Faction The Return | Sith Order

[Darth Malum of House Marr]

Gloved hands were balm to the iciness of the transparisteel in front of him. Beyond it, stars whirled past him, as if they were blasterbolts that somehow, in their multitude, were unable to penetrate his vessel's shields. A swirling mass of blue, black, and white that pulled them ever forward, toward a destination that filled him with as much gaiety as dread. Yet, it was apprehension, apprehension that most of all filled his form. That sensation that made his knees weak, that made his stomach twist and turn, that made him gaze ever forlornly forward in both a desire to be the first to see his home...

...But too, so he could avoid it for as long as possible.

He had many regrets in his short term of life, regrets that he had imagined would never be topped.

His other hand gripped tightly around leathered gloves, the material taut and rigid upon a hand that felt heavy, upon an arm that threatened to snap and be torn out of the socket. Ophidia... Elsie... Revna... Strosius... Kara... the names of his regrets, of his failures, haunted him ever still. Within the black confines of his mind, it was easy enough to imagine some of their ghostly spectres reaching out to him.

Beckoning him into the shadows from which he would never emerge.

Some of them were not dead, some... as far as he had been told, were doing rather well for themselves; the question lingered on the back of his mind if it had been he that had held them back. Yet, regardless, his actions in failing them... in leaving them to the clutches of the enemy, in killing them even, to bring them back.

In... calling out for them, and they not answering his call.

He knew, after this, one way or the other.

One specific haunting would be done away with.

Red eyes broke their gaze through the viewports, turning away, back towards the crew behind him. He had caught their glances, furtive, curious, nervous; they were quick to look away when his rays fell upon them, but they looked when they thought he would not notice. He could hardly fault them that, could they? Mystery filled the air, questions unanswered, for questions that had gone unasked. They knew it was him, it was unquestionably him, and yet... the him they had known had disappeared years ago.

...Years.

His tongue tasted the word; the rancour of emotion that it once had brought out of him had dulled in the days since his return. Yet, still, it was as if he could feel the blade jagged in his heart. The absence, as it was pulled out, and his lifeblood, ichorous and angry, spilt across the floor. He had lost years.

And a galaxy had moved forward, none the wiser.

In some way, it was a blessing that it had only been years. Considering what he had seen, considering what he had experienced, considering what he had lived, if it had been at all proportional to the time here... he might have returned to a galaxy from which nothing he had known still existed. Where the Tsis'Kaar had been lost to the annals of time entirely, rather than simply written off in the history books as defeated. Where Alvaria might have been forgotten by the galaxy entirely, slipping back to obscurity. When House Marr itself... well, they had survived thousands of years, would they survive thousands more? Would they ever reach the heights from which he had brought them for just a moment?

A few years, for all that he had seen peering beyond the veil, might have been worth it.

And yet, all he could taste was the ashen promise of what he had left behind.

His gaze flicked back to the viewport as a resounding boom echoed along space from which sound was not meant to make purchase, the sound which announced the arrival of the Dar Itah to its destination, from one end of the galaxy to the other. Charting a careful course from the Tingel Arm, through the Slice and Wild Space, to finally emerge out into the Western Reaches, avoiding Sith space entirely. It had been by design; his warlords had come when he had sent the call, the dull booms and the flare of the hud signifying the arrival of other ships to the system was proof enough of that.

Yet, for others, informants, spies, infiltrators, assassins, and all the rest. They might have answered the call in trickles, passing messages via encrypted channels that only the Tsis'Kaar knew of... and yet...

...Until he had seen them swear fealty, he could never be too sure, and so, across the galaxy, those that could were all summoned to Alvaria. Summoned for the chance to show their loyalty to the Lord, to whom they each owed fealty. His return could not be kept secret for long; already, he knew that Quinn must have known. He had considered cutting the binds that attached him to her, hesitating long enough to maintain them.

He had taken too many actions that had left a far too... permanent edge.

He had to trust her to be discreet. Was that not a wonder all unto itself?

He had idly hoped too, that... the other whose bond he held, would be here.

Yet, for a reason he could not truly place, but perhaps simply the same hesitation that kept him chained to Quinn, she had not cut it either. Even as through it, he could feel across the breadth of the galaxy that she was fast attempting to escape him. A futile effort, she must have known. If he knew where she was at all times, what was the point? And even beyond that...

...Did she truly imagine that he would not move heaven and hell for their children?

The pang in his heart was a reminder of another failure...

...Aureus and Caelia...

...He would be reunited with them soon, he promised the void of space between them, a distance beyond human comprehension, but a distance he would cross a thousand different times if it meant returning to them...

