Private Tests Upon Tests

[Darth Virelia]

"Feel the power of the Force."

Tags - Miasmær



The training chamber was cold by design—smooth white duracrete, reinforced glass, and polished obsidian veins cutting through the floor like ancient script. It was cavernous yet precise, one of many hidden beneath the foundations of Polis Massa's deeper sanctums. No decorative relics adorned the walls. No sigils. No banners. It was not a place of celebration or ceremony. It was a crucible. And at its center stood the woman who had built it to break others.

Darth Virelia leaned idly against the elevated observation platform, the curve of her hip accentuated by the taut angles of her armor. Tyrant's Embrace shifted as though breathing with her, polished like midnight glass, etched with subtle, crawling runes that pulsed softly with each of her heartbeats. She had dismissed her guards. Closed the doors. Lowered the lights. In the silence, only the low hum of repulsorlift panels and distant ventilation could be heard—like a whisper of something alive beneath the walls.

Her fingers traced lazy circles across a control panel, but her attention was elsewhere. She could feel the girl approaching. The Force always murmured before she did—a flicker of pain and ambition, laced with defiance. Miasmær was not strong enough yet to hide from her. Not here. Not in her domain. Serina's lips curled faintly, a slow, amused smirk that hinted at something more than challenge. She wanted to see if the girl would sweat. Would strain. Would break. Not to hurt her—no. To reveal her.

Virelia adjusted her posture slowly, sensually, letting the cape drape from one shoulder like silk blood. She imagined Miasmær watching her from the doorway, trying not to be caught looking. That flicker of hesitation—desire wrapped in discipline—was a flavor Serina knew intimately. She had coaxed it from stronger wills than this one. But Miasmær was hers now. And this lesson was not about survival. It was about submission to the truth. Power was not in what you knew. It was in what you did with what was inside you. And Virelia intended to draw it out of her like poison from a wound.

She didn't look up when the door hissed open. She didn't need to. The air changed. The pressure shifted. Her voice cut through the silence like perfume and blade.

"Welcome, apprentice."

 

[Miasmær]

Miasmær strode through the halls of her mistress' sanctuary, portraying a confidence she had come to master in the previous days. Things had moved so quickly in recent weeks, all of it culminating in her assault on the Loovrian slave pits and the freeing of several hundred of the slaves, most of whom Miasmær had brought off world with her. They had never made it to the sanctuary, instead occupying a once-abandoned mining facility in the asteroid belt of Polis Massa which Miasmær had made functional again by diverting some of her mistress' more skilled servants attention to the facility. While it may have been permitted, for the time, Miasmær still expected to be chastized for her actions and so it was with a set jaw she strode towards her meeting with Serina.

Passing through the dimly lit halls those servants who had come to recognize her bowed in reverence before returning to their tasks, and those who didn't were quickly dragged down to avoid their mistress' wrath. It wasn't Miasmær they feared, it was only the authority bestowed upon her they had any reverence for and that simple fact churned at the embers of rage in Miasmær's core. They should fear her not grovel because doing so would upset another.

She would hesitate at the entrance, trying to take a deep breath to master her emotions before she would break out into a small coughing fit. She was ill. She had come to recognize that now and already had consulted the on-site physicians for necessary treatment and yet she did not get better. Miasmær would compose herself, taking a second to subdue the self-loathing at being so unable to control oneself as to show signs of weakness in front of her mistress' servants. Then, she would enter.

The doors would hiss open revealing Serina, clad in her signature armor. Upon being greeted Miasmær would step into the room, giving a small but formal bow.

"Mistress." would be all the greeting she would offer before straightening, her voice cold but formal.

Her eyes would scan the room, trying to determine what was about to happen before settling on Serina once again. Part of her awaited judgement and sought to flee but she rejected it. What was to come was needed, it would shape her... or so she hoped.

Darth Virelia

 

[Darth Virelia]

"Feel the power of the Force."

Tags - Miasmær



The sound of that single word—Mistress—struck across the chamber like a chime of crystal dipped in poison. Virelia's head tilted ever so slightly, not in approval… not yet. Her lenses pulsed violet, soft like candlelight, cold like stars. She didn't move from where she stood on the dais. She didn't need to. Presence alone was a noose.

"So formal," she said at last, her voice rich with amusement. "You sound like you expect punishment. I wonder what for."

Her words, languid and laced with velvet contempt, carried the weight of inevitability. She let the silence hang, just long enough for it to become uncomfortable. Then she descended.

Her heels struck the floor like falling verdicts—each step unhurried, echoing with quiet power. The armor moved like liquid machinery, the folds of her cape whispering across the stone behind her. She approached slowly, deliberately, as if studying a flaw in a precious relic. When she reached Miasmær, she circled once, not touching her. Just feeling. The girl was sick. Weak. Worn. And still trying to pretend that nothing had cracked.

"Do you know," Virelia said, her voice curling close to the girl's ear, "I woke yesterday to a list of names I did not recognize. Dozens. Hundreds. Most of them half-starved, traumatized, illiterate. Runaways. All dropped in the shadow of my system with no explanation but a name: yours."

She drew in a slow breath through the vent of her helm. The scent of her apprentice's condition—unwell, stretched, unready—was not lost on her. She would not call it weakness. Not yet. But it was a risk. One she had not authorized.

"What exactly have you brought me, Miasmær?"

It was not truly a question. Her tone made that clear. It was a test. One she fully expected her apprentice to fail unless she could make her answer more valuable than her mistake.

Virelia stepped in front of her at last, close enough that the edge of her armored breastplate brushed against the girl's robes. Her voice dropped to something more intimate now, more cutting.

"Was it some sentimental little crusade? Some moment of moral clarity while I wasn't looking?" Her helm tilted ever so slightly, six violet eyes narrowing in synchrony. "Did you think that this Empire I'm building could accommodate every bleeding-heart cause you bring to its doorstep?"

And yet—

She didn't strike her. Didn't raise her voice. Instead, her tone shifted once again, softened—dangerously.

"You did something, my little ember. Something bold. Stupid, perhaps. Unforgivable, even. But I haven't decided whether I should flay you for it…"

She reached out, gloved fingers trailing almost across Miasmær's jawline, but not quite touching.

"…or reward you."

There it was. The tension. That thin line between danger and desire. Virelia thrived on it. She let the silence hang again, giving her apprentice the chance to breathe—but only just.

"You want power," Virelia continued, "but you still think like a child. Like someone trying to do good in the galaxy and merely survive its consequences. But I didn't take you in to survive."

Her voice became a murmur, like silk pulled tight.

"I took you in to make you safe."

And then, she stepped back. The moment passed. Her tone returned to something more clinical, cold and smooth.

"You will explain what happened on Loovria. Every detail. Every decision. You will give me a reason not to return your little refugees to the fires they fled from. Because I am not your sanctuary, Miasmær. I am your crucible."

A beat.

"And I do not suffer waste."

 

[Muphinz]

(wrong account -_-)

 

[Miasmær]

​

Miasmær would accept her chastisement with a set jaw and forward facing stare, refusing to surrender in the face of critique. Part of her wanted to protest, to offer vague half-thought out excuses. But instead she stood and listened. It is only when Serina finished, standing stoicly in need of a reply that Miasmær dared respond.

"I went to Loovria to fight." she would pause, realizing that that wouldn't be good enough, so she would clarify "All my life I dreamed of striking back, of doing something to hurt the people who hurt me. So I hit them where it hurt; their bottom line." she would pause again, trying to think further before deciding to tell her story in full.

"I landed on the planet discretely, then made my way to the pits underneath Strako. There I carved a bloody path until discovering a young Jedi, who I manipulated into aiding me under the pretext of freeing slaves-" There was no pretext, that was the goal "With her assistance we claimed a security room and freed the slaves, but the Jedi escaped before I could claim her. The plan was to always evacuate the slaves off-world to prevent the arenas from using them, slow down their games. Most I sent away, some I brought here."

She would pause again as if interrogating her own actions, trying to figure out why she had been so worried about them before offering further though less substantiated reasoning "They're loyal. Treat them well and they'll kill for you. You were the one that taught me love was a better way to control than fear, and now they love me. I have their unwavering loyalty. Train them to be soldiers, put them to work, what ever you decide to do with them they'll do it. There may even be a few force sensitives among the younger ones-" Nearly thirty percent of them had been younger, orphans who had no where else to go and who didn't know what to do. It seemed only natural, at the time, to guide them to safety.

Miasmær would lift her chin a little, refusing to admit she had done any wrong "This is the way of the Sith? Is it not? Is it not in our nature to struggle amongst one another, to take what one is too weak to keep? I took what I was strong enough to claim."

She was grasping at straws now and she knew it. Three different explanations; hurt her enemies, provide a service to her master, prove her strength. None of them were necessarily false, and neither were they contradictory. But these were rationalizations of someone who had time to think on their past actions. Miasmær refused to admit she had simply been angry, had simply wanted revenge. And when she was ready to leave it was the adorations of the lost and scarred that had swayed her to protect them.

Finally she would add her final statement, this one more of an admission of guilt than anything else "I apologize for the inconvenience. It was not my desire to put you in a difficult position."

Darth Virelia