Private Inheritance of Ash

[Darth Prazutis]

The facility on Ession's barren moon had never been a place for the living. Even in the height of its purpose, when the Tenth Sith Empire poured its secrets into these sealed corridors, it existed only to serve ambitions that outlasted flesh. Now, in the emptiness of its abandonment, the structure clung to its purpose like a corpse refusing decay. Ash drifted across the scorched landing platforms. Static lights blinked fitfully behind armored viewports. In the main hallways, chambers, and laboratories, the last testament of Darren Shaw lay preserved in a cradle of alloy and ritual bindings, skin stretched taut over bones that had once carried the weight of empires.

When the outer doors accepted the arrival of the Shadow Hand of the Kainate, they did so not with alarms but with the quiet resignation of something that understood it could not refuse. The seals parted, and the darkness beyond the threshold thickened and crept inward, as if to herald an authority too immense for the ancient locks to contain. Darth Prazutis stepped into the hall without hurry or pretense. The black warplate that sheathed His vast form caught the guttering light and returned no reflection, as though it drank in all radiance. In His wake the light withered and died, shrinking from his titanic frame as a measured stride carried the hush deeper into the chamber. Shadows drew long across the various consoles and containment tanks, trailing behind him in slow ripples. The very air itself grew colder then, brittle even with a tension that made the walls shiver and a pressure that forced groans from the floors and ceilings.

When the giant swept into the laboratory at the center of the facility, he paused before the preserved ruin of Darren Shaw. Where others might have lowered their gaze in deference to memory or legend, He regarded the corpse with the same patient curiosity He might have given any failed experiment. The Shadow Hand didn't reach for it, nor did He break the silence with proclamations. His sheer presence was enough. It filled the laboratory with a certainty that nothing in this place would remain unaltered in his wake. A careful gaze scrutinized every curve, every shape of a body altered for genetic perfection by its creator, a form designed for unending war. Slowly, carefully, His attention shifted, passing over the rows of alchemical vessels and the evidence of a long obsession that clung to every surface. No flicker of sentiment moved behind the helm's expressionless visor. Only an enduring, measured consideration as He shifted to something else.

When He finally spoke, His voice was not raised. It didn't need to be. Even quiet, it possessed the gravity of something that did not ask to be acknowledged. "Here in this tomb of the past, you wear his memory as though it were armor, Delsin Shaw." Prazutis said, each syllable carrying the finality of an oath already fulfilled. "But there is no defense in devotion to the dead." He took a single step to the side, his gaze unbroken. "But the question stands: Have you come here to inherit his failures…or to surpass them?"

Delsin Shaw ​

 

[Delsin Shaw]

The presence of a lord so great, and demanding of the force loomed over the facility. The essence of the Shadow Hand was pervasive and powerful. Absorbing light literally within the halls and rooms. As if the darkest of voids walked within the rooms and over the tile of the sanctified sterile floors. The smell of the room changed. Flowing different within the force to be filled with a sense of not just war, but almost of the Ozone. A layer of the atmosphere in which the air became thinned.

I stood at a fairly large height, yet I was dwarfed by the height of this man in warplate. He showed up as the Shadow Hand for a purpose. His presence alone was to be here in a formal capacity. That was the point. As his frame moved to stand in front of the corpse of my father, a man who he seemed to respect if only for the accolades of what the man had done. However in death, he failed to reach this perfectionism he chased for so long. So much so, he neglected everything else.

The words spoken hit me. This facility itself was a tomb of the old Sith Empire. Even more so with who was being held within. And I used it as an Armor. He called it correctly. I did. Moving to be in step with the man. Looking at the body of the man who had once given me life. However, now I used it for other such studies. In an attempt to discover what he had truly done. The fullest of capacities in which I hoped to bring to light. Not because I desired perfection, but I wanted to be better than that which he had wrought.

"I have inherited his failures already. A son carries the burden of what was left behind."

I breathed in. Sighing heavily before continuing.

"Darren, had his faults. However, he accomplished much. I see to take what he had done, and do so much more with it."

My eyes stayed on the form of my father. Preserved and held in such a way to study his form over a long period of time. I reached forward and grabbed the hair upon his head. My fist clenching it tightly to move his head to the side to look directly at it. The face of a man who had done so much, yet done so little.

