Korriban

[Darth Nyrys]

Was there something wrong with the permit?

 

For what seemed like the hundredth time, Ailbasí poured over the display of her datapad trying to figure out what went wrong. She had filed through the proper channels at uni, and all of the veri-sigs were showing up complete and authentic. She examined the datapad on a spartan cot in a tight but well lit cell. The place was so clean that it evoked the sterile nature of a doctor’s office, or a newly built hab block before the masses were let in to mark and stain it with their collective essence.

 

Was it Nasovicci playing some kind of sick practical joke?

 

The thought of that scumbag strolling in with some of his frat minions, his nasally laugh escaping through his smugly crooked smile was enough for Ailbasí to feel her tiny fists tightening up into balls. The rodent faced bottom feeder had been throwing an adult tantrum for weeks because Ailbasí had refused his so called generous offer to be one of his assistants. Everyone knew what Nasovicci wanted “assistance” with, but he was tenured and published, so nothing was ever done about it. He couldn’t just keep this up for ever, acting like he could take whatever he…

 

A very cold and intimate fear slithered up Ailbasí’s spine, with legs of ice and nausea. While the truth was never a certain mark with the Sith, it was said that their prisons were where the more sadistic among them practiced their art, tormenting and cutting on their victims for dark rituals or idle pleasure. This place was clean, well lit, and while sparse it wasn’t inhumane. Nearby, mournful musical notes drifted from another cell like in the holovids, almost like a wink at the absurdity of this being a Sith gulag.

 

Sith were a highly chaotic society and there was no way in retrospect to know whether the men that had imprisoned her were actually Sith officials or just imposters. Regardless, Ailbasí’s mind frantically referenced whatever images she could remember of Sith guards or officials, but in her state of panic the mental images seemed blurred and distorted.

 

Reflexively, sharpened claws extended from Ailbasí’s fingers and toes, but the reality of the situation was washing over her like gallons of nearly frozen and brackish sea water, robbing her lungs of air as her body rebelled with short, desperate gasps and a panicked staccato of heartbeats.

 

If they come in here I won’t be able to stop them from taking what they want.

 

Tears streaming down her face, Ailbasí curled up in a tight ball on the cot hugging herself, wishing to anything that was listening that she could make herself so small that she could vanish.

 

Admin edit: Testing something

[Darth Nyrys]

When the prison block door opened with a sudden thwishing sound, a pair of black and red armored guards smartly marched into sight, displaying the precision of fanatics. In an odd way, this actually helped, as the source of Ailbasí’s panic had been dispelled, and replaced with an entirely new thing to be terrified about, but the about face was so jarring it left her temporarily numb. Words that she knew were being spoken, but sounded alien to her ears as she struggled to cope with everything that was happening. As they opened the cell door she walked between them in a dazed state of non comprehension through the cool, dry halls.

 

As they moved through the complex, the air changed dramatically, or Ailbasí’s nerves went into overdrive, and heat and wetness seemed to make the air feel thick, like being in a primordial swamp. The hall opened up to a feasting area with tables set to serve Sith being tended by robed servants. An ominous throne loomed over the room, and at first that’s where Ailbasí thought that she was being taken, but as they got closer, their course changed to bring her in front of a large dais, upon which loomed a massive hutt, made even more imposing with his black battle armor. Ailbasí didn’t even know that was a thing Hutts did. The guards placed her on her knees in a position of supplication before the being that clearly had come from Ailbasí’s nightmares because armored battle slugs with powers over death and suffering were not things reality allowed for.

 

With the knowledge that the next for moments might define the rest of her possibly very short life, Ailbasí fell back on what she knew intrinsically, and that was the stories in her father’s library. Speaking in delicately intoned Huttese, she addressed the figure before her.

 

“Your Eminence, I hope that we can resolve this matter to the profit of us both.”

[Darth Nyrys]

When the hutt next spoke, his words were an intricate etymological tapestry that shifted languages and dialects to find the precise words to best say what he was saying, or more specifically, what Ailbasí would have thought would be the best words out of the assortment of languages she had collected over the years. It reminded her of vocabulary games with her parents, they had always said that words were part of how we remembered our lives, and therefore the more words you knew, the more nuance your life would have. A brief memory from childhood of sharing words from different languages like collections of polished stones flitted through her mind.

 

The interaction was certainly peculiar though, having been told by colleagues in the past to keep at least a planet’s distance between herself and the enigmatic Sith. These esoteric lords of darkness were notorious for their isolationist tendencies, especially regarding matters of their past. Perhaps this individual, who seemingly at random had taken such an interest in her plight, had been the one to approve the permits to begin with. Maybe he wanted an unbiased opinion on something, or thought that inviting some uninitiated academic to examine some piece of lore would be an entertaining novelty. Either way, it seemed like an honest answer was best, especially since this Sith was potentially able to read her thoughts.

 

“Everything the galaxy knows about the Sith comes from times after the first great war, which culturally redefined your people. Everyone knows where you are now, but where did you come from? What were the original beliefs of the Sith and what was the breaking point between the orders? In essence what I seek is…”

 

Ailbasí struggled to find a word that truly encapsulated what she was looking for. There was one word, part of a language her father had kept between the two of them as sort of a father daughter thing. If nothing else, it was the most honest answer she could give.

 

“Saarai.”

[Darth Nyrys]

The Best Behavior pulled out of hyperspace over Korriban and hailed the spaceport for guidance to land. After transmitting documents and responding to purpose of visit inquiries, the ship was given a berth to land at the academy hangar. At touchdown Ailbasí already had a bag ready and was moving down the ramp the moment it lowered. In times like this you just had to keep a forward momentum or the anxiety and trepidation would catch up to you.

 

Ailbasí was wearing one of her dig site outfits, a getup that her father had helped her put together for when she was studying in less civilized places. It was baggy enough to hide her figure, and even had some reinforced padding on it in case things got violent. She also kept the hood up to hide her long hair and obscure her face in shadow. Creeps were a universal constant on every populated planet in the galaxy, and there was no reason for Korriban to be an exception to the rule. She palmed her chemspray and carried her keys in a way that allowed them to double as an improvised weapon as she approached the massive building through a sprawling tent city.

 

The earlier conversation with the flight controller had included a suggestion to check in with the recruitment desk in the academy for reassignment. Ailbasí didn’t know if being reassigned had negative connotations in the Sith order, but she hoped that it would offer a new perspective. Her observations of Sheog and her own personal experiences with the Dark Side had made her feel less like she was controlling anything and more like she was being chained up and dragged along behind a speeder. It was too much, and maybe that meant that sorcery wasn’t what she was meant for. Or maybe she just needed to study harder. She had so many questions and not nearly enough answers. Even the other voice had been quiet lately.

 

The recruiting office was less than crowded but not empty either, with most of the people being sorted into what seemed like new applicant lines. One of the posted guards did a double take when he saw her and muttered something along the lines of surprise that she had survived. Thinking back to introduction to the Sith, he wasn’t wrong for his surprise at the revelation, so she decided not to make a scene. When he collected himself he gestured to a smaller line, perhaps meant for reassignment of already registered apprentices, and she joined that line. Everyone in line was quiet, either to project an image or to hide their own insecurities, and Ailbasí decided not to upset that status quo.

 

It wasn’t long before she was at the desk facing a man in what seemed like his late twenties, dressed in ceremonial robes rather than the business professional outfits that Ailbasí usually saw in academia. His face was surly and his lips held a not even bothered to be hidden sneer. The skin around his eyes was unnaturally dark like you sometimes saw in heavy Dark Side users and he had numerous tattoos.

 

“Here are my datadocs, I’m here for reassignment under a new master.”

 

The man snatched her multipass out of her hand and began entering data.

 

He eyed her up and down as her file came up on his screen. “Our records have you as Sheog the Mad’s apprentice, but the progress notes don’t have any actual notations of training milestones, just sketches of you in revealing leather outfits. So either you can take your skanky self over to the new apprentices line and stop wasting my time, or you can file a petition of your totally not fabricated tale of how you were totally training the entire time and submit it for inquiry, which may require months. The form must be filled out in triplicate, and all of my pens seem to have dried out, so you’ll have to run back to your ship and get one from there.”

 

Ailbasí felt like she had been slapped in the face. Her cheeks flushed red with embarrassment, and the realization that everyone in the room was now staring at her made her have to hold back tears. Everything she had done, everything she had survived over the last few months, invalidated due to clerical omission. How could they take that away from her?!

 

“Awww, is someone disappointed that their little modeling sesh didn’t get the results they wanted,” the registrar chided.

 

She felt something new inside of her, and Ailbasí realized that it was the strength that she had found surviving her ordeals. Unlike the unknowable vastness of the Dark Side that she had confronted in her earlier training, this was personal, this was hers. She seized hold of it with her mind’s eye, like a huntress grasping comfortably on the hilt of a blade, and willed herself to draw and brandish it.

 

And it listened.

 

It felt rapturous to hold, a righteous and justified anger that the soon to be recipient deserved to have loosed on him. She focused on his face and yanked it towards herself, sending the man sprawling over the desk, his face an inch or two away from hers. The flesh sizzled and popped where her projected hand touched, and the man began screaming in pain until she seized his throat with her physical hand.

 

“I’m not disappointed, I’m angry. I did not kill my enemies, consume the weak to overcome my wounds, raise their corpses to do my bidding, and rend the soul of a krayt dragon just to have some wannabe conduit of the dark powers who users more eyeliner than my three old roommates and I combined try to push me around. So here’s what is actually going to happen. You are going to get me a cup of caf from the office, and then you are going to immaculately write out my petition for me, because real Sith don’t do clerical work. And about those pens not working…”

 

She wrapped her hand around the mass of pens in the cup on the desk and brought them down hard on one of his hands supporting him on the desk. He tried to pull them out but she stopped him.

 

“You can take one out at a time to write my petition, and if we need more pens, then I will find new and exciting places to put them.”

