Chandrila

[Montjoy]

The harlequin sat, or rather perched on the edge of the transport ship’s meager seating as the haunting embrace of hyperspace yawned into a starburst that narrowed into simple points of light. Before them hung Chandrila, an emerald jewel dangling alone upon a spread of dark canvas. The Kaz Ampercat had been diverted onto the Hydian and from there by direct Imperial order until the crown jewel of Northern Dependencies itself. The Devorian girl turned a smile towards Piotr, her lilting, soft accent twisting the words into a playful tone.

 

“The Jedi and the rebellion has indeed won… But the nature of sentience itself has not changed.”

 

Roncevaux flashed in the reflected light, the nyix alloy glittering blue as the Harlequin flipped the poignard from hand to hand.

 

“The line separating good from evil, Jedi from Sith, passes not through governments, or classes, or political parties—but right through every heart.”

 

The girl’s dark eyes seemed to grow bright from an internal, white flame. The air about them became fresh, as if passed through a grove of sweet-smelling Laurval-trees, taking with it a spiced nostalgic warmth. She seemed older as if by decades, in soul alone.

 

“So yes, we did win. The Sith have lost control. For now. The nature of sentience is that evil rises again, even from the ranks of the self-proclaimed good.”

 

The blade stilled, the warmth spreading from it with the sparkling, reflected light of Chandrila. These next words were spoken harder, with an edge found only in complete faith.

 

“For the Imperial Knights, from the highest Lords to us lowly Harlequins, our ‘Rebellion’ is never done. We prepare.”

[Montjoy]

The Harlequin took the measure of the noble son’s words, the fire alighting her hazel eyes implacable. Did he truly not know the weight of what was at stake? Her words were soft, yet held a stern conviction.

 

“I’m not sure you’ve been exposed to enough of these Force Shenanigans, Piotr, to truly judge.”

 

Reaching across the Kaz Ampercat’s loading bay, she held the glittering Roncevaux towards him, and from the spice-smelling metal crawled a scene, pulled from a broken, sterile world. Twisted, broken buildings, the former heart of an industrial empire shattered and extracted in volcanic toil.

 

A strange, foreign heartbeat had replaced it. Each pulse bringing with it a flood of agony and terror. The lifeblood of a world stricken of its population in a single day. The crystalized horror of flesh devoured and life absorbed, from that of the smallest microbacteria, to that of women and children; their pain swelling into the cabin as they tore their own flesh to devour it as an ouroboros, driven mad by the heartbeat of the revel.

 

Jedi, younglings, apprentices falling with the world in its danse macabre. Fighting, but losing to the atrocity at the heart of the storm. Fierce, hungry eyes stared from the center of the vision as it collapsed back into the glittering Roncevaux. The stench of a dying world, of rot and sulphur, cloyed at their senses, trying to drive its madness into their flesh.

 

“Sheog the Mad. One Sith Master, a single Sith, destroyed the planet Sullust in a single day. It’s entire population and numerous forces arrayed against him. Gone.”

 

Montjoy breathed out a sigh, and the demonic traces of the vision burned away in white fire. The ship shuddered as it touched down, and she smiled at Piotr, sharpened teeth gleaming in the dazzling sunlight as the access hatchway yawned open.

 

“The war between good and evil does not simply involve political factions, of one religious order or another. We stand in the gap, fighting so no more shenanigans wipe a planet from existence.”

[Montjoy]

“The fight against sentient nature is a fight against the divine, true. Evil is always lurking, corrupting. Passions unbound into degeneracy, the corruption of Sin. It’s a complex fight, and an even more difficult debate.”

 

The Harlequin smiled ruefully as the two of them walked past the elegant façade of a party in full swing, the smell of fine wine on the air. She could taste the excesses of gluttony and it wrinkled her nose with revulsion.

 

“As for the fight against the Sith themselves, we strive to protect the innocent. You may one day return to Cardia and your noble life, but I trust the exposure to such a fight, that against corruption itself, will leave such a mark on you that you cannot simply give it up, no matter how hopeless it might currently feel.”

 

Their names announced, one with far less grace; a sting to her pride that had never truly faded despite the repetition of it across a hundred worlds. The reality remained as an unhealed sore, ever painful; she would never truly fit into the society she had pledged herself to. Always second fiddle to a second son, nothing beyond the child of a whore, the distasteful much upon their bootheel-

 

Brenna breathed in a lungful of the spiced air, and centered herself, draining the deeper hue that had risen to stain the orange of her flesh. Pride was a sin. A servant, a slave, there was no better way to move unseen. But at this time, the hundred scornful eyes that drilled into her seemed to burn away her composure. Her pulse quickened into a rapid pounding that filled her ears. Her widening eyes found those of Raphanel, the current Lord Commander of the order, a man she had only met through reputation, and she grabbed her apprentice’s arm and hauled him hurriedly to the Warden’s side. Being of short stature, she stared up at the Chandrilian, her pounding heart driving the two large dark spots of her hornbeds into a shallow purple. Her voice seemed horse, raspy, not her own

 

“Lord-Commander, we are at your service”

[Montjoy]

Montjoy stepped back from the embrace returning the kisses as was custom. The Lord Commander had always been an accepting soul, even to the oft-cursed Harlequins and for that the Devaronian was thankful. She gave him a rueful smile, one that held little joy beyond that which a façade requires. She spoke to her apprentice with an equal tone that carried a gentle firmness

 

“We stand in the gap between the innocents and those horrors who would prey upon them. Give a few months working with us peasants, perhaps your ivory towers will grow tarnished and your lotuses rotten within your mind.”

 

She pulled a chair out for the man, as nimbly as the highest paid Valets, a face she had worn often, and watched him sit. The Harlequin took up her seat with a trained nonchalance, her posture a careful patchwork to not offend those about her in higher office about her. her manners could not be too refined, or the nobles would feel it out of place. Brenna let the conversation play between the two, her commander and her apprentice, her eyes wandering across the crowd, her face holding no emotion. She cared little for table games and diplomacy, she was more comfortable in the field.