A Lesson on the Water

[Taeli Raaf]

Taeli sighed as she walked through the parts of Ahto City that had been rebuilt under the Sith. She could feel lingering hostility from the native Selkath, and some annoyance, and she figured that was a mix of having to rebuild the surface trade city for the fourth or fifth time in history and from the invasion.

She had decided to come back to the planet to see what she could offer to the rebuilding process, and she had found out that [member="Selka Ventus"], a leader of Silk Holdings was spearheading the operation. So, here she was, prepared to offer her services and to try and help mitigate the animosity towards the Sith, but something else was needling in the back of her mind. Something was going to happen here, but she just didn't know what.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Darth Arcanix"]

When a Knight of the One Sith asked to meet with you, you made the time. This remained true whether or not you were secretly a Knight of the One Sith as well. Selka Ventus, twice injured by Republic sabotage to Silk Holdings' kolto facilities, was ostensibly just a member of Silk's board of directors, and a former interim CEO of the interstellar corporation. Manaan, where she'd recently transplanted two willing pseudo-Progenitors from other kolto-producing worlds, and where she'd helped rebuild Ahto City twice over, loved her -- or hated her, though that negative minority remained very close-mouthed as to why. Suffice it to say, her relationship with the Selkath was largely positive but complex.

She had her Ahto City office swept for bugs weekly, but made sure to get it done ahead of schedule in preparation for this meeting. She'd recently moved her main operations here from the submerged Pathfinder-class frigate Baobab, which remained nearby.

The office doors closed behind Arcanix, and Selka removed her curved lightsabre from a secret compartment within her desk. "I went to a planet called Arcanix once," she said apropos of nothing. "I helped redirect a Force Storm, betrayed an empress, arranged a Dark Lord's destruction...it's a long and happy story. What can I do for you, Lady Arcanix?"

 

[Taeli Raaf]

Her shock was complete and absolute. She had never guessed the woman before her was a Sith, let alone done everything she claimed to have done.

"Forgive me, I had no idea you were . . . different than what you portray to the public," she said, shaking off the shock as best she could. Noting the curved lightsaber, she could immediately guess what lightsaber style the woman used and she was very eager to learn that form herself. It suited her personality better than other forms.

"I had simply come here to offer any assistance I could for the rebuilding efforts, but now I can think of something else," she said, wondering how she might take this request. "Perhaps you wouldn't mind teaching me a few things, as you obviously have more experience than I do and I would appreciate anything you have to teach."

Her eyes kept flickering to the curved hilt, but she wondered what Force powers she might be able to learn as well.

[member="Selka Ventus"]

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Darth Arcanix"]

"I know. And it's because you came to help that I decided to tell you a bit of who I am." She smiled faintly, pleased by the shock, and slipped the lightsabre into a thin briefcase, along with other business essentials. "Remind me to tell you the rest of that story sometime. That all took place at the Battle of Arcanix, in the Unknown Regions. Good times," she said, deadpan, "were had by all."

She rose from behind the desk, displaying a professional gray dress with simple lines. Hardly combat attire, though the fabric had more stretch and the backslit more height than the cut made it appear. She could do Makashi well enough in this.

"Tell me," she said, taking up the briefcase. "What can you do? Where do your specialties lie?"

 

[Taeli Raaf]

[member="Selka Ventus"]

"I haven't really focused on specializing in anything yet," Taeli admitted. "I'll freely admit I'm the sort of person who lets her curiosity get the better of here and has to have every scrape of knowledge I can get. You could call it a hunger, but other than standard abilities, I've dabbled in alchemy, with using Force Lightning in other ways, implanted a coral seed inside myself to access a form of Vongsense, and started learning the basics for cryokinesis. I really just want to learn whatever you're willing to show me."

She was extremely curious what this seemingly ordinary woman could do, considering Selka was most likely a very powerful Sith to avoid detection as she long as she had and continued to do. Looking into her satchel, she could see her half circle hand-guarded lightsaber hilt almost begging to be taken out to practice.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Darth Arcanix"]

"I can empathize better than you'd think."

As Master Velok, lor pelek and jen'ari, she'd been a collector of every Force technique known to man, though she hadn't mastered many of them. But if Selka Ventus=Sith was a secret, Selka Ventus=Velok was a far, far deeper one. The defining feature of his personality had been that exact hunger, and though she had few of his memories, the overwhelming curiosity had carried over clearly.