 

She released her hold on him and he ran back into the office to get her caf. The actual petition itself didn’t matter at this point, it was about defining her qualifications through action, pushing back against the people that pushed her. The man came back with a cup and its contents were as dark and bitter as Ailbasí’s current mood, so she through the steaming hot liquid in his face.

 

“Sugar and creamer you moron, who the pfask taught you how to make a cup of caf?”

 

People were still staring at her, but it wasn’t with judgement or mockery anymore, and it felt very, very good.

[Darth Nyrys]

Ailbasí suddenly noticed a young woman of roughly equal years to herself leaning casually against a wall and speaking to her. She was a Twi’lek, a species known for its graceful dancers that often caught the eyes of slavers, much like females of her own species. However, the manner of speech and confidence of this this woman suggested that she was no mere slave. Perhaps she was even a Sith, as in one of the true wielders of the Dark Side, as opposed to the fool that she had just put in his place.

 

“It was not an easy road to get here, and he tried to take those triumphs over hardship from me. Sheog was training me the ways of the Sith, but his duties to the Dark Lord called him away, and I was separated from the teachers he delegated to take over my training during a two month long exploration of trance state.”

[Darth Nyrys]

The sounds of combat surrounded Ailbasí in the training arena, and she found herself intrigued seeing the more formal training of Sith in combat. This was the sort of things that the holovids loved to show in the action flicks of Sith and Jedi, highly choreographed combat between skilled opponents. She should have been panicking that Sheog and his followers hadn’t taught her anything about combat, but a strange casualness stilled her mind. Muscle memory that didn’t belong to the Cathar kicked in, and her knees bent as she lowered her center of gravity. Her eyes moved over the girl and an alien perspective seemed to be framing what she saw into new information, and she supplemented its logic with her own.

 

The woman was at ease before combat, which meant that she had experience, more than Ailbasí did for sure. Ailbasí had no weapon, let alone anything that could withstand a saber, which is traditionally what a Sith would have. This meant that there was a wide radius of nope in the woman’s front arc that would be suicidal for Ailbasí to occupy. She also probably wasn’t fast enough to flank the woman as she could turn faster than Ailbasí could move. She would have to find a way close the distance and strike from where she wasn’t expected.

 

A plan began to form between herself and the phantom memories in her head. Use the mace to remove sight and smell from the equation. Bound low and right towards the statistical offhand of the woman. Extend claws and swipe at the hamstring, wounded animals don’t survive long in the sands. She would have to commit to the plan entirely from start to finish, she didn’t have the muscle intelligence to swap things up mid action.

 

The mace slid out quickly, a practiced action of muscle memory that was all her own, and she depressed the stud to send a cloud of chemical deterrent towards the woman. No time to wait for results, she dropped low and bounded right with claws reflexively extended, this part was the Otherness inside her head right now. As she started to clear the woman’s side she swiped her claws towards her hamstring.

[Darth Nyrys]

That… did not go as intended. Her pride would have been bruised if she had ever received any combat training beyond the self defense courses Atani had dragged her to at Charmath Uni. She recovered as best she could from the blow while responding to the woman’s query.

 

“He found me. I was doing a permitted survey for an archaeological dig when I was detained by Sith guards and held in the detention cells. After being held for awhile I was escorted before him for what at the time I thought was a trial, but now think was more of an interview. He must have liked what I said because he gave me full access to the Sith historical archives while we departed for Onderon.

 

When we arrived I had my first encounter with the Force, a Sith battle meditation. It was powerful, and terrifying, and overwhelming. Afterwards, Sheog offered for me to partake in consuming the fear of the planetary population with him, but I declined. I felt like if I did it, I would be swept away and lost to the current. I don’t know if that makes me weak or just cautious, but when I look at Sheog, I don’t see a person, I see the darkest, most sadistic aspects of the Force wearing a Hutt shaped mask. I want to use my power, not for my power to use me.

 

After that, I was dispatched to parley with the Onderonian nobility. I wasn’t fear and death incarnate, but I think that is why they sent me, I didn’t have a reputation for brutality or slaughter. Once the Galactic Alliance stood down, the responsibility of my training was delegated to two underlings of Sheog’s. They sent me out onto the streets with a knife and told me to come back with a kill. I came back with two. Not because of any particular skill or bloodlust, I just don’t think that they expected me to fight back as hard as I did.

 

I was in a hospital for a while after that, broken finger bones, dislocated shoulder, multiple lacerations, and a concussion. Someone smuggled me out back to the Sith and Black Sun fleets, and there I met up with the twins again. They were teaching me meditation when I blacked out. Woke up two months later, surrounded by corpses and fully recovered. The scent of slaughter attracted a canyon krayt dragon, but between a hunter that happened to stumble upon me, my research into the creature’s biology, and some poorly reanimated corpses, we managed to mortally wound it. I consumed what was left of its life force with the Dark Side after that.

 

I felt a presence on the planet calling out to me, promising to teach me more about the Dark Side and necromancy, but again I felt adrift in a dark and violently turbulent sea, and that wasn’t what I wanted. You wonder why Sheog taught me so little, I think he wanted to turn me into another conduit like himself, another mask for the Dark Side to hollow out and wear. I didn’t want that so I noped the pfask out of there and came here. Grabbing that desk clerk was the first time that I actually felt like I was controlling the Force, and not just being immersed in it.”

 

Ailbasí could feel the woman poking and prodding around in her brain. All of this immersion and connection had left her strangely attuned to the connections between individuals. She teased out the invading presence with thoughts of her next move, before enveloping it with the fragmented shards of the girl that she had killed on Tatooine. Like smooshing a spider with a piece of tissue paper and bundling it up tightly. Except the tissue was made of the razor edged fractal shards of a former person’s mind. She didn’t have the speed to outmaneuver the woman, but maybe a sudden burst of direct aggression would catch her off guard? Hoping for an opening from her mental trick, she discarded grace and poise to try and close in enough for a grapple so that the woman couldn’t use agility to evade her.

[Darth Nyrys]

The experience had been like lucidly experiencing a nightmare where she could never be fast or clever enough to overcome the monster. Ailbasí’s mind had a general idea of what to try, but her limbs felt mired in a thick ooze when she had tried to make those ideas a reality. A panic response of the brain is to process data more heavily to try and find an appropriate response, but in this case it had only succeeded in making her feel even more insufficient.

 

Her trainer bid her farewell while pressing a medallion into her hand, and while she felt like she had failed, the token throbbed warmly in her grasp and brought the envious stares of others. She didn’t feel better than the others, but the sparring match had brought into sharp focus the direction that she needed to take her life in. She had always been a lover of knowledge and wisdom, inheriting the former from her father and the latter from her mother. While under the oppression of her condition learning and academia had always seemed like her natural course in life, and she had excelled in it, but now through the wonders of the Force she had found a way to restore her physicality.

 

Was restore the right word? She had been a prisoner of the circumstances of her unusual birth her entire life. She hadn’t been sick enough to live in confinement, although there may have been a sense of solace in that life, living vicariously through her father’s books and her mother’s stories. Her mother was always telling stories, and a knowing smile seemed permanently chiseled into her features. Ailbasí always felt like there were other things that her mother had wanted to tell her, secrets that mothers know but are reluctant to pass onto their daughters because it means that they aren’t little girls anymore. But fragile innocence left unchecked groomed fragile daughters who couldn’t cope with the real world. She was afraid of breaking the fantasy, but the truth is that life breaks everyone, constantly and mercilessly, and the only true measure of people is how well they can put back the pieces that matter, and let go of the pieces that don’t.

 

Right now she could use a few secrets to compensate for the death of her innocence.

 

She looked at the coin in her hand, inscribed with the language that she had once thought a secret between father and daughter. It was blindingly apparent now that there had been aspects of his life that he had concealed from her, but she didn’t know if she would have understood the weight of those things when she was younger. His focus around her had always been on being a good father, and perhaps he had meant to tell her the truth himself some day.

 

Nwûl tash.

Dzwol shâsotkun.

Shâsotjontû châtsatul nu tyûk.

Tyûkjontû châtsatul nu midwan.

Midwanjontû châtsatul nu asha.

Ashajontû kotswinot itsu nuyak.

Wonoksh Qyâsik nun.

 

As a TA at uni one of her favorite professors told her that an exam should be written to test mastery of concepts, not rote memory of details. She hadn’t failed today because of a singular wrong technique or inadequate muscle, but rather an overall lack of physicality. Ailbasí wasn’t obese, but perhaps that had allowed her to comfortably neglect pursuing a better body state. If she had ever felt disappointed with her condition there was always a guy that she could find that would tell her that she was hot, and her doubts would be forgotten through sweaty fumblings in the backseats of speeders or college dorm rooms. It’s hard to be honest with yourself and lying could feel so good for everyone involved.

 

But now the lies had been scraped away with a dull blade and it time to face herself honestly in the mirror. No more excuses, no more self pity hookups, no more drifting by on good enough. She would begin with a training regimen as rigorous as her study programs at uni, and apply the same discipline to staying on track. It was time to stop settling on getting by and start being pfasking amazing.

 

With a new direction found, Ailbasí resolved to commit herself to getting into shape before seeking out the mysterious woman again for the next step of her training.

[Darth Nyrys]

Constructing a program for meeting her physical training goals wasn’t all too dissimilar from putting together an academic study plan. There were more fitness programs than stars in the galaxy, but she was able to trim her options down through process of elimination. Troubling reports of muscle failure if sessions weren’t upkept meant miotism units were a no go. Plans that focused entirely on health through nutrition or medication wouldn’t take her where she wanted. The alchemists and biomancers on Korriban seemed incredibly sketchy, and there was no way to know who was legitimate and who was a scam. There were surgical methods that could be performed by certified medical specialists, but that still wouldn’t give her a familiarity with her own body. Training programs not designed for or compatible with Cathar physiology were obvious exclusions.

