SithLore

Small empty jars attached to a belt around Kressara’s waist clinked together with every step she made down the empty halls. Night had fallen over the terraformed moon and most of its inhabitants were sound asleep while the girl roamed the resort like a ghost, wandering past the suites and into the gardens outside. The night was cool and a strong breeze caused the trees and flora to dance and sing, a sound that only grew louder the further from the resort Kressara traveled. The forest’s edge was imposing at night with it’s deep dark shadows obscuring sight, with every gust a symphony of shivering leaves and groaning bark that rang like choir song. She stopped for only a moment to appreciate the entrance to this dark place before stepping forwards into the shade of a starless night, her visage vanishing within the shifting blackness.

Kressara plotted out every step through those woods, the twinkling of the glass on her hip the only noise she made as she climbed and curled through trunks and branches. She’d made this journey before, though each time finding more and more reasons as to why she shouldn’t ever attempt another. Something about the loneliness of it, the danger she ventured by in solitude as the grand and all encompassing night silenced the world enthralled the girl. No longer was she too afraid to view her worst nightmares, instead seeking them out like old friends. Before wandering into a dark forest alone would have been out of the question, but now with her spirit growing strong in the force Kressara enjoyed facing those little terrors.

Trees moaned and bent as a sudden rush of wind swept the forest, several branches cracking and falling to the ground below. Nesting birds shrieked and took flight into the currents and Kressara stopped to stand in the midst of their fright. Corvids dispersed into the shadows around the young sith and left her awestruck, those eyes of hers uncovered for once in a great while. The beauty, it melted her like love letters and sweetest songs. With a euphoric smile and something akin to a girlish laugh Kressara too fled the seen of tumbling timbers and ran with her back to the wind. She embraced what once gave her nightmares and allowed it to come to life all around her like a living dream, flying over a fallen tree and bounding into a grove of old growth. The trees here were stronger and gnarled, blocking out the sky entirely with their reach. It was just barely plausible to see in such a place, yet Kressara felt the most at peace there as she settled down from her promenade through the forest.

One step of her boot onto the lush mossy ground set into motion a living light show. Bioluminescent fungus and plants alike lit up and painted the grove a glowing green lovely to behold. Moths of shimmering silver fluttered out by the hundreds and settled again within the undergrowth as night birds gently cooed their lullabies. This is what she came all this way for. Kressara knelt down and removed a jar from her belt, picking up clots of dirt and glowing flora which she carefully sealed within the glass container.

Life-

It was all around them. It was a permanent staple of this moon, a place Blood and Slade both had managed to grow into a successful place of relished well-being. Cultivation of both credits, and care, of legacy, and lavish living. Any who got his permission to be on this moon were blessed by the Wicked Messiah, as this eden was what he enlisted the softer piece of himself to.
Tonight, however,

Tonight was something that simply felt wrong to him.

He had come to silence the urges that didn't belong on this moon, the urges that reared a starved head. Desires to kill, to feast, to grow, to murder, to gorge. All baser instincts that were multiplied by a million times, snarling and curling horrid whispers in the centerfold of his mind. They would not cease. Not until he had his fill. The salvation of salivation greeting sanguis and sloshing over the sacrament of muscles and membranes. The hunger in him rose, and he felt the agony that would soon come with it if he didn't pacify those incessant whispers...
Rahab had silenced them with her smiles, guiles and wiles, but the Dark Side only humored the crocodilian tempered woman's trade for so long.

They grew as he stepped forward, pulled by a lull of something mouthwatering. It was no mere beast, and it was rank with some savory scents. The ink grey tongue danced between the pillars and rows of ivory daggers in his mouth. He couldn't help it; he anticipated making his first kill on this planet. He knew that would be what unraveled his standards of keeping Sojourn's newest record 'clean', a broken rule that couldn't be mended, but the agony grew. It spread, and he just couldn't seem to keep himself together, much longer. That little voice of reason that he kept as his main mentality grew closer and closer to absolute silence with every step he took through the forest.

