Field Trip, Interrupted

[Matsu Xiangu]

[SIZE=14pt]Tython[/SIZE]
[SIZE=14pt]Early Afternoon[/SIZE]


She spent so much of her time on Coruscant and while the planet had no end to its forms of entertainment, sometimes a change of pace was nice, even for a woman that loved the jewel of the Galaxy.

So she found herself on Tython. Originally the Sith had contemplated razing the planet, leaving it twisted and useless – a message to their enemies in the Republic. But they’d seen the value in leaving it as it was. After all, it was home to the dark too. A verdant planet, its forests and vast lakes sprawled visibly from the surface when descending. Matsu could appreciate beauty even when it wasn’t morbid.

But deep within the forests she’d made something the likes of which the once notoriously Jedi-held planet hadn’t seen before.

Matsu didn’t believe in slavery. It was one of the few things in the galaxy she would never participate in. Her closest friend had been a slave. Matsu had freed more than one apprentice from their chains once they’d proven themselves. Of course, the lines were sometimes blurred, and she didn’t say anything when her acquaintances participated. But she herself would never own another human being. Perhaps it was just a throwback to her days in the Fringe where freedom had been everything.

A huge crowd of people milled below in a shallow valley, seemingly confused as to how they’d ended up on a planet so green. The Sith Lady was sitting high above them on a grassy knoll overlooking the depression they’d all been deposited in, clad in a dark bodysuit with her hair tossing lightly in the breeze.

Matsu had bought every single one of those people and then freed them. They could start their lives anew…beginning with surviving the day. The Atrisian Sith lady had sent word to her newest apprentice to meet her deep within the woods for her first real lesson. It would be difficult and on a large scale, but Matsu was eager to see what the redhead might accomplish considering her creative solution to the Lady’s illusions.

[member="Maja Vern"]​

 

[Darth Zilti]

The best laid plans and all of that. A simple trip from Ambria to Coruscant had been detoured to Korriban and now Tython. Not that she minded. She’d never visited before and as it had recently been prised from the Republic’s hands, she was keen to take a look around.

She was delighted she’d decided to take her life in her own hands and more importantly that the Sith Lord she’d previously trained with had agreed to be her Master. There was a synergy there – she knew it – and she knew she would never be the greatest with a saber, but instead her path lay somewhere else.

So she arrived at the planet with such a rich history for both Orders. It was early afternoon local time, but for someone that travelled as much as Maja, the time of the day was generally irrelevant. So she checked and double checked the coordinates. She was to meet her Master in the middle of some woods. Maja hoped they weren’t expected to sleep in a tent. But as she couldn’t land her ship any closer then a small clearing, she accepted that walking – her second least favourite pastime after camping out in a tent – was inevitable.

She threw a few things in a bag. Candy bars, bacta patches, more candy bars, a bottle of water. Her bag was almost full, but she squeezed another candy bar in before she set off.

Dressed in her customary died black dead animal hide and flowing cape, she patted the name-plate she’d had welded to the side of her ship. Valcy. The ‘n’ would have been nice, but she’d failed to find it on Dxun.

And so the red-head set out for the depth of the woods, for that’s where her Master had said they would meet. She rummaged in her pockets and pulled out a candy bar. She always carried spares.

[member="Matsu Xiangu"]

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

[SIZE=18pt]ELSEWHERE, ABOVE TYTHON[/SIZE]
​

“Pasat, 10 minutes out.”
“Copy. Let me know when you have a heading.”

A carrier filled with mercenaries floated above Tython’s atmosphere, probing its surface for the best place to land undetected. They had the best stealth equipment available on board…but they were attempting to infiltrate a Sith-owned planet. It was an insanely foolish task, but Pasat’s team was known for taking insanely foolish jobs and completing them successfully. And the price tag on this one was nothing to scoff at.

Placing two fingers on his holopad, a sharply defined image of the woman they were hunting rendered in 3D coalesced in to view.

Matsu Xiangu. Pasat wouldn’t deny she was stunning, but unsettling. The dark was slowly eating her as it did everything it touched – her cheekbones were unnaturally sharp, an angling to her eyes that made her look like a demon shifting between itself and the form it had chosen for the last 30 odd years. The list of crimes was long, scrolling next to the image of her face endlessly, each more heinous than the last. All told she was more than deserving of the combined 15 million credits on her head.

They’d gotten word she was heading to Tython, leaving the insular protection of the city-planet she lorded over with such convincing benevolence. He would relish bringing her to justice, or at least just making a nice buck on bagging her. A Sith Lady would be a nice notch on his bounty hunting belt. He leaned back, running fingers through his dark, neatly-trimmed beard as a smile curled on to his lips.

[member="Maja Vern"]​

 

[Darth Zilti]

Maja reflected on the past few years as she walked. She was as stubborn as a mule but even she had to admit she’d made mistakes. She’d started to understand her weaknesses at last. She was self-centred, self-absorbed and self-promoting…amongst other things.

She’d pondered at her sister’s wedding that she’d spent the past on a fool’s errand around the galaxy. She should have joined the Sith straight away and sought a Master and had the love of a sister too. Instead she’d had some fool notion so romantic in its conception, you could have wrapped it in a pink bow, sat it on a pony and not made it look any less princess fairy-tale nonsense.

But then, she mused, back then she might not have met Matsu. Here was a Sith Lord that could bring out the best in her and she intended to maximise her potential under her. And to fulfil her Vahla heritage.

And there was the man she’d met on Korriban. The one that likes red-heads. She smiled. Who knows where that might lead? And she’d bought a decent sized-ship that she could call home. She was never going to settle on a planet – it just felt wrong, so her somewhat luxurious purchase would be her residence whenever she wasn’t training. And once she’d get the chance to get round to it, she’d get some servants in too. For a young woman with wanderlust, she had six star tastes.

But she’d reconciled possibly seeing her sister only infrequently – as long as her elder sibling was happy, Maja would settle for that. And she’d declared her ambition – to achieve the rank of Sith Lord, to master the Sith magic that Matsu knows and to be remembered in her own right, not as Silara’s little sister.

As she walked, something felt wrong. When she’d first found out she was Force Sensitive, it had explained how she always knew there was going to be trouble just before it happened. As a Vahla, she was naturally blessed with Farsight.

There was nothing concrete – there never was. Typically, when she was searching for something it could take a week of images and sensations that had to be correlated to provide a solution to her dreams or intuitions. So all she got was a feeling. Matsu was central to it – she knew that much. But that’s all she had to go on was a sensation, so she focused hard on her Master’s image, searching for something…anything.

And then she had it – for what it was worth. An image. A dark, neatly-trimmed beard. And a smile that promised nothing but harm.

[member="Matsu Xiangu"]

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

A Sith didn’t know relaxation, at least not for more than a few hours at a time. There was no place safe from those seeking to eliminate them, halt their devouring advance across the stars. So many Sith were driven mad by paranoia, constantly looking over their shoulders for the next threat coming to take the thing that was most precious to so many Sith – life, forever, the chance to conquer even that which came for every natural creature. Matsu had avoided such disintegration simply because of her personality. Though she’d been attacked on every single one of the planets she’d ever called home – some even going so far as to break in to her apartments on Coruscant to slit her throat – she’d never succumbed to the chains of fear. She wasn’t overly confident, but she was ice where so many of her counterparts were fire. She thought with a cold efficiency that allowed her analyze her bounties and death threats and assassins with the caveat that while annoying, they were a natural consequence of how very high she’d learned to soar.

Any one of them might one day kill her, but she wasn’t afraid to die. She believed she wouldn’t. She would become one of those giant black holes that destroyed everything around them. She would absorb stellar waves and torment this galaxy for eternity.

However, she had none of her apprentice’s natural heritage and hadn’t been trained in even the slightest bit of farsight. The men planning their descent and capture were too far above the atmosphere for her to sense their minds and therefore she was still sitting placidly when Maja appeared.

“Ah, Maja,” she called softly, beckoning over her shoulder for the redhead to join her. “I’ve brought you some presents.” The crowd of a hundred milling below was getting restless, especially at the appearance of another woman beside the one dark-haired one that’d been watching them for the last half hour. “I hope you like them.”

[member="Maja Vern"]​

 

[Darth Zilti]

Maja finally came upon her Master and nothing appeared untoward. That was the thing with Farsight. The image could have been from a time past or a time yet to be that might never happen. It was, as ever, difficult to see...

Spoiler

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nt7-WKXL5vw

So she chose to mention nothing just yet. If there were any additional images, she’d be sure to share them, but for now, Maja would no doubt come across as a scaremonger.

Maja smiled as her Master called to her and she walked to the grassy knoll to see what Matsu was indicated. She looked down to see a huge crowd of people milling about in a shallow basin. They seemed agitated and through the Force, Maja could sense confusion.

“Presents, Master?” She cocked her head to one side. She wanted to add that she didn’t understand – but figured that was the point. Clearly they were part of some elaborate training plan. So she looked her Master in the eyes. She was striking in a different way to her sister. Her sibling was like an oil painting to her. Her splendour was yielding. Matsu looked as though her beauty had been carved from some rare metamorphic rock.

“I always like presents…once I work out what to do with them.” The smile remained on her lips. Presents were great. Surprises were even better.

[member="Matsu Xiangu"]

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

The crowd below had started to break off in to groups, the stronger choosing to band together while the weak crowded in huddles, frightened expressions upturned to the two women discussing their fate as if deciding where they’d like to go for lunch.

Matsu pushed herself from her cross-legged position on the ground, rolling her shoulders and dusting anywhere grass might have stuck to her clothing. “Well, the beauty of your chosen pursuit is that you may do with them as you wish.” The Atrisian raised a hand, fingers bending in a series of intricate series of motions that seemed second-nature, its culmination a soft rumbling as men – tall and brutal – dug out of the earth below and started chasing through the gathered crowd. They slaughtered without thought except to carry out Matsu’s ideal: rearrange the sheep, redistribute power. By the time her illusions dissolved the strong and the weak were all over, no groups planning an escape. Merely survival.

“You show a strong natural affinity for sorcery, but for the moment its true power is out of your grasp. You and I commune with the darkside through a natural connection, something few know the sweetness of. But it has the potential to turn on you – as is natural – if you are not ready to control it. Utter the wrong word to a spell, lose your concentration, so much as make the wrong motion with your hands when you’re casting, and the entire thing will turn on you and destroy you. If you are weak, unworthy, the darkside will know and take back its gift. While you can’t touch it yet…you can make yourself strong for the day you can.”

Turning to look out over the crowd, Matsu gave a moment for her words to sink in. She rarely spoke so much. “Sorcery is a path to powers unknown, the root of many more common variants. Illusions, for instance: those created through sorcery take true form, causing real harm to their enemies, such as mine did to the crowd below. A mentalist’s illusion is no less dangerous in potential, but loses its steam, disappears once the affected mind realizes it’s not real. Less effective in combat as they can't truly hurt as Sith magic can, but the mental effort required will prepare you for sorcery.” Matsu waved her hand over the ‘presents’, offering her apprentice a smile. “Go ahead, show them whatever you can dream of.” Matsu still knew relatively little of the red-haired young woman - her propensity for cruelty, if she valued economy over wanton brutality, her values. These lessons were as much for the the Master as her Apprentice, collecting information as was her love in life.

