It was a shame really. Lirka thought she was actually pretty funny, in her own odd little way. Perhaps
Serina Calis
simply wasn't the best of company for the casualness of plain sarcasm. Though perhaps no one in this Empire of any real import was. In some ways Lirka's jabs danced between vague fondness and boundless disdain - the Once-Sephi was an unpredictable woman at the best of days and the true meaning of her words twirled through the same coin flip as her moods.
By most metrics it was certainly a foolish thing to take point with a serpent like Calis at her back: Lirka did not care much today. If the girl really wanted to throw themselves back into the old song and dance of unwavering stubbornness and unshakable zealotry. So be it. Lirka was never a monster to shy away from violence between supposed "allies". She had lived among the Sith too long.
Lirka's eyes may have been invisible beneath those glowing lenses, but the exacerbated twirl of her hand was plenty to mimic her eyes nearly rolling back into her skull. She shouldn't have been surprised, she knew it was coming really. But even when you prepare yourself when your about to be stabbed...you are still being stabbed.
"Or perhaps it merely echoes in those with empty skulls."
For all of Lirka's jest, the girl would have fit right into the old royal courts what with all that poetic waxing. If that was truly a good thing? Lirka wasn't entirely sure yet, but she was leaning no.
Yet too did she ponder, impossible goals had become something of a grand self motivator in Lirka's long life. Were it possible to finally coax it out of her most dearest of enemy to finally speak like a normal person? A few months of combat meditation? Or another iconoclastic crusade to get rid of those damnable lady velvet stories that seemed entice such...interesting emulations from people.
In private amusement, Lirka did muse over those days being a true Sephi supremacist. Oh the good old days of her own idiotic naivety before Primordial Dark had truly graced her with foul knowledge.
"I may have believed that once. But you know as well as any, Serina Calis: I am something of an odd one out. Yet perhaps that is the great irony of us both: so incredibly self confident, unable to truly grasp the other because of the blindness of perception."
Lirka was gracious enough to throw the girl a small bone, Lirka had certainly made some vestige of an attempt to understand her at Anoth - and had been woefully disappointed by what she had pieced together. The curse of youth, Lirka had put it towards once the dust had settled. It was a dismal prospect to write a "fellow" off entirely.
Lirka was at rather religious woman at hearts, and it was not a belief system she clung to selfishly. It was merely the struggle of finding those souls within the Galaxy that could actually grasp the full depth of what she was speaking of.
"Beginning and End, if you wish to wax more accurately. You do not need to envy, Dark Enlightenment can come to all - you merely need to be willing to see it. It is a difficult task."
And it certainly took a strong heart to survive the catalysts Lirka preferred for reaching enlightenment. Lirka tried to ignore the glyphs and whispers that followed the pair in their wake, the brief shake of the head for but a moment as Lirka cast away whatever ghosts had been slammed into her brain. It was an odd thing, a life so long yet so short all the same. Memories forced upon her and those forged of her own path. Few of them pleasant. The paths before her all followed one thing: death.
"You may not chase it, yet to even mention the annihilation of reality offhandedly is a dangerous thing, Serina Calis. It may not seem so at first, but it is a poisonous thought. A thing to remember, even if I do not believe you will truly grasp its depth yet."
A priest's warning. Lirka paused briefly before continuing, leaving the prospects of the Great Lie behind.
"Blind destruction is for animals. I destroy with purpose - admittedly, I walk with you because I doubt the charges would reach far enough on the surface. Why mar the skin when I can strike at the heart, after all. It is "the will of cosmic fate" that we have found each other again, it would seem."
She jested, Lirka believed in only one fate - and that was the end-of-all-things before Primordial Darkness. She strummed over Calis's words, clicking a clawed fingertip at where her chin must've been in dramatic gesture.
"An not entirely inaccurate assessment. The power to change reality by a mere world is a disease of weakness - some may call it the work of gods. But as I said upon Anoth, Serina Calis. There are no gods. Just men. If men wish to change reality, they will do so by their own two hands. Not the work of some wretched crystalline archive."
Perhaps in some nicer reality, Lirka would have found employ as a subpar motivational speaker instead of a wanton mass murderer.
Beneath her helmet she grinned, a rare moment of humanity slipping out of that metal brute.
"I like to think I'm too pretty to be a Rhandite anyway, they're all...dried out. All about organs on the outside, flies coming out of their eyes, and of course I do not believe they know how to bathe either. So trust me, Serina Calis, if the day comes where I slip and succumb to the Great Lie - you will not need a gag: I'll have slit my own throat first."
Many would call her a nihilism, and with violence Lirka would rebuke them every time. For Primordial Darkness had given them nothing
more meaningful than worthy life - that is what the fools who had succumbed failed to realize. For now, Lirka did not mention the mirror. She had a plan formulating in her brain first. Idly did she throw another charge to the room for when the grand explosion would happen later.
"Why thank you, Girl-who-calls-herself-weaver."
It did not feel like a particularly genuine one. The paths appeared before them, their pulsating nature lost upon Lirka's void. She merely would have to judge by the heart, but for a moment now: she stopped. And she watched, tsch, to let an archive make opinions about them? It seemed almost pitiful. If this place was to be a mirror, let the work of men decide what the two would be.
"You say this place is a mirror. I'm sure you have felt the whispers already..."
For a moment it felt like idiocy, but Lirka understood the path of the manipulator. She had walked it for years, so she offered one who too knew that most unpleasant of paths a morsel of opportunity to latch onto. Not without a price, of course.
"...a token of good faith between us. I share one of mine. You share one of yours."
Lirka couldn't feel the force, but this place did not pick its ghosts idly. She would judge only by what their minds had concocted. Then she would walk another path, like she had been doing for her whole life.
