Kanni Ugaiya Kilran
The Viper
What is it? That was the burning question that turned her veins. That was the query that twisted her arteries. Who am I? Another question, and either was bereft of answer. It didn’t matter how far she had ventured, whether she went onward in this direction or that one, because she was never given a satisfying answer to her question to begin with, and there was more than one in a number.
Why? That was a question she hated to ask. Why, Father, did you leave me? He never answered her. Emperor Velran Kilran. Only she first met him as General Velran Kilran. When she had woken up in a medical chamber, some kind of infirmary, only he had given her a weapon to practice with her enemy, had dubbed her a Weapon. Hers was a shuriken. My baby.
That was fine. That was why she was conceived and created to begin with. Then she passed her tests and impressed the man and she became his adopted daughter as Kanni Ugaiya Kilran. She was his assassin, his snake in the grass, his Viper, and her bite was quite like that of a blaster.
General Velran Kilran? No. The great man became Emperor Velran Kilran, leader of the Empire of the Lost, and his would be a name that would not be lost for the ages but live on in memory and, if it didn’t, it would live in the pages. His descendants would make sure of it, one way or the other. Oh, it echoed.
There he was. In a glass cage. It was the first thing Kanni Ugaiya Kilran glimpsed as she entered the chamber in her outfit, never minding what kind of person might line either side of her emergence, or whether her appearance would satisfy them. In the end, they mattered little and less in comparison to the deathbed of her very own father, Velran Kilran.
“Such woes you spoke,” his daughter whispered under her breath. She didn’t care what the meeting was, who had come, what they had spoken, whether ally or enemy. At this moment, all the girl saw in all the world was her father, with that mustache so brilliant, emphasized under a bald head in the form of a man formed for conquest, bright and true, with eyes that did not dilute even in death.
“Such woes I know,” Kanni whispered again, fingers all but stroking that bald head, feeling memories in between from the moment he had awoken her from her chamber and had given her breakfast from eggs to donuts, given her tests, given her missions, sent her to assassinate his enemies and eliminate his opponents.
“That’s all I ever was.” She spoke above a whisper, never caring who might hear her. “An assassin. A weapon. The Weapon. The Viper.” She didn’t mind it, however. Kanni Ugaiya Kilran was a woman who tried to live up to her purpose, striving to survive in her existence and deliver pride to her father when and where permitted.
They called her a young girl, someone who didn’t understand the ways of war, but she understood the way of the blade and that was enough for her. Until this moment. Her lips may kiss the glass, and maybe Velran Kilran would feel the touch of his dear daughter from his skin to his mustache, but he was dead and gone, yet his daughter lived on.
“You were lost…” Kanni sniffed with quivering lips. “...But I found you…” She stood, erect on two feet, turning between the various members of her audience gathered here together, whether the body and the ceremony were in one place and the meeting in another, time no longer mattered to her.
“The Lost.” No, she didn’t know the words that were spoken prior to her entrance, despite recognizing faces familiar. Darth Rasnuhl. Maldor Mercetti. Teckla Tane. Others were less familiar yet presented all the same, including Zonn Geist and his weapon from what a weapon could surmise, Aculia Voland.
Only Voland did not seem to take a stance against Kilran, yes, that descendant of Emperor Velran, and let his name never be in vain, for what mattered beyond words were actions, and Kanni Kilran knew in truth that she was simply an assassin.
“I did not want this,” she first admitted. “Yet here it is.” Her expression was serious amid her countenance beneath her hood. “Palpatine, that was my father’s figurine in his dreams, and who was Palpatine?” Rhetorical question.
“Darth Sidious. Sith. Like others in our midst.” She spied them with her eyes but looked away. Their message was less important at the end of the day. “Empire of the Lost, we call this, but are you not found?” Kanni pointed toward this person, that person.
“I ask you, truly, what does the Empire mean to you?” She pointed at him, her, her, him, this person, that person, this Sith, that Imperial, that politician, this militant. “Let it not mean infighting. Please… Let my father’s memory not be stained by quarreling over positions in competition…”
Kanni visibly grimaced. “Or you can deal with me…and I am never afraid to wield my blade…” Kanni. Assassin. Viper. That’s what they called her. A weapon. An instrument. If that is the Princess’ position then so be it.
“The Empire of the Lost, we call ourselves,” she announced. I am born in the dark pit. In darkness. In the well. Yet, bereft of my father’s and master’s hold, I am free to navigate between the planes of heaven and hell. I am the core of existence. “How about the Empire of the Found?” She broadcasted with no qualms over capitalization.
“Help me forge my father’s empire a new future, where Velran Kilran’s death and defeat will not be seen as weakness but a cliff to reach success and reap vengeance,” she said, ever aware of her own madness, such as it was.
For I love you, Father, and if I do not avenge your memory then I will burn in your grave, share the same fate, as your daughter, and may they forget my name if only they remember your destiny.
“I will give Emperor Velran Kilran his vision even after his death, from lost to found, or I will die trying in the attempt.” She looked right, looked left, might have stomped her feet but that was the old Kanni so she didn’t. “His legacy is not in vain but in our veins, ladies and gentlemen, and we may honor it today by moving forward together in strength, not weakness of personal ambition, or we can collapse.”
Oh, Kanni was no Force-sensitive, but she could sense sedition and opportunistic beings in her midst. “Of which I will take the heads with my shuriken as I did before and you traitors will be no more.” She promised. Shouldn’t have? Perhaps. But that’s why Velran left Kanni with comrades in her midst to keep her head in check. Heh.
Last edited:
