Hollow Pursuits
Posted on Fri May 29th, 2026 @ 6:15pm by Mange & Hollow & Verse
4,981 words; about a 25 minute read
Chapter:
Chapter IX: The First Verse
Location: Cult of Axion Enclave
Timeline: Immediately after "The Acolyte"
OLD
"I owe nothing to the failings of our brothers and sisters," Hollow said quietly. "Too many became enamoured with themselves. Trey, and Voq... Mentis..." The faintest trace of confusion touched her features at that last thought, as though the very notion remained incomprehensible to her. "Each was imperfect in their devotion and are warnings to us all."
Her gaze lifted slightly then, attentive and luminous in the dim chamber. "If the teachings of these Sith strengthen the hand that serves the Dark Master, then they cannot be heresy," she said simply. "Power offered upward remains holy... Sister."
A small pause followed, but then, with sudden, almost childlike conviction breaking briefly through the serenity she had so carefully maintained, Hollow added: "We are Axion."
"We are indeed," Verse affirmed. She gestured for Hollow to lead the way out of the room, and they left to begin their lightsaber training.
From deep within the recesses of her mind, hidden within the subconscious, the Dark Lady of the Sith added to herself...
...and more, dear Hollow. We...'I' am much, much more. Together, we will surpass the false god. I will find a way to crush him, with or without your help. It's only a matter of time...
NEW
The deeper training halls of the enclave were unlike the sanctified chambers above. There were no incense braziers here, nor soft geometric spirals of smoke and prayer. The architecture remained carved from the same dark stone, but stripped down purely to purpose. Weapon racks lined portions of the walls beside crude metal medical tables stained dark with old blood of differing colours, whilst the floor beneath their feet bore the scars of countless impacts, blade strikes and cauterised burns layered over one another through unknown years of use. The air smelled of sweat, scorched metal and antiquated antiseptic.
Nothing still gave away the planet they were even on.
Verse and Hollow had scarcely crossed the threshold before a scream tore violently through the chamber, which ended almost as quickly as it began.
At the centre of the circular hall, a young Human cultist collapsed to his knees clutching the ruined stump of his left arm, blood pouring in heavy streams between trembling fingers before the heat of the wound began to blacken and seal it. The severed limb still twitched several metres away across the obsidian floor beside a discarded blade.
Mange stood over him. The enormous albino Wookiee did not appear particularly agitated by what he had done. One of his heavy-handled lightsabers remained lowered at his side. His pinkish-red eyes lingered upon the crippled neophyte not with cruelty, but with the same dull consideration a butcher might afford meat.
He rumbled a low critique at the fallen cultist with little embellishment in his native tongue.
The kneeling cultist made a horrible choking sound somewhere between agony and desperate gratitude, lowering his head repeatedly against the stone despite the violence wracking his body.
Only then did Mange's gaze shift, as his eyes settled first upon Verse, then Hollow beside her. For a brief moment, the chamber fell still around the weight of his attention.
The wounded cultist at his feet was all but ignored as Mange stepped away from the pooling blood and advanced toward the pair with heavy, deliberate strides. He extinguished his lightsaber and let it join its companion, both hanging loosely at one side, claws still slick with fresh crimson, whilst the sheer scale of him seemed to swallow more of the chamber with every step forward. Lesser acolytes nearby instinctively lowered their gazes or shifted back from his path without command.
Mange finally stopped directly before Verse. Beside her, Hollow lowered her head immediately in silent reverence toward the towering Wookiee.
"Lord Mange," she acknowledged softly, her voice measured and melodic within the oppressive stillness of the chamber.
Towering over the Nautolan by well over a metre, Mange did not respond to Hollow as looked down at Verse in complete silence, broad shoulders rising and falling slowly with each breath.
The tension was held between Mange and Verse for a dangerous moment, the latter faced her physical superior without visible fear or reservation. She knew all-too-well Mange was volatile and bloodthirsty, and that approaching him for training was an extreme risk for both her and Hollow, but it was still more preferrable than to approach Nala or Glynt. She needed to learn the Wookie's brutal mindset and vicious techniques to rival and surpass anyone, including the Jedi. Nala had already marked Verse as an imposter, and Glynt's constant unexplained use of "little flame" was insufferable and was already defeated once by Thane and Bomoor who themselves are likely dead. So neither of Axion's other favored females would suffice.
