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