![[-]](https://www.horuset.com/images/igame/collapse.png "[-]")
29-04-2023, 01:50 PM
SEKKER ALONEA VIREN SEKKER STORY
Korriban: The Homeworld of the Sith - Now.
![[Image: korriban-planet-landscape.jpg]](https://riclimstudio.files.wordpress.com/2019/02/korriban-planet-landscape.jpg)
Quiet.
The ancient homeworld of the Sith radiated it in the same way stars radiate gravity.
Even here on the surface, far away from the vast tunnel networks spidering their way beneath the ground, the desert was nearly silent; but it wasn’t the quiet of tranquillity or peace… rather the dull hush of predatory patience. A silent malaise from which generations of evil waited… patiently… for the weak to fall.
There was no fear in the eyes of Viren Sekker as he walked the sand; for he was that blind malaise, the culmination of generations of what some beings called evil - here, he was the predator that stalked the sand.
Towed behind him, following like an obedient pet, a hover-sled carried what meagre provisions he had taken with him; tent and sleeping-roll, oil to make fire with, spare robes.
For the moment, he was dressed in a sleeveless tunic and trousers beneath a long hooded robe that hung just above the ground- all in the customary black of his order.
It had been nearly a day since he had left Dreshde city behind him. He had begun walking almost immediately in the early hours of the morning, having slept briefly and tumultuously on the transport to Korriban.
Now the sun was nearly setting over his left shoulder as he traveled further and further north - away from the great Academies and temples that clustered around the somewhat more temperate equator, towards the death-fields and the sentinel mountains that could be seen, albeit distantly, from the Valley of Kings.
All around, the landscape was devoid of all life and topography; as though some long-dead Sith had swept a hand over the entire area and made it as flat as the deck of a starship.
Viren came to a slow stop, throwing back his hood. His destination was clear in his mind, the route to it seared into his memory from hours of studying maps years ago - years that felt simultaneously like a lifetime, and no time at all. Ahead of him lay the Valley of the Dead, a great burial site where many Sith families had their tombs.
Despite the name, the valley was not in fact one singular valley, but rather a series of them - ranging in size - spread in the shadows of the mountain like cracks in the planet’s surface, making it seem as though the great peaks had burst forth from beneath the crust to rise into the air like the fist of some colossal creature.
With the moons about to rise and the sun nearing the horizon, he knew he would not make it to the foothills and crevices that marked the foot of the mountains before nightfall. Travelling by night was a sure way to get himself killed, even now.
Setting up ‘camp’ - and here Viren applied the term only lightly, since a small fire and a single tent was hardly such - took only a few minutes.
When he was done, Viren sat down cross-legged with his back to the fire and looked out at the darkening Eastern sky; the great globes of Korriban’s moons were growing more visible with every passing moment, and the first hints of the explosion of stars that were the unsoiled night’s sky were beginning to emerge as well.
Viren closed his eyes and let himself slip into the Force. It came like a heightening of the senses, a gradual opening of a third eye that allowed him to feel the world around him; he could feel the low-resonance hum of the stars far above as they emerged, the deep cold of the dead planet’s core at the heart of Korriban, sense the tremulous vibrations of the thousands of bodies within the Sith Academy touching the Dark Side.
Yet, not for the first time recently, there was something deeply wrong with the sensations that flowed through him. As though he was touching a part but not the whole of the Force, as though there was… a piece missing, something strangely vital which he could not find.
He tried to reach for it, to find that dark hole in the Force with his mind - but each time he tried, the sensation grew further away, or closer in, lingering just out of reach; he persisted, trying over and over to locate the source…
…and not for the first time, the hollow settled in the center of his own chest, a physical ache like someone had plunged their hand in and scooped something vital from the center of him.
Viren let out a low sigh, allowing his mind to recede from the heightened world of the Force back into his own mundane perceptions. Hours had passed, and the pale sun had set behind him, leaving the desert bathed in otherworldly moonlight.
Frustrated and still dissatisfied, Viren opened the sleeping roll and crawled inside, too tired to bother removing anything but his boots. He would find what little sleep he could, and in the morning… he would see her again, and everything would be right.
