Private Talon of Fate

[Korran Dorn]

E M P R E S S​

Tag: Srina Talon

Jutrand loomed as a world of unbroken cityscape, its horizon consumed by towering spires and layers of durasteel that stretched endlessly toward the heavens. From the bustling skylanes above to the labyrinth of shadowed streets below, life pulsed in every direction, a ceaseless tide of beings and machines moving in perfect chaos. The roar of speeders echoed between canyon-like avenues, while the glow of neon signs and holo-displays cast shifting colors across steel and glass. High above, the glimmering towers of the elite pierced the clouds, untouchable and aloof, while far below, the undercity breathed in shadows, smoke, and whispers. Jutrand was a world of opportunity and ambition, but also one of secrets and danger, where power was fought for in both senate halls and back-alley deals, and where a single step could carry someone toward glory or ruin.

Korran strode towards the palace, the sound of his shoes clacking as his stride took him ever closer, the sound drowned out by the deafening noise of the city. His focus was elsewhere as he walked, but his movements as graceful as a feline stalking its prey, sliding past people without effort, only the air moving around him any indicator that he had truly been there at all.

A brow furrowed across his brow as he thought, his request to speak with Srina Talon was not unheard of, but for most people a meeting with her would be almost unthinkable to obtain. Korran was of no importance over the rest of those who served under the Sith, but he was pushed by a feeling to put forth this request.

The attention of Korran was brought back to reality as he stepped up to the palace proper, "Halt, what is your business here." the gruff voice escaped from one of the Praetorian guard that stood on either side of the entrance. Korran's eyes glanced towards the voice, a certain level of annoyance flashed on his face for a brief moment, before returning back to a face that seemed as if it could show no emotion, or had never shown any in its lifetime. "I have an audience with the Empress, I am Korran Dorn, I can show you the Comm data if it will soothe your mistrust." His voice carried with it a certain weight, measured, resonant, and unyielding. Each word flowed with deliberate calm, neither hurried nor hesitant, as though time itself bent to his cadence. It was not the booming thunder of a tyrant, but the quiet inevitability of a tide, rolling forward with a certainty that brooked no challenge. Even in its softness, there was authority; a regal command woven into every syllable that demanded attention, not through force, but through the simple gravity of presence. His eyes burned with a muted gold, not the wild blaze of fury common to Sith, but a steady, unsettling glow. They seemed less like orbs of flesh and more like twin embers. When they fixed upon another, it was as though every mask, every pretense, was stripped away, leaving nothing but the cold certainty of inevitability staring back.

All Korran could do was glance between the pair as the glanced over his Dataslate, his patience growing every thinner with each passing moment, his mind blazing with a fury that his face did not portray, his expression blank as he waited for the guards to finally come to a conclusion on wether or not he would be permitted to enter the premises of the seat of the Sith.

"Everything looks in order sir, we will have members of the guard here forthwith to bring you to her meeting chambers." The guards voice level as he spoke back to Korran, his presence no more unusual to him as if a member of the Dark Council was to walk past the doors he guarded.

Time to meet the Queen.​

 

[Srina Talon]

Allies: Korran Dorn
Location: Jutrand [Empress Quarters]

____________________________________________________

Beyond the tall black spires, the endless sprawl of Jutrand glittered like a circuit board with power flowing through it. Bright, pulsing veins of civilization that stretched into infinity. Yet inside the Empress's quarters, all was still. No sound but the faint whisper of breath and the soft, deliberate rhythm of porcelain meeting porcelain.

Srina Talon knelt at a low obsidian table, a tea service arrayed before her as it often was. Each movement she made was tethered with a certain grace that seemed unnatural. The water poured from the silver kettle in a perfect ribbon—unbroken, neither too fast nor too slow. Steam curled upward, catching the light in delicate coils that rose and vanished. Her long white hair draped down one shoulder, reflecting the same pale luminescence that emanated from her skin.

If the art of tea reflected the soul, then hers was a study in restraint. Every motion was measured, patient—deceptively gentle, like the certainty of the moon calling to the tide.

When Korran Dorn was led in by the Praetorian Guard, he would find her not upon a throne, but still at that table, the faint scent of nerium blossoms and jasmine drifting through the air.

Without rising, without even glancing up at first, she gestured to the seat across from her.

"You may sit."

Her voice carried no sharpness, only quiet authority that filled every square inch of the room. The soldiers of the Order that had escorted him in turned to depart almost as swiftly as they had arrived, strange though it was, to leave their liege alone with a strange man. At least it would have been…Were she not who she was. If anything, they pitied the Sith Knight who had come to see her.

She poured a second cup, the sound of liquid striking ceramic somehow loud in the stillness between them. With one graceful turn of her wrist, she set the cup before him, perfectly aligned with the table's edge, then lifted her own. Her golden eyes met his over the steam, unblinking and calm. She was just as beautiful as any of her Echani sisters. Full of grace, eloquence, and an uncanny femininity that made her seem…Soft. It was part of the mirage, her genetics.

Everything about an Echani was designed to draw others in. Lure them, until they were within striking distance.

"You have come a long way…" she began, her tone composed but curious. "And you have chosen an unusual path to reach me…Would not my husband be your destination?"

She glanced down at the tea before lifting the second cup to deposit it across the table. Intended for her guest. Srina was less than adept at political situations due to her inability to pick up certain cues…But where she lacked, she made up for it simply by being herself. It seemed to suffice.

"Few request my audience without purpose."

She sipped at her own tea, unhurried, her gaze lingering on him as though studying the ripples a rock left in still water. There was a strange poetry to it—the way she looked at him not as a ruler to a subordinate, but as one examining the surface of a deep and dangerous pond.

"Tell me, Korran Dorn…", the pale woman asked softly, setting her cup down without so much as a clink from the glass. "What has compelled you to seek me out?"

