Dominion Onward | Dominion of Ord Thoden | NIO

[Paz Koon]

Bastard

​

"You will not make them talk," Paz called out. Her intonations had a metallic, muffled quality behind the rebreather latched to her lower skull. As if taking her heckling as its cue, a dry wind rolled across the dusty, grassless plain. Off-green robes billowed and fluttered around the small alien's stature, revealing peeks of the furtive Imperial Knight cuirass beneath.

A premonition had intruded into her mind like a sudden illness as she landed on Ord Thoden; A portent of slaughter. Even with her uncertainties, the implication of the repugnant reverie was as clear as the image of the Echani whom she stood before: there were Sith about. To find the Sith, she would track the predator that hunted them as well. Initially a daunting task, but once she'd found the first body, it was like following a road.

"They believe we are naught ants compared to their sordid overlords. There is little we can do to convince them otherwise." The tail end of her cloak scuffled into a spasm with the low breeze as she strode forward toward the comparatively younger man. Paz turned her head up a tick towards the eyes of the unpigmented beau.

A thought existing vaguely between the realms of pertinence and apathy thought he might have looked familiar. Had she more time to consider, she might have indulged the notion.

"Even the clandestine unfaithful among them will resurrect conviction at the sight of you. It gives them the strength to hold their tongues, believing there is nothing you can do to them worse than what the Sith would do if they were to blow the whistle."

At least, that was as much as she could infer. Foreseeing ashen hair and stygian blade killing them to their last sent a message flowing somewhere vaguely in that vein.

"If you snuff them to the last, the secrets follow them to the grave." There was a pause. A slight tilt of the head heralded a blink of brown eyelids over milky enviro-contacts. "May I offer an alternative approach?"

 

[Bastard]

"I march to the beat of unheard drums. They sound through the night, a signal of impending doom."

Tags: Paz Koon
​

"Then they will die," Errant decreed before he buried his great blade into the chest of a kneeling reaver. Her cry was cut short as he squared his feet and tore up through her body. It cleaved the woman near in two, her head, now split in half, drooped idly in two different directions. He stepped past the killer made supplicant, apathetic to the mess of gore staining his lower half.

"I have found the information I seek, Seer," he called over his shoulder, attention momentarily diverted from the path. He locked eyes with Paz Koon, the depths of his impassioned stare unending. "They are located at the top of this ravine, at the end of these makeshift, wooden walkways. Twin Sith Lords await my judgment. I continue to question these fools," he paused to nudge another of the dead from his path. It tumbled to the canyon floor, the crunch of bones and wet tear of muscles echoing noisily throughout the descent.

"Because I am sure there is more to their abilities," he finished.

He did not slow as she spoke. Each step carried him through the shanty, closer to the location marked on the datapad clipped at his belt. He could make out sporadic bouts of movement up ahead. Hushed calls barely reached him.

"If my presence inspires them to fight, then there is no one to blame but themselves when I deliver their souls to nether," Errant rounded a rocky bend and lifted his weapon. Two shoddily dressed reavers charged him with misshapen metal rods. The Albino swung his weapon about until it crested down overhead, shearing through the shoulder of his rightmost attacker. The dark blade cleaved through flesh and bone as if it were paper. The bandit's forward motion carried the blade deeper into the horrid mess until he stumbled to the floor at Errant's feet.

Errant allowed his weapon to fall from his grasp, taking up the metal pipe with an outstretched hand and mental summons. He ducked beneath a wild swing from his foe. Rising up, he cracked the rod against the bandit's chin. His head snapped back. Errant reversed his grip on the metal rod and plunged it through his victim's empty socket. Screams of pain erupted as the bandit crashed into the floor. Errant paid him no mind, already moving on to the next.

Three others waited atop a wooden palisade at the edge of the platform. They took cover behind the flimsy wall and pelted the Kinslayer with rocks and rubble alike. Errant thrust his hand towards them, watching with minimal interest as a wave of energy slammed into their position. It carried the reavers from the canyon's side, the palisade right along with them. Three heavy thuds sounded from below, followed by sorrow-filled cries of pain that vanished the moment the palisade's sharpened tops found their paralyzed bodies.

He turned to Paz Koon as he tore his blade from the dead man at his feet.

"I will hear your suggestion."

