"Liar."
The response swiftly countered the claim he made about being whole. Clearly, he knew nothing of Echani or he wouldn't have bothered perpetuating such a fallacy. He was unraveling before her eyes and because of
the Penumbra the Empress barely had to press on his weak points. The silence of her husband was concerning, but the effects of his actions on the mental state of their enemy, were indisputable.
That was half the fight.
It wasn't enough to decimate the warriors that the Alliance brought to bear. It wasn't enough to kill them. They needed to be broken, their faith, stripped away—Where that loss might shake the very foundations of all they had built. They relied on hope to carry them home, moreover, to cleanse their souls of all the atrocities committed in the name of the Light. To ease them, so sweetly, of their guilt.
Srina would
obliterate the hope that burned inside this Jedi.
Not for any warped sense of justice or honor. Srina had explained it to the old man the last time they traded blows—
Nothing had changed. This event was nothing more than a continuance of cause and effect. The flaxen-haired woman would have been content to leave their northern neighbors to their own devices, however, they pressed a boundary. They had stepped foot on territory uninvited with the intent of shrinking the Sith influence sphere. They spoke not of diplomacy or peace but of spilling the blood of her children, calling for their heads, as if they were cattle—Shelling a domed city, breaking airlocks, without thought or care, toward the populace that would be
vented if they succeeded.
The Galactic Alliance spoke. With mortars and mayhem. Just like before…Srina, listened, the Sith Order listened, and when the time came, they responded in kind.
This war was the answer.
"Once again you use the innocent, and for what this time? The Alliance attacks the shipyards on Sulis Van, and the Sith Order does what… Eradicate a city."
"Spare me your tired righteousness, Jedi.", her voice was quiet, as usual, but he would have no trouble hearing her over the sounds of grinding metal and distant blaster fire. The bright light of her crimson blade made her achingly beautiful features take on an almost demonic edge. Every shadow was deeper. Her eyes, though distant, were full of shifting gold and were hard as durasteel.
"The innocent? The same innocent who build your ships, fuel your war machine, and kneel at the feet of their so-called protectors?"
A slow, deliberate pause. The kiss of her lips twitched in what might have been a ghost of a smile were her expression not so full of ice. A lesser being might have flinched at his words or tried to find some feeble moral high ground. But, she was not lesser. She was Sith.
"Do not insult me by pretending you know not what you serve. You came to us. You came…To me. Your Alliance brought war machines to Echnos, fleets to Sluis Van, set the system on fire, and then recoiled in horror when the Sith chose to remind what war truly is. You would do battle at our gates and demand mercy in return?", her head tilted, hawkish, while Srina studied him as if he were some sort of leftover science experiment. She drank in the exhaustion of his eyes. The weight of the dead Woostrians that pulled him down as if chains had attached to his soul.
"I do not slaughter cities for sport, Judah Lesan. You cannot shame me with your broken ideals…I do it because it is necessary. Because you, your Alliance, your innocents—You will never stop. So we, will never stop."
The Jedi had put plenty of distance between them. It was an intelligent tactic of someone trying desperately to survive when she could break every bone in his chest if he stayed in proximity. But, it wouldn't save him. The wind howled and a vortex of glass suddenly rose and shrieked around her like a tempest given form. Razor-sharp shards spun in chaotic spirals around her, slicing into soft, exposed skin before she could reinforce telekinetic defenses. A thin line of crimson beaded along the alabaster curve of her cheek, another, lashing out far more angrily along her collarbone. Her eyes narrowed. The scent of scorched metal and ozone filled her senses as the storm in the heavens above crackled with kinetic energy, turning the air electric with static.
Srina's lips pressed into a thin line while her shields momentarily held. The tornado, nay, a maelstrom filled with sharp debris and furious fragments of melted silica sought to squeeze her into nothing. As if the Jedi had placed her body in a literal, blender. She did not panic. She did not fear. Srina reached beyond the whirling corkscrew of glass and wind and sought to reverse the airflow—But in the shifting, tumultuous currents of the Force she felt something—
<<…Quinn…>>
The name, though only a thought, resonated in the ether and Srina momentarily placed her own survival on hold. There was an unbreakable tether that threaded between mother and daughter. Nurtured, since before the little princess had even spoken her first words.
Pain. Something had harmed her child. Injured her. To what degree she did not know. Her words slowly wove themselves into the Force, whispers, that bound themselves to
Quinn Varanin
and reinforced her being at the very core.
<<Take of me… Suffer no Jedi, to live.>>
A mother's fury took root, cold and insidious, driving her power outward and deep into the shifting shadows. An incantation in High Sith curled into Srina's mind and the malefic dark within Quinn would stir into a wanting, feeling creature, that amplified her own gifts. The shadows around her daughter would lengthen unnaturally, coalescing into jagged, inky spears—
Darkshears—born of void and malice, waiting in the periphery for Quinn to command. They hummed with latent violence, their edges gleaming with the raw hunger of the Darkside.
<<Make them wish they were never born.>>
Srina exhaled sharply, and with it, the glass storm exploded violently outward. Shards shattered against the invisible force of her shields, scattering, like microscopic embers dying in the wind. She emerged from the chaos with a flat expression and shocking swaths of red staining milk-pale skin. She could feel a sticky wetness running down her neck, her armor, while it stained the furred collar of her cloak. The taste of copper and iron sat on her lips—An echo of pain causing her jaw to clench. Her ivory hair billowed, tousled by the tornado, and her gaze burned with a frozen fire that was absolutely punishing. It would hurt to look at her directly—With eyes that could be so pitiless, so cruel. Frigid and inexorable.
He made her
bleed.
Her body rose in the air, suspended and weightless, to meet him on the platform of the Landing Castle. She strode forward, each step unhurried, and unremitting. She gestured slowly toward the damage he had done from a lofty perch, a coward, to the last.
"Does this please you?"
The Empress of the Sith Order did not wait to hear his response.
The whisper of her lightsaber igniting was lost beneath the roar of its crimson plasma as she surged forward, her strike swift as a Vornskr pouncing on wounded prey. She did not hesitate nor did she give the old man time to breathe or react—Her blade swinging down in a vicious diagonal cut, aimed to split him from shoulder to hip. Their sabers met when he blocked and sparks scattered. Srina pressed forward, bearing down on him, her strength coiled within her compact frame like a drawn bow ready to snap. Then, she twisted.
A sudden shift, her body a blur of white and crimson. She disengaged in a fluid motion, pivoting, on the ball of her foot, before sweeping low—her saber carving a deadly arc toward his knees. It was a ploy. An act. Just to make him move. The second he leapt back, just barely avoiding the strike, she launched herself upward and her free hand shot forward when she was within his guard again.
Not with any weapon, just the Force.
The impact would hit him square in the chest. A raw, invisible burst of power, crushing and intractable. The air would rip out of his lungs as the shockwave slammed into him, his ribs compressing under the sheer kinetic pressure. Whether he continued to stand, fell, or powered through the pain her saber would find a place uncomfortably close to his exposed neck. He would be able to feel not only the searing heat against his skin but the refinement, in her every breath. The control it took not to liberate his head from his shoulders.
"You are slow…You fight like a man trying to remember what he once was and sooner or later...I will tire of this game. You mistake your suffering, for strength. But suffering…"
"Is not power, for a Jedi. It is an anchor…And you are drowning in it."
Eira Dyn
Ko Vuto
Colette
Tamsin Graves
Darth Carnifex
, had subjected her to. Her neck was tender and screaming at her almost as loud as the ringing in her ear, but the metal discs held, preventing it from snapping outright no matter if she felt like it had.
