Private The Apparition (Lunaria)

[Darth Carnifex]

The shadow of the war galleon cast a stark gloom over the Jutrand Academy, the massive, bloated warship passing lazily over the heart of the world-city. Weapon emplacements bristled along it's hull, each one carrying enough payload to level an entire city. Fortunately for those below it, the galleon was departing for the front lines. It had risen up from the subterranean dockyards beneath the city, released via massive coreways interspersed within the city sprawl. Deep below the surface, thousands of kilometers of construction yards and assembly plants worked ceaselessly day and night to bolster the Empire's far-flung legions.

Most of the academy students had departed, sent away on assignment or retiring to their domiciles as the day's instruction drew to a close. Very few students mingled on the campus after hours, and the staff often kept their distance from those that did. There were none who could become aware of He who now stalked the halls, moving past chamber after chamber like a roving phantom. His hood was drawn over His face, obscuring it even from the cameras which monitored the academy, all of which began to malfunction one after the other as He passed.

She exercised in one of the training yards, flipping and spiraling through the air in a graceful display of acrobatics. Her entire body was attuned to her mind, and even her unconscious thought. It often responded before her own brain could send the signal, lending an otherworldly ethereal quality to her movements. He watched her for some time, a dark stranger at the periphery. It was only when she caught sight of Him, when He allowed her to catch sight of Him, did He finally draw back the wide hood.

"You've gotten better."

Though the words were praising, the voice that spoke them was like a collapsing star. She felt the words more than she heard them, a droning pressure pushing against mind. But it was not uncomfortable. It was welcome, embraced even. She'd known this voice since she was a small child, and it offered her only comfort.

For Darth Carnifex had again come to see her after a long absence.

Her Haru.

Lunaria Talon ​

 

[Lunaria Talon]

Location: Jutrand Academy [Training Yard]
Tag: Darth Carnifex [Haru]

Artemis Dreadmoor stood still in the center of the training yard, breath soft but steady from exertion. The echo of her final landing had barely faded when she became aware that the darkness overhead was not cloud cover but the movement of a war galleon passing slowly overhead. She might have looked up sooner, but she had to finish her set. Poor weather was not an acceptable reason not to practice until her feet ached and her hands bled from beneath their bindings. She had to beat her current time. Luna...Luna was good. But, she always needed to be better.​

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Better than everyone. Better than...Even Sol. Things came so easily to her brother.​

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Or so it seemed. ​

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There was a subtle pressure behind her eyes that began to feel all too familiar. Eyes of shining silver dollars fixated on the treeline, peering into the shadows, not because she knew who waited, but because she knew something had shifted. The air bent not from the Force but by sheer presence. Lunaria had only known two people capable of breathing power without intent, simply, because it was what they were. Her mother...​

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Her mother and—​

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When Darth Carnifex spoke, the rest of the world ceased to matter. His voice. the voice of her Haru, reverberated through her soul like a song heard in a forgotten dream. It stirred memories of blood and stars, of ash and lullabies, of learning and a life that she yearned to return to in the orbit of Cularin. The simplicity of it. The Jutrand Academy of fraught with tests and terrors. It was a wonder that the young woman still drew breath. In all that time, however, this titan of a man, had been silent. She did not flinch from him.​

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Instead, she straightened, brushing a silver braid back behind one ear. Her gun-metal blue eyes met his—the ones that could never be fully hidden beneath any hood. And then, she smiled. It was not full of joy. It was not morose...But it carried a sense of finality that he would not recognize.​

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"Of course I have...You left me no choice, Haru." ​

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Lunaria had long ago figured out that some of their "tests" and assassination attempts didn't come from their school instructors. There were a few that happened just because of rankings, and others because she was Echani, and rumors said she lived for a fight. But, the moments that had created real fear? Immediate danger? It wasn't part of the curriculum. ​

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It had been so long.​

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She would seem different to him. Luna had been smaller, years ago, lithe and wiry. More of a sparrow than a hawk. The snow-haired youth had grown enough that she might have been a few inches taller than her mother. Her form was elongated and elegant, shaped by countless hours of acrobatics, combat forms, and meditative discipline. There was no softness exhibited in her silhouette—Only precision and control. Her hair had also grown much longer, now falling to her waist in endless platinum strands. braided and knotted in ways that mirrored Echani tradition. At eighteen years of age, however, it was her eyes that had changed the most. They had grown sharp.​

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Unlike her younger self...She did not immediately seek his approval. They were measured. Calculating. Lunaria had inherited the quiet of her upbringing, but now, she wielded it like a weapon versus hiding beneath a shield. Silence had become a statement. Not submission.​

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She was no longer his little ghost, hiding behind him. She couldn't be.​

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Soft footsteps brought her toward the robed man, easily and without fear. Haru had taught them a great many things...But never to fear him. Not directly, anyway. He was even taller than she remembered. Her movements were graceful, no longer girlish, but with his presence saturating the area, it almost made her feel small again. It was surprisingly nice. "We waited for you." ​

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"I...I waited for you." ​

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The airy footsteps brought her into him, and thin arms wrapped around him. Possessive. As always. She only had so many people in her life who could be trusted outside of Soldane. She could count them on one hand...And it made her existence, occasionally, a very lonely place. Her cheek rest quietly against him, and she simply stayed that way. There were no tears. No accusations. Just...This one moment. A bubble in time where every other hour of her day was a storm. Just because she was an adult now didn't mean that things had changed in his absence.​

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Lunaria would always love her Haru.​

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She was angry with him as well, deep down, but she settled on the fact that two things could be true at the same time. Love and hate.​

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"Why...Why have you come? Why here? Why now?" ​

 

[Darth Carnifex]

"I know you did."

