Private Suffer Not The Light

[Darth Voyance]

After the Battle of Kintan
Aboard the Ascendancy Class Dungeon Ship The Embrace


Darth Voyance entered the interrogation chamber from a side door. Its hissing actuators announced her arrival as the solid durasteel door slid open. Stepping over the raised threshold she approached the 2-1B medical droid standing before her. The droid waddled over in short steps and gave a curt nod. Voyance waved the droid to proceed.

“I have administered the necessary toxins as asked my lady,” the droid said.

“He shall experience a slight paralysis that should inhibit his bodily functions and constrain the use of the Force.”

The medical droid stretched out a robotic arm, gesturing for Voyance to see for herself. She glanced away from the droid and to the Jedi ( Lanik Dawnstar ) strapped to a Sith Imperial Torture Chair. The Jedi was strapped to a platform that hung over a mirrored slab covered in all sorts of gadgetry, piping and wires wrapped around them to increase their terror. Voyance stepped closer and walked past an IT-O Interrogation Unit that had been busy administering the toxins, floating above the Jedi. It bobbed away and moved to the commanding medical droid.

Voyance leaned in to look at the Jedi, still groggy and slowly coming to. She reached out a golden glove and rested her hand on his cheek. She brushed her thumb against the cuts and scrapes of his jaw. Her eyes inspected him, each curve, each dimple, each wrinkle, cut, scrape, and bruise. Like an artificer to a work of art. It was art to Darth Voyance. Suffering was the grim beauty of life and the manifestations of its struggles on the body was art.

“What about his belongings?” Voyance said still caressing and eyeing the barely unconscious Jedi.

The medical droid approached carrying the Jedi’s lightsaber. He presented it to Voyance. Voyance let go of the Jedi’s cheek and turned around to pick up the lightsaber. She tightened her fingers around it, choking it with her muscle and tensed flesh. Then she bleed her being into it and with a dark psychometry she read the deep impressions in the Force that were imprinted upon it. The very experiences the weapon had, the visions of the Jedi’s life they held and the emotions they stored like an aura. She felt all of it. And she saw all of it. Of the young Jedi Knight, of the mentor who he idolized and the catastrophic terror of the light that burned him, casting himself out from the Silver Jedi.

Voyance smiled and exhaled a shivered breath of dark side intoxicated excitement. She nodded slowly and looked back to the Jedi with an affectionate pout, as a mother humoring her hurt child. She rested her free hand on his head once more, passing it through his hair and down his face.

“How you have suffered at the hands of the Light, my dear padawan,” she whispered to him, breathing into his ear.

“But, do not fear,” she continued, “What the Light burned, the warm Darkness may return.”

“Only...,” she hissed, “...Only if you give into the wisdom of that suffering you have experienced.”

Her fingers left his face but, hung only a breath’s length away. A small splatter of lightening jolted from her fingers and latched to the Jedi’s face. Crackling over him. It vibrated through his body and administered a quick, burning, painful shock to raise him from his drug induced stupor. Voyance took a few steps back and began to pace around the torture chair, her hands clasped around the lightsaber behind her back. She waited for the Jedi to become fully conscious.

 

[Lanik Dawnstar]

When Lanik’s eyes opened he stood before his childhood home. A quaint cottage where smoke came from a chimney. The scent of freshly made panna cakes, and a voice from inside calling his name. “Lanik, come inside its time to eat!” Once more the call came and filling the frame of the doorway was the woman Lanik knew as his mother. Sporting dark hair much like himself, her face angled with a sharp chin.

Tears sprung unbidden to the Jedi’s eyes as he stared at his mother. He opened his mouth hoping to speak, to get some words out but none could. His throat seemed to almost close on himself. Soon enough joining his mother in the doorway was a man in his early forties. Sporting dark stubble on their chin, and possessing a sharp jaw much like Lanik himself. They wore the robes of a Jedi. Hope swelled within Lanik’s chest. Joy beyond any he’d felt in years as he ran forward to embrace them.

No matter how much he ran he couldn’t get closer. With each step, the home grew further away. Unfolding behind it a cityscape. In the skies above beams of crimson plasma streaked through the skies. The roar of starfighters pierced the air like a banshees scream. Then from above a brilliant light came down, and everything was gone.

