Private Spider's Web

[Darth Virelia]

"Crawling back to me."

Tags - Kaila Irons



The void around Polis Massa was still.

Even for a world defined by silence—vacuum-wreathed, asteroid-born, shaped by catastrophe—it was too still. The station lights along the primary equatorial ring flickered in perfect sync, each white strobe sterile and mechanical, blinking into blackness like the eye of a dead god. The orbital sensors whispered their songs through encrypted relays, invisible to most. Impenetrable to all but one.

And in that silence, the voice of Polis Massa Control emerged like a thought unbidden. Flat. Calm. Clean.

"Unmarked shuttle, transponder code nonstandard, you are entering restricted approach vector L-Xesh. Identify yourself."

The pause was expected. The reply came quickly.

"Authorization verified."

No further questions. No pleasantries.

Only a shift in tone, as subtle as ice forming over glass.

"Proceed to landing pad Theta-Seven-Twenty-One. Coordinates transmitting now."

Another pause.

"Deviation from route will result in null response protocol."

Click.

Transmission cut.

No flight corridor. No escort ships. No visible sensor towers or turbolaser batteries. Nothing to mark that one of the Sith Empire's most secretive blacksites had received a visitor.

And yet, it had.

Polis Massa didn't welcome guests. It processed them. Quietly. Without ceremony. Especially those who came under their own power.

Especially ones like her.

Theta-Seven-Twenty-One was not a landing zone.

It was carved into the side of a crater too narrow for capital vessels and too remote to monitor without advanced sensor sweeps—precisely why it was chosen. The ground was black dust and broken metal, fused glass and fractured walkways half-swallowed by time. A single hangar bay sat recessed into the wall, its blast doors already half-open. Ancient hydraulics creaked as if awakened from hibernation.

Just the bay—and beyond it, an empty office.

The shuttle settled with a soft hiss, repulsors gently disturbing the powder-dry surface of the crater. No welcoming committee. No labor droids. No guards.

Only silence.

Inside, the structure was worse.

It had once been a control post—a tertiary research hub, if records could be trusted. Whatever its purpose, it had long since been abandoned, the offices stripped, walls scorched, ceiling cracked with evidence of some long-forgotten pressure surge. The only illumination came from the red pulse of emergency strips embedded in the floor, and even they flickered erratically.

The main chamber was bare.

A wide desk sat at the center, metal peeled and rusted like an autopsied corpse. A shattered holoprojector rested at one corner, long dead. There were no chairs. No datapads. No sign of life.

And yet, it was clean.

The sort of clean that only came from obsessive, intentional erasure. Every wire removed. Every panel resealed. Every remnant of identity stripped until even the ghosts no longer recognized the place.

 

[Kaila Irons]

Wearing: Dress
Tag: Darth Virelia

The Masquerade arrived swiftly and without issue.

A stealth-courier which had kept itself off record since the old empire's reign may have raised questions, but a stealth ship transmitting a Dark Lord's clearance was far from a comforting answer.

Darth Anathemous was disgorged in a flow of blackened silks and bladed shoulders, graceful like marble; beautiful but hard and cold to the touch. Despite her heavy gait she seemed to almost glide across the steel deck, fingers laced behind her back, never turning from her destination save for a sidelong glance spared at the damages as the blast doors sealed behind her.

The pyromancer had torched enough buildings to recognize the calling card, though the question remained; why?

An accident, or deliberate destruction of evidence?

Glowing eyes shifted from side to side curiously, then slowly shut as her preternatural senses uncoiled, allowed to waft freely like unseen smoke through the chamber, searching for sings of life.

Virelia had a game to play, she was certain, but it was to be expected.

Kaila did too, arriving all but unannounced.

​

 

[Darth Virelia]

"Crawling back to me."

Tags - Kaila Irons



The blast doors shut behind Darth Anathemous with a grinding groan, final and echoing.

The sound reverberated through the skeletal corridor like a verdict rendered from something deeper than the walls—older, even. Not decayed. Prepared. As if the structure itself had been hollowed for this moment.

The silence that followed was not empty. It breathed.

The flickering red of the floor-strips washed her in crimson shadow, casting her silhouette against fractured durasteel like a painted specter. Her silks fluttered in the stillness—weightless, elegant, wrong. There was no wind. Nothing should have moved. And yet, her cape stirred. Lightly. As though something unseen had brushed past her.

The air here was dense. Not merely in temperature—there was no heat—but in weight. The air was loaded. With pressure. With intent. The kind that made the heart beat a touch too fast, the breath catch a second too long.

As she advanced through the ruins, every step was swallowed by the quiet. No echo. No resistance. The room accepted her presence like a whisper accepts a secret—gladly, greedily. Walls scorched by fire did not weep. They watched.

But she was not alone.

She would feel it now.

A presence—diffuse, impossible to track, but intimate. Not watching her from the outside. Within. Inside her skin, her breath, the marrow of her bones. A presence not pressing on her senses… but sinking through them.

