Lehon - Jedi Temple

[Vorin Blackmorne]

The hurricane blew across the surface of Lehon, buffeting the Warrior’s decent into the jungle that made up most of the planet’s landscape. Wind picked at his clothing and whipped his long hair free of its leather bindings as he leaned out of the shuttle’s gangway. They were still about three-hundred meters up, flying low to avoid any active or passive radar. Those that accompanied him had their orders, and had dispatched further into the jungle, pressing in a flanking maneuver towards the temple.

 

The shuttle was close now to the Temple, and Vorin could feel the tension in the Force caused by the stirrings of war. He could feel his blood rise as he touched the Force, letting his emotions flow free. A smile came across his pale face as the wave of power crested within him, joining his emotions to drive a frenzy in his blood.

 

Well… Jump. Get in there…

 

He glanced back at Bloodletter, his smile widening, and he leapt into the storm.

 

Yes, listen to the sword that lacks intelligence, what’s the worst that can happen?

 

The wind swept him, carried him, disoriented him, but he kept his sulpheric eyes to the ground, driving himself down towards the outskirts of the temple. He channeled the wind, letting the natural chaos of it meld his frenzied blood into a Force-bidden rush. He landed in a roll, sending a gout of soft loam and dirt into the storm, as if thrown by a meteor. Coming to his feet, he howled like the Tuk’atas he had grown up around in the Court of Madness.

 

Call to them, bring them to me so we might find glory…

 

Vorin reached out, rumbling with the storm in his veins, calling to any Jedi that dared defend the temple to come to him. His hands ran across the leather-bound pommel of the Zwiehander, preparing to drag it from its sheath. He would have his victory.

[Vorin Blackmorne]

An amber glow woke the night, standing like a lighthouse in the storm, resolute, strong. The challenge had been answered. The Sith Warrior’s smile darkened as he reached out a tempted hand towards the light, feeling what stood behind it. There was a wash of femininity, strength, weariness of war. A veteran of combat then. A part of him cried out against following through with his challenge, for a predator sought out the sick and lame within the flock, but he quieted that whisper.

 

The Force has brought us first to the shepherd, so that we might then slaughter the flock…

 

Bloodletter’s whispers crystallized into its sardonic voice  

 

Mhm she’s tempting… Why don’t we… kill her?

 

Yellow eyes rolled narrowed as the Sith approached, passing the primitive nature of the predator into the depths of his mind. The howling ceased from around the Sith, the wind-whipped air stiffening into bitter chill, reflecting the crystallization of his purpose and his mind. The smile faded further into a grim painting of determination.

 

The water that beaded upon his skin began to crystalize, just as his conviction, flaking into shards of ice that ran in a pattern across his lamellar-plate. The warrior’s demeanor changed noticeably, drawing into itself, replacing the carefree lust and casual charm with the placid stare of a sociopath.

 

Ahhh… There’s my Vorin…. I was wondering if you were coming.

 

Ice crested footprints were carried away in the gale as the Sith began to run towards the amber light. When he saw the figure of the woman (Draygo), Bloodletter was unleashed from its bindings, falling into his hands. The Zwiehander was as dark as the heart of the Maw and seemed to drip with shadows. Frost formed on the darkness, giving the Flamberge twists of darkmetal a terrifying form.

 

My… she would look… Lovely dissected… and displayed…

 

Vorin pressed into his instincts, embracing the rush of his blood, passing it into his muscles. He breathed of it, feeling the coldness in his lungs. Wrath came to him then, his truest sin, his only friend. Ice began to form about his forearms and upon his belt, muttering and cracking like the great frost-lakes of Thyressa. Whispers became patterns of attack, hate into cold dispassion. The rain about him became frozen beads of hail, and the Sith leapt towards the Jedi in an arc.

 

A kinder, weaker Sith would have taken the time to fence his opponent, cross blades and discuss philosophy, but that was not Vorin of the Court of Madness. There was no reason to talk to such a creature. What were the words of a Jedi to a Lord of the Warriors? She was an obstacle to power, and as such she would pass into the afterlife, preferably screaming.