[member="Maja Vern"]​

 

[Darth Zilti]

She watched as the crowd below started to break off in to groups. She was fascinated. Typically she’d only ever been exposed to one or two people at a time and given she spent most of her time on her ship, the behaviour of humans when effectively a pack animal was intriguing.

Groups were forming. Some exuded fear like some foul stench, yet at the same time, she found she could draw power from it. The other group, the braver of the souls perhaps were offering her nothing right now.

The offer to do with them as she wished caught her by surprise. Perhaps her Master intended them to be servants? But no sooner had that thought occurred to her than the Sith Lord raised a hand, fingers bending in a series of intricate motions.

From the earth came creatures…men…who butchered people at will, scattering the groups that had previously formed. She savoured their fears. It was everyone now. None was so brave as to be immune.

She was snapped out of this reverie by her Master’s words. She drank them as readily as she had the emotions a moment before. She knew she had a lot to learn and for a moment, she wondered if she would ever accomplish so much? She had a natural affinity for the Dark-side, but sorcery seemed a step above. Incantations, hand gestures? She was perennially a joker but worked long and hard when needed – her spirit was the one thing nobody had broken yet. And Sorcery wasn’t going to be the final straw.

“Go ahead, show them whatever you can dream of.”

Maja was a scholar. It was hard to believe given her general attitude but time spent travelling – which was 95% of her life since she’d discovered her gift – was always about learning. There was nothing written about Zannah that she didn’t know – plus she had her own way of gaining insight (often at times she didn’t want it).

And unknowingly she’d had her values and beliefs moulded to the former Sith Lord's. Not that she wasn’t a willing student, but she was still clay to be moulded.

Did she care if these people lived or died? Of course not. They were unworthy and deserved nothing other than death. But…and it was an important but for Maja, there had to be a use or purpose in their death. Usually it was because they were in her way, or their demise gave her something tangible, be it goods or even learning. But she did not rationalise things in slow-motion, dissecting her intentions or morals. Rather it was instinctual – ingrained over the past half a dozen years.

So their deaths were inconsequential to her.

What her Master had achieved was truly impressive. Whatever she offered would be pale by comparison, but then she was able to build on the terror her Master had created. The men had gone, so what could she replace them with?

Her mind was quick and a plan formulated instantly. These seemed to be people that knew each other. Maybe not intimately but they clearly had family members and had travelled here together. She had to play on that familiarity.

She’d manipulated the mind of individuals before, but a group was new to her. But then she’d never been fed with the collective emotions of so many previously either. So she drew power from their fear and suffering. Her eyes morphed to a shade of yellow. Her irises ringed scarlet. She could taste the Force, Dark and noxious, such was her connection to it – fuelled by these fools in front of her.

She remembered Zannah’s words…"I can use my powers to conjure up your worst nightmares and bring them to life before your eyes. I can drive you mad with fear, shred your sanity, and leave you a raving lunatic for the rest of your life."

She started with a woman, in tears and staring at the lifeless child in front of her. ‘She can live. You have the power, all it needs is a sacrifice. A life for a life. You know what to do.’ Maja planted the image of the child trying to sit up, imploring her mother to help her, an outstretched arm and desperate fingers clawing at the air. ‘Please mommy.’

Maja didn’t wait and simply repeated the process again, starting with the obvious candidates. Those most easily tipped over to madness. Those that wanted to believe the lies she was planting. In her own mind, it was easier and she had to build up to more complex manipulation.

The next was another mother, then a father, then a lover. To another she promised herself, even her Master if they simply performed one act. A very simply act. A righteous act. Death. She promised them what their hearts most desired and with the reality that they’d been fooled, they’d simply tip over into insanity. And then they’d kill because they knew nothing better.

A simple but effective chain reaction. And it felt…delicious.

[member="Matsu Xiangu"]

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

ELSEWHERE, ABOVE TREELINE​

If the daring required to take a bounty on a Sith Lady wasn’t indicative of capability, the sheer amount of technology at the fingertips of Pasat’s crew was. After entering atmosphere the thirty heavily-armed men had boarded dropships and descended towards the planet’s surface. They’d decided their best course of action would be to patrol the wooded areas surrounding the most prominent Sith settlements first. It would be easier to narrow her down outside of a crowded place first. If she was nowhere to be found, they would head for the capital and beyond.

But a mere half-hour of exploration found quarry.

They were flying well above the treeline, minimizing the sound of their engines, but close enough to allow their thermal imaging to show a clear picture of heat signatures within the forests.
“Boss, massive heat signature a half-mile up. At least a hundred, temperatures right for humans.”
“Right. Deploy one of the scout droids, stay away from the area until we have a positive ID. I don’t want to spook her.”

Pasat watched with usual characteristic, subtle confidence as one of the men tossed the droid from the open side-door. It was small enough to fit in the palm of one’s hand and flew with the technologic prowess of a decade of testing. Within minutes it’d flown where directed, its view flickering to life on the holopad in Pasat’s hands. With two fingers the bounty hunter enlarged the picture to zoom in. The Atrisian cut an even sharper picture in motion, a slight smile on her face as she watched another woman working something with the Force.

“It’s her. She’s got what appears to be another Sith woman with her. Redhead doesn’t have any bounties on her head.” He looked up at his men, clicking the holopad off, his grin widening. “But I’ve never been denied credits for bagging an extra Sith.”

