Where Madness Reigns

[Atom Smasher]

Spoiler: OOC

A few OOC notes:

• Sato is off her f*cking nut (at least more than usual).
• In order to understand what is going on, I recommend reading Satoryu's biogarphy.
• You can read more about Satsuki here.
• This was probably the most enjoyable post I've ever written and I'm super proud of it.
• Gnarly, messed-up stuff and filth is what I work best with and I bloody love writing it.
• Enjoy!

Dromund Kaas

A piano solo sounded from behind the bathroom door, which the young girl had set up for her Lady. Shadows moved on the aged walls like spectres dancing amidst infrequent light. Their shapeless little feet seemingly kicking up the gatherings of dust. Subtle movements silently tormenting the young Sith with every discrete bounce. Keiko, servant girl turned Apprentice approaching her 17th birthday, sat hunched up against the splitting, dark wallpaper outside of the ajar bathroom door.

As per usual, Keiko's mistress had arisen from her slumber to proceed with her nocturnal functioning. Ten years Keiko had served the woman, it had been the longest amount of time any of Satoryu's servants had lived. How she came to be here, living under the shadow of a recluse drifting in and out of infrequent madness... Well, that was another story entirely.

The music sounded dully throughout the dark corridor, only aiding in Keiko's present terror. It was the woman's favourite kind of music and it always assisted in calming any potential aggression that might befall her unfortunate carer. Understanding Satoryu was a skill which took years to master, and Keiko was close to doing so. She knew what the woman liked and disliked, when to be present before her and when to leave her to her solitude.

It was safe to say that Keiko now knew Satoryu better than anybody else. She was an undeniably fascinating person. Fascinating, but despicable. Captivating, but sick in more ways than Keiko could list. There was no excuse for the way Satoryu behaved, for the things she had done. Nor could Keiko possibly defend the atrocities she had witnessed, but for many reasons she did pity her Mistress. Never had Satoryu felt physical love of another, never had she felt the embrace of a friend or love one. However, Keiko's view of her Mistress was hardly rose-coloured.

As she waited for her Lady to bathe, Keiko analysed and scanned every shred of memory she recalled until the day Satoryu had shut herself away. The Dragon Lady's memory had since been skewed since the events of five years ago, past relationships and events clouded and distorted within psychological disarray.

Keiko, on the other hand, remembered everything. The day the teenager had forgotten the faces of her own family, would she still remember watching Satoryu murder Satsuki, the woman's own sister and a former Sith who had defected to the Republic. She remembered her final conversation with Darth Kadmus, by that time a Grey Jedi and a traitor, before Satoryu had slain him, and exactly what he had told her. There was a reason Satoryu had never harmed Keiko, it was because she knew nothing.


That was no longer the case.

..............​

​

Memory.


The word had turned to ash. The very concept had decayed away like the aged tiles on the walls of the filthy, once-grand bathroom. Flickering only with infrequent life as the candlelight did so next to the bathtub. The Onida estate was old, very old, built long before Satoryu's family had occupied it over thirty years ago, and most of the walls and furniture had decayed. The Sith woman stared fixated upon the delicate flutter of the tiny flame.

Soaking in the now filthy and luke-warm bath water, Satoryu brought her hand from the sharp pain in her lower abdomen to the table next to tub. Retrieving a cigarette, she set it alight with the candle flame before bringing it to her wet lips. By Satoryu's orders, only a few lights were ever left on in the dark house. The bathroom was illuminated by only one candle which allowed a charming yellow glow amidst the darkness of the fraying old room.

Releasing a cloud of smoke into the darkness from her parted lips, Satoryu sat up in the water and gazed upon the morphing shapes of the smoke. Her eyes lowered towards the similar, hypnotizing patterns created by sanguine liquid between her thighs. It swirled through the ever darkening water, creating artistic and murky patterns.

They were charming. They were captivating, floating underneath the reflection of the candlelight and shifting their shapeless arms in time to the music. For so long, Satoryu had denied herself the pleasure of shedding the blood of another, it was her own immaculate blood which caught her fixated gaze. Puffing away on the cigarette, she stared a little while longer, but her pleasurable musing was suddenly drawn to a halt.

The music had ceased.