 

Vorin focused his wrath into the ground as he landed, shattering it towards the Jedi to break the roots of her defense, before drawing his power back into himself and rushing into the harsh momentum of war. He advanced in a flash with the shockwave of the shattered temple ground. Bloodletter whipped through the hurricane, cracking and whispering on the wind, shards of ice scattering about it. Yellow eyes, a grim smile, and long white hair would be all the Jedi would see of her killer. He would have far more time to study her after she was cold and bloodless.

 

The Sith Warrior brought the darkmetal Zwiehander to meet the Jedi, behind that amber glow. He leveraged his weight into the blow, bringing the strength of wrath through his shoulders and ice-crested forearms, to strike down in an arc that would drive the undulating edge through the woman’s shoulder and exit through her pelvis.

 

((1))

 

Actions: Shattered the ground in order to weaken the defense and disrupt stance, and then cut at Draygo with a force-strengthened chop of the Two-Handed Sith Sword 

[Vorin Blackmorne]

Where he had expected to feel the slick rending of flesh, and the cracking and grinding of splintered bone, he felt only the jarring emptiness of a parry and the softness of the forest loam as his sword bit into the ground. Yellow eyes watched the bronze blade of the lightsaber fall useless, narrowing in disbelief as the Jedi gave up her weapon. Rain became frost as it ran down the formless darkness of Bloodletter’s blade. She didn’t deserve to possess a blade if she couldn’t hold onto it. He stamped down towards the lightsaber’s handle, intending to crush the offending light away.

 

Pity… She didn’t die. Maybe, try next time.

 

Rage sprang for a moment unbidden from the depths of his mind, fueled by Bloodletter's whispers, and Vorin channeled it into the cold, sociopathic determination that connected him to the Power of the Force. Perhaps it was for the best that the Jedi before him hadn’t died in his initial assault, such a quick death forbade him the study of his opponent, and the extraction of her terror. What use was a death if you didn’t see the hope fading to horror in their eyes?

 

A grenade landed beside him, and his momentum faltered. He leapt backwards, landing on the forest ground, forming a deep furrow as he slipped. The Jedi’s grenade had robbed him of a proper second strike, and frustration formed within him, but only for a moment as second blade whispered to life above him, the world awash now in green. He attempted to steady himself, but the blade ripped into his armored shoulder, not deep enough to disable, but enough to wound him.

 

Pain broiled up from beneath his armor, a roiling sickening thing. Such a feeling would have drawn a Sith Warrior towards the emptiness of berserker rage, but it was not so with Vorin. The rush of emotion became cold, hidden beneath that grim, determined smile. Frost licked at the trickle of blood that ran from beneath his armor, overrunning the pain, numbing it. The only sound that came from him was the groaning of teeth grinding together. It sounded like ice-sheets cracking and gasping as they ground against each other with the waves. On his belt, ice built up a second weapon, filling in the voids with the rain, built from his pain.

 

She landed then, beside him. Scant a few hands-breadths away. He had expected her to flee, to gain distance, but she was here. Close enough to taste. To smell. To kiss and devour. In a single heartbeat, he could see the strands of grey in her hair, soaking wet within the verdant glow of her blade. She was far older than him, not the whelping pup he had assumed, but age didn’t matter in an opponent. The frost-mist of her breath lingered in his cold. His right hand ran down the blade of his Zweihänder, leaving his left hand, encrusted with ice, upon the pommel.

 

The shine of her eyes was like the rainbow-gems of Gallinore, reflecting and mimicking the light of her lightsaber. But they were not nearly terrified enough.

 

He would keep her eyes.

 

This Jedi had closed into his realm, within the circle of the first and sword, the distance where strength and precision were most important. She would not escape it alive. The grim smile twitched with the dark glee of victory.

 

Wrath moved, and Vorin channeled all of his determination into rebuilding his momentum. The blade was not the only deadly part of a sword. His left foot came forward, shifting his weight as he poured Wrath’s cold chill into his left arm and the Force moved with him. He brought his left hand up in a strike towards the Jedi’s throat and jaw, pivoting Bloodletter’s pommel and handguard into the strike, steadying the blade with his right hand. He would hit with the strength of a mountain, dashing her throat and brains with shattering ice, striking through to decapitate her with the strength of the Force and Bloodletter’s pommel.