His men roared in approval, strapping their helmets on as the dropship, followed by its companion, swung towards the heat signature to the east.

___________________________________________________​

This was her favorite part, watching another Sith work. Not only was it a glimpse in to another’s mind, but it was interesting to see what someone else could conjure up in a situation as opposed to her first ideas.

She needn’t have been disappointed however. Where some Sith Lords saw apprentices as a threat, Matsu saw allies, future powerhouses. And this? Rare. The emotion was so real, so vivid and detailed. “Excellent, excellent. Something believable, something that could really happen. You give them no cause to stop and think for a moment, to question what they’re seeing.”

The slaughter began slowly, starting at the epicenter where Maja wove her images but quickly growing in to mass hysteria as some either saw similar illusions or fell victim to seemingly-righteous killing. Man murdered wife, brother murdered sister, and each started its own chain reaction of indignation, rage, and fear. She drew strength with each body that fell, her fingertips itching.

But something…a twinge of warning in the Force…

She looked up as two dropships pushed through the canopy high above, flattening the grass all around the rim of the crater housing their test subjects. The swung wide, covering both sides of the pit before their doors slid open and men came pouring out, blasters raised. Raising both hands, Matsu projected a shield as the first volley of fire pat-pat-pattered over her telekinetic barrier. But that would only hold for the seconds it took the two Sith women to begin their slaughter.

“Kill all of them except their leader!” Matsu yelled over the sound of their weapons, dropping the barrier and closing her eyes to start a spell.

______________________________________________​

One of Xiangu’s bounties required her dead, but most Sith fetched a higher price alive. The men would attempt to get the women in chains, sever their tie to the Force at least long enough to transport them without them threatening with some strange, mystical power none of them understood.

One, the fastest out of the ship, sprinted towards the redhead, his thumb pressing the activation trigger on a grenade meant to temporarily sever a Force-user’s connection. He tossed it in her general direction, lifting his blaster as he waited for his aim to be true. Like shooting fish in a barrel…

[member="Maja Vern"]​

 

[Darth Zilti]

As odd as it sounds, Maja was enjoying herself. Not in the death per se, but the learning was exhilarating and seeing how she’d been able to work with the Force was truly enabling. She felt she could truly achieve anything given time.

But as fast as the action below was reaching a crescendo, she had another flash. A vision of men preparing for battle. And no sooner had she sensed it than she saw the two dropships.

Maja acted on instinct. She’d never experienced open warfare but she’d raided enough tombs to have faced opposition. Zombies, Dark-sided creatures, even spirits of long-dead Sith Lords. So she didn’t freeze or even stop to think. Two actions came to mind instantly and so she pursued them one immediately after the other.

The men and women below were not soldiers. But there were still a lot of them, and they were at very least a distraction.

‘Kill them. These are the men responsible for the deaths you see before you. Kill them and your loved ones will return. Kill them but leave the one with the beard alive.’

She remembered the earlier vision and assumed it was not just a coincidence. Her Master wanted him alive, and she’d do anything and everything in her power to accede to the request.

The second action was simple and required but a moment’s attention. With a wave of her hand she simply threw the grenade back where it came from. She had no idea of its potential, but grenades were never good news if you’re on the receiving end.

[member="Matsu Xiangu"]

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

Her apprentice sprang in to action and so did she, the two women working in unison as the hunters bared down. She could feel the smug presence of the man waiting behind his forces, the one who’d like to clip Sith wings and see both Maja and Matsu in chains or – preferably – dead. She usually gave no thought to what it meant to be to what she was. Fright was no longer an emotion she was familiar with, a feeling who’s impression was a ghost among all the shells of human trappings she’d once possessed. Fear had had been cut out of her, off of her, removed with every limb that she lost. Enlightenment had come in the form of dismemberment – perfection through pain, every weak emotion had been burned out of her flesh. But she thrived off of it in others.

The shift in the crowd below was visible out of the corner of her eye, a massive convulsion of a crowd before they all started moving under orders that hadn’t been spoken aloud.

In kind, she raised a hand to conjure an unspoken spell, the one she held closest to heart and therefore needed no words to make reality. Far below the bodies that hadn’t survived the Sith women’s practice in the first round stirred, bones cracking in unnatural symphony as they found the way to their feet.

At first they stumbled but after a moment or two muscle memory took over, each of them sprinting alongside their living companions to take down the hunters. Those closest to the edge of the pit fell to the group of mind-controlled slaves and zombies only a few seconds after, clawing at the edge as they tried to escape, to no avail.

Matsu needed a moment, her spell sapping her immediate reserves. Closing her eyes, she collected before letting out a telekinetic blast that leveled the earth around her, sending rocks and earth flying in all directions and flattening the frontline of men and women charging at her.

__________________________​

When Maja tossed the grenade back, it detonated right above the heads of three of Pasat’s men. Although they did not possess the Force and therefore were safe from some of its effects, they were still flesh and blood and therefore died quickly but painfully as shrapnel stuffed inside pelted them.

The men and women who’s minds she’d touched did their work without fail, ripping more of the hunters down in to the pit.

Pasat raised a hand to indicate he wanted his dropship swung around, leaning out of the hanger as it rotated towards the apprentice.

“Focus fire on the redhead!” Blaster bolts started ripping through the earth towards Maja, sending up huge spurts of dirt as they pelted closer and closer at breakneck speed.

[member="Maja Vern"]​

 

[Darth Zilti]

“Kark”

Elegant? No. Eloquent? Hardly. A precise reflection of her thoughts? Absolutely.

