Private Reconciliation

[Darth Strosius]

Heretic's Bane clattered to the ground amidst a hissed curse, with Darth Strosius Himself having to stifle even more obscene mutterings as He winced and grabbed at His shoulder. The newly healed arm was evidently not quite as restored as He had thought it would be, given how it was throbbing with pain from a simple handful of slashing motions with His blade. He despised His weakened state, biting back another curse as He cautiously rolled His shoulder to make sure that it wasn't torn again. The supply of bacta and blood had been fruitful in restoring His body but none of it was as quick as He would have liked.

If He were back at His workshop then He'd have made use of His specially enhanced blood to kick His healing factor back into gear but He didn't have such a luxury here on Alvaria. With a sigh He pressed His hand against His injured shoulder and summoned forth some bolts to soothe and ease the healing process there, even if it did leave Him feeling quite drained to do so. Everything seemed more taxing since He had been released from the bacta tank. Since He had clawed His way back from death. The most likely cause being that He hadn't come back whole.

A reminder of such flickered into the corner of His vision, one of the tendrils sprouting from His back idly danced and swayed just on the periphery of His sight. As though in doing so it would avoid the harsh glare He sent its way. Once He was fully healed and back at His workshop then finding out how to rid Himself of those odd little things would be among His top priorities, even if only for the piece of mind.

He called the fallen blade back to His hand and slowly stepped over to a nearby table to set it down, having to steady Himself against said table for a moment as He let out another breath. Exhaustion had been a foreign concept for so long and yet now it seemed like the only constant thing in existence. How wretched it was. He idly rolled His shoulder again with a slight grimace before stepping away from the table, mostly out of spite at having to lean on it at all. "Blasted thing."

Srina Talon / Darth Malum of House Marr

 

[Srina Talon]

Location: Alvaria
Direct Tag: Darth Strosius | Darth Malum of House Marr

______________________________________
​

A storm rolled in without warning, heavy clouds blotting out the moonlight, drenching the typically picturesque Alvarian countryside in torrential rain. Flashes of lightning illuminated the towering spires of the palace, which stood out stark and sharp, against the blackened sky. It was well made, considering, the difficulties the small world had faced in the past. It was a fortress to the eye of a layman…Built to keep the galaxy at bay. Within walls of glistening stone and duracrete, all was quiet.

Srina wondered what Malum was thinking.

He sat alone in the spacious hall with firelight casting flickering shadows on sharp features. There was a long-stemmed glass of wine seated in his hand, seemingly, untouched. What did he see when he looked so deeply into the red embers? Did he think of his duty? His place as a King—About his schemes to topple his enemies—The immortal tyrants? Did he think of alliances?

Did he know she was there?

Or was he simply sated in his solitude…Content in his choices.

The faintest shift in the atmosphere rippled through the room, an almost imperceptible disturbance. The air grew heavier as if the storm outside had suddenly decided to hold its breath. He would know her first by the scent of ozone that swept into the hall, of jasmine and rain, but with her Force Signature hidden, it would be difficult to discern if it was real or a memory. Regardless… Darth Malum of House Marr would soon be alleviated from his questions when she stepped into his peripheral view.

The stillness broke.

"You have not come to see me.", she spoke, her voice soft as silk, cold as the void. Her eyes sat not on his form but lingered on the firelight that had held him captive. As if there were secrets to be gleaned from the space between leaping flames. Her presence would always be a paradox of serenity twined with menace. Her moonlit hair was unbound but pristine, falling around her like a veil, even in the chaos of the storm she had arrived in. Perhaps, caused. "So…I have come to you."

Her steps were slow, deliberate, as she approached him, her expression as inscrutable as it always was. The security of the palace should have detected an intrusion but through no fault of their own she merely moved through the halls like a wraith. The gaze of those intended to protect the occupants of the grand estate would find that it slid right off her like water, and, that they forgot about her the moment she moved out of sight. If Srina did not wish to be seen—She would not be.

"I could have sent a holo but I prefer to speak unfiltered, in person, rather than through devices that can be invaded and manipulated. Would you not agree?"

Delicate hands rose toward the fire to warm her palms. It was a rare moment of humanity that few caught a glimpse of. She was thought to be unmoving, brutal, and unaffected by the elements—As if she were made of stone. It wasn't true. None of them were impervious. Not the younglings rising to power nor the Sith of legend. Death, came for all in equal measure.

It was only a matter of time.

"Tell me, my own. Do you mourn the loss of Alisteri Haxim?"

 

[Darth Malum of House Marr]

It was the stillness which he enjoyed the most. Or so he told himself, the fire roared away, the element which it seemed all of them thought best fit his humours and temperment, it would be easier if he was of ice, cool, concentrated, and conquering, both of himself and all others and else. Instead, he was of fire, hot, wild, and easily extinguished.

Even the greatest of infernos were destined to smoulder out eventually, and as hot as he could scorch, as bright as he could burn. That was his future was it not? Had he reached the pinnacle of all which he would achieve? Fooled into battle against the only woman that might have held answers, who even in the back of his mind, resting, watching, could not provide the certainty he so desired.

For what victories he had achieved, for what heights he had risen.

His body remembered Echnos, for all which had happened, for all that he had failed to break his opponent's guard.

For the realisation that even if he had somehow... what did it matter when at least contingencies existed for his continued survival, one around the neck of one who even when providence itself had intervened to bring it to his grasp, he had failed to take advantage...

...And the other likely in the depths of the Malsheem for all that he knew, far beyond his reach.

Youngest Dark Councillor the Sith had ever seen, the accomplishment tasted more of ash day by day, perhaps there had been reason there was none that was younger than him, for how could one command respect amongst their peers of such greybeards and wizened statures... heh... they hardly looked that part.

His shadow was cast heavy along the ancient architecture of the private hall he sat, its history long lost to him, a tear to his heart for all that was lost to him... lost to them all... he cast a long shadow, yet, to all of them it remained that he was as hollow as the days of his apprenticeship. He swirled around the glass in his hand, the fermented grapes of his burgundy liquid providing him no relief.

Least of all because he had not yet taken succor.

He held enough self-control to know this bandage to pain, was as much poison to him as the thoughts which were cast across his mind, a poison that once it took hold, would hold him in place for hours... perhaps days.

It would be the first stupour he had found himself in.

...A disappointment to his ancestors.

...A disapppointment to his descendants.

He wiped the rogue tear that passed by his cheek, as it began to rain. As it began to thunder and strike...

His blood remained in bondage, and here he was, sulking away in darkness, the Tsis'Kaar required his leadership and here he was... lost in his ways.

...He had those born of his body and blood, and a pain in his hurt, had him hide away from their red eyes that looked as ever, like his own.

Might have it all been easier... to have had been the one to perish upon Jutrand...

...At least he was confident enough that he would not have been returned... would not have been saved... if it had been his life that had been lost that day.

He stilled, tensing as the smell of rain filled his nostrils, it was not a scent unfamiliar to him, it was not a scent which would normally make him question, yet, acompanied by a fragrance that was rare at the best of times, jasmine. It was enough to make his eyes narrow, turning his head away from the flames, to the room around him, leaving the goblet upon bare table, as instincts were resisted to move for the Shikkars hidden beneath his robes.

...It was not everyday that his Imperial Palace welcomed an Empress to its halls.

"...If you wished to see me, you could summon me to your side, and duty would have me there at moment's notice," Malum countered, knowing full well her feelings on such ordinances, as he bowed his head in the submission which he showed few others apart from her, even still, red eyes gazed upon her carefully.

As his heart beat a moment faster. She was not meant to be here.

It was the first time in quite sometime that her approach in his direction, filled him with... trepidation, "...I can understand such preference, but, I wish you would have asked ahead, no doubt the staff will be disappointed in not being able to show you Alvaria's true hospitality... indeeed, I am disappointed for such reason as well," The question pressed upon his chest and skull, the question of purpose and concern, why was she here? "...And if you wished to see me, I would make myself available to you as soon as possible, to Jutrand or anywhere else, you know that." Though perhaps with how their last meeting went... with her so vulnerable in that gilded cage she so hated...

...She did not know.

It was the last of her words, which had his heart drop down into the depths of his stomach.

"...As much as is permissable."

Darth Strosius Srina Talon
Mentioned: Darth Carnifex

 

[Darth Strosius]

A quick injection of bacta had soon remedied the new soreness in His shoulder, much to His relief at the loss of the inconvenience, by the time that He had sat down in one of the stiff chairs scarcely littered around the room. He had a habit of moving them around to various different areas in His little fits of stir craziness. And as a subtle annoyance for His host of course.

Darth Strosius set the now empty vial aside and pulled open the small cooler sat atop the table next to Him to retrieve one of the red bags hiding within. Where exactly Malum kept sourcing it all from He wasn't certain and He hardly cared either way, but He was certain that at least not all of them were from the Sith himself given that not all of them had a stale aftertaste. Such as this one that He sank His fangs into now, much to His relief. Malum's blood might have given Him a noticeable little boost to His strength but the taste spoiled that particular advantage every time.

He sat back as He idly drained the bag of its contents, staring at the remnants of His armor adorning the rack on the far side of the room. The already dark plating was largely singed and with a rather unavoidable slash through one side of the chest plate that had also happened to leave one of the shoulder plates in half. It was in a terrible state but worst of all it seemed as though Malum hadn't decided to recover the ruined mask that should have adorned the front of the helmet.

Before a scowl slipped onto His face at the sight He paused and retracted His fangs from the bag just before He had finished it, cocking His head to the side as a very subtle noise reached His ears. "Is that thunder?" It made sense He supposed, He couldn't recall ever hearing any mention of rain or storm since He had awoken in that dreadful tank so it had to rain sometime.

Srina Talon / Darth Malum of House Marr

 

[Srina Talon]

Location: Alvaria
Direct Tag: Darth Strosius | Darth Malum of House Marr

______________________________________
​

"Becoming your dutiful chore has never been my desire, Malum."

That should have been achingly clear to him during their last interaction on Jutrand. They had exchanged quiet words with quiet truths—Things that need not be shared with any other. Her mastery within the Force was still not fully restored, but at the bare minimum, she could manage not beheading those who sparked her ire. The last thing she wanted was for her raw nerves to turn loyal citizens of the empire into pink mist for looking at her the wrong way for the singularly most insipid crime of thinking too loudly. "I have not come to Alvaria to observe protocol. I have arrived…Because I must."