In the great obsidian floor of the throne room, Viren could see the star-strewn night sky reflected perfectly; the great glass windows behind the throne showed the wan purple scenery of Serenno in full relief, beautiful as the sun rose over a moonless pitch-black night sky.
Stood before the throne was Darth Sekker, regal and beautiful even though he could not see her face; turned to the side so that her hood covered it, she beckoned him closer with a raised hand - which he saw now was strangely white…
As he approached, she turned to face him - and where there ought to have been a face, slender and beautiful, there was only a grinning fleshless skull.
“Cousin…” the skull hissed at him in Nalda Sekker’s voice, its jaw working open and closed, “Why didn’t you save me cousin?”
“I couldn’t!” Viren yelled, reaching for her, trying to make his feet move but finding them rooted to the floor. “Nalda please! I wasn’t there– I was too far! I shouldn’t have gone but I had to-”
From the throne, a figure suddenly emerged - literally pouring forth from the black obsidian as it turned to liquid, flowing away to reveal the bald head and undulating tattoos of Kitsana Sekker.
“Cousin…” he growled, raising a massive hammer in both hands and bringing it down on the crown of Nalda Sekker’s head. The sheet-white bone disintegrated instantly, shattering into a billion fragments that rained down on the steps of the dias towards Viren’s feet.
“NO!” he screamed, trying to summon the Dark Side to strike down Kitsana - to electrocute him, to make him feel pain, to suffocate the air from his lungs and rip his body apart through sheer force of will!
Nothing happened.
Coldness started seeping up his ankles, over his shin - and Viren looked down to find that it was not just the throne that had turned to liquid, but the glittering obsidian floor as well - and now he was sinking into it, faster and faster even as he thrashed, trying to pull himself free, and Kitsana Sekker was laughing, laughing at Viren’s weakness, at his stupidity, at having come to face him unprepared, at the death of his family, and now the black liquid was at his neck and Viren took one final breath of cold air as the obsidian rose to cover his face and he was drowning and–
With a huge gasp, Viren sat bolt upright, screaming and tearing the sleeping-bag from around his shoulders.
It was some time in the very early morning, the sun just barely risen. Viren was drenched from head to toe in ice-cold sweat, breathing like he had just run a marathon. The ground around him was blasted and scorched, like he had been hurling bolts of Force Lightning in his sleep…
“Just a dream…” he told himself, repeating the words out loud to make them sink in. “Just a dream… nothing more.”
Knowing sleep would not come back to him, he began packing the camp away. By the time the sun was fully above the horizon, he had begun his trudge across the flatlands towards the mountains again; keeping the sun to his right as he traveled towards the mountains.
By the time the sun was directly overhead, he had reached the beginning of the cracked landscape that was the entrance to the Valley of the Dead.
As he walked, Viren let his mind wander - the simple trudge of one foot in front of the other allowing him plenty of time to get lost in his thoughts. The last few weeks felt like a blur of days rushing into one another, as though he’d lived a lifetime in only a few weeks; becoming Darth Horuset’s apprentice felt like so long ago, before Plooma, before the rush and exhilaration of battle by his master’s side - before discovering emotions he didn’t even think he had buried deep within him.
Stop, he told himself, don’t think about that. That’s why you’re out here, to take your mind from these things.
Unbidden, images floated to the surface of his thoughts; faces of Zartila, Temekel, Tse’kira and Vliriel; the hooded visage of Darth Sekker; the cruel grin of Lord Seq’kar from his dream…
When had his thoughts begun to feel like this - like something he couldn't control, something which discipline and fortitude held no sway over? Perhaps around the time he had found new depths of emotion; perhaps before.
Or perhaps there had never been any order to his mind at all… except that he imagined for it.
He tried to force the images from his mind, to stop them surfacing again - but the more he pushed, the more they returned, and the feeling of a band around his chest suffocating his heart began to intensify; gradually the images resolved into one amalgamation of all the people he wished not to think about, and only then did he realise the real root of all this.
