Under the Hammer

Posted on Fri Jul 5th, 2019 @ 10:01pm by Thane & Bomoor Thort & Amare

4,264 words; about a 21 minute read

Chapter: Chapter V: Unbound
Location: "Sith Pyramid", The Ruins of "Trayset", Mind Prison (Korriban)
Timeline: After the Trials of Sacrifice, Treason and Strife

OLD

The Nautolan had to rely on the Force just to keep her Ithorian from falling hard like a marble pillar to the floor, and even then she wasn't able to completely soften his fall without getting herself crushed under his considerable girth. She placed a hand on his hump and closed her eyes for a moment. Satisfied that he was merely unconscious having felt his still-active aura, she rose up and gazed out and inspected the remnants of the battlefield and what was left of Trayset. She had never seen such monumental destruction before, simulated or otherwise, and it was astonishing to think that Bomoor had wielded such incredible power.

She tried to reach out with her mind to find Thane, and she felt something out there, familiar, yet faint. She knew he was alive, but she couldn't tell what his condition was. She shook her head, and felt a tinge of frustration building up inside.

She had had enough.

NEW

"Hazzarah!" she whirled around and screamed as she drew her short sword. "The game is over! My masters have done the impossible and saved your fake city. I saw through the lies of your witches. You will not toy with us anymore. Show yourself! If you value the legacy of the Sith people, then you will release us back to our bodies...now!"

"Your petulance has served you well, child," the familiar voice erupted suddenly from behind Amare, the ebony-skinned King Hazzarah having materialised without so much as a sound or shift to tower over the young Nautolan. As before, his grim, armoured visage was nearly expressionless, and his oversized warhammer remained firmly gripped in one gauntleted fist, perched heavily upon the stone ground.

His free hand then extended out towards Amare, whom he swatted aside with relative ease to grasp the crumpled Bomoor beside her. In the same motion in which he reached for the Ithorian, the fallen Consular's clothing had reverted to his usual robed attire, lightsaber and all.

Held up entirely by the ancient king, Bomoor's body was slow to respond as weary eyes looked back into Hazzarah's own, matched with an inner weariness of their own. "The price of peace?"

Hazzarah's heavy backhand had battered Amare with the effect of a swatter on a stationary fly taken by surprise. She felt her face pulsing with pain, and her senses momentarily floundered into a turbulent sea of dizziness. What struck her harder, however, was the masochistic nostalgia that came over her. Such abuse had been familiar to her in the past, even before her capture by Hutt slavers, and so had the experience to learn to roll with the punches, though she had been powerless in those days to retaliate against her abusers. But something different washed ashore in her mind this time, a face...another Nautolan, a...male? Older, and heavy-set. Someone she thought she hadn't seen before, yet knew deep down was somehow important to her. She scarcely had little more than a second to see an unfocused image of his face in her mind, but it was enough to notice something else she was intimately familiar with...an electrically-charged stun whip in the male's right hand, poised to strike.

Fear came over the Sith apprentice, threatened to drown her in cowardice, but her experiences in the mind prison had frustrated her immensely, being ensnared, her thoughts forcibly divorced from her body. She was exhausted, at her wit's end, still recovering from the horror of the terentatek, the harrowing battle with Archonus, and the strange circumstances of her "rebirth". There was only room left in her for malice and viciousness. This place was an abomination. This...Hazzarah, needed to be vanquished once and for all.

On her knees, Amare lifted up her head in time to see Bomoor hoisted in the air, his appearance restored to normal.

"Let...him...go!" Amare demanded, scowling, indulging in the power of her inner darkness as a surge of energy built up in her right hand, random turquoise sparks of power bursting from her smooth blue palm, stray electrical forks impacting the hilt of what had once again returned to being her ill-gotten shoto lightsaber. The time for being the victim was over.

Bomoor seemed to be drifting in and out of consciousness, but his eyes were wrenched open as he felt himself being suspended by Hazzarah’s command of this realm. It was doubtful that even the muscular black Sith could have truly lifted the Ithorian in the physical realm, but they were still in Hazzarah’s game. Bomoor experienced a sickening feeling of complete and utter helplessness.