He closed his eyes as his breath grew heavy, his chest constricting against the armour plate shielding his front. His lip quivered as an energy passed over him, a reminder of a matter that even after his arrival, he had done his utmost to ignore, and yet... it was time to pay the piper. Red eyes awakened to gaze upon the world in front of him.

And his heart broke.

For all that S- the Empress had warned him, for all that the Empress had veritably shown him. He was not prepared for this.

It was the lack of ships, the lack of a station, that he first noticed. Hulks, empty and cold, floated under the backdrop of the world below, remnants of the fleet that he had left here to defend his world. Bits and pieces, chunks of hulls, turbolasers, engines, and all in between them, made for a circle of debris that, even still, seemed to make for a rotation around Alvaria's orbit.

They were a distraction.

Smoke and mirrors, to what he did not yet wish to face.

He breathed in, a desperate bid for an overworking heart, begging it to be calm, or else bring about the end of him and everything else. His gaze tilted ever carefully, past the ghosts which had been the first line of defence, past those that he had abandoned, and yet still fought on in defence of their master's home... he promised, he would provide them the dues in death that he had failed to in life.

And even still, he distracted himself from the sight that he did not wish to confront.

It was a shuddering breath out of his lips, as the first crystaline spires registered in his gaze. Even from orbit, they were unmistakable, blood red with a sheen of black, as wrought as the moons he had borne from Lothal. Even from this distance, he... felt them. The rogue shiver pulsed down his back, a call that was unable to be ignored, voices playing at the edges of his mind, the Empress trapped in that moment...

...It made it impossible to deny she had not been wrothful at the attack against him.

...Not that he truly had imagined she was lying.

His hand upon the viewport brought itself closer to the darkened world, looking to cup it within its grip... all that he had built, all he had transformed, all that he had done...

...What did it matter if it could all be wiped away in his absence?

He turned away, flicking his gaze to the ground, as his lips were dry. The bridge was quiet, eerily quiet; they awaited him, or they gazed ahead to the world they had once known. Paying their respects, for all they had known.

A return that had never been promised, and yet now, here they were.

He slipped his hand into the confines of his cloak, fingers finding purchase upon the mask that he knew all too well. He brought it to his face with little fanfare, and a short hiss resounded across the room as it confirmed itself upon his front. He turned towards them then, all of them standing ever slightly taller, formal, unquestioning. He said little as armoured steps took him out of the bridge, the blast doors opening at his presence, as he marched through his vessel to the hangar.

The pinpricks by his eyes had to be ignored, lest all of him crumble with them.

​

He gazed in silence at the palace above. It stood upon a hill that was more mountain, straddling a cliffside's edge, as the sea itself seemed to wish to challenge its heights and pull it down upon craggly steps. The waves had never succeeded, and yet, as they swelled in energy, before crashing again and again upon the sandbanks, they were relentless in their resolve to achieve the impossible. He had spent many an evening gazing upon those waves...

Now he gazed upon a palace that once so welcoming now was... pierced via the crystal spires that the Empress had left behind. It was good she was here, he could vaguely muse, for even crystaline there was something... alive, about them. Indeed, it was as if they were living growths that had attached themselves to the once cream-white walls. He had no intention to touch them, for even without physical contact, the sense of emotion within the voice contained compelled him to stay away, even if reasonably, he knew they bid him no harm. Him, at least... others, he could not be too certain. It would make for an intriguing backdrop, all things considered. The weightiness upon his chest had not lessened any, in fact, upon the ground now... despite all the familiarity, it beheld a weight that threatened to crush his ribs.

The irony of where they stood was not lost upon him either.

It had been from which he had confronted the Emperor and Empress once long ago.

It had been from where his break with his Mistress had become official, and he was provided the certainty to undertake his task upon Fiviune.

And now, in this place, this clearing, from which he stood upon a small hill, in the distance the crystaline infused palace, and below him, the gathering of the last of their Order, with more arriving every moment...

...From here, they would restore all that had been lost.

A hiss resounded from the sheath as pommel and hilt were heavy in hand, the Sith Steel black and weighty upon both form and soul, sung stout, as a hundred different eyes gazed upon its point.

As the sun melted away beyond the horizon, leaving its last orange hues to splutter and burn in askance, as twin moons emerged from opposite burgeoning.

He ignited his blade as the plasma burned alive.

And in the sky.

The crescent of the Sith Order appeared, circled by the ever-chasing Ouroboros.

Their Lord called, the Lord of the Tsis'Kaar.

It was now only a question of who would answer.

