Cursed

[Jacobi Wylcott]

---THE STYGIAN CALDERA
---ESSTRAN SECTOR
---ZIOST - R-4

Remembering the lost. Remembering the damned.

They were all damned to him.

They were all lost to him.

So was he - for he was to lead them - he had failed.

Ziost was a dead world. A nexus, a vergence of the Dark Side of the Force and it was unforgiving for those that did not embrace its ways. It was equally as condemning to those that did. The difference was that those that wallowed in the Darkness knew how to manipulate the consorting energies better than those that tried to live in harmony with hel. It simply was not so. Such was this all consuming world at the fraying sense of the mind that there was no longer any population and to the Sith Citadel that stood upon the empty tundra - twas abandoned just as well for the Dark Side ever ate at its own and none could remain in this place.

It was the perfect setting of reclusion for one that had fallen from the grace of his own mind. To lose oneself in the abyss of emptiness. Not to wallow pathetically in some form of self pity. But to reflect and understand as to why it had befallen him. It was the world of Ziost that was the mirror of the soul of torment and harrowing sorrow. Was it not a failure of the faction? Not so. It was the failure of focus of the nucleus - the mind in control of the beast’s operation - nothing more. Manaan had been an abject failure and the one behind it all had to understand why in order to refute its appearance rearing up again. The Sith Order, the Red Cauldron - it was not a faction of endless resources. Finite in truth. It could not afford vast losses. Fortunately the strike force sent to Manaan had been very controlled in quantity and thusly bore no true loss that could not be readily replaced by the Order. Said as such - reflection was necessary.

For the Lord of Darkness had taught to his students in failure was the most knowledge gained. He was no different. Due upon his temperament however, he could not simply take in the fact of loss. It required seclusion and a constant state of remembrance to not only know that which he sought but to study the loss in question and absorb it within the folds of his mind.

Here on the endless tundra, dead forests, mountains that climbed high into the lower atmosphere - that he could do these things and grow not only in understanding but in power.

Blue surrounded him. The hues of the icy arms of Ziost cast everything in this melancholic embrace. The cavern was nothing less than wrought in the creation of Ziost’s own rendition. Ice. Ceilings, walls, floors or the thickest and most hardened ice ever to be seen on this side of the galaxy itself. How deep was this? The truth was lost still. But the raw truth was set in the ice at the apex of this cavern. A singular body, coiled in the venomous tail of the terror beast itself - Kraujas Ntima.

The pair of them were completely encased in a ten foot wall of ice. The King of Dragons - banished to reflection in the ice itself in that the Force, the Dark Side itself, would be all he would have to sustain him. And the Hydra sent to defend him and to guard over him to ensure this ice bound prison would not release the Son of the Dark One.

Before the wall of ice - buried deep into the shining crystalline floor - Jidai Maras. The Sword of the Damned. The sword born of the sands of Moraband itself and the blood of the hated trio. The Bane of Jedi. This sword was known throughout the verse and it was equally as feared as its terrible owner. Yet as the imprisoned Hydra and King, it lay silent and in repose. Frost covered its mirrored steel and leather hilt bound in silver cord. Its spirit lay dormant. It could be recognized as just as dead as the planet itself though the truth of that was very much the opposite and it was a dreadful truth indeed.

Many feet away from the Ice Wall and the Jidai Maras, knelt a giant of a man. Robes of midnight black worn in literal tatters much like a beggar’s attire. Hands resting upon knees, head bowed in silence, cowl covering his likeness dropping his face in the shadow of his meditations. Like the dread sword before him he too was frosted, covered in layers of the cold touch of Ziost. As if he had not moved in an age. There he sat ever motionless.

The Dark Lord of the Sith, the Lord of Torment and holder to the infinite gate of eternal damnation.

Darth Tormentous.

[Mercy Vyler]

Magnificence was about as biased as beauty, and much more chill in appearance. Magnificence was the tree which stood, the fire which brought it to ash, and the sprouts which rose up from the soot. Magnificence was just as painful as it was beautiful.  As just,  she stood on the platform of a ship hovering over the heartless planet's face,  orbit turning her nigh derelict ship in a slow and lazy circle.  Power was low,  fuel trickling to its last in her reserves. 


She had come so far...

And now, it was her turn to be magnificent.  


