When the first chains fall

[Darth Abyss]

Malachor V, Abyss Academy

The wide entrance hall of the academy was empty, devoid of any live this time of the night, at least besides the lord of the sith and headmaster, Darth Abyss. Shrouded in his tattered, ragged and heavily damaged black robe the sith stood in the middle of the hall, waiting for his new apprentice to join him in their first real trainings session. Like any acolyte at the academy she had been given her own small room, and when they arrived Abyss had send her of so she could "sleep" and "rest". In fact, only 3 hours had passed since their freighter had landed in front of the building, and since she reached her room and found sleep even less. A guard had been send to her room, to bring her here, if she wanted or not. That was the way of the sith, filled with struggles, sometimes as big as the risk of being killed by the own master, and sometimes as little as a being awoken rather roughly. It was simple test of her discipline and her devotion, and sooner or later, sleep would become as meaningless as rest, once the ambition and passion of dark side would fully control her.

Silently and motionless he stood, his back to the entrance to the rooms for acolytes, knights and masters alike, his mask hiding the all but the lower half of his face, and only his yellow eyes truly standing out in the dim light of a malachor night. The planet had many meanings to him, and the sith alike. The darkness lived under the surface, a twisted and dark feeling that lingered in every corner of the planet, death echoing through the old stone around the academy. To Abyss, it was empowering, a eternal mark left on the galaxy that still told of the horrors of wars long gone by. He had build the academy in close range to the infamous Trayus Academy, in a nod to the lords, Sion, Traya and Nihilus.

From behind he could hear steps, unsure if it was his apprentice on her own, or if she was dragged her by his guard. It wasn't important to him anyway, it only mattered that she would hear what was about to happen to her. Since he found her, he already pushed her through hardships of different kinds, testing the strength of both her body and her will. Now she would be tested again, this time not to prove herself but instead so he could see what path was the right one for her, which talents she possessed to strengthen, and which weaknesses to eliminate . Not that he would inform her about that, it was far more amusing if she again believed that this was a matter of life and death. In all honestly he had been pleasantly surprised by her, as she showed many traits well suited of an sith acolyte, and that without any training prior to this day.

Still with his back to her, his red blade came to life in front of his face, the tip of the plasma blade peaking above his hand in the classic makashi salute. Slowly lowering the blade, now loosely hanging on his side he turned around, the yellow eyes and the mask making his appearance more akin to a demon than a man. His words and voice devote of any emotion, and his eyes only showing apathy he spoke:

"Defend yourself, Apprentice."

[member="Eshtaol Hyde"]

 

[Eshtaol]

Three hours had passed since Eshtaol and her Master had reached Malachor, and exactly seven minutes less than three hours had passed since she had fallen asleep. Granted, it would've been three on the dot had her room been right at the entrance of the academy, but alas, she'd had to remain with her eyes open a few minutes longer so as to avoid falling asleep on the floor. That would've been no good: even in her weakened state, any admission of weakness was beneath her pride and, she was quite certain, punishable in one way or another.

Her sleep had been restful while it had lasted, but not much else could really be said for it, because, of course, it had been so short-lived that Eshtaol hadn't even neared a dream cycle before being forced awake by a guard - and quite literally forced awake. It had already been proven that the way of her new order was blunt and brutal, but sleep, to her, was sacred: pulling her out of it so harshly seemed dreadfully unjust.

Nevertheless, Eshtaol had allowed her frustration to remain expressed solely through sour looks, following obediently after snatching her beautiful new saber-hilt from where it lay on her bedside. She wasn't hoping to have to use it, but it gave her a sense not just of safety, but of belonging, and so it would stay at her side at all times. In fact, the robes she'd been given just hours ago were not quite so useless as to be exempt of pockets, and so she could keep it with her without inconvenience.