“Argh!” he cried, before trying to claw himself back into the moment, “Hazzarah! We have completed your games. If we have failed, then so be it, but do not torture us; take us out of this bloody war at least!”

Hazzarah gave a sidelong disinterested glance to the comparatively small Nautolan, but he inclined his head in response. The ancient king's grip on Bomoor was released, but instead of falling upon the hard stone surface of the pyramid's chiselled floors, the Ithorian's feet landed upon that ethereal white plane that had been their first welcome into the Mind Prison.

Just as King Hazzarah had reappeared with no noise or introduction, so too had the world around them instantly melted away, replaced again with the infinite white blankness that seemed to be the Prison's natural state. As before, the queerly-etched and ornate pillars surrounded them, along with Hazzarah's oversized anvil and smithing equipment. A deep warmth was emanating from the setup, as if the embers had been crackling for hours before their return. And, with each passing second in the presence of the smithy's warmth, energy and focus seemed to return to Bomoor and Amare.

"You succeeded," came a fourth familiar voice from behind the group, wearied and strained. Favouring one side, although now also returned to his usual clothing and appearance, Thane was moving slowly towards Bomoor and Amare. However, even though his clothing and weapon had been returned to him, he still bore the wounds of his trials from the Siege of Trayset, and the mark of the Sith was still scarred into his forehead. It gave him a uniquely grim esoteric appearance, not unlike Thane's own descriptions of Axion and his various cultists.

Hazzarah, as before, made no show of noticing Thane, and instead remained standing tall, warhammer perched at an angle beside him upon the eternal immaculate floor.

Amare had ran to Bomoor's side to help him up, "Are you okay?" she asked the Ithorian with deep concern. She was relieved she didn't have to fight a futile battle against the old Sith king. Hazzarah might have been Sith by blood, but he predated the Sith Code, and Amare hated him for being the one who acted as the chains that bound them in the Mind Trap. When Thane appeared, she almost lost control of herself with every joyous desire to go run and throw her arms around him, but she instead calmly held her ground and respectfully bowed her head to him. "Thank the Force you're well, master," she said to him, her expression blank, masking her elation. She made a mental note to ask about his strange mark later. Right now, all that mattered was the king keeping his word and letting them go.

Thane inclined his head slightly in response to his apprentice's bow, but his grim and tired expression gave little otherwise back to her. His features did little but mirror Hazzarah's own, especially as his eyes properly locked upon the towering Sith forebear.

Bomoor felt some strength returning as the horrors of the Builder war were washed away with the return of the endless white landscape that now surrounded them. When he had been unconscious, he thought he had seen a vision of his mother. He drew some strength from this, feeling he was not so far lost, even in this place.

The Ithorian nodded some reassurance towards Coda and rose up as Thane drew beside him, “I am not certain there was ever a true criteria to succeeding in this place,” he suggested to the dark-skinned Sith, “But you have observed how our actions have changed this reality. Tell us, do you believe we are not worthy to return to our bodies? Are you ready to pass judgement on our souls?”

"The worth of your souls was never in question," the burly warrior boomed, still calm. "If they were, I wonder at what value would be attributed to them - especially you, Bomoor of Öetrago, Destroyer of the Rakata, Tyrant of Trayset."

Thane cast a glance aside to his old friend, the Ithorian's unease palpable and plain for his fellow former Jedi to see. Years of companionship and trials had made the older man's quieter feelings more obvious to the Human, a rare trait when observing Ithorians, and he would have easily detected Bomoor's upset, even without their recently-forged Force bond.

While he was in pain, the Ithorian straightened up to face Hazzarah, taking in the strength of his companions around him and in his vision through the Force, “The price of peace,” he stated back the words, now somewhat proud of the statement.

"What actually happened to Trayset?" Thane asked King Hazzarah, his knowledge limited to the fact the Pureblood clearly survived and was successful enough for Adas the Ax to evict the invaders from Korriban, which, in turn, probably led to the right environment being fostered on the world for the eventual rise of the Dark Lords. A part of him now wondered if he should consider the Bastard Hammer a genuine precursor.

