Fallen Empires -- An Old Republic Era adventure (Star Wars)

Skylah

Your breath comes in ragged gasps, shoulders slumped at this sudden resolution. Still, you flash Brenby a grin of beaming gratitude. He's not facing you, but he'll notice, you're sure.

As you move, your foot kicks an object on the ground. You glance down — your lightsaber! You snatch it up, running your hands over it like a long lost friend, fingers curling around its long grip.

"Jyte took this from me, before," you tell Imperius.

"It does look like it would suit your style," Imperius decides.

"Yeah, it's based off of my mom's," you say. You turn to look at the results of Avress's duel with Jyte. Your eyes are pulled away from the Sith Apprentice's sad form on the ground to settle on the sight of Avress and Elra.

Oh, wow. That escalated quickly!

Elra has her arms flung around Avress's neck, kissing her industriously. The Jedi seems helpless to do anything but hold her close and kiss her back, strong arms wrapped around the Pantoran woman like she's something rare and precious.

"She always did like them strong and serious," Keel says, amused, as he sidles up beside you.

"Well that works out then," you decide, still grinning.

"If you say so." Keel glances up the hill as he says this, and you follow his pointed gaze. Amira Rist is looking on from a little ways up, taking in the scene as she climbs carefully down toward you all.

"I have no idea what I'm going to tell her master," you hear Amira say in tones of mild despair.

"I think it's cute!" you say in a stage whisper.

Amira bites down on the length of her index finger as she glances your way, a nervous tic you haven't seen from her so far. "I doubt he'll think so. Assuming he's... well enough for that to be a concern." She moves past you, heading in Avress and Elra's direction.

"My master would not have killed him this quickly," Brenby says from behind you.

You crane your neck up and back to look at him. "Can you let him go, then? Since you're like, in charge or whatever?"

There's a pause. You're trusting him again, you both realise, and this time he has much more power over the situation even than he had when you first met. Finally, Brenby says, "I can."

You turn around to fling your arms around him briefly. He goes rigid at the gesture, but at least doesn't shove you off. "We really need to work on that," you tell him.

Avress seems to have noticed her audience. Coming up for air, she looks at Amira, face flushing dark green with deepest mortification. "... Jedi Knight Rist! I... I didn't realise you were here." There's a note of panic in her voice.

"Indeed not, Padawan," Amira says. She's had time to take her finger away from her mouth and adopt something a little more stern and authoritative. "It is good you're unharmed."

Elra, reading the mood, gives an exhausted sort of laugh, leaning up and kissing Avress on the cheek before stepping away from her.

You glance between the two Jedi, the tension of the situation getting to you after all this. "Brenby says we can go get Jorden!" you blurt out. That makes both Amira and Avress look at you. "He says Jorden should be alright!"

"... Alive, I said," Brenby corrects.

You wince. "Brenby says he's alive!" you say. Beside you, Imperius winces.

One of the soldiers who'd been shooting at you moments before steps up. He addresses Brenby with the sort of respect usually reserved for dubiously-tamed nexu. "... My Lord?" he asks, uncertain.

"We have a truce with the Jedi," Brenby says. The soldier freezes up for a moment, clearly not liking this much. Brenby's voice takes on an air of menace. "Was I unclear?"

"No, my Lord!" the soldier says. He salutes.

Well, you're sure this will go fine.

==========

You'd worried that, even under truce, going back to the insurgent base would be stressful and hideously awkward. This is because, sometimes, you're actually pretty smart.

You flinch away from the hard stares, even as Brenby's presence seems to ward off any potential violence. "So, we're not killing them this time, my Lord?" Corporal Dee, Brenby's aide, is at least still seemingly chipper, even if she's obviously confused by all this.

"We aren't," Brenby confirms, leading the way confidently through dim hallways and past many glaring people with blasters. Avress is right on his heels, eager to confirm her master is really alright. Amira brings up the rear, nerves from before hidden back away behind Jedi calm. The Pantorans walk in between, ahead of her and behind you.

