The Fall

[Laira Darkhold]

People like to ask prisoners, or murderers, or killers, “Why’d you do it.” More often than not they receive a lame answer that leaves them without closure, wondering what screw was loose in the killer’s head for the rest of their pitiful lives. They suffer two fold because of it. They suffer for having lost their loved ones, and for having never understood why they lost their loved ones. To me, I have discovered the why.

Life is cruel.

Life is a cruel, miserable, suffering that lasts from the moment you are old enough to understand the meaning of loss until the day you accept death. That’s why I never understood why all these Sith Lords want to be immortal so badly. Do they think they can wait out the pain and the suffering, or is it that they find solace in their own misfortune? It has little effect on the situation now, here, the one plaguing me. But to understand my pain you must hear my story.People like to ask prisoners, or murderers, or killers, “Why’d you do it.” More often than not they receive a lame answer that leaves them without closure, wondering what screw was loose in the killer’s head for the rest of their pitiful lives. They suffer two fold because of it. They suffer for having lost their loved ones, and for having never understood why they lost their loved ones. To me, I have discovered the why.

Life is cruel.

Life is a cruel, miserable, suffering that lasts from the moment you are old enough to understand the meaning of loss until the day you accept death. That’s why I never understood why all these Sith Lords want to be immortal so badly. Do they think they can wait out the pain and the suffering, or is it that they find solace in their own misfortune? It has little effect on the situation now, here, the one plaguing me. But to understand my pain you must hear my story.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

Not all of it. My time on Eriadu was average, the same as countless others, not fulfilling, but not horrible. My family life wasn’t terrible nor dysfunctional. My parents just had a trio of kids and two of those were trouble making boys always in some sort of trouble. An old HoloNet show comes to mind.

But more, once I became a man in the galaxy, looking for my purpose. I was kind hearted, so I shied away from my true purpose. I wanted to help people, and that is why I joined the Galactic Republic, but politics betrayed me there. I was young and naive and I didn’t understand how the galaxy worked. How politics worked. I understand now.

With the Mandalorians and the Techno Union I pulled closer to my purpose, and working for the One Sith helped me realize what I truly was meant for. But they were just governments, no better or worse than another, just different causes and different means of accomplishing their goals. Part of me never liked the Sith, even the ones I called friends, or I slept with. They were too bloodthristy for someone like me. I wanted to kill and fight, but I wanted to have a reason to kill someone, I wanted it to be honorable, meaningful. Each notch on my belt to be a warrior worth killing, you know? They were just about wholesale slaughter, which is why i gravitated to the Mandalorians. The Union had started as a place for me to take my company, my holdings and make exponentially more money, it didn’t start as anything meaningful. Just simple greed on my part. It became something else, something more personal. But my understanding didn’t come from my relationship with Galactic Governments. It came from my personal relationships.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

There were a few, most more unsuccessful than the last.

First, there was my first crush, Tmoxin. She drew my eye, and she was strong, independent. Everything I thought I wanted, but it was just never the right time. She was always hurting from a previous relationship or in one. It made me dejected. Weak willed. Made me pursue things I shouldn’t have. She was the reason I stayed with the Union after Geonosis, after Druckenwell, and Doldur. I had a family through some of our having known each other, but she and I were friends, even if I felt more than that. I couldn’t bring myself to abandon her or turn her away when she needed me. Not after it had happened to me with my first wife. But that was my weakness, and had little to do with her.

Then there was her. She was my everything for the year I was with her. Beautiful, strong, powerful, influential. Around her I could be me, I felt like. I was wrong, I was being what I thought I wanted to be, not who I really was. Her daughter was precious to me, I cared for them both like they were my own family, provided, held close. Rescued when the need arrived. I loved her with all my heart, I thought, and poured my soul into her, and she seemed to return the favor. We were two halves of the same coin. We needed each other, we explored together, fought together. We seemed to click. But then she left one day. Without a word. It tore my heart out, left me broken and sad. I didn’t eat, didn’t sleep for days. I couldn’t imagine going on without her and I didn’t want to. I devoted my life to leaving a legacy of a glorious death and nothing more.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

