Private The Truth Is Far Darker

[Ellayina L'lerim]

Information

Minister of Intelligence, Director of SHADES, Torture & Interrogation Officer​

"Galactic Common" | <"High Nelvaanian"> | ["Essonian"] | ~ telepathic communication ~ | << comm. channel >> ​

Objective: Meet with Tancred
Location: Unknown Location
Equipment: White uniform | Viper Mk. I Skinsuit || Empyrean gland || OPBC-01m

@Tancred L'lerim​

Ella had waited for this moment for a very, very long time. Now that her sister was to become Cesare Demici 's betrothed, she could not yet act against the girl; but her other sibling, Tancred, was finally within reach. Kazian Blackwood, known as Agent Vigilant , had returned from his undercover assignment, once more proving that Ella had been right to allow him back into service all those years ago. It was Kaz who had captured her brother; thanks to him, she would finally be able to execute him. And, perhaps most importantly, Kaz was one of the few in whom she still placed her trust, their shared past binding them together.

Why did the woman hate her younger brother so fiercely that she would have seen him dead just as she had wished for Lilia? The common tale spoke only of their mother’s death. The queen had died when the twins were born, and Ella had never been able to accept the loss; she had blamed the infants and wished them gone as well. To many, this reasoning sounded petty. But the truth… the truth was far darker.

Ella had pondered it more than once: if Meliant had known what truly happened, what would she have thought? Yet she allowed that thought to linger only for a heartbeat before sweeping it aside.

Everyone knew the story of the twins’ mother: assassins had attempted to kill the queen using Sith poison. She could have chosen to survive by ending the pregnancy, or she could risk death and bring the twins into the world. She chose the latter. And when the day came, she died from the birth. But even that was not the worst part.

Ella had been raised in the Ashlan faith. Through both her upbringing and her lineage, she knew that there was life after death. In the Netherworld, a soul might become part of Ashla or continue on in another form. But that had not been Lady Hilda’s fate. The Sith toxin had devoured not only her body, but her very soul. Nothing of her remained; she had been erased, unable to be one with the Force.

There was no afterlife for her. No lingering spark. Nothing. Eina L'lerim-Vandiir had confirmed this when she had attempted to search for the queen’s soul.

Ella knew that if her mother had not carried the pregnancy to term, there might have been time to find a cure for the poison. She might still be alive. But she chose the twins; and Ella had never forgiven them for costing her a mother. And so she intended to grant them the same fate their mother had suffered: utter annihilation.

For this reason she had turned to St. Thomas Barran , asking him to carry out Tancred’s execution. As a saint of the Dark Three, he could offer Tancred’s soul to War, Death and Rebirth, ensuring its final consumption. No afterlife. No return. Just oblivion.

Ella had arranged for the execution to be brought forward, aligned with the other deaths the Empire had orchestrated. But before it happened, she wanted one last thing: to face her brother. To look him in the eye one final time. And to speak.

Thus she now walked through the corridors of the prison complex, each step leading her toward the place where he was kept.

When she entered the chamber, she saw not the child she remembered, but a grown young man. Sith poison had marked both of her younger siblings - Tancred most visibly, Lilia through her hair and fragile health - but their age no longer mattered. Nothing changed how she felt.

"Welcome, brother. It has been a long time…" she greeted the younger man, her voice quiet as she stepped into the cell.

 

[Agent Vigilant]

Ellayina L'lerim | St. Thomas Barran
​

The bright fluorescent lights hurt his eyes, and the constant slight white noise in the air drove him crazy. The imperial's designed interrogation chambers that hyper stimulated the senses, giving subjects a baseline anxiety and uneasiness before the interrogation even began. It was genius, but Kazian hated it. He hated the white uniforms too. It meant he was going into the office, and putting on a show. Things had been easier in the field, and he was struggling to remember that he wasn't in a deep cover operation anymore, and that the office game had to be played. He already taken a covert job for the minister of natural resources, indelibly tying him into politics some day down the line when it was time to harvest the sins he'd sown.

Today though, he was in the office to watch an artist perform. Hanging back against the wall, arms folded, eyes studying the siblings, he watched Ella begin her work. Her grace, her beauty, locked into rigid imperial posture, her cold eyes telling of a pragmatic stoicism holding back a rage of emotions. An artist working her craft, at perhaps its most critical point yet. Kaz knew it couldn't be easy calling a hit on your own brother, even if he was an Ashlan. Submitting him to the executioner yourself...

He wondered what was going through the kid's head. He'd said very little, from the time Kazian wrestled him into arrest, all the way to the fateful reunion. The eye contact between the siblings, he could only assume, was like psychological warfare. Who would snap first? Maybe neither, he figured. If there was one thing he'd learned about Force-sensitives was their superhuman ability for apathy. He wondered what the correlation between Force-sensitivity and psychopathy was...

 

[Tancred L'lerim]

VOICE OF ASHLA

TAGS
Ellayina L'lerim Agent Vigilant

THE TRUTH IS FAR DARKER
I​

OIT Blacksite, Unknown Location,
Unknown Planet, Deep Core Territories (903 ABY)

'A long time? Hah! Yes, of course.... Last time you saw my face was long before the disfigurement.... Well, feast your eyes, and feast well.'
​

Lifting his face to look at something other than his elder sister, Tancred's eyes crossed paths with those of the other person in the room, only finding himself fighting the urge to spit in the agent's direction. A seemingly justified reaction, though only due to the fact the young Saint shared the room with the same man who snatched him for capture, the same man who bound his hands with Ysalamiri-coated handcuffs, immediately nullifying the lad's attempt to counter it. Yet, as much as the urge to spit was stifled, the youth would not drop his gaze, even going so far as to inquire,'So who will it be, Agent? Which of you will be the one to turn the dials, hm?', defiantly goading his enemies into dispensing with their formalities.

