only needed to endure.

And in time, all things would orbit her. Willingly. Or not.

 

[Taeli Raaf]

Polis Massa
Darth Virelia
​

In her experience, whenever someone who was being chastised fell silent and then only responded with, they understood, it was more than likely they did not. Not even just as someone who was a mother and grandmother, but as someone that had trained multiple people over the years. Pride was the poison that often inflicted those she found that 'understood' and they would take that pride, the wound to it, and try and compensate for it. The young woman before was no different.

The girl didn't need to voice any thoughts aloud, nor did Taeli even need to probe her emotions or thoughts with the Force. Experience told her exactly what was going through the young Sith's mind, even as she inclined her head ever so slightly in a calculated submission. That was honestly the issue; she was still calculating, not accepting. She was still, in her silence, trying to figure out how to turn the situation to her advantage, to figure out a way to once again slip under the proverbial radar. Unfortunately for the young Sith, her move had now made that impossible. In her desire to become somebody, she had created a situation where her every move would now be under watch, whether she knew it or not.

"Of that, I doubt, my dear," would be the response to her words. There wouldn't be any malice in her tone, just the quiet patience of a teacher that knew the lesson wasn't sinking in yet. Taeli knew what would eventually do so, that would bring the girl's ego down a few pegs to a more manageable and productive level. It would take her failing at something monumental, something that she had poured everything she had and every plot she held dear to what passed as a heart, for her to learn. In the meantime, the punishment was needed for what she had done on Saijo... and to drive home the point further that she had little she could hide from her.

"Whether you learn and grow or die chasing something that you believe will make you the most important being in existence, is ultimately irrelevant to me," she would continue. "What is, however, is what am I going to do with you in the present? You violated conventions of behavior expected of Sith and their scheming, and that can't be taken lightly. You burned down a fortress world that, Tsis'Kaar stronghold or not, was important to not just military operations in the southern portions of the galaxy but also economic activity. You killed a fellow governor of the Assembly in the open, for all to see. By all rights, I should end your existence now as an appropriate punishment, but as I already stated, my goal was not to kill you but for you to learn."

Her fingers would tap slowly on the armor of her summoned throne in what seemed to be thought.

"All economic activity out of Polis Massa and the system will be tithed to fund the rebuilding of Saijo, all resources mined here will be turned towards that project. Your name will not be attached to any of this, with all funds and resources being funneled through the Ministry of Logistics and Sphere of Scientific Advancement under my supervision. Any income you gain from the mines you established on Sevarcos II will be halved, with half also going towards this rebuilding fund. The economic activity generated by the corporations under your control will also be tithed for this rebuilding process, with them forbidden from establishing a presence on Saijo itself."

Her fingers would keep tapping slowly.

"Any designs your companies create will be shared with the Sphere of Scientific Advancement, any projects you and Dr. Garreth create in your supposedly secret labs and vaults in the caverns in this planetoid will require my sign off to proceed." The mention of the bioengineer that she had poached was likely not something Serina wanted to hear, but between her oversight of scientific efforts in Sith space, her own power base and experiments, and her corporate interests, she kept tabs on the galaxy's top genetic minds that didn't already work for her.

"And this will all continue until Saijo is rebuilt to my liking, so until then, consider Polis Massa under supervision from the Sphere of Scientific Advancement. Any failure to comply with these stipulations, any attempt to wiggle out or not report things to me accurately, will result in your termination. Am I clear?"

The message was quite clear. She might believe in giving the girl a chance to grow and learn, but her... ability to offer second chances only extended so far. She had told Serina to prove herself during the free trade forum, now she needed to do so doubly.

 

[Darth Virelia]

"Consequences."

Tags - Taeli Raaf



The words did not cut.

They crushed.

Not because they surprised her. They didn't. Not because they were undeserved. They weren't. But because of what they represented: total external control—precisely the one thing Serina Calis could not survive without.

She did not react as the list unfurled. Not at first. Not when the terms were outlined with the cold patience of a teacher dictating from a syllabus. Not when her industries were claimed, her resources seized, her research labs—her sanctuaries—placed under watch. Not when her designs, her power, her future, were all reduced to tributary flow beneath the iron watch of someone she would never submit to.

No, Serina did not react on the surface.

But inside?

Inside she screamed.

Her mind burned. The room blurred at the edges as adrenaline flooded her senses, as every muscle in her spine locked into place to keep her from visibly trembling. The tap of Arcanix's fingers on her throne was the rhythm of chains sliding into place—every beat another iron bar across Serina's future, every word a clasp sealed shut around her throat.