 

When she had gotten it down to a handful of options, she tried to close her eyes and let in the Force to guide her. Her finger drifted and hovered for a bit before settling on a spot and she opened her eyes. It was a banner ad for male enhancement. Either she wasn’t quite “there” yet, or the Force was pfasking with her. After hemming and hawing she picked a new plan that also included a nutrition guide for carnivores. At uni it was so common for students to take stims that they actually had kiosks that sold them, tracking consumption by tying purchases to student IDs, and while Ailbasí had never gone overboard with them, they were appetite suppressants. The amount of food that this guide was suggesting though was colossal in deific degrees, and Ailbasí wondered if she would be able to manage even with her appetite back.

 

Research had eaten the day entirely, and Ailbasí could feel sleep calling to her, so she curled up in her rented room’s bed and resolved to start in the morning. She didn’t want to get labeled as weak at the academy right at the start, bad things happened when predators sniffed out weakness. Drifting away quickly, the tiny room was replaced with the smell of brine and a familiar nightmare…

 

****

 

The first days were the most painful. Going from a lazy college student lifestyle to a serious exercise regimen left muscles that Ailbasí didn’t know she had screaming in agony. In a normal situation she would have let her muscles heal naturally over time by having break days, but this was far from normal. For better or worse there were treatments available that let her speed up the healing of torn muscle tissue and maintain a daily heavy workout routine. Early on, this meant mornings of agony as her shredded muscle tissues screamed in protest so wretchedly that she could barely get out of bed.

 

After building a foundation, Ailbasí began to work on supplementing her movements with what traces of the Force that she could muster She was careful not to undercut her own training program goals with the Force as a substitute, but she was gaining a measure of precision, although using the Force could be just as tiring as exercise.

 

When her symptoms would return, she would make use of the local jails to sate her hunger on rapists and pedophiles. She could no longer feed on murderers without feeling hypocritical for any sense of having the moral high ground. Overall though, she was on the path to feeling healthier than ever, her hair and fur becoming fuller and softer as she continued to steal these spiritual transfusions. Even a degree of color was finding its way into her fur. The jailers were fine with the situation as long as coin graced their hands, Sith needing “volunteers” was apparently a fairly common practice.

 

****

 

The person looking back at Ailbasí wasn’t her familiar, comfortable reflection from months ago. Carefully cultivated lines and curves made up a sleeker and more powerful whole. Her fur was now fully pigmented and a deep black tone, although she dyed her hair white like it used to be as a matter of personal preference. The person in the mirror was an unknown, but also powerful, confident, and someone Ailbasí was proud to be able to become. At last she felt prepared to face the dark halls of the Korriban academy and she returned to its perimeter, medallion in hand, ready to start a new chapter in her life.

[Darth Nyrys]

Ailbasí strolled the academy grounds, for lack of a better term, now able to take in her surroundings without grim specters of fear and insecurity haunting her so heavily. The most eye catching trait was the contrast between reverent traditionalism and feverish innovation. It was almost like someone had melded the same location across two vastly different time periods together, or looking at a cyborg shark, a predator so effective that it never needed to evolve but ingenuity found means to do it anyway. Warriors from lost eras conversed with assault troopers in state of the art power armor, and venerated architecture was traversed by turbo lifts.

 

Underneath this striking disparity was an overwhelming sense of viscerality. There were some places that were so sanitized and disconnected from life that you could look at a holopic of them and know everything you needed to know about their feel. This was not one of them. The scents of bodily fluids permeated the air, along with earthen clay and machine shop oils. All around her were thrumming currents of activity as young Sith sought to either assert their dominance over each other or trained to find the edge they needed for tomorrow’s battles and position jockeying. This was a place of vigor and grit. Being here got under your claws and left its scent on your fur.

 

Hearing the sound of metal hitting metal at a rhythmic beat and hoping to maybe observe a sparring session or something, Ailbasí entered a temple room and was hit by a wall of heat so overwhelming that she actually took a step back in response. Her initial assumption had been wrong, this wasn’t students performing a martial sequence, it was a smithing forge where apprentices learned the craft through hands on training. Noticing her intrusion, the instructor’s voice carried out a booming warning.

 

“We have a visitor gracing our humble workshop, be sure to point and laugh at her if she does anything stupid and hurts herself.”

 

While Ailbasí had never been in a working forge before, she had been to active industrial zones visiting family on Kuat and knew those safety regulations from having them repeatedly being drilled into her head. She had thought her parents were just being overprotective until she saw her first machinery accident. Grabbing a thermal mask from the wall that wreaked of someone else’s sweat, she observed from a safe distance, taking in as much as she could. There was a sense of belonging here that she couldn’t explain, amidst the sweltering heat and molten metal. Something in the blood.

 

After what Ailbasí would later find out was a great deal of time had passed, the forgemaster approached her directly, like a migrating mountain of leather and steel. His face and body were obscured, but Ailbasí was pretty sure he was a Sith hybrid of gundark and rancor genes with the way he loomed over her. The man giant looked her over and brusquely grabbed her arm to poke and prod at her before addressing her.

 

“Visiting hours are over, either leave or pick up a hammer.”

 

A moment of anxious panic briefly flooded over Ailbasí, like the feeling of getting caught in a lie or with her hand in the jerky jar. “I wouldn’t even know where to begin, I’ve never smithed anything before…”

 

The forgemaster shoved a hammer into her hands and said, ”I don’t know how you expect to learn without picking the damnable hammer up. Learn by doing.”

 

Ailbasí grasped the hammer’s haft and felt the heft and distribution of the tool. A few months ago it probably would have strained her terribly to hold it, but that version of her was no more. “I mean, I can learn the basics but I won’t know anything about the best alloys or most effective designs. This would take considerable research to produce the best results. In sophmore year I did a paper on the Conclave of Jirakor, where the best smiths of five different systems debated over the best techniques of weapon crafting at the behest of the Baristahl Hegemony for their sixth great expansion. The debate lasted over fifteen years and started eighty seven blood vengeance feuds between the clans attending.”

 

The forgemaster looked at her thoughtfully for a moment before speaking, “Fifteen years of smithing knowledge, do you have that paper with you?”

 

“And the accompanying charts and graphics! I was a bit of a history nerd… let me see where it is in my files…” Ailbasí brought up her datapad’s holo display and began browsing through folders to find the file. When she located it and let out a triumphant “Aha!” a massive armored fist burst through the holo display and into her nose. The world spun, and she could feel sticky red blood flowing warmly over her face and down her chin, yet somehow she got the impression that she had been hit with only a fraction of the force that those fists could muster.

 

“Even if you find the perfect science and designs before you start, you won’t be able to reproduce them properly without any hands on experience. Worse, you were so distracted by finding the perfect method that I managed to strike you undetected in a place with no armor, which is all of you because you haven’t made any armor yet. Do you understand the lesson here?” said the forgemaster with a stern but on some level concerned tone.

 

“I will be working on a helmet with whatever junk scraps you give,” she said, wiping away the blood from her nose.

 

And so she began her education of fire and steel.

[Darth Nyrys]

Ailbasí could feel eyes on her as she worked, but it was to be expected, this entire place place was like a practical exam occurring over months, maybe even years. There were some here that thought themselves above the lessons being taught, and others who balked at the remorseless brutality with which the instructors delivered them, but Ailbasí had experienced first hand the nature of the galaxy beyond the temple walls, and the dark energy that ran through it like pulsing arteries. The wisdom of masters and an environment of relentless persecution were necessary to survive. She had been so fragile before, but every adversity, every broken bone, and every struggle just to keep breathing had seen her come out stronger on the other side.

 

The days faded away into weeks as a ruthless regimen of self improvement set in. Yesterday’s Ailbasí was trash, she always needed to improve over the past self and take it even further tomorrow. Each piece of armor she completed revealed flaws in the older designs that drove her to go back to the forge and start anew. Sparring classes were slowly turning the powerful but undisciplined blows that the krayt dragon soul inside her had favored into refined strikes. She supplemented what the instructors taught her with her university access to historically preserved fighting manuals of hundreds of cultures. At times this would be a source of frustration for her, as the texts were for weapons with physical blades, and as such there were techniques that simply could not be replicated with a lightsaber. Agility courses made sure that she wasn’t just powerful, but also precise and flexible with her movements.

 

In the Crucible she found a hidden talent that blossomed from the tribulations of her past. She had always thought of herself as being physically weak because of the chronic pain and sickness she had endured through most of her life, but that endurance had grown to astounding levels in comparison to others in the temple. The Crucible was a place to test endurance and study pain. Volunteers would submit themselves to the cruel ministrations of the instructors while other students, mostly sorcerers studying biomancy, observed with rapt attention. There were no scoreboards or grand metrics in the Crucible to know how she compared to the others in the temple, each session was unique in its miseries, but Ailbasí was always one of the last to collapse or black out. The Crucible was the first half of her “rest days” when she was giving her muscles time to heal. At this rate the meds she had been taking earlier couldn’t keep up on their own, so it was Crucible followed by bacta tank sessions, where she read Sith texts from a datapad through the clear tank wall.

 

Before physical training or after the bacta treatments, she attended open classes to expand her knowledge of the philosophy of the Force and her ability to control it. She knew that the Jedi worshipped the Force and sought its guidance, but she wasn’t even sure if she believed that there was a higher awareness within the Force. Perhaps the Jedi were just like savages worshipping volcanoes and rivers because they didn’t understand the science of them. The holonet could be a vast resource for information and an insight into the shared neural patterns of the galaxy, but it certainly wasn’t guided by some altruistic guardian spirit. It simply was.

 

In her quarters at the temple (She had moved in as her training regimen had intensified), Ailbasí regarded her latest attempt at armor as its fierce face mask stared back at her. It wasn’t full plate like some of the other suits she had seen, instead more of a leather and steel hybrid of sorts. Some of the other regulars to the forge had helped her make Sith steel. They were part of a Sith subsect of sorcerers called the Krath, and apparently the forging of sorcerous weapons was one of their renowned qualities, albeit they manipulated the steel with the Force rather than the hammer. They called her methods “quaint”. It may have been meant as a slight, but Ailbasí liked putting in the work. The mask, breastplate, bracers, and greaves were Sith steel, while the rest was leather dyed with a mixture of black pigments and norris root, a combination found by studying ancient scrolls. She had on order the materials for a sash of pure cortosis to cover her abdomen, Sith scrolls and fighting manuals alike agreed that a septic stomach wound was a terrible way to die.

