~| 3 Hours after the attack began |~
Darth Nyiss stood on the bridge of her Harrower Dreadnought as it hovered above the surface of the ecumenopolis Coruscant. Below, fires raged and scenes of carnage played out as the last holdouts of defenders were slaughtered… But from her commanding position, it was all silent. Only the purposeful murmuring of the bridge crew to be heard, punctuated occasionally by an order from the captain.
Before the ship stood the Jedi Temple. The colossal edifice was aflame in multiple locations, and already one of its great spires had been toppled through indiscriminate turbo-laser fire. The hour of its final destruction was fast approaching.
Nyiss was looking forward to the spectacle, but did not want to experience it alone. Such a triumph deserved to be shared after all. Accordingly, she had summoned a guest - a Jedi who she had captured several weeks prior by the name of Lea. They knew each other well at this point - in so much as a torturer and the tortured could at least.
The troopers pushed Lea onto the bridge. Though she did not fall over, she did stumble, ending up very close to her captor, Darth Nyiss. “What sort of tortures have you planned for me this time, darth?” She quipped out the words while stubbornly ignoring the troopers that had escorted her in.
“Nothing but the finest.” Nyiss said, turning to look at her ‘guest.’ “A unique spectacle the likes of which has not been seen in the galaxy in hundreds of years.”
She turned back to the view before the mighty ship, motioning for Lea to come and stand with her. The prisoner wasn’t restrained in any way for this. It wasn’t necessary - Nyiss’ presence was all the restraint needed. And if the girl still tried something, the ship's crew were well used to her subterfuge by now.
“It will be a rare privilege for us both.”
All around her, both now and before she got to the bridge, she had felt death in the Force. Lives beyond counting ending. “What are you destroying this time, darth?” Lea said as she walked up to where the darth was, her eyes searching for anything she could conveniently filch. It was only when she got close to the viewport that she truly understood what lay outside. There were buildings everywhere. She had never seen this sight before, which is why it took her this long to realize exactly what it was.
“So. You’re destroying the Jedi temple. How very Sith of you. I suppose I should be surprised at this?” even as she spoke, another of the Jedi Temple’s towers collapsed and Lea could feel the raw fear and terror of the people still inside it, especially from the Jedi there.
She then reached out with the Force. Though she had not spotted anything useful to pick up, she had spotted the equipment belt on one of the troopers standing at attention near a side wall. With a quick gesture, she activated a stun grenade.
The soldier, expecting a nice, quiet bridge guarding duty, failed to notice the activation of one of his munitions. Nyiss, on the other hand, did. With a wave of her hand she deactivated it, then turned to Lea and wordlessly lifted her by the neck with a light Force Choke, rotating her so she would have no choice but to watch the temple.
“Of course you shouldn’t be surprised. This was an inevitability from the moment the war began. But if you are determined not to enjoy it, then at least you will believe that it is done when you witness it with your own eyes. Any moment now.” Behind her she picked out parts of sentences as the bridge crew coordinated with the fleet and ground teams. “-report charges ready…-” “-all ships acknowledge move…-” “expected blast zone marked…-” The anticipation was palpable. The fear from far below tasted of success and power. The expectance of a momentous event permeated the Force.
Lea was in fact not surprised by the attack on coruscant. Not because she had prior knowledge or that the darth had bragged about it, but rather because this sort of destruction was exactly what the Sith were wont to unleash. Nor, of course, was she surprised that the Darth caught her activating the stun grenade. But it had certainly been worth trying. Even so, she could not help but try to loosen the invisible force squeezing her throat, even though she knew perfectly well that her fingers would find nothing to grasp. It wasn’t the first time she’d been choked with the Force, and it probably wouldn’t be the last.
Fortunately, it did not last long. The Darth used it more as a means of chastising her and forcing her to actually watch the destruction below than as true torture.
In between the rubble of the two fallen towers, Lea saw the distinct black armor of imperial troopers moving about, as well as a number of Sith. The entire temple was surrounded, and she could even see what had to be Jedi either being forced to board imperial shuttles, or carried aboard while unconscious. “You won’t get away with this, Darth. The Order will hunt you down.”
“What order?” Nyiss said, then laughed lightly. “The Sith are ascendent. The Jedi are soon to be gone entirely from this galaxy. With them, the Republic will fall and all life will come under the wise rule of the Emperor. I have nothing to fear.” The multitude of troopers and Sith on and around the temple quickly boarded their shuttles, which wasted no time in moving away. It was the final part of the preparation.
Nyiss couldn’t help but smile as a moment of stillness came over the surroundings preceding the relatively small initial blasts. Then the main event arrived, a number of larger charges detonating in sequence, bringing the slab sided walls and remaining towers crashing down in a great cloud of dust and pulverised stone. From their position in the sky, they were spared the great rumbling as it all came crashing down, the vibration never reaching them and the low rumbling sound drowned out by the vessel’s engines. It was an expertly performed demolition, quick, efficient, and absolutely fatal for all those Jedi still trapped within. The dust cloud would linger for many minutes yet, but it was clear from the evening sun and fires now visible through the dust that the once grand edifice… was no more.
When the first explosions burst out of the temple ziggurat, Lea’s eyes widened in surprise. It was one thing to know, on a theoretical level, that the Darth intended to destroy the Jedi Temple. It was quite another to truly see it.
The following detonations of the much larger charges turned the entire Jedi temple into one large detonation of dust and debris, intermingled with fire. Lea felt the instantaneous deaths of the countless individuals still inside the temple as it all blew up. She watched in silence as it all fell apart.
Nyiss lingered for a moment, gazing at the destruction.
Victory at last. And with it… peace. The suffering of the girl next to her went ignored as the Dark Lady savored the flood of unusual feelings that surged forth at the thought of real, true, peace.
She allowed herself only a short moment however. With an elegant flourish, she turned back to the captain and spoke, breaking the silence on the bridge with a clear command. “We’ve seen enough, Captain. Take us into orbit, and on to Feena.”
They may have achieved victory at last, but her real work was only just beginning.