Jerking awake, skin reddened where the lightning had struck him. Head rising immediately as though water had been dunked on him the Jedi looked all around. The room was blurry and slowly everything came into focus. A room of solid gray encased him. His mind fuzzy, and any attempts to focus seemed to slip through his grasp. Feeling the cold durasteel restraints that held him in place Lanik looked down to the table of instruments that was laid out before him. The padawan was no fool, he’d seen instruments of torture, he’d heard tales of Jedi that had been taken by the Sith. The first thing that he felt was fear. Not for himself, but for others. Just what had happened on Kintan? What about the other Jedi? Had any others survived? Had any others potentially been captured? The civilians?

Worrying his lower lip Lanik’s eyes began darting around before locking on the lone Sith as she came full circle into his view. There were many emotions that came to the Jedi as he looked upon the woman who had so easily defeated him. Some would expect anger. Others would have expected fear. What Lanik felt in these moments was a genuine pity. Azure eyes never leaving the Sith, Lanik felt the air grow cold. While he couldn’t reach out to the force he could still feel the twi’lek’s overwhelming presence that weighed upon him like a starship had been placed upon his shoulders. It was odd, one always expected the darkside to feel hot, yet it was more chilling than the deepest parts of the oceans on Ilum.

Mouth dry, lips horrifically chapped the padawan had to dwell up the strength to even speak. “You… What did you do to me?” He asked, trying to fight against his restraints Lanik could barely move his body. Every portion of him ached, the results of the battle finally setting in and taking their toll. Bruises covered his body from head to toe, black and blue welts raised up on his tan skin. “You know you don’t have to do this?”


Darth Voyance

 

[Darth Voyance]

He was resisting. She could sense it. Weak and dim, the Light burned and reached out. Trying to make sense of the cauldron of darkness it found itself in. Lanik writhed and wriggled in his restraints. He passed glances at Voyance as she continued her pacing around him, circling him like a predator. She felt him draw on the lightside and conjure the strength to speak to her.

"You… What did you do to me?” He asked, continuing, “You know you don’t have to do this?”

Voyance stopped just as she circled back around to return to face him. She took some steps closer and bent over to drop her head beside his. She said nothing and watched him struggle. Watched him suffer. Suffering. It would be his ascension, she thought. As it was hers. Voyance shrugged and flexed her lips into a brief smirk that died as fast as it was birthed.

“And what have I done?” Voyance asked, waiting for no reply.

She unclasped her hands from her back and raised Lanik’s lightsaber to prod the jedi in the face with his own weapon. Poking his cheek with the very end that would unleash the plasma blade. Voyance’s finger teasingly brushed against the ignition button. She jabbed him a couple more times.

“No…” Voyance said, punctuating her point by waving the lightsaber in his face. “What have you done to yourself… Lanik Dawnstar .”

“To suffer so much at the hands of the Jedi and their Light.”

She straightened her back and returned to pacing around Lanik. The lightsaber still being brandished like a lecturer’s pointing stick. Bobbing up and down in her hand as she continued.

“You know, Jedi,” she said. “You don’t have to do this.”

“You don’t have to pretend anymore.”

“Like you said to me on the battlefield.”

“You are not hiding.”

She stopped, turned on her heel and marched up behind Lanik. All coy pretense gone, as she came directly at him. Boiling with venom and malice she reached out her hand, gripping Lanik by the skull. She dug her hands into his head and like a claw clung to his scalp. The darkside poured into his mind and took Voyance’s with it. The powers of Force Empathy, Mind Control, and Visions erupted into an invisible virus that corrupted the synapses and bled herself into the corners of his memories.

“Let’s go to it together then. Hmmm?” her voice hissed in his mind.

“Let’s go face that light, the light that burned you, that made you suffer unimaginable loss.”

“Let’s go to Mirial, shall we?”

The world blurred and both of them fled the realm of flesh into the nebulous maelstrom of the fabric of the force. A fabric that Voyance controlled, a dark vision that was her vehicle of wisdom to come. The jedi had suffered from the light and instead of reaching for the sufferings painful message had run from it. To hide behind numbing code and cowardly embalming of the Jedi’s own prejudicial fears. Such an existence was narrow, confined, and ultimately futile. She would open his mind to the possibilities of sufferings wisdom. Of the possibilities of giving into the path that suffering opened. A darker path, a grimly enlightened one. The path of the Darkside.

