Log:Sith: Dragonslayer

Dragonslayer

OOC Date: March 3, 2025
Location: Fountain Palace, Hapes
Participants: Alys Zapal, Ben Solo

The Sith invasion of the Hapes Star Cluster has ground on for three weeks. Multiple large battles and countless smaller skirmishes had taken place, and to the surprise of none, civilian traffic to the throneworld of Hapes Prime had become heavily scrutinized. In the void, 45 capital ships of the Queen's Own Royal Navy- distinctive Battle Dragons, backed by the predatory profiles of Nova cruisers- held a magnificent defensive formation, while squadrons of sleek Miy'til fighters patrolled the system, challenging approaching craft in an endless search for spies and smugglers. Still, a planet was an impossibly large thing to watch, and with the Hapan navy unwilling to break formation for fear of a sudden attack, there were all too many ways in which enterprising and unwelcome guests could find their way onto the surface of the ever-light world of Hapes Prime.

However, the largest ships in the system were not Hapan. Notable by its unusual profile was a bulbous MC80 cruiser identified by its transponder as the *Ascendancy*, while the dead hulks of various ships from old wars hung in space as enormous trophies. Among these was an old Imperial I star destroyer, joined by the shattered remains of a Sith Empire Victory II, newly added.

Interlopers were aided by circumstance, as a fantastic gala was to begin that day, which brought in yachts, transports, and freighters from across the system, more than doubling the typical traffic in and above the capital city. The worlds of Hapes were planets without true night, as the density of stars and radiant nebulae that swathed the spacelanes left the skies painted vibrant shades of pink, purple, and pale blue at all hours. When the spinning world turned toward one of the less-luminous quarters of its sky, the natives agreed it was time to sleep, which took the place of a typical "night".

Twilight was the present hour. The skies over the royal palace with its tapered walls, graceful buttresses, and soaring spires had darkened to rose, purple, and royal blue above manicured gardens and the invisible energy shield that warded the palace grounds. Treachery and political murder were constants within Hapan culture, and their precautions against assassins were impressive; highly refined chemical sensors would detect explosive compounds of airborne toxins in even miniscule quantities. Motion and heat sensors as well as remote surveillance could be spotted by a keen and trained eye. Per'Agthra, the so-called Fountain Palace of the Queen was perched high above the capital city below, atop cliffs that cascaded with falling water.

Within, the luminaries of Hapes Prime had assembled for their courtly rituals and grand, ostentatious displays of solidarity. No doubt countless schemes were hatched, but the royal gala concluded without any dead bodies, drawn blood, or oaths of enmity; an underwhelming event by Consortium standards. The dizzying array of nobles, dignitaries, retainers, and bodyguards had gone their separate ways, leaving the Queen to retire to quarters escorted by guards and accompanied by a favored retainer, while the Royal Guard swept the palace yet again before going into twilight patrols.

Alys hates parties. She hates galas and celebrations. She especially hates when she's tasked with infiltrating one of these things, because it means she can't dress comfortably and has to be stuffed into something quote-unquote elegant. In this instance, it's a floor length dress the same shade of purple as her eyes with a daringly high slit on the right. By dress, she fit in for the party. By actions ... not so much. She hovered around the edges, talking to as few people as possible, and was just menacing despite her clothes, hair and makeup. She cleans up pretty nice, if she only knew how to smile in a way that wasn't a rictus.

The gala ended, and Alys stepped into a dim hallway and vanished. Invisible to all save other Force practitioners good enough to sense her, she moves through the hallways, her heels abandoned in an alcove for extra silence, padding towards the Queen's chambers, unaware she's about to have an Encounter.

In the past week, Alys' dreams have shifted. No longer is it the endless, monolithic, darkening crystalline path into the stars; now the shadowed dreamscape leads to a stylized version of the Hapan throne. A throneroom with a different array of bodies, of blood, every time she reaches it. When Zapal strikes down the woman on that throne, their features match; as if she WERE the Queen of Space France already.

Should she sit on the throne afterwards-- and what self-respecting Sith Acolyte would not-- she arrives anew to assassinate 'herself' once more. The dead accumulate, the self threatens to dissociate, and what would ring as some as a cycle of power through death... tones as trauma in other ears, in rattled mind. The Rise and the Fall-- it's an ancient rote, a tale that reaches out past even known history. It's a circle than Ben Solo knows all too well.

To slip past the blockade and onto Hapes itself is as smoothe a process with the Infiltrator as it would be with a TIE Silencer, Solo's ship left secreted in the forested outskirts with the Ronin taking some pleasure in the resultant jaunt to the palace. It's up the rocks lining that magnificent waterfall, along sheer cliff face and past roaring water from there, to hop over the railing of a luxurious balcony with a graceful, smooth leap.

