Consolidation Litanies of the Dark Side: Defiance

[Valia Muqai]

From Valia's perspective, all she did was simply free Kirki from her restraints. The gravity or consequences of such an act weren't on her mind as she was focused on one goal: escape. For she did not want to end up in the clutches of the Dark Crusade once more. She did not care how or where she'd go, all she wanted was to get get away. Nobody can stop her, she'd not allow it.

Otherwise, she'd make herself taste death once more.

Valia grimaced at the command that forced its way into her mind. Fighting between obedience or defiance, eventually making her choice by backhanding Kirki in the face. Even in Valia's current state, she was not entirely mindless or lost, not yet anyways. She refused to be commanded so easily.

Without another word, Valia rushed down the hallway to leave Kirki behind unless she follows. As she had done before, cutting down all those who dared fight against her with inhuman speed. Each dead 'marauder' gave Valia strength, it felt good, it felt satisfying. She did not notice any wounds on her body from blaster shots she had failed to block or dodge. One wound, a bleeding cut across her shoulder, was due to her grazing a piece of cut metal jotting out within the hallway's wall.

Valia would only stop once every marauder in the hallway was dead.

 

[Empor]

There was no stopping her.

Like a rabid beast, she cut through the troopers before they ever got to register her coming. Her blade swinging left and right, the stairs becoming a bloodfall, as more and more cut corpses barrelled down. The walls marked with evidence of the intense carnage.

Kirki stood at the very base of the stairway, passivelly observing the troopers descending, as Valia gradually left from her sight, reaching the top. Kirki's eyes burned with satisfaction. Her hand reached to the cheek still warm by Valia's backhanding. When many would feel anger by the act, Kirki could only trace pleasure in her veins. So far into her path of Defiance was Valia, her very sight had long entered redshift from any reason.

This was where Kirki thrived...

The witch knelt down over the piled dead. She caressed the white and orange plasteel armour of the dismembered troopers, as she slowly made her way up the stairs. Blood still warm by the fight, her naked feet embraced by the warmth, taking in the ecstasy of the End Times she had manifested upon Omwat, as it now entered a point of no return...

Her fingers traced a stain of blood on the wall. This was different than the rest. This wasn't polluted by faith, or hope, or duty....

No...

This was Malice bound in Red.

This was Valia's.

She brought her bloodied fingertips to her swollen lips, tasting it as her eyes rolled back....

She reached up, as her lips purred bewitching spells, further strengthening her diabolical incantations, now that she had Valia in her mouth; Her psyche subjected to her spells through no sound but the fabric of the Force itself, worming its way into her being through the fever of violence...

---

There was no counting the corpses that trailed Valia's path, as she made her way up the bunker. The higher she went, the more stiff the resistance. The troopers cared little for their own lives, each a sacrifice to her wrath. And then.... Finally...



The buzzing of the lightsaber halted the cacophony of blaster fire and screams. the figure was clad by a mist of black will and cloaked by feral malice. His face carrying not enough weight to even register.

"You...." his voice echoed. The very disturbance caused around him artificially twisting the vibration of his words, causing him to sound like the Dark Lord the false miscreation served.

"You have a heart drenched in Darkness... We should have known..."

His blade brought before him, as if to enter a stance yet indistinguishable by any a Lightsaber Form.

"You were no slave... You were a puppet... And now... Now, you die, as one."

The presence of the Dark Side overwhelmed the chamber. Pipelines cracked open, doors twisted and bent, while corpses shifted up, as if standing upright despite their lifeless state.

"Tell me... Do you fear Death?"

 

[Valia Muqai]

Time almost became meaningless in Valia's perception. All she could smell was burnt flesh and blood, all she could hear were their screams of pain or death wails and the singing of flesh caused by her lightsaber. Truth be told, Valia did not know what was happening other than it felt good to kill the Marauders and that she should keep going. On and on until they are all dead, they needed to die, her heart thirst with the desire for revenge for all that the Dark Crusade inflicted onto her, what they turned her into. Each fallen body quenched that thirst little by little as if she was a parched beyond belief finally taking a sip of water.

