Private Ours to Shoulder

[Kaila Irons]

It is the nature of one's shoulders to carry weight. Since the first humans left their caves on Coruscant to do battle with the Taung, they have shouldered everything from stone to cannon, spreading across the stars such that they had grown to be more than merely a species, producing countless variations including Vahla such as Darth Anathemous, and Echani such as Empress Srina Talon .

On Echnos, The Empress had unknowingly lifted a great and terrible burden from her.

Yet upon the Laminanium shoulders of Anathemous, she had also laid another which the Echani believed her capable of bearing.

She was now, among other things, Governor of the Echnos system. To be given such a task by The Empress herself honored her. And terrified her in those few moments in which her mind was not preoccupied with it's meticulous planning and execution, which had been ceaseless ever since her promotion. Had she served this purpose adequately? In those moments of inner doubt, had she not in turn doubted Talon's decision? Surely she mustn't dishonor her so by even questioning her will.

And yet, as would always be the case, Anathemous had a great many questions.

What did Talon see in her? why had she reached out to her amidst the battlefield when so many others fought and died for Echnos just the same?

And what part would she play in this newfound future?

Whether or not she was worthy of such responsibility would be laid to rest shortly, for The Masquerade had taken her to Jutrand. To the Empress. She had come to personally settle this internal debate by updating the woman on these planetary efforts, exiting her ship atop a landing pad outside and being escorted by imperial security. Dressed in her newest armor as a symbol of the station to which she had been raised by her host for the evening, she marched with purpose towards the audience that had been granted, cloak swaying from tired but resolved shoulders, signature mask held beneath her arm as she opted to forgo her mental wards for the time being. She would not begin her newfound relationship with Talon by hiding her thoughts away, not in the way she did with Darth Carnifex.

To that end, everything was on full display.

Unoppressed by the crowd of powerful sith who drowned out her presence on Echnos, her peculiar force signature might be easier to feel now, no longer blurred and twisted within the dark maelstrom of so many others. And yet it was still as if multiple beings were present here, things far more ancient than even her master having come to dwell within that young body, shackled to her will.

It was ironic perhaps, that the youngest darth and rising star who bound the very dead, was perhaps the humblest of the empire's servants. For a sith, at least.


Srina Talon

 

[Srina Talon]

Tag: Kaila Irons
Location: [Jutrand] - Empress Quarters - Solarium
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Soft rays of light filtered through a tinted glass dome.

They were slight, barely able to survive, and just enough to warm her…But fleeting. The shimmering effect of pushing through etched glass left her alabaster skin with an ethereal glow but she was still...Not quite herself. Not sickly, not healthy. Srina lay upon a long, silken couch, with white hair fanning out like silver threads, eyes half-closed, as if caught between the waking world and something far more distant. Yet, even in her current state, there was a palpable sense of something powerful in the air—an unspoken authority that no illness or weakness could strip from her.

Her body might have been enfeebled, but her mind was as sharp and unyielding as ever.

The grand tapestries lining the walls stirred faintly with a breeze that filtered through from the balcony, where the distant hum of Jutrand barely reached her ears. She could sense everything: the subtle movements of her attendants outside her private quarters, the quiet murmur of life continuing around her. But none of it disturbed the stillness that enveloped her now, a stillness that carried more weight than any spoken word.

The Dread Queen had always been more than her physical form. Power, true power, did not come from mere strength or stamina; it came from a force of will that could shape and bend reality…. And her will was nothing if not indomitable.

A quiet shuffle caught her attention. One of her advisors, unsure if they should approach. She needn't see them to know their hesitation—her senses stretched far beyond the walls, into the Force, and into the very soul of those around her. Even in her rest, she felt their nervousness, the unease that swirled among her staff as they watched the Empress, knowing she was not in her full strength, yet unsure how to proceed.

"You hesitate…", she said, her voice like a whisper that somehow filled the room, soft yet cutting through the air like a blade. The figure stilled in the shadowed doorway. There was a long silence, as if they awaited her next words, unsure whether to respond. Eventually, they admitted what she already knew with their eyes sweeping the floor.

"Yes."

"Do not. Why are you here?"

The advisor stepped forward cautiously now, kneeling. Her eyes opened but she lacked the strength to chastise him for the unnecessary subservience. "You have a visitor, Empress. It is Darth Anathemous…She has traveled far and awaits an audience. Shall I send her away?"

Srina shook her head and sat up slowly, clad in wispy, pale robes of black and red that imperiously swallowed her willowy frame. She settled on the chaise and her expression schooled itself into one of focus and the purest ice. It was the woman they knew. The woman that the Sepulchral loathed and often tended to the turn the Order on its head. "No."

"I have expected her...Just not so soon. We will not keep her waiting."

The advisor nodded his head and moved to go fetch Kaila Irons to bring her to the solarium.

He knew better than to ask twice.

 

[Kaila Irons]

Anathemous did not wait overlong. True to everything Gerwald Lechner had told her of The Empress, Talon was a practical woman, and so it should have been no surprise that no time was wasted. It was a welcome change to the bureaucracy she often endured during her days as a Kainite seeker operating on foreign soil.

Although a few extra seconds to mentally rehearse wouldn't have hurt.

She was about to meet with the most powerful woman in the galaxy, a being who had turned an entire city on it's head, routed the galactic alliance in one fell swoop. A being that even Carnifex, despite his narcissistic dogma and godlike power, held respect for. And now she was in her home, being escorted by a servant who looked equally nervous as she herself felt.

And she didn't even know what she would say to this woman.

Or rather, she knew roughly what to say but not how to say it, not in all the languages she knew. Perhaps then the flowery language and politics could wait in favor of a simply factual approach. Brief, to the point, something she could do without much thought. Well, now that she thought of it, perhaps The Empress would be similarly gladdened to skip to the meat of the subject and depart from the usual routine of sycophants and statesmen.

Or at least that was her thought, until she saw her.

Clad in silken garments of black and red that clashed starkly with the Echani's pallor which glowed in the dying light of the Solarium. She looked like a spirit from a world far beyond mortal comprehension, something from a fairy tale painted upon the page of a new chapter in a timeless story. And yet she was very real, Something Anathemous had clearly seen with her own two eyes upon Echnos, in addition to the great and terrible things this woman was capable of. The Vahla was used to pretty and beautiful things, but this was not the same. This was the kind of beauty that one admires from a distance, that one respects.

Lord Lechner once said that The Empress could be described in but one word: Practical.

But Anathemous had another word for the woman: Regal.


She threw the ends of her cloak back and dropped to one knee in an instinctual yet practiced grace. Her eyes, though fiery gold in the dim light, settling on the floor as they'd been trained.

"Empress," She began at first with an urgent reverence.

"You look well, all things considered"

It was the closest she could come to summoning confidence in such a presence, lasting but a heartbeat, as did the pause between that shift from momentary formality to the pragmatic, business-like nature that Anathemous had been forced to adopt for so long that it was second nature.

"I come bearing news: There have been developments upon Echnos. Including but not limited to new infrastructure, The Seizure of opportunistic pirate vessels, A proposal to strengthen The Emperor's second legion, and the fate of the Alliance Agents I was tasked to remove."

She had made a great deal of progress in a short time, acting upon the urgency of her assumedly brief stint as a Military Governor, knowing that she may be reassigned at any moment. Her skin, though subtle, darkened near the eyes, alluding to the time she'd invested into these projects, and but one of numerous reasons she'd been able to report progress sooner than expected.



Srina Talon