Silence, Deafening

[Ras'kala'han]

Malachor​

A World in Subjection​

Once, it was called the Tainted City. Once, it was the home of a proud people, living in a bubble of pristine anarchy, free of the will of others; they lived in accordance with the code of the Sith, although they were not Sith themselves. Once, it was a place built to glorify and serve a bodiless, yearning evil who tested wills with a relic of a bygone era, who humiliated his foe and would rather see it all burn than be lost to the pristine nature of its original designs. Once.

Now, Antherion surveyed the smoldering ruins of the Tainted City, stepping in dark raiment through what may once have been a market boulevard crowded with scammers, food-vendors, and begging orphans. It was silent. Buildings had been made into twisted sculptures of ash and scrap, true art of war. As he was the presiding 'Sith Lord,' in a loose sense of the term, for this abandoned ball of dust, he had the right to rule all of this, and had dismissed any occupying troops from the planet. Even now, banners of the Resurgence fluttered in the Tainted City, and a new underworld of corruption and rebellion had formed nigh-instantly under the Council's inelegant bootheel. What had been covered in garbage was now reduced further to a mere cesspool.

He raised his hand to his throat, rattling, metallic sighs emanating and a locked pace from behind his high collar. His long sleeves covered arms and legs that were mere masses of twisted scar tissue, looking like poorly-sculpted clay thrown over the metal, pulsing muscles he relied on to even so much as move. His flesh was cloaked in a pallor like death. He was...

...was he dying? He pondered for a moment, then turned away. Scavengers were picking at the scraps in hopes of something to trade for food, made barbarians by their decision to not become refugees to an Empire that would likely shoot them on sight. They ignored him, the richly-appointed man surveying them like one might insects, unaware. He was keenly aware. Aware of how little effort it would take to crush these vermin.

He let out a rattling exhalation, giving voice to nothing, for by now the sound of the synthesizer's metallic shrieks and subsonic rumbles grated on him. All his body and voice and flesh and situation and surroundings disgusted him.

He turned his eyes skywards. Not long, now, before it passed overhead. To get a better vantage, he made haste to an abandoned, still-standing skyscraper, its floors given way but the framework still defiant of its condemnation. In a series of enhanced acrobatics, he began to make his way to the pinnacle, aware of a thing of significance about to come from above... and another, a familiar face about to make its way to him from below.

| [member="Elensa Jari"] |​

 

[Elensa Jari]

Malachor, Malachor System, Chorlian Sector

To be king of a ruin is not a noble pursuit, Elensa thought as she slowly made her way through the desolate streets of a place that was ultimately little more than an empty shell of what had once been a living city. She remembered it as it had been: a place of true facades, decadence and bright colours painted over a shell that was rotten to the core. To see it now was to witness the true face of the place: a stain upon the Galaxy, a shadow lurking amidst vital, luminous worlds. And it is our fault that it has come to such. The Sith had done this: turned a planet into a pit of nothingness, an endless abyss that only swallowed life, giving out nothing but the dark.

Truth be told, she wasn't entirely certain why she had come to this place: it was little more than a corpse being picked apart for scraps, a desolate shell. What little life existed here had to claw and scrape in order to exist, and to consume all around them was the sole hope anyone had for a better life. In a wasteland, the best any can hope for is to go to bed with a full stomach. She had learned the truth of such deprivation as part of her own training, but to witness it now forced onto others made her feel little but contempt - both for those that suffered from it, and those responsible.

There were movements in the dark - she could sense it. There were others of her kind here among the abandoned rabble that served as a population. Others that could touch the Force, others that could turn such desperation into opportunity, wielding it the way a writer might wield a pen, or a surgeon might brandish a scalpel. Perhaps they are simply here to experience that wild deprivation firsthand, to learn what it is to survive when you have nothing but your frayed nerves and your wits. Malachor was a perfect candidate for such training: a hellish wasteland with the taint of death hanging over the abandoned rooftops.

She alone felt alive here: in a place where silence was the only appropriate response to any whispered question, and where death was the most likely outcome of any scenario. The beings who remained here were all dying, slowly, painfully, and many simply did not know it: perhaps they dreamed of being able to find a better life for themselves, one far removed from the horrors of such a desolate place. But here, the darkness feeds, and their slow consumption is the only reason they have even the semblance of life. But she was Sith: the darkness that their lives fed nourished her in turn. Perhaps that was why she was here.

More than that, though...there was something familiar here, beyond simply the torn-down streets and dilapidated buildings. The Force was prompting her to take note of such, though she couldn't quite say what it was pointing her towards. But something here is known to me. Something she'd encountered before, something that had perhaps drawn her here in the first place. A piece of music playing gently that slowly moves towards a crescendo. The blonde felt like the piece was just beginning to play, but before it ended, she might have her answers.