And she kept going, on and on, with no desire to stop. Until the cloaked figure appeared before her. Drenched in darkness, with a face too distorted and corrupted to even be recognizable to Valia. Even without the face, it's voice sounded all too familiar to Valia, and only fueled the anger already going through her.

"Me? Fear death?" Valia tilted her head, as if the question was some sort of complex riddle to be deciphered first.

Then she laughed. A dreadful sound full of bitterness, malice, and pain all in one.

"No, no.... I don't fear death. I begged for death, yet it does not want me. Perhaps... It even fears me, that's why."

 

[Empor]

The cloaked figure stirred. Valia's words not much as a response, but an invitation.



"I shall do as I ḑ̴͚̠̟̖͔̝͉̬̙͙̖̻͊̓̀͗̀͊̓̇̒̚͜͝ë̵͇̪̲́̀́̓́̈̍́̕ṡ̴̻̦̖͎̱̳̗̫͖̯͇̀̾̀̽͌̿͛͂͛̊̆̈́͘i̸̢͇̲͙̱̳̼̲͙̩̱͊̈́́̄̓̌̂̎̋ͅŕ̴̗͈̭̙͉͇̺̗̜̘̯̝̮̕̚͜ȩ̸̖̘̪̣͔͙̺̦͉̝̥̥͇̓͑͒̽̃͋̀͐̾͋͆"




His lightsaber spinning, as he enters a Makashi stance, bring the hilt before his shoulder, in a challenge to Valia.

In the background, far behind the dark figure, a large group of marauders flocked, each wielding a blaring blade.

"You will never reach them.... Sith... This, is where you perish." the figure proclaimed, before he reached out with his free hand, unleashing a powerful wave of unseen energy. Upon the shockwave's contact with Valia, her vision momentarily engaged by a blinding light, the kinetic strength of the wave itself capable to cast many a man against the wall.

The Marauders in the far distance rushing to the wounded shuttle, as if willing to evacuate the location.

---

The world shook, as the fabric of Realspace twisted and bled. The skies blazed with lightning, yet no stormclouds darkened the endless blue. The oppressive presence of something far too blasphemous and depraved loomed, drawing ever closer by the second, and the whole planet could feel its coming.

A light shined in the distance. A single blue line, descending from the sky in a trail of proton energy....



In the blink of an eye, the sky turned burning blue. Any who beheld the very source of the light had their eyes melted by the sheer strength of the Proton Bomb, while the long distance between them and the blast point hinted of few minutes before the shockwave eventually pass through...

"This is it..." the figure muttered. "Omwat burns."

 

[Valia Muqai]

Valia did not need any further invitation.

She cared not for the Marauders in the background, in that moment, she wanted the Dark Lord dead, to finish what was started on Karideph after so long and return to how everything was before. Valia desired nothing more than that, she was so close to achieving it, so close to finally escaping the chains that had bound her for years.

While the shockwave would have knocked back and pinned anyone else to the wall, Valia stood firm. Countering the wave of unseen energy with her own to keep herself from being knocked back, though she was still temporarily blinded by the light.

She reached out her own hand, channeling all the dark energy that she could through her fingertips. A powerful barrage of lightning shot out towards the figure.

 

[Empor]

The lightning burned a path of destruction across the polluted air, reaching like tendrils of black will to consume the figure.

It was then, when the opponent reached with the hand and shot lightning on his own, as if in utter ignorance of his clothes cast and burning by stray lightning chains. No, the warrior contested Valia's darkness with his own light of burning lightning, resulting to the forming of an embrium star inbetween, marking the point on which the two bound together, bleeding flame and sparks of Force energy, the orb of pure light balanced inbetween the two warriors.



"You are a fool! You had a choice. Now you sealed your fate in ignorance!!" she roared. Voice twisted and bent, corrupted to the Dark Lord's own tongue, as one of the Marauders behind the warrior turned, looking at the duel taking place. His hands curled into fists, as his mind flooded with determination.

"We do not die a victim!" the Duro snarled, reaching for his blade by the hip, beckoning the rest to join him in his charge.

"No!" A shout heard from beyond, to the shuttle.

More and more marauders ignited shoto lightsabers and rushed to the duel, swarming around Vallia, as they made ready to commence their charge.

"You die here, Darkling!" they taunted.