The guard watching that exterior doesn't double take-- doesn't even glance as Solo strides past on silent footfalls, cloaked in the Force. The tumult of the party is a mask, more than a masque-- a salve on deep paranoia, deeper terror, and grief from losses past... and future. His mind steady, his course true, Ben connects fully with that energy and nurtures his own center-- and its, by consequence.

Ben pauses in the Throne Room, reaching out to the minds of guard and monarch alike, sensing their intentions for Sith infiltration at this early hour. But it's the Force Sensitive assassin who moves to breach the palace that draws his attention in the end, a familiar mind. He's in the right place.

His black and white leather hood up over his features, his coat's hem trailing on the air behind him, a steady but purposeful step takes the reputedly redeemed Ronin through the posh corridors along Zapal's approach-- seeking to force her to confront /him/ before the targets. And away from an easy strike at them in tandem.

Alys moves silently through the corridors, trying to focus on her mission and not the ceaseless dreams. Ever since her encounter with Solo, and the advent of this mission in particular, it's like every cycle is a trip into a nexus. Like she's on a vision quest. The only reason these haven't ruined her is exactly how comfortable she is with her own death. Still, night after night of killing oneself is enough to shake almost anyone.

She slips through the halls, her mental map of the palace guiding her. She reaches under the skirt of her dress, pulling free the paired vibrodaggers that she had strapped to her thigh in such a way that they weren't visible. She clutches them in her hands as she slows her pace as she gets closer.

Something still feels...off.

The dimmed corridors are nearly vacant now, with most of the palace retiring for the lustrous Hapan evening. Almost peaceful, if the underlying thrum of fear, of war, were not a resonating reality. In the midst of that unease, the tremulous variance of forced normality, beneath the shadow of the Dark Side-- a light shines, warm and inviting, a cobalt glow. Soft, suffusing, but not weak; its strength a distant melody, a surging note that surrounds and salves the terror.

Perhaps it even reaches Alys' darkness-deafened senses... perhaps even moments before she realizes she is not alone in the corridor, that a familiar hooded Jedi stands at the next intersection, already looking right at her. This would arrive moments before an outstretched, black gloved hand seeks to relieve her of her twin daggers, to abruptly wrench them from her grasp by way of the Force.

"And here you are, their electroguillotine. Inspiring." It's utterly unsurprised, but dripping in sarcasm. Hearkening back to the assessment he leveled on Zapal on Mygeeto; what does /she/ want, this carefully directed weapon? This Dark Side tool.

One moment, she's slipping through the corridors alone. A shadow of impending death. The next, she's confronted by him. Again. Her slim blades are removed from her hands with relative ease. Ben is very good at telekinesis, and Alys is surprised. Once again, he's popped up out of nowhere. Fixated on her. Her teeth grind in annoyance. Unarmed now, she's a sitting duck. An easy target. Sure, she's quick and nimble, but there's no fighting back, because she was a fool and left her lightsaber with her normal clothes in her ship!

"Are you going to follow me to the ends of the galaxy!? What did I do to get your attention? Aren't there other Sith, stronger Sith, that deserve your scorn? Your ...pity!?"

She can feel the pity, and that's the one she really hates. She doesn't expect anyone to like her.

"I'm just an Acolyte. Lords and Darths seem more your speed, Solo. Or, what? You'll be ... more redeemed the more Sith you cut down? I'm unarmed. Easy prey now. Or are you just going to hit me with more mind games?"

She's mouthier this time, it seems.

The vibro-cells in the daggers sizzle, and vibe no more. The implements of death by stabbing are waved away, discarded with reflexive ease into the corridor's recycler. "I'm here tonight for the Hapans; that they sent you is just a happy congruency." The Will of the Force.

"... Or a serious miscalculation, depending on how one views it." /Does/ Ben Solo pity Alys? It's easy to read it that way-- but pity is easy. Pity, sympathy, these can exist even when a Jedi Shadow mercilessly purges those tainted by, drawn into the Darkness. Empathy is harder.

"Had they sent a Lord, it would be a Lord I faced in this palace." But as they're starting to establish... for all the bravado and talk of dark power, that's seldom the modus operandi for her Order, is it? "If I wanted you dead, you would be dead; but the Hapans may not feel the same." And Solo is keenly aware their time here is on a very different sort of timepiece than within the depths of forgotten crystal caves.

