Zaledeneli stolp

Well, much as I expected, he conceded in his mind, eyes ever attentive to her slight movements. He pondered everything this library could offer him; knowledge of battle forms he'd never encountered before, the Force of course and most notably the art and eventual mastery of wielding a lightsaber. He smiled at the thought, happy with all the sudden possibilities that opened up with it. The Force was something he'd secretly envied the Jedi and Sith, however little he knew of both; he was jealous enough to desire it often, for it offered indescribable advantage over one's target or adversary, not to mention he'd wipe out any rivals with ease. With a content sigh escaping his lips, he let himself relax into her sudden, if welcomed…embrace?

It was the most fitting expression, however strange it might've felt in contexture to Darth Pride. But then on the other hand, so did the cuddling, yet he had no complaints concerning that. Not that he himself was the cuddling type, but if felt good to feel a sleek woman's body press against your own after a long, deeply satisfying session of lovemaking. "Of course not, my Lady," he drawled out in that harsh voice of his, the smirk stretching the scars marring his facial features. With a nod to acknowledge her order and a swift, short bow, he turned on the spot to face her, stealing a quick kiss and ending it with a chaste bite, moving away before she could return the favor – even though considering her Force powers, it probably wouldn't be much of a problem for her to do it anyway, with no regard to the distance he'd put between the two of them.

An amused grin colored his face at her parting words, but he kept it concealed by turning his back to her, heading for the door that led out of her bedroom and into another bodily stressful activity. He didn't deem her warning – or maybe even a veiled threat? – with a response as he pushed those doors open and followed the path he'd arrived by, leaving the Sith beauty behind him.

The tower was dark and foreboding. And yet, the lights of the entrance hall and the staircase that led to that particular corridor were dimly illuminated by soft azure lights. Azaria Raye trod silently among them, her steps literally soundless. She felt as if the faintest sound would disturb the unusual tranquillity, that pervaded the tower at such a time. Indeed, most denizens of the pitch-black, ice-encased structure would be in their quarters elsewhere. The rare few that remained were careful not to break the silence, while simultaneously enjoying the luxury of completely sound-proof walls. It was a device of Pride, naturally, giving her all the privacy she wanted, yet allowing little to others - despite the appearances being different. While those who knew, that Arkanians could see through at least one set of walls with their infra-red vision alone, were few, many suspected so. And fewer still were those, who were not smart enough to realise, that someone of their Empress's skill could easily pinpoint the location of anyone on the planet with hardly more than a thought.

This she pondered, as the blue-skinned Twi'lek ascended the steps. As she passed the Hall of Glory, she couldn't help but admire the crests. There was a newcomer as well: the iron half-mask of Telos (which represented Citadel Station hovering above the planet's surface) was added to the left wall, with a small inscription in Aurebesh denoting the day of it's fall. Or perhaps it should have been called the day of its rising, considering what she had learned from an overheard conversation between Darth Gul and Pride.
Finally, she knocked on the middle gate, the one she was instructed to. A stupid gesture, as her mistress was bound to be able to sense her presence, even had she not explicitly sent for her in the first place. But she was used to good manners, even when they were more or less redundant, which was one of the many little details that made her an incredibly successful diplomat. Finally, upon sensing a beckoning impulse, she entered.

"You summoned me, my lady," she said with a half-inquiring tone. It was not for her to question her mistress's demands, but she let a hint of curiosity "slip" her tongue to imply that she wanted to know nevertheless.
"Indeed I have," the pale woman replied. Her figure was covered in dark robes of a thick, heavy fabric and her hair of snow tumbled loosely over her shoulders.
"Come hither," she ordered the Twi'lek as her white hand slowly slid over the black satin bedclothes.
"M-my lady?" she stuttered, uncertain, while her mind was already filling up with possible scenarios. Why was she summoned here? And why did her mistress now beckon her to her own bed? She could not be insinuating what Azaria had suspected, could she?
"Relax, my little manipulator," the Arkanian purred as she came closer.
"B-but I..." the Twi'lek stumbled, uncomfortable with where she thought this was going, yet not daring to outright object. Pride didn't seem to be bothered by her words, or to have heard them at all. She placed her hands on Azaria's shoulders and gently, but unyieldingly, pushed her downwards into a sitting position on the bed.
"Do not fret, my apprentice," the mistress said as her face came closer. "You have done well, and you deserve your reward," she purred. Azaria's eyes grew misty with joy and her will weaker with the feeling of being recognised for her efforts. The next thing she sensed was a pair of lips pressing softly upon hers, caressing them like silken pillows. Without a second thought, she buried her hesitations about engaging in intimate relationships with members of the same sex somewhere deep in her subconsciousness. And, encouraged by the fact that she did not resist, those lips came down upon her once more, but this time more fervently and more passionately...
She would have been lost in fantasy, had the not-so-dark-after-all lady not let go of her.
"Ah, the rival apprentice," Azaria could hear her say. The Lady's voice was playful and oh-so-pretentiously courteous. "Do come in. You will have to forgive us for beginning without you, but she was here sooner, after all."

