One year before Darth Phyre's execution...
Phyre clipped to her belt a purple curved hilt lightsaber, clad in her white suit.
It was one of many a time she had met the Jedi in battle, real battle. Not one or two, but multiple.
It was her glory days, the plague winding down but not over, the suffering, the death, the cruelty on each affected planet an endless source of nourishment and pleasure for the Sithspawn Witch, still thirsting ever for more to turn, more to corrupt or butcher or both, and not necessarily in that order. She had arrived on Dantooine, pursuing a pair of Jedi on the run after producing a child strong in the Force. Ordinarily Phyre did not take children for training, preferring those who were old enough to decide for themselves what they wanted, but The Brain Demon had insisted. This one was too powerful to ignore.
Her starship, a modified Star Courier with all white armor, settled down on the grassy plains of Dantooine in the early dawn, close to what would eventually become Loste Citadel. They had fled here, to this ancient refuge if The Jedi, seeking a place to hide. But there was nowhere they could go that Darth Phyre could not or would not follow. She would sacrifice their blood, feed and annoint the child with the blood of their family. A supreme blessing. She was a regular evangelist.
She left her sanctum, calling the power of hate to infuse a corrupt, seething flesh underneath a curvy, athletic exterior, the power of the flame, with her since her awakening in The Darkness, danced in a rotting mind as she floated above the grass in her white and gold chrome outfit. She could almost smell them in the Force. Their desperation. Their fear of her. She had done things that would make prisoners on death row recoil. She found it addictive, as always.
She lived the Bogan. Breathed it. She would make them suffer slowly for making her chase them. The Jedi were powerful, true, and Phyre had honestly considered corrupting them also. But they were too much slaves to the light. It would be more trouble than it was worth, and Phyre was in the mood for slaughter.
Moldy yellow orbs peered out of an exotic face as she scanned the landscape. All the animals had fled on instinct at her approach, including the insects. If the bacteria could have fled, it probably would have as well. The clouds were a dark blue and the Sithspawn sneered at the feeling of the light within this place. Draining the life from the grass she stepped on out of spite as she approached an old but large circular gathering of stones with murals of ancient Jedi carved into the stone surfaces. The wind blew as coldly as Phyre's heart was small. She tasted death, breathed it in. Death all around. But not for her. 'Never' for her.
They waited next to a bright brown and white Dynamic Class Frieghter. This caused the Sith Lady to raise an eyebrow at the idea someone was flying a frieghter from such an ancient era. She could understand a yacht from that Era...she owned an X-70B Phantom Class Yacht called The Corrupted Flesh in addition to the Star Courier. But a frieghter. Times must have fallen hard on them. Phyre was amused by their poverty, for it only demonstrated her superiority.
They waited atop its hull, clad in black slacks and boots, with black, spiky jackets, wearing black masks which obscured their features and small, stylized black wings on the sides, at the temples. Both gripped black hilted lightsabers with emitter shields on one side. What little Phyre could make of their skin revealed that while the man was with a leathery tan, the woman had skin white as paper. They had fled this creature, and her servants, for months now. But they had recently acquired some help. An edge. A last ditch effort to keep their baby out of Phyre's hands.
As Phyre came closer, she hissed a little under her breath as she saw the symbol of the Jedi Order in white emblazoned on their chest.
"So these are the infamous Crownwraithes..." Phyre said as she got closer, calling her lightsaber to her hand, its purple blade hissing to life. A hideous life.
"Why do you reject the honor that I bring? The scion of The Brain Demon 'herself' would bless your child, induct her into the many treasures of the dark. Perhaps even you could find meaning in the Bogan's embrace."
"Oh, this is rich, my love, the creature thats beyond saving thinks to preach to us." Morris Crownwraithe rumbled in a deep voice from atop the ship, blue lightsaber activating.
"A beast such as you has no grounds to talk about saving 'anything'. You will not have our daughter, Witch." The woman, Lysandra Crownwraithe spoke.
"So its a girl..." Phyre smiled. "I can sense her, even now. She will make a powerful champion of The Brain Demon. Give her to me, and 'maybe' I'll give you a quick death."
Lysandra force jumped from the top of the ship with her husband. They could feel the seething corruption that animated her body like a snake in their mind. Morris took a Shien Stance, Lysandra a Makashi open. Phyre snarled and her flesh wiggled on her bones like rats were moving underneath as she tried to simply ignite both their bodies through will alone. But the Ashla was strong in them, and held back her dark will.