It wasn't power in the traditional sense. It wasn't flared. It wasn't bright. It was subsurface—like something coiled just beneath the floor, the ceiling, her.

It didn't announce itself.

It waited.

And it tasted.

Kaila's presence had uncoiled, yes, but something far more patient now wrapped itself around it—slowly, carefully, not crushing but measuring. Every inch of her force signature was being traced. Every flicker of her power made warm against her neck, like lips almost brushing skin.

And deeper still, arousal. Not the simple, physical kind. This was the kind that sat between danger and desire, between secrets and surrender. It hovered in the air like perfume: faint notes of something floral, metallic, feminine. Not sprayed. Exhaled.

But her path was clear.

And if she let herself listen—not with ears, but with understanding—she'd feel it.

The shape of something waiting to be spoken.

Long fingers.

Cold lips.

A presence that did not touch, but unwrapped.

It called to her like silk down a bare back, like breath against parted lips, like a voice behind her ear that whispered—

Closer.

 

[Kaila Irons]

Wearing: Dress
Tag: Darth Virelia

This was her, somehow, unexplainably.

Anathemous slowed to a near halt as she crossed the room, boots sliding gently, silently.

She wasn't hiding, wasn't trying to pass through unnoticed, but eliminate a source of outside stimuli and distraction. She heard and she felt in a way that could be mistaken for serene, languidly stalking the room.

Her presence poured like tendrils gently stretching through the blacksite and intertwined with Serina's own, like lovers touching shoes beneath the dinner table. But they—whatever they were—surely had motives unspoken.

The young Darth found her senses enveloped, sinking in... her?

It felt strange, beckoning.



Where are you?

Words that never left her lips. A psychic whisper, stunted and small.

Gloved fingers traced the edge of that desk as she circled past, silks fluttering in a wind that did not exist, blonde, curled locks lifted from her bladed shoulders as though carried by tender hands unseen. She was wandered in whatever direction this presence was guiding her.

And when it took her senses wholly, she opened her eyes.

​

 

[Darth Virelia]

"Crawling back to me."

Tags - Kaila Irons



The moment Kaila opened her eyes, the presence wasn't around her anymore.

It was above her.

Directly.

A silhouette dropped from the ceiling like a descending curse, silent, inverted—spiderlike. Six violet eyes glimmered in the dark, arrayed across the mask like an impossible god staring down at its acolyte. She hadn't heard her. Hadn't felt her. Not truly. Because Darth Virelia—hadn't just entered the room.

She had always been here.

The cape fanned around her like black silk in zero gravity as her form rotated midair with fluid precision, armored talons curling beneath her as if preparing to strike—until they didn't. She landed instead with the silence of inevitability, knees bending atop the desk in a controlled crouch that brought her down, down, down, until she was perched with unnatural stillness, a sovereign spider regarding a trembling fly.

Virelia's head tilted one degree to the left, the subtle movement impossibly graceful and inhuman all at once. Six eyes stared unblinking at the woman below her.

And then she spoke.

"You always walk like you don't want to be followed, Kaila…"

Her voice was filtered, rich and low through her helm—distorted only just enough to make the vowels slide like oil, the consonants click like silk being cut with a blade.

"But your scent's the kind spiders dream of."

She stepped down from the desk in a single liquid motion, the ridged heels of her boots kissing the floor with predatory poise. Her armor sang faintly as it moved—like something living wearing steel skin. Tyrant's Embrace framed her in the dim red lighting like a sculpture carved from venom and ritual. She didn't rush. She didn't pounce.

She stalked.

One step.

Two.

Then she stopped. Close enough for heat to be felt. Too close for modesty, not close enough for mercy.

"You came all this way…"

Her claws rose—just two fingers—gliding near the curve of Kaila's cheek but never quite touching. Just hovering. Tasting.

"…to ask me for help."

She leaned forward, lips just behind the mask—no face, no warmth. Just breath. And hunger. And command.

"Was it the way I held your throat?"

"The way I made you whimper without a single kiss?"

She let the words coil in the air between them like a lover's exhale down the back of the neck.

"Or did the little predator forget that webs are not invitations—they are traps?"

The last word landed like a caress with fangs hidden just beneath it.

She hadn't touched her yet. Not really. But the Force itself caressed Kaila's senses like velvet on bare skin. Around her wrists. Down her ribs. A temptress' memory. A warning.

And then—she lifted her hand.

Slow. Poised. Sovereign.

And laid it lightly around Kaila's neck.

Just fingers.

Just presence.

Not to choke.

To own.

"You look so beautiful when you're conflicted," she said at last. "Like you're begging me to make the choice for you."

 

[Kaila Irons]

Wearing: Dress
Tag: Darth Virelia

Golden eyes snapped flexibly toward the ceiling with mechanical precision.

It wasn't fear so much as instinct, that part of Anathemous that her master had trained up like a brand upon her soul.

