Private STRINGS OF THE SERPENT | Whispers in Velvet

[Serina Calis]

STRINGS OF THE SERPENT | Whispers in Velvet
Location: Garden of Perpetual Dusk, Rakata Prime
Objective: Teach the art of corruption.
Allies: Ellissanthia
Opposing Force: ???
Tags: ???​

The garden breathed.

Each flower was a lung. Each vine, a vein. The soil beneath the blackened lilies still steamed with half-spoken curses, and the obsidian trees creaked and wept atonement in the breeze—a breeze that didn't come from anywhere. Not truly. It sighed from between the cracks of worlds, from fissures rent open by Sith alchemy and whispered prayer, from beneath stone where hearts had once beat in time with hope and now beat only for her.

The Garden of Perpetual Dusk had no sun, no moon, no sky. It lived beneath Rakata Prime, in a sanctum of heat and velvet silence carved by will and flame. Its shadows were not absence of light, but presence of a different truth—Serina's truth.

It had been her hands that tilled this soil, centuries-old volcanic loam saturated with ashes stolen from Jedi pyres and Sith tombs alike. Her sweat had made the roots grow. Her blood had sweetened the buds. With the patient elegance of a spider spinning its first web, she had cultivated every bloom and bulb through ritual, through pain, through the unspeakable ecstasies of Sith alchemy that made even the weeds sing.

And oh, how they sang.

Some with pheromones that invaded memory.
Others with spores that glimmered like constellations and clung to lashes and lips.
Still others released nothing but an emotion—want, despair, hunger, guilt—like perfume.

Their voices wove together in a song of slow ruin, and at its center—Serina sat enthroned.

The throne was grown, not built. A twisted sculpture of living bone-white thorn and petrified heartwood, it curved around her like an embrace, its spines rising into a crown behind her head. Her posture was one of calculated sloth: one arm draped over the throne's armrest, her legs lazily crossed, the side of her face resting against the back of one gloved hand. Her robes—those dark silken layers embroidered with crimson runes and slashed open to reveal alabaster thigh and the gentle rise of bare shoulder—cascaded like oil across the throne and floor.

She exhaled. Slowly. Sensually.

Around her, the garden pulsed in time with her breath.

Today was no ordinary day. Today, Serina would begin the second most sacred of rites: the delicate art of corruption. Not with blade. Not with fire. But with the force of feeling, of need, of belonging. Not every soul had to be shattered. Some could be stolen.

And she had just the right little Undine in mind.

But before the lesson, came the ambiance. The mood. The rhythm of the scene, constructed as carefully as a poem—if the poem were written in sweat and secrets.

Her prisoners had not yet stopped praying.

Across the garden, beneath the low arch of weeping amaranth vines, a woman knelt in trembling rapture. A former Jedi, now something less. Or perhaps, something more. No chains bound her wrists. No gag stilled her tongue. Her chains were made of memory and misplaced desire. Her tongue chanted Serina's name.

And Serina allowed her to.

She liked the sound of worship laced with shame.

The woman had been given no water for three days—only wine laced with root-serum and sugared poisons. No sleep, save beneath the glow of the dream-thorns that whispered lullabies of surrender. No company, save the garden itself, whose breath came warmer when she wept.

Serina watched her now. With the gaze of a sculptor regarding a marble torso mid-carve. Her lips parted slightly—not to speak, but to taste the atmosphere.

It was ready.

Almost.

She leaned forward. One long-fingered hand descended from the throne to a nearby pedestal of fused obsidian glass, where a chalice waited. Black metal, etched in curling vines, filled to the rim with crimson wine so dark it gleamed like blood from the heart of a sun.

She sipped. Slowly.

The taste: aged Catharese vintage—cut with something ancient and thick. She closed her eyes as the first drop passed her lips.

It was time.

A presence approached. Distant, but not unwelcome.

She felt it before she heard it. That subtle ripple across the garden's ambient current—the brush of a foot against silken moss, the flutter of robes caught in psychic scent. The garden shifted, vines twitching as if in anticipation, petals parting to allow the newcomer a path forward.

Serina set the chalice aside with a soft clink.

She rose, movements unhurried and poised, her long silhouette stretching upward like a black flame unfurling into bloom. The silks clung to her like ivy, glimmering as they caught the bioluminescent pollen drifting through the air.

One step forward. Then two. Her hips swayed with feline grace, her gaze sharpening like the tip of a vibrodagger as she turned toward the approaching threshold.

She did not need to see Ellissanthia to know her.

She could already smell her—a faint note of fear wrapped in duty, laced with salt and memory. It excited her.

"Come," she murmured, though the door had not yet opened.

"Let us begin."

And the garden opened its mouth to receive its next song.