Verse's eyes narrowed at Mange, feeling a slight ache on her mostly healed leg where the Wookie previously tore into, despising her limited training prospects and said, "You consumed my body and blood, and now I live in you forever. So have I come for your knowledge to prepare for the great winnowing to come. Our divine Master expects me to prepare Hollow harder than she has ever been pushed. I, too, must be made ready to fight. You have slain Jedi before and they have never defeated you. We need to be as strong as you." She said those words having no idea that the combine power of Jedi Master Rynseh Lahan and Bomoor did indeed stop Mange on Korriban.
The towering Wookiee remained motionless for several seconds after Verse finished speaking. His red eyes lingered upon her first, unblinking and heavy beneath the dark recesses of his brow. There was something deeply animal in the scrutiny - something primal. His nostrils flared, scenting her.
In turn, the smell that rolled from his matted fur was as thick and unpleasant as it had been during Verse's incarceration, damp musk mixed with old blood and the faint tang of fresh slaughter. Beneath it lingered something fouler still, the stale rot of meat caught between enormous teeth - perhaps even the flesh he had claimed from Verse lingering still. His breath washed over both the Nautolan and Muun alike as he leaned forward ever so slightly, studying Verse.
Then, slowly, Mange turned his head toward Hollow.
The Muun remained perfectly still beneath the regard, hands folded neatly behind her back, posture straight and reverent despite the sheer physical enormity looming over her. The Wookiee's gaze crawled across her with the same brutal simplicity he afforded weapons and prey alike, lingering briefly upon the curved hilt at her side before rising once more to her face.
A low grunt of acknowledgement finally escaped him.
Without another word or noise, Mange turned away from them both and strode back toward the centre of the chamber. By now, the mutilated acolyte had already been dragged aside by two others, leaving behind only thick smears of blood across the blackened floor. Somewhere above, thin streams of incense drifted downward from suspended iron braziers, filling the hall with a peculiar sweet musk that clung unpleasantly to the senses. The air itself seemed heavier beneath it, dulling perception slightly, softening the edges of thought in ways Hollow recognised instinctively from the deeper rites of the enclave.
Mange reached the centre of the training floor and stopped and both of his lightsabers ignited at once. Twin crimson blades exploded outward with a violent hiss, their red light washing across the chamber walls and throwing long warped shadows behind the gathered cultists. The oversized weapons looked monstrous in the Wookiee's hands, less like elegant instruments and more like brutal executioner's tools.
"As animals..." Mange rumbled in his native tongue, voice reverberating through the stonework itself. One massive arm lifted outward slightly, claws flexing around the hilt. "...use everything."
The chamber answered immediately as weapons tore free from the walls without warning. Training blades, rusted knives, metal rods and discarded tools all ripped violently from their mounts in a shrieking storm of steel before hurtling across the room toward Verse and Hollow from multiple angles at once.
In the mere blink of an eye's time, Verse had foreseen no amount of acrobatics or slashing could have saved her from either being impaled and cleaved to pieces. There was virtually no option left to Verse except to use the Force. She acted on pure instinct, leaned forward, thrust both hands, open-palms, directly ahead and unleashed a heavy burst of telekinetic energy. Many were blasted back, deflected aside, and even fractured in metallic shrapnel, a few hurled back at Mange, but many more were missed.
One particular spear went straight for one of Verse's eyes...and miraculously stopped mere inches from impact. Many more had nearly struck or slashed her. She felt power, true concentrated power by her side. She turned slowly towards Hollow and saw real command of the Force in play, the likes of which rivaled even that from which she had seen before as Amare.
Only once the barrage had passed did Hollow's attention shift fully toward Verse. The faintest smile touched her pale lips as she observed the spear halted near the Nautolan's eye, not amused, nor mocking, but quietly approving of them both, almost reverent in its sincerity.
Then, Mange roared, and the sound exploded outward with such force that the chamber itself seemed to shudder beneath it, enhanced through his own feral connection to the Force. The Wookiee's voice split into layered echoes under the enhancement of his power, causing loose weapons to rattle violently across the floor whilst hanging braziers swung overhead. Several lesser cultists nearby instinctively recoiled or lowered themselves toward the ground beneath the sheer pressure of it.