The team-work was impeccable. Their actions were complementary and effective. As she commanded the living to attack the men, so her Master raised the dead. Soldiers, even battle-hardened ones, couldn’t fail to be intimidated by the sight. And Maja knew, because she felt their fear – in fact she fed on it.

Maja’s control was less precise – she relied on guiding rather than commanding. Given the emotional state of those she prompted, she was lucky. They were malleable. She didn’t even try to affect the soldiers en masse. She knew her powers were not sufficient.

But the makeshift soldiers were just that – improvised. They were no match for armour or blasters or professional training. Soon the mercenaries started to break through and her Master obliterated the first wave with the very earth they walked on.

But the blaster bolts from the dropship were not so easily dealt with. She had a limited bag of tricks. Her only saving grace was her natural gift of Farsight. She was able to somehow sense where shots would go and dance her way around them…but only up to a point. Finally there were too many close together and one round ripped through her thigh.

Her pain didn’t add to her anger, it multiplied it. The crimson ringing her irises started to bleed into the centre of the eye now – her connection to the Force never stronger. Looking up she saw the men firing and focused on one, he was leering down at her as the dropship moved at great speed. This time there was no subtlety or careful manipulation. She simply tore at his mental defences and demanded he did her bidding. He turned his gun on his comrades and opened fire.

[member="Matsu Xiangu"]

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

Once, a little under two decades past, Matsu had been just another girl striking out from her homeplanet in to the wilds of the galaxy. She knew little and less of its cruelty but was convinced in her heart of hearts that whatever wandering urge propelled her was the same that would allow her to destroy anything that might attempt to hurt her. In some sense she had been right.

In others, very wrong.

The Matsu Xiangu she was now resembled the girl she’d been in only the most fundamental of ways, and even physically she’d changed greatly. Perseverance and a natural affinity had seen fit to grant her prowess in necromancy, illusions, mental control, and telekinetics. They were powers fit for her dreaminess, made for a woman whose head was up in thunderclouds more often than it strolled among her peers. The Force was a balancing act and she could only hold so much, and so she’d chosen to settle herself in the place where she felt most at home. Maja reminded her little of herself at that age. Where the Atrisian had been wild, a spitfire prone to deadly telekinetic outbursts, Maja had a cold determination that Matsu believed would serve her quite well. Sorcery required concentration and determination – the Lady succeeded because her mind found free-association naturally, stringing together thoughts and ideas without her encouragement, but determination seemed part of Maja’s very bones.

The Atrisian felt a burst of pain in the Force as a blaster round hit her apprentice. The drawback of their chosen path was no more evident than in this moment – they were not meant to form impenetrable shields, not meant to take on entire battlefields with merely their lightsaber. They were meant to sow fear and use it against their enemies, and sometimes that meant sacrifice. (But sacrifice was the route to perfection. Every little thing they gave made them better, gave them u n d e r s t a n d i n g.)

Matsu whipped her head around to watch as one of the dropships began to tilt, the pilot turning in horror when the gunman turned his turret to take down his brothers. Panic and disbelief took hold, the simplest way to take out an entire ship and a dozen of the men down below before the mind Maja controlled could be stopped. She felt a laugh bubble up from her chest, a grin characteristic of battlelust when the tide had turned stretching across her features. “Beautiful!”

Her dead were climbing on one another, half mindless hunger and half her suggestion as they crushed each other underfoot, a human ladder scrambling hand over head to reach the ship just above their grasp. With speed ushered by her encouragement they reached, hands claw-like, and caught hold of the lip of the captain’s dropship. The first round was shot by panicked crew members but the beauty of her corpses was their lack of fear – they kept climbing until they overwhelmed, pulling themselves in to the ship and sending it spiraling to the ground in a crash that sent some of the living inside flying from the unstable ship and others unlucky enough to crash to the ground.

The leader – she could feel him, feel his mind, despair at how wrong it had all gone – had been thrown from the ship halfway through, hitting the ground with a hard smack that served to jar him but not knock him out. He pulled himself from the ground, limping as fast as his legs could carry him away from the two Sith.

“Maja…” Matsu called across the smoke and flame. “Would you stop him?” The bounty hunter would expect an attack – his would be a mind with resistance, the hardest to crack.

Challenge yourself, and sorcery will respect you.

[member="Maja Vern"]​

 

[Darth Zilti]

Maja’s life had been to date something of a patchwork. Her formative years on-board one freighter or another, unaware of her Force genetics. Then she’d met her sister and oddly things became worse. It was as if she’d been expected to pick up Abilities through osmosis or something.

So she’d petulantly run away and sought help from witches and Dark Jedi and even Sith. But the return was insignificant for the effort expended. Although she had her crystal which was her one saving grace.

And then she’d happened upon the Epicanthix. His style had been unique in her experience but once they’d got the measure of each other, she’d grown so much in stature. It was his belief that she could succeed that had driven her to combine her theoretical knowledge with his simple instruction that had seen her develop Ability after Ability. Of course his methods were extreme and included poisoning and temporary excruciating blindness – but there was no denying the results.

But it had only taken her so far and she’d been fortunate enough to meet Matsu. Initially for training, the Sith Lord must have seen something because she accepted her as an Apprentice, as Kaine once did.

But despite the bohemian lifestyle, Maja was no dreamer. She was instilled with the tenets of secrecy, patience and ingenuity. And underlying them all was a pragmatic approach. If she was not worthy, she would die. But entwined with that philosophy was a steel that said she would not fail. Could not fail. Not arrogance, but rather a tenacity to succeed. An unfaltering determination to put everything aside and focus on the task in hand with an unswerving belief that she would prevail.