She wanted to lunge. She wanted to rip. She wanted to summon every ounce of Force she had ever studied and burn the woman alive where she sat, to consume her body in white flame and erase her from memory.

But she didn't.

She stood perfectly still.

Perfectly composed.

A black silhouette framed by the cold light of her stolen kingdom.

Because she knew that to act would be to lose everything.

And she had already lost so much.

Her voice, when it came, was not calm. Not measured. It shook—not with fear, but with fury so deeply buried it sounded like the earth cracking beneath the weight of mountains.

"…You are clear."

She said it like poison swallowed. Like glass chewed into pulp. Each word a small death.

There was a long silence.

And then—

"I am furious," Serina said, her voice quiet, but raw. "Do you understand that? I am furious. Not because I failed—because I didn't. Not because I was caught—because I wasn't. But because I did the thing that no one else would. And I am punished… for doing it well."

A flicker passed through her eyes—like something shattered behind them.

"I am forced to watch you dress me down like I'm some ambitious child, as if I haven't crawled through more death and rot and betrayal than half this Empire. The same disgrace of an Empire that allows fools and buffoons to run amuck because they have 'approval' from those who sit at the top."

She stepped forward once. Not in defiance. But with deliberate restraint.

"I accept your terms."

Her lips curled—not in a smile. In something uglier.

"But don't confuse this with learning. Don't confuse it with submission. You haven't taught me anything I didn't already know. I've always known what this place is. I've always known what happens to people like me."

A slow turn of her head.

Her eyes met Arcanix's. And for the first time, truly, they were naked. No calculation. No masks.

Only hate.

The room held still.

"You have your agreement, now leave before I change my mind."

 

[Taeli Raaf]

Polis Massa
Darth Virelia
​

A melodious laugh would fill the chamber as Serina made her statements, likely one of the things the young woman didn't like to hear. There would be a slight undercurrent in the laugh, a part of it almost like it was trying to echo or linger in the mind and spirit. The girl's rage was unmoving to the Lady of Secrets, the hate in her eyes only amusing Taeli.

"Oh, my dear, if you have anyone to be furious at, it should be yourself. And you, my dear, do not have the authority or power to dismiss me. This was not a negotiation, this was not an agreement, this was not a situation where you could change your mind on accepting or rejecting what I have said. These are the consequences for your actions and your failures, nothing more, nothing less. I don't care if you're subdued. I don't care if you submit. You want to be part of this Empire, you act within the rules. If that requires permission to act against a rival in Sith space, you get that permission. If that means suffering the fools and buffoons around you, you suffer them in silence."

Her power would once again construct closer, this time becoming visible within the materials as slowly encircling loops of dark side energy not unlike those that create the dark side tendrils of the most advanced sorcery. She would remain seated as she was, meeting the girl's gaze calmly even as her power remained on full display.

"As I mentioned earlier, when a Sith strikes against a rival in Sith space itself, plausible deniability is everything. It is one thing for others to know you dealt with a rival, it is another entirely to have proof at hand and boasts from the perpetrator about the deed. That, my dear, is failure within our Order. If you had done it well, had been satisfied with the knowledge you destroyed a rival, but kept it quiet and light as a rumor or a jealous thought in the heads of your contemporaries, I would not be here. But instead, you decided to emulate Darth Malak and declare yourself his heir. A Dark Lord of the Sith that lasted all of a year before the master he betrayed returned and killed him, a Dark Lord whose only claim to fame is the devastation of Taris."

A beat.

"But perhaps, due to your experiences, you'll shift to a more accurate role model in the future. Your repeated deaths and revivals may be interesting, recalling the tale of the Lord of Pain, but don't think for another moment that it makes you any more special than other Sith that have come before or will come after. Your chains come off when Saijo is restored to my satisfaction, not a moment before, but also not a moment after. I'm a fair woman, and you have both your conditions and your ability to lift those conditions. And if you want to no longer be grouped in, as you say with people like you, the young and ambitious and impatient, then yes, you will learn. As pricked as your ego may be, if you want to survive another year... You. Will. Learn."

That would be a moment when a shadow would detach itself from the constricting tendrils, settling into Serina's own shadow and melding into it seamlessly. A little bird to keep an eye on the spider.

"First lesson. Try and break free."

 

[Darth Virelia]

"Consequences."

Tags - Taeli Raaf



Serina didn't answer.

Not at first.

