Web of Time

[Elenviel]

Maena

Her little freighter had held up nicely, and though it had been taxing, she'd managed to get the droids left on the ship to pilot them to a nearby star system. It wasn't the nearest, but apparently it was still logged in the nav computer, so it would have to do. The moment they translated back to real space, she gasped - it was a startled noise, torn from her throat at the sight of the angry, black morass that spread like a cancer across the world below.

The Sight allowed her to understand it was a volcanic planet, but what she saw was the pulsing, black heart of the Dark Side, even from here in orbit.

"Take me down, droid."

A shrill whistle, and the ship angled itself down through the atmosphere. Without turning, her hand came up, brushing along the snout of one of the River Tribe warriors she'd brought with. The reptile huffed, but tilted it's head forward, allowing her that familiarity.

They did not like being touched like pets, but they allowed it.

She was blessed by the Master, and as His Offspring they were obligated to follow her. Most were alright with it, but some of the smarter ones could get... a little too devious for her tastes. Thankfully, most of the warrior caste were intentionally dumb. You didn't need brains to smash, after all.

Smiling, the comm unit crackled, and the droid managed to communicate for a landing pad - a landing pad down inside what appeared to be an inactive volcano. In her youth, she'd traveled to the Smuggler's Moon, and it reminded her of that onerous blot on galactic civilization, if you'd stuffed the whole moon down a lava chute and removed the molten promise that it would be gone at the next eruption.

"Ah well..." she mutters to herself, the ship vectoring in to land.

Little did she know, an Alchemist resided here. Or, rather, ruled here. But while the Dark Side wasn't necessarily strong in this city, it was strong nearby. One way or another, she would find out why.

There hadn't been many Sith or Jedi during the Plague. But, perhaps things had changed more than she realized.

[member="Matsu Xiangu"]

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

Matsu’s hallmark was - in most things - subtlety. She was no showy warlord destroying planets to make other’s fear her iron grip. But neither was she some bookworm hunting holocrons or sitting secluded. The Lord remained somewhere firmly in the middle...or perhaps neither. Perhaps new.

Either way, her grip on Maena was obvious only to those who already knew or were particularly perceptive. Forcing people to acknowledge her rule was weakness. No, she’d slipped in and taken and in her swiftness they’d had no room to question her. And now they feared it.

The New City was bustling, a mix of commerce legal and illegal, beautiful and ugly, glittering and disgusting. Most of the landing pads were up high enough that the putrid streets lined with neons and limned with criminals weren’t immediately visible though their ilk passed through the spaceports to come and go for other ventures. Beautiful. Dangerous. Though undoubtedly those who chose to set foot here weren’t easily scared.

Not, at least, until they got to the very bottom.

There was little regulation of air traffic as far as smaller ships went, tourism a hot commodity and the easy come and go lucrative to those who profited from Maena’s debauchery. Nevertheless, a droid glided forward to greet whomever came off the new ship. If the robot of unique make thought anything of whatever companions the woman did or did not have with her, it wasn’t obvious. She had seen many strange things since she had been made.

“Hello, and welcome to the New City. The Commerce Districts can be found directly outside this spaceport. The Entertainment Districts span from Level 10 to Level 112. At this time is it not advised to travel below Level 112. May I assist you with anything regarding your visit?”

[member="Elenviel"]​

 

[Elenviel]

She'd come by herself, of course.

If she'd learned one thing by sitting at the middle of a web, it's that the larger the vibration, the more the intruder appeared a threat. Escalation was a dangerous game, and one she was not comfortable playing just then. The droid came up, speaking in clipped, cordial tones. A greeting more inviting than she'd become accustomed too. Most places just demanded credits; credits her family had often not had. Yet, here she was, being asked if she required help as though browsing some sort of food market stock.

Her eyes regarded the droid through eyes that saw beyond sight; the heat of it's power core, the electricity flowing through it's circuits, even the firing of fake synapses within it's droid brain. A cursory study said it wasn't a new droid, but one well cared for by the people of the area - or, rather, left alone.

New droids often meant wealth or conspicuous replacement.

Well used was an oddity to her.

