Private Slave to Man, Slave to Addiction

[Shade of Decay]

To: @Arcturus Thesh
From: ???

Meet me at your earliest convenience. You'll find my ship at the coordinates enclosed with this message, please use the private docking bay, not the public one.

Arcturus Dinn

 

[Arcturus Dinn]

He hadn't even known that his commlink was still functional.​

​

By now, he'd figured, it would have long since been busted. But nope. Indestructible that thing. The coordinates weren't ones he was familiar with, and he didn't rightly know who the sender was. Did he exercise caution, and have someone else bring him? After all it wasn't as though he had his ship right now. Then again... The message did say private docking bay.​

​

After all he'd endured on Geonosis, some semblance of reality had begun to kick back in. There was an uneasy feeling in his stomach, but that could have been withdrawals. In the end he threw caution to the wind. If the Force was gonna see him die, it would have done so during his journey down the Corellian Run. Not when he'd just fought his way out of a gladiatorial pit.​

​

He commandeered a ship from the local spaceport, just a dinky little thing that was barely noticed when it lifted into the air, and tried to remember how to fly.​

​

Force, it had been too long.​

​

Eventually, and after however long was deemed appropriate, he came upon the hangar bay in question. Down into the private docking bay the starfighter drifted, and once landed Arcturus hopped on out. Glanced around, a slight sway to his step. Wait, was he even stepping?​

​

Even a stint through space hadn't fully cleared his mind.​

​

Shade of Decay ​

 

[Khel]

"And so the slave arrives."

Khel had been sent to the private bay to await Thesh's arrival. As always, he did as he was bid, as faithfully as ever, no matter how pointless or foolish he thought the commands...or his master's focus on this child. The ability to deny the commands had been purged from him long ago, and if he was to have any hope of release, it would be wiser to follow than to struggle.

But that didn't stop him from making his opinions known, as Thesh soon found out.

"Perhaps, once you've remembered how to walk, you'll join me in the turbolift." The condescension was as evident in his voice as was the sneer on his face. "It will be a short trip down to your destination, assuming you don't float away before reaching it."

Arcturus Dinn

 

[Arcturus Dinn]

Slave?​

​

Oh-ho, them's fighting words... Arcturus bristled as the title which had gripped him for so much of his life was spat out from the mouth of this stranger; was he the one who had sent for him? Was he here simply to demean and condescend? The boy took his first steady step forward, and leveled his glowering gaze upon the other.​

​

Still, he did not say anything in response. Not immediately that is. He let it stew within him as his gaze shifted from stranger to the mentioned turbolift, then drew in a breath to better clear his mind. It didn't work miracles though, the haze would not fully lift. All the same, Arcturus made his way toward it; not before giving something of a bow of greeting to the man. Not as respectful as he'd ordinarily present, no this one had given him no reason to show him respect, but formality often dictated as much.​

​

Some things he could never quite shake.​

​

There were countless questions floating about his mind. Who was he, where were they, why had he been summoned... None of them wanted to rise up though. He just carried on in silence, imagining all the ways he could cut the man down to size.​

​

Or simply cut him. Arcturus didn't rightly care which it would end up being.​

​

Khel ​

 

[Khel]

Hmmph.

The boy certainly hadn't met with any of his approval yet. Khel led Thesh to the turbolift, punching in a seemingly-random string of numbers on the keypad. With a lurch, the turbolift cabin started its descent as the pair stood in silence. After little more than a minute, however, it came to a stop, the doors opening to a lightless hallway with an unknown terminus. "Your stop," Khel bid the young man, waving him forward. "Try not to make him angry."

And once Thesh stepped out, the turbolift sped away again, leaving the former slave standing alone in the darkness.