"Irrelevant," the Sith King answered, shifting his weight and his warhammer without confirming whether he had any true recollection of the real Siege of Trayset. And, again, his expression betrayed nothing of the ebony warlord's true feelings. "But your companion is correct: there was, perhaps, no true criteria to 'succeeding', as his worldly mind assessed. There was only my observation of your actions within my realm, presented with the trials of an age forgotten. It seems, however, that in my formless ages within the Mind Prison, the galaxy beyond is not such a changed place. It is as I have ever feared and seen these millennia: the Great Cycle ever turns."

“The nature of life does not change,” Bomoor responded, thinking on this ‘Great Cycle’ Hazzarah described, “Even millennia apart, we are still pulled by the same drives, still are connected by the same Force. Perhaps we are doomed to repeat ourselves by design. But what does that mean for you? Do you no longer wish to see the world outside if you have seen it all before?”

Amare held her tongue in check with the hope of this tiresome philosophic attempt at diplomacy would produce a positive outcome, but she wasn't counting on it. In her seething contemplation, her frustration with being trapped in another cage against her will gave her nothing but the desire to tear Hazzarah, her jailor, to simulated atoms. The ancient Sith was acting as if he was the god of this made-up realm, yet he too was a prisoner... or was he? Surely the same rules applied to all inmates in the prison, but what if Hazzarah was in fact the prison itself, like the gatekeeper of a holocron?

She started to panic.

What if there was indeed no way out? What if there was nothing they could do to force their way back outside? Her rising fear was making old traumas feel fresh again. She felt so powerless. She swore to never let herself be in that position again, and yet here she was, once more at someone's mercy.

Always at their mercy.

She gripped her shoto hard, her tightening knuckles showing ivory white under her cerulean blue skin, on the verge of igniting the blade and charging the Sith brute like a wild animal.

"Meaning." Hazzarah uttered the word in a contemplative fashion, partly echoed from Bomoor's question, although, as with Thane, the huge man made no attempt to answer it. Instead, after taking a few indulgent seconds to consider his own thoughts, his muscled neck twisted so that he faced Amare directly. "Little one, who rejected power and glory in favour of loyalty: what meaning do you seek beyond the prison?"

The question was a fair one, and it was disarming as it gave Amare pause and reason to ease her tension, but only barely.

"Justice," she answered reflexively. She wasn't surprised to learn the red king had witnessed her actions with the Sith sisters. "I was put in a cage as a child, then I broke my chains, and now get forced back into this...another damn cage! You have no idea how bad I want power to take my revenge on what happened to me and family, but I trust Thane and Bomoor with my life. They saved me, tested me, gave me weapons and knowledge and a purpose. I will help them do what must be done out there, and I will claim power, but on my terms. If I have to fight you and bring this whole fantasy world down on your head to be free--to do as your people did to destroy those invaders--then may the Force help me see it done."

The tension returned as quickly as it had relaxed. She ignited her shoto, shifted herself into a basic battle-ready Shii-Cho position, and tightened her face into a harsh and malicious gaze to make her point clear. If Serus said "kill", then she would not hesitate. Even though Hazzarah held all the power and the cards in his private little domain, she was prepared to go down fighting. Indeed, there was far more fear than rage rippling through each of her hearts, but she was fed up and tired and was on the verge of a wild mad homicidal frenzy. She hoped she still had enough in her for one last battle; she had enough of Korriban to last her a lifetime. All she wanted was to get back to her body, see the Red Raptor once more, and crash in her quarters for ten hours straight. The pursuit of power could wait later.

A long-fingered hand rose gently before her, placing a divide between Amare and Hazzarah. Bomoor did not turn to face the Nautolan woman, who was clearly so much stronger but nonetheless, somewhat unfocused in her drives. He did, however, show no malice as he spoke.

“You have forced us to look deep into our hearts,” he admitted, “And I think that all of us must admit to ourselves that we do seek more strength, more power, so that we may come to change some of the wrongs we see in our world, just like we all sought to correct the wrongs we saw in the world of your time. The meaning we seek to find is in our shared purpose and shared vision for a galaxy that breaks the chains of your past and our own, if such a thing is possible.”