 

[Paz Koon]

Bastard

​

"I will hear your suggestion."​

Paz hadn't foreseen the cards he was holding. Auguries did not beget omniscience. As the Albino spoke further, the purpose of his violent inquiry became clear, and with it, the inaccuracy of her deduction. She stole a glance toward the mangled corpse at his feet. The Kel Dor's regard followed the length of the blade until it had skulked its way back to his face.

An uneventful silence heralded an eventual response: "It no longer matters, I now see the path."

A clawed, four-fingered extremity moved down to her belt. The cloak opened, fully revealing the Imperial Knight panoply. A curved hilt plucked from belt coupling, with an explosive hiss, colorless plasma extended with controlled fury. "If Sith have tenated here, you have my sword." The blade hummed loudly as it cut through the air with an eager flourish.

The collective bellow of human and alien reverberated through the shanty. Another group armed with pipes, shafts, and other improvised weapons charged the pair. With a raise of a hand, she called upon the Force's aid. A sudden burst emanated from her palm, shoving the group away with an invisible phantasm of an influence. Some of them cried out with dread as they plummeted from the platforms while others grunted as they crashed hard into objects or flooring.

Paz turned to the stranger, glancing at his datapad, then back to up to eye-contact. "Onward. I will follow."

 

[Bastard]

"I march to the beat of unheard drums. They sound through the night, a signal of impending doom."

Tags: Paz Koon ​

"Glorious," Errant said.

Shouts heralded the approach of yet another band of the Sith's following. He narrowed his gaze, blade hefted in preparation. Paz's attack sent the latest group of assailants to their doom well before the Albino even took his first step forward. He shrugged, sheathed his weapon, and set off at a comfortable pace.

"While the rumors regarding these two Sith have been mostly lackluster, I've confirmed there are, in fact, two of them. One has supposedly forsaken the use of a lightsaber in favor of the force. Local myths indicate this Sith created this canyon," he paused at the base of a tall wooden ladder. His gaze scanned the horizon, taking in miles upon miles of barren, lifeless land. Stones of all sizes jutted out from the earth, like fingers in search of something just out of reach. Fissure large enough to swallow a man whole connected them.

"The locals claim the Sith responsible drew a passing asteroid from space when the planet's citizens refused to pay a tithe of blood. This asteroid impacted here and wiped out an entire town, along with the farms, livestock, and people who called it home," he turned away from the ledge and took hold of the lowest rungs. The Albino continued to speak as he scaled the rickety ladder. "Various bandit clans and reavers were drawn to this region in hopes of plundering what was left of the city. They've since sworn service to the Sith responsible."

Cresting the top, Errant turned and offered a hand to his elder.

"From what I understand, the sorcerer is far more powerful than their twin, but the stories speak favorably of the other as well," the Crestfallen Knight looked towards the open cave, somewhat surprised to find a lack of opposition. "The remaining twin is said to be a savant with the lightsaber. It is through their skill with the weapon that the local ruffians deemed him worthy of following. It is said, in their rage, they laid waste to well over a dozen of the bandit clans who dared threaten this very cave."

Skeletal remains littered the space, most picked clean by the canyon's carrions. New bodies hung from the wall, pinned brutally by big metal rods turned to makeshift spikes.

"I highly suspect we are outmatched. This mission, my path, is mine alone to walk, Knight Koon," Errant shouldered aside the tattered cloak, his hand resting on the pommel of his blade. "My transgressions have made me an exile. If I am to die in search of my atonement, then so be it. You still walk with your honor intact. I would not think you a coward for returning to the Order in search of reinforcements."

 

[Paz Koon]

Bastard

​

A vast majority of her canvas for expression was blocked by the brutalist rebreather, but the epiphany in her eyes was brighter than a star. "So you are Knight Varanin?" she gawked with intonations equal parts curious and cautious. That feeling she'd had before crept back for a subtle 'I told you so'. Varanin the traitor, they say he chose bedding with a Sith over the New Order. Bastion pre-dated her enlisting, she would not pretend to know the truth from the embellishments.

" Rurik Fel speaks highly of you when his mood begets musing, despite what has happened. I will remain on this path with you, as the Knight Commander wishes you redeemed, and I have an oath of purging to uphold." Her eyes narrowed to white slits on a brown, roughly textured visage. "Do not misconstrue my begrudging cooperation as being in my good graces, Varanin. I am doing what is expected of me."