She reached the hall still trying to blink away her fatigue, eyes scrunching up in discomfort as the crimson light suddenly sliced through the darkness, shockingly bright against the black. Again with Apprentice - it wasn't as though Eshtaol cared particularly for her name, but to be stripped of it altogether was still rather insulting - and then he turned, saber on the ready. A fight? She knew she couldn't hope to win - toughened by life on the streets she may be, but that didn't quite extend to skill with a flashy sword. She'd seen what these things could do, too: she'd used it just yesterday to kill a woman. That wouldn't be her fate should she fail, would it?

Well, it definitely would be if she refused to fight, and so Eshtaol grabbed at the fabric of her pocket hastily, bringing the hilt out and activating it. Again a surge of satisfaction at seeing the purple blade shoot into the dark, and then total concentration as her blade readied to meet his.

[member="Darth Abyss"]

 

[Darth Abyss]

Darth Abyss didn't had to tap into the force to see the emotions inside his new apprentice. The strange mix of confusion, doubt and maybe even fear combined with determination and ambition that so many had when they began their training under a sith lord, the same mix he had felt once when he looked in the eyes of his master back then. She shared many similarities with himself when he was still an unworthy acolyte of the sith, even more than he had seen the day before. While his face still was lacking any emotion, he felt a bit of enjoyment about it and the possibility to train something worth his precious time.

Now for her lesson. Most masters began their training with the art of mediation, showing a apprentice how to draw from their innermost emotions, how to summon the dark side to guide them. But it wasn't her ability in the force he seeked to determine today, it was her character, the strengths and flaws of her behaviour that he had to enforce or eliminate over time. He had planned the whole encounter in his head, and each strike would force her to use a skill that would be vital for all that was to follow. Strength, intelligence, creativity and patience would all be addressed in a quick strike of the crimson blade in his hand.

The first and far the easiest to determine would be her strength. His blade fell down on her, vertically without any angle or fitness behind it. Even someone untrained would see it coming and could react accordingly. The only real question was how long she would be able to keep the pressure he would enforce through the blade contained, and how she would react once her guard was broken. Would she show fear? Anger? Time would tell.

[member="Eshtaol Hyde"]

 

[Eshtaol]

Alright, they were starting out simple. With the crimson red saber standing out easily in comparison to a regular knife, she could easily spot it as it swung down aiming for her head. Instinct told her to step out of the way - she would have to move less than a foot to dodge a fatal blow, after all - but she was being trained, to the best of her knowledge, as a warrior of sorts. Evasion was no longer the winning strategy.

As unusual as that was for somebody who'd had to shy away from physical confrontation in order to survive, Eshtaol could get used to it. Well, she supposed she'd have to; she was still waiting to find out what would happen if and when she failed to meet the standards, but she wasn't looking forward to it. She would adapt to whatever she had to adapt to, and that way, assuming sadism didn't play a part in her treatment, she'd never have to find out.

Back to the saber falling towards her skull. It took a few moments for her flinch reaction to fizzle and reflex to kick in - long enough, in fact, that she was an inch away from having her brains quite literally fried when she rapidly brought both hands, wrapped tightly around the saber-hilt, sideways from her head in a hasty but forceful horizontal hold. Eshtaol tried to loosen her grip, make herself less rigid, but the red blade was pushing against her own and so she had to put her strength into her arms, wrestling to keep her saber upright. A few more moments, and if the pressure didn't let up, she'd hurriedly try and shift her position, becoming much more easily fallible for a quick moment, before mirroring her previous position with her saber pointing the other way.

[member="Darth Abyss"]

 

[Darth Abyss]

Abyss pulled his blade back, followed by a backwards step away from her, again getting in strike position, while giving her room to breath for a second. It would've been easy for him to break her defense in the blink of an eye but that wasn't his reason for doing this. She was right at the beginning of her training, and other than some she had never learned to fight. The clumsy yet detriment way she stood against him again reminded him of himself, and his first times of wielding a blade. Swordplay was an artform and even after years of training he was far away from truly mastering his weapon, so had no expectations about her beyond her willingness to survive.

