The Withering Bough, Part Two
Posted on Fri May 30th, 2025 @ 9:10pm by Thane
3,556 words; about a 18 minute read
Chapter:
Chapter VII: Uprooted
Location: Red Raptor, Strategy Room, Irrikut
Timeline: Week One, Two days after the incident on Öetrago
OLD
Thane remained still for several moments after the holocomm connection faded, the residual glow of the projector retreating into its housing with a soft chime. The lights rose automatically in response, but he did not move. He stood in the now-empty chamber, staring into the space where Bruta's image had been—his thoughts unmoving, yet far from still.
There was something final about the old Ithorian’s words. A torch passed, a mantle acknowledged. Thane of Caanus, he had called him. Spoken not in jest, nor in suspicion, but with respect. That was not a small thing.
And yet, the promise Thane had made—to Bruta, to himself—still rang hollow without the clarity of truth. He turned on his heel and left the room.
NEW
As he entered the medbay, Thane was instantly greeted with his own apprentice snapping up to him from a stool at Bomoor's bedside, igniting a golden lightsaber in one hand dangerously pointing at her master, and a green shoto in the other ready to intercept an attack on the unconscious Ithorian. Her expression was stone-faced, detached even, as if she were operating completely on instinct.
Amare blinked and shook her head when she recognized Thane and quickly disabled her weapons and lowered her guard.
"I...m-my apologies, master," she stammered in shame, putting a hand to her forehead to rub at her glistening blue cranium, her head deep in a fog of fatigue, poorly rested, and in pain. "I've, um..." she sighed, clearly restless and on edge, "...I haven't slept since Öetrago. I've been...jumpy."
Thane did not flinch at the drawn blades. He simply watched her—measured, silent—until they were extinguished, and the charged hum of danger faded back into silence.
He stepped further into the room, the threshold hissing shut behind him with a soft mechanical sigh. The medbay was dimly lit, a deliberate choice Useless had made after consulting old Republic medical records and environmental studies—its tone a soft ochre warmth, allegedly better for long-term patient recovery. More than that, it was one of the few environmental controls the holographic medic could still manipulate with consistency. It made the space feel almost tranquil.
His eyes shifted from Amare to the figure in the bed. Bomoor lay still, framed by the steady rhythm of vital signs blinking across the monitor. The Ithorian’s massive frame seemed smaller here, cocooned in quiet and shadow. A warrior at rest—or perhaps, at war within.
Thane remained still for a time, gazing at his old friend. A dozen conversations flickered across his thoughts—memories of debate, of laughter, of silence. And then, of power. The kind that changed a man.
“You should have rested,” Thane said at last, his voice low but clear. “I did not ask you to stand vigil.” He stepped closer to the bed, internally considering that there was no need to admonish the Nautolan for her gesture or desire to stand guard. “I know what Öetrago took from him,” he continued, unnaturally glinting eyes never leaving Bomoor, their gleam almost carrying the point in that moment. “And I know what it demanded of him in return.”
The nascent Sith Lord’s breath lingered a moment longer as he watched the gentle rise and fall of Bomoor’s chest. He fought for her... And yet, it had not been enough.
“I have spoken with his father. Bruta stands with us now. A further foundation, perhaps, for something greater.” He looked back to Amare, the faint glow of the medbay casting a muted sheen across her paling features. She looked tired, but more than that—uncertain. Guarded, even with her weapons sheathed. Thane studied her in silence. She has not asked. But, surely, she wonders.
He thought then of the Telos Holocron—of the voice of Darth Plagueis, precise and demanding, offering doctrine not as rule but as inquiry. He could not allow her to guess. He has to guide her, to shape her understanding—or she would be shaped by something else.
He spoke again, softer now, but no less certain. "There are things you must understand,” he said. “About what happened to Bomoor. About what he... What he chose, perhaps. And what that means for all of us.”
Whilst they had discussed the nature of the dark side and their respective understandings of it, having come from such contrasting places, it has, perhaps, never been promised as a topic in such a personal manner. He would need to address this not just as a self-appointed master, but as someone who walked close to that same edge, out of purpose and choice. He could not afford to let her fill in the blanks on her own.
