A chi vuole, non mancano modi [Order of the Sith Lords]

[Alicia Drey]

Violent dreams have violent ends.​

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Outer Rim Territories;
Carrion sector, Sojourn system.

The familiar pang gripped the Sith Lord as she made her way through her castle on Sojourn. Like all the others, a spasm crept up Darth Ayra's body- first beginning at the base of her spine- and then creeping it's way along her heavy frame until finally passing. It threatened to topple her from her standing position, as she paused to fight against the sensation, as if such an act would spell the end for her reign as a Dark Lord of the Sith. But the spasm passed, leaving only the same fire that itched it's way all across her body, inflaming her skin and muscles, as the infestation that covered her body from neck to toe continued to gnaw and bite their way through her flesh, injecting her with toxins that were bringing her to the drink of insanity. If not for the dark side of the Force, Ayra feared she might have passed along time ago.

Sojourn was empty. Gone were the times where Alicia Drey would host fancy banquettes designed to learn information on galactic events, or burrow her claws deep into various criminal and corporate organizations. No more handmaidens, waiters or cleaners to keep up the decor of the home away from home. Not even her Sith Apprentice JN-34, or as she called herself "@Joon", was there to give her a scowling stare wrought with the hatred she had taught her to feel. Like a sanctimonious husk of a former life, Darth Ayra wandered the halls of her empty home, far away from her homeworld of Chandrila, and out of the eye of galactic events to await nothing but death. With each passing moment, the Sith felt her mind beginning to sink into the despair of it all, as the parasites she had been infected with during her adventures on Dxun continued to eat away at her. But Darth Ayra was a cunning individual. She knew things that not many others could know, and so she had decided not to wander into deaths embrace so willingly. There would be one more roll of the dice before she would allow herself to be consumed.

Ella Nova, a Jedi Knight who had served the Galactic Republic during the One Sith Wars was on her way to Sojourn. Most would think that this would spell the end for the dying Dark Lord. After all, her powers had dwindled considerably in an effort to fight away the infestation that had plagued her since she had returned from Dxun a standard year ago, plus this Ella Nova was a trained Jedi and thus a mortal enemy of the Sith, who had no doubt come all this way to the Carrion sector to put an end to Darth Ayra's reign. But Darth Ayra was cunning. The war between the Jedi and Ayra's former comrades in the One Sith collective had had a significant effect on the Jedi Knight that was set to meet with her. Three months locked away in the Black Pyramid, constructed and ruled by Darth Vornskr a.k.a Kaine Zambrano, a former Emperor of the old Sith Empire had played their part well in the fall of the vulnerable Jedi.

In a daring rescue, the Sun Guards of Sojourn had freed the Jedi from her cell and taken her by force to Sojourn to meet with their master Darth Ayra, so that she could play her part in the discovery of a cure for the Sith Lord's affliction. For Darth Ayra knew that the Jedi possessed almost an infinite knowledge on the healing arts of the light side, and it was both by an insight into the Force, plus faith, that Darth Ayra had instigated the subsequent rescue of the damned Jedi Knight so that she could ultimately use her in an effort to discover those secrets and use them to save herself. Just out of the eye of the Keep's wooden gates, just shy of the sunlight, Darth Ayra stood waiting for Ella Nova's arrival.

 

[Darth Ayra]

| [member="Darth Ayra"] |

The noose that hung over Ella's head smelled unpleasant, adding to the discomfort caused by it's fabric and texture. Alongside the constant banging and jarring of the ship that she was currently sat upon, occasionally forcing her to bump painfully into the wall behind her meant that the Jedi Knight was experiencing a level of discomfort that was only dwarfed by the torture sessions she had endured for the past few months at the hands of Darth Vornskr, the Sith Lord that she had ventured far from Republic space to apprehend and subsequently bring to justice for his crimes. The only source of comfort that Ella could reach upon was the fact that she was not at least being subjected to torrents of force lightning, or left hanging by her wrists for days on end by chains connected to the ceiling above, which had left her suspended like a ragged toy for Vornskr to leave and play with as he so choose.