She saw the blood. It stared back. Dancing, even though the music had stopped. It neither noticed nor cared, it's only intent being to mock the woman from which it had escaped. She saw frailty, she saw her own vulnerability and humanity, which stabbed her every fibre like the pain in her stomach. Then she saw not her own blood, but the blood of Kadmus, the blood of Satsuki. Their deaths floating before her in the soiled water. Every syllable, every word now echoing inside the walls of her paranoia.

"Satoryu."

Silence pervaded room. The cigarette involuntary falling from Satoryu's fingers into the water. A tiny, minuscule mishap which accompanied by the voice inside her head, enraged Satoryu. Like a child, she splashed the water in frustration. The light of the candle was hit by the water, leaving the room in darkness, tainted only by the pale trace of light from the Dromund Kaas moon.

"Satoryu, swear to me you will not harm your sister and I shall tell you everything..."

..............

"Mistress!"

The door flung open to reveal the young servant carrying a bright gas lamp along with a robe and a few towels. The light illuminated the entire room and corridor, glaring in Satoryu's eyes and revealing the rather disgraced Sith Master sitting confused, disorientated and naked in the dirty water. Furious, she spat at the young woman with compulsive aggression.

"Turn that f*cking light off!"

"Don't be stupid, m'lady, I need it to see. Now get out already, it's been three hours."

Keiko rolled her eyes while she vocally mocked and commanded her superior, but Satoryu thought nothing of it. There were more important things to punish a subordinate for, it wasn't as though Keiko had brought her green tea when she had explicitly demanded white tea. Besides, there were other matters on Satoryu's mind. The petite Sith rose from the water and stepped out on to the floor. The taller Apprentice handed her a towel.

"You never used to curse like that. I remember when you used to be so polite!"

"I stopped being polite because everybody else had bad manners."

As the woman dried most her physique, Keiko wrapped a single Sith robe, in place of a dressing gown, around her superior, who promptly put her arms through the sleeves. Both of the females went about their actions casually, feigning ignorance about their present circumstances.

"It was the ghost of yours, wasn't it? The one who possessed you? He taught you to use bad language."

Keiko pretended that she did not know. Satoryu was too occupied with voice in her head to care, the words of the Sith Lord, a triggered memory now repeating over and over in her head. She analysed them, studied them and tried to decipher they kept repeating themselves. It was over, she knew the truth. It was so explicitly clear there seemed no need for the words to repeat themselves. Kadmus and Satsuki had been the final ties, now severed. Attachments erased, weaknesses conquered.

Even so, one more seemed to be hindering Satoryu from putting the past behind her. Somebody who had innocently followed her for years and bared witness to her total immersion in the Dark Side. Standing in the center of the bathroom, her robe still hanging open, Satoryu fixated her gaze upon Keiko. The young woman leant over the bathroom to peer outside of the window. Something seemed to grab her attention.

"M'lady, there are people outside..."

As she leant back, the grip of Satoryu's wet hands would wrap themselves around Keiko's shoulders.

"Mistress, please... I've left the front door unlocked."
..............

"There was never a ghost, Satoryu. You were never possessed. There is nobody buried in the first antechamber of Marka Ragnos' tomb.

"Kesti" was a hallucination that your mind created to give you something, anything that might act as a form of support or company. He evolved into a secondary personality that overwhelmed and controlled you. The essence transference ritual was an act. You were put under medication and made to believe I was exorcizing a spirit from you. It was the only I could cure you of your illness.

There are no ghosts on Korriban, Satoryu. Not anymore."

..............

The dexterous, pallid fingers of Satoryu's graceful hands moved from their harsh grip around the servant's shoulders, to grasp her by the hair. With both speed and violence assisted by the Force, Keiko was brought to her knees, her head shoved deep beneath the surface of the bloody bath water. The girl struggled with every last ounce of her faltering strength as red liquid filled her throat and lungs. Satoryu's grip intensified as the Sith Lady employed all of her physical weight upon the larger girl.

Water exploded from over the edge of the tub and proceeded to flood the wooden floor. Keiko struggled still, but her Mistress' grip remained unchanged. The services of the loyal handmaiden to the Hidden Dragon had come to an end. As more water filled her body, Keiko's flailing hands and legs ceased to move. An exhausted sigh fell from Satoryu's mouth as she released her hands from the dead girl and left her to lay head first in the water. Standing up, Satoryu slowly moved backwards and stared for a moment to observe her work.

