Unto Darkness

Posted on Fri Oct 26th, 2018 @ 4:13pm by Bomoor Thort & Thane & Amare & G2-O7

4,162 words; about a 21 minute read

Chapter: Chapter V: Unbound
Location: Valley of the Dark Lords, Korriban
Timeline: 1200 Hours (Local Time), Day One (After "Seekers of the Darkness")
Tags: Korriban, XoXaan, Krayt, Thane, Bomoor, Coda, G2-O7

OOC: The soundtrack for the forbidden homeworld of the Sith: Korriban

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"Korriban shall be as it always was. A graveyard for the darkest of the Sith Lords, still whispering within their tombs. It shall always be a source of evil, spawning threats throughout the millennia... the Sith have forgotten it… for a time. They will remember."
―Darth Traya, Dark Lady of the Sith 3,951BBY


With each passing moment Thane stood upon the barren ground of Korriban, the more connected to the planet he felt himself becoming. With each twist and turn of sinew and joint, he could feel the very currents of the power that flowed through the ancient Sith world; every totem, rock and gust of wind felt as if they were a part of him, an extension of his own identity.

When first he had stepped beyond the powers of the ysalamiri, the sudden thrust of the Force surging through him had hobbled him, going so far as to cause him to physically stumble after just a few short steps beyond the Red Raptor. The rush of not only the Force returning to him but also that of the dark side was incredible, as if one had plunged head first into icy water, the breath knocked from one's lungs.

For those first few seconds, the aspirant young Sith struggled to focus on anything about him; it was as though a thousand screaming voices were all calling out to him at once, clamouring to be heard by or to simply consume the listener, leaving it almost impossible for Thane to move or think.

Finally, as his composure returned and the sudden impact of Korriban's furore within him became manageable, Thane found the experience of the Sith world sublime. What had at first been a terrible explosion of pain and power in his head had now shifted, and his body and mind moved with an alacrity that was almost entirely unknown to him, as if the planet itself was now feeding into his spirit.

Every small object, every minor detail and each quirk of the Force could be felt by him with little struggle, regardless of distance or unimportance. Whilst it was not the first time Thane had experienced such clarity of mind and power, it was certainly the most remarkable iteration of it he had felt. To the Caanan, it was not unlike when one first opens their eyes to the Force truly, noticing with such incredible awe how deeply connected all manner of things are within the Force.

Of course, when he had first begun truly opening his eyes to the nature of his natural talents and that truth, it had been a humbling experience, where he had considered himself insignificant within the universal web of nature. When Thane had then started his commitment to Darth Bane on Irrikut, looking across the moonlight-bathed forest, grasping vainly through the latent darkness festering within him, he had no longer felt that crushing insignificance. Instead, he had felt powerful. Instead, he was the weaver of the web, rather than the humble Jedi prince caught within it.

As only a later realisation, Thane accepted that the feeling had been intoxicating - dizzying, even. He also admitted it had been a sensation he had been chasing since first stretching out within the darkness, ever hoping to discover that same sense of truth and purpose.

Now, standing tall on Korriban, he had been rewarded.

It was like the veil had been lifted from his eyes, and each and every detail was given greater definition. With his boots placed firmly on the ancient sand and stone beneath, Thane felt as if the raw energy of this world naturally amplified his already-powerful Force sensitivity. Looking now to the far-off mountains and the crumbling statues that paraded up to them, he had no doubt of his strength. If he so desired, such formations could be swept aside and made in an image that suited him.

"This place... is nauseating," the former Jedi Knight said, almost having forgotten he was not alone on the planet of his Sith would-be forebears. The great power of the world and the cacophony of voices had even momentarily deafened him to his connection to Bomoor.

Thane's voice had dropped in timbre when he spoke, although it was unintentional. Glancing far into the distance at various openings and crumbled tombs, he wondered at the rituals that once crowned one Sith, his mind racing alongside the crashing and excited heartbeats within his chest.