I entered every fight I could, smashed into every enemy like a wild beast, not caring if I lived or died, only wanting to unleash a flurry of pain onto my foes, win a few battles and go down in history as one of the greats. One of the monsters of heroes some powerful group had to sack up and go hunt down. I was childish, seeking death like that, but I was hurting. I didn’t understand the reason I was hurting was because I was weak, I was trying to be something I am not. I was cruel, I fed on people’s fear, I hunted them for it. I just wanted them to be afraid of me, and they were. The masses were terrified of the Dark Jedi who could summon their darkest fears from the depths of their nightmares. But seeing all that, some people have really messed up nightmares, brought me closer to who I truly am. I was so close to breaking through and realizing what I needed, who I was supposed to be. I saw fear itself, fear incarnate, the darkness in all men and women and knew what I wanted to be, but I couldn’t break free. My chains remained unbroken, strong and resilient to my will. I hadn’t fallen far enough because I had never had enough. I wasn’t strong enough to fall and remain.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

I collapsed and sought to cause suffering to the man I thought was the holder of my first crush’s heart. He was getting married to someone else, the bride had offended me. It was perfect for me to continue my downward spiral into the abyss, the false abyss I had conjured from everyone else’s nightmares. I didn’t have anything to lose, so I felt like I had nothing to fear.

I destroyed that wedding, killed dozens, drank in their fear, and to my luck, the pregnant bride was captured in the process. I enjoyed feeling her so terrified holding his happiness, his family in the palm of my hands. Why should he be allowed to be happy when I am not? Why should he be the idol of the one I hold feelings for and be allowed to have another? Part of me wanted to kill her as brutally as I could possibly imagine and send him the parts of his wife and unborn child. I think that would have set me down the wrong path. I wasn’t ready for the fall, I wasn’t strong enough to survive it yet. Instead, in a sadistic twist, I took his child for my own and sent his beloved wife into a slave pit for seven long years. I never expected her to live, I didn’t care for the longest time whether she did or not. I would have preferred her dead sometimes, but I didn’t keep tabs on her like I should have.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

But the child. Abigail. She, she was just what I needed. A little baby girl with shining eyes, who lit up with joy and gladness whenever i was in the room. I had never had my own child, I still don’t have one by blood, but Abigail was more my daughter than anyone else had ever been, and I was more her father than anyone else. And that little broken family had been just what I wanted, just what brought me back from the brink of darkness. I was still dark, but for different reasons, with different morals. It wasn’t about killing for killing’s sake. It was about fighting for her, to ensure she had a future, she had the perfect life. I wanted everything for her, money, objects, love, caring, everything she ever wanted I had and gave to her willingly. The way her little brown eyes shined when I spent time with her warmed my heart.

She changed my perspective on a lot of things, made me rethink my life as a whole. Everything before her had been me wallowing in sadness and pity, but it had lead me to my daughter, and for that I will always be grateful. Abigail was the greatest thing that ever happened to me and I knew it. I don’t know if I ever told her enough that she was. Even despite all I am now, the time I had raising her will always be the best years of my life, the first and last time I felt happy.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

When I lost her, and she became possessed, I cracked, I panicked, I and fractured down to my core. She still walks around, but she isn’t the same girl I raised, not even the same mind anymore. I tried taking her to a healer, but the spirit that resided inside her caused her to spasm and seizure when I tried, a warning. It was either them both, or neither. I cried for days, I sat pondering what I would do with my life, how I would cope. Then I saw her killing for the first time, the glee she took in it was the last straw, the breaking point for my mind. It was at that moment I realized she was gone and there was no going back. The last vestiges of my little girl was eclipsed by some long dead Sith spirit whose name I didn’t even know.

For days I spiraled out of control, crushing things, just smashing furniture, databanks, and things in my offices. The one on Bothawui was torn to shreds and had to be repaired structurally. The Obsidian Citadel had become a place of such destruction and suffering that many of the neophytes had chosen to move to one of the smaller buildings. My pain and suffering leaked into the Force like a floodgate had been opened. This was the last of my weakness pouring out. I had suffered and lost so much, so many times, that losing everything again… No, not again. Abigail was the first time I had truly had something. But even still, losing her, compounded with everything else, I shattered, only a remnant of what I had been. I was torn to the core, but the core survived. The core remained hot and burning, and black as the night.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

At my core I have always been a builder, a smith of wonders and terrors. Both from forges of fire and crafts of steel and the forge of the mind, and crafted of darkness.

