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29-04-2023, 01:49 PM
VIREN SEKKER IN: PATH OF WOE
Nightfall - Sekker Mansion on Serenno - One week ago.
TO BE CONTINUED...
EPISODE II
Morning - the Sekker Mansion - The next day…
The first rays of morning sun never touch the interior of the throne room of Sekker Manor; the windows are oriented, intentionally, to face west so that when the Lord of the house receives visitors, they can remain hidden in shadow.
The shadow that lurked in the obsidian throne waited, passive and patient as the dark itself.
What adornment there had been before was now gone; the elegant red draperies lining the hall, the black satin curtains with their gold trim, even the sparse side-tables and paintings that had hung from the walls were gone. The place seemed oddly naked without them, stone bared in a display of brutalist confidence.
The same was true of the rest of the house now; paintings, busts, statuary, rare plants that had adorned the luxuriant halls… what wasn’t worth saving was burning in a great bonfire in the central courtyard, and whatever was of value was… elsewhere.
From the far end of the hall, the great doors were levered open by a pair of slaves, dressed far more appropriately now in rags with chains about their necks that fastened them to the doors by means of newly-welded iron rings.
The Sith that poured through - less than a dozen in total, accompanied by various… lesser members - were instantly recognisable as relatives. They all had a certain weight of brow, angularity of face and quick, darting eyes that could only be due to common genetics.
Kitsana remained veiled in the shadow of the obsidian throne, watching them come closer and squint through pale orange sunlight to pierce the shadow. With his presence dampened from their sight, they could not tell who sat in the throne… him, or his recent predecessor.
“Welcome, family,” he said, his voice hissing across the bare obsidian floor. Several of the lesser Sith visibly tensed, recognising his voice; a few even put their hands to their lightsabers, and Kitsana had to hold back a laugh.
“Kitsana!” a loud voice retorted from the front of the crowd. “What is the meaning of this? We were summoned by Darth Sekker-”
He stopped as Kitsana rose from the throne, stepping down so the light haloed his bald head and glinted off the hammer held before him.
“I have summoned you all here to make an announcement,” Kitsana said, setting the hammer down beside him. With a wave of his hand, a trio of probe droids descended from unseen alcoves above, coming to hover over the heads of the assembled Sekker Family.
Two of them projected images of yet more Sith, those too far or too busy to be present in person; after a few exchanged looks of uncertainty, the attention of the room was drawn inexorably back to Kitsana as his hand rested atop the pommel of his hammer.
“Gathered before me are the collected representatives of all of House Sekker; Sith of my Household. Representatives of every branch, even House Qel-Sekker, save for one; the line of Dinosh Sekker. It is here and now that I say to you that this line… is forever broken. I have killed Darth Sekker, and by right of conquest I declare myself Patriarch of this house forevermore. I shall bear the title until my death, and my heirs after me.”
Here he paused, letting the weight of those words sink in. Watching as yellow eyes widened, as a hush so deep and total fell over the family it was as though he was stood before an assembly of the dead.
“There will be changes now. The days of… progressivity that have led us to bow to the impure, the human and near-human, are gone. Henceforth.. To bear the name of this great family you must be pure of blood!”
Now the silence was broken, as a wave of angry murmuring and even shouts came from the Sith - denial, rage, as the Sithblooded humans and Halfbreeds raised their voices to protest.
“BE SILENT!” his raised voice cut through the chatter like a blaster bolt. Now instead of looks of confusion and distrust… the expression on some faces was of pure hatred. Good.
“Nalda Sekker was weak! Weakness perpetuated by Dinosh and his line! This house was once great, and it can be - WILL be again. First we must cut the chaff from ourselves. All those whose blood is not pure enough to show the glory of Sith ancestry, are hereby excommunicated… those who have married humans, those who have purjored our way of life: you have no place among the true House Sekker.”
“This is madness,” a voice cut in from one side– and Kitsana was shocked to see it was a pureblood who spoke.
“Eivar Qel-Sekker,” he greeted him with a contemptuous smile. “You wish to speak?”
The hologram of Eivar Qel-Sekker trembled with visible rage, his fists clenched by his sides.
“I will not abandon the strength of my family for hollow promises of the greatness of the ancient ways. You aren’t excommunicating the half-breeds because you wish to be pure - you’re doing it because you wish to be rid of Viren Sekker!”
Another weighty silence followed that as eyes tracked from the hologram back to Kitsana - some tensing in expectation of an outburst of rage that could be felt like a wave of heat from the throne.
“Viren Sekker… does not frighten me. The little boy, so far from home… where was he when his adored cousin fell? His mother chose to forego her Purity in favour of human weakness, for the same sentimentality that caused the fall of Dinosh. That mired Variel Sekker, his daughter, a half-blood as well!