[Darth Nyrys]

“Perhaps today it will be you that learns.”

 

Ailbasí had the smallest stake in this moment, having agreed to the confrontation in exchange for training and out of principle. This was a place of learning, there was a sanctity to that which must be acknowledged. But she was also the most forward, and could feel the fearful hesitation miring the purpose of her momentary allies. She would have to take point if the others were to find their courage.

 

“There are very few rules here. Obey the Dark Lord. The weak serve the strong. The only justice here is what justice we make. Not the justice of gods or men, but of devils. We’ve come to deliver you to the hell of your own making.”

 

The teacher is both fast and skilled. This is known. This is expected. This is prepared for. The gathered students are not a collection of random seekers of martial skill, they are the wronged and a select few outsiders with necessary talents. An assassin to conceal their true motives. A warrior in case things got out of hand.

 

This master had been using his position to prey on the students in vulnerable moments. After he had violated and excruciated them, he used mental attacks to drive them to suicide through phantom shame and chimerical despair. For a time, no one noticed, but eventually former lovers and siblings became suspicious enough that inquiries were made to a necromancer, and the deception was revealed.

 

The plan was simple. Each student would use the Force to bind a part of the teacher’s body to rob him of his speed and skill while the killing blow was lined up. Tutoring in using the Force to manipulate objects was why Ailbasí agreed to help, and now her lessons were being put to the test.

 

The master struggled and railed against his invisible restraints to no avail. When he realized the futility of physical resistance, he turned to mental attacks, lashing out at his captors. Despite reducing many students to collapsed heaps on the floor, the binds still held for the most part, although Tsai’kara, the apprentice originally agreed upon to deliver the death blow, was clutching her crushed throat and slowly dying because of the master finding temporary release.

 

Ailbasí could feel his focus narrow in on her as he tried to incapacitate her with visions of torture with acid and barbed wire. If not for her time in the crucible it would have worked, but those sanguine days of nightmare had more than prepared her for this pain. She didn’t have a lightsaber like the other apprentices, but her hammer from the forge was in her pack. WIth forceful but clumsy will she used the Force to lift the tool and lob it from range, cutting her control of it early to make its approach harder to detect. While the toss had been aimed at the master’s head, her control was neophyte enough that it instead struck with bone shattering force on the master’s right knee. With a bestial growl, Ailbasí closed the distance with a pouncing leap and clamped her teeth down upon his throat before pulling away with a wet tearing sound. The master collapsed amidst ragged and blood soaked gurgling attempts at breathing.

 

Ailbasí stood up and went over to Tsai’kara, whose pleading eyes seemed to expect some sort of help. Instead Ailbasí rummaged through her robes as the sorceress’s breath failed her until she located a coin pouch with jade coins. The coins thrummed with unseen power and were of great use to Ailbasí’s future plans.

 

“You were supposed to make the killing blow and take the brunt of the burden, but instead you failed and I had to step in on your behalf. You will die a failure, but at least your debt is paid, Tsai’kara.”

 

Jade in hand, Ailbasí left the room to return to her familiar place at the forge. There was work to do.

[Darth Nyrys]

The question took Ailbasí aback a great deal. Not because of being accused of doing something foolish, in spite of everything she was still too young to know when something was or was not foolish. Instead it was the fact that anyone other than the Forgemaster had noticed her as someone of potential that she had trouble grasping. Sheog, the twins, the voices in the deserts of Tatooine, and most recently the woman that she had sparred with upon arrival had all abandoned her. She had begun to think that she was missing some vital quality needed for apprenticeship or possessed some off putting trait that drove away everyone around her. The time since her arrival on Korriban had been a process of sharpening herself like a razor blade, scraping away anything that could possibly be the source of her abandonment while honing an edge on her soul that could cut through anything. And none of it had seemed like enough.

 

“The teacher was abusing students and killing them afterwards to make sure that no one would find out. He hadn’t targeted me personally, but I was there when others who had lost lovers and kin used necromancy to confirm their suspicions with rituals of correspondence. The wronged parties had enough to offer me to procure my services, but their offerings would have been meager if not insulting to secure the strength of a master, and it is not the Sith way to rely on the charity of betters. I have no desire to see a student revolution, students tend to let their expectations govern their perceptions of reality, rather than wisdom or experience. But I do believe that students should have the right to defend themselves from predators like the late master.”

[Darth Nyrys]

For a moment waves of panic went through Ailbasí as the woman mentioned that she had not caught the eye of any lord. The woman from her arrival was truly gone then, and she was alone. She felt icy hands of despair embrace her with the realization that she would probably never have a master, at least a long term one, she was relegated to the ever changing background of the temple as others found masters through petty games of intrigue.

 

...But that hadn’t stopped her from learning here, or receiving training. True, she didn’t have the personal oversight of a dedicated master, but in some ways that meant more freedom to pursue what she wanted without any prestation or expectations. Her course was her own to plot.

 

“I would be honored to learn this technique, it opens up possibilities that I had thought unobtainable.”

[Darth Nyrys]

“I studied the Dathomiri culture at Uni for a few semesters as part of my sociology curriculum. I wrote a thesis about how maintaining their cultural identity rather than allowing themselves to be subsumed by more technologically advanced peoples was a major factor in allowing them to preserve their way of life. As I recall it, Dathomiri are shamanistic animists that believe that everything has a soul, particularly natural flora and fauna. They use rituals to communicate with and awaken spirits in items and talismans.

 

In earlier classes we talked about the shattering of the divine truth, essentially the thought experiment that there was a singular truth was shattered at creation with shards landing across every populated world. Each culture sees their shard as the divine truth, and considers every other shard a fake. The truths revealed by each shard are valid, the only falsehood is that one shard is the entirety of the divine truth. The thought experiment goes on to say that academics are slowly reassembling that divine truth across a thousand worlds, because you know, hero complexes for EVERYBODY! But in short, I was trained to respect culture regardless of whether or not it was mainstream, and not to dismiss things because they were different.”

 

Talking about her curriculum felt like reading about another person from a dusty, long forgotten tome. Now she felt as shattered as the divine truth, fragments of herself spread across disparate life experiences that if combined together would probably make no sense. It was like halfway through watching a romcom someone had changed the feed and put on a snuff holovid.

 

When Qaela requested an item that Ailbasí had created, she proffered her mask. It seemed the most fitting thing to awaken, and many cultures had stories of masks with magical properties. Most Sith designed their masks off of monsters and demons from folklore, menacing designs that they found appealing, or personal fears that they wore like armor. Ailbasí’s mask had a stormy ocean motif, inspired by childhood night terrors of drowning.

[Darth Nyrys]

“So essentially the Krath alter the materials before construction, and the Night Sisters alter the finished product after creation. How does the ritual achieve the hardening effect in scientific terms, does it alter the molecular structure or the nature of the bonds between molecules? Have there been comparative studies between the two methods? What about studying samples under an electron microscope? If so, are there spreadsheets I can study?”

 

Ailbasí’s mind was racing and she was eager to begin applying this new knowledge to her work. She departed for her quarters and began laying out a new project, combining her studies into Krath metallurgy, Dathomiri witchcraft, and ancient fighting styles to produce something that bridged the past and the present. There were many failed attempts along the way, miscalculated formulas that resulted in blades that shattered under the stress of the raw forces of creation. One made it all the way to the final quenching before being reduced to a frail piece of scrap due to the weakness of the last reagent, the blood of a hated enemy. The acolyte’s blood had irreversibly blighted the steel with its pathetic nature, leaving a pitted and flaky blade where there had once been promising potential.

 

Ailbasí’s solitary time here had led to few enemies, and certainly not any powerful enough to finish the blade. In what seemed like a lifetime ago at uni she had made what could be considered enemies amongst the more xenophobic imperial students, but their childish bullying had lost its sting in comparison to other torments that she had endured. It was a strange feeling, to be adrift and directionless because she had been too focused on her studies, on her future.

 

Seeking distraction, she turned on her datapad and started reading a mythograph like how she used to when she would hit her retention limit studying. Despite the compelling story and beautiful imagery however she kept coming back to the inescapable present. These tales lacked the grit and imperfections of reality, and until looking at them through her new perspective she had never had reason to see how false they were. She had been such a foolish and naive child, always running away from how the world was to hide in illusions of how she wanted the world to be. Finding no respite in the piece, she loaded up a holovid, but the upbeat songs and corny jokes only made her feel smaller, more childish. The harshness of Korriban and its visceral lessons had made her come to hate the girl she was.

 

But was the thing that she had become any better? Despite all her efforts to learn, adapt, and transform into something stronger, she continued to be left at the wayside and abandoned. Discarded by master after master, even with her eyes torn open she wasn’t able to find a way to be enough. Worse, this had been a one way trip. Part of her knew that from the start, that’s why she had left behind her connections to her normal life, better for them to think she had died. In a lot of ways the girl that they had known had died. Her goofy smile was a mangled wreck and her bright eyed intensity had transformed into smouldering coals.

 

Even her time at the university, all of the knowledge that she had collected, it was so sterile. Like looking at life through a thick glass pane and thinking that it would be enough to understand without touching, tasting, feeling, or doing. The ivory tower was filled with padded rooms so that the enlightened could rant and rave about truth without hurting themselves on the sharp edges and abrasive surfaces of harsh reality.

 

For the first time in her life, Ailbasí looked at herself stripped of distractions and excuses, and felt overwhelming loathing for what she saw. The childish immaturity, the collecting of hollow knowledge, the failure to push herself hard enough to become a worthy Sith apprentice, all of it came crashing down on her, constricting and crushing, denying her breath. She punched the mirror, shattering the accusatory reflection, but the pieces returned to their proper places and fused back together with sizzling ferocity. The darkness within her wanted her to see this. Surging around the room, she smashed and tore through what meager decorations and displays she had put up. Limited edition figures of favorite holotoon characters, posters of cherished mythographs, replicas of famous weapons from holovids, nothing was spared her fury.

