George Strayton

A Tale from the Dark Side

4000 лет до Явинской Битвы

The black obelisk seemed to absorb even the meager illumination shed by Krayiss Two's twin moons. A hooded figure took slow, perfectly measured steps toward t he massive structure, keeping her hands hidden within the folds of her oversized robe.

"Taka zeech ma toka duuwaj," she muttered for the fourth time, precisely six heartbeats after her third intonation. Sith rites had to be followed with exacting care, for to abandon even one element of the prescribed procedure could spell doom for the uninitiated. And Vara Nreem did not wish to tempt the dark side by offering it an opening to exploit.

She took two more strides toward the obelisk, daring for a moment to glance at the perfect symmetry of its smooth face and the precise lines that marked its edges. Such wicked beauty.

"Taka zeech ma toka duuwaj," she chanted for the fifth time — or was it the fourth time? Her heart suddenly pumped, further distracting her. Calm down.

She measured the distance to the obelisk with her eye. About a dozen meters — that had to make this the fifth time.

Having deduced the number of recitations, she held still and quiet for a moment, waiting to see if her stumble was enough to bring down the wrath of the dark side.

When nothing happened, she took the last two steps toward the Sith structure and issued the chant one final time. The obelisk continued to remain silent before her, as if ignoring her insignificant presence.

Entering the last section of the rite, she eased herself to her knees and pulled back the hood of her robe, allowing her light brown hair to spill across her shoulders and down her back. She clenched her hands into fists and placed them against her forehead, the base of her palms pressed together.

She remained in that position for what she guessed to be just over an hour when something happened — something she sensed from both within and without.

A low rumble issued from deep within the hard ground, growing from a bare whisper to a deafening cacophony over the space of a dozen heartbeats. The land beneath her quivered, and then shook. Though her muscles ached from sitting for so long, she managed to maintain the position even as the ground tried to knock her down.

She glanced toward the obelisk, and though her vision jumped with each tremor, she thought she saw the massive stone moving, sliding upward, its base growing ever wider. The ground groaned and then cracked in a series of sharp fracturings. Violent quakes erupted at the same time, the most powerful heave tossing Vara several meters to her right. She crashed on her side, and thought she felt a bone in her shoulder crack, but she ignored the pain and forced her head up so that she could watch the spectacle unfolding before her.

The obelisk itself had become nothing more than a spire atop a monstrous structure of angled walls and pyramidal towers. Vara recognized it from the ancient Sith writings as a library-temple, a place where sorcerers of pure Sith blood would come to meditate and to set down the knowledge they had gained from their experiments. A shiver gripped her body for a moment as she realized that she was standing at the foot of such a powerful place, an edifice that had witnessed the evolution of Sith techniques for accessing great dark side energies over dozens of millennia. How long had it been buried, its halls lifeless?

The ground quieted, and the silence of Krayiss Two's night cycle fell upon the land once more. Vara staggered to her feel, her right arm limp from the shoulder down, and stood before the Sith structure, staring at its beauty and sensing the black power that radiated from its every centimeter. She suddenly wondered whether she was hallucinating, but she dismissed the stray thought immediately. She could never have imagined what now lay before her. and her mind could therefore not have summoned it from the depths of her consciousness to fool her.

No. the temple was real. She could feel its imposing presence leering at her, measuring her. The chill of dark side power caressed her, and she knew that the spirits trapped inside the temple were deciding her worth.

She realized then that she had to prove herself to them, to demonstrate that she had the right to access the Sith powers lying in wait.

She stepped forward, and the gentle spirits' caress broke into a frenzy of energy motes, as if shocked by the unexpected move. Barely before she had time to notice the sudden change, the energy re-coalesced, wrapping itself about her once more.

She took another step forward, and elicited the same response. No more than six meters away stood the massive double-door that formed a tall trapezoid at the structure's base. Sith markings ran around the door's perimeter and along the seam in the middle. Though she couldn't read them, she knew that such engravings both warned intruders of certain death and acted us a receptacle for dark side power. Those who dared to penetrate the temple would be attacked by that stored energy — and there was very little evidence to suggest that anyone had ever survived such a deluge of dark side power. Vara hoped that the spirits would judge her worthy and not cast their hatred down upon her.

She dared to move closer. This time the energy swarm erupted and reformed so quickly that Vara wasn't sure whether it had actually happened, I guess I'll take that as a good sign.