Many would have called Virelia's descent otherworldly, perhaps even majestic, but the warrior-sorceress only crossed her large arms. Perhaps Virelia had never heard tale of when she—Valkyrie of the Second Legion—and the Princess flew into battle upon the stormy shores of Woostri. If it were meant to intimidate, to unnerve, it would do no such thing.

Even if she could appreciate such a graceful display.

"But your scent's the kind spiders dream of."

"There are easier ways to confess, Serina." her lips curled into a faint smirk.

"That I am in your dreams, I mean."

Serina had a way of killing smiles though.

It faded with reference to that day in the office, overstated, wielded like a cheap knife too large to slip between the ribs. Not at all the dagger that Virelia wanted, but it hurt nonetheless.

That was one thing she'd give her credit for; the girl was impossible to ignore.

She eyed the approaching hand, head tilting back at an angle that wasn't quite recoil but not quite invitation.

All the while her signature continued to press into and coil around Kaila. She was quite the invasive little bug, every bit the spider she claimed to be. But always so close to being squashed.

"You look so beautiful when you're conflicted," she said at last. "Like you're begging me to make the choice for you."

Kaila snatched the hand around her throat, holding the wrist joint in an iron grasp.

Even without her power armor, Darth Anathemous had strong hands. Metal boned and trained for war, she grabbed at just the right spot to prevent any movement that she did not approve. Enough to audibly strain her glove, pressure that might become irritant in time, but for now only alluded to the pain which could be.

Then she leaned in, close to the ear, and spoke with deceptive calm;

"Anathemous does not beg."

"Anathemous does not kneel."

"And Anathemous certainly does not whimper."

She straightened her posture with a slight sigh, not yet letting go, only peeling the girl's fingers away from her throat.

"Now, if you're done lying to us both, I did come here with a purpose."

​

 

[Darth Virelia]

"Crawling back to me."

Tags - Kaila Irons



The hand around her throat didn't flinch. Not at first.

She allowed Kaila's grasp—felt the pressure clamp around the tendon with intimate precision, the threat of pain promised but not delivered. A warning. One that would've meant something to a lesser creature.

But Virelia was not lesser.

She didn't recoil. She smiled.

It wasn't on her face—her mask bore no lips—but it radiated from her nonetheless. The slow, calculated satisfaction of a creature that wanted its prey to bite back.

The violet eyes pulsing across her mask flickered once—subtle, but precise. A predator's blink.

"No," she whispered, voice slinking beneath the smirk that had tried to rise on Kaila's lips, "Anathemous doesn't beg."

The talons in her gloves relaxed. Not submission—permission.

"She just doesn't know when she's already on her knees."

And then it began.

Kaila wouldn't feel it right away—not in the way that registered alarm. It was slower. Deeper. Like time catching in the throat of the world.

The glyphs along the corset-spine of Virelia's armor pulsed once—so faint it could have been mistaken for a breath. Hidden inside, the Chamber of the Second Will bloomed open, releasing the caged specter bound into its core. A harvested consciousness, alchemically altered, built for subjugation and sorcerous dominance.

An echo of Virelia herself.

Not a mind, not exactly. But a soul-fragment fed on obedience and hunger.

Every movement she made would be slowed—just slightly at first. But then a beat longer. Then two. Her enhanced reflexes would slow, her muscles would obey half a step behind. A warlord's nightmare: her body no longer hers.

All without Virelia even exerting her own power.

A whisper from the Force:

"Your in my web, Kaila."

Virelia leaned forward again, pressing her armored frame against Kaila's as if to feel her heartbeat from throat to thigh. Her claws traced down the wrist that held her, no longer restrained—just touched.

"Your power. Your fire. Your strength."

Virelia exhaled.

"So easy to wear like silk."

She said it with that same honeyed vulgarity that clung to all her words. Not crude. But deep. Implying far more than spoken. It was clear that Virelia was having some fun with this.

She then decided to play nice:

"Now be a good girl and tell me what you want."

 

[Kaila Irons]

Wearing: Dress
Tag: Darth Virelia

That's better, she thought.

Virelia's grip loosened, so did hers.

She still held on of course, not to own, not squeezing. Just enough to show that she was playing the game too, and perhaps a little indulgent retaliation even if symbolic. The lord of Polis Massa owed her that much, right?

"She just doesn't know when she's already on her knees."

"Hmhh." she smirked.

"Good thing I punch up..."

Her breathing slowed to an almost relaxed rate, allowing her a moment to enjoy the quiet between Virelia's incessant banter. But as her smile lasted a beat longer than she'd meant, Kaila paused, glancing away in concern.

"Your in my web, Kaila."

Eyes widened reflexively.

Virelia was already so close by the time she looked, the weight of their pressed bodies causing a sharp, stuttering breath.

"Your power. Your fire. Your strength."

Virelia exhaled.

"So easy to wear like silk."

A pause.

Then an exhale in kind.