So she put aside the pain in her leg – it was temporary and if anything helped her draw on the Force. Use what the enemy has done against them – it was something she often used to good effect.

Between them they’d turned the tide. Not through the use of a saber but with their minds – and the Force. Hand to hand combat allowed a single foe at a time to die, but to use these people as pawns, it had taught her such a valuable lesson that – when she had the chance to reflect, would stand her in good stead. But for the here and now her Master had another task for her.

The ship had gone spiralling to the ground and the man with the beard had been thrown from the ship, hitting the ground hard but not with enough force to incapacitate him.

“Maja…would you stop him?”

She’d glimpsed his mind already – albeit briefly – in her earlier vision. He was no run-of-the-mill trooper but a leader of men. And as such should not be underestimated. He was injured and that was in her favour…but she knew she couldn’t just twist his mind like she’d done with the gunner previously.

She reached out with the Force. He was far enough away to present a second challenge. Range was also something she was coming to terms with – for proximity was a definite factor for her stage of development.

So she latched on to emotions he was clearly leaking. She sensed pain. No loss or regret, given the number of men that died under his command. Pride was there too. She added these facts together, contemplating the best way to bring him to heel like the cur he was.

She followed the emotions to his mind – he was already resisting her intrusion, but she had no intention of breaking him – at least not yet. Yes, she could have lashed out, but no doubt her Master wished to question him – and there was the small matter of learning too. So she paused whilst his natural defences railed against her intruding his mind. She was serene – like an angler, allowing the fish to thrash about before choosing the right moment to reel him in.

And there it was, a momentarily lapse in the struggle. She slipped into his mind but chose to wait…patience her trump card. Pride. That was the angle she was going to play, his Achilles heel. ‘Do not fight me. I’ll not damage you. I am here to give you a choice. To show you two possible outcomes.’

Her voice was soothing and slow. Almost reassuring despite the obvious menace it contained. ‘Look at them.’ He resisted and so she projected into his mind the images of the undead, clambering over each other to get to his men. ‘It is in my Master’s gift for you to be one of them. Forever in servitude. Quite literally forever. Never dying and never in control. To be eternally a puppet for my Master’s whims. Perhaps one day given to me to play with. To experiment with. We always need test subjects. I can think of so many ways to humiliate you.’

Once more his mind struggled and she allowed him to have his mind for a few seconds. And again, as he lapsed in his efforts, she took control once more. ‘I’ll not make you do anything you don’t want. All I want is for you to speak to my Master. That’s all. I’ll not force you to do it. It will be your choice. In truth you want to speak to her because the alternative is just so revolting, so degrading. A man of your stature forced to live out his life as a mindless automaton. A tool. A toy.’

In reality, she was manipulating him. She was merely giving him the impression of free choice in order for him to believe the decision to turn and return to face the Sith Lord was his own. It was a way more powerful method of control. Plant the idea so compelling, that the person believed it was their own.

She made a pretence of leaving his mind. Having spent so long in that consciousness, she had a greater measure of the man now. With a subtle prod he turned to face them now. ‘There is no way I’ll end up like them. What’s the worst she can do to me compared to that fate? No doubt she has a use for me. I can command again. Be a man of power and influence again – and riches – she’s bound to shower me with credits.’ They were Maja’s thoughts but they became his too. Slowly he picked up speed as he walked to them, finally stopping a few feet from the Sith Lord.

He dropped to one knee and bowed his head in servitude. Maja thought it was a nice touch and hoped her Master would approve.

“He’s all yours, my Master.”

[member="Matsu Xiangu"]

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

It was within her abilities to sit in the back of the mental conversation, to pick up the words like noise within the static of dying minds and corpses growling. But she didn’t. Maja was more advanced than most that came to her asking for full-time apprenticeship and Matsu didn’t feel the need to watch her every move. At the level she was operating any mistake would prove deeply injurious if not fatal. Matsu was less extreme in her teaching methods than those Maja had sought in the past but failure and weakness proved their own punishment. Matsu merely had to watch it happen, should the possibility arise.

When the hunter came to kneel before her, her smile settled to something wicked. Reaching up to wipe a spattering of blood from the high arch of her cheekbone she nodded in satisfaction.

Rewards would be in order, but first, to business. She squatted down in front of the man on his knees, resting her elbows on her knees.

“Who sent you?”

He was quiet at first, his expression slightly dazed, holdover from hitting the ground and Maja’s takeover. Matsu reached over and curled icy fingers around his chin, touch amplifying her mental insistence.

“I asked who sent you.”

Revulsion curled over the hunter’s skin at her touch, an involuntary twitching that he seemed to almost immediately regret. In response Matsu chased that revulsion, hunting it as he had hunted her until she sank her claws in and amplified his disgust. If you want to get away from me, you will tell me what you know. The sooner you tell me the sooner I go away.

“N-no one sent me. You’ve got two bounties on your head. It’s just what I do.”

Matsu ran the tip of her tongue along the inside of one cheek, considering his answer. She’d known from the first that this man would be an example to anyone that thought to come after her in the future. But Maja had done exceptionally well, defended herself and worked through pain to seek her ends. She was an acolyte, but for how much longer? Matsu looked to her red-haired apprentice, beckoning her closer.

“I’m sure you recall from the text that survives of Zannah that she was extraordinarily skilled at manifesting what’s known as tendrils of the darkside? Capable of removing limbs, burning through even the densest parts of the human body, throwing an opponent or killing them in an instant…remarkable, really.” She paused, considering the man in front of her and Maja at her side before looking up to her the woman. It might kill the acolyte to try, but she believed that ample supply of determination and the potential Maja had once shown in Matsu’s labs that first meeting would stave off such dire consequences. “Just keep him alive. I still need him. Do you know the words?”

