Your Death Is My Gift

[Via Dolorosa]

Darth Venefica was never one to go above and beyond to impress anyone, especially when it came to another Sith. To her, another Sith was only a temporary ally and a permanent thorn in her side. The Rule of Two was long dead but any true Sith knew the best way to test themselves both physically and mentally was against another Sith. Jedi, they just didn't get it. However, when the Sith Lady caught wind that her former mentor and teacher, [member="Matsu Xiangu"], was coming to Anaxes for a visit she pulled no expense in impressing the Sith that showed her the path of the Darkside.​

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The Dagobah Sith didn't know what to expect other than her former Master was coming here to see the newly created Covenant of the Black Rose, something she prided herself on. Darth Venefica had plotted, manipulated, and even killed to make her dream become a reality; not caring how many enemies she made in the process. But when it came to her former Master, she felt like a new Acolyte all over again.​

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"The moment her shuttle touches down," she said to the Captain of her personal guardsmen, "Test her. I want to see her in all her glory as she slaughters those foolish enough to challenge her."​

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Darth Venefica despised sending her boys into the jaws of death, but this demonstration was a both a test to them and her former teacher. Where they failed, the survivors would learn. And where her former Master taught, she would learn. ​

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As an added bonus for her former teacher's approval, she held the teacher, the one that had abused her when the name Xhexania meant something to her as an Acolyte, in chains. She recalled telling her former mentor that one day she would kill him, but now learned that his death would not give her the satisfaction she hoped to achieve. Instead she broke his will and turned him into her puppet. ​

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The angry girl had grown into a woman.​

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

So few of the apprentices that moved through the One Sith’s ranks made it past their trials. While this was a failure on their part, Matsu considered it a success for the organization as a whole – allowing weakness to take root in what they’d built was a distinctly miserable and protracted form of suicide, and those acolytes that could not make it were simply doing the Sith a favor by removing themselves from the equation. It was, after a while however, a little disappointing to see one after another fall.

But not Venefica.

The girl she’d been and the woman she was now were distinctly different from Matsu, at least in terms of personality and method. That had never bothered the Atrisian. She could respect and admire a different point of view, even one that saw her with her throat slit at the end of the day.

And look at all the Dagobah Sith had done.
Matsu certainly did love the sin of pride.

Matsu wanted to see it firsthand, the gray-purple surface of Anaxes blooming as the shuttle from the starship high above punched through atmosphere and brought the Sith Lady towards the surface. Lifting herself from her seat, she ran fingers absently over her throat as she waited for the hissing of the doors opening to complete.

She was three steps out of the doorway (smart, these Nightshades, waiting until the possibility of finding cover in the mouth of the ship was eliminated to attack) when blaster fire ripped past her, its burning hum far too close for comfort. Excitement shot up her spine, dark amber leeching from the outside of her irises, rushing to dilated pupils. She threw herself behind one of the supports for the exit ramp, peeking her head around just long enough to assess the situation before forcing her way in the mind of one of the company of men intent on killing her.

Under her influence he turned, aiming his rifle towards one of several speeders off to the right and sending off a volley of fire at the fuel tank until the entire thing ignited. By the time it exploded in a hail of shrapnel and flame it was too late for most of the men close to it. Some died when chunks of metal pierced their brains, others in the agony of burning alive.

But none of them stayed down for long. With a deep breath and the energy granted by her excitement and bloodlust she raised a hand and raised her dead, the dead Nightshades lifting themselves from the ground with the unnatural snapping of broken bones forced to move. One screamed, its mouth the only thing left in a face destroyed by a piece of shrapnel that had lodged itself right in the victims skull, a rallying cry that set them all off as the dead attacked those that had once been their partners in war and exploration.

For the moment Matsu was unable to see her once-apprentice through the smattering of combat and the hazy quality of the explosion’s aftermath.