Outside, thunder rolled over the city, but she didn't flinch when rain began to fall. There was only a soft lull, and the scent of jasmine pervaded. Mixed with petrichor, ozone, it would become clear that the sweet scent wasn't merely the tea. It was power, leaking from her pores.

 

[Korran Dorn]

Tag: Srina Talon
Location: Jutrand [Empress Quarters]

The Praetorians had scarcely finished closing the polished obsidian doors when the silence deepened, thickening, almost, as though it wished to test the density of his will before allowing him to speak within it. Korran lowered himself into the offered seat with unhurried finality, the motion neither deferential nor discourteous, but measured in a way that suggested inevitability rather than assent.

For a moment, he said nothing.

Where her stillness was moonlight, soft, graceful, and deceptively serene, his was the dark horizon before a storm, vast and unreadable, holding shape through sheer immovable presence. The cup before him remained untouched, warm steam coiling upward and vanishing like memory. His golden gaze lifted to hers, not with challenge, but with the cool appraisal of a being who weighed futures rather than moments.

When he finally spoke, his voice was low, composed, a velvet gravity that did not press so much as settle, like an ancient throne being lowered into place.

“Had I sought your husband, I would be sitting in his shadow,” he replied, tone neither sharp nor softened. “But I came here for clarity, not dominion.”

His eyes did not drift, did not stray or flicker. They held. Patient. Certain.

“You are the wave that reshapes shores, Empress. He is the storm that scatters them.”

A faint pulse in the Force traveled with his words, not a flare of power, but something subtler, like a cathedral bell tolling from beneath stone rather than above it.

“I did not cross half the galaxy to petition either throne or favor. I am here because among the Sith, very few rule with purpose beyond the moment in front of them… and fewer still understand that legacy is measured in centuries, not battles.”

His hand hovered once, barely a fraction above the porcelain, before folding back to his lap, choosing restraint over indulgence.

“I did not come to stand before a ruler," he continued, voice softening only in texture, never in weight. “I came to witness the architect of an era. To see whether the one who commands the allegiance of empires is led by the same hunger as the rest… or by something far deeper.”


His final thought came quieter still, though no less absolute:

“I am here because the galaxy bends, always, toward the hands of those who understand consequence. I would know whether yours are such hands.”

He did not bow his head.

He did not need to.

His certainty bowed space itself.​

 

[Srina Talon]

Allies: Korran Dorn
Location: Jutrand [Empress Quarters]

____________________________________________________

For a time, she said nothing.

The sound of the rain tapping against obsidian stone in the courtyard filled the pause, each drop refracting light into ghostly colors that blurred the world. It was a quiet counterpoint to the stillness that radiated from the woman before him. The Echani-born warrior remained poised, her long ivory hair spilling like liquid silk down the sharp line of her shoulder. The faint scent of jasmine that moved through the air seemed to billow when she breathed, becoming more, and less. She did not blink, let alone breathe…As if time itself hesitated to interrupt her.

When she finally moved, it was not to reply, but to lift her cup once more. Porcelain kissed her lips, and she momentarily indulged in the scalding liquid. She liked her tea about the temperature of lava; the hotter, the better. Her golden eyes remained on his, analyzing him, as a scientist might inspect a specimen from beneath glass. It was not dismissive—But fueled by diligence and experience.

Not everything was as it appeared to be.

"Clarity…", she repeated the word gently, as if it held a strange taste on her tongue. "Is an uncommon pursuit among our kind. Most come to me bearing chains disguised as ambition…They wish me to move the heavens for them. Break the stars, for them. Surrender to them."

Power was a thing, tricky and elusive, meant to be taken. Many Sith came to her in hopes that she might shift the balance in their favor. Or—To take power from her directly. It was to their detriment that they assumed such a feat would be simple were her better half not present. As if she did not have strength of her own, as if she did not have a mind of her own.

Her gaze lingered, hawkish eyes tracing him not with admiration, but in pure analysis. He would likely notice the way she paused to think things through and listened twice as much as she spoke. It was the silent mathematics of a mind forever at war with probability and purpose. She did not smile. Yet, there was something about her stillness that drew the soul forward. It was akin to a horizon drawing a wanderer forward, ever onward, despite knowing it can never be reached. "You speak of consequence as if it can be chosen…"

The faintest hum in the Force rippled outward, imperceptible to the untrained, but undeniable to one who listened closely. It was not aggression, nor defense. It was the truth of her being manifesting itself in the very fabric of the air. The temperature dropped by several degrees, and that rain outside seemed to thin…Reality bending so that she could be heard, without any effort or command. "…But consequence is not something we forge. It is what remains when the forging is done. All we have are varying states of cause and effect. I am only better than most at managing both."

Srina held the unique position of seeing the Order from the view of an eagle, versus the narrow field most Sith were prone to. She did not lack purpose, as some might suspect; it simply didn't revolve around power. She had more than enough of that. The pale Empress desired other things, things that most Sith would find difficult to comprehend. "My husband…", she spoke finally, his name unspoken, but felt in the deepest pit of her heart… "Is a storm. He rages, as storms do."

"And I…I am what he returns to, what they all return to, when it is time to rest."

Husband and wife were two parts of a whole. Codependent in a way that was likely a psychosis…But they took turns orbiting each other the way planets floated diligently around their designated star. Her point held the notion that they were not all that different, merely perceived that way. Srina would hold Darth Empyrean together when the Worm proved difficult. She would hold him to his vows, to his memories, as no one else dared. No one else could.

…And in return? He would love her until every star died, perhaps, even after that.

"I have no need for the hunger you speak of…My duty, my desire, is bound to my people. Not feckless ambition.", she murmured, noting that he was bold enough to reference such a thing directly. It was strange to be considered the sovereign of a nation known for greed and somehow…Not want for more. More territory, more power, more. It was a common weakness for Sith who never knew when to stop feeding on the poison bounty the galaxy had to offer. "If you've crossed the stars to witness an architect, I'm afraid that I will disappoint. I am only what they require."

A convoluted, complicated, and overly simplistic statement.

"Nothing more."

