Private Time After Time

[Aerik Lechner]

Wearing: This | Weapons: Lightsaber | Knife
TAG: Darth Prazutis​

Rain fell in a steady curtain over Dromund Kaas, turning the jungle paths into dark ribbons of mud and reflection. Thunder rolled somewhere beyond the canopy, distant enough to be constant rather than disruptive, a familiar presence that blended into the rhythm of the world. The air carried the scent of wet stone and living growth pressed close together, heavy with the quiet pressure of the dark side that never truly receded from this place.

Aerik Lechner moved along the approach without haste.

The stronghold rose from the jungle like something grown rather than built, its black surfaces slick with rain, edges softened by creeping moss that had learned long ago where it was permitted to take hold. He had walked this path many times, yet the awareness never dulled. Every visit carried the same quiet tightening in his chest, not born of uncertainty, but of memory. Lessons here had never been abstract. Expectations had never required explanation.

He did not come lightly.

Brosi lingered at the edge of his thoughts, not as noise, but as a steady presence. The moment of bleeding the crystal had left its mark, a subtle tension that remained whenever his awareness brushed the weapon at his side. The blade felt different now, warmer in a way that did not fade, as though it retained some echo of the strain that had shaped it. He carried that change without display, knowing it would not go unnoticed.

Servants along the outer corridors lowered their eyes as he passed. Acolytes stepped aside without needing instruction. The atmosphere within the stronghold felt as it always had, ordered, deliberate, the quiet hum of the Force woven through stone and shadow in a way that demanded attention whether one sought it or not.

Aerik noted each detail without allowing his gaze to linger.

He had not been summoned. There had been no message, no directive carried through the channels of the Order. The decision to come rested entirely with him, and that fact alone shaped his posture as he moved deeper within. His master valued initiative, but never without scrutiny.

The corridor leading to the audience chamber felt narrower than its dimensions suggested, the ceiling high yet somehow close, as though the space encouraged focus. Rain tapped faintly against the windows set deep within the walls, a steady rhythm that filled the silence without softening it.

He paused briefly before the threshold, not from hesitation, but from habit. Breath steady. Thoughts aligned. Nothing left unattended.

Then he stepped inside.

The chamber remained severe, each line precise, every surface maintained with exacting care. The air carried that familiar pressure, a subtle reminder of the presence that commanded the space long before words were spoken. Aerik crossed the floor with measured steps, aware of where he stood in more ways than one.

He stopped at a respectful distance.

“Master.”

The single word was offered without flourish. He kept his hands relaxed at his sides, neither concealing nor presenting the lightsaber at his hip. The faint unrest of the crystal sat quietly in his awareness, a detail he did not attempt to mask.

Aerik held his posture, attentive and composed, carrying with him the calm of someone who understood both the privilege and the danger of standing exactly where he was.

And he waited.

 

[Darth Prazutis]

The throne chamber of the Sith Citadel didn't resemble a place of audience. It resembled a command nexus for dominion. Vast blackstone pillars climbed toward a vaulted ceiling lost in shadow, each column etched with ancient Sith glyphwork that drank the crimson light flowing through channels carved into the floor. Those glowing veins pulsed slowly like the circulatory system of the Citadel itself, feeding power toward the raised dais where the throne of the Shadow Hand stood elevated above the chamber. The throne had not been crafted so much as grown, obsidian-black stone fused with alchemized alloy in jagged geometries that seemed less constructed than willed into existence. Its back rose into clawed spires framing the vast sigil of the Kainate suspended behind it, the crimson symbol rotating slowly in the air like a silent engine of dominion.

Upon that throne sat Darth Prazutis. The Dark Lord of the Sith was not armored for war this evening, though the presence of violence clung to Him regardless. Deep crimson robes flowed across His immense form like restrained flame, their layered fabric threaded with dark gold sigils that caught the chamber's blood-red illumination with quiet authority. The Dark Lord's hood was pulled down revealed His chiseled form, blazing eyes of molten fury bore a scrutinizing gaze over everything. It was like He was the gravitational axis upon which the world spun. The Dark Side was a storm around him, a hurricane of dark energy so deep, its darkness choked out the light itself, and deepened the darkness. Around him shadows seemed to come alive and rise off the walls.