Hollow did not retreat. Instead, she instinctively moved to Verse's flank, placing herself several paces aside from her mistress in disciplined readiness, curved hilt now resting within her grasp.
With the weapons now fallen harmlessly to the floor and the pair recovered, Verse ignited her lightsaber in one hand and raised the other surging with bolts of cyan-hued electrons.
"As acolytes to a god... she responded with the open palm of her energized hand facing up, "...use His wrath!" She turned the open palm forward and angled down towards Mange's feet in an attempt to unbalance him as she approached on the offensive.
The mutilated cultist screamed as he was wrenched bodily upward into Verse's assault. Her Force lightning tore violently across ruined flesh and blackened bone alike as Mange used the broken neophyte as a living shield without hesitation, the smell of burning meat flooding the chamber almost instantly. The Human convulsed horribly beneath the electrical surge before his body was discarded aside with casual indifference, crashing limply across the obsidian floor.
Hollow was already moving. Her rusted-red blade hissed as she advanced, gliding low across the stone with controlled speed rather than reckless aggression. The attack that followed was clean and direct, a sharply angled Shii-Cho strike aimed toward Mange's exposed flank with textbook precision born from years of repetitive drilling within the enclaves, but Mange caught it effortlessly.
One crimson blade intercepted Hollow's weapon in a violent spray of sparks whilst the Madclaw's cybernetic left arm remained extended outward, metal talon-claws still flexed from manipulating the corpse between himself and Verse. The sheer force behind the block shuddered violently through Hollow's slender frame as the thin apprentice was thrown backwards from the block alone.
Not one to let a good attack of opportunity go to waste, Verse, outwardly unfazed by the cultist she unintentionally burned, attempted to give Mange a taste of his own dirty medicine. While she didn't have the ability to unleash as many at the same time as her bestial foe, she was able to control two of the weapons at a once. She grabbed a spear and a vibrosword with the Force and hurled them at Mange's flank, going for one of his shoulders, careful to choose an angle that would not put Hollow in the crossfire. Verse immediately prepared another two stray spears and threw those at one of his calves. She did not expect hits, only to unbalance him and buy Hollow time to recover.
Hollow capitalised immediately on the chaos. Her rusted-red blade came down from above in a sharp overhead strike aimed directly toward the Wookiee's exposed shoulder and neck, but Mange reacted with monstrous instinct rather than refinement. One massive hand shot upward and seized Hollow cleanly by the throat before the blow could properly land, the impact glancing violently aside across his upper arm in a burst of sparks and scorched fur instead. The Muun was bodily lifted from the floor in the same motion, her feet kicking free of the stone as the Wookiee's claws tightened around her slender neck.
At the same time, despite Verse's expectations, the first spear struck - it punched hard into Mange's upper shoulder from the side with a wet crunch, driving deep enough to stagger even the enormous Wookiee half a step sideways. A violent snarl tore from his throat as the second weapon screamed past him. One of the pair of spears aimed lower struck true enough to force his footing to shift awkwardly across the obsidian floor, one slipping past his calf whilst the other buried itself shallowly into the thick musculature above the ankle.
For the first time since the exchange had begun, Mange's balance broke - and the Wookiee roared in genuine fury and released Hollow violently away from him, the Muun barely managing to prevent herself from crashing hard across the stone floor as Mange finally turned fully toward Verse. His jaws opened wide and the sound that erupted from him was no ordinary howl, but a Force Bellow swollen with primal rage. The chamber itself seemed to buckle beneath it as braziers swung wildly overhead and loose debris skittered violently across the floor toward Verse beneath the crushing wave of sound and pressure.
Everyone within earshot felt the deafening sonic blast, but none more so than Verse. The magnified intensity of Mange's horrific and painful loud roar doubled with the ferocity of a highly concentration thrust of telekinetic energy. Verse lost grip of her lightsaber as it flew back towards the wall behind her. She desperately shielded her auditory canals with her hands, but there were already tears in the myringas of her hearing along with an overwhelming ringing and tremendous pain. Her feet slid along the floor a few feet. A sharp blade flew and slashed at her right thigh, and the tip of a spear spun and tore at one of her head tendrils before she was thrown up into the air hurled back hard against the wall.
