How in Hell's Seven Circles were we going to get to Aelvedaar?

I blew a breath from between pursed lips, pondering as I moved quickly back toward the Dining Hall.

Wondering as I moved along about these weird links everyone seemed to be always having with each other, links popping up, being blocked, switching back and forth like rivers winding and looping within their floodplains.

Links popping up... similar to certain personalities of our acquaintance. One in particular, one who had inhabited Panthar's mind at some point, or had it been Phalomir's?

Some other disembodied Sith, Thoran, wasn't it?

I came to a halt, wondering if this idea had any fruit to bear.

But he had been inside Panthar... who was now acting mighty, mighty strange...

I let out another, deeper, sigh; one through which I strove to expel the last remnants of any misgivings from me. Moving along, I thought further.

And what about that imp-thing, Fido? What had he been blathering on about when he popped up in the shower Terrin and I had been sharing? I was too mad at the time to really listen; maybe Terrin caught all of whatever it was he had been saying.

Maybe there was something helpful in his words, too.

Up ahead of me then, as I rounded yet another corner, there appeared a familiar flame-headed figure.

Darra.

I gave a fractional pause, then increased my pace, hurrying to catch up with her. Moments later, and I was taking her roughly by the arm.

She whirled in surprise and concern, questions rising in her face, her mouth opening to state them.

I didn't have time for that.

"Nevermind why, just go to your aunt's chambers and get there quickly!" I stated tersely, pulling her close so that my lips were next to her ear.

"And don't stop to talk to anyone en route!"

Pursing my lips more tightly, I released her, watching until she gave me a quiet nod and turned back in the direction from which we both had come. Heaving another sigh, I quickened my pace, hastening down this corridor and that, ducking into dark doorways and empty halls, striving to make myself invisible now so as to get to the Dining Hall and Terrin without any further disastrous incidents occurring.

[ 03-06-2006 04:08 PM: Message edited 1 time, lastly by Galen ]

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...and send him into full suspicion mode. And as if that wasn't enough, the flash that left the two of their wrists glowing in golden splendor...

What were those things again, Graysith and Aelvedaar and every other Dark Lord or Lady had them. But Rhylla was supposed to just be in line, right? And who the hell was the Sith with her anyway? When did Rhylla start having an admirer? And what was with Panthar? He really was starting to sound a lot like Fido the demon, with all of his blatherings about Rhylla and the idiot boy...

a lightbulb flickered to life in Terrin's head. He slitted his eyes at Panthar, then the Sith whosis...

...and began to wonder just how in the hell he was going to get Panthar...and whoever else was possibly inside of him...out of the Dining Hall so he could start putting together the pieces of whatever was going on.

[ 03-06-2006 04:20 PM: Message edited 1 time, lastly by Terrin Danner ]

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It was that he had entered with an air of what I could only describe as sarcasm, and now bowed his head playfully. It bemused and angered me.

But I could not deny my lady's request, though it was voiced more as a command.

Begrudgingly, I sat down, but now looked at the human who so observed us from the shadows of the door. "Come, sit and dine. Or shall you hide there as a worried stingfly?"

I smirked. "Afterall, tis fitting that I show some hospitality."

--------------------

...only to skitter to a fast halt just inside the door. For who would be there but my dear darling niece, with a Sith I didn't know.

Then abruptly leaving him to go and apparently speak with Panthar, who had stalked away.

The one she left in her wake turned and called out to...

Terrin.

Yikes.

Instinctively, my eyes darted around for a good hiding place, skittering back again and again to the pair at the table. While they seem to have had Terrin pinned, they had yet to notice me. Holding my breath, I waited until the one Sith turned haughtily back toward Rhylla, who stared into his eyes as if asking him something. Making the most of this opportunity, I sidled quickly toward the imposing doorway I had just vacated, and moved.

Good thing those two were both all so wrapped up in their little affairs, I thought as I burst into a run. Time passed blindly, but soon I found myself outside of earshot of anyone in that grand and glorious meeting room; clenching my teeth, I only moved along faster.

Oh Khaandon, they had Terrin, they had Panthar...

This needed group thought, and quickly.

