Private The Bright and The Broken

[Aymeric Prendergast]

THE BRIGHT AND THE BROKEN
Ghost of the Core’s Past - Chapter 1

EXCAVATOR​

NIRAUAN

The air in the Inquisitorius chambers on Nirauan was recycled and cold, tasting of sterile metal and the low hum of high-security containment fields. It was an environment that mirrored the architecture of the Fourth Brother's own mind; hollowed out, efficient, and devoid of the clutter of his previous life.

He stood before a flickering hololith, his yellowish-red eyes fixed on the data streams. A ship had just exited hyperspace, tripping the high-sensitivity sensors of the Inquisitorius. It wasn't a scavenger or a merchant; the signature was distinct, a relic of a splintered past. An asset from Barran’s splinter cell. A week late for a Conclave that had already decided the future. In the Inquisitorius, tardiness was not a mistake; it was a threat.

The walk from the HQ to the spaceport was short and quiet. Aymeric preferred the transit through the fortress's shadow-drenched corridors, his boots making no sound against the polished floor. Every time he passed a window and felt the biting wind of Nirauan through the structural seals, the scars at the base of his skull gave a familiar, rhythmic throb. Daedalus Tarkin was watching. Not physically, perhaps, but the ghost of his labs was always present, a silent overseer ensuring the tool remained sharp.

By the time he reached the landing bay, the ship was already beginning its final approach. The roar of the sublight engines echoed off the high durasteel walls, a defiant sound in the oppressive silence of the Initiative's stronghold.

Aymeric stepped out onto the gantry as the landing struts hissed against the pad. He didn't ignite his blade. He didn't call for the purge troopers. He simply stood at the base of the ramp, a silhouette of sharp angles and black synth-weave against the swirling Nirauan mist.

He reached out, not with the warmth of the Force he once knew, but with the cold, grasping senses of an Inquisitor. He felt the presence inside the ship; a light-leaning resonance that felt like an itch against his sensitized nerves. It was a familiar flavor of righteousness, the kind that usually broke so beautifully under pressure.

Like he did, under the brutal palm of Tarkin.

As the ramp began to descend, Aymeric tilted his head. He allowed his yellow gaze to lock onto the opening, his presence expanding to fill the hangar with a suffocating, clinical weight. He wasn't there to welcome a guest or to parley with an ally. He was there to intercept a threat that had arrived too late to matter and too early to escape.

Silthe Aerin
cc: Valyra Keth | Odessa Caeli | The Agarian | The Madclaw​

 

[Silthe Aerin]

RIGHT PLACE WRONG TIME
NIRAUAN

Being late wasn't a habit. Being a week late, when she was expected and invited, no less, certainly wasn't, either, but the galaxy often had its own ideas. So she had come to learn.

After the Lightsworn dispersed a few months before, it'd put her in a foul mood for a time, and not because of that. What did she expect? After the eons of ineffectual conflict she'd been made to learn of, she knew better, had been taught better, had it ingrained and trained into her to know and be better, but it was complicated. Tied up in family.

Fast forward to now, and the young Aerin was coming in after extracting herself from the onset of Sith-on-Sith conflict in the Core, where until that point she'd been acting the pest where and when she could. She'd never set out to be a vigilante, but it'd been a sight better than swallowing her feelings and going back to nothing, with the deaths she was informed of in her absence the only thing remaining to greet her, back home. Those feelings she did swallow, did push down. Peering at the invitation that'd somehow found her raised her suspicion and her misgivings in tandem. But as she fled what was intent on devouring everything and anyone that didn't go their way, the clarity of her situation became stark.

There were no other options. Imperial was what she was, who she would always be, even if she was late. The landing struts of the now-battered vessel hissed in a clean landing; she may have left in a hurry, but she didn't need to come in at the same chaotic clip. Sil sunk back into the pilot's seat after powering down, and blew out a breath, only to tense in the next second, her thoughts spiking in alert as as a cold touch whispered against her awareness.

