Private Sundering Dawn: Necessary Evils (Anathemous)

[Ashin Cardé Varanin]

Subsequent to The Becoming.


The Pomojema
Jutrand High Orbit

The ritual chamber had been one of Ashin's favourites for decades, host to elegant and ambitious projects of every kind. The setup was anything but elegant today. Eighty bodies lay in four ranks of twenty, all on repulsor beds and hooked to chemical cocktails that allowed for rapid, comprehensive metering of consciousness, unconsciousness, and continued life.

Around one end of the four ranks, she and her associates — Master-level students here, and some instructors, all Aksifas members — had reared up a complex ritual apparatus derived from past exercises and experiments. It was mostly metal and crystal and polished stone, and its resemblance to a mouth was probably coincidental. Recording and transcription devices backstopped manual scribes.

Around the four ranks feeding into the mouth, the chamber was standing room only. Ashin wanted to get started, but even retired, a lifetime's worth of teaching aboard this academy ship made a verbal explanation almost obligatory so as not to damage important relationships.

Besides, today involved teaching more than one lesson.

"Eighty bodies," she explained to the room. "All Force-sensitive. Around fifty years ago, a Sith contingent attacked my homeworld of Varunda Nine. These are some of the perpetrators, freshly thawed from deep storage. All blinded by carbonite, which augments their utility for this exercise.

"As you know, many prophets who've peered too deep into the future of our current crisis have died horribly. As you also know, this ship mounts a powerful Netherworld beacon to which we're all contributors in our simple way. With the permission of Captain Kishan-" She nodded to the Stennes Shifter, a longtime instructor here, a notorious poisoner and alchemist, and her replacement at the Pomojema's helm. "-the Aksifas have reactivated the beacon and retuned it to siphon the shades of those recently deceased prophets from across the Netherworld. Four have been procured. They will then be injected — or resurrected, if you prefer — into a body each, overriding and overwriting its waking spirit with the assistance of the apparatus. They will prophesy; we may get a few words out of each before the body crashes. At which point it will be dumped into its the next forcible resurrection in turn, and a few more words will be captured, and on, and on."

Crash, dump. Crash, dump. Eighty Sith would burn away in an hour or less, and there wouldn't be much left of the four prophetic spirits either.

"If these bodies are not sufficient, the Aksifas have arranged an alternative source from within the Blackwall. It would be a significant loss of resources, but the Emperor has made it clear that there is no higher priority, and I mean to bring him useful insight."

The apparatus roared to golden-warped life. Chemical feeds twitched, and the first four bodies' hovering platforms slid into the apparatus.

The first round of screaming began, but it was screaming with substance.

"As Darth Calypho taught, let them bleed prophecy." Ashin turned to Kaila Irons . "You have your catalogue of commonalities, Anathemous."

 

[Kaila Irons]

Wearing: Dress
Tag: Ashin Cardé Varanin

Kaila stood off to the side, glowing eyes taking it all in.

They'd left the council in such a hurry that she still wore the expensive dress which Quinn Varanin had bought her, rather than the simple robes she was used to conducting her rituals and research in, as there'd been no time to change.

The Pomojema to which she'd been rushed was as fascinating as it was strange, and that made her nervous.

She'd come here against her instincts with a strange but clearly powerful sith whom she barely knew, carried forth only by her trust in the Varanin name and insatiable hunger for knowledge.

Then again she'd done worse for answers.

The fate they'd condemned these souls to was even more so grim, but as Ashin explained their origins, she understood.

"Eighty souls to save an empire," Anathemous muttered, tracing that ring again.

"I suppose more have been sacrificed for less."

With a deep breath in and out she took her place among the scribes, preparing a pen and notebook of flemsiplast.

A few pages had already been filled with her experiences aboard and the knowledge Ashin imparted even now. Macabre as it was and though she found it difficult to admit aloud, there was a cold genius to the plan which Anathemous might remember for a lifetime, and it too deserved to be catalogued.

"As Darth Calypho taught, let them bleed prophecy." Ashin turned to Kaila Irons "You have your catalogue of commonalities, Anathemous."

"Darth Calypho..." she echoed between scribblings, though her face tightened at each scream.

"Master of Darth Thanaton, their shared legacy cut short by Darth Nox, another legacy thought lost till recently."

She paused a moment to study the last of the screams from this first round of sacrifice, the initial shock having given way to the focus with which she often drowned out all problems of the mind.

And so back to scribbling she went...

"Seems we've both been charged to continue the work of dead men."

​

 

[Ashin Cardé Varanin]

"Seems we've both been charged to continue the work of dead men."

"Hardly. We're transcending them. None of these prophets could have done this alone, and Calypho was never involved in anything quite so grand with such great stakes. The abilities to be right and innovative and good at something, as he was, are very different from the ability to do something useful with all of that. Knowledge and audacity need each other to be credible."

She kept her comments quiet so the recorders, both digital and manual, could continue their essential work of plucking sense from screaming.

The first four bodies died; golden light flickered weirdly through the apparatus. Attendees pulled those bodies free and sent them and their hover-beds down through floor vents for disposal elsewhere. The alchemists would have use for midichlorian-rich flesh. The next four bodies were pulled into the apparatus and properly incarnated.

