Oil & Water
"Beautiful." The Dark Voice bellowed.
Powerful gusts tugged at his robes violently, the air was thin, the view however.. spectacular.
Vroom!
A single hypersonic roar flooded his senses, a single Eradicator class starfighter screamed by. The single vanguard of an encroaching storm not long behind. Mawite fighter craft and dropships carrying the zealous holy crusaders and fierce tribal marauders peeked through the clouds. Streaks of exhaust spat out in their wake as the sky thundered with their approach. It would not be long before green and red bolts of luminous laser fire would flicker back between earth and heavens above.
Glorious.
The Dark Lord stepped forward, leaning closer towards the 'edge' of his vantage point. Soon the vast cityscape of Cinnagar was in plain view. He could see the palace, the Great Library, and soon…
Rumble! Shake! Thunder!
"Ah, there it is."
The city quaked, there was a symphonic shockwave that melodied from the heart of the old capital. It percussioned a cloud made of duracrete and glasteel, crescendoing to the rise of the Iron Citadel. Soprano cries of terror, baratone wallows, and harmonic crashes filled the chorus of the Krath.
With the power of Sith Sorcery, their return was boldly broadcasted to the pretenders occupying the Tetan throne. They bore with them a gift, a secret long buried that ignited with eerie luminance filling the ancient ruin with a sickly emerald glow. The hypergate had opened.
"The time has come, daughter."
The beast roared beneath them.
Be a pool of water.
Like a lake...
cool... unmovable... without ripples...
Jem forced herself to envision it. The jedi meditation practice had once been a security blanket. Now its ragged form kept slipping through her fingers. Calm was not something Jem typically embodied but she stood at her father's side and force herself to remain still.
It was becoming harder every day to manage it.
Her father's corrupting measures seared through her veins and she suffered for it. Every moment was a battle inside her own mind. Every breath was effort-- a cognitive task of control.
She ignored her father. She ignored the city, she ignored the pending war. She was running out of ti--
A familiar presence cut through it all. Her attention jolted outwards, a pained gasp escaping through her lips. It only took a moment for her to make sense of the presence.
Not even the darkside could make her forget her master.
Her own presence was weak, barely identifiable amongst the corruption that threatened to swallow Jem whole. A warning image jolted through the tentative bond they still shared, powerful as it tried to drive itself like spikes into Dagon's mind.
Her father was coming. He was more powerful than ever before.
Jem winced and released the reigns from her grasp. The metal had warped under her fingers. "Yes father."
She let herself free fall to the ground, disembarking to... she no longer knew. She no longer asked questions. Her strength was conserved for one thing.
I am a lake.
Dagon Kaze
Darth Solipsis
Ryv
Corin Trenor
The Sith are a superstitious cowardly lot.
From day one it has been so. The resurgence of the New Sith over the corpse of the old and decrepit on Thule. A pattern Solipsis had followed religiously throughout his crusade to warp and change reality itself. Logistical lines, strategic locations, all rational military targets had been delegated to the 'simpler' minds of the Final Dawn. Instead, he'd waged war against the hearts and minds of the galaxy, against the sole existence of the Jedi.
From torching to ash the Enclave at Jakku and the pilgrimage of Jedha to the massacres in the Sith Worlds and all the way to the heart of the Jedi, the home of galactic civilization - Coruscant. None could forget the Sacking of Coruscant that had driven the New Jedi to the edge of extinction.
This was no war of occupation, no war of tangible strategic value or anything of the sorts.
No, this has been an existential war. A war of life itself against the forces of entropy, of death.
A war to forever change the hierarchy of power and the natural order of the universe.
Forever.
The coronation on Teta - home of the legendary Krath, a dynasty known for its historical roots with the Sith. Where and when else could he have attacked? To make a point. To demonstrate true power. Symbols and superstition.
And yet, as predictable as Solipsis may have grown to be in the eyes of the Jedi, the question that truly held importance was neither where or when but could he be stopped?