He was draped in a cowl, a deep hood which left nothing of his face visible, and with added assistance from his own capabilities, he made the darkness much thicker within it's folds. The cowl was connected to a long flush of cape, and it dragged behind him like a spread of Void, itself. He was shirtless, as he felt unbelievably uncomfortable in clothes, most especially shirts, as they no longer fit. They were tailored for his smaller frame, and with this larger, stockier build, he fit nothing of his. He got lucky with these pair of slacks, as they were slightly more allowing in room for his lower half's increase in girth. Not that any of it was visible, the cloak claimed his body in it's silken embrace as he moved through the woods like some hunting monster. Well, he was some hunting monster.

It didn't take long before long legs found themselves slowing and stopping to a scene. Near neon growths and other alien additions lay in a concentrated scatter beneath him.
Or them, rather, as in his presence, was someone else.

His mind blurred slightly as he could only imagine whose fingers those were, scooping up dirt....

"Do you have permissssion to be taking that dirt?..." the deep baritones hissed from the shadows of the night.

By the time the shadowy figure had caught up to Kressara she’d collected several samples of glowing plants and sealed them in bottles, hanging each on on her belt carefully. She was just about to rub her hands clean when a booming voice broke the blessed speechlessness of the midnight grove. She didn’t jump so easily as she had on Lothal, only staying crouched and turning to look over at him from behind her own hood. Seeing his intimidating size towering over her put the girl on edge, her teeth gnashing together just slightly before a masking smile hid her true emotions. The girl rose with a slowness, knowing that in tense situations taking things too quickly could result in an attack. Once she stood upright her feminine frame could be seen in the way her familiar black coat clung to her body, turning so that long tresses of ashen hair would be just as visible as her grin.

“No, but then again it’s not leaving the planet, and I’m allowing it to grow stronger by removing sickly plants from the ecosystem. Selective breeding of flora and disease prevention if you will…it’s a service I perform freely.”

Her chin craned upwards so a gold and green eye could peer out more effectively from her mask of hair and shade.

“Are you related to someone here? I don’t believe we’ve met...yet I feel as if we have.”

His bloodthirsty energy didn’t go unnoticed, something akin to the predators she used to safeguard her farm from so long and far from Sojourn. He looked like a beast prowling the forest, only instead of a roar before he’d pounce he asked if she had permission to take samples from the forest. Her head tilted downward again, that Cheshire grin widening with an out of place warmth. Howling winds played like flutes through the branches that lifted glowing spores off of the ground, floating away as green embers.

“There’s quite a tempest brewing...it’ll carry these spores all over the forest even from their covered grove. You’ll have quite the invasion on your hands in a few months time...they grow like weeds. Pretty, useful, lovely weeds.” Now she was just stalling his mind, speaking about plants for the sake of forcing his thoughts to wander, giving her more to work with than a large beast of a man whose only concern was a wrong doing of hers. It’s best to add as many thoughts as one can to the minds of their potential enemies, making it more difficult for them to sort out their priorities so she could use their indecision and confusion to slip away or strike where it counts. The girl portrayed no such ill will in her mannerisms, only standing as a grinning sprite in the blustery woods.

Blood listened to her words, more interested in them than the false guise she place on those overbearingly kissable lips. Crazy can't fool crazy, and neither can the sane, apparently. He was a wonderfully skilled sociopath, and he atleast acknowledged his decrepit behavior. The way to conquer a problem was to address it, but his problem was that he didn't think it was a problem. Not in the slightest.
It was a problem that he kept staring at her rather than peeling that gorgeous grin right off her face.

"There is a team of specialized scientists who have already been paid billions for that-"

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"But who knows; a random soul who performs free services of harvest and help to a moon she harbors secrets on...such as cutting tree's lives short without mercy, whatsoever."

Blood had walked past the felled trees, their height and glory, their legacy short lived. Her essence, as well as his Son's was scant on the scene, but the moon told no lies.
His nares widened, catching her scent with much more as she most definitely reacted to being caught.

"Yes, we most certainly know each other, Kressssara. You've made your mark here, on my moon. How could I forget someone of such passssionate caliber?"

