IC:
Empress Volshe (Darth Viscretus)
The Courtyard, Korriban
The sound of Hesper’s voice tore through the courtyard, ripping her attention from the woman at her side.
No.
The thought was in time with the throb of her heart, a flush of blood flooding to her cheeks. There was no time to react, no time to change what had been said. Each word the Sith Lady spoke came to her like a gossamer dream, ethereal, wrapping around her throat and blanketing her mind in molten threads of rage.
No.
It all insulted her. Guards? Orders, against her own, from them? There was no defense of her, no acknowledgement of her instructions. Only confusion, spawned by the seeming refusal to accept her will. It
affronted her, their very audacity an acid that pooled in her chest and liquified her heart into venomous anger. Every misstep of theirs risked her own. Her loyalists. Her
lover. Her
children.
Fight? They could not fight. Certainly they
would not fight. It was futile.
Useless.
And yet those allied with the woman seemed determined to.
Her head turned to face them. She blinked. Everything was slowed, each second stretching beyond its bounds, each motion merely a dance of fate.
The S’kytri. Xarxes. The chained one.
Hesper.
She hesitated, lip curling in distaste. poised to release Marasiah in that instant and send Hesper and those followers who questioned her orders skittering across the sand with arcane incantation. Her hand rose, at first curled into a fist. Her fingers splayed, snapping out in practiced motion as her lips moved to call upon the occult. Ire billowed in her gut. Miasmic. Poisonous.
Something stopped her. Perhaps it was the insanity summoned by the endless fleet above, gripping her. Perhaps it was something else. It was not something she could dissect.
She stood, nerveless, for what felt like an eternity. Her fingers remained outstretched, her muscles tensed, as if she were one of the ancient guardians of stone that oversaw the Valley.
Her thoughts returned to her in a tumultuous rush as her heart beat once again. Memory flooded back to her, even her internal monologue drowned by the onslaught of it all. It was every moment of her time spent beyond the realm of the known Galaxy, and it overtook her before she could protest.
She was blanketed in darkness. It swallowed her, winding about her and leading her into the depths of her psyche. Cold sweat beaded on her brow. Blood flushed to her cheeks, her delicate beauty painted briefly with fear.
The Rot God was before her, terrible in his sight, no matter the form he claimed. She could hardly stand, her mind urging her to throw herself to the ground in dreadful reverence. She resisted, somehow, staring up to him.
"Mine is the face of blood and fire. I am Mordiggian, the Immortal God of the Sith, Daritha Venomis of the Rakata. He who is worshipped under a thousand names. Mnggal-Mnggal! He who feeds the goat with a thousand young. Ea ea! Mugg! He who is the Gate! Ea ea! Mog! He who dwells beyond the Veil! Ea ea! Morddoth! Morddoth confundar!"
Ice spun about her veins, crystallizing them in fear. His voice echoed in her ears, as powerful as the screaming wind and quiet as the grave. It was nearly too much to bear: as it had been every time she faced such abominations.
Her heart pulsed again, blood perfusing through her and tearing her away from the unspeakable being before her. She was gripped again by a vision of the past. For a moment, she was outside her body, watching as she writhed on a stone balcony. Then, she was within herself, watching helplessly as it all unfolded.
A sickening clacking of jaws echoed. Chattering at her, chastising her for his attempts to hide. It would not be ignored. Her eyes snapped open once more as the clacking grew into raucous hisses, spittle flying into her face.
Her eyes met with hundreds of glistening black orbs, each glowing with scenes of twisted anguish.
It curled tentacles of onyx and sickening greens around the near-corpse, then around her legs, lacing them up to her waist, caressing her face. Putrid black stains seeped through to her skin, singeing it with poisonous fear. Her mouth flexed in torment. Suffocating from the claws around her neck, she could not scream.
Its mouthpieces widened to vomit - spewing squealing, squelched carcasses onto her lap.
As her body wracked with spasms, begging for air, dying as it gasped for escape, insects crawled from the melting visage of Ku’ar Danar, spewing themselves onto her as his organs turned to putrid liquid, each one burrowing into her skin with a flash of tormented imagery. It was as if every insect that dropped from his orifices brought to witness every death, every fear the Galaxy had known at once. It seemed as though it would never end, though her mind begged it to. Though it seemed the assault would kill her at any moment. Suddenly the images changed to unspeakable horrors upon those she knew. And herself. So vivid she could not tell if they were real. Her heart stopped briefly, finally brought to its limit.
“You will not change this. You are nothing.”
The voice was shrieking now in acidic hiss, her eardrums nearly rupturing with the inescapable volume. Her eyes faded to blackness.
“Death comes for you.”
She was thrust into softly lit rooms of the Sith Temple, a thrall of Dreadwar beside her. She recalled her questioning of the Dread Lord, the words that she struggled to speak through parched throat. Answers she had begged of him. Who was it who plagued her? Who had shown her such atrocities?
"He Who Dwells Beyond the Veil. An apocalyptic deity beyond the Gunninga Gap."
The Lord unfathomable, whom she had somehow fathomed. Whom she had witnessed, and
lived. Her mind reeled.
Her heart throbbed again, feeling as if it might burst. Her chest ached. The dying light of Horuset glared in her eyes, as though it were blood that pooled in them, instead of tears spawned from her terrible vision.
Her eyes shut just as the silver blades of the guard ignited, surrounding Hesper. Her mind screamed, begging the words the woman had spoken to vanish into the air unheard, to return to non-existence. It felt as if she were floating in the void that enveloped them all, submerged in the darkness, unable to escape, struggling for breath.
The future. The past. It all converged.