Arcturus Dinn

 

[Arcturus Dinn]

Silence. The other man seemed to permit him his silence, not bothering to waffle on any further in so dismissive a fashion. Nope. Instead they headed into the turbolift, and after a short journey Arcturus found himself being spat out into a void of a hallway. He glanced at the stranger for just a moment, nodded once, and then unceremoniously disembarked the lift. Maybe he should have waited, tried to grasp his bearings, maybe he should have given rise to some of those questions he'd wanted an answer to, but he hadn't. And before he could turn and voice any of them the darkness truly fell over him. The turbolifts doors closed, and he was left within that void.​

​

The real question was, who was this him he spoke of?​

​

Arcturus turned back toward the way he'd been facing, and tried to give his eyes time to adjust. That didn't seem to do very much of anything, there wasn't a single snippet of a light source with which to cut through the darkness, with which to make use even of any sort of minor night vision humans barely possessed in the first place. He took his first step forward.​

​

Then another.​

​

And then, all at once, it hit him. A deep painfilled misery which thrummed through the air and reverberated against the ground at his feet. It was suffocating, to have his senses wholly overwhelmed in such a manner, to be rid of his vision, and to hear, and feel, and practically taste the despair which coursed through the vessel. One hand reached out, to stabilize his approach with the aid of a wall, and he kept it in place with each step he took, fingertips grazing along its surface.​

​

How long he walked that way the boy did not know. He'd never been particularly good at keeping track of time, and such proved doubly worse in what seemed to be little more than a vacuum. His heart thumped rapidly within his chest, and within the depths of his mind that same hauntingly familiar melody began to rise up. A siren's song which threatened to further overwhelm him. Though he didn't much notice it himself, the boy was slightly stooped over, as though afraid to hit his head on some unseen object which might be hanging from the rooftop, as though expecting that the hallway might shrink down into a tunnel, and then a vent.​

​

Certainly it felt to be all of those things..​

​

Khel ​

 

[Shade of Decay]

With one hand on the wall, and not in front of him—

Arcturus, in his addled state, eventually walked straight into a closed door, which opened before him.

Arcturus Dinn

 

[Arcturus Dinn]

He felt the end of the wall beneath his fingertips, as he came unto the corner, right as he walked face first into the closed door.​

​

"Oof..." Staggering back, he tried to shake off the embarrassment he felt, as well as the brief pain in his nose; then he saw light begin to form as that door opened and offered a way beyond. Not one to ignore the opportunity, he was quick to step on through lest his world be plunged back into darkness.​

​

It took him a moment to truly comprehend what lay ahead of him, for his eyes to adjust to the almost blinding light which stung. He had not stopped his forward motions in this time, so when he took it all in he was already amidst the worktables and the machines and the tanks. It was more than that though, he realized as the pulsating thrums of pain intensified, there was a steady thumping which echoed along with the noise those machines made, and in many ways with his own heartbeat.​

​

His eyes locked upon the great artificial heart, with all its wires and the blood pumping in and out, cloudy and recycled and blackened and thick, then clear and bright and thin... Arcturus had stopped by this point, he was just staring. Staring at the valves, staring at the bacta tank - itself not as fresh as one might expect - confused, uncertain.​

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But above all else curious.​

​

What was this place? And who had called him to it?​

​

Shade of Decay ​

 

[Shade of Decay]

Within the bacta tank, behind the impossibly arcane conglomeration of machinery that surrounded and penetrated it like the Force made metal, the murk began to clear. Slowly. It was ever further being polluted, but at times, when it cycled the fresh bacta in constantly passing through its many filters, it could clear, for a moment.

Here, a shrivelled hand, long atrophied from disuse.

There, a sunken chest, visibly moving with each labored heartbeat.​

And then, the face. A multitude of tendrils obscuring the jaw and chin, one cut shorter than the others. Gaunt cheeks, a long nose, and pure black eyes, staring balefully outwards. There was no intelligence behind that face, nothing but pain, frayed nerves constantly aflame, filling the room with agony and the stench of constant decay. Even as Arcturus Dinn watched, he'd see the tank fill with murk again, flesh sloughing off and dissolving as though submerged in acid, not the galaxy's miracle healing liquid.