There it was. That feeling, that addiction. It was both Satoryu's greatest strength, and a fatal weakness. It empowered her in combat and allowed the psychological ability to do things even Sith would shudder at the thought of doing, but those things were an addiction that was out of control. Satoryu watched in sensual fixation at her artwork. Every subtle involuntary twitch, each infrequent little noise and motion which came from the the drowned wench mirrored off Satoryu's glassy brown irises.

A shadow had been lifted. The final tie to her past had finally been severed. Kadmus the liar, Satsuki the whore, Kesti the falsity and Keiko the loyal. All figments of a skewed memory. Satoryu's thoughts were interrupted when a noise came from outside. The Sith paid no heed, she simply walked over the player and turned on the piano music again, selecting a different track.

Eyes closed, fingers moving in time with the music, the dead girl's body still making the odd involuntary twitch, Satoryu bathed in her solitude. She stood before the carnage, the wet Sith robe hanging from her naked physique. At last she was totally alone.

Disturbed yet unconcerned, where madness reigned.

[member="Jared Ovmar"]
[member="Darth Adekos"]
[member="Darth Venefica"]
[member="Matsu Xiangu"]

 

[Caulder Dune]

[member="Satoryu"]

Dromund Kaas, to Darth Adekos, was a dead planet. It had not always been that way. The planet's current sorry state had been brought about by those neanderthaloid Mandalorians and their similarly mentally decrepit allies. There was not a single standard day that went by in this galaxy where Adekos didn't burn with fury over what the Mandalorians had done to this once populous world. There was no orbital bombardment, only the pelting of asteroids into the surface. Those who didn't perish as a result of the blast faired poorly in the ensuing environmental devastation, as the Mandalorians had no intention of helping them. Mandalorians were cultural simians devoid of higher thought, and Adekos would sleep easier if they were all hung from their entrails and dragged through the streets of a ruined Keldabe, before the planet Mandalore itself was reduced to little more than an interesting asteroid field, of course.

What remained of Dromund Kaas was in the hands of the Primeval. Darth Adekos wasn't comfortable with religious zealots, but so long as they continued their campaign against the Mandalorians, Adekos was content to remain quasi-supportive of their activities. Meanwhile, the Umbaran intended to pick over the remains of Dromund Kaas. Many powerful Sith Lords and Ladies, some men and women high in the Imperial chain of command, had held estates here. The ones that escaped destruction were abandoned, their inhabitants either killed, fled, or missing. It was of little consequence what happened to them. Their material posessions were all he cared about. Salvage from the physical and cultural genocide the Mandalorians had disgustingly waged.

Thus far Adekos had visited three estates. Various paintings, sculptures, and furniture had been salvaged. Holorecords, jewelry, artifacts. There was little to be found, but what was there had to be carefully cataloged and preserved. One estate had already been picked clean by squatters and smugglers, who Adekos had ordered thrashed to a pulp for their actions but otherwise left alive. Normally he would have just killed them all and been done with it, but they were natives. They were, for all intents and purposes, an endangered subspecies of human. They had gotten that status by the actions of Mandalorians, who had actually been pushing for total extinction. Adekos was not going to help finish their degenerate work for them in any capacity.

A lone shuttle, just now returned from a trip to refuel and unload cargo, circled the Onida estate once, twice, before landing in the front courtyard. The garden would have been overgrown if it weren't dead. Pity, that. The boarding ramp descended, and the cloaked figure of Darth Adekos made his way down with the usual pomp and circumstance of Sith with delusions of noble blood. He was followed closely by some number of TA1 Battle Droids, the insectoid automatons marching dutifully after their master. He preferred the company of droids most often than not on these types of things. Droids did not impulsively attempt to pocket things for themselves and then waste time trying to lie about it, then beg for mercy when they thought Adekos was going to murder them for it.

Droids also didn't ask for pay raises. And the ones that did could be memory wiped.

Normally standard procedure would have seen the droids kick down the front door, clear the house room-for-room, then start searching for the sought after valuables. But from the moment Adekos had stepped off the ship, he felt the distinct presence of someone still living in the estate. Two, actually, but now it was just one overbearing individual. His mind must have been playing tricks on him. It happened with age, or so he was told. Whatever squatter or insane illegal resident was still lurking around this place, he intended to at least afford them the chance to leave on their own terms. Otherwise they could be tossed out the gate by the droids. The Umbaran approached the door and knocked harshly, the same impatient intensity one would expect from someone conducting a clandestine search and seizure of property that wasn't theirs.