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Backstory Eventide

Admiral Volshe

Legendary Member
NGE Empress
A/N: An expansion on the backstory of our legendary @Darth Nathemus , so this is all his fault. Blame him for this, not me.

**TW for blood and trauma, specifically SA.**

~

tsWrCF9.jpg


132 ABY
Korriban


Midnight had come and passed, though the velvet of night was not quite visible through an approaching storm. Rivulets of moonlight strained through the clouds above Korriban, obscuring all but scattered swathes of the night sky. The air was unnaturally heavy, almost oppressive, though it had yet a chill in the blistering winds.

The Sith temple stood solemnly, rising up from the deep orange sands as if it were a sentinel. Like the Temple of old whose ruins sat buried beneath the foundations, it was a marvel of architecture. It was not dissimilar from the ragged mountains. Its spires mimicked their shape - but dwarfed them in comparison. From the temple’s pinnacle, one could see the Valley, and all it held. Every tomb that dotted the vast wound in the sands was in sight, from Naga Sadow at its forefront, to Marka Ragnos in the far reaches.

It was this sacred place from whence Kára Volshe returned, blanketed by night and guided only by two knights painted with crimson skin. A single lantern hung from a staff of black metal, sickly green light preceding them as they trudged through the sands. They were weary, all of them, the expedition to a small sub-tomb of Marka Ragnos having taken hours to map and descend into.

Volshe’s face was creased into a frown. Her aura was nearly as desolate as the ruins of Dreshdae surrounding her. The ghost of a city rose around them, shadows stretching across the path ahead. The lantern drove them away, but only briefly. With every step, the darkness pursued, lurking only paces behind them, threatening them with its embrace.

Their mission had not been fruitless, but it had not gone as expected. Nests of tuk’ata left them forced to take an alternate route through narrow, winding corridors that were very nearly collapsed. The depths were nearly untraversable. Pools of irradiated water meant they could not proceed in a straight path. Their destination, one of the treasure rooms, was far worse than the main chambers. The same deadly water had tempted them with its serenity, motionless pools glittering in the depths of the tomb.

But the tablet in question was seemingly previously acquired. The treasure room had been ransacked long before they had even set foot inside. Years ago, it seemed. The open chests and crumbling urns had collected a lace of cobwebs. The dust had been stirred by footprints that were barely visible, whispers of the past that had not yet faded.

She looked up as they at last began their approach to the main temple. Her neck was forced to crane to take in the detail, to see where its capstone met the skies. Her gaze fell to the path ahead, drizzle speckling her skin as they trudged upwards. Their feet hissed and crunched in the sand - it had obviously rained before their return. The small blanket of light surrounding them allowed her to see the wet sand beneath them, as sticky and cold as the air also was.

They took their final steps, onto the less desolate pathways, nearing the vast entrance to the main halls. She slowed and paused. The darkened space ahead was empty. Not a soul occupied the hall, its vastness almost a challenge to the endless night around them. The braziers offered little in a way of breaking through it. He was not there. Her eyebrow rose, a symptom of her surprise, but she did not betray any other emotion.

They proceeded, as she did not stop her entourage even despite her surprise. Once they reached the main hall within the main temple, they diverged with no words exchanged. They had already discussed their report - they would deliver it at a more suitable time. To disturb the Emperor so late could be considered a deathwish unless he wished it - and their mission was insignificant enough he would not. It was a blessing in its own way. They were all weary, considerably exhausted from the journey and task they had completed. Her own eyes were heavy, her throat parched from exertion and the harsh cold of the desert night.

Volshe’s initial intent was to return to her meagre room and prepare herself for the night. The must of the tomb enveloped her, seeping into her clothes and even her skin. She could smell it now, even as she was wrapped in the scents of the Temple - ember and petrichor, smoke and the distant tang of blood.

She inhaled. What usually assaulted her senses was far better than what she had experienced in the stale, carcass filled rooms of the Tomb. It was almost comforting, despite the fact she did not feel much comfort in the presence of the Order.