Srina, even after all these years, had trouble accepting herself as anything more than a soldier leading her men through perpetual war. Sometimes the enemy was within, sometimes, outside of their borders…But there was always some new battle. Some new fire that needed to be put out so that they didn't raze an entire system for a minor slight. She was a voice of reason, powerful enough to back it up, but rarely used that power. Instead—She had become what many of them had never had.

Their blackest sun, their darkest star, moreover, their mother.

 

[Korran Dorn]

Tag: Srina Talon
Location: Jutrand [Empress Quarters]

The rain outside struck the stone like a thousand distant drums, but within him there was no echo, only stillness deep enough to swallow sound whole. He regarded her as one might regard a faultless blade: not with desire, nor with intimidation, but with understanding. Some things were made for devastation. Others were made so that devastation had somewhere to end.

When he finally spoke, his voice emerged as a low, resonant murmur, as if it were not conjured in the throat, but dredged from some quiet well beneath the sternum.

“You mistake me,” he said, though there was no reproach in it. “I do not speak of hunger as complaint, nor as threat. I speak of it as the currency by which most beings define worth. They claw upward because they fear vanishing. Because emptiness terrifies them more than death.”

His fingers drifted, not to the tea, but to the faint curl of steam rising from it, as though measuring the shape of heat before deciding whether it belonged to the living or the memory of flame.

“You are not what they require, Empress. You are what remains when the need is stripped away. There is a difference.”

He did not look away from her. He did not blink. Gold met gold, distant suns studying each other across a gulf of inevitability.

“Consequence, as you say, is what endures after the forging. And yet…” His tone softened, not in warmth but in gravity, like stone settling into its final place in a great foundation. “Even consequence requires someone willing to hold shape, lest the molten collapse into nothing.”

There was no reverence in him, but there was recognition.

“You say you are sanctuary to the storm. The harbor to which power returns to breathe.” A pause, measured, neither deferential nor presumptuous. “Sanctuary is not lesser than the tempest. It is the reason the tempest does not consume itself.”

The chamber felt colder, yet heavier, as if philosophy itself had gained mass.

“I did not come to ask for stars broken or heavens moved. I came for the one being among us who does not seek to own consequence… but to steward it.”

Only now did his attention dip to the untouched cup, not in thirst, but in acknowledgment.

“You think you disappoint because you do not crave more.” His gaze lifted again. “But restraint is not the absence of power. It is its final evolution.”

Outside, the thunder rolled again, not as an interruption, but a punctuation.

“You call yourself nothing more,” he said quietly, “but the galaxy will remember you as the shape carved into the ages by what you choose not to take.”

He did not smile.

He did not need to.

The truth in his words sat between them like another presence at the table, not praise, not fealty… but the rarest honor a Sith could give another:

Recognition of Equal Gravity.​

 

[Srina Talon]

Allies: Korran Dorn
Location: Jutrand [Empress Quarters]

____________________________________________________

"No."

She had not mistaken him. Instead, she had added her own thoughts on to his mention of hunger and ambition. Her eyes seemed to grow distant for a moment, reflective, while lightning flashed and traced erratic patterns in a distant sky. The quiet between them was not peaceful or stagnant…It was a place of suspension. She remained motionless, her eyes still studying this mysterious Lord Dorn, committing him to memory. Every inflection, every subtle flicker of will. He deferred much to the darkness…

But that was familiar territory. Srina Talon, deliberate or otherwise, was one he could not hide from.

Her posture did not change but after a long moment her pointer finger tapped the table. It was a small gesture but served as a punctuation mark in the conversation rather than a pause. "I see you, Korran Dorn."

"The Jedi have their faith. The Sith have conflict…Both are rituals meant to justify existence.", the soft murmur left no room for argument, merely, a statement that she found to be entirely factual. She did not besmirch her younglings that were in a constant state of confrontation but she did know when to draw the line. The very moment, when it did more harm, than good. "…When conflict strengthens us…I let it burn. When it begins to rot what we are—I end it."

Her teacup settled on the table and after a moment her head dipped and a wind that couldn't be inside caused moonlit tresses to stir. That lowered temperature was enough to draw chills down the spine but as her eyes closed once more, the walls of the chamber began to unfold like petals, shadows bending while the space around them grew impossibly vast. Dark light blossomed like glass breaking underwater until it formed dozens of floating projections. Viewscreens, wreathed in midnight black.

Armies clashed onto shattered worlds.

Fleets mercilessly exchanged fire in orbit above crimson skies.

"Sith must fight.", she turned one of the screens and brought it forward, fingers touching the surface, and a faint resonance filled the room. It was a mixture of things that the Empress did not often display, but most prevalent, was sorrow. For one who dedicated herself to the superiority and success of the Order there was nothing more painful than watching her people torch what they were given. Thoughtlessly, wastefully. "They must…Because in their war they remember who they are. It makes soldiers move; it pushes them to act. It keeps us from decay…But this…"

"This is what I see."

Around them, the air thickened with her projections, translucent screens hovering in a slow orbit. The faint reflection of her face shimmered in the screen she touched, fragile, and false. She was never so delicate as her genetics tricked others into thinking she was. Soft, gentle, but deadly beyond compare. There was nothing she would not do to ensure the survival of her husband's dream. No matter where he was—No matter the role he played. This was the task he had unknowingly asked of his wife.

She would not disappoint him.

Metallic eyes watched while ships burned, planets were besieged, assassinations were attempted and completed, and brutal duels took place in council halls. These were just the events that took place on the surface. There was more, much more, that ensured every corner of Sith space was alive with the blood of their brothers. Srina did not look at them as one who watched holofeeds for enjoyment. She studied them as if each instance was a pressure valve, quiet and methodical, measuring what must be released and what must be sealed. "This is what most often consumes my waking hours…"

"Every rebellion, every border dispute, every power struggle, every death that threatens the stability of our Empire…It all passes through me."