 

[Lanik Dawnstar]

A question answered with a question, ironic just how similar the higher-ups within both the Jedi and Sith were when it came to being cryptic. Icy eyes locking onto Voyance as she leaned down, once more Lanik struggled against his binds to attempt to break free. Reaching for the force once more it slipped through his fingers like a rishi eel. The Jedi was completely at the mercy of the Sith Lady, he knew it. If she so wished it she could end him with a single motion.

Feeling the emitter jabbing painfully into his face Lanik attempted to pull away from the weapon, his efforts futile. A torture tactic to draw out fear? What man, or even Jedi wouldn’t feel fear in this situation? It was a misconception that Jedi didn’t allow themselves to feel, it was a crucial part to being a Jedi in fact. Yet unlike the Sith the Jedi learned to let go. To not hold on to those bonds.

While the Sith may have brandished Lanik’s own saber, he simply stared past the hilt to her. Part of the padawan wanted to respond to the Sith but that would be wasted breath. Instead, he attempted to focus on freeing himself while Voyance busied herself with the trapping of all Sith. Their arrogance in believing that they were always the smartest in the room.

Shifting in the restraints a majority of the Jedi’s body still remained paralyzed, refined to just his wrists moving in their constraints. Slowly rubbing the skin against the durasteel in the hope to draw blood. Face twisting into a snarl of what could be considered anger, but was in fact pain, Lanik looked up to see Voyance had circled around behind him.

Slowly leaning back he found himself unable to as the soft twi’lek flesh cradled his head, then turned into a vice grip of daggers. Nails bit into the flesh of Lanik’s scalp drawing blood, five crimson streams retreating down from the crown of his skull. The snarl soon turned into sheer agony as the Jedi’s mouth hung agape. A howl resembling that of a wild beast escaped the padawan’s mouth. The scream shook the room itself, reverberating off the walls.

The mental barriers taught to all Jedi as a youth stood no chance against the might of the Sith Lady. It might as well have been a wall made of cotton. Voyance’s will tore through the blockade, her presence intermingling with Lanik’s.

Head leaning back and looking to the lights above Lanik’s roars of anguish seemed to seek to reach the heavens themselves. The lights above grew brighter, and brighter till soon they became blinding.

In an instant the light retreated, Lanik’s body slammed into the dirt, wind escaping the Jedi’s lungs. The warmth of the sun bathed the Jedi’s flesh. The pain of Voyance’s grip no longer present. Scrambling to his feet Lanik rose up, before him in the distance sat the capital of Mirial. Home, a home that was beset on all sides. Jedi and Sith clashed, a hospital exploding as a Jedi starfighter strafed it.

“No no no no.” Turning around and looking behind himself Lanik saw a crimson lightsaber surging towards his neck. Ducking beneath it the padawan’s body reacted on instinct. His cobalt saber swung back removing the legs of the very same Sith that had sought to end his life. Every movement, every action was the same. Even the way the Sith acolyte collapsed to the ground, their bellows of passion, fury and pain.

Glancing back to the capital Lanik knew what was to come next. In the skies above the clouds themselves began to part. They began to spiral around each other as from the skies a pillar of incandescent light descended. Collapsing to his knees Lanik’s fists slammed into the ground. “AARRRRGGHHHHHHHH!”

Darth Voyance

 

[Darth Voyance]

The maelstrom of brilliance bathed everything a thick coating of white light. Pure, bright, blinding and incinerating. It vaporized the entire arcology, its people, and the planet’s earth. Like a flood it poured into every crack and space, clogging it with purifying light. As it ballooned and pressed it’s destructive event horizon outwards, it ripped it all. Earth cracked, levitated and shattered. It raged towards Lanik. The world around him shook and everything grew lighter, brighter, and becoming void of color. But, as the all consuming rage of the lightside came to swallow the fallen Jedi, a dark shadow cut through the light.