As it so often did in times of crisis, he found himself dwelling on the images - what few of them were left in his memory - of his mother.
The band tightened again, and he had to stifle an cry of physical pain, but Viren did not stop walking.
Soon, he thought as he passed from the flat desert into the shade of a deep riverbed, I will see her again. Soon I will speak with my mother and she will tell me what to do, how to move forward.
The last time he had walked this route to his family’s tomb, near the end of his journey, he had heard her voice calling to him - calling his name, singing to him as she had done when he was but a boy.
It stood to reason, or so Viren felt, that as his powers had increased more than double since then… so too would the strength of this vision. He would hear her truly speak again, see her face - perhaps even be able to touch her!
The thought of that alone was enough to loosen the band around his heart.
If only for a while.
That night as he made his camp in a wider gulley filled with sandstone gravel, he became aware he was no longer alone. Something - or someone? - watched him from above the stone edge, a shadowy shape silhouetted against one of the larger moons.
Viren rose to his feet, gathering the Force to him. The black shape was indistinct, and Viren could not tell if it was humanoid or an animal - a grave robber who would try to shoot him, or something worse…
The sudden prickling of Danger-Sense gave him barely a second’s warning to avoid the attack that came from behind.
Diving forwards, Viren rolled on the ground and came up with his lightsaber in his hand, red blade illuminating the scene before him - Tuk’ata, an entire pack of them, their eyes reflecting the red light of his lightsaber back at him demonically.
“Come on then!” he roared, relishing the chance to clear his mind in the heat of battle. The strange sense of clarity that always came with battle rolled over him, the adrenaline hyper-awareness that made the night brighter and everything seem to move in slow motion.
He brought his glowing blade up in a Djem-So defensive ready just as the first of them dived at him; with their element of surprise gone, the hungry fanged beasts would try to rush him, to pull him down and gorge him with their knife-like claws.
The first of them fell with a quick thrust of the blade, the Dark Side lending strength and precision to the movement that a normal being could never hope to accomplish; the creature slid aside, dead before it hit the floor.
The rest of the pack would not be so easy; they were wary now, communicating with one another with intense flicks of their tails and tensings of their bodies.
When they came again, it was two at once - seeking to take him with greater numbers, or catch him unawares from opposite angles - and Viren gathered the Force into himself to spring straight upwards in the air out of their way, spinning as he came back down to slide the horns from one and cut deep into the skull of the other, wounding both but not yet killing them.
No sooner had his boots touched the gravel again, then another of the beasts charged him from behind and he had to twist to avoid being gored by its horns - one cutting through his tunic and just grazing the skin of his stomach.
Pain flared and he let out a low, animalistic growl to match the one in the back of every Tuk’ata’s throat. In the brief second before the next attack, he counted them - one dead at his feet, two injured, three more untouched.
Last time he’d been here he’d killed only one, and that had been a challenge in and of itself.
Rolling his shoulders and squaring his feet, Viren let his mind sink… into Djem-So.
The fifth form of lightsaber combat did not seem, on paper, to be suited to Viren - he was educated in classical swordplay, was a capable acrobat, a tactician and generally favoured the Force over a blade in a true fight - traits one usually expected in a Makashii duellist, Ataru gymnast or Niman stylist.
But in the raw aggression and power of Djem-So, Viren managed to take all of these things… and make them inconsequential. He moved with the rapid fluidity of a dancer, the speed and precision of a duellist, as his blade carved elegant arcs thorough the air around him - cutting furrows into one massive Tuk’ata even as his blade moved to ward off another, its glowing heat enough to deter an attack if not block it.
In response to his act of carnal violence, the Dark Side rose like a pitch-black tide within him, feeding his muscles strength and endurance a normal being couldn’t match; allowing him to feel for just the right moment to extend a foot in a kick that cracked Tuk’ata ribs, or a hand to grasp a proximal horn and wrench jaws away from his leg.
Even with his skill, he felt the battle slipping; these were wild creatures, saturated in the Dark Side, born of the hunt and death itself. A sword alone would not kill them.
What the sword could not accomplish, the Dark Side surely would.
