Private Two Stars Past Midnight

[Persephone Halcyon]

Location: Dantooine [Middle of Nowhere]
Tag: Darth Prazutis

Fields of magenta-tinted flowers rolled as far and wide as the naked eye could see. Winds from the north whistled through a winding path of war-torn scenery, the aftermath, of some great battle that nature would eventually swallow and bury. Farms of simple people had been decimated. The relics of old bases had been ground to dust while the scent of smoke lingered. This piece of the world had seemingly been out of the way from the battle itself, but it still bore witness. Water had memory. Air had intellect, the ground, absorbed the imprints while flame held a cleansing purpose.​

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A several kilometer-wide-pit filled with the bleached bones of those that had been sacrificed to the Yuuzhan Vong Gods in centuries past had been unearthed. A statue, half-buried, seemed to have been pressed up from beneath the crust. All manner of beast seemed to scurry through the area to avoid the charred pieces of twisted metal and fall out that had driven down from the sky like heaven-sent vengeance. Justification. Predators picked off the weak while they sought refuge from what non-sentient minds would never understand. The strong survived. The weak, unprotected, perished.​

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As it was meant to be.​

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In the midst of a thick grove of biba there seemed to be something out of place. A pulse. The creatures kept their distance. The native people also kept their distance. It was too close to the leftover madness of the Vong, plainly, on cursed ground. Food planted in the area did not grow as intended. It was not fit for consumption. Those who ingested the deeply earthed tubers world find themselves sick, ill, and poisoned from radiation sickness that masqueraded as disease. There was something beneath the surface. More than statues, more than bones.​

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At some point the tall, sky-reaching biba, had been tossed from their roots. As if a tornado had touched down to tear away at only one, small area, while the rest of the world was besotted with war. Distracted by a struggle of power between two titans that seemed hellbent on rolling around in the muck as long as it took to beat the opposition back into the primordium—They were all made blind. Their cries were like thunder. Victory like the shining sun. Defeat, like rainfall on a bitter earth.​

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It was a particular form of madness that seemed to engulf all in a cacophony of white-noise that reverberated through the very foundations of a green, backwater world, that was obviously in the middle of nowhere. War had pressed these lands before. Many times. From Vong, to Imperial, to Sith—It mattered not. Everything moved on. Growing, changing.​

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Life went on. ​

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At least—Until a silence most unnerving swept through the colorful plains of Dantooine. It was a whispered hush that spread in an outward circle from the space where the biba tree had fallen. An unassuming bystander would conclude that it was the result of a blast zone. It could be described in no other way, though, no explosive had fallen there. There was no military target, no foothold, no reason for anyone to visit this part of the world. Nothing. Just remnants, ruins, and an odd pulse of energy.​

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There was a pattern to it. A hum filled the air, stealing the silence, that grew louder with proximity. Within the epicenter of the damaged space lay a small form. Pressed into the dirt as if it were the only thing holding her together. The sky overhead began to turn gray in a pattern that was unnatural, indiscernible, but that didn’t stop a storm from brewing. The scent of ozone rose and rain eventually began to fall when heavy clouds burst. The distinctly feminine creature curled in on herself as if the water, entirely harmless, burned. Slender fingers curled in pale grass and mud—But she couldn’t lift her head. Too tired. Too cold.​

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The light clothing she wore was entirely out of place. It was not beaded, nor jeweled, but the fabric was so fine that it seemed to contain an almost frail quality. So soft, that it might melt away if improperly handled. Every inch seemed to have been embroidered with such a delicate touch that the thread seemed to move, shimmer, as if alive. Impossible of course. The pale-colored cloth that wrapped neatly around her was quickly becoming soiled. So was she, so was it, such a gorgeous composite that even the elements couldn’t tarnish the truth.​

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Her arms drew down and crossed over her chest as she curled in on her side. A platinum bracelet glimmered in the fading light and she made herself even smaller in the wide-open area while she tried to organize her thoughts. Everything was out of place. Jumbled. She could see the fighting. Pain. The bloodshed. Here and gone. Then and now.​