She stripped off her robe as she entered her room, surveying it. The lantern she had left alight was still glowing, though more weakly, casting a yellow haze on the plain furnishings. She frowned. Her eyes searched as she reached through the Force - but he was still not there, not awaiting her as she had anticipated. Now, her concern grew more palpable. It was claws on the hackles of her neck, which she quickly attempted to stifle. It was unreasonable. She could feel his presence, nearby. A distant spot on the periphery of her mind. He was likely sleeping or attending to something else. As Fist, one of the Emperor’s chief lieutenants, he oft had duties that kept him occupied late into the night.

She quickly found her way to the refresher, washing away the day’s dust and grime and slipping into a satin gown beneath a clean robe. She adorned herself again with simple, golden jewelry, misted herself with the water of millaflower and zwil. Instead of heading to her bed, though it beckoned to her with an ache that lingered in her exhausted mind and weary soul, she left her rooms and instead, began down the hall.

The journey was short. Most of the rooms of the lords and knights were near each other, the hallways simple and not labyrinthine as the rest of the temple was. She obscured herself in shadow as she walked. Though her status was not hidden, she did not wish to exacerbate it with notice. She had already received unwelcome notice - though it did not bear the bitter fruit of cruelty. Yet.

She waited in a pool of darkness for Darth Luft to pass her, then with elegant strides, slipped from her place of insignificance to the door of Darth Nihl. He was inside, she knew. There was a darkness, there, neither warm nor cold like much of the One she had encountered. His was the zenith of night, the darkness that enveloped one in late summer eve when the stars and moon were hidden away. It was quieter than it was dark, as if she could hear every heartbeat as she reached out. It was not frightening. To her, it was soothing as a night of contemplation in the mountains of her homeworld.

Peace.

She nearly always recognized him, despite the competing shadows that lurked in every inch of the temple. The bond between them was enough that she was nearly almost always able to pinpoint his location if she were close enough.

She waited, outside, for a moment, and assessed his surroundings for a moment. There was no other within, only the quiet aura of Lord Nihl. She quietly slipped inside, through stone doors, and lingered briefly in the darkness of the foyer. The room was more plain than her own, monochromatic in its colour scheme. It seemed more nuanced in the night, somehow, the moonlight and darkness mingling together in a spectrum of blues and greys.

She tilted her head. He was not in the main room. Yet the door to his bedchambers was open, the light off. He was within. She could sense it.

He did not rise to greet her, as he usually did. In fact, there was no stir from the bedroom. Her entire frame shifted over as a lithe hydenock in the swamps of Naboo, craning to see if he was asleep.

He was not. His form sat on the bed, dressed only in loose trousers. He was awash with moonlight, the beams bright enough she could see both the white and obsidian of his skin glisten. A frown crossed her features, etching into the alabaster of her skin as her illusioned visage of crimson faded away. Despite her entry, he had not stirred.

“Nihl?” She said, tentatively, removing her cloak and making her way towards him. He still did not move. He appeared almost as a statue. She knew precisely which one - a lithe, statuesque man carved of marble, standing in the moonlit gardens of Aldera, just outside the royal palace. It was a brief flicker of memory, one that remained past her reliving it, the bittersweet taste of a life long past lingering on her tongue.

“My dear?” She offered, now, her approach slowing. He had, even now, not moved. His chest rose and fell with breath - but that was all.

Her footfalls wafted into the air, her feet bare. She had not replaced the dusty boots she had worn in the tombs. Curiosity, not of the desirable kind, pricked at the back of her neck.

“Nihl?” This attempt was weaker. She slowed as his name slipped from her lips. It was delicate, the wings of a heliconian that glided in the chilled air. Only feet from him, now, she could sense his disquiet.

He sat in silence, with vacant stare, but his mind was anything but. There was...more than disquiet. There was something far more. He was hiding it. The Force nudged her away as she attempted to reach out with her own mind and investigate. He was behind it, she knew. He was pushing her away.

Anxiety pricked at the nape of her neck, her instant query was if she had somehow done something wrong. But she quelled the fear. This was something else.