'I assume my dear sister here wishes to do more than just watch, though I could be mistaken... One never quite knows where gutlessness leads, or at least, not I.'

It was then, in that moment, when Tancred's gaze returned to that of his sister, even growling,'Mind you, she actually looks like she wants to do it.', before giving in to wry, disdainful laughter. The young Saint, before the incident in the Death Star III's infirmary, had believed (but also hoped) his elder sister could be redeemed with the right application of empathy, but lately, it was becoming apparent that Ellayina was too far beyond the point of no-return, a path from which there could be no Ashlan, nor familial reconciliation. Even thinking about it made the laughter more bitter, as it had been festering in Tancred's mind for as long as he had been in captivity, and without any road to holy, repentant forgiveness, it would become increasingly likely that he would need to end his elder sister's life someday.

 

[Ellayina L'lerim]

Information

Minister of Intelligence, Director of SHADES, Torture & Interrogation Officer​

"Galactic Common" | <"High Nelvaanian"> | ["Essonian"] | ~ telepathic communication ~ | << comm. channel >> ​

Objective: Meet with Tancred
Location: Unknown Location
Equipment: White uniform | Viper Mk. I Skinsuit || Empyrean gland || OPBC-01m

Tancred L'lerim | Agent Vigilant​

All of it spoke of a remarkable degree of trust on Ella’s part, allowing Kazian to be here at all. This was a family matter; although it had not been particularly difficult for her to arrange things in such a way that it also became an Imperial matter. The young man was, after all, a self-proclaimed Ashlan saint, not the first in their family; and the Ashlan faith stood in direct, unyielding opposition to the interests of the Empire. The Jedi were simply Jedi, but the Ashlan Crusade and its fanatical crusaders posed a far greater threat. At least, this was how the woman saw things, shaped by the world in which she had grown up.

There might have been those who would argue that making a martyr of Tancred was unwise, but after the Empire had executed Pietro Demici, such concerns hardly held any real weight anymore. The young saint surely had far less influence than the good old Cardinal ever did. Even so, he was useful enough to send a message to the other Ashlan followers, and to anyone who might attempt to follow in their footsteps. This was how the remnants of the crusade would end as well... destroyed by the hand of the Empire.

When Ella reached the cell, she was only momentarily surprised by how deformed Tancred’s face had become. But she was a professional; she allowed her gaze to rest on her brother’s features for only a heartbeat or two, then sought his eyes. She chuckled quietly at the words the boy spoke. Did he truly believe such things would work?

"Gutlessness? Truly, is that all you can manage? Tancred... I am a L'lerim as well. Insults are as useless against me as they are against you. It is in our blood... perhaps only Lilianna is someone against whom they might accomplish anything." the woman said to the young man, her tone almost gentle. "And they do not work on my agent either, he received an excellent training."

There was not a trace of mockery in Ella’s voice now, only a kind of heavy, shadowed seriousness. She reached toward the panel on the side of the cell door and tapped something into it. A moment later, the cuffs on Tancred’s hands sprang open and fell to the floor. A small gap opened near the ground beneath the energy shield; a tiny droid arm slid out, pulled the cuffs away, and the energy barrier sealed itself once more. The young man was no longer cut off from the Force. Ella continued to look directly into his eyes; his disfigured face stirred neither disgust nor alarm in her. She simply noted, inwardly, that this was the effect the Sith poison had had on him.

"What do you think I came here for today? Why do you think I visited you?" the woman asked him.

After a few seconds, as if to prove that she was unafraid, she lowered the energy barrier and stepped inside. She fully expected the young man to be foolish enough to attack, and she was prepared to fight if needed. But while nothing happened, the woman calmly pulled the cell’s lone chair over, positioned it directly across from Tancred, and sat down with an ease, a composure, an almost queenly elegance.

"Well?" she asked again.

 

[Tancred L'lerim]

VOICE OF ASHLA

TAGS
Ellayina L'lerim Agent Vigilant

THE TRUTH IS FAR DARKER
II​

OIT Blacksite, Unknown Location,
Unknown Planet, Deep Core Territories (903 ABY)

'Well, whatever the reason, the end-result is a test of my pain threshold.... But I can hazard a guess.'
​

As the young Saint lifted his head once more, making sure that his gaze crossed that of his sister, he tried to search her mind for moment, only to find himself scuppered by the effects of his poison coursing through his circulatory system, and right down to the last vein and capillary. Tearing at heart, head, lungs and spleen alike, even feeling it bouncing back from the fronts of his toes, it was little wonder that Tancred could do nothing in his condition; all he had was an as-yet untrained endurance, carrying little more experience than the rigors of training, and the agonies of his facially malforming after-effects to a poison of a different sort.

'Do you feel - that this is, perchance, retribution? Is your presence, here, purposed toward punishment, something to that effect? That would be my guess, though I would know more without this heretic FILTH in my veins!'

​

Already trying to struggle out from his position, it would be obvious to his tormentors that nothing else could be done, and yet, the Saint would try another few times before giving up for a while, seemingly turning the ordeal into a matter of training, strength and mettle. This would work somewhat to the lad's benefit, as it was owed to a mentor he believed was dead, making the lessons that Yorunarr passed down stick all the more profoundly in the mind, and all in the nick of time. Giving Tancred all the more confidence in the moments preceding his torture, fully aware of the look in Ella's eye (and all that it meant) when he concluded,'Sister, I hope for your sake that you have your reasons.... You ought to know there is no redemption for blind malice!', trailing off to struggle once more with the poison stupor.

Obstinance would seal his lips for now, but the OIT had their methods of rectifying stubborn willfulness.