She turned one of the images with a flick of her hand and it shifted to show a new scene. A Sith Lord kneeling in surrender to his better, perhaps Kainite, perhaps Eternalist, it mattered little. He had been too weak to hold governorship the system and had therefore lost everything. There would be more killing before those worlds were pacified, but order, would restore itself.

Order—On the blood and bones of their people.

"I do not intervene because I enjoy control. I do not stay the wrath of others because I exist in defiance of them…I do it because I am aware of the cost when no one does. My Sithlings think themselves free because they destroy what they cannot command…But freedom without discipline is not strength."

Her fingers moved again, this time, showing a youngling standing up to those who had burned his village. Finding power, in darkness. Strength in his hate. Slaughter…It was slaughter.

The child would be brought to the Jutrand Academy for training. She could not restore what had been taken from him, but she could ensure his future, his potential, and see that it wasn't squandered over the grave of his world. That he wasn't lost in the shuffle…

As so many children were. A pity—and a waste.

"It is rot. And that…I will not abide."

 

[Korran Dorn]

Tag: Srina Talon
Location: Jutrand [Empress Quarters]

Korran did not recoil from the truth she laid bare; he recognized it. The shifting holoprojections cast him in the reflected glow of war, but his expression remained composed and contemplative. Not disturbed. Not impressed.

Understanding.

When he finally spoke, his voice came low and tempered, shaped not by dispute, but by accord.

“You do not merely manage consequence,” he said, eyes tracking the projection of burning fleets, broken worlds, kneeling Lords. “You keep the cost honest. Without you, these flames would not forge anything; they would only consume until there was nothing left to inherit.”

His gaze lifted to her, not upward, but directly, the acknowledgment of a sovereign whose dominion was structural, not symbolic.

“This is not a restraint born of gentleness. Nor is it mercy compelled by sentiment. It is curation. Refinement. The will to decide what must endure, and what must not. Others call it interference because they fear limits. But limits are the skeleton of civilization. Without them, power liquefies and slides back into chaos.”

His tone softened, not with warmth, but with precision, “You are not the pause after the storm. You are the condition that makes rebuilding possible. The Sith believe the lesson is written on the battlefield. They do not grasp that the true lesson is written in who is allowed to rise again afterward.”

The projection of the youngling lingered. Korran watched him as one might regard a blade still inside its forge, unformed, but already dangerous.

“To shape the child is to shape the century that will follow him. Those who dismiss this work as restraint misunderstand: it is selection. Legacy does not emerge from endless victory. It emerges from deciding what the next generation will be permitted to become.”

At last, he looked fully to her again.

“You do not stop the war, you narrow it, until only what is worthy survives.”

No challenge.
No correction.
Recognition, anchored, absolute.

“You call this burden yours alone,” he continued, voice quieter but denser, “but it is not merely a duty. It is a design. One few are capable of perceiving, let alone bearing. Without a hand such as yours, the Sith would not evolve. They would feed upon themselves until nothing remained worth ruling.”

A long silence passed, not friction, but acknowledgement of shared clause in an unspoken doctrine.

“Architect?” he echoed, faintly. “No. You are the keel. The shape that determines what survives the crossing.”

There was no need for reverence.
Agreement alone carried more weight.​

 

[Srina Talon]

Allies: Korran Dorn
Location: Jutrand [Empress Quarters]

____________________________________________________

The last of the projections flickered and died, their lingering light collapsing until her quarters slowly returned to their original shape. The scent of ozone or perhaps burnt circuitry faded into the cool perfume of rain, tea, and evening air. Silence filled the vacuum left behind, deep and alive, not for the shocking images—But for the reality of her truth. Many of her people would think of her logic as the antithesis of what it meant to be a practitioner of the Dark, but few knew that their hedonistic nature and wanton violence was the reason the tenth Empire fell.

Ignoring the common man, the forceless, the backbone of the nation, had brought even the mightiest to their knees. In this new age, the eleventh, Srina would do all that she could to not repeat the mistakes of the past. The quiet that existed now belonged to one who had seen too much. Experienced far more than her fair share…She had witnessed nations, empires rise and fall. Through it all?

She remained.

Yellow-gold eyes that had long ago been swallowed with corruption traced the places where war had been moments ago. Where thousands of lives still played out, unseen, far beyond Jutrand's rain-wet skyline. The echo of their screams did not reach her, but she felt them all the same, small tremors in the nation she fought to keep in motion. It was both power and blight. Death and salvation.

Her hand slowly curled into a fist, eyes closing once again, head tilting, while releasing the sensation of souls passing from this world to the next. They died—And they knew not why. An ant did not quarrel with a boot, yet it came down from the heavens all the same. Unthinking, unknowing.

Just killing.

"They fight because they must…I watch because I must. We are two sides of the same credit."

It was not a love of cruelty that kept her from turning away. It was comprehension. Srina had found that an Empire could not survive through sentiment alone. It persisted through the tests of time and violence through a willingness to make the decisions others refused to name aloud. "I think…We understand one another.", she offered, the words leaving her like an exhale she had been holding for a hundred years.

She paused, and her hand moved over his teacup as if it were the most normal thing in the world, reheating it, even though he never thought to try it. "It is cold.", the reason was plain, as if they had been conversing about the weather and not planets burning.

The Sith Empress slowly unfolded from her kneeling position, the act aching with eloquence as she rose from her place at the table. The movement was unhurried, not regal, not rehearsed, but graceful in a way that bespoke years of practice and control. The lengths of her black and silver attire whispered into place while iridescent Sith runes glimmered in the fabric. The purpose? Likely, indiscernible save for the hand that put them there. Delicate footsteps carried her toward the transparisteel windows, and she waved it away. Letting the air in—The rain.

The storm had painted the city with refracted light. Jutrand was endless…An organism of noise and motion. Lit by ambition, starved by its own appetite.

"I do not keep the cost honest, Lord Dorn. I keep it…", she breathed outward, as if, it was a long-suffering point of contention. They didn't know each other well enough for that to have been the truth, but it would become clear this was not the first time this conversation had taken place. "Paid. In full."