I ran on, soon arriving at Jharmeen's quarters. Without so much as a knock I just burst inside, my frantic gaze sweeping past a teary-eyed Darra who stood quietly crying next to the bed--

--coming to a halt upon the sorrowful Phalomir.

"They've got Terrin," I gasped, leaning limply against the door which now stood closed behind me, the words difficult to spit out for the stitch in my side and the agony now constricting my throat.

[ 03-06-2006 11:01 PM: Message edited 1 time, lastly by Graysith ]

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Come on, Danner. You were an expert salesman, and the same tactics should work here. Besides, if you bolt now, they really will wonder what you're thinking. Or doing.

"I'm just wondering," Terrin opened with, "Why my friend over there acts like he knows you. I'm beginning to wonder if he partook in too much brandy last night."

[ 03-06-2006 11:02 PM: Message edited 1 time, lastly by Graysith ]

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He had a sip of brandy, then set the nicely inlaid goblet down without a thought, and looked at the human before me with respectful distain, as an employer looks to a disliked but necessary employee.

"I am sure they are all reasonably hungry, especially with their newfound grief. So, instead of bothering your present company with irrelevant questions, I bid you retrieve your companions to come and dine."

With that, I waved my hand imperiously and paid the man little more attention as I looked to Panthar, of whom had been silent during this exchange.

--------------------

"Fine, then," Terrin replied, disgusted with the arrogance being directed his own way. Then, with no further ado, Terrin got to his feet, headed across the room...

...and out of the Dining Hall altogether to retrace his steps back towards the suites where he and the others had been left. Enroute he didn't even notice the quickening of his pace as his mind wondered just what in the hell they were going to do to get Panthar out of his current predicament.

And he nearly ran smack into Shayla, who didn't seem to be looking where she was going either. Reminded him of his first contact with Galen...

...which caused him to wonder exactly where she was. Something strange was going on in this place...

...and the sorrow on Shayla's face was enough to cement that suspicion.

"Shayla, what is going on? Where is everybody? Where is Galen?"

--------------------

...at least at the moment. But this is not the time or place to talk of such things. Follow me."

Shayla was glad that Terrin accepted her brief response and nodded...

...and had to wonder just why he was making a beeline from the Dining Hall himself.

Did he know too, somehow? Or was something else going on to add to all of this?

Shayla walked through a brief maze of hallways until she reached the suites Shawn and Terrin Danner's two employees had been given. Shawn literally met her at the door, the look in his eye eeriely cognizant of something. He frowned. "What has happened?"

Shayla wasted no time, but directed Shawn to get Matt and Jasyn. Once they were all present and accounted for, Shayla lead them back to Jharmeen's chambers, took them inside...

...and closed the door behind her, the sound bringing with it a knell of impending doom as reactions of shock quietly filled the heavy air.

--------------------

Including--

"Terrin!"

Scrambling, I managed to regain my footing and reach his side faster than I thought I could manage. My arms snaked around his neck.

"Oh thank the gods," I breathed, taking a moment to assuage the pain of my sister's death and that due to what I had been certain would be Terrin's certain capture, by just soaking in the feel of him against me. Satiated for the moment, I stiffened my arms, pushing back from him and took a quick glance around.

Everyone was present with the exception of the walking toaster, the weird silent shadow, and--

"Oh no, Panthar didn't make it away?" I mourned, sensing immediately that he was probably in danger, but knowing that at the moment we really didn't have much recourse in assisting him.

Unless Phalomir got hold of himself, and fast.

"Well... what are we going to do now?" I said for openers, my brain racing in circles.

Just gimme that ship--

But I knew our chances of getting to the warship were slim to none. We had to figure out a way to get to Aelvedaar, and then to the Darker Realms.

"Anyone have any ideas?"

--------------------

Terrin trailed. "Then looked to Galen. "He might be the one our dear friend Fido refers to as 'Idiot boy.' After all, he was with Rhylla. And they both have those damn golden tatooes on their wrists like..."

Terrin trailed, finally registering that something within the room was really very, very wrong. His eyes wandered to the all-too-silent form of Jharmeen, then to a sorrowful Darra and Phalomir.

