The Lady Doth Protest Too Much, Methinks

[Aver Brand]

A light shrug was all Aver offered in response before sinking her teeth into the meat. Delight and blood trickled across her face as she tore the barely cooked flesh from bone. Heedless of propriety. Ignorant of customs. Crude by choice.

She wolfed down her dinner in a matter of scant seconds and licked the remnants off her fingers.

With a deep-seated satisfaction written all over her features, the merc settled back against some carefully arranged cots and leather rolls. Her recline was a lazy one, her smile genuine in a way that only a full belly could evoke.

Drawing slow circles with her thumb at the junction of her clavicles, Aver canted her head back and gnawed on her lower lip.

“Tell me, [member="Quietus"],” she murmured, soft against the crackling fire between them. “Why am I still here?”

 

[Quietus]

Another slow drink, Quietus leaned forward to lift the top of a wooden box to reveal a collection of hand rolled ... cigs? No, they looked more similar to a blunt of Spice. Not far from the truth, but not quite truth either. She picked one out before closing the lid and brought it to her lips. Pinching it there the Beastia leaned forward towards the fire and with a gesture of a hand curled a flame outwards towards her, controlling it into a spiral at the end of the Sten. Once caught the flame fizzled into thin air.

Quietus dragged briefly on it, wild green eyes closing to the world around her as the numbing sensation settled in and released a plume of blue smoke that smelled of something akin to mint with a heavy bite on the senses.

They reopened to stare at Aver unblinkingly, head coiling to one side in consideration.

Because I like you.

 

[Aver Brand]

[member="Quietus"] smoked.

Aver blinked.

Then she she squinted, peering at the dark leaves over the flickering orange light.

“What’s that?” The smell was like no cigs she knew, and she’d encountered plenty of variety in her days of gambling dens and air so thick with smoke you could barely see your cards. The plumes rolled from the burning tip, spreading purplish cobwebs in the warm darkness of the tent.

Her lips quirked upwards at the simple reply. The Beastia didn’t complicate matters, and Aver appreciated that more than she’d ever care to say.

“Why?” A single loaded syllable, carrying the weight of a thousand implications.

 

[Quietus]

It's called a Sten, said the woman as she plucked it from her lips, fangs exposed and grit loosely against one another. Smoke rolled through hairline cracks to flow down along her jaw and front like the smog rolling from the maw of a lucid dragon. The campfire lashed about in the greens of her eyes, making widening pupils dance as she regarded her habit.

Something crafted by my people... not these people, the same hand holding the roll gently gestured off towards the tent flaps, indicating the Beast Tribes, my kind. She drank from her cup again, emptying it and setting it down on the table. It comes from a plant native to their home world and helps abate certain... aspects of daily life. Back to her lips, she took another slow drag and this time held it in. The fog seemed to fill her eyes as much as it did the air in the tent.

Quietus blinked it away, brows raising as her lips parted to form an 'O'. She blew smoke rings at Aver.

Because you remind me of...me. A much younger me.

 

[Aver Brand]

Her curiosity sufficiently piqued, Aver leaned forward, closer to the warm caress of the flames. The ice of her eyes seemed to melt in the fire, dripping down into a smile that curled her lips to the barest flash of teeth.

“What kind of aspects?” My kind, a conversation they’d had earlier today, surrounded by a different sort of warmth. The hot springs had been full of revelations, certainly. Her gaze flickered to the pointed ends of those fangs, and Aver swallowed a spike of white-hot heat.

Yet another sort, this one.

“A young you was a mass murderer?” she asked, voice flat as frost crept back over her features. She did not come here for self-reflection, nor to have her deeds sliced open and examined, bloody and squirming. She came for… what did she come for?

Whatever she was going to say next died on her lips, and Aver averted her eyes from the piercing greens of the Beastia. Again, [member="Quietus"] had slunk past her defenses, and she had no idea how.

Perhaps they were alike after all.

 

[Quietus]

Carnal aspects, she ashed the sten on the dirt floor off to the side and took another long drag. The pungent odor of her smoke had filled the immediate area now and began lingering with the overwhelming smell of the campfire and Aver's meal. Heady, heavy, she felt the smoke cling to her skin and settle on her eyelashes. The world of the tent and the beasts and the jungles were slowly weighing down upon her.