Her tone carried the cool edge of something clinical. That was normal. For those who knew her best, they would be well aware of her distant nature and thoughts that were so far away they might as well wander off the edge of the world. Her eyes, when they caught the lightning, when thunder sounded, expressed something deeper. Something older. Not warmth, not regret, but something quieter and more dangerous. The kind of understanding that killed mercy before it had the chance to become a weakness. "Every world that burns…Every fracture in our ranks…I keep count. And when the balance tilts too far—I correct it."

They called her an abomination. They called her unfeeling, sick, for her eternal devotion to a walking corpse. For her ability to look at Darth Carnifex and never see the butcher, even, while he cleaved someone in twain before her eyes. For her outlandish notion that Darth Strosius was more than the blustering menace he painted himself to be. For the way she found kinship with Darth Caedes rather than a potential rival…It was all such a complicated web. There was so much irony to be found there that not even she could miss it. They celebrated her when war came, when she unleashed hell, but damned her when it came time to put that power away.

Her mind, calm as a frozen sea, weighed his words again.

"You understand the design…"

But he did not know the burden.

"You have spoken of what endures…But endurance is not our natural state. It is something we impose upon the galaxy, again, and again. Through alchemy, discipline, choice, and sheer force of will."

A faint flicker of her fingers and a projection returned, the smallest holo-panel flaring to life, and it depicted that same boy. Barely grown. Standing amid the ruins of a battlefield. His face was streaked with blood and ash, eyes glassy, burning with hate. It was the same child in the aftermath of his actions…A child born from a cycle she could not break. "This is what becomes of our neglect…"

"Potential, twisted by pain, taught that survival is proof of strength…The Sith will call him useful."

Korran Dorn had said as much, noting that she aimed to shape the next generation. What he didn't grasp was that she had already failed this sithling. He was broken, fractured, before he had even reached her height. A broken boy would produce a broken man. "I…"

"I call him salvage."

Her thumb brushed the image, and it went dark.

"I take no pride in what I do. I was born a soldier…And I will die as one. I have lived a life of taking orders, following them, and knowing that my hand was guided by my betters. Now I fill the role of sovereign, master, and mother. There is no satisfaction in pruning decay…In razing fields for new growth…But I must. We, must."

 

[Korran Dorn]

Tag: Srina Talon
Location: Jutrand [Empress Quarters]

Korran did not move while she spoke; not even breath betrayed a shift in him. He watched her rise, watched the storm spill its breath into the chamber as if the sky itself had been waiting on her signal to exhale. But his focus was not on the rain, nor the skyline, it was on the truth she had finally unveiled.

Not the rationale.
Not the duty.

the cost.

When she finished, he regarded her in silence for a long, measured moment, as if taking stock not of argument, but of weight. When he finally stood, it was not abrupt; it was deliberate, a gesture of joining her plane rather than closing the distance. His voice emerged softer than before, but deeper, the kind of quiet that does not cede ground, but defines it.

“You do not pay the cost.”
A pause.
“You become it.”

He rose from his seat along with her, his stance coming just far enough that the light from the storm limned his features in cold fire. His eyes were not ablaze with pity nor sentiment; they held the solemn recognition of parity. “Others see policy. Doctrine. You are the collection plate into which all of it is poured. They think you preside over their war.” His head inclined the smallest fraction. “But you absorb it.”

The youngling’s fading image lingered in his peripheral memory, even extinguished. Korran’s gaze lowered, not in shame, but acknowledgment. A verdict shared rather than contested.

“Salvage,” he echoed, quiet. “Most would call it reclamation only after they reshape him into something useful. You call him salvage before that shaping begins, because you understand what has already been taken.” He turned his palm upward, slow, almost ritualistic. “That is not governance. It is guardianship. And few among our kind are still capable of such distinction.”

The storm rumbled, distant thunder, or perhaps punctuation.

“You think I speak of endurance as a structure,” he continued, measured. “But I speak of those who choose to hold when the galaxy tries to hollow them out.” His eyes held hers, unblinking. “You do not fail that boy by meeting him broken. You would only fail him if you allowed him to remain that way.”

A slow breath, not weary, weighted.

“You do not prune decay for pride. You prune because without it, the branch poisons the tree.”
Another pause.
“And when the tree is the Empire, pruning is not cruelty, it is mercy applied in its final form.”

His voice fell even lower.

“You believe I do not understand the burden.”
The faintest narrowing of his eyes, not in defiance, but in precision.
“You are mistaken.”

He did not elaborate, not yet.
Because understanding did not need proclamation.
It needed recognition.

What he offered her next was not disagreement, nor compliment, but a truth spoken only between beings who act at altitude:

“You are not a sovereign because you rule.”
A quiet beat,
“You are sovereign because you remain, and the Empire remains because you do.”

It is Lonely on the Mountaintop.​

 

[Srina Talon]

Allies: Korran Dorn
Location: Jutrand [Empress Quarters]

____________________________________________________

She did not turn to look at Korran Dorn when he rose from the table, again, ignoring the tea that she had carefully prepared. It was not the indulgence he seemed to think it was, but rather, an Echani offering of her hearth and home. She had not always been Sith, and the traditions of her birth remained present despite the years that had passed. She could be removed from Eshan…But Eshan could not be removed from her. Her eyes lingered on the world beyond—A wash of light and motion diffused by water and wind.

“You do not pay the cost.”
A pause.
“You become it.”

The words echoed through her, not an accusation, but a half-truth she had long ago stopped articulating out loud. Srina had become it long ago, though, she had never meant to. There was no single moment of surrender, no dramatic choice made. It had been erosion. One duty after another, one compromise folded neatly over the next, until there was no self left to separate from the Empire she served. When she finally turned toward him, white hair alight from the storm, hedged in holy fire and metal wire in the dim…Her expression was the same. Steadfast, unmoving. It was only her eyes that changed.