 

[Valia Muqai]

So twisted Valia's perception that the mere hue of the lightning were reversed in her eyes. Her foe spewing out the red lightning that her old oppressor had so painfully been known, whilst the light flowed from her fingertips. Unsurprisingly, and much to her continued frustration, she could not overpower the opponent as easily as she had hoped.

"I free myself from whatever wretched chains you've forced upon me!" Valia roared back at the warrior, full of anger and spite as she had always been. "No longer will I be your puppet. I am Roshia Chamiane, NOT your Valia Muqai!" she growled.

She glanced around herself, upon seeing the approaching Marauders and their shoto blades, Valia swiftly thought of a way to fight back against the incoming horde.

Valia clenched her hand into fist, though still continuing her stream of lightning, she sidestepped, her arm shifted, pointing at the crowd of approaching Marauders and redirecting the streams of lightning onto them as if she were tossing a ball with a string.

 

[Aola Cliyerslan Vilbolra]

Her eyes widened, seeing them circling the rogue woman. She had no time enough to shout, nor power enough to stop them on their tracks. Blades came out faster than she could register. Lightning twisted in the blink of an eye, in a moment of utter chaos and discord.

She was powerless...

Not because she could not act, but because of her pride. She chose not to. She chose not to kill, in hopes of bringing what she once saw as a lost soul, to her senses. How many times had the troopers warned her of this... How many times had the Sergeant Major cried out of what lurked within that infernal youth. She heeded none of it.

And now... It was not her, who paid the price.

It was them.

The stream of lightning hurled the Jedi Master almost instantly, as soon as she halted her own chain of Light, in a last ditch effort to stop the inevitable conclusion.

Her body crashed against the shuttle, while Troopers jumped out, rushing to form a circle around her. She felt dizzy.

By the time she looked back, the scattered bodies of the younglings littered the ground, each of them baring yet another mark of deadly lightning.

How foolish was she.... She had told them to rush onboard. She had instructed the troopers she would hold the Sith off for as long as it took, but she yet still hesitated killing, as if it was upon her the choice of who lived and who died this infernal day on Omwat.

I am Roshia Chamiane

The very words broke her then and there....

"Roshia?" she whispered in a trembling tone of sheer horror.

"What have they done to you?"

"We must go, General!" the troopers shouted, grabbing her by the shoulders and dragging her to the shuttle, while she simply froze, staring at what she had once known as a promising youngling, now being the very beackon that had brought the end to the siege of Omwat....

Roshia....

Roshia...

How far had she fallen....

"What have they done to you.... What have you done?"

She whispered as the blastdoor closed shut, denying her the view of the handful of troopers who chose to stay back, continuously firing at the woman in an attempt to keep her back, away from the fleeing shuttle....

Aola shook. Her bones freezing cold.

The seats intended for the younglings empty. And yet....

She sat there, a mockery of the Jedi Master she claimed to be....

The scream of desperation reverberated above the cacophony of the engines, pushing the shuttle higher in the atmosphere.

 

[Valia Muqai]

All it took was a brief, blinding flash to befell the incoming horde seeking to attack her. The scent of burnt flesh filling her nostrils, their deaths so quick that she practically heard no death screams from them. A perfect strike, she thought.

Yet, when she blinked. There were no corpses of the Marauders like she had expected. In fact, there were no Dark Crusaders at all.

Valia looked as if she had been doused in ice cold water. Utterly shaken by the sight before her, the corpses of the younglings scattered about with their flesh singed by lightning that had been from her hands. She met Aola's gaze and it was clear to the Jedi Master that she had broken out of whatever dark spell her mind had been under, for now.

Her mouth opened to speak, however no words came out, only tears streamed from her eyes. Valia felt she couldn't even breathe. Her hands shook as the weight of everything crashed all over her.

Searing pain erupted from specific points on her form, not from emotion, but from blaster fire having struck across her body as she had been too shocked to even block herself with a lightsaber. Valia cried out, from the pain of her wounds and the weight of her actions, from all she had lost. Now appearing like a tortured young soul rather than the formidable evil they had faced moments ago.