Her expression remained serene whilst she continued warming her hands by the fire. An official visit from the Empress would have sparked unwanted attention, putting a magnifying glass on the flourishing planet, while she did her utmost to direct eyes elsewhere. Srina seemed entirely untouched by the tension in the room, carved of alabaster, and every bit the monarch she had never wished to be. Were Malum to catch a glimpse of her eyes, aureate and endless, he would have caught a glint of something sharper. A quiet amusement or perhaps…A calculated warning. "Your staff will survive their disappointment and so will you...", Srina continued, dismissing the matter of hospitality with a graceful wave of her hand. "Their King remains the pinnacle of their devotion, after all."

The simple words carried no mockery, no accusation, only the clinical precision of observation.

As she turned toward him her scent lingered in the air, soft and elusive, as though it sought to anchor her presence in his space. Without apology. The soft rustling of her cloak and traveling dress was the only sound for a long moment while the firelight cast her figure in sharp relief. The wintry woman stood before him now, a stark contrast to the hearth, her being like the first chill of winter slipping through a door that had been left ajar. "You are ever dutiful, Malum. To me. To your family.", her voice softened, slightly, while her gaze found his. "I do not doubt that you would have come to me if I so requested. But what I seek is not so easily conveyed in words or written decree…It requires observation."

Observe, she did. That last word was laden with implication. Warmed hands reached for his face in a way that showed no violence. Improper, by his standards. Still. The slender Echani would hold his face in her hands as if it were the most precious thing. Yet, her eyes were pervasive. As if she could see right into the heart of him. Feel it, when his heart dropped into his stomach like a stone. "As much as permissible? Have someone forbidden your mourning from a loss you inflicted?"

One hand lifted to brush his hair from blood-colored orbs. There was no threat in her. There was…Comfort. Albeit, cold, and hard to grasp for those that were not of her culture. But she was not blind to the fact that he'd been sitting alone in a palace that treated him as if he were the God-King of the universe. He could have anything he wanted. Any desire met—But it was solitude that he settled for.

Solitude and a chalice of wine.

"We both know how hard you tried to steer Darth Strosius toward salvation. You are stubborn and incredibly competent in play-acting…But you forget that I know your heart, moreover, I know your mind…And yet…You would have me believe that you, a Sith Lord who holds loyalty in such high regard, would strike down a sentient being for the sake of a glorified spectacle?"

It went against everything she had ever come to know about the Heir to the Noble House of Marr. She was among the strangest of their kind, yet, he gave her a run for her credits. Wanton violence did not appeal to him nor did the prospect of what he might consider kin-slaying. He took no joy in it. He took no pleasure from it. Malum would move heaven and earth to protect those he deemed worthy and no matter of harshness spoken at the Kaggath dissuaded her from that notion. She had missed it then. Weak, from Echnos. Struggling to be present for him. For the Order.

She did not miss it now.

"…You wish to understand why I have arrived unannounced. That is fair. I will grant you clarity."

Her next words, though repeated, fell like a blade singing through the air between them. There was much power in a name that it nearly sang from her throat while it coiled in the space between them like a serpent.

"Alisteri Haxim." ​

Srina's gaze never left his. She did not blink, unyielding, beautiful as the dawn—But empty as the void. The storm that had come with her arrival seemed to worsen while thunder echoed through the stone corridors. The light filled their faces from the window, the sound of rain, beating mercilessly along transparisteel windows. There was so much there, unspoken. So many secrets. When her voice came next it was barely a whisper. So small, he might need to lean in to hear. "You do not mourn him because his ghost…Is not here.", she gestured toward the room, "Nor here."

She pointed at his chest.

"Because he is not a ghost...You are many things...", there was something dangerously close to fondness in that statement, pride, or something entirely other. The faint curve of her lips flattened while golden eyes shimmered with gentle silence and a direct sense of forbidden knowledge. "But a cold-blooded killer of those you care for? Those who you hold in esteem? Perhaps, even recognize as kin?"

A breath.

"That is something…You are not."

There would be no mistaking it when her expression turned to saddened steel. Her presence here was no accident, and no flattery or diversion would turn her away from the truth she sought. He offered it to her without thinking, perhaps, underestimating Echani eyes. They missed nothing. Especially, not this close. "Once again…I may need your forgiveness for an order I must give. You may tell your house guest that I beat his location from you. That I threatened your family, your planet, and all that you hold dear…You may claim anything you need to reduce culpability if it brings you discomfort. I will accept it, in silence, and through every bit of hate...I will hear the opposite."

Malum could place the blame at her feet, freely, and without regret. Her touch remained. Still, so gentle.

"…But you will take me to him, Malum. Now."

 

[Darth Malum of House Marr]

"I never sought to imply you were a chore, You- Srina, but that you are my duty as along as you have my fealty, has never been in question, I hope." Of course, it would be in question, he questioned itself enough that she who seeemed to see through him so easily, might have picked upon his doubt, if only not for a constant effort to keep such questions concealed to the darkest depths of his mind.

Why exactly he put such effort to defend the sanctity of those thoughts he hardly knew, after all, none of whom he played this great game with were stupid, no matter how dutifully he acted, no matter how much honour he conducted, he was the serpent son of Darth Ophidia, he had joined that traitor in rebellion most earnestly even if caught off-guard by it.... and he had not made his dislike of those powers that be much secret.

Even if only as their dislike of him had not been hidden, and for all which he had thought himself the good actor, his pride would not bend nor break in the face of such insult.

A smart man would have bided his time, an intelligent man would have taken every slight, every insult, and every burn with the composed mask of which he was meant to be. Yet, he refused ever ardently, he was the heir of House Marr, the scion of the Lord of Duty, why should he bow to those that he had in such short time grown to become their peer.

...But what a joke that was.

Pride would be what broke him, for all which he had been able to bite his tongue in the worst of moments, for all that he had derided his co-apprentice for being unable to do the same, there had been instance enough that he allowed himself to run his mouth, the momentary pleasure all the worthwhile instead of the greater victory which he dreamt of.

For all the high minded ideals he held in champion.

As ever, he was but a child, surrounded by heaving behemoths.

He raised an eyebrow at her words, "...You must?" He questioned, the realisation of theories fermented, alongside the genuine confusion at such wording creating a marriage of strangeness in his mind, that was reflected easily enough in his voice.

She still held her hands over the flames, pale hands warmed by crackling flame, hands that seemed to have not experienced the light of the sun, such that the heat of fire might have been all which she could stand. If such was the case, she hardly seemed uncomfortable in the heat, though truly, he had not thought she ever seemed uncomfortable anywhere...

...Even in the aftermath of Echnos, in her weakest place, she seemed more serene in the hands of that monster, than uncomfortable, let alone weak.

Yet, it was her eyes that she revealed anything, though in that reveal it might as well have been nothing, for all that it benefited him. Golden orbs gazed at him with such... he could not quite tell, but that it might have been somehow both progressive and regressive, filled him with a certain rancour that had his chest placed under an anvil.

"...A King is below that of an Empress," He countered, even as likely they both knew the point was moot, though something which he did not advertise, something which he kept hidden, upon this world, he as Emperor, crowned not by God, nor Church, even as both provided him the legitimacy, but by... at least with how he justified it to himself, the will of his people.

It still made his skin crawl with the innate wrongness of it all.

She turned to him, consorting with the Butcher King, she held a certain proclivity to being towered over, that was no different in their interactions, but in this place, sat as he was, they were equals.

Yet, even when he did stand above her, there was little doubt that it was this beautiful, dimunitive woman that towered over him.

Towered over them all.

He parsed his lips at her continued answers, "To the Sith, to the Empire, to the Emperor," He continued, listing off those great things, which they all held dear, if he listed them all together he might even be able to delude himself into believing it, "I hope your observation has only made my leality more well apparent." It was laid on thickly, but that to a great degree was how he found that Srina operated, and she was taking this conversation in dangerous place, he would do all that was required to steer rightly this ship of state.

His breath hitched, as warm hands cupped his face, it was not done with malice, there had been plenty of opportunity to avoid such inappropriate touch, yet, as was the ever evolving nature of their relationship, he did not withdraw... in fact, though he would admit it to no one, let alone himself, there was the barest possibility, a roguish thought breaking his brow in wonder.

...Had he leaned into such touch?

There was no shiver that travlled down his spine, the instinctive response to cold hands burning against warm skin, her hands a warm oven, that welcomed as easily as a mother's embrace. Yet, he had little opportunity to appreciate, enjoy, such a sensation, red eyes gazed with steel, hiding the vulnerability that he keenly felt, as gold bored into him.

"...I mourn the Knight I once knew, the Apprentice that once was, not the Lord he turned out to be," Malum offered stiffly, even know, the shield between him and execution, despite, all the pain and frustration he caused him, despite, all the pain and frustration he still caused him. For all that the Sangnir had been knocked to the ground, for all which the once Lord Inquisitor had been literally burned alive, for all which he self-proclaimed God had been killed that day.

His tongue was as vicious ever.

And perhaps all the agony which Malum had wrought him, went to equalise the verbal spars which they fought as harshly as their real spar.

"...No one forbidded me from mourning, but to mourn a traitor hardly suited," Guilt had been what he had felt first, guilt for what he had done, guilt for the events which had taken place to force such an outcome, but... the guilt faded away slowly, as the smoke of a dying flame, until one stepped into the embers and felt the heat full force, and it reared its ugly head, it could be safely ignored.

He did not flinch as her petite fingers caressed his long raven locks, even as the electricity strummed down his nerves, it was progress, though for all that he should have been progressing on, it hardly felt like much of an accomplishment, to be touched in such intimate manner, it was reserved only for those... that he knew... intimately.

And whatever guilty thoughts crossed his brow of the woman in front of him, he did not know her in such a manner.

Her words silenced him for a time, as the blood flowed in his veins with extended pressure, as he felt his mouth dry, and his heart begin to tremour in his chest, if she knew... for it was becoming all the more readily apparent that this was not some flight of fancy, if she knew... if she suspected.

Who else knew?

Who else could know?

How did she find out?

All questions remained frustratingly elusive to any answer, as the stress began to mount, as breath softly listed out of his lips, as he retained composure upon a knife's edge, and he knew, whatever would come, he would need to play a game, against one who held most providential advantage against him.

...So what was new?

"...He was not loyal to me, I could bring the horse to water as much as I wanted, but I could not force him to drink, and yett you believe it was out of character for I to strike him down in glorified spectacle?" His heart burned, what was performance and what was genuine, slipped together out into some serpentine hiss, "Of course I did not want that! You, and His Imperial Majesty forced that to be made live to the Holonet!" The hiss grew to such decibel, that it might have made a canine wince, he stepped up from his seat, his shadow rising high as the flames flickered in their place, and he made to tower above this woman, that was the source of so much hidden frustration.

Never did their gaze break, never did his mental guards break, she, she could not be allowed passage into the confines of all which was hidden in his mind. His ever broken, and splitting mind. The thunder hammered against the grounds outside, the lightning light making her pale form something entirely blinding, as rubies burned in his sockets, bearing into her unflinchingly.

Even as she announced his name, sang it with a grace that was entirely hers, his fangs were raised.

"...Are you so cruel to mention his name here?" He stated stiffly, bringing all emotions back down to centre, all the more certain of all which had gone wrong, but holding his ground, the sandbank against an unstoppable wave.

He turned away from her, allowing himself heaving breaths, as much feigned as truly felt, unable to gaze into those eyes without feeling as if she was extracting something directly from his pupils, providing himself the cover and excuse to act as he was, to act how he truly felt for far different reasons.

"...I do not mourn him because mourning one whose loss provided me full advantage felt wrong, I do not mourn him because..." Had he not spent enough time mourning, had he not already hidden so much in favour of this great game that slowly poisoned him, and choked the very life's breath out of him? "...Because he would not have mourned me." The truth always did hurt, the truth did always... make deceit so much more true.

He chuckled, something forced, for true and lie, "...His ghost is here, carried by the ashes I still hold to myself, but true, his ghost is elsewhere, if you so wish to find him, go to Korriban, go to Corva Vag, you'll find the ashes of his ghost there just as the same here," Korriban, his ploy to push them away from this, to push her away from which she was stepping ever more dangerously to.

He stilled as she continued.

He... could not quite paint a vivid image of what he felt, but it was only a full portrait that might have to full justice shown all the colours of which his heart pounded, of lips curved dangerously, eyes drawn confusedly, a nose turned upwards, and a body set aflame of which frustration, anguish, and rage made equal home, along with each and every other demon prince.

"...You do not know me, Your Imperial Majesty," His voice was hollow, sullen, his gaze lost to the tempered darkness of his wall, mind filling with the sights of lives taken from battlefield across the cosmos, the helmets made it easier for many of them... he never had to see their faces, only remember the agony of their screams.

...But so many did not have helms...

...But he had not cared for them, not held them in esteem, yet... there were those which he had.

...It had not stopped him.

"...I killed the woman who made me who I am, I had pledged myself to her cause, her vision, but the face of defeat was all it took for me to abandon my honour and duty, and justify myself having both as I turned the turncoat," His vision swam in golden hue, as her presence was so keenly felt, there was no pain anymore, no more sensation of utter despair which others gazed upon him to consider mad.

No... there was only ever now, that which was somehow more maddening, a constant presence, a constant reassurance, a caress of a woman that had not ever loved him, no, that was not the relationship Mistress and Apprentice had shared, but she had forged him into what he was, she had taught him all which he knew, she had been his protector in an Order, in a galaxy, that had come to hate him, and hate all he was...

...She had become part of him in a way that only one other could possibly hope to claim the same.

And he had killed her, because of a lie.

A lie perpetuated by the same man that he had saved.

"...He was never my brother." The whisper was as silent as her own, spoken through low tones, yet effortlessly felt.

Another truth, to keep the facade of the lie. A vice grip upon his chest, that threatened to spill his lifesblood upon this ancient seat.

It mattered not in the face of the certainty which she see so clearly felt.

He let out a sigh, his eyes prickling with unspent emotion, held at bay only by a lifetime of training demanded of him by his station, reaching down into his robes, he felt the hilt of the Shikkar as instinctively as one drew in air. It was slowly revealed, the black glass shimmering against the light of flame and lightning alike. Turning himself, turning to regard the woman, that already knew far too much.

...He knew what he should do.

...He knew what he was meant to do.

...But he was always so... bad at doing either of them.

He might have thought once to send word to Alisteri, tell him to flee this place, but there was already part of him that knew, that ever so bittersweet core at the middle of a heart heaving with the weight of the entire galaxy.

...He would never listen to him.

So once more he acted a shield, for a man that did not deserve it, for a man who even now, after defeat, did not consider him a Sith... did not consider him his equal. That it hurt still... had not been something which Malum had ever given such proper thought of.

He offered the hilt of the blade to the woman, that he felt such... filial feelings towards.

This to be his stand.

"...Take the blade, and plunge it into my heart."

Srina Talon Darth Strosius
Mentioned: Darth Ophidia Ansisa

 

[Srina Talon]

Location: Alvaria
Direct Tag: Darth Strosius | Darth Malum of House Marr

______________________________________
​

Her hands remained steady whilst she held him, for the moment, able to see him at eye level. Her gaze was unwavering while she searched crimson orbs and read him as only an Echani could—Like a book. She had not crossed through several star systems just to hear the same nonsense that everyone else took at face value. She felt it, before she saw it. The glimmer of truth that swam in the web of a mind that felt like it was dangerously close to cracking under pressure. He was trying to fool her.

Mixing truth and fable—Disguising a lie, with something true. There was some level of veracity to his responses, emotion, that anyone else would have broken beneath the weight of. He was a creature of contradiction. He spoke of loyalty, honor, and duty. Yet…The air between them carried the faintest scent of doubt. The faintest tremor, of a man at war with himself. She let him weave his tale. She let him spin like a spider in the fall…Because he needed to.

Malum…Needed to try. Even if he knew the futility—He would stand between heaven and hell with her for eternity if it meant that he could spare the Sith that most assumed he had killed.

Her thumbs brushed lightly against his cheekbones, not only to soothe as her culture dictated, but to keep him grounded. She could feel him spiraling but she couldn't keep him from it if he didn't wish for his mind to stop. It was on fire…Only he could put that out. Srina kept him close whilst his anger found him. That was real. But the cause? Unknown. Malum could break from her hold at any time. He always could…She was not his jailer, not, his keeper. "…You question me…as though I am ignorant, Malum."

"Do you believe that I am?"

"Do you think I speak his name lightly? Do you think I do not know the fate of Alisteri Haxim?"

The way she repeated the name was deliberate, calculated. It was not with a hiss of venom but with an edge of certainty, spoken in a tone that suggested she was pulling at a thread that the Dark Councilor could no longer hide. "I have never been cruel, to you. Even if I am inherently…cruel. You have seen the monster that lives in me, the nature, of my being. We were both on Echnos."

"I know you, my own. Far better than you think."

When he referred to her as "Imperial Majesty" she knew that something was deeply wrong. They had established many moons ago that she wished for him to call her by name. She had expressed, her distaste for honorifics even if her station demanded it. They were alone, in this room. There was no need for him to refer to her in such a way unless he was trying to create distance.

It was easier to lie to her Imperial Majesty, consort, to one of his most hated enemies.

It was easier not to think of the many, many times he could have destroyed the Emperor by destroying his wife. They'd been alone in her quarters when she was weakened after using the phobis. He could have slit her throat while she slept and absconded to whereabouts unknown with his life intact. It was true that he had murdered Ophidia, it was true, that both he and his fellow apprentice had taken the pale one from existence. But…They'd been left with no choice.

During the kaggath?

He had a choice…He could have let Darth Strosius kill him. He could have beaten his fellow Sith bloody until he couldn't move. But, no. He wanted her to believe that he had taken steps to end the life of someone he had fought so hard to protect, for so long, just because the eyes of the nation were glued to the drama of the event?

When Malum pulled away, her hands fell, and she allowed him the space he sought. Yet the movement felt more like a retreat than a reprieve, as if her touch had become too heavy with the words she uttered. She watched as he turned his back, his posture rigid, his breath uneven. All parts of her wished that there was some way to soothe the storm in him. To tame the beast that lashed out, unaware, that he was often taking pieces of her with him. "I have known traitors, Malum.", her tone softened, but it was no less sharp.

"I have loved them. I have killed them. And I have mourned them all the same. If you perceive the act of mourning as a weakness you have been misinformed. It is a reckoning. And for whatever it is that weighs you down…It will come whether you will it or not."

She remained unflinching beneath his outburst. Unbroken, in his pain. It was real…His frustration and agony, the guilt, were all real emotion. But Srina, knew the difference. Hiding a lie within a truth was the oldest art used to deceive her people. Thyrsians had employed it without guilt or shame for years when she had served the Six Sisters. "He was not loyal to you…He did not care, for you. But I was never speaking of his loyalty. Only your own…Because for all that happened, all that didn't happen, you kept trying. You knew the truth, you know it now, but still you persist."

That was loyalty. Borderline insanity…But loyalty all the same. Staying the course even though he knew the other person would have never done the same for him. When he turned back toward her, the shikar glinting in his hands, she tilted her head, her expression unreadable. The offer was there—The blade extended, a challenge, or perhaps a plea. Her lips curved. Not in mockery but in something far more haunting. It was a ghost of understanding, of pity, that neither insulted nor absolved.

"You wish to die by my hand?"

No. Not, entirely. She knew better than most what made Malum of House Marr tick. What got him motivated, moving, and nothing would press him toward such drastic measures faster than the fact that she was right. Her voice was barely above a whisper while she accepted the weapon…But not the way she should have. The blade bit into the flesh of her palm. Pressing deeper, while she stepped closer, her eyes holding the gravity of the moment as if it were her own heartbeat. "Perhaps, you think it would be easier than waking in the morrow. Perhaps you think it will atone for any number of perceived failings…"

"Perhaps you think to stop me."

Her hand held onto the blade until it hit bone. It spilled blood to the floor freely, staining the wood, and seeping into the stone. Eyes of aureate, burnished, and bold were filled with more emotion than she knew how to express. It sat somewhere between feathered eyelashes and lavender lids. Pain. Not from the blade that pierced her flesh but from the simple fact that he would ask such a thing from her. "Is this what you need? Is this your desire?"

"If it is blood to be paid this eve, let it be mine. That is how it must be."

She let go of the shikkar and it clattered to the floor. Ever and always would she give of herself for the wellbeing of her children in this Empire. They would never know. They would never see it, they would hate her, but that was an acceptable loss. They lived. Beyond that…Srina was exhausted with men in her life requesting that she plunge a blade into their hearts. Exhausted.

This young Sith…This man, with whom she held dear, would never know that his words cut deeper than being sliced in twain. He would never feel her ire. Never, know her rage. Only the coppery scent of her blood that rolled down her fingertips. Her mortality, her sacrifice. She could feel Darth Empyrean stirring with her pain but the stability of her mind, her purpose, would keep him on Jutrand. Malum wished to shield, to do what he perceived to be the right thing, the only thing, but he was fighting against an enemy that…Wasn't there.

Srina would protect him. Even if—It was from himself.

"I must see him, my own. It is not a question. I am not asking. You can join me…Or get out of my way."