And what does a smith do when a weapon shatters?

He takes the pieces and crafts something new, something stronger.

What I was, and how I got here, they matter, for if one does not learn from the past they are doomed to repeat it. Its different now. Abigail still walks and talks, but she isn’t herself anymore, she isn’t my weakness like she used to be. I thought I would be angry and depressed forever, but since my fall, my total acceptance of the Dark, I am not really anything. I don’t feel emotions like I used to. I thought being a Sith would be different, a swirling sea of emotion and pain, but instead its like nothing phases me. I haven’t smiled since, but I’ve noticed I am not sorry I lost Abi either. I’ve just accepted it as an inevitability. She was always going to be my sacrifice, the thing that changed me forever. I just don’t feel anymore.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

My idol used to be Darth Vader. And I think he still is as I sit wearing his glove, the old crushgaunt forged by Sith Lords. He didn’t feel true emotion for nineteen years. I could get used to that. I would be fifty by the next time I felt any emotional rush outside of adrenaline in combat. I don’t even consider that emotion. It’s just fighting. I don’t enjoy it, I just do it because it’s necessary. I don’t regret it anymore either. Sometimes I used to regret certain battles, like Amar. Amar had been just a butchery just to kill off a species. I had partaken, somewhat, but not in the wholesale slaughter.

No, my sacrifice had been made, even if she had been taken from me unwillingly. She had been taken from me nonetheless. Now I was without weakness and needed only to understand my purpose. And I understood it perfectly.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

I was no evil emperor, or crusader on a mission from the Dark Side of the Force. The Dark Side and the Light Side are myths, dreamed up by Jedi and adopted by the Sith. The Jedi use it as an excuse, as a boogeyman to explain away their weaknesses, and the Sith worship it like it helps them. They are both wrong. It simply is. Any idiot with a blaster can wield it for whatever purposes they please. The Force is the same way. It doesn’t have two sides, it doesn’t favor Light or Dark. It simply is, and the strongest beings are able to wield it the most efficiently. I used to like to say the Force favors only the Strong. But I had been far stronger than the spirit that had possessed Abigail. Well, stronger in the Force, weaker of will. I had been fracturing before then. Abigail had been growing curious about her mother and I had been consumed with worrying whether or not she would discover the truth of the matter, who she became mine. I had lied a lot and was afraid of facing the consequences of those actions. If I had been like this at the time, she would be fine. She would be afraid of me, but she would be safe, and I could have dealt with that.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

I knew, in the depths of my mind, that had I been like this, I would not have suffered, life’s cruel irony, that I was strong enough to save her now, but lacked the opportunity. She was the last vestiges of my weakness, but it was miniscule at best. I knew she still had the smallest hold over me. Not as she was, but her true self, the sweet innocent young girl I raised. She was my weakness, not the Abigail that currently haunted the earth. But the weakness I had wasn’t real anymore. If she could be brought back, I would move mountains, tear worlds asunder, and leave a trail of bodies in my wake, but alas. She was gone.

I was like this now because it was what I was supposed to be. Everything bad that had ever happened to me was because I was weak, I hadn’t had the courage to embrace my true self until I had been built up and then smashed down to the bottom. Now I wasn’t on the chart anymore, like that. I was just there, just a simple force of nature. I was a destroyer, a bringer of carnage, and pain, and suffering. It wasn’t a divine purpose or a mission from the Force. It was just the way it was, I was simply here, and because I was here and had time left I might as well help others understand what life was.

Life is Pain.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

Once they realized that, they could be themselves, live, exist. But there was no meaning to life, no great mystery. You just made it through and in the end there was nothingness. Nothing to be sad about, but nothing to get your hopes up about either. Just enjoy your time alive while you could and then wait out the clock. I had my three years of happiness. It wasn’t as much as some people got, but it was something.