The laugh had cut deeper than any blade. Not because it belittled her rage—no, Serina had known mockery her entire life—but because it did so with ease. The echoing sweetness of it, the way it lingered in the air like the scent of poison orchids… it wasn't just a dismissal. It was condescension made into music.

Then the tendrils came.

They coiled with patient elegance—visible now, arcs of sorcerous gravity weaving through the walls, floor, and even the lights above, black veins worming into the room's skin. One slid low across the polished floor like a serpent, brushing along the edge of her boot with delicate calculation.

Her shadow darkened. Then deepened. Then shifted.

She felt it.

The phantom weight of surveillance, the Force-tethered parasite leashing her movements—rooted in her very presence, folded into her outline.

She didn't flinch.

Instead, she closed her eyes.

For three long seconds, Serina stood silent, her breathing slow, shallow, as if she were somewhere else—some place deep beneath the surface of her mind, where memory and hate and sheer, bladed will coalesced into shape.

And when she opened them again—

The air rippled.

Not outwardly. Not like a storm bursting from a Force master's fury.

It was internal. Focused. Controlled.

She reached inward, not with wild rage, but surgical violence. No gestures. No chanting. No grand display. Serina had spent years studying control—not just of others, but of herself. Her power wasn't explosive.

It was precise.

Her hands remained at her sides. Her feet anchored. Her body unmoving.

But within, the tether met resistance.

Like a strand of thread stretched across razors.

She followed it—the line of the shadow that had been sewn into her own. She followed it with the honed brutality of someone who had studied the sensation of death in slow detail, and found its weaknesses not in emotion, but in rhythm. In pattern. In design.

The Force surged inside her, not loud, but sharp—like a scalpel breaking bone.

She pushed back.

Not with strength, but with technique.

It was a test. A piercing, focused act of unraveling, an attempt not to overpower the leash—but to slice through it.

To feel the moment of tension at its core and snap it, not with resistance… but with truth.

The truth that Serina Calis had already died twice.

And that whatever thread bound her now—this surveillance, this threat, this leash—it was not stronger than death.

She whispered. Not aloud. In the Force.

I am not your apprentice. I am not your experiment. I am not your lesson.

And she pulled.

Not physically.

She pulled on the fault in the tendril's spellwork, not with fire, but with a whisper of psychic violence. A knifepoint of spiritual noncompliance. The refusal to be observed. The rejection of the leash—not in rebellion, but in self-negation.

Try and break free, Arcanix had said.

So she did.

Not because she thought she could win.

But because the moment she stopped trying, she would no longer be Serina Calis.

The Force cracked.

The lights flickered for a heartbeat.

Then—silence.

She remained standing. Breathing.

Her eyes slowly turned toward Arcanix. There was no triumph in them. No smugness.

Only fire.

And the slow, impossible force of a vow that could not be undone.

 

[Taeli Raaf]

Darth Virelia
​

There would be no spoken words as she watched the girl summon her power, summon her control, to try and slip free of the leash she saw and sensed. No greater force of resistance or lesser to strengthen the tendril wrapping invisibly around her throat, binding her like a puppet on a string. The girl knew to cut at the point of metaphorical tautness, relying upon the control she learned as a Jedi and the sharpness of her will to try and cut through it. Of a will forged by death and return, as though she thought it would give her, perhaps not an edge, but a fighting chance in this lesson.

​

"No, you are not my apprentice. No, you are not my experiment. No, I am YOUR lesson... And where you saw and sensed the tendril, you missed the bird," would come the reply, slipping into her mind just as quietly as a small raven formed of wisps and shadow crawled out of Serina's cloak to perch on her shoulder. The raven would ruffle its wispy feathers before sinking back down into the shadows formed by Serina's very form, her very essence.

"If you believe death and the truth such an experience imparts are aids to you, you'll never succeed," the voice would continue in her head, almost conversationally. "Control is one thing the Jedi did teach you, but there is greater control you can learn." The girl had studied control for years... the sorceress had studied it for decades. More tendrils would attach themselves to her shadow, potentially more little birds of shadow, more familiars of the Lady of Secrets, fluttering around and in and through her. "But your fear of self-negation, that if you bend and accept what you view as a leash, is a weakness. You already reject what you were, what you are, and it blinds you to what you could be. Blinds you to your surroundings as you seek to impart your reality upon one already controlled by another. Blinds your senses as surely as any fog." The room would fill with a new sound, the sound of feathers and wings moving. In the darkness, in the tendrils themselves, small beads of amethyst would blink in and out.