A younger me was a Sith, said the Beastia to the Merc's thoughts without any due ceremony to the fact, and Sith were no different then from what they are now. A pointed gaze settled on [member="Aver Brand"] but nothing more was said on the subject. Instead that gaze traveled from the pale eyes of ice to the thrumming of her blood pulsing just beneath the surface of her skin. Quietus gave a slow blink and exhaled a plume of fog from between her lips.

I can show you, the tamber of her telepathic voice was lower now, like the distant rumbling of thunder, would you like to see?

 

[Aver Brand]

The words pulled Aver’s lips into a grin – more of a grin – and a spark into her cool eyes. They tingled down her spine, coaxing memories of a different evening to the surface. Scorching where tonight was warm, the abandon of war instead of the slow tango. Seduction. Whatever their previous encounter had been, it wasn’t that.

Perhaps that was part of why she was still here. I like you, there was truth to that. But even truer still was I don’t understand you.

She scoffed, an indignant flare of the nostrils. “Sith doesn’t define me. No more than tribeswoman defines you.” Clearly, the blanket statement was a sore spot for the woman. [member="Quietus"] was frightfully talented at finding those. “It’s a label, like hero. Something to call you when you’ve killed so many people that ‘murderer’ falls short.”

Through the lazy blue smoke, Aver met the Beastia’s clouded gaze. Morning mist, crawling between the trees. No telling what lay hidden beyond the thready veil. Then again, she liked that. The one steady, unwavering aspect of Ygdris Val was her love of danger.

So she leaned forward, past the fire, trespassing into personal space. Brazen fingers plucked the sten and replaced it with lips.

Show me.

 

[Quietus]

The leveled green gaze maintained an iota of acidity - the type that burned through barriers, saw through masks, picked apart all the lies - despite the depth of fog forming within them. If her age were to show at all it was within those eyes. Calm and centered as she was now, the Beastia was equally as tired, world weary, of seemingly living the same life over and over again.

Nothing truly changed. Not really. The last greatest change came with the Plague and it all amounted to the quietude of the galaxy after the storm had passed.

The silence of the stars.

The roar of death from one galactic sphere to another. All the universe had become a wound in the Force and she remembered the invigoration of the trembles consuming every particle, every fiber of her being. She felt it again as she watched Aver's approach, all glacial hellfire and salt-coated candy. Quietus felt her lips and breathed plumes of irnroot essence into the Merc's lungs. Light as clouds, heavy as thunder, churning in the slow dance of flames.

There was blood on their lips and arcane energies on the air. Bodiless, voiceless chants of eons past echoed along the Force. Quietus felt the weight of her companion sink upon her as heavy as Aver's eyelids had become. Twisting and tugging, coelascing with the fog around them, painted fingers traipsed over closed eyes, across reddened lips, taking the crimson down the chin and neck to venture...

...to venture....



They became the blackness between those who slumbered and those who lived with the prickling sensations of the waking realm dissipating into the formless, colorless fog. Endless. It was truly and utterly endless.

They became themselves - in idealized perfection, in long-desired remembrances of memories faded or far gone.

Glowing green eyes blinked out from within oblivion and watched as the subconscious self of [member="Aver Brand"] formed within the dreamsphere.

 

[Aver Brand]

By now, she knew to expect the unexpected when it came to [member="Quietus"]. Trouble was, knowing and doing were two different things, and hell, her headspace was still a precious place. Insanely precious.

The tent was gone. So was the fire, the food, the smoke. The whole frakking planet was gone.

When Aver opened her eyes again – slowly, tentatively, like one might navigate a minefield – there were only stars. Billions and billions of them. Uncounted punctures in the great black expanse, windows to other worlds and universes.

Words tumbled from her lips, soft, reverent. “Where are we?” Her breath misted white, but strangely, she felt no cold. Just a pervasive sense of unimportance. Taller than most and dangerous like few others, Aver felt just as small and insignificant faced with the vastness of space.

That was, perhaps, why she loathed it as she did.