 

Her room in shambles, revelation struck like a flash of lightning. The reverberating rumble that followed shook her between mania and melancholy. Overcome with sobbing laughter she headed to the forge with the dragon pearls from Tatooine. She shattered two and reduced them to a crystalline powder, which was then added to the molten alloy that she would use to forge both gauntlets and a new blade. Two were polished down into gleaming crimson orbs. One was inscribed with spells and names, half known, half dreamt. The crystals in the crucible attuned to her raw emotion and became conductors of the darkness in a molecular matrix permeating the gauntlets and the sword. Time passed as if under a strobe light, fugue states riddling the production process, but the work continued whether or not Ailbasí was aware of what she was doing. There was no calm serenity in the process, only a desperate, nerve rending dash to cross the finish line before exhaustion and sanity won out.

 

When the blade was ready for the final quenching, she latched onto that moment so tightly that it burned, and began running back to her quarters. The longer she held onto the moment, the more she felt like she had plunged her arms into acid. When she finally breached the threshold of her room, she slammed the door shut and fell to her knees as she let out an agonizing cry that was somewhere between a roar and a scream.

 

“A true Sith sword must be quenched in the blood of a hated enemy”

 

Lining up the tip carefully, Ailbasí plunged the blade into her stomach. The blade roared unnaturally as it drew upon the power of her blood and Ailbasí laughed deliriously as she finally heard the thrum of a properly forged Sith sword. The light in the room adopted a dark red hue, and Ailbasí felt herself torn between two moments, the present and her recurring nightmare. The walls of her room began cracking and through the gaps sprayed torrents of blood, filling the room at an alarming rate. But Ailbasí would not flee. Perhaps it was some combination of dark courage, sunk cost fallacy, and sheer exhaustion. She had been running so hard for so long that she just didn’t care anymore. The room continued to fill, alternating between blue ocean water and crimson blood, but she would not relent her prize to the rising tide.

 

The boiling surface rose up over her mouth, then her nose, and then it wasn’t long before she was fully submerged in viscera. The walls of the room drifted away and she felt herself drifting in a vast expanse of endless blood tides. The currents seized her body and tossed her about with hurricane force, but in this great void there was nothing to crash upon so she rode the wave. Sensations blanketed her with unabated intensity and she embraced them with naked abandon. There was fear, anger, and suffering, but also ambition, joy, and passion. Her nerves lit up with overwhelming agony and pleasure, rising in intensity until she convulsed uncontrollably.

 

Ailbasí became dimly aware of a presence in the murk, and felt the ensorceled dragon pearl she had inscribed drifting closer to her, drawn by a deep spiritual connection to the blade buried inside of her. She reached out to grab the glowing orb, and felt the incision on her chest creep upward on its own despite the blade remaining staunchly in place. Her ribcage peeled back as if it was made of gelatin and the Sith saw her own beating heart laid bare in her chest. Pausing only momentarily in hesitation, she tore it free and replaced it with the pearl.

 

Power surged through her as alchemy melded with biology in an impossible outcome. Her rhythmic heartbeat was replaced with a steady thrum of raucous energy. She understood now, what the pearls were and why the krayt dragons tended towards nesting in Dark Side nexuses. The pearls allowed a krayt dragon to digest Force energy when they consumed their prey.

 

Her immersion continued to stoke the fires of the roaring inferno of sensations, and part of her considered staying here, conquering the pain to lose herself in the pleasure. An eternity of raw, visceral experiences without any of in between moments. She wondered if journeying here was what drove Sheog mad. Before she could be further tempted, however, a gauntleted hand that she didn’t recognize seized her shoulder and pulled her back to reality.

 

Her eyes jolted open and she was back in her quarters. While the room wasn’t submerged in blood, a thick patina of red covered every surface. She pulled out the blade from her abdomen, the wound sizzling and crackling as it sealed shut. The pain would remain, the Dark Side did not give without cost, but the wound would not be life threatening. Ailbasí cradled the blade for a moment like a newborn child before affixing it to its handle and properly securing it. There was only one more part of the process left to do.

 

Ailbasí picked up a hobby knife that she used for building models and regarded its glinting edge peeking out from the layer of phantom viscera. She brought it closer but even in spite of everything she’d gone through, she still flinched now. There was something profoundly and deeply terrifying about having a blade near your eyes. She bit her lower lip nervously and stalled a bit longer before realizing a rather obvious workaround that avoided putting a knife into her eye.

 

Putting her other hand in front of her face and giggling deliriously at her own cleverness, Ailbasí used the Force to yank her eyes out of their sockets with a sound that would have been hilarious to hear out of context, and cut the optic nerves as they dangled. Fortunately there was nothing intact left to break on her desk as she fumbled about blindly trying to feel for the last two pearls. At last she laid hands on them and while reciting the spell she had found she inserted them into her now vacant eye sockets. A riot of colors and light returned as the orbs enmeshed themselves with her body and she marveled at her new profane vision.

 

She regarded herself in the mirror again, and found the rapture of the Dark. The person that she hated when she looked in the mirror, that person could change. Exhaustion and sleep deprivation, no longer being held at bay by imminent purpose, took the upper hand and her knees buckled. She collapsed onto the floor, hobby knife still in hand, and laughed joyously at the success of her transformation. She could feel her sword next to her and turned to regard it with new eyes.

 

“Was it good for you too?”

 

Her hysterical laughter grew louder until blackness consumed her and her mind descended into dark dreams.

[Darth Nyrys]

Ailbasí didn’t know how much time had passed when she woke up. The copper tang taste of blood was still on her tongue, but the once red veneer of the blood on her walls had turned… inert and still. She closed her eyes to rub them and realized that these new eyes could see unabated in spite of her closing her eyelids. Trying to find her pulse, she instead found the steady vibrating hum of the dragon pearl turned amulet. Her blood tingled with power as it coursed hotly through her veins, and her body vibrantly grew effulgent as the darkness surged into her nerves and lit them up like a riotous nighttime festival. Ailbasí had never done hardcore drugs but she was pretty sure this was what the really good stuff felt like.

 

Rather than feeling like she had reached some transcendent state, distant from the reality of the world, she felt hyper connected to her own personal experience. It was like someone put a metaphorical magnifying glass over her senses, intensifying and elaborating on the signals from her nerve endings. Chills ran along her back where naked flesh touched the cold stone floor… except Ailbasí was still wearing her smithing apparel.

 

A brief sense of disorientation followed the realization that the sensation wasn’t coming from her back, but rather entirely new senses originating from the newly forged blade. She reached out to it and it drifted into her hand before she even willed it to. Clambering to her feet, she found that the weapon had a natural buoyancy that kept it within her palm regardless of gravity and whether or not she released her grip.

 

The elongated hilt allowed for the blade to be heavier while still remaining balanced. Ailbasí had bulked up enough that she could have effectively wielded a bulkier weapon like a war maul or an axe, or even just sized up the blade to be a greatsword, but certain techniques that she was interested in could only be done with a proper sword. She casually launched into a flurry of mock strikes against the air, and pleasant chills ran through her body as the blade sang and danced at her behest. While the sword didn’t possess a sense of touch, it was acutely aware of thermal shifts and movement, Ailbasí could feel an exhilarating sense of anticipation when the blade moved. On a deeply instinctual level, she knew it would feel even better to drive into someone.

 

“Your name is… Gwn Marwolaeth.”

 

The name came to her lips as unbidden as the sword came to her hand. The sword’s name had always been Gwn Marwolaeth and Ailbasí had come to understand that, rather than naming the blade herself.

 

The moment was abruptly ended by a knock on her chamber door. The door itself, existing in the Force the way the way moons were illuminated by their neighboring stars, was only a diaphanous veil between Ailbasí and the unexpected guest. She looked like a white porcelain doll of a Twi’lek woman filled with black ichor that undulated and occasionally probed beyond the cracks as wispy finger length tentacles. Some of the cracks were sealed with gold, others were welded in a way that left black scorch marks around the seams. The ephemeral remnants of rusted chains forced her body into provocative poses despite being little more than phantom memories. Not all scars marked the flesh.

 

Gwn hovered languidly floated behind her as if sheathed on her back. Ailbasí didn’t recognize the woman, although she wondered if this was how the Twi’lek that had given her access to the academy looked in the Force. Composing herself as much as one could when covered head to toe in blood, Ailbasí opened the door with a gesture and called out for the woman to enter.

[Darth Nyrys]

A numbness, defined by its distant coldness seeped into Ailbasí, chilling her bones and stilling the features on her face. Why now? She could have been getting laid tonight… Surely there were some guys into the glowing red demon eyes look… A false patina of pleasantness honed from years of working retail during prep school and college calcified over her face as she responded to Darth Pfask Foiler.

 

“Let me change out of these wet clothes and then I’ll get your measure, I’m assuming it’s armor you want me to work on since you’ve come so well heeled.”

 

The spartan quarters of an apprentice did not offer much in the way of space, and Ailbasí just wanted to get this over with, so she changed in full view of the assassin. However, if the interloper was hoping for a show she would be disappointed, the warrior’s movements were quick and efficient. It wasn’t long before the soiled smithing gear was replaced with fresh warrior attire. Her sword found its place not long after.

 

A simple trade of favors for services would have been a reasonable ask, but the assassin had to complicate things by adding a threat. Even if the assassin had offered her something she deeply wanted, she couldn’t afford to appear to be cowed by threats, vulnerability was a death sentence here at the temple. Ailbasí gestured to the door and it closed and locked, creating a claustrophobic arena where the assassin’s stealth and mobility would count for nothing. The arrogant assassin had adopted a tactically unfavorable stance, leaning against the wall, and Ailbasí executed a piercing lunge that intentionally strayed right of center so that if the assassin took the easier dodge she would be boxing herself further into the corner of the room.

 

“Now I will take your measure, assassin.”