"Try again."

 

[Darth Virelia]

"Consequences."

Tags - Taeli Raaf



She didn't flinch when the raven emerged.

Didn't speak as it unfurled from the folds of her cloak like a coiled parasite made of smoke and gaze. She merely watched as it settled, ruffled its feathers, and folded itself back into her shadow like it had always been there. Like it had always been part of her.

She breathed in once—through her nose. Controlled. Measured. But this time, it was not to summon will.

It was to contain it.

The voice in her head was precise. Surgical. Too calm to be cruel, too sharp to be kind. It entered like a scalpel slipped between bone and tendon—not to kill, but to open. And Serina let it. Not out of submission. Not out of respect. But because even wounds could be used.

She didn't try to respond in words.

Not yet.

Because she was processing.

Not calculating.

Integrating.

The voice had told her the truth. Blunt, indifferent, maddening. That she had missed the bird. That she had attacked the obvious threat—the visible tendril, the leash she wanted to see—while failing to perceive the true instrument of control. That she had acted as she always did: direct, controlled, precise, yes—but also reactive. She had sought to sever the cord, without ever asking who held the knife.

That realization burned. Not because it humiliated her. But because it confirmed what she had always feared about herself.

She wasn't done.

Not yet.

She closed her eyes.

And this time, when she reached inward, she didn't seek to cut.

She listened.

Not with ears. Not even with the Force. She listened in the way a dead thing might remember breath. In the way a broken clock still feels the ghost of time. She let the shadow creep. Let the birds move. Let the sorcery touch her.

She didn't resist.

She yielded—not to Arcanix, but to reality.

To the idea that she didn't control the field.

That she never had.

That she was in the lesson, not above it.

The amethyst eyes blinked all around her in the dark, and still she stood unmoving, crown unbowed, but heart stilled. And in that silence—one not of defiance, but of deep, bone-level observation—Serina began to see the shape of the thing laid before her.

It wasn't just a leash.

It was a framework.

A system.

A sorcerer's lattice designed not to punish—but to teach.

Not the way Serina taught. Not with words, or control, or chemical formulas.

But with truth laid bare.

The voice had said: Your fear of self-negation is a weakness.

And in that moment, Serina finally understood what that meant.

She had spent years building herself out of fragments. Out of ruins. She had refused to bend, to kneel, to be consumed by the Force in the ways the Jedi demanded. She had defined herself by control because it was all that remained after death had taken everything else.

But now—this was something else.

This was death without destruction.

This was submission without surrender.

And she hated it.

She hated it so completely it made her want to scream. To lash out. To kill.

But she didn't.

Because in this moment, in this lesson, Serina Calis finally saw something she hadn't seen since she was a Jedi Padawan on Coruscant.

Possibility, stillness, serenity, peace.

So she breathed again, though she could feel her heart start to fail her.

Was it Arcanix? Was it her stillness? She couldn't know for sure, but it hurt badly.

She whispered—not aloud, but through the Force. A single phrase. A single truth, a rasp for air in a dying body.

Then teach me how to.

And for the first time since her days as a Padawan, she truly meant it.

 

[Taeli Raaf]

Darth Virelia
OOC: Short phone post, but wanted to get this out
​

The response to her question would come vocally, not within her mind. She had felt the slide of the girl into something like acceptance, that what she had become thus far was only a few steps down the path of her destiny. That her desire to never kneel, never to surrender, might be a weakness after all, but that part they would see in the future.

"Not yet, but perhaps in time," she would reply, her temporary throne vanishing back into mist. "I'll give you this, my dear. If you ever ask me a question, I will tell you no lies. If you act in a manner that deserves praise and recognition, I will give it to you, but likewise if you act in a manner that only deserves scorn and lessons, that too I will give you. I am not one to nurse egos or hurt feelings, I am one who will nurture talent that truly deserves it. When you have learned to set aside ego, when you have walked further down your path, when you have asked your questions and gained answers and not empty platitudes. When you have learned to know what honeyed words might be and what those who truly want your best interests will say... I will show you the truths you seek, but until then..."

Her form would suddenly fade away, and within the hangar bay, the shuttle she had arrived on would also fade away. At the edge of the system, even the three Star Destroyers would simply vanish away from all sensors and visuals. It would become apparent the Illusions that the Lady of Secrets had crafted were extensive, even to the point that she had her projections go through the motions of the landing shenanigans. It was a subtle lesson in of itself...

"...I'll be watching my dear." Her voice would whisper.