Srina Talon Trayze Tesar Leliana Adean Castor Seren Gwyn Zorath Kom Ceaasan Darth Callidus Darth Strosius Darth Tormenta

 

[Darth Callidus]

Location: Alvaria | Tsis’Kaar Landing
Tags: Darth Malum of House Marr

The ramp descended with a hydraulic groan that spoke to the freighter's age, and Callidus stood at its threshold for a moment, framed between the warmth of the cabin and the wind that carried salt and ash in equal measure.

Alvaria stretched before her, dark and wounded. Seas hammered against cliff faces in the distance, relentless in their assault upon a world that had already endured worse. Above, the orbital graveyard turned in slow procession; hulls split open to vacuum, their innards trailing behind them like the viscera of slaughtered beasts left to rot in the void. She had studied them on approach, noted the pattern of weapons scarring, calculated the approximate tonnage of what had been lost. A fleet. A station. Years of consolidation, swallowed by the absence of the man who had built it.

And rising from the surface itself, the spires. Crimson and black, crystalline, alive in a way that had nothing to do with biology and everything to do with the Force. She felt them before she had seen them clearly during descent, a resonance that pressed against her awareness with an intimacy that reminded her, uncomfortably, of the Sepulcher.

The voices stirred at the thought. A low murmur, the ambient tide she had long since learned to navigate, rising just enough to press against the edges of coherent thought. Her jaw tightened, a micro-expression, controlled before it could fully form.

“Not now.”

The surge receded. It always did, when she commanded it. Mostly.

She stepped onto the ground and began to walk.

The Quiet Dividend sat behind her at the periphery of the gathering zone, well removed from the other vessels. A light freighter taken from a smuggler who no longer required it, bearing no Sith markings, no military transponder, nothing to distinguish it from a thousand other battered ships limping through the spacelanes of the Western Reaches. It was a role, and like every role, she had inhabited it completely. She had been no one for a long time now. A ghost threading through Outer Rim ruins and forgotten temples, cataloguing what predated the Republic, drawn by whispers she could not always distinguish from her own thoughts.

It had been quiet work. Patient work.

The kind she had always been suited to.

The encrypted burst had found her in that silence, arriving through Tsis'Kaar channels she had believed severed. Or, at least allowed to atrophy into irrelevance. She had studied the authentication twice, then a third time. Not because she doubted its origin. She had known whose hand had sent it before the decryption was complete.

Malum.

She had sat with the name for hours, golden eyes reflecting the pale light of her console, fingers unmoving upon the controls. The strategist had weighed every angle: what it meant that he had returned, what it meant that he was calling them back, what the cost of answering would be against the cost of silence. The voices had murmured their contradictions, half-formed warnings tangled with encouragements until none could be distinguished from any other. She had closed her eyes. Let them wash through. Opened them, and her decision was already made.

It had been made, she suspected, the moment the signal arrived. Everything between had been theatre she performed for an audience of one.

Now her boots pressed into Alvarian soil, and she walked the path toward the gathering with the deliberate, unhurried pace she brought to everything. Not hesitation. Never hesitation. Every arrival was a performance, and every performance required tempo.

She thought of death.

Not morbidly. Not with dread. She thought of death the way an astronomer thinks of the space between stars; as the medium through which everything meaningful travels. She had tasted it through the Force more times than she could count, fed upon it, felt the dark narcotic rush of extinguished life flood through her like fire. She understood it intimately. And she understood what so many failed to grasp.

Death was not an ending. It had never been an ending. It was a hinge, a threshold between one state and the next, a door that swung open onto corridors the living could not map and the dead could not describe. She had watched civilizations burn, her own first among them, and what rose from the ashes was never what had stood before. It was something shaped by the destruction, informed by it, born of it, but never a repetition. The galaxy did not resurrect. It transformed.

Malum had vanished. The Tsis'Kaar had fractured. Alvaria had been ravaged. And yet here, on this wounded world, something was beginning. Not the same thing that had existed before, that was gone. What emerged from this gathering would carry the shape of what was lost the way a scar carries the shape of the wound, but it would be its own creature entirely.

This was why she had come, she realized. Not loyalty. Not obligation. She had come because she recognized the moment for what it was. A death that was not an ending. A beginning that could not be predicted.

Callidus had always positioned herself precisely at the hinge.

Callidus, who bowed to no one, who had killed every master who had ever presumed authority over her, who had burned the very concept of submission out of herself as thoroughly as the Sith had burned her childhood from the galaxy —

— inclined her head.

A fraction. A degree. The kind of gesture that meant nothing if you did not understand what it cost.