 

Don’t let her even breath. All we should hear is SCREAMING.

 

He followed through with a shift of momentum, striding forward then with his right foot to cut back through his opponent with a precise blow. He ran his right hand down the flat of the blade as he cut, guiding its intent true. Pain shot up his right arm as he struck, a grim reminder of the wound he had taken, and his fingers twitched along the blade’s edge. The Warrior’s blow was aimed to cut through the gap between her neck and left shoulder and to leave the Jedi lifeless on the Temple’s purportedly blessed ground. She would pay dearly for her deception and daring to continue to live.

 

((2))

 

(Vorin attempts to crush the fallen lightsaber, leaps away from dummy grenade and takes damage with the lightsaber strike to right shoulder. Force-fueled pommel strike across the close distance, followed through with a force-fueled bisecting cut.)

[Vorin Blackmorne]

Bloodletter’s pommel, wrapped in its dark leather, became warm and wet with the Jedi’s blood. The blood seeped into the handle and soaked into the darkmetal itself, warping its way into the patterns of shifting, frozen night. He could feel it on his fingers. Visceral. Steaming heat against the cold plating. He let it flow to his forming weapon and the crystals of ice took on a tinge of crimson.

 

Vorin let his momentum flow, and again there was disappointment. No catch of bone. No wretched gasp of lifeblood. Instead, emerald light slashed into the night. Bloodletter reversed momentum, catching the light against its wavy edge, but it was not enough to stop it fully. The first cut reflected off his armor around his waist, but he felt it still, for the armor of the Sith was an extension of their skin. It was a searing, tearing thing, but left nothing beyond melted plating. A distant screaming arose on the wind. The second cut drove deeper, tearing a line into his flesh on his left abdomen, searing its light into the skin and fascia beneath. His breath came in ragged and his momentum seemed to fade

 

The pain came in a rush, threatening to warm his blood, to drive away the edge he had in battle; to part him from his calculating mind and drive forth a frenzy. Beyond him though, there was another emotion, ripe with untapped potential. It was that fear that had come blazing into the night with the crimson flame of blaster shots. It was a palpable thing now, the fear of a garrison watching their Jedi die. Vorin pressed into it, taking in its power, letting it add its strength to Wrath’s. Strong emotions were the tinder for the fire that was the Dark Side of the Force, and though its expression within the Warrior was of a sociopathic cold, it raged with a strength more than that of the Hurricane around them.

 

His face did not change, but the sulphuric yellow of his eyes seemed to glow in the hurricane. The Jedi had begun to speak, and the Sith Warrior let Bloodletter’s frosted blade rest against his armored shoulder.

 

Oh is this the Jedi’s voice? I expected more squeak, for such a small mouse.

 

He watched her stance. The quiet mocking in her voice. It drove itself into him like a knife.

 

He would hear that voice shrieking in pain. She would be mewing for mercy as his blows shattered not only her body, but her soul. He would drink in her pain like he would her lifeblood. Bloodletter’s whispers crystallized in retaliation.

 

Well, I think you have magnificent grace.

 

He stared hard at the Jedi, unrestrained wrath bidding him to charge her head on, but instead he breathed, catching the wind within him. The storm was unyielding, just as was his wrath, just as the fear about him. But when she leapt, it was a surprise. Was she not guarding the temple and its feeble garrison?

 

Vorin widened his stance, drawing back his right foot. Ice followed with it, cracking and muttering. His shoulder screamed in protest as he moved Bloodletter onto his back, but he could only shrug off its pull. The pain was a barely heard now in the back of his head, a rushing of a river muted against the sounds of an ocean. He could sense her, a power presence, even against the back the background of the storm. The arc of her jump had been beautiful, parabolic even, against the unrelenting wind

 

He considered for only a heartbeat, letting Bloodletter be sheathed for a moment on his back. All the souls that were to his back were his to take, or would he follow a Jedi into a storm? A trap was the only logical solution, besides trying to give her men some time to escape, but they had not moved yet. A small smile played across his grim features, for he could not turn away now, and leave the Jedi to live. The garrison’s fear would be all the more palpable if he brought them the head of their supposed guardian.  Yellow eyes seemed to smile in the darkness. 

