Doctrinaire
Posted on Sat Apr 18th, 2026 @ 10:37am by Nala Sao & Amare
4,156 words; about a 21 minute read
Chapter:
Chapter IX: The First Verse
Location: Unknown, Cult of Axion Enclave
Timeline: Unclear - after Sleheyron
She fancied herself the hunter;
She was the prey.
Wrath gave her focus;
It made her a fool.
Power gave her the illusion of supremacy;
Weakness was her truth.
Submission to a prince was merely the preamble;
Devotion to a god struck the first verse...
Long ago in the era of the Old Republic, a wise Sith woman once said to a fallen Jedi Master, "It is such a quiet thing, to fall. But far more terrible is to admit it."
For the better part of a year, Zaracoda Wolph had believed she was on the path to greatness. When she proved her potential, she was exposed to the ways of the ancient Sith masters that had commanded the powers of the dark side of the Force far beyond the capabilities of any other throughout the galaxy.
The Force, however, had evolved, the venom of the darkness grew in potency through the ambitions and talents of others that seized and wielded the grand legacy of the Sith Lords.
Thane had taken on the mantle of the new Dark Lord...he burned.
Bomoor Thort had walked with Thane into darkness as his bonded brother...he failed.
Amare faithfully trusted them both and blindly thought she had the power and knowledge to prevail and surpass all others...she was wrong.
Thane had been quieter on the walk up through the higher reaches of the enclave, though it was not the cold and distant quiet Coda had first come to know aboard the Red Raptor. Here, it seemed to belong to the place itself.
He moved ahead of her with an easy familiarity that made even the ruined old paths and weathered stone seem somehow ordered beneath his feet, one gloved hand occasionally brushing moss-dark walls or the trunks of the great trees as if reassuring himself that Irrikut was still as he remembered it. The jungle light reached them in shifting bands through the high canopy, catching now and then against the black and grey of his robes and the pale line of his face. Without the harsher set of his darker garments and without the strain that so often seemed to live around his mouth and eyes, he looked younger here. Not soft, but fresher faced; his skin clean and pale in the Caanan way, his eyes more plainly blue than gold in this gentler light.
When they finally emerged onto the high platform, Coda saw his whole posture alter. Some of the tension she had grown used to reading in him loosened by degrees, not disappearing so much as settling into the background. He drew in a slow breath through his nose and looked out over the trees and the open air beyond, saying nothing for a few moments. The wind moved lightly here, warm and damp and alive with the scent of leaves and old stone, and she thought he looked almost content in it. Then his gaze shifted toward the five great boulders waiting in their old places, and something more difficult passed briefly behind his eyes - not fear, not sorrow exactly, but the shape of a memory he did not much care to touch.
"I was here not long ago," he said at last, a name almost spoken absently. "She found the whole thing deeply offensive... mostly because the stones refused to indulge her." A faint curve threatened at one corner of his mouth as he looked at Coda, as if he was ready to say something complimentary - but the thought fell away again.
He stepped away from the edge and towards the stones, his boots making little sound against the old platform. Coda watched as he slowed near the first of them and set a hand against its worn surface, not theatrically, not as if he needed to, but with the ease of someone greeting an old adversary whose habits he respected.
"These are called the Muntuur stones," he said, glancing back to her over his shoulder. "Or so I was told, years ago. A favoured exercise among the Jedi. Which should not, in itself, recommend them to either of us." There was a dryness to that, though not bitterness. He turned then and faced her properly, folding his arms with the patient severity that always made her feel as though he had already anticipated her first three mistakes and decided to permit two of them. "But some things survive their teachers. This is one of them."
His eyes moved over her, measuring not her appearance so much as her state - where the strain sat in her shoulders, how quickly she was breathing after the climb, where her attention drifted and returned. It was the look he often gave before correcting her, but this time there was less edge in it.
"The point is not merely to move them," he went on. "If brute exertion alone were enough, one could bring a cargo lifter and call oneself enlightened. The stones are useful because they reveal where the mind lies to itself, whether you divide the world too sharply into what is possible and impossible, of whether you panic before you begin... Whether you reach too greedily, or else hesitate at the instant conviction is required." He paused, then added more quietly, "And whether you trust what the Force is already showing you."
Coda had noticed by now that when he spoke like this, truly spoke rather than instructed or rebuked, there was something almost scholarly in him. Not quite Bomoor's warmth, nor the lofty abstractions of some imagined sage, but a precise and purposeful pleasure. He liked making things plain. He liked, perhaps more than he admitted, being understood, too. It sat strangely alongside the harder parts of him, yet made sense of them too.
As he approached her again, that same intent remained in his expression, though softened by some small measure of restraint.