Her mouth opened to ask him what was going on. It all surprised her, left a thousand questions fluttering in her mind. She closed it, thinking better of it before words could leave them. Never before had she seen him so withdrawn, so unresponsive. She had witnessed his anger, his disappointment, his disgust, his dark brooding. Far more than simply those. Nor was this one of those.

Instead of questioning, she sunk to the floor before him, half-kneeling, reaching for his hands. He resisted, at first. She coaxed him with featherlight circles on the back of his hand, urging him to silently allow her. He at last did, his tightened muscles almost melting into her touch. Her lips found the back of his hand. She looked up at him, curiosity glimmering in her golden gaze though she attempted to stifle it.

He looked down, his silent reverie broken by something that was ...soothing. He realized it was late in the night, now. A frown twitched briefly across his lips. He had only intended to think, for a moment, to take time to escape the swirling orange sands and the frigid temple. It had all flooded away from him.

His hand tightened around Kára’s. Her hand was warm, though her fingertips were just barely cold, the soft skin still claimed by the frigid air of Korriban. He said nothing. There was nothing to be said. She had returned from her own mission. He had...returned…

His chest tightened. A lightning bolt arced across his mind, revealing an image he did not wish to see. A memory, recent, the wound from it yet raw. His jaw clenched.

He was a man forged of war. He had no weakness. Certainly not this.

“Nihl,” Kára’s whisper wafted up to him, a balm that eased the ache in his mind that was both distant and right in front of him. “What is it?”

She was never unkind. It was not her nature. Though she was a woman of brutal efficacy, of martial prowess, of shrewd intellect and deadly wit - but she was not rough, nor calloused. She was as delicate as she appeared, to him. Only to him. Their relationship had begun with passion, with the same malevolent fire and wicked desire the One often stoked.

But it had gone beyond that. It had grown into something that resembled...normalcy. Something that perhaps seemed heretical to any of the Sith.

He could not unclench his jaw to speak. She rose, sensing his difficulty, and instead sat beside him upon the end of the bed. Her hand found the back of his neck, gently circling between his shoulders. Tension ebbed from him, the vacant suffering withdrawing at least from the knotted ends of his nerves.

She did not ask what had occurred. Her thumb circled his cheek.

“Shhh.”

It was barely a whisper, her head leaning close to his. She had been married before, she had loved before, and thus she knew when softness of silence and her gentle touch was the only remedy. Even if she had not seen him in such state, she recognized it instantly.

She had never seen him so troubled before. Angered, yes. Frustrated, moreso. Never withdrawn nor sullen as he was now. Such a fact did not mean she was incapable of soothing him. It only meant she was more concerned.

After a handful of long minutes spent in the darkened silence, his body had visibly relaxed, though tension still reigned within him. It was powerful enough she could nearly taste the peppered spice of it, at the back of her own tongue. There was yet tumult in the Force, though he was yet to speak on its origins. Her gaze leveled with his, attempting to search his eyes. He blinked away.

This would not break him.

But for a moment she saw them shudder in a sigh of discomfort, of an internalized agony he was clearly attempting to keep entirely obscured. The crimson appeared to shatter in the light as his irises slipped away. He was a man of ruthless intent and deep secrecy. But he could not hide from her.

“What has happened, my dear? You know I will not speak of it, not to a single soul.” Concern etched into her features, her thumb not stopping its gentle motion. This was unlike him. Such silent darkness was unheard of for her warlord. She knew there was upset within him. But where was his anger? His frustration? Why did she not feel the slightest glow of heat from him? Why was he simply a frigid winter’s rain where there should have been a simmering wildfire?

His hand rose to meet hers and pulled it away. He gently pressed his lips to her knuckles, yet avoiding her eyes. She frowned. Her voice fell into whisper. “My love…”

He gripped her hand more tightly.

It was then she noticed the wounds upon his knuckles, daubed with bacta and glistening in the weak light. She frowned. There were bruises, there, and gashes that snaked across his biceps and shoulders, her eyes traversing the blood-red rivers one to the next.

“You were not careful in your training?” she asked, fingertips pulling from his grip to gently caress his wounds. He grit his teeth as she touched the gash upon his shoulder. Her frown only deepened as he looked away. Was it the result of some punishment? Was he upset because...he had lost? She pursed her lips. “Nihl.”