Holographic projections burned in the air before him like captured stars. Entire fleets hung suspended in luminous geometry as orbital shipyards glowed across distant systems. New destroyer hulls emerged from forge rings in silent construction cycles while streams of production data scrolled endlessly beside them. The Shadow Armada expanded with relentless calculation, reactor cores activating, weapons arrays entering test sequences, entire sectors of Kainate industry shifting their output in response to the directives that originated from this throne.

Standing below the dais was the architect of that machinery.

Darth Kalystryx, High Technarch of Shadow Mind, towered in tall skeletal precision before the throne. His pale Arkanian skin bore the unnatural smoothness of extensive surgical refinement, broken only by the blackened alloy lattice that crowned portions of his skull. Suspended behind his head rotated the Technarch Halo Array, a gravitic neural amplifier ring that pulsed faintly with dark energy as it processed streams of machine-language data invisible to ordinary sight. His eyes burned with a controlled crimson glow beneath advanced ocular implants capable of perceiving the electromagnetic skeleton of every system within the chamber.

The lower portion of his face had long since been replaced by a respirator unit etched with Sith glyphwork that shimmered faintly whenever it interfaced with surrounding machinery. Beneath layered technopriest vestments of black and arterial red, an articulated spinal harness connected to mechadendritic interface cables that coiled unseen beneath the robes. A simple lightsaber was clasped to his side. Machines seemed to respond to his presence as though recognizing a superior command architecture.

Between master and technarch a projection of a warship hull expanded slowly, its interior schematics shifting as Kalystryx spoke in the quiet, clinical tone of a man discussing architecture rather than instruments of war. "Shadow Mind reports successful integration of the new reactor architecture. Production facilities on Valcantha and the Kaasian orbital yards are now capable of sustaining triple-output manufacturing cycles. The Shadow Armada's expansion window has shortened by thirty-two percent."

With a subtle gesture, the projection shifted again as fleet formations unfolded in luminous geometry between them. "Weapon systems derived from your previous directives have entered prototype evaluation. Hexfire Lance arrays demonstrate superior penetration metrics against contemporary shield geometries, while the Voidflame reactor architecture has stabilized within acceptable thresholds. Within the next production cycle, the Kainate will possess industrial parity with empires centuries older."

If there was any visible reaction on the Dark Lord's part it was completely impossible to tell. He didn't even seem to move as the words of the High Technarch flowed. Finally, one hand rested upon the armrest of the throne while the helm regarded the projections in silent evaluation, its fingers moving ever so slightly. Then the Dark Lord spoke, His voice emerging like distant tectonic movement grinding through stone.

"Parity." The single word carried quiet displeasure. "We do not pursue parity." His head inclined slightly toward the holographic fleets. "We pursue inevitability. We require more." Darth Kalystryx bowed his head fractionally in acknowledgment. "Of course, my lord." Before the technarch could continue his report, the chamber shifted. Not physically, but within the current of the Force itself. The massive doors of the throne chamber parted and brazier light spilled across the polished black floor, carrying with it the distant thunder of Dromund Kaas' eternal storm. Such disruption swiftly ended conversations flowing from the aides in the fringes summoned should something be required. Projections dimmed. Even the mechanical systems humming quietly within the chamber seemed to pause.

Aerik Lechner had entered the hall. Kalystryx's crimson ocular implants flickered faintly as his enhanced vision analyzed the approaching figure. Energy signatures, emotional fluctuations, and more all appeared within his perception simultaneously. The High Technarch didn't speak any further. Instead he stepped aside from the throne's immediate presence, folding the mechadendritic interface cables back beneath his vestments as silent recognition passed through the chamber.

After all, it wasn't his place to address the newcomer who stood before the Shadow Hand of the Kainate. Darth Prazutis didn't even move as the youth walked in. The slow gravitational pressure of His presence filled the hall as His head turned toward the approaching apprentice. The storm outside thundered faintly beyond the Citadel walls while the sigil of the Kainate burned above the dais.

"You arrive without summons." The words carried neither accusation nor welcome. It was a statement of fact. The Dark Lord's molten eyes regarded Aerik carefully. After a moment the Dark Lord spoke again. "Welcome." One massive hand settled against the throne's armrest as He continued. "I sense uncertainty within you. Something troubles you my young apprentice." His gaze flicked briefly toward Darth Kalystryx before returning to the apprentice standing below the dais. "Speak, Aerik Lechner." The Dark Lord settled into the throne once more.