"I'd thought to invite my daughter, but she has her own tactics for this moment. Knowledge and audacity."

 

[The King in Red]

The ritual rolls on—four bodies at a time, eight at a time—each fresh incarnation shrieking away its borrowed life while scribes scramble to catch a syllable, a phrase. But somewhere past the thirtieth sacrifice, the pattern of agony changes.

First, the screams modulate … harsh vowels flatten, pitches align, overtones converge.
Second, a beat emerges—deep, resonant, almost mechanical, as though an enormous gear were striking a locking pin.
Third, every voice in the chamber—living or dead—falls instinctively silent.

What remains is a single, uncanny chord that hovers in the air like a tuned capacitor. It tightens, brightens, and finally speaks—not as a woman, not as a man, but as a mingled legion of futures straining to become one.

WE ARE THE WHISPERED MOSAIC—PIECES MADE WHOLE.
THE GALAXY CRACKS ON THREE AXES:
HYPERLANE, SHADOW, MACHINE.
ON THE FIRST: THE HYDIAN FRACTURE WIDENS UNTIL HOPE FLEES WITH TRADE.
ON THE SECOND: STARWEIRDS FEAST WHERE FEAR BLEEDS, YET AN ALPHA HUNGER GUIDES THEM.
ON THE THIRD: CALLADENE TURNS AGAINST ITS FORGERS—A HEART MISALIGNED, A GEAR MISPLACED.

The chord swells; sparks of golden‑violet energy dance across the ritual mouth.

THREE KEYS REST IN THREE HANDS.
BLOOD—ECHO—AXIS.
BLOOD lies within the frozen world where prophets first screamed.
ECHO drifts in the grave of a convoy lost before its time.
AXIS sleeps beneath the rusted spire at the galaxy's forgotten center.
Bind the keys—
Mend the gear—
Or harvest the fracture and REIGN.

A final harmonic overtone snaps—glass spiders across nearby readouts, and every remaining corpse erupts in simultaneous, silent expiration. The chamber's lights gutter back to normal, leaving an after‑image of spinning gears and a crescent maw gnawing at a star‑map no one recognizes.

Ashin Cardé Varanin // Kaila Irons

 

[Kaila Irons]

Wearing: Dress
Tag: Ashin Cardé Varanin Darth Empyrean

Hardly. We're transcending them.

"On this we agree."

Kaila managed a faint smile, despite the cacophonous backdrop. While she hadn't meant to insinuate anything, it was true she and Ashin were both pushing the limits of these respective legacies. The Once-empress had seemingly taken the works of Calypho to grand new heights, and Anathemous had broken the limits of Darth Nox's force walk ritual.

And now they were making history in this very room.

"I'd thought to invite my daughter, but she has her own tactics for this moment. Knowledge and audacity."

"She's very proactive." Kaila nodded.

"I... I do wish the princess would stay near Jutrand till we understand more, but I know she can hold her own."

"...it'd just make me feel better..." she muttered.

For but a moment it was easy to forget that she stood before The Ashin Varanin, and mother of Quinn, and that she needed to put on a brave face for the both of them, to uphold not only her own image but the idea of her implacable warrior-princess, the future empress.

But then the corpses began to sing. Or drone, attempt to speak, whatever that infernal sound was.

Suddenly it was a race to jot it all down even as she backed away from the ominous light which danced around the dying.

"Axes... or was that Axis...?" she winced "Both?"

Back to scribbling.

"Axis sleeps beneath the rusted spire"... Does that sound like a name to you?"

"Unless it's a device, awaiting activation. Maybe "Calladene" isn't a person either..."

Then again if it were a construct, something like a droid, it could very well be both.

She paused, brows creased.

"So confusing, these prophecies and omens."

​

 

[Ashin Cardé Varanin]

The chamber's lights gutter back to normal, leaving an after‑image of spinning gears and a crescent maw gnawing at a star‑map no one recognizes.

This didn't feel like success beyond her wildest dreams for this project. This felt like terror. Ashin was glad of her mask.

She stayed perfectly silent, listening. One of her specialties was short-term memory enhancement, and she intended to relive these specific moments frequently until she'd isolated all the meaning from them - until she was certain the scribes and recordings had caught everything vocalized; until she was certain she'd sufficiently recorded the visionary aspect of it, that afterimage. She had not expected a vision of her own.

The periphery of the ritual chamber was standing room only, and among the many people standing there, a second wave of reaction began. A gripping of vision or, more concerningly, of notification from personal devices. Many began to leave as if to answer urgent calls, leaving the room very quiet and full of the dead.

"I believe," she said to Kaila Irons and nearby Aksifas Lords, turning to watch the room's rapt attention dissolve, "we just unlocked the future. An audio recording — now."

Someone furnished her with a datacard within heartbeats. She abandoned the room and its chaos. Convenient to the ritual chamber was a small space suitable for communication and coordination — reporting results, for example. She slotted in the datacard, uncaring whether she was observed, and sent it immediately to Darth Empyrean , Darth Carnifex , and Taeli Raaf

Other sources might have beat her to it by seconds. But her mask contained a certain system that allowed her to turn visual data, dreams, or visions into recordings, and she attached a static image of that star map.