“You think I am afraid, Eivar? Very well. Viren Sekker I speak to you, now, wherever you are: I challenge you. I challenge you by the ancient rights of blood that bind us. Face me. FACE ME! If I die then the throne will be yours. If you dare.”
There were more ripples of conversation now, the rhythm of silence-and-muttering now becoming apparent; but again Eivar spoke.
“House Qel-Sekker will not stand with you, Kitsana, Hammer of Sekker. Our loyalty is to the true line of Sovernus and Quortez. You betray the very bond of brotherhood that brought our houses together.”
“I stand with you, Sith Eivar!” said a female voice as a half-blood woman stepped forward, lowering her hood. “You wish to see me excommunicated? So be it! I stand with Viren Sekker!”
Kitsana’s red eyes burned like dying stars in the shadow cast by the obsidian throne, his rage incalculable at this…. Inexplicable turn of events.
“...Very well. You wish to keep your loyalties to the whelp? To the weak? So be it. From this day forward you may call yourself Sekker - for the pure who follow me will have a new name, a name that I shall bear as the title of my Lordhood. Let it be known as my first act as Lord and Patriarch of this house: that no longer shall this great house bear the impure, bastardised name of Sekker. We shall be known as we were before the great hyperspace war: As House Seq’kar!”
A roar of approval came at that - but not from the entire crowd. One by one, some of the Sith - mostly halfbreeds or near humans - turned to walk away or simply cut their transmissions, until all that was left… were red, pure, glorious faces looking up at him in rapture.
Kitsana grinned. More than half had remained, more than three quarters. Let Viren Sekker take the refugees, those whose purity or conscience prevented them being perfect Sith.
“Let Viren Sekker come to me if he dares…” Kitsana hissed, taking his hammer in his hand and raising it high. “House Sekker falls! So that House Seq’kar shall RISE! And our first act… shall be to burn this temple of profanity to the very ground.”
THE END... FOR NOW.
EPISODE I
Nightfall - Sekker Mansion on Serenno - One week ago.
Two figures strode quickly down deserted hallways of the manor house, their footsteps muffled against velvet red carpet. The first figure, leading by the shadow of a pace, was a tall heavy-set man in grey panelled armour and a respirator mask, adorned with weapons across his back and hanging from his belt.
“She went into the chamber and has refused to leave for the last two days,” he was saying to his companion, “Then yesterday, she called for you. Asked that I reach out and send transportation at once.”
The second figure remained silent. He was shorter than the first man by a good head, and drenched in a pitch black hooded cloak that left his face in shadow and concealed the form of his body beneath it.
“Of course, Viren, you understand what’s happening,” Lord Hesei went on, casting a yellow-eyed glance at the cloaked figure. “Years of practising dark magic, alchemy… corrupted her body. But her body was crippled to begin with. I never knew the story of how, or why, but you know as well as I that she was reconstructed from… basically nothing. Near enough every bone in her body shattered, repaired with science and durasteel pins and alchemy… and now the corruption is undoing all of that. She’s holding on by threads. Painkillers have no effect.”
The hood turned towards the Lord, a glimmer of deep orange eye visible somewhere within its shadows, but still said nothing. Lord Hesei, sensing perhaps that his companion didn’t feel like discussing the matter, walked on in silence.
Together, they came to the vast entrance doors to the grand audience chamber. Inside, their footsteps rang suddenly loud against the solid black obsidian floor, a steady tattoo beat by four boots.
To either side of them, stationed at regular intervals, grey-hooded cultists of the Seven stood carrying small torches in silent vigil over their lord and master. Hidden in deeper shadows still, servants and slaves in grey uniforms of their own stood meekly waiting for orders.
“Darth Sekker,” Lord Hesei enunciated, sinking to a knee as he approached the throne. “I have brought your cousin as you asked.”
The obsidian throne reached high into the air, blocking what little pale evening sunlight filtered in through the vast windows behind it, leaving the seat of the great stone chair wreathed in shadows… rendering the occupant, if indeed there was one, invisible. To one side of the throne, a sickening concoction of medical monitors and paraphernalia cluttered the great obsidian dais from which the throne protruded, as though hewn from a single solid piece of the black stone.
From the edge of the shadows, a skeletal white hand formed itself out of the nothingness and made a dismissive gesture, while a voice like ice water running off a glacier bled from the shadows.
“Leave us.”
There was a sudden susurration of motion as the servants made quiet exits through side doors, and some of the cultists - though not all - vanished along with them. Lord Hesei rose, bowed once, and exited the way he had come, closing the great doors to the audience chamber behind him.
The throne room seemed suddenly muted, deprived of life. All that was left were two shadows; the one cast by the throne, and the one stood before it like darkness given unholy life.