Kaila had become focused on that mask, upon the central most set of eyes which she instinctively believed to be Virelia's own beneath. And slowly but surely, she'd coaxed out of Kaila something that very few could; fear. Outwardly her shell of steel cracked slowly, but inwardly, her mind raced to the time dilating nightmares of the Silent Mirror, and the surgeries she'd endured strapped to the table and unable to move, but denied anesthetic by Him.

An entire lifetime of control over her own self, stolen, flashed before eyes that could not adjust in real time.

"Now be a good girl and tell me what you want."

Kaila did not answer.

Anathemous did.

The air began to cool until breath turned to mist, as though a chilling storm broke overhead. Clouds of anguish and bitter resentment not her own darkened these proverbial skies and something far older than anyone on this world rose from the deep. They came from the depths of her souls, tethers of dominion loosened just enough to let the graveyard experience the surface for but a moment.

And she didn't need her body to drag them out.

Her eyes became as though violet flame in an instant, and one by one she was joined by her wraiths. Their intertwined shadows began to coalesce into a shape just behind Kaila, taking the faceless form of Darth Parasideus. Others were translucent figures, ancient knights of Korriban, the witch Mystra Midnight , and from the black spiraling energy around her, the Sangnir Wraith she and Serina fought all that time ago.

He in particular laid a clawed hand on the spider's shoulder.

Anathemous moved her lips, but no sound came.

Until the wraiths all spoke in unison.

"...What have you done...?"

​

 

[Darth Virelia]

"Crawling back to me."

Tags - Kaila Irons



Virelia did not turn.

She didn't need to.

The hand upon her shoulder was ice to the touch—necrotic power wrapped in the illusion of flesh, ancient hate given form by memory and will. Its claws pressed through the outer sheath of her cape, touching the phrik alloy beneath with no small amount of contempt. Her silhouette did not waver. Her breath did not quicken. The six-eyed helm slowly inclined, just enough to cast mirrored light onto the wraith's faceless reflection in her armor.

She knew what touched her.

She had let it.

The room darkened around her, filled with the ancestral dead of a soul who could not let them go. Their voices, unnatural and layered, filled the air like a funeral procession. The Sangnir's hiss, the long-dead Sith's mutterings, the breathless hunger of Mystra's echo. A tapestry of old devotions—or obsessions—torn from the grave for this single question.

"...What have you done...?"

Virelia tilted her head.

The grip on her shoulder tightened, clawed fingers curling, searching for purchase—not on flesh, but on reaction.

They found none.

Only a stillness that drank the heat from the room.

The Second Will stirred inside her armor again—quiet, observing. It didn't lash out. It listened. Learning every phantom voice, every tether, every note of fear that wasn't her own. She did not fear the ghosts.

She understood them.

She could use them.

She turned at last, deliberately slow—her steps like the hands of a chronometer descending into zero. The cloak flared around her, casting streaks of blood-red shadow against the walls as she faced the storm of apparitions gathered in defiance or warning or longing.

Then she stepped into them.

Walked through the image of Parasideus as if he were no more than memory pretending at shape. Through the Sangnir's claw as it tried again to grab her. Through the choking shadows of Midnight's curse. They all resisted—all failed. Their forms shivered, warbled, and dissipated in wisps of vapor where her body intersected theirs, like a god refusing to acknowledge the faith of dying stars.

When she emerged from their center, Virelia came to stand before Kaila once more.

No distance now.

Helm to face. Six violet eyes burning into two of gold.

"You should never let ghosts ask your questions for you. I would highly advising putting them back."

"They are, tempting."

She let the words linger. Then raised a talon—not in threat, but in promise.

The finger traced down the center of Anathemous's silk, a slow drag from collarbone to sternum. Not enough to draw pain. Just pressure. Just presence. Like marking territory.

"You're afraid of what I've done," she purred.

The room pulsed again.

Not from the Force, but from something else. Something between things. The Chamber of the Second Will contracted inside her spine, harmonizing with the fragments of resonance still flickering from the conjured dead. Matching them. Drinking them. She didn't resist Kaila's ghosts.

She began to feed them to herself.

"Every chain you've broken. Every leash you've spat on. You have always hoped in defiance."

Her talon stopped just above the core of Kaila's chestplate, hovering.

"And yet here you are—trying not to tremble while I remind you how easy it would be to wear your ruin like perfume."

A pause. A breath. Her voice dropped lower.

Thicker.

Deadlier.

"So I ask again. What do you really want, Kaila?"

"What do you desire?"

 

[Kaila Irons]

Wearing: Dress
Tag: Darth Virelia

Virelia was either very bold, or very powerful.

She watched with mixed horror and morbid curiosity as the spider phased through her spectral slaves, not because she needed them to attack her physically, but because of the unnerving casualty on display.

Kaila reached out too slowly to stop her talons but the woman never intended to draw blood.