A simple leap took her beyond the ground level she had been walking on, moving well beyond the talents of an average human, her soft boots coming to rest upon the torn roof of a building above. She was drawing near to something, drawing her closer with a pull that she could barely feel, but knew was inexorable. The Force has a purpose of its own. That had ever been clear. But what is the purpose it has for me here? Something told her she'd soon find out.

| [member="Antherion"] |​

 

[Ras'kala'han]

His voice was a collision of music and shrapnel. "I call. You answer." He sensed her presence, in the beneath. This system, this place, this planet — all of it was shrouded in darkness, for one reason or another. It occluded. It blocked and confounded efforts one might make to sense with clarity from without. But he was accustomed to such conditions, he, who was born and raised on the planet of the Dromund Kaas, it was as clear air. Like an individual who had been born on a planet of high gravity, and developed according strength, who could leap and bound easily on other such worlds, he was accustomed to oppressive, enshrouding darkness.

So clearly, he sensed the familiar presence of the woman who once tried to strike him down in Sith wargames on a snow-covered planet. And he spoke, the worlds echoing around her clearly. An unfamiliar voice, a familiar darkness. She would hear his speech through the Force, and so hear it without the defilement of machinery. As it should be, as it truly is.

"You are awaited. The darkness beckons. Follow."

Had he expected her? Yes, not at this specific place or time, but he had known they would cross paths, like anticipating rain by catching a glimpse of clouds on the horizon. It was right, though, that she arrive now. It would be the perfect time to find her, to show her the all-important truth that needed to be demonstrated.

He finished his erratic ascent of jumps and half-jumps, a dull ache settling in his legs as the stress of his metal musculature began to bear its weight on bones and skin that were all too organic. He gazed out from the edge of the city, looking inwards, his cloak fluttering in the rising wind, and he reached out over the skyline with one hand, watching steadily, as though to catch the sun from the barren sky. And he waited.

| [member="Elensa Jari"] |

 

[Elensa Jari]

| [member="Antherion"] |​

​

An echo of a voice sounded within her mind, a whisper that no amount of sound-dampening might silence, something that could not be escaped. It was alien in her thoughts, the touch of another's mind that sought to impose itself upon her consciousness for a brief moment, though solely to convey a message, it seemed. Cold blue eyes narrowed at that, a measure of outrage flaring through her at the casual nature of such an intrusion. The Sith were all too quick to penetrate the mental defenses of others even for the simplest of things, and it seemed this being was no exception.

It didn't ring familiar to her, the voice as foreign to her as the planet itself, not even the echo of a memory stirring. Yet it knew her, and that disturbed the young woman more than she cared to admit. Truth be told, it angered her somewhat: she didn't like to feel that someone was playing games with her, but of late, that was a persistent feeling. Aligning yourself with a bunch of sadistic psychopaths can have that effect, she mused silently, not for the first time. True, their path suited her: no demand to keep the sorrow, the rage, the frustration she felt all pent up: no, better to unleash it, channel it into something productive. And when I find the one playing with my thoughts, I'll introduce them to the concept.

There was something more to the sensation of those thoughts, though: a sense of drawing her here, as though a compass were pointing her in the direction of the being communicating with her. The tenuous connection that they had formed with her mind evidently gave her a sense of location along with a glimpse of where they might be waiting. That way, then, she judged, blue eyes scanning the skyline above her.

The blonde drew in a deep breath, gathering on the energies that swirled tempestuously around her, invisible, ethereal but potent, an energy source only a handful could ever tap into. She felt it make contact with her, surging through her in a fashion that was simultaneously agonising, and yet the most pleasurable sensation she had ever felt, empowering in a way nothing else could match. As it flowed through her limbs, the young woman pushed off from the duracrete surface she had stood upon, leaping up the side of another wall, bringing herself to a higher elevation. And closer to whoever awaits.

"You expect much for a stranger," she projected, a pause between leaps allowing her to gather her thoughts and convey them telepathically along the link that had been established between their perceptions. It was a skill she still had little experience with, but Ignus had urged her to spend more time upon it. She could not be sure whether her words would come through clearly, but that would not be for her to determine. "Not all welcome such contact."

They were close now. She could sense it, though the other remained indistinct, their presence carefully concealed: a shadow within the darkness. To discern it would take more work yet. But I'll succeed in that yet. It was but a matter of time.

 

[Ras'kala'han]

"Contact. An interesting way of looking at it. When you hear a sound on the street, does that mean your aural defenses are being breached? A helmet can shield your skull and still have a visor out of which to look." He could convey complex ideas with ease, and perceive them as well -- albeit, he had to mouth them, put a whisper of air behind them, as though speaking them aloud, a sort of pantomime. That she had welcomed and reciprocated a connection was what allowed this, and what allowed him to act with such facility. "And you did welcome such contact, no? You follow what trail I leave because of a quality, one I sense in you, one of many that makes me believe you have a spark of potential that could be fanned into a raging fire."

A smile played across soft lips as he pivoted slightly on his feet, continuing his balancing act on the rusty metal bar that upheld him and "Curiosity. In other words, a desire to know things. And that means a willingness to hunt down power, from wherever it might proceed. This makes you stronger."

He wondered if she recognized him as he recognized her. She would when she saw him, to be certain. That meant that, doubtlessly, if it came to blows that one of them would be taking the quick route to descend the tower. He had no desire to do so.