"With Bería," he said the name aloud, with the barest flicker of amusement, "the greater challenge was persuading her that lifting pebbles, dangling instructors and threatening to leap into the canopy were not in fact the same lesson. With you, I expect a more civilised sort of difficulty."
He did not stop until he stood directly before her. Up close, Coda could see the tiredness he carried even here, only better hidden in this place where he seemed less burdened by himself. There were no deep shadows beneath his eyes today, and his features, for once, had not yet been dragged into that gaunter severity she had begun to associate with his darker moods. One hand lifted slightly, not quite touching her at first, as though giving her a brief chance to object before his fingers came to rest with careful firmness at her upper arm and then her shoulder, adjusting her stance by small degrees.
"Not so rigid," he said. "You're not preparing to be struck. Plant your feet properly." His hand withdrew and then returned to tilt one of her elbows down a fraction. "There. Better. The Force does not need to be met with clenched teeth and ceremony every time."
He circled her once, slow and thoughtful, not in suspicion but in concentration, the hem of his robe whispering against the stone. She could feel when his attention sharpened and when it eased again. It was never difficult to tell with him; even at his most controlled, he brought with him that peculiar intensity, like the pressure in the air before a storm breaks. Yet here there was something steadier beneath it. Not peace exactly, but fondness for the place, for the practice, perhaps even for the act of showing her.
"Choose one stone first," he said from just behind her shoulder. "Not because you are only capable of one, but because there is no merit in making a spectacle of your ambition before you have properly located your balance. Look at it - then stop looking with your eyes."
A brief silence followed. When he spoke again, his voice was lower, closer, carrying none of the cutting irony he so often used to prod her into sharper thought. "You do not need to impress me, Zaracoda. You especially do not need to impress the stone. Reach for the shape of it within the Force. Its weight, yes, but also its stillness. The way it settles into the world. Feel how that stillness is not separate from you. You managed something similar in the storm, whether you fully understood it or not. This is less cruel - so do not look so offended."
There it was again - that dry near-humour, so fleeting she might have imagined it had his mouth not shifted with it. When she glanced at him, she found him watching her not with cold expectation but with a kind of severe encouragement, as though he had already decided she could do this and would brook only temporary disagreement from either her or reality. He moved then to stand at her side rather than above or before her, and turned his gaze to the chosen boulder as if lending his attention to it without imposing himself outright upon her attempt.
"Good," he murmured, though she had not yet moved anything at all. "Start there. Let the world be quiet for a moment and see what remains."
The crisp gentle Irrikut breeze had stilled as if on command by Thane's own words, but Zaracoda's mind did not obey exactly. Her stance was textbook precise, her eyes closed, her mind, however, was delightfully chuffed.
It was difficult for her to hide her smile of contentment as she felt captive in her feelings for the way Thane was training her. It was everything she had always dreamed of from since childhood. All of the years of loneliness living with her adopted family on Glee Anselm, the tragedy of her family's loss when their colony ship, the Atlirith, fell to the pirates, and the subsequent years of misery on Nar Shaddaa had finally lead to something meaningful, kind, and decent. Here she was, under the tutelage of an actual Jedi Knight, learning about the Force, making things move with only her mind...
...except she wasn't moving anything aside from the tiniest molecular twitch imperceptible to the naked eye. There was very little focus, just her feelings for the moment and the warmth she took from Thane's good will and exemplary patience.
I wonder if I'll be a powerful, too, someday, she wondered, lost in thought. Maybe I can really make a difference with one of those laser swords in my hands, helping people...oh...mother, how I wish you were here now. I'm so sorry I couldn't save you...
Thane remained beside the chosen stone, posture composed, one hand resting lightly against its surface as though it alone held his attention. The platform held steady, the canopy above still filtering light in soft, broken bands, the air pleasant and damp in the way Irrikut had always been.
"You are reaching ahead of yourself," he said, evenly. "That is where you fail."
There was a slight distortion beneath the words, but it was not enough to interrupt them - enough to draw immediate notice. But it was there, faint and metallic, as though the sound had been carried through something artificial.
"The Force is not waiting for your understanding," he continued, that metallic twang growing more prevalent. "It is already present - already within you. You either recognise it... or you remain beneath it." A pause followed then followed, but he still did not turn to look at her. Then, sharper. "You were closer before."
The air shifted then. The breeze that had settled across the platform returned, but it did not move cleanly. It pressed instead, carrying weight, and beneath that weight came a scent that did not belong. Acrid, bitter and chemical.
Thane did not react, though.
"Hold where you are," he instructed. "Do not withdraw simply because it becomes uncomfortable."
The light altered, like it was being drained. The greens above dulled, the shadows thickening at the edges. One of the nearby trees gave a long, splitting creak, the sound stretching and warping as its surface began to peel back in slow strips.