 

((Duel Post 1))

[Darth Nyrys]

Ailbasí expected white dots to be dancing across her vision as she recovered from the impact to the back of her head courtesy of the wall, given that armor did not magically stop physics. Aching pain spread throughout the back of her body, but surprisingly Ailbasí’s vision grew sharper and the force of the impact lingered in the crystalline matrix she had crafted, glowing an otherworldly crimson.

 

Had Ailbasí been wielding a lightsaber, her ability to attack in the tight quarters would have been limited severely by the walls, but a Sith sword allowed for techniques that a lightsaber did not. Her opponent had not drawn any sort of weapon, despite having close quarters weapons prominently displayed on her hips. It was a strange decision, perhaps she thought to establish dominance through displays of unarmed prowess, as if Ailbasí wasn’t worth her drawing her weapons? Another insult that would not go unanswered. And a tactical blunder that would not go unpunished.

 

The assassin’s roll had taken her into the center of the room… right next to Ailbasí’s bed. The sheets were lighter than other objects Ailbasí was used to lifting, and they launched off the bed like a tidal way of linens to entangle and blind the woman. Despite having only done minor Force use in the duel, Ailbasí was still feeling the strain on account of her earlier ritual and self mutilation. A weaker person would have been overwhelmed by the strain, but both heavy physical conditioning and pain endurance training had prepared Ailbasí for pushing past normal limits.

 

While the sheets launched through the air, Ailbasí spun her blade into a mordstreich grip, turning her sword into a mace and shortening the reach to allow for fuller swings in the tight quarters. While the sheets wouldn’t incapacitate a Sith, they would serve as enough of a disruptive influence to reduce the opponent’s ability to react. Ailbasí used this opening to swing savagely with Gwn Marwolaeth in a flurry of blows, giving herself enough reach to outrange the assassin but not not enough to foil her own attacks.

 

((Duel Post 2))

[Darth Nyrys]

As Ailbasí attacked she felt an odd sluggishness in the air as the assassin tried to siphon energy from the Force through distant and faded memories. The energy here was different though, frantic and close, manic and visceral. But most importantly, it was her energy. The air and her opponent filled with color as she watched the currents of the Force pulse and surge in waves and eddies of electric neon, a map telegraphing intent before execution was realized. The assassin gestured to the wall and the electrical cables severed, cutting off the electrical flow to the lights. If the room had gone dark, Ailbasí wouldn’t have known, her new eyes didn’t see in terms of light and reflection.

 

A plan began to formulate as the currents of the situation came into sharper focus. Each movement would play its part, like brush strokes coming together to form a painting, or dancers performing carefully choreographed steps to convey the emotion of a scene in a musical. The difference in energies revealed the nature of the assassin, who was focused with laser intensity on detached control. Her opponent’s natural state was distance and avoidance, and she channeled energy sterilely, afraid of touch, of connection. Of harm. It was the fundamental philosophical difference between warriors and assassins, confrontation versus avoidance. Accepting that you will be hurt versus trying not to be hurt.

 

Ailbasí saw the shifts in energy and allowed for her blade to leave her grasp when it became entangled in the sheets, nudging its course subtly so that it embedded in the wall touching the active part of the power line. As her sword drank deeply, her crimson eyes turned a throbbing scarlet, but she wasn’t done yet. The energy in this place was her energy, attuned to her distinct frequency through the blood rituals she had performed. Through will forged by harrowing tribulation Ailbasí seized back the energy that the assassin had tried to steal, while simultaneously maneuvering her gauntlet to block the depowered strike. Her eyes blazed effulgent and the walls began to bleed again with fresh blood as Ailbasí tapped into that primal darkness once more.

 

When her opponent disengaged, Ailbasí also withdrew, but for different reasons. Gwn Marwolaeth returned to her hand and she pressed the flat of the blade down her body, while bracing her body flat against the wall, pressing against it to endure what was coming. The final step was incredibly risky, but she was far better equipped to survive it than her opponent.

 

“You have no claim to anything in this pfasking room, most of all me. You came in here with threats but no armor, and despite being well armed, you’re fighting like a kath as if this were a practice match. I used to think that I was weak, and that’s why I had trouble finding a master, but you’ve shown me what true weakness looks like. You reek of someone who always had a safety net and a choice. Oh, I’m sure you think of yourself as a survivor, desperately, pathetically clinging to some past version of yourself, or a dream about who that waste of flesh would become with the help of your black magic sugar daddy, but you’re in the real galaxy now, locked in a room with me, and guess what kath? I PFASKING EAT PEOPLE!”

 

“I’ve shattered EVERYTHING I was to become the kind of monster that would excel here, not because I had to, but because I wanted to be something greater than what I was. I’ve been evolving while you’ve been “surviving” and leaning on the pedigree of your masters. I’ve sacrificed things that you will never understand, through my own choices, to build my bed of bones here. Tell me assassin, are you ready to see what a sacrifice looks like?”

 

Incandescent rage overflowing, Ailbasí released the energy that she had been collecting throughout the fight in the crystalline matrix that connected her body, her armor, and her weapon, shaping it into a concussive blast that detonated a few feet ahead of her. If she hadn’t already been braced against the durasteel door it would have been lethal even with her armor just from collateral impact, but the risk was necessary, because on the other side of the blast was a room full of shattered toys, failed prototype swords, and broken collectible holovid weapon replicas that had just been turned into an improvised fragmentation mine, rocketing towards Keenava’s general direction at lethal velocity.

 

((Duel Post 3))

[Darth Nyrys]

A high pitched whining sound pierced the room, rising in intensity with Ailbasí’s rage. This assassin lacked the resolve to follow through on her threats, and it would cost her everything.

 

The whining sound exploded into a hissing roar as the knives rocketed out of the walls on geysers of blood. When Ailbasí had meditated before, the darkness had been one of melancholy and despair, with blood oozing coldly, lazily from the walls. But this new darkness was rage and motion, heat and pressure. Torrents of blood came into the room and from the now waist high depths figures clawed and grabbed at both combatants greedily to pull them under. Ailbasí brushed them off and surged forward. Movement was agony due to her self inflicted injuries from the blast, but Ailbasí had trained to act through pain. Her now unrestrained fist shot out and connected with Keenava’s unarmored stomach with meaty impact, forcing the air out of Keenava’s lungs and leaving her gasping for air.

 

“You fight too little.”

 

Ailbasí didn’t relent as her opponent struggled to draw in breath, instead she gripped the woman by the shoulder with her off hand and began raining down blow after blow on Keenava’s head. When the Twi’lek went limp Ailbasí drug her over to the desk and laid her out like it was a sacrificial altar. The remaining pieces of porcelain cracked and peeled away as if gravity had been suspended, before they transformed into white butterflies and flitted away. Underneath the doll like facade was not the oily darkness that Ailbasí had seen before, but rather the battered and broken body of a girl caught up in a chaotic storm. She should have gotten out before it came to this, Korriban is no place for people seeking shelter.

 

“There’s no kindness in throwing you back into this nightmare, you’re not meant to run amidst monsters like us. Such a fragile little thing. So I’m going to take you out of this nightmare cycle so that you can have peace at last. You may have company down the road, but it’s not like they can kill you since you’ll already be dead. Now I will admit that this next part will be a bit messy and awkward since in the past when I’ve eaten people I’ve either been in a trance state or used the Force. But I need to send a message to others that might make the same mistake you did.”

 

Ailbasí unwrapped her prize and as it stirred she delivered a pommel strike to its spine, paralyzing it. There were a couple of false starts, but eventually Ailbasí was able to set in on the grisly banquet. When the last light started leaving Keenava’s eyes, Ailbasí peeled open the rib cage and plucked out the heart like a pulsating fruit nestled in briars. She consumed it with sensual abandon, revelling in the tastes of spicy alien blood and lean, iron rich meat. The act was not only delicious and nutritious, but also symbolic, and upon its completion that infinite spark of identity was also devoured and trapped within the prison of Ailbasí’s pearl heart.

 

********************************

 

Sentimentalists would readily tell you that the topography of the heart would be defined by warm memories and places of joy, sanctuary, and nurturing. In truth it’s more of a mixed bag, as places that make your heart sink or freeze in terror can just as easily find purchase there. An Escheresque network of places resided in the young apprentice’s heart, connected not by reason but dream logic and matrices of sentiment and trauma. Keenava’s soul, at least enough shards of it to consider itself Keenava’s soul, found itself here. It was empty, just like the apprentice had said it would be, at least as far as Keenava could tell. Peace at last.

 

A growl reverberated through the heartscape from something large and hungry. A hunter that had been without hunting for far too long at last sensed a prey thing, and the chase began, the ghost of the krayt dragon roaring triumphantly at a new conquest.

 

**********************************

 

“Oh… oops.”

 

When Ailbasí had had her fill she opened the door to her quarters, and a river of blood burst out. The half eaten body of Keenava followed shortly after from the lightless room. Content that a sufficient message had been sent, Ailbasí departed for one of the many temple med bays to recover from what was surely a great deal of damage.

[Darth Nyrys]

It was days before Ailbasí was let out of medical, not because she was too unwell to leave, but because the biomancers were concerned that she wouldn’t follow their activity restrictions. Which was a fair hypothesis. But still stupid and annoying. They may have also been mad about the med droid that malfunctioned and then caught on fire while repeatedly screaming “CRITICAL FAULT, NO CARDIOVASCULAR MUSCLE DETECTED!”

 

When Ailbasí had first come to this temple, she had been full of fear. Now she wore it like armor. Other students gave her a wide berth now, so news had gotten around. She wanted to celebrate, but Sith were rubbish at parties. A few months back a girl threw a party upon being accepted into the academy, within two hours it had imploded from power plays, duels, and drunken sorceries gone wrong. The final death count was never disclosed, but Ailbasí was fairly certain it was in the oodles range.

 

Even dating was difficult. Either the guys were all obsessed about showing dominance and expecting you to be some leathered up assistant, or they were sleeping with half the temple already. The worst was a date with an almost normal seeming guy who took a turn for the super creepy, talking about how their offspring would be the vessel for a new breed of super Sith. She wanted to get laid, not mother the new master race. Not like she could mother anything to begin with, being an infertile halfbreed. Jokes on you, eugenics prick.

