The Perfect Art

[Matsu Xiangu]

Maena​

The New City​

“We don't necessarily have the logistics of it set in stone, but I am confident we are able to load your army within an hour if needed, my Lord,” came a long, thick drawl from a surprisingly nasal accent. That Eet Lee Lucas had a voice to match his lean, lanky body wasn't surprising so much as that Matsu always found herself expecting someone with such a thick protraction of words to speak as deeply as he did protractedly. He didn't look like much either. Long, perpetually dirty blonde hair grown past his shoulders and a dark salt & pepper beard offset a face that seemed more at home beating under a summer sun on some moisture farm than on Maena. But he'd found himself a position as the Overseer of her Undead holding facility and she'd never regretted the choice. Maybe it was his tendency to speak his mind, or perhaps just that he said the oddest things that amused her enough to keep him around. That, and she couldn't imagine someone might do a better job.

“My Lord, your guest has arrived,” came a smooth voice over the commlink, cueing Darth Lyko’s appearance.

“Well, thank you for report Eet. I am quite pleased, and as long as the simulation runs as you project later this week, you and your men can expect raises,” she finished, standing up to the sight of the man grinning something wolfish to reveal teeth that could use a dentist's touch. He exited the room ahead of Matsu, bowing to the hooded guest slightly as he passed. He was no fool.

For her part, Matsu was very interested in whatever it was the White had contacted her for. The Assassins, both as a whole and individual parts, were fascinating to Matsu - but he had been the only one she hadn't had prior dealings with. Krest had tried to kill her and eventually they had become amicable. Abyss had dealings with her son. The Pale had been deeply involved with the One Sith at the same time as Matsu. And yet Lykos was a mystery. At the meeting she had read him as a careful, clever predator willing to play a part to create the exact perceptions he wanted. And she sensed that she was being read just as carefully. And yet caution had not made him boring or droll, paranoid to the point of peckishness.

She nodded in greeting, turning to walk at his side as she beckoned him to join her. She'd invited him to the New City, a marvel built in to a dead volcano once she and Prazutis had finished forming the planet to their vision. Bursting with activity, the city twinkled and writhed beneath them as the two Sith walked along a durasteel and duraglass walkway circling the volcano wall.

“I was pleased and somewhat surprised to receive your message. I assumed I would not hear from any of you for quite a while after our meeting. I hope nothing has changed.”

[member="Darth Lykos"]​

 

[Xevek Nekonis]

It was with practiced ease that Lykos ignored the bow directed his way by the blond haired man that scurried past him. He knew that such signs of respect where oft demanded by those who held the same title as he within the Sith, their perception of the common folk leading them to believe themselves entitled to it (or, at the very least, that rang true for some of the more annoying and odious Lord he had interacted with in the past), yet, such actions were useless to him. For the Zabrak, having someone of a perceived lower rank stumble over themselves to 'humble' themselves before him was a useless action. Meaning that he saw it as something that should not even happen. Especially as he saw no need to pad his ego with arrogance.

Putting his opinions on people bowing to him out of his mind, Lykos instead focused on Matsu as he followed what she had bade him to do, long and measured strides carrying him at her side. She was someone that he knew nothing about when it came to anything beyond rumours, what with the fact that he had never interacted with her outside of the meeting that had been held between herself, himself and his fellow Council members of the Assassins. yes, he had heard stories and rumours, but, he had never had the chance to draw his own conclusions, beyond the fact that she was a rather shrewd woman that sought to protect what she saw as hers so as to ensure that it would keep that descriptor.

As the Sith Lady's words trailed off, the question that was not a question hanging within the air, Lykos held his silence as the pair continued to walk along the walkway. Such a tactic was not to draw out any emotions of unease within Matsu - as it may have been his intent if she were some with less focus, someone easily intimidated - but, instead, to create a moment so that his thoughts could be collected and organised as well as a moment in which he could enjoy the quiet that surrounded the pair.

"I am not shocked that you might be surprised. The trade of secrecy and subtly may be my trade, but I do not deny that we Assassins can tend to be a bit too focused on ensuring that even allies know not of our presence." The words would be grumbled out in a low rumble. Now that he did not need to control his voice for the purpose of a formal meeting, the gruff and rasping growl that accompanied his voice was now much more pronounced. However, what would be much more obvious would be the more amiable tone that his voice carried. Masks had been his trade for so long that not even his Master, Darth Ophidia, had met his true self as his very first mask had been formed within the slave pits on Nar Shaddaa, a time before his rebirth into the Darkness. In this case, the Mask he wore was more open than the one he had worn at the previous meeting, an attempt to forge some sort of connection, even if it would be a connection built upon a fake pretense, due to the request he wished to ask. "But, no, my Lady, nothing has changed. You need not worry yourself about that."