He had left her, not for dead, but on the knife's edge between life and death, enveloped in a cloud of enshrouding, pestilential darkness in the middle of a storm-struck tundra. She had survived, and in that moment between death and despair, the mark of his darkness had been on her. It was a knowledge of her basest, most animal self, which was all he needed to know to feel his most basic, animal instinct:

Avarice. This one was a pearl of might, and he trafficked in collecting treasures.

| [member="Elensa Jari"] |

 

[Elensa Jari]

| [member="Antherion"] |​

A whispered response into her thoughts, amusement conveyed and a correction made, angering her more than she would have imagined. It had always been something she had hated, being lectured, particularly by a man. Yes, there was definitely a masculine essence to the words projected into her mind, and it infuriated her beyond reason. Not only did this one reach out to touch her thoughts, a violation of sorts, but now he would use that to scold her. If he wanted to fan a raging flame, she was very tempted to provide one for him: the sort he might not enjoy receiving.

True, he had beaten her before - she knew that now. His projected thoughts had been sufficient for her to gain a sense of who he was, and Elensa recalled that they had met before. Cold winds, snow and sleet descending upon them from the heavens, promising a frigid death if they could not survive it, and even that had been a lesser threat to a more pressing one: each other. Her fate had been in his hands for a time, and he had refrained from taking her life. One more reason to hate him, she reflected darkly.

She wasn't the type to indulge in self-destructive fantasy, but there were still moments when death seemed preferable to the life that stood before her. The Sith had never caught wind of that, of course: those who offered it tended to be moulded into warriors that might be expended in the war before them. They give the death you desire, and a means of serving them in the process. Elensa wanted to live, very desperately, but as with so many that did, she felt resigned to the realisation that death was ever but a heartbeat away, and sometimes she simply wished for the anticipation to end. But he would not give me that when I wanted it. Yes, she had good reason to feel angry at him.

Still, there was something here that was more than her anger: he wanted her here, and she rather doubted that it would be with the purpose of continuing where the two of them had left off back on Hoth. He wanted her on Malachor for reasons she could not yet discern, and that bothered her more than merely his presence ever could. Being a pawn in someone else's game is always a precarious position, she reflected darkly, continuing to search silently through the Force to hone in on his presence. You can never be sure when they might sacrifice you for some greater gain.

If he sought to use her thusly, she would make sure to turn that to her own advantage, and not to his. But that all remained to be seen.

A few more jumps, ascending further upwards that she might reach the same level as her former opponent, she landed, rancor-leather boots softly whispering against the metallic surface that she set down on: scraps of building supports that remained propped up against the ruins, if she was any judge. Looking across, she saw him: wearing a concealing robe that clearly hid his figure, dismissing any intentions other might have had to learn more of him. His skin was pale, ashen, as though he had little blood left within his veins, paler even than her alabaster pallor.

"And now you've found me," she projected, blue eyes narrowing in cool anger, the better to examine this one that had once stood as her enemy. And who perhaps still lives as such. If so, he would be the one to make the first move, but she would make it his last this time. "Curiousity killed the Canoid, they say," she added, in response to the remarks he had made earlier. "But you'll assuage mine: you brought me here for a reason. What is it?"

 

[Ras'kala'han]

| [member="Elensa Jari"] |​

"Why have I brought you here? To make an offer. Do not think that you must accept this... it would not offend me if you refused. I will allow you the right of refusal."

He did not turn to look at her. What he had seen of her face, while she was helpless, what he had seen of the manifold rage burning in her eyes? That was enough to burn the features of her face into his mind. It reminded him of how his face must have looked when his sister locked him so cruelly away, so easily... no, it was more strength than he had. He had begged. He had whimpered and pleaded piteously, and wept earnestly, and called her 'beloved sister,' and he had raged and railed and nothing he had said could have stopped what was to come.

No, he would turn around. What he caught a glimpse of was telling, telling enough. Hapan, the traditional garb of such a noble figure, although colored by the traditions of the Sith. She had been raised with surety of her own value, with pride. That was what gave her the resolve he did not have. It was also a point along which she might be broken, that he would never be. If she did not learn strength, that is, and strength already dwelt within her.

He wondered if she considered him inferior, due to his sex. Maybe. Maybe she was right, given it was his sister who defeated him at the peak of his power, and sent him into this trough.

"There is a ruined starship. Since pollution has been mostly cleared by some violent weather annihilating infrastructure, we ought to be able to see it passing overhead. Even if we cannot see it, we will sense it, for it holds people who died in great suffering, and many contrivances of darkness that I gathered there for the express purpose of filling it with horrors."

He motioned, and as he spoke it, he could feel the familiar star of the Floating Market passing near. That it still spun in its falling, nearing orbit was his latest mockery of the powerful, deadly Darth Abyss, who was one of the people who had so ruined his body in their clash. He had lost, without a doubt, so he found comfort with what he could grasp of that thing's and what he could shatter.

"The first term of my offer: You will tell me, truthfully, whether or not you can pluck that ship from the sky and hurl it into this festering, useless ruin. And I will tell you why you are wrong."