[ What th'feck was tha? ]

It didn't feel like what she'd just fled from. If anything, the frigid quality only reminded her of the last person she wanted to talk to. Sil frowned faintly, unbuckled herself, and rose just enough to peer around the edge of the forward viewport, only to slam right back into her seat soon as she saw it.

[ Tha' isn't... what the actual... ]

On the one hand she was relieved, but on the other hand... was that a Sith? Had she been followed all the way here? Her mouth became a line in the next moment, when she grasped the reality of it well: there was no way but out. She'd seen enough in the Core to know she could end up crushed in here. That was motivating enough.

Craning around the edge of the pilot's chair, she flicked the ramp controls then stood and hugged the bulkhead as she paced slowly towards the descending ramp, her hand hovering by the hilt clipped to her side. She peered around the edge of the opening... only to be whacked with an exacting, suffocating presence. Sil stumbled back and away from the opening, but it did little to change anything, and after a further moment of trying to will her way past it, she became frustrated. Sil settled against the bulkhead, just inside of the edge of the opening as the ramp finished its descent.

She was no chicken... and this felt awful. Sil cleared her throat and raised her voice.

"If. you. want. me. to. come. out," enunciating in the way she'd been firmly schooled to, in her mother's inflection... that it came out severely clipped was an effect of the pressure, "this. isn't. the. way. to. go. about. it."

A beat.

"You. could. ask. you. know."

Aymeric Prendergast​

 

[Aymeric Prendergast]

THE BRIGHT AND THE BROKEN
Ghost of the Core’s Past - Chapter 1

EXCAVATOR​

NIRAUAN

The proper inflection of her voice; clipped, rhythmic, and steeped in Imperial heritage, no longer held weight on Nirauan. Aymeric didn't answer her immediately. He sharply watched the edge of the bulkhead where she stood, his yellowish-red eyes tracking the slight tremor in the Force that betrayed her location.

He didn't need to hear her thoughts to sense the scent of frustration and the sharp, metallic tang of fear she was trying to suppress. It was a familiar resonance; the sound of a spirit trying to bolster itself against a weight it wasn't prepared to carry.

Suddenly, Aymeric pulled back.

The suffocating pressure he had been projecting vanished instantly, replaced by a vacuum of sensation that was arguably more unnerving. He stood perfectly still, his arms hanging loosely at his sides, his presence retracting until he was nothing more than a dark, quiet hole in the world.

"Manners are the crutches of the indecisive," Aymeric rasped, his voice a dry friction against the humming vents.

He took a single, deliberate step back from the base of the ramp, creating a hollow pocket of space. He was aware of the surveillance droids hovering in the rafters and the distant, prying eyes of the spaceport technicians. A public execution or a forced extraction would be a political stain Tarkin did not currently desire. The Inquisitorius were the hidden blade, not the blunt hammer.

"You have brought a battered ship and a shattered reputation to a fortress under high alert," he continued, his yellow gaze never wavering from the opening of the ship. "If you truly wish to be asked for your cooperation, then consider this: your ship's signature is already flagged for decommissioning."

He gestured vaguely toward the dark, sleek transport waiting in the shadows of the landing bay; a vehicle with tinted viewports and no Imperial markings.

"There is a secure location prepared for your processing. A place where we can discuss why you were in the Core and why you've chosen to emerge now." His head tilted slightly, a predatory bird watching a cornered mouse. "Step down the ramp, walk with me as a guest Director Tarkin. Or wait here until the port authority decides your ship is salvage."

Silthe Aerin
​

 

[Silthe Aerin]

RIGHT PLACE WRONG TIME
NIRAUAN

When the pressure fled, Silya felt a scant flicker of relief, but that was quickly disturbed by nothing she had ever felt before; the sudden deprivation felt more disorienting than outright unnerving, yet it nonetheless brought forth a choice selection of words that never made it past her lips, when she thought better of it as that lack of sensation also began to recede.

"Manners are the crutches of the indecisive," Aymeric rasped, his voice a dry friction against the humming vents.