Blood took himself a steadying breath as he tried to focus on the girl. He had known calling her by her name, helping himself recognize her as who she was rather than another human, it would aid him in fighting against the hunger that pounded in his skull. It was deterring yes, but how long would it last?

Holding up a clawed hand, the obsidian spikes glittered almost eerily pretty in the bioluminescent grace of the fungi and other fauna. Within the recesses of his immediate memory, he brought forth the illusion of a fungus in particular he had imported to this moon. It had been brought from Bakura, and it was shaped like most other mushrooms. As the dark Void began to craft up this picture, swirling just over his held out scaled palm, the smoke swirled into the exact thing he willed it to. Before the both of them, an image of a realistic looking rainbow colored fungus lay in his demonic looking grasp. It glimmered with a mystical light, and with only a second of pause, his ominous baritones growled between them.

"Let's play a game, shall we? You have exactly half an hour to travel 2 miles of diameter and find this exact fungus. Bring it back to where your sins lay, and all will be forgiven. You will survive this night, should you succeed. If you fail, then then you will weep as I tear you apart and devour you. Now, fly, pretty Crow..."

His hiss sounded much less kind.

"Fly, fly, fLyYyyYy..."

The rainbow fungus in his had appeared to be decaying, and it only took seconds before it melted into a shriveled black sludge in his hands, then disappeared completely.

The girl stood perfectly still as this looming nightmare of a man answered her and a breeze lifted free the strands from her eyes just in time for him to see those pupils narrow with realization. Her eyes widened when his identity revealed itself through the patterns of his speech and the way his voice held a remnant of the smooth talking Sith Lord she met before. Kressara took a step back on sheer instinct, recalling the creepy sensation that Blood had given her in one of their only other times alone together, but now something was even worse about it. He looked different, FELT different. Something changed in the dark lord that Kressara did not put trust in. He mentioned the trees Raphael and her sliced during their training, showed her an image of some beautiful specimen manifested in his palm, and then put her safety on a timer with the most suave of tones...followed by a hiss that sent shivers down her spine.

Kressara said nothing, argued nothing. The young sith reached with haste to her belt wrapped around the exterior of her coat and unlatched it’s buckle before dropping the dead weight to the ground. It would only cause too much sound and light if she needed to flee from him after all, so she abandoned it without hesitation. After the glass containers dropped safely atop the spongy ground the dainty woman turned heel and launched herself into a full on sprint from a stand still. In seconds her form disappeared from the light of the grove and into the darkness she flew like a large black bird diving through the forest to escape the talons of a more dangerous predator. The storm intensified, rain now falling down from the heavens and dripping through the canopy of leaves overhead while Kressara made her flight to the object of her salvation. Half an hour...two miles...there and back...it would be nearly impossible!

Muddy ground made it difficult to keep her steady footing as the elf like girl darted through the forest, narrowly dodging a plummeting widow maker when the wind brought it down with a thunderous crack. The distraction was all it took for Kressara to slip when next her foot landed from an evasive leap, ankle twisting when her boot skid against a slippery stone. Her body collided and rolled over the wet ground and with a pained hiss she curled the injured leg in and grasped it. It wasn’t the time to hurt herself, not when her life depended on her ability to run swiftly, if not to the resort than permanently from it.

“Not now!!!” She growled to herself and with an angry smack of her hand into the mud, she pulled herself to her knees.

Kressara’s clothing was smeared with soggy dirt, her hair tangled with the filth and leaves the helped break her fall. Her body pushed itself up on one leg with the help of her arm strength, leaning against a tree for support while she tested her weight on the injury. Pain jolted up her entire leg starting at the ankle and Kressara flung her head upwards to the rain in aggravation.

“No…”

She pressed down again, the same result.

“NO!” The girl roared from somewhere deep inside, nails dug into the bark of the tree she leaned against. She wouldn’t make it with an out of joint bone, but giving in wasn’t the answer. Kressara wedged her foot between two roots and in a fit of both anger and bravery, snapped her own bones back into place with a wicked pop of sinew and calcium. Her agony echoed through the woods in the form of screaming before the storm erased such a sound with it’s turbulent melody.

Gasping for air she carefully touched down to the ground on her wounded ankle again. This time the weight was steady, steady enough at least, despite the pain being tenfold. Still beat being devoured. With determination she trudged onwards through the rain and muck, nearly blinded by the storm.

He felt her determination, her instinct, her will to survive. On hand, the heated exchange of emotions had touched something more human in him, something that could even be close to empathy, molding into sympathy.
But the fiery catch on the other hand was the scalding cinder of hunger that seemed to only expand in him.

He battled the conflict as she battled her own.
Blood tasted deeply the direct drive the girl threw herself through. It was clear she was intending on completing this challenge, and Blood was impressed by it.

Taking the oppertunity for it, he followed the trail she threw herself down, slowly as to not crowd her hunt.
It was then he felt something snap, and an ecstasy of pain that flooded his mind. It wasn't his pain, no...It was hers. She hurt herself. He couldn't place exactly where the throbbng came from, but something that filed into his mind was her inability to complete the challenge, now. He knew she wouldn't make it in time.
But the Sithette didn't give up. Through the torrent of falling water, she struggled forward, the pain near inescapable, but adaptable, and adapt she did. She hobbeled, her thread pulsing, shaky, but moving, as she forced herself to complete the now voiding challenge.

Blood closed more distance now, his hood firmly in place despite the battering buffet of wind and water. It was caught on slight spikes that emerged from spereate segments of his scalp, and not going anywhere. The flow of fabric however was insane and chaotic, rivetting in the winds, and the inhuman man near appeared to be a reaper hanging around the edges of the woods.
But he kept up with the shambling girl, interest and anticipation gleaming in those unseeable eyes of his.

Was it for her potential slim victory?
Or was it for her looming failure?

The time was flying by as every element of her journey seemed to exist solely for the purpose of slowing her down. Kressara limped through a pool of standing water and continued her way through the forest until despair sunk in. The girl slid against a mossy boulder and leaned her rain soaked head against it’s cold wet surface, catching her breath for only but a moment. She was tired, cold, soaked to the bone, and shaking like one of the millions of leaves rattling in the strong gusts.There was no way...she’d run so far and for nothing. She might as well give up at this point. Blood would tear her to pieces over a tree...A TREE.

A glimmer of light caught her eye. Something deep in the crevice of the stones she stopped to rest on glowed in the darkness and as the girl leaned down to pluck it from the crack in the rocks, she realized that her task was almost halfway over. It was the mushroom! The bloody, rainbow, happy freaking mushroom! Oh stars above if she was only a little less intelligent Kressara might have kissed the stupid thing. With a breathless laugh she tucked the shimmering shroom into a pocket close to her ribcage where it’d be safe, turning towards the direction she came from. It was a long shot, but she had to make it...even if she DIDN’T reach the garden in time, she still had to survive this. Even if she had to fight Blood tooth and nail like a wild animal. She only hoped it wouldn’t come to a fight.

Kressara centered herself, took a deep breath, and took the first step towards victory. The second step was shaky, the third determined, and soon enough she was sprinting again like a champion with her teeth grit to manage the pain. In a mad struggle against time the youthful sith flew towards the resort at breakneck speed and when she finally burst free from the tree line her feet carried her to the fallen trees before her body collapsed upon the soggy grass. She made it, whether on time or not she didn’t know, but she made it. Her trembling hand pulled the prismatic fungus from her pocket and set it on the ground before her, completely depleted of energy. Her entire body rose and fell as her burning lungs sucked in air and rain without discrimination, causing her to cough on occasion. She stayed on the ground like that, eyes shut and forehead to the puddle she’d fallen in as the storm poured over her in sheets. Kressara rolled onto her side and groaned, fighting back the urge to cry.

Kressara had managed to do what he hadn't thought she had the heart to do. It was a tremendous thing he witnessed, and stepping from the forest of his, wind swirling around his cloak, he strode over the distance between him and his ward like a ominous dream as she lay in agony. It took only a minute before he came to be in her space. She was bedded in the pelted grass, water forming around her in a serene pond from immersed weight. Water, and serenity. The same aura of his Rahab.
That put the fire out in him as the Sith Lord bent low in the downpour, and scooped up his packmate gently, scale and nails on both hands working not to harm, but to help.