 

The Sith Warrior channeled his strength through his legs, letting the Force carry him to meet the Jedi. His side crackled with the electric fire of pain, but he pressed into the jump. He aimed into the storm, towards the height where she would be in her leap, that bitter end of a jump, where gravity begins to overwhelm momentum. He twisted with the wind and rain, hefting from his belt the formed weapon of ice, stained crimson with Jedi’s blood. It was a wicked, crude thing; a hardened mace of ice, imbued with his pain and malice. It was a quieter thing than a Sith Sword, but just as deadly for it was the living embodiment of his power. He held it low in both hands and when the Jedi loomed from the storm, he brought the mace cracking upwards towards her chest with all the momentum of his force-carried leap. He twisted into the blow, aiming to crush the voice from her, and all the air from her lungs, that they might never breath again. The ice would shatter away to nothing but pain-fueled shrapnel after it kissed her with death, churning the night with the cracking and grinding of a iceflood.

 

Never leave fate to chance.

 

His right arm spasmed from the pain, and the Warrior dragged Bloodletter from its sheath with his left, reversing the arc of his blow with the Sith steel. His own momentum had begun to falter against gravity, and so he used the force of nature to fuel the strike, hammering the Zweihander down onto her with his right forearm plating while his steadier left guided the pommel. He was relentless. He forced the movement through the pain, feeling the ice on his wound rip away. He no longer cared if she was still alive or had died from his first attempt. He would use gravity to drive her into the dirt, beneath the living blade she had so mocked. The Jedi would find herself the anvil beneath the sharpened hammer of the Sith.

 

((3))

 

((Takes damage to armor from one attack, and then a wound to the flesh of the side with the other. Follows Draygo in her leap to strike at her with his ice-forged mace he had created across the duel, and follows it through with a hammering blow with his Sith sword on their downwards arc. Thank you, a very enjoyable duel!))

[Vorin Blackmorne]

In an instant, it was over. There was a great change in the Force, a weary sigh, and the very hurricane lost its fury. It had transformed into tears unnumbered, mourning the loss of a great Jedi. Vorin landed on one knee, exhaustion threatening to overwhelm him and he stared at his opponent. She was there, bloodstained and peaceful for but a heartbeat until she faded and all that remained was her cloak and weapons.

 

Well that was unexpected… Must have been a powerful Jedi to disappear like that…

 

The Sith Warrior had heard it had been a thing of Jedi Masters, to unite themselves truly with the Force at death. It irritated him. What good was it to join the force? When you’re dead your impact stops, no more waves. No more echoes. He knew his own fate would end at the flash of a blade. No sorcerer had seen a future that had him dying of old age in his bed, surrounded by women. He would burn bright and die like a star in supernova.

 

He brought the sword his lips, forcing the frustration deep into himself, that it might not boil over. He had lost his trophies. Those eyes like gallinore gems. He had wanted to keep parts of that Jedi to stare at when days grew dark, but perhaps the taste of her lifeblood would stick with him. When it met his tongue there was a rush as if he were drinking a strong stimcaf on a cold morning. Copper. Warm.

 

Oh she does taste… Immaculate…

 

Bloodletter changed perceptibly as it absorbed the Jedi’s lifeblood.  A sanguine crimson creeped into the dark metal; the shards of ice bound to the flame-formed blade appearing like burgundy crystals upon a wine-dark sea.  Vorin let it run from lips, wiping them upon the Jedi’s discarded clothing. He tore a dark strip of the cloth, soaking it in the blood before tying it to his belt like a tattered trophy. About it formed a few scarlet crystals, frozen tears from the sky. 

 

The pain came again, biting from his shoulder, his waist, and now his right arm. The Jedi’s blade had seared a bit of the flesh, but thankfully the armor had taken most of the beating. He ground his teeth, setting his jaw against the pain and let his mind open to the force. He needed to tell his masters of his victory.