The air was suddenly split by an almighty crack of blue-white energy as a thundering bolt of Force Lightning threw two of the Tuk’ata back at once; the other three backed away a little at the display, letting out frustrated snarls, but Viren would not let them flee.
A hand shot out in a clawed gesture and one of the Tuk’ata went suddenly stiff, taken up in an invisible grip that rendered it helpless as it was hurled bodily across the space to slam into the gulley wall with a sickening, final crack.
Two down, Viren thought.
Another bolt of jagged lightning finished one of the two he had struck before, the powerful current hitting its twitching body and stopping its heart instantly - before he could do the same to the one beside it, a pair of jaws closed around his leg and he felt pain erupt below his knee.
With a feral scream of rage, Viren rounded on the offending creature, hacking at it with his lightsaber in a frenzy of pain and rage, not stopping until the beast lay bloody and smoking in a heap before him.
Freeing his leg, Viren rounded on the only two that remained - to find them running away.
“Cowards!” he screamed after them, voice cracking with the pain. “Come back here! Come back and die!”
The Tuk’ata did not listen, and kept running until they disappeared around a bend in the gulley ahead.
Silence followed, the kind of deep silence that falls on a place when predators come hunting.
His breath heaving in his chest, blood trickling freely down his leg and belly, Viren staggered back to the fire.
“Hah… ha.. Of all the times to need a medic…” he growled to himself as he fished the emergency medical kit from the recesses of the hover-sled’s storage. Inside were more than enough bandages and disinfectant, but the few vials of kolto did little more than stop the bleeding in his leg after he injected them over the wound.
Tearing back the remains of his trouser-leg, he examined the damage.
The jaws of an adult Tuk’ata are designed to rip and tear almost instantly on contact, razor-sharp and long-toothed as they are - in part an advantage granted by the meddling of Sorcerers,but a natural advantage to hunt their typical prey of Shyraks, whose leathery wings would be torn by the jaws to prevent flight and escape.
What those jaws had done to his leg was similar in effect; the skin had been cut clean through to the red muscle underneath, though he was fortunate no major blood vessels had been cut, nor were any cuts deep enough to reach bone.
“What would… Temekel say if she saw me now…” he said out loud, still regaining his breath. “Probably… tell me not to be reckless… hah. Kari’da, on the other hand… now she’d call me an idiot… ask if I want to go a few rounds with a rancor…”
He winced as he sinched the bandage tighter around his leg, fastening down a handful of gauze to stem the already slowing bleeding.
“And mother… she would say…” he closed his eyes, casting his mind back to find some trace of her voice in his memory. He found… nothing. In her place was only the stern voice of Darth Sekker.
‘You’re a foolish boy’ she would have said, ‘And just like your father. You rush to battle because that’s what you enjoy - you’d rather spend all day with your sword than your books, but what did that ever get you? Injured, Viren. It got you injured.’
There were no words of comfort to be found there. He couldn’t remember if his mother had ever said anything to him comforting, though some part of his mind was sure she had. He could recall his father’s sternness, the look of disapproval he would have given to see his son flailing in the yard with a training sword, trying to imitate him.
He remembered his mother though. Comfort or not, she was alive in his memory; he felt the warmth of her hand around his, heard the gentle lilt of her voice as she spoke.
‘What do you know of this art?’ she would ask him, pointing at some obscure piece from her own collection. ‘You don’t know where it’s from, nor the artist who made it… you may not even know their species or culture. But you can feel the emotion that went into it, the passion of the artist. Great art takes more than just skill and talent to make, Viren, great art is a work of love.’
‘Love, mother?’ he had asked, looking up at her with confusion. ‘But isn’t love a weakness? Something to get you hurt? That’s what cousin Nalda says.’
And she had knelt down on the floor in front of him and taken his face in both her hands, looking right into his yellow eyes with her own deep gold.
‘Love,’ she said, ‘Is our greatest strength. The Jedi shun love because they do not understand it. Love will make you fight stronger, give you a cause to champion. It will turn your art from mere pastimes into things of beauty. I love you, my little one, and I love your father.
