Sea of Doubts

Posted on Sun Dec 21st, 2025 @ 1:06pm by Bomoor Thort & Thane

2,348 words; about a 12 minute read

Chapter: Chapter VIII: Broken Chains
Location: Vault Room, The Red Raptor
Timeline: One week after the fall of Cloud City

The vault was dimly lit, the lights from the various cabinets providing a golden rim around the room while, on the central table, the holocron of Darth Krayt emitted a rhythmic crimson pulse, not unlike the Kaiburr shard set into the Baron's armoured shell on Bespin.

Bomoor sat heavily before it, eyes stern and focussed, with an ebony arm cradling his long neck, feeling at faint bronze hairs that had started to pepper his chin. He had spoken with Krayt multiple times over the last few months: discussing Axion’s hollow pursuit of power, of the corruption that plagued the galaxy, of his despair when he could not save his mother despite the darkness he had begun to embrace and how Thane had brought him back on Irrikut by showing him the strength he thought he lacked. Krayt had acted as an anchor during that time: questioning, disagreeing, yet ultimately reaffirming the path he walked. But tonight, even that anchor felt less secure. Tonight his words carried the weight of failure.

Despite his doubts, Bomoor reached out and summoned the gatekeeper once more.

The ever-striking visage of the two thousand-year-old Sith Lord flickered into digitised life before him, clad in his Vonduun crab armour. He tilted his head ever so slightly; mismatched eyes simply beckoning the former Jedi consular to speak his piece and dispense with unnecessary formalities.

“You are aware that we were heading to Bespin, believing there to be an enclave of Axion's there” Bomoor began, voice low and rough. “When we arrived, we found that they had been experimenting with creating synthetic Kaiburr crystals, based on ancient designs perhaps dating back earlier than the Infinite Empire. But the crystals they forged were rough and imperfect: the cultists that used them fused themselves to the shards, becoming strong, but erratic and corrupted by base instincts. Once we knew their weakness, they were no match for us."

He inhaled deeply, as he approached the next part of the tale, “But when we found their leader, the so-called Baron, we realised he held a true Kaiburr shard. I was set on facing him: destroying Axion's operation and claiming the crystal for our cause but found that all my powers meant nothing against the power of that crystal."

His eyes darted over to the shelf containing the shard he had claimed on Jericho.

"I had forgotten what it was like," he spoke to its rosy ethereal gleam, "Or perhaps I was blinded to it from having wielded it myself. I thought the darkness would give me strength. I thought it would let me protect people. But against the Baron, against the shard, I was nothing. Mentis nearly died because of me and now the crystal is lost."

He looked back at Krayt, now ready to seek his answers: "You have told me before that power must serve a greater purpose. The purpose I sought was to make a new galaxy where those I love will be protected and allowed to flourish without false gods or kings.

But what good is pursuing that power when I lose those people along the way? What if all this anger, all this pain, is just a hollow promise? Tell me, Krayt… is the Dark Side enough? Or have I been deceiving myself all this time?"

The gatekeeper did not answer at once.

He watched Bomoor in the silence that only the dead could afford - not the silence of contemplation, but of appraisal. The crimson wash of the holocron crawled across the Vonduun plates like old blood sliding along seams.

At last, he exhaled - a faint sound, more a habit than a need, in spite of the whole thing being performative of a non-existent body.

“Enough?” he repeated, and one mismatched eye narrowed a fraction. “You speak as though the dark side is a ration - a draught to be sipped until the heart steadies. As though it is meant to sustain you.”

His gaze drifted, briefly, to the vault around them: the inert trophies behind glass; the tomes; the relics; the quiet idols of conquered epochs. The Jedi lightsaber on its mount. The old helmet from his own time in the Old Jedi Order. Finally, the furnace, squat and obscene in its utilitarian simplicity.