 

But…

 

There was nothing now. Neither of the Nightsisters, not of that girl nor her mother. There was nothing but the growing fear and horror of a battleshocked garrison that had just seen their leader die. He fed upon that fear like he had upon the Jedi’s blood. Ice formed over his wounds, cracking and grinding like a frozen dam to hold back the pain and blood. Numbness took hold and in his veins the steely coldness grew again.

 

A few crimson bolts flew at him, but in a leap, the slaughter began in earnest. The garrison would die, and after they fell, so would the padawans and innocents of the Temple. The joy of such an orgy of blood became bright in his mind. The Jedi forces were caught now in a dark tide, one from which there was no escape but through death. 

[Vorin Blackmorne]

Rainfall dampened the sound of screaming. It gave the cries a hollowness, stifling the ringing echoes before they could resound in chorus. The shouting of a disheartened garrison had lasted a moment, tinged with terror, before it had transformed into disjointed, chaotic shrieking. That too had lasted only a short time, before the rains and the cuts of a blade had changed them into the gurgling mewing of dying men.

 

Vorin stood now amongst the dead, the zweihänder an inky stain of crimson-mottled night resting in his hands. It seemed to smoke in his hands, coated in crimson crystals that formed from rainwater and blood, dripping down to shatter upon the Temple’s floor.

 

Why are we not still killing?

 

Bloodletter’s whispers was the background of the Sith Warrior’s world, and yet even a Sith sword could not create more enemies where there were none. The Jedi he had slain had led the reargaurd of the Temple’s forces, and other than the terror that hung upon the meager winds of the dying hurricane, there was nothing to fight. At least here, one the outskirts of the Temple, the fight was done.

 

Sulpheric eyes stared up at the imposing walls of the Temple. There, he could feel a vibrant, soothing presence at the heart of the Temple. A wanting, a lustful rage grew in his heart, to be at the heart of the war. Vorin drew in a deep breath of the hurricane’s dying wind, letting it chill within his lungs. He forced the rage to change, to take on the coolness of his breath, attuning his mind to Wrath.  He could feel the life before him, beckoning him to crush it from existence.

 

So a few Jedi still breath…

 

The flock was bereft of its guardian and the wolves were at the door. Footfalls left behind a trail of ice and the Sith Warrior approached the main wall of the Temple. He brought with him a fell wind, but no raging fire. His signature was not that normative flame of a warrior, staining the force with unrestrained rage and wrath; his was a cool sociopathy. Vorin set his jaw, a placid expression removing emotion from his face. A light was ahead, a cerulean brand that marked a Jedi.

 

They do love to mark themselves in such garish displays…

 

Crimson flame blazed as blaster-fire whipped in the air, the ever-present calling card of chaos. A few soldiers fired from the shattered cover of a breach in the wall. A shimmering in the air almost caused the Sith Warrior to smile; another Jedi was holding the breech with a shield, and before it the Jedi with the azure blade defending the gap.

 

Vorin landed near the rubble, stepping quickly beside one of the soldiers. The markings on the uniform signed the Twi’lek as a medic. Before her lay a shuddering Wookiee, wounded in the abdomen by an axe-blow. Its blood stained the wind with its pungent scent. Sulpheric eyes seemed to glow in the darkness as he stared at the Jedi, watching him as he cut through Sith forces. The Jedi behind the shield would be able to see him clearly. He allowed himself to exude his coolness into the Force, mirroring his feelings as he had killed the last Jedi, savoring her blood on his lips. It had been him that had killed the Jedi who had held the rear-guard, and he would kill them too. 

 

Oh… you want them to see…

 

The Sith Warrior measured the medic in front of his for a millisecond before he drove the icy blade into the base of the Twi’lek’s spine, right above her hips, crippling her in an instant. He pushed the blade further into her until the tip pierced the soft flesh of her belly and then ripped it from her with a savage flourish, her blood spilling onto the shattered gravel in a half-frozen slurry. Her scream was ear-piercing, and he fed upon it, drinking it in along with her terror, twisted joy blossoming in his heart.

[Vorin Blackmorne]

Vorin watched as the shield collapsed, judging the Jedi that had held it for so long against the ferocious onslaught of the Dark Side. It appeared to be a young woman, born to that underwater race from which Akbar and others had come. He hadn’t seen a Jedi like her before, so much life swirled about her, warm and vibrant. He wondered what would be reflected in those large, watery eyes as he crushed her windpipe. Would she favor him with a last trace of dying hope, turning to bitter terror in that last heartbeat?