“This some kind of mental trick? What is—” Just then, the firrerreo had glanced down. Her undersuit was gone, replaced by a simple plaid shirt and jeans. Top buttons loose, sleeves rolled up. Her hands still felt rough, but it was from tools rather than arms. An unsure hand reached up, running through the red mane. Her hair, at least, was still the same. But when she moved, her muscles didn’t pull along scarlines, and her joints didn’t moan.

Whole.

“Quietus,” firmer, now. “What is this?” Was that an edge of concern in her voice? Hard to tell, if you didn’t know her well. And it wasn’t the mental hijinks that worried her, for once.

Ygdris Val had never felt whole before.

 

[Quietus]

The Dreamsphere, answered Quietus whose voice was everywhere and nowhere at once. Its echo surrounded the realm and yet remained within Aver's mind just as she always knew it to be. Answering bluntly and truthfully, yet never fully explaining... just as always. Green eyes blinked in the nether, formless fog moved and coiled, becoming particles of blackened sand the likes of which Aver had witnessed in the passing of their first introductions.

The chair at the center of the room crumbling, disintegrating into nothing but black sand under the grips of the Beastia. The memory came unbidden.​

It whispered as it moved, furling in a cloud to swarm, to form a body that Aver knew well enough. Every scar and tattoo, every mark, every carved wooden bead upon every blond braid was there. Quietus stepped forward from the gale of particles dressed just the same as she was minutes ago in the tent, bringing with her the smell of the fire and meat, the lingering essence of irnroot, the taste of blood. Red still stained her lips but the fog was gone from the gaze of untamed jungles now rolling over Aver's figure, appraising it patiently.

It is a place of the mind where one Masters the realm of their subconscious through the art of Dreamwalking.

Quietus noted Aver's confusion and shock to her present state of being and considered this with some amount of nostalgia for her own first many journeys through the subconscious.

Everyone starts as the image of their own mental self - how we see ourselves in an ideal, perfected state... and it was curious how the definition of perfect varied from person to person. Aver's definition was no less a curiosity to her than anyone else's.

...it is sometimes not always what we think it to be. The subconscious is far more honest than many realize.

[member="Aver Brand"]

 

[Aver Brand]

The Dreamsphere…

As the whisper echoed in her skull, aver whirled around, trying to grasp more of the curious world around her. It was as if she’d been caught inside a perfectly transparent sphere of glass and ejected into space. To drift forever. The air around her began swirling then, plumes of gray and blue that quickly took on familiar form.

“You’re saying this is my… ideal me?” With a raised brow, Aver looked from [member="Quietus"] back to her own transformed body. The thought carried implications she didn’t contemplate. Not alone in bed, in the middle of the night. Not with [member="Loray Tares"] by her side, coated in blood and sweat. Not in some alternate dimension construed with mind and magic.

Never.

Doubt and disquiet battled across her expression in equal measure, but eventually the latter won out. Subconscious was an alien arena, with rules she didn’t comprehend. Didn’t want to comprehend. It required self-reflection on a level far beyond her usual practice; it required introspection.

Her lips curled, her brow furrowed.

“I am honest with myself,” Aver finally stated, voice edged with protest. “And this is not…” she trailed off, waving emptily at the void.

“You said you’d show me your Sithly days. Not… not this.”

 

[Quietus]

It is... said the blonde as she continued her slow circle around Aver, what it is.

We are not here to divine the nature of it. This is merely the cast-off, the loading module...if you will, while your self image integrates with my subconscious.

Quietus moved to stand at Aver's left, dwarfed physically by the taller woman's frame but in no way overshadowed by her. Even here, in the dreamsphere, the Beastia's presence was mighty, unflinching, immovable. She looked off into the fathomless distance where familiar stars had formed in a bleak night sky. Blues and greens bled in from the darkness. Solid ground formed beneath their feet in waves of black sand that slowly reddened to a deep umber.

Korriban, over 500 years ago. The Elimination War. Without a word Quietus stepped forward through the sands, leading a trail across rolling dunes until they found solid stone. A precipice formed overlooking the Valley of the Dark Lords where a massive citadel speared the skies with high towers. A wind picked up and brought with it the smell of plasma and blood, the roar of battle. Bodies materialized in the blustering of sand, painting the grounds red.