‘One day you will love too, my child, and you will understand. Cousin Nalda will try to take it from you, to make you like she is… but cousin Nalda is not infallible, Viren. She makes mistakes. And this is one of them.’
She kissed his forehead then –
And Viren jerked awake in the sands of Korriban.
Alone.
Despite the time he’d been dreaming, Viren didn’t feel rested; the pain in his leg had turned into a dull throb with every beat of his heart, though at least the bleeding had completely stopped. Thanks to the Kolto, the wound was pink and sore, but no longer open.
Limping heavily and now leaning on the hover-sled for support, he carried on his journey, unwilling to turn back when he knew he was so close. The pain drove him on, and he wondered if this was what it had been like for others of his ancestors making this same pilgrimage as he had done; armed with nothing but a knife and a waterskin.
He was so close now he could practically feel the thrum of power of the Sekker Tomb. The pain in his leg had risen from his calf up past his knee and into his thigh, and he felt it throbbing in the back of his mind. What few painkillers had been in the medkit had worn off after a day’s walking, and he was reluctant to take more incase they dulled his Force perception.
He was navigating by feel alone at this point - his vision swimming in and out of focus from exhaustion - dragging his left hand along the wall of the fissure while his right gripped the guide-rail of the hover sled.
At times he felt eyes on him again, as though somebody was following him from high above the fissure’s edge, and every now and then he almost swore he caught a flash of shadow as something darted away from the edge and out of the sunlight.
Soon he would be near enough to hear her, as he had done last time.
The sound of her voice would be like cool water on his mind, washing away the pain and the anguish he felt…
He strained his ears, listening for any sound, for any sign that the visions might come again - for the lilting song he’d heard before, for a whisper of his name, anything!
Anger started to rise in the pit of his stomach, black acid that burned at the bands tightening around his heart. Why couldn’t he hear her yet? Was she waiting, testing him!?
He sped up, walking faster - ahead must be the pyramid by now, and he would see it in its glory - the illusory banners of his house, the glow of the torches and the gleaming golden capstone, and stood beneath all of them he would see his mother, he had to see her, she would be there!
At the next bend he saw it.
Dilapidated and in ruins, the pyramid was barely visible against the stone of the valley walls in the fading light.
There were no banners, no golden capstone. No figure haloed in torchlight waiting for him.
Forgetting the pain in his leg Viren ran, the sled whining to keep up with him as he did, until he was at the base of the pyramid. Panic filled him from somewhere deep within, his breath coming in jagged rasping gasps.
“Where are you!?” his voice echoed back to him off the valley walls as he yelled.
“I’m here! I came back! I came back to find you again!”
The pain in his leg was too much, and he fell to the floor, pounding his fists against it.
“Why won’t you show yourself!? Why!? Why!? You were here before - I know it! I felt your presence, I felt you here– please! I have gone so far. Done so much… Please, mother…”
Viren curled over until his forehead rested in the sand, his hands splayed before him as though in an act of prayer - as though begging.
“Please, mother… It’s not fair… please…”
His voice faded to little more than a whimper as he cried into the dust.
When at last Viren pulled himself up from the floor, his eyes were dry again and his expression carved from stone. He strode into the pyramid, leaving the sled outside; the interior was cool and still, as though he’d stepped into a frozen piece of the past.
The twin sarcophagi of his parents were gone now - secreted away into the deeper chambers to be interred more permanently among his dead kin - and the chamber seemed oddly empty without them. There was no sarcophagus laid out for Nalda Sekker, last of the second line of Dinosh Sekker.
Viren found his attention drawn to the one sarcophagus on permanent display in the wide chamber; a huge almost crystalline thing whose amber surface was clouded by years of built up dust.
Reaching forward, Viren touched a hand to the orange glass, finding it just faintly electric to the touch. He brushed some of the dust from its surface gently - finding that beneath, the amber glass case was entirely transparent.
With enough of the dust removed, he saw the contents - a pureblooded man, sharp-featured and haughty even in repose, lay as though sleeping upright in the sarcophagus, his clawed hands resting across his chest.