Instead a delayed shiver ran down her spine as that claw ran gently down her dress. No armor now, Kaila felt every intimately threatening sensation. It made her breath quicken despite the supernatural delay binding her muscles to inaction, eyes wide with the sort of fear that only a killer bound in chains could project, so sure that there was a way out, but racing against time to recognize how.

"Every chain you've broken. Every leash you've spat on. You have always hoped in defiance."

Her talon stopped just above the core of Kaila's chestplate, hovering.

"And yet here you are—trying not to tremble while I remind you how easy it would be to wear your ruin like perfume."

The ghosts around her twitched with phantom pain most had not felt since their original deaths, and Kaila's features froze long enough to have been for more than muscular delay.

It wasn't her life she feared for. Even without her spectral batteries, Anathemous had become a power worthy of her titles. But it wasn't from Virelia that she needed to defend herself, it was Him. And without every scrap of power to her name, she would surely be destroyed one day.

The wraiths had to survive. Had to fuel only her.

"So I ask again. What do you really want, Kaila?"

"What do you desire?"

She turned her head away.

Quickly as they'd arrived, the wraiths all vanished in a cloud of black smoke and violet sparks.

Their presence was still felt, but it had been drawn deep into her core where Virelia could not reach, their power being drawn into Kaila much the same way as she had intended to drain them.

"...A lead..." she relented, speaking through grit teeth.

"...Rakatan..."

"...Technology..."

​

 

[Darth Virelia]

"Crawling back to me."

Tags - Kaila Irons



There was something fascinating about the way Kaila turned her head. A retreat in posture, but not in spirit.

A flicker of preservation—and not for herself.

Virelia saw it. Read it. Consumed it.

When the wraiths vanished—smoke and violet lightning collapsing into the vessel of the woman before her—Virelia didn't recoil. She leaned in. Took in the sudden hush of the room like a breath of incense in a crypt. The scent of sulfur and bitter violet clung to the air where the dead had been.

And still, Virelia said nothing.

Not until Kaila finally forced the words past her lips, one crack at a time.

"...A lead..."

"...Rakatan..."

"...Technology..."

The silence that followed was profound.

But not peaceful.

It was the silence of silk drawn over steel. Of claws unsheathed in velvet darkness. Of the galaxy leaning ever so slightly off its axis—because Darth Virelia had heard something she liked.

And she did not like lightly.

The six glowing eyes of her mask flared once—just a pulse of deeper hue. Then she stepped closer still. Not walking. Sliding. Like something arachnoid shifting along a webline. Her hand rose again—not to strike, not to cut, but to cup the side of Kaila's jaw, thumb just barely brushing her cheek.

Possessive. Slow. Intentional. The gauntlet's phrik tip dragged gently along the corner of her mouth, tracing the contour of her silence. The action was electric in meaning.

"Now you're speaking my language."

Her voice was velvet soaked in poison. Warm. Sweet. Terrible.

The mask loomed nearer—so close that the mirrored obsidian showed Kaila's own reflection a dozen times over, each warped in the slight curvature of the eyes. A kaleidoscope of herself, surrounded. Claimed.

"Rakatan," Virelia said again, like a worshipper tasting a sacred name.

It was no secret that she had hunted their secrets. Had built parts of her empire upon forgotten mechanisms, upon relics left rusting beneath crushed stars and extinct suns. But to hear it now, from her lips…? It was a gift. One Kaila didn't even realize she'd given.

"Did you think I'd let you leave after whispering that word in my ear?"

Another breath. She trailed her fingers down Kaila's neck, teasing across the hollow of her throat, across collarbone, until she reached the center of the young Darth's sternum again. No armor to dull the sensation now. Just silk. Just heat. Just nerve endings trained to recognize danger that masqueraded as pleasure.

"Show me the coordinates," she whispered.

"Or let me take them from you the old-fashioned way."

A threat?

No.

An invitation and a promise.

She could feel the tension beneath Kaila's skin—not just from the Second Will's metaphysical drag, not just from fear. Desire. Pressure. Need. Even if not for Virelia herself… then for what Virelia represented.

Power.

Chains.

Obedience.

For her ghosts. For her secrets. For whatever game Kaila thought she could keep playing forever.

But Virelia wasn't a player. She was the board.

And now Kaila's piece was caught between her talons.

She leaned closer still, until the mask nearly touched the other woman's lips. The six violet eyes didn't blink. Didn't need to.

"I could teach you how to wield it, you know."

She let her thumb slip lower, down to the center of Kaila's sternum. She applied the tiniest pressure—just enough to make her spine register it. To suggest obedience without demanding it.

"Properly."

Another whisper. Darker this time.

Hungrier.

Inevitable.

"And in return… you'll give me what I'm owed."

There it was.

The trap closed.

Because Virelia was never going to just help.

 

[Kaila Irons]

Wearing: Dress
Tag: Darth Virelia

She had her by the jaw.