Even the corneal film over one of the eyes detached and faded into the liquid before the murk overtook the face once more.

"Impressive, isn't it?" came a voice from behind the addled Sith apprentice. Behind him, stood Tsisaar Taral, or a simulacrum of him, much as he'd appeared before Arcturus when first they'd met. But unlike that time, the face was set in a disapproving scowl. "But it isn't my best creation. Nor, it seems, are you."

The figure, that which should not exist in two places at once, raised a hand languidly. "Your thoughts shall not be addled when you speak with me, young man; I require that your mind be your own."

And Arcturus would find a familiar, searing pain, that of Tsisaar's cleansing and healing, begin to overtake his mind and the entirety of his being, not just the space of his wrist.

go back to sleep i see you online

 

[Arcturus Dinn]

It was certainly strange and unnerving to behold, the shriveled and decaying body which lay suspended within the bacta tank. Was this who had summoned him? This near-lifeless form? He approached the tank just a little more in the interim, observing and piecing together the puzzle. When the tendrils were revealed stark realization fell over him.

Tsisaar...

Well, that certainly made sense and cracked some of the illusion which had befallen him. Who else would see fit to draw him into this strange labyrinthian laboratory? Certainly not Maliphant, this was not his sort of haunting ground.

He was so lost in his observations and his thoughts that the sound of a voice at his back made him visibly jump. He turned, rounding on the individual, only to find another less-decrepit version of the Sith Lord stood there scrutinizing him.

Arcturus did not say anything at first, listening to the words which were uttered. Clones then... The creature in the vat was a clone? But it wasn't stable, that much was obvious in the way in which its skin was flecking off.

He opened his mouth to speak, but he was met with a scowl of disapproval and words that struck his core. Clearly he was unimpressed with Arcturus and in that moment the boy could hardly blame him. Look at what he'd become, a pathetic mewling whelp who had made the Galaxy his playground for depravity. Lost and without purpose.

"I..."

Pain seared through his mind and accompanied the Sith Lord's next words, putting an immediate stop to whatever the boy was hoping to say. He cried out, floundered some, and raised both hands to clasp either side of his own head in hopes it might put a stop to what was happening. It didn't, of course, the same pain he'd once felt upon his wrist was now making a home of his mind and it was unbearable.

Then it wasn't just in his mind, but his body. Arcturus found himself dropping to his knees quite unexpectedly, as the alcohol and the drugs were cleansed from within. Oh his mind was clear in the end alright, as though baptized in fire, clear and inflamed.

Shade of Decay

 

[Shade of Decay]

As Arcturus Dinn cried out in pain, grasping at his head and falling to his knees, Tsisaar poured more power into the fire burning within the young man's mind and body. There were few things in the galaxy that could inspire such immediate and potent rage in him as seeing one of his investments so woefully squandered, and Thesh was one he considered quite important, both as the next generation of Sith and for his connection to Tsisaar directly. "Where is your passion, boy?" he snarled, and the pain grew stronger.

"Where is your anger? Where is the hatred I bid you attack me with?" With each word the pain grew stronger yet, though Tsisaar was no simple conjurer of tricks. He would not push Thesh to the point of breaking, but he would bring him as close as possible. The room darkened, the lights themselves failing against Tsisaar's wrath; and as animated as the specter was, the creature within the tank at the back of the room gazed out from its murky tube, face contorted in rage and pain both.

The raised hand clenched into a fist. "Where is your drive, Thesh? Arcturus Thesh? Where is your will? What happened to the snivveling, weakling boy that understood?" With each punctuated word his fist shook, the pain reaching newer heights. It crossed his mind to break the boy. To push beyond what Arcturus could ever handle, to rend his mind to shreds and leave him another worthless slave aboard the vessel, never to know true life again.