The corpse was dressed in fine red robes that hung from a thick golden shoulder-adornment, the color of them nearly the same as the man’s skin; sealed as he was in the sarcophagus, decay had not even begun to touch his features and he lay as though in a deep, endless slumber rather than in true death.
Were it not for the glass between them, Viren felt that he could reach out and touch his face and feel the warmth of his skin…
Written in curving, archaic runes above the man’s head was a name in the ancient Sith tongue.
“Qortez Sekker…” Viren whispered, gazing in fresh awe at his ancestor. “So distant… a thousand years separate us, Tzirji Ari, and yet you’re right here…”
In that moment, Viren felt a profound connection with the being before him - a link of family and lineage which went beyond the emotional all the way down into pure species instinct.
He saw in this man’s high cheek bones, his mother’s face. In the angularity of his brow, he saw Darth Sekker’s scowl. In every facet or feature he saw distant family, cousins and uncles and aunts, a thousand years of Sekker history written like a tapestry across one face.
And, at last, he saw something else - something perhaps in the slight upturn of the lips, the shape of the jaw, the sharpness of the teeth behind thin lips…
Viren saw himself, reflected back at him in the amber’s clear surface; and in the face of a man who had been dead for one thousand years or more.
“Tzirji Ari…” he whispered softly. “I came here seeking family… and that is what I have found. Thank you.”
Viren stepped away from the sarcophagus, closing his eyes as he bathed in its light for a moment longer; the pain deep in his chest had lessened somewhat, the grief he felt weighed… a little less.
With a twist of the Force, he found the secret switch - shown to him so long ago by Nalda Sekker - that opened one of the alcoves into a doorway that led down a flight of stairs into the deeper catacomb hidden beneath the pyramid.
Within, there were rows upon rows of sarcophagi planted upright against twisting walls - relatives dating back to before even the time of Sovern and Quortez. The original Sekkers - perhaps, even, Seq’kar.
Finding an empty alcove usually reserved for cremated remains, Viren drew something from within the folds of his cloak.
It was the hilt of a slender, slightly curved lightsaber - the black metal and letharis wrapping on the handle beaten and battered from where he had found it among the wreckage of the Sekker Mansion.
He had stopped there, briefly, before journeying back to Korriban; to see what was left, what might be salvageable. The main building had been burned completely to the ground by Kitsana Seq’kar, no doubt using some chemical accelerant to ensure the work was final, and the chambers beneath it had been torn open and stripped bare.
Darth Sekker’s once prestigious library - the teachings of generations of Sith, the ancient weapons and ceremonial artefacts of his people, even the holocron of Sovern Sekker himself - was now in the hands of Kitsana Sekker… who no doubt even now was trading artefacts for power or favour, trying desperately to unlock the secrets within the holocron.
Yet, buried in the rubble that had once been the throne room, he had found the remains of the great obsidian throne itself - and, concealed in a compartment which none but Darth Sekker must have known the existence of… he had found her lightsaber.
Gently he prized open the casing and drew out the crystal from within - glowing faintly with inner fiery orange light - and tucked it into his robe. The rest of the device he laid carefully in the alcove, the exposed metal seeming at odds with the rustic surroundings.
“I am sorry you couldn’t get the burial you deserved, cousin,” Viren whispered softly to the stone. “You ought to be laid here with our ancestors, with Quortez. Instead your remains are on Serenno… but I swear to you, in your name. I will have revenge for what was taken from us. And when I do, I will return here, myself, to bury you alongside our ancestors.”
He touched two fingers to the lightsaber hilt in a final act of reverence, and turned to depart the tomb.
He had come to Korriban seeking… comfort and answers. But that wasn’t the way of the Sith, and so it wasn’t the way of Korriban; instead of comfort he had found violence, and instead of answers… purpose.
The bond between Viren and his family had felt severed, lost forever after Kitsana Seq’kar excommunicated him and reinvented the family. Yet, in seeing his ancestors… Viren knew now that those bonds were not so easily broken; that it was more than a name which made a family, more than a man that made a house.