Her memory of what happened that had led her to this latest precarious position was hazed. She had been trying to sleep, the only way that she could get away from the numbing pain that was spread across her body at the time, when there had been the sounds of blaster fire nearby, and then a sudden explosion that had collapsed the entrance to her cell. Ella had tried to reach into the Force in an effort to use this as a means to escape, but her powers had not been there for her to summon, with thanks to the series of drugs and toxins that had been injected in her system by her tormentor so that she would not be able to use them in the first place. Through her blurry vision, Ella had barely made out an individual- a man or woman she did not know- wearing some kind of yellow Armour. Before she had passed out, she remembered hearing the chains break, so she assumed that whoever had broken into her cell had come to free her.

When she had woke back up it had been in some kind of ship. She could tell by the familiar sounds of engines whirring somewhere in the background. She had tried to talk at first, but found that she did not have a voice to command. Her first thoughts was that this was some type of Republic-led mission to save her, after the Jedi had somehow learned that she had been captured by Vornskr and imprisoned on Coruscant inside the Black Pyramid. But she had quickly figured out that this was not the case. If this was some type of Republic special forces or Jedi led rescue mission than she was one hundred percent sure that her rescuers wouldn't have her cuffed, gagged and a noose over her head. She was still in a considerable amount of pain too, and Ella figured that if these people who had broken her out of Coruscant were allies to the Republic then she wouldn't be in this amount of pain still either. Her deduction that her rescuers were not her friends was confirmed when she overheard conversation between two individuals, whose dialect and language indicated that they were Thyrsian. She could remember studying the language during her trials to become a Jedi Knight.

Ella did not know how much time had passed between being taken from the Black Pyramid and the subsequent journey on board the Thyrsian's ship, but she guessed that it had been a day. With the hood over her head and the gag in her mouth, she was helpless to do anything. All she could do was try to practice the meditation techniques taught to her by [member="Sochi Ru"] during her time as a Jedi Padawan, in an attempt to gather her powers so that she could try and free herself from her new captors. But the toxins that were still in her system from her time on Coruscant were still there, preventing her from being able to use them. Patience, Ella reminded herself, as she had been reminding herself for the past three months. All you have to do is wait. Eventually you will be able to free yourself. All you need to do is wait, and be strong.

Damus, leader of the Sun Guards of Sojourn, brought the Initium out of hyperspace. Below them spun the ancient, uninhabitable world from which the Hunter's Moon orbited. The Commander piloted the shuttle expertly to begin descent into the satellites atmosphere on course for the Keep from which their Master awaited. Turning to his co-pilot, Damus said in his native tongue: "Keep her steady." He was met with a nod from his fellow Sun Guard, which he took as acknowledgement to his order. Rising out of his chair, the Commander strode through the cockpit door and out into the hallway. His eyes were met with seven less men than which he had gone to Coruscant with to perform the mission given by Lord Ayra. After they had got away, Damus had questioned each of his men to make sure that they had done what was necessary to preserve their Master's secrets. As far as he was concerned, his men had turned their disruptor pistols onto their brothers and comrades after it became clear that they were either going to die, or become captured by the enemy. The Master had been explicit in her orders to not allow her enemies to learn that the Sun Guards had performed the rescue mission. But Damus could not be sure if they had left behind any survivors, or any evidence given by their brothers bodies, for the Armour of the Sun Guard was legendary and distinctive.

"Load up the prisoner," Damus ordered in Thyrsian as he turned his gaze to the hooded, bound and gagged Jedi in the corner of the shuttle. His men complied, pulling the woman up by her armpits and arms as the co-pilot brought the Initium down to land. As the engines cooled down and the hydraulics within the ship worked to open the shuttle bay doors and lower the landing ramp, Damus led the way down and out of the ship towards the castle that sat over the valley overlooking Sojourn's vast forest. The Commander was not Force-sensitive, yet he somehow sensed that his Master was aware of their arrival, and this suspicion was confirmed when he opened the Keep to discover Lord Ayra waiting there in the darkness, hooded and more gaunt than which he had previously seen her.

The remaining Sun Guards followed Damus inside, dropping the Jedi before the Sith Lord and falling to one knee before her, with the Commander following suit. As she knelt there, trying her best to see past the hood over her head, Ella did not require her eyes to sense that she was in the presence of someone quite formidable. The dark side of the Force was strong her- not as potent as it had been in the Black Pyramid- but significant enough to make the Jedi worried. Walking slowly forwards, Darth Ayra wrapped her hands around the hood that hung from the Jedi's head and pulled it back so that she could see. Light instantly forced Ella to blink and look away, shielding herself away from it because it was too painful. As she blinked through the light, trying to glimpse up at the person standing on top of her, Darth Ayra murmured weakly: "Welcome to Sojourn."