At last his gaze fell and found hers. Moonlight glittered in his eyes, shimmered on his pale skin. It did little to soften the intensity of him in that moment. For a second, they were both breathless. He spoke in tone so hushed that even she could barely hear as she sat beside him. His teeth briefly showed in a restrained snarl, his brow creasing.

“It is nothing,” he said, lamely. A thousand responses had crossed his mind, but each potential path dissipated before he could follow it. He did not have the energy to follow them.

“I know that is a lie,” she said. The words had a terse edge she had not intended, but her concern was a shuddering crest that could no longer be contained. It took her willpower at its maximum capacity to avoid begging him for answers.

“Lord Krayt made demands of me,” he said. The statement was seemingly deliberately cryptic. “I obeyed, as I must.”

“What demands?” Her eyes had shifted to twin pools of fire in that instant. Though she was yet loyal to the Emperor, it was merely a loyalty crafted from convenience and intended to protect her interests - her ultimate loyalty would never lie with him. But now at least she knew a tiny piece of the answer to his mysterious plight, though she still did not understand. “Why?”

She did not wait for a reply. Her head inclined, and her lips trailed his neck, intending to distract him from whatever it was that ailed him. A single hand followed suit, splaying across an unscathed part of his chest. “I will draw a bath and prepare a meal, hm?”

He looked down, but only briefly, releasing a silent breath before returning to his near-catatonic stare. Now, there was anger that glowed there. All at once, he withdrew.

“No.”

She rose onto her knees as he stood, now growing concerned. Her fists gripped the satin of her skirts to avoid her becoming caught in them as she knelt in the spot he had occupied. “I will tend to your-“
He turned. “I do not require your attention.”

The words were layered with something else entirely, a message he knew she could likely identify, that she could pull from below the harsh current of his words. I am not weak.

It was not the truth. The words had no lack of venom, but there was an obvious lack of conviction. The anger, as startling as it was for her, was not directed at her. They stood in silence, his chest rising and falling with harsh breath. His fists were curled again, white and grey pulled taut as his lips were. Now, she could feel it. It was a deep ache that emanated from him.

“Come here.” She beckoned with her hand, rising from the bed. Demanding anything of him was obviously not going to remedy the situation. “You need not tell me what ails you, and I will leave if you wish. But you must at least rest.”

After a lengthy silence, he returned to again sit beside her, agitation curling its claws into his muscles. From the moment he was still, he was uncomfortable, visibly so despite the fact his face remained nearly still. He had returned to the tension she had soothed away minutes ago. She sat beside him, staring at the fragile moonlight that slipped through the towering peaks of the Valley beyond.

He was a caged vornskr. She could see it in the faint curl of his lips, in the tautness of his muscular frame, and she could feel it sloughing from him in dark waves. She rose, her hand lingering on his shoulder, before withdrawing. Her form, a ghost of zeydcloth and satin, moved to merge with the shadows of the deeper temple.

“I will leave,” Volshe said, the pressure of feeling like she was imposing overtaking her near-unquenchable desire to help him.

His lips parted but he did not speak. His mind was a warzone, though she could not know, for she could not see the barrage behind his eyes. His hand snapped out, gripping her wrist as she began to drift away. It was not a violent thing. It was merely desperate.

“No,” he whispered, the word throttled in his throat.

She turned. He stared up at her, at last his façade of stoicism vanished. There was distress there, now. It was not the sort that belied weakness. It was the sort that only came from one who did not know how to be weak.

“Nihl, Nihl, my dear,” she said, herself not knowing what to do. She could not think of why he would be distraught. No possibility found her as a potential truth. She shrugged her robes from her shoulders before she approached. Her left hand gripped his, draping the robe about his shoulders in the same motion of her returning to his side. “Tell me. You know I will not think less of you.”

“Lord Krayt,” he began, stopping after the words. He could not find the rest. He could not speak the rest.

I am not weak.

The words did not echo in his head, they were simply swallowed into nothingness, as if he were screaming them into the dark abyss of space.