"You believe you had a better chance on Mygeeto?" Colour the Ronin unconvinced, but apparently finding some intrigue in Zapal's assessment. "You should flee. With me. For your own sake, if not the freedom of this Cluster." Beat. "You know the end of this cycle, how much you've already given up to feed it."

Surely his utter repudiation of the idea that death in service to the Sith yields -peace- in the end has driven her curiosity since that confrontation; it is a harsh reality, when such an end stands as sole solace.

"I at least had my lightsaber there," she mutters petulantly. "Faced you as a warrior. Here I'm in this foolish outfit. You took my only weapons." Only because she couldn't figure out how to hide the knives and her lightsaber in her dress. If she could have, she'd have the thing in her fist and damn the guards.

Her eyes start to narrow further, but instead she blinks with shock and incredulity. "Go -with- you? To what end? So your Rebellion friends can torture me for intelligence? So your Jedi friends can lock me away?" She sounds scornful, but her presence in the Force wobbles. Not out of temptation, but out of confusion. She should understand, but she doesn't.

"Did you?" Face Ben as a warrior. A dark brow arches inquisitively. It's possible he has a different take-- but it's not precisely an indictment of her choice on Mygeeto, either. As to his ends? That's a far more complicated equation.

"Look at me." She already is; but he means something deeper, something beyond stature, strength, obstacle. "My father wasn't even a bastard, and I killed him. An argument could be made, easily, that my mother's death is also entirely my fault. I've destroyed star systems." The list could go on; but they'd be here all night. "I meant what I said on Mygeeto; it is never too late, and you have not-- yet-- stained yourself with so much blood." Atrocity is seldom a thing best viewed in relative terms, but he's not -wrong-.

"There is real strength beyond your pain, a chance to build something -better-; not just for yourself, but for all those who will suffer in the Sith's unrelenting need for domination. For security that can never come from rage, tyranny, or death. If it were up to me, each of you so seduced would see this, embrace Balance, -thrive-. I would see you given another chance, taught another way; as even -I- was."

One gloved hand reaches out, but there is no wave of the Force with the deceptively simple, inviting gesture. As Alys wavers, Solo stands as a rock in the rapids, unconcerned with-- or even embracing-- the way that tumult, the course of fate and choice, have eroded him. Or from another perspective... reshaped him.

Whether for the hushed voices, the clatter of ruined daggers in a trash chute, or simply for the precise sweeping pattern of the Royal Guard within the Fountain Palace and the inevitable march of time, bootsteps can be heard in approach from upcorridor. Though the dim light is still ample for human eyes, in addition to the tall profiles of two armored figures, the beams of handheld lights cast cones of greater illumination before them.

Alys can hear the guards coming. She's not worried about them. Even without weapons she can probably manage enough to handle them and escape into the perpetual gloom of the Hapan night. The guards don't concern her one whit. Ben does. Not only because he could destroy her with the ease of one disciplining an unruly child. No, that extended hand has her fixation. What he's offering, can it be true? It has to be at least somewhat true. Despite his turn from the Dark, he's as strong as the stories say he was. Stronger, possibly. That's not the point though, is it? Balance. Peace. What are these things? She's not sure she even knows. The Sith way is of strife and burning blood. Of iron fists and -feeling-. Aryn told her once that hatred and rage weren't the only ways to the Dark Side, but those are the only things she really knows. That and pain.

Is there another path?

She shakes her head. "I ... I can't come with you. I'm....If they find out I'm even -thinking- of it, they'll kill me, but...," she says, drawing a breath.

"I'm...interested in hearing what you have to say."

She reaches into the bodice of her dress, pulling a commlink out, tossing it to the Ronin. "That's a direct line to my ship. If I survive this failure, you'll hear from me, and we can meet somewhere in secret. Away from...everyone."

Ben can hear the guards coming. He is worried about them; though not for his own sake, or even particularly for Alys'. It would be, after all, a relatively fair retribution should she fall there, under other circumstances. At her assertions, there's the subtlest trace of a smile; partly for her wavering certainty, for her desire to know more intensifying. Partly simply for another fact. "You do not yet understand the real power of the Force."

Even as it's spoken, the Ronin steps into a long shadow of the darkened hallway, drawing the concealing currents of said Force around himself, concealed from all but that tingling feeling at the back of Zapal's mind.

As the encounter ebbs, Solo slips in gracefully alongside those guards, murmuring on those flows of power, unheard but impossible to ignore. "You killed-- and disposed of-- an intruder seeking to assassinate your Queen. There may be more on the way; keep vigilant."

As for Ben? He'll lurk about long enough to see Alys out-- perhaps even tail her /to/ that ship.

Trust, but verify.