"My lord." Her voice was cool, measured, a blade sheathed in silk. The golden eyes held his mask without flinching, without deference, but with something that might, in a different woman, have been called respect.

A pause. The faintest trace of something moved behind her expression; not warmth, never warmth, but an acknowledgment that she found this moment, against all expectation, satisfying.

"It is good to see that death has not yet claimed you, Darth Malum. Though I suspect it has tried."

 

[Seren Gwyn]

Alvaria announced itself to Seren through the Force before the planet had fully resolved beyond the viewport.

She felt the wrongness first.

Not corruption precisely. That word was too simple for what pressed against her awareness as the vessel descended through the atmosphere. The sensation possessed texture, history, and something disturbingly close to life. Seren remained near the viewport throughout the descent, glowing amber eyes fixed upon the crimson and black crystalline spires rising from the wounded landscape below. They pierced structures and earth alike, unnatural growths that seemed less constructed than manifested. Even at a distance, she could feel something within them. She had spent enough time among ruins, artifacts, shadows, and the remnants of Sith workings to know better than to mistake unfamiliarity for harmlessness.

"Interesting."

The word left her softly, carrying considerably more caution than enthusiasm.

She had come because of the summons. That alone was peculiar enough. Seren Gwyn no longer called herself Sith. Darth Eryndis remained a name she had earned and a history she did not deny, but she had ceased allowing either an Order or a doctrine to determine what she was permitted to become. Once, a summons carried expectations of obedience, hierarchy, and allegiance. Now it represented something else entirely. A question. Someone named Darth Malum had returned after years of absence and called the remnants of the Tsis'Kaar to a world bearing the scars of everything that had happened without him. Seren had decided that was a question worth answering.

Her ship settled some distance from the growing collection of vessels, and Seren emerged shortly thereafter. She had dressed for neither ceremony nor battle, choosing black fitted trousers tucked into knee-high boots and a sleeveless tunic of deep forest green beneath a fitted black leather coat that fell to mid-thigh. Voidstar rested openly at her hip, its blackened hilt and etched runes requiring no explanation to anyone familiar with a lightsaber. Her dark blue-black hair had been left loose, shifting around her shoulders as the wind came off the sea and carried the mingled scents of salt, stone, and ash across the landing grounds.

The devastation became harder to ignore once her boots touched Alvarian soil. Above her hung the carcasses of ships that had once defended this world, while farther ahead the palace itself stood wounded by the same crystalline formations she had observed during descent. Malum's return had brought him home to the remains of a fleet and a palace pierced by those strange growths. Whatever had happened here had possessed both power and purpose. Seren's attention lingered upon one of the distant spires for several seconds before she continued walking.

By the time she reached the gathering, another woman had already approached the masked figure upon the rise.

Seren slowed rather than interrupting.

She knew neither of them personally. The woman was unfamiliar, composed and deliberate in a manner Seren recognized without needing to know its origins. There was something significant in the fractional inclination of her head, though Seren lacked the history necessary to understand precisely why. The masked man required considerably less deduction. Between his position before those answering the summons and the blade burning against the coming night, there was little question that she had found Darth Malum. The symbol of the Sith Order hung above them, the crescent encircled by the Ouroboros, marking his call to whatever remained of the Tsis'Kaar.

She heard the woman's greeting as she drew close enough to join them.

It is good to see that death has not yet claimed you, Darth Malum. Though I suspect it has tried.

One corner of Seren's mouth lifted faintly.

"Death does seem remarkably poor at keeping Sith when it claims them."

Her arrival carried none of the ceremony of the woman before her. Seren stopped a comfortable distance away, allowing her gaze to pass briefly between the two strangers before settling upon Malum. There was no bow. No my lord. She had abandoned such habits along with the hierarchy that once demanded them, but neither was there deliberate disrespect in her posture. She had answered his summons, after all. That alone meant something.

"Seren Gwyn." After the smallest pause, she added, "Once Darth Eryndis."

The old title felt strange spoken here. Not painful, nor shameful. Merely something that belonged to an earlier version of herself.

Her amber gaze shifted briefly toward Callidus, offering the unknown woman a small inclination of her head in greeting before returning to the masked Sith who had drawn them both to this wounded world.

"Your message reached considerably farther than I imagine you expected." Seren's attention wandered toward the gathering below them and then to the crystalline spires dominating the horizon. Curiosity warmed her expression rather than allegiance. "I confess I was curious enough to see what sort of man returns from the dead and immediately begins calling an Order back together."

Her eyes settled upon his mask once more.

"So I came to listen."

Darth Malum of House Marr Darth Callidus