Her strength was lacking, but with time and training it would come. For now it was sufficient. His yellow eyes rested on her for a moment, and he performed a slight, subtle nod towards her, to signal her that he had been satisfied with her performance. Punishment was a core part of the sith training philosophy, but another was that success and strength were rewarded, even if it was in the smallest of ways. Soon she could stop to fear for her live, as he had not intended this to be a full sparing session. To wield a lightsaber properly one had to be attuned to the force, something she would learn later this day. But to do that he had to better understand the way her mind worked, and what better option than pressure was there to find out. Now for her intelligence, her ability to perceive and assess a threat.

Again his blade came down, this time in a rather weird angle. At the same moment his left pushed forward, sending a punch in the direction of her stomach. If she was a gifted as he hoped she would realise that his saber was only a distraction, as the blade would come down slightly besides her. If she was even smarter, and if her mind worked fast enough she would recognize that the real threat was his left, as he didn't held much of his strength back in his unarmed assault. It wouldn't be a deadly or damaging strike, but it would hurt enough to punish her if she made a mistake.

[member="Eshtaol Hyde"]

 

[Eshtaol]

Well, she wasn't dead yet - if her judgement was anything to go by, that predicament would last for the time being so long as she didn't slip up too badly. As nice as it would be not to have to fear death with every move she made, knowing the cost of failure was truly a much more effective enforcer than it would've been to let her float by wrapped securely in praise. That made much more sense.

When his blade came back down, her instinct was to raise her own to block it - thankfully, her line of vision also extended to the punch incoming. Ooh, that was tricky. Which attack was the more dangerous? She wanted to say the saber - after all, out of the two it was the fatal weapon - but that didn't look quite right. With only a second to make the appropriate calculations and act upon them, she couldn't place her finger on exactly why; at least, not until the crimson blade was close enough that she could measure the distance from her at which it fell, but fortunately, by then she was already in motion.

She evaded the punch by milimetres, but not in a particularly refined fashion: rather, she turned a pace backwards into a twist to the side opposite where his saber fell mid-step. Not the most elegant of dodges, but it was a dodge, at least. A thought occurred - she was positioned nicely to play the offensive. The instruction had been to defend herself; Eshtaol wasn't certain yet when the right time was to show initiative. Oh, well. She brought her blade back up at a more comfortable angle that shielded her front diagonally, watching with a careful, analytical gaze as she waited for him to counter.

[member="Darth Abyss"]

 

[Darth Abyss]

Now it was time for the final round, a test of both her creativity and her patience. Many young sith made the mistake of rushing head on into a fight, without any regard for tactics and timing. Abyss had been one of them, and it had cost him more then once. His right leg, made out of durasteel and hydraulics instead of flesh was a silent witnesses of one of his greatest, the scars all over his body for all the other smaller failures of his live. It had been important to him to make this mistakes to learn from them, but it would've been even better if he had avoided them completely.

She had stumbled out of his fists way, exactly as he had expected. Elegance and grace came at a far later point of her training, as Abyss lessons would be filled with simple, yet effective pragmatism. He himself still looked like a mindless brute when swinging his saber, because he valued tactical versatility more than perfection of form and technique, as he had accepted that to become a master duelist, talent was as important as strict training. His chances for ever matching his master in the art of swordplay were slim, so he simply chose a different path. With time she would do the same, or find a talent that her master did not posses.

The crimson saber again rose in the air, beginning a series of quick diagonal feints. First one right, than one left, a kick at her shin, followed by a thrust forward aimed slightly below her stomach. The attacks weren't meant to hit her initially, but were a test of patience. If she would try to block any of his attacks, the next would change to actually break her defenses, but if she would simple wait the series of implied strikes out, she would stand unharmed, and if there was even a spark of creativity in her, she could use his lack of balance as a follow up of his trust to start a attack of her own.

[member="Eshtaol"]

 

[Eshtaol]

The first few feints, Eshtaol didn't try to block, solely because as an inexperienced fighter, her immediate response was to recoil slightly in evasion rather than try to block or counterattack. By the time her survival instinct had kicked in and she had her head in place enough to do something of use, the fact that she'd taken none of the hits had reached her consciousness.

