Mustafar

[Darth Furion]

Two weeks on the planet, and not a single worthy specimen. Countless pieces of obsidian glass, ranging from big to small, dense to less dense, had passed through his ship and none were good enough. This one was too thick, that one had too many micro fractures, the idiots didn't understand the concept of perfection. He slumped down on his bed inside the ship, ignoring the pangs of hunger and the call of sleep. It had been long since he had either, but he was determined not to answer his body's call until his mission was complete.

[Darth Furion]

"No," he said, contempt thick in his voice, "Perhaps I'm acting too much like a perfectionist, but every piece I come across seems utterly useless for my design."

 

He sat up from the bed, his body almost lurching forward as an unseen energy brought him to his feet by the collar bones as his head remained tilted back, almost like he was a corpse.

 

"Meditation hasn't seemed to aid me in my search, either. There's some form of disturbance on the planet that keeps my mind's tread on a tight leash. Perhaps it's just the volcanic activity, I don't know." Weariness clung lazily to his words, and his eyes held his body's hunger poorly.

 

"Every time I seek out this disturbance, I end up beside a river of lava, but that's it. Just some sort of residual resonance emanating from one spot. Whatever it is, it was strong at one point, but now it hides just beneath the surface, just beyond my perception."

[Darth Furion]

He sighed and reluctantly agreed. Somehow he thought that if he pushed his body beyond its limits, tortured himself to the point of near delirium, he could bypass the cloud of misconception the physical intrinsically had tied to it and thus attain a new level of perception, quickening his search for the glass. The meal was quick and bland, but filling enough. His sleep was short and unrestful, but with his drive to complete his task so strongly built into his awareness, the force was easily enough to make up the difference. Once his body was at least back on par with what it should have been he returned to Faust.

 

"So I assume you know the exact place where I can find the perfect stone."

[Darth Furion]

"Will do."

 

After packing some water and rations, Julio began the long hike to the place of the disturbance. It was no more than a two mile hike, but with the planet's volcanic surface, it was like walking through a desert, a desert where the rivers were on fire. The slope down towards the river was steep, but was nothing to the dexterous sith.

 

"Here it is." He said, stopping just before the lava bed. "Do you feel what I meant? Something powerful was here once, but what it was, I can't tell."

[Darth Furion]

A brief nod was all he offered in acknowledgment before descending further down the steep slope. The apprentice lowered himself to the epicenter of the disturbance. As he shifted his weight to kneel, the loose volcanic sand and gravel slide away from him, sending him several feet down the slope. A desperate lurch an vicious grab at loose ground kept him from falling prey to the hot river at his back. Julio cast an unsteady glance towards his master before climbing back up to the origin. As dangerous as this was, he doubted Faust would be too concerned for his safety. After all, if he couldn't conquer something as simple as a contest between footing and gravity, he deserved the fiery fate that awaited him. This time he knelt much slower, careful to keep his center of gravity moving solely vertical. Once he was confident in his position he closed his eyes and pushed aside the world around him.

 

In place of sight being his dominant form of perception, he began to feel. But this sense of feeling was not of this world. It stemmed from something other worldly, beyond the tangible and through the numinous. This was a place, no, not a place per se, but a reality where consciousness flowed, where the vices and virtues that brought weight to every soul were exhibited for all who sustained the mental fortitude to simply look. What separated the wolves from the sheep, as Faust so pleasantly categorized, was that very mental fortitude. Summoning something terrible from the deeper reaches of himself, Julio tuned himself to the unseen world around him. It was little more than a whisper, but if you truly tried to listen you could hear it. But what Julio felt was not the original flow but merely an imprint.

 

The feeling is old, but deep. Whatever left this was....strong, once.

 

The heat at his back could barely be felt, the physical almost completely shunned from his perception. Further he delved, focusing ever deeper into the taint forced upon this place. There was a steady pulse rippling the current of the spot. The beat was slow, but each pounding grew heavier with time, driving Julio's awareness past his preconceived abilities. Without warning, a black dragon forced itself into his sight with a pulse, gone the second it arrived. He didn't have time to pursue the dragon, as much as he wanted. Now there was a very defined sense of hate that he couldn't ignore. He began to unconsciously clench his fist, slowly becoming one with the hate. Faint trickles of blood ran from his palms, his finger nails burying themselves in his flesh more and more as the raw animosity flowed through his furnace heart. And then...

 

Pain...

 

His limbs faded from his self awareness, as if taken from him. They didn't hurt, but he could feel very distinctly that they were missing. Shocking as the new development was, Julio couldn't pull himself from meditation. He had to go deeper, he had to know. Accepting the pain and loss brought about a new revelation. Underneath the pain was desperation. Not a desperation devoted toward survival, hatred had overridden that long ago. It was...strange. The hatred Julio had uncovered at this place had become his own, pushing him even further. Part of him, a very small part, began to grow afraid of what was to come next. Why doesn't Faust stop me?! Haven't I seen enough?

 

Fear...