His blue eyes fell into Galen's, concern clearly evident. "Oh hell, what has happened?"

--------------------

Then with a fluid motion and smile, I rose and crossed the chamber, and opened the doors. I looked to one of the warriors in the chamber beyond, and with a smile that did not betray my inward laughter, I spoke.

"The body of our late Dark Lady has disappeared from its chambers. I am aware of it's captors. At least three humans, one female and two males. Capture them and their companions and retrieve her body so that it may lay in true rest."

I was about to dismiss him so that he might muster the ranks, but then held up a hand. "Oh, and if needed, Lethal force is permitted. We cannot allow the dirtying of our sanctity to last any longer than necessary. Bring any survivors to me, thankyou."

To dispel any worries or concerns about my newfound authority, as I had spoken and raised my hand, I had let my sleeve reveal my golden mark.

With that, I turned from the entryway, closing it, and returned to my seat. "Let loose the dogs of war..." I chuckled, taking yet another sip of the delightful brandy.

--------------------

"I-- I don't; she's-- gone, Terrin. She-- she d-died," I somehow, finally, managed. I couldn't say anything else, and Khaandon help me neither could I let myself go before the fresh wash of grief now threatening to overtake me. I didn't have the time; we didn't have the time, if what Terrin said was true.

And I know my Terrin. He doesn't exaggerate. He leaves that up to me.

Blinking back tears, I turned to Phalomir, and then to Shayla and Shawn and Erik.

"You guys have all the power we've got, and something tells me it's not going to be enough," I said. I swallowed thickly, then repeated my former question.

"What are we going to do? We're really kind of sitting ducks here, especially if my darling niece and her new joe decide to come make more trouble for us."

[ 03-06-2006 10:36 PM: Message edited 1 time, lastly by Galen ]

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"My Lord," he said simply, bowing over a forearm clamped across his chest. Then straightening, he left his companion to guard the Dining Hall, hastening away to his barracks to get a retinue of soldiers with which to follow those orders given to him. As he hastened along he pondered upon what Rykounagin had said, his colorful eyes slitting in growing anger.

The very desecration!

Panthar ate a bite of fruit as Rykounagin returned, then he left the plate on the table. He turned to face ShaRhylla.

“But I understand you hear the call of your father,” he continued. “It is your choice to answer that call, but hear me. Your mother is gone, but there are others in line. Others of your own bearing, carrying with them the same desires and unending hunger for more. Never forget them, lest yours be the same fate as your mother. I wish only for your safety, my queen.”

Panthar looked at the smirking Sith, and once again hate and rage filled him. He had no idea where this came from, let alone why he spoke the words he did, but he looked back to ShaRhylla and continued.

“I wish you great success,” he said, bowing to her. He lifted his head and added, “To you both. I shall take my leave, and leave you to your newly found stations.”

Panthar stood and walked towards the door. Something within him still stirred, and a strange electricity seemed to crackle around his body. A tense feeling poised all around him, as if he anticipated an attack and readied to counter it. With what, he had no clue, but whatever it was that was driving him seemed to feel no fear.

Before he reached the door, he paused and turned.

“And to answer your question, my queen… Memories linger forever, and pass through many forms. Some things are never forgotten. Rule your people, my queen, and I shall see you again.”

Panthar turned and walked through the door, thoroughly confused.

--------------------

It was as if an emptiness she did not know she had was suddenly standing on the verge of being filled.

Impossible.

"Impossible!" she cried, finding her voice, her voice loosening her from her frozen state.

"How dare you-- who are you to speak of such things? How dare you come to me with riddles, speaking words of seeming fealty yet words through which dark laughter runs unchecked! Do not feel so smug in your belief that I do not sense that!"

Now her loosened tongue loosened her feet, and she bore down upon Panthar like an enraged bantha. Coming up behind him she shot out one slender hand, letting forth with a blast of her talents, immediately bringing him to a halt and yanking him jerkily about to face her once more.

"Who are you to decide who is and who is not your Lord and Lady!" she seethed, freeing him, wanting to rip his throat out where he stood. Confusion danced in the eyes in front of her; she didn't even see it. Lifting her lip in anger she leaned forward, up and into him.