“You are correct. The cost and I are the same thing…I cannot put it down.”, she affirmed quietly, too softly, as if ghosts might overhear. He had sought her out to understand her. Normally, she would have dismissed such enterprises as scheming Sith politicking but he didn’t seem to have an unspoken agenda. His quest was knowledge, but knowledge was power—And she did not give that lightly. “When I began…I thought I could keep something of myself apart. A fragment, untouched by what was necessary. A place inside me where the war could not reach.”

A strange thing for an Echani to say. Traditionally, they loved combat…But few would understand how they enjoyed the act but loathed unnecessary killing. They were the perfect weapons of war, the perfect machines to fill the galaxy with destruction, and yet, they fought to converse. To show their spirit.

Not to end life.

What she had become was an Avatar of Death for the Six Sisters, a creature of the night, the one that they told stories of to scare their younglings into behaving.

“I was wrong.”

The illusion had died the first time she had ordered a world purged for its defiance. Not due to plague or any true fault, but simply, because their disobedience threatened thousands of others. It had taught her many things, swiftly, and blackened her heart in a way that there was no recovery. It was then that she had finally learned what it would take to stand at the side of her husband. To stand…Anywhere in this world. Anywhere, at all. “I have learned that there are no clean choices…”

She breathed, and her shoulders moved, breaking the image of a statue standing at the window.

“There are only outcomes that you can live with…And those you cannot.”

Srina turned away from the window, and her thoughts were closed for the moment. Not for the first time, she felt a particular sense of displacement, if only, because the burden she carried could not be shared. Not truly. “You speak of guardianship…”

“Perhaps that is what it has become. Not rule, not vision. Guardianship—”, she paused, testing the word, to see if it fit. Somehow…It did. “—Of a thing that was broken before it was mine to protect.”

Her eyes found him again, steady, unflinching. This unknown figure claimed that she absorbed the war…He might have been right about that, too. Someone, had to. Every death, every rebellion, every child twisted by fire collected in the center of her chest. A burden that none could know, that few would comprehend, because they were not charged with making the final call. It was her word that brought salvation or damnation. “I do what must be done…”

“And the longer I bear it, the less I remember what I was before. This is why…I am what they require.”

Her hands moved to fold before her, and her silvery head dipped in acknowledgement of his understanding. She would never ask another to place themselves in her shoes, to ask them, to accept their soul being scattered to the winds. The pale-skinned woman could accept that he intellectually knew what burden was, that he knew the truth of her final full measure of devotion…But he would never truly know unless the crown sat on his brow.

It wasn’t his fault—It was simply the way of it.

“And now…You see. Now you know. Have I sated your curiosity, Lord Dorn?”

 

[Korran Dorn]

Tag: Srina Talon
Location: Jutrand [Empress Quarters]

Korran did not immediately answer.

For a long moment, he simply regarded her, not the Empress, not the mask of stillness or the vast machine of power she embodied, but the eroded shape left behind after years of erosion had worn divinity and humanity down to the same razor’s edge. When he spoke, it was not with the fervor of revelation, nor the detachment of philosophy. but with the tone of one naming a truth that already existed.

“No,” he said softly. “You do not carry the scaffold. You are what remains of it after everything else collapses.”

He did not reach for the tea. Instead, he stepped closer by a single, measured pace, not invasive, but the distance one closes when the abstract becomes human, if only for a moment.

“You did not surrender yourself,” he continued. “You were claimed by necessity. There was no moment of decision because there was never permission to refuse. The Empire did not ask you to become its spine; it collapsed until only you were left standing upright.”

There was no sentiment in his voice, and yet, there was something rare: comprehension without judgment.

“You think you cannot put it down,” he said, “because there is no longer a you apart from the burden to set aside. You are not wrong.” His gaze held hers, equal, level, unflinching. “There is no fragment left untouched because fragments do not survive the weight you bear. The role consumes until there is nothing but the role, and the one who endures it long enough becomes indistinguishable from the Empire itself.”

Lightning cast her silhouette in silver; thunder marked the breath between his next words.

“You say you are what they require.”

A pause, not hesitation, but respect.

“That is not resignation. That is sovereignty in its final state.”

He dipped his chin a fraction, not in deference, but recognition of station: the quiet acknowledgment reserved for the one other being in the chamber who understood cost in its true form.

“You have sated my curiosity,” he answered at last, “but not because I understand your power.”
A beat.
“Because I understand your price.”

He did not flatter her. He did not reassure her.

He validated her calculus.

“You call it guardianship now,” he concluded, voice low enough the storm seemed to lean close to hear it. “But what you guard is not merely the Empire, you guard the space where its future will still have room to exist.”

Another small stillness passed between them.

“And that,” he said, quietly resolute, “is the domain of someone who can no longer remember who they were, because the galaxy would not survive if they did.”

What Does it Mean to Give it All?​

 

[Srina Talon]

Allies: Korran Dorn
Location: Jutrand [Empress Quarters]

____________________________________________________

For a time, she did not breathe. Or rather—She forgot to.

The words he spoke settled into her like sediment at the bottom of a river, quiet, but immovable. Her eyes kept drifting back to the steady rainfall, catching the reflection of the storm, as it fractured her silhouette into a dozen pale ghosts. It was a strange thing to see herself multiplied—A creature made of light and water, dissolving at the edges. Her shoulders rose and fell once more…offering a gentle sigh that held the weight of worlds…

What did it mean to give everything?

It meant this.

It meant becoming the silence that filled every room when the screaming stopped. It meant knowing that her hands were clean only because there was nothing left upon them that could stain. Blood didn't take. Lives, didn't show. Souls were fuel. It meant the death of memory—Not because she had forgotten, but because remembering the woman she had once been served no purpose. Her gaze sharpened only when he stated that she had been "claimed" as if it had somehow happened against her will. "I do not kneel…Not even for an Empire. I chose it—Knowingly."

