Tyrant Queen of Darkness
"Banners and Blades"
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The Confederation's capital glittered beneath a starless canopy, a jewel of reconstituted faith polished too smooth to be trusted. New Alderaan had been broken and rebuilt more times than history cared to count, yet here it stood again—a symbol of survival, a shrine to continuity. Every arch of marble-white duracrete, every polished avenue and whispering memorial garden proclaimed resilience, as if repeating the word often enough might make it a fact. To Virelia, it reeked of denial. A planet desperate to prove it had not been erased, while blind to the inevitability of what was coming.
She sat at the edge of the promenade, where the Confederation's banners draped in immaculate rows, their threads fluttering faintly in the evening breeze. Around her, citizens walked in their dignified silence, cloaked in the knowledge that their world was the Confederation's seat of power, guarded by fleets and proclamations alike. Yet none spared more than a glance at the figure who watched them from a stone bench in the shadow of a sculpture.
Darth Virelia.
Her armor was subdued for once—deep black plates veiled by a mantle of silk and chain, a design muted enough to pass as ceremonial, though never disguising the predatory weight it carried. Her helm rested beside her thigh, six obsidian eyes turned upward at the stars that could not be seen. Without it, her features were revealed in the violet glow of the memorial's lightstrips: sharp, elegant, and carved with the kind of stillness that demanded silence around her.
She sipped from a slender glass, something local, red and faintly sweet. Not enough to dull her senses. Only enough to mark the time, to remind herself she was waiting by choice and not necessity. The Confederation's capital was not a place she visited lightly. Every meter of ground here bristled with watchful eyes, every shadow carried the suspicion of a listening device. That she dared sit in the open was not arrogance—it was calculation. To be seen was to unsettle. To let them wonder whether she belonged here by sanction, by invitation, or by conquest.
Her contact would arrive soon. Or so the message claimed. A name withheld, a time given, a place chosen with symbolic precision—the Promenade, where so much Confederation history had been consecrated in word and blood. She found the choice amusing. Whoever sought her here either understood her tastes or badly misunderstood the risk they were taking.
She leaned back, one gloved hand brushing across the helm's obsidian surface. Her neon-violet eyes narrowed as she let her gaze drift across the memorial gardens, across the flickering torches, the hush of the crowd. Somewhere in that flow of movement would be the one she awaited. She could already feel the threads tugging tighter.
Virelia smiled, slow and predatory.
The Confederation called this place sacred. Tonight, it would be something else: a stage.
And she would not wait long.