"I have a few tricks, nothing impressive. My specialties are Force Drain and things like unto it. Do you have any experience with that?"

 

[Taeli Raaf]

"I'm glad someone can relate besides my apprentice," she said, sighing slightly as she thought about how while Sith hoarded knowledge, they would only seek it out when they felt it would benefit them the most. They didn't truly understand the pure need she had for gaining every scrape as quickly as possible.

She shook her head quickly, her eyes growing wide slightly. She could feel herself almost shaking from the excitement at the technique that Selka mentioned she specialized in.

"I have never even tired to learn that technique yet," she said. "Had no idea how to start it or who could teach me, but I'd be perfectly willing to learn from you at least the beginning techniques for Force Drain."

Her excitement and academic nature were showing themselves, she knew that, but she didn't personal care that if she wasn't coming off as the stoic figure most Sith tried to portray. She was just too curious and hungry for the knowledge to care about being anything else.

[member="Selka Ventus"]

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Darth Arcanix"]

Selka's grin could have swallowed worlds.

"Excellent."

***​

​

A couple of hours' travel took them out of Ahto City. The pretext was polite interrogation; Selka Ventus, publicly, was not allowed to leave Manaan, as part of Silk's 'good behaviour' arrangement. All part of maintaining her cover.

But the Sith touch was light, decidedly pro-business. That much had been established everywhere from Coruscant Rimward. And all the lighter now that Aldiel D'Lessio - secretly Aleidis Ijet - had disappeared. Had been disappeared. Much to Selka's surprise and pleasure, it seemed that she, as the former interim CEO, was a strong candidate to fill Aldiel's shoes. And meanwhile, the Selkath actively appreciated her for replacing the Progenitor. Things to ponder as she journeyed to a remote floating facility as a 'guest' of the One Sith. She'd brought her briefcase with lightsabre, and little else.

The facility was little more than a depot, a covered floating platform that bobbed gently underfoot. Selka's lightsabre hissed to life, a cold blue. Strictly speaking, as an AgriCorps washout, she wasn't supposed to have one of these by the Jedi rules; she'd built it after her departure, under the influence of the fragmentary other minds that occasionally overwhelmed hers.

She eyed the curved hilt in her hand, then met Arcanix' gaze and flourished the sabre into a quick salute. "What are you prepared to sacrifice for the knowledge you're after?"

 

[Taeli Raaf]

Leaving Ahto City under "innocent" reasons, Taeli could only wonder what she might be getting herself into. Part of her wondered if she might have let her curiosity get the better of her. The entire flight to the floating platform Taeli spent contemplating what exactly these lessons would entail and how much she would actually be able to learn. Steeping onto the platform, she could feel it bobbing under feet and [member="Selka Ventus"] seemed . . . slightly different somehow.

The snap-hiss of the blue curved blade igniting snapped Taeli out of her thoughts, prompting her to draw her own lightsaber, the half circle guard covering her hand, hiding the true form of the saber for now.

"What are you prepared to sacrifice for the knowledge you're after?" Selka asked her, snapping her lightsaber up in a salute.

Taeli was silent for a moment, thinking about what she had given and was still willing to give. The answer . . . well . . .

"For knowledge . . . anything and everything," she answered, her red blade igniting and sweeping it up into a mirror salute of Selka's.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Darth Arcanix"]

"Oh, easy words. Easy words. Twelve thousand years ago, the bulk of the Jedi Order radicalized into the Order of the Terrible Glare. One of their training and discipline procedures for Padawans was to burn them, repeatedly, with blasters. That was the price they demanded for passing on the knowledge they kept." Still in her tight gray office dress, feet bare on the plasteel deck, Selka assumed a precise back stance. Her left foot was the back, the root, pointed to her left; her right foot pointed straight forward, ninety degrees off.

"On Yavin Four, six thousand years ago, Naga Sadow recorded the principle that anyone wishing to learn alchemy from him needed to present him with full measures of blood from an enemy, a friend, and themselves.

"On Yinchorr, almost nine hundred years ago, the Imperial Guard trained in pairs that became closer than brothers. Their final test for ascendancy was to fight to the death. That was the price Palpatine demanded from men who wanted to become the best.

"Darth Lumiya, eight hundred years ago, taught that to become a true Sith Lord, you had to sacrifice the thing or person you cared about more than anything else. Your closest family member -- your reputation -- your beauty -- your lover.

"So once more, with feeling. What are you willing to sacrifice?"