Other people normally look back and feel like the good outweighed the bad, but not everyone got that luxury. I didn’t for some unknown reason. For some reason the universe had decided to punish me time and time again, hammering me down. But that was because I was weak, and had let peacetime make me weak. If I had been stronger it wouldn’t have been so bad for me.

No, it wasn’t fair. Life wasn’t meant to be fair though.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

I had suffered worse than most, and it wasn’t fair. But life wasn’t supposed to be fair, it was supposed to be difficult and painful. Pain was supposed to mean you had had something to lose, and that at least you had had something worth losing.

I didn’t deserve this. I was a good father, I was good to my friends. I would have taken a bullet for them. I was loyal to my people and to the people who were loyal to me. What had I done to deserve this. Was it Thais? Was it what I did to her? No, I had let her off easy. If not for me Abigail would have been in a prison orphanage and Thais would have been dead.

Life was pain, and I had suffered enough pain for one lifetime. It was time for others to suffer as I had. It was someone else’s turn to suffer. Someone who wasn’t me or mine. It was everyone else’s turn to suffer. It was my turn to simply feel nothing anymore.
And I felt nothing. No anger. No sadness. No pain. That was for everyone else now.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

Concordia: Clan Vereen Fortress

The forge was cold. It had sat cold for weeks since the Drahr’buir had sealed himself in the depths of the fortress. No one really understood what was going on with him, but they knew it wasn’t good. Introspection was one thing, but the pulses of the Dark Side the echoed from the sealed portion of the fortress wasn’t a good thing. He had been in distress when he entered and he hadn’t come out.

And then there was nothing. No emotion, just a burning inferno of Dark Side energy. To many, it was a good sign. His mind no longer swam, his cries didn’t echo through the Force. He simply didn’t have emotions through the Force anymore. With any luck he would return from this self imposed exile as he had been before.

Abigail had wandered around on occasion but she wasn’t the same, and she never stayed for long, and she never visited him in the week of his seclusion from the galaxy. She was gone when the storm stopped. It felt as though it was peaking, and the area around his corridors sparked with lightning, occasionally flickers of fire filled the hallways, and they could feel it, the swirling energies of a maelstrom within the room. And then nothing.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

And then the forges were alight.

Channeling the Force through the mountain the heart of the world churned, rising to greet an old master, magma spilling from the river and into the forge fire, bubbling with dark energy. The Forge crackled as it rose to answer his call, the flames igniting stronger than ever, burning black and purple within the forge and the cauldron of the smelter. Crystals lined the wall, and the tools of Beskar shudders as it felt as though the weight of the world shifted, as though the fires had their own gravitational pull from the maelstrom of Force energy fueling them. There were new bellows blowing air into them, only the Force. Only the Dark Side channeled into that place.

Gold and aurodium ores were dropped into a cauldron and cast inside the smelter, boiling in seconds, the impurities burning out from the molten metal as the heat rose steadily higher. As steam began to rise and the metal began to turn gaseous from the force of the temperature in the cauldron the maelstrom within the smelter stopped, and the metal did not boil away. As it cooled it was poured by the deft hands of the Drahr’buir into a mold, hand cast special for this project. Smoke and ash funneled up from the chimney as Smoke Demons joined the Dark Jedi Master, answering his summons, putting their own fear and malice into the mold as he set it alight with lightning and fire from his hands.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

Were there a witness to this it would appear as though the devil and his demons were hard at work within the depths of hell, fueling their fires of torment, crafting some monstrous creation from the depths of some poor soul’s nightmare.

At last the metal cooled into a solid, having taken hours due to the pressure of the Force and the flames from the maker’s hands. The demons screeched in agony as they felt it. The change in pressure, the change in the Force.

The trinket was held in a black leather glove, older than the forge’s oldest tools. As Vader’s fist closed itself around the little golden trinket, grey eyes, rimmed with red observed the creation. Only the first piece of the artifact being created by the smith.

“What does a smith do when his creation breaks?” The man said, his expression almost bored as the Force surged into the little trinket and the glove wrapped around it, squeezing with greater and greater force.

