Prey of the Cabal

Posted on Tue Jul 17th, 2018 @ 12:36am by Thane & Amare

4,576 words; about a 23 minute read

Chapter: Chapter V: Unbound
Location: Cavern, Vaa (Thaal system)
Timeline: Night, after "Scourge of the Cabal"
Tags: sith, wolph, sith code, slave

OLD

Before Coda could say or do anything else, he also reached beneath his undershirt to fumble and remove the key that had drawn them here, its incessant pulses having become a difficult distraction from his need to recover, and let it drop to the floor next to his lightsaber. Almost immediately, gripped by the relief of narrowly escaping an unnatural death on the accursed moon of his homeworld, his eyes flickered shut and his head gently rolled forward onto his chest, consciousness seeming to escape him.
...

She thought that if this didn't work, she would have to slap him awake, scream really mean words in his face to startle him, or shake him violently with lots of begging and crying, but she started fading too fast to even attempt such desperate shenanigans. Her eyes faded back to black, and she breathed out slowly with deep fatigue, the remaining smoky remnants of dark energy curling off her dry lips, the faint rotten taste of the Vaa taint on her tongue akin to sulfur and charcoal that would have made her ill if she wasn't so completely spent. Exhausted beyond her limits, she ignored her discomfort and moved to seat herself by Thane's still motionless side. She held him close in a tender and protective embrace, and quietly lost consciousness with her head resting contentedly on his shoulder.

Her sleep was dreamless, and her purpose--at least for the moment--had been fulfilled. She staked all her hopes and dreams for a brighter future on Thane and the promise of power through the ways of the Sith. She could not let her master die when there was so much left to do. Not today. Not ever.

NEW

Zari...wakey time, my child

Coda stirred from her difficult sleep as she heard that warm familiar voice of her childhood.

Mustn't keep your mother waiting, Zari. You have chores to do before your lessons...

"Father," she mumbled as her mind struggled to rip itself free from the chains of unconsciousness. She never liked it when her kindly Nautolan father, Dr. Capasegno Wolph, used to call her Zari. It always sounded like he was saying "sorry" instead. Maybe he was sorry when the slavers tricked Coda into shooting him for nothing.

My time has come, little one. It's now your mother's turn...

Coda quietly snapped awake upon seeing the deep smoking hole in her father's chest. It was just a nightmare...but it wasn't, really. It was the truth her mind blocked out to keep her sane in order to survive the years that followed. Strangely, rediscovering what really happened didn't shake her so much. All the tears she had for her lost family were long gone by now. She had to keep moving forward, or the Thaalda might find a way to get to her and her master.

Her master! She winced as she lifted her head from Thane's shoulder, resisting a terrible migraine setting in, and could see the man she tried in desperation to save with power she didn't understand was beginning to stir to wakefulness as well.

"Master?" she called to him, shaking him by his shoulders, her rekindled concern laced with hopeful anticipation. "Thane, talk to me. Please wake up!"

For a few seconds, the Human continued to languish where he was, the occasional twitch of his mechanically-enhanced right hand and a weak murmur under his breath being all that indicated any hint of rousing. After just a few more moments of stirring, the former Jedi slowly opened his eyes.

To Thane, the journey back to consciousness had appeared to be a long and difficult one, wrought with flashes of quite foreign and painful emotions, as well as the distinct sense that interloping thoughts were threatening to consume his own.

Images of creatures howling at a violet moon had pummelled against his weary mind, whilst Nautila words, both softly- and aggressively-spoken, had swam across his thoughts - words that he knew he had no knowledge of, yet he recognised the meaning of without difficulty. There was an overriding sensation throughout it all that he had not been alone; Thane was certain there had been another, an uninvited wayfarer, that had joined him on his near-death ambling within his own spirit.

As his mind hurried back to true consciousness, his blue eyes worked just as quickly to study his shadowed surroundings and his own body, next to no light around him. He could not quite recollect where it was he was slumped, his mind first thinking he was back on Jericho, and that all of his other considerations had been his tortured mind finally cracking, grasping at any whimsical notion through the Force. Finally, his eyes settled on the blue-skinned lady next to him, and his ears finally began to catch up with his memories, noticing she was both talking at him and had her slender hands on his shoulders.