Rain then began to fall. The first drops struck the stone near his boots with soft contact, but lingered too long before sliding. Then more followed, each one leaving behind a faint hiss as it spread across the surface.
Thane still did not look up.
"Maintain your focus," he said. "You do not lose control because of the environment. You lose it because you allow it to dictate your response." There was another pregnant pause, and when he spoke again, the cadence held - but the tone became quiet alien, as if uttered through a speaker. "You have done this before."
The rain began to intensify, and each droplet struck harder now, the hiss growing sharper, more insistent as vapour began to rise in thin, curling strands from where it touched the platform. The scent thickened with it, burning through the damp air.
The canopy shifted again, as branches bent at wrong angles. One trunk split fully, folding back to reveal something rigid beneath, dark and segmented. The structure of the forest began to collapse inward, revealing glimpses of something constructed beyond it.
Thane stepped forward. The sound beneath his boot was no longer stone - it rang, hollow, like it was reverberating across metal.
"You have already failed once," he said. "You felt it slip from you. You allowed it to slip from you." The rain struck harder and the hiss became constant. "You reached," he continued, voice tightening, "and you hesitated." He took another step. The platform gave a low, metallic reverberating again. "You broke your own control."
There was then a shift of movement behind, as a sudden impact struck. A hollow clang echoed sharply across the space as something cylindrical rocked underfoot and struck against the surface. The sound cut cleanly through the rain, wrong in its shape, wrong in its weight.
It was a barrel and it rolled, unsteady, before tipping. The lid split as it struck the ground, and something dark spilled from within, thick and corrosive, spreading rapidly across the surface with a violent hiss.
Thane did not turn nor try to move from the liquid as it draw closer to him. "You recognise it now," he said, his voice no longer entirely his own. "The moment you lost yourself." The air thickened and the scent burned.
Coda shook her head as she lost concentration and looked up at Thane, "No...I...I've always been lost, and then you found me. The mistakes I've made are entirely my own. They are mine to--wait." She looked around and everything started to feel different, feel wrong in almost every way, especially when she fixed her eyes at Thane. There was something odd about his posture. It was too perfect, too unburdened, so very empty. "This...there's something not right. I don't remember you saying these things. Am I...dreaming? I managed to budge the boulder a little. I remember that, you were tougher on me, and your voice...what is going on here?!"
Thane did not turn as the corrosive liquid crept closer still, hissing as it ate through the surface beneath it, thin vapours rising in curling strands that distorted the air around him. It reached his boots first. The liquid climbed and it reached the fabric of his clothes.
There was no immediate reaction - no instinctive withdrawal. Only the slow, deliberate advance of it as it began to blacken the material, eating through it in uneven patches, exposing pale skin beneath as it continued to go higher.
The acid soon climbed his neck. The skin there tightened, warped, and his head finally tilted, slowly and deliberately.
"You were not found... You were revealed."
Then, he moved - fast. The distance between them collapsed in a single motion, his hand snapping up with unnatural precision as his fingers closed around her throat, the grip immediate, absolute.
His face was close now - too close. What remained of it shifted as she tried to focus. The left side held its shape, pale, controlled, recognisable, but the right sloughed away, an eerie red glow of diodes and metal erupting from the eyesocket.
Skin burned away in jagged sections around his mouth and jaw, the exposed structure beneath not bone but something darker, reinforced, unnatural. A metallic framework rose where flesh had been, fused into place, locking part of his face into a fixed, unnatural symmetry - a metal mask. The breath that followed from within rasped, mechanical, forced through artificial speakers.
When the voice came, though, it was not his - not even an artificial blend of it.
"You mistake coincidence for purpose, schutta." The voice was smooth and controlled - and female. "You mistake survival for worth." The grip tightened. "You think he made you something."
A faint red glow began to bleed at the edges of Coda's vision, threading through the distortion, through him, through everything.
"He barely understood what he was looking at."
The mask did not change.
The voice did not rise.
"You were not chosen. You were convenient."
The pressure tightened around her neck until she could see and think no more, her hands barely grasping at the twisted and broken form of her master - and then the world was replaced by cold, unforgiving stale air and stone.
The world snapped back without transition, her body jolting against restraints that held her in place, angled upward, forced to face forward. The air was still, stale, a hint of moisture staining it all.
The light above was harsh, fixed, casting hard shadows across rough stone walls that enclosed the space entirely.
A figure stood before her. Green skin. Dark eyes with a pinkish glow hidden within them. Tight leather clothing. One slender hand hovered just above her head. There was a small incision there, directly through her skull, precise and unforgiving.
From it, a faint red aura bled outward, thin strands of energy threading into the opening, pulsing with a quiet, invasive rhythm that spread beneath the surface of her mind like a web.
The pain was immediate, total and everywhere.
The figure watched her without expression. Then, slowly, deliberately, she withdrew her hand and the red strands pulled back with it, peeling away from the wound in fine, resisting threads before snapping free entirely.