“Step closer cousin,” the voice spoke again, and the skeletal hand turned itself over to beckon the second shadow to it. “Let me look on your face.”
The shadow took a few measured steps closer, stopping with one rain-slicked boot on the highest step of the dais, but made no effort to lean closer to the throne. From here, the creature sat in it became more visible… the last rays of sunlight faded from the sky, and diffuse light from the torch-bearers lent fresh perspective to the figure on the throne.
Once, Nalda Variel Sekker had been beautiful. She had prided herself on excellent genetics, human and Sith ancestry; her face had been angular, symmetrical, expressive; her skin smooth and her body shapely.
That was the past.
The figure in the throne resembled the corpse of Nalda Variel Sekker. Her once soft cheeks were now sunken pits through which the outline of teeth were visible; her eyes, once vibrant, were pale amber and dulled as though blind, with milky cataract pupils swimming in them, searching with difficulty to see the shadow two metres before her. Her body was no longer shapely, but angular and jagged, a plastic sack of bones with the air sucked out of it; where there were scars, and there were many, they showed up bruise-purple against skin so white and papery it could have been punctured with the press of a finger.
Her voice, once melodious, now sounded ancient beyond belief, cracked and papery like her skin.
“Finally the flesh reflects the madness within,” she rasped, making a half-hearted effort to rise somewhat in the throne and failing. “I understand this may be a shock to you… or it may not, you are an observant boy… Sorcery can do so much to hide one’s appearance, and for many years corruption’s touch on me was little more than an aesthetic concern–”
She broke off, coughing violently, and to one side a machine beeped a shrill note. One of the servants rushed forward with a cloth and a glass of water, but the Dark Lord shattered the glass with a gesture and snatched the rag, coughing black blood into it while the machine continued to wail.
The shadow before the throne straightened, turned towards the machine; an ungloved hand, strong and healthy, emerged and made a fist. The machine crumpled suddenly as though in an invisible vice, and went silent.
“Time… grows short Viren…” the corpse inhaled with a sound like a death rattle. “My body… is held on by mere thought. I have trained you to be my successor. Given you my wisdom, and now you have the wisdom of the Horusets as well. You must… take my place when you are ready. You must.”
The robed figure turned back towards the dying Darth, expressionless within shadow.
“For so many years… I wore the Force Mask… hiding my fragility, the curse of my Sorcery and Alchemy… but beware!” A skeletal hand trembled forth, clawing desperately at the air. “Beware… the Hammer! Your uncle… Kitsana Sekker… the one they call the Hammer of the Sith… I have forseen a great conflict between you my boy-”
Again she was racked by spasming coughs, but there was no machine to warn them this time. Still, the shadow before the throne was silent, still as a statue.
“Say something boy!” Darth Sekker snapped, her voice like a whip’s crack. “Speak! That I would know you understand!”
“Oh, Nalda…” the soft voice that came from beneath the robe was hushed, but carried across the entire throne room. “I am afraid…. It is you who does not understand…”
At last the shadow leaned closer to the Dark Lord, close enough that her searching hand could grasp at the lapel of his cloak. Feeling, the cold fingers found his neck, then his jaw… feeling spurs and tendrils where none ought to be.
“You– you are not Viren–” and there was fear in the voice now.
"No, I am not," said the figure. His own hand reached out again, wrapping unstoppably about her spindly throat. “Young Viren is still deployed many light-years away, on Pollus… but I found the shuttle you offered to him. The guardsman aboard took no issue with my taking his place…”
“No! You! No!” the cracked voice almost became shrill before it was cut off as the hand about her throat squeezed slowly.
“Yes,” whispered Kitsana Sekker, the Hammer of the Sith. “Me.”
With a sudden violent twist, sharpened black claws tore into soft flesh, and in a single motion Kitsana Sekker ripped what was left of Nalda Variel Sekker’s trachea from her throat.
There was a terrible, gory splattering noise as blood and thin tendrils that had once been tendons and vocal muscles slopped to the floor. In a single shrugging motion, the shadow freed itself of its cloak and straightened.
For every part of Nalda Sekker that had been decaying and falling apart, Kitsana Sekker emanated strength. Stripped to the waist, his broad chest, arms, neck and bald head were adorned with millions of lines of spider-thin writing, a tattoo in Sith script of his devotion to the Old Gods; no lightsaber hung by his side, but hanging from his un-soiled hand was a magnificent hammer wrought in Sith Steel. Like its owner, the hammer was adorned in runes and etchings, and a depiction of a fearsome Sith-Beast across the sides of the flat striking face and wickedly hooked spike.
Throwing back his hairless head, Kitsana let loose a sudden primal scream at the ceiling, a Force Bellow audible throughout the entire complex. From the sidelines, stunned cultists were pulling weapons from beneath their robes - some carrying wicked looking vibroknives, others simple metallic cudgels, and a pair of them (dressed in robes of dark crimson instead of the usual grey) even drew pale orange lightsabers.
