Private Ashes of the Damned, Blood of the Wolf

[Darth Prazutis]

The air over Jutrand hung thick with the weight of its own ambition. From the upper causeways of the Eternalist dominant Sith capital-world, endless spires pierced the sky like the spears of some titanic army raised in eternal defiance. The arcology stacked skyline shimmered beneath dark clouds, a polluted dusk locked in perpetual twilight. Hover traffic screamed through the distance, muffled by the atmospheric interference of a dozen military fields. Here, where stone, steel, and circuitry formed a horizon that had long since devoured any trace of the natural world, the Sith Academy stood like a blackened shrine. Not the oldest of the temples, but one of the most unrelenting. It was here that the summons would come.

No warning preceded his arrival. No announcement over comms, no honor guard deployed from the Academy's fortress walls. The structure itself seemed to feel him first. Lights dimmed, weakest among them shriveling in the wake of shadow. Statues cracked. The hum of hidden repulsorlifts shuddered in their very coils. In a place where darkness ruled its grip tightened with crushing resolve. When the Shadow Hand approached, even silence dared not remain ordinary, it warped into a pressure, a tremor, a vast suffocation of presence. The gateway arch to the central atrium peeled open without a signal, scorched by proximity alone. The scent of cold ash and scorched metal lingered in the air, as if the Dark Lord of the Sith dragged war behind him with every step. He entered alone.

Tall as a monster from a warlord's nightmare, clad in cloth of obsidian etched with slivers of runic crimson, Darth Prazutis cut the visage of a dark king, a supreme monarch as he passed beneath the archways like some risen revenant of an age that never died. The giants boots rang like funeral bells on the stone floor. Those molten orbs of blazing fury stared forward his face clad in a stoic, unreadable expression of absolute certainty. Runes gleamed across the folds like the pulse of something buried far too deep. An amulet of blackened chain and deep red crystal gleamed around his neck, its power remaining dormant yet it pulsed like the beat of a heart. All that remained at the Dark Lord's side was a single large hilted lightsaber radiating fell power like the blaze of the sun yet ever present. No guards moved to intercept him. No instructors dared protest his passage. The threshold had been crossed, and now the Academy was drowned beneath his might.

The Mortarch had come for something. Past rows of frozen statues, halls echoing with the fading clash of training sabers, and walls steeped in the smell of cold blood and scorched ozone, the Dark Lord of the Sith moved with unhurried finality. Every Sith acolyte who passed him turned aside without a word, some falling to their knees in reflexive terror, respect and fealty, others simply freezing in place as though their bodies refused to continue. His presence did not merely oppress, it consumed. A young instructor rushed to intercept him just beyond the eastern hall. He tried to speak. He failed. The Dark Lord didn't even stop walking. Then the central chamber doors parted. Beyond stood the Headmaster of the Sith Academy, a bald-headed man in voluminous robes he had come to see, the one who would get the Dark Lord what he came for. Aerik Lechner. The son of Gerwald. The last ember born of Naedira Darcrath, kindled in blood, fire, and the hunger of things not meant to walk free. There was irony in the air, irony and something else. Memory twisted with destiny. The wolf's pup now stood at the threshold of a far more terrible inheritance.

Darth Prazutis came to a halt. The air grew still. A dark pulse radiated outward from the titan's frame, unspoken yet undeniable, like a command issued from the marrow of reality itself. For a moment, nothing moved. Only the low thrum of power, like a war drum beneath the skin of the world, echoed through the floor. The Headmaster was forced to his knees, shaking in his presence. He did not need to speak to be understood. But when he did? The words were knives. They fell with ironclad certainty that there was no alternative, the finality they carried enforced the only acceptable response was obedience.

"Bring me the wolf." The titan rumbled, voice like stone dragged across a grave. "Bring me Aerik Lechner."

Aerik Lechner ​

 

[Aerik Lechner]

WEARING: xxx
TAG: Darth Prazutis

The sky had been dark the night before, more than what was considered normal for Jutrand. From the garden maze where Aerik would often sneak to for some semblance of nature he was used to seeing the stars. They had not been present. Something had blocked their view, or it was a bad omen, not that the pup believed in such things. His father ensured he stayed away from the more religious aspects of using the force. Though the witch he had encountered had opened his mind to the idea that there was something at play, a will beyond his own, and deep magicks he could not possibly hope to understand.

His sleep was restless. Aerik had been haunted by what it could possibly mean. It was another thing to bottle up. When he killed the Jedi he had been awarded by being separated from his siblings. Aerik had learned to be independent of them, though he craved the camaraderie they had shared. They were his pack. Lone wolves went insane. Aerik could not allow himself to become one. His friendships with other students seemed to grow cold as well. They saw the monster when they looked at him, the one that tore two Jedi to shreds.