 

While musing and walking the halls, Ailbasí’s attention suddenly settled upon an outsider with fierce intensity. He wasn’t as brilliantly lit as the other students, meaning he wasn’t a Force sensitive, but he was beautifully defined in his own way. He looked like a knight, a feudal armored knight, not the creepy cultist Jedi knight type. His armor, once burnished gold, was blackened by the flames of war, and his hands dripping red from the atrocities he had committed. This didn’t deter Ailbasí though, her hands had their own share of blood on them. A half shattered halo floated above his brow, with the broken pieces forming a horn. This was a good man ground down into something darker by the wars he had fought. Maybe he had been a hero even. Ailbasí liked that notion. A familiarity that she couldn’t place clung to him, but there was no apprehension or unease tied to it.

 

There was an instant attraction, undercut by a sudden fear. What if she said something wrong, or foolish? What if he wasn’t into Cathar? What if he wasn’t into women? What if he wasn’t into Cathar Sith women with crimson dragon pearl eyes?

 

What if I let my fear control me for the rest of my life? What if I end up alone because I’m always too afraid? This isn’t like back at school, where most of her classmates were arrogant, xenophobic kaths who could sleep with an alien but couldn’t date one. Her world sucked and she already changed it once, time to do it again. Say something clever but don’t overdo it. She approached the mystery man and linked her arm in his while whispering conspiratorially in his ear… at least as close as she could get with the height difference.

 

“It’s dangerous to walk alone here. Pretend you’re with me and maybe by the end of the night you will be...”

[Darth Nyrys]

“That’s a story that I haven’t had enough drinks to tell yet. Suffice it to say, I did what I needed to do to survive, and that led to some dark places, places that I think changed me. But I don’t think that I’m too far gone. My entire life up this point was spent searching for an elsewhere to be, whether it was in holovids and mythographs, or studying ancient alien civilizations, but there is a sense of belonging here, a natural intuition within me that helps me find my way in the dark.”

 

There was an ease in opening up to the man, knowing that he was just as changed, or maybe broken, as she was. Any potential judgement would be hollow and false, and any empathy honest. It was a foundation of kinship different and yet more accessible than any she had felt before.

 

“I never got the chance to thank you for coming back for me at the hospital, there have been a lot of people that have discarded me the moment that I became inconvenient, but you came for me before I was even conveniently good for you. It means a lot to me.”

 

Maybe she was being too open, but she didn’t care. Fear was no longer an obstacle, but a companion that bid her to fight harder for what she wanted. What probably they both wanted.

 

“I don’t know if you have somewhere you need to be, but if you don’t, you can join me for drinks on my ship… My quarters at the temple are currently a disaster zone from a couple of rather messy rituals, but my yacht has been kept up and we can have a few drinks and… talk. For as long as you want to.”

[Darth Nyrys]

His words hit her like a bucket of ice water. Her immediate gut reaction was to feel anger, to feel slighted by his dismissal of her sacrifice. But he didn’t know about her sacrifice, he only knew that rituals had been performed, and he took it to a very logical conclusion. It hurt, but not nearly as much as his lamenting the loss of the girl she once was. That was like an icicle through the heart. She didn’t think there was anyone left in her life that cared about That Girl. Memories of That Girl came floating up to the surface like shards of a broken mirror and Ailbasí felt nauseous. She forced the urge to vomit back down and composed herself.

 

“I’d be lying if I acted like I could bring back who I used to be on a whim. I’m damaged now in ways that make such a notion simply impossible. But this conversation is the first time in awhile that I had the desire to do so, and that has to be worth something.”

 

She wiped away rebellious tears and turned to face him, looking up directly into his eyes. It made her feel vulnerable, and the darkness within her raged and railed at that. But something inside her told her that this was exactly the right time to be vulnerable, to be open to the intervention of someone that cared about her.

 

“So here’s my offer, we go on my ship, and you tie me up so that you can feel safe. There was a guy I knew in Uni that was into that so I have ropes. Next I soberly tell you what all I’ve done to get here, and you make a decision. If think you can still save some measure of me, then you tell me, and you hold me like fragile porcelain, even if I feel harder than smithed steel. You tell me how pretty I am, how sexy I am, despite the fact that I’m built like a monster. When you look into my eyes, you pretend you don’t see hardened pearls that can handle anything, you act like you need to tell me that everything is going to be okay. You lie to me, until I dare to believe those lies and see some measure of hope for reclaiming pieces of my past self.”

 

“If you don’t think that I can be saved, or if you just don’t want that burden, we drink to what we lost until it stops hurting, and then we pfask until we pass out. Then when you wake up you leave and never speak to me again. Save me or use me, we’re both getting what we want tonight.”

 

The Best Behaviour’s ramp descended like a timely dramatic threshold, creating a portal into a life that Ailbasí had tossed aside only a few days ago. Was this a second chance or a moment of temptation? Either way, Ailbasí hoped that Delta was too distracted by her to notice the holotoon characters on her bed sheets once they got to her room...

[Darth Nyrys]

Ailbasí watched Delta stride confidently up the boarding ramp. Part of her had wished that he would have just picked one of the two options that she had laid out, kept things uncomplicated. This was the opposite of uncomplicated. Now he was going to be on her ship and be all paying attention to things and asking awkward questions like “why do you have so many toys?” or “what’s an Ereneda Handmaiden Sorceress Force and why do you have like fifteen posters for it?” or “What’s cosplay?”.

 

“Give me a minute to change out of my evil mistress of the night getup, yeah?”

 

When the changes in her mass and figure had stabilized, Ailbasí had hired a personal shopper to pick up some new outfits. They were waiting for her in her closet, neatly hung and folded. And virtually indiscernible from one another to Ailbasí’s new eyes. If it had been her old clothes, she might have been able to recognize some pieces by what memories were attached to them, but these were all blank canvases. She settled on a fitted tunic with a V neck that had the words “Board certified professional hugger” embroidered on it and some ridiculously soft and fluffy thermaweave pants. An angled leather belt and knee high leather boots finished off the outfit.

 

She put an elastic hair tie on her wrist like a bracelet in case the night took a turn for the better and checked herself out in the mirror out of habit. What stared back at her though was an image of her in her warrior armor, glaring daggers over her philosophical about face.

 

“Oh come on, we both know that I can’t even settle on a favorite color for five minutes, this won’t be an overnight change for me,” she whispered.

 

The reflection reached through the mirror and tried to seize her head and smash her face into the mirror’s surface, but she grabbed the frame and braced herself, and promptly left the room after the attack failed. The pursuit of the dark arts would just have to learn to share time with the pursuit of hot guys.

 

Ailbasí found Delta where she had left him, and guided him to the passenger lounge area where she plopped down in an overstuffed armchair and folded her legs cross legged. She gestured to a myriad selection of other chairs and couches, indicating Delta could take a seat.

 

“Alright, Inquisitor Delta,” she spoke in an over the top Imperial Core worlds accent occasionally interrupted by giggles, “how would you like to begin your interrogation of the subject?”

[Darth Nyrys]

Ailbasí didn’t respond to the question immediately. Instead she chewed it down to the bone, her mouth scrunched up and angled off to the side as she mulled it over. It was one of those simple questions that required a complex answer.

 

“I didn’t seek out the Sith in a bid for fortune and glory, in fact I didn’t seek out the Sith at all, they found me. But now there’s this thing inside of me that’s awake, and if I don’t learn how to live with it, it’s going to seize the wheel from me forever. And the light, the light is the same thing except you’re expected to just give control over while all the bits of yourself that make you… well… You, all that fades away. I don’t want armies and limitless cosmic power, I want to know that the sword on my back is sharp enough to cut through any chain. To exist beyond the Great Game being played and to choose my path rather than to grind down everything that is me chasing after armies and secret rituals. So big picture, I’m not happy yet. But at the same time, in the small moments, I absolutely am happy right now talking with you.

 

I’m going to stumble and make mistakes following this path, and they’re going to cost me, but that’s not really any different from any other path in life. Either I dive in headfirst or I let other people make decisions for me, or worse, I just live on the sidelines of my own life. But me is what I’m fighting for, not some vague dream of power or wealth. Besides, I think having things to care about makes me a better Sith, since I have more to feel things about. I’m definitely feeling things about you, and how you and I may fit together. In multiple ways.”

 

Ailbasí knew she was coming on strong, but after months of keeping her head down it was refreshing to be reckless with her intentions. She pondered for a moment before settling on a first question.

 

“What was the first choice you made after you were discharged from service, and what was it like after being in a super disciplined environment for so long?”

[Darth Nyrys]

Ailbasí felt his mind slipping into the past, fettered by ghosts that wanted to strand him there forever. A robed specter, slight of form with grim demeanor and jealous eyes hovered behind him, clutching at him from decades passed.

 

“Hey,” Ailbasí said softly, “Come back to me.”

 

Gracefully coming to her feet, she crossed the distance and gave him a gentle kiss on the forehead, the way a mother might discreetly check a sick child’s temperature. Curling up next to him and virtually coiling around his arm, she looked like the antithesis of his rigid military posture.

 

“I would have gone with a nice steak dinner or flavored frozen custard for my first choice, but blood vengeance is cool too. I may actually have lived the same place as you when I was very young, I remember a floating city with white walls, and my nannies during that time were identical triplets. Daddy worked Imperial R&D, so it’s very likely that I was there during Project Genesis, the big imperial push for mass producing civilian clones. I had a super bad nightmare though when I was little about drowning, I still actually have a phobia about oceans, and my parents decided to move me to Cathar. It was away from oceans and the war, so everyone was happy.