Once more, they came in droves. Springing from the depths of an ancient, long-forgotten hypergate and cutting through the skies; a dark curtain enveloping the light and casting an impregnable shadow over the world.
The heavens hung in black.
In that unending sea of darkness converging in the skies, a behemoth of Sith Magic stood out. A creature born solely for the purpose to destroy and annihilate and atop it he could sense it. Not the twisted nature of the beast and neither the malicious maw of death that its master was. No. Her presence may have been like the sound of a nail falling into hay but to him... it was all he could hear.
"Jem..." he heard himself mutter, eyes narrowed unto the behemoth from his vantage point atop one of Cinnagar's many high rises cutting the clouds. A warning shuddered the rusty bond between master and apprentice, wedging itself into his lobe. Strong enough to force an involuntary step back.
It bore no threat, conveyed more like a friend's caution.
A moment later it abated, replaced by the malice of corruption which enveloped the sender and the weight of guilt upon the recipient.
It was time to move.
To act.
As always.
He caught her lithe form freefalling from the skies, an enviable feat she hadn't truly mastered before. Even this distant from her, Dagon could feel the power her father had provided her with. The shortcut. The easy way. A clear sign of his own failings as a mentor. It dug deep into his heart.
"Corin, we move to intercept her." Dagon said, unnatural gloom besetting the usual easy-going bravado he was known for. Solipsis would never send her away on a menial task. No, she was his key. The single soul in the whole wide galaxy he would trust.
The heiress of Apocalypse.
"Time for you to meet my... former apprentice."
The beast's roar rippled through the skies of Cinnagar like a hurricane wind. Smoke and fire spilled out as far as the eye could see as the battle for the soul of the planet began in earnest. A quick glance to his daughter saw her off as she made her way towards the edge of the floating behemoth. Without a hint of fear or doubt, the apprentice gracefully stepped off.
DARK LORD OF THE SITH | VOICE OF THE MAW
Jem Fossk |
Cinnagar, Empress Teta
WRATH
The Dark Lord of the Sith pressed his right foot forward and dug in, eyes like daggers following the trajectory of his kin. He hissed, extending his right hand forward, palm opening in gesture as the psychic connection between man and beast intensified. The Summa Verminoth groaned and dipped, diving towards the cityscape with it's tendrils extended out.
A typhoon tugged at his robes relentlessly, fierce winds powerful enough to uproot him threatened to remove the Dark Voice from his fortified stance. He would not budge, the gusts were like waves breaking against the unmoving rock. Twin orbs of sulfuric hate glared down as the beast savagely slammed into a nearby tower, cleaving through an entire story.
Vroom!
Wherever the massive beast loomed, dust and debris followed in it's savage wake. Buildings partially collapsed if not outright crumbled under the weight of the apex predator. As the monstrosity circled, the Dark Voice lifted himself and cast off. Touching the empyrean, he gathered the Force and leapt from the dome of the Summa Verminoth, descending in a slow controlled fall.
He came down, eyes casting a terrible glare down towards the landing site of his kin. The Sith'ari's black robes enveloped around him, an umbral shroud that defied physics floating down. The Dark Voice lowered, drifting into a dust cloud kicked up by the rampant destruction around them. Smoke and ash filled the air, his form vanished completely, lost in the chaos.
"You may think this is suffering. No."
"It is salvation."
The Dark Lord emerged from the fog of war, the smoke and dust rolling off his midnight cloak as the winds pressed against him. He advanced, eyes honed and ready.
"Dread it all you like. Run from it if you have to. The facts remain the same… huh.."
His gaze twisted away, immediately drawn to the final obstacle in his daughter's training and full conversion as a Sith.
"Time to let old things die. You know what you must do, do not hesitate."
His new Master had felt distant at times, as if an extended arm refused to allow them to become as close as some other students he had been. It wasn't as if Corin had not been all too aware of the Padawan that came before him, but he failed to realise that it was fear; fear of failure had seen the two remain focused on the business-end of their connection, to find interests outside the Jedi Order and their mission... that fear of loss. It never seemed to settle in Corin and at the mere mention of Jem, had Corin frowned. Not for his Master, but for himself - his mind lost all focus, all that he needed was lost as he turned into the second born to the favoured star.
He had too much to lose.
She could succeed into her father's embrace, or fail into her Master's.
Corin shut himself off from the chaos, and a breath followed in an effort to find some composure. To no avail.
The Padawan nodded towards Kaze as the world crumbled around them. He had no words for all of this, and followed his Master as the two traversed the ruins of Teta, of the same ones that continued to increase in destruction as each second came and went.
Some small amount of calm had found itself returned to Corin, but that sliver was tested once the distant two came into view and both Dagon and Corin came closer and closer. He was better than her, he assured himself, he was not so weak as to crumble onto a traitor's road and abandon all that he knew.
Jem fell without feeling. Lakes didn't enjoy the thrill of free falling through air. Lakes didn't care that buildings were exploding and lives were ending around it. Lakes moved for no one. Well...
Except pebbles. And wind. And feet-- and...
She followed his gaze, her gray skin loosing luster as she caught what held his attention. "I'm not running," she asserted quickly, trying to bring his attention back to her.
"I accept this-- I'll not--"
Her stomach fell out from under her. She was forced to meet her father's gaze, his very presence demanding her acknowledgment. She wanted to melt into a puddle. Those seemed less noticeable.
"Yes... father..." Stupid, stupid Dagon.
Her feet felt like foreign objects. They obeyed her father and moved her towards the one thing she did not want to face. She couldn't stop them, but she could control the speed. She moved with slow precision onto the roof ledge... she... braced... and arched gracefully through the air, from one roof top to the next. He had taught her that. Dagon. The idiot with a death wish. Every step towards him felt like shifting through cement, the bags under her eyes growing deeper as she hoped without hope that her father would look away.
She brace... and jumped again... the skies above crackling with streaks of red. She saw a tuff of black hair and stopped on that roof ledge.
"I gave you a chance to leave," she hissed, her voice reaching the figure masked by the shadows. Up close she was unrecognizable. Her once hearty, gold-tone complexion was now colorless and hallow. She had not slept nor eaten in days, sustained by the corruption that consumed her, and it showed. She was lifeless and frail, but she rippled with unmistakable power.
"You should have taken it. Master."
There was a time before the bliss.
Those times and places were distant things, left to fade away into obscure stories told by hardened veterans and displaced refugees. Some found hope in those tales, while others looked upon them with abject hatred. When foreign and abstract ideals drove a boy to become something more. A monster who militarized an Order of masterless children and turned them into killing machines not seen since the times of Revan or Lord Hoth. Or maybe a hero, a symbol of unshaken hope that stood unbowed against the flowing tide of darkness.
A time better left in the past. Before the arrival of a loving family and nights spent in peace, where the greatest of toils were beer poured and food served.
Memories of pain, interwoven through the years by a sense of purpose.
Ryv sighed.
He looked up past the city limits, his gaze locked on the distant horizon. War came for him again. It appeared in the form of someone in need, as it always had. War promised him an end. A bloody one. Trapped, alone, away from his family in his final moments.
The tension in his chest, the storm of chaos that buzzed about the air like a swarm of starved locusts. He knew this place better than any other in the galaxy—a battlefield. Where the brave marched off to their death, and the foolish went to live.
There was a time when the kiffar longed for this feeling.
Now, Ryv yearned for the cozy armchair in his bedroom, where he would read to his children or tell them stories of his legendary exploits. It was a safe place. The memories dulled with the passage of years. War could not reach them there on Denon, not in the heart of his home. His territory.
But here on Empress Teta, within the city of Cinnagar, it had found him. War crawled closer, driven forth by the machinations of a mad man changed by alien designs the sane could not begin to fathom. A demented beast thundered towards the city. It hungered for innocent blood, to feast upon the dying breath of hope as pawns of light and shadow fell beneath its bulk.
In another time, on another world, the battle to determine the galaxy's fate would be fought.
Ryv paced across the flat top of a towering starscraper. He stepped up onto the ledge meant to separate him from a fatal plunge, his eyes never leaving the monstrous behemoth as it lumbered closer to its death.
"Fossk," Ryv uttered the name in a whisper, infused with subtle power. The words found the great empyrean like a smooth stone skipped across a calm lake. Power rolled through the ethereal, cutting through the ghostly echoes of battle between the Sword of the Jedi and the dreaded Sith'ari. "Surely you've waited long enough for this confrontation."
The sky above crackled with fury and laid its vengeance upon the world. Threads of life cut short by the pestilent hand of the Sith quivered as ripples throughout the ethereal. The air reeked of plasma and burnt flesh, filling his nostrils with that all too familiar stench of war. It dug into the very skin you wear and no moments of peace nor joy could ever wash it away.
Dagon wrinkled his nose. The New Jedi Order, baptized in the flames of the Stygian War, learned that reprieve was a luxury they could neither have nor could they afford.
Reprieve had filled the gutters of the galaxy with the blood of its sons and daughters. It's the only lesson the New Jedi ever learned from their absent masters.
The Jedi duo's traverse came to an abrupt end, cut off by the appearance of a hollow shadow standing in their way. A grey shadow of a once colorful past and fateful future. Grey like the skin of a dying man, dry as a funeral drum. And that drum banged loud, beating into a crescendo of grief and regret.
"You know I like beating my head against the wall." he dryly responded, the hilt of his saber materializing in his hand. It had come to this, hasn't it? The pinnacle of his failures and mistakes shaped the monster that stood before him. That had taken his apprentice away from him. But the corruption -- as tight as a tourniquet around her -- could be broken. Blood does not dictate fate, only what we do defines us.
He'd prove it to her.
Or die trying.
The Knight's eyes narrowed sideways at Corin, a plan of action on his tongue but never uttered. How could he? After all, the infallible chemistry he'd built was with the one standing against them, "I'll go low, you go high." he whispered. A simple stratagem indicating the fledgling progress they had made. Then hoarsely reminded, "No killing."
The proverbial bell rang with the snap-hiss of his blade and the Force surged through his feet sending him darting at her. His body folded into a crouch as the cerulean saber sought to make contact with her legs.
DARK LORD OF THE SITH | VOICE OF THE MAW
Cinnagar, Empress Teta
W R A T H
His daughter had accepted the dreaded task given to her and asserted herself ready. She was not, no one could ever truly ready themselves to make 'the Sacrifice'. It was spiritual collapse, a rebirth of identity as the last vestige of compassion was killed off along with those dearest to you. To complete her transition into a Sith, she had to cut the last link holding her to her former life as a Jedi.
She had to kill
The Dark Lord had intended to follow and see the job done before his very eyes, to watch the life leave the Jedi as he fell at the hands of his very own apprentice. The one he fought so passionately to save, to redeem and bring home. He never understood the truth, she was home, where Jem belonged. Her destiny was intertwined with that of her Father's, she was the heir to his legacy and the key to the future he designed.
Alas, his attention drifted elsewhere. Caught unawares as the silent speech of the Sword saturated his thoughts from the empyrean wind. His eyes widened, orbs of incalculable wrath glistening in the shadow of Cinnagar.
"…The Sword of the Jedi."
The Sith'ari cooed.
"You should of remained in exile."
The Dark Lord of the Sith stretched forth, hand reaching out across the expanse, his mind probing the depths of battlefield. He uttered a savage hiss before muttering in the 'Old Tongue' an unrecognizable command.
The earth shook, the skies thundered, and throughout the city streets a monstrosity glided overhead. The Summa-Verminoth groaned violently as it made haste in the direction of the valiant Sword. Earth and Heaven moved before the apex predator as it turned towers into turmoil.
The Beast lumbered on, carried by it's master's command to seek fresh meat.
He stood there, so disconnected from the core of the situation as the former master and student made their remarks to one another. He was the extra, the added addition, the one that came after, the one to find himself cast aside should Jem be returned to his side. His features scrunched and narrowed, from the creases on his forehead to the clench of his teeth. Corin was tense, and it remained so difficult to discern whether it was the nerves of a true test of skill or the fire that storm that near-thundered beneath the surface.
Corin returned a similar narrowed look back towards his Master, he readied himself to follow one command and still remained so unsure of the other. Had their success as two ensured his own loss as one? He wished he had all the chance to dimiss all the intrusive ideas that flashed before him, but there was no time but the here and now.
His weakened resolve had turned him into a moldable mass of flesh and bone.
In a silent rush of his own, Trenor mimicked Kaze as the blue blade hissed into existence. Beside the other Jedi, Corin bounced into the air and made the motion of an overhead attack, as if in effort to rid the fresh Sith of her arm.
He had finally hardened his heart to her. No more begging. No words. He had finally accepted the inevitable. She should be relieved, but his resignation burned like salt on a wound.
There really was no going back now. Her face hardened as he descended, her own saber jumping to her hand in turn.
She caught both the blades with a powerful upward strike-- forcing Dagon's up and entangling them both with the third before it could reach her shoulder.
"You're really going to make us do this?" She accused. "All the energy I've put into keeping you alive, and you're going to make me kill you." They remained locked for a moment in a power struggle, the tip of her dead jedi saber pointed at the ground. Darkness flexed through her muscles and she did not budge, her control over it balancing on a pin point.
"Do you have any idea what you're doing to me?" Her pain was palpable. She wanted nothing more than to pretend she had never sat on that corrupting throne, but her father pushed her further every day and her master...
Her attention fixated on the jedi fighting besides him. She had dismissed
Her resistance slackened with shock.
"Who is this?"
"You can try." he retorted as the two Jedi's blades locked a cross with Jem's parry. "If you can't step back into the Light -- I'll drag you back." he could feel his flesh squeeze his hilt tighter and tighter against Jem's newfound strength.
An eyebrow slightly arched up, "Wh--"
That was for Corin to respond. Feeling the resistance of her parry begin to falter, Dagon stepped back and to the side seeking to flank her followed by a horizontal slash of his blade across her arm. Had Jem been the one on his side, he'd known she would've followed to flank their enemy on the opposite side. Just like they had trained. Just like in the good old days.
Oh, this divine irony of it all.
He was no Jem.
Far from it.
But now, of all times, he resembled her current state most of all. Even as the Master of the three shifted out, a clear chance for himself to do the same, Corin elected to remain and in an effort to hold her there, to be better than her. It was all he wished for now, he was unable to ever confess otherwise, least of all as he leaned further into his own blue-bladed saber and his features contorted in order to be more tense than ever before.
"I'm Corin," he mustered between all the exertion, "Your replacement."
"You never trusted me."
Her whole body quivered with emotion. Up until this point she hadn't actually raised a hand against them but she struggled to remember why that was. She was no longer a lake, she was a raging storm threatening to explode. What that the darkside or what that her pain? It was impossible to fuss out and she wasn't trying to. The betrayal took her breath away.
It took everything away.
Jem fell into a pool of darkness. In its cool embrace nothing mattered, not even her own agony as the light inside of her snuffed out. "No," she decreed, taking a step towards them. Darkness billowed off of her, bending the force around her and dragging it in. Like a black hole.
"You're not allowed him. You don't deserve him." She crept towards them, her path unclear as she forced her way deeper onto the roof. "You will never have a padawan again."
She charged, not on him but on the boy that had taken her place. An abrupt overhead leap would put Corin between them-- affording him no easy protection from Dagon as she slashed for his neck.
An attempted kill shot.
Dagon Kaze
Corin Trenor
Darth Solipsis
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