By now he had come to know the path to her chambers so well that he could navigate his way between his room and the tower with so much as a single thought, in the middle of the blackest night. Because of his summoning there any trace of the usual guards was gone, save for the defense system of the towering structure itself; but he was sure that the system recognized him from the many visits he had paid to the upper levels of the building. With a grin on his face he ascended the stairs, taking his time. It was true that he'd spent many a hour between her sheets, but she'd never called him without a reason and in the eerie quiet that embraced the stairwell, he was left to ponder why. Was it the duel at the ceremony? Maybe the simple fact that he was a full-fledged Sith now?

In the end, he knew it'd just boil down to sex and violence again and he couldn't say he really minded. With the pleasant images of what might happen tonight he sped up his steps down the sable-colored hallway that led to her abode. A leisurely smile was spread across his face as he closed in on the entrance and nudged the door open.

The sight that his eyes met wasn't one he was expecting; but it was certainly the good kind of surprise. The other acolyte that had become Sith at that day's ceremony, the Twi'Lek named Azaria, was seated on those soft, silken sheets…and in her lap was the Dark Lady herself. The low-keyed voice of the very same woman rang softly yet overpoweringly in the suddenly small room, beckoning the man closer. "Please, my ladies, there was never anything to forgive," his voice dropped, brushing at the margin of that hoarse, deep voice with which he liked to whisper in her ear. Gray eyes ravished the expanse of already uncovered skin. To his immense dissatisfaction, Pride had chosen her attire carefully tonight, robed in flowing and not at all skin-tight apparel as she was. But the hunter had no heart to complain, for it surged with the possibilities now budding in his over-active mind. Azaria was nice on the eyes and really, he had never had reservations about indulging with aliens. Besides, the Twi'Lek were renowned for their beauty and the newly anointed Sith flush against Pride was no exception to that rule.

"I do hope you do not mind me joining you, My Lady," he purred on, his words now directed straight at the Empress herself. His silver eyes burned into the pure white of hers and he grinned ever so slightly as his fingers traveled down his chest, pulling with them the zipper of his thermo-vest. He shed the annoying piece of clothing as quickly as he could while still appearing calm and nonplussed. Not one, but two gorgeous women to please! And after the duel earlier in the day…it was going to be an exhausting night to be sure.

He stepped closer to the two closely entwined women, reached for both their graceful hands and almost reverently kissed each. "My utmost respect to you both," he whispered with a spark in his eye and rose again, his eyes firmly locked with those of the Lady. He reached with one tender, tentative thumb and ran it softly along her lower lip, silently savoring the gentle moisture of the gentle, pliable flesh under his skin.

Ah yes, he does his best to keep up pretences. How lovely, Pride thought to herself as the man uttered his own apologies of void politeness. She had not yet decided whether she liked this or not, but for the time being, she kept up with the charade.
"Oh, but good sir, there has been a misunderstanding," she said with faux confusion on her face, after the two parted from a long, passionate kiss. "While I do not object it, you are not here to pay us your respects; you are here for your reward. And you are also an award for the two of us, but don't let that concern you too much."

The Twi'Lek might have been shy and uncertain when she was alone with her mistress, but now she was cutely chuckling with a hand concealing her mouth and her true thoughts concealed. She did not have a reputation as a persuader and diplomat for no reason, after all.
"Where I come from," she began, "we have a somewhat different understanding of... certain behaviour." She made a dramatic pause when both of the remaining two pairs of eyes had turned her way.
"You know how the Echani believe, that you can only truly get to know someone through personal combat, or a series of duels? Well, our methods are in essence similar... but more refined, generally less violent, and doubtlessly more pleasurable." That being said, she didn't wait for the man to get his own impression, but grabbed him around the shoulders and locked her lips with his. She too was, in a way, a hunter; but unlike Kareem, she did not hunt heads; she preferred owning the hearts and minds of her targets instead.