Kitsana Seq’kar might have numbers and power on his side for now, but Viren had faith; he had the strength of will and of blood; and the might of House Horuset to propel him forward. While Kitsana stagnated trying to rule over a powerbase used to being governed, Viren would hone his mind… his body… and his very soul until he was ready.
And when he was ready? Kitsana Seq’kar would die.
END.
Spoiler: Recomended ambience
Korriban: The Homeworld of the Sith - Now.
Quiet.
The ancient homeworld of the Sith radiated it in the same way stars radiate gravity.
Even here on the surface, far away from the vast tunnel networks spidering their way beneath the ground, the desert was nearly silent; but it wasn’t the quiet of tranquillity or peace… rather the dull hush of predatory patience. A silent malaise from which generations of evil waited… patiently… for the weak to fall.
There was no fear in the eyes of Viren Sekker as he walked the sand; for he was that blind malaise, the culmination of generations of what some beings called evil - here, he was the predator that stalked the sand.
Towed behind him, following like an obedient pet, a hover-sled carried what meagre provisions he had taken with him; tent and sleeping-roll, oil to make fire with, spare robes.
For the moment, he was dressed in a sleeveless tunic and trousers beneath a long hooded robe that hung just above the ground- all in the customary black of his order.
It had been nearly a day since he had left Dreshde city behind him. He had begun walking almost immediately in the early hours of the morning, having slept briefly and tumultuously on the transport to Korriban.
Now the sun was nearly setting over his left shoulder as he traveled further and further north - away from the great Academies and temples that clustered around the somewhat more temperate equator, towards the death-fields and the sentinel mountains that could be seen, albeit distantly, from the Valley of Kings.
All around, the landscape was devoid of all life and topography; as though some long-dead Sith had swept a hand over the entire area and made it as flat as the deck of a starship.
Viren came to a slow stop, throwing back his hood. His destination was clear in his mind, the route to it seared into his memory from hours of studying maps years ago - years that felt simultaneously like a lifetime, and no time at all. Ahead of him lay the Valley of the Dead, a great burial site where many Sith families had their tombs.
Despite the name, the valley was not in fact one singular valley, but rather a series of them - ranging in size - spread in the shadows of the mountain like cracks in the planet’s surface, making it seem as though the great peaks had burst forth from beneath the crust to rise into the air like the fist of some colossal creature.
With the moons about to rise and the sun nearing the horizon, he knew he would not make it to the foothills and crevices that marked the foot of the mountains before nightfall. Travelling by night was a sure way to get himself killed, even now.
Setting up ‘camp’ - and here Viren applied the term only lightly, since a small fire and a single tent was hardly such - took only a few minutes.
When he was done, Viren sat down cross-legged with his back to the fire and looked out at the darkening Eastern sky; the great globes of Korriban’s moons were growing more visible with every passing moment, and the first hints of the explosion of stars that were the unsoiled night’s sky were beginning to emerge as well.
Viren closed his eyes and let himself slip into the Force. It came like a heightening of the senses, a gradual opening of a third eye that allowed him to feel the world around him; he could feel the low-resonance hum of the stars far above as they emerged, the deep cold of the dead planet’s core at the heart of Korriban, sense the tremulous vibrations of the thousands of bodies within the Sith Academy touching the Dark Side.
Yet, not for the first time recently, there was something deeply wrong with the sensations that flowed through him. As though he was touching a part but not the whole of the Force, as though there was… a piece missing, something strangely vital which he could not find.
He tried to reach for it, to find that dark hole in the Force with his mind - but each time he tried, the sensation grew further away, or closer in, lingering just out of reach; he persisted, trying over and over to locate the source…
…and not for the first time, the hollow settled in the center of his own chest, a physical ache like someone had plunged their hand in and scooped something vital from the center of him.
Viren let out a low sigh, allowing his mind to recede from the heightened world of the Force back into his own mundane perceptions. Hours had passed, and the pale sun had set behind him, leaving the desert bathed in otherworldly moonlight.
Frustrated and still dissatisfied, Viren opened the sleeping roll and crawled inside, too tired to bother removing anything but his boots. He would find what little sleep