But such would be too easy. Such would be a waste.

Such would be too merciful.

The bacta tank shook, the creature within it writhing nearly as much as Thesh himself was, as Tsisaar's voice rose to a hoarse yell. "Where is the Sith in you, boy? Where is your power?"

The pain stopped abruptly, and Thesh's mind was entirely clear of any influences other than the memory of what he'd just been inflicted with. The writhing in the tank continued for a few moments more, multiple of the machines blaring alarms. The simulacrum, the specter, slowly padded over to a table, placing a hand upon it. Solid, as real as anything else around them, but for a moment, before the power manifesting in the space was released and it became just an immaterial image once again.

Tired as the specter seemed, however, it didn't face Thesh with any of that. No, it faced him with disgust. "I see you took well to your master's teachings," it sneered, Tsisaar sneered, as he began to speak again. "Even despite his best efforts not to teach you, you've drawn yourself down the same path as him. Decadence. Sloth. No higher calling than slaking your own lusts, following in the foodsteps of the Lord of Luxuries." The title was spat with more scorn than Tsisaar was wont to waste on many beings of the galaxy. He had never held a particularly high opinion of Arcturus Thesh's master, but in the face of the wreck of a man before him, that opinion dropped even lower.

"Stand, Thesh, if you still have the power to do so. Or did my teachings go unheeded, and you're still the same slave boy I met with all those years ago on Kruskan?"

 

[Arcturus Dinn]

For a time there was naught in existence for him save the pain, and the words. Words uttered by a man so enraged that everything else in the space around them reacted to it, so disgusted by what he saw before him that he was bringing the boy to the edge of eternity, holding him on the precipice of life and death. His very blood felt as though it was boiling within his veins, his mind felt as though a thousand volts shocked through his brain, his bones were left feeling like over-solidified gelatin, and his heart beat so rapidly that he felt certain it was going to burst within his chest cavity.

All of this, and the words. All of this, and the words.

That's all that there was. For an eternity. For an infinity.

Arcturus writhed, and squirmed, and before long screamed under the weight of it all. He could not hold it back, in that moment he'd lost control over most aspects of his person. He was reactive only. He couldn't breathe, wasn't breathing, yet each inhale he made all the same was hot, it felt like sand within his throat, clawing and dry and scratchy.

Words. Words. Echoing in his mind. His mouth opened, intent on responding, somehow, some way, but only further cries of agony leapt out.

Passion. Anger. Hatred. Drive. Will. Sith. Power.

Then Maliphant. Oh, he had so much to say about Maliphant. Somehow some of those words struck home more than those intended to be directed at Arcturus himself. Rang within his mind a thousand times over by the time that the last word had been uttered. Impossible to ignore, it gnawed at him, pried at the more sensitive parts of his mind and made a home within it.

To fester...

Slowly, over time...

By this point it was over, the pain. It had been over for some time, and yet in his place on the floor, as the words had been spat out by the specter who had left him in favour of the table, the boy was still reeling from it. Barely able to take a breath, his lungs burned something fierce, rejecting the very air he needed to breathe.

There was nothing there though. No more narcotics, no more influences, no more tangible pain in fact, just the recollections of pain.

Then talks of slaves, of Kruskan, of what could have been, what should have been, though the latter were not actually spoken just felt by the boy. A torment of his own devising. Bade to rise. Challenged to stand in the face of all that had just transpired.

For a moment he seemed incapable of doing so. For a moment he seemed to merely writhe upon the floor.

A moment which felt like a forever to the one living through it.

But Tsisaar had struck a chord. For a slave Arcturus would never be again. Were it in his power to make it so, he never would have been... But he'd been nothing then, weak, lame, craven. Now?

Well... Evidently he was still those things. But he could be so much more. He'd tried to be so much more.