Ever since she'd witnessed the fall of the Confederacy and the Tenth Empire, she had acted accordingly. They walked a path on the edge of a blade. One step to the left, on to the right, and it was all over. A faint sound, a whisper of silk, accompanied her movement as she turned once more. Idly moving with her visitor in such a way that his back faced the only door. She preferred being able to see the entry and exit of any room, but rather than make a fuss, she matched his movements.

Letting him turn until they were spaced as she desired.

"You mistake me for someone who mourns the self that was lost. I do not. There is no tragedy in transformation, and it can never be undone. They see the crown…", she trailed off, arms rising slowly to cross beneath her chest, fingers resting on the sleeve of her forearm, "…And imagine power as a prize."

"My own daughter yearns for it. She does not understand what is given in exchange. The small pieces chipped away, the warmth, bartered for order…You, in turn, seem to understand the price…But comprehension does not grant immunity. Power is never, ever, without consequence. Even the knowledge of it…It is not free."

Srina drew in a breath, slow and deep, as if the air resisted her lungs. The storm rolling outside interposed with her actions in a low, rolling growl. He claimed to be sated by what she had offered thus far, but he had not yet taken his leave. Perhaps, he needed more still. "You have been both right and wrong this evening; however, I am the only one who can determine who and what I am. What I will be. I am not the spine but the marrow…The living tissue that feeds the bones and rots with them alike. It was never meant to be beautiful…It was meant to survive."

Another sigh, deep and aching.

"I know…That there is no self left to save."

 

[Korran Dorn]

Tag: Srina Talon
Location: Jutrand [Empress Quarters]

Korran did not recoil from her admission. If anything, the statement seemed to clarify something in his posture, his presence sharpening rather than softening. There was no flicker of pity, no tremor of discomfort. Only recognition settling into place like the last piece of a long-studied mosaic.

“You speak as though survival is the lesser form,” he answered, voice low, carrying the sound of stone meeting foundation. “It is not what remains after the cost. It is the cost. Survival is the purest expression of power, because everything weaker becomes ash long before it reaches this point.”

He did not step closer, but the weight of him did. The air between them thickened not with threat, but with acknowledgement of what she had confessed: not a flaw… a completion.

“You say there is no self left to save,” he continued, “but what you mean is that there is no self left to spare. The woman you were did not vanish. She was spent, as currency, to purchase a future that still exists because you did not keep her.”

Lightning bled silver across the durasteel once more, and in its reflection, his gold eyes looked almost molten.

“You chose this,” he said, echoing her earlier rebuttal, “not because you desired power… but because you understood that if you did not become the marrow, there would be no bone left to carry the weight at all.”

No argument.
No correction.
No softening.
Just the truth, handed back to her with its shape made visible.

“You do not mourn what you surrendered because you have nothing left to trade.”
A pause.
“And that is the point where burden ceases to be duty, and becomes identity.”

Not martyrdom.
Not sacrifice.
Metamorphosis.

His gaze held hers, steady, unswayed, as if he were reading the final line of a scripture she had written in blood and inheritance.

“You are what remains,” he said, quieter now, but heavier than thunder. “Not because there was no one else… but because there is no one else who can remain.”

A beat.
Measured. Inevitable.

“So no, there is no self left to save.”
A faint incline of his head.
“There is only the one the galaxy could not break.”

The silence between them did not feel empty then, but answered.

And for the first time since he had entered her chambers…
Korran did not watch her.

He regarded her as one would regard a fixed star in a collapsing sky, not as something to be understood, but as something that endures.

All that Remains.​

 

[Srina Talon]

Allies: Korran Dorn
Location: Jutrand [Empress Quarters]

____________________________________________________

The Empress remained utterly still in the glom, her figure drawn into the long shadows of her quarters. Rather than interject she chose to listen to the shape of his words, to the way they filled the air with meaning he thought new. Some sort of revelation…But she had heard all of this before in countless variations. It was not arrogance that quieted her but the familiar circumstances. Every Sith thought themselves the first to name her truth, the first, to peel back the veil and see what lay beneath.

Every one of them came believing discovery was communion.

And here it was again, the pattern, the careful vocabulary of those who believed understanding her was the same as reaching her. They always spoke as if she was some distant philosophical problem that, once solved, would reveal meaning. But they misunderstood…She was the end of the equation.

Not the beginning.

"You've built me into a monument. Measured and catalogued each stone until you think you know where I stand…You are not the first."

He meant well enough, it seemed, but these circular dances of revelation were not something she enjoyed being regularly trapped in. These conversations were about control. He and many others sought to name what could not be named because it brought them comfort. Assurances, that she was not the wrathful Sith Warlord or the malefic shadow of the Emperor. If they could contain her, describe her, they thought they might be able to survive her. Not realizing…She was not their enemy.

She was not the threat, rather, the sovereign they were promised.

Something in the air changed then, imperceptibly at first, but the faint shimmer of lightning across the walls dimmed. Shadows deepened at the edges, lengthening toward her, obedient little things. It was not power she summoned, it was pressure, the sensation of something vast uncoiling in a confined space. The chamber would feel significantly smaller, though she hadn't moved any closer. She did not know this man from a commoner on the street—And he had given her no reason to extend faith beyond what Sith society might request. "You've said enough."

"You've spoken of survival…But you have much yet to learn. Especially, what that means in my hands."

The fire that outlives the forest.

The tide that erases the shore.

The night that swallows the day.

It was many ways to say the exact same thing, many ways, to impart that she had a reached a point where she was both a part of this world and removed from it. Srina would never be able to live a quiet life with her children, with her husband, and it was more evident now than ever. She would never be able to rest…Even if the Empire fell. Because, there would be another, another, and another one after that. Why? Because…

…Sith were Eternal.

The domed lights along the far wall flickered, and in their brief, uneven glow her outline seemed to blur—Less a figure now than a shape of shadow and light that could not quite decide which it preferred to be. Her eye lifted to his and for a moment they seemed molten, gold shot through with red, ancient, and unfathomable. The quiet composure that had defined her began to shift, not cracking, but revealing what lay beneath the flimsy surface of her skin.