“Your failure on Bespin was not a moral revelation,” he continued, voice low and even. “It was not the Force reprimanding you for your anger. It was not your mother’s spirit turning her face away." A surgical pause. "It was arithmetic.” He leaned forward slightly, the jointed plates of his armour shifting with a sound like bone against stone - another obscure generation of the holocron. "A shard of Kaiburr is not a weapon, nor a mere crystal. It is a wound in the rules, an anomaly, which somewhat proves these 'rules'. You met a man who had wrapped himself around that wound and called it mastery. You were not defeated by conviction, Bomoor Thort. You were defeated by an artefact you did not truly understand.”

Krayt’s eyes flicked toward the shelf where Bomoor’s own Jericho shard slept, rosy and patient. “And you are doing what the Jedi always do when confronted with the limits of their competence,” he said. “You are moralising your ignorance.” The gatekeeper let the words hang a moment, cold enough to sting. "You ask me if the dark side is enough. You ask me if you have deceived yourself.”

His mouth twitched, but the expression was unreadable.

“You have done neither. Not yet.”

Bomoor’s reflection - large, hunched, weary - trembled faintly in the polished angles of the holocron’s casing as the pulse continued. Krayt’s voice did not soften.

“Listen to me carefully, Ithorian.” He did not call him Jedi. “You are grieving. You have wrapped your grief in philosophy so it will stop looking like what it is - fear. Fear of loss. Fear of meaninglessness. Fear that the moment you reached for strength, the universe answered by taking something from you.”

Krayt raised one hand, palm open, as if stopping any response that may yet come. “That is not deception. That is the beginning of honesty. So, the question is not whether the dark side is enough... The question is whether you are.”

Bomoor drew in a sharp breath, his mouths tightening as he looked away from the holocron’s crimson pulse. The words weighed on him as he lowered his gaze, letting the silence settle before he forced himself to meet Krayt’s mismatched eyes again.

“I know I am grieving,” he said at last, voice low and roughened by the admission, “And perhaps you are right: perhaps there is no thread binding my path to what happened to my mother. But that absence… that lack of meaning… it gnaws at me more than any punishment could.”

His gaze drifted briefly to the shelves, to the relics and trophies that seemed to watch him in judgment. The Jericho shard glimmered faintly, as though listening.

“Or perhaps it is Quellus,” he continued, bitterness creeping in, “His teachings still whisper in the back of my mind. Perhaps a part of me still believes that straying from their path demands retribution. That suffering is the price of disobedience. I spent most of my life under the Reborn Jedi's watch and those roots grow deep.”

He shifted, the weight of his frame causing the metal stool beneath him to creak. The holocron’s glow washed over him, painting his features in shifting red.

“But punishment or not… failure or not…” Bomoor said, lifting his head with a weary resolve, “It is clear our enemies wield power and influence beyond anything we have faced before. Axion and the shards, GalactaWerks and their vast influence; no matter how strong I become as an individual, I cannot protect everyone. My father and the people of Öetrago, the people on this ship... They all could suffer for me.”

His echoed voice, with its deeper, resonant undertone, lingered a fraction longer on the next words:

“So tell me, Krayt… how do I ensure I do not falter again? How do I make certain that next time… I am enough?”

The gatekeeper regarded him in silence for a few seconds longer than necessary. When he spoke again, the edge in his voice was unmistakable.

“It seems to me that you are still asking someone else to make the choice for you,” Krayt said flatly. “You dress it in doubt, in humility, in grief - but it is the same question asked twice.” One mismatched eye narrowed. “'How do I make certain I am enough?'"

A faint, humourless sound escaped him.

“I asked that question once,” he continued, finally. “Before the Empire. Before the armour... Before the Vong.” His gaze drifted, momentarily distant. “I was a Jedi then. Raised by the Old Order. Tempered by Tatooine - by scarcity, by exposure, by a world that does not care whether you believe yourself righteous.” His eyes returned to Bomoor. “The Jedi taught me restraint. The desert taught me consequence. Neither taught me how to endure a galaxy that devours the well-intentioned.”