At the very second of impact, she felt her bones and brain rattle, and instantly her mind slipped back to Yavin IV with a flash of memory, still raw, Thane using the Force to punish her for her arrogance. For but a brief moment, her identity violently regressed. She was Amare again, then Coda, then...the very beginning...
In Verse's mind from twenty-one years ago, an older woman declared:
"Great Dragon of Khrysaor, imbue thine essence upon your daughter! Grant that she may devour the wills of the spirits so that she may be the Mother of a Dathomir reborn!"
A young man protested angrily:
"Nooo!! How could you do this?! You promised that essence would be mine! I was destined to carry our legacy into the future!"
The woman retorted with dark finality:
"It is done, my son. She carries the mark of the Devourer now. Only a daughter chosen by the spirit ichor can take from the Force to restore what was lost to Dathomir. Henceforth, she shall be a Nightsister, and it is she whom you shall serve...
...Shadrak!"
Every word echoed in Mange's mind, Verse's earliest secret exposed to him through the Force.
The bellow ceased, and Verse fell to the floor. Yet she did not lose consciousness, but rather groaned and whimpered and cried low in deep agony as her mind slung itself back to her present persona. Her body shook visibly as she tried to push herself up to her knees through sheer grit. Blood streamed readily from her auditory canals, her nose, and her tears were serosanguinous. Her thigh wound gave up blood freely, and her wounded tendril was barely able to hold the lower half as most of it dangled close to being severed. And yet there was more as each labored breath she expelled was accompanied with gentle short-lived puffs of emerald green smoke.
Mysteriously, she began to feel some of the pain from Mange's impaled shoulder and wounded ankle. Nevertheless, through her increasingly accelerated rate of respirations, she refused to give in. She felt deep pain in her fingers and she looked at her hands, the tips of her digits pointed almost like natural claws filled with crimson energy flowing and swirling beneath the skin like molten magma. She began to huff and pant and growl as she looked up at Mange and atavistic instincts and muscle stimulation start to kick in. She screamed her own animal-like roar at him. Though it didn't hold the power of the Wookie's mighty bellow, it did send the clear signal that she had embraced the dark side fully and was tipping at the edge of becoming raw and hopelessly feral.
She thrust her right hand out to nearby cultists that were crippled and writhing in pain from Mange's sonic assault and pulled at their very souls. Torrents of blood-orange energy surged from them, visible only to the eyes of trained Force-sensitives. Her eyes deepened in their red color, and with her other hand, she pulled back and then thrust it forward releasing intense bolts of turquoise and red lightning directly at Mange.
"YOU.WILL.YIELD...TO ME!!!" Verse shouted at Mange with rage flirting with madness, her reverberating voice a lower octave, distorted by an effect of the dark side rushing through her. Through all her pain, she began to levitate from the floor as her relentless counter-assault rained without fail towards her Cult rival. Every syllable of Sith knowledge she was granted, every spec of trial and tribulation she faced over the last year, all came pouring through her at once. All that she knew, everything that she gained, was lancing with violent precision upon the albino dark warrior through relentless electrical conquest. What she didn't realize, however, in her moment of incredible power and aggression, was the danger she had just put herself in.
Mange did not evade the lightning. The turquoise-red torrents struck him full across the chest and shoulder in a violent eruption of crackling light, forcing the enormous Wookiee back half a step as the current surged wildly across wet fur, metal and flesh alike. The embedded spear shifted deeper still beneath the electrical convulsions and a genuine howl of pain ripped from him.
And through it all, the azoth answered - within Mange. The moment the lightning connected, he felt the visions as sharply as Verse herself. The sensation was clearly an invasive experience, forced into his awareness with all the raw intimacy of instinct and blood. For a fractured second, the Wookiee's concentration broke beneath it, his thoughts dragged violently into Verse's earliest self whilst her agony bled directly back into him in turn, but the feedback crippled them both.
Verse's own lightning immediately surged back through the connection in distorted waves, causing her suspended body to convulse mid-air as arcs of lightning crawled mercilessly back across her arms, chest and throat. The assault faltered almost as quickly as it had begun, though, the unstable loop collapsing beneath its own violence as both darksiders staggered under the shared torment.