Kitsana strode down the steps of the dais, raising his blood-stained hand to his face and dragging his fingers across his forehead and cheeks to leave bloody smears there. “In the name of my ancestors, I commit your deaths to the Gods.”
The head of the hammer hit the floor with a ringing metallic clang and stayed perfectly still, its elongated handle standing like a pillar as its owner strode towards the oncoming Cultists.
The first of them, he didn’t give a chance to attack - simply slamming his fist into the centre of their chest with Dark augmentation driving knuckles through bone, turning ribs into shards of shrapnel that pierced their owner’s heart. The cultist dropped to the floor, instantly dead, even as the second took a swing with his sword.
Each of them came for him, swinging their weapons with wild abandon; their training was basic, crude. Most of their duties were little more than factorums and decoration, their weapons for show and ritual more than actual use; it was easy, without weapons or armour, to take each of them down.
Some he killed as he had the first; with precisely-delivered blows of his fists that killed nearly instantly. Others, he grappled to the ground and snapped their necks or spines. Still others, he turned their own weapons against them, slitting throat or breaking skulls with their cudgels.
The two with the lightsabers hung back - he could feel the Force in them, too weak to be true Sith, but enough that they could access the barest metric of Sorcery, enough that they could participate in rituals for their master… the blasphemy of it all filled him with white-hot rage, and the rage gave him strength.
A call of the Force brought his hammer to his hand, singing as it flew through the air; he turned it over in both hands as though the heavy weapon was weightless, blocking both the strike the cultists sent at him at once with the long handle; their blades failing to cut the steel, made holy by Alchemy.
He responded with incredible speed for a man of his size, slamming the handle of the hammer into the stomach of one, lashing out at the other a second later with a kick that instantly deadened the leg it made contact with.
The hammer made a singing noise as the head flew through the air, orbiting in a Djem-So arc behind his head, then split the leftmost assailant’s skull open like an overripe melon. The second cultist had time to make one final swing, moving as though in slow motion compared to the Hammer, whose pick arced suddenly back along the reverse path to rip through the cultist’s knee. The lightsaber tumbled from his slackening grip as he screamed in agony, tumbling over as Kitsana Sekker wrenched the pick free.
Up went the head of the hammer… then back down again in an arc that ended with finality on the cultist’s screaming head, silencing him instantly with a pulpy splat.
At the chamber’s far end, the doors flew open - revealing Lord Hesei stood framed between them. In the Force, his rage was a shining, blistering scalpel of molten heat, like a man made of ignited thermite.
“What have you done!?” he roared, purple dualsaber crackling to life in his hands. “Kitsana! What have you done!?”
Kitsana Sekker let out a soft, mirthless laugh.
“I have claimed my birthright,” he hissed, “I have killed your Dark Lord and now I shall become the new Darth Sekker. Do you oppose me?”
“I must,” Hesei said, leaping toward him with the Force rising with him, unleashing dark powers the like of which few could withstand.
Instantly, Kitsana felt his strength and muscles begin to weaken, even with the resistance of a powerful Force Barrier; the hammer came up to defend from the blurred motion of the dualsaber’s blades as Hesei launched into an attack.
Without consciously thinking about it, Kitsana analysed every motion he made, every blow he struck. He saw the influence of the forms he was using; the all-out acrobatic assault of Ataru, the staccato rhythm of Juyo, Djem-So’s brute force. This Hessei was not one to be trifled with, a true Sith. But he had his weaknesses.
With a snaking motion, Kitsana’s left hand reached under Hesei’s guard as he raised the dualsaber to strike again, winding his fingers into the gap between the exposed piston’s of the man’s mechanical right arm. There, they found a wire…
Lightning coursed through Kitsana’s arm and into the prosthetic, ignoring the dampening technology that usually protected the arm from such energy discharges by simply feeding power into the circuits; the hand spasmed, and suddenly the dualsaber tumbled from Hesei’s grip.
The Sith’s head cracked forward into Hesei’s face, slamming into his temple; such was the force of the blow, Hesei staggered backwards, exposing himself to a sudden kick from Kitsana that sent him sprawling back onto the floor.
“Stay down, Hesei,” the Sith snarled, levelling the hammer at him one-handed, feeling its weight vanish as strength coursed back into him. “My quarrel is not with you. I do not care for you nor the servants of Nalda Sekker. Leave, go… do whatever it is with your pathetic life you did before my weak family took pity on you.”
Hesei’s yellow eyes burned up at him, unwavering, as he dragged himself to his feet. “My loyalty was always to her,” he spat, jerking his chin towards the throne. “Fuck your family. Fuck you.”