Bomoor had not chosen the dark side. Not in the way he had, at least. His descent had not come from fully-informed conviction, nor, wholly, through a philosophical awakening, but grief. Grief that had become a furnace that melted patience and ideals alike, until all that remained was raw instinct. A surge of feeling, rather than a stance.
He had fallen. Thane had felt it in the Force. It was not a declaration, but a scream, and that, he knew, was what Amare would need to understand, and deserved to understand.
She had seen enough of the dark side in her own life and apprenticeship to form assumptions—too many, in fact. If he allowed her to fill the void on her own, she might decide Bomoor was weak, or treacherous, or worse... righteous. Any of those would lead her down paths Thane could not easily control nor countenance in his vision as the new Sith. That was the lesson of Plagueis, to not let the unknown ferment, but to inform it. Shape it.
Bomoor’s fall would not be mythologised—it would be explained.
"I have felt what I think you're about to say," Amare said somberly. "Darkness is surely upon him. I hear echoes of his mother's voice calling out to him. Perhaps from his dreams, or perhaps it her spirit, I don't know. The dead have a tendency to follow me wherever I go lately."
She gently placed a hand on Bomoor's shoulder, an almost compassionate gesture, and not within the bounds of the Sith ethos. There was, however, a devious underlying intent with the seemingly kind gesture.
"Master, you need to know that I have tried to channel my power to heal him," she confessed. "I failed. On Vaa, I did something that still defies explanation to this day. Not even the holocrons could answer it. I laid hands on you in that cave and the Force worked through me. I was scared, I was locked in terror...for you. I didn't do anything special, I just wanted you to be strong again, and it happened. A wish made, a wish fulfilled. It was on that day I learned we had in our hands the power to save those we cared for...from death. And yet, here is Bomoor, lying in anguish, and my powers refuse to do as I wish. The dark side...it resists me. It taunts me. I'm supposed to be in control of the Force, not submit to its whims. It gave me a power one day, then took it away from me..."
She withdrew her hand from Bomoor and clenched it into a fist. The hand became aglow with crimson light and filled with dark potency, and then she unfurled her fingers, and the visible red flame of corrupted Force energy rose from her palm. "...And then it gave me this. I can no longer give to others...I can only take. It does not wish me to be kind, only to be selfish. Is that what will become of Bomoor? To forever walk in darkness as we do? Are we prepared to become a Rule of Three?"
Thane remained silent for a moment as the crimson flame of Amare’s conjured power flickered, then died, curling back into her palm like a breath withheld. The Force around them was still restless—no longer violent, but unsettled, as if it too were waiting for clarity. He stepped toward her—not hastily, but with deliberate calm—and let his eyes pass briefly to Bomoor before settling on the faint shimmer that lingered where her hands had flared with power.
“You were right to try,” he said, "but healing is not of the dark side.” He said it without condemnation, only clarity, like stating a natural law. “That power, when it manifests, does not emerge from control or dominance. It does not answer to the hunger we draw upon in battle. It arises from a harmony with the Force that we no longer live in.”
He gestured, subtly, to his own golden eyes—the faintest nod of the head, a quiet admission of the change already written in his own face, before continuing. “And now that Bomoor too has begun to slip into that same current, the Force resists. His body lives, but his spirit has been scorched. The dark side does not lend itself to restoration, not in the way we might have understood before. It rewards ambition. It answers pain with strength, but it exacts a toll. Always.”
Thane turned fully to Bomoor then, gazing down at the unconscious Ithorian. “He is changed. That much is clear. But not like us—not yet. He has not, for instance, taken up a title, or forged a new philosophy yet. He is not building, for he is still breaking.”
There was no disappointment in Thane’s voice—only observation, and a trace of something quieter. Something like regret. “What happened to him was not weakness. It was not cowardice. But I do not think it was choice, either—not fully. It was survival. It was grief. The kind that tears through certainty and leaves something raw in its place.”
He folded his hands loosely before him, his voice softening as it lowered, inwardly thinking of his own grief from childhood, although it was not this that had compelled him to embrace darkness, lest he traced this back in some way - but that was a consideration for another time.