Thane had watched and listened intently as his companions engaged with King Hazzarah, cold blue-and-gold eyes shifting discretely from one to the other. He had been buoyed by his apprentice's declarations of fealty and apparent show of loyalty during her own ordeals within the Mind Prison, even if she had again overstepped in her frustrations towards their host. Admittedly, his own patience was wearing thin, but pragmatism still ruled the day in his mind.

Knowing Bomoor now also had some greater awareness of his Sith aspirations, he wondered how much onus of responsibility the Ithorian would place on him for Amare's developing character. Bería was a failure that Thane had taken into himself; Zaracoda Wolph would be something quite different, should Bomoor so deduce his friend had warped the young girl into something twisted.

It was yet another conversation for when they were free of this torment.

"If history is to be believed, Your Majesty, those who accept the realities of the Force's true and innate powers have sought dominance over the meagre and egalitarian on countless occasions, felled though they nearly always are by the combined might of their detractors - or their own hubris." Thane took a step towards Hazzarah, his tone calm. "I do not expect you to look upon us and think us any different from any self-declared visionaries that you have encountered before - we are but more of the same, no doubt - but we do have a shared purpose, as Bomoor said; we do have a design for our world, and for ourselves. We do not intend ourselves to be pawns for the greedy and surreptitious to dispose of or revenge themselves upon."

With each of the gathered captors having spoken their peace, Hazzarah shifted his considerable bulk once more, the metal of his heavy armour grinding with the slow movement, even if the fact it was all an affectation of the Mind Prison was still not lost upon the observers. For the first time, recognition seemed to cross the ancient Pureblood's face, although he elected not to respond to the trio's speeches.

"Why did you come to my world?" He asked them. "You are no mere historians, nor do you reek of the dusty tomes oft-loved by grave robbers and hunters of trinkets. You seek power, as you say."

Thane saw no harm in speaking more truth to their captive audience. "Your world has been claimed by many who name themselves Sith in the millennia since the Siege of Trayset, many of whom were deeply-gifted in many dark powers and knowledge. We are pursuing the kaiburr shards - remarkable jewels imbued with the power to make even the faintest of apprentices the most gifted of warlocks."

The Caanan's eyes fell upon the crimson stone glimmering within the ornate metalwork of Hazzarah's warhammer, the aspirant Sith Lord wondering at whether the facsimile had a real-world counterpart after all this time, somehow protected in the aeons since Hazzarah's body-death.

"It is ancient, with many splinters and cousins born from the same crystal growth, or we have read," Thane added, not concealing his intention from Hazzarah. For a time, whilst facing the Fabricants and the Infernal Engine, he had lost sight of this remarkable boon their quest. It was his hope that the obvious request did not impede their hope of escape from the Mind Prison.

Hazzarah twisted his warhammer within his gauntlets, the false and endless white light of the Mind Prison causing red beams of ethereal light to refract from the gleaming gem across Amare, Thane and Bomoor. In some ways, it seemed almost as though it was the first time the Bastard Hammer had even noticed the existence of the gargantuan stone lodged within his fabled and mighty weapon, perhaps having lost sight of its importance in his years of captivity. Or, worse, he simply considered it a mystical bauble of minor curiosity.

Both could work to their favour, Thane mused.

And then, without any comment, Hazzarah smashed his huge fist into the receptacle of the warhammer and grasped the jewel within, tearing it out with an almighty wrenching motion that caused the weapon to fall apart around it. Several previously-perfect and connected bits of exotic metal fell about the pure-white floor, scattering about Hazzarah's feet, its owner disinterested in the remnants. He held the stone up high within his closed fist.

"The Heart of Typhojem," he boomed. "A badge of my office, seized from the hellfires of the Eternal Pyre, born from the core of Korriban." His glimmering eyes turned to his prisoners. "Its worth was not known to those that brought me here. None before you have asked. It remains."

Amare's jaw hung slightly agape at the sight of the Heart, struck deeply in awe and fascination at the glow. The light emanating through the gaps between Hazzarah's clenched fingers reached her eyes and caused a cold rush along the length of her spine. Her attack posture slackened, and she extinguished her shoto just as she let it fall from her grasp. Her legs started to buckle as she felt a strange, almost overwhelming compulsion to bend the knee to the king. She looked down, and saw her left hand trembling involuntarily, and the tips of her fingers alight, their colour matching the Heart almost perfectly.