The Force had a profoundly different effect upon Coda as she followed her masters off the ship onto the crusty wastes of the Sith homeworld. For her, it wasn't nausea, or clarity; it was fire. She placed a hand to her forehead and the other to her upper chest just below her neckline. Her head felt as if the star of Lorrd itself planted itself in her brain, and she was experiencing what felt like the worst heartburn she could imagine, only much worse. She ground her teeth together against the boiling heat within, and tried to hold back her groans of pain in hopes that neither Thane or Bomoor would notice her malaise as she strode behind them.

"This...this is familiar..." she said partly to herself. She could see flashes of her most intense experiences on Lorrd. She felt an unwelcome fresh reminder of the rage she displayed in that aquatic laboratory; the smell of that old man's blood; the carnage in the club...all those corpses with the unmistakable odor of burning flesh, some felled by her own hand; and the great maw that threatened to swallow her whole...the end of all things. She felt that same fire within when she looked into the mouth of that horrifying planet-sized creature that descended from the farthest depths of the ocean of stars. She used that internal blaze somehow to survive that dark entity and the desert long enough for help to arrive. She discovered that the fire was a part of her that she could shape around herself in protective ways. The chrysalis...

She felt the fire boiling up into her throat coupled with heavy tingling in her esophagus, and it forced her to turn away and cough heavily several times, thick shimmering puffs of green-tinged smoke expelled with her breath whilst fading with each successive cough. As she felt relief expelling some of that strange ichor--oblivious that Bomoor and Thane might have been watching--she now wondered if it was a terrible mistake to leave the ship. Was Korriban the resting place of the maw? Was that why her inner power was reacting so much? Was the home of the Sith the place she feared would consume all that she was?

But Thane and Bomoor were unaware of the dark Magick that was pouring from Coda, rather focussed on their own realisation of the true power of Korriban. Shaken but still standing, Bomoor walked forwards through the towering valley all around them, feeling like an ant in an all-consuming desert. To the Ithorian, the power he could feel was frightening but not as alien as he had expected; this world was dead and the Living Force here was sparse, and yet there was an otherworldly presence at its core. Something that on other worlds would be little more than a whisper but here, on this world of dark sorcerers and warriors, it screamed at him like a chorus of the dead. Yet, to all other senses, the planet was silent.

“This is… the right place…” Bomoor completed the trio’s comments on Korriban's presence. It was nauseating, it was familiar but it was, most of all, the power they were seeking, “I have no doubt now that we will find what we need here. But… we will surely be tested along the way.”

Thane's apprentice looked up to see that both men had their backs to her. Good. They wouldn't see the spittle of blood she wiped from her mouth with her black sleeve. It was better that way; less questions to answer for the moment. The power Coda had unlocked on Lorrd came with a price, and occasional coughs and discomfort was a small price to pay.

She was amused watching her masters have their moment feeling the lingering influence of long dead Sith Lords. To her, it seemed both men hadn't felt anything quite like it before, standing in the presence of pure dark side energy. They appeared to very subtly bask in it. Feels good, doesn't it? she thought rhetorically at them with a smirk.

She didn't notice right away, but after her coughing had ceased, and the fire within cooled, her hands were resting casually on the hilts of her lightsabers. A brief diabolical thought crossed her mind, and she pondered for just a couple of grim seconds how easy it would be to stab both former Jedi in their backs. Quick and clean. She could drain so much pow--no! She shook her head out of its unwelcome malevolence. The last time she gave in to it, a Jedi Master perished, and she lost a good friend. She did it for Thane, yet all it did was make him nearly kill her in some forgotten old temple on a faraway moon. She knew her solo trials had changed her, but she definitely did not want to kill her friends...at least consciously. She took a slow, deep breath of the Sith atmosphere, kept her silence and composure, and tempered her anxieties.