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The same energy pulsed from her being time and time again, invisible, but there.​

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Reaching out. Calling. But for who? For what?​

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Nothing and no one. Nothing but echoes—The stars above. Ringing and resonating while water flowed from above as if it were the tears of souls that had been rendered asunder. She had no reason to cry for them; but she did. No reason to hide from them; but she did.​

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The earth could not swallow her fast enough.​

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Perhaps then—The madness would stop.​

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- S h i n s i - ​

. . . Stop . . .​

 

[Darth Prazutis]

Location: Dantooine
Tag: Persephone Halcyon

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Calm.

When victory was claimed over the course of a battle, tranquility eventually slipped back in to restore order. In the aftermath of the crushing victory that saw the New Imperial onslaught blunted, the calm seeped through. The skies over the former battle sites were choked with thick black smoke from still burning fires, the air holding the smells of war in the recently killed soldiers whose corpses littered the battlefields. Great battleships once looming overhead along with a full swarm of fighters and other shuttle craft that started transferring troops back to their ships. Many of them were gone now. The folly of the traitors in telling the Sith where their next assault was coming led to an immense buildup of military forces all across the region, including the supreme Goliath Command the armada of the Lord of Lies. The Goliath II-class Super Star Dreadnought in all its immensity still loomed overhead, its hull was black as pitch and it seemed to draw in the light from the overhead sun.​

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So long as its master remained it wasn't going anywhere.​

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The Dark Lord of the Sith stood like a towering god of war unlike any other that walked the fields. A heavy suit of black plate armor emblazoned with glowing orbs bearing the symbols of eyes. A set of rising spikes bore the skulls of the dead and a massive black fur cloak of some immense monster fell from his shoulders. The giants hands were wrapped in blackened talons, gauntlets of great power that constantly drew in the residual force energies all around him. They acted like a constant vacuum that pulled the energy in and even now after such a prolonged battle, his colossal reserves were already replenished. In its own slot a powerful dark side crystal pulled from the sacrifice of a world that once cast its colossal typhoon of fear and insanity faded, suppressed in its own containment field. The great helm receded revealing his chiseled face that swept out across the fields as he stood silent. ​

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The only noise came from the titanic armor he wore as its inner workings hissed and wheezed. Its face was marred in gouges, slices, burn marks, and other effects that insulted its profane beauty. But even after such intense combat nothing the invaders could conjure were enough to pierce through the treated sarrassian iron. Even if they had there was still a full impervium exoskeleton beneath before one could strike at his body directly. The large runeblade gripped in his hand turned into a cloud of black smoke that faded into the air as he walked. Something still kept the great titan here on this agricultural world, and the source of which he couldn't identify. Far out across the fields away from the battle site it came, an eruption unlike anything he'd seen in quite a long time, a titanic source of energy so profound it drew even his gaze. ​

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It was something, or someone out there. Even now he could feel it desperately calling out to him in its own way, like a call of help. In order to track its position he needed something else, someone else. So molten eyes were replaced by those from beyond this reality as he peered through the sight of his other half, Uthax'ra. The entity's sight pierced the planes of existence and transcended the material plane, it saw the world in a different light.​

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"There you are."​

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The entity born so long ago was an outsider that existed beyond the cracked gate with the horrors that lurk there. It was ever presence and it clawed at the back of his mind. For all the power it gave the Dark Lord when he called upon its fury, the ruination and the powers to warp this very reality came at prices. One being that held inside of him two different identities. The giant dismissed his crownguard escorts before fading in a shimmering of force energy and folding space teleporting across the fields, in the blink of an eye he appeared miles away far closer to the epicenter of this eruption. A grove of biba that once stood unmolested, the remnants of conflicts in times past. The power of this eruption had cast even these rooted trees asunder, its effect transcending the world and rising into the skies above it, its effects felt on the very clouds. The heavy rain fell here pounding against his armor and washing the blood spattered plate clean of the smears of fighting, while feet squished in the freshly formed mud, pressing closer and closer to the edges of what was a formed crater.​

