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

Skylah

You stare at the hologram of Darth Shaed, heart pounding in your chest. Who are you? That's a dangerous question, under the circumstances. You don't want a murderous dark lord taking out old grudges on you. "I'm, uh, you know. Just passing through!"

Shaed stares, voice scathingly incredulous. "Just passing through?

"Yeah, that's what I just said. Are you okay? You know, because of your apprentice."

Shaed pauses in whatever she was about to say. "Am I--" It takes her a moment or two to find her footing again in the face of your genuine apology. "Of course I am, he was my apprentice, nothing more sentimental than that!"

"Oh," you say, shrugging as if you don't understand the dynamic she's describing at all. "That's sad."

"What on Korriban are you talking about?" Shaed demands.

"It's sad," you insist. "Everyone should have people who care about him. I didn't like him much, but no one actually seems upset that he died. So! That's sad. Seems kind of lonely."

"I do not have time for this," Shaed mutters, squeezing her eyes shut for a long moment. "Tell me what happened to Lord Myre."

You shrug. "Well, uh, the ruins kind of collapsed on top of him. Like, all the ruins."

This draws her attention fully. A wild fixation that does nothing to diminish her volatile, predatory aura. "My relic?"

"Everything down there got buried," you say. "Sorry!"

She seems to go perfectly still for a long moment. Then you notice that she's trembling slightly, a terrible, agitated energy running through her tiny frame, building and building toward some terrible end. When it finally reaches the inevitably bursting point, she lets out a savage, piercing scream, hurling a saberstaff that is suddenly in her hands, snapped open and lit. You see the blade scything through away from her, sailing out of pickup range of the holocomm. Shaed is briefly bathed in a shower of bright sparks, before the weapon flies close enough for her to snatch it back out of the air. She turns back to you, breathing hard, shoulders heaving up and down with furious exhilaration. "Girl!" she says, in between savage breaths. "Girl, you do not want to cross me."

"Yeah, probably not!" you agree, heart very much in your mouth. "You... you seem busy. Maybe I should go."

"I know someone whose mother was named Skylah," Shaed says. Oh no. "It's Mirialan. You don't remind me of her, though."

"I don't remind a lot of people of a lot of things," you agree, uncertain.

She stares at you for another silent second. "I never knew how she could put up with that Lavaeolus woman." Oh no. Shaed continues: "Honestly, anytime I was near that Jedi, I just wanted to hurt her until she'd hopefully shut up. That one, you do remind me of."

"Right," you say, decidedly wincing. "Well, I guess that makes sense."

"Do not meddle in my affairs again. And make no mistake, if I discover that you're concealing my prize from me? I will find you, and Nyx will not be able to save you all the way out here." She lets that hang for a few seconds more, luminous, inhuman eyes boring into yours. Then she hangs up.

You cringe, turning slowly to face the others. Everyone is out of the torture chamber now, and is looking at you. Keel seems outright horrified. Brenby is just slumping in defeat. "She was going to find something out eventually," he mutters. You can tell that he's worried, even if Darth Shaed's baleful attention is not yet turned on him.

Jorden is supported by Avress and Amira. He's even more tired than the rest of you, sporting numerous small injuries and what look horribly like electrical burns. His eyes are fully alert as he looks at you, though. You shift uncomfortably under that gaze. "She said 'Lavaeolus," he says.

"Yeah," you admit. "She kind of did. It's, uh... my name. One of them. My last name!"

He looks at you, eyes drifting down to your lightsaber, with its distinctively moulded grip. You can imagine him piecing together various strange things about you. "'If someone just gives her a chance at the right time,'" he says, quoting you from earlier. You'd been offended by his characterisation of Sith as slaves of the Darkside.

Avress frowns. "Master?"

He keeps looking at you, frowning in a way that has nothing to do with his injuries. As though thinking of something distasteful that he doesn't want to fully give voice to. "Master Lavaeolus did not part ways with her... companion from her youth, did she? The Sith."

You fidget in place, caught between guilt at his injuries, frayed nerves from Darth Shaed's parting threat, and an almost irrational irritation at his expression as he talks about your family. "Just because they're both women doesn't mean you can't say 'wife'!"

"This... explains a great deal," you just barely hear Brenby murmur into the silence that follows. You're the only one who notices him. Jorden stares. Avress stares. Amira sighs. Imperius starts laughing, which is pretty rude, because you weren't even remotely joking!

It's a moment before Jorden can bring himself to respond: "That is so far away from what is concerning about this, I don't even know where to begin."

You cross your arms. "They're fine. There's nothing concerning about Pa'ma." Well, not usually, anyway.

Avress looks torn between shock and outrage, but Amira cuts in, thankfully. "We can discuss this later, when we're all somewhere else." She looks around meaningfully. These are not welcoming surroundings. "These people are abiding by Brenby's orders not to harm us for now. We owe him all our gratitude, but I would sooner not test that further, if possible."

Brenby nods once in acknowledgement. "A good idea."

Jorden nods as well after a moment of thought. "I require medical attention. And we all do need to get to safety."

