Death is the Road to Awe [Solo - Training]

[Matsu Xiangu]

Only by taking on the persona of a god can the magus (or magician) use power with maximum effect in commanding [the elements].This is a poorly understood secret of magic, but absolutely vital: the magician in him or herself is a fallible human being, and can perform no more than the works of a human, but when he or she takes on the identity of a god, the magician is rendered to perform the works of a god. - The Tetragrammaton by Donald Tyson​

[SIZE=9pt] When Matsu looked back on who she’d been and who she’d become she was almost unrecognizable. And who had she to thank for that?[/SIZE]

[SIZE=9pt] Krius? True, her first instinct would be to say the effect he’d had on her was gone, some figment of a time when she’d been more impressionable and apt to take the advice of a man she hardly knew. (Because she hadn’t known him, not even after months had she? He’d been a stranger in the end.) But he’d changed her nonetheless. He’d torn out the part of her that responded to things in an explosion of rage, a bright-brilliant display of all her potential in one split-second illumination. And the whirr of gears and weight of durasteel that replaced what he’d taken was a physical reminder of him, something she was sure he thought would haunt her. (But it helps me. It HELPS me, are you angry?)[/SIZE]

[SIZE=9pt] Kail? She’d thought she’d found freedom, a key to tapping out of what crept up on her in her mind at night. But he’d turned out to be nothing she imagined. (And it was callous, thinking of him that way. She’d been right on the verge of loving him, right on the verge of the kind of trust she’d been sure she’d never grant again and it had fallen apart in the space of minutes.)[/SIZE]

[SIZE=9pt] Ovmar? He’d taught her to be quiet. He’d taught her to think before she acted, that often business came before revenge and the ability to ravage a planet or commit an atrocity – though she was capable of both – were not necessarily the best path, or what defined her. He’d taught her about the mind. He’d taught her patience…though perhaps that was not a lesson he necessarily intended.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=9pt] Or what of those she’d met along the way? Ashin Varanin? Alen Na’Varro? Matsu Ike? Her fellow members of the Fringe? She’d hurt and she’d healed in equal measure and she was unconventional at best.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=9pt] But she’d become someone focused. Someone hardened. Instead of the ball of rage that threatened to go supernova and consume anything in its vicinity she had learned to channel her connection to anger and rage. She thought of it in terms of isolating negative emotion in one spot, deep in her chest – as if packing a snowball, she drew in layer upon layer upon layer of anger and hate until she had built something so dense and ice-cold that its release gave her power a fuel almost unparalleled. Its use felt indescribably different from the early days where she’d spent herself all at once, throwing her power outwards in some great but short-lived display of potential. One could only maintain such a thing for long. Concentrating her power made it strong, a sucker punch of packed energy so forceful that it required less to get the job done – making her potential a well-spring.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=9pt] (Not a sun, not some burning-hot star that melted flesh and tore apart that which came too close. She was the sea, the goddess of the sea – her namesake. Where others caught fire she froze, she sank beneath the water where everything as quiet and she could concentrate. The rage was still above – but she was silent. She was ice. She was death.)[/SIZE]

[SIZE=9pt] She sat back in the seat she’d taken behind the controls of the small stealth ship she’d borrowed from the Fringe. This mission did not nearly call for the use of the Frigate she’d been awarded a while ago in the invasion of Alderaan – it was just her and the few people trapped in cages somewhere back in the ship. She’d kept them back there as even though they’d started the trip in a more quiet state she doubted they would stay that way and frankly she wasn’t keen on listening to them beg and scream. It had started out that way and no amount of pleading was going to veer her from her course. It was really just rather annoying.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=9pt] Running her natural fingers absently over the durasteel of her left arm she watched as the bright green surface of Malrev IV came in to view. It was a little-known planet for good reason, its atmosphere thick with the power of the dark side. The records on it were sketchy at best, the history-destroying nature of the Plague that shook the Galaxy taking its toll on what might have happened on the planet she flew towards.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=9pt] But what Matsu did know was that long ago a Sith – which in particular lost to time and the ravaged records left behind – had built a temple on its surface. Combined with its dark side affinities Matsu believed it might be the perfect place to discover what was building within herself, the way the dark side came to her concentrated, thick…like home. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=9pt] She banked downwards, breaching in to the planet’s atmosphere and heading for the surface.[/SIZE]