 

[Darth Strosius]

"He almost carved all the way into my heart." Darth Strosius muttered to Himself as He slowly ran His hand along the gash in the chest plate, noting the angle of the strike that caused it as evident in the scar it left in the metal. Whether by Malum twisting away at the last moment or His own struggling as the blade dug in, the killing edge shifting to slice into His lung rather than carry on and sever his heart in two. He knew this already of course, based on the ache in His chest that still throbbed whenever He took a deep breath too quickly, but the visual confirmation was a disturbing reminder of it.

The armor itself was irreparable but not unsalvageable, it could be melted down and reforged just as easily as He had done to it before when it needed such extensive work. Nothing that could be done now but work that could still be done so that He could make use of it once again someday. He pulled His hand away and stared down at the soot now darkening the fingertips of His glove with a slight frown, quickly brushing them off on His pants. The substance thankfully wasn't His ashes of course. His weren't so easily brushed aside.

Burning golden eyes flickered to where a pouch of said foul ashes sat atop another table, one of His eyes twitching as He felt His senses idly brush over the bag and deliver a sense of pain and hatred straight into the back His mind. That was another matter that He'd have to settle later it seemed as they were simply nothing like He had encountered before. His blood had been somewhat noteworthy for quite some time now, an unintended side effect of His Sithspawn experimentation, but the ashes were something else entirely.

He could still feel them, as though they were simply another part of His body.

Before He realized it, the unmasked Sith was standing and leering over the seemingly innocuous bag containing a portion of His essence. They were more than likely partly to blame for His regeneration and power being so weakened as they were now, although He suspected they were more byproducts than the cause. For while they were unquestionably His in terms of their composition and presence in the Force, there was more to be found there.

It was difficult to detect but He knew His own presence well enough to sense that the ashes did indeed hold something else within them. Emotions and feelings that were not His own but were still familiar to Him. His worshippers, the ones who had perished while connected to Him and even seemingly something of those that empowered Him and survived, existed as dim echoes in the ashes. Their signatures faint and masked but no less present.

"Forgive me, nuyak berniuk." He muttered to Himself as one of His gloved fingers hesitantly traced the bag. "You deserved better." Better than to die in His service, when He had promised them full lives. Better than to give their worship and belief to Him, only for Him to falter at the final hurdle. Better than to have any remnants or echoes of themselves trapped in a form that He barely understood, and one only in existence due to His failure. The tendrils sprouting from His body held no such hesitation nor boundaries, quickly reaching out and curling around the bag before Him as much as they could manage in their semi-tangible state. They were drawn to the contents within, and to an extent so was He, but to what end He was uncertain.

There was only one way to find out why, He supposed.

Srina Talon / Darth Malum of House Marr

 

[Darth Malum of House Marr]

He froze as the blade met flesh, he felt no pain, as the burgundian liquid flowed down, but the weight upon his chest was ever keenly borne. Even in the emotional state that he was within, even in the weakness that she so easily drew out of him, he had not truly thought that blood would be drawn, even if... even if... some disgusting part of him, some weak part of him, that so wished to...

...Feel peace.

That all so damned word amongst the Sith, that which was the ultimate lie. Yet, it was the words of his ever-so-great and famous ancestor that echoed in his mind, those words spoken in his childhood home with as much reverence as the Sith Code itself.

Life is the enemy. Death is our solace.

...They were words that confused all who heard them, even now, after a lifetime of knowing them, they remained ever illusive in the answer which their forefather had intended for them, yet, this feeling which so struck him, this pain that sprouted out its tentacles from its grip on his heart and spread it out through his veins.

Life certainly felt the enemy, and he so longed for death.

Yet, it was not his blood that was pooling on the oaken ancient floors below them, allowing himself a shallow breath as his eyes widened.

He felt bone.

A painful blink, and his grip upon the leathered hilt was broken, the obsidian-like glass shattered upon the precipice, as his breaths increased in a rapid tempo. He...

He...

The blood continued to trail down, a riverine current flowing through jungle environs, steady, but its sensation duly felt, as the first layer rapidly dried against the skin, and yet it continued to flow on, for as much as she looked as him, she was not, she was Echani, from a world a countless distance away from his native Jutrand, yet, gazing upon the blood...

...They bled exactly like each other.

His breath hitched, as he took a step back, eyes flicking upwards, and they widening further as golden irises bored into his rubies with the full temerity of a speeder about to wilfully crash into him, like an avalanche stemming down from the highest mountain peaks, that sought to crush him underfoot, or else send him flying off the cliffside, all that he had built...

...Not even remembered by the crows.

Her words, all her words, held a power mighty enough to destroy nations, and with them, they confronted lowly him. What could he possibly do to stand against such suicidal resolve, a move that was born out of emotion, sure, but one which had been designed entirely to stop her in tracks, had been ignored with a near suicidal drive.

...Who would take the blade to themselves simply to make a point?

His hands shook, a tremor sailing up finger, hand and arm, as he reached into his robes, drawing out the red handkerchief as he allowed another breath, his mouth shaking from the effort, as his nostrils were wet in emotion that he could not place. He broke his gaze from hers, as he took another step forward, intimately close, but at this moment, after all that had happened.

He did not care.

He pressed the handkerchief upon the wound, feeling the blood erupt for barest moment, as more was forced out, but applying pressure to stem the tide, "We are not on Korriban, I do not desire your blood."

There was much more to say.

But he was to tired.

He had but last one bid to stop what was to be yet another of his betrayals, against one he cared for, against himself, but... but he supposed, that was nothing new when it came to him.

"Give me the phylactery, I will no harm to it, trust me as much as I trust you, and I will show you what you seek." A whisper fell from his lips, as he continued to press his fingers deeper upon the wound, a red handerchief, with the visage of the mask of his House, made even more so with the blood of an Empress.

Srina Talon Darth Strosius

 

[Srina Talon]

Location: Alvaria
Direct Tag: Darth Strosius | Darth Malum of House Marr

______________________________________
​

Her gaze never wavered while his hands trembled, his breath hitched, and his words fell flat in the wake of her unrelenting silence. The blood that spilled from the wound painted a vivid contrast against her pale skin, yet, she remained as if she were made of stone. Her expression was one of cold contemplation rather than pain. As if she had detached herself from it, disassociated, in a way that should have been far more frightening than the actual act.

No one should be able to shut out pain that way.

So completely, so wholly, without thought or the slightest flinch. It would tell the story of a woman who despite appearing flawless, who appeared untouched, had been the subject of something much darker.

It wasn't the first time she'd been sliced to ribbons.

Her eyes lowered for a moment when he closed the distance between them to use his handkerchief to staunch the blood loss. The statement was folly. He did not understand…But how could he? Her hand was held higher than her heart for the moment to slow the flow, but she could sense his emotions, still awash with guilt and loyalty. With frustration and some measure of pain that was beyond the physical. His trembling…He needed her. Almost, as much as his house guest.

"If you have ever held any care for me…You will never ask that of me again. Never."

Srina would not accept the offer to end his life, moreover, she would find more creative ways to punish him for the betrayal of his assuming it a possibility. They were near enough to breathe one another's air when he made a request for the dark bauble that sat around her neck. His words were not a plea but they hung heavily in the air. It was desperation, a ploy, but it was wrapped in a fragile shroud of trust. He no longer argued whether she was right or wrong.

They had reached terms.

If only it was that simple…Srina could not give him what he sought. The phylactery that belonged to Darth Carnifex had been placed in her hands as a sign of armistice between her husband and the Butcher King. It had been a public declaration that they would lay down arms. What appeared to be a dainty and ancient piece of jewelry held more than an end-of-war doctrine, more, than memories. It was a tether, an unbreakable bond, to something more profound. She could never relinquish it no matter the circumstances. Yet, she would not dismiss his need for collateral.

"I cannot give you that, Malum. He will feel when it is not with me, when it is violated, by another. He would assume the worst, that I have been beaten, and betrayed on Alvaria, and a new war would begin. It is not a matter of refusal. It is a matter of impossibility.", her voice was steady, soft, but laden with the strength of durasteel. Her uninjured hand reached for his face once more. Such a familiar act for her to hold his cheek with the mercy of a mother. "But I can give you something else."

Something far more precious.

Her stomach churned briefly, but, it was a turning point in which she would either need to trust him or put him on his ass in his own home. "You must never speak of it, not to anyone, or I will burn the memory from your brain and anyone unlucky enough to hear it in the most painful way I can concoct. I have no love for torture, but that does not mean, I am not exceedingly skilled in the subject."

She would not kill him—But he would break before her like a wave against the shore.

Completely.

It was the cost of betraying her.

"Look at me."

When their eyes met, he would feel as if the warm hall had been sucked away from him. The floor beneath his feet, her touch, and everything real would disappear and begin to reassemble in another place and time. It was a memory, her memory. The bedroom was grand and brightly lit. White oak furniture that was intricately carved and trimmed with gold luster. There was sunlight streaming through the window with pale blue curtains and the sounds of birds singing in the distance.

First, the sound of a gentle lullaby coming from the woman on the bed in a language that would feel both familiar and foreign. She was lying on her side with ivory hair unbound, wrapped in white, modest and neat, but curled around something. It was the pale form of the Empress, clearly tired, but content with her arm delicate shielding two infants swaddled in silk. As if she were afraid not to be touching some part of them. As if something might happen. Their tiny forms were kept cradled while a tremor ran through her with something akin to love and fear in equal measure. Their faces and aura were blurred, and indistinct, yet the bond she shared with them pulsed vividly through the Force.

Their identity remained secret, even, in the sanctity of memory.

The hall on Alvaria would snap back to Malum in a flash to show her withdrawing slightly. Lips pressed flat, silent, while she waited for it to sink in. Waited, for the reaction. There would be no doubt about what she had shown him. It was one of the best-kept secrets in the Sith Order…

Secrets she had killed, maimed, and destroyed to keep.

The Emperor had heirs.

Srina slowly released Darth Malum of House Marr and pulled from his grasp. She held the handkerchief to her palm for a moment longer before flexing her fingers with a sharp tilt of her head. If he looked closely enough, he would see her skin shifting while it painfully started to knit itself back together. She could not heal as a Jedi might—But she was a flesh seamstress. She could stitch the wound, mend, the nerves, and sinew. It would take time to fully repair…

But at the bare minimum, she wouldn't leave a bloody trail of breadcrumbs from here to whatever closet his house gust had been stashed in. The door opened of its own accord and she walked through it, expecting, Malum to follow. If he would not show her the way…. She would blow through every piece of wood and stone like it was wet tissue paper until she either found Alisteri Haxim or there was nothing left. The only difference now, in her search, would be whether or not this Palace still stood.