Valia no longer attempted to plead or even defend herself. She turned and ran back into where she had came with no direction planned other than to escape from the firing line and the gaze of the Jedi Master she had gruesomely betrayed.

 

[Empor]

The path to the bunker was paved with dismembered republic troops, scattered on the wake of her escape. Each moment was yet another step deeper into what could only be a most wicked spell. Their voices shattered into the twisted form they manifested, her senses corrupt by the influence of witchcraft so powerful it denied any access to what was real at the time.

Pitty the hound who sees the chains, ignorant whether it drags the chariot, or held by a leash...

The chorus of voices, screams and cries of those she slain, now returning to cast the blighted words of He she could not forget. A black will, looming over her every action, as if patient enough to wait the next time she fell to the very same spiral of foul deceit....

Defiance.

Chains do not release you from Death. Chains Bind you in Death. Free you, of Life.

The ground of the bunker stained by blood that laked around those she killed. The foul air dry, furthering the consolidation of what was truly, part of the hallucination, or the Nethergate openning through the very chest she once cut through...

Pain.

Every time she rushed past a carrion, she could feel the very cut that ended his life, as if it was yet another offering of her unknowing worship to the Black King that reigned below.

Three pieces is the toll, to walk the River. One of Heart, beating and drenched in Life.

Her chest bled. It was no blood. It was black ooze, sourced from the very point the blade had been driven in by her own hand. She could feel the cold metal, once again, as if it never left her body....

Three pieces is the toll, to walk the River. One of Heart, beating and drenched in Life.

The demonic chorus insisted. A lesson never learned, yet repeated all the same as if the course was predetermined, each of her acts of Defiance leading her ever closer to her predestination.

A flash of light.

Her ribs bursted in agony, as if torn off by an unknown force.... No... No, this could not be.

It was there, long now, where cortosis nested, yet it felt as if cut by the burning plasma. A wound never healed. A Death never Delivered....

Life....


Drenched in DEFIANCE.

The voices went silent. Then, in a moment of overwhelming discord and desperation, morphed into a stench too unbearable to inhale, sourced by the dozens fallen, yet refused a passage beyond the cages of broken flesh..... There, a moment of silence followed.... Before the horrific chorus, amalgam of the Dead and Dying, all speaking in infernal synchrony...


Do you wish to walk with Death? Or taste a Life of Torment, yet again?

 

[Valia Muqai]

Nothing made sense. Everything that she felt and saw was beyond what Valia's mind could comprehend within the moment. All she could do was keep running, as much as she could, no matter how much everything hurt. Covering her ears with her hands in a futile attempt block away the chorus of suffering unfolding around her. She could not bare to look at the fallen corpse of all the soldiers, Jedi, innocent souls, that she had so coldly murdered by her own hands. People that she considered her friends and allies in the darkest moment of her existence.

Her steps slowed as she felt the blade embedded within her chest. Stumbling as she rounded a corner within the corpse filled hallway. Even through the pain, all she could think of was fleeing, to run, and to escape. Somewhere, anywhere. Silence everything, to make the pain stop.

Then another burst of pain flashed across her chest. One so painfully familiar that it made her stop and her knees buckle as she clutched the area where the wound once was, when she had attempted to take her own life in defiance of the Dark Lord.

The sudden silence was no relief. It was as overwhelming as the chorus itself. Valia could only rest on her knees and weep.

"I don't know!" Was all Valia yelled out as an answer to the void.

"Why me?? Why did it have to me? Who are you? What had I ever done to you?" Valia desperately questioned into the void.

 

[Empor]

DEFIANCE​

A single word, clad in meaning far beyond mortal minds could comperhend. But Valia, in all her damnation, was no mortal no more. Her skin pale, her blood sticky, her breath cold.

COLD.....

In her cry of despair, amidst the reverberation of her own voice, she could hear; Count, even, the millions who fell to the sword and fire and proton carnage, unleashed from above. Blood, sinking deep below the surface, in a sow of Death...

DEFIANCE


The word frozen, as if cast from a place without time, from voices without being. That was the responce she received, as the hallway around her was usurped by a building cold, so much so that the very pain gradually faded into oblivion. Limbs giving up, as the muscle grew into stone, blood no longer flowing through to allow motion.

Cold.