"Zaracoda," he said, his voice deep and little more than a whisper, as he placed a hand upon one of her forearms. Looking into the abyss of her two large queerly-twinkling eyes, he could not help but feel a peculiar sense of familiarity with her that he had not before - as if seeing her differently from before, like noticing the subtle image hidden within another piece of art.

"My injuries," the Caanan then commented, immediately looking down from Coda to where the gash in his abdomen had been. Placing his hand within the tear in his clothing to touch the pale flesh beneath, he found no open wound, but instead a slight bump in the skin like an old scar.

A momentary confusion gripped Thane. The aspiring Sith knew he had tried to enter a healing trance when he had propelled himself and the Nautolan into the cave. What he also knew, however, was that his talents within the Force to heal himself had subsided since his recent tutelage under Darth Bane's teachings, inhibited by the growing dark side power deep within him. There was also something of the dark side within the Thaalda, too; something unnatural, beyond the beasts' warped deformities.

"You did this?" He asked his apprentice, also noting that no Thaalda had assaulted them in the cave since Caanus' primary had finally set.

Coda thought about throwing her arms around Thane, but her body was racked with throbbing pain all over--especially the same area on her side where Thane checked on his side for the wound--and she was seeing a disorienting multi-coloured aura in her vision that caused her to reel back a bit from Thane and put a hand up to her forehead.

"I...I'm not sure what I did," she murmured. "Ohhh...this pain. I think I overdid it."

“Describe what you did,” he commanded gently, already formulating his own deductions as he recalled her powers on Sheva, and how she now cradled an invisible wound that seemed to mirror his own.

"I...um...I touched your face," she explained with an uncertain shrug. "I got really scared when you weren't moving, and my hands glowed like they did on Sheva. I thought about what I did there when I punished that woman, but I wanted to do it in reverse for you. So I just...let go, and...I dunno why. I..." Her face flushed with a blushing rosiness which contrasted with her azure blue skin. "...I kissed you." She quickly added to dodge the awkward moment, "And I know that wasn't right, but I sensed some kind of poison in you. I had to do it. I don't know what I was thinking. I...inhaled it from you and breathed it out, and then I just felt everything in me flow to you. I felt all your pain, and it made me so angry with those...things out there. I wanted you to live. I couldn't let you die, master."

Thane listened intently to the younger woman, shifting himself slightly as he decided the cavern floor was too uncomfortable. The Human raised himself up carefully, finding his neatly-healed wounds to be a fading pain, reminiscent of muscle ache more than a mortal wound. He elected to make no mention of Coda's confession, largely because he was unsure of his own feelings on the matter. He had not been kissed before - not in living memory, anyway, and not by anyone who was not family.

He took a few careful steps towards the cave mouth, and looked out into the misty darkness beyond. Although there was no longer any howling or screaming from the Thaalda, he could still sense their distinctive presence within the Force, as well as the odd pattering of their grotesque limbs on the concealed terrain beyond. Closing his eyes, he could still feel the life force of Bomoor on the planet, although he could not penetrate further for greater detail. Even so, it pleased him to know the Ithorian was alive, even if not necessarily safe. There was still great danger on Vaa.

“Your power,” he said slowly, raising his voice once more, his mind weary but clearing with every passing second. “I’ve only heard of one thing like it.” Thane summoned his lightsaber to his hand from behind him on the cavern floor, grasping it silently and turning it in his grip as he considered how he finally wished to broach the subject on his mind.

That subject. He knew he had to – that he intended to. He knew that this was to be their dynasty, and that not only did events time and again prove the need for a successor, but also that the young Nautolan had proven her raw power and worth repeatedly. She could even outstretch him.

He found it odd to consider how pleasing that notion was.

Dried blood flaked from his hand and slid harmlessly off of the hilt’s electrum grip and he finally spoke. “The last man known to master a power anything like yours… was the last galactic emperor and the last Dark Lord of the Sith.” Thane turned to face Coda. “Darth Krayt.”

She looked up at Thane as she stood up to move to close to his side, curious about the name, "Darth...Krayt?" She didn't know anything about those dark times in the galaxy. "I don't know much history. Most of my homeschooling was in languages, art, and lots of maths. Father wanted me to be an engineer like him."