The ship AI, one who reminded her of the last bit of the vessels juice too stayed quiet, almost seeming to hold the last of its breath, too. It didn't have the heart to remind her of the cold riding in on blatant curls through the durasteel walls.  However,  someone did finally speak.  A shuffle that murdered the silence with a wail, a siren to the Vyler that their time had come.  A reminder of what she had to do.  


"I've done your commandment, " she spoke to the frosted glass overlooking the planet. "I kept my head down and looked the other way. I've kept quiet." She was weak,  her voice portraying a strong and waiting woman,  when in fact she was starved to a degree,  mourning and childbirth and some sickness that had followed her since her loss having pulled her vibrance and vitality with it.  


Once Emic had found her with child,  whatever she had sensed with it came violence and plot.  Almost immediately,  she was cast from the ranks and from the ship,  from the system,  and from the galaxy,  seemingly.  Dropped far from anything remotely recognizable.  This time,  she was not running from her Keeper... but back to him.  Knowing who's child she bore, she had no choice.  It took her 7 months to trace what she could,  what bit of intelligence gathering she pulled from her lessons with Dastan and Emic, dragging her ass through the stars to the coldest planet, where the coldest man lie.  This had to be it.  

Whatever flaked bit of her Force ability she had left couldn't help her,  now.  

And the wailing got louder with every debated second.


Fury bled into fear, and fear into passion. Passion into desperation,  and desperation into ... 


"Please," her voice puffed out a vapor that hardened before her golden flecked hazels. Gloved hands gripped the controls without care for the whitening flesh beneath.


"Whistle for me..."

[Jacobi Wylcott]

A countenance of dread was swollen in his breast, every heaving breath was labored - the breathing apparatus had been cast aside to lay his flesh bare to the elements. Pale of skin in this atmosphere, scars across his face like war maps, a scowl that could quell the wrath of a star. This was no scholar nor frail strumpet. This man had worn the miles of battle’s embrace as a cape of honor. Now his pride, no different, was upon a mountain top glaring down at him. The great failure of Manaan was an embarrassing scar to be worn. Lest he forget - this long visit to Ziost’s cold heart was necessary.

Vengeance upon Manaan would be woven in a horrendous tapestry for all to see, even if he had to reap this tremendous harvest himself. For now he sought reflection. Once before he made the mistake of channeling godhood unto his ineffable hubris. Not so this time. Dash the thought of a lesser namesake to this tyrant - he was simply now more mindful of his failures and in that failure he sought understanding why the Dark Side had forsaken him. This feeling of dependence upon an element he controlled was a feeling he was mentally coming to terms with.

Terms that would dominate these thoughts and render the Force as once again a willing or unwilling tool. Not as a keepsake to beg and plead for its attention. He would be damned if he asked the Force for one ounce of its power. The failure at Manaan taught him this. A god he was not. A source of power he was not. A titan of which to manifest this power - however - he could become. A terrible, terrible being whose will would be such that the Force itself would beg release of his mind - and there would be no release. He would administer unforgiving torment upon the Force and in such he would rediscover his hatred of it all the same.

Indeed - he had forgotten how he hated the Force. It was weak and those of renown had to ask power of it. Both notions he despised and would do no longer. The Force would dwell at his command and it would fear him in equal measure. It was as if his foes had begun to transmute from beings of flesh and blood to an entity that surrounded him as an energy source.

The irony was obvious.

In his meditations of understanding the abomination was of a quiet mindset. Tormentous sat for continuous hours on end in this silence. Until the moment where his senses called to him - a faint trespass. A calling. She was calling to him, coming for him - some fool hardy and very mistaken feeling of love of a bound duty to him. “Mercy.” He hissed, the first word he’d delivered in months. There was no love uttered for her nor longing in that voice. It was filled with sinister intent. Perhaps it was that the relations he stole upon her were returned in some soothing manner on her heart. The fool. The only warmth between them would soon be he heart pounding in his hand after the Dark One ripped it from her chest.

With a thought he delivered hence forth a reply through the Force, one of which she would recognize and know. She would come to him with open arms and he would receive her. It would be her final action. Death on a stage of ice to immolate the fires of his plan. A sacrifice with which to drench this tomb of his Son with blood and to harken the return of a monster.

[Jacobi Wylcott]

Landing in a glade the woman had arrived with trepidation to what her true purpose was to be. Why had she come here? To what end? But the call was irresistible and so she had come to this world, to this very place and inevitably to meet her fate. Out into the cold she tread, every footfall crunching down into the snow deep enough to encase her legs to her knees. Furrows gouged into the faux earth given her path from the ship into the wood and beyond. Through those dead trees standing sentinel unto the mountains that were ever stalwart to the gates of time itself - eternal monuments to nothing at all.