 

[Darth Ayra]

I am one of you.​

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Somewhere near Lorrd;
MZX32905 system.

Darth Ayra overlooked the asteroids that passed her as she stood upon the secret installation she had built on top of the Home. In the wake of her death three years ago, the Omega War had passed in the fallout of the Galactic Alliance's victory over her old comrades in the One Sith, the Sith Order she had joined under the orders of her deceased master, Darth Pandeima. The era of Chaos continued, seeing to the rise and fall of countless organizations, factions and ideologies. Yet, here she stood, enduring the death and decay that had ravaged her during her final year of life, as she had sought the secrets of Freedon Nadd.

Alicia Drey had died, but she had lived on in the form of a new face and body to adopt her indomitable soul. The art of Essence Transfer had been an ability that Pandeima had used excessively in her attempts to ward away death. As her apprentice, Ayra had learned everything that Circe Savan had ever learned or discovered about the dark side of the Force. On the brink of death, Darth Ayra had hatched her last ever plan: to free a captured Jedi Knight found in the clutches of one of the galaxies most powerful Sith Lord, and use her to find a way to cure the infestation that had plagued her body. But even after three months of torture, and the agonizing defeat of the Republic she had loved, Ella Nova had still found the strength to defy her.

"No," Ella whispered, voice weak and cracked as she listened to the woman's demand. "I will... not... betray... the... Republic." Despite her precarious situation, Ella was enamored by the knowledge that there is no death, only the Force. Something that Vornskr, nor this Sith Lord who had taken her from the Black Pyramid would ever understand. She would not betray the Jedi Order, nor the Galactic Republic she had fought for, so that she could steal and then give the cure to the parasites that wrought this Darth Ayra. Despite the pain and hardship she had endured, Ella still found some sympathy and sorrow for the Sith. To be in constant agonizing pain was something Ella could relate to, but not at the expense of her beliefs, or to put the lives she had fought to protect die in vain due to her betrayal. "I... will... not-"

Caught in a tidal wave of fury, Darth Ayra reached out into the dark side of the Force and consumed the Jedi Knight that knelt before her. In the avalanche of power, the parasites that hung from every orifice and limb that Darth Ayra owned were sent into a frenzy as they fed upon the dark side power and returned it in kind, their teeth burrowing faster and deeper than they had before. The symbiosis that followed only served to increase Darth Ayra's power for a moment before her physical vessel was consumed. The Sun Guards that had knelt before their master rose to their feet, startled by the sudden vortex of power that they could feel and the subsequent roars and screams of the two women as the dark side itself consumed both of them in the ancient ritual of Essence Transfer.

Fleeing from the keep, the Sun Guards spread into the valley to take cover so that they too were not consumed by the dark energies as Darth Ayra poured her essence into the ritual in one final attempt to save her life. The defiance of the Jedi Knight, her one final chance at saving the life of Alicia Drey, had forced her to the last resort: the ancient ritual of Essence Transfer, that would allow her to consume and takeover the physical vessel of another. In a sudden explosion, the parasites that had threatened to consume the Sith Lord were destroyed as too was her body as the ritual took form, plunging the soul of Darth Ayra forward into the mind and body of Ella Nova; and the Jedi Knight hung, suspended in mid-air as the Dark Lord of the Sith eradicated her existence and replaced it with her own. It was almost angelic, as the petite frame of Ella Nova hung there in the vortex of power in the eye of Sojourn's dying star was taken over by the Sith Lord.

The face of Ella Nova stood, reflected in the transparisteel of the Skyhook's dome, as a shooting comet passed by Darth Ayra. Three years had passed her, the Omega War had come and gone, and the One Sith stood fallen and defeated. In her hubris, Ayra had come up with another name- Vupua- to trick her fellow Sith who had been deceived into thinking she was dead. Far away upon the farmlands of Chandrila was the tome of Alicia Drey, erected and placed by her fellow Chandrilians in thanks to her work for her people, empty and desolate of a real body.

It was time to return.