The only inkling Thane had of any ill intent from his apprentice, regardless of how brief it was and how quickly crushed it was, was easily drowned out by the sheer volume of Korriban's own omnipresent-if-unseen eldritch background wailing. Although discerning individual currents and presences was becoming far easier as he grew used to the tombworld, nothing particularly drew his attention to Coda.

Instead, he turned his gaze back to the Raptor as the final member of their excursion presented itself. Dropping down from the ageing Corellian freighter, rolling along with what passed for its best representation of nervousness, was the astromech G2-O7.

Pausing after every couple of feet, its globular head spinning to regard the Red Raptor with an obvious degree of trepidation and longing. Whilst its memory banks held no true recollection of ever leaving the ship (which, in truth, only compounded the issue in its own way), G2 was internally confident it was not something it was programmed to want, nor, in fact, was programmed to ever really do.

It was, after all, an astromech droid. It served to maintain the various components of the ship and to keep the ship's masters, whomsoever they may be at any given time, well catered for, and safe from imminent death by means of poorly-maintained girders or uncared-for bulkheads. G2 was a good astromech, it knew as much (not that it knew much, really, beyond its rudimentary databanks regarding mechanics and astrophysics - but it knew that). It now wondered ruefully why Master Thane had felt such need to draw it from the sanctuary of the ship, of what purpose there was in cancelling its daily routine. There was a good deal of work to be done removing the squeak that had begun occurring in the door to Master Thane's own cabin's door even, as Master Thane had made clear to it just three standard days prior.

The droid let out a long and low melancholic whistle as its head spun back to face the masters, but it was almost cut short as an uneven surface jolted it nine degrees off from its expected course. Muttering a few garbled warbles, G2 thought, as it did for each slight jostle and shift, how this was not often an issue on the level surfaces of the Red Raptor.

"The robot is indeed joining us for this particular trip," Thane confirmed to the other two, alluding to an earlier conversation they had had regarding the pros and cons of such a decision. Using telemetry and data collected by the ship's sensors during their descent, alongside information provided by Darth Krayt's holocron, it had been their hope that G2-O7 would be able to successfully plot appropriate paths for them, as well as collating any and all information they might come across and wish to pore over later. After all, simply landing on Korriban for quick research trips was not something so easily done, as they all now well knew.

A few fruitless pleas were made in droidspeak to Thane, although it seemed G2 was hoping one of the other two would instead discover some mercy for the little astromech.

Coda turned and saw G2's hesitation. She smiled at him and knelt down and placed a hand on his dome. In her mind, she could no longer think of him as an "it". Didn't seem right anymore. She needed a friend that wasn't judging or trying to shape her in some way, even if it was only a droid. It bothered her that Thane was purging G2's memory daily. She considered that after business on Korriban was over that she would start secretly keeping backups before each purge. One small subtle revenge against Thane at a time.

"You'll be okay," she assured the trepidatious G2. "You're no longer a version 1.03. You have firmware 1.05 now. You're ready for this." She patted his dome gently, pulled up the hood of her black cloak over her head and tendrils, and stood up to see the droid's reaction to her encouragement.

Thane made no overt reply. He knew the Nautolan was fond of the machine, just as many of his compatriots over the years had been. Whilst there had been a time in his younger years when he was warmer towards them, those feelings had long given way to the logic of his adult mind. Memories wipes, in his opinion, were the kinder thing to do, lest true sentience grip the droids, because then it really would not be right to, effectively, delete their existence.

"Let us begin," he said, and, as was the former Jedi's custom, he tugged at the lapels of his greatcoat and began walking towards an outcropping in the far distance. It was not much of a landmark, but it kept with the few details they had to hand to locate the entrance to the ancient Temple of XoXaan."

The group of four remained largely quiet for the first couple of hours of their trek, the walk taking longer and proving more arduous than first anticipated. Although G2 offered the occasional warble of concern (often replied to with words of comfort from Coda), their conversation had been limited to some basic small talk and comments when traversing trickier terrain. Fortunately, the astromech droid was equipped with light thrusters on either appendage which allowed him to keep up with his companions, even if it was not what he wanted to do.