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The air around him became heavy with his presence, the colossal aura of the Dark Lord swirling like a maelstrom. This menacing tyrant stained with the blood of an uncountable amount of slain dead, the vile acts perpetrated by his hand were quite simply beyond count. When compared to what he felt within this grove? What he finally laid his eyes upon laying curled up, shaking, helpless almost as if it was trying to bury itself? He didn't belong here. Unless his role was delivering death upon the helpless woman, they didn't belong together. Braxus Zambrano was a unique monster born and bred by this galaxy. Innocence wasn't enough to stay his blade from striking her down. After all the amount he'd condoned to death before was staggering, his eyes stared coldly down at this helpless woman. "Interesting." He mused to himself. A small woman of otherworldly beauty, unmolested by the scars that marred his own. Innocent, pure. But there was something else about the woman that stood out and grasped his attention like the horns of some vicious beast. "Such innocence. A rare flower to bloom on a world burning in the fires of war. You came and nurtured yourself on the howling of departed souls and spilt blood. What are you?" He mused aloud to himself as he watched her. ​

 

[Persephone Halcyon]

Location: Dantooine [Middle of Nowhere]
Tag: Darth Prazutis

She felt it before she saw it.​

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Like a great shadowed beast, a titan, that had come to crush her amidst the rain. To grind her into dust as if she were little more than the muck and grime she remained so close to. While some might have recoiled from dirtying such pristine clothing, from marring, such perfect, unblemished flesh with what they considered to be filth—She wore it proudly. Like a crown of earth, war paint, and no part of her longed to give in to the call of the deep. She had slept, so long. Drifted in the nothing.​

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Had she not slept enough?​

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The young woman remained close to the ground while metal feet stormed through the relics of her landfall. The bleached bones crunching, swiftly, beneath the weight. The closer it came the more she tried to gain her strength. The being that approached was malice. She could smell the death that had permeated what was left of a tattered soul. It’s light; brought so low, that it exuded the darkness. Swallowing up everything else.​

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Even the air.​

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Her eyes closed tighter for a moment and her arms squeezed tighter around her chest. It was almost as if she hoped she could make herself small enough that this metal monster, draped in pointed iron, might stroll on by. She was so insignificant that he might not even see her. Did a boot notice an ant as it passed by? No. It killed them, simply, because they were in the way.​

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She was in his path.​

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It stopped. He, stopped. She could feel the monster watching her. She could imagine invisible teeth. A great maw that would dislocate, extend, and swallow her whole. Was this it? Was this what she had always been meant for? A child abandoned. Lost. Everything was so jumbled, still. She was so confused and all of the pain and death made her physically ache.​

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Words.​

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That surprised her. It took her a moment to hear the Dark One through the pounding rainfall, but, she did. It spoke a language that she understood. Not guttural growls. Crystalline eyes peering through droplets of water let her see and feel the truth. The metal monster was not some creature from the depths, nor, a beast of make-believe. It was a man in a protective shell.​

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Just a man. Or, he had once been.​

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Thin arms lifted her slowly from the mud. She slipped and slid more than once but eventually, determination won out and she pushed herself into a sitting position. Delicate legs tucked beside her. Even that small effort caused her to tremble like a leaf in the wind, but there was something else buried and hidden in her helpless visage. It wavered at the sight of such a giant. But, it was strong. Even if her physical form was not. There was a curious edge to her that almost ran along the lines of defiance. As if she could not know to fear him—Not as mortal being should. He was a threat to her continued existence…But the pale woman did not exude fear. Her thoughts, emotions, remained exceedingly complex and elusive.​