With a quick jerk and a girlish squeal she retreated. Next to her stood the pale Arkanian, her eyes as mysterious as ever, but a smug smirk playfully decorating her perfect face. Her hands were on the hind-cheeks of each of the apprentices, remaining on the locations that were recently the victim of a playful, but quite energetic spank.
"Naughty, naughty," she purred. "I did say that you two are a reward for each other, it is true... but let's not forget that somebody invested a lot of time and effort to get you this far." She grinned and concluded:
"And that somebody is in dire need of a good ravishing right now."

The hunter could hardly keep down a soft chuckle that threatened to escape his chest at the pale woman's words. It was as if all of her titles and all of her meticulous correctness disappeared the moment the doors to her bedroom shut closed. It was, he suspected, a sanctuary of sorts for the magnificent Arkanian, her refuge, a place where she acted the way she wanted; well, not that her being Empress of the Sith didn't allow for such behavior otherwise, but if one was determined to keep a certain amount of dignity and – well, will you look at the irony! – pride, one could do no less than to act according to the unspoken rules of the Sith society and remain a poised, proper monarch.

This musings of his, however, were now long buried in deep, dark and currently very unused recesses of his mind, his thoughts occupied by other matters completely. Namely, the two gorgeous women that, albeit standing at a respectable distance now, still caused his dissatisfaction with his pants grow exponentially. There will soon come a day, he ranted in his head in the few moments that were void of either lady's attention, when I file a complaint to the apparel industries. By now they truly should've come up with a material that allowed for comfort even in such situations, the confines of his pants were causing him some undue disgruntlement, but all of that was dissuaded and pushed aside the second a pair of hot lips came crashing on his.

He had to admit that he hadn't been paying attention – not real attention, anyway – to any of the words that had been coming out of Twi'Lek's mouth and had been rather happily distracted with the movements it was making during the short and probably enticing speech. So it came as a surprise that suddenly the sleek alien was so flush against him that even a fly would have a hard time finding place to squeeze through; nevertheless, he was a man quick on his feet and his hands wasted no time to drift along the curves of the slender body pressed to his. She was lithe, even slightly petite, with less accentuated curves than Lady Pride, but it suited her stature perfectly and, frankly, who was he to complain when her hot tongue found his with fervent passion?

He heard the spank more than he felt it, really, but it was strong enough to leave a soft sting in his wake. It was also unexpected enough to have the desired effect and the two newly anointed Sith parted, slightly breathless and with quickened heartbeat. His Lady's eyes were lidded, her mouth ajar and those plump lips glistening in the strange light of the room, and as she spoke, ever so softly, her purr rang clearly even through the sound of the blood in his ears. Going south, he smirked to himself, silver eyes still glued to the svelte body of the pale woman. He needed no spurring, really, but with the additional encouragement from Pride, he was by her side in the blink of an eye, skilled fingers tracing her form underneath the dark, heavy fabric she choose to wear tonight.

Her choice of attire perplexed him, if he was truthful. Its only value lay in its teasing quality, especially since they watched her in skin-tight bodysuits almost every day. They both knew very well what she looked like and the flowing garment concealed that generous piece of eye candy, causing the frustration to build even further. A point for Lady Pride, indeed. He slipped behind the still fully clothed woman, hands still roaming the body that lay underneath, while his lips had worked their way around her silken white hair and had gained access to the creamy skin of her neck. He alternated between soft, ghostly kisses and barely-there nips at the soft flesh, teasing her as she did him. His breath was hot against the corner of her jaw as he explored the well mapped regions with a gentle graze of his teeth, capturing and mercilessly victimizing a helpless earlobe. His hands, in the meantime, had strayed on different paths; where one had climbed her ribcage to ghost just at the edges of her ample breast, the other had drifted lower, firmly grasping the tight, beckoning muscle.

Pride was now caught in a no doubt pleasant sandwich, an apprentice on both her sides, kissing, caressing, groping and even biting. Kareem's mouth curled into a smug grin and with a sparkle in his eye he rasped in her ear "Just say the word, my lady."