"I have waited, long enough."

 

[Darth Strosius]

Darth Strosius was in a weakened state in all respects, there was no refuting that fact, but in this instance in regards to attempting to solve the riddle of these ashes He did have one advantage to help level the playing field. Alvaria possessed a Force Nexus, and one that He had communed with before no less. As He had done so then it was time to do so again, otherwise He wouldn't have the strength needed to attempt what He was about to.

The bag of ashes was clutched in His gloved fingers, tendrils curling and lashing around it just as securely as His fingers themselves were as He sat down in the center of the room. He took a breath, one that slowly became visible in the air as His eyes closed and His focus directed towards the ashes in His grasp. The candles that illuminated the space flickered briefly before their flames turned from a brilliant orange to a sanguine red, bathing the room in a dim crimson glow.

The ashes were a roiling sea of emotion, peaked with hatred yet underlaid with agony while at the same time frothing with devotion. A rather unsettling and jarring combination but one that He nonetheless endured as His senses sifted through the surface level and plunged past the emotions to search for something deeper. What exactly He was looking for even He was uncertain, but He knew that His very being tugged at Him each and every time He laid eyes upon the wretched little bag and now it was high time to find out why.

He looked and scoured and scanned but could find nothing of note, nothing that stood out aside from two constant sensations that rang in His mind like the tolling of a great bell. Here He was, and here His followers were. Fragments and echoes of people and of Himself. But why? Why would there be fragments of Him? He was here, He was alive and fully able even if He was still mending His wounds. What could have been left behind to saturate these ashes in such a way?

A pause, a flicker of an idea. A realization that brought horror just as easily as it brought clarity. His senses abandoned the bag and instead shifted inward, returning from exploration to introspection and diving just as deeply as they had into the bag. The bag dropped from His fingers as He shook, golden eyes snapping open in shock as His breaths came in quick shallow bursts. He barely noticed the temperature returning to normal, the candles dimming back to their usual flame, His gaze solely focused on His hands as the tendrils curled around His fingers and the slow throb of His barely active heartbeat pounded in His ears.

He was not whole.

His mouth felt dry but before He could properly arrange His disparate, panicked thoughts into anything cohesive He heard the door open behind Him. It would have been a rather pitiful sight, the normally verbose and imposing Darth Strosius sat on His knees in the dim candlelight. His grand robes missing and replaced by burned, tattered remnants that were intermixed with new yet drab coverings and wrappings to hide every inch of skin from sight all the way up to the short hood. Except for His face. One that turned to regard the door with a look of abject dread spread across the young yet gaunt features of Alisteri Haxim, His normally burning gaze simmered and diminished enough that one could actually see the pinprick pupils within.

" Y o u ? "

Srina Talon / Darth Malum of House Marr

 

[Darth Malum of House Marr]

Malum chuckled a morose sombre chuckle, one which hardly felt like one, as much as it did not sound like one, "We the ones that value life all die eventually, and considering the dangers which my duties place me, considering simply the danger of being a Sith, would it not be a much worthier death dealt by an Empress, than some rogue blasterbolt?" Any remnants of good joy which might have existed in the figure, though he hardly imagined there was any, had entirely gone by the end of his words, as he pressed his hand ever firmed against the self-inflicted wound.

Self-inflicted as could be claimed, as he held the blade.

For all that he had feared the implications of this... ever so improper relationship, for all which no young gentleman should have been allowed unaccompanied into an Empresses quarters, for all which an Empress should have been so willing to break the rules of propriety, to bring her hands to his form, for all which made little sense about their... dynamic.

That which all the courtiers had feared had never come about, the apprentice of Darth Ophidia, had not plunged a shikkar into the heart of their Empress.

Instead, today, on Alvaria of all places rather than Jutrand, he had held the blade which had made the Empress bleed.

Her warm breath was ever close to his skin, a shiver, a tremor down his spine, as he still held her wound ever tight, raising her arm, to stem the flow, as mind and heart pulled in different directions, exemplified as the protrusion by his throat bobbed like an apple at a summers fair, his mouth... so dry.

His lips parsed as she gave excuse, as she gave explanation.

If it had been another moment, he might have raged, he might have let the feelings of betrayal bubble over upon the surface of a pot which as always sorely wished to overflow.

But the pot was empty.

He was empty.

That which he had denied for so long, that which Mia had warned him of, all that time ago, that which stubbornness had born with him a fallacy that this could ever play out any differently.

A fallacy that when the chips were down, and one day, they would be down.

She would ever pick him, she would never give him which was necessary for his battle with that tyrant. He had been too weak to take it that day on Jutrand, and now... now that he knew this...

...Why was he so weak to do what was necessary now?

The chuckle held the manic tendencies which were so often hidden behind ruby orbs, "I fought him on the Malsheem, I fought him on Jutrand, I fought him on Echnos, here I ever stand, if you cannot give me release, why not him?" The words he spoke were caustic, a near serpentine hiss filling out of his lungs, memories of what else that Mia had told him so long ago filling him with renewed life.

And renewed hate.

He was unready.

"He tried to kill me," The hiss was barely contained within his frame, "He has tried to kill me, again, and again, and you refuse to give me..." He swallowed the emotion, so wishing to begone from this place, begone from his home, invaded by...

His eyes lifted as she offered something else, gazing upon golden orbs, as she gripped upon his face, threats fell easily from her lips, but the offer was still present, hanging in the air, with the capability to bring it all to asunder. A mystery, what he was so suspectible to, the curiosity of which was both his greatest strength, and his abject flaw.

Even as her threats struck him with the temerity that they were given.

"I..."

He was gone, the same sense of deja vu that had come when he had learned the truth of Srina's efforts upon the Malsheem, came over his sight. A vague fuzziness, that would not be mistaken for anything else but the reality of existence, if only not for the fact that one had experienced the true reality of existence. The room he now stood in... he was unsure if it was the room which he had known so readily...

...But what was within the room, he knew entirely was not known to him.

He gazed down upon two babes, covered by the protective aegis of their mother.

Their mother...

...A woman he had thought he knew so well.

The calculus forever changed.

The illusion shattered, as he was pulled from the dream that was not his own, the memory that was stuck within his mind, even if for all others who might have killed for this knowledge, for him...

...It only trapped him ever further in chains.

His breath was heady, as it billowed out his nostrils, turned over, as red eyes grew wide, skin grafting itself together in the background, as the door careened open.

So much had happened.

Why did she do this to him?

He fell upon his knees, as the first tears began to fall.

As he was left alone in this room that was his prison.

Srina Talon Darth Strosius
Mentioned: Darth Carnifex

 

[Srina Talon]

Location: Alvaria
Direct Tag: Darth Strosius | Darth Malum of House Marr

______________________________________
​

"I am selfish, Malum. I will not suffer preventable loss…I cannot."

Srina could not suffer the loss of Malum any more than the loss of Carnifex. They had both tried their hardest to kill one another in the past, just, as her husband and the Butcher King had done. She had placed herself between them, time, and time again. There was an element of what was best for the Empire but there was also another, more human, component. She had lost…So many.

Her heart would not bear it.

With that…The Empress of the Sith Order walked away.

Her form was that of a swan gliding across a dark lake in the evening…Quiet. Unassuming. Unconcerned with the danger that may or may not lay below the stillness of the water, as it was with monsters, that they tended to devour from below. For a fleeting moment, her gaze lingered on the kneeling form of the Dark Councilor but she could linger no longer. She yearned to take his pain. To shelter him from this confusion—From the darkness, he thought he wanted. Leaving him this way with the fractured pieces of his spirit scattered about like shards of a broken mirror, intuitively, felt incorrect.

Was she not meant to protect him from the storms?

How she wished to remain. How she knew, she could not. He had done exactly what she had requested.

Malum was no longer obstructing her path.

"...Forgive me."

The sound of her measured footsteps would soon be drowned out by the same lullaby he heard in her memory. Whether she sang, softly, in the gloom of the palace or whether it sprung from the momentary tether would be difficult to discern. It was in her native tongue, but somehow, he would understand the words that would etch themselves soothingly in his mind. It was all she could do for him when duty demanded that she tend to another lost soul.

Her fingers grazed the cold, unyielding walls as she moved, as if tracing the veins of some long-forgotten creature. With each touch, the walls of the palace seemed to temporarily breathe, shadows coiling like serpents in the corners, the very air, thickening. Her power crawled through the hallways, like metaphysical fingers that searched, creeping, patient things. The vague pulse of the presence she sought thrummed through the Force once she knew where to look, assured, by the whispers of the unseen. Every building had a story to tell. She just had to listen.

Alisteri Haxim was close.

The predator in her recognized prey—But the woman who had evolved beyond that recognized far more. Her hand fell to the door that separated her from her quarry and she opened it without hesitation. It opened like an old book and Srina remained silent while she took in the initial sight of the Sith Lord who ought to be little more than ash and crumbles of desiccated bone. He was a wraith, in this shoe box, with a presence that had dimmed to a smoldering ember. A firefly in the eve rather than a burning, blazing bonfire, that swept in waspish, hate-filled waves.

This was a different man.

…But he was still horrified to see her. Her head inclined slightly, expression empty, while she reached up to untie the dark cloak that hid her shoulders from view. The white clothing she wore beneath it was an anathema to everything that existed in this chamber. "Yes...", she responded, bluntly, but without any sort of malice in her tone. Srina approached him slowly enough that her movements hopefully wouldn't send him into a flurry of activity.

He didn't look like he had the energy to spare.

"Me."

She settled her cloak on the cold floor nearby before her body folded down like a lotus flower folding itself inside out. "I would like to sit with you, for a little while.", the soft murmur was coupled with the whisper of fabric rustling as she got comfortable. The pale woman was no stranger to sitting on cold hard ground and didn't really seem to mind the flickering candlelight that glanced off her person with an almost heavenly glow. It was part of the lie. Echani were deadly because they were designed to draw others in, while simultaneously, being incredibly lethal.

Like some kind of fly trap.

"Eventually…I would also like to talk, but you seem…Bothered."

Her head tilted, hawkish, and birdlike while she assessed his mental state with visual cues. Her choice of wording downplayed how she picked up his breathing, the pinpricks, of his eyes. Her presence was likely confusing. Her approach, startling. As if she had always known they would wind up together in this chamber at some point, regardless, of their decisions. Regardless of the fact that he was supposed to be dead... Her eyes drifted toward the bag on the floor before they returned to him. Again, an oddity.

Why would it interest her? Why would he interest her?

Time would tell.