Her trek took her three days into the east. The echoes of time whispering the promise of damnation to her with every step she took. Warning her away. To just turn around back to the ship and to fly as far away, as fast as she could and to never come back. To forget this place and the one she sought. To live a life full and in peace and to give her child a chance at the same. With every step she stole away more and more of that chance and dropped it away into oblivion’s embrace. Still further she endured the frozen lands of Ziost until finally her eyes fell upon the mountains.

Standing tall as ziggurats piercing the grey drab skies, they refused to let the light beyond them. The cold wind whipped down frozen gusts into the forest to buffet her approach with temperatures deadly to any sort of endured time. She could not delay lest she tease these factors. Her mind robbed of reason - Mercy made haste unto the mountain.

Hours of the approach continued until those very mountains that warded all sense of safety dominated the view. There was no road nor trail to invite her onward, only the faintest and most sinister echo from what once was lay there to guide her.

Somehow - someway - she found her feet before a great hidden cavern that only the Dark Side of the Force itself could have shown her. Within the cavern’s mouth was nothing but the pitch of the most unseen black and a hollow roar of the wind that followed.

Standing within the cavern well into unlight - he gazed upon her. That dead eye touching her form and reflecting her entirety over its surface. The grayed pupil casting odd hues over her curves. It was a reunion. Not one that would go to either person’s expectations. She had no clue as to what she sought and he had no desire to entertain this scenario for the connection between the two was dangerous to him in such an extent that neither could understand or realize. It would not be long though before this confrontation came to a brief and dark end indeed.

[Jacobi Wylcott]

Her eyes gleamed in the starlight, sparkling as if lost stones of polished sapphire in the dark. Her voice spilled from her throat of words containing a length of time and space in which they had once both shared. Her concerns gave proof to that of legacies’ own property - a beginning rather than a tragic end. Though as time ever bade the fate of a joyous greeting - accusation began to creep into the ice caverns and breed a new cold that had yet to of been felt even here on this frozen mountain within the depths of this frozen world. Her hatred of his actions dwelt from a place deep within her heart and she cursed his name, his honor, his duty, his very place in the galaxy - and she damned them all to the darkest pit of all the hels ever known.

And she was right.

Ripping his heart out and smearing it over the solid ice cavern floor was a piece of justice in her heart and mind that she so terribly wanted and needed. It was justification. It was enduring the most vile bastard this galaxy had ever birthed. How she let him have it - the time bled on and on. She raved and she ranted. Spit and cursed. Stomped upon the ice and even struck at him vehemently with passionate fervour.

It all culminated across the span of their history together and she desperately hated him for the results of ever knowing him in the first place. His adoration - no - his obsession with her had brought them both to this very moment. As a snake coils around its prey. And it would choke the life right out of them. Should either of them struggle and create freedom of this debacle - the poison would make feature of their lie of faith towards future - and it would dash them both over the very ice cavern floor in which a very real and deadly monster dwells, eyeing them both with envy for their lives which it would snuff out had it the chance.

Yet for her chance to run and live a better life. To receive a fresh start. Finding reprieve in a chaotic existence. She sped her way into the Stygian Caldera to find the one whom worlds hated. Now she stared him down and expected answers.

Namely. Why?

He had nothing to present her inquisition. Jacobi Wylcott lay dormant after Manaan and Tormentous found himself at the helm of a defeated will. The Dark One had not realized that the feat of maiming the very being that sought to destroy him and causing him silence would only see to dishelve his own worth. Or perhaps it was even a selfish rendition of sadistic mention - his opponent - the only one he truly cared about - was silent.

When he had the world in his hand - so then did he realize that he only wanted the pursuit of the goal. Without the chase was there no reward for him? He only knew that in this place, this frozen cavern where he had spent months of his time ever staring at Slade the son and Kraujhas the killer. Willing their thoughts to his mind that he may speak to them anew. In this place he had found the bottom. The emptiness. The meaning of failure and the price of it all.