Pasat lifted from the ground, attempting to attack Matsu when he snapped out of the soothing coo of the promise of her disappearance if he told the truth. She raised one hand, pinching two fingers together and stilling him, the picture of placidity at least for the moment.

[member="Maja Vern"]​

 

[Darth Zilti]

Maja watched, listened and learned. One long dead had helped her progress but the living had always been the greatest help in her advancement.

Her Master managed to exude authority, power and menace without even accessing the Force. This she both admired and coveted. And she pushed the pain in her leg aside, not wishing to miss a moment of the lesson that was unfolding. And then she was aware that her Master may be using the Force – but so subtly that even this close to the action, she could barely perceive what was being done – if anything. That was true mastery and once more she craved that level of control.

She could discern though her natural senses the inner turmoil the bounty hunter was experiencing. How he was doing his best to remain calm and in control despite his combination of fear and what could only be revulsion. How imprudent he was, how truly foolish.

She shook her head involuntarily at his behaviour before her Master faced her. She now nodded at the instruction. Once her Master had subdued the man, she reflected on the challenge. It was an Ability that she would have hoped to achieve in the future – but like Vornskr before, there was something in the faith expressed that made her believe she would be capable now. Albeit not at the level or power that a Sith Lord could perform.

She knew the theory of course. How could a Zannah-ite not? It was the Sith Lord’s most potent weapon, one she’d used to defeat her Master. Dark-side tendrils were pure manifestations of malevolent Force energy summoned through Sith magic. They rose in the form of black mist from the ground and took the form of serpentine tentacles which swarmed their victim and attacked with the power of the pure Dark-side.

She knew it would require complete mental concentration. She would have to block out her pain and give her entire focus to the magic. If her Master were not there, she would be extremely vulnerable given her rank, but she was fortunate to be able to give herself entirely to the ritual.

She closed her eyes and pulled the Force close. She focused on her pain. She’d learned Force Rage and had embraced pain and fear as a fuel for her powers. She did not shrink from them, or even block them out. Instead she welcomed them as allies in tapping into as much of the Force as she could muster.

So she opened herself up to the Dark-side completely. She let it flow through her, drawing it from every available source – her own emotions, those still alive around her, still coming to terms with what had happened. The very soil of Tython was drawn from. She invoked the words, her voice barely more than a mutter, the language archaic and evil in and of itself. She called to power buried for centuries, summoning it up to the surface as wispy tendrils of dark smoke snaking up from the earth.

The thin tendrils crawled along the ground, reaching for one another, twining themselves together into writhing tentacles each a metre or so long. It was not impressive by Zannah standards, but fortunately she was not facing Bane. And response to her spoken command, the tentacles rose up and lashed out at the kneeling man.

The bounty hunter saw the strange black mist crawling across the dirt. He had no way of knowing if this was an illusion or not. He had no way of knowing that somehow Maja had given substance and corporeality to the Dark-side, transforming it into a handful of shadowy, serpent-like minions rising up from the ground.

Suddenly the tendrils darted at him. His hands flew up instinctively to defend himself. But his hands simply passed through the black mist with no effect. The man threw himself to the side, but the tip of the leading tentacle still brushed against his left shoulder.

The material of his clothes melted away as if it had been splashed with acid. A chunk of flesh beneath simply dissolved, and the hunter screamed in agony.

The excruciating pain he felt from the mere touch of the dark side tendril was unlike anything he had ever experienced before. The damage was far from life threatening, but it nearly sent the man into shock. He fell hard to the ground, his jaw slack and his eyes rolling back into his head. His mind was reeling from the brief contact. The anguish radiated through every nerve in his body, but what he felt went far beyond any mere physical sensation. It was not the raw heat of the Dark-side but rather the empty chill of a void itself spreading through him. It touched every synapse in his mind, it clawed at the core of his spirit. In that instant he tasted utter annihilation, and felt the true horror of absolute nothingness.

Somehow he managed to stay conscious, and when the next tentacle coiled he tried to scramble to his feet. But the tendril evaporated before his eyes. They all did. Maja was spent. What she had achieved – given the amount of the Force she’d already expended – was significant, but it was also all she had to give.

She slumped to the floor – euphoric and exhausted in equal measures. “He’s still alive,” she offered and scrambled for her bag. “Sugar, I need sugar,” she said and pulled out a candy bar and took a large bite. She looked up at her Master, a huge grin now spread across her face. “That felt…simply the best. Truly wicked, in every meaning of the word.”

She regained her feet but felt slightly light-headed. “I think I need to work on it though,” she added and took another bite. “Chocolate covered vweilu butter. If this bar was the Force, that’s how it would manifest itself, believe me.” She smiled again. “Wicked.” She could think of no better or apt description it seems.

[member="Matsu Xiangu"]

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

Tython had been her choice for a reason. Though the Jedi had called it home for hundreds of years, it’d always been a planet of coexistence, the light and the dark vying for equilibrium. In some ways it was nature’s manifestation of the grand battle. (It was a battle that had never meant much to her. Her attachment to the One Sith was because of its hollowed members, not because of its ideals. That she battled Jedi was merely a product of the company she kept. In truth Jedi held no special place of hatred in her heart – she would cut down anyone in her way.) What she’d asked of Maja even before the hunters had shown themselves required energy and Tython was a well-spring, a font from which Maja could draw and perform more than she might have been capable of somewhere else.