The Kel Dor's glance shifted to the mouth of the cave. "As for our malignant quarry, fools will make myths out of anything. Outmatched or not, we have nothing to fear, for I have seen to the contrary." Boots ground against dust and grime as she shifted to face it fully. Her cloaked stature would begin to drift forward with a deft stride. "I will lead now. Come."

Into the cave, the pair would descend.

 

[Bastard]

"I march to the beat of unheard drums. They sound through the night, a signal of impending doom."

Tags: Paz Koon​

"That would be correct," Errant muttered in response to the accusation. It was no surprise she knew his reputation. The Order had dragged him through the streets of Ravelin in chains, stripped of his armor, wrapped only in the tattered black cloak that now hung from his shoulders. The Butcher of Bastion, they called him. A duel meaning, much like his very existence. For on the planet of Bastion, the Crestfallen had committed a grievous sin, one birthed in the throes of passion and bathed in the blood of his brethren.

In a twist of fate, his emergence from the prisons beneath Fortress Imperator dawned a second slaughter. He took to the streets, his face a mask of stoic alabaster. He ripped the Sith Empire's forces apart one by one. The streets of Ravelin ran red with the blood of the corrupt. It coated his entire body from head to toes, painting his snow-white form the color of passion and rage. When the Knights returned from the tunnels, Lord Executor Rurik Fel at their head, Errant awaited them. Gaping wounds decorated his flesh, a showing of his stalwart defense of the Imperial Homeland. The Knight Commander decreed mercy, freeing him from the prison, so long as he took up an oath of the fallen.

"I think nothing of your reasoning," he admitted. "It would change nothing."

Errant fell in step behind her as they entered into the cave-proper. More bones lined the corridor, fresher than those outside, not yet bleached white from what light stretched into the cavern. Chunks of meat clung to some of them, the red tissue blackened and rotten.

"Disgusting," he grumbled while stepping over a pile that resembled a humanoid's ribcage. Vermin skittered outward, rushing into the shadows in fear of the two overhead. Errant paid them no mind, his gaze focused entirely on the Knight before him. While he didn't recognize her face, the rumors of the Kel Dor who'd taken up the gray cloak reached even him in his forgotten cell. Perhaps his once-brethren sought to torment him with news of the outside, joined by jeers and taunts meant to unbalance him, but rarely did the Albino think anything of it.

He made his mistakes. No insult could eclipse the shame he felt from his lowest moment. And whatever the other Knights thought to accomplish did little more than keep Errant informed of the Order and the rest of the galaxy.

All other thoughts quickly vacated his mind as he felt something dark just ahead of them within the tunnels. He slowly drew his dark blade from its sheath and fell into a crouch. The cavern wall fell away to reveal a small, bowl-like lip in the stone pathway. Just past it, he could make out echoed chants, spoken by two different voices in unison. Errant pushed closer and peered over the stone lip.

Fresh corpses hung from rusted hooks, most unmoving, though some still squirmed uncomfortably. A body rested upon a table, limbs splayed out in four separate directions. The man looked up at the cavern's dark ceiling, ignorant of the T-shaped cut that tore his chest open in two. Flaps of flesh were pinned to his sides and shoulders. The macabre dissection seemed almost unrealistic. How could one's body survive something so horrific?

Deeper in the cavern stood two figures. One clutched a crooked black staff in slender, white fingers. Long white hair cascaded down their back, stopping only inches from the floor. A black robe hung loosely around their frame, held in place by a simple belt adorned with bits and bobbles. Beside them, an eerily similar figure leaned against the rocky wall, onyx arms crossed, hands tucked away in the folds of their snow-white robes. Midnight black hair held in a warrior's topknot, pinned in place by something closely resembling a finger bone. At their side hung two curved hilts.

"At last," Errant straightened, black blade held tight in both hands.

 

[Paz Koon]

Bastard

​

"I think nothing of your reasoning," ​

"Nor should you."

"It would change nothing."​

"Nor should it."

Silver light emanated from her saber, illuminating the stygian passages with an unsteady glimmer. Any qualms she had with the macabre disarray were entirely internal, not warranting an outward display of disgust like Errant. She stepped over and around corpses gingerly, keeping her saber raised like a torch. They came to a head in the labyrinthian caverns, face to face with the twin black hearts within.

"Demons," she spat with bladed contempt. "By my oath, I am your end." Without allowing another moment, the small woman pressed forward. She struck for the shrouded ivory figure, plasma cutting the stony walls as the Sith weaved away. Black and orange scars marked her failure upon the stone. Thrusts, lunges, and slashes rang out ravenously, managing only grazes and whiffs as the sorcerer proved slipper.

