Alkor listened to her words, not altogether surprised by the knowledge of Ra's return. He certainly had not expected it, and it came as a foul taste reminescent of his own former actions in the Sith Empire. The hand of Darth Carnifex was further reaching than the longest shadows, and where he willed it, puppets would dance. Despite the greatest of efforts against him, he knew how to dig deep and rip out the foundations upon which his enemies built.
The towering terror also knew how to build, and he knew how to cultivate the growth of others in his own image. He watered the flora of free worlds with blood and grew a devout generation of followers. The Sith flocked to him like dependent, power hungry parasites, suckling at his necrotic teats and taking his leavings as triumph.
Yasha had seen a glimpse of what he could do, in the form of many Empires that fell before him. It was only the tip of a massive iceberg. "Ra Viszla," Alkor began, "was one man. His beliefs helped to carve only the beginnings of what you have brought up from the dirt with your hands. Death can only serve to cut away useless things, to make room for the new. What Ra did not understand, and what you do understand, is that in order to forge a new life for our people, they must have something to live for. They must have a place to call home. The difference between the Sith and Mandalore, is that the Sith will never be content to settle in one place. They are filled with a necessary hunger, one that will consume everything around them before finally, it has nothing left to feed on except for their flesh."
Alkor gestured toward the top step of the dias, where he took a seat and offered for her to take one next to him. "You are not one who has ever had the Force," he said, "or if you did, it left you after your years in the Nether. You may understand the darkness that Carnifex thrives in, but it sounds like you could profit from the perspective of someone who lived through it."
It was not an easy conversation to have. Alkor had fought hard, and come a long way to become the man he was; to wear beskar'gam and fight with honor beside his Mandalorian Brothers and Sisters, to have a family, to be more than a husk with a blade. Before the woman beside him uttered the words Cin'vhetin and washed away the boy he was to make room for the man he had become, his was a life without meaning.
"I was born on Corellia," he told her at last. It was a time of difficulty for the people, still browbeaten and ragged from the Empire's reign. My mother was an addict, she whored herself for spice and stim, and I scarce remember a day when she was sober enough to act like a parent. I ate scraps from vendors and shopowners who pitied me, and from the vast array of men who came and went from her bedroom. By the time I was old enough to walk, I learned to lie. I learned to pick pockets, to steal from shops, and to get good enough to not get caught. Getting caught meant not eating. It meant that my chances to survive dwindled."
He folded his hands and closed his eyes. "I took life for the first time- not the life of a beast, but the life of a man- at thirteen. It was instinct. I killed him, and I disposed of his body. I got the taste for blood, and by fifteen, I was working in the underground of Coronet. I killed for a man named Cicero, a psychopath by all rights, but one of the most feared crime lords that the Five Brothers had ever been cursed with.
At first, it was easy. Too easy. People are gentle by nature," he said, "not made for war, and certainly not ready for when it came to them unannounced." There were so many dead, so many faces he still remembered, frozen forever in masks of horror. He opened his eyes to banish them, but they would never let him be free. "One day, a young woman, the daughter of the Corellian Senator- she crossed Cicero, she defined his hold on the people of Coronet. She lobbied in a house packed full of people he had bribed to act against him. I was his response."
Alkor worked at the gauntlet of his beskar'gam and peeled it away from his coarse, tanned, calloused hand. His fingers felt the sting of fresh air, and he let out a breath. "I failed to kill her," he said finally, "but not because I couldn't. She kept talking about freedom for Corellia, for a better life, for the very thing I'd hoped for since I was a boy in the street. I let her live, but Cicero, he didn't like that. I had his friends set me up and I was arrested. All of my kills, all of the work I did for Cicero- he dredged it all up, found every ounce of evidence against me, and they condemned me to die. By sixteen, I was on trial for hundreds of counts of murder, and I should have died."
He glanced to [member="Yasha Mantis"], a sad expression on his face. "But, I was saved. A man named Plaga," he told her, "came to me in my cell, and he told me that if I agreed to come with him, he would ensure that I would live. I did the only thing I could to survive. I said yes."
He let out a shaky breath. There were very few people left who knew the story of Alkor Centaris, if there were any at all. Keira knew some of it, having grown up on Corellia as well. They talked about his life as a killer sometimes. It was time that Yasha learned what it meant to sell one's soul to the dark side of the Force.
"C'thulu Plaga was a Master of the Dark Side of the Force," he confided, "and the man who would inevitably teach me its secrets. He was in many ways far worse than Cicero, and yet, I was exiled instead of put to death. He had vastly more resources than the Crime Lord, and vastly more enemies. But as a killer, I was an asset he could not simply let slip through his fingers. That was the only reason he kept me alive."
"I was already a skilled killer without the Force. He simply wanted to make me better at it." He had never wanted to learn to use the power. The truth was, faced with a decision to learn it or be tossed aside with nothing and no one, Alkor continued to survive. "So, I learned it. I resisted at every turn, seeking to be strong by my own will and hands, but he punished me by making me kill time and again. Sometimes people who deserved it, and sometimes women and even children."
He looked up at her evenly. "Yasha, I had never once felt remorse for taking a life. That was what he wanted. He ripped away my humanity and made me no better than the weapons I was using. The dark side of the Force is the unnatural, utterly amoral place where those seized with their own vanity go to believe they are free. And in that freedom, it matters little to them what becomes of anyone else. They kill indiscriminately, they enslave, they corrupt, all in exchange for a rise to self-importance. A Sith can experience love," he said, and his voice dropped nearly to a whisper, "but they will cast it aside in an instant if it means they will become more powerful."
He took a deep breath, looked away from the woman who had earned his deepest respect and with it, his secrets, and then sighed. "I was stripped of the Force by my own volition," he said at last, and once I was, I felt something other than the will to survive for the first time in my life. If you wish it, Yasha, I will do everything I can, and use all of my knowledge, wisdom, and strength to help you make Mandalore stronger than all of its enemies combined."
He took his gauntlet in hand and began to put it back on. "But I do so of my own free will," he told her, "and act in the interests of Mandalore, because it has become my home."
Alkor paused, then added. "The moment you can stand on your own and say "no" is the moment you're able to fight back," he told her, "it will never control you again, unless you let it. Remember that."