Aerik Lechner​

 

[Aerik Lechner]

Wearing: This | Weapons: Lightsaber | Knife
TAG: Darth Prazutis​

Aerik did not acknowledge the technarch, though he was aware of him and of the way the chamber had stilled when he entered. His attention remained fixed on the throne, and he held there under the weight of it without shifting.

“I chose to come.”

He did not offer anything further. The choice would stand on its own.

“Brosi is secured. The objective was met.”

The report was given simply, because anything more would have been unnecessary. That was not why he stood here.

The silence that followed pressed in, familiar and exacting, and he did not move to break it too quickly. What he had come to say required more than precision. It required him to decide how much he was willing to place in front of his master.

“There was a moment where I lost control.”

He let that stand as it was, without redirecting it into something safer.

“It was not something I chose to do. The anger and the pain were there, but I did not reach for them or shape them. They were enough to let something else through. It was not the wolf. I know that part of myself. I have never lost control of it, and I did not lose control of it there. This was different. It did not answer when I reached for it, and it did not wait to be called. It came through the moment and took hold before I understood what it was.”

His awareness brushed the saber at his side, the same presence still there, unsettled, difficult to ignore.

“I held onto myself. I did not lose who I was, but I was not in control of it in the way I should have been. I have never lost control of a shift, and this was not that. I will not allow something within me to act without command again.”

His gaze remained fixed on his master, though there was a brief pause before he continued, and this time it came from something different than restraint.

“I do not remember it.”

The admission came quieter, but it did not retreat.

“What I know is what I was told. It pushed further than I intended, and it did not stop until others intervened. There was a hunger to it. Not instinct. Not the same drive I know. That is the only way it has been described to me.”

He let that stand without trying to refine it into something cleaner.

“What is it?”

 

[Darth Prazutis]

The silence that followed Aerik's question didn't feel empty. It felt measured. It pressed outward from the throne in slow, deliberate waves, settling across the shadowy chamber until even the dim pulse of the holographic fleets seemed distant and irrelevant. Rain whispered against the high windows. Thunder moved over Dromund Kaas like something ancient dragging its claws across the sky. The Dark Lord's molten gaze remained fixed upon His apprentice. "You ask what it is." The words emerged at last, low and severe. "A lesser master would give you a comforting lie. He would name it madness, instinct, possession, or the consequence of strain. He would tell you it was a momentary failure and instruct you to meditate until the memory became easier to bear." One massive hand shifted against the armrest of the throne, fingers settling into the carved obsidian grooves as if the stone itself had been shaped to receive His judgment.

"I will not insult you with comfort." His eyes narrowed slightly. "It was not the wolf you know." The chamber seemed to grow colder despite the crimson light flowing through the channels beneath the floor. "The wolf has rhythm. Instinct. Hunger, yes, but hunger of the flesh. It seeks motion, release, blood, territory, pack. It is not gentle, but it is honest. You have lived beside it long enough to understand its language." His voice lowered. "What emerged was older than discipline and less honest than instinct." Darth Kalystryx's ocular implants flickered faintly, thin rings of crimson light passing across the lenses as he studied Aerik with cold fascination. The High Technarch didn't interrupt. He didn't breathe in any natural rhythm. The respirator that replaced the lower half of his face gave only a soft mechanical rasp, the sound of machinery patiently awaiting permission to define the living thing before it. Prazutis gave that permission with a slight turn of His head.

"Lord Kalystryx." The Technarch inclined his head.

"My lord."

"Speak."

Kalystryx's voice came quiet and clinical. "The apprentice's condition presents as layered transformation rather than singular lupine emergence. The observable morphology is consistent with a shifter-derived predatory strain. Heightened aggression, sensory dominance, muscular amplification, accelerated response, and carnivorous appetite would all fall within expected parameters." His crimson gaze remained upon Aerik. "What he describes does not." A faint holographic band unfolded beside him without gesture, a thin crimson lattice of anatomical notation, energetic readings, and profane theory. It did not pretend certainty. It simply displayed what could be measured, inferred, and feared. "Memory discontinuity is the most significant detail. A typical transformation state should preserve behavioral continuity even under heightened aggression. The subject would become more predatory, perhaps more violent, but not fundamentally displaced from command. What he describes suggests temporary executive displacement." Kalystryx paused. "Not external possession. Not ordinary instinct. An inherited structure asserting itself through stress conditions." The chamber seemed to darken around the words. Prazutis didn't look away from Aerik. "There." The single word fell with quiet force. "That is the part that matters." He leaned forward slightly, and the movement caused the shadows around the throne to stir. "You did not lose yourself because the wolf overcame you. If that were all, this would be simple. Brutal, perhaps, but simple. A beast can be trained. An instinct can be disciplined. A hunger of the flesh can be fed, denied, or redirected." His molten gaze bore into Aerik. "This was not merely hunger of the flesh." The crimson channels cut into the floor pulsed slowly, casting the chamber in deeper shades of red. "You were never merely the son of Gerwald Lechner." There was no mockery in the name. No admiration either. It was spoken as one might name a weapon once carried by an enemy.