 

[Darth Strosius]

In spite of the hollow feeling in His core a slight sneer managed to cross His otherwise horrified features as she stepped into the room, idly wincing as her cloak gave way to a stark white attire. It was too bright to look at directly. Everything was too bright at the moment. The dim candlelight that had been His only familiarity since His awakening now seemed to glare like spotlights down upon Him, making Him all too aware of an indistinct ringing in His ears that He had somehow been ignoring until now.

He blinked furiously, shaking His head for a moment as though it would shrug off the intensity with with all His senses seemed to be assaulted with. While it hardly fixed the issue it did slightly dull the input enough that He could open His eyes and refocus on the woman that now slowly approached him. He withdrew and curled in on Himself, hunching over His knees as His eyes tracked her with an unblinking yet occasionally twitching gaze. The look of a cornered animal, wounded and pretending as though it had any bite left to ward off its hunter with.

"Do as you please." He drawled in a far more composed tone than His earlier outburst, almost sounding relatively normal. Almost. The lack of His mask made His voice clear and sharp like few had heard before, tinged with an audible and entirely unnatural reverb that clung to His words like a slightly off-beat choir even as His normal passion was replaced by a slight rasp. "It's not as if I could stop you. And clearly Malum isn't willing to." He should have known that it would end like this. That Malum was always going to sell Him out for even a fraction more clout with the powers that be.

Typical blue-blooded brat. He should have gathered the strength to strangle him when He still had the chance to do so.

There was no sign of the tension leaving His shoulders even as the Empress sat before Him, His wild pupils almost pulsing with the flickering of the candlelight as He carefully watched her every motion and movement. Whether such fluctuation was due to His mood and state of mind or simply an overcorrection on the part of His eyes was unclear. His hood was pulled taut over His head, only allowing a handful of stray dark strands to cover His ashen forehead. The sharp curving tattoos beneath His eyes seemed all the deeper at the moment, sunken in like one might expect from dark circles under sleepless eyes.

"Bothered." He repeated with a slight click of His tongue as though in distaste. Before He continued however He noticed the brief glance at the bag that now sat at His feet, one hand swiftly snatching it up from the floor in a move that was all too quick for one in His state to accomplish. He held it close to His chest defensively, the pale and all but translucent tendrils exuding from His body curled around His wrapped arms and gloves until they constricted around the bag itself in His grasp. "Is an understatement."

Finally a blink, a sigh but with no release of tension and barely a release of His held breath. "You've come to gloat, I presume? The executioner would have been sent if the corpse wanted me dead." A simple accusation but one that clearly had been rolling around in His mind since her arrival. It seemed as though His long stint behind His mask had ruined any manner of straight face that He could have once had, His features clearly displaying apprehension as His jaw tightened and His brows furrowed. He was quite expressive all things considered.

Srina Talon / Darth Malum of House Marr

 

[Srina Talon]

Location: Alvaria
Direct Tag: Darth Strosius | Darth Malum of House Marr

______________________________________
​

She watched Alisteri Haxim closely.

He was not at all like the Lord Inquisitor who had come storming into her home with pride and indignation with her audacity to summon him. His sneer didn't ruffle her composure; it was a familiar response, one she had expected. He lashed out in the only way he could, his tone rough, and defensive, but she hadn't come to exploit any weaknesses. The vulnerability that he had hidden behind a tough outer shell was not enough to pull her from Jutrand in the dead of night.

She didn't speak immediately.

He would remember that too, her love, for silence.

As Srina settled down on her cloak and the scent of jasmine moved in the air her hands folded and slowly settled in her lap. She had not moved to take the bag he'd dropped on the floor but the way he snatched it up, fast, lent importance to whatever it contained. The pale tendrils that curled from his form reminded her of a dying vine, clinging desperately, to the last vestiges of life. In her silence, she came to understand more about the depths of his…Pain.

Objects had memory.

The floor she sat on was the same blocks he had been treading, now tainted, with the raw edges of his distrust. Her eyes fell shut while contemplated what was on his mind. He wasn't hiding himself as well as he once had, but then, he'd never been this powerless so close to her before. When she finally spoke, her voice was clinical and even, barely, disturbing the air. "…Crossing systems in the middle night to gloat would be a waste of resources and time, not to mention, incredibly juvenile. I do not derive pleasure from your suffering."

Her golden eyes softened, though only slightly, while a glimmer of something that could have been mistaken for empathy passed through her. Srina leaned forward after another pause, remembering almost after the fact, that Alisteri had mentioned the King of Alvaria. "Malum did not betray you…Even when I asked him to take me to you. He chose you, over me. He is currently tethered by his own chains and demons. Just as you are."

The bag caught her attention again, curious, that he would prioritize it over anything else in the room. He could have gone for a weapon. Lunged at her…But he hadn't. Perhaps it was because he was too exhausted. Perhaps it was because he thought he couldn't win in his current state.

"You cradle that satchel as if it were a child."

It was a statement, not a question, even, whilst she waited for him to settle. She wondered what it meant to him that he would hold it to his chest. Obviously, more than anything else in the room. There were words on the tip of her tongue but their previous encounters caused her to pause. He could take his independence from this place and start living his life in the present—Or continue to wallow. She wouldn't force him into the light before he was ready, but she would not operate on the faulty information that he had died. "I do not expect you to trust me…It is a luxury that neither of us can afford. I am not here to threaten, besmirch, or harm you. I am here…"

"To ensure that the ashes of this event do not consume you. The executioner would have offered you mercy…But I do not bring that form of absolution. So many of us are so willing to die for nothing..."

Her eyes opened and searched a face that she had never seen, at least, not before now. His voice was a little different but his expression made all the difference. It let her see him, truly, for the first time with Echani eyes that would never forget. "Is that you? Another…Statistic?"

"Or are you willing to live?"

 

[Darth Strosius]

As quiet as He remembered her, but now He knew better than to mistake her silence for anything resembling hesitancy. She was far more clever than He had given her credit for during their first meeting and yet that knowledge hardly seemed like any sort of advantage at the moment. If anything it felt more like another twist of the knife that could so easily turn this dismal place of His reawakening into His tomb if He didn't play His cards very carefully and tactfully.

Barbs and simple insults did little to shift her mood or tone, and were it not for her attention being focused so squarely on Him then He'd have been convinced that she had somehow not heard Him at all. Until she spoke out in response after a few tense moments of silence of course. "You'd be among the first to not, then." There was a hint of a scoff in His rebuttal but it didn't fully manifest like it would have at any other opportunity, the lack of real bite or heat to His words proving how hollow they were even to Himself.

His gaze narrowed slightly as she had the gall to defend Malum, the odd and unnatural bond the pair shared still just as mysterious as the day that He had first learned of it. He never bothered asking the Heir of Marr for any clarification as He simply didn't need it. The boy was consorting with their enemy, that was all that He was concerned with. Even now she somehow managed to keep speaking in riddles, reaffirming His suspicions and casting them aside in the same breath.

"He knows nothing of chains nor demons, Empress." Perhaps the most confident statement that He had made thus far. "Regret may be His bedside companion but both of our presences prove how little he's learned from it. How little struggle he's underwent to get to this moment. Whatever it is he wrestles with now I have no doubt it is but a trifling affair." Malum had chained himself to a man in a mask that he was always destined to betray and refused to see the demon that sat before Him now for what she was. Ignorance damning progress and all that.

A half-hearted glare would be His only response to the remark about the bag clutched so tightly in His grasp, a subtle yet noticeable twitch of His cheek briefly displaying a glimpse of a fang in the dim light as though in some sort of warning before His features settled into a small grimace. Of all the things to grab in His hour of need and He chose the physical reminder and proof of His current state of weakness. An irony that was not at all lost on Him when she off-handedly mentioned ashes in her next metaphor.

"I don't view people as mere statistics I'm afraid, no matter how inconsequential their lives or deaths may be." He paused and stifled a short cough that drew out another wince from His ever cracking façade of indifference. "I would have gladly died for all of my faithful then. I still would now. It is only by the will of the Force itself, and the foolishness of a Marr, that I did not. But each moment of life that I've had since that dreadful duel, I'd not hesitate to trade every last one to revive my fallen flock. To gift them the bright future that your kind would deny mine."

A blink, a shift, a breath, a wince. "Could you say the same, Empress? Could you ever dream of dying so that others may live? Or do you cling so selfishly onto that throne of yours no matter how many bodies must be piled up to keep it stable?" A wheeze that He didn't bother masking escaped Him with His next breath. "Is that you? Another tyrant making statistics out of your subjects? Or are you willing to lose it all so that those you care for may gain in your stead?"

Srina Talon / Darth Malum of House Marr

 

[Srina Talon]

Location: Alvaria
Direct Tag: Darth Strosius | Darth Malum of House Marr

______________________________________
​

Stillness.

As par usual…She didn't visibly react when his words tumbled out, jagged, like shards of glass. Each accusation, each assumption about her, felt like a threadbare blanket he tried to drape over her, hoping to cover up what he couldn't understand. Her silence was not hesitance. It was nor weakness nor acceptance. It was a deliberate choice—A quiet storm gathering strength beneath an implacable surface. His words on Malum…If anything could have drawn a response from her?

It would have been that.

"You speak of demons as though you know them intimately, yet, you fail to acknowledge what can destroy someone the most. Doubt, fear. It is no trifling thing and it cannot be reduced to nothing if you truly see the value in every life. Malum offered his life, in exchange for you…"

She had watched Alisteri Haxim turn his doubt and fear into vitriol for as long as she'd been aware of his activities within the order. He wielded it like a weapon, lashing out at every opportunity, never realizing that he cut himself deeper than any enemy ever could. Her right hand rose so that her elbow could rest on her knee, exquisite cheek, falling to her palm. Her other rose so that the shabbily covered figure could see the depth of a macabre, still healing would. "He offered me the blade."

"But…It did not go according to plan, mostly, because I never needed him to tell me where you were."

It had been a courtesy. A chance, for the Dark Councilor to show, once and for all, that his faith in her wasn't simply a smokescreen for his own designs. She didn't know what to think of the interaction several floors above but now wasn't the moment to dissect the truth. Alisteri, likely, wouldn't have cared to listen regardless. "Pain…Is pain. It cannot be compared. It has no equal—And the value is only ever judged by the recipient."

Her words carried the weight of someone who had been through more than they were willing to divulge. She had walked through fire after fire since leaving Eshan as a young adult and none of it had left her unscathed. She had been reforged, so many times, that she could scarcely come to terms with the woman she saw in the mirror. She was not, as she had been. She breathed in slowly before exhaling with no small amount of disappointment. "You misunderstand Malum…You misunderstand me. It is not unexpected, but, I do not know if such ignorance is deliberate. Do you truly misunderstand or do you willfully ignore what lays before you?"