Spoiler

Words: 818

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

[SIZE=9pt] Malrev IV, through its shroud of mystery, would cause one to be naturally inclined to the fantastical in imagining its surface. So little was known about the vastly uninhabited planet that it might be easy to imagine previously undiscovered beasts, primal peoples, troves of treasure long since abandoned by their original owners and ripe for the taking. So to cross through its atmosphere and escape the cloud cover would leave a small sense of the anti-climactic instead when greeted by the wild green of thick forests interrupted only by the lazy sway of rivers coursing through. This was a place untouched in hundreds of years and despite the life Matsu could feel brimming down on the ground beneath the wings of the stealth ship, there was perhaps no more than a thousand truly sentient beings roaming the entire planet. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=9pt] It was electrifying to be so alone.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=9pt] One of her prisoners seemed to have a flair for inopportune timing, her musing cut short by a screech of pain. It – and the correct pronoun was it as Matsu was not inclined to seeing test subjects as people – had probably relaxed for a moment and touched the electrical barrier doubling the security of the pens she’d herded them in to.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=9pt] She dipped the ship lower over the treeline, extending her senses outwards. Despite the thrumming heartbeat of life beneath her feet the presence of the dark side was even stronger, suffused in the atmosphere as if Malrev’s creation was purely the intent of the dark side of the Force. Whether that was true she could not say, but she was satisfied to feel the same thing that ancient Sith Lord must have experienced to convince him to build his temple here. Finding said temple was a different matter entirely. She’d believed that she’d be drawn to the nexus of power, the conduit to the dark side that the temple would most likely create as it had been purported to play host to some of the darkest magic rituals known to their order. The area she was flying over all felt like…one flavor, an even spread of power cut across miles of forest and river. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=9pt] Setting the ship to auto-pilot, a slow and even course slightly above the treeline, she set her mind to the task at hand. She had spent time around Jedi and knew they often tried to push everything from their mind, find clarity and let the Force guide them while acting without fear or anger or any of the passion that Matsu found drove her with burning intensity. She got the principal but it wasn’t one that she saw a point in, especially as she dove in to the chaos of the planet’s connection to the Force. It was easy with her natural affinity to deal in the less concrete, abstraction a mental exercise that seemed second nature and she credited as the reason for her success in mentalism and failure when it came to almost any work with her lightsaber. She listened, sounds upon sounds upon sounds barraging her mind. She let them all slide past, sitting like a rock in the middle of a current that threatened to uproot her and drag her along until she could make sense of nothing, reveling in the violence and chaotic noise of the planet’s aura until she found what she wanted though she hadn’t known what she was looking for.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=9pt] Laughter.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=9pt] It was more a cackle really, the raspy windbag delight of someone who despite sounding very ill was very pleased.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=9pt] She opened her eyes, retaking the controls of the ship and following the thread of laughter. The closer she got to what she felt was its source, the thicker the pall of the dark side she felt infused in the air around her, as if it were crawling in to the ship to greet her eagerly. (Welcome home, welcome home!) The tree cover was even more dense here, branches struggling and fighting to reach the sun and grab precious energy to fuel themselves, a constant struggle for competitive edge. It seemed a fitting home for the temple that rose, monolithic and imposing, so high that its pointed roof breached the tree cover as if announcing itself to any brave enough to return to the planet it had taken residence on. The circle of trees around it seemed to give it just enough berth to remain safe, as if hesitant to touch something that might wither and ruin them. Matsu put down the ship gently in the small space she could find between the tree line and the temple, shutting all the systems off and taking a small breath. It was so quiet, so isolated that even the men and women joining her for the journey were deathly silent. No birds, no exotic cries of animals undiscovered…just Matsu.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=9pt] Her dress clung to some spots and billowed in others as she made her way through the ship, pointedly ignoring her guests as she skipped over their ‘quarters’ for the time being and instead made to descend out on to the planet’s surface.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=9pt] It was warm, dry, and just as silent outside the ship’s walls as within. Glancing around to get her bearings, she followed the shafts of sunlight downwards to the façade of the temple, taking steps that seemed impossibly loud compared to her surroundings as she traipsed through the grass. Nothing moved – no breeze, no scurrying of a small animal – as she broke the timelessness of the clearing. The temple itself was dirt-brown, earthy and ancient, watching her with a wisdom she hoped to crack and possess for herself. Its challenge was just as its surroundings – unspoken, but weighty. Here a Sith Lord had found a way to concentrate the power a planet naturally possessed, using it to perfect his understanding of Sith Magic and all its possibilities. Matsu hoped, if the whispers and scant rumors were true, she could start her journey here and begin the path to knowledge far greater than she had imagined previously.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=9pt] After one more glance over her shoulder at the ship she began her way inwards, planning first to circumvent its traps and pitfalls and then upon success, invite her guests inside to help her with a bit of learning.[/SIZE]