"On the horizon," she says, with two voices, one layered beneath the other. The first, the most obvious, was a melodic, feminine voice that would have been the envy of the most cordial of shuttle attendants. The second, however, was darker, raspy, hoarse from lack of use. It slithered beneath the first, twinged with malice. "...the sun sets uneasily upon lands lost to the underlying harmony of life. Who resides there?"

A smile formed in the back of her mind, and though she had not laid eyes upon the Disciple's earthly body when it had been flesh, she could sense the pinpricks of blood forming upon split lips as they smiled disturbingly broad upon a sharply angled face, handsome like a freshly whetted dagger.

Where had that image come from?

Me, of course, child.

I was beginning to think you'd left me.

I see as you do, and more. Sometimes, the truest form of expression is silence.

[member="Matsu Xiangu"]

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

And those artificial synapses would fire bright and rapid when two voices reached it. Two voices, one subject in front of it. A droid like this one, checked every day for the memory of people it had seen before its memory was downloaded and erased, did not ‘learn’. It couldn’t remember yesterday. It had no bank of memory from which to think about what the sounds meant. So it ignored them, speaking as if it were still just one subject. And yet still the newcomer’s verbiage also presented a challenge. The droid understood thousands of languages and the stranger was speaking Basic - but poetry was lost on the droid. It took a moment, searching its robotic ability to reason, before responding.

“No one. The Wastes are unoccupied and best left unvisited. However, I can take you to the one who goes there.”

___​

Despite her proclivities and hobbies, Matsu did not - in fact - like to wallow in morbidity. That it made up her fabric was undeniable, but she loved cities, sleek lines, the bustle of endless, dirty life despite her obsession to the contrary.She was found most often in the Unit working on an abomination of some sort, or in her offices in the New City. Her personal dwellings were high up, camouflaged among the homes of the rich and famous who kept their controversial vacation homes on the city planet. But at the moment she was in the bank of offices in the city’s topmost level.

It was there that the droid brought the Stranger, depositing her in a suite of quiet rooms too nice and comfortable to be a waiting area though it was their clearest function.The robot disappeared further in but returned within a minute or so.

“The Lady Xiangu will be with you in a moment,” it informed, bowing low before silently drifting off back to the spaceport.

And she was.She was as silent as her droids, a petite woman who looked almost pleasant besides the ageless, ghostly pallor to her skin and the slowly roiling amber of her eyes. Dressed impeccably in an outfit to make any front-row runway addict green with jealousy, she moved towards the Stranger with the ghost of a smile curling the ends of a deeply scarred mouth.

“Most ask about anything but the Wastelands,” she joked by way of greeting, voice like a piece of seaglass, smooth and deeper. Her gaze remained mostly on the newcomer’s face though she made a quick assessment, noting the strange garb but only made curious. Extending a hand, she offered her name. “Matsu Xiangu.”

[member="Elenviel"]​

 

[Elenviel]

Into the city they went, through slums and affluent districts, offices and cantinas. Finding herself in a waiting room, she shifted about uneasily, drawing a hand along a wall to feel the texture beneath the pads of her fingers, reading every imperfection in it's surface beneath the brush of her skin. She didn't turn, at first, as her head began to ache, but like the pressure of the moon upon the waves, it was impossible to resist the gravity of presence at her rear.

Turning, carefully, what she saw and what was presented were two different things. The Dark Side was a fickle thing, undeniable and impossible to keep fully hidden. You could suppress your signature, and you could cover yourself in illusion, but that kernel of darkness still sat like a tumor in your heart.

Elen knew, because one was sitting below her breast even now.

Beneath the glowing trio of eyes covered by a strip of silken cloth, Elen's smooth skin wouldn't have looked out of place on one of the models who'd so readily lust for the garment adorning the scarred woman before her. A set of lips suited to smirks and pouts remained in a neutral line, and the sharp angles of her jaw would have drawn the attention of many a suitor - that is, if she wasn't presently weeping black tar that seemed to disappear before ever reaching her jawline.

A small hand came forward, clasping [member="Matsu Xiangu"]'s in a firm embrace, giving a pair of shakes before releasing. "Elenviel." She says in that strange, double voice. "I imagine, however," she begins, to answer the vague jest Matsu had lead in with, "...that they don't think to ask because they don't see it as I do. How long have you spent building your home?"