“He may be more Sith now than either of us realise, but not because he sought it, and not because that is the identity he would choose for himself. But because the Force, in its way, has driven him here, and what comes next is not redemption, or punishment. It is adaptation—evolution.”
Thane glanced at Amare again, the sharp edge of command absent from his tone now. “He has not found strength through this fall—yet. He has found only consequence. But there is strength to be found, if he can learn to shape it. We must neither fear what he may become, nor criticise what he is now or what he was or may have been.”
He looked once more at Bomoor, his brow faintly furrowed. “Our task is to help him grow into this new reality. Not to mourn what he was, nor force him to be something else. He must choose what he now wishes to carve this into, and that will take time.” He straightened, just slightly. "He has a place with us. Whatever shape that takes, and whatever names or creeds we claim to follow." Looking back to his apprentice, he knew he was perhaps talking too much, either because of a desire to inform Amare's understanding as best he could now, or because of his own concerns for his old friend, and he let his gaze linger on the Ithorian once again.
He could not sense exactly in the way Amare could, for there were no whispers of the dead that he could hear, but he felt the torrent within Bomoor, so alien from his usual presence. He was still unmistakably Bomoor, but never as Thane had known him.
As Amare's morose amphibian brain processed Thane's teachings, she stepped away slowly from the bedside, her back to her master, and she gazed at the Caanan prince with one eye over her bare blue shoulder.
"Come what may, then," she said softly to Thane, and turned herself to face him properly and respectfully. "I offer you, in return, wisdom of the Sith." She stepped a bit closer to him, close enough to be easily within reach of his lightsaber, more than enough to take in the olfactory natural musk of the man and how his presence stirred conflicting feelings within her on a daily basis.
"For all of our chains that we struggle to break," she began, "there are two no Sith has ever beaten: place and time. The Force always puts us in a place..." she gestured and glanced to the unconscious Bomoor, "...and gives us so little time."
She began to slowly pace around the bed.
"Your species can live well for as much as eighty, ninety, even a hundred years or longer with medicine and implants, but mine..." she continued, "...sixty to seventy at best. Time is the greatest thief, and it robs us from being with those we love and from fulfilling our ambitions."
She walked up to the bacta tank near and behind the bed and placed her hand on it, dwelling on how she used her power and felt reborn in there once after Thane had nearly shattered her bones to dust on Yavin IV.
"You and the holocrons tell me to crave your power for its own sake, to take it, drink it all in, to fill our chalice with the poison of darkness, then tell our apprentices to rinse and repeat," she added.
Amare slowly and thoughtfully moved back towards Thane.
"I beg you to mindful and see beyond the past. Knowing that if Bomoor is to form a sort of...triad with us, we must learn to put our minds together and learn how to rise beyond place and time. I do not wish to be part of a never-ending cycle, master...I want to ascend beyond it. I no longer wish to face death or fear it, I wish to be the hands of life and death themselves, to have the power to judge and to take and give life to those I deem worthy. To heal and to burn. To restore and to prune."
And then her tone became one not of musings or selfish declarations, but of deep reverence.
"Is that not what you wish? To control destiny itself? To be more than a man with a lightsaber on an old rusting starship, but to control place and time? To be supreme? To be sovereign? I feel it within you, my master. I have seen it in my nightmares. I am Sith because I fight beside the one man who can summon the future, and make the galaxy his to own and guide forever. It is only for me, and now Bomoor, to serve your will, as it should be, for all time. Not as slaves, but as those willing to be your hands, to bring order as we saw on Bastion. To fill a throne that is empty."
On the medical bed, Bomoor groaned slightly, his four mouths emitting a low, asynchronous melody as he shifted his neck uncomfortably. His eyes scrunched up slightly before relaxing and he returned to a more restful state.
Thane did not respond immediately, briefly distracted by his friend's motion. His gaze moved back and held the Nautolan's, but his silence was not cold—it was contemplative. Measured. The words she had spoken, though wrapped in reverence, struck closer to truth than he would have liked to admit. Not because they were wrong, but because they reflected a future he had never fully dared to name before, not truly.