(("His choice of attire perplexed him..." - you did mean "her choice," right? ))

The pale Sith let herself be touched and teased, kissed and caressed, nibbled and bitten; all the while purring like a kitten spoilt rotten and occasionally releasing a soft moan from between her voluptuous lips. The unguarded thoughts her apprentices were projecting only spurned her pleasure and secret amusement. The most peculiarly interesting thought that had crossed both their minds was the bewilderment about their mistress's choice of wardrobe. While one reasoned that she only did it to tease them, the other considered her just being more modest so as not to discourage them. The best part was, that neither of them had considered the most plainly obvious chance, which just so happened to be the true reason for her choice of garments: that she had been meditating and did not have the time to change clothes before the first apprentice arrived.

Now, most people would not be aroused by just that. She however knew, that the fact they were so perplexed by something so simple, had in fact proven that at that moment, their thoughts were completely devoted to her. After all, it doesn't take a mind-reader to figure out that such extents of wondering about something so unimportant can be a clear sign of affection.
Well, let's be honest: that, and all the caressing, embracing, and rubbing against her. While the man stimulated her neck and upper body with his phantom fingers and the firm outline of his not-so-light-sabre throbbing against her curvy bottom, the Twi'lek had placed herself upon the Arkanian in a most un-ambiguous way. Their legs were intertwined, their stomachs and breasts pressed against one another, and their bodies moving in all directions interchangeably in a manner that resulted in constant stimulation for all three of them. While the girls rubbed against each other's lower section with either their own or the thigh that was caught between the other's legs, Pride was also pushed somewhat backwards, extending their ecstasy onto the man behind her.

Pride twisted her right hand behind her so as to embrace the hunter's neck (her other arm was still busy exploring the paradoxically firm softness of the Twi'lek's backside).
"If I... actually needed to... mmmmm... explicitly command you..." she said with a heavy voice between the moans and sighs of pleasure, "Don't you think... you'd be doing something wrong?" That went for both of them. She might have been the empress of a growing imperium of powerful Force-users, but she was still a woman, with all the needs and desires that brings along. And if neither of them would have figured that out by then... well, failing an impromptu test of intuition and observation skills would probably be the least they'd regret. Luckily, neither of them proved to be a disappointment... in fact, the next couple of minutes were filled with an unexpected dose of pure pleasure.

The long, elegant fingers dug in his scalp as she reached into his hair, tugging him even closer to her than humanly possible. Her wet lips parted next to his ear and he couldn't help but feel the liquid heat sear through his veins at the tone of her voice. He barely even heard what she said and it mattered not; what mattered was the ever growing need and the obvious desire the pale woman harbored for them both: their touch, their lips, tongue, their undivided attention that she so overtly enjoyed and most of all their ministrations that brought her closer to the highest pleasure with every passing minute. He forced his eyes open, only then even realizing he had them closed, and caught the look of the Twi'Lek that was being almost manhandled by their Lady. A suggestive eyebrow raised up his forehead and with minds completely in sync and completely in the gutter, they led – well, not so much led as pushed – the Arkanian onto the huge silken bed that offered more than enough space for the three of them. The hunter wondered, very briefly, of course, if she had actually planned for such things when she had the bed commissioned or if she just craved luxury on a totally different level that most people could even conceive.

It was brief, however, and his next actions were much less thinking and, thankfully, much more doing; that was, if her moans were anything to judge by, a wise decision. Both apprentices teamed up on the Empress, communicating without so much as a single glance, working in perfect harmony to bring the white-haired woman to her peak. His lips curled up against the flesh of her neck while his hands fumbled, furiously so, with her robes. The clothing was becoming more irritating by the second and he was on the verge of summoning something sharp and ripping it off her body without a care. Just when he was about to do it anyway, against his better judgment, he hit home and his hand sneaked below the heavy robes, brushing against the heated skin he found underneath.

A long sigh escaped his chest and he rose to tower above the woman he was about to strip so thoroughly she wouldn't know what hit her. With his free hand, he grabbed Azaria by the arm, pulled her up and crushed her lips with his own, all the while his fingers worked to unfasten the unbelievable amount of lace that had been hiding under a fold in the cape all that time. Despite having only one hand at his disposal, Pride's apparel was lying forgotten and abandoned beside the bed, having only the clothes of the Lady's lovers to keep it company.