"You want what he has done. The history here, his, and my own studies of such modifications."

Darth Prazutis

 

[Darth Prazutis]

The silence that followed Delsin's words wasn't empty. It was thick, alive. Saturated with meaning yet to be spoken, it was as if the force of the Dark Lord's contemplation had a very mass of its own. The overwhelming darkness like the beating of a thunderous drum. Darth Prazutis didn't move. He didn't need to. The giants warplate creaked only slightly as He turned His gaze from the corpse of Darren Shaw toward his son, those molten gold eyes burning behind the mask like the heart of a dying star. "A son." The Shadow Hand said, voice like tectonic plates grinding beneath the surface of the world "Does not merely inherit a name, or even a burden. He inherits the echoes of choices made in fear. The ones never admitted. The ones buried in silence." Prazutis's gaze drifted back to the body, preserved, inert, cold. "I knew him. Knew the strength that drove him. Knew the fear that gnawed at its edges. He chased perfection as a fugitive chases a home he destroyed with his own hands. And in doing so…he created this."

The Dark Lord of the Sith gestured, not with theatricality, but with sovereign precision, to the facility around them. A tomb. A reliquary. A mausoleum of unfulfilled design. "You say you will do more with what he has done. Good." The word landed like a hammer on an anvil. "But what you do is meaningless…unless you understand what he refused to become. What he feared. He tempered his brilliance with morality, with memory. You, Delsin…have not made that mistake. Not yet." He stepped forward, towering presence blotting out the light behind Him as if even photons obeyed His gravity. The chamber breathed darker in His proximity. "I have come not to steal what is his. Nor yours. I come to elevate it." His voice dropped, low, intimate, dangerous. "You speak of studies...of modifications. You see the flesh as pliable. The soul as a resource. Then know this, your father's work was not his own. He was shaped by an era afraid of itself. He reached the edge of the impossible…and recoiled. Instead of pushing forward."

Prazutis turned now, fully, and looked Delsin in the eyes, not as a mentor, not as a threat, but as the architect of destiny addressing a forge yet unlit. "I offer you clarity, Delsin Shaw. You already stand atop the foundation of a giant. But you've no need to honor his shadow. Shatter it. Use it. Dissect it. Transcend it. The Kainate does not want your loyalty. We want your evolution." He stepped once more, closer now. The tomb chamber seemed to dim, as though the Force itself grew silent to listen. "You will give me everything you have uncovered of him, every scrap of data, every fragment of genetic theory, every cursed breakthrough your father was too weak to follow. In return, you will be given resources provided by the Kainate. Access. We will open doors for you." Prazutis's tone hardened into finality. "Prove you can build something greater than him. Not for legacy. But because the future we are crafting…will not remember the names of those who hesitated." He let that hang, weighty as a pronouncement, binding as a pact. "Now. Show me what he feared to perfect."

Delsin Shaw ​

 

[Delsin Shaw]

His presence shifted. Changed. Absorbing all of the light that was within the room of itself. Light bent as if being pulled by a singularity. Warping around the presence of a lord who had gathered power and an energy that would would hardly find a second to him. It filled the rooms with not a sense of dread, or death, but a charge of great significance. Each word was a hammer upon the anvil. Each hit struck a cord within my very soul. It only made sense why so many followed the likes of Darth Prazutis, and Darth Carnifex. Brothers in arms and in the force. However, that is not what Prazutis wanted.

Proclamation of while Darren had failed, those faults would not be my own. I had to transend to become better than him. To find what he feared. That which he would never dare to go near, and to delve deeper than he did. I knew what he was asking. So was he. Asking me to find that cavernous depth of the force and to dive in head first. To allow myself to become even more consumed by my work. So much so, that he offered all assets of the Kainite and their imperium at my fingertips. That knowledge, that wealth of a power base was extensive. Darren's own writings of Carnifex, and even knowing the Lords Dead Name. This structure being given to me on a silver platter, so that my job, my obsession would become to them, a tool and to further increase their own.

It made sense. Recruit the greatest living people to join you, use them as a tool for as long as they were useful. Provide yourself even more of a structure to build from. For that, in return, the individual would become so much greater as a byproduct of such a deal. Looking up to the warplate helmet. Blackened and eyes filled with nothing but darkness. I could feel the piercing gaze of the man beneath it. Knowing full well, that this was making a deal with a demon. Patronage to a pseudo-god.