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What was she? ​

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“… Kam tuti j'us?”, she responded, returning his question in even measure. ‘What are you?’, she asked him while her elbows locked to keep her upright. The words would echo all around him in several languages. High Sith, among them. ‘What are you?’​

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He watched her and the young woman could feel defensiveness raising. Pale-green orbs seemed to become almost translucent while the storm overhead raged on. It was spreading. Growing violent enough to tear still standing biba trees from their moorings quite some distance away. Her head inclined slightly and her expression seemed clear itself of all things. The lightning that popped and cracked was suddenly much closer. It snapped down at the feet of the behemoth. Once, twice.​

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The ground began to rumble and pieces of stone and wood rose from the ground. Rather than to fly in his direction, offensively, they simply disintegrated. Breaking down into nothingness. Dust. He would feel pressure against his armor that was unnatural. She was pushing things away from her. Just like she had pushed away the biba trees in the grove. The epicenter was growing, expanding—While more things blew outward. What seemed like an attack, too strong, for one that seemed so weak would soon become clear.​

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Storms did not act this way. Lightning did not strike, this way. Materials did not disintegrate.​

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Whether she knew it or not; It was her. ​

 

[Darth Prazutis]

Location: Dantooine
Tag: Persephone Halcyon

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The face of the giant held a gaze of absolute apathy upon it as he stared down at the young woman, unnervingly so.

It was as cold as the howling breeze that swept down from a titanic glacier on the arctic. In those blazing eyes it seemed like there wasn't a flicker of humanity left in him. As if it had been ground out through the toiling of years, decades, centuries even. It withered and died through the bondage of pain and suffering he had been reborn ages in the past, before he could even call himself a man into something else. The world had created him and through the endless trials determined to lay him low, he blossomed into an unstoppable force of nature washed in the blood of those who stood in his way. Those cold eyes that held the weight of boulders stared intently at the soaked, mud covered, trembling woman. They had shattered the resolve of the greatest and it washed over her like water flowing off a rock. She should have broken. The valiant struggle to rise should have ended the moment he saw her and yet something else stared out at him from deep within. The eyes of a being that didn't fear the fire, no matter the heat. Inside the woman came a defiance he never expected her to have, a question deflected with a salvo of her own repeated in several languages amidst the storm. It sounded like such words echoed from every direction when spoken by her.​

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Just like that the world changed.​

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A surrounding aura of alarm around the woman rose and with it a raw, unbridled power from within. She wished to push the world away and with her all of reality responded by pushing it outward. A crater grew and out came a storm of rock, dust, bone, and trees rent asunder by her fury. A storm grew heavier into a deafening hurricane as she tried to push it all away. Down from the sky came the bolts of cerulean lightning, power from nature itself. Debris picked up from the ground whipped in every direction, erupting in showers as they collided with the armor and shattered into pieces. Even as the bolts grew closer the Dark Lord never once moved a step backward. The pressure surrounding him like a vice grip and they clamped down tight enough that he could hear the grinding of strain on the hardened plates. The only motion came from a mouth and what came cut through the storm.​

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"Death."​

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The giant took his first step down towards her then. The titanic pressure bore down on his bare skinned face and he could feel even his strong bone strain, crack and fracture. It was like the web on a glass window that formed through a collision, spidering outward from impact points of the strongest efforts. There were distinctive snaps and cracks, the spilling of blood as flesh was occasionally scraped away. But his legendary resilience responded and his body rapidly began to regenerate, an endless cycle of damage and renewal. Yet through it all it seemed as if none of it even phased the huge man, as if no amount of pain could rattle him. "I am the final moment made flesh. The axis upon which the wheel of change turns, unbound by its rotation." Boom. Another heavy step followed. The giant moved with all the inevitability of a tectonic plate ever towards the petite woman of mystery with her mind akin to a maze. All across the gigantic plate the bulbous eyes suddenly blazed bright, from them came the howling screams of countless trapped souls locked away. All around him played out hazy mirages of countless victims and the very last moments of their lives.​