Her grace, her infinite patience, was not gentleness. It was containment.

"You have spent this evening telling me all that I am…", her voice was soft as silk, but when she spoke again, it was no longer one thing. It came layered. One tone was soft and melodic, the other, deeper and darker, the rumble beneath thunder. Not discordant—Harmonic. Like two beings, equals, occupying the same space. "Now tell me…"

The second voice breathed through the words, low and predatory, a vibration in the chest more than it was an actual sound.

"What is it that you want?"​

The statement rippled outward with more than sound. It was feeling…It was strength, it was the weight of a woman who was not used to being denied—Nor studied like some sort of crude Sithspawn. The faint scent of jasmine and ozone grew to a cloying degree and the walls tensed as though some sleeping thing beneath the foundations had shifted, stirring, and was now wide awake.

 

[Korran Dorn]

Tag: Srina Talon
Location: Jutrand [Empress Quarters]


Korran did not wither beneath her presence.

The pressure that folded inward, that enclosing, cathedral-deep weight of a sovereign no longer veiled, struck him fully, and he did not retreat. He bore it like gravity: accepted, acknowledged, and answered simply by remaining upright. He did not challenge it.

He survived it, and survival in her presence carried its own declaration.

When he finally spoke, there was no tremor, no supplication. His voice was low and unyielding, a force that did not compete with hers, but existed alongside it, carved from its own source of inevitability.

“You misunderstand my aim, Empress. I do not seek to define you.”

A measured pause, not theatrical, but intentional.

“I am offering my services to you.”

He took one step forward, not encroaching, but entering the space of truth, the distance where only those with strength enough to walk beside sovereigns could remain.

“I do not come as supplicant. I come as one who sees what you hold, and knows that a force like yours should not be forced to carry the axis of history alone.”

Lightning cracked beyond the glass, reflecting along the planes of his face like a forged brand of certainty.

“I am not here to be guided,” he clarified. “I am here to be useful. To reinforce what endures. To ensure the weight you bear is not the only pillar holding the ceiling overhead.”

His gaze never broke from hers, and unlike the others who sought to define her, he did not seek metaphor, nor claim revelation.

“You wanted to know what I want.”

The storm punctuated the quiet, as if answering for him before he did.

“What I want is not to kneel, but to uphold. To aid in the building of what you refuse to let collapse. Not a servant. Not a rival. An instrument of the same purpose, chosen, rather than compelled.”

A final beat, clean and absolute:

“I offer not fealty. I offer alignment.”

And the room, still pressed beneath the power she had uncoiled, seemed no longer to shrink around him… but to make room for two shapes of gravity, rather than one.

To Weather the Storm.​

 

[Srina Talon]

Allies: Korran Dorn
Location: Jutrand [Empress Quarters]

____________________________________________________

"You may not have sought to define me—But you have done so."

Repeatedly.

Her expression remained empty of all things, unreadable, but her posture shifted slightly with an almost imperceptible tilt of her head. She could feel her eyes narrowing just slightly, but it wasn't anger that stirred her. It was the need to weigh the intention that was undoubtedly hidden behind his words. No matter how pretty they sounded. If Sith could speak—They could lie.

An offer was the last thing she'd expected.

No Sith offered anything without some sort of angle or exchange. And yet…His declaration carried very little of the usual strings. It was too still and measured, too freely spoken, and the alabaster-skinned Empress had become something of a savant when it came to recognizing when one of her people was running a con. "Sith…"

"Do not share easily. Not in wealth, not in burden. Those who try to stand beside me often end up vying for control, that, or they wind up crushed beneath the weight of what they thought they could lift."

Srina moved while she spoke, not pacing, but drifting in quiet precise arcs. It was as if her thoughts required space to work them through…And every step he took forward? She carefully arced the other way. They were not friends. By his own admission, he was not loyal to her, and there was no reason she ought to trust him. "Alignment is not the same as allegiance…I do not support half-measures."

It wasn't rejection, but it wasn't acceptance either.

The Echani-born warrior was vetting this Sith Knight in the same way that she would have interrogated any other that appeared from the blue. She had never required that men kneel before her, nor did she demand supplication, but she did intimately understand command of things. Regardless of her desire to be different than sovereigns of old, she knew that power had a place.

It was required to maintain some semblance of order in a nation that she feared would devour itself through greed and ambition. She could sense the tide turning, shifting, toward a culture of feudal warlords squabbling over territory and crumbs. It was horrendous, a mistake, and beyond short-sighted for those who thought it was the way forward. An Empire…Could not survive that way, cannibalizing itself, versus hunting abroad—Earning real victory, real prey.

Where did Korran Dorn fit in all this? What did he threaten? What was his price?​

"You have offered to uphold.", the Dread Queen noted at last, "But…You must understand what that means in practice. It is pretty to think it will be simple. It is…Anything, but simple."

"The Order is not sustained by faith as the sepulchral would have you believe. It is maintained by pressure. Those in my orbit must be able to bear it. When I act, you will be implicated. When I am attacked, you will be targeted. When I fall silent…", she let the pause stretch deliberately, soundless, as her words implied, "You will be expected to know what I intend."

Srina turned just slightly, an echo of movement that wasn't quite human. She hadn't sought to crush his presence rising with her own, but inevitably, her aura would swallow his. She had walked this world too long to be eclipsed by anything other than her husband. The Empress knew that he sought only equality…But the truth? They were not equal.

It was not her ego that determined that, but simple fact. Her tone softened, and the dual-strings that echoed through her vocal cords seemed to momentarily settle. If he was as self-aware as he seemed to be, he would recognize her caution in taking in assistance without equivalent exchange. Without a plan forward, a reason to align herself with an unknown. As her deeds would fall on him…So would his belong to her.

Nothing was free.

"What would this look like to you? What will you uphold? How?"