Private Let The Past Die, Kill It If You Have To [Taeli Raaf]

[Darth Carnifex]

Ziost.​

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A world left decrepit and barren by the actions of a mad Dark Lord of the Sith eons ago. In an instant, life had been wiped out across the planet down to the last blade of grass, leaving only frigid wastes and the lumbering beasts known as Monoliths to tread upon Ziost's lifeless surface. In the ages since that disaster, the planet had gradually regained some of its lost vitality, but it had never truly recovered. The harsh and brutal nature of the world lent itself well as the new military center of the Sith Empire, its cities sufficiently utilitarian and well-defended. ​

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What civilian life existed on Ziost was as harsh and unforgiving as the Sith themselves, the populace having adapted to the cold climate in stark defiance of the world's attempts to turn them back. The ever-resourceful Sith had also established an academy on Ziost's surface to develop the talents and skills of the Empire's most promising students in the art of Alchemy and Sorcery, the Sorzus Academy. The brutal environment around the academy was the perfect testing ground for the occupants of the academy, the bones of those who had failed their trials littering the lifeless soil at the mountain the academy was built on.​

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It had been many years since he had set foot on Ziost's surface, his duties to the Empire and his own ambitions have taken him far beyond the confines of the Sith Holy Worlds. But recent events had drawn him back to that cradle of Sith faith, the recent Alliance assault on the tomb-world of Korriban being one of those events.​

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The other was Taeli Raaf , the recently divorced Lady of the Sith.​

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He sensed an opportunity, a potential. For years, the Mistress of Monsters had been defined by her relationship with her wife, it had been one of the last remaining barriers to her fully committing to the power that he had offered. Now that barrier had been toppled, and he could sense the turmoil which boiled beneath the surface of one of his oldest allies.​

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His summons had been brief, only that she was to meet him at the Sorzus Academy to discuss the next phase of their grand design.​

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She had not been told the exact specifications of what this next phase entailed, nor was she made aware of all of the equipment that he had transported to the Sorzus Academy, nor what his minions had constructed at the pinnacle of the academy's tallest tower.​

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But she soon would be.​

 

[Taeli Raaf]

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Darth Carnifex

Ziost was a world of dark power, and it had been a monument to the Sith for millennia. It had been her decision, when she had merely been Triumvir of Power, to establish a Sith academy on world devoted to the study of alchemy and sorcery. Only the best students were allowed to join the Sorzus Academy, overseen by her hand chosen headmaster, Darth Kizian, a Givin Sith Master skilled in both arts. It was a place of dark study, a place where students were pushed to advance the frontiers of the dark side and its insidious arts further than ever before.

It was a place she was comfortable, after the letter arrived from her wife and her errands on Coruscant finished.

Kaine hadn't needed to send a summons for her to meet him at her favored academy, its dark structures towering over the northern mountains. She had already been on her way to the world. It was taking a little time to arrange for personal quarters on Dromund Kaas that would be to her liking, and would need to include everything her daughter wanted or needed. Nerralyn had come with her mother to Ziost, and was excited to see the man designated her godfather when she was born and to start reading and practicing her powers. She was her mother's daughter after all, but Taeli would not be happy until she reclaimed her other two children. In time.

Arriving at the academy, ten year old holding her hand and Rose following dutifully behind her Master, Kizian fell into step alongside Taeli.

"He awaits you in your personal quarters, Mistress," he informed her, voice gravely. "I know not what the Emeritus does, but he has brought apparatus of alchemical nature with him."

She nodded, more to herself as she took in the little bit of information. The Sorzus Academy was her domain still, even Kaine would know that, and nothing remained secret from her here. She had an inkling what he was up to. Discussions about the next phase of their plans, of course, but she could feel in the currents around her that it was more personal too.

"Nerra, Mommy needs to speak with Lord Zambrano alone for a little bit. Maybe Lord Kizian and Rose can show you the library?" she said, framing it as a question, but it was more of a statement. The young girl, already entranced with Sith education, recognized it was Darth Arcanix, not her mother, speaking and nodded rapidly. Taeli watched the three go before making her way to the private turbolift that would lead to her quarters. She could feel the event horizon in the Force that was Kaine waiting for. He would not have long to wait as the doors opened and she emerged, gown and robes billowing behind her as she moved.

