Private From The World's Heart [Private]

[Darth Caedes]

• Outer Rim Territories
• Dagobah
• Tags— Madrona A’Mia | Elmindra Xitaar

Missile explosions made low and thrumming thunder sounds in the distance, causing the swamps to go silent and their waters to quiver. Warm rain fell in thick droplets, plunging into the murky water and tasting of smoke and ash. With his eyes closed, almost, Caedes could convince himself that none of it was really happening at all. It had been hours since the Lernea-class Carrier Incubator passed by overhead, casting Dagobah in the eclipse of its slowly drifting shadow. No doubt now, the land and the Sith's enemies alike burned in fires hot enough to melt stone; a testament to Xitaar's naval forces and the firepower Korriban brought to the Sith's endeavors.

"They can feel it too," he whispered, eyeing the still and almost-hidden creatures clutching protectively at their young or guarding their nests; the vine-snakes clinging tightly to their swaying banyan-branches, tongues flicking out suspiciously, tasting the air. Amphibious prey gathered into clusters but did not sing, floating in the murk, their throats expanding and contracting, expanding and contracting, eyes wide and panting as if struck by fear. And the plants too, he thought to himself, they could feel it also— fear— and their roots, and the long things which swim along the swamp's bottom. To them it was sadness. They could feel the snuffing out of life as temples and ancient places collapsed beneath laser fire and orbital plasma. Shivering detonations traced ripples through the stones and the top of bog-water. Fear made the world alert, hardened the bark of trees. Fear gives opportunity to sadness. Sadness foments anger, and from anger arises power.

Darth Caedes, King of Korriban, looked wet and unhappy trudging through the muck, his dark hair clinging in soggy ribbons to a mud-flecked face, punishing gaze cast out from beneath a sharp brow. With smooth and unblemished skin, his features looked very much like those of a human's, a change which had overcome him gradually as the sounds of war grew farther and farther away. Unceremoniously plastered atop his dark armor, a thick layer of mud clung to him tightly, all of the way up to his thighs. Before him, at home already with the world's way, strode A'Mia, symbiote of the Murakami and voice of its dead. Around them and under her power, shambling through puddled thickets and wading through the stagnant bogs of Dagobah, ghouls from Odacer-Faustin skulked in a defensive cordon in the trail of their Lords. ​

 

[Madrona A’Mia]

• Outer Rim Territories
• Dagobah
• Tags— Darth Caedes Elmindra Xitaar

Were it not for his powerful connection with the Force and his unique energetic entanglement with A'Mia herself, the neti might well have slipped from his sight. So perfect was her disguise for the Dagobah swamp and undergrowth. Navigating such rich, biodiverse terrain seemed second nature to her and in fact allowed her to puppet the Orchid touched undead with nearly as much stealth with which she moved since they were cloaked with extensions of her arboreal body.

At first, the entirety of A'Mia's focus had been on concealing her movements and carefully controlling their dangerously diseased entourage. With that well in hand and their presence entirely overshadowed by the unfolding destruction they'd left behind, her cold calculating mind shifted to new priorities. His whisper somehow reached her ears or at least its meaning. She sought to tap into the life forces around them too, her recent symbiosis with the Murakami Orchid having granted her generally narrow force abilities more breadth. If Darth Caedes was a vast storm of power, practically a planetary body which bent the very fabric of the Weave with his Force capabilities, A'Mia was a scalpel or more accurately a set of surgeon's tools.

As she connected with roots, trailing vines, and all manner of other vegetation, her intense pupil-less eyes alighted on a pattern, an encoded pathway. With her intentions set and the ritual held like a schematic within her mind's eye, A'Mia took a creaking step in the direction of the cryptic signals she read in plant sign, her form somewhat stooped and twisted like the native flora of Dagobah.

"There is a hidden glade, a secluded vale not far. Where the marshes dip down and trees drink deep of the planet's lifeblood."

Her normally high and chipper voice came soft and hoarse, the transformation she'd undergone on Korriban in order to prepare for surreptitious travel on foot having altered even her affect for a time. She debated saying more, unsure of her Master and his inner workings. Would he prefer a student whose actions spoke for themselves? Or was he the type who would seek to understand how she rationalized and came to conclusions? She erred on the side of contemplation and reaffirmed her mastery over the undead at their flanks, guiding them all toward her chosen destination.