And there, before her eyes, the darknes gathered, morphed and twisted, into the very same apparation, the foul entity that had presented itself to her in the Bogs of the Netherworld, now choosing to bring itself forth into Realspace, feeding in voracious famine onto unseen slaughter and continuous loss of Life, to preserve itself for barely few moments yet...

Three pieces is the toll, to walk the River. ​

The voices presistent. In a cacophony of pain, despair, lust and decay, the true meaning behind the chorus was naked of any and all sentiment....

Regardless of running, regardless of her will to resist, the entity had observed, like the inevitable light of Dawn, he spared no words of conviction, nor attempts of parley... Absolute. Cold. Unreachable....

Death himself. Or so the Shadow claimed... Her chest was weighting her down. Chains, hooked deep in her wound, the wound carved after her own plead of Death; A summoning, Dark and inevitable, yet to be unmasked for what it truly was, perhaps, too ignorant, or too Defiant to admit.

The chains led to the Shadow. The entity presented before her. Ethereal, unreal. Cold to the scent, yet unmade in touch.

Only through these three, will the shackles of Death weight you no longer.​

 

[Valia Muqai]

Defiance....

A word she had heard so many times and paid no heed to. It was a way to describe her will to resist submission, to resist the dark side. Even under the most gruesome torture that the Dark Crusade had inflicted onto her, she had never let go of the light, even when she was forced to dip within the darkness. An utterly venerable effort to some, an extreme annoyance to others.

Her sight caught a reflection of herself on the steel walls of the enforced barracks. Valia could not even recognize herself, when she looked down at her hands and arms, all she could see was some pale creature that bled darkness. What was she? What had she become? Questions that she may never gain an answer to.

Valia saw the shadows shift, watching it gain the vague shape of humanity, though it was anything but a human nor even a living being. Even the mere sight of it was foul, only adding to the chaotic storm of sounds and sensations already present that were overwhelming her senses every second.

"Who are you?!" She held a hand against her chest as she felt the weight intensify as if something was pulling her down. Practically ignoring the being's words to continue her questioning.

"Who are you?!" Valia repeated, screaming out the words with all the pain and rage she could muster. Ever slowly realizing that this foul creature was the source of her continued tortured existence. The price it wanted to cross the river though, she did not understand just yet.

 

[Empor]

The entity answered her question with silence. There was no point in mustering the power gained by the foul deed Omwat was subjected to, barely to redefine things she had yet to realize, or was too ignorant, or too defiant to acknowledge... No, he would do no such thing. Instead, the black shadow that composed the entity shattered, as if its form scattered by unseen, unfelt wind, the shadow flying into oblivion.

I am Fear​

A chorus followed. Not in tears, or cries or pleads, no... A whisper, formed by a thousand dying breaths, each felt cold and shattered, as they descended to the River most dark..

I am DEATH​

The hallway remained empty. Barren of presence, or Life. Her skin could feel the distancing, as whichever entity haunted her banished itself to the Void beyond the reaches of Realspace, leaving her alone, in an empty chamber of corpses and bloodletting. It was in this silence, she found herself in, the hollow sensation of her blood, sticky and cold, going through her lifeless body with enough zeal as if trying to give her the feeling of Life, which itself had long since abandoned her.

 

[Valia Muqai]

Valia felt desperate for an answer from the shadows formed entity, anything, yet it did not come. The silence persisted until she watched it fall apart like wind passing through smoke, and whatever foul aura it had becoming more distant by the second. Only leaving the vague whispers into her ears as its answer that sent a colder chill up her spine. She was beginning to understand a little more, though simultaneously remained ignorant, deliberately so as part of her shattered her mind preferred to bury the experience and never see it again.

Silence fell within the hallway. True silence that time, leaving only the sounds of sparking broken wire and the faint buzz of barely operational lights to accompany the fallen jedi.

Valia slumped against the metal wall, her head hanging low and closing her eyes. Once feeling powerful and energized now utterly drained mentally, physically, and spiritually. Her breaths were dragged, shallow and even as if the act was a struggle. The pain of her wounds still persisted, but she had no strength nor desire to seek any sort of remedy for them. Leaving herself to whatever fate that was left for her then.