One Path, Two Wills

Posted on Tue May 6th, 2025 @ 4:01pm by Thane

918 words; about a 5 minute read

Chapter: Chapter VII: Uprooted
Location: Thane's Cabin, Red Raptor
Timeline: Flight from Öetrago, After "To Ashes"

The hum of the holocron filled the chamber like a heartbeat—low, steady, and red. A crimson pulse radiated from the crystalline matrix resting at the room’s centre, casting its glow in rhythmic waves across the dark walls of Thane’s private quarters. He stepped inside, cloaked in silence, the door hissing shut behind him. For a long moment, he regarded the artifact coolly, unmoving. Then, with a subtle gesture, he activated it.

A shimmer of energy flared to life, coalescing into the towering projection of Darth Bane. The ancient Sith Lord’s gatekeeper stood with arms crossed over orbalisk-plated armor, his eyes glowing with sharp intensity—calculating, unblinking.

“You come heavy with consequence, Serus. Something has shifted,” Bane said, his voice resonant and ironclad.

Thane lowered himself to one knee before the spectral figure, the holographic presence of his chosen master in the dark side. Though a facsimile, the reverence was real. Here knelt not a wayward student, but a supplicant before the progenitor of the Sith Lords' great design.

“Voq is dead,” Thane said solemnly. “Bomoor killed him. The dark side… consumed him, born of his grief. I felt it. Lived it, through our bond.”

He paused. The words came slowly now—considered. Years before, and until recently, he might have turned to his Jedi Master for wisdom. Sotah would have listened with calm patience, offered guidance cloaked in compassion. But Darth Bane was not Sotah. He would not offer comfort. And Thane, now Lord Serus, no longer sought it.

“It was justice,” he said at last, his head still bowed. “But not peace.”

Bane did not answer at first. He tilted his head slightly, curious—measuring his pupil. Then, with the faintest flick of a hand, he gestured for Thane to rise.

Thane stood, hands behind his back, his brow furrowed as he began to pace—controlled, thoughtful, as one lost not to grief but to the implications of what had passed.

“I saw it coming, Master,” he confessed. “I’ve seen it in him for months—the shadow, the heat. And I never asked him to stop. I never gave him the choice.”

He looked up into the burning red eyes of the Sith Lord’s avatar, now towering with an aura of dominion. The words came harder now.

“He followed me down a path that I chose, and I never truly let him choose it for himself. That’s not strength. It’s not leadership. That’s influence. Manipulation.”

He faltered, the final word catching bitterly in his mouth. Was it ‘fair’? Was it ‘right’? Words with no purchase in Sith philosophy.

The gatekeeper took a single step forward within the flickering projection field. The illusion was accompanied by the generated sound of heavy footfalls—hollow, deliberate—designed to impress.

“Do you mourn his fall,” Bane asked, “or your part in it?”

Thane’s jaw tightened. His response was low, and steady.

“I mourn that I didn’t give him the clarity I demanded for myself. I questioned. I chose the dark. He reacted. He bled for loss—and now he walks in it without direction.”

The ancient Sith almost smiled, his voice smooth as velvet pulled taut over barbed steel.

“Do not confuse influence with domination. You did not bind him, Serus. You offered proximity. That is all. The fault, if you must assign one, lies not in the path—but in the lie you believed; that friendship means withholding truth." Bane paused for the briefest of moments. "You did lead him. Now own that, and finish what you started.”

Thane looked down at his right hand—mechanised fingers now twitching subtly. This was the same hand he had once used to lift Bomoor up from fear, through their many adventures, through their trials and challenges. The same hand crushed by Bomoor himself in the throes of rage. No blame had ever been given, yet the memory still festered. The tremor ran deeper than muscle or machine—uncertainty, guilt, or perhaps a darker rot blooming beneath the surface.

“If I claim responsibility for his path,” he murmured, “does that make him mine to command? Or to protect?”

Bane’s tone sharpened like a blade drawn from its sheath. “It makes him yours to shape—or discard,” he replied. “There are no equals among the Sith, Serus. That lie birthed centuries of betrayal. Of empires gnawed to death from within... He can be your tool. Your shadow. If he proves worthy, your apprentice, perhaps. But a brother?”

The image leaned in closer now, menace thick behind the coral helmet that obscured Bane’s tattooed features.

“Sentiment. Poison. If you will not rule him, you will lose him.”

The chamber darkened further, as if the holocron were drawing in the ambient light around them. Only Bane’s crimson projection remained, now towering, monolithic—his voice a decree echoing through time.

“One to embody power. One to crave it. Anything more is heresy.”

Thane stood still beneath the looming projection, unmoved yet deeply stirred. His face was expressionless, save for a narrowing of the eyes. When he spoke again, his voice was quiet—not submissive, but measured.

“I do not crave mastery of tools. I want him to walk his path, not be chained to mine.”

The gatekeeper replied without pause, his certainty absolute.

“Then you are not ready to lead. He will leave you—or he will be taken from you... by someone who is.”

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