First it appeared as a singular dark line, the widened and modelled into the form of a standing figure. The cast shadow walked forward and eclipsed Lanik. While the fabric of Mirial evaporated around him, Lanik was preserved by the darkness of the shadow. Warm, inviting, and an embracing shelter it protected him. It accepted him. It invited him. The shadow was Darth Voyance, appearing like a shield before Lanik, keeping the Wall of Light so callously conjured by the Silver Jedi at bay. She looked down at him. She crouched, kneeling down to his level.

She reached out and placed her hands on both of his cheeks, gently raising his head. When the Jedi looked up he was face-to-face with Darth Voyance. The white blazed around her, but the darkness that shadowed her pale blue skin was tranquil, resolute, and powerful. In that darkness, Voyance’s eyes appeared like the burning golden silhouettes of binary suns in the void.

There was no malice, no threatening coy body language or sadistic glee. It was sadness. Voyance empathic powers made her feel the Jedi’s anguish. Anguish that was being ignored and smothered beneath Jedi teachings of profane isolation from one’s suffering.

Darth Voyance shook her head rubbed her thumbs across Lanik’s eyelids, brushing aside swelling tears that were tittering on the precipices of his lashes.

“You have suffered, Lanik Dawnstar ,” she said, “Suffered so much at the hands of the Jedi and the Light.”

“Burned, scarred, exiled, and hurt.”

“And yet you enslave yourself to the charlatans who pollute your mind with false hopes, like Peace.”

“You will find no peace there, Lanik.”

“No peace, until you hear your sufferings whaling demands and give in.”

“Suffer not the light, Lanik.”

She smiled.

“It is foolish to fear the Dark,” she continued, “But, it is far more foolish to fear the wisdom in suffering.”

“You are running away. Still.”

She let go of his face and grabbed his hands. She pulled him up, so that they stood together.

“The light has rejected you. Cast you aside.”

“But, I have not.”

“The Darkness saved me once, when I was enslaved.”

“It will save you too.”

“It can set…you…free.”

 

[Lanik Dawnstar]

Thousands of beings screamed out through the force as the light burned away what they once were. Parents hugged their children close to their chests in their final moments. Husbands and wives shared their love with one another one last time. Everyone within the capital city suffered, their very presence burned away in the overwhelming presence of light. All that remained where these people once stood were pillars of salt or faint etchings of shadow.

The Sith always said the Jedi were weak, that they could never muster or match the might of the Dark. Everyone knew that was a lie, no one side was more powerful than the other. It was Jedi restraint that kept them from ever needing or utilizing such destructive force. Mirial was a testament to just what could happen when the Jedi finally decided to release those restraints. The purest version of the light committing a massacre to rival a Sith.

The wave didn’t stop, its warmth, its heat traversing the land, reaching out to claim Lanik once more. Looking up he raised his hand to defend himself as he’d done on that very day. Instead, his hand now lay upon the body of the Sith Lord. Her own form lowering to him, holding his face the way his mother once would when he was a child. A warmth came with that touch, one in which Lanik recognized, one in which perhaps as a youth he craved for.

Those cobalt eyes locking with Voyance’s own, Lanik listened to her words. How honeyed they were, how much she offered, all to cover the stench of piss that she was trying to feed him. The Jedi knew of the dark, of its temptations. As an ancient jedi proverb once said ‘The dark is generous.’ It offered comforting illusion, the ease of gentle dreams in its embrace.

As the tears continued to retreat down his own cheeks, Lanik offered the Sith lady a saddened smile, a hand raising to rest on her own. Just what had she experienced in her time? How much pain had she felt, how many lies had she been told to believe her way was right? Lanik could see that the twi’lek was not too much older than himself, perhaps if they’d met before she’d been found things could’ve been different. Instead of a Sith, the woman with her potential could’ve been one of the brightest beacons of the force.

“The dark doesn’t save any of us, it is but illusion. The dark that seeds cruelty into everything we know. It drips of contempt, it poisons what we love.” Stopping and rising from his kneeling position Lanik looked down to Voyance.

“As long as there remains a single light we can hold the dark at bay. I will never forget what happened on that day, but unlike the Sith I do not bear grudge. I do not despise the Silver Jedi for what they did, nor do I despise you for what you do. You will not have me on this day.”