Phyre's flesh stopped wriggling and she hissed at them, the next attempt at death-by-fire coming from it pouring from her mouth onto both of them. She snarled when she realized they were wearing thermal capacitance belts. High quality ones at that. The pair finally stucks, both at once, and Phyre retreated from and overhead swipe from Morris, just barely in time to parry Lysandra's stab. The pair were skilled in attacking together, both flanking from her sides and swiping at her limbs. The Sithspawn's purple blade intercepted the two spiky jacketed warriors attacks, deftly driving them to the side or to each others blades, but the Crownwraithes were fast wiley, and, most importantly, genuinely talented. Phyre actually had to think out her defense, trying to counter Morris's heavy but focused attacks that left no room for mistakes and Lysandra's ghostly speed and cunning at the same time. Her purple blade whipped and twisted this way and that to fend off their strikes, Phyre never staying still too long for them to corner her. The wind blew the grass around them harder as a storm begin to roll in.
"Your skill is impressive the both of you. But your power will ultimately break before mine."
"Your are a disease in an era already filled with it. We will die before we let you infect our child."
"My thoughts exactly." Phyre sneered, muscles and veins bulging as she slipped into a Force Rage, her purple blade slashing for their heads, bashing against their weapons. The Crownwraithes faded out of her strikes, their blades glancing off her armor. Morris got into a bladelock with her, and Lysandra pulled out a strange black medallion with a black and green jewel at the center, and focused the light within herself.
The crystal glowed with a pink light. Phyre snarled as her flesh tugged away from her skeleton desperately trying to escape the range of the glowing light, pulling against her skeleton. The Sithspawn thrashed as Morris's lightsaber went into her chest, spilling yellowed, putrid smelling muscle and intestine that burned in purple flame as it made contact with the air. The damage grew worse, a fissure cracking open the suit and Phyre's skin underneath, spilling now black blood that caught fire and burnt the grass. Phyre force-pushed Morris away, causing him to slam into the hull of the frieghter, removing his lightsaber even as muscles and skin began tearing away from the skull, which was exposed, a slick, geaming white in the morning air and opened its jawbone, corrupted musculature still trying to latch back onto it, even as it shuddered in the light of the crystal Lysandra exposed her to.
Red Force Lightning erupted from behind the jaw, smacking into the crystal and destroying it, flinging Lysandra backward, and electrocuting her also.
The ripped open creature staggered to Lysandra, cackling psychotically as it fell on her. Lysandra screamed as Phyre began to tear the life force out of her through touch alone. Lysandra was too injured from the powerful red lightning to properly resist, and ended up rotting in seconds, Phyre's body and army stitching back together as she rose to face Morris.
"Your wife was barely a snack..." Phyre taunted, telekinetically raising Lysandra's lightsaber and crushing it, throwing the parts at Morris.
Morris suppressed his anguish at his wife's fate. They were buying time. It had all been to buy time. Both Morris and Lysandra knew they were not leaving Dantooine alive. He said nothing to her.
"Your wife is dead. Your child is mine. Why continue?"
"Because our child isn't yours." Morris answered. "And she never will be."
Phyre snarled and flew towards him with the Force, Morris fought against her and attacked from all angles, the pair locked in a brutal contest, Phyre feeding off the fury and chaos of the moment to strengthen her. Morris focused only on staying alive long enough to delay her, avoiding several openings when he could have attacked solely because he could have been killed that much sooner. But eventually he got tired, wasn't fast enough to dodge the lightning from Phyre's throat. He was killed instantly as it struck him in the chest.
Phyre frowned. Already the day had not started right. She had meant to make their deaths protracted but the talisman they had used had thrown her for a loop. Oh well. The baby could be annointed in ash as much as blood she supposed...she might even use her own...
Phyre took Morris's lightsaber, using it to disfigure his face and mask before dismembering it along with the rotted, lifeless body of his wife, scattering the parts to the wind and heading up the ramp of the ship--
--where she was promptly blasted by a bolt of electric judgement. Her face burned and caught fire from the agony of exposure, staggering back as another woman in a long, tight fitting black armor with an armorweave cape stepped down the ramp, a lightsaber blade with an all black core and green aura snaked out of a hilt modeled after Ahsoka Tano's. She was a beauty, bronze skinned with very black curly, and long hair, her eyes were strange, the whites of them made a shiny copper color, the irises a solid, dark green, the pupil's white in color. The woman stared sadly at the body parts of her comrades, tossed carelessly about the grass.