Matsu thought of it as something like muscle memory. If Maja performed something here, it’d be easier someday elsewhere when her mind and connection to the Force recalled how it’d once felt.

Suffering suffused the air around them, both the Hunter’s and their own, the darkside taking its due. Even though the spell was not her own Matsu’s connection stirred nonetheless, responding to such a tapping of power with a burst of memories. In their own way they would be fuel from one sorceress to another, things to feed from.

What had been worse? The agony of what was left of her arm, or the sight of the shrapnel she’d used to cut it off curled in her hand? Knowing that someone else had broken in to her head and twisted her thoughts so profoundly that she’d removed her own limb? Or that she’d allowed it to happen at all? Or perhaps it’d been watching her tormentor fly away, his ship growing smaller and smaller in the bright blue sky as she faded in snow quickly turning deep red with her blood.

Memories, emotions, sensations seared over their connection, all the things in the past that had made Matsu the woman she was. She’d promised back then that no one would touch her mind without her permission and she’d achieved that goal in more. Some manifest sickness had reared its head, sure. But she was a fortress, the peak of the tallest mountain. No one would reach her.

It all faded as Maja let up, the Hunter still intact though clearly mentally unfit to go on. That was fine – Matsu did not need his thoughts.

Her laugh was slightly breathless when Maja dropped to the ground, searching for her perfunctory candy. “I like that…wicked.” There was some part of Matsu that knew the rest of the galaxy saw what she did – what Maja would do – as sin. She just wished she could make them understand it was life. Suffering meant perfection, preying on the weak gave one strength. Those without the gumption to do so were left behind, the insects under her feet.

She sank down next to Maja, folding her legs in the same direction underneath her and leaning on one palm. Smoke rose all around them, the sounds of Matsu’s reanimated dead gnawing on corpses all around them as she watched the Hunter twitch and attempt to roll himself over. “Sure, it needs work. But that was more than a little impressive for a first concerted attempt. More than impressive…” It was something ponder, Maja’s future.

The Atrisian hadn’t had much of a sweet tooth before meeting the red-haired woman, but she’d developed something of a craving for chocolate since the first bite she’d nabbed…and Maja’s description reminded her of her new-found love. Reaching out one delicate hand, she raised an eyebrow in question? “Can I try some?”

_________________________________________​

Little droids floated around the trio, a retinue of Sith workers surrounding them but the cameras focusing on the Master and her Apprentice…and the man on his knees, hands behind his back, curled over between the two women. She looked right in to the camera, dark eyes tracking its movement around her.

“Good evening. Tonight I speak to you, to the entirety of the Core and beyond. This message is being broadcast as far in to the Outer Rim as possible, to anyone browsing the underworld’s message boards. Not three hours ago, my Apprentice and I were attacked, unprovoked. This man,” she said, indicating Pasat with a tilt of her head as one of the cameras panned with a mechanical buzz to capture the cowed hunter, “led the assault. We managed to defend ourselves. He is the only survivor.”

Matsu looked back up, straight in to the camera’s eager lens as she raised one hand and pinched her fingers together, Pasat’s hands snapping to his throat as he tried to stop himself from choking. Her gaze didn’t waver once, not as Pasat gagged, not as he managed to utter a ‘please’ past her telekinetic chokehold, and not even as she pressed with one final closing of her fingers and snapped his neck in two.

She let the silence reign for two or three heartbeats before she stepped around his slumped body towards the floating trio of cameras. Not a trace of yellow-amber leeched in to irises – she was cold, calm.

“To anyone looking to take up a bounty on my head or my apprentice…this will be your legacy, a thirty-second clip of your death to play over and over and over on the Holonet until people get bored of you, to be remembered as the corpse at someone’s feet. I will find everyone that means something to you and I will make each of them hurt more than the last – if you are lucky, I will kill you first. This is your only warning.”

The cameras flickered off, another whir starting as droids prepared the footage to filtration across the bounty network and every underground system Matsu’s allies had access to. She looked to Maja, her expression returned to its normal unnerving placidity. “Do you want the body, or shall I?”

There was no sense letting a potential experiment go to waste.

[member="Maja Vern"]​

 

[Darth Zilti]

Maja smiled as her Master sat next to her. She fished into her bag and pulled out a bar. She never travelled anywhere without at least a handful – plus a spare in her pocket.

“It was so…pure. So natural. It was like it was the Force itself I was invoking, not me channelling it.” She shook her head. “That may not be a great explanation – but it’s the best I can do. Usually the Force flows into me and then out in the Ability I wish to utilise. But this time, it was like I was commanding the Force itself to manifest into those tendrils.” She shrugged.

Handing the bar to her Master, she smiled again. “They should have a warning on them, they’re addictive.” It was odd that the Acolyte could conjure the Dark-side and see it as so matter of fact yet see chocolate as if it were some terrible vice. Was it a skewed perspective? To others perhaps, but not to Maja.

She accepted the praise without words. She knew she’d done well and by her own standards knew she could and would improve her control and the spell’s longevity and power. But as a first attempt? She wouldn’t complain.

#​

Learning to use the Force was one thing, but what came next was an even greater lesson. There was more to being a Sith – to being someone of power – than simply using the Force.

So she sat, observed and absorbed. If she could demand a fraction of her Master’s authority, she will have done well.

And when it was all over, there came the question.

“Do you want the body, or shall I?”

Her initial instinct was to defer to her Master. Experimentation wasn’t her forte. But then, she had to start some time, and what was wrong with the present?

“Actually Master, I’d like to have it.”

[member="Matsu Xiangu"]