 

[Darth Caedes]

• Outer Rim Territories ​
• Dagobah​
• Tags— Madrona A’Mia | Elmindra Xitaar​

With a husky voice, augmented no doubt in accordance with the form she now wore, and perhaps even by the Murakami at her core, A'Mia announced the merits of their slow but steady progress.
"There is a hidden glade, a secluded vale not far," she said, "where the marshes dip down and trees drink deep of the planet's lifeblood." Carefully, Darth Caedes brushed the tangled hair from his eyes with a wrinkly thumb and peered forward to find the indicated path; but he could not see with the same sight accessed by the Lord Seer. Hesitating to study the strange woman, to wonder at the depths of her vision and to imagine at the symbols which guided her hand, he nodded the affirmative and pulled himself up the muddy bank of a Dagobah atoll. The ground smacked and oozed beneath him, sucking and popping at his every step, gripping at him as if in warning, as if pleading that he not find nor uncover the land's secrets. This world knew to fear the Dark Side of the Force already. It could feel what was to come before it happened.
"Then that is where we must go," Caedes said, predicting the trajectory of her thoughts. Did she follow her own instincts, he wondered, or was she now guided by the voice of Murakami? Where did that line of separation cleave one from the other, where did A'Mia begin and end, and how much of her now existed only as an instrument for the flower.

Presently he trudged forward, clearing thick vines from his path with lethargic arms and keeping his gaze ever fixed on the woman's back.
"From where, or from whom, did you derive the talents of sight which now guide us?" he asked, voice low and crackling like fire-sparks on split wood. Once, he too had possessed such a talent, though years spent in the Dark, absent of any Light, had dulled his senses and closed his eyes. Once, that gift had been nurtured in him by the soft hands of an irresponsible Jedi. He'd had to strangle those powers and bind them, drown them out and bludgeon them lest they draw him back towards the comforts of serenity and the Jedi's Light. He'd had to learn to close his eyes, to force them shut and keep them that way, or else to be driven mad by the constant bombardment of prophecy and vision which had assailed him throughout his youth. Yet A'Mia bore not the signs of a Jedi's touch nor the inclinations indicative of their techniques— nor was the influence she now practiced over the dead any less chilly than his own. Yet still, always the presence of this woman tugged at his mind in that old way, that forgotten way, like the last a missing lyric of a song stuck in one's head.
​

 

[Madrona A’Mia]

• Outer Rim Territories
• Dagobah
• Tags— Darth Caedes , Elmindra Xitaar

"From where, or from whom, did you derive the talents of sight which now guide us?" he asked, voice low and crackling like fire-sparks on split wood.

Onward Caedes trudged while A'Mia and her minions all but glided through nutrient dense muck. Her pause was pregnant as she considered his words and sensed something heavier in them than she was capable of discerning. The question posed was more complicated to answer than it had once been. She'd grown much and her sight had changed to suit new power at her disposal. Gone was the wayward soldier awoken on Kashyyyk in a time not her own, receding into history with the child outcast she had once been, replaced instead by a capable student, warrior, and even a Lord who was entrusted with resources the likes of which she'd never factored into plans that she'd made for herself in the past.

"My people… I suppose. Originally I thought it was my birthright, but even the Grovemind found my presence fell."

She decided to spare him the rest unless he asked because she found that most people disliked hearing about the excommunication and abandonment A'Mia faced as a sapling. It supposedly made some people sad, but within the social circles she tended to be part of, it seemed to be seen as some kind of weakness or perhaps a ploy to plant sympathy and therefor weakness in others. Regardless, she would not bore her Master with that history unless he had some practical use for it.

The Murakami shuddered in her chest cavity, straining momentarily against the tightly wound filaments of her own body she bound it to her own life force with. There was an almost imperceptible stutter step that cascaded through the encircling undead, causing them to subtly fall out of sync with their puppet master, even if only for a moment. There was a ponderous creaking sound as A'Mia sent out a few more lashing vines to reaffirm her control in a more physical sense.

"Odd," she thought, recalibrating her focus to the task at hand rather than errant contemplation.