For all this moping and pitiful wallowing - there was purpose in it too. Beyond the endless war of the galaxy. There was knowledge of the Dark Side that could only be learned from a place so decrepit as this. The time spent here had ‘purified’ his ever-blackened heart in the well of Darkness that soaked this world in its depths. The cold was not so natural as it was the lifelessness of the Dark Side that cast this place into its embrace. Tormentous had been in its throes all this time. Willing the call of the Dark Side of the Force to awaken his soul to its callous siren’s wail. Its foul temptation. Its unforgiving decay.

To the rights of the galaxy. To the will of the Force. Tormentous had been birthed to hate and be hated in such a way that none other had to survive this tortourous existence. Yet Mercy had found him and offered him a way out. He could walk away and be whole.

As time ticked by. As the fancy of a life beyond the Dark Side and beyond the Caldera beckoned him. Perhaps there was a glint of hope out there. Something that could be seen beyond the killing and the destruction and the never ending torment of his life.

A pleasant fiction.

Until he remembered who he was. Tormentous was not some wallowing insult of pride. He was no weak shotty resemblance of a man. He was the dire wolf that prowled the night and wherever he strode he brought the reality of fate along with him. You are not everything you seem to be. You are not capable of fielding this life lest you deserve it.

His eye - cold and clear - fell upon her. She did not deserve it.

[Jacobi Wylcott]

Let it never be said that the twisted machinations of the Dark Side did not have a sense of humor. In the same stroke that it would spit in your face it would just as well see one brought down with spite or even irony. How easily it would have been for the Dark One to throttle the woman with his bare hands - much less the weaponry upon his person - and give to the passionate release of a soul robbed of life. This feeling had ever been Tormentous’ shadow, for he had ever been surrounded by murder and death. It was a welcome thing. It was a commonality to him. It was a returning friend after an absence too long. How generous the Phoenix’ soul would have been as a sacrifice to the Dark Side of the Force. Its’ fiery vitality would have fueled the Darkness for a while and given him fuel to the calling that ever plagued him.

With the conclusion of the exchange and the results to be given, the death of Mercy was yet to come and as he rose to his full height in opposition to her spittling outbursts - it was but an echo to the engines of her starship now roaring with impulse at it tore away from this place.

Darth Tormentous looked on as the ship shrank into nothing more than a blue and glowing dot in the night sky and then unto a moving star within an endless starfield. The audible drives dying out and leaving this secluded place alone once more with only the freezing winds to accompany it. Perhaps he did not even know the reason why he rebuffed the Phoenix and sent her away but the facts were as clear as day. She was now nothing more than a distant echo and a memory that would eventually fade with time. Her destination given over by the one who would kill her - though for now - she would endure and be well within the lie of safe-and-sound.

Turning away from her departure, the Lord of the Sith gave view to the cavern’s deep once again and with boots crunching down on the icy surface below he made way into the depths. Turns and twists did not stop his progress until he stood before the vast pillar of ice within the massive body of said cave. Before him was the Hydra - frozen still - and kneeling before the Hydra within that same ice wall was the King of Dragons. Being sustained by the Dark Side of the Force itself - the two were bound and trapped. Freedom denied.

For another span of time he remained. More chilling words were revealed unto the trio until finally a decision befell him. After Manaan he had diminished and sought understanding as to why. He had done everything right and had sacrificed properly to the Dark Side to an assured victory over Manaan. Yet here he was empty handed and without.

Months of meditation and reflection brought clarity and a conviction - a desire for vengeance against those who had opposed him as well as those who had failed him. This time there would be no stopping his fury from rending and reaping a tally of this list and beyond.

It was time.

Turning from the altar of ice and the failure that it represented - he departed the cavern, vowing never to return until his own failure had been avenged and once the Dark Side of the Force had begun to thrive on this world once more. Marching from this place he made way to the mouth of the cave.

A hundred yards ahead in an open glade surrounded by frostbitten trees, was a rough block of ice. Likely the scene of beauty. The pure whites surrounded by cold chilling blues. Instead at the epicenter of this originated a shadow that devoured light rather than be cast from it. The natural colors of ice and snow were stolen away and delivered the lifeless grey and deepness of the Dark Side.

Tormentous marched into this glade, approaching the center monument with purpose and a viable discomfort. Every step he took was as if a pulse of Dark Side energy was hammering into his mind. The weight of his steps reflected this with deeper furrows resulting. His march became a trudge and soon a slog through the deep untouched snow before arriving to his destination and looking to the uncloven ice. Within the ice was doom itself. And the Dark One needed it.