 

[Taeli Raaf]

[member="Selka Ventus"]

Taeli was silent, allowing Selka's words to flow over her. Internally, a war was being fought between her two sides, the one that was fully submerged in darkness, and the other that was still like how she had been before Darth Praelior found her on Lorrd after the murders she committed in self-defense. Her hunger for knowledge was in both sides though, and now she could see she had to embrace both and merge them. There would only be one way she could truly be free. . .

"I'll sacrifice . . . everything I have to secure knowledge," Taeli said fiercely, flicking her saber down to her side, her eyes turning yellow as she pulled the dark side to her. A dark side aura would have been wafting off of her if anyone could see such things, as she started to slowly circle the platform, preparing for what promised to be a hard lesson of the dark side.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Darth Arcanix"]

"You see this aura you've built up?" Selka gestured with her bladetip. "I can taste it. Siphon away from it, even as far away as this. It's around you, ready for you to use but at the fringes of your control. In a sense, it's wasteful. It'll exhaust you and corrupt your appearance more quickly than a measured approach to the Force -- look what it's done to your eyes already. Save overclocking like this for moments when you need it."

The hunger grew in her, and she felt no need to hold back: A spray of multiforked red lightning connected her sabre hand to the aura of power around Arcanix, but didn't latch on to her fellow Sith Knight. Unless Arcanix found a way to break Selka's concentration, she would find her accumulated power draining away, though weakness and harm weren't on the table just yet. Then again, Selka's manner didn't suggest an attack, just the harvesting of wasted strength.

Over the crackling red sparks, Selka's voice rose, energized by the impending snack. "What do you know about the price of Force Drain specifically? The cost of knowing it?"

 

[Taeli Raaf]

[member="Selka Ventus"]

She could see the red energy streams drawing away the aura around her, could feel how the effort was already trying to drain away her vitality and move her towards exhaustion. She had to stop that immediately, or she would fall quite easily in this lesson. Drawing the aura into herself as quickly as she could to internalize the energies, lightning lanced from her fingers towards Selka, hopefully enough to distract her from concentrating too much on her drain technique. But, Taeli knew, that just like lightning, a steep price was involved with Force Drain, and she had a fairly good guess what that was.

"To truly learn it, I have to experience it first hand," she said, almost certain in her guess as she kept the lightning going, just enough to force Selka to divert her attention away from draining her. "And, guessing again, once you take part of my vitality away with it, it will instill a hunger in me to replace that loss. A hunger that can eventually consume and destroy me."

She had heard the tales of Darth Nihilous, but also how Force Drain could act as a version of healing for the user.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Darth Arcanix"]

The lightning slammed into Selka's upraised blade and grounded out; after a pause, Selka kept up the Force Drain barrage from her sabre hand, with her other tucked behind her back. "Correct on both counts," she said, a little surprised. With a satisfied sigh, she left off drawing from Arcanix' aura. "And if you understand that, you have at least a limited idea of what you're getting into. More than any other manifestation of the Force, this one will try to define you.

"Let's talk about expectations. I'm a specialist in Force Drain, and I'm an experienced but relatively weak Knight. I can drain you from all the way over here; with the right circumstances, I can drain someone at far longer range, though with greatly reduced efficiency. For you, as the definition of a generalist, there'll be no killing people with a glance or a touch. It'll take work, and you'll need very short range. Lightsabre range or a bit farther. Maybe your drain will manifest as darkness, as clusters of branching red lightning, as red or yellow streamers connecting your heart to theirs -- I recommend the lightning visualization myself. It helps you avoid the impression that your Force Drain will inevitably hit, and that you'll be able to drain multiple targets, which you almost certainly won't. Frankly, some masters of Force Drain have done quite well by limiting their use of the technique to touch only -- to contact. Clear enough?"

 

[Taeli Raaf]

"Crystal clear," Taeli said. She knew eventually she would need to focus on a specialization for her Force talents, but that didn't mean she couldn't learn what she could, sample the platter do to speak. She continued to circle, glad that Selka wasn't attacking her with Force Drain directly . . . yet. Taeli could guess it was going to be a very painful experience, maybe on par with the coral seed implantation she did to herself.

Keeping her lightsaber angled and read for a sudden attack or block, depending on Selka's preferred method of opening a duel. From what the woman was saying, she preferred to fight from long range, but that could just as easily be a misnomer. It was the nature of Sith to be secretive about their true strengths and abilities, and that included how they would fight.