All that she had sacrificed. All she had borne. was a ghost before her. A mirage, shimmering in the waning sun.
Wounds, inflicted upon her pale, delicate skin. Blood trickling from the blistered, scorched flesh. Pain gnashing at her every nerve as she crawled on hands and knees.
It dissipated as paper in flame, ash left to the wind.
A smiling man, maggots dripping from his serpentine smile.
A thousand children, their fate in her hands.
Her sacrifice had stayed their demise. Her stomach lurched, bile in her throat, envisioning the thrall of Venomis enraptured in his profane desecration. Her own suffering, recalled from that moment, threatened to drown her in its agonizing depths.
A thousand Sith, now the same.
Every memory, every second, every minute, every year she had spent in her exile amongst their very enemy. It had all led to this.
The ships leering above them, birthed by ancient alchemies, inconceivable to the greater Galaxy.
A Council converged in shadow, formed of Lords of legend, obscured from all.
Generals of the True Sith, convened alongside her in cloistered halls, working to plan the very assaults she now knew would soon arrive.
The hissing voice of Sorzus Syn and saccharine snarl of XoXaan, baleful as they spoke of betrayals and cataclysms.
Warnings from the darkest sources, spoken to her in her stolen moments of seclusion.
Plots, endless plots, spun between her loyalists and her confidantes, dangerous in their treasonous intents...yet necessary to ensure their survival.
Secrets, uncovered by her command of the esoteric. Knowledge that would bring the most powerful and wise of the Sith to their knees.
She was nearly brought to hers. Her next step was halted. She could not move. She could scarcely breathe.
All she had done was not meant to be done. All she had lived was not meant to be lived. It was not meant for mortal eyes, tender and nearly blind. It was not meant for mortal soul, weak and diaphanous.
Her soul was not spun of the same thread.
Lord Kain’s voice echoed around her. Everything was yet in slow motion. Her head snapped backwards, curls and delicate gems splaying across her face. He was aiding her in her mission, every word he spoke blanketing her in realization. She could not comprehend what he said, metres away, but the warm tones steeped her in memory.
“I do not think you are just connected to Abeloth in some way. I believe you are her.”
Her heart lurched again. The words did not leave her. They remained, lingering in the back of her mind, not for a moment leaving her. It was if the Valley had taken his voice, the chaos hissing it back to her, reminding her of a truth she had attempted to bury deep within. That she had obscured from even those closest to her.
No longer.
Deceiver.
Pretender.
The words spawned venom at the tip of her tongue and stoked the smouldering flame within her. She was neither.
She was more than a daughter of Vahl. She was more than their Mother’s creation.
She
was Her.
She had carried burdens they would never know, they could never bear, they could never understand. For their sake. Every moment of torment was a moment they would all live.
Dreadwar’s hiss returned to her, snaking up her spine.
She who causeth the mightiest to tremble, their teeth to gnash and on their lip gnarl;
Whose hair is as the golden dawn, whose countenance is splendorous as the sun…
The obelisk rose in her mind’s eye, far on the horizon. The Perann Nebula swirled beyond it and bathed the monument in crimson glow.
Her heart beat again. The obelisk collapsed, crumbling into violent fire.
The Witch-Queen of Ambria.
Another beat.
The scarlet nebula swirled at her fingertips, as if it were spun of her blood and by her design.
The Divine Mother.
Another.
She was bathed in celestial fire, swathed in endless dark waters, in a realm beyond reality. Eternity surrounded her.
Beloved Queen of the Stars.
The burnt orange of Korriban returned to her, her eyes focusing on the scene around her as the ethereal visions faded away.
It was not only bravery that had returned to her, but pride.
Her fingers flexed, ready still to strike or recoil. It would be so very easy to eliminate them all, to siphon their very essence in moments, or seconds. It would take mere seconds to damn them into oblivion with tendrils of ink spun from Chaos itself.
It tempted her. Oh, it
tempted her.
Her breath released. Their damnation never came. She did not summon it, though she had briefly seduced their fate, courted it, dancing with its lissom form in the recesses of her mind.
They were Sith. They would have every chance to fight. She would have every chance to spill blood, to annihilate those who insulted her. But
not now.
Not now.
It would be a
waste.
The curse on her lips slithered away, vanishing before she had even uttered a single syllable. Her mind and the muscles relented simultaneously, and her hand fell to her side. Her resolve returned, her mind surfacing again in the courtyard. Rage ebbed from her, now. The vibrant colour returned to her eyes in its place, sound following to her ears. She swallowed. Speaking out would only sow further discord. She would not convince them otherwise. She would simply take advantage of the situation.
They were giving their lives for
her.
She would make use of their sacrifice, however foolish it was, to save the others.
She took a moment to recenter herself, to focus her anger and forge it into a focussed determination. Her eyes shut for what felt like minutes, though she knew by everything echoing around her it was not even a minute.
Her eyes glanced about the courtyard. Barely a soul had moved in the time that had passed. Her gaze hardened, lip curling.
She pulled Marasiah closer in the same moment, instinct overtaking her as Hesper and her followers sowed discord - unwilling to let anything harm the woman at her side.
They would not take anything more from her. Not those who challenged her. Not the True Sith. No soul would have such power again.
Fire burned in her soul, the Force roiling around her as if she were a wildfire of obsidian flame - as if she were not only the thousands of stars that burned in the unfathomable void above, but the void itself.
Her eyes, twin suns, blazed as they found Hesper, then Apollyon. There was violence, there, an unspoken challenge should they have met that brief glance.
All that had been lost were seconds in her ruminations. But everything moved, now, and she was immersed in chaos yet again. Her foot landed again, pulling her forward as it sunk into the frigid sand.
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