Darth Voyance

 

[Darth Voyance]

Darth Voyance's warm smile decayed slowly. The perked edges of her lips slumped down into a flat line and then dragged further until it became a bent frown. Her eyes narrowed and her nostrils flared for a brief moment as she sighed through them. The hands that helped him up shot up with a speed that blurred them in to a black mist. It exploded into a cloud that reassembled itself abruptly around Lanik Dawnstar 's neck, forming back into her hand. All her rage snapped around his throat, while the other hand followed to grab and wiggle his chin.

"You are naive," Darth Voyance said in a deep exhale.

"Blinded by your arrogance and your pathetic servitude to comforting lies."

The seductive whispering tones of the darkly warm Voyance gave way to the hissing fury of a Sith Lord. The very darkside growled at Lanik, speaking through the lips of the temptress twi'lek.

"I have misunderstood you, Jedi," Voyance said, "And for that I apologize."

A bolt of lightening snapped from the hand that held his throat. It crackled down his body and electrified his spine.

"You are correct, it is too early to make you mine."

Another bolt. And another. Each one destroying the illusion of Mirial. Part by part, ruin by ruin, Mirial fell and the chamber of Voyance's dungeon ship returned.

"But, in time, you will find that your are gravely mistaken...about a great...many...things."

A cascading torrent of lightening flowed through him now. Burning, scorching, stinging and debilitating.

Suddenly the whole illusion broke, Lanik would find himself fully aware that he was back in the chamber. The torture chair's back slab was now fully lowered and his entire face and body was pressed against the horrendous instruments of the forward array. Hot coil wires, piercing prongs electrified into bolts of blue harpoons, and siring heat from vapor vents. They full force of the chair was applied to the Jedi Padawan without warning and with brutal decisiveness.

While the torture progressed, Voyance remained inside Lanik's mind and begun the true nature of her work. Nesting in the darkest recesses of his mind, where the most painful memories hung - she pulled on the Force to leave a part of herself, very small slither of her Force consciousness. Infusing this unwanted parasite with the festering malice of Lanik's hidden darkest emotions. Conjuring an illicit Darkside Force Bond that would bind her to him, so that come what may when he was released she would use him as a beacon to latch onto. From now on, whether Lanik knew or not - he was hers. Hers to watch and to use. Whatever he saw, did, experienced, and learned - she would do the same in time.

Finishing her dark work, she left Lanik's mind and fell back into hers. She let go of his scalp and strolled to the front of him and watched the torture carefully, inspecting every reaction.

 

[Lanik Dawnstar]

Much like the deception that the Dark Lady had portrayed, so too did the false impression she sought to leave. It gave way to malice, rage, and pride, the trappings of the dark. Lanik did not shy away when the Sith dashed forward, the grip that now seized his neck rivaling the strength of durasteel.

Unable to breathe or even speak all the padawan could do was meet the Sith’s gaze. The words Voyance spoke seeming as if she felt genuine anger and betrayal at being denied. Neck flexing in the grip, throat tightening, darkness swimming at the edges of his vision Lanik felt a surge of electricity shoot through his being.

Unbidden the air within Lanik’s lungs found their exit through his mouth that now hung open. Cobalt bolts of lightning enveloped the Jedi’s form as his muscles gave way. Falling to his knees, his icy gaze rising to meet the nova that was Voyance’s. The sheer heat of her hatred continued to burn at his being. There was nothing he could do as slowly behind the Sith much like a mirror when shattered the landscape began to fragment.

It started with a slight fracture in the sky, from that multiple others began to branch off till the entire illusion was a spiderweb of cracks. From there the pieces came crashing down, absorbed into the void to reveal the cold walls of the torture chamber. Through the suffocation, Lanik held onto enough of his personal reserves to offer a smile to the Sith Lady. Mirial had been the Jedi’s nightmare yet it gave him strength, a strength that she’d have sought stripped of him.

The grip released from his throat, now replaced by the burning and sting of torture tools pressed into his flesh the Jedi closed his eyes. Jaw growing taught, teeth clenched together the Jedi bore the pain, head tossing back and forth. Grunts were offered, as the padawan fought the urge to scream. He would not give Voyance what she wanted.