Paz, in her age, had grown slow, but the Force granted her speed. When the electric hatred left lithe, ivory fingers, she was quick to catch with her blade. She flicked the saber to the side with a flourish, sending the lighting out of the tip and crashing to the side. She moved, but the sorcerer was quicker, calling the rubble created by Paz's redirection toward her.

The Kel Dor strained, holding the rubble's momentum in stasis as she mustered the strength to redirect.

The Sith began an incantation...

 

[Bastard]

"I march to the beat of unheard drums. They sound through the night, a signal of impending doom."

Tags: Paz Koon​

There was a time Errant would have echoed the Kel Dor's shout. To take up the call of his brethren in honor of their glory, weapon held firm to support their push. Shame kept him silent. He lifted his Sith blade and launched into battle a step behind his elder, great weapon raised above his head, primed to deliver a brutal end to the onyx-skinned twin. Errant crossed the room in the blink of an eye, his supernatural speed attributed to the force's omnipresent power.

He drove the weapon down in a violent arc meant to cleave the Onyx Twin in two. The metal blade screeched as it carved a deep groove through the stone wall where they stood seconds before. Errant tore the weapon free and jumped back just in time to avoid the crimson blade's scorching touch. It pierced the wall beside the sundered stone. The Sith withdrew their blade, leaving behind a quickly cooling thin orange hole. A violet saber exploded from the second hilt a split-second later. They raised their two blades across their body, the reddish-violet hue of the sabers illuminating the cruel smile affixed to their lips.

"To think-" the Onyx Sith began.

"-you would so foolishly engage us directly," the Ivory Sith concluded.

The white-robed Sith pressed forward without warning, their violet saber swept out in a horizontal strike. Errant pulled his greatsword across his body and batted aside the first strike in time to chop down and force the quicker foe back. The Imperial fell back towards the Kel Dor and thrust his hand out towards the rubble which threatened her. The added strength saw the ruined stone forced away. It bounced against the walls harmlessly, clattering against the cavern floor.

Soft whispers sounded in the back of his mind—a warning. The Crestfallen Knight turned back and raised his weapon's hilt overhead, the blade itself in a downward guard across his form. While it successfully warded away the crimson saber, the violet weapon pushed past the guard and carved a groove through his breastplate, just beneath the arm. The Albino winced, a shout of pain echoing around them as he fell back once more.

"You are not strong enough to defeat us," the Onyx Sith taunted.

"I am your superior in sorceries, Imperial," the Ivory Sith decreed at the epoch of their incantation.

"And I yours with the blade, Black Knight." Onyx jeered. "Your bodies will make for fine additions to my twin's laboratory. I am excited to see what they can do with the corpses of a half-blooded bastard and a Kel Dor."

 

[Paz Koon]

Bastard

​

The air seemed to crackle with Sith magic. Beneath her, the ground gave into a black liquid. Paz sank instantly to her ankles, her descent slowing in the thick sludge. Despite her efforts, freeing herself proved vain. Arms with desperate grasping hands erupted from the conjured puddle. Paz struck at them, severing them with quick cuts of her saber. The dismembered bits resigned into the sable goop and fell back into the puddle as more arose, pulling her down slowly.

With a sudden change in method, her hand raised upward. With all the will she could manifest, she pulled. Despite the routine force barrier that combatants always did well to maintain, Paz's ethereal grip found quarter. The sorcerer made a surprised noise as they lifted from the ground and careened toward the Kel Dor. Paz caught the Sith, an arm around the neck in a chest-to-chest embrace.

Elbow leered back, saber in preparation for a thrust. She plunged the blade forward toward the sorcerer's gut, but again the Sith managed to slip by. She heaved, throwing the ivory thaumaturge over her shoulder and into the sludge. She was knee-deep by this point. A bolt of lightning shot out of the Sith somewhere in the struggle, flying wide and crashing into the cave ceiling. It rained stones, the roar of their impact reverting like thunder.

She held the head of the Sith under the sludge, twirling her blade into a reverse grip before plunging it downward. The sorcerer sank instantly, disappearing beneath the tar-like liquid. Paz's strike sank down into the puddle, trapping her saber and hand beneath the black. With a horrible bubbling squelch, the Sith rose from the edge of a puddle as if pulled by a harness.