 

He couldn't help it. No matter how much he tried, no matter how much he told himself that he was better than this the fear was inescapable. And therein emotion turned full cycle. He began to draw upon the very hate that this place conjured within him. Hating himself for being weak, hating Faust for driving him to this point, hating whoever it was that was that left this stain upon this spot, too weak to overcome his own fear. When feeling was brought paramount, Julio snapped awake, both clenched fists brought harshly above his head. In one monstrous swing he brought both hands down against the very slope he sat on, his hatred escaping in a mighty roar. The hill he and Faust stood upon shook to the core, and all the sand and pebbles around them flooded down the slope in one black, sulfuric avalanche. Julio, still infused with a foreign hate, flew from his knelling seat, landing deftly atop what remained of the hill. Ignoring Faust, he turned to look at the spot where he once was. No longer covered by sand and gravel, something odd sat where he once was. Reaching out he commanded the obtrusion to him. Landing softly in his hands, Julio held what appeared to be a metallic gauntlet. Around the seams were some form of letters from an alphabet he didn't recognize. Despite this, he knew exactly what it was. Without looking up at Faust, he spoke, holding the gauntlet at arms length.

 

"This...is a mandalorian crushgaunt, augmented with the terrors of darkness. I left it here....apparently."

 

He couldn't explain how he knew it was his. It just was. Nothing anyone told him, including Faust, could persuade him otherwise. There was a uniqueness in it that Julio saw in himself. Looking up at Faust, Julio's golden eyes shone as bright as Faust had ever seen them, even in the dim light of the volcanic world.

 

"Thank you, for showing me this place."

Edited January 21, 2009 by Guest

[Darth Furion]

Julio walked in a daze behind Faust, ignoring his own maxim of never ignoring wisdom and only half listened to him. He was still in search of understanding of what had just happened. How he had so easily connected to the scar, and how frightening that ease was raced through his mind. It just didn't seem possible for him to do by himself. As much as Faust had taught him thus far, it paled in comparison to what Julio was somehow able to do. He knew how to sense things, how to feel them in the force and even then no more than basic sensory range. And commanding the gauntlet to him. He twisted the metal glove in his hands, studying its form. He was sure he had never seen it before, nor even heard of what it was in all his time since his reawakening on Naboo, but none the less he knew without a shadow of a doubt that it was his, and what its design was.

 

Frightening as the enigma was, Julio couldn't help but feel nothing but aspiring hatred. If he had learned anything from this encounter, it was that he could no longer fear. Not because it was a cardinal sin amongst the Sith, though that still held some weight, but because he simply could no feel it any more. He saw any form of fear as a weakness, as did all in the order, and like them he despised weakness, but it was more than that. Whereas a Sith would take their fear and twist it into the hatred they so needed to weave their dark demands upon the force, Julio could only hate what it was that threatened his will. Fear was nothing more than an open gateway to self loathing, just another weapon in the arsenal.

 

"...one at their core is like this, you can deconstruct them, make them your own. If you can feel that hatred, you can feel the pulse of a mind, of a heart, and shape it."

 

Snapped back from his inward stroll, Julio's ears perked up. What did he mean, exactly? That everyone had the capacity to hate? Or that everyone had some form of crucible that could bring about such hatred? Either way, both concepts were worth exploring at a later time. He had decided when he left Onderon that he would hold most of his discussions with himself. Depending on his own wit would in time make him stronger, and depending on Faust's opinion would only cloud his own perceptions and never allow him to fully develop his own. All he could do was take everything Faust said with a grain of salt, and test the ideas and principles on his own time.

 

"The heart and mind of another are your's to shape and do with as you please now. If you could reshape them to your desires, what would they look like?"

 

He mused to himself for a moment, taking on a scholarly glaze in his eyes.

 

"Some would corrupt the hearts and minds of others solely for corruption's sake. The problem there is that if you fill the galaxy completely with vice it would be much harder to control. You can always trust an honest man to be honest, so long as you don't put him up against a wall. A dishonest man, you can trust only to be dishonest, which opens up a multitude of new possibilities."

 

Julio stopped his tirade for just a second, a curious look to him. He looked around, as if something was trying to grab his attention. Something was whispering at him, lightly tugging on the coattails of his awareness. He glanced down to the ground and smiled, bending down to pick up a fist sized shard of black glass and stuffed it into the folds of his robe.

 

"Everything done will have consequences, so I would have to be sure that I am aware of every possible outcome before I made even the softest step. As misguided as Darth Sidious was in seeing the potential hatred in others, he was quite gifted in foreseeing possible outcomes. Be it because he was gifted in looking to the force for premonitions or simply because he was patient and calculating enough to use his own wit in his plans, I can't say. Ah, but I'm ranting. Sorry, your question. What would the hearts and minds of those I reshaped for my own purposes?"

 

He paused, trying to visualize what his own forced will would do upon the fragile mind of others.

 

"Ideally, my influence will not be noticed. If I could, I would make it seem like my influence was the idea of the person in question the entire time. To doubt their thought or action would be to doubt themselves, not me."