That was a line the half-Echani never heard before, and it pulled her narrow, judging, light slate gaze around the edge of the opening at the moment he took a step back from the ramp. She gave the... whatever he was a cursory once-over, and stepped out to stand fully at the top of the ramp while she did, folding her arms over her chest while he started to expound on the situation she was in. The very reason for his response to her mere presence.

No, the purpose of manners would be a pointless debate with this heathen, and when there was a pause, she gave him a flat look: tell me something I don't know. The vessel was old as it was, all the heads of the Protectorate were, as far as she was aware, dead. Being out in the galaxy had contextualised for her how much of what she had left behind was futile. Ineffectual. Pointless.

That too had made her angry.

Sil followed the arc of his arm to where the unmarked transport sat waiting, listening to the... not-Sith? lay out what was to happen, and the particular words used; they suggested to her more than what was to come, but that supposition of something that was familiar still felt off. He sounded ISB, dark and unmarked transports with tinted windows tended to scream it, but he did not look the part. Enough of the details didn't add up to that conclusion. It was, however, enough to not make her question how he knew where she'd been.

"Step down the ramp, walk with me as a guest Director Tarkin. Or wait here until the port authority decides your ship is salvage."

Her attention tracked back to those unwavering eyes, that seemed as if they could nail her feet to where she stood. Then she unfolded her arms and walked down the ramp, continuing to observe the Yellow-Eyed-Not-A-Sith with no small measure of suspicion.

"What are you?" Not who — what, like he was some thing — once she reached the bottom of the ramp and stepped off of it. Ceasing any further progress once she did, turning to the darkling, now having to look up at him with her hands planted on her hips.

Testy... or defiant?

"You're not ISB."

Aymeric Prendergast​

 

[Aymeric Prendergast]

THE BRIGHT AND THE BROKEN
Ghost of the Core’s Past - Chapter 1

EXCAVATOR​

NIRAUAN

Aymeric's jaw tightened, a sharp contraction of muscle that was the only outward sign of the irritation prickling beneath his skin. To be questioned as a what by a Knight whose ship smelled of scorched wiring and failure, the way she sees him, like he is some kind of disgusting creature, was a stain he would usually have scoured away with a flick of his wrist.

He didn't move as she planted her hands on her hips. Her posture was one of defiance, one adopted by a brat who was raised by a weak man, sheltered away from the pain and struggles of the world. It felt remarkably small against the cold, monolithic backdrop of the fortress-world. His sulfurous eyes tracked her movements with the clinical focus of a predator watching a wounded bird puff out its feathers.

"The ISB deals in ledgers and whispers," Aymeric rasped, his voice like dry stone grinding on bone. "They are the accountants of the Empire. I am the silence that follows the audit."

He took a half-step toward her, not to threaten, but to loom. The scars at the base of his skull gave a sharp, warning throb; a phantom reminder that Tarkin would not appreciate a spectacle on the landing pad, but he would appreciate a tool that allowed itself to be mocked by a stray asset even less.

"You ask what I am because you are looking for a category that does not exist in your limited understanding of the world. You seek a title to make me less... uncomfortable. To provide a name for the weight you feel in your chest."

He gestured again toward the waiting transport, his fingers curling slightly as if he were already imagining the magnetic seals of a processing room locking into place behind her.

"But titles are crutches for the insecure. You will find that I am exactly what is required to ensure the shattered reputation you brought here doesn't become a terminal liability for the Initiative. Now, move. My patience is not as refined as my master's, and the wind on Nirauan is far less forgiving than I am."

He turned slightly, not quite giving her his back, but clearly indicating the path toward the darkened vehicle. He expected her to follow; in his world, the alternative was simply a slower, more painful form of obedience.

Silthe Aerin
​

 

[Silthe Aerin]

RIGHT PLACE WRONG TIME
NIRAUAN

"The ISB deals in ledgers and whispers," Aymeric rasped, his voice like dry stone grinding on bone. "They are the accountants of the Empire. I am the silence that follows the audit."