Nearby on the peak more figures emerged from coils of memory. Powerful men weilding powerful titles stood arguing over the diminutive form of a young child: a girl no older than 14 summers, skin tanned yet unpainted; hair long and black and wild as the chaos surrounding them; and eyes as striking, piercing as a jungle beneath the moon. Quietus watched impassively as the argument grew louder but the words were muffled in the winds.

[member="Aver Brand"]

 

[Aver Brand]

As paranoia tends to do, it kicked up a notch now that Aver was in such a distinctly unfavorable situation. Distrust always lingered just beneath the skin with the firrerreo, and any breach of her mental redoubt left her reeling. High-strung. She pivoted on the spot, icy eyes following every movement of the Beastia. No telling what she could do. No telling what either of them could do.

The stiffness in her spine melted as [member="Quietus"] continued. The mercenary accepted the explanation. Rational. Finally, she closed her eyes. A subtle flare of the nostrils and a deep exhale were the only outward signs of effort, but it took all Aver had to relax her taut muscles.

If she even had muscles in this place. Likely she was just memory and smoke, manifest through the Force.

“How real is this?” She felt stupid as soon as the question left her mouth, and yet the fact that she had asked spoke volumes.

The galactic panorama shifted and changed, a great beast shaking off centuries of stardust. The sky fell, revealing blood-red sand and blood-red blades. A different age, a different name. Same war.

Her attention was drawn to the argument against the backdrop of wholesale slaughter. Eyes flashed with emotion, features twisted with anger, and lips moved. All without a sound. Aver, who was used to the din of battle, found the muted scene more jarring for its silence than its content.

“Not a great time and place for custody disputes, was it?”

 

[Quietus]

Quietus did not deign to answer the first question. Reality within the subconscious was tied to perception, and perception in this place was a very powerful tool. Best to let anxious beasts calm when in unfamiliar territory lest they turn on the few things of familiarity in their panic. Aver wasn't panicking, she was listening, and that was all Quietus needed of her.

Sith are introverted creatures. Give them an enemy, make them a war, they will still draw the blood of their ally over the smallest of slights.

Of course the value of this girl and the weight of the slight seemed far larger than small.

A great gust of wind kicked up, the images billowing away in the gale. When it settled again a new scene played out before them: a line of Acolytes, warriors, soldiers, cuffed and on their knees. The same young girl issuing beheadings with youthful enthusiasm. Quietus watched her younger self with no hint of amusement or fondness.

 

[Aver Brand]

“I know.”

It was this knowledge that had first drawn her to the Order, and it was this same knowledge that drove her away in the end. Full circle, always. The Sith were tethered to their whims like the tides to the moon – ever changing, ever ebbing. Vrag had ridden the wave of ascension all the way to the top, yet had the prudence to jump off before it crashed against the rocks far below.

Watching them cannibalize each other while the enemy advanced on all fronts had been… sobering.

Statuesque in posture and emotion both, Aver acknowledged the change of scenery with a slow blink.

“You enjoyed it,” she said, unsurprised to find it unsurprising. “Was it the power? The blood?” She turned her head to the side, meeting Quietus’ jade gaze.

Aver quirked her lips into a smile. “Why’d you change your hair?”


[member="Blackthorne"]

 

[Quietus]

I was raised within it, by it, there had been no initial draw to it. Whatever it really was. Perhaps Quietus was too old to remember or see anymore just what had kept her there within it for so long. A century at least devoted to the doctrines ... well, devoted to the appearance of devotion. She considered her younger self and watched as the girl, little older than 14 summers, looked up at the approach of a man.

Tall, lithe, chiseled and brawny beneath his black robes, long black hair fell past his shoulders. She looked like him, Quietus narrowed her gaze in mild distaste as she recalled this fact.

My father, Darth Immortus, was the youngest Dark Lord of the Sith in the last six centuries. One of the last of his time. He took the title from Master Malice Draclau - another Sith Lord that I lament to find also survived the Gulag and 400 year darkness. I suppose Shi'ido can survive most anything really...

The woman caught herself, realizing she was getting on a sideways tangent. As much of a tangent as she was capable.

It was the only way of life I knew growing up.