She had changed much since they last met. The girl that He had trained was still there, a kernel at the heart of who she'd become in His absence. He could see it within her, that devotion now tempered by the harsh realities of Jutrand. In truth, He had left both her and her brother to the cruelty of the academy, orchestrated plots against them to strengthen their resolve and sharpen their skills. But it was necessary, and the truth of it's success was staring right back at Him.

Her arms wrapped around His waist, face pressed into the soft silk of His tunic. His own hands found her and held her close to Him, comforting as from a parent to a child. Though they were not bound by blood, He had in a way adopted them as part of His own family. He fell down to one knee, leveling the field between them so she could adequately look Him in the eye. Even though years had matured Lunaria, He never seemed to change at all; a constant fixture.

"You've both exceeded our expectations of you, ilvezhmin." His hand found the gentle slope of her cheek and affectionately held it, drawing her gaze towards Him. Though His eyes radiated darkness, Lunaria would find comfort in them; welcoming her into their dark embrace. He had always been her pillar, alongside her mother, and His absence had been keenly felt. Perhaps He had stayed away too long.

"The time draws near when the both of you will leave this place, and continue on your journey. I will endeavor to be there by your side for as long and often as I can. I hope you can forgive me for these past years."

Lunaria Talon ​

 

[Lunaria Talon]

Location: Jutrand Academy [Training Yard]
Tag: Darth Carnifex [Haru]

Ilvezhmin…My little moon. ​

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Haru remembered. Even after so many years…He remembered. Did he really know? Lunaria didn't speak right away, while an unfamiliar tightness in her throat made it feel too small to talk. Eyes of silver dollars searched that of the Butcher King as he knelt before her, and although her hand did not move from his tunic, her grasp slackened ever so slightly. It was not a word that she had heard in half a decade or perhaps a little longer and yet it rang in her head as if it had been yesterday.​

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It was a name once whispered in the dark to soothe a youngling who couldn't understand why her life, why her family, was so different than what she saw on the HoloNet. Lunaria had intuitively always known that she and her twin were not like the others. Not like anyone, regardless, of their physical similarities to Echani kin across the galaxy. They both had a star inside.​

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Not the pretty, twinkling lights, that filled a velvet sky…It was the opposite. It was up close, personal, and blazed with a fire so cold it burned. The moniker still meant something to her, something she deeply suspected, Haru also knew. It quieted the storm in her chest and her cheek sank into his hand as if it were second nature. Most would find this King of Kings horrifying. They would shake in his presence and fall to their knees because his mere presence would bend their spines without trying.​

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Luna knew it differently. He was…Haru. He was safety, even, if he acted against her. He was home.​

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"I want to forgive you…But I also want to be cross with you.", she offered softly, a little distant because those weren't the only emotions she held at bay. Uncharacteristically, she also wanted to hurt him. To make him understand the void that his absence had caused in her existence but at the same time…She couldn't bear it. Her hand lifted from his tunic and she reached to toy with the ends of ebony hair.​

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He looked the same. He even smelled the same.​

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"You missed everything, Haru. You missed my first kill."​

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The edges of her voice, melodic and refined, offered a voice like glass that had been smoothed to perfection by years of erosion. She spoke with the diction of a diplomat but the certainty, the clarity, of a little royal. "The first real one. Not a simulation…The instructors pretended that it was a test, but I know it wasn't. The body stayed there for hours before someone moved it. They wanted to see how we might react…"​

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A pause. Mercurial eyes flickered toward the umbral, fire-filled eyes of the King, and her lips formed an indistinctly sweet smile. It was refined. Saddened…But solidified with merciless resolve. It was vaguely disturbing to see one so young express so much while doing so little. "I didn't flinch."​

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He might have been proud. Luna regretted that opportunity to prove herself to Haru. It was a duel that had left her bloody and broken but the sheer fact that she had won made it all worth it. It had been a fight to the death, no way out, no pulling punches. "I was hurt for days…Sol and I…We decided not to tell anyone. Not you. Not Naneth. We decided that we didn't need saving."​

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Her jaw clenched and her cheek moved just a little while her free hand moved to catch the back of his to hold it closer. As if she couldn't be sure he wasn't a hallucination. A trick of the twilight, while she softly, gently confessed the sins of her youth. "You missed my sixteenth birthday. I spent it getting beaten into the ground by one of the higher cohorts because I passed them. It wasn't fair. But…Naneth said, fights are never fair. They…Had an accident. I made it fair."​

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The tutors had grilled her for hours and even sent her to the Sepulchral for interrogation to discover how one apprentice could cause that much destruction. More than that, how an entire cohort could have been removed from the face of Jutrand without so much as a single scream. Not a peep, not a sound. "I stopped waiting for you after that…We teased when I was small that I was your ghost…But I had to become a ghost without you. I had to survive here, without you. No more training sessions with you and Nana. No more stories of faraway places. No more…"​

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Her voice trailed off, but it would be apparent where her mind had gone. She breathed in deeply before her shoulders sagged a little when she exhaled. "I'm not angry anymore."​

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"I just wish…I still didn't hope you'd come. Every day. That's the part…"​

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That was the part she felt foolish for. The part that hurt. He was still taller than she was when he kneeled, and he dwarfed her. Lunaria nodded her head slowly and when her eyes opened once more, he would see much of her mother in her. Eyes that were beautiful, perfect, but with a confident edge that could be…So cruel. It was cutting in a way that had no name. "I will always be your Ilvezh'lin, Haru."​

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"But…Don't ask for forgiveness as if time were a thread to be stitched back together. If you want to be at my side….Walk with me. Be with me. Don't disappear again."​