 

Do you think... an underwater species can drown in their own blood?

 

The Sith Warrior dropped the squealing, choking Twi’lek into the slurry of her blood, pausing to watch the tremors that ran the length of her lekku, before striding into the onslaught. He carried Bloodletter on his shoulder, the blade a formless dark current beset with crimson stars. It appeared like the blood-kissed sky on a night of fire.

 

A blast of telekinetic energy surged against him, shattering away the crystalline matrixes of sith-formed ice, but yet he stood. He slowed his steps, advancing offline from the Jedi, circling like a predatory beast watching a sick yew. Wind cracked the air, fluttering the strip of cloth, stained as it was with Jedi’s blood, like a banner in battle upon his belt.

 

He didn’t care to speak, if she wished, this Jedi would share the fate of the one he had slain or join in the terror of a hasty retreat. There would be many of their wounded to feast upon yet.

[Vorin Blackmorne]

Oh my… She seems to be still… Alive?

 

The crimson-eyes Arkanian looked up from where he sat upon the dark snow, legs crossed, meditating amongst the dead and dying. It took effort for him to tear his mind from the sound of death. Every drip of blood was its own rhythm within the songs of war. Every strangled cry, every rattling cough was a voice to a holy chorus. That choir was as ecstasy from which the Sith Warrior was reluctant to turn from.

 

A bitter, retching cough came from the snow at his feet. A breath of warmth began to turn the frost into a trickle of reddened water. It appeared like wine, spilling across a white canvas. Vorin focused upon the warmth, breaking into it with his mind.

 

…I cant feel my legs…

 

So the Twi’lek medic was still alive, her insides churned to carmine slush by the thrust of Bloodletter. She was barely moving. It wouldn’t be long now.

 

Mhmmm… Draw me again…

 

The leather-bound pommel, so stiff with the cold the Sith could feel the wire binding that lay beneath. The blade made no sound as he unwrapped it. It appeared so formless in the faded light, a crimson night without stars. Yet, he didn’t strike. He listened instead to her heartbeat as it grew slower, its rhythm fading to join the quieting chorus of the lifeless.

 

A Krath approached, stepping gingerly amongst the strewn bodies, careful not to stain his verdant robes with the consequences of war. The Vermandois had shown up after all. A prim voice blossomed into the night as the man proffered a Jedi flag to Vorin, crumpled in a manicured fist.

 

“Well done taking the planet, Blackmorne.”

 

The Sith Warrior affixed the beautiful, proper man with his silent state.

 

“A new Dark Lord has been… Crowned. Our Court supports her, Nyrys, an apprentice of Sheog.”

 

Vorin nodded, Bloodletter across his knees, crystals of ice forming upon it and then melting away in a rain of red. When he spoke, it was slow and deliberate, like the grinding of a stonemill upon grain.

 

“Then... this planet is hers.”

 

He moved his eyes from the Krath, watching the slurried blood creep from the Twi’lek’s shattered chest. Somewhere he knew the blood of the Nightsister girl had stained the ground and his indifference grew. Had it been a victory then? It surely felt like a defeat.

[Vorin Blackmorne]

Vorin stared at the rain-darkened sky, sulpheric-yellow eyes glittering. The damaged lammelar plating ground and squealed as he slowly stood, shards of crimson ice cracking away like pebbles from a mountain, sliding to join the bloodied slurry at his feet. Pain coursed from his wounds, a burning caustic thing that crept into the background of his mind, spreading like creep-vines upon an ancient temple. His slow breathing caught on his tongue, an unsteady heartbeat of rage beginning to colour the world in red.

 

Oh, you think you’ve had it rough?

 

Vorin’s fingers tightened around the roughened leather bandings of Bloodletter’s hilt, the Zweihander dripping the rain from it in inky blots that twisted with the reflection of the fading light, cast as though through a mirror darkly.

 

You only let me kill twelve rebels! Twelve. In a war!