Always and forever, he viewed things with a narrow lens, horse blinders, that kept him locked in this constant state. Strangely, she did not blame him. Sith were known to be duplicitous and there had no doubt been rulers of former Empire's that were not worthy of the claim. He felt pressed down. Ignored. Locked in a powerless cycle, blaming all those around him, but never once taking in his own reflection. Her history was not openly worn, nor, did she clamor for titles and power. She didn't move like a Sith.

She didn't act like one—But she was.

Her golden eyes seemed to flicker in the dim light, a soft, dangerous glow that hinted at things she could not yet say. "I was willing to die on Echnos if the situation called for it. Not for glory, nor power, but to halt the spread of our enemy and prevent them from taking a beachhead inside our border. I fought that battle as if it were my last because I see what many refuse to acknowledge—The Alliance, the Jedi, are a threat."

She breathed once more, shoulders rising, and falling…But not without contemplation.

"If they had pushed through the Alliance would have spread to other systems and compounded the problem exponentially by thinning our forces, draining resources, and pressing more warfronts. They multiply like ants from a hive and once they take root it can be extremely costly to exterminate them. You have the liberty of taking the moral high ground, but that, will never be an option to me. I never wanted this crown…But it is here. It has requirements, of me. I will fulfill them."

As much as Alisteri knew, as much as he had gone through, he had never known what it was like to have the eyes of an entire Empire turn solely toward him in their darkest hour. There was always someone else to blame. To be able to destroy with good conscience, to be able to behave badly, and call that behavior "righteous indignation" was the height of psychological luxury. The most delicious of moral treats. Until he made the decision to abduct Sith children—He had been spoiled for choice.

"The night that Valery Noble cut down by husband, before this 11th Empire really had teeth, and wings, I was not only willing to die. I wanted to. I have been a soldier fighting from one war to the next all my life. I have lost…So many…", she paused for a moment, her gaze shifting, as if memory had returned to haunt her in that moment. "I would have given anything to resurrect my daughter, my sisters, the people of Eshan, the Confederacy…But that isn't how life and death operate. Everything, dies."

And for the betterment of the galaxy, more often than not, it ought to stay that way.

"And when my husband returned, not himself, I had moments to choose. To decide. I knew that I couldn't win against what he had become, but I couldn't let him rampage either. If that was to be my sacrifice, I came to terms regardless the fact that it was suicide. I thought my death might pull him back.", the admittance, never before spoken, was met without a single glance from the Empress and her cheek simply remained in her hand. Her eyes had gone hollow. "As it turns out…Trying to rip my throat out was enough. He was then, as you see him now."

"Your question, unfortunately, has an irrelevant answer. I have given more of myself than you can comprehend. My body, my soul, have been the mortar in the walls that have kept our people from crumbling or tearing one another apart. Sacrifice is not foreign to me."

He was confused on a great many things. While her husband hated, many, of the citizenry he had been fated to oversee his wife had the opposite opinion. She did not hate them. Not when they rebelled, insulted, or failed a mission. Not even if they outright attacked. She had pledged her loyalty to the one who owned her heart decades ago. That wasn't something that faded, even if he could no longer see it. His cause was her cause. His people, her people. He placed a crown on her head and named her mother to so many wayward children…Alisteri, was one of them. "You ask what I am and make assumptions of who I am but you never seem to want the truth. Merely, your abridged, biased version. I do not cling to power. I wield it…Because to let it slip, is to allow those who would see us destroyed, win. When you are in my shoes, I welcome you to lecture me with statistics, but until then, you know not my mind nor my intention."

Her expression seemed to soften then, rather, than expressing any sort of anger or frustration. It was almost as if she found some sort of pity or understanding in his ire. She did not expect to make him change his views, but she suspected he had never once held an open or frank conversation with anyone he deemed a tyrant. He laid the blame upon her for things that had taken place before she'd been born or from before she'd ever set foot in any Sith Empire.

Was it really just a lust for power that drove him? The need to see himself on a throne? Did he even know what he was fighting for, specifically, or had his anger just consumed him?

"…You know nothing of the burden I carry…So that you and thousands more like you…Don't have to."

And mostly? His ignorance?

It was because he had never asked.

 

[Darth Strosius]

An eyebrow quirked up to match the skeptical expression adoring His features as she told Him of Malum's supposed selfless act. Clearly she didn't know the Heir of Marr as well as she thought she did, uttering such a phrase was sheer fantasy on her part. Or more likely a bold faced lie to try and manipulate Him. Which was why whenever she revealed her wound His face fell into total confusion and surprise. So much so that He finally broke their stare in order to slightly squint in disbelief at the cut.

That didn't make any sense at all.

After all that Malum had done to save his own rear why would he ever even pretend to offer his life for Him? Why would the Empress so casually display that she wasn't some untouchable monolith of authority? What was the point in revealing either apparent fact to him? Was it so clear that He posed no threat in His current state? Was she so certain that He never would again? His gaze kept flickering across her expression and movements as though attempting to decipher some foreign equation with no real solution, His formerly tensed disposition having slouched and slackened.

For once He was actually at a loss for words for more than a few moments, His mouth opening and closing but with no remarks or noises of any kind to speak of being let loose. Even when she continued on and accused Him of ignorance He still looked perturbed rather than annoyed or frustrated like one might expect. "I beg your pardon?" He looked and sounded taken aback more so than anything else. "Ignorance? Unlike Malum I see you and your ilk for what you are. I've misunderstood nothing."

Clearly this was all some grand manipulation tactic. A very confusing and elaborate one at that. At least her assessment regarding the Alliance's threat was accurate, something that He could anchor Himself on and somewhat recover His composure. Enough so that His jaw wasn't gaping open as He tried to wrap His mind around her enigmatic nature anyway. He knew well enough what the Jedi would do to the worlds of the Sith that they managed to capture in war, He had seen it firsthand and had been powerless to prevent it. And now it was as though He was powerless still despite it all.

His brow furrowed in confusion again as she mentioned one Jedi in particular that He had unfortunately crossed paths with Himself on more than one occasion, but He didn't quite understand the relevancy of it until she had continued in her recounting. With some very...odd details. That she had lost loved ones over the years was to be expected but it took a moment to click in His mind that she implied her husband had been killed as well. And returned to life changed somehow. Was that why he resembled a corpse so much? Because in truth he was one? And how had he been any different beforehand compared to afterwards? Her little tale left Him with far more questions than answers, a fact that He couldn't have hidden in His expression even if He wanted to, but He doubted that He'd be able to get any concrete and satisfactory responses.

A small huff would be His only reply for a long moment after her extensive rebuttal, giving the impression that He was rolling her words around in His mind. Whether that was in an attempt to understand them better or to find some hidden double-meaning that He could weaponize was unclear even to Himself. When He did finally speak again His words began with a small clicking of His tongue. "Do you know where I was when the Tenth Sith Empire fell, Lady Talon?"

He cocked His head to the side, His tone neutral and even. "I was shepherding my faithful onto a ship to take us away from Dromund Kaas before the lawlessness and ruination that came in the wake of our great defeat reached the former capitol world. They were lost. Their homes had to be abandoned, their lives packed up, their whole existences rearranged. But they never gave into despair, they were battered but not beaten. Their spirits had fallen yet hadn't sunk entirely. Because they saw a Sith that they believed so desperately would keep them safe. Because they saw what they needed to see in me."

A sigh escaped Him as He glanced away, shame coloring His pale features just as fully as anger had ever done. "They couldn't see the boy who had been wrapped up in a war on a scale that he had never even dreamt of before. They didn't know that I had seen it consume world after world, that I had watched it devour each of my friends until there were none left." A pause, the remorse in His voice hardening to an edge for the first time in their little chat for just a moment. "That I had thought then that I would never see the woman I loved again."

He swiftly moved on, the flare of emotion fading back to melancholy just as quickly as it had erupted. "I had no plan. I had no idea what I was doing. All that I knew was that dozens of lost souls crammed together aboard one little frigate now looked to me as their only hope. I tried to visit other stations and worlds of the empire, attempting to find some aid or guidance, but all I found was more desperate people needing something to cling to. Dozens had become hundreds by the time we left former Sith space. Families, veterans, lone survivors, faithful and skeptic alike, they had all come from such different places and lives but now they all shared in the hope that I would be their savior."

His knees were pulled up against His chest as His arms wrapped around them and His chin rested upon them, His gaze fixed on the small bag now held loosely in His fingertips and barely visible tendrils. "Their whole lives they had been promised that their rulers would take care of them, would bring them security and prosperity so long as they obeyed and fell in line. They did for me what the empire had demanded of them. They followed me as I made a trail of mistakes and missteps with corpses of friend and foe alike at every juncture and pathway." There was no pride to be found in his words, he sounded as he had made himself in his current position. Small, hollow. Frail.

"The difference between our burdens is not in scale, but in result. You were handed a role and you play it better than most in your position would. You could have turned it down at any moment, and still could now." His gaze flickered back to the Empress, golden pools dulled and half-lidded with a strange yet potent mixture of jealousy and grief. "I was looked upon as the shining example of what the forgotten had been promised, as the sole hope in a galaxy that had strangled out every other opportunity and blessing. I was all that they had. No one else would help them, no one else had even tried. You were chosen to be an Empress, I was forced to be a leader. I know your burden well enough because I pick up the pieces you drop from it."

Srina Talon / Darth Malum of House Marr

 

[Srina Talon]

Location: Alvaria
Direct Tag: Darth Strosius | Darth Malum of House Marr

______________________________________
​

"Pardon, noted. Still…You are wrong."

The barely uttered words were not of defiance or mockery. It was a profession of truth so simple that a youngling could grasp, while this tattered, cloaked man, stared into the abyss and saw nothing. She did not yet elaborate on what he was incorrect about but she would have been remiss not to counter it. He did not understand either of them because he did not know them. He claimed to see value in every life—But that courtesy was not extended to her. It was not extended to Malum.

There was some unspoken notion that she was untouchable, impervious, to all things. Her personality was one of strength and stone because of how she had been raised. The people found a strange level of comfort in the way her chin never lowered, she rarely took sides, and often found resolutions that everyone could live with. She had united two of the most stubborn men in the galaxy. Not with jewels, bribery, or muscle. With a simple choice. They could annihilate one another.

But they would need to go through her.

Neither had been willing, because, she was very much so mortal. Long-lived but near-human just like any other person in the galaxy. She could bleed, she could be killed. Beyond that…

His story was one she knew.