"You are destined for so much more than that, than the humdrum mundanities of the everyday sentient," Thane assured her. "We both are. And I think it is time I answered your questions. I know you've had many since we first met, and you've been remarkably patient and willing since then. It almost belies logic." He took a few small steps back towards Coda. "If this enterprise of ours is to be successful, then there cannot be secrecy between us."

Before she could ask about the first thing on her mind regarding the Sith, a strange sensation brushed lightly across the back of Coda's head tendrils. Startled, she whirled around with a frightened gasp, her fists clenched in anticipation of a threat that wasn't there.

"What was that?!" she glanced around the cave frantically, and then felt like the periphery of her vision was vibrating. Everything started to show in pairs of contrasting colours, and there were quick flashes of numerous white humanoid silhouettes standing motionless all around them. "G-ghosts...?" She rubbed her eyes, and they were gone, but her migraine was persistent and making her feel ill. "What is this place?"

The darkness of the cave was immediately swept away by brilliant amethyst light, emanating brightly from Thane's now activated weapon.

"I don't see anything," he said, perhaps too curtly. "But there is a lot of mystery surrounding Vaa, and not least of all this place we now find ourselves." It was only now that he realised the ancient key he had discarded before falling unconscious had found its way back around his neck, its heavy weight pushing against his tired chest, but he made no mention of it to Coda. It also made discerning what it was he was exactly sensing difficult.

He disengaged the lightsaber again and set himself onto the cavern floor once more, feeling a light breeze from the cave mouth brush across his face. "Now, sit with me. I'm not yet at full strength, and I don't intend to face whatever it is down in the depths of this accursed place, or to go after Bomoor, before then. You have done incredibly well, but if those things are fearful to enter here, then we would be wise to heed their caution."

Coda had watched the saber the ignite, and its light was far brighter and almost blinding to her current state of ocular disarray. Still, the purple light remained a firm dichotomy of beauty and intimidation. After the blade disappeared again, she wondered how different things would have been if were armed with one. Perhaps it would have just made things worse, but she wanted to try. She had a burning desire to learn. She looked up at her master as she sat on her knees in front of him, and discovered that so long as she focused on his eyes, and traced the golden outline encapsulating his irises, her migraine was slightly quelled, and her vision slowly became stable.

Thane locked his blue eyes onto Coda's black ones, watching them intently, both to make clear his desire to engage with her properly and on an equal level, and to convey a degree of intensity to the younger woman. "I believe this place, this moon, even, is a relic of the dark side. Perhaps even of the Sith, as well."

There was a blood-curdling howl some distance outside the cave, stealing Coda's attention for a second, but enough to bring her twin blasters into view. She reached out and telekinetically pulled them along the ground to her side. She picked them up by their barrels and saw they had melted and deformed, and the capacitors had burned out completely. She realized how lucky she was they didn't explode in her hands when she went all-out at the Thaalda, but they came very close to it.

"I hope there's a relic here to replace these," she said with a resigned sigh as she held them out to Thane, the grip sides facing him.

"Perhaps," Thane said, taking the two weapons in his hand, before then letting them both float suspended between them. "But after what I have seen of you, and what I have planned for us, you will not need blasters any more."

The former Jedi closed his eyes for a few seconds and focused upon the broken objects, delving into their inner workings as he envisioned the various components and the myriad of ways they interlocked, both big and small. They separated into their constituent parts, hovering for a few seconds more, before they then reassembled into their previous original design.

"Have you not wondered why I am training you?" Thane asked. "Or why I have not taken you to the Jedi, or that I do not even train you in the Jedi ways?"

"I..." she hesitated to answer, then shrugged. "No...not really."

Before arriving on Vaa, Coda had read through some cryptic tales about the Jedi, their Code, and brief accounts of some of their heroic exploits in the time of the Old Republic and The Great War. There were some peculiar witticisms from someone named Jolee Bindo regarding a story about a padawan that got lost in the Jedi Temple and asked the wrong master for directions, and melodic psalms about a man named Revan and his love for his Jedi friend, Meetra Surik, but was short on details except that it was held as an example of the folly of personal attachments. As fascinating as those old tomes they received from the Givin shopkeeper were, page-turners they were not.

The only book that held her interest aside from the synthweaving tome was the tattered and torn manual that depicted training lightsabers, their parts, the physics involved in their functioning, and illustrations on a combat style called Shii-Cho. She especially liked the cute Nautolan man in some of the pictures. She wondered if that was the legendary Kit Fisto her brother used to have action figures of when they were kids. Still, in spite of it all, the Jedi Code, the Jedi themselves, all of it didn't really connect too well with her, not as much as she thought it did. They weren't as real as Thane and Bomoor. There was too much in those chapters about peace and patience and rejection of love. She couldn't afford to hold herself back when her brother was still out there needing help to be free. She would have to be powerful and brave to save him. When it came to filthy slavers, peace and wisdom be damned.

"It's not my place to question your motives, master," she added softly, almost apologetically in her tone. "You set me free and gave me a home on the ship. I trust you."

“Fool!” Thane admonished suddenly, the two blasters flying into the wall next to them, shattering once more into several small pieces. “Then you are learning nothing. Your trust I have earned through good reason, I admit, and I also confess to trusting you, today being a fine example of your character and our bond. However-” he placed his hands on the knees of his crossed legs, the auric disk that hovered about the centre his eyes shimmering brighter as his temper flared.

“However” he repeated more evenly, “whilst you must learn to follow and to heed my teachings and instructions, you must think for yourself. Self-determination is the greatest gift of all in this mortal plane, and none are more deserving than those with the power to influence the universe around themselves so profoundly - us. You are not some footsoldier or pathetic data entry analyst on an obscure underlevel of Coruscant, and we are not mewling Jedi; we do not follow a mantra blindly or follow those weaker or those without vision.”

Thane’s eyes followed Coda’s as she examined the smashed remains of her blasters to their side. “Challenge everything, Zaracoda, and trust nothing at face value. Look beyond the surface of people’s plain words to find deeper meaning, to discern advantages and your own truth, and never shy from power or supposedly-forbidden knowledge. Be the authority; claim the power and use it as others fear to – as the Jedi fear to.”

The aspirant Sith Lord saw Coda turn away from the shattered metal pieces of what remained of her recent past and gaze to the floor in contemplation. It was clear for him to see that she was mustering the courage to question him as he desired. She looked up at him with a sob, trying her best to hold back tears as she asked what she resisted to ask due to the subservient mentality that had been drilled into her head all her life; first by her traditional nautolan family, and then at the end of a slaver's whip.

"They held you back," she stated in gentle empathic understanding. "Kept you from reaching your potential. Is that why you left the Jedi?"

“It is part of why I left,” Thane replied. “The Reborn Jedi Order under Master Quellus is as corrupt as the Senate it purports to protect. Just as the Third Republic has become mired in corporate interests and obsessions with inclusivity, so too have the Reborn Order become inward and fearful, ever glancing over their shoulders for the next imagined threat, seeing enemies in every corner. It blights their ability to think clearly, and has led to them becoming book burners and censors, as if they have a monopoly on knowledge, dictating what people can and cannot think. It’s insulting, and restricts those of us who could use that power for more – to become greater, and wiser, than any Jedi.”

The former Jedi Knight examined the Nautolan’s features as she considered his grandiose words and their lofty concepts, but such was the nature and necessity of their current relationship. “The Jedi are dogmatic and narrow-minded, so worried about anything with the barest hint of the dark side they launch inquisitions within their own ranks. Hell, the entire Second Outer Rim Conflict became an exercise in their failure as the Rift Jedi abandoned Quellus and his insane edicts. No, they are not the future, Zaracoda. It falls to beings like you and I to right these wrongs of the galaxy, to accept the mantle of power and make things as they should be, where people can express themselves and reap what they sow, not shackled to the banal.”

"You mean...we can free people?" she asked with a rise of hopefulness in her tone. "Make everything so no one has to be a slave ever again?"

"Through victory, our chains are broken," Thane paraphrased coolly.

The Caanan Force user then cast his eyes down, and extended his presence within the Force, purposely reaching out to Coda in a manner he had not before. Just as she had shared her existence with him when he was unconscious and injured, so too did he now share of his own, raw nature. His intensity, rage, purpose, and indeed loyalty to Bomoor and Coda herself, flowed like a raging river current into the Nautolan, unbridled and initially overwhelming.