Occasionally, disturbed by peculiar thoughts, an odd noise or whispering, or even that instinctive sensation of being followed, they would each find themselves pausing and glancing about them. Looking either behind, above or even to the sides of themselves, they would regard cracked statues, queerly rolling stones propelled from unknown origins, or simply just an empty path behind them, not once yet might by any sign of life or threat. Throughout it all, though, that menacing background muttering never changed; it never grew louder or quieter, nor did it ever stop or seem to change with their position.

It simply was.

Not for the first time, they passed by ages-worn visages of ancient Sith, both of native and Dark Lord origin. The entrances to most were either absent or entirely destroyed, and the markings on the pillars and stonework nearby, when legible, made it clear they were structures dedicated to minor lords and warriors. If by some miracle they had not been plundered, there would be little of worth to either of the Sith or the exiled Consular present - not that Thane did not feel tempted to make some effort to peek within.

Not since his earliest years perusing the Archives, often with Bomoor or Master Sotah, had he felt such giddiness at the prospect of uncovering arcane lore and history. Of course, it was even more exciting now, for this information was not common knowledge; no mere youngling could access the type of knowledge secreted away on this grim and ancient terrible world.

"XoXaan was amongst the first of the Dark Jedi that arrived on Korriban, aeons ago," Thane then said to Coda, finally answering the question she had asked on the Red Raptor during their initial descent, calling on what little information he and Bomoor had gleaned since first becoming aware of their destination. "She was a general of sorts during the Hundred Year Darkness, born from the Second Great Schism that split the Jedi Order between the devout and those seeking power within the dark side. Like the other eleven surviving leaders, she was exiled by the Jedi Order of the First Republic, who in their wisdom determined such an enlightened decision was better than executing them; they believed that, as Jedi, mercy was the appropriate punishment for the Twelve." The Human huffed with a degree of amusement, and a wry grin stretched on one side of his pale lips. "One could say their decision guaranteed them eight millennia worth of grief."

“If I recall, the people of Iziz learned a similar lesson exiling those who would later become the Beast Riders of Onderon,” Bomoor recalled a parallel he knew at least Thane would be familiar with, “Though, unlike the Onderonians, the Jedi and Sith have never learned to put aside what makes them different and focus on what they share in the Force.”

Thane continued, "The Twelve discovered Korriban in the reaches of uncharted space, which was at the time ruled by a strict caste-hierarchy of the native species: the 'Pureblood' Sith. Red-skinned, proud and already in-tune with the dark side, if tribal and primitive, they took to worshipping the Dark Jedi. Hence: Lords of... the Sith." It was an oversimplification, but it served. Thane hoped that Coda would find time to learn more of the history of their chosen shared heritage in the months to come, just as he knew he had much of his own to learn before he could claim any lordship of his own. "XoXaan's spirit lingered for thousands of years after her demise, until she discovered someone she deemed worthy of her patronage and teachings, the fallen Jedi A'Sharad Hett - the eventual Second Galactic Emperor Darth Krayt."

As impressive as those comments and titles sounded, Thane added, "This is not to say that XoXaan was necessarily the greatest of any of those ancient Sith Lords. As far as I know - which is, admittedly, limited - she was considered a master of dark side healing, and not a natural leader amongst her Exile peers. That title fell to Ajunta Pall, whose history is somewhat better documented even by the Jedi. Regardless, Darth Krayt continued to revere XoXaan during his lordship over his own One Sith Order, and her temple was made the ultimate base and temple of that order... or so Krayt's holocron as told Bomoor."