 

The Sith Lord ground his teeth, and straining as though against a great weight, placed Bloodletter into the sheath on his back. Dark, blotted ice crystals flowed and sealed across it, sealing it as if below a frozen lake. The Warrior shook his head, tying his unkempt hair into a snow-white, rain tangled plait with a banding of leather.

 

Lord Blackmorne stepped lightly across the dead, his boots grinding on the strewn viscera, feces, and blood of war. The putridity, that carrion-song, was ripe in his nostrils as he walked towards another of the Sith Lords who came from the entry-way. He was of fine stock, that pale brooding and pompous sort that made up the Imperial Court and its intelligence offices. Vorin’s own armor leaked blood slowly, and was stained by the corruptions of the dead. A ghoul compared to the finery of this newcomer.

 

The Court of Madness had named this one as Umbra, Lord of the Necromancers. This was a different sort of dead-monger than his own Master, Sheog, one of refinement. Not blood-bound to the sins and their pleasures. Unbidden, Bloodletter thrummed in the force, the ice grinding upon its sheath in mimicry of the death rattles that had been the chorus of this battlefield hours before. Blackmorne’s voice was that of shifting stones, seldom used and exhausted.

 

“If you have come for war, I fear you have missed the worst of it.”

 

He bowed his head in reverence, causing a new, glistening trickle of crimson to spill from a wound on his neck. Under Exodus, the deaths of common soldiers had been of little consequence, but to lose the number of Lords and Masters that this pitiful planet had cost the Sith Empire, there would surely be a reckoning. Much less the Right Hand of The Spider, the lady Qaela. 

 

“I suppose you come to find the Nightsisters that commanded this mission, and so I must place myself at your mercy, for they did not survive the battle. I accept the failure of their deaths as mine, as I could not preserve them for the Dark Lord's pleasure”

[Vorin Blackmorne]

The Sith Lord stared into Umbra’s eyes, his own narrowing as the Intelligence Officer spun a tale of betrayal and treason. It was a story he had heard often of one Sith Lord or the next. It was the nature of the Dark Side, unrestrained passions moved a soul towards independence and a natural conflict with leadership. The other side of the credit chit was the obvious pairing, those that delved deep into the darkness were driven to paranoia; such power was never a stable thing.

 

“If the Rebellion has truly become united, then The Spider’s plans were not but folly. A time of purging then…”

 

Bloodletter almost purred in its sheathe, its voice serpentine and nearly orgasmic with the thought

 

The useless Sithlings cast to the carrion. How beauteous that would be!

 

Blackmorne’s grim jawline became more defined as he gave the Sith before him a rueful grin and spread upon his arms and hands in a gesture of more familial greeting, blood still dripping from him. The Court of Madness had never been one for the crippling haughtiness of a Dark Lord’s Court, and often spurned the formalities.

 

“I am Vorin Blackmorne, of the Court of Madness. I have titles to throw about, but who cares for such things. Call me Vorin.”

 

Tza Anachas, one of the Sith Warriors that had joined Blackmorne from Sheog’s court, a handsome Cathar girl, handed Umbra a datapad, with vid records of the battle and set up a small projector which displayed the battlemap as it now stood.

 

“The nightsisters seemed to have led a strong attack at the temple’s outer walls and on the enemy’s skirmish line in the forest. Reports are that most of our nightsister allies were slaughtered there. Some pretty Jedi with an Acklay I think.”

 

Vorin shrugged, Tza displaying a few numbers in the basic script demonstrating approximated dead on each side for the skirmish and assault. He gestured to the landing pad, a fleck of blood pixelating the display for a moment as it passed through the hologram.

 

“My warriors, a dozen of the Court’s finest, attacked from the side of the landing pad, at their retaining wall with me at their head.”

 

The image blurred into a still image of Vorin and Armenia Draygo facing each other, Bloodletter driven through the woman’s chest.

 

“I met a fierce fighter, some Jedi woman of considerable strength… But the Dark Side prevails. When she fell, the garrison faltered, then crumbled.”

 

Numbers appeared noting only a few wounded from Vorin’s squad, with an opposing number of Jedi and Soldiers displaying medium to high casualty rates.