Hollow did not understand what was happening and only saw opportunity, and the Muun moved quickly and precisely. Her blade swept cleanly across Mange's exposed side in a precise two-handed arc just above the visible cybernetic integration point. The strike bit deep through flesh and metal alike before the Wookiee could fully recover his awareness, severing the entire mechanical arm in a violent spray of sparks, blood and burning fur. The massive limb crashed heavily against the obsidian floor beside them still twitching spasmodically, severed conduits spitting showers of electrical discharge, his lightsabers dropped and disengaged.
Mange roared again, but this time in unmistakable pain.
By then, nearly everyone in the chamber had been brought low. Several lesser cultists writhed helplessly across the floor from the overlapping Force assaults whilst Verse herself crashed back down hard against the stone amidst smoke and blood. Even Mange dropped partially to one knee beneath the combined agony ripping through both body and mind, his remaining hand clutching at the ruined shoulder as smoke curled upward from scorched white fur.
Only Hollow remained standing, her chest rose and fell steadily as she held her blade low at her side, dark eyes fixed attentively upon the crippled Wookiee and the broken Herald alike, awaiting instruction from whichever of them rose first. The smallest hint of confusion tugged at her features, yet she did not surrender to the emotion or moment, instead staying the course and looking between them, waiting.
Breathing shallow, barely conscious, Verse was flat on her back and a mess. The feedback loop effect from her vicious lightning offense had torn open fresh wounds all over her skin. There were ugly gashes above and below her left eye, marks all over her arms and upper chest, though her tendrils were mostly spared. Her deep brown basic clothing Kelderesh had issued her had become ripped and shredded. None of her wounds were burns, but looked instead like multitudes of small shallow lacerations. Although her sliced tendril was already starting to mend, these minor "cuts" and gashes on her face held true.
She suddenly began to choke, her esophagus desperately trying to clear itself. Adrenaline kicked in, and she quickly turned on her right side and expelled the mix of mostly liquid stomach contents and blood.
Verse groaned as she recaptured her breath. "H-Holl..Hollow..." she struggled to summon her, a quivering hand trying to wipe the foul digestive refuse from her mouth with a quivering hand. Through blurry vision, Verse saw Hollow's handiwork having ripped Mange's cybernetic arm away and forced him to relinquish his weapons. Though she could not fathom how her power had backfired on her yet again, the training went far better than she could have imagined, though she wondered if the damage, both collateral and to themselves, was worth it. And then there was the revelation of a memory that wasn't entirely her own, but something shared to her in-utero from her mother, a memory before she was even born. And the old woman had called her...
...a Nightsister.
A symbol on Verse's arm became visible in Hollow's sight now with the sleeve of Verse's shirt torn. It glowed orange-red and clearly showed the triangular mark of Axion above three sigils, and below that a dividing line with three more matching sigils and a new small one of a V-shaped symbol just below the line, and larger uneven Y-shape, both having the effect of being upside down incomplete triangles.
Hollow moved immediately at the sound of her mistress struggling to speak.
Her weapon disengaged with a hiss as she crossed the ruined chamber and lowered herself beside Verse with controlled urgency, long pale limbs folding neatly despite the blood, smoke and twitching bodies surrounding them. Her dark eyes travelled quickly across Verse's wounds, lingering for a moment upon the strange glowing sigils now exposed beneath the torn fabric and the thin cuts spread across her flesh like fractured lines etched into porcelain.
Something within Hollow's expression shifted faintly at the sight. Approval and reverence - perhaps even fascination, yet she stopped herself just short of touching her.
"Mistress," she said softly, the word almost devotional as she waited attentively beside the injured Nautolan.
"Well...done..." Verse slowly began to say through heavy labored breathing, and she added, "...apprentice...retrieve my weapon...and take me...to Mange. We will settle this...by blood, or by respect."
At Verse's command, Hollow obeyed without hesitation. She rose swiftly, retrieved the fallen lightsaber from where it had skidded against the far wall, and returned just as quickly to help the battered Nautolan back onto unsteady feet. One slender arm supported Verse carefully around the waist whilst the other held the reclaimed weapon respectfully lowered at her side, the Muun guiding her mistress across the devastated chamber toward the kneeling Wookiee.