"I stand not on the shoulders of my father. I climbed there myself. He denied me all of this for fear of what, and who I am."

My eyes pierced back. Words thickening with a controlled hatred of the man who had been my father. An outstretched hand pulled a vial to my hand. A red so deep, it neared upon the black was presented to him. I let it hover in the air for him to see, or even grab it should he desire it.

"He feared me."

Once upon a time, I had nearly worshiped the ground my father walked upon. Found him as my faith. Yet that was broken. Years of training, abuse, and torment to the child that was long dead before they even knew their name. That child was smothered in the darkness and raised within it. Formed to be something it was not. For the purpose of my father. Which even now, still I knew so very little of.

"I was birthed from the spirit of a sorceress, and a mad man. Natural in almost ever sense of the word. I was incubated in the force. Borne of nothing, and the Nether. My existence is that of a Sithspawn. My blood is the very same that Darren had. Yet it remains inert. That is why I study him."

My eyes turned to the corpse of the man. Currently he looked like any other man. An Echani. However, I knew better.

"His true form was not human. But a Spawn. Those same traits, abilities and feats are mine, yet they are not. My blood itself holds all of what he was. That vial is a sample of my blood. Flowing in my veins is some altered form of Sith poison. Those who drink of it are affected by poisons and viruses that even the days of the old Empire would never dream of."

A sigh escaped me. I moved to the table the corpse was on. Leaning heavily upon it and then nodding my head. Sequestered to my fate. I knew I had to do this. I was not really in any other position. I had to go deeper. I had to dive. I needed to break that fate, that destiny.

"The studies I have been performing are not just on him, or whatever I find. I have been studying myself. I was supposed to be his most feared project. A body that would be able to accept his form in its entirety and be born of it. Thus exponentially stronger than what he already was. Yet here I am. Unable to do what he did. That is the failure he passed to me. Lord Prazutis."

I could feel it. The anger welling inside. The hatred wanting to burst from me. All of this emotional baggage. It was a weakness. I had to control it. Smother it, and so I did. Nearly feeling like the boiling water being pushed down deeply into the cold so that it would never reach the surface. A sigh to let the steam out safely before finally speaking one last time.

"I am his greatest failure, and his greatest success."

Darth Prazutis

 

[Darth Prazutis]

The silence that followed was deafening. It was no longer a silence of calculation, nor the pregnant hush before diplomacy sharpened into decision. A stillness so absolute it felt wrong to breathe within it crept through the laboratory. It was as if some vast, unseen pressure were pressing down upon the room, grinding thought into submission, emotion into ash. The giant's obsidian warplate held its stillness like a monolith carved into the fabric of reality itself. But something had changed between them then. As Delsin spoke, as the vial hovered, a chalice of poisoned legacy suspended in the air, the air itself grew heavier. Not with menace but with gravity. The black tide of the Dark Lord's will had shifted. Molten gold eyes burned behind the helm that didn't blink nor waver. They watched with the cold certainty of judgment, the abyssal gaze of a being who had destroyed gods and outlived dynasties. When he finally spoke, it carried the weight of worlds.

"He feared you. Yes." The words hung like thunder without the presence of lightning. "Because he knew that to complete you...was to erase himself." A pause, thick with purpose. "Darren Shaw believed he could outrun the truth, that power which cannot be controlled will eventually devour its maker. But it is not the truth that devours, Delsin. It is the failure to claim it." He stepped forward. The weight of that movement alone sent a ripple through the Force, like the surface of deep black water responding to something massive beneath. A reckoning. "You are not his failure." The statement came with such finality it rang like prophecy. "You are his denial, made flesh. The answer to the question he dared never ask aloud: What becomes of a legacy that chooses not to be inherited, but conquered?" Prazutis reached out with a single gloved hand, and the vial swiftly drifted to his palm. He turned it slowly between his fingers, studying it as one might a relic dredged from beneath the surface of a long dead world. In his hand, it pulsed faintly. "This blood…this venom. Your birth was an abomination. A sacrilege against nature. Good." The word cracked the air like a blade drawn across stone. "You are beyond its limits."