Kareem crawled down the bed, watching with growing enthusiasm and almost an unpleasant amount of arousal as the two gorgeous women made out their hands possessively roaming each other's bodies. He bit his lip in order to keep his smile from spreading. Who in the name of the Force orchestrated the Galaxy to work this way? How did it come to be that a soulless, bastard Nar Shaddaaian bounty-hunter-turned-Sith ended up between the spread legs of the Sith Empress, not counting that the deadly Arkanian was fondling an incredibly sexy and incredibly naked Twi'Lek at the same time? He shook his head at the craziness and insanity of what was his life and ran his fingers up the soft skin of her inner thighs, eyes sparkling in amusement as she trembled at his touch. He pressed his chest against Azaria's back one hand moving to join Pride's on her perky breasts as whispered to her. "Listen to my mind," he said in that hoarse voice of his, licking the length of her slim neck.

And what a story his mind had to tell! It was an idea that he'd been thinking on using on Lady Pride for some time, but the more the merrier they say, don't they? And that's certainly what the image he conjured in his thoughts conveyed, the message was quite clear to anyone that could read surface thoughts and both other occupants of the bed were certainly more than capable of doing it. The hunter thought it had the same, if not even better a charm than having sex in front of a mirror; there was something undeniably, even lewdly salacious about it and it made his body throb in all the right ways. The sudden gasps from the women certainly told him he was doing something right, but as his fingers dipped into the wetness between her legs, he knew he won.

A brief chuckle interrupted the moans that have been increasing in volume for a time now.
"'Listen to your mind?' But my dear, naive apprentice; whatever do you think I have been doing ever since I've first spoken to you?" she chode him playfully. The fact that their intimate encounters were the only time she in fact did not do so, was of course kept a carefully guarded secret. What initially served as an intensification of pleasure by denying herself foresight of the participant's upcoming actions could quickly become a great liability, if anyone were to learn of this and attempt to abuse it to their own advantage. But be it as it may, she did comply with his plea, if only for curiosity's sake.
What she found there, did not surprise her. After all, it was nothing new to her to have her lovers stupefied by the sheer fact that it was she whom they were attempting to please. Nevertheless, the sheer strength of his lust, primal and predictable though it may have been, had almost overwhelmed her senses. But then again, why would she force herself to remain in control of herself? And so she decided, just this once, to lose herself to the passions that flowed between the three lovers...

A lone ray of solar light, stemming from the growing sunrise, had awoken the sleeping beauty from her pleasant repose. She would have sat and stretched herself, yawning like a cat, had her movement not been impaired by a sleeping body on both sides of her: one behind and one in front of her. Her arms were surrounding the lithe Twi'lek with hands resting over her blue stomach. She was pressed onto Azaria, just as the man behind her was glued onto her. Though his manhood had lost its potency for the moment, despite being largely in contact with her lower curves, and though one of his hands rested on her breast and another pressed against her crotch, she could sense he was still asleep. That was when she noticed them. Bruises, large blots of dark purple and burgundy red on blue and light-brownish skin. Though her own skin was still perfectly white, her lovers were both covered in bruises for the better part of their bodies. Azaria even had a huge love-bite covering the better portion of the left side of her neck.
Ah Victris, that's what you get for allowing yourself to bring out the animal in you, she reproved herself. Without further ado, she slid one hand, the one that wasn't caught under the (largely insignificant) weight of her body, away from Azaria and began to mend her wounds through the Force. Her palm floated above the bruised and scratches, leaving only impeccable blue skin in its trace. When she was finished she shifted around, carefully, so as not to wake either of the two slumbering apprentices, and began the same process on the other. While she did pay attention not to overdo it, it was still early morning and her mind was not yet fully centred, vague memories of the fornications of last night distracting her focus, which resulted in her removing several of the lesser scars on his body. His face stayed the same, as there were no injuries to mend there, as did the larger of his ink-less engraved tattoos, but most of the rest had either lessened (when she managed to move away quickly enough), or disappeared completely (when she was not sufficiently expeditious or when the scar itself was minimal in the first place). She was not certain if this was good or bad: after all, scars were, in their essence, evidence of wounds not healing perfectly and as such the malformed tissue could be exploited by an enemy - but at the same time, they held stories of past fights their owner had encountered, and as such served as something similar to a coded journal only its owner could read.