It was not the first time the contents of her mind seemed to create an empathetic response from the guest A'Mia hosted, where the Murakami almost protested against the parasitic bond she'd elected for them both. Once the low psychic whine of the tormented flower was properly channeled toward total control of the zombies once more, A'Mia completed the answer in a way which Darth Caedes might find most relevant to his line of questioning.

"My functional use of the sight greatly improved when I underwent training as an echani fire-dancer. It becomes more potent still as I learn the ways of alchemy and sorcerery."

She inclined her mossy head in his direction, a swaying bow proffered while still on the move and one of the few niceties she'd engaged in on the journey. A'Mia mirrored and mimicked socially adept individuals with practiced ease most of the time, but the King of Korriban was decidedly more difficult for her to run those careful interpersonal calculations upon. So far she had elected to focus her energy on two things: proving herself capable of achieving her lofty ambitions and showing deference when it was not a distraction to that first goal.

"The footing grows treacherous here on out."

A'Mia's form was changing even as she spoke, the plant life cloaking their undead entourage following suit. She began using her many limbs to find purchase on trees and her locomotion could no longer accurately be described as bipedal. The undead were offered a similar freedom of movement, and A'Mia made efforts to provide the arboreal equivalent of stepping stones where Caedes was trekking. Ahead there was a cluttered, log clogged murky pool. Beyond that natural dam looked to be a steep embankment which sloped down into darker waters still and older more gnarled roots of yet larger trees.

 

[Darth Caedes]

• Outer Rim Territories ​
• Dagobah​
• Tags— Madrona A’Mia | Elmindra Xitaar ​

A ripple of agitated flesh swam across the face of Caedes, his lips forming a curved snarl which showed teeth. How dare this woman think to aid him without his first ordering it of her? Did she think him in need of help when traversing this place? The mud which clung to him, the dirt and water, the discarded leaves plastered to the fringes of his cloaks, they tied him to this place, made him a part of 'here' in a way he doubted A'Mia had ever needed to strive for.

Still, defiantly, he hugged his cloak round a slender body, hesitated, and then stepped out onto the root-woven walkway provided by the Lord Seer. Her power had grown in considerable fashion since their campaign on Odacer-Faustin's icy mantle. At times, Caedes had heard the woman refer to herself as a fine pointed tip in the Force— a needle or a surgeons scalpel— but Caedes saw through the simplicity of that analogy. Where before such a claim might have been considered as unadulterated truth, now the Murakami muddied the water and offered to her a battery of power unique and unrivaled by her peers in the Order. Yet she was clumsy, a child unaccustomed to new growth, a longer reach.
"You yet struggle against its power," he observed of the Murakami. The grimace he wore turned to something sour, then altogether towards a selfish curiosity. Her power, his guidance, and soon the galaxy would heel to the weight of their combined vision. The galaxy, composed of both the Light and the Dark, as well the shifting grey shadows which swayed between the two, all could be theirs; all would be his.
"Can you still hear its pleas for mercy?" ​

 

[Madrona A’Mia]

She propelled herself forward, certain Darth Caedes would maintain pace whether through the support she offered or by his own means. Her many limbed locomotion moved her through this environment as few other living things could and she skillfully lent that same ambulation to the non-living in their company as well. Down, further down they went, over a natural damming and into a sunken bog. Sounds of other forest life stilled as they approached, their fell presence heeded by even the simplest creature so long as they had a survival instinct.

"At times yes. Can you hear it too?" She was curious, genuinely, but continued so he knew her machinations.
"I intend to bind it to me entirely- for orchid and I to become one being in the Force."

Her momentum built and she knew time was still of the essence. Though they'd gone unnoticed upon their exit from the ship in a literal war zone, their mission was predicated on stealth. A'Mia moved with purpose toward the center of the boggy meadow, beginning to lower herself and the zombie puppets into the water as they reached her chosen destination for the ritual. Her King was of course offered more dry places to step if he so chose, but the Neti needed to be in the muck - needed to send snaking tendrils down into the silt and to wind amongst the oldest roots of this place.

It was not in her nature to dally or waste time. Once in place she carefully moved each zombie to their exact coordinate with the precision needed for such acts of sorcery. Together they formed an animate sigil, which soon would be bound together by A'Mia's many grasping vines and piercing tendrils. Soon, she would infect this place and seed it with everything necessary for more strains to grow.

​