Two hands extended, fingers clawed with malaice. Lighting came. Paz screamed.

 

[Bastard]

"I march to the beat of unheard drums. They sound through the night, a signal of impending doom."

Tags: Paz Koon
​

As solid stone turned to an inky tar, Errant hurried away from the spreading murk. The Onyx Sith pressed forward, falling upon the Albino with a flurry of powerful blows. Errant pressed his left hand against the flat of his blade, lifted the weapon overhead, and blocked the first of the attacks before sliding the same hand down the length of the weapon to its hilt. He yanked the blade leftward as the second blow came wide, aimed for his hip. The sudden jerk saw the great blade swing counter-clockwise into the violet sabers path.

"You cannot hold me back forever, boy," the Onyx Twin growled. "Already your ally flounders in the face of the inevitable. How will you fare when you stand alone against our combined might?"

They moved a wide circle around one another. Errant held tight to his great weapon while the Sith choked up on the curved hilts and began to weave them back and forth through the air before the Albino's cold gaze.

"If your skill with a blade was half that of your tongue, we would already be dead," Errant countered, his tone measured. He looked beyond the serpentine movements of his foe, attention flickering between the Sith's hips and feet. Though the Crestfallen could not match them for speed, he could more than make up for it in his efficiency. No warrior, no matter how skilled, be they ambidextrous or not, could direct both weapons simultaneously. Two-weapon fighting's greatest weakness came in the form of split strength and the body's own limitations.

So, when the Onyx Sith's hip shifted forward, the weight on their left foot increased to support their 'sudden' charge, Errant smirked.

He dropped low, leveled his monolithic blade parallel to the floor, and ducked beneath the Onyx Sith's guard. The tip of his black blade met the Sith's charge head-on. Errant plunged the weapon through the Sith Lord's chest, his foe's momentum carrying it well through his body and out the other side. Crimson burst from their back in a fountain of gore. It splattered over the Imperial Knight, painting his face in a thick coating of red.

Not one for theatrics, he ripped the weapon free and turned back to Knight Koon and her adversary in time to see lightning surge over the elder Imperial. He charged towards the Alabaster Sith, his wild swing aimed to shear their head from their shoulders. Lightning arched out from their fingertips and blasted him back across the room instead. He narrowly tucked his chin in time to avoid his skull's shattering on the cavern surface.

Stone fell from the ceiling in chunks, some dangerously close to the battered Knights. The Pale Sith shifted their gaze from Errant and Paz to the fissured stone above. They flexed their crooked fingers once more, a steady stream of white lightning sent upward. Another thunderous boom exploded from the point of impact, echoing all around them.

"You who has killed my dear sibling," they swayed closer to Errant, hand reaching down to take up the Albino's chin. "I should kill you where you lay, you filthy half-blooded mongrel... but you have done me a great service in freeing me from that which bound me. Now," they released the Crestfallen, hand outstretched towards the twin sabers laying beside the Onyx Sith's corpse. "I can continue my work in peace. Farewell, Imperials. May the site of your greatest triumph make for a comfortable tomb."

The Sith waved their hand, uttering another spell in their accursed tongue. A thin seam slowly formed before them. It crawled outward, soon giving way to a shrouded portal of ashen gray.

"Farewell," they stepped through. The portal blinked out of existence behind them, leaving the two Knights in their pain-addled stupor.

 

[Paz Koon]

Bastard

​

By some inexplicable force of will, Paz managed to free her hand and saber from the conjured tar-like substance. White plasma erected with urgency, a wild slash managing a glancing blow against the sorcerer. A sudden dance of ivory fingers conjured grasping arms and lamenting, featureless black faces twofold.

By the time she had cut them all away, the Sith had already torn open a portal. "Coward," she spat as her opposite hand was as well pulled free. Four clawed fingers extended, lighting over her own arcing out toward the portal as the Sith disappeared through it. The egress closed as the erratic arcs slipped in halfway, sundering the lighting prematurely.

A flash of light and a calamitous thunder shook the cavern as the energy scattered at the portal's null point. Rocks and dust were shaken free of the cave's ceiling, sending a rain of pebbles and grime down onto the knights. "Tch," Paz played her displeasure from her maw.

"Varanin," she called out firmly. "A hand, if you would?" She was up to her waist now. Slow plummet into the void, yet her voice played to no hint of urgency or panic.