"His blood gave you the wolf. His strength. His appetite for bond and battle. His stubborn refusal to break where another creature would have bent." Prazutis' stare sharpened. "But that is not all you are." A deeper pressure entered the chamber then, old and cold, the kind that belonged not to war rooms or throne halls but to laboratories, sacrificial chambers, and places where flesh had once been persuaded to become something else. "I know what was done to Naedira Darcrath." His voice fell into something quieter. "I know what the Noćna Mora is." The words carried no uncertainty. No boast. Only ownership. "I know it because I made it." The chamber seemed to hold its breath.

"I remember the first hour it walked free. I remember the fear spreading through stone and steel. I remember skilled Sith drowning in their own minds while it fed on them. Not their flesh alone. Not their blood alone. Their fear. Their memories. Their essence. The pieces of themselves they believed no predator could reach." His molten eyes burned brighter. "It was made to obey." A pause. "It hungered anyway." Darth Kalystryx remained perfectly still below the dais. Prazutis continued, His voice becoming quieter with every word. "The Noćna Mora was never merely a beast. It was appetite given shape. Terror given muscle. A furnace of hunger wrapped in hide, flame, and malice. It did not devour because it needed to survive. It devoured because hunger was the law of its existence." The shadows along the walls shifted. "I brought it to heel. I banished what could not be made useful in the way I first intended. I cast failures into darkness and found another purpose for them." His gaze did not leave Aerik. "But failure does not mean ignorance." The words cut through the chamber. "I know its stain. I know the mark it leaves upon the mind. I know the way it links itself to a victim and peels them apart from within. I know the way it consumes memory until suffering becomes a prison. I know the way it makes fear into sustenance."

The Dark Lord's expression remained immovable. "Your mother was touched by that hunger." He let the sentence settle. "Not metaphorically. Not symbolically. The Devourer reached into her death. It fed upon her terror. It tasted her memories. It learned her name." The air seemed to tighten around Aerik. "Naedira." The name was spoken without reverence, but with the awful precision of a truth drawn from the depths. "Whatever returned from that darkness did not return untouched. Whatever lived after did not live as it had before. Your father may have anchored her. His wolf may have filled the absence. Love, desperation, defiance, call it what you wish." His voice hardened. "But alchemy does not care what name the heart gives to consequence." Prazutis rose from the throne.

The simple act changed the chamber. The throne ceased to be the center of gravity. He became it. Crimson robes fell in heavy layers around His immense frame, dark gold sigils catching the blood-red light as He descended the dais one step at a time. The holographic fleets dimmed in deference. Even the distant hum of the Citadel's systems seemed to lower beneath the weight of His presence. He stopped above Aerik. "Your parents may not have known what their offspring would become." The Dark Lord's expression did not change. "I did not require their certainty." Darth Kalystryx's ocular implants pulsed faintly. Prazutis continued. "I have watched you. I have seen the transformation. I have felt the pressure beneath it. Fire in the eyes. Smoke in the flesh. The shape of the predator, yes, but also the imprint of something made rather than born. Something that should have remained bound to death yet learned to move through living blood." His gaze bore down on Aerik. The words came colder now.

"A lupine strain already touched by ancient alchemical interference. A woman remade through abomination. A soul once caught in the jaws of something that should not have touched the living. A bond strong enough to anchor what death had tried to claim. A child born from conditions so specific that chance becomes irrelevant." The shadows lengthened. "That is not mystery, Aerik. It is arithmetic." Prazutis held the youth's gaze. "And I have always excelled at calculation." Kalystryx spoke again, carefully. "The term hunger may be imprecise, my lord, but applicable. Biological appetite would not explain the persistence described. The event appears to have sought continuation of state rather than simple feeding. It wanted to remain active."

