Private Shattered In Two

[Darth Virelia]

"To rebuild a legend."

Tags - Rayia Si

Ebon Requiem lying shattered in two was an inconvenience Virelia could no longer ignore. Saijo was far behind her now, but a halberd—her halberd—was not so easily replaced, and she had always found a quiet, indulgent satisfaction in wielding a weapon worthy of her will. If it was to be reforged, there was only one set of hands in the galaxy she would trust with the task. That necessity, more than sentiment, drew her once again toward Rayia Si.

Rayia had always been an anomaly in Virelia's life. Not a subordinate to be commanded, nor a peer to be measured, but something rarer still—someone she had simply liked. A private, unspoken connection, untainted by hierarchy or expectation, kept carefully sealed away from the rest of the galaxy. Such things were scarce, and Virelia was acutely aware of their fragility.

The galaxy, after all, had a long and proven habit of taking everything else.

With the fall of the Galactic Alliance, Virelia presumed that Rayia—if she still drew breath—would have retreated to Weik. It was an almost idyllic world, kept distant and intact by its disconnection from the galactic hyperlanes, a place the wider galaxy had never quite managed to bruise. Virelia had been there once before. They had spoken, worked, and shared a moment that had been genuine in a way few things ever were. If she were to begin her search, there was no better place.

Reaching Weik, however, was never simple. Virelia did not move openly through the galaxy; she survived through absence, misdirection, and the careful use of other people's shadows. Her private shuttle still lay abandoned on Chandrila, and so she turned, as she so often did, to less legitimate solutions. Providence came in the form of a pirate crew running a shipment of illegal beskar, freshly stolen from Mandalorian space. In exchange for her assistance, they carried her with the cargo—unregistered, unrecorded, and unseen.

It was not an elegant arrangement, but it was sufficient. Another step taken. Another thread followed. And Weik, distant and untouched, lay ahead.

Finally setting foot on Weik, Virelia wasted no time. She made her way toward the same place they had met before, guided less by memory than by instinct, as though the world itself still remembered that moment even if the galaxy did not. If Rayia yet lived, if she had not been claimed by war, exile, or quieter cruelties, then this was where traces of her would remain.

Virelia followed those traces carefully, intent on seeing whether the fire that had once burned here had truly gone cold—or merely learned to hide.

 

[Rayia Si]

Location: Weik
Tags: Darth Virelia

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Retreat. A bitter prospect in the face of most things but doubly so given Rayia’s general weariness. The last few months had all coalesced into a blur, with only a pervasive feeling of tiredness lingering as the Felacatian had been stretched too thin. The proverbial lion with a thorn in her paw. It was no surprise then that she had returned home to lick her wounds.

Virelia would find the abandoned smithery where Rayia had met her last much the same. Ivy still carpeted the three remaining walls, tumbling in thick rivulets to the ground. The walls curved against the wind; a valiant attempt to ensure variables such as rain had no effect on the work produced. Though the impression was slightly punctured by the incomplete nature of their protection, given the crumpled heap of stonework where the fourth wall would have stood.

A well trained eye would notice that amidst the tools that lay scattered, several were well maintained. While certainly there were those speckled with rust and ash, the entire selection of tools one might need was accounted for. One might infer that the presentation was a facade. One that utilized the state of the original tools of the dwelling to mask its current habitation.

And Rayia? Well, she did not appear to be present. She had sensed the vibrations of an individual approaching due to her keen Felacatian senses. Yet, a sense of watchfulness pressed in upon the space, as if she was waiting for Virelia to identify herself.

 

[Darth Virelia]

"To rebuild a legend."

Tags - Rayia Si

Oh. This would not do.

A place like this did not rot by accident. Virelia stepped into the remnants of the smithery with measured care, violet eyes tracing ivy-choked stone and collapsed masonry, the familiar shape of the space tugging at memory even as something fundamental felt wrong. The warmth was gone, that the quiet presence that had once lingered here. Rust kissed some tools, ash dulled others… yet not all.

Her gaze lingered. Several implements were clean. Maintained. Balanced where a careless hand would not have left them. The illusion was clumsy only to those who did not know what to look for. Rayia Si was many things, but careless had never been one of them.

Dead, then? Virelia dismissed the thought almost as quickly as it formed. Rayia had to have survived the Empire. She had to have endured the collapse of the Galactic Alliance. She was clever, resilient—dangerously so. Once, Virelia had even entertained the idea of corrupting her, of turning that talent toward sharper, darker ends. Time and circumstance had denied her the opportunity.

It would be a bitter irony indeed if the galaxy had claimed her now, for the prospective mind still sought Rayia.

Virelia exhaled slowly and set Ebon Requiem's broken haft against the stone, letting the sound linger before she drew a measured breath and allowed a fraction of tension to drain from her frame. Tyrant's Embrace sealed her away in obsidian and violet glass, six unblinking eyes fixed upon the ruins, yet the girl beneath the armor remained keenly present—reconstructing what might have transpired here.

Weik lay too far from the galactic arteries to invite casual intrusion. That narrowed the possibilities, but did not simplify them. The Hidden Path, perhaps. Quiet asylum within the High Republic. Voluntary retreat. Forced disappearance. Each answer branched into half a dozen more.

If Rayia had been taken, then Virelia would retrieve her. If she had fled, Virelia would find her. Problems, after all, had a habit of resolving themselves only when she applied her own hand. It had become a constant of her life—mending her wounds alone, whether of flesh, of power, or of steel.

The silence granted clarity, yes. It always had. Still… there were moments when she wished it did not have to.

Her own skill at the forge was improving, but it was not enough. Not for this. Not for Ebon Requiem. She required mastery beyond her own—and, whether she admitted it or not, she hoped Rayia might yet provide more than that.

She had a Court to rebuild, after all.

 

[Rayia Si]

Location: Weik
Darth Virelia

---

Rayia herself wasn’t exactly sure how she would classify the relationship between herself and Virelia. They had shared a moment here, sure. The Felacatian was well aware of the woman’s motives for coming to her, and yet liked her anyway. Just as Virelia pushed her towards the Dark, Rayia pushed her opposite towards the Light. Or at the very least, she liked to think towards good.

Regardless, one thing that Rayia would define her opposite with was Virelia’s observational nature. And under the gentle, dappled light that crept through the smithery’s opening, several things stood out as fundamentally wrong.

An abandoned bedroll was unfurled in the farthest corner where the two most structurally sound walls stood. A small patch of earth lay disturbed near it, heaped up like a depression had been hastily covered. Rooting around in that would yield a crumpled, metallic sphere that Virelia could easily pinch between two fingers. It looked to be gutted and from its exposed inner workings spilled a noxious, orange gas.

The second clue lay within the ashy remains of the forge. Though half crumbled from heat, Virelia would spot the remains of bones dumped haphazardly within the fire. They did not appear to be humanoid, no, more akin to…nerf haunches. An unlikely meal on a humble smith’s salary. Especially as they had to be brought in from off world and well… Rayia had easily provided for Virelia from her game bag the last time the woman had been here.

Lastly, as Virelia settled into a state of mindfulness, she would feel it. An odd scratching on the skein of her mind. A Force presence though incomplete and muted. It radiated not from any one individual but from a small splotch of golden ichor currently drying into the dry, porous stonework of the threshold. It was not alone either. One, two, three… the start of a trail.