Lifting his hand palm up and fingers clenched - Tormentous called to the Jidai Maras.

Nothing for long moments, until a single solitary crack. This crack was not just a lonesome physical event. When the sharp crack snapped into the block of ice it released a pulse of that Dark Side energy that had hounded him on his way here. So sent forth was a beacon unto the Stygian Caldera to whomever could hear the call. A violent disruption of the Force. A tremor of terrible and forboding promise. He could feel the sword within crying out - vying to be held once more - to rend and cleave, to spill the blood of so many more. It was a renewed addiction that Tormentous could not deny. He wanted it just as much as it wanted him.

It called to him.

He called to it.

Gripping his fist tightly the Force surged from him and the ice-like stone was detonated. Shards of ice stabbed outwards in all directions without discrimination. His body was struck with direct, glancing and slight blows alike. Cuts tore through the fabric and pierced skin with ease. Every slight and harsh wound brought back the feeling of lust within the Dark Side - fuel - raw and untapped fuel.

There it was. Levitating from the earth. Rising as a titan from the sea. Heat began emanating from the blade in reaction to his very proximity. It was the sword offering up emotion. An envious will to be back in his possession once more. The long blade - beautiful and mirror-like. The guard - deadly and threatening. The grip and hilt - bound by black leather and pommel sworn to endure it all. The blade of Jedi’s Bane. The sword forged from the sands of Korriban itself. Birthed from his own blood. The Jidai Maras woke up.

Inverting properly and facing away horizontally, it shot to his right hand and he caught it. The very instant his flesh wrapped around the leather had the blade of that sword erupted with volcanic fervour. Fire and percussion exploded from it cratering the ground and blasting broiling steam into the glade. A surge of the power of the Dark Side fell upon him. The sword was his keystone and with it his power and its power were amplified to untold levels. The tremor in the Force earlier was a sudden and solid wave of notice. This was a violence that could not be hidden even if an entire cult had striven to do so. It was a force of tidal power ripping out into the darkness of space and time and the Force itself suddenly remembered the vile being of Tormentous’ wrath.

The Force cried out in denial. Fear. Utter terrified panic. For Tormentous had reawoken from months of dormancy.

And he wasn’t happy.

[Kressara Thryn]

Old buildings were filled with pests hiding in the cracks and crevices, and the gang’s HQ nestled in the slums of Euphornis Major was no exception. Glitterstim deposits in citrine yellow eyes glimmered, fixed on the sparking point of a hand welder on metal clawed attachments she fashioned for articulating armor over her boots. A roach, the aggressive variety, dropped down from a smoke stained ceiling onto her hand, causing her to jump and burn through her glove. Sharp pain and the scent of cooking skin halted Kressara’s repairs, and though the injury was only surface deep this had been the nasty little creature’s second offense. Cold golds shifted from gleaming talons to the bug insisting upon her personal space and nonchalantly lifted the welder over its head, scorching the roach until it was nothing but a black pea sized chunk of charred insect.

Kress flicked the ash wad from her table and sent it bouncing somewhere insignificant before resuming her work, toiling away with more careful attention than most of her peers in the sith believed her capable of. After another hour of hyper focus and sitting awkwardly hunched over her self made armor the repairs and additional pieces were complete. She leaned back, spine popping, and groaned at the pins and needles in her legs before rising to numb feet. Wiping glittering sweat from her brow, Kress shuffled into the kitchen when she felt something deep in her gut…like a hollowing of her insides and a sudden realization of something out there, something begging to be found…

Leftover takeout! Hell yeah! Remembering a box of fried goodness hidden in the very back of the deep fridge where her fellow punks wouldn’t find it, the cinder dirtied assassin pulled the chopped hem of her borrowed tank top to wipe her blackened hands before opening the door. God, it was cold like a frozen wasteland in there! She reached through a forest of energy drinks towards the object of her desire…fries. It was a renewed addiction that Kressara could not deny. She wanted them just as much as they wanted her.

They called to her.

She called to them.

The crow tightened her grasp around a container frozen to the back of the fridge and strained to break it free when ice shattered and a mildly annoying sprinkle of frost covered her arm. The smell of greasy starches brought it all back…her lust for fried potatoes.