“That’s the spirit!” Kitsana gasped faintly. “Yes! Now get out.”
Hesei cast one final look to the broken remains of what had once been Darth Sekker upon the obsidian throne. Without another word, he turned his back to the new Lord of the family, and departed.
“She went into the chamber and has refused to leave for the last two days,” he was saying to his companion, “Then yesterday, she called for you. Asked that I reach out and send transportation at once.”
The second figure remained silent. He was shorter than the first man by a good head, and drenched in a pitch black hooded cloak that left his face in shadow and concealed the form of his body beneath it.
“Of course, Viren, you understand what’s happening,” Lord Hesei went on, casting a yellow-eyed glance at the cloaked figure. “Years of practising dark magic, alchemy… corrupted her body. But her body was crippled to begin with. I never knew the story of how, or why, but you know as well as I that she was reconstructed from… basically nothing. Near enough every bone in her body shattered, repaired with science and durasteel pins and alchemy… and now the corruption is undoing all of that. She’s holding on by threads. Painkillers have no effect.”
The hood turned towards the Lord, a glimmer of deep orange eye visible somewhere within its shadows, but still said nothing. Lord Hesei, sensing perhaps that his companion didn’t feel like discussing the matter, walked on in silence.
Together, they came to the vast entrance doors to the grand audience chamber. Inside, their footsteps rang suddenly loud against the solid black obsidian floor, a steady tattoo beat by four boots.
To either side of them, stationed at regular intervals, grey-hooded cultists of the Seven stood carrying small torches in silent vigil over their lord and master. Hidden in deeper shadows still, servants and slaves in grey uniforms of their own stood meekly waiting for orders.
“Darth Sekker,” Lord Hesei enunciated, sinking to a knee as he approached the throne. “I have brought your cousin as you asked.”
The obsidian throne reached high into the air, blocking what little pale evening sunlight filtered in through the vast windows behind it, leaving the seat of the great stone chair wreathed in shadows… rendering the occupant, if indeed there was one, invisible. To one side of the throne, a sickening concoction of medical monitors and paraphernalia cluttered the great obsidian dais from which the throne protruded, as though hewn from a single solid piece of the black stone.
From the edge of the shadows, a skeletal white hand formed itself out of the nothingness and made a dismissive gesture, while a voice like ice water running off a glacier bled from the shadows.
“Leave us.”
There was a sudden susurration of motion as the servants made quiet exits through side doors, and some of the cultists - though not all - vanished along with them. Lord Hesei rose, bowed once, and exited the way he had come, closing the great doors to the audience chamber behind him.
The throne room seemed suddenly muted, deprived of life. All that was left were two shadows; the one cast by the throne, and the one stood before it like darkness given unholy life.
“Step closer cousin,” the voice spoke again, and the skeletal hand turned itself over to beckon the second shadow to it. “Let me look on your face.”
The shadow took a few measured steps closer, stopping with one rain-slicked boot on the highest step of the dais, but made no effort to lean closer to the throne. From here, the creature sat in it became more visible… the last rays of sunlight faded from the sky, and diffuse light from the torch-bearers lent fresh perspective to the figure on the throne.
Once, Nalda Variel Sekker had been beautiful. She had prided herself on excellent genetics, human and Sith ancestry; her face had been angular, symmetrical, expressive; her skin smooth and her body shapely.
That was the past.
The figure in the throne resembled the corpse of Nalda Variel Sekker. Her once soft cheeks were now sunken pits through which the outline of teeth were visible; her eyes, once vibrant, were pale amber and dulled as though blind, with milky cataract pupils swimming in them, searching with difficulty to see the shadow two metres before her. Her body was no longer shapely, but angular and jagged, a plastic sack of bones with the air sucked out of it; where there were scars, and there were many, they showed up bruise-purple against skin so white and papery it could have been punctured with the press of a finger.
Her voice, once melodious, now sounded ancient beyond belief, cracked and papery like her skin.
“Finally the flesh reflects the madness within,” she rasped, making a half-hearted effort to rise somewhat in the throne and failing. “I understand this may be a shock to you… or it may not, you are an observant boy… Sorcery can do so much to hide one’s appearance, and for many years corruption’s touch on me was little more than an aesthetic concern–”
She broke off, coughing violently, and to one side a machine beeped a shrill note. One of the servants rushed forward with a cloth and a glass of water, but the Dark Lord shattered the glass with a gesture and snatched the rag, coughing black blood into it while the machine continued to wail.
The shadow before the throne straightened, turned towards the machine; an ungloved hand, strong and healthy, emerged and made a fist. The machine crumpled suddenly as though in an invisible vice, and went silent.