When the nameless stepped that little bit closer, Aerin didn't budge a centimetre but for her chin to lift by a small margin. One way or another, it was only polite to look at someone when they were speaking to you. It was all she could do to not summon an unseemly scowl to her face, when he wound his way towards dropping another of his twisted views of the world.

She swallowed, not because this unsettled her, no... because was irksome. Because it started to put thoughts in her head that weren't for now. It was only natural to want a label of some sort, or a name, but his reticence meant she'd have to come up with her own names for whatever was standing in front of her; her eyes narrowed at an oncoming thought.

Maybe he had no name... maybe he was a nobody.

She didn't look in the same direction as the gesture when he once again indicated the transport — It wasn't as if it'd vanish if she wasn't looking at it — but that was because he was still. talking. and she was therefore still looking at him. Sith certainly didn't corner the market on monologues.

​

When he turned, another half-moment saw Silthe's arms drop as she blew out a terse breath, turned... and started walking right past him.

"You will find I don't take orders from nobodies."

This was going to be a long ride.

Aymeric Prendergast​

 

[Aymeric Prendergast]

THE BRIGHT AND THE BROKEN
Ghost of the Core’s Past - Chapter 1

EXCAVATOR​

NIRAUAN, WEEKS LATER

The sky over Nirauan was no longer a bruised purple, but a canvas of orange fire and black smoke. The retaliatory strike following the Bastion assault had turned the Hand of Thrawn from a cold sanctuary into a pyre.

Aymeric stood amidst the rubble of a secondary spire, the air thick with the scent of superheated durasteel and the metallic tang of blood. Around him, the new, promising Empire was unraveling in real time. He could feel it in the Force: a chaotic, frantic vibration of dying loyalties and panicked retreats. This Empire was a ghost clinging to a corpse. It was too soft, too distracted by its own internal rot to withstand a true storm.

Through the haze of a collapsing bulkhead, he saw her.

Silya.

She was framed by the flickering glare of an atmospheric fire, her silhouette a stark contrast to the crumbling Imperial architecture. Aymeric stopped, his black robes snapped in the wind created by a passing TIE fighter's death-spiral. For a long, suspended moment, the screams and the roar of bombardment faded into a dull hum, replaced by the sudden, sharp memory of their last encounter.

It flashed through his mind like a corrupted data-file, the interior of the unmarked transport weeks ago.

The ride back to the Inquisitorius HQ had been anything but smooth. The vehicle had been a sensory deprivation tank on repulsors. He remembered the way she had sat across from him, her slate-colored eyes contrasting his venomous yellows. The air had been heavy with the hum of the engine and the suffocating pressure of his presence.

"What are you?" she had asked at the ramp, and that question had hung between them throughout the transit, unanswered and abrasive.

Back in the present, the orange glare of Nirauan's destruction reflected in his yellowish-red eyes. He locked onto her gaze across the field of ruin.

The memory of the transport felt like a relic from a different age. The certainties of the Inquisitorius are now burning with the spire. The neuro-scars at the base of his skull throbbing; a phantom command from a master who was currently failing to hold his own empire together.

He could feel his whole world crumbling, so he clings to the only thing he could at that very moment. His gaze burned daggers at her, his presence in the Force feeling less like a shadow and more like a void.

For the first time since the labs, he felt the weight of being a tool without a hand to wield it.

He didn't know where the galaxy was going, or who would rise from these ashes. He only knew that the Fourth Brother was a title for a world that no longer existed.

Silthe Aerin
​

 

[Silthe Aerin]

THE BRIGHT AND THE BROKEN
Driving Home the Lesson​

In the midst of the pyre of rubble and smoke, Silthe Aerin found clarity. Clarity, and an understanding two years in coming, as expectation failed her once again: her mother had the right of it. Though she could no more resist the call of Empire than any Knight tied so long to their oaths, Siyndacha had been right to leave the remnant she had raised her daughter in, and her daughter, behind.

The same oaths that tore at the daughter, now, wound up in the fact that she had allowed herself to begin to believe. The lull of camaraderie among her own kind made the pill, so to speak, easier to swallow… but this was no resurrection. It was a reanimation, a necrotic summoning of the dead.