"Who is it you speak of, who would threaten this reign? Who are the ones you state as being in line, who would pose so dire a threat to me and my Lord?

"Answer me now, if you wish to remain alive to see the end of this day!"

[ 03-07-2006 12:36 AM: Message edited 1 time, lastly by ShaRhylla ]

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“Whether I see the end of this day makes no difference, my queen,” he said steadily, bowing his head. “For some memories live on forever, even those lost within you.”

He raised his head to meet her eyes, the smile toned down to a mere pleasantry.

“It would bring me great pleasure to help you find those memories in some future time, when your present liabilities have passed. For this time, I shall answer your question. There are those to which you have spawned life, my queen. Lost long ago through actions of others, hidden from you, but nonetheless alive. I know only this, and offer you this knowledge.”

--------------------

Satisfied with the wink of yoda-speak (though I did not know it), I gently turned her from the doorway at which the sith had stood; a totally different one from that which she and I had encountered the night previous.

I glanced back towards the sith, and with a mental composition of magic, slammed the door in his face, though whether it was real or not I hardly cared. "Come, you are overexcited by the events of our new status and the words he threw about to befuddle us."

I smiled, and gently taking her hand, brought her to sit. "We have a much more important affair to deal with, one of which the warriors, of all sith, treasure most dearly. With only a fortnight and a half between this moment and it, there is little time to be spared."

I was about to continue, if I was to do anything I am sure I was. But at that very moment, an almost piercing keen split my head for a moment, as those same visions that had plagued me in the night before my transformation flashed through my mind at a break-neck pace.

I growled quietly as slowly they faded from my vision, but realized what I was doing, and ceased. "Worry yourself not with prophets and riddle-speakers, for neither are important. You are whole as is, and we have much to celebrate. A celebration that can commence-"

"-as soon as your mothers dear friends and murderers are brought to justice." I smiled, had a moment of pondering whether to take another sip of brandy, but decided against it, and spoke my last words before waiting in my turn.

"After all, such justice is a sweet song of morale and honor to the ears of those who carry blade and worship the lord of war himself."

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Shallow.

There was something else here, something other; more than the mere babblings of a soothsayer, more than the dire foretellings of a prophet.

Here, in the words uttered by the strangely haunted Sith, reality of a darker kind beckoned to her on ebon wings.

She blinked, frowning as she strove to put meaning to the words he had spoken. And then, as if coming up from a great depth, like a noisome, oily bubble oozing up through a pit of tar, to burst sickly upon the surface, darkening its immediate surroundings with blackness, there came a touch of memory.

Not much, just a quick vision of black and flame and the rushing roar of a multitude of voices crying out in exultation, all watched over by a pair of red, red eyes, oh so ruby red, as red as freshly spilled blood.

Dark tresses rode upon the winds of Night.

Blinking in frightened confusion now, she turned to Rykounagin. Gestured toward the door.

"Tha-that one displeases me," she said, her voice faint, before she interrupted it altogether by taking hold of a nearby bottle of Sith brandy and lifting it to her lips, never setting it down until it had been drained completely dry.

[ 03-07-2006 01:09 AM: Message edited 1 time, lastly by ShaRhylla ]

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"I..." However, caught in that spin I could not bring voice to whatever I had been going to say.

A small voice of sanity whispered in my ear in the spin, amongst the howl of that which my mind seemed stuck in. With little else to follow, I spoke quietly, as though amost programed. "I need to look upon something."

Then without a further word, I rose, turned towards the set of double doors that led from the chamber, and passed through them.

My destination, unvoiced was my own. It was a place one would not normally think to find a sith warrior, let alone the dark lord. But it seemed there that I might find peace and somehow sanity in the raging storm that seemed to be boiling up.

Solace... gods give me solace in a place of neverending silence... the library, answers are always there... the library...

I gently pushed the doors open to the old tome-filled chamber, and felt the agonies from before washed away by the agonies of the ages, that seemed to cry out from the shelves.

But there was one, a single silent one- bound with no title. "Perhaps this one...?"