The absence was almost as violent as the intrusion.
"Awake." The word was soft and measured, almost curious. The hand lowered slightly, though it did not fall far from where it had been. "You took longer than I expected... And you were so certain of yourself." The faintest hint of something passed across her expression, an evil smile tugging at one side of her mouth.
"Tell me," she then said, voice calm, precise, entirely in control, "when he stripped you and left you to freeze on that world... did you thank him for it?"
There was no possibility of struggle from Amare's restraints and no bodily energy in her to even move. Though the pain she was in was beyond rational measure, she simply had nothing in her to wail, to cry, or even to whimper. If her vital signs had been monitored in that moment, they would be weak and thready. All she had to show for her condition was tears slipping from her eyes, almost like someone on a surgeon's table who was fully aware and felt every cut, every second of extreme pain without being unable to respond in any way. She lethargically averted her eyes from Nala for a moment, but then dared to lock eyes with her.
"You..." Amare could barely say through what was barely more than a whisper. "...don't care...selfish...evil..." She started to slip away into unconsciousness.
Nala watched her slip and, for a moment, she simply observed it, head tilting a fraction as though studying an imperfection in an otherwise promising specimen. There was no irritation in her expression this time, no anger at the insult that had just been offered.
Then, softly, almost gently:
"No... stay."
Her hand move and the red aura returned - not as a slow intrusion this time, but as a precise, violent insertion. It drove back through the incision with surgical accuracy, threading instantly into the exposed pathways beneath, latching, tightening, igniting.
The effect was immediate. The world did not fade for Amare as she and her body my have expected. It snapped into perfect, unbearable clarity, and with it came something else.
A flash - a boot pressing down and acid hissing again, along with the skin burning she was sure she had witnessed moments before.
"No... stay."
The words overlapped, echoed, wrong in their source yet identical in their weight. For a fraction of a second, the moment was not memory but presence, as though she had been there, as though she had felt it herself, the pressure, the inevitability, the command that did not permit retreat. As though she has felt...
Axion.
Nala’s expression did not change as the connection settled, as the pain did exactly what it was meant to do. She leaned in slightly, not close enough to touch, but close enough that her voice did not need to rise.
"You confuse weakness with morality. You call it selfishness because you cannot understand it, because you still believe that purpose must revolve around you... Or your 'lord'." Her gaze held Amare’s. "That your suffering, your choices, your little acts of defiance have meaning beyond your own perception of them... We are selfish, yes," she continued, almost conversationally. "In the same way a priest is selfish when they abandon the world to serve their god. In the same way a martyr is selfish when they give themselves to something greater." A faint tilt of her head. "You have simply never been taught the difference."
Her hand hovered again, just above the wound now, the aura contained but ready, like a blade held just short of contact.
"You think he found you... that he chose you." The slightest narrowing of her eyes. "That he made you something." An intentional pause followed. "He did not. He saw something useful; he saw something broken enough to shape, and just capable enough to survive the attempt." Her tone did not shift, but there was something firmer beneath it now, as certainty grew. "He gave you pain and named it instruction - and you thanked him for it."
For the first time, the faintest hint of a smile touched the corner of her mouth, though it did not reach her eyes.
"We do not pretend it is anything else." The red aura flickered once, briefly illuminating the thin lines of strain beginning to spread beneath Amare’s skin, the subtle tremor in muscle that spoke of a body being pushed beyond its limits. "We are not here for ourselves. Not in the way your child's mind understands it. What we are, what we do, what we endure... It is not for gain. It is not for comfort, nor even for survival. It is for Him. When He rises, there will be no distinction left between will and reality, - no separation between power and truth. The Force will not be something you touch, or question, or misunderstand." A faint tightening of her fingers in the air, the aura responding in kind. "It will be defined - and we will have helped to shape that definition."
Her hand lowered slightly, not withdrawing, not advancing.
"You call that evil," she said, as if the conclusion amused her in some distant, abstract way. "Because you still think in terms of yourself, of what you want... of what you fear... But that will pass."
She straightened slightly then, the faint smile gone as though it had never been there.
"When He comes to you, remember this moment, schutta. It will feel like mercy."
As if the flames of perdition had no longer been held back by Nala's hand, so came the very worst, most terrorizing storm of agony Amare had ever felt in her life. Her vision was haloed in a red aura, her joints locked and muscles spasmed. Ever bit of her brain fought to make her pass out, but Nala's direct tap into Amare's brain prevented any and all possibility of such desperately needed relief.
Amare's voice rose into blood curdling screams. There was no escape. No love. No chance. She was trapped in her own personal Hell. Death would have been preferrable, but Nala quietly observed, devoid of empathy, and would not let her captive's end come so easily.
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