It took every ounce of will he had remaining, and even then it was like pulling himself out of quicksand. No words, just huffs and groans and frustrated scowls as he laboured to find his feet once more. Those legs still felt like jelly, his organs still felt out of place, he did not entirely feel himself, but he pressed on all the same. If not now then never.

If not now, then fling him out into space and end the whole thing.

One foot flat, he pushed up. Dragged the other into place. Held onto something, he didn't rightly know what, for some modicum of support. Then let go. He didn't even really look in the direction of the specter nor the tank, it was hard enough to stand there in truth, but he rose all the same.

Shade of Decay

 

[Shade of Decay]

He watched as the boy stood, the same expression of callous rage writ upon his face, not only the simulacrum, but even his true form within the tank. "You play with powers beyond your control," he said, as soon as he was sure Thesh would properly understand him. "You poke your head in realms exceeding your understanding, with naught but a shadow for protection. Their kind has power, yes...but not enough. Not compared to some of the threats to be found."

The rage grew again suddenly, although Tsisaar was not some base marauder willing to let it go unchecked. Thesh stood unmolested by his power—for now. "Did you think to make me hunt you down in there?" he asked, cold venom in his voice. "To find you and drag you back out, kicking and screaming, like I did Kyrel? I will protect and retrieve that which I consider important, no doubt, and certainly could return you to a body..."

The specter waved a hand, and one panel in the walls retreated, showing a cloning tank with a perfectly made, fully-grown copy of Arcturus Dinn lying inside, softly breathing with a respirator but otherwise in perfect, mindless stasis. "But if you think I would not press severe limits on your independence, boy, know that you would rather wish I left you dead."

 

[Arcturus Dinn]

Even with his inhibitions resolved, Arcturus' head felt like a watermelon strained under the pressure of a thousand rubber bands just waiting to explode. Every single word uttered by Tsisaar was just another band to the pile, wrapped around his cranium, berating him for his time spent in the Nether, for the folly of believing himself safe with a Shadow at his side. But something about the whole thing felt like a slowly pushed knife in the gut, nay... It was more irritating than even that. A stray hair fallen down the back of a shirt, itching incessantly.

"If you were paying as much attention as you claim," he retorted, through gritted teeth, one hand raising up to set against the accompanying temple as though somehow it might alleviate the pressure, "You'd know that I didn't find myself there voluntarily. Something pulled me in."

Of course he'd interjected, and after the fact was graced with something most unpleasant. Pulled back was the veil which covered an unsightly view of --- "W-What?"

Arcturus found himself staring at, well, himself. It wasn't the first time he'd looked at himself, after all Kal had formed a mighty fine doppelganger of him in the Nether once, but this was different, fully tangible and unnervingly real. Flesh... Bone.... Hair.... It made the boy nauseous just to look at it. He was not unfamiliar with the process of cloning, the subject had arisen when they formed the Necrobats, but even so he'd never thought to see himself sitting there, suspended in goop.

"Why? Why do you have this..." Headache seemed fleeting then as he took a few shaky steps forward and glowered in the direction of himself. His legs almost buckled beneath him, but with each passing second he was regaining his strength. He pushed past the pain, pushed past the weird memories of the pain, and simply... stared.

He knew why, of course, heck Tsisaar had just spelled it out for him, but it was still impossibly difficult to wrap his brain around all the same. "Limits?" That word stuck out to him more than anything.

Arcturus had not had limits imposed upon his being since he'd been that quiet boy Tsisaar had first met so many years ago, since he'd been a groveling little slave. No, since then he'd been given free rein, one might argue too much freedom. It had been difficult, he'd been left to his own devices, largely forced to forge his own path, to oversee his own studies, to find sources to learn from.

Heck, in comparison to that limits almost seemed agreeable.

But not quite.