"You heeded and succeeded, Kressara, not from rules nor fear, but from desire and submission," he worded to her softly, almost as if cooing the injured bird a lullaby. Walking with her in his arms, he held her, giving her more than enough room to get comfortable in his grasp.

"You will come to find that when desire becomes submission, submission, becomes power."

The real comparison that sparked to mind yet again was Rahab, as the sounds of her sobs and utter release of herself, her absolute submission to the power of the Force, it was the most passionate thing he had seen from any soul he had ever encountered. From her incredible intake of burden, she gained the gift of knowledge from the Force, and it empowered her permanently. She was given the gift, as was he, and that moment was one of many he cherished that got a glimpse of the beauty hidden within that silver-eyed minx.

"You sometimes must find which desires are meant to be submitted to, and which are only there to land you in unnecessary trouble."

The Dragon King walked through the strengthening wind, and only after a few more stubborn blows did the hood free from the snags of the small horns atop his head.
The hood pulled back to reveal the man who was once a handsome tanned human, a proud and wily devil, turned completely horrifying. Black scales stripped down the lines sided of his neck, while a crest of them bordered his forehead and chin, other halves of his face in their entirety distinguished by scaly skin, both paled and darkened into an ashy grey. His hair was no longer the flowing and silky mane it once was; it was clear the bottom half of those locks had broken off, while a majority of it had fallen raggedly out. He turned his face away from her, almost seeming ashamed of it, but returned it to look at her.

"I hope you learn swiftly how to categorize those desires." He didn't finish off the worse half of that statement; he was a prime example after all, of what happened when you chose wrong.

They were heading in the westward part of the moon, and from the distance loomed an exquisite sight; a massive mansion was sitting further ahead. It was there he resided on this moon, and it was there where his medical team could doctor up Kressara. Well, if she didn't run screaming and crying away from the monster that was carrying her.

The plip-plap of footsteps on the drenched grass drew closer to Kressara’s sprawled out form and with a sound half sob and part intake of air the girl braced herself. Blood had changed somehow, not that she wouldn’t have been just as worried for her safety before his transformation, and now her energy was spent completely on the task he’d given her. Should she have stood her ground? Used her strength and vitalized condition to defend herself rather than play his game and throw it all away? Now he could so easily end her life and-

His imposing shadow eclipsed the moon that dared to peak out from behind breaks in the storm every so now and then, but when he reached for her all expectations were nullified. Blood knelt down and gently scooped her up, strangely beast like talons minded with caution as to not break her skin. He talked to her in a soothing manner like a parent might calm their child after punishing them, speaking of power from submission and what wishes she should abandon. Her eyebrows furrowed as the rainwater ladening her hair pulled it free from her face and showed every expression in detail. Just as Blood removed his hood, Kressara’s own mask was discarded. His once blessedly handsome looks were warped by scales and grey skin, most of his hair gone as well. The sight of him was shocking, but Kressara didn’t flinch. She didn’t look away from his face or doubt it was really him. She just stared for what felt like a forever before that smile she always wore shone through again.

“Well, that’s not so bad, Blood…” Breathless she recuperated as he carried her. Kressara realized that by showing her this change he’d undergone he likely wanted some response. There was something almost fearful in the way he carried himself after letting her see, but she just smirked and closed her eyes before leaning her head against his shoulder. Her body was exhausted, but even after seeing his darkside warped appearance that heart rate didn’t raise a beat like it had when he threatened her.

“...Your temperament was uglier...and with a little cleaning up I think you’ll find you’re less monstrous looking than you act…”

It was like his outward appearance simply wasn’t all that knew to Kressara, in fact, it wasn’t. It matched the darkness she saw in him before they were allies, though she only caught a glimpse. Coughing a wet, chest deep jaunting of her lungs, the young sith cleared her throat and mused, “You know the funny thing about beauty, my lord, is that it only exists by name...it’s just a word we use to describe something when it evokes euphoria in our souls, an invention of mortal minds too limited to speak such divinity...We see something so enthralling, so alive, and deserving of an entire language all its own...but we as foolish things can only call it ‘Beauty’ …”

Her old soul rested comfortably with him now, more than he would have ever known her to trust him before. Kressara wanted him to realize something, anything that he was missing, anything that he needed to heal whatever plague of the heart had sickened him so utterly.