 

[Darth Carnifex]

He stood at the far end of the chamber, arms held behind his back with both hands curled into loose fists. His black Sith gi was tightened at the waist by a black synth-leather girdle, the symbol of Eternal Rule emblazoned in red and gray. His hair had been cut recently, shortened to reach down just below the nape of his neck. A single lightsaber hung freely from his waist, while a large sinister sword circled calmly around him in a circular motion. ​

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When the lift doors opened, Carnifex did not turn to face the Mistress of Monsters. Rather, he kept his eyes straight and focused out the window in front of him. Beyond was the vast expanse of Ziost's desiccated landscape, a gnarled and twisted visage of faded beauty.​

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Only when she had come close did he speak, "Taeli, it's good to see you again." He tilted his head slightly to the side to look at her, his glowing eyes reflecting in the ceraglass window. "I should have known you would be close, this was always one of your favorite retreats."​

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He then turned to face her at last, revealing that a vicious scar had been riven into the Sith Lord's face. Exposed muscle and cheekbone could be seen through the wound, the flesh still knitting itself back together on its own accord.​

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Carnifex made no mention or acknowledgment of the wound.​

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"How are you faring?"​

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Taeli Raaf ​

 

[Taeli Raaf]

Darth Carnifex

"It has a simplicity to it," she remarked, coming up to join the Emperor Emeritus at the window that allowed her to overlook the academy grounds. In the distance, a few Cirmuhai were flying through the sky. She made no glance at the wound the man beside her sustained. Kaine had always been one to wear any damage done to his current body openly and with pride.

"And it is my academy," she continued. She had been the one to establish it. She had chosen the instructors personally. She had created its alchemical and sorcerous defenses. Even though she was no longer Triumvir of Power, the position had been changed since and she had advanced further up the ladder, the academy was still hers.

She didn't respond the question for a long time, merely looking out over the grounds still. A thundersnow storm was brewing over the mountains in the distance, likely to sweep down to New Adasta in the next few hours. Kaine wouldn't need her vocal response to how she was; he would feel it in the Force. She was a writhing ball of deep heartbreak, depthless betrayal, infinite anger, and a slowly forming black hole of hatred for her ex-wife for what she had done. Taeli had finally gotten the family she wanted, could start putting the pain of her birth family being wiped out, by having her children... and Fiolette had stolen two of them away.

She. Wanted. Revenge. It was plain and simple, and yet she knew she needed to control all of it. A Sith was master of their emotions, not their slaves. They served her, not the other way around. She would use them, in time, and now... the one limiting factor on her ambitions had decided to remove itself.

"You know," she answered simply.

 

[Darth Carnifex]

"I see," he answered monotonously. ​

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He did not empathize with Taeli, that was something he was incapable of. When he had first walked down the path to immortality, he had done so out of a deep-seated fear of what waited for him beyond the veil and the loss of material power he had worked his whole life to accumulate. Now that he had achieved immortality, or whatever he was calling immortality, his view on death had shifted dramatically. The ritual he had undertaken, the Shakkai, had gradually stripped him of many things; touch, taste, smell, emotions, and even the ability to distinguish color. He could only experience the most intense of emotions and desires, chiefly white-hot hate, and the overwhelming pleasure of carnal delights.​

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Some might pine for a time before they had rid themselves of all frivolities, yearn to again feel like any normal individual would. But Carnifex was not like those people, he had embraced this new existence wholeheartedly and was not fond of looking back to before he had undertaken the ritual. Free of distraction, his mind was razor-sharp and single-minded in its fixation on his sole ambition to reshape the galaxy in his image.​

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"I needn't remind you how to harness those emotions you're feeling," Carnifex spoke after a short silence, "But in this time of great heartbreak and betrayal, I can offer you a new path. When last I offered it to you, you declined because of your family. Now the only family still with you is the girl several floors down. The women you once called your wife has shown you her true colors, the ones that were always buried beneath the surface. Never before have you been so alone..."​

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He breathed out, the air in the room dropping several degrees.

"But you needn't be. I offer you a way out, Taeli." He slightly angled his body to partially face her, "I can offer you eternity."​

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Taeli Raaf ​

 

[Taeli Raaf]

Darth Carnifex

Of course, it began to make sense. She knew Kaine was incapable of empathy, even before he began pursuing this avenue to defeat the ultimate enemy of the Sith. He would not come here to provide anything such as comforting words; no he had come to remake an offer she had rejected almost immediately the last time he had proposed it.