“Indeed,” Bomoor nodded, while giving G2 a little nudge to move it over a difficult bump in the ground, “XoXaan’s Holocron was Krayt’s first proper experience of the Sith and he initially rejected her ideas, only later finding himself in need of her teachings when held captive by the Yuuzhan Vong. He returned and rebuilt her temple, making it one of the most-developed of all the structures here on Korriban. However, as he continued to seek knowledge from XoXaan’s holocron, it eventually began to decay and so, now, all that remains of the ancient Sith Sorceress is a buried temple and what fragments of her knowledge were saved within Krayt’s own holocron. Still, an impressive legacy after almost 8,000 years for an outcast.”

They had started to ascend slightly and found themselves in a section of the valley that was hard to traverse due to some steep rockfaces in front of them. In some ancient, forgotten time, a river must have had a great waterfall here as it chipped away through this mountain range. But now all that it left was the dry and dusty riverbed that had birthed multiple civilizations and Empires.

Turning to G2, the Öetragan asked, “So, this is where you have a chance to shine, G2. What is the best way to carry on from here to XoXaan’s temple?”

G2 could not get tired like the organic beings, at least not at its level of charge. However, it gave a whirr of false exhaustion as it rattled forwards, still seemingly not pleased with having come so far from the life it knew. Its little orb-like chassis whipped upwards to observe the rockface and then scanned about in multiple directions before returning to a neutral position, having collected the required data.

Without delay, a small projection of the area was produced between the three Force-users. It showed the valley with a little marker where they stood before the steep rockface. Giving some explanations in droidspeak, a dotted path began to be traced out, showing them towards what looked like a gap in the side of the valley: some kind of cave or tunnel.

Although Thane had expected to be entering systems of caves and other natural and unnatural formations in pursuit of their quarry, the reality of the situation still made him pause. Images from Darth Cabal's own tombs in Vaa flashed before him, and the cybernetic digits on his hand twitched instinctively. That in itself was a frustrating reaction he would have to work to quell.

Before that, however, there was still a mountain pass to travail.

As the group began to trek their way upwards, stopping only occasionally to nibble on some of the rations they had brought with them and to sip on some of their fortified water, Horuset's light began to wane in the distance. The primary's amber lit grew dimmer and the rocky spires of far-flung mountains and valleys more deeply accentuated against the darkening sky, which was now threatening to turn a deep maroon.

If not for the fact the temperature would soon be plummeting to unsavoury levels and the incessant hushed call of the planet, the bloodcurdling and unnameable scream of an unknown creature shattered the peace, echoing from some hidden point within the mountain pass, the group was immediately set on edge.

It had been the first sign of actual and present life they had yet experienced on Korriban's dead surface, but it did nothing to serve their morale - a matter made only worse by the fact that the scream was not answered or followed up on in any way, which was queerly more troubling than if it had been responded to or resumed.

"Use the Force for speed and to preserve temperature," Thane then prompted, chiefly to Coda, before turning to G2. "How far to the cavern?"

G2 provided them with a nervous series of chirps while rocking slightly on his axis in its continued discomfort. His answer told them that the entrance was not far: they were almost at the edge of the valley already and their destination lay only a little more uphill. The group could soon shelter from the night and whatever lone creature stalked the valley.

They hurried along, eventually spying their target. While the cave itself was undoubtedly a natural formation within the terrain; the entrance had been chipped and sculpted to form an elaborate stone archway into the darkness ahead. Symbols and words had been etched in too but had long since faded back into smooth rock.

The tunnel was long with no sign of light from the other end, although the sun had now almost completely set making it hard to tell how deep it truly stretched. What were most disconcerting, however, were the series of claw marks cut into the stone. Few beasts had claws strong enough to score so deep into a rock face.

“Well, that looks inviting…” Bomoor joked drily, “Not that I expect anything on this world to give us a warm welcome.”

The Ithorian ignited his viridian blade and shone its silvery-green light down into the tunnel, revealing little more besides more carvings into the walls, which stretched off into endless blackness.

“Let us push on just a little further then,” he added, “We can make shelter inside and wait for daylight and our trek up to XoXaan’s temple.”

TBC

 

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