Private A Scream to the Void

[Ashin Cardé Varanin]

To be a genuine Sith is to decide what you truly want and sacrifice anything to achieve it. 'Through victory my chains are broken' refers primarily to transcending your inner limits - conscience at times, yes, but also fear to lose what's yours, fear of the powerful, laziness, preconceptions, vanoty, pride, comfortable mistruths, relationships, vices, weaknesses. The Dark Side, mastered correctly, blossoms from overcoming these - and gives you the strength to make that victory enduring.

What more do I need to sacrifice to find you?

Or have my sacrifices made me unrecognizable to your soul? Is that why all I find is silence?

If you don't want to come back, am I willing to sacrifice the crusade itself for something better? Or do I drag you kicking and screaming back to mortality, to raise our daughters in ways I never did?

You won't believe what I've done to bring you home. I gave up the mask of Anger and became mortal again. I resurrected Ijaat Mereel , a suicide, just to make sure I could still pull a reluctant soul out of the Netherworld. I've been through Force rituals with Dissero to build the tools to find you. I've traveled to the most brutal wastes of Tash-Taral to recruit Seydon of Arda of Arda, the one I feared when we led the Fringe, just so he can guard me when I finally figure out how to come for you.

I sold a year of my service and public deference to the Worm Emperor just to find the right Netherworld breach point. I founded a Sith academy that saps a portion of energy from its students and uses it to send out a constant Force beacon through the Netherworld. I vivisected Sithspawn hordes in the bowels of Coruscant for the money to do it. I murdered the sacred heart of a forest in the Deep Core, drained it dry. I've drawn so heavily on the Dark Side that I don't know what'll be left of me the next time we see each other. Typhojem's left nut, Spencer, I even spent time with our daughters.

You, Spencer Varanin - you're the one thing I did right. And I will do right by you no matter what it costs. No matter what that means to you.

Just give me a sign that you still exist, that you haven't dissipated completely into the Cosmic Force. A whisper is enough.

 

[Spencer Varanin]

//: Ashin Cardé Varanin //:​

A breeze without a source would caress against the tired face of the woman who shouted into the void. Her words were heard and her answer given. ​

Oh Ashin, my sweet, sweet Ashin. ​

While you’ve searched and reached out to friend and foe, I have been battling and trying to weather the storm. The sins that I’ve committed came with great punishment, but an existence without you never held a candle to what I’ve suffered beyond death. ​

I’ve heard your whispers, and I’ve felt your touch. You’re the only reason I have not faded into the endless well of the Cosmic Force. Every step you take, every sacrifice you make, all of it helps me remember our life together and makes me feel real. ​

Eternity and immortality is nothing without you, my Conqueror. I want to return; I need to return; we made a promise to always be by each other’s side and not needing or caring what the rest of the galaxy was doing. Each time I reach for you, I’m only met with limitations. I’m stronger now; I’m here.​

Please be there to catch me - like you always have. ​

 

[Ashin Cardé Varanin]

You can hear me. You're still there.

Ashin rubbed at her stinging eyes as relief cascaded through her. It jeopardized her grip on the Dark Side and thus her ability to connect and hear - but she dug deep into the same implacable fury that had brought her this far.

Where in the Netherworld are you? A place, or just the edge of oblivion? I have guides and maps aplenty. Just tell me where you are.

With the soul-to-soul conversation in the back of her mind, she sat down at her desk. Her quarters on the Pomojema had a hardline link to the hypercomm. She sent identical messages to Dissero , Quinn, Noelle, and Ibaris: Spencer's daughters and her oldest friend.

She still exists. Wish me luck.


Quinn Varanin Noelle Varanin

 

[Spencer Varanin]

//: Ashin Cardé Varanin //:
​

A smile, if it was possible, crossed Spencer's spectral face. A warmth that she had felt sporadically as Ashin journey pushed onward. She remembered the first moment when the heat had stirred her soul. Spencer had accepted her fate, but Ashin was forever one to go against fate.

The questions felt ethereal and quiet, but she listened and looked around her. Exhaling, the same breeze would bring the sound of her voice to whisper against the ears of her savior.

Darkness.

It's always so dark until it comes.

Spencer didn't know how to describe it, but she knew when it was near.

It hungers. There were more here with me, but it devoured it till I was all that was left. I don't know what it is, but it's getting hard to fight it off.

Silence.

Hurry Ashin.

 

[Ashin Cardé Varanin]

There was exactly one benefit to the tsunami of fear that washed away the relief: fear was a path to the Dark Side, and Ashin knew well how to use it. She let the fear have rein, let it build into a near-frenzy in her heart, and spiked her mind along their bond, through everything that separated them. She'd hoped to see where Spencer might be, but the darkness was nearly absolute.

She heard a growl, and then the connection shattered again. Which meant she had left Spencer alone.

The Pomojema - a frigate-sized Sith academy bigger than most skyscrapers - shivered around Ashin. Only force of will kept the office from tearing itself apart. The holocomm terminal sparked and died. Somewhere behind her, a rivet popped and whined around the room.

With her heart still pounding, Ashin got up and sprinted, careless of her dignity. Sith Lords and strange Darksiders got out of her way as she crossed the distance between her office and the ship's library. She'd gone through everything to do with the Netherworld, of course, and there was quite a bit of it written over the decades since the two Akala Crises. Now she needed to go through it again.

Profound darkness, and a predator. That had to narrow it down.

She burst into the library, whose panoramic window displayed the desert char of Korriban. The rift was down there, the one whose location she'd bargained from the Worm and found with Seydon of Arda . Today, unready as her plans might be...today she'd walk through and stay there.

***
​

In all her reading, only two known Netherworld regions matched her three criteria: darkness, serious predators, and a place capable of confining Spencer indefinitely. The Bone Orchard, perhaps its central chasm, and the Dreaming Dark. Experienced Netherworld travelers avoided both. Neither one promised a simple journey or an easy adjacency to known Netherworld areas. She reviewed the little that was known of them while her shuttle zeroed in on the rift. She wasn't ready, not by a long shot, but Spencer needed her now.