"Make sure no one disturbs us," Brenby orders Dee, coming to the door to his master's private chambers. He slides the door open like he owns the place. The first room is about what you expected. Some shelves with shady Sith things on them, strange equipment, a full-sized holocomm setup. Brenby ignores all of these, heading for one of several doors branching off of this room.

The door slides open as he keys in the code, and you instantly recoil from what's inside. A harsh, antiseptic scent drifts out from a place of durasteel surfaces and what almost looks like medical equipment. Except, medbays don't have this much of an aura of darkness and pain hanging over them.

This is a torture chamber.

"Master!" Avress pushes ahead, running for the body strapped down to a table inside. "Help me get him free!" she snaps at Brenby. To your surprise, he doesn't argue.

"Calm yourself, Padawan," says a quiet voice from within, not unkindly. You feel a surge of relief — Jorden really is still here. You didn't leave him to die when he told you to go with Brenby.

You have things you'd like to say to him still, of course, like apologising for having lost his lightsaber in the ruins. But the horrible room isn't so big, especially with Avress and Brenby already inside and Amira standing in the doorway. So you back off, awkwardly waiting outside with Keel, Elra, and Imperius.

Out here, you hang back awkwardly, most of your concentration going to trying your best not to eavesdrop, edging slowly away from the doorway. You become aware of a familiar chiming sound, and begin patting your pockets for a personal holocomm unit. At this point, you realise it's coming from the full-sized unit behind you, a rounded, table-like apparatus up against one wall. Without thinking, you've already hit the answer button on the control panel.

Immediately, Brenby pushes his way out of the torture chamber, hissing: "No!" It's too late.

A figure flickers to life in blue-cast monochrome. A tiny humanoid woman as short as you are, wrapped in ostentatious robes, face covered by an ornate mask that hides everything but her eyes. These last fill the eyeholes without visible pupils or sclera, faintly luminous even through this projection. Brenby freezes in the doorframe, very much not wanting to enter into the holocomm's pickup range, where this woman could see him.

You're every bit as rooted in place, unable to do anything but stare at the masked woman, a nervous grin spreading over your face. "Uh, hi?"

"You aren't Lord Myre," the woman says. She has the sort of posh Dromund Kaas accent that your pa'ma does. The kind of perfect diction that comes from having it beaten into you until however you'd spoken Basic before is nigh physically expunged from your mind.

"No, no, I'm definitely not," you say. You don't like the way she looks at you, somehow, despite not being able to see her face. It's like being a rodent in front of a predatory bird preoccupied with whether it's hungry or not. "I"m, uh... Skylah."

"Do you know who I am?" asks the woman. There's an odd, artificial quality to her voice, beyond just the comm static. It goes a little tinny at the extremes of her range, whenever her mocking lilt swoops up too high. On her belt, you notice what is clearly a hinged saberstaff, currently folded.

You have a good idea of who this is, and it makes your heart sink just thinking about it. "Yeah, uh... probably I might," you say, voice sheepish.

Darth Shaed, self-styled Dark Lord of the SIth, throws back her head and laughs, an unhinged cackle that sends a shiver down your spine. "Oh, very cute. Is Myre dead?"

"A bit," you admit. "Well, no. He's a lot dead."

"And what do you imagine I'll do to the one who killed my servant?" Shaed asks, voice still playful.

"Uh... honestly I'll pass on imagining that?" Imperius buries her face in her hands. From the corner of your eye, you see Amira hovering nearby, ready to intervene if this all goes bad. "Like it's just going to just boil down to 'killing them horribly', right?" Your mouth just keeps going, your very real fear of a woman who you know to be a dangerous psychopath with a possible grudge against your family actually making it harder to stop.

Shaed pauses, spearing you with her uncanny gaze. "You said your name is... Skylah?" It's not quite a question — she's turning the information she already has over in her head, trying to rule out the horrible suspicion that she's increasingly sure might be true. "Just who are you, little girl?" Shaed's voice is abruptly sharp, piercing.

Article:

What do you tell her?

[ ] Tell Shaed the truth
[ ] Lie unconvincingly
[ ] Throw Shaed off her game on purpose