Lykos would reach up to remove the hood that hid his features, allowing his battered face and ashen hair to be seen, before twisting his head to look down directly at Matsu. "I asked for this meeting for the simple fact of asking what may not be a simple request. Your talent with the more arcane practices of manipulating the Dark, Sorcery of course, is known and I would ask the favour of learning the techniques and secrets of this art from you. It is and area that I have little to no experience with and, so, I thought it best to seek out someone with extensive skill."


[member="Matsu Xiangu"]

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

She nodded, pleased when he reassured her nothing had changed. She truly valued the Assassins quiet presence on Maena. Perhaps in another life she might have been one of their number, hands reaching from the shadows to spill blood quickly and efficiently before disappearing as quickly as they’d come. But life had seen fit to put her somewhere in the middle way, forging a galactic presence that was quiet but far from anonymous.

“Matsu, please,” she said with a small smile when he used a formal title. Though she did not know of his dislike of other beings bowing to him, it was something they could agree upon. She found difficulty in throwing her hat in with Sith organizations specifically because they rarely succeeded in meeting their goals because everyone at the table was preening, taking offense over perceived slights to an imaginary hierarchy. Why bother when so much was to be gained by shedding the obsession with titles - words that burnt as easily as the paper you could write them on? She expected respect, but if she had earned it. Not because of some fancy title.

His request was undeniably interesting.

“Well, you have my interest,” she quipped, taking in his appearance when the hood was lowered. “Unlike telekinesis or alchemy, sorcery is not something I can teach you unless you have the gift. When we are born, some of us are blessed with the pure gift of the Dark Side, allowing us to use it in ways others cannot. You can have it and never know so it is quite possible you possess the ability, especially if something is driving you to seek it out.” She seemed excited, her speech still articulate but slightly faster.

Their walk brought them to another section of the building which they’d just left, part of a maze of dizzying outdoor skywalks and non-descript buildings Matsu used for business and experimentation when she didn’t feel like traveling all the way to the Old City facilities. A few turns down several hallways and eventually they were in a room much like any other save for its lack of furniture. She paced it in a circle, hands wound gently together behind her back. “Now, using the Dark to wield sorcery is sort of abstract and therefore difficult to explain. But I’d like you to think of a terrible memory. Something awful. Something that makes you feel hatred deep enough that it threatens to burn. Imagine that hatred leaving you through your hands, and direct it at me.”

One side of her mouth quirked up in a grin.

[member="Darth Lykos"]​

 

[Xevek Nekonis]

Lykos was often someone who would lapse into quietness in even the most series of conversation, but that was not without purpose. Despite the carefully crafted brutish exterior he often wore, he was someone who was rather proud of his intellect and someone who valued secrets and knowing more than those around him. That value was the root course of his silences. After all, why should he so willfully and quickly offer forth answers to questions posed or jump upon offered questions when, by simply biding his time and biting his tongue, he could create an atmosphere of unease with those he spoke with, an unease that would, more often than not, drive them to speak further, to fill the heavy quiet.

By following this ideal, he had had conversation partners reveal more than they perhaps should have in the presence of the White Assassin and, during this meet with Matsu, such and ideal was still followed. As such, it was only after her instructions were given that he would speak a reply to something mentioned earlier.

"Xavka. If I must call you Matsu, you must call me Xavka."

Despite the secrecy that he shrouded himself with, he was not afraid to reveal his name, especially to one he saw benefit in allying himself with. It was a source of quiet pride for the Zabrak that, should his name be tracked and followed from Iridonia - for, after all, Xavka was not a common Zabrak name, then all that the searcher would fine would be an account of his death in the midst of a slave-born rebellion on Nar Shaddaa that had claimed many a life of those that had been living within and visiting that specific slave pit at that time.

Seeing no further need to speak, Lykos would bow his head so that his chest would rest against his chest and allow his eyelids to slide closed, casting his mind back into his past. It did not take him long to delve back into a memory that matched Matsu's specific requirements. For simply hearing those very requirements had been enough to rouse the memory from within the cage he kept it contained within.

The burn of flames curling along his skin and the stench of burning flesh. The feeling of long, thin and knotted strands of ropes tearing skin from muscle and muscle from bone, soaking his back in his own blood. The remembrance of the blade slowly carving along his face before catching and slicing across his now lost eyeball. The feeling of shackles around his wrists and ankles. The hiss of time-consumed words that spoke of degradation and sought to shatter his will and pride. The taste of blood, strong and burning within his mouth, as his teeth sank into the soft flesh of his torturer's neck. All of it flood to the foreground of his mind with the strength of a surging tsunami, yet, no muscle along his body or face would twitch in reaction.

Raising his hand towards where he knew Matsu to be, mere seconds after closing his eyes, Lykos could feel the pulsating maelstrom of hateangervengeancepain pushing at his skin, fighting to be free, to wreck havoc upon the world around him. And he allowed it. He did not release it, he did not suppress it. Instead, he made it his and threw it towards Matsu, eye snapping open and head wrenching upwards to stare directly at her as he did so.


[member="Matsu Xiangu"]