What Coda didn't understand until the wave struck her was that her earlier transfer of power to an injured Thane wasn't a gift at all; it was an act pushed forward by a will far greater than either of them combined. Threads of destiny itself was formed that created a link between master and apprentice, an act made possible by the impossible power and artistry of the Force. Thane completed the cycle by pushing some of it back to Coda, and a balance was created.

Coda's head snapped back with a gasp as she felt her whole body feel as if it were burning from the inside, eyes closed, her mind pushed to what seemed like realm of nothing but deep space and stars. Her eyes reopened she and found herself surrounded by the cosmos, and was enveloped in a weaving curtain of orange-red light as she was suspended in awe of Thane's infinite dreamscape. Randomly flashing through the din of light were images of places and people she didn't recognize: a blue Chagrian man of advanced age with a harsh accusing look on his face; a kindly Selkath with a gentleness that reminded her of her own father; Bomoor the stalwart friend, noble, cunning, and brave; an arrogant looking human man with strange tattoos on his face with a perfectly trimmed beard and an ignited lightsaber bearing a blood red blade and gesturing a challenge to come at him; and there was a woman...a beautiful example of a female like few Coda had ever seen...and she was crying...

Coda reached out to that face feeling some kind of connection to her. She wanted to soothe her, be her friend, make the tears stop. Coda's outstretched hand glowed red and the image of the Jedi woman disappeared along with all the others. The Nautolan realized she was lying to herself, being the kindly weak little slave she once was. She didn't want to save that woman, didn't even care about her pain...she merely wanted to absorb all her memories, consume all the presence of the Force in her, and ease her anguish gently, slowly, with a loving embrace of death.

When the current of the Force brought her back, Coda let out a long, dragging deep breath. Her satisfied exhale was accompanied by some residual wisps of black smoke from the Thaalda taint she drew away from Thane's body, and she licked her lips no longer tasting the sulfur. Her vision had also returned to normal, and her migraine had mostly cleared.

"The Jedi...are tyrants," she concluded partly to herself and to Thane. "You saw the truth of what they really are."

“It was a truth I had always known, but was a part of me I tried to reject, for the sake of the Jedi, of my one-time saviours, to honour a commitment I had made as a child,” Thane declared, his voice echoic and commanding. “But that is what it was: a child’s naïve promise to a dying order. It took me until I found a holocron to truly break free of the shackles of the Jedi and find a true path.” As he allowed his pride and an honest malevolence – that genuine feeling of frustration and disdain that existed in all beings, even if quelled – to fill his character, Thane opened his eyes again, now like two swirling oceans of smelted electrum once again. “Until I found the Sith.”

He extended his open hand to Coda, inviting her to take it. “Through the power of the Sith, you and I can become greater than any Jedi. We will be able to sweep away the megalomania of the Cult of Axion – those who took my family from me – and fight the true injustices of the galaxy. The Third Republic – the galaxy – is sick, rotting from within because of the likes of Chesto, Saucy Feril, and the pirates who claimed your own parents, who go unpunished and even rewarded by the greed and business of the lowest common denominator.” He shook his head. “These people are not powerful, not truly, nor are they wise. They deserve your ire; they deserve condemnation. Both Jedi and Sith have always gravitated towards commanding populaces, only the Jedi pretend it is not in their nature, but when people do finally fail to live up to their expectations and they take command, they find their petty morals incompatible and even less capable than those they replaced. With the power we could forge, an order of our own, reborn through us, we can make things the way we want them to be. The way they should be. Zaracoda Wolph, I can promise you the stars – but you need to want it, and to know why you want it. Be more than Coda the Orphan. Never be a slave.”

Coda gazed at the offered hand, finding it easy to accept, but there was something her master needed to understand before she took it.

"There is just one thing you are missing," she said whilst her lips slowly curled into a wicked little grin. "Pirates didn't kill my parents," she seized his hand, squeezed firmly, pulled herself close to him, and added with an icy whisper, "I did...I did it out of love...and I relished it. I will do anything for you, my lord. I will go anywhere to free the galaxy of the Jedi. And I swear I will kill anyone that gets in our way."

Despite himself, Thane smiled, gripping his Sith apprentice's hand tightly as he raised her up, bringing them both round to face towards the depths of the ancient cave. "The Force... shall free us."

TBC

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