Shade of Decay

 

[Shade of Decay]

Tsisaar's rage spiked again, and he stepped near Thesh. Had he had the corporeal presence to do so, he might have slapped the boy for his insolence; instead, he was limited, at least for the moment, to educating. "The ring," he snarled. "The ring you earned as a result of one of your forays, aiding others in their delvings. Are you so blind that you cannot sense the tie it has to the Netherworld, or are you so wilfully ignorant that you think that believing your own excuses will make others believe them as well?"

The specter turned on one incorporeal heel, stalking away through the room. With a wave of its hand, other panels slid away, revealing other tanks with bodies in various states of either growth or dissection. Each one held in perfect stasis. One tank held nothing but a nervous system within life sustaining liquid, keeping it from succuming to oblivion. If Thesh reached his senses out towards it...

He would hear nothing but screams of horror in his head, and flashes of vision of the room itself from a holocam feed. Whatever, whoever that had been, it was alive.

In another, a body that looked almost exactly like the first being that Thesh had met on the station, save a few small differences. But this one seemed...the spark of life was there, but the soul was not.

And multiple others in similar horrifying states. Other bodies on the tables in the room, illuminated by the light, including a Trandoshan sedated until entirely insensate, ribcage cracked open, still breathing lungs held elevated above the rest of the body. Perhaps his most recent experiment, though for what purpose was inscrutable. "I have many such creations, boy," the shade replied testily. "But yours is in case I really do have to bring you back from the Nether's clutches myself."

But he stopped, and turned back as the young man mused on the idea of limits. So, too, did the body in the tank turn, bacta sloshing audibly as it faced Thesh, a new wave of pain spiking through the room...though the shade didn't show it.

"Yes, boy, limits," he said, his tone low, though if Thesh had sense it would be no less threatening than before. "Why do you ask, pray tell? Have you found such unrestricted freedom isn't too your liking? Have you developed no way to contend with the onset of ennui?" The black eyes glowed, almost hypnotically, as he met Thesh's gaze. The laboratory surrounding them almost seemed to melt away into nothing but an empty void of darkness as those eyes were met, but anywhere Thesh turned he could see the room again.

"There is much I can offer you, boy, if you have the willingness to shake off the fetters of your own lust and your master's misguided...teachings." He spat out the word in disgust. "Limits to guide you and encourage your growth, goals to focus and sharpen your mind. But if you deny me, and should happen to fall prey to your own foolishness..." The clone was spotlighted within the void, eyes glowing the same as Tsisaar's own. From behind it, another glow emerged, and the mindless body writhed in agony at some unseen command.

"You will find me far less forgiving."

Then Tsisaar stood silent, leaving the choice open to the boy before him.

Arcturus Dinn

 

[Arcturus Dinn]

If he'd thought his head hurt before. The ring..? His gaze shifted down, two bands carefully slipped over his digits, and assessed the one he'd had no part in the creation of. The ring... Ashin's ring? The ring given to him by Ashin Cardé Varanin ? That ring..? No...

No way...

Really?..

Holy kark, he thought, blinking in amazement, Kal had to know! Right that second, he needed a way to get Kal here, to tell him, he---

Sense hit him all at once, like a tonne of bricks. Mostly because yet more of the tanks were now revealed and served as new points of light in the room. Well, darkness, they were seeping with it, but physical light. He stopped staring at the ring, and instead furrowed his brows as he took a step closer to the tanks. Then immediately recoiled at what lay within.

Arcturus had seen some gruesome things in his life, half eaten and rotting carcasses, heck much of the Netherworld itself was unsightly, and that wasn't factoring in the two trips into the Dreaming Dark he'd made in recent years. He held on to the contents of his stomach, just about, though he'd be lying if he tried to claim that the lizardman on the table didn't bring him frightfully close to failing even that.

"Force" he whispered, feeling as though the thermostat had been risen by a thousand degrees or more. In the face of all that, having a fully intact clone of himself waiting for the day he succumbed to the Nether for real was nothing. Pleasant, one might argue.

Mental note: Do not get on Tsisaar's bad side.