Closing her eyes for a moment, she braced herself for what she was going to say next.

Opening them again, she said, "Then let me experience it so I know how it works."

[member="Selka Ventus"]

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Darth Arcanix"]

"I suspect I can accommodate you."

Selka's stance adjusted fractionally as her left hand came out from behind her back to settle near her face, palm out and down. Her blade dipped, and a storm of red Force Drain pseudo-lightning, each little bolt a crackling nastiness that had nothing to do with electricity, sought to jump the gap from her empty hand to Arcanix. Rather than a single frontal attack, she adopted the encirclement technique that her...former self had made instinctive, and though she might not have all of his memories or powers, his instincts had translated well. Though she hadn't used the name Velok in the presence of any member of the One Sith, a good few from the old days might have made the connection if they'd seen her crimson pseudo-lightning split and come at Arcanix from multiple directions, like a clawed fist closing.

 

[Taeli Raaf]

Taeli saw all around her the red pseudo-lightning, arcing across the platform towards her. She shut her eyes, knowing this was going to be quite possibly even more excruciating than when she had implanted herself with a Yuuzhan Vong coral seed to access a form of Vongsense.

The red streams of lightning connected with her, and she was right. It was pain beyond anything she had ever felt in her life. She wanted to scream and collapse, tear her hair out to just make it stop as slowly but surely part of her vitality, her life energy itself was drained away by [member="Selka Ventus"]. She couldn't suppress the pain, she could only do her best to try and wait it out, but she felt herself collapse to one knee as more of her life energy drained away. It was then she felt it.

The hunger was seeping into where her lost vitality had been, her body demanding she find some way to replace it, anyway at all. It wanted to be whole again, and Taeli, through the pain, recognized that would sit within her for the rest of her life. The hunger would need to be controlled though, she could allow herself to be consumed by it. She had subjugated a coral seed to her will, she would subjugate this too in time.

She fell to both knees as the red-pseudo lightning disappeared, panting heavily and eyes wide as they stared at the deck of the platform they were on.

Lifting her head, she said hoarsely, "Well that didn't feel too good at all."

 

[Ashin Varanin]

"It's almost allegorical that way. The addict is never satisfied; the other, the loved one or the target, takes the brunt of the damage. Force Drain has a unique relationship with Force-bonds, almost paradoxical. It's more difficult to use against those closest to you, and easier against those who are progressively more different. Different species, strangers...and yet when Force Drain propagates beyond nearby targets, it does so through Force-bonds. That's how worlds die." She smiled faintly. "But Nihilus was a specialist and a high-level Master. No need to concern yourself with his precedent."

She kept her blade up; her free hand returned to the small of her back. "Up you get," she said, with a minute gesture of the bladetip. "Let's see where your limits lie."

 

[Taeli Raaf]

Taeli took a moment to catch her breath and to analyze what had been done to her. The hunger, the sort of void in her being, was still sitting there and was hungry for energy, but it wasn't trying to consume her. From what Selka said, she need not worry about becoming something like Nihilus since she didn't create Force Bonds at will like the Lord of Hunger had.

Looking down at her hand that was holding her lightsaber, she ignited it and rushed forward, feeling a little drained but ready to learn what else Selka had in store for her. Her fighting style was already geared to be more graceful and elegant when she used her single blade mode from years of being on the Lorrd fencing team, and she demonstrated that here, throwing several feints and thrust at her as if she was wielding a fencing foil.

[member="Selka Ventus"]

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Darth Arcanix"] would discover fairly quickly that Force Drain of whatever degree, even if she'd never become as powerful as Nihilus, could become as addictive as Nihilus had found it. Welcome to the deep end.

She fell for the occasional feint, but adjusted to Arcanix' style quickly; much of her Makashi memory was acquired, not earned, meaning that muscle memory wasn't as ingrained as she would have liked. A matter for practice. To someone with Arcanix' experience, Selka would come off as someone who'd once been very good but was now somewhat rusty.

"Remember-" Snap-hiss, snap-hiss. "-this isn't-" Snap-hiss. "-fencing." She drew back a couple of steps. "It's derived from Shii-Cho as much as it's derived from fencing. You have the entire blade to work with; don't limit yourself to lunges and thrusts. Makashi has a wide variety of strikes, and its defenses have almost as many circular movements as Soresu, most in the form of parries and redirections; it's the only way to deal with full-power attacks, especially fighting as a woman with a one-handed style."