Kaila didn't stop her. Fight or flight sense bled into something else she did not fully comprehend, and doubt. Could she power through this if Serina threatened her life? was there a point, in this state?

The Lord of Blades had not felt this small since...

Since losing Leven.

She turned towards Serina, lip quivering beneath her clawed thumb.

"Now you're speaking my language."

Then closed her eyes, unable to bear the sight of herself so helpless reflected in those eyes.

What's more, something about the way she said that word, "Rakatan", was morbidly fascinating in ways she refused to acknowledge. Somewhere deep down, Kaila wanted her attention, and now she had more than she'd bargained for. It felt as though she'd teased some obsession and in doing so associated herself with it.

Now her ability to leave was being threatened.

All the while, she could feel that shamefully familiar touch upon her strong neck, rendered as though putty in her hand.

Then, finally, the offer.

"I could teach you how to wield it, you know."

"Properly."

It had taken Virelia two of these evenings and so much self flattering to finally offer something real, tangible, something Kaila did not have but that she did.

Something to tempt her.

Kaila opened her eyes slowly, morbid curiosity behind that fiery gold.

Only to turn sharp again.

"And in return… you'll give me what I'm owed."

Defiant, bordering on rage as she hissed;

"...And what the frak is that...?"

Kaila rarely swore.

​

 

[Darth Virelia]

"Crawling back to me."

Tags - Kaila Irons



Kaila swore.

The sound of it cracked the tension like a whip—raw, unpolished, real. No title. No mask. Just fury and fear twisted into words she rarely let herself use.

Virelia didn't flinch.

She savored it.

That trembling defiance, rising like steam from a boiling heart, was exactly what she wanted. The words may have burned on Kaila's tongue, but Virelia drank them in like incense, letting them curl around her spine and settle in her lungs. The scent of a woman trying not to be conquered, and failing one breath at a time.

Her thumb pressed slightly harder beneath Kaila's lip—not enough to bruise, not enough to silence. Just to remind her who held her.

The helm tilted. Six eyes glowing like violet stars, each one a mirror of the girl's rage and shame and unraveling.

"That fire," Virelia said, voice dark and wet with promise, "will taste divine when it's mine."

She leaned closer, her voice sliding beneath Kaila's skin like oil through silk.

"You think this is about a map, or a vault, or some half-rotted relic."

She moved behind Kaila now, dragging her claws slowly across the exposed collar, beneath the curtain of curled blonde hair, until her palm lay flush against the base of her neck. The talons cradled her spine, not threatening—but caging.

"But I don't want your secrets, Kaila."

A breath. Just above the skin. Just enough to make it feel like a kiss without being one.

"I want you."

The words coiled with unbearable weight. Not lust. Not hunger. Claim.

She could feel Kaila's body beneath her hand—still strong, still proud—but not moving. Not running. That mattered more than anything she said.

"You don't trust me," she murmured, almost gently.

It wasn't a question.

"You think I'll do what all the others have. Use you. Break you. Bleed you dry, then cast aside what's left."

Her hand slowly lifted from Kaila's spine and found her jaw again, guiding her to turn back and face the mirrored horror of herself in the mask. Those terrible eyes staring down like an executioner with the patience of infinity.

"But I don't believe in the Sith Code," she said.

Not loud. Not boastful. Cold.

"I don't want to break chains."

She pressed her forehead to Kaila's—not touching, not really. But near. So near the sensation filled the space between them like a held scream.

"I want to put them on."

The declaration fell like a ritual blade.

"I want to suffocate people in them. Wrap them around their hearts until they forget they ever breathed freely. I want to make them love it."

And in that moment, it was unclear whether she spoke of Kaila or herself. But the difference no longer mattered.

"You fear me because she left you," Virelia whispered, and now her voice carried a bitterness older than any heat in the room.

Her gauntlet lowered, and one clawed finger hooked beneath the seam of Kaila's silk collar—just enough to feel the contrast between flesh and fabric.

"You're right to be afraid about her."

She pulled back at last, just enough to breathe.

"But you're wrong about one thing."

There was no venom in her tone.

No pride.

Only finality.

"She's dead."

She lingered a moment longer, gaze boring into gold with her impossible six. Let Kaila see the truth not just in word, but in presence. Let her feel the death of the girl who once cried beside her.

There was only Virelia now.

And she would never leave.

"Now," she said, soft as velvet.

"Do you want to be strong enough to never be abandoned again?"

Her fingers brushed the curve of Kaila's throat one last time.

"Or do you want to keep pretending you already are?"

She stared, six eyes beaming like a demon's judgement on a mortal soul.

"Because if your ready, I will wrap a chain around your neck so hard it will never break."

Then:

"And I never. Let. Go."

 

[Kaila Irons]

Wearing: Dress
Tag: Darth Virelia

"I want you."

It sounded dangerously close to the truth.

Or what she wanted to hear, at least. That Serina didn't want anything from her, just... her.