A pause. The Force stirred again in a subtle but unmistakable way. The room responded to him and the lights dimmed imperceptibly, drawing away from the force of his presence. The shadows recoiled or reached, as though unsure of the Dark Lord's desire. "The Kainate doesn't elevate you because you were born for greatness. We elevate you because you crawled toward it, broken, malformed, and hungry." Prazutis's voice deepened, iron and fire were braided into its resonance. "You speak of his experiments. His form, and studies. You will give them all to us. Not because we demand it but because they are beneath you now. He bred you to be a vessel. Become the vessel that consumes him entirely." He took another step. Closer now. "And understand this, Delsin Shaw. The moment you give me his secrets…you are no longer his son. You are no longer a child of legacy. You become a force of revision. Rewriting the order from its marrow outward." He extended the vial back toward him, not as a gift, but as a test. "Take it." The voice of a storm held at bay. "Take it, and tell me now: Are you his echo…or are you the scream that ends him?"

Delsin Shaw​

 

[Delsin Shaw]

Those words... they... they broke me. A legacy I was holding onto. Was I to so easily give it up just like that? Hand everything over to the Kainite so then I could become better? become more? He was right. I was not a failure. I had crawled and fought to get here so far. I needed to continue to do so. And the reason I was being asked to join this fold of the Sith, was not because I was borne of a high status. Not because I had nepotism. Yes, I was tied to the Shaw family. I had connections to the Varanins, the Verds, Sith, Jedi, Mandalorians. All of them were connections of mine because of how much networking my father had done. How much he moved around to try and make his goal a reality. And now that he had, his time had ended.

I had to take it, and make it better. Do more with it. That was my purpose. I was succumbing to being his mirror. A reflection of what the man was. This... passing of the knowledge to the Kainite, was a way for me to release that white-knuckled hold upon the glass shard that cut deeply into my palm. It pained me to release it, but it would only cause more pain to tighten my grip upon it. To simply let it go with how much blood I had lost from it. I felt like I had to hold onto it. Feeling like it may have been wasted effort. Was it? Or was this a true learning moment for me.

It broke what I had done so far. His words were a wakeup call to how obsessed I was being. However, there was so much more I could get from this. I had already done what I could to release myself of the chains that Ashin Varanin had placed upon my father. Meeting with her daughter to try and be on a more neutral ground. I made new relations with the Mandalorian Clans. As the Verds held Darren for years in his abandonment. I felt charged to fix all the problems placed upon me. I was taking Darren's failures and shouldering them of my own volition. Was I really doing that? I shuddered in my breath. Breathing in where I could. This oppressive feeling I had placed on myself. It was consuming me in a way that was not beneficial. Darth Prazutis was giving me an out to do something more with it.

I reached up to the floating vial. My fingers gingerly wrapping around the glass. Holding all of the work I had done. All of this held back to the idea of finding out what it was. Yet, I already knew who I was. My grip tightened. Slowly feeling my hand squeezing it My grip turning white with the force. My eyes rose to the warplate. My gaze piercing. I wanted to see the man beneath. Show him that eventually, even he would never be able to stand in my way of all that I wanted to accomplish. I am the creeping darkness that will one day over take all that tried to hold me back.

"Neither."

My hands crushed the vial. Cutting deeply into my flesh. The drips of blackened ichor flowed through my hand for a moment. My other hand moving to cup the other. Breathing in deeply, I could feel new life within my grasp. Slowly, the ichor would no longer drip. And instead leave behind the broken glass in my hands. Absorbing what was my past, but not letting it define me. I would take the failures of my father, and sluff them off. If only to be who I was meant to be.

"I am a product of what came before, but I know that it holds me back. It confines me and festers into an obsession. I will hold onto them no more. The Kainite has access to all of this of their free will. I too, shall have access to it. Not to be held by it. Not to be chained, but to remember where I have come from. To see that this failure of my father, was only my beginning. I will make this, myself, better than he."

My hand over turned. letting the shards of the vial drop to the floor. I left it there. Not caring to clean it or pick it up. There was no point. that was the vessel of the past. I bottled myself up. And now that I had broken that barrier, I would join the Kainite, and provide them with all the resources they could want or need of me. Just so then I can further myself, and truly become something monstrous.

Darth Prazutis