Spoiler

Word Count: 1926

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

[SIZE=9pt] It was quiet when she first entered, trailing her fingers lightly over the stone of the door that seemed to open with a whisper of long-held breath at her touch. (Or perhaps she was just imagining it in her anticipation, her eagerness to choke on the secrets that seemed to dance right outside her realm of knowledge.) There was nothing but the dust that permeated every surface, decades and perhaps centuries of complete solitude on display as she broke the patterns of motes gliding through shafts of light. Though just as ancient as the outer façade, the inside of the temple had an aura of promise that seemed to lend it a vitality unexpected from the outside.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=9pt] Matsu felt alive.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=9pt] She let her feet carry her where they would, moving slowly and trying to decipher the meaning in images carved in to the walls of the temple. They were unexpected as this wasn’t the kind of site made in dedication to a dead Lord or some great event taking place on the planet. From everything she knew it existed for the sole purpose of concentrating the dark aura of the planet. The artwork however showed something else – a challenge, a test of some kind. Someone had even taken the time to paint it, ornamenting the scene with ghastly swaths of black, flesh, and red. Leaning in close she could make out the details down to an obsessive level, the eyes of the victims burning in the wake of tremendous power bulging from their sockets, even the veins in the whites of their eyes carved delicately in to the stone. Matsu suddenly got the crawling feeling up her spine that all this work – the entire mural, down to the tributary turn of a veined eye – was the strange dedication of someone who had been here far too long…gotten trapped her. (A warning: get caught up, forget what you’re dealing with, and you too can spend three decades agonizing over the correct perspective of various unspeakable acts of violence.)[/SIZE]

[SIZE=9pt] Pulling herself from her observations lest she become just as engrossed as its creator, Matsu pushed further on through the temple, finding everything was too quiet for her liking. The purpose of the temple originally had been access to untold power and she could not imagine its creator would leave such a thing unguarded. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=9pt] As if in answer to her question however she turned the corner in to a room so large she stopped in her tracks. From the outside the structure had appeared enormous but she would never have anticipated something so magnificent. The ceiling stretched in to infinity, its furthest reaches swallowed in total darkness. The room was a square shape, supported at each corner by thick pillars of stone, another set of four deeper in to the room. Within the inner square of pillars a dais sat, raised on a short flight of steps as if beckoning the visitor up to its contents. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=9pt] Anything looking so inviting had to be trouble.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=9pt] Matsu walked closer.[/SIZE]

Spoiler

Word Count: 2430