A knock on the great double door took her attention away from such ruminations and back into the here and now. She couldn't rise normally without moving either Kareem's arm from her sweet spot or his leg from hers, and moving Azaria's entire body to liberate her other arm. So instead, she gathered her thoughts and all three of them momentarily levitated. She unfolded herself from the two sleepers, much easier now that they were no longer bound by gravity, and let them slide gently together and back on the bed, while she herself floated towards the door and her black nerf-skin cloak flew onto her, enveloping her in its soft embrace. She commanded the messenger's mind to enter the door on the left of the one that led to her bedroom, then exited the room herself. She was gone for a few minutes, then dismissed the courier and returned to the bedroom. When she did, she found both of her apprentices/lovers awake and met their gaze.

It was not the warm sun that woke him up that day, or the pleasant numbness across his body. It was neither sound nor lack of warmth when the Sith Empress moved away; it was the absence of a sore pang of pain that always gnawed at his side when he lay on it too long. And half a night was certainly too long. So what was it that was keeping the annoying burn at bay? With that sole confused thought running through his sleep-muddled brain, he pried open his silver eyes and propped himself up on his elbows. Now that he was becoming more aware of his surroundings and his own body, he started to realize with strange clarity that he felt completely rejuvenated. Not only had the decade old itches in various places disappeared, but he could feel the tautness of previously scar-knotted muscles under his skin.

His brow furrowed in bewilderment and he rose completely, looking over his suddenly hardly blemished skin. There was almost no trace of his hard fought battles left; even the biggest, nastiest and deepest of scars had faded to thin white lines, while the majority of them had simply gone; literally overnight. "What in the name of all Hutt strippers…" he cursed under his breath and looked around the room, as if there would be any evidence of the strange occurrence.

A long yawn to his left brought him back from his musings and his eyes fell down to the blatantly exposed blue body. Despite the exhausting ordeal of last night, a feeling stirred in his loins at the sight. The Twi'Lek lay on the crumpled silken bedsheets, sprawled out like a kitten; and he knew from first-hand experience that she mewled like one too. An impish smile curled his lips into a devilish smirk and he leaned down to wake up the woman completely with a scorching kiss. Azaria's slim hands reached out and she entwined her long fingers in his tussled black hair, mussing it into a complete mess. They both grinned into the kiss and parted just in time to be greeted by their Lady, who was already – to his great disappointment – dressed into a simple black robe.

The expression she was wearing on her face when she returned to the bedroom, however, was not one Kareem would've expected after a night like that. Come to think of it, why was she gone in the first place? Wasn't it cozier and warmer snuggled between two diametrically opposite bodies that had pleased her all night long? To answer the questions that plagued his mind, he simply asked them outright: "Is everything alright, Lady Pride?" His voice wasn't particularly laced with concern; after all, if something were really wrong, the blaring of code red would've already thrown them out of bed a lot earlier. Seeing as nothing could be that grave, he decided to make yet another inquiry. "And just maybe, you wouldn't happen to know anything on the subject of self-erasing scars, would you?" his face, at this, turned once again into a mask of complete confusion. Sex wasn't that good for the body, was it? Besides, if that were the case, he would've become immortal by now.

One of the things that set the bounty hunter apart from every other Sith on Ziost was his excellent sense of humour and a knack for seeing the lighter side of things - or at least presenting them as such. That of course was still not enough for the hint of a swift retraction of the two bodies to escape her notice.
"Oh don't be bothered by my presence. As Sith you are after all free to do whatever you wish, as long as you do not oppose me or your other superiors," she said with a dismissing notion. Essentially (among other things), she was telling them they could spend every night henceforth together if they so desired, as long as they were not summoned to their mistress' side.
"As for the 'self-erasing scars,' as you put it... I suppose you haven't heard that bringing a Sith Lord to a climax several times in the same night is highly beneficial to one's health? Of course, considering the fact that most beings to have claimed the title "Darth" before me were either male or undesirable hags, I can understand why this would not be common knowledge." She gave him a wink, which indicated that she knew exactly what he was referring to, but had said all she intended to and intended to let him figure out the rest, if he could. Azaria was miserably failing in trying to conceal inspecting her own body for improvements.