“You are not mistaken,” the nascent Sith Lord said at last, his voice low but unwavering. “Not anymore.”
He stepped past the bed, slow and deliberate, as if he too needed to move to collect his thoughts. He no longer looked at Amare as merely his apprentice, nor at Bomoor as the wounded comrade he had once fought beside in the name of the Jedi. Those identities had faded, and something else was forming.
“This was never meant to be a crusade. I told myself that. We were chasing shadows, cleaning rot from corners the galaxy had chosen to ignore. The Jedi failed. The Republic wavered. And still... I had not intended to become what I am becoming, not at first.”
He drew a breath through his nose, slow, steady. “But now the pieces are falling into place. Not by accident. The Reborn Jedi grow stagnant. The Cult lashes out in desperation. The Republic fractures daily, its spine hollow. And we—us three—we have survived every attempt to break us. Grown stronger with every test.”
He met her gaze again. “Yes, I see it now, I wholly admit. What you saw... The power we hold. The structure we can forge! This is not the Rule of Two, or whatever empty title we may cling to. This is not even the Sith as they were. That was doctrine—useful once, but brittle now, fragile in this new age we are fumbling within. What we are... what we could become... it must be more.”
Thane's hand gestured faintly, encompassing the room, the sleeping Bomoor, and the young woman before him. “Together, we reshape not just the Sith, but the very idea of what it means to lead, to command, to create order from decay. No more crawling through ruins. No more feeding from the bones of empires long dead.” He paused again, voice softening. "You are right to speak of time. I cannot deny, yours may be shorter, but what we build must outlast any one of us. It is not only my legacy that will matter, but how we define succession itself. That responsibility will not fall to me alone. It must be shared, as the burden of shaping the galaxy will be shared, aligned though it may be behind my vision, for now, as master." He looked meaningfully again to Bomoor, determination supplanting the mild sadness that had creased the pale skin around his golden eyes before. “He is part of this, whether he accepts it or not. And so are you.”
Then back to her, and now there was steel in his voice once more.
“But first... the Cult must fall. Axion must fall.”
His expression darkened, but not with fury—rather with the precision of a blade being drawn. “They will grow desperate now, as I feel they did on Öetrago, so personal was the event. They will lash out not only at institutions or enclaves they fear align with us, but at us personally and directly. They will come for what we care about, and they may even try to divide us. That is how this ends for them—not in power, but in vengeance.” He now stepped closer, his voice lowering just enough to draw her in. “We will give them no peace. No sanctuary. Not until the last of them has been silenced. Then, and only then, do we build. I commit this to you, Lady Amare, my apprentice." He now glanced back to Bomoor. "The Sith shall rise again, in majesty, and this galaxy will fall before our supremacy."
"It shall be as you say, my master," Amare in reverence to the dark prince's royal declaration, head bowed, her hearts fluttering with elation that her encouragement helped set the course of their destinies.
She had tried to nudge and guide his ambitions before but wasn't successful...that is until now. It was a moment for the ages, even though there were only three in the room to hear the proclamation. She knew even in unconsciousness, Bomoor's brain could hear and process Thane's vocalized stab at fate itself, if not through his auditory sense, then most definitely through the Force that bonded him to Thane.
"I yearn to make the Cult pay for what they've done," she added with dark icy enthusiasm. "The hunt will serve as a good breaking-in for my new lightsaber."
Thane gave a single, deliberate nod. It more than approval, but not quite celebration. The moment was too heavy for exultation. None of this had been a victory speech; it was no coronation. It was a statement of intent, witnessed by each of them, even Bomoor in his pained slumber. Thane then turned slightly, just enough to take them both in, with Amare standing upright in her fervour, and his friend cocooned in shadow, a man whose body slept while his soul continued to howl through the currents of the Force, through Thane's very being via their connection. He did nothing to quell the bond in that moment, allowing Bomoor's unspoken agony to spread through him, miserable and intoxicating at once.
"Then let it end," Thane finally said, momentarily catching a glimpse of his distorted reflection on the nearby cabinet, his gleaming eyes warping on the shining surface. He looked back to Amare, expression heavy with meaning. "Axion's death will be the prologue to the new age."
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