“Time… grows short Viren…” the corpse inhaled with a sound like a death rattle. “My body… is held on by mere thought. I have trained you to be my successor. Given you my wisdom, and now you have the wisdom of the Horusets as well. You must… take my place when you are ready. You must.”
The robed figure turned back towards the dying Darth, expressionless within shadow.
“For so many years… I wore the Force Mask… hiding my fragility, the curse of my Sorcery and Alchemy… but beware!” A skeletal hand trembled forth, clawing desperately at the air. “Beware… the Hammer! Your uncle… Kitsana Sekker… the one they call the Hammer of the Sith… I have forseen a great conflict between you my boy-”
Again she was racked by spasming coughs, but there was no machine to warn them this time. Still, the shadow before the throne was silent, still as a statue.
“Say something boy!” Darth Sekker snapped, her voice like a whip’s crack. “Speak! That I would know you understand!”
“Oh, Nalda…” the soft voice that came from beneath the robe was hushed, but carried across the entire throne room. “I am afraid…. It is you who does not understand…”
At last the shadow leaned closer to the Dark Lord, close enough that her searching hand could grasp at the lapel of his cloak. Feeling, the cold fingers found his neck, then his jaw… feeling spurs and tendrils where none ought to be.
“You– you are not Viren–” and there was fear in the voice now.
"No, I am not," said the figure. His own hand reached out again, wrapping unstoppably about her spindly throat. “Young Viren is still deployed many light-years away, on Pollus… but I found the shuttle you offered to him. The guardsman aboard took no issue with my taking his place…”
“No! You! No!” the cracked voice almost became shrill before it was cut off as the hand about her throat squeezed slowly.
“Yes,” whispered Kitsana Sekker, the Hammer of the Sith. “Me.”
With a sudden violent twist, sharpened black claws tore into soft flesh, and in a single motion Kitsana Sekker ripped what was left of Nalda Variel Sekker’s trachea from her throat.
There was a terrible, gory splattering noise as blood and thin tendrils that had once been tendons and vocal muscles slopped to the floor. In a single shrugging motion, the shadow freed itself of its cloak and straightened.
For every part of Nalda Sekker that had been decaying and falling apart, Kitsana Sekker emanated strength. Stripped to the waist, his broad chest, arms, neck and bald head were adorned with millions of lines of spider-thin writing, a tattoo in Sith script of his devotion to the Old Gods; no lightsaber hung by his side, but hanging from his un-soiled hand was a magnificent hammer wrought in Sith Steel. Like its owner, the hammer was adorned in runes and etchings, and a depiction of a fearsome Sith-Beast across the sides of the flat striking face and wickedly hooked spike.
Throwing back his hairless head, Kitsana let loose a sudden primal scream at the ceiling, a Force Bellow audible throughout the entire complex. From the sidelines, stunned cultists were pulling weapons from beneath their robes - some carrying wicked looking vibroknives, others simple metallic cudgels, and a pair of them (dressed in robes of dark crimson instead of the usual grey) even drew pale orange lightsabers.
Kitsana strode down the steps of the dais, raising his blood-stained hand to his face and dragging his fingers across his forehead and cheeks to leave bloody smears there. “In the name of my ancestors, I commit your deaths to the Gods.”
The head of the hammer hit the floor with a ringing metallic clang and stayed perfectly still, its elongated handle standing like a pillar as its owner strode towards the oncoming Cultists.
The first of them, he didn’t give a chance to attack - simply slamming his fist into the centre of their chest with Dark augmentation driving knuckles through bone, turning ribs into shards of shrapnel that pierced their owner’s heart. The cultist dropped to the floor, instantly dead, even as the second took a swing with his sword.
Each of them came for him, swinging their weapons with wild abandon; their training was basic, crude. Most of their duties were little more than factorums and decoration, their weapons for show and ritual more than actual use; it was easy, without weapons or armour, to take each of them down.
Some he killed as he had the first; with precisely-delivered blows of his fists that killed nearly instantly. Others, he grappled to the ground and snapped their necks or spines. Still others, he turned their own weapons against them, slitting throat or breaking skulls with their cudgels.
The two with the lightsabers hung back - he could feel the Force in them, too weak to be true Sith, but enough that they could access the barest metric of Sorcery, enough that they could participate in rituals for their master… the blasphemy of it all filled him with white-hot rage, and the rage gave him strength.
A call of the Force brought his hammer to his hand, singing as it flew through the air; he turned it over in both hands as though the heavy weapon was weightless, blocking both the strike the cultists sent at him at once with the long handle; their blades failing to cut the steel, made holy by Alchemy.
He responded with incredible speed for a man of his size, slamming the handle of the hammer into the stomach of one, lashing out at the other a second later with a kick that instantly deadened the leg it made contact with.