It was almost too much for his pain-addled brain to handle, much less comprehend. He turned almost full circle, taking in all of the various sights in the room, before finally returning his gaze to the man.

Everything in the room was emitting pure horror, and he fought hard to try and keep it out, to close off his mind. Usually it wasn't too difficult a task, but here, with so much of it, it was downright oppressive.

It wasn't until there were further talks of limits that he seemed to snap back to attention, and his eyes settled upon Tsisaar's soon to be lost within their hypnotic, mesmerizing state.

"I've never liked it" he said, before he realized the words were even freeing themselves from his lips. Even after they'd been uttered he hadn't the sense to recollect the fact he had. "No place, no purpose, it's an endless freefall into obscurity." Maybe that was why the Nether called to him so, perhaps that was why he found more solace among Shadows than mortals. A void to fill a void.

"All I had was structure; then nothing." Arcturus blinked, tried to turn away from the man as though finally realizing the strange effect he was having on him, or maybe that was the excuse he sought to draw upon. Maybe Tsisaar was right, willful ignorance... Was that all he was? A hollow empty shell. A vestige?

Darkness formed at his peripherals, so black that it was safer to lock eyes with the man once more. He did precisely that, feeling his breathing begin to slow to a crawl, or maybe that was the room itself, time drawn out and stretched as it had been at varying times in his life. Not always in motion around him.

Words fell around him, and Arcturus tried to grasp at them. Frantically, one might say. Limits and purpose and focus and growth and.... There, a light. He turned his head toward it, only to witness the writhing of his own form staring back at him. Witnessed his own torment personified. Too much, he thought... it was too much.

He did not notice immediately that he'd succumbed to the pressure and dropped to his knees. If his head truly was a melon then one more band would be enough to crush it. Just one more band... He panted, as though he'd run the length of a city, sweat having formed across every exposed inch of flesh. His hair was matted, and his limbs felt heavy. Arcturus was conscious of the fact that this wasn't even Tsisaar's doing. Something else, deep within, writhing and clawing, unearthed by all that had been said, and all that had been done.

"Please" he whispered, somehow transported back to the mewling whelp he'd first come to Tsisaar as all those years ago. With his head bowed as it was, the brand upon his right shoulder proved more than visible, contorted as the cloth was. He needed to stand, he knew, had to rise lest he find himself cast out the airlock like some failed experiment borne in one of the many vats this place held. Reached out for --- something. He didn't even know what at this point.

Just sought the leverage to pull himself back up.

Shade of Decay

 

[Shade of Decay]

The boy was close to breaking. He could feel it, smell it, taste it, even, despite being so deep within the tank and its sorcerous workings. No...Tsisaar's gaze lifted from Arcturus for a moment, to look within the tank. The body, his body, lie motionless for the moment. This, Tsisaar could tell, was a moment of power. The bond that he had forged between himself and Arcturus during that first meeting, just reinforced moments ago, was giving Tsisaar the energy to interact with the physical world beyond mere manifestations of the Force.

He stepped around the boy, but they both were left in that dark void. The ship itself may as well not have existed, were it not for how they could feel it beneath their feet. Tsisaar...could feel it beneath his feet.

One hand came down, resting upon the brand and markings on Thesh's shoulder. The boy might have thought them an oversight, so many years ago; but Tsisaar was not the type for oversights. He was the type for symbology and pure intention.

Incorporeal fingers made solid dug into the skin of Thesh's back, ripping away the branded and tattooed layers in a single movement. The spell was shattered, the void disappearing around them, leaving Thesh in pure, blinding light. Kneeling on the floor, one hand having just found a table to try and pull himself up, his shirt rapidly soaking with the blood running in sheets from his fresh wound.

The skin was laid upon one table, a stasis field immediately coming into existence to prevent it from succumbing to any decay. One hand came down, covering itself in the blood, and he once again placed it directly upon Thesh's forehead. Just as so many years before. "Then it is within my power to grant you this," he started, the same formal intonation overtaking him as had done before. "No longer are you an acolyte, Thesh. You have the power to prove it, and now you undertake the path to wisdom and true growth."