I silently pulled it from the shelf and began to read- and as I did so, the wailing of the ages faded away as more knowledge of things came to my mind...

[ 03-07-2006 01:35 AM: Message edited 1 time, lastly by Rykounagin ]

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He reached Phalomir’s door, panting, and knocked. There was no answer.

“Oh, dang… oh wait, maybe he got lucky!”

Panthar ran for Jharmeen’s chambers, ducking once to avoid a group of warriors, then finally made it to the door. He pounded on it, heard nothing, and decided to take a chance. His fear was great, and a sense of urgency had overcome him. He opened the door and entered.

“Buh?” he said.

--------------------

Her eyes darkened then, other words now coiling silkenly through her mind.

"...a Lord... fits the station and attends to more than his personal satisfaction..."

Slowly her clawed hand coiled into a fist, shattering the sith bottle still clutched within it. Shards of glass ripped into her flesh, but she paid it no heed.

She looked down at the damage she had wrought, her eye suddenly caught by the golden glow of her Tattoo. It glimmered there upon her wrist.

Laughing at her.

Snarling, she threw the bottle remnants at the nearest serving girl; then rising upon her high horse quickly and haughtily fled the Dining Hall, seeking what she did not know.

She only knew it had to be dark.

[ 03-07-2006 01:48 AM: Message edited 1 time, lastly by ShaRhylla ]

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Kriffing hell...

"They let you go?" Terrin couldn't help but opening with. Then, frowning, he continued with, "Where the hell are they, anyway...

...and what happened back there anyway?"

Standing his ground, Terrin hoped that Panthar wasn't still acting as strangely as he had been before, and could make sense of what was going on.

--------------------

From my birth to now, this was all forseen... before even the moving of the sith to the present, this was forseen.... how?

As I turned to the next page, a small shining object fell from the pages and into the folds of my robes.

I groped down amongst the material, and found the fallen thing to be a small mirror. But when I lifted it to look at myself, I did not see the sith I had become, but the boy I once was: pale, hair white and eyes scarlet, with what I could only describe as my own now invisible tattoos pulsing with something I could not see.

I stared for a long, long time at what I once was. Then with careful, almost obsessive care, I gently placed the mirror in a sealed fold of my robes.

I looked back to the book, and continued to whisper quietly of what I read, page after page still showing more and more darkness, more and more... nature.

It seemed that as each word was read, its meaning and purpose flew into me and possessed my mind for a fleeting moment before becomming stored. It seemed that this book, this tome, this... guide had been written for me... or one of my kin.

My old kin, the assassins.

Before me was not just the simple arts, rituals, and powers of the cult- but the darkest parts of what it was, what it had, what it could symbolize. Each page was a wealth of things I had never known, but knew to be true.

Was I afraid? Disturbed? Shocked by the images and knowledge that seemed to possess my mind and give me even darker thought and more loathed persona?

Not at all.

With a smile, I raised my index-fingers to my horns, and prodded my fingertips, drawing blood from each. With a frenzy that few could have comprehended, I began to draw upon what I had learned, the book -blank as it was- whispering away into the shadows as I worked, staining the stone dark with my blood as my art slowly began to unravel from its central point.

My art... my legacy...

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“I, um, I’m not sure why but I wished them well and offered some advice,” he said. “Then idiot boy slammed the door in my face and I ran here…”

Idiot boy? Where did that come from?

“Um, I am not quite sure what’s going on around here – or in here – but I know it can’t be good.”

He glanced at the bed, to Jharmeen, and then to Phalomir’s wan face.

“But something very bad happened, didn’t it?” he asked, turning his face to Shayla.

--------------------

She trailed again, tears welling up in her eyes. "She's gone."

The words fell into silence, and the weight of the very air in the room seemed to increase, causing everyone's shoulders to visibly sag. But then Shayla continued. "But there has to be something we can do," Shayla said, firming, turning now to the despondent Phalomir. "You are a Dark Lord, Phalomir, and I've seen Dark Lords of the Sith communicate with one another. We need to get in contact with Aelvedaar, ASAP. Surely there is some way you can make that happen."

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