The hammer made a singing noise as the head flew through the air, orbiting in a Djem-So arc behind his head, then split the leftmost assailant’s skull open like an overripe melon. The second cultist had time to make one final swing, moving as though in slow motion compared to the Hammer, whose pick arced suddenly back along the reverse path to rip through the cultist’s knee. The lightsaber tumbled from his slackening grip as he screamed in agony, tumbling over as Kitsana Sekker wrenched the pick free.
Up went the head of the hammer… then back down again in an arc that ended with finality on the cultist’s screaming head, silencing him instantly with a pulpy splat.
At the chamber’s far end, the doors flew open - revealing Lord Hesei stood framed between them. In the Force, his rage was a shining, blistering scalpel of molten heat, like a man made of ignited thermite.
“What have you done!?” he roared, purple dualsaber crackling to life in his hands. “Kitsana! What have you done!?”
Kitsana Sekker let out a soft, mirthless laugh.
“I have claimed my birthright,” he hissed, “I have killed your Dark Lord and now I shall become the new Darth Sekker. Do you oppose me?”
“I must,” Hesei said, leaping toward him with the Force rising with him, unleashing dark powers the like of which few could withstand.
Instantly, Kitsana felt his strength and muscles begin to weaken, even with the resistance of a powerful Force Barrier; the hammer came up to defend from the blurred motion of the dualsaber’s blades as Hesei launched into an attack.
Without consciously thinking about it, Kitsana analysed every motion he made, every blow he struck. He saw the influence of the forms he was using; the all-out acrobatic assault of Ataru, the staccato rhythm of Juyo, Djem-So’s brute force. This Hessei was not one to be trifled with, a true Sith. But he had his weaknesses.
With a snaking motion, Kitsana’s left hand reached under Hesei’s guard as he raised the dualsaber to strike again, winding his fingers into the gap between the exposed piston’s of the man’s mechanical right arm. There, they found a wire…
Lightning coursed through Kitsana’s arm and into the prosthetic, ignoring the dampening technology that usually protected the arm from such energy discharges by simply feeding power into the circuits; the hand spasmed, and suddenly the dualsaber tumbled from Hesei’s grip.
The Sith’s head cracked forward into Hesei’s face, slamming into his temple; such was the force of the blow, Hesei staggered backwards, exposing himself to a sudden kick from Kitsana that sent him sprawling back onto the floor.
“Stay down, Hesei,” the Sith snarled, levelling the hammer at him one-handed, feeling its weight vanish as strength coursed back into him. “My quarrel is not with you. I do not care for you nor the servants of Nalda Sekker. Leave, go… do whatever it is with your pathetic life you did before my weak family took pity on you.”
Hesei’s yellow eyes burned up at him, unwavering, as he dragged himself to his feet. “My loyalty was always to her,” he spat, jerking his chin towards the throne. “Fuck your family. Fuck you.”
“That’s the spirit!” Kitsana gasped faintly. “Yes! Now get out.”
Hesei cast one final look to the broken remains of what had once been Darth Sekker upon the obsidian throne. Without another word, he turned his back to the new Lord of the family, and departed.
TO BE CONTINUED...
EPISODE II
Morning - the Sekker Mansion - The next day…
The first rays of morning sun never touch the interior of the throne room of Sekker Manor; the windows are oriented, intentionally, to face west so that when the Lord of the house receives visitors, they can remain hidden in shadow.
The shadow that lurked in the obsidian throne waited, passive and patient as the dark itself.
What adornment there had been before was now gone; the elegant red draperies lining the hall, the black satin curtains with their gold trim, even the sparse side-tables and paintings that had hung from the walls were gone. The place seemed oddly naked without them, stone bared in a display of brutalist confidence.
The same was true of the rest of the house now; paintings, busts, statuary, rare plants that had adorned the luxuriant halls… what wasn’t worth saving was burning in a great bonfire in the central courtyard, and whatever was of value was… elsewhere.
From the far end of the hall, the great doors were levered open by a pair of slaves, dressed far more appropriately now in rags with chains about their necks that fastened them to the doors by means of newly-welded iron rings.
The Sith that poured through - less than a dozen in total, accompanied by various… lesser members - were instantly recognisable as relatives. They all had a certain weight of brow, angularity of face and quick, darting eyes that could only be due to common genetics.
Kitsana remained veiled in the shadow of the obsidian throne, watching them come closer and squint through pale orange sunlight to pierce the shadow. With his presence dampened from their sight, they could not tell who sat in the throne… him, or his recent predecessor.
“Welcome, family,” he said, his voice hissing across the bare obsidian floor. Several of the lesser Sith visibly tensed, recognising his voice; a few even put their hands to their lightsabers, and Kitsana had to hold back a laugh.
“Kitsana!” a loud voice retorted from the front of the crowd. “What is the meaning of this? We were summoned by Darth Sekker-”
He stopped as Kitsana rose from the throne, stepping down so the light haloed his bald head and glinted off the hammer held before him.