He had faced the embrace of pain and survived. He did not need comfort. He did not need anything. He warred with himself, resisting the urge to push her away once more. Her presence, her warmth, the featherlight touch upon his wounded shoulder, was a salve he desperately sought, even if he could not admit it.

She frowned again, her hand soothing his with the same slow circles as before.

I am not...

His fingers tightened around her until his knuckles were as white as the bone beneath, tight enough he could feel the sear of lightning as his nerves protested. Volshe’s breath hitched, but she said nothing.

She yet searched for some way of understanding.

“What happened?”

There was silence. It grew more oppressive, minute by minute, his face twitching as thoughts skittered across his mind. There was no logic to them, which distressed him all the more. She sighed, softly. Her hand crept along his bicep, falling to his thigh, her nails lightly curling into the fabric and flesh there as her head inclined. It was no comfort. It was searing. It was as scorching as an arc of lightning that burned through both flesh and bone.

He tore his hand away from her, the anger he had been suppressing suddenly overtaking him in a rogue wave. He was on his feet, again, in a flash of honed reflexes. He was uncoiled, now, muscles rippling as if he might pounce, his gaze hardened into a vengeful grimace. She leapt back, instinctively.

But he did not lunge at her, though she feared he might.

His hand briefly clutched at his hair. The Force roiled around him, screaming in a burst of crimson danger as the blood that roared in his ears. His eyes scanned the room, catching sight of something that only stoked his anger further. A holocron that he had been given in his training, the memory of which did not escape him.

Krayt’s voice ricocheted in his head.

His hand rose, a wave of the Force rippling out and collapsing the holocron upon the desk there in the same moment his fist closed upon it.

Jagged shards of glass and twisted metal remained, the light of the gatekeeper dying and silicate dust rising from the aftermath. There was blood, there, spattered from where he had sliced into the already wounded flesh of his knuckles. It sent a scream of pain though him. But physical pain he could bear. Physical pain he could understand.

He did not remain standing. He slid to the floor, rage still pulsing in his skin, a fire he could not quell. Blood dripped from his wounds, pooling into the soft fabric covering his thighs and the coarse stone of the floor. His hand briefly found his forehead, eyes shutting, leaving streaks of crimson there.

Show me,” she whispered, at last, approaching and kneeling at his side. Her hand extended before him. He looked to her and slackened, his hand falling and taking hers after a long moment of consideration. He no longer had the energy to resist, the heat of his fading anger prompting him to give in to her request. She opened her mind to him in that same moment, allowing her own defences to fall. She ignored the sticky blood across his palm and cleared her mind.

What greeted her seared a deep wound into her. But it was only an echo of his own disquiet.

“...a great warrior to serve the Order. As his parents were.”

The voice of Lord Krayt, echoing in the distance, shifting into a high-pitched ring. There were flashes of crimson, the sensation of desperation, of hatred. A screaming of opposition in the depths of her warlord’s mind, though the surface was placid as the tundra of Hoth.

There was no love, no passion.

But there was the unspeakable.

There was a face at last, briefly clear in the daze of the vision...a young, very young, lethan Twi’lek she knew well enough. The apprentice of Ruyn. There was a distant agony in her own glassy gaze.


He withdrew in that moment, fracturing the vision. It flooded away from her mind’s eye. Breath rattled into his chest, but never left. He formed two fists again, instead.

They were left in terrible silence. There was a moment in which she knew not what to do, and a longer moment still before she processed it in its entirety. That moment quickly brought her to resolve. Rage billowed deep within her, but it was not towards the Nagai she knelt beside. Her own chest ached as she replayed what he had likely been replaying himself.

“You did not wish for this.”

It was not a question. Everything she had witnessed in the past minutes had answered her question before words ever could. His jaw tensed, jowls locking with another wave of anger she could sense.

“No,” he said, eyes opening back into the vacant stare he had possessed when she had found him.

“I will kill him,” she said, her voice eerie in its deathly quiet. Her own suffering was leeching in, now, all her most desperate desires surfacing.