Looking back up at the mighty relic, she fell to her knees in near-supplication to the ancient king of the Sith, her willpower breaking under the raw unbridled resonance of the kaiburr shard. Not even her merging with Darth Archonus' azoth experiment had weighed so heavily on her senses. The shard was so beautiful to her, and it made her feel vulnerable and subservient in its naked presence, yet also triggered an almost vampiric hunger deep in her soul to thoroughly engorge upon its essence. She held the palms of her hands up to her face, almost appearing as if she were crying when in fact nausea was overwhelming her as the trembling in her left hand continued to worsen.

A conflict had been triggered in her mind; the part of her that was Zaracoda had sensed the shard and attempted to reassert herself to hold back the desire for power and remember her original mission: seek out and rescue her brother. Amare inwardly pushed back, insisting that the shard was the answer to all her problems. The raw power...yes, more power...a step closer to avenging the Wolphs. All the slavers and their sponsors...she could kill them, slay their lackeys...their spouses...orphan all their children. She would rebuild the Sith, elevate her Lord Serus to power...remove all obstacles including certain friends that dared stand between master and apprentice.

Serus is my master...he is MINE! she thought with mindless, yet deeply covert fury as she fell to her hands on the perfectly white floor. She knew with whom her wrath and envy was directed at, but she consciously refused to acknowledge it fully. Zaracoda, buried deep within, was horrified at the prospect of such a betrayal.

Bomoor was shocked too, to realise that the jewel was, in fact, the very shard they had been hunting. It seemed that the Force had indeed meant for them to enter this place; had the ghost of Darth Nihl been simply a thrall to the whims of the Force?

Looking over at Thane, he lowered his arm, while still appearing guarded. Only the Ithorian had held the first Kaiburr shard they had obtained on Jericho; the crystal’s power had been magnificent and terrifying, even when just a splinter of the full jewel. Axion’s cultists and Zrad’s Mandalorians had been mere insects in his presence. He wondered if his friend was tempted to snatch up that same power now, even though he had held off before.

“You would simply give us the shard?” he now asked of Hazzarah, “Is it not a legacy of your people?”

"A mummer's rock," Hazzarah said dismissively. As quickly as he had produced the crystal from the warhammer, he crushed it in his fist, and it shattered into thousands of tiny shards, exploding in all directions and raining down as tiny particles all about them.

Thane's eyes widened. Instinctively, he had stepped forward in what was almost a vain effort to save the jewel from Hazzarah's act of madness but, despite the aura the artefact had exerted on the world around it, he had known that, like all other things in this prism prison, it was but another facsimile - a pale imitation of whatever truth had once existed.

"But a legacy of the Sith it is," the king continued. For the first time since they had seen him, he was without a weapon, not that it especially made him any less imposing a figure. "My people are gone, their name sullied and brandished by fools and magicians of low worth and even less mettle." He paused, and he looked first to Amare and then to Thane. "But, it seems something of what we were endures, in some measure." Hazzarah's bulk heaved with a deep breath, an affectation they had not really seen from him before, being almost a glimpse of some tiredness. "My bones are dust, my kin are ash. Trayset and the other cities are but words on ancient winds, forgotten to time - save the three of you, in a manner."

Hazzarah flexed his hand in a purposeful motion, and three bodies appeared arrayed on the floor between him and the trio, as well as several other familiar objects that appeared neatly positioned upon the otherworldly white surface of the Prison. The bodies were, of course, Thane, Bomoor and Amare's, still but breathing. The objects around them - including a representation of the Mind Prison itself - were positioned just as they had been in the laboratory the Raptor crew had found Hazzarah's Builder tomb.

"Never have I set eyes upon the same face twice, since the betrayal of my kin," Hazzarah continued, contemplatively, his gaze cast down upon the unconscious forms of the three aliens stood before him, their visages immaculate compared to their battered physical forms. "Na-hah ur su ka-haat. Su ka haru aat."

With no further comment from any of them, Hazzarah slammed his hands together in an almighty clap, and the world dissolved.

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