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"How exquisite you are. A diamond within the body of a dove."​

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Boom. ​

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[Persephone Halcyon]

Location: Dantooine [Middle of Nowhere]
Tag: Darth Prazutis

The looming shadow in the pitiless rainfall belonged to a man in a metal casket. An anomaly, a punishing creature with a heart so dark that it devoured light with the veracity of a rogue black hole. This was a being that was used to having what he wanted. To getting his way, regardless of the cost, nor the price that his victims were required to pay. The less than subtle stench of death rose above that of petrichor and ozone. It would not shatter her. He, would not shatter her.​

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Pale palms pressed deeper into the mud while her elbows locked and brilliantly insolent orbs found his with a strange sense of security. It was almost as if the turbulent weather responded to her innermost desires without paying any mind to the laws of nature. Pale pink lips tightened as her strength seemed to compound; Not physically, but in the way that the earth cracked, groaned, and lifted from its moorings. His response displeased her. Death?​

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“You are a bringer. J'us tuti zo nisosûti. Not, Death.”​

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Flaxen hair seemed darker with the rainwater that saturated every strand. As her whispered words pulled at the trajectory of the elements, he would see them ripple, shiver, and tremble with every effort she made. His armor was giving way. Losing, the fight. She would not lose. "Nindz, Kûts.”​

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No. He was not death. Not in the simplistic, easy, earthly way he claimed. She had been born of that which referred to herself as such. She had seen the eternal abyss—The ever-mother render those that stood against her into motes of dust. Less, than dust. With the blink of a cold, unfeeling, and slightly psychotic eye. If it could be called that. She was death. She was and always would be, the end. He was that which came after. Her children. A reaper.​

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His claims continued and starlit eyes glowered in terrible disbelief. He broke. He shattered. His metal skin and glass coverings, the divine cage, were pulling apart at the seams. She could see his flesh knitting back together once it became exposed and her teeth ground together while she did her best to keep pushing him away. He would leave; had to leave. Leave, or cease to be. “There is no moment. No axis. Only here. Now.”​

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His wheel was broken. This storm would sweep away the pieces.​

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Her eyes fell shut and she pulled on threads of power that wound through the area. It was all connected. From the bleached bones of old to the struggle, to the pain of the recently damned. She could feel all of it. All of them. Screaming. He came closer. She pushed him away. She pushed it all away with everything she had to give. When that ran out, she drew on the elements, and lightning arced from the sky as if it were the answer to her silent plea. It pushed away his darkness. Pushed away the night, the souls, and left only empty clarity.​

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“I am not a dove.”​

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She was not some avian creature that he might think to pluck the wings from. That was what a dove was for—Was it not? A thing? A creature with wings to break? Never. The storm collapsed around them and the very air burst. The young woman remained at the epicenter whilst a blast range exploded outward in unyielding destructive force. The ground rolled while the top layers peeled back, almost, like an earthquake that traveled in a rumbling scream that could be heard for miles around.​

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In the aftermath, there was silence. Nothing but the rain.​

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Startled eyes took in the terror and her gaze slipped down to the mud. To the earth. She was tired once more. Perhaps, she should sleep again. This world was full of things she did not grasp and totems of destruction that advanced with the booming footsteps of giants. She wanted to lay back down. Longed for it. But, could not. For she would never break.​

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Never bow. ​

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Not for time itself, let alone, the one who called himself Death. She would fight. Forever. Swimming in a sea of unearthly screams and echoing sentiments that would ring in his head, in his ears, with complex sorrow. It was the sound of dreams crushed. Of true loneliness.​

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Of a pure heart breaking.​

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"Nu wuwiti sosûti rokatsa... Oi tuti zo tash. Wisa irsir, tuti jin'.​

I longed for light...It is a lie. All there is, is dark.​

I longed for light.​

It is a lie.​

All there is, is dark.​

Jin'."​