Anyways, they were fracking delicious.
Licking salt from her burn after a hefty helping and secretly enjoying the sting of her scarred tongue on fresh singed skin, Kressara Thryn cleaned up the kitchen and set out a few new bug traps. Lorcan, Jasper, Blink, and the rest of the punks would be meeting her soon to discuss business (and finish off the night with games, food, and a variety of alcohol after their work was done) and she didn’t want the place to look trashed. Going around with a waste bin, she started picking up the common areas when an electric skitter ran down the length of her spine and back up again. Going statue still, eyes darted this way and that.

…Nothing.

And yet it was something.

Something bloodthirsty, powerful with the force, and thankfully very VERY far away.
Did the others feel it too? Dropping the bin, she returned to her gear on the workbench and picked up her datapad, sending out messages to those in the sith she cared to keep in touch with.

Crow: “Did anyone feel that just now? Roll call. Where is everyone? Drop locations NOW and diminish your presence in the force. If I could feel it, that was BIG.”

Forwarded messages checking up on Yarkar, Aliclair, the Professor, and Kita would soon appear on their devices. Shortly after a message for the present lord of the sith whom she hoped would have answers on whatever that dark resonance was, which read, Crow: “What was that? Was that you?”

Lastly, a message to the estranged sith lord called Fett (named “babygirl” in her contacts, his information acquired without actual permission) asking, Unknown Recipient: “Did you do that?”

[Silas Karn]

Sitting with his right leg braced by the knee of his left leg, his head supported by just a few fingers on his left hand tilted in an outward sign of his utter boredom the Dark Lord of the Sith brooded about his latest abandonment by his flighty companion. The longer the pair had involved one another in missions the greater the sense of anxiety that crept over Silas in absence of such. Moreover as the many adepts that considered themselves Sith cared more for individual pursuits than working for the advancement of the sect, the Sovereign found the silence of his otherwise vacant palace a regular occurrence.

In the first months of his rule Silas had taken to a daily hunt for his former superior. However, with the lack of evidence the Sovereign’s concerns for usurpation had slowly ebbed to fearful curiosity and finally acceptance of the unknown. With this slow march of time Silas’s habit had waned now to the point he had given up such pursuits. The great mystery of what was capable, at the height of his great might, of displacing the former Dark Lord whom was perhaps the greatest entity within the Force in an era seemed beyond the grasp of even the peerless insight of the Sovereign.

No, this Lord of the Sith lacked the fiery hatred necessary to hunt each member down and demand their participation in campaigns of slaughter. Instead the lack of commitment to the principles inherent to the sect from those that had remained following Tormentous’s disappearance and Warvanus’s loss in a duel for control spurred Silas’s indignation and fostered his pride against allowing such fledglings the honor of conquest, especially such forced upon them rather than earned. As everything he strived for leaving him in solitude and darkness it was not a shockwave or rippling sundering of the supernatural that stirred the Dark Lord.

In its place the throne room grew cold and a pulse resonating from within the Irus’s Mirtis spoke to the mind of the Sovereign. Perplexed by this uncalled change Silas stood and unsheathed the cursed sword. The blood-forged relic shown with a pale silver light as it responded to its kin within the craft that had borne it forth. Soon the words of the ancient sith tongue began to fill the room as the Sovereign’s armor too began to align itself with the wayward call still unheard by Silas.

From the serpent entwned hilt down the length of the magnificent rapier pulsed once more and the Dark Lord answered its call by opening the domain of the Sith’s greatest weapon within his self (Sith Sorcery). As the resonance intensified Silas as if filled with forbidden knowledge regarding the events beyond his sight took the blade and stabbed it into the floor of the throne room. Donning his helmet the chants of the old tongue began to echo loudly throughout the antechamber.

Placing both hands upon the top of Irus’s Mirtis’s hilt a cold fog began to develop at the floor of the throne room. This frozen territory juxtaposed the fiery chasm from which the echoes through the Force called. There could be no doubt as to whom the epicenter of such a potent firestorm belonged. As if on queue a transmission emerged across the HUD of Silas’s visor. Reaching for his com-link the Sovereign granted his reply. “Lady Kressara, how is it that you don’t recognize the author of this announcement. The Lord of Torment yet lives.”

[Professor Mors]

"Field of specimen five holding at twenty six joules", Sa'ato spoke into the recorder with a practiced, neutral tone, "Increase to voltage by three points, other specimens' integrity remains constant". The professor squinted slightly at his myriad experiment, a set of vornskr nasal glands. Three he had harvested himself on the surface of Myrkr and brought back to Sith space for study, the latter two, like specimen five, had then been grown from cellular material over a period of two weeks. Having taken care to prevent necrotization, and 'circulating' oxygen via a series of tubes, the professor could now test the displaced organs response to energy without the need for living subjects.

