Unto Nothing

Posted on Mon Apr 27th, 2026 @ 4:23am by Verse & Kelderesh jai Nektus

2,951 words; about a 15 minute read

Chapter: Chapter IX: The First Verse
Location: Unknown, Cult of Axion Enclave
Timeline: Unclear - after Sleheyron

"Death..." the thick voice spat with contempt in Amare's face.

"Death is a choice for the weak of spirit. For those that lack the vision to persist."

The Nautolan's vision flickered in and out as a dusty robe swept this way and that before her. Occasionally, she caught sight of amber eyes peering at her from beneath a mask of bone, but these glimpses disappeared as quickly as they came.

"In this room, you may at times feel the urge to give into death," the voice of Kelderesh slithered into her mind, repeating his mantra to her and also, to an extent, himself, "You will feel pain of the flesh, you will be sapped of your spirit. These things are sent to test us - to see if we have the divine spirit of persistence that Axion seeks his disciples to possess."

Those eyes appeared once more before her - this time lingering long enough to glimpse more: below the mask, a red jaw, with jutting talons and teeth bared with fury and passion.

"I must be frank," he peered deeply into her, raising her chin up with a single clawed finger, drawing a hint of blood where he pricked her, "You have the stink of death upon you - I don't think you are worthy of the eternity that Axion offers."

His finger flicked aside and he instead grasped her face fully in his palm, twisting it before him to get a fuller look.

"And yet, there is something deeper within you that won't let you die," he bared his teeth as he stared, breath was stale, "I see it in your eyes: the urge to give in. So, what is it about you that draws you back from that precipice?"

He withdrew suddenly and her head drooped down again where she hung, suspended in the small chamber.

Kelderesh paced away and placed his hands behind his back, speaking to the dark void before him.

"I would see it again," he uttered, before spinning and unleashing a fury of lightning into her.

It was raw, elemental. It burned like a piercing heat that reached her very core with blinding speed and sent her into uncontrollable spasms.

Kelderesh roared as he brought forth another hand of lightning towards her.

"Show me!" the Kaleesh sorcerer demanded, "Or I will rend you unto nothing!"

The passage of time had folded and blended and things seemed less and less real to she whom he demanded answers from. His Nautolan subject was beyond tears, beyond cries, and her cares had been discarded. The Force lightning had come so easily to the Kaleesh sorcerer, and with each strike, Amare felt a flaccid stirring within, bracing her just enough, but not acting overtly to aid her, as if it knew she had the strength to bear the power of the dark side even further. Whatever the Azoth in her had been, or what its true purpose was, she wasn't concerned--she was just waiting to die.

The sizzling of charged bio-electric streams of electrons reigned sovereign upon her vulnerable flesh and the tatters of the rags she was given to wear was becoming a profound thing to her. Each time Kelderesh untethered his command of the Force upon her body, the experience became less about the fear and maddening agony, and more a curious thing in a queerly morbid way.

Words attempted to leak from Amare's lips, but instead came coughing fits as the electroshock "therapy" had the effect of dramatically dehydrating her.

"K-Kor...--" she coughed some more, and barely managed to let out, "Korri..ban.."

Kelderesh slowed, drawing back his rage to just a crackle in his hands so he could hear her above the sound of the crackling air. He Pulled in slightly, his breath heavy.

"Last saw you...*cough*...on Korriban," Amare replied, somehow finding a way to adapt to speak through the hoarseness of her dry throat. "Your storm was...beautiful. I was jealous...that is how I live...I envy power...fall in love with it...now you know..."

The arcing bolts in his hands diminished almost entirely now and he stood up taller, prouder.

"Life," he stated simply, the word charging the room with energy like the power he had just unleashed. Except it did not weaken Amare. It offered a faint, perhaps unintentional comfort.

"Life is the beauty you saw. Only from the strength of the living can we command order from chaos, create manifestations that stir our admiration, set ourselves apart from the inanimate and purposeless. Without life, we are just random etches in sand to be washed away by the next tide."

He brought his finger to a point in the air, "Perhaps you understand more than you let on," his raspy voice was tinged with interest, "But that won't help you. Not when your life stands between me and the power to resist death itself."

His fingers twitched again, the sparks jittering forth in anticipation.

"After all, a finite life can yield only finite beauty but infinite life begets infinite beauty."

He raised his hands, but not to Amare immediately, instead holding them at his sides and casting a wave of brilliant electrical light in both directions, this time it was a pale red coloured energy that seemed heavier than the white hot beams before. It seemed to flow out of the Kaleesh's claws like a waterfall of might.

He loomed closer, almost appearing to hover before him like a malevolent djinn.

"So," his voice was louder, weightier, pressing on her mind, "Will you show me willingly. Or must I push you further? To the point of death?"