"Because it had tasted freedom." Prazutis said. Kalystryx fell silent immediately. The Dark Lord stepped closer.

"What you felt was not foreign." The words were soft. "That is why it is dangerous." For a moment, He simply looked down at His apprentice, the full gravity of His presence pressing upon the space between them.

"A foreign spirit can be exorcised. A parasite can be cut away. A curse can be unraveled if one understands the hand that wove it." His voice lowered. "But inheritance is different. Blood does not ask permission to speak. It waits. It remembers. It survives in silence until pain, anger, or necessity opens the door." Prazutis' gaze remained fixed upon him. "And you were not ready for what answered." There was no condemnation in the statement. That made it worse. It was not insult. It was diagnosis. "You say you held onto yourself. Good." There was no warmth in the praise.

"That is the difference between an apprentice who comes before Me by choice and a failed beast dragged into My presence in chains." His molten eyes burned brighter.

"But do not confuse survival with mastery. You did not command it. You endured it. You remained present while another part of you acted. That is not control. That is resistance." The distinction fell like a blade between them. "The Sith do not resist themselves, Aerik. They conquer themselves."

Aerik Lechner​

 

[Aerik Lechner]

Wearing: This | Weapons: Lightsaber | Knife
TAG: Darth Prazutis​

Aerik did not speak immediately.

The storm continued beyond the walls of the Citadel, its distant thunder filtering through stone old enough to remember empires that no longer existed. Crimson light moved through the channels cut into the floor and cast shifting reflections across polished obsidian, but his attention never left his master.

Much of what he had heard would require time to fully consider. The revelations concerning his mother settled uneasily alongside memories which did not fit the image Prazutis had described. Naedira had always seemed unbreakable in Aerik's eyes. She had been fierce when she needed to be, patient when she chose to be, and unwavering in ways he had spent most of his life trying to emulate. The thought that something had reached into her death and returned with her was difficult to reconcile.

The revelation itself was not what held him.

What lingered was the certainty with which Prazutis had spoken.

The Dark Lord had not speculated. He had not offered theory. He had described the thing as a smith might describe a blade he had forged with his own hands. Every answer Aerik had sought had been met with certainty, and that certainty left very little room for argument.

Brosi remained the problem.

He could follow the battle only so far before the memory simply stopped. Everything beyond that point existed through the accounts of others, and no amount of explanation changed the fact that he had not lived those moments for himself. The gap frustrated him more now than it had before. Not because it frightened him, but because it denied him something he depended upon. Every lesson he had learned, every mistake he had corrected, and every skill he had developed had required understanding where he failed and why. Brosi offered none of that. The most important moments existed only through the words of others, and no amount of trust could change the fact that he had not seen them for himself.

Prazutis' final assessment lingered more stubbornly than the rest. Aerik could spend days turning over every detail he remembered from Brosi in search of some missed warning, but the conclusion remained the same each time he returned to it. Whatever had emerged had acted without his command. Whether it had been born from inheritance, alchemy, or circumstances beyond his choosing mattered less than the reality that it had happened at all.

When Aerik finally spoke, his voice remained calm.

“You said I wasn't ready.”

The words carried no resentment because he found little value in arguing with the truth. The answer he had received explained why Brosi happened. It explained what had surfaced and why it differed from the wolf he had known his entire life. None of it changed the fact that he had lost control.

“I can accept that. What I can't accept is leaving it there.”

Aerik shifted slightly, more from thought than discomfort, while the storm beyond the Citadel rolled through another distant peal of thunder. Pain was not rare in the life he had chosen. Neither was anger. Conflict had become so common that he could no longer imagine a future without it. If those things had been enough to open the door once, then sooner or later they would do so again. He had lived with the Noćna Mora his entire life. Knowing it existed had not prevented Brosi, and understanding why it emerged did little to ease the frustration that followed.

“You said I endured it. You said I resisted it. Then tell me how that changes.”

His gaze never left Prazutis.

“If pain and anger opened the door, what closes it? If it answered once without my command, what keeps it from doing so again?”

The questions came naturally from the problem rather than fear. Aerik was not interested in surviving the next encounter with that part of himself. Survival was what happened on Brosi, and Prazutis had already made it clear that survival was not the same thing as mastery.

“The next time it happens, I want to be the one in control. How do I do that?”