You let go of your outburst. They're right. "I'm sorry, I lost your lightsaber in the ruins," you tell Jorden. You offer your own. "Do you want another one?" You can't very well give him Imperius's. That would feel wrong.

"No, child," he tells you. "I only hope it served to keep you safe through this ordeal." He means it, you think.

"Yeah, it did," you say, slumping in relief. You don't want to give your lightsaber up again, so soon after getting it back. "Thanks."

You linger back behind the group for just a moment, giving Brenby a quick hug again. He's not coming with you all, of course. This time, he feels you slip something into his hand — the holocron. "Don't let the scary Sith lady catch you with that," you caution him.

Brenby nods. Away from other eyes, he raises a slow hand, laying it against your back to return the gesture almost cautiously. Imperius has the good grace to turn away. "I may have to leave the planet, sooner rather than later. She isn't a woman I want to challenge yet."

"Let me know before you go?" you ask. "I want to say goodbye, at least."

"We'll see," Brenby says. Hopefully, that's a yes.

==========

The subsequent days pass in a blur, in part because you spend a lot of them asleep. Jorden and Amira are able to prevail on the Tyrost government for aid. They're in the awkward position of having told the Republic that the Imperialist insurgency was no longer a problem and that there were no Sith left on the planet at all, which both Jedi Knights have independently confirmed to be false. As a result, they put you all up for the time it takes to recover, including Keel and Elra. You're also finally getting your ship repaired, by people who know what they're doing.

Once you're lucid enough, it's time to take care of something a little awkward, but nonetheless important.

"I was going to, I was going to!" you say. You're just coming back to the room you've been given, already being nagged as soon as you step through the door.

X2-L4 gives a deeply skeptical series of beeps, managing to give you a critical look despite only having a single large camera lens and some sensors for a face. He's mean like that. Still, you had given the astromech a tight hug the moment you'd been reunited, much to X2's disgust.

You set the drink you left to get on a nearby bedside table, crossing the room to the holocomm unit mounted in the wall. It's a small chamber, and everything in it has that cold, black-brushed, triangle-heavy quality that all former-Imperial architecture seems to have. You got clearance for this particular call already, which is good. It's not such a cheap thing, maintaining calls over the kind of distances you're going to now. You key in a complex sequence of characters, telling the holocomm to make a call all the way to Empress Teta, a city planet all the way within the edge of the Deep Core.

Then, call placed, you retreat to the bed, where you flop down cross-legged and retrieve your cup of hot chocolate. You wait for the call to connect, suppressing a yawn. It's quite early in the morning here — you called once without checking the time difference first, and you won't make that mistake again.

"I would caution you against unwise candor," Imperius says. "News of our... situation is liable to cause more alarm and confusion than it is to do anyone any good."

You hold the warm cup in both hands, blowing the fluffy raft of mallow paste around the dark surface. "I don't know. They deserve to know something."

"It's your life, not theirs." Imperius perches on a nearby chair, one leg crossed over the other. It's disconcerting when she pretends to interact with real objects like that. "You don't need to answer to anyone about your choices."

"Well, yeah, that's true," you say, "but I'm gonna let them know that I'm alive, and okay, and how many ghosts I have in my head, if that's like... more than none." Even if you didn't want to do that, Amira knows, and she can certainly tell your mom if you don't.

Before Imperius can respond, a figure flickers into existence, projected onto the floor in front of you. The one who answers your call could hardly be more different in appearance and bearing than Darth Shaed had been. A tall, slender Mirialan woman, dark clothing simple and unpretentious. Her bearing and scarred features give off a brooding intensity that seems to threaten at any moment to veer toward violence. Upon seeing who it is that's called her, though, her single fierce eye softens, and the hard line of her mouth twitches up into a fractional smile. "Little one. You're on Tyrost."

"Hi, Pa'ma!," you say, grinning back. "Yeah, I made it all the way to Tyrost. Sorry it's been a while. Things have been pretty busy!"

Nyx nods. "Your other mother is out. She'll be home soon, though, if you have time to wait."

"Yeah, I have time." This call isn't on your credit, after all. You can't help but add, completely honestly, "It's really nice to hear your voice."

Nyx tilts her head in that inscrutable way of hers, the only tell on an otherwise unmoving face that she's processing new information. "What's wrong?"

Well, damn. It was too much to hope you'd hide that there was something, wasn't it? You still don't want to have to explain about the big stuff more than once, and it can wait until your mom is here too. There is still a lot on your mind, though.

Looking at her, you have a sudden memory of being very young, of curling up on her lap and confiding in her about the various small woes of a happy childhood. One clumsy finger tracing the length of the lightsaber scar that slices down from the bridge of her nose to her jaw, disrupting ceremonial tattoos as it goes. You're not that little girl anymore, and your problems aren't anywhere so simple these days. Still, her steady, deep voice speaks of safety to you on a deep level. Telling her about some of what's been bothering you might help, before you get bogged down in ghosts and Dark Lords.

Article:

What do you talk to you pa'ma about before your mom arrives? This will help Skylah cope with something difficult that's been playing on her mind.

[ ] Taking a life for the first time
[ ] Nearly being killed by Sith
[ ] The way Lord Myre's soldiers just dropped everything to follow Brenby after Jyte died