Thoughts that became background, as she looked out across the haze, and found yellow-red eyes staring back. The same pair that were her introduction to this now-crumbling Empire, the processing she could scarcely put out of her thoughts, afterwards, and the want that lived in the back of her mind, since; want that caused her fingers to curl in tightly from time to time, making her knuckles whiter from the pressure.

Sil’s eyes narrowed in bleak distrust at the sight of him, blacker than the smoke; protocol made her refrain these long weeks, but now? Now it would be foolish to even consider it. Then her head turned to flick a glance in the haphazard direction that would take her to the ship she’d been given. A ship she knew would still be there, coded as it was to her imprint. Intent to leave this corpse behind swelled in her.

She turned her slate gaze back to the Inquisitor, and canted her head curiously. Why was he still here? Why was he still there, tossing cold daggers at her? Where was his master now?

Aerin turned heel and began to pick her way towards the garage. What did it matter? Those so-called comrades had abandoned this place, and her, but only so many steps in, she stopped, blew out a terse sigh, then turned and looked back at him. She couldn't simply turn away — it was wrong. Codes, oaths she had always known... she had no-one and nothing to pin that loyalty to but her own honour, now.

"Come along, or stay and rot, Darkling," she called, projecting her voice across the field, "your call."

Then she turned away again and kept moving, picking up the pace as she went.

Aymeric Prendergast​

 

[Aymeric Prendergast]

THE BRIGHT AND THE BROKEN
Ghost of the Core’s Past - Chapter 1

EXCAVATOR​

NIRAUAN

The word Darkling hit him like a physical blow; a sharp, informal insult that stood in jarring contrast to the cold designations of the Inquisitorius. For a moment, Aymeric simply stood there, the ash of Nirauan coating his black robes until he looked like a statue of soot.

The neuro-scars at the base of his skull were screaming; a high-pitched, electric frequency of a master whose signal had been cut. In the absence of Tarkin's specific, cold direction, the Fourth Brother persona was glitching, the internal architecture of his mind groaning under the weight of the falling spire.

He looked at the garage where Silya was headed, then back at the burning Hand of Thrawn. The Inquisitorius was a purpose that had turned into a nightmare. There was no one left to report to. No one left to impress.

He began to move.

It wasn't the predatory glide of the landing pad or the calculated prowl of the mission. It was a stumbling, heavy gait, his boots crunching over the glassed remains of a culture he had been forced to protect. He felt the vacuum in the Force where Tarkin's will used to be, and in that void, Silya's honor; as naive and misplaced as it was, became the only fixed point in the chaotic uncertainty.

He caught up to her as she picked her way through the debris, his presence a cold, shadow trailing in her wake. He stayed a few paces behind, his breath coming in shallow, ragged hitches.

"Rots, all of them," Aymeric rasped, his voice cracking under the weight of the smoke. He kept his yellow eyes fixed on the path ahead, his mind struggling to process a reality where he wasn't being told what to kill.

"Where?" He asked at her as they moved, a flicker of his former venom returning to his gaze, though it was tempered by a rare, raw disorientation.

He followed her into the gloom of the garage, his hand resting instinctively on the hilt of his blade. It was not done out of aggression toward her, but out of a primal need to hold onto the only tool that still made sense in a galaxy that had just turned upside down.

Silthe Aerin
​

 

[Silthe Aerin]

THE BRIGHT AND THE BROKEN​

The feel of him tailing her for the second time in so many weeks was something that might’ve provoked her ire if she hadn’t invited this very thing to happen. The sound of his breathing and the yellow of his eyes, however, painted a picture that made her disinclined to look back again. As it was, she had to focus on where she was going.

"Rots, all of them."

Aerin was keeping a steady pace, weaving around and over debris, though the smoke irritated her throat and nose and caused her to breathe the occasional cough. When he finally spoke, she didn't immediately respond, though she thought much the same. Experience told her he'd have more to say, but when a few breaths passed in silence, Sil decided to answer.

"That's one way to put it."