Soft chuckles was the answer Kelderesh received, and it rose into weak hysterical laughter that melted into cries, sobs and more laughing as she fell into delirium.

"I-I've been dead before...hahaha..." Amare began to ramble as her sanity slipped from her mental grasp. "Ohhh, the potency of the Force...only two...master...apprentice! Hahahehehe...stupid, stupid!...The dark side...like 'poison' he said. The fewer the vessels...the stronger the powers...LIES! The Force is FIRE! The Force is--"

"Yes!" Kelderesh swept closer with wide eyes open, taking in every fragment of what was before him like an all-consuming void, "Who surfaces inside this tiny girl? Arise from her flesh and speak!"

He pressed his hands forward now, once again sending his torrent of lightning at her. This time, more steady and controlled, ready to push harder or wrench back depending on the effect it had on his subject.

As the lightning struck and charred Amare's flesh, she screamed out, "If--y-you--h-h-hate meeee---Nngghhhaaaahhh!!!" The lightning surged ended as Amare's head tilted back and she stared up to the stone ceiling, "M-m-master...t-then h-hate me...b-but do it...honestly......just.....be...ho.n.e..s...t......"

Her head tipped forward and down, her hearts seized, her limbs went entirely limp, and she stopped breathing.

The Kaleesh cut off abruptly and the room went dim.

He unwrapped the fabric around his hands, revealing palms scarred and thickened from years of casting his lightning. He brought his bare flesh up to the Nautolan and felt her neck for a pulse.

"Curses!" he declared with a hiss, withdrawing his hand and shunting her in one motion of frustration, "You won't slip away from me like this. Not when we were so close."

He stood back and breathed deeply, attempting to channel a power that did not come naturally to him, but he had worked hard to practice from as many sources as he could find. For, if his own body should fail before he learned to conquer death, the power of restoration might be the only thing he could tap into to extend himself.

He pressed his palms together, feeling his own mottled flesh, while reaching for something more tender: willing the Force to grant him a moment of restoration. A spark, not of death, but of life.

The sudden quiet of the room seemed to aid in his pursuit and he felt the Force answer him. The roughness of his palms suddenly felt softer, as though the years of scarring briefly fell away and, from his hands, a gentle pulse of healing welled forth.

He opened his eyes and went to approach Amare with outstretched palms but found, with a start of surprise, that something was happening to the Nautolan's body. She was violently jerking: a sharp, unnatural convulsion snapped through her limbs. Kelderesh froze mid‑step, the healing energy still faintly pulsing in his palms as he watched her fingers curl inward, then splay, then curl again in a rhythm that did not belong to the dying.

"Impossible…" he breathed.

Another jolt tore through her frame, this one arching her back so sharply the chains rattled overhead. Her head snapped to the side, tendrils twitching in a grotesque imitation of life. Her scorched, cracked and blackened skin began to shift.

Multitudes of small fluid-filled blebs appeared and moved unnaturally along her skin, each with an eerie dull aquamarine glow to them. They grew, inflated, and burst at random, releasing glowing blue-green viscous fluid that thickened as it spread. The fluid then came out of her eyelids and nose. Fluids started to sludge down her arms and legs and immediately acted as a chemical solvent disintegrating her restraints. The sludge began to gradually lift her from below her feet and position her legs to curl up close to her chest, and then her arms were forced to cross protectively over her chest as her prison rags were dissolved and her head was brought low to her knees. In moments, she was floating in a semi-transparent smooth chrysalis, her form in fetal position appearing somewhat fuzzy and blurred by the texture of the outer membrane. Long tendrils extruded from the chrysalis extended out in to grasp and hold onto various parts of the room, mostly the ceiling and floor.

"Finally," Kelderesh hissed, clenching his fists and dissipating the wasted healing energy like suffocating a candle flame, "We see beyond the blue child to what is buried beneath."

He brought forward a claw, motioning to pierce the veil before him but stopped short of touching it, recalling how the chains had corroded away in mere seconds.

Instead, he knelt down before the bioluminescent sack and lowered his head in meditation. Trying to commune with whatever entity, sentient or otherwise, was responsible for Amare's miraculous remaking from the brink of death.


~~Such exquisite tapestries we weave...~~

The deep posh baritone voice wasn't heard by Kelderesh so much as it came as a forced thought in his head. It was potent enough to translate through the midichlorians as perceived sound in his ears, even though there were, in truth, no soundwaves.

~~...I do so wonder if she'll transmogrify this time.~~

"Spirit in this child..." Kelderesh answered faintly, eyes still closed and mind reaching out from his corporeal form as much as he could muster, "Tell me: who or what are you that can reverse death and remake the flesh?"