 

“They were able to evacuate at the last, we could not get through a Force Shield in time to route them truly and kill what had remained. Many refugees escaped. Some did not.”

[Vorin Blackmorne]

Umbra’s bray of laughter caught the Sith Warrior by surprise, disconcerting as it was. A small wince crossed his placid countenance. He had expected the emotion in its wake to be mockery for some unimagined aberration, but it was genuine happiness that had arisen.

 

So, that woman had been the leader of the entire Jedi Order? He had heard stories from the kretch-tellers of the Grandmasters, such names that had reached galactic infamy; Ara-Lai Kaipi, Starlisk, Kiralloca and so many others… The name Draygo had been among them. The one without a heart. Disbelief boiled into shock and doubt.

 

Blackmorne was saved from a stutteringly doubtful reply by the voice of a woman and the staggering weight of power he felt swirling within the Force. The presence was contained, held fast behind walls of iron, but it was not unlike standing before the Mad Hutt. A storm of energy, swirling in the background. It was like the instant you can taste and smell the rain before the first drop lands.

 

He turned to her and forced his battle-weary shoulders to bend, his scarred and roughened lammelar plating grinding as he bowed. This was no lotus-eater, bound into ivory towers with chains of arrogant gold. This woman had trained in the Court of Madness and had become the Dark Lord. Such a title never fell by de-facto, nor was it disgraced by nepotism.

 

The Sith Warrior took from its bindings the sheathed Zweihander, its only tassel the bloodied strip of the Grandmaster’s tunic and proffered it before him, a ceremonial offering of the victory over the Jedi. His hands held firm before him, but beneath the skin the muscles ached and cried for rest, the burnings of lactic acid lashing at his mind. One of his knees sunk unbidden to the ground and he bowed further.

 

“My deeds are few. War only makes heroes in stories. Had I known the Jedi I had fought to be important, I would have brought her to you alive. I offer you my sword, as a symbol of your victory here.”

 

Bloodletter was its own identity within the veil of the Force, forged as it was from Sheog himself. It was one of the Seven heirlooms of the Court of Madness. Its name of secrets was Accidie, for that was the emotion from which it was forged; that listless torpor that made mankind heavy in their own minds, driven in flight from their divine nature into the pitiful sorrow of the world.

 

From his knee, The Sith Lord contemplated the words of the others, and the newcomer whom he recognized from reports. He smell bacta on her, but even yet there were the stains of raw battle. He flashed her a genuine smile, one of warm welcome.

 

“Darth Tyra, you stood alone against what broke all the nightsisters and turned the tide of battle before the very gates of the Temple. I would raise her, Dark Lord, as a champion of this world.”

[Vorin Blackmorne]

Vorin stared into the dirt-flecked boots of the Dark Lord. A small tendril of ice stained the ground with crimson as it slipped from the void of Bloodletter. He had listened closely to the words of the Lady, most of the words uselessly diffuse about the core of what she had to say. She was Dark Lord, but she appeared to flower the former with decrepit praise, as if she needed to appease any who had stirrings of rebellion. It did not smell of strength. It had the air of an Empire on the verge of collapse. The Sith Lord’s voice was low, gravelly, and calm.

 

“It would be a lie that soured the tongue, to say I have no aspirations for the post you now hold, Dark Lord.”

 

There was a murmuring, scraping, laugh that skittered across the ground, forming from the voidless shape of Bloodletter. It was a gleeful anticipation, icy and manic, reflected in the steel eyes of the Sith Lord. Those sulpheric yellow eyes seemed to glow as he brought his gaze from the Dark Lord’s boots to her face, sizing her up. It was for but a moment, but it was as though he was tasting her blood.

 

A smile came instead, overcoming the predatory pull that the Dark Side set into his heart, dragging him always like the heart of the Maw. The tension bled from the room, and the void that had been Bloodletter dropped into cold steel within its sheath, harmless and no longer wielded.

 

“But the Court of Madness has made its pledge, and I will not the ties that bind our Empire.”

 

Vorin bowed his head, the whitened hair spilling from his shoulders, lightly bound by a scrap of bloodsoaked cloth

 

“Hail, Dark Lord.”