The Shakkai, as he called it, was an ancient ritual of alchemy and sorcery. It had allowed the ancient Sith Vitiate to extend the lifespans of his favored servants if the records were to be believed... and they were to be. Scourge had lived at least three centuries, unaging, serving as the Emperor's Wrath and plotting his eventual downfall with an ancient Jedi Knight. The price was what the issue was. It involved tearing away sensory impulses, stripping away the ability to perceive the world in many ways. To become eternity, one had to sacrifice feeling.

"Replication, not enhancement," she quietly scoffed. Kaine knew her opinion on merely recreating the ancient rituals of the past. "You were content to take part in the ritual before it could be truly studied, to be improved. To limit or even eliminate the price."

She glanced around the chamber, still not looking at Kaine. The implements were in place already. She now had to wonder... would he force the issue? They had been allies for almost two decades now, and Taeli spent much of that time studying the man as he studied her. He was completely capable of it, even before his transformation, and he might even view it as helping his close ally by taking a choice away. If he could feel that deeply, that is.

"Eternity without perception would seem to me a prison," was her remark. For a naturally curious woman like herself, for someone consumed by the desire for knowledge and advancing the arts, to not be able to utilize her five physical senses, would be unacceptable. Kaine would also know that about her.

 

[Darth Carnifex]

"Resentment will consume you, Taeli Raaf," stated Carnifex in a matter-of-fact tone, the sharpness of his words brooking no disagreement. "You think that you can push it aside, subdue it, but eventually, in time, the littlest things will remind you of her. A smell, a color, a piece of music. Then that hurt will come rushing back, stronger than it had ever been, and you will be crippled by it. It will magnify with every passing day, and you will be helpless when all you can see is her face."​

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He looked away from her again, staring back at the icy glass which separated them from the barren world outside. "Or hear her voice even when she is not there." Carnifex altered his voice to perfectly mimic Fiolette's, letting the very act of doing so punctuate his argument. He changed his voice back as he continued to speak, "And I will not suffer this period of grief that you will endure, what we have built is too important for distraction."​

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Swiveling around, Carnifex walked towards the center of the room. "You have been given an opportunity, Taeli, to finally embrace your ambitions without attachment holding you back. I offer you a path to do away with your resentment and heartbreak, and all you would have to sacrifice is your lesser emotions, to experience only the most intense pleasures and desires as I have. In time, you would thank me." He stopped and turned to face Taeli again.​

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"But I will not force your hand, I will simply offer you a choice. Accept my gift or walk away from your destiny and never know what lies beyond the World Between Worlds."​

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Taeli Raaf ​

 

[Taeli Raaf]

Darth Carnifex

She stayed silent as he made his argument, her eyes narrowing imperceptibly at the reprimands and then the rather cruel trick of changing his voice to sound like Fiolette's. Oh, she understood what point he was trying to make. But there was both an emotional and logical mistake he was mistaking... this was not the first time she had suffered such loss, and if anything, this was not even close to what occurred before. His last point before his stick was almost laughable as he would know, for she had cultivated such a reputation, that she was never one for hedonistic pursuits or vices.

The stick made her eyes narrow further.

"You always were so quick to dismiss such pain," she retorted, finally turning to face him fully. "But then, my old friend, you were never really capable of understanding it even before the Shakkai ritual. Compared to Corvus and Melori, my ex-wife's betrayal is nothing debilitating. When they vanished, I took that pain and made myself stronger. That pain let us destroy the first Alliance, shatter the Jedi for years, and even now they are blind to what happens in the shadows. Heartache is just another path of power, if one is familiar with it."

She turned away from him again as he walked to the center of the chamber. Her adoptive parents, dead by her hand. Her birth parents, dead before she ever got to meet them. Her sisters, vanished without a trace and at this point dead too. Fiolette leaving and taking Aerys and Iaacen, that was something she could rectify on her own and... she realized something too. Something Kaine wouldn't understand even if she explained it to him, but he understand this part of it.

"My ambitions have no checks now," she continued, her gaze sweeping across the landscape around the academy. Eyes that were gifted with a vision of war coming to her doorstep, of the encroaching of the Alliance. They would be coming no doubt. "You need not worry about me being distracted from our goal, Kaine. Vengeance can be set aside until we rule, or if the opportunity arises as we prepare. And your choice is a hollow bargain, my old friend."

A flick of her hand and black smoke of Dathomiri magic would form around it to reveal a scroll.