The pain rose again, but subdued this time, as the wound began to knit itself closed. Tsisaar drew back his hand, and in the blood left on Thesh's forehead traced out the ancient symbol of the original Sith Order. "Your days as a slave before me are ended. No longer shall you be Thesh in my sight—henceforth, you shall be known as Darth Marcion, first of the lords of my lineage." He stepped back; the bleeding had stopped, the wound was healed.

"Rise, young Lord Marcion. Your life awaits you."

Arcturus Dinn

 

[Arcturus Dinn]

Enveloped by the void, head hung as it was, Arcturus barely even noticed the somewhat more corporeal form take shape and step around him. In the silence which lingered he found some of the weight which had pressed him down to his knees begin to alleviate, his mind beginning to reform; he took one breath that did not shake.

And then he screamed.

Skin was rendered obsolete upon his back, torn from its place among its kin, and the pain he felt was unbearable. Even after all that he had experienced already in this hellish laboratory it seared throughout him and when the void became awash with light he could not tell if it was legitimate or caused by the sparks in his brain igniting.

His skin became clammy and cold, yet that spot upon his back was scorching, a warmth spreading where the blood seeped in. The scream became hoarse and then faded entirely, as a tremor overcame him. Hand upon the table, it gripped down upon whatever edge it could find to keep him from passing out. Arcturus focused on the pain, on the warmth, and used it to keep his mind sharp and active.

He stared out at a spot among that light, chest rising and falling rapidly, until his gaze became obscured by the hand which reached around and pressed a bloody digit atop his forehead. Smeared his own blood upon his skin. Arcturus recognized it for what it was, even amidst the chaos in his mind, for there was no forgetting such an act. The scar on his wrist from a similar event throbbed in solidarity with the other as it began to knit closed and formed a gruesome skin of mismatched flesh across his shoulder.

Tsisaar's words became all he could hear, all he could truly focus on beyond the pain and the sticky warmth at his back, casting aside his position, his enslaved state, the name he'd clung to even after claiming another for his own. Not an Acolyte, not a Slave, not Thesh...

Marcion. A Knight, a Lord, first of the lineage of Taral.

He rose as bid, but even in doing so his expression became awash with something more than the moment would suggest. Revelation, pure and simple, lay upon the boy who had arisen into his new state of being.

"Marcion?" he managed to push free from his lips, a name he could not remember knowing, but which he knew to be true within his heart. A name he'd once held upon the tip of his tongue as a slave boy brought to Bastion, yet which he'd pushed down and suppressed into obsoletion. And with it came more than just the name of his youth but the crushing of a great many other barriers he'd thrown up to preserve himself against their wrath.

Arcturus' hand did not leave the table he'd used to drag himself from the ground with, but that grip softened ever so slightly. "That name" he asked, slowly turning to seek out Tsisaar where he stood, "I know that name..." Perhaps this was not the response that the Sith Lord was expecting from him, there was no fanfare toward his new station at all, no mention of his ascension, not yet at least, though it was clear he'd already taken it onboard in the way he stood slightly taller than he usually did in the man's presence.

Free from the binds of a slave, he no longer hunched in the face of one who knew him as such.

"Marcion Dinn... How did you---" Arcturus shook his head, biting down on the accusatory tone which had sought to accompany the words. It took him a moment longer to realize all that he had ignored; to understand all that Tsisaar had done for him in that moment. He bowed his head, though it was not a grovel this time but a sign of respect.

"Thesh no more," he agreed, casting the mantle aside as readily as he had once clung to it. Already the last of the fog was gone, and any remnants of the pain both mental and physical he'd sustained was slowly washing from him. He lifted his chin. "I'm ready to begin, Master."

Shade of Decay