"Record what you saw," she recommended to Kaila. "What did you see, if anything?"

 

[Kaila Irons]

Wearing: Dress
Tag: Ashin Cardé Varanin

Golden eyes would dart warily as devices pinged and sith wandered unexplained.

Just a momentary distraction, same as Ashin's brief seclusion. The young Darth did not pry, more so out of respectful caution than lack of curiosity. In the meantime she scribbled, drawing an approximation of the crescent maw they'd all witnessed, though she'd need to copy some holo-recordings to get the star-map just right.

All the while unaware of the cold sweat overtaking her, even as she sat tiredly.

"Record what you saw," she recommended to Kaila. "What did you see, if anything?"

"Nothing," she sighed in frustration.

"I don't see—"

"—I can't see,"​

Sightless eyes went wide with unexpectant horror, then screwed shut, as she fell unconscious.

The sith girl shivered uncontrollably, her freckled skin paled. And as she clawed at the pages of her study journal, a runic white scar began was drawn along her palm by an unseen force like cracking ice.

Seconds passed.

Seconds became moments.

Moments stretched anxiously.

Till she gasped for air.

"Cold-" she coughed, eyes still shut tight.

"Numbers, scratched in the walls. N-57... K-12... D-34..."

Her fingers shook, not with pain for she could not feel them, but bodily shock.

"...crew's dead... floating with the stars..."



"...Something's coming..."

​

 

[Ashin Cardé Varanin]

If Kaila Irons had been auxiliary to Ashin's attention, she was not so now. Moments after she fell unconscious, Ashin pulled off the mask of Anger and fitted the ancient artifact over Kaila's head. The goal was to let the Dreamscape circuitry capture whatever vision was unfolding in there.

Ashin crouched over her throughout the ordeal. Once the vision ended, she stayed crouched there, pondering and fixing every detail in her memory.

"My mask, please," she said as Kaila woke up. "What did you feel? What are those numbers?"

The face she wore was her own original — pale, sharp, with dark hair and of middle age. She didn't look much like her daughters, but the resemblance was there, mostly around the eyes.

 

[Kaila Irons]

Wearing: Dress
Tag: Ashin Cardé Varanin

Kaila's breaths began to steady behind the mask, and eyes blinked open.

Ashin was not as she expected, causing the young Dathomirian-vahla's head to tilt. She did not look like the princess, but rather another, though who exactly, she could not yet say. Her eyes however, Kaila recognized them through Quinn Varanin 's.

"My mask, please," she said as Kaila woke up. "What did you feel? What are those numbers?"

"Oh-" she stammered, muffled by the mask, "pardon me."

The mask was offered carefully in twitching, numb hands. She glanced curiously at the strange machinery inside, which she assumed bore some purpose in those moments missing in her waking memory.

"Well, if we're sure I am not dying, then I can afford to slow down and speak in more detail."

It wasn't until she'd returned the mask that Kaila noticed her scarred palm.

"When did...?"

She shook her head, gently rubbing her hand.

"Well I didn't feel this. I scarcely felt anything, but shear, unrelenting cold."

"We were on a ship I think," her gaze grew distant, searching for every scrap she could remember.

"A gutted thing, laid bare before the stars. The numbers were scratched into it's hull above frozen corpses cast away by gravity's absence."

"They looked like coordinates but... perhaps not, they're a number short."

She tried to put her thumb to her chin in thought, the numb digit missing first before settling.

"I saw myself, mirroring gestures I'd not yet taken."

"Then there was a face, like something dead, it felt... wrong."

The face looking up at Ashin was one of a girl trying to be brave, but her lips twitched with a discomfort she could not describe, not even to herself. Kaila did not run from her fears, in fact the look in her eye was every bit as violently accepting of the future as it was horrified by what they may face, but still this was new.

"I've had visions before, both of them true, and I do not like where this is going."

She paused then, glancing at the mask again.

"Did the machinery in your mask wake me from the dream? or was there some other purpose to my wearing it?"

​

 

[Ashin Cardé Varanin]

Ashin stood to give Kaila Irons the space to stand. She offered her a hand up. You could tell a great deal about someone in a moment like that — whether they feared the appearance of weakness; whether they would carry their own weight.

"Many years ago my wife had a devotee, an Echani-Mandalorian inventor named Connory. One of his more successful projects was a headset system that reads sensory data from the wearer. It's called a Dreamscape. It was on the market at one point as an artist's aid and debrief tool and you can still find them here and there. I've used the technology in various helmets to record enemies' words and actions for leverage, or pull my own visions and dreams and flow-walking experiences — seeing through time, essentially. Just now I used it to record everything you saw and heard in your vision. It just won't record the interpretive context you felt intuitively and through emotion, which is why I took your impressions verbally. If you're a credible visionary by aptitude, I recommend the technology. There are several aboard and you're welcome to one on the condition that you share anything further you see."