"I have the ritual we need and what it requires to open the Door for us," she said, turning back to him once again. Purple had become amber. "Until you improve the Shakkai, I won't go through it... but now I offer you, my friend, the key to our eternal domination."

 

[Darth Carnifex]

Carnifex stared at Taeli as she spoke, not speaking another word until she had finished. ​

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"Disappointing, but not unexpected. It appears we at an impasse yet again, Taeli Raaf."​

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Still, he looked at the scroll with a keen hunger reflecting in his eyes. Regardless of whether or not Taeli's words would prove to be true, she had still pulled through on her end of their pact. That alone was enough to placate the Lich Lord of the Sith from pressing the issue of the Shakkai any further, at least for now. Yet, even now in the back of his mind, there was the briefest flicker of a nagging thought which had routinely plagued him ever since he underwent the Shakkai ritual.​

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Perhaps, Taeli was just stronger than he was at living.​

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Had he not taken the ritual to escape the pain of living one's life exposed to emotions and feelings? Perhaps, but Carnifex had buried whatever true intentions he had possessed for taking the Dark Side into his veins so far down in his psyche that he could no longer recall the exact reasoning. It was better that way, less burden to shoulder.​

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"What are the specifics of this ritual?"​

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Taeli Raaf ​

 

[Taeli Raaf]

Darth Carnifex

And she had him. His hunger for domination won out over the argument the Shakkai ritual always prompted between them. She wasn't all that surprised to be honest. Kaine might offer immortality, but it was flawed and the ritual needed some enhancements, but what she held was key to altering reality itself, to opening the Door.

"We'll need those Artusian Crystals we have been holding in reserve," she replied, unfurling the scroll. A touch of the dark side to a rune would project the words in a fiery illusion above the scroll for both of them to observe. "And we will need a great deal of Force energies, both light and dark, to fabricate a portal. The One were clever in how they protected the World Between Words. A world with a powerful connection to the Cosmic and Living Force like Lothal or Ruusan or Tython and the equivalent of power and focused strength of a nexus of light and a nexus of dark and then just an immense amount of Force energy to fuel the ritual. Representative of the Son, the Daughter, and the balance symbolized by the Father. If done correctly, we can open a door and enter the Vergence Scatter and create our own Dark Vergence."

What she didn't mention was she was unsure of what exactly would rise to oppose such work. She didn't know, but she doubted the Force would allow them to do so easily.

"The light nexus will be the hardest part, but we will need to harvest worlds as the Dark Reaper once did to get the power we need."

 

[Darth Carnifex]

Carnifex studied the fiery inscription of the scroll.​

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"I have designed an invasion craft that will suit our needs for this exact task. It is fortuitous that our actions have aligned, perhaps the Dark Side of the Force guided our hands." Not that Carnifex actively believed that the Force, Light or Dark, had a will of its own. He did believe that, like any animal in danger, the Force would lash out against any malevolent aimed towards it. He agreed with Taeli that they would have to be prepared when they finally put their ambitions into action.​

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As for the planets they would need to harvest? "My agents have been scouring the galaxy for weeks, documenting populated worlds without significant defenses from any of the intergalactic powers. There are plenty to choose from."​

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The fact that they required a great deal of Force energy was also fortuitous, as Carnifex had been interested in accumulating such energies for years. "What of the souls that Voracitos has consumed? Could they be used to help power this ritual? He had consumed many over the years, this war with the New Imperials and the Galactic Alliance has proven bountiful."​

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Taeli Raaf
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[Taeli Raaf]

Darth Carnifex

She didn't need him to say what regions of the galaxy might be ripe for such harvesting. The Galactic South had become a free region when the Outer Rim Alliance disbanded. With the CIS and First Order slowly spreading instead of a rapid expansion, it left a vast swath of territory free to be abused for their plans. Not that she would limit the targets to just free worlds; a harvest within territory controlled by the Alliance, the Silvers, or New Imperials would create caution, evoke a response where even those forces might become targets. It would remain to be seen once they narrowed down the list of planets.

"The question I would ask about those poor souls that Voracitos devoured would be is how many would the Gluttonous One be willing to let go," she remarked. "We could certainly use them, either as fuel or... another idea that I've been tossing around in my head, but I don't want to rely on that source of energy if it could be tenuous at best."

She was sure Voracitos had gorged himself on the war in the north, but he was a greedy creature and not one to let things he held within his thrall and in his realm of the Netherworld go for free. Everything had a price.