Exhaling, the Neti applied a set of protective goggles, and lowered a windowed hatch over his menagerie. "I shall now introduce localized photovoltaic radiation", he spoke into the recorder once more, "Beginning at point zero one eight joules per square meter". Of course, there was as of yet no true radar, much less a thermometer for the Force as it was, nor any clue as to how the vornskr's anatomy allowed them to manipulate it with such accuracy. That said, neither of those present truths would forestall Sa'ato's investigation as he thumbed the generator. Despite his many precautions, the academic's makeshift laboratory was instantly bathed in a harsh, near-blinding light.

The professor, keen as he was, remained unperturbed, and squinted harder to make out the readings. The surface of three of the glands, two organic and one of their unborn cohort, began to pulse with greater duress. Sa'ato let the miniature flare blaze ten seconds, twenty, until he decided to cut his losses at the half minute mark. "Halting photovoltaic emitter in light of perceived muscle stress", Sa'ato continued with mounting fascination, "Measuring change fluid pressure against original baseline". Finally, a fresh font of raw numbers: data to be weighed, evaluated– calculated! There was no more sublime a pleasure than that.

And yet, as an uncharacteristically giddy Sa'ato prepared the necessary instruments for recording, he stopped dead in his tracks. The disembodied glands had not only continued to pulse, but had begun to do so at greater frequency. Stranger still, the two that had idled before now throbbed at pace with their siblings. Rootlike fingers scrambled across every screen and dataslate to make sense of it. After a few moments, the nonsense figures, in context, started to make sense. A thrumming rattled up through the Neti's system— not just through fickle oaken flesh, but to his very core. Calling it a disturbance in the Force would be likening a drop of dew to a hurricane.

Immobilized and awestruck, Sa'ato fought to remain standing as the sheer gravity of an unseen darkness commanded him to do anything otherwise. After a few moments, that horrid nexus of the Living Force receded, but not before causing each of the Neti's specimens to rupture one by one with a sickening pop. By the time the professor had recovered from the moment, his wrist chrono whirred with activity. But of course, there was no mistaking that psionic signature. A thin smile creased along Sa'ato's countenance as he typed out a simple reply. What a fortuitous day indeed. Simply, uncannily, "Fascinating"...

[Aliclair Austjor]

The desert breeze ran through the dark auburn hair of a certain felidae. Usually she would be anywhere but here. However, after the many adventures she and the Professor had taken together, the feminine figured she could use a day to herself. No training from Silas, Sa'ato had his own plans for a while and with no other aquantinces to bother, a lazy day best fit her. Opening her opalescents, she made her way back into her room after shutting the door leading to the balcony to allow the cool air to fill her quarters after using telekinesis to turn the thermostat.

She watched as her two Raquor'daan companions tussled with each other, her lips curling into a rare smile. Peace, however, was never available. Something always ate at her, bit at her Achilles' heel. Before she could grab her holopad to read some reports and news on the Galaxy, an all to familiar presences latched onto her spine and refused to let go. The hackles on her tail spiked as Ali froze in fear. All around her seem to stop in time, cold encased the feminine and a ringing buzzed her ears. The Force writhing in pain, agony. Someone who's attached to the Force to a tea, it felt like whoever had frozen her in was right behind her; Ali even whipped around to ensure that He wasn't there.

Her Reaper of the Galaxies... after months without his presences, he decided to reappear big and loud. Breathing shakily, she got low to the floor and crawled into a cranny underneath her bed in an attempt to escape this call, her brows furrowed and her tail curled tightly around her body. It took her being in such a closed space to realize how hard she was trembling. The fear so great rattling within the feminine even caused her to tear up and clasp her hands over her ears and shutting her eyes while her breathing was hard, heavy, heaving. There was no way, after all of this time, that The Lord of Torment lived.

But, alas. The Force does not lie. And it was crying to her as he pierced it's veil.

The chime that came off her terminal caused her to briefly shriek in fright, her tainted palms pushing against the floor so her body pushed further into the cranny. Aliclair wanted to check the message, but she couldn't move. As much effort she put into it, her body was in a pure state of stasis. So under her bed she stayed, breathing shallow and shakily.