This really felt like an opening. On one hand, it might be stretching the limitations set in place. On the other, in what real fight would she defend without fighting back? It wasn't in her nature to start fights, but it certainly wasn't in her nature to leave them unfinished either. Oh, why not? It might result in electrocution, yes, but it was nothing she couldn't handle.

What skill in combat she'd picked up over the years was blunt and unrefined and meant to counter brawn, rather than brains. Street-defense, really. All but useless against a Lord of the Sith. But she did know how to move quickly, how to use her small size and moderate agility to her advantage. She could go from there.

Thinking fast, she did what he'd done and feinted: a swing at his side that turned rapidly into a jab at his stomach. Ideally, it would unbalance him enough to score her some points, but she wouldn't cross her fingers.

[member="Darth Abyss"]

 

[Darth Abyss]

He was more than satisfied to see that she had caught the opening he had presented to her, and made a move of her own. It had been the right decision to make, or at least as right as it could be when being trained by a lord of the sith, especially one that had a reputation of being shrouded in lies and deception. She even used a feint, probably because she meant to mimic what he had done before, what he noted in his head a good thinking. Creative and perceptive, all he had wanted to see from her today, after she passed his other tests. But he wouldn't be Darth Abyss, if he hadn't planned for this to happen, if there hadn't been something he had been playing it the whole time. He made no move with his saber, instead he unleashed a assault on her mind, his thoughts hammering on the barriers in her head, commanding her to stop the attack before the blade could reach him. It was a simple, yet effective display of his true power, not his mediocre skills with the blade.

"Good. You fought to kill, not to survive. You have begun to start to think like a sith. But ..."

A cold, empty laugh emerged from his lungs, echoing from the walls of the hall around them. Now it was time to reveal the catch about all this.

"But, I commanded you to defend yourself, not to attack me. It is important that you trust your instincts, but my word stands above all. I could crush you with a thought, I could command you to slit your own throat open right now."

As he spoke another mental assault followed, this time commanding her to move her blade to her throat. His yellow eyes looked down on her for a moment, then the power around her mind faded in a heartbeat. Deactivating his own weapon, the sith lord descend to the ground, his legs crossed and slowly allowing his eyes to close. With his left he gestured her to do the same.

"I have looked into your mind, I have tested and analyzed how you think. Now it is time for you to truly understand what it is that gives us sith the power bend reality to our will. Tell me apprentice, what fo you know about the force?"

In a matter of seconds the whole tone of the training session had changed, the threat of sudden violent death had faded, and in its place the teacher inside Abyss had emerged, the one that didn't needed violence to enforce his lessons.

[member="Eshtaol"]

 

[Eshtaol]

Always the type to prefer keeping herself to herself, Eshtaol really didn't like suddenly having another presence inside her brain, much less telling her to abandon her attack. She was bossed about enough without her mind being forced to want to obey, but unsurprisingly, she hadn't the skill to do anything about it. Her saber stopped in its tracks, she halted, and plain irritation crossed her face.

Chit. All of these strange double-standards and misinterpretations were really starting to get to her. She'd done something wrong - at least, sort of. She was getting mixed messages here. But when arm raised involuntarily, bringing the blade it held to within inches of her throat, she quickly concluded that it was mostly wrong. Alright, then. Obedience one moment, independence the next. Eshtaol was having trouble keeping up.

She did her best not to make it clear that she'd been holding her breath when her control over her mind was given back to her, exhaling as discreetly as she could as she deactivated her saber and sat, trying to hardest to conceal her frustration. At least the almost-dying part was apparently over. For now, anyway.

"The Force..." she knew almost nothing about the Force. Ugh. She could probably make an educated guess, but that could perhaps be seen as arrogance, and that would definitely be a bad thing. Would ignorance be worse? "I know you can harness it in different ways, for different purposes. If you use it correctly, you can make yourself more powerful." Alright, that last part was a guess, but it had to be right. There would be no point in teaching it if it couldn't make you powerful.