Eyes clenched shut Lanik paid no attention to his surroundings, slowly drowning them out. Focusing the pain on not the physical but the spiritual the Jedi steadied himself. Not through the force, but out of sheer will and determination he simply lay there offering no amusement for the woman. He’d faced pain, he’d faced it on Kintan, on Mirial, on Formos, he’d felt the deaths of hundreds, neigh thousands. What she sought to inflict was child’s play in comparison to what the innocents of the galaxy had suffered.

Eyes never opening the padawan spoke. “You will not have me,” speaking through the pain, each breath labored, every second seeking to break him the Jedi stood true to his beliefs.

Darth Voyance

 

[Darth Voyance]

"He is losing consciousness my lady," warned the medical droid as he monitored Lanik's vital signs from a data panel.

Voyance said nothing instead she watched. He kept reciting the same defiance, over and over, as if it was a prayer more than a retort. She looked down to the lightsaber in her hands and she squeezed it. Turning away from the writhing torment that was Lanik Dawnstar , Voyance walked to the medical droid.

"Keep going until he is out," Voyance commanded flatly, "And then have the IT-O droid wake him with a toxin, then start again."

"Do not let him rest, do not let him regain anymore connections with the Force."

"Understood my lady," replied the medical droid.

"And what if he becomes entirely unresponsive? This kind of technique will waste him quickly."

"Leave him here and have the security droid surround the level," said Voyance.

"Yes my lady," confirmed the medical droid.

Voyance nodded and marched away to the exit. She stopped just before its raised metal threshold and gave a side glance to Lanik. She narrowed her eyes and pondered something for a moment but, then whipped her head forward and left the interrogation chamber. Traveling down a corridor she took a repulsorlift up to chamber behind the main bridge - the location of her temporary personal quarters. Entering, she strode to the center of the room and squatted down. Her legs crossed and she placed the lightsaber in front of her. She raised both her hands and stretched out her fingers, with her palms facing down to the red carpet she sat on.

She closed her eyes and whispered a black speech, malignant and as vile as it was ancient. Ur-Kittat, the old speech, the High Language of the ancient Sith. A language taught to her by her dark master the Emperor and one that was further enhanced by her encounters with Sith Lords of old like Tulak Horde in his tomb on Korriban.

The words slipped from her lips, they echoed, rattled in the Force. Crystalline arcs of azure rage in the form of short sparks of lightening blasted from her finger tips and enveloped the saber. The bounced around the weapon before splattering onto the carpet. All the while Voyance continued her vile chanting, reciting a dark ritual's words.

"Kintik had-zus-ka sutta chwi-tus-kak!"

"Kintik had-zus-ka sutta chwi-tus-kak!"

She then drew one of her hands back and bit her thumb, causing it to bleed profusely. She smeared the dripping blood onto her other fingers and by pressing her bleeding thumb against them, then she closed her fingers into a fist blooding her whole hand.

"Jiaas-jen Jidai, jiass-jen Jidai!"

Voyance lunged for the saber, grabbing it with her bloody hand. The darkside cried and shrieked and Voyance was bond to the saber's entire Force presence. She felt everything, saw everything...knew everything. Her mind flew across its cognitional impressions formed in bubbles of past realities held in place by the soul of the wielder of the saber. She saw the Jedi Master she had faced on Kintan, she saw him speaking to Lanik and Lanik reply back his name.

" Wyatt Morga ?" the name came to her lips. She then looked more, she saw a many Jedi gathered around this Master Morga. Saw him enact some unknown skill that vanished him and his Jedi from a large hall. A Jedi enclave of some sort? She was not sure. Later she saw how Lanik and this Master arrived at her battle lines.

"I see. So that's how you did it," Voyance said, "Impressive. Most....impressive."

She then felt a disturbance. As if someone else had latched onto the Force consciousness of Lanik ( Ryv ). Voyance snapped her eyes open and stood up abruptly. She slowly turned around and looked about her quarters. She smiled. and looked down at the bloody saber.

"Indeed you are powerful, as I have foreseen...Lanik Dawnstar."

"Your power to connect with those of the Force is remarkable. And quite useful."

"Good. Your friends will come, and they will take you from me."

"But know this. As long as you have feelings for your friends and this desperation to be with them in the light......"

"...you will always be mine."