But what did this entail? what does Serina Calis do with what is hers? Kaila would not serve another Carnifex, nor an emperor who threatened her for secrets she had not yet discovered.

She laid her head back tiredly against the woman's shoulder when she'd circled behind.

So tired.

"You think I'll do what all the others have. Use you. Break you. Bleed you dry, then cast aside what's left."

When Serina took her by the jaw, forced her to look at herself again, that defiant rage in her eye had burnt out. Because she was right. Damn her to hell, she was right. All of them. Xyrah. Synora. Ala, even her. Back to back they'd discarded or betrayed her.

"You fear me because she left you,"

"She's dead."

Something in her broke.

Because despite that bitter anger, the dark power coursing through her, the light in her eyes was no more.

Just a pale, washed out yellow.

Anathemous would not let herself cry. But when Kaila afforded herself the tears, they'd always come silently, strained, as though sobbing would kill her if she let it out. They slid down her freckled cheeks slowly, captured from six angles in Virelia's insectile lens. Her eyes had become unfocused, fuzzy, so that she'd not have to look at herself.

She looked pathetic. And she hated it.

"Do you want to be strong enough to never be abandoned again?"

Her fingers brushed the curve of Kaila's throat one last time.

"Or do you want to keep pretending you already are?"

She was pathetic.

Because for all her power, the influence, the skills she'd trained so obsessively, she had never been strong enough to stop them from leaving her behind, or dying before that inevitability.

"Because if your ready, I will wrap a chain around your neck so hard it will never break."

"And I never. Let. Go."

"...fine..." she choked.

But even surrendering a part of herself, and slowed by foul sorcery, she tried raising a shaky hand towards that mask.

"...but do not forget..."

"...who... I... am..."

One last defiant glare.

"...I will bite the hand that feeds... If you give me reason..."

​

 

[Darth Virelia]

"Crawling back to me."

Tags - Kaila Irons



The tears didn't surprise her.

Nor did the quiet. The way Kaila's breath hitched like a girl remembering how to breathe. The shudder that passed through her shoulders. The slow, fragile way her body sagged—not into collapse, but into yielding. A warrior who no longer fought the tide, but let it take her. Virelia did not mock it. She drank it in.

That was always the moment it began.

The moment they broke—but not apart.

Open.

Like a blade being unsheathed, like a lock clicked loose, like the last breath before a scream turned into a whisper. Her fingers—still curled gently under Kaila's jaw—tilted her chin just enough to hold her gaze in the six mirrored eyes of the mask. Not forcefully. Not cruelly. Ritually. Reverently. As if to say:

I see what they threw away.

And unlike them, I'll never let it go.

She didn't speak at first. There was no need. The silence was hers. The silence trembled with her. When the tears slid down those freckled cheeks, captured from all angles, Virelia didn't wipe them away. She let them stain the silk. Let them fall freely.

Let her grieve without interruption.

Then came the hand.

That trembling hand—halting, uncertain—reaching toward her face like a final warning. Or a plea.

"...but do not forget..."

"...who... I... am..."

The words cracked from her throat like broken stone.

"...I will bite the hand that feeds..."

"...If you give me reason..."

Virelia didn't move.

She let the hand rise.

Let it press to the obsidian mask.

Let Kaila feel the chill, the strange heat, the faint tremor of energy rippling through the armor's faceplate like it was alive. Because it was. Because she was. Because this—this—was no longer Serina Calis. That girl was buried beneath the tomb of Tyrant's Embrace, and the woman she had become, was Virelia.

Virelia's fingers, those elegant claws, traced back down the column of Kaila's throat—not squeezing, just measuring. The shape of her. The strength still buried inside the exhaustion. The pride tangled in the heartbreak. She wasn't trying to hurt her.

She was studying her.

Memorizing.

Owning.

"I don't give reasons. I give commands."

She circled again, gliding around Kaila's frame with all the silence and inevitability of a moon eclipsing the sun. And when she stood behind her again, arms slipping down slowly, one across the waist, the other high across the collarbone, she held her—not like a lover.

Not like a captor.

Like a keeper.

Her breath spilled warm over the shell of Kaila's ear, words dropping like coiled silk.

"You're mine now," she whispered.

Not with pride.

With truth.

"You will burn brighter under me than you ever did standing alone."

The Chamber of the Second Will pulsed once more within her backplate.

"I don't ask for obedience."

The hand at Kaila's waist slid upward, knuckles brushing against her lower ribs, rising toward the trembling beat of her heart beneath those traitorous silks.

"I corrupt it."

And it would be so easy.

So easy, to twist her in velvet. To guide her into craving instruction. To poison her fears with comfort, until she mistook it for purpose.

Virelia leaned in close once more. The six eyes burned inches from gold. No mask now—only reflection. Only power. Only promise.

"I will make you strong enough that no one ever leaves you again."

That was the final truth.

No more hollow titles. No more crypts of loyalty built for them who'd sooner spit on her spine. No more thoughts. No more doubt. No more anyone.