For only a moment the trinket resisted, only giving way at the end, shattering into three pieces in the man’s hand. “He forges it anew, stronger than before.” The fires around him surged again, and the hammer rang out as the metal was flattened and forge welded together.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

Every blow of the hammer was assisted by the Force, ringing and echoing out from the small forge. Each time the metal was folded in on itself the Force folded within it, driving the impurities of the metal and the Force from the metal. The smoke demons around their master one by one surrendered themselves to the metal, becoming infused with it, becoming one with the hunk of red glowing metal, imbuing it with their power and fear and hatred. As twenty became ten, the man in the room, the Devil as it were, smiled. No he was not happy, that emotion was gone from him. He was appeased with his work. As ten became five the air crackled with each blow the hammer, lightning splitting through the room, echoed in the skies above, having turned black and crackling with lightning, swirling with cyclones, hail, and heavy rain against the mountain fortress.

As five became none, the air in the forge was charged and pulsed with the Force. Perhaps this is what the spirit had wanted after all when it possessed Abigail. His utter acceptance of the Dark Side, his utter and complete acceptance of his purpose. To destroy. Draco would never know for sure what the spirit had wanted when it had merged with Abigail, but he did know she was gone to him forever. And for that, everyone would pay. Not because they deserved it, in fact he didn’t care whether they suffered at all. But they would pay for failing to understand, Life is Pain.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

More and more the skies churned under the pressure of the Force, the intricate web all touched by the power of the Dark Side, answering the call of its Master on this world. The sky was alight with the flash of steady lighting outside, as in the forge they were worse. The air cracked and sparked with fire and lightning as the smoke and ash from the furnace churned into its own swirling storm of Dark Side energy.

“Woe to the man who betrays his brother, it would be better for him if he had not been born.”

The hammer fell against the metal one last time. Two hundred folds, for a trinket. The Force radiated from the little hunk of metal as it was slipped into the cauldron one last time, to be melted to liquid once again and reformed into the masterpiece that the Drahr’buir had once made but found unworthy. The new mold, the new metal, the new cast. Day turned to night before the metal cooled, the spirits of the Sith Demons howling as they were cursed and crumpled into little more than a channel or a focus for the power of a Dark Master.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

As the trinket fell from the cast of the mold as it dissolved around the little item, the man in the leather apron could feel it was different. Black glove gripped it again and the Force focused its assault on the trinket and it did not faulter this time. It held its form in the hand of Vader, clasped and wrenched from the plaster the gold and aurodium was taken to a work table for the last touches to be made upon the time.

I fine file, a grinder, and a polishing kit were all the master craftsman needed to finish this part of the forging, imbuing the Force into the Gold and Aurodium talisman. The pulse of the Force, echoed with fear and malice as the finishing touches were placed on the trinket and with a last surge of power the metal was heat treated by the sheer force of its maker’s will.

“I am not the man I once was. I am someone new. Someone stronger.”

 

[Laira Darkhold]

The lignan crystal had sat unused, or used on rare occasion until now. The prime gem taken from Phaegon all that time ago was plucked, polished and compressed. The Life Drain crystal sat on the desk beside it, the talisman clasped in a jewelry chain behind them. No, this would hardly do for what was in the Dark man’s mind.

He pried open a small box and from it withdrew the Holocron, labeled Crystallurgy. From it the man watched, learned, waited. The instructions were clear and simplistic. A trained alchemist with significant work put into his efforts was able to understand the instructions and knowledge held within the little Holocron. Most people wouldn’t even know this holocron existed, but it was nothing exceptional. It held specialized knowledge on the subject and from it, the man learned how to enact the effects he desired into the crystal.

Taking up the Life Drain crystal and the prime lignan crystal they were deposited into the furnace and through the Force the Dark man guided the crystals on their new formation through the Force, using separate Lignan crystals to increase his abilities, to surge past his limitations, just as he had done before when crafting his gauntlets that now aided him in crafting this item. Hours passed and dawn began to rise, but when the crystals were withdrawn they were but oneperfectly cut blood red gem ready to be set inside the golden amulet.