She came closer, and as she pierced the invisible barrier of energy radiated by the library-temple she felt her heart flutter, its rhythm suddenly interrupted by the plane of ionization. Vara had read of such defensive shields, but none that allowed an intruder to pass through. It seemed that the spirits had accepted her right to enter…

She heard a faint call, like someone had whispered her name in a rush of cold air.

"Vara Nreem… "

Her body tensed, and she glanced around to see who had spoken. Seeing no one. she turned her attention back to the double-door, and there stood a translucent, shadowy figure, its head adorned by a crown of spikes and its body enveloped by a voluminous robe. She could make out its features only because they were different shades of black, the eyes and mouth the darkest of all.

She stopped herself from involuntarily staggering backward at the sight of the specter, for she knew that a display of fear would only decrease her chances of surviving an encounter with a Sith spirit.

Apparently satisfied with his effect on her, the shadow spoke. "Vara Nreem, you have awakened us from our ten- thousand-year slumber." The voice hovered just above the lowest register Vara believed her senses could perceive. "Do you believe you can truly defeat us this time?"

Vara swallowed the saliva that had collected in her mouth and throat. "I… have come for knowledge, not for battle." Her own voice sounded brassy and high as it followed in the wake of the specter's deep timbre.

"You are a Jedi," he stated, as if that simple sentence held volumes more than its surface meaning would suggest.

Vara considered. She had to maneuver the conversation just so if she wished to accomplish her goals. "If by that you mean that I am a believer in the Force, and that I have learned to manipulate it at my will, then yes, that is what I am." She straightened up as she spoke, intending to present herself as an immovable and impervious object. "But I do not believe in this distinction between the dark and the light. To me they are but one and the same. And I have come to complete my learning by mastering the techniques of the Sith methods for using the Force-not the dark side of the Force — just the Force."

The spirit raised its head slightly as if summoning long-dormant memories or receiving information from some invisible source. Vara's breathing had begun to speed up, and she did her best to mask her nervousness, for to allow the specter to see such weakness would be the last mistake she would ever make.

The spirit returned its gaze to her. "We are… puzzled by this perspective. How did you come to this conclusion?"

"By many years of reasoning and meditation." she said, more confident now that she had already succeeded in confusing the Sith by her words. The light and dark sides are but aspects of the Force. The Jedi have always sought to show the barrier between the two — but it does not exist. The line blurs. All that can be relied upon then is the source of these two aspects, for it — the Force — depends on the existence of nothing, unlike the light, which would not exist without the dark. The Force just is. And therefore, worrying about its subdivisions does not matter."

The Sith did not respond, leaving the silence to speak for him. Vara began to wonder whether she had taken her ruse too far…

The specter laughed, a booming outburst like the rumbling of stone grinding against stone. "Your logic is faulty. Jedi. Did you think that your masquerade would allow you to enter our abode, to steal our secrets? We allowed you to find us. We allowed you to call us from the depths of this world. And it is we who will determine the consequences of your attempted deception."

Vara could not help shrinking back, feeling for the lightsaber tucked into her robes.

"Did you think us charlatans? Do you even know what power we possess? By your actions. I would have to say not." The Sith seemed to grow, its shadowy form stealing away more and more of the surrounding emptiness. "Other Jedi have come here before you. Do not think you are the first, or will be the last. Perhaps you would like to see some of those who have failed in this same endeavor."

With a wave of its arm, the Sith summoned three additional specters. But these did not possess the same black form. These were faded gray figures, their faces contorted as if in tremendous pain. But even in their spectral form, Vara could tell they were Jedi Masters. And if the Sith could do that to a Master…

She jabbed her hand into her robe and yanked out her lightsaber, igniting it before she even had a firm grasp on the hilt. The blade hummed to vibrant red life, and she held it in front of her, its tip pointed toward the lower-lying of the two moons, which hung in the sky just above the temple's obelisk-spire.

The Sith shadow focused on her again, and then suddenly swooped forward.

Vara swung her lightsaber around in a wide arc, slicing the specter from its left shoulder to its right hip. But the red blade passed through without leaving so much as a mark…

And then the spirit was upon her. It wrapped its shadowy form around her. rendering her visual sense useless and at the same time burning her skin with a cold fire. She screamed and slashed violently with her lightsaber. But the specter's attack only intensified; her body went numb from the pain as the dark side fire penetrated her corporeal shell and assaulted her spirit.

The end came swiftly, and Vara found herself merely a bleached shadow of her former self surrounded by dark side power. And the realization that she would remain in torment for eternity swept over her like a shadow. I cannot believe what I have done. I only wish I had a way to warn those who come after me not to underestimate the power of the dark side…

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George Strayton
A Tale from the Dark Side