~~A spirit speaks not to you, Kelderesh jai Nektus. It is living essence. Conscience. An imprint of a Sith Lord murdered long ago. The female here never truly died, for you did not seek her demise, merely the truth of something you now see, but do not understand. This chrysalis does not hold the power to restore life from death. It can heal from wounds and diseases that are not instantly fatal, and it is more potent than the inferior bacta treatments of your time. What you see is what I devised. She has become a vessel carrying a piece of the answer to the great mystery that exists all around us. However, it is not to be envied or desired. It is a burden that can save you, elevate you, but it can also be your undoing.~~

Kelderesh opened his eyes a fraction, the eerie light once again bleeding in. He observed the Nautolan's huddled form once more - the dark charred flesh was being melted away, like dark layers of bark peeling from an old tree. In its place, new, soft, unscathed flesh settled upon her.

"Sith science?" Kelderesh queried, a hint of dismay palpable as he confirmed it but he still delved further at the incredible spectre speaking from aeons past, "A genetic alteration that causes her own body to generate this... fluid... to break down and reform anew. Like the suun moth from my homeworld - digesting and reforming itself in darkness for days before it emerges again with its new bone‑patterned wings."

He forced his eyes closed again, setting his head askew with frustration, "Still, not enough to defeat death..." he softened a fraction, "But still a powerful tool to resist it."

He settled back into his meditative stance, "Lord of the ancient Sith. Name yourself so that I might seek out what remains of your teachings. Your imprint on this child will fade and I require more than a memory. I seek to become immortal."

~~What you seek is death, mageling! You are powerful indeed, but you are uninitiated in the Sith ways. Ours is not a tradition of storms and blood sacrifice, it is power to bend the will of the Force, to claim true absolute sovereignty over all creatures, and to annihilate all opposition, even the stars themselves! Abilities do not make up for lack of knowledge, mindset, and training. If you cannot break the chains of that of whom you serve, then you will fail. That is what this girl has learned. Though her power has yet to truly grow, she carries some of that ancient knowledge in her head, embraces it with all her soul, finds more meaning in it than her own identity. It is not easily taken by your middling cantrips and ritual incisions, for the Sith Lords do not share to the unworthy, and they guard their secrets well. If you wish to learn the true nature of the dark side, you must be willing to risk death. By touching the chrysalis, you may learn the beginning of the Sith ways, but you risk the wrath of your master who will most assuredly destroy you.~~

Kelderesh gritted his teeth, sharp incisors baring below his bone mask, "I do NOT seek death!" he hissed, the words scraping out of him like metal on stone, "Do not presume to lecture me, spectre. You are not the first spirit I have faced."

He rose slowly, the memory burning behind his eyes.

"My people cast me into the Mulium Kharif to meet death face‑to‑face. In its depths, I found the shade of a fallen Force‑warrior. I worshipped him as a god of endings... until he corrected me. He taught me that surrendering the flesh is no triumph. Even spirits decay. Even they are swallowed back into the storm of the Force."

His gaze lifted to the chrysalis, its glow reflected in the amber of his eyes. The Nautolan’s skin had nearly reformed: smooth, unblemished, serene. A mockery of the ruin she had been moments before.

"So you will serve me as well," he demanded, voice thick with conviction, "The living guide the dead, not the other way around. I seek eternal flesh: the promise Axion offers. I serve him because he understands what your ancient order never did."

He leaned closer, claws flexing at his sides.

"But this girl?" His voice curled with disdain, "She served a pretender: a master who embraced death like all the rest. And you saw her fit to carry your imprint; your relic clinging to a vessel that will accept death as her master did?"

Kelderesh began to pace, eyes fixated on the chrysalis with a burning passion that demanded he know more but he also knew the tricks of the dead. They envied the living and this ancient unnamed Sith might simply wish to see him perish and fail in his mission.

"You want me to touch this thing?" he growled, the claws of his bare feet scraping the stone as he twisted this way, then that, "You think me a fool? Why would I trust a spectre who won't even name themselves?"

The reply he received was not another statement from the ancient Sith's voice, but rather the giggles of what sounded like a little girl from behind.

"You're funny!" she said sweetly. When Kelderesh whirled around, he saw a young blue Nautolan girl in a long yellow sleeveless sundress perhaps no older than five or six in equivalent human years, and clutching a stuffed furry white doll that looked like a cute cartoonish version of Mange complete with glowing red eyes and a patch of red blood staining the fur under his mouth. Her feet were dangling over the edge of a nearby table she sat on, legs casually swinging back and forth as she regarded the big bad Kaleesh. On one of the legs, a bloody bandage was wrapped around it, and her head had a patch in the same spot where Nala had cut into Amare's head.

The girl waved innocently at him after he locked eyes with her, and happily greeted, "Hi! I'm Zaracoda! Is Uncle Archonus being mean to you? He's a big mean huff n' puff, but I think he likes you. Do you want to be my friend?"

TBC

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