When the Confederacy broke beneath the wave of the Unmaker, she had been an Exarch, standing just below the might of the Vicelord himself. As Alisteri described what happened during the fall of the Tenth Empire her gaze grew distant. She hung on every word, but there was some measure of a mirror that made her uncomfortable. Not with the content. It was memory returning in full force and without any consideration, or acknowledgement, that she had buried these wounds.

Buried, them.

It was a tale of hardship, loss, and reluctant leadership. Her expression remained empty, as if carved from the same alabaster as the cold, but her eyes were full. The cold-fire in them shifted and turned while his history stirred something from beneath a stoic exterior. She had heard similar laments before, seen the cracks, in countless masks of defiance. But this one—this misplaced parallel—churned the memories she kept hidden. Her posture remained as it was, delicate, cheek in hand.

"I am sorry, for their loss. For your loss."

The statement wasn't followed by an immediate rebuttal because this conversation was not a competition. It was not a game of who had lost more, who, had sacrificed more and who had suffered more than the other. His shame, was felt. Srina would never forgive herself for the fall of the Confederacy even though she had done everything in her power to right the ship. She had watched her home burn, watched, while planets crumbled and entire governments went dark. They had done everything right in building a truly free society. It hadn't stopped the inevitable. "The Confederacy perished…Not long after the Tenth Empire. The event is called by those who survived, the Calamity, and the enemy was known as the Unmaker. When it came…For all our might, technology, and warships we could do nothing."

"Not for a lack of effort, but I was an apprentice. Still learning. We fought for as long as we could but there came a point in which we could consign the entirety of a multi-system nation to death…Or we could evacuate. Save, what we could. I remember—"

The memory of ash in her throat was more vivid than she would ever admit. The sight of something untouchable tearing through the populace as if it were a plague bent on rending meat from bone. It swept like an invisible wave, crossing forcefields, barriers, as if they weren't even there. Her head tilted to the side and she looked away. Eyes closing, while she tried to stay on topic. Discussing things with an emotional tether was not her strong suit. She was clinical, precise. There was no room to feel.

"Standing with fellow Knights Obsidian while keeping the crowds moving on Geonosis. It was such a warm planet, so hot, that you could see heat rising from the pavement. It was cold that day. The Unmaker was particularly cruel, if only, because it thrived on forcing those it deemed a threat to acknowledge how helpless they were. It cut ships out of the sky. Turned citizens to…Ash. Or worse. It waited until we had the illusion of victory before snatching it away at the last moment. I know what it is to have the eyes of friends, family, and a thousand lost souls turn to you. Believing…"

"That you can do the impossible."

She breathed in, pausing, for a moment while the weight of what she had not spoken about in nearly two decades settled on her. It was almost visual, the way her shoulders were tight, bracing for impact or preparing for what might next fall on them. Srina was strong, but there was something worse, than dying in a war. Surviving it. Knowing, that it was only by luck or fate that the Unmaker hadn't torn her apart. She'd spent years, years chasing it. Training. In the end—The diminutive woman had her revenge but it hadn't done anything to quell the pain.

Nothing could bring back what was lost.

"My husband was torn from life and returned a shadow of what he once was. My comrades, my family, were scattered to the winds, and the legacy we fought to uphold was shattered…Because I failed. I was not strong enough to stand against a world-eating demon on Geonosis. I was too slow to save Empyrean—"

She settled. Quiet, once more.

The harshness of her tone, cold, and frigid when speaking of herself would be easy to note. Her head eventually lifted from her palm as she took in the sight of Alisteri once more, a sigh so heavy, falling from lips of primrose. "I am not the same as I once was, but, some things do not change. I am still a woman who has fought in the trenches, bled, for her people. The crown does not shield me from the cost of what I must do…It amplifies it."

"I have no love of title, no need, to be aggrandized the way the Sepulchral see fit….an untouchable bird in a gilded cage. They would have me obedient and embroiled in courtly drama, distracted, while my husband is left to become the weapon they want. I could not allow that. Standing at his side, with him, is the only way to ensure that does not come to pass. Being…this…Is not something I ever wanted."

"It was a duty that came with loyalty to my husband. This choice you speak of is an illusion for more reasons than I can count. I accepted it because I refused to stand idly by and watch another Empire burn itself out from the inside. I accepted, because I know, what the Jedi are capable of. My decision was not a selfish endeavor but a calling, to which, I must answer. I am a servant…Not a god."

Alisteri would likely never believe what their plans were before Odavessa, before, the Jedi in their hubris awakened an alpha and omega that the galaxy wasn't ready for. Maliphant had asked his wife for the one thing she was apprehensive about. Their lives were full of fighting, violence, and yet he longed for a family of his own. They planned for a life on Eshan. A private, quiet, fulfilling life.

That was all gone now.

"My silence…Is not indifference. It is restraint. You think that I do not share the burdens of the common man, that, I do not know or understand the cost of leadership, of sacrifice…Yet I have given all that I am to hold the line. There will be a day when I am no longer here, when my husband, is gone. You will cheer for the passing of your immortal tyrants but that cheer may become ash on your tongue when the Eleventh Empire is seen as wounded and the vultures descend. If it is not about power, it is about people, and our people will suffer. You held the fate of thousands…I hold the fate of millions."

It was easy to pick and punish when something went wrong, without, understanding the full scope of the issue at hand. Srina had the advantage of seeing the situation with the perspective of an eagle while Alisteri was held down by problems close to home. Close, to his heart. She did not have that luxury of dialing in on one specific group of people when there were so many caught in the crosshairs of not only their enemies, but, the often-violent ambition of other Sith. It was a two-way warfront that no one seemed to realize the entirety of the Imperial Court was always managing.

They had to stop attacks from outside and often greater attacks from within less they stagnate trying to constantly rebuild or fix what had been broken. Catering to ego, outbursts, and children thinking they had access to rockets when they'd only just discovered fire. "And with that knowledge…I must also accept one other finality. You will loathe me moreso, but being a leader, means that certain truths can no longer be avoided. You will kill. You will sacrifice yourself. You will sacrifice the lives of others both knowingly and unknowingly. People will die for you…Even if you did all you could to safeguard them…Even if you beg them not to."

She breathed in again, but her jaw was set tight.

"In the end…You will let them. Because the truth is? The world isn't fair, it isn't moral. It doesn't give a damn how you feel or about those that are left behind. It doesn't care about the head that bears the crown. It doesn't care that most civilizations are built on the backs and bones of what came before. We can remember those who have given a final full measure of devotion…We can honor them… But we can't save them all."

 

[Darth Strosius]

"Someone has to be sorry."

The words seemed to echo for a moment, standing out as the first ones He had uttered thus far that had any fire or passion in them like He usually spoke with. But while they hung in the air He didn't follow them up at all, didn't launch into some tirade or to interrupt the Empress. Instead His fingers merely tightened around the bag, a slight tremble just barely visible before they clenched. Someone had to mourn. Someone had to regret. Someone had to remember the sins of the past. And if He didn't, then no one would. It was as simple as that.

The Confederacy had always been little more than a distant and foreign power in His mind, even when fleeing from Sith space so long ago He had never considered them amidst the various ports and destinations that they visited. He certainly paid them no mind after their collapse either. To hear of them firsthand was odd given His almost total lack of real information and context but nonetheless He allowed her to say her piece without interruption. It was the least that He could do He supposed.

Her recollection would draw forth a slew of reactions, most being winces and even brief flickers of sympathy. The similarities and parallels were not at all lost on Him even when He listened through His usual filter of skepticism and wariness. While it would have been all too easy to dismiss her words as mere reflections of His own recounting the sincerity and hesitations that accompanied them were not so easily manufactured. They were inconsistent, misplaced. Real. Perhaps for the first time in His eyes she seemed real in this moment, not like her usual calm and composed self that drew His ire and frustration at His own inability to crack such an image.

She even managed to somewhat make Him consider her husband for a few moments, even if that line of thought was dismissed as quickly as it had been entertained. She was absolutely right, the moment that Empyrean and herself were gone He and His followers would be lining the streets to celebrate. To clamor and cheer for one of their greatest enemies slain. As sympathetic and resolute as she was there was no changing the reality of the situation at hand. She was the Empress of a throne that He could never see as legitimate, that He would refuse to heed to. And He was the failed usurper of it.

There would be a slight narrowing of His dimmed gaze upon her when recollection and assertion became something of a lecture. As though He was unfamiliar with what had already been thrust upon Him again and again. In spite of the slight offense He couldn't summon forth the energy to scathe her with remarks or rebuttals. "Perhaps we can't." He agreed. There was no altering certain truths and realities, there was no changing what had already been constant since time itself was recorded. "But we can always do more. I should have done more."

He should have became what His people wanted of Him. He should have forced Raaf to back down and saved Formos from ruination. He should have cut down Malum during their Kaggath. He should have had the strength and capability to rip Empyrean from his seat and steer the Sith towards a new age. He should have saved Revna. A resigned sigh escaped. "But I didn't." Could He have? Could He have accomplished even one such task? He had been so sure of His ability to do it all before, but now He had been proven wrong. Raaf had stolen two worlds from Him. Malum had stolen His Inquisition and His life. Empyrean hadn't even bothered to steal anything, for there was nothing left of His to be concerned with. Revna was still in the clutches of the Kainites enduring unknown yet undoubtedly horrid torture.

And the Empress?

His jaw clenched tight, fangs almost audibly grinding against one another as He stared at the woman before Him and tried to dissect her with nothing but His own thoughts and theories. Yet nothing concrete or cohesive came to Him. No assumptions nor accusations to levy her way in order to try and recover some authority or standing in spite of His current state. Nothing that made Him feel as though He had any hand to play against whatever it was she had come to Him seeking.

And so, in a fit of His own despair and frustration, He asked. "What do you want from me?" He couldn't bother to sneer or glare, He simply stared and frowned in displeasure at His own lack of an answer. At having to rely and hope that either she'd be honest or that she'd lie in such a way that He could easily pick it apart and discern the true answer hidden beneath it. "You came all the way here and sunk a blade into your hand just to find me. I'm not your loyal subject and I'm no use politically as anything more than an example of your husband's enemies failing to gain ground."

He didn't understand, He couldn't. It didn't make sense. "You said it yourself that you couldn't convince me and you know well enough what I'd prefer to see of you and the throne you stand beside. You even bothered to confront my murderer and leave him behind to stew in his own troubles. And all for what?" Not enough effort to be monumental but more than enough to be intentional and decidedly inconvenient. "So what, in Bogan's name, do you want from me?"

Srina Talon / Darth Malum of House Marr