 

Family… I get the impression that everyone has a different family experience, but mine was one of the better ones. Daddy worked a lot, but he always made sure to make time for both of us, even when mom got sick and was on bedrest. There was an intensity to him that whenever he was looking at you, you felt like you were the only thing in the galaxy that mattered. Before mom got sick she was super mom, maker of jerky and slayer of monsters under the bed. There was a fearlessness to her that I always admired, and it stayed with her even after the illness set in. Even when she had to stop going out and doing, she seemed to have a limitless number of stories for any situation. Daddy was incredibly intelligent, but mom was his match in wisdom and sass.

 

Mom worked on the Kuat Drive Yards spacedocks before she married daddy, and while eventually she got more into the personnel end of things, she had enough exposure to unshielded parts that she developed severe rad cancer. Bacta can’t treat cancer, in fact it accelerates it, so the best we could do was make her as comfortable as possible and control the symptoms. She has already fought it off way longer than the doctors expected, that’s part of why I’m terrified to look at my messages from home, it’s like as long as I don’t look, she’s still around, she’s still fighting.”

 

It was Ailbasí’s turn to be distant for a moment. It had been a long time since she had felt that she could be vulnerable around someone, and that had robbed her of a great deal of catharsis. Even so, she needed to keep pressing forward, so she did.

 

“Uni is… it’s like getting pulled in opposite directions between people asking you to be the most responsible that you’ve ever been, and having the freedom to be the most irresponsible that you could ever be. I had an apartment with three of my friends who were willing to look past my species. Growing up xeno in the imperial school system has always been harrowing, but I loved learning enough to shoulder through any pushback. And even when the administration wouldn’t deal with bullies, bad things had a tendency to happen to people that crossed a line with harassing me. Being older and wiser, I think I have a better understanding of the truth behind that.

 

The actual education part was fantastic, libraries with shelves that outreach the limits of sight in their length, access to experts in every academic field, and the majority of the people wanted to be there. Some of the profs were still racist jerks, but not nearly as many as in the earlier schools. There was apparently a big party scene on campus, but I didn’t really get involved in it. I was more the geeky hologamer when I wasn’t studying.”

 

Ailbasí pondered if she had missed anything before realizing that she had never answered his first question.

 

“Oh, my name is Ailbasí, but my friends call me Bashi or Ash for short.”

[Darth Nyrys]

“My name, it’s a bit of a mythology reference regarding benevolent otherworldly beings of magic and mischief, or translated super literally it means pure being of chaos. I prefer the White Fairy approach though. Did you know that there’s a theory that a lot of early cultural beliefs tied to mischievous and helpful spirits alike are born from untrained Force user phenomena? So many of our stories hint at greater truths that we just didn’t have the insight to understand at the time.”

 

The offer of books was a very thoughtful and sweet one, but it was also one that in her current state she couldn’t act upon. But if Ca’Aran was offering books maybe there was another avenue that could be taken of equal value.

 

“My eyes right now, I don’t see the way that I used to. But if the rumors of Black Sun being involved in black market antiquities is true, I could use my sight to verify the claims of your providers while looking at all of the pretty pretties. I think there is a way that I could see through someone else’s eyes, but I don’t know the consequences of it enough to want to risk trying it with you yet. I know that I can connect to people on some kind of spiritual level through the Force, but I don’t know the full extent of the connection or what it does to the people that I connect to. So maybe down the road we can read together sometime, but I think I like the idea of having you be the one thing that’s just mine, and not mine and the Darkness’s.”

 

Ca’Aran’s last question was another simple question with a complicated answer.

 

“I want to find a way to move forward on my terms, to understand the Darkness enough to not be a slave to its hold on my life. Earlier in the night I saw you as a pretty distraction to have fun with and then move on, but after talking with you, I feel like there’s so much more to you than just a one night stand. I know that giving a pfask about people as a Sith is supposed to be a weakness and therefore a no no, but I think that the way that you are willing to challenge my expectations and speak fearlessly is worth a little weakness for the sake of growing. I guess what I’m trying to say is, no matter what happens tonight, I want a second date.

 

Taking advantage of their closeness, Ailbasí playfully licked Ca’Aran’s face and with a mischievous smile spoke again.

 

“Besides, I’ve licked you so you are mine now, that’s how the rules work and the ghosts will just have to deal with it.

 

I don’t know what wanting a long term thing means in regards to tonight. I’ve always been the charge ahead sort of person for anything that I’m passionate about, but I don’t exactly have the best track record of long term relationships. If you hadn’t already turned down my initial proposition, I would be worried that you yourself just wanted a one night stand, and didn’t care about me. But I don’t think that’s the case. I think that deep down underneath all of that regret and despair over outliving your war is someone willing to strive for new meaning in life. I’m not suggesting that I am your key to salvation, anyone that pins all of their hopes on one person is going to get pfasked one way or another, but I bet it has been a long time since you did something that would make the ghosts that haunt you jealous. So stay, and be happy, whether that means just being close, or a marathon event that deprives both of us of the ability to walk the next day. Just be here, instead of in the past, and comm me after. That’s what I want. Although if we do just cuddle, I’m not liable for any less than chaste groping that may occur. Also, you’re history, I love learning about history, in depth, and have poor impulse control. THE ABS MADE ME DO IT, I’M JUST A SWEET DEFENSELESS VICTIM OF YOUR DEVIOUSLY SEDUCTIVE MUSCULATURE!”

 

Emboldened by her own silliness, and on a giggling high from being herself again, she leaned in for a long kiss, hoping that it would convince Ca’Aran to take her back to her room.

[Darth Nyrys]

“Redemption is for people who are looking for the permission of others to move on from their past actions. Be a good man, or not, because the truth is that is the simple choice that needs to be made. Being a good man isn’t about what you did, it’s about how you plan to conduct yourself in the choices to come. So leave the moral arithmetics to the hardcore philosophers and just be. Hells, you don’t even need to be a good man, you could just be a decent one.”

 

Ailbasí gently wrapped her fingers around Ca’Aran’s forearm, enjoying being held and the feeling that someone thought she was worth holding onto. She couldn’t sleep before because she was afraid that she would wake up alone, but that simple gesture dispelled the fear like an evil curse being broken.

 

“Or are you asking for redemption for that last line you used, because that was pretty terrible. I almost called the whole thing off right there. I’m glad I didn’t though. Tell you what, get some sleep and if it’s still on your mind we can talk about it tomorrow while I train. I’ll be working on recovery training, so I’ll look like a complete spaz, but it’s actually super useful for real combat.”

 

One last kiss and then she drifted off into a deep sleep that was so blissful that she would stab anyone that interrupted it.

[Darth Nyrys]

Ca’aran had managed to sleep through Ailbasí’s alarm soundly, so rather than force the issue, she let him get some much needed rest. While the other times had been under different circumstances, she had plenty of experience in slipping away the morning after. She departed her ship armed and armored for training, and made her way to one of the sparring fields. After a certain point in Sith training, apprentices had to spar against training droids rather than each other to keep the med bays and morgues from overflowing. Of course when living opponents were required slaves could be provided, but recovery training was less about the opponent and more about adapting to unavoidable setbacks.

 

Ailbasí donned the recovery training overlay, a tangle of wires, connectors, and power sources that would randomly cause numbness, muscle twitches, and muscle failure throughout the fight. Most warriors on both sides only trained in unhindered sparring, but often what decided a duel was whether or not a combatant could recover from being put off balance or forced into poor footing. This was a particularly painful regimen that could easily lead to sprained or twisted joints, but she felt it was necessary. It also played into an element of combat that Ailbasí was increasingly becoming more and more dominant in, ground fighting and grappling. Gwn Marwolaeth came readily to her hand as the match began, and a brutal training session began.

 

By the time that she had completed her routine, her body felt like one giant bruise. Ailbasí was no stranger to pain, but she also made sure that she didn’t do anything that would stall recovery, moving gingerly to the nearby locker room. After hitting the showers she changed into a more forgiving outfit of Sith robes and carefully stowed her armor in a duffel. Gwn Marwolaeth rested in her back sheath, ever ready for a time of need.

 

As she drug herself out of the locker room to return to her ship, she found herself facing a small formation of soldiers at parade rest. While there were minor variations, the armor and insignias of the troops identified them as Darkwatch, a private security firm that her father had founded. For half a second she thought that they might be here to escort her home… but one of the minor variations that she noted was that they bore the heraldic devices of the Dark Lord, sporting arachnid insignias and spiderweb motifs. They were definitely waiting for her, but their stances were not exactly combat ready, and even elite troops of this caliber were not arrogant enough to engage a practitioner of the Dark Arts so casually. None of them spoke, but one approached her with a datapad with the expectation that she read whatever was on it. Just by the make of it she could tell that it was a securadisplay, a datapad design that could only be read from an appropriate angle and distance.

 

“With all due respect, I can’t read that with my eyes in their current state.”

 

Her father had used Darkwatch to protect what he cared about most, which meant that Ailbasí had been around them more than a few times, and from a young age had been taught to address them respectfully until it overcame even her propensity for sarcasm.

 

Stowing the securadisplay, the soldier tapped some buttons on a wrist pad and in seconds the area was covered in a sound baffling dome. Any conversation held here would be private. The focus on secrecy was new to her, but this was the first time she had interacted with Darkwatch in the employ of the Dark Lord, who was said to be a master assassin.

 

“The Dark Lord has sent us to collect you for an audience with him, we are to conduct you to him immediately.”

 

If Ailbasí still had a normal heart it would have probably nearly imploded at this point. An audience with the Dark Lord? The fear within her supercharged the pearl in her chest and sent her adrenaline skyrocketing, but even if she felt like she could bench a starfighter it didn’t take the edge off of the razor sharp terror plunging into her. Even for someone on team Sith, the Dark Lord was more grim bloody fable than living, breathing person. To be the Dark Lord was to be the most cunning and lethal killer in a society of demigod assassins, warriors, and sorcerers.

 

“I… I’ll have a servant conduct my bag back to my ship and accompany you immediately. I have a guest aboard my ship, may I let him know that I’ve been called off world without providing details?”

 

The soldier nodded and collapsed the security field. Ailbasí summoned a servant, gave her the bag and the message, and went with the soldiers to face destiny on Onderon.