Tags:
Braze
Oz Neru
Avarice watched the little lost Jedi stumble from his ship, wrapped in that delirious state of bewilderment as he entered the vine-strewn mouth of the ruins. The old stone rose around him in a welcoming maw, slick with dewy moss and threaded through with the roots of thick vines that had pried their way into every seam of stone. The dark beyond seemed to hungrily swallow the pale silhouette of he young half Echani, disappearing from sight.
Avarice lurked ahead in the shadows, keeping his crimson eyes upon the young Prodigy before him.
No doubt this was him: the little thorn caught beneath the Sith Order's grand designs, small enough to be dismissed, yet still some how just sharp enough to draw blood from that which should not bleed.
Some Jedi brat with the audacity to stand before empires creating inconvenience with seemingly effortless ease. Always frustratingly just beyond the hand that reached for him. Always slipping the leash before it could close around that scrawny neck. It must have been vexing to those old lords, and those hungry architects of dominion, to find that power did not always kneel simply because they demanded it.
Perhaps even maddeningly so...
He certainly was quite powerful in the Force... far more than the pretty softness of his face or the slightness of his frame might suggest. There was something in him worth coveting, something bright and rare and terribly inconvenient, the sort of power that made old Sith eyes narrow with want rather than wrath. Perhaps that was why they had not simply sought to kill him. Death would have been a crude waste of such magnificent talents and skills. Any butcher could destroy a jewel he could not own after all...
No... they wanted him kept. Turning such a radiant little peculiarity would be a remarkable triumph, something worthy of a Sith Lord's pride, a prize to be whispered over in private halls and displayed only when envy had an audience. To set him among their other precious baubles as proof of conquest: a little Jedi savant made obedient beneath the iron hand that finally caught him. An apprentice... a tool... a
weapon; a living trinket of impossible value just beyond their grasp. They would have liked that control very much, that sweet authority of directing such incredible power as though it belonged to them by right.
Their own greed and pride urged them to make the little savant into something they could manipulate.
And yet...
None of them could touch the unshakable will of one boy who, in truth, carried such a frail sense of self-worth beneath the surface. Such incredible depths of anxiety and self-doubt coiled silently within him, hidden behind sharp wit, dexterous hands, and that insufferable little habit of surviving where others expected him to break.
None of them knew the art of manipulating the little trickster. And that made him all the more dangerous. Perhaps so dangerous they kept their distance. Or perhaps they had simply underestimated the young lad far too often for their own good.
And yet...
The Jedi shadow stood dauntlessly in the void of darkness, defiant of it even as the dark powers saught to stamp out every last pesky little shadow.
And Avarice found that amusing in a familiar sort of manner.
He stalked his prey as the youth entered the darkened ruins, looking for some sort of answer as to why he had been summoned here from across the stars... and by what will the Force had carried him to this forgotten place.
Poor little foolish Jedi... Still thinking the call had come from something holy and ancient as the living Force...
Perhaps there was some small truth in that....Ruusan had ghosts enough to lend any lie a sacred visage.
But Avarice knew better.... Knowledge was power. And he knew exactly why the boy had come.
He knew whose hand had been curled around the thread, tugging softly night after night until exhaustion made curiosity in to unwitting obedience.
His Master Darth Carnifex would have certainly delighted in such a pretty gift, no doubt. The pale little Prodigy dragged from the Light and set at his feet, bruised but breathing, furious but bound. What a prize that would have been.... What a lovely thing to place among the other conquered baubles of power, a living jewel finally brought within reach, and brought to kneel before the eternal father.
And yet Avarice was not so certain capture suited the annoying little creature.
Death, perhaps, would be wiser. He certainly though it a far more desirable than delivering a blade still sharp enough to cut the hand that claimed it.
Just a little farther, little Jedi.... just a little farther in to the dark...
Avarice prowled behind him without sound, keeping to the blind places between shadows, his presence folded carefully into the ruin's old grief of the Force wound that permeated the very air. He watched Braze pass beneath the broken arch, intent on seeing him step deeper and deeper toward the snare already waiting below.
Just a little farther... 