[member="Aver Brand"]

 

[Aver Brand]

Keeping her gaze on the scene before her, Aver glanced at [member="Quietus"] out of the corner of her eye. The names meant nothing to her. Formal education wasn’t exactly par for the course for the people of Nadir – let alone the slaves. Sure, she’d picked up the important bits as she went along, and hyperspace travel allowed her much time to fill the gaps, but history had never been important.

Except, perhaps, in the sense of forging it. And even then, it was her present. The past was littered with molds of abandoned prototypes, each attempt a little closer to…

whatever.

“I only ever enjoyed killing one man in my life,” she spoke, lips curling up at the corners. A wry smile. However full of rage she had been then, the memory was crystal clear down to the details of blood spatter. Every blow recorded, every scream, every plea for mercy. Every split second of his death.

“The rest is just… business. Yeah, maybe I was raised on violence, but that’s a piss-poor excuse.”
“Every time you shoot someone in the head, or shove a knife between their ribs, or cut off their head… yeah, it ain’t the upbringing. It’s a decision.”

She turned fully towards the smaller woman. “Anyway— hair? You go blonde from the Gulag or something?”

 

[Quietus]

Quietus tipped a brow at the woman's scoff.

Well being raised that way just sounds better than saying I was young, stupid, and heartless.

She smirked. Self deprecation got easier with every passing year it seemed, but there honestly wasn't much more to really tell about her childhood. Those years had been spent exploring the wilds, getting underfoot, causing as much trouble as possible, and getting passed around between Master after Master. Those faces she might've offered to Aver, but it seemed that the historical names were lost on her and meant very little. Fast forward through her teenaged years, the scene around them slowly morphed. From beneath their feet the desert quaked, seeds of green sprouting up all around to grow a great jungle. Stones formed the massive walls that would become Halcyon Citadel - pristine in a time long before the Gulag.

They were standing atop one of the high spires with the wind ripping at their clothes. On the horizon a great storm brewed, clouds far too heavy and dark to be natural. A woman stood before them, far slighter of build than Quietus and even a hand shorter. Her skin was just as tanned, however, and what remain exposed was covered in tribal scarification and tattoos. Black hair, short and wild flailed in the winds. Her arms were at her sides but a veritable maelstrom of energy was surrounding her figure. It became apparent after a few moments that it was she creating the storms in the distance and that those storms were tearing across the landscape with such force that it left charred remains in its wake.

The cleansing of Onderon at the tail end of the Gulag had been her last great efforts there before she left.

No, she shook her head and smiled, the Gulag had nothing to do with that except for putting certain events into motion that lead to the eventuality of my ... change.

 

[Aver Brand]

“I’m rather true and a monster than a pretty liar,” Aver spoke after a beat, tipping her head to the side. “And that is one damn fine ass. I mean. Not that you don’t have a fine ass now… but, you know.” A cough, a glance towards the woman. “The jugs have definitely improved since then, though. Mmhm.”

Unmarred arms crossed over her chest, the merc wandered over to the edge of the tower, casting an appreciative gaze over the landscape. The Queen of memory didn’t seem to notice them, focused completely as she was on the tempest wreaking havoc through the jungles.

“Reckon they didn’t call you Quietus back then, did they?” she ventured, running a hand through what had moments ago appeared to be solid stonework. Vrag had seen the spires of Halcyon when she’d taken stock of the annexed Onderon territory, all those years ago. They looked weathered now, gnawed upon by the passage of time.

Aver regaled her companion with another side-eye. “Anyone ever tell you you can be a cryptic little shet?”

 

[Quietus]

She could always rely on Aver to comment on the most lewd of subjects - even if they weren't part of the conversation. Remarking on this didn't seem warranted, though, considering they were both ... compliments in some strange form. Quietus deigned to give a small shake of her head, eyes closing in something not-quite like disbelief; smirking, rubbing at her temple. Really, it shouldn't have surprised her at all. She's still so young.

So very, very young.

The winds picked up as the tempest drew closer - a veritable hulking beast of destruction. Quietus remembered this day well.

They did, actually, eyes pulled open again to scan the horizon. It had begun to rain a hard, sideways gale that soaked through their clothes in little less than a few seconds.

I've been called Quietus since passing my Knighthood trials at the age of 16. It was the name given to me by my Master. And yes, she approached to stand next to Aver, her smirk broadened, I have been told that.