“No,” he replied. This time it was acid, dripping from his onyx lips. He did not even glance to her. He was occupied with replaying the memory he had given to her, silently chastising himself for every moment of his weakness. He was more powerful than that. He should have been.

Krayt had spoken of it as if it were for the greatness of the Order, and perhaps it was, but all he felt was shame. The memory was a knife against durasteel, a curdling scream in his mind. It burned through the honour he possessed as a wildfire. The very honour that guided him in every moment of his life. The very honour that bound him to his home, his past. It was dust, nothing more.

There was honour in victory, in war.

There was no honour in what he had done.

There was only eternal shame in such atrocities as he had committed. His own weakness had betrayed the woman consoling him, his own weakness had been the cause of his distress. His own weakness had-. He winced, the disgust at the thought of the Twi’lek woman overwhelming. Her youth only further revolted him.

He should have been strong enough, wise enough, to have stopped it. But he never could have stopped it. His teeth grit in recognition of the futility. It burned, heat rising to his neck.

He still fought with himself in his near-desolation. He was never a man of rumination, but he could not turn his mind back to the present. It was his fault.

He looked down. His hands were stained with blood.

He wanted nothing more than to do the same as she to Krayt, to rip the heart of the man from his feeble bones. In that moment, he craved his death with an insatiable hunger. But he held too much power. It would not come to pass.

It was an impossibility.

Volshe bit the inside of her lip as she sat beside him in silent rumination. Her rage burned cold, now, a searing ice that her past carved into needlesharp shikkar. Krayt would die, for this. He had no say in the matter. But she said nothing more on the subject. She only returned to her soothing, her gentle touch. Her fingertips glowed softly as she moved to begin work on his shoulder. He did not wish to be fawned over. Every wound spoke the truth. The pain was what he knew. It was what he deserved.

He stopped her, hand pulling hers away. His head tilted, strands of ebon hair falling over his shoulder. “It will heal.”

It will heal.

She exhaled.

“Nihl,” she said, a gentle insistence there. A single tear escaped, rolling down her cheek. She swept it away before he could see it. This was not about her, not about her pain, no matter how wounded she felt, even if for him.

“You have done nothing wrong,” she whispered, escaping his grip to continue her work. “You do not deserve what has been inflicted upon you.”

The words were what she had herself learned, a script she had replayed in her own desolation as she had craved so desperately a moment of consolation. There was a limn of mist settled in the obsidian of his gaze. A moment of humanity, of vulnerability, seeping through the spidering cracks in his psyche. It only pained her more.

She settled a hand upon his knee, staring intently at him. She waited. All she could do was wait.

It took minutes for him to relent. He nodded once and at last allowed her to repair the wounds, pouring his focus into slackening the muscles. He winced as she touched the raw skin. But he did not recoil.

After long, silent minutes, she had completed her task, his bloodied skin no longer laced by open wounds. She had gathered warm water and a tincture of herbs he used after his training, carefully cleaning away the trails of ichor and soothing the muscles beneath with the salve.

But he remained staring ahead, unmoving, unflinching even as she finished her work.

“Come to bed,” she said, at last, blotting away the last rivulets of bloodstained water, her fingertips applying the last of her salve. She cleared everything away, but her attention never left him, only gave him space to make his decision. He stood, with his agile grace, and followed her mere feet to the bed, folding her robe and placing it upon the nightstand. There was no emotion in any of his motions, only lifelessness.

He remained silent as he slipped beneath the satin covers, turning away from her. She contemplated withdrawing as he had wished prior, but instead decided that she could not abandon him. She knew he could survive on his own, for she had survived on her own, but she would not subject him to such.

She stayed there, beside him, her hand tentatively reaching out to pull the supple sheet to his chest before gently stroking the silken strands of his hair. He made no attempt to stop her. She could sense the turmoil within him, endlessly ebbing and flowing with the chaos of the sea. He stared ahead into the moonlit Valley. She stifled a sigh, following his line of sight. It was as desolate as she felt. As she imagined he felt. There was nothing more she could do.

If nothing else, she would not leave his side.

If nothing else, he would not be alone.
 

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