"That's all I know."

[member="Darth Abyss"]

 

[Darth Abyss]

"A correct, but very narrow view."

It was a guess, but it wasn't the worst one she could've made. Other than before there was no trick in all this, he simply wanted to see from where to start. That she had no understanding of what the force really was, wasn't her fault as even some of those who called themselves lord of sith lacked any deeper insights into the mystical powers that empowered them.

"The force is far more than a source of power. It is a form of metaphysical energy that is connected to every living being in this galaxy. It transcends the limits of space and time, it can show us visions of the past, of possible futures. It can shape the world around us, in almost any way we can imagine."

Very slowly he pulled something from under his robe, a single small stone, the same he had been tasked to lift when his master first introduced him to the force. Back then he had already been somewhat aware of it due to his upbringing, but only Ophidia could truly reveal what lived inside of him.

"The force can be accessed in many different ways. We sith call upon the dark side, we use our darkest, innermost emotions to bend the power around us. Focus on your frustration, your hate, your anger, feel as it flows through your veins."

He placed the small pebble in front of her, his yellow eyes resting on her. Now the real training would begin, she would learn what it was that made sith stand above common men and women in this galaxy. In only a few seconds she would learn, that reality was simply there to be shaped by those with power.

"Lift the stone without your hands. Channel your emotions, thinking about the stone being pulled in the air."

[member="Eshtaol"]

 

[Eshtaol]

Ugh, so confusing. She was getting there, though. Now, how to float a rock? In principle, she supposed it couldn't be that hard - she'd seen [member="Darth Abyss"] set things on fire. The odd spot of telekinesis should be comparatively simple. On the other hand, all Eshtaol knew of the Force was that it existed, much less how to use it. But fine. She could try.

Frustration, hate, anger. Alright, put like that it didn't seem too daunting a challenge. Eshtaol harbored all three of those with unabashed precision, happy to hold grudges over the smallest occurrences for the sake of it. Just float the rock. Be angry, and float the rock. How utterly normal.

She thought of passersby who ran into you and didn't apologise, and then thought of the rock rising. It twitched. She thought of the girl at the bar she'd worked at who'd gone out of her way to make life difficult, and then thought of the rock rising. It twitched a little more. Fine, maybe that wasn't enough. It was just a rock, for god's sake. How much emotion could it take to lift a rock?

Be patient. Closing her eyes in concentration, she thought of when she'd left home - zoned in on every detail, every argument, every day that had followed after. That had to do it. She opened her eyes, and it remained fidgeting on the floor. Seriously? Still not angry enough? Couldn't the damn thing just float?

Oh, there it was. Finally, it stopped touching the floor and hovered an inch or two above the ground - just for a brief moment, and then it dropped again.

 

[Darth Abyss]

He had meant for her to discover the power of the force in a less threatening scenario, but that was just disappointing. It was written all over the bit of his fave that was visible that he wasn't very satisfied with her. When his master taught him telekinesis, she simply dropped a large boulder on him, heavy enough to kill him if he wouldn't be able to lift it. [member="Eshtaol"] could be very lucky that Abyss was her master, and not Darth Ophidia.

"Pathetic."

With nothing more than a thought, the pebble shoot from the ground at the face of his apprentice. Not fast enough to be dangerous, but certainly fast enough to hurt. She wasn't some jedi padawan, it was a glimpse of greatness he wanted to see and not some halfhearted attempt.

"Again. This time keep it in the air."

Pain and hate were excellent fuel for the dark side, and if he wanted to see power rise in her he had to kindle these feelings. His mind extended once more, and she would feel how an unwanted intruder would slowly claw himself into her mind, not yet breaking into it but waiting and observing like a predator searching for the right time to strike. Ophidia had used the threat of death to push him, and he would use something less lethal but similarly threatening.

"Disappoint me again, and I take everything from you. Right now I allow you to still have your secrets, but I can take that right from you with nothing else but a thought. Lift the rock."