Krayt stepped closer, the crimson light cutting sharper lines across his armour, as he continued. “You failed on Bespin because you are still thinking as an individual - as a man who must personally account for every outcome.” A pause. “That is not morality. It is inefficiency.” He gestured, subtly, as if indicating something larger than the vault. “You cannot protect everyone. You never will. Neither could I. That truth does not condemn you - it defines the sheer scale of the task.”

His tone now cooled. “The One Sith was not born from indulgence in the dark side. It was born from recognising that conviction without structure collapses. That power without cohesion is squandered. That isolated strength is irrelevant against organised will.” Krayt’s gaze hardened. “If you wish not to falter again, then stop asking whether the dark side is enough. Stop asking whether you are... Build something that does not fail when you do.”

The Sith facsimile straightened. “That is how I moved beyond the Jedi. That is how I survived Tatooine. And that - not immortality, not domination - was the part of the One Sith worth preserving... Where my progenitor failed."

A few silent moments passed, but the fallen Human was not yet concluded. "Thort, you need not speak as though this is a future problem,” he said, “as though the tools required to do this must still be found, excavated, earned." His eyes bore into Bomoor, sharp and unsympathetic. “You are already surrounded by them. On this ship, you already have individuals bound by necessity and loyalty, of shared identity and risk."

The gatekeeper finally fell silent, the crimson light pulsing gently.

Bomoor nodded slowly, eyes flitting as as though something inside him had finally clicked into place.

“You are right. I have been trying to outrun the Jedi and yet I have refused to recognise the value of the Thane's new Sith. I have been drifting between paths, clinging to the illusion that I could forge a new one by myself.”

He straightened, both the lights from the holocron and the vault now fully capturing his weary features.

“But I cannot keep others at arm’s length and expect to build anything that lasts. Thane has reached out to me more times than I deserve, Mentis looks to me for guidance I have been too distracted to give and my father…” he swallowed, “My father deserves more than silence.”

He breathed slowly.

“If I am to be enough, then I must allow myself to belong again.”

The gatekeeper regarded him for a moment longer, unmoving.
Then, slowly, he inclined his head.

“Belonging is not absolution,” Krayt said. “Nor is it surrender. It is alignment.” His mismatched eyes, so perfectly replicated, narrowed with renewed precision. “You have not chosen the Sith,” he continued. “You have chosen direction. The distinction may or may not matter, to you or to others.”

The gatekeeper removed his helmet, revealing the tattooed and scarred, aged face beneath. “The Jedi would have demanded you deny what you are. The Sith of old would have demanded you name it.” His voice flattened. “Both are shortcuts.” He looked past Bomoor now, as though seeing the ship beyond the vault to its crew and its tensions - to its fragile cohesion.

“You have something rarer,” Krayt continued. “It is not purity, and perhaps not certainty. But, a cohort that has survived exposure - to fear, to loss, to power - without yet turning inward. Do not waste it by pretending you stand apart - seek to harmonise and direct, to keep its will whole.” The gatekeeper straightened, the false Vonduun armour shifting around the thick-set form of the gatekeeper. “Stand with them,” he said, “and stop asking whether that makes you enough.”

The holocron’s glow dimmed, the projection collapsing inward as the vault returned to silence, leaving Bomoor alone - but certainly not isolated.

Not knowing quite how to process this revelation, Bomoor allowed himself the faintest of chuckles and placed his large hand atop the holocron, absorbing the warm sensation of the crystal memory core within that held the facsimile of the ancient Sith Lord.

"I'm not alone, am I?" he spoke reassuringly to himself, not knowing whether the holocron still had any awareness when inactive but not minding either way, "I needn't carry the weight of the galaxy by myself, neither should I assume others safety is solely my responsibility. I have been setting myself up for failure all this time."

He gripped harder and plucked up the artefact, gently carrying it back to its place in the vault and securing it behind the transparisteel seal. Turning towards the exit he shook his head, allowing thoughts of failure to be cast away.

"I will build a better galaxy, mother..." his lips curved into gentle smiles as he addressed his departed parent, "But, this time, we will do it together."

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