"Forgive me my old friends. It was necessary..." Moya De Lifte spoke somberly, watching Phyre, who was still scorched, part of her skull exposed by the blast right herself.
"Jedi trash..." Phyre hissed at the newcomer, before blinking in recognition.
"You..."
"Hello, Phyre. It has been some time since our last dispute..." Moya spoke, angling her lightsaber blade at the Sithspawn.
"Hopefully this dispute really 'will' be the last one..." Phyre snapped, emitting a stream of flames from her hand...
Moya sighed, holding out her hand and using force absorbtion to draw the flame into it. Phyre struck, and Moya defended in utter patience, her one handed Soresu intercepting the blade seemingly before Phyre knew where she would attack. "Away from my prize..." Phyre sneered at Moya. "I come here to annoint a champion."
"Indeed, there is a champion here, but she will not be a champion of The Darkness..." Moya spoke making Phyre flinch backward and guard with her blade as the electric judgement grinded against the blade. "You will not claim her..."
Phyre's flesh moved and stretched and bunched up in places under the suit trying to escape the radius of the judgement as it grinded on her blade, leaving her quite deformed looking. She called on her hatred to resist, and some of her flesh stopped fissuring and tearing at the Ashla's presence.
"Your...pretty...green...light...won't save you forever." Phyre gasped, face stretching away from her skeleton as she broke the Force Lock, sending a gigantic fireball that made Moya dodge the ensuing blast.
"Yet again, our old stalemate..." Phyre hissed as Moya righted herself, making sure the ship had not been damaged. Phyre raised a burned eyebrow. "What's your game, Moya?"
The ship started to lift off. Phyre suddenly sensed magic, and remembered Moya was a fairly talented witch herself.
"What have you done?" Phyre asked as Moya guarded.
"I am a powerful seer, as you well know..." Moya admitted stoically. "And in every future where Julia stays in this era, you inevitably acquire her. But if Julia takes the long route to the future, via dathomiri magic sabotaging the hyperdrive to create a slow hyperspace jump..."
Phyre instantly knew Moya's logic...and how Moya had robbed her blind. The Crownwraithes had tricked her. This was why they stalled.
"NOOOOOOOO!" Phyre roared as the frieghter blasted off into a sabotaged jump, knocking them both back to the grass.
Moya was the first up...just in time to stop Phyre's angry slash for her head.
"SHE WAS MINE!" Phyre screeched. "MINE! MINE! MINE! MINE!" Each word was followed by an enraged blow.
Moya backhanded the Sith backward.
"I shall leave you to stew in your failure, now, Sith." Moya said coldly. "But know this: your punishment is coming."
"There is nowhere to run from me..." Phyre snarled, charging.
Moya parried the next few attacks, almost lazily, before shredding part of her foe's corrupted body with more electric judgement, which finally took the fight out of her a little, making Phyre drop to one knee, still guarding.
"In every future where I stay, I either kill you...or you kill me. Much good could and would come of killing you now. But I play the long game, and only the good that can come of sparing you stays my hand."
"I will 'never' be a source of your precious good!" Phyre snapped angrily at her, stretching out her essence to feed on the plant life around her. It restored her, but slowly. She rose, ready to attack, albeit not fully healed.
"Not yet..." Moya replied, and just as Phyre's purple blade was brought down, Moya vanished using the White Current, in a great burst of light.
The Sithspawn screamed at the sky at how her day had gone.
Syd shook, her body rippling as her memories and the magic of the enchanted skeleton in the sarcophagus reacted.
Syd screamed as her shel deformed like putty, bunching up and flowing out of her red suit and into the crack in the sarcophagus. The white suit burst through the case just as the sarcophagus lid shattered, flowing onto the body of the restored Sithspawn underneath.
Phyre opened her eyes, clad in her white suit, remade anew, while Syd's empty red and gold suit clattered lifelessly to the floor.
Darth Phyre turned to face [member="Willa Isard"] and the other Jedi.
"Ooo. Breakfast..." Phyre smiled wickedly, before opening her mouth and letting a large stream of red flame out towards them...