The rumors still said their blood was still on his chin when he shifted to a human once more. It was likely. Those kills had not been any different than any of the hunts which preceded those. He was still adjusting to what… who… he was now. His siblings were as well.

*****​

“You cannot simply walk in here and demand a student, no matter who you are,” the headmaster protested. "That is not protocol. You are not his sponsor, not even a silent one as far as I have been made aware. The Lechner pup, his brother and sister, are here because Carnifex wishes for it.”

The Kainites seemed all too eager to have a hand in what took place in an Academy which should have been beyond their influence. Yet, here Prazutis stood, a towering mountain that broadcasted one obvious truth to any who would listen to it.

He would not be denied.

A long sigh escaped from the headmaster as he walked toward the same door which the Shadow Hand had just barged into moments before.

“He should be fighting today. Someone within the second cohort thinks he needs to be taught a lesson.”

He stopped, looking over his shoulder.

“Follow me, but as rules are rules, we will let the contest play out to whatever conclusion comes about.”

*****​

A small crowd of students had gathered around the contest. By all rights, it should have been over by now. It was rare that someone in the fourth cohort lasted as long against someone in the second. Aerik had stopped caring to hide the combat training he had received prior to entering the Academy. Gerwald had insisted his children would know how to fight. They were not as disciplined or rigorous lessons as what the Echani were known for. Gerwald was Lupo, a warrior, not an Echani. He simply fathered his children the same way he had been in this regard. On Stewjon they would be seen as warriors, not farmers.

“Did you expect this to be easy… you’re fighting a Jedi-killer,” a voice rang out, making the second angry.

He lunged at Aerik, a weapon in hand, but the wolf pup was too quick for him. The natural agility which the younger Lechner possessed was a benefit of his race. It was quite unnatural to everyone else. Those who had seen his father fight knew of course. Aerik caught the wrist of the student. He had finally made a mistake. That mistake had given him enough of an opening.

A loud crack was heard followed by a loud scream. It was the sound of pain, pure and direct. Aerik had broken the student’s wrist, and with it the fight was over.

“Lechner,” the headmaster called out.

His eyes shifted, but they did not settle on the headmaster. Instead they rested on the behemoth of a man next to him. He was unmistakably a Zambrano, but which one. Aerik knew he had not met all of them during the few months he had spent with Carnifex prior to his enrollment into the academy. There was something about him, something which a part of him recognized as familiar.

It was odd.

Where had he seen this man before? Why did that even matter?

He moved, quickly, before the headmaster saw the need to call out again.

“This is Darth Prazutis. For some reason, he wanted to meet you.”

 

[Darth Prazutis]

The Headmasters words barely settled on the air before they were swallowed entirely. The Dark Lord stood in stillness, though there was nothing calm about it. His gigantic frame loomed beside the Headmaster like a monument to some slain god of war, carved from grief and violence. Even here, where so many aspired to greatness, he eclipsed the moment with a presence that dragged silence down like a corpse into black water. In every measure imaginable he made even the strongest instructors, even the headmaster himself look small. Prazutis's gaze locked upon Aerik not as a man sees another, but as a force of gravity recognizes orbit. The moment he saw him, something changed.

The eyes didn't lie. In them Prazutis saw the echoes of Naedira Darcrath, those fire-ringed irises that danced with a soul once sacrificed, once consumed by the Nocna Mora. Not even death had truly buried her thanks to the untimely intervention of others, and Gerwald…Gerwald still howled in the boy's shape, still lingered in the cut of his jaw, the predator tension in his posture. It was as if the sins of two broken legacies had stitched themselves into this lone survivor, this shard of fate shaped like a youth and forged in blood. The giant didn't speak immediately. The chamber seemed to bend to the pause, to the measured silence that followed Aerik's acknowledgment. A tension coiled in the air as the Headmaster stepped back, reluctant to linger in the path of what came next. Then the titan moved.

One step. Another. Each falling with a slow and deliberate precision. Each one a denial of any illusion that Aerik still held control of the moment. The black cloth of the giant stirred like banners in a wind that didn't exist. He came to a halt only a meter from the wolf pup, his gaze drilling into him, the amulet at his chest smoldering with dormant fire. "You fight with hunger." The Dark Lord said at last, voice deep as the grave. "But your fury is undirected. It snaps in all directions, like a beast wounded in a snare." Prazutis's eyes narrowed slightly, not with disappointment, but scrutiny. "The question is not whether you can kill. That is easy. You already know what it is to make something die. But have you learned to command?"

He didn't wait for an answer. A hand extended, not with menace, but invocation. An offer, terrible in its implication. "There is power in your blood, Aerik Lechner. A line sired in ruin, tempered in fire. The galaxy will come to know your name…if you survive what I will make of you. You've learned all you can from this place, it will carry you no further." The moment hung like a blade.

Aerik Lechner ​