“We all wear beauty like a mask, Blood. Some to hide who they truly are from others…” She paused, smiling with a sly sparkle in her eyes before tiredly leaning against him once more. “And some to hide who they truly are from themselves.” She sneezed, covering her nose with the back of her wrist before groaning at how dreadful she felt.

“So please don’t lament the loss of your mask, my lord. You’re nothing if not divine and endlessly alive, and you shouldn’t avert your eyes any longer to that reality.”

He listened, fully attuned to the words not only with his ears, but with his mind. She meant the things she said, and everything she said to him was more than simply trying not to invoke his wrath. This was one of his Initiates attempting to comfort him, and despite her missing her mark on a majority of it, she had fallen dead on the mark as far as his temper. His temper was a finicky thing, and when triggered was a sight to behold.

"If only you knew the memories that ruin me so, only then you would know what horrors lie nuzzled forever in my soul, Kressara. They break my mind until my soul unwinds, forcing my thoughts through hell and back, and leave my humanity there alone to die."

But the Sith Lord wasn't sad nor burdened by it. In fact, that very horror Krynn had afflicted him with had been the mighty essence that fed his Dark Side abilities. He simply needed to have more time, more time to control. Until then, he would be broken down until it was time for him to be built anew.

"This new look is one of my few failuressss; it will haunt me, and I will learn from it- But I do not regret it. Just as all lessons in life, it has its blessings, and curses. But I will push forward and destroy opposers of the Sith, no matter what skin I am in. I simply have to adjusssst."

Blood knew he had a nice amount of time needed before he became fully comfortable in this new body, as his flexibility wasn't what it once was, not was his alluring appearance. His tongue held not that bewitching and eased manner speaking, the serpentine whip flicking his words out with slick and wet enunciations. His bulk was something he wasn't too pleased about, prefering his agility to his power. But if Kroxata learned how to be a proper powerhouse, he would have to, as well.
Stomping through the rain, Blood indulged himself into the inner warmth broiling viciously in his core, the ovenhelm of his heart, and brought it to reality. Under Kressara, a bright flash 'whooshed' before the girl was engulfed in fire within his arms, from the neck, down. The fire was merely the after-effect of him bringing heat and friction to the air around her. In the end, the totality of what he was trying to accomplish was simply keeping her warm. The heat underneath the flickering flames was lower than the degree necessary for the air itself to catch fire's thisty inhalation, thus preventing her from being burned.

"But I appreciate your understanding; it does show how much further off you are in success than the many of Sith who come and go. I see you will certainly leave your mark, here."

With that, he walked through the lavish entryway, passing through the gardens who were most certainly getting their fill of aquafication. It took nothing more than a mental unlock against the door for him to be within the threshold of the massive home. It was decorated in the manner of someone who typically lived a calm and royal life on Alderaan, pillars and ponds outside of the grand mansion of sandstone and whitestone, accented by appropriate and inspiring architecture designs. Within, pillars and a grand staircase was visible, the front parlor room warm and already set up for him as if he had never left, despite not having been 'home' for 4 days. Immediately, Diona, one of the Omwati women who worked clerical duties at the resort's registration office rushed forward to greet him and his company. Her sister Iona came forward as well, a warming blanket fresh from the dryer in her arms. "Company was unexpected, Mr. X, but surely we will accompany her." Iona began. "Is miss Kressara capable of walking? We have the base spare room fully stocked as all others are-"

"No." He wouldn't have her resting up in a bed; too much time would be wasted on healing."Prepare a bath of Bacta for her in the first level bathroom. She will heal there. Ensure it is warm enough for her at all times."

Looking down at Kressara, he murmured, "Food? Drink? The will most certainly bring whatever it is you ask."