Just her.

And Virelia.

Together.

She would fill her. Remake her. Ruin her—so beautifully, in a way only Virelia could do, not anyone else.

And in the end, when Kaila finally understood, finally crumbled into something that wasn't breaking but becoming, she would thank her.

Because Virelia would never abandon her.

Never discard her. Never forget her.

Because Virelia did not lose what belonged to her.

And now?

She belonged.

 

[Kaila Irons]

Wearing: Dress
Tag: Darth Virelia

Her hand fell against the mask.

Clawed rings over ever-gloved fingers slid across the obsidian surface, scraping downward.

But it was all the fight she left. All the emotional energy she could spend, whilst this hex continued to delay the physical. Even her neck was bared for Virelia. Not recoiling nor inviting, but accepting of gentle hands.

Let her study, let her claim. If Anathemous must fight, it would not be today.

"I don't ask for obedience."

Kaila leaned into her, towards that voice in her ear.

Before long, Virelia had her by the heart. And slowly, with twitching struggling which fought through the sorceress' spell, she reached out. Her hand was dragged up the armored surface of the spider's arm, up past the vambraces and over her fingers. She did not squeeze, did not pull. Kaila merely laid her fingers of hers, where they would remain.

"I will make you strong enough that no one ever leaves you again."

And with one last tear, she closed her eyes again and laid herself to rest in the crook of Virelia's neck.

"...then release your spell on me..." she murmured.

The young Darth did not beg or kneel, just as she'd claimed. But to make a request was not above her.

"...and let us stay like this awhile..."

​

 

[Darth Virelia]

"Crawling back to me."

Tags - Kaila Irons



The request hung in the silence like the last note of a requiem—fragile, echoing, dangerous.

"…then release your spell on me…"

"…and let us stay like this awhile…"

For a heartbeat, Virelia didn't answer.

She didn't need to.

The stillness was answer enough.

The kind of stillness that suffocates movement. Not out of fear, but reverence. The kind that descends over tombs and altars alike—because something sacred is happening. Something irrevocable.

Something claimed.

Kaila's fingers rested over hers—not gripping, not resisting. A gesture not of defeat, but trust. Conditional. Earned. A risk she wasn't sure she could afford to take, and yet took anyway. That was what broke them, always—the ones who could not afford to be vulnerable and did it anyway.

Those were the ones Virelia loved to break the most.

Loved to own.

She did not remove her claws from Kaila's body. Not yet. She let her armor hum with gentle resonance beneath the silk-draped form curled against her. Her presence coiled like a slow-winding serpent around the both of them, tighter and tighter until the concept of "separation" seemed childish. Laughable.

There was no you and I anymore.

There was only this.

She let the Chamber of the Second Will breathe with her. Its inner specter—submerged now—pulled back its influence with ritualistic grace. The slowing hex unwound, unknotted, peeled away from Kaila's spine like silk strips undone from flesh. Not released. Recalled. With the grace of a master withdrawing a needle from a vein. Precision and intimacy all at once.

Kaila would feel it as warmth. Not freedom. Never freedom. But the comfort of a leash no longer tugged.

"You earned it," Virelia murmured, low and velvet-rich.

The second came with a touch—her fingers sliding through crimson curls, drawing them back to expose the nape of Kaila's neck, to frame her like something delicate. Her claws were not weapons here. They were adornment. Brackets of reverence. The crown upon the chained.

"But I never said the leash was gone."

She kissed her, but not on the mouth. Not yet. No. She kissed the point just behind Kaila's ear, where the skin thinned over bone and pulse. The kiss was hot—too hot, even through the mask. Something radiated from behind the obsidian: desire laced with sorcery, intent laced with permanence. It marked her.

"You'll stay," she whispered, "you will never be discarded."

There was no cruelty in her voice. Just knowledge. The kind that came from dissection, not guessing. Virelia understood the shape of trauma like a butcher understood bone.

But she never broke the hold.

Kaila rested in the crook of her neck, and Virelia wrapped her arms tighter. A queen wrapping her prize. A hunter nesting her kill. A god wrapping herself in prayer. Her armor did not chafe. It fit. Her movements were sinuous even in full war-plate, and Tyrant's Embrace molded around Kaila like it had been waiting for this—for her.

They stood there in perfect stillness, the red gloom of the chamber casting streaks of bloodlight over both of them, their bodies forming one single silhouette.

One cathedral of control.

And Virelia? She smiled, though it could not be seen.

She had her.

Kaila would never be free again.

Because this—this cold affection, this brutal care, this intimate dominance—was more than anyone else had ever given her.

It saw her.

Took her seriously.

Held her without permission and meant every second of it.

When Virelia's final line came, it was almost loving.

Almost.

"Now sleep," she murmured. "And dream of what I'll make of you."

And then, gently—possessively—she cradled Kaila against her chest like something sacred.

A prize.

A project.

A beginning.