[SIZE=12pt]“You want to play Xheeeexxaniiaaa? Come play.”[/SIZE]

[member="Darth Venefica"]
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[Via Dolorosa]

Her black and red flecked eyes glazed over with satisfaction not just by the display of power by her former Master but also at the opportunity to strike a crippling, if not mortal, blow against the woman that had shaped her life; even though the latter had failed. Darth Venefica was two things, patient and an opportunist. What she just failed to accomplish would be learned, calculated, re-plotted, and enforced with a stronger fortitude. The same mistakes would not occur again.​

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She didn't hate this woman, not in the traditional sense of the word, but she had made a promise to the Sith Lady years ago. She had told her former mentor that one day she would try to kill her, and though this day was a failure; there were many more days to come. Only the strong shall endure.​

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An unstable laugh escaped her lips when the name of her long and forgotten past purred off the mouth of Lady Xiangu pleading with her to come out and play.​

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"Choose someone as a successor and you will inevitably be succeeded." A cold smile.​

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"Choose someone hungrier and you will be devoured." A haunting smile.​

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"Choose someone quicker and you won't dodge the blade at your back." A sinister smile.​

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"Choose someone with more patience and you won't block the blade at your throat." A sheepish smile.​

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"Choose someone more devious and you'll hold the blade that kills you." A prideful smile.​

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"Choose someone more clever and you'll never know your end." A cheerful laugh.​

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"Such a beautiful and truthful mantra," Darth Venefica said turning her eyes to the walking dead as they began to overwhelm and consume her living soldiers. "Impressive display of power....indeed. My turn."​

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Her eyes snapped shut as she pulled all the darkside energy into her, filling and fueling it with all her anger and hated and pain until it threatened to consume her. Then her eyes awakened, both hands outstretched and released torrents of chain lightning it the macabre dance between the living and the dead, first racking them with pain then setting them to convulsions, and finally leaving them all smoldering husks littering the ground. It was a shame that she had to kill her own troops but everything held a purpose; and everything could be replaced.​

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"Kill the necromancer," Darth Venefica whispered to her thrall prisoner as she removed his shackles. "Kill her and you have earned your freedom. Die....and you have earned your freedom."​

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"Perhaps," she yelled through the haze of smoke, "You can teach me how to raise the dead one day. If you hold no grudge afterwards." Again she laughed.​

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[member="Matsu Xiangu"]​

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

"If you hold no grudge afterwards."

From the first day Venefica had been the most traditionally trying of her apprentices. The days of the Rule of Two were long gone but Matsu imagined that back in the day the swamp-Sith would have been one of those that kept the Atrisian sleeping with one eye open, protective of the power she would eventually lose in keeping with Darth Bane’s ways. But these days they all advanced the Sith power, all drank from the wellspring. Matsu would be hard-pressed to believe that her access was diluted by too many others at the watering hole, but she was covetous of her knowledge nonetheless.

Sorcery was innate. Sorcery was born from the very soul of someone connected inextricably to the darkside. Matsu held on to what she knew in an iron grip more literal than anything else.

On the contrary, the potential power to kill Matsu was proof of worthiness to wield necromantic prowess.

There were a dozen ways to turn someone of weak character to one’s side, and the thrall in question had always been weak. That wasn’t to say he didn’t command a particular amount of control where the Force was concerned – the Sith Academy would accept no less from an instructor. But there were Sith that were powerful in the Force but incapable of higher thought and this one had always proved to be one of them. Power meant nothing without the ability to think of all the choices, all the alternate paths and which would garner the best outcome. He just did what he was told and never used that power for anything greater. He’d gone on to work with hundreds since that day he’d tried to tame Xhexania, but if he’d ever forgotten her promise to kill him he’d been foolish.

“What, don’t you want to kill him yourself?” she asked as the thrall came for her, weaving and uncertain at first but with increased purpose as Matsu sent a smattering of mental probes over his mind. She received a lot of buzzing in return, characteristic of a mind not entirely its own. She usually attempted to keep her use of sorcery to a minimum as it ate her alive with every use, sharpening her features and making her look more demonic, more animalistic, with each passing use. So she began with something simple though it was one of the most powerful tools in her arsenal.

Attempting to penetrate the quivering in his mind, she pressed the idea of a dozen Veneficas suddenly stepping around him in a circle, each of them throwing their hand back in laughter, black curls shifting around her shoulders in the smoking breeze. They would advance on him if she’d managed to snap through the control on his mind, cause him to move backwards towards her once-apprentice.

[member="Darth Venefica"]​