Uttered words. Now wasn't the time to indulge further in the thoughts it brought on. She didn't know what she might do if she saw any of the other knights again. They were all so much quicker to leave.

"Where?"

She hadn't gotten that far. "Anywhere but here," Sil answered as they reached the garage and she started making a bee-line for her ship in the otherwise bare space, "our first priority is to leave the system."

Doubtless there would be need to evade whatever might be camped out, above. She had some few ideas of where she might go, though... "I'll need to consult the holomap before we depart." Short of being given orders, the lines drawn on her ship's map were the next best path, and would be in accordance with whatever the last intelligence update was prior to the attack, current to her return from her last mission. Only so much could have changed in a matter of days.

When they reached her ship, a sleek thing that could carry a team and enough consumables for a couple of months, Sil almost went right ahead and engaged the side-door, but her fingers curled just shy of pressing her hand to it. Letting someone into the confines of her ship that she didn't know and much less trust was a crazy thing to do. And she was going to do it.

But.

"If you..." her hovering hand lifted and the crook of that elbow went to stifle a sneeze; she then turned just enough to look over her shoulder at the inquisitor, "...unless you prefer I continue grasping for epithets, you'll tell me your name."

Surely even a thing had a name.

Aymeric Prendergast​

 

[Aymeric Prendergast]

THE BRIGHT AND THE BROKEN
Ghost of the Core’s Past - Chapter 1

LET DOWN​

NIRAUAN

The demand was a simple one, but in the hollowed-out wreckage of Aymeric's mind, it hit with the force of an orbital bombardment.

He stopped at the foot of the ship's ramp, his black-clad frame trembling with a fine, rhythmic shudder that had nothing to do with the cold. The neuro-scars at the base of his skull seemed to hiss in the silence. For years, he had been the Fourth Brother. A number. A tool. A weapon in a sheath of black synth-weave.

But with the Hand of Thrawn burning and the Master silent, the sheath was peeling away, and the raw, unhealed nerves underneath were exposed to the air.

Tell me your name.

His name felt like a stone in his mouth; heavy and foreign. It was a sound he hadn't let himself think of since the labs, because to remember the name was to remember the boy who owned it.

He saw her face again; not Silya's, but his mother's. He remembered the smell of the Coruscant undercity: grease, sour, and the acidic scent of poverty. She was the only thing that had ever been warm in that world of shadow. She had whispered his name like a prayer, a shield against the darkness of the lower levels, until the day the darkness took her. He could still feel the phantom weight of the blade in his hand, the horrific necessity of striking down the woman who gave him life to save her from the spirits that had claimed her body.

Then came the second voice; clearer, sharper, and even more painful.

He remembered the suffocating dark of Woostri. He had been holed up in a crumbling sub-level, the walls closing in as the Inquisitorius circled. He had clutched a communicator like a lifeline, hearing her voice through the static.

I'm coming for you, Aymeric. Stay in the light. I promise, I will find you.

He had believed her. He had clung to that name; his name, as if it were a beacon. But the light had gone out. The rescue never came. The Jedi Shadow had been left in the dark until the Inquisitorius found him, and by the time Tarkin was done, the boy who waited was dead.

Aymeric looked up at Silya, his yellow eyes wet with an involuntary sheen that looked more like blood than tears. The Inquisitor was gone; there was only a man standing in the ruins of two lives, holding onto a hilt because he didn't know anymore how to hold a hand.

"Aymeric," he whispered, the name cracking and breaking in the smoky air. It wasn't an introduction, but a confession.

"My name... was Aymeric."

He looked at the ship, then back at her, his expression twisting into a mask of raw, agonizing disorientation. The void in the Force where his purpose used to be was suddenly filled with the ghosts of the people who had loved a man who no longer existed.

He took a stumbling step toward the ramp, his hand finally dropping from his hilt to catch the side of the ship for support. "There is only... what is left. And what is left has no home to go to."

He didn't look at her then. He couldn't. He just stared into the dark interior of her ship, waiting to see if she would still let a ghost on board.

Silthe Aerin
​