"Unfortunately, the good news end there," Pride continued. "We have taken Saleucami without much trouble: they capitulated as soon as we threatened to pulverize all life-forms on their aquatic home-world by dropping ion charges into the ocean. But before that, they have managed to inform the Republic of our attack, and while to late to save their fishy allies, they have seized the opportunity to strike at the one point that was not as well defended as it should have been." There was a hint of praise in her voice, for although she despised her enemy for getting through her defences, she could not help but admire the tactician who pulled it off.
"A small Republican army entered the orbit above Korriban. While they were eventually disintegrated to the last vessel, about fifty Scout-class interceptors infiltrated the planet's surface on the far side. Nine of them managed to land, and now their crew has set demolition charges along the entire Valley of the Dark Lords, as well as the ruins of Dreshdae, and are threatening to blow the entire place up unless we send an emissary to negotiate terms."
And obviously we cannot bomb them from orbit without setting off the charges, and we cannot risk sending assassins if we are unsure as to the enemy's number and equipment, she added to herself, but the fact was plain enough that she didn't have to explicitly state it.

"So," she stated, "I'm sending a messenger. But there is only one person I can trust to get this done as it need be, as well as ensure maximal exploitation of the element of surprise."
A meaningful look and a twisted grin spoke volumes of whom she was implying.
"And she will not be going alone," she concluded, whereby she looked at the two naked apprentices. For a moment, there was silence. Then, she turned, opened the door, and looked back on them.
"I want both of you to forge a new lightsaber for yourselves to signify the passage into full-fledged Sith-hood. For the time being, you will create your own focussing crystal using the geological compressor in the forging chamber of the Dark Temple. You can find records detailing the creation of both the weapon and the crystal in the Temple's archives. If you want to, you may assist or advise each other, but the crafting itself must be done by the wielder himself. Once you hold your newly completed weapon, you will understand why it must be so. You are not obligated to stick with red, if you prefer another colour and modify the crafting process accordingly. I expect both of you to be done and ready by nightfall the day after tomorrow. That is all."
After that, she simply turned and walked down the corridor without even bothering to close the door. Their apprentices wouldn't linger in her chambers for long, if they intended to take full advantage of the limited time she had allotted them.

He chuckled softly, a grin spreading his lips and stretching the only scars that hadn't been healed. He cast a glance over to Azaria and they shared a look of mutual understanding; and also of mutual amusement. Both with small smirks gracing their faces and naked as the day they were born, they silently listened to what their mistress had to say. He had a hard time of suppressing the laughter that threatened to bubble up at her words and he bit the back of his hand to keep it in. Lady Pride really was a multi-faceted woman that never failed to surprise. "Never said there was anything wrong with men," he muttered in a voice so low that even with their heightened senses, both other occupants of the room had to strain to hear his words. At her mention of multiple orgasms, his body tingled all over with the still fresh memories and he hummed in approval, his eyes twinkling with mischief. He decided to ponder what exactly she'd meant at a more appropriate time, for he could see in the way her features changed that there were more pressing matters on her mind.

She related to them in a few brief sentences what had transpired while they were in the throes of passion. When she was finished, he just kept nodding, unfocused, his mind already running over the whole situation. It was plain and obvious blackmail – not very honorable, eh? – but this was war and as long as it was effective, anything went.

His gray eyes flashed to the blue Twi'Lek beside him and he grinned, partially relieved that he wasn't being sent off to perform such a crucial and important mission. His face fell almost immediately, however, when Pride's white eyes turned to him and her words at the same time doomed him and stroked his ego. Being Sith is a frustrating job, he thought, shaking his head. When she spoke again, her tone left no room for argument and it was clear that fun time was over and it was time to get to business. They were in the middle of a Galaxy-wide war, after all, and there were only so many moments to play games. At the idea of crafting and finally wielding his own lightsaber, the hunter's eyes sparkled with newfound energy, while he was seconds ago ready to go back to sleep next to two gorgeous women. Alas, it was a dream for another day, perhaps, though most probably something that would never actually happen. With a sigh he stood and called his scattered apparel to him, a small self-satisfied smile signifying his inner smugness tugging at his lips; a few months ago he would've needed all of his focus to do even something so mundane – now it came easily to him

He clothed himself almost haphazardly, knowing that a shower in his room later on would do him much good. He bowed his head and winked at Azaria, who, quite oppositely, took her time donning her clothes, and made to leave.