“I have summoned you all here to make an announcement,” Kitsana said, setting the hammer down beside him. With a wave of his hand, a trio of probe droids descended from unseen alcoves above, coming to hover over the heads of the assembled Sekker Family.
Two of them projected images of yet more Sith, those too far or too busy to be present in person; after a few exchanged looks of uncertainty, the attention of the room was drawn inexorably back to Kitsana as his hand rested atop the pommel of his hammer.
“Gathered before me are the collected representatives of all of House Sekker; Sith of my Household. Representatives of every branch, even House Qel-Sekker, save for one; the line of Dinosh Sekker. It is here and now that I say to you that this line… is forever broken. I have killed Darth Sekker, and by right of conquest I declare myself Patriarch of this house forevermore. I shall bear the title until my death, and my heirs after me.”
Here he paused, letting the weight of those words sink in. Watching as yellow eyes widened, as a hush so deep and total fell over the family it was as though he was stood before an assembly of the dead.
“There will be changes now. The days of… progressivity that have led us to bow to the impure, the human and near-human, are gone. Henceforth.. To bear the name of this great family you must be pure of blood!”
Now the silence was broken, as a wave of angry murmuring and even shouts came from the Sith - denial, rage, as the Sithblooded humans and Halfbreeds raised their voices to protest.
“BE SILENT!” his raised voice cut through the chatter like a blaster bolt. Now instead of looks of confusion and distrust… the expression on some faces was of pure hatred. Good.
“Nalda Sekker was weak! Weakness perpetuated by Dinosh and his line! This house was once great, and it can be - WILL be again. First we must cut the chaff from ourselves. All those whose blood is not pure enough to show the glory of Sith ancestry, are hereby excommunicated… those who have married humans, those who have purjored our way of life: you have no place among the true House Sekker.”
“This is madness,” a voice cut in from one side– and Kitsana was shocked to see it was a pureblood who spoke.
“Eivar Qel-Sekker,” he greeted him with a contemptuous smile. “You wish to speak?”
The hologram of Eivar Qel-Sekker trembled with visible rage, his fists clenched by his sides.
“I will not abandon the strength of my family for hollow promises of the greatness of the ancient ways. You aren’t excommunicating the half-breeds because you wish to be pure - you’re doing it because you wish to be rid of Viren Sekker!”
Another weighty silence followed that as eyes tracked from the hologram back to Kitsana - some tensing in expectation of an outburst of rage that could be felt like a wave of heat from the throne.
“Viren Sekker… does not frighten me. The little boy, so far from home… where was he when his adored cousin fell? His mother chose to forego her Purity in favour of human weakness, for the same sentimentality that caused the fall of Dinosh. That mired Variel Sekker, his daughter, a half-blood as well!
“You think I am afraid, Eivar? Very well. Viren Sekker I speak to you, now, wherever you are: I challenge you. I challenge you by the ancient rights of blood that bind us. Face me. FACE ME! If I die then the throne will be yours. If you dare.”
There were more ripples of conversation now, the rhythm of silence-and-muttering now becoming apparent; but again Eivar spoke.
“House Qel-Sekker will not stand with you, Kitsana, Hammer of Sekker. Our loyalty is to the true line of Sovernus and Quortez. You betray the very bond of brotherhood that brought our houses together.”
“I stand with you, Sith Eivar!” said a female voice as a half-blood woman stepped forward, lowering her hood. “You wish to see me excommunicated? So be it! I stand with Viren Sekker!”
Kitsana’s red eyes burned like dying stars in the shadow cast by the obsidian throne, his rage incalculable at this…. Inexplicable turn of events.
“...Very well. You wish to keep your loyalties to the whelp? To the weak? So be it. From this day forward you may call yourself Sekker - for the pure who follow me will have a new name, a name that I shall bear as the title of my Lordhood. Let it be known as my first act as Lord and Patriarch of this house: that no longer shall this great house bear the impure, bastardised name of Sekker. We shall be known as we were before the great hyperspace war: As House Seq’kar!”
A roar of approval came at that - but not from the entire crowd. One by one, some of the Sith - mostly halfbreeds or near humans - turned to walk away or simply cut their transmissions, until all that was left… were red, pure, glorious faces looking up at him in rapture.
Kitsana grinned. More than half had remained, more than three quarters. Let Viren Sekker take the refugees, those whose purity or conscience prevented them being perfect Sith.
“Let Viren Sekker come to me if he dares…” Kitsana hissed, taking his hammer in his hand and raising it high. “House Sekker falls! So that House Seq’kar shall RISE! And our first act… shall be to burn this temple of profanity to the very ground.”
THE END... FOR NOW.