Mange had already begun forcing himself upright again as several lesser cultists rushed nervously toward him carrying dark cloths and heavy robes to stem the blood pouring from the severed shoulder, but the enormous albino shoved them violently away with his remaining arm before they could touch him. One acolyte struck the floor hard enough to crack teeth against stone whilst another stumbled backward clutching a broken wrist.
The Wookiee barely seemed to notice. Clutching the ruined shoulder with his remaining hand, Mange loomed over Verse as she approached, smoke still curling from scorched fur and blackened flesh. Blood dripped steadily from the partly-cauterised ruin where Hollow had severed the cybernetic limb, splashing heavily against the obsidian floor between them.
His reddish-pink eyes fixed entirely upon Verse. Hollow, despite delivering the crippling blow herself, seemed beneath consideration entirely. For several long seconds, Mange simply stared down at the wounded former Sith in heavy silence, chest rising and falling slowly beneath lingering pain and fury alike.
Then, finally:
"Herald."
The word emerged low and rough from deep within his throat, less title than acknowledgement, and spoken in a very rough approximation of Basic.
Without waiting for response, Mange shoved bodily past Verse and Hollow alike, shoulder-checking aside one approaching cultist as he strode away across the chamber trailing blood behind him.
Verse shook her head with a momentary scowl at the passing Wookie as he passed by, and then her expression shifted to a grin as she looked up at Hollow.
"So ends the warmup exercise," she quipped, then winced and put a hand up to her aching head. Her muscles were sore all over and her hearts were gradually slowing down and stabilizing after the terrific shock she took when attempting to fry Mange. Nerve endings in her extremities were randomly flaring with fleeting shocks of pain, and her spine and shoulder joints felt stiff, but she learned how to use the Force to brace from hard impacts since the "lesson" she received from Thane all those months ago. A kind of inertial dampening as her late stepfather, a gifted starship engineer, would have liked to call it.
She bowed her head to Hollow out of respect as the pain and dizziness subsided for a moment. "Thank you, apprentice. We must keep training. I don't think Lord Mange will go so easy on us next time." Verse winced again as further momentary surges of aching nerves resumed. Trying to put on a brave face, she added after an exhausted exhale while ignoring the traumatic plight of the other cultists in the room, "Come. Let's take leave of this place and find a quiet space to meditate on what happened here, then we'll spar. I need to see more of what you're capable of."
It dawned on her that it was possible Hollow may have been more experienced with a lightsaber than she was. Verse had only her one-year experience as Amare. Hollow may have had much more than that. Although, Verse did have her share of Cultist blood on her hands and plenty of fights before that. Perhaps real combat experience was the edge she needed to be a suitable master, but she understood there was still considerable room for improvement.
She began to think about the Sith holocrons on the Red Raptor. She needed them as it would make teaching far easier. If Mange and the others were anything to go by, they could certainly fight with impressive ability, but they did not have the precision and ethos that Sith knowledge possessed. She needed to find that ship and take what was rightfully her's...no, Axion's. All glory to Him...but then, she realized it would be impossible to keep them hidden from the others. Amare, lurking deep beneath the Verse, knew she could not allow them to gain access to such power, but this Hollow, perhaps could be shaped over time to rise above her indoctrination. Amare, however, had to find a way to break her own, first.
Hollow's smile appeared a heartbeat later, not entirely natural, but carefully mirrored from Verse's own expression. It lacked some of the Nautolan's humour, yet there was no mockery in it - only a sincere effort. Her dark eyes remained fixed attentively upon her mistress as she inclined her head in acknowledgement.
"I am loyal to you, my mistress - our Herald," she said softly. "To the Dark Master." Her gaze briefly shifted toward the trail of blood Mange had left across the chamber floor before returning to Verse. "And Lord Mange is loyal, also."
With careful precision, she adjusted her support beneath Verse's arm and began guiding her toward the chamber exit, stepping around discarded weapons, bloodstains and the groaning bodies of injured cultists without so much as a second glance.
"I will meditate upon today's lessons," she continued after a moment. "And I will be ready when you wish to continue, mistress."
Together they left the ruined training hall behind, whilst the sounds of the enclave slowly resumed around them.
VERSE
▼ Dark Side Shift
▬ Force Ability increase
▬ Force Drain increase
▬ Force Levitation increase
▬ Force Lightning increase
▬ Force Telekinesis increase
☼ New Ability - Dark Rage
RSS Feed