Private The Storm Feeds the Beast

[Darth Prazutis]

Dromund Kaas, Over Grathok'ta...

The shuttle cut through the ash-choked sky like a black dagger through dying light.

Even from the clouds, the continent of New Gratos revealed itself for what it truly was, a wound. A land where the planet itself had been brutalized into submission, beaten down so far its very nature had been transfigured. Rivers of slow-moving magma glowed like open veins across volcanic plains, casting blood-orange reflections across the obsidian hull of the descending vessel. Thunderheads of soot rolled in endless procession overhead, vomiting black rain and caustic winds across a charred wasteland where nothing natural survived, not anymore. For the Graug of the Dark Legion saw to that. The Shadow Hand's shuttle moved in silence, its sleek silhouette veined in faint crimson pulses that mirrored the lifeblood of the land below. Aerik would see it for what it was displayed before him, a descent not just into geography, but into something deeper. An initiation. A crucible. The deeper they went, the heavier the air became, not only from heat or pressure, but from presence: the kind of psychic weight that filled the lungs with memory of violence.

Below them loomed Grathok'ta, the black citadel of monsters. Long had the Dark Legion faithfully served the Dyarchy ever since the falling Eighth Sith Empire, they were infamous reavers, conquerors who blazed trails through every major foe the Sith had faced. In the past they had been given worlds for their reward, Fornow, Moridinae...now their reward was an entire continent all their own. The city did not rise up from the land; it grew out of it, like bone driven through cracked skin. Monolithic towers of fused basalt, blackstone, dark iron and bloodsteel stabbed toward the sky like broken spears, their sides engraved with crude trophies, skulls, flayed banners, fused armor plating from a hundred conquests. Great furnaces lined the city's walls, their smokestacks billowing columns of firelit ash. Somewhere in the industrial haze, the dull roar of war drums echoed, slow, guttural, and hungry.

There were no streets visible from above. Only chokepoints, kill-zones, barricaded walls, and fire bridges that stretched over slag-pits like spines of beasts. The denizens were even more horrific: Graug warbands stalked openly in the smoke. Towering brutes with furnace jaws and flesh-welded limbs, augmented, mutated and vicious monsters alike. Some bore brands of old campaigns, scars of battles past that would've killed lesser men. Others dragged prisoners in chains, screaming until their voices broke. This was a city with no place for peace.

Inside the shuttle, Darth Prazutis stood unmoving, arms folded behind his back, His towering shape wreathed in the gloom of the red-stained viewport. He hadn't spoken since they left the Jutrand Academy. There was nothing to say. Everything He wished to say was below them now, as they came to a corner of the world the Kainate ruled unchallenged for decades. Everything was etched into every howling wind and burning crater. "Look well." He rumbled, the words low, volcanic. "This is where you will bleed. This is where we will truly see what the Jutrand Academy taught you."

Aerik Lechner​

 

[Aerik Lechner]

TAG: Darth Prazutis​

The shuttle cut through the smoke like a blade, and Aerik watched the world below unfold in silence. New Gratos stretched beneath the clouds like a scar that refused to heal. The land did not breathe. It bled.

Rivers of molten rock wound through the plains, their light flickering across the hull. Every reflection was the color of blood. The sky hung heavy with ash, turning everything gray and lifeless. The air seemed to press inward, filled with a weight that went beyond heat. It carried memory, the kind that whispered of things broken and never repaired.

He had studied places like this. Worlds that had been stripped and scarred until nothing living remained. But this was different. The Force here was raw and unbound. It filled every inch of space like something alive. It was not kind. It was not patient. It was a test waiting to be answered.

The citadel came into view. Grathok’ta. It did not look built by hands. It looked forced out of the ground. Towers of black stone rose in uneven lines, etched with the marks of conquest. Skulls, banners, armor—everything fused together until it was hard to tell where one ended and the next began. The forges that lined the walls glowed like open wounds, and the smoke from them drifted into the sky in endless spirals.

He felt the sound before he heard it. Drums. Slow and deep. The rhythm of war. It made the deck beneath him vibrate. It made the air hum with hunger. The Graug below moved through the smoke, their shapes caught in flashes of light. Flesh mixed with metal, eyes bright with madness, voices shouting in a language that sounded like thunder.

Aerik let his gaze rest on them and felt the lesson take shape. This was what the Dark Legion called strength. To live in ruin until ruin became part of you. To let the fire burn away what was weak and leave only what could endure.

He glanced toward Darth Prazutis standing at the viewport, silent and still. The power around him was not spoken, it was felt. The kind that needed no words. Aerik understood what the silence meant.

This is where you will bleed.

The thought settled in him without fear. He knew what waited below was not a battle but an initiation. Every Sith faced a place like this eventually. A place that forced them to see what they were made of.

He drew a slow breath and let the heat fill his chest. The drums grew louder, and the citadel loomed larger.

Let it begin, he thought.

“I do not intend to bleed if I can avoid it,” he said as he finally pulled his gaze from the city below and fixed it on the one he now called master. “What is the test?”

 

[Darth Prazutis]

The great shadow didn't move at first.

The silence thickened, not any sort of absence, but density, like the way a tomb holds silence. Crimson light from the viewport crawled across the surface of his obsidian warplate, tracing the engraved runes of agony and dominion etched into Qâzjiin'vraal. The towering figure loomed motionless, as if carved from the same volcanic stone as the towers rising below. But beneath the iron stillness, the Dark Side breathed, not in sound, but in gravity. The planetary dark side nexus, the Umbral Maw bore down hard here, its presence changing among a continent so gripped in darkness, that it flowed freely from the cracked earth.

Then, one massive gauntlet lifted and pointed. Out beyond the glass, the citadel's furnace gates loomed, great chasms belching flame, where titanic doors of darkened steel yawned open to receive them. Pillars of molten steam curled upward as the infiltrator shuttle circled low. Right at its base, Graug sentinels formed ranks in anticipation, their warbrands still glowing from the last execution, heavily armored. "The test." Prazutis said at last, voice deep as seismic rumble, "Is not a simple trial of strength. Not here. Strength is expected. What is tested is something far more... intimate." He turned then, slowly, so Aerik could see the faint red glow pulsing in the hollow of His helm, the eyes of the Xûl-Karzaan, not merely seeing, but consuming.

"Every apprentice can strike a foe. Every savage can survive a wasteland. But very few can do what must be done when victory demands the death of comfort, the betrayal of certainty, the extinction of mercy. That is what I will take from you here. Your final illusions. So that when you kill next, it will be as a Sith, not a boy clinging to a shadow of righteousness." The shuttle descended through fire-wreathed thermals, its hull rippling with heat distortion. The great landing claws spread wide as it touched down upon the scorched blackstone of the courtyard, a circular ritual square rimmed with mounted skulls, braziers, and obsidian shrines. The moment the engines powered down, the surrounding Graug roared in unison, united in bloodlust. The boarding ramp extended.

The stink of sulfur, iron, and sweat poured into the cabin like a living thing. Beyond the open hatch, war priests waited with axes and charred incense; armored brutes knelt with their heads bowed low in reverence. It was not for Aerik. It was for the god in his company. A deep reverence for their undying, merciless destroyer god who expected nothing less from his butchers, for in a land devoid of mercy these brutes fought to bow lower, show deeper devotion to their Dark Lords. The Shadow Hand didn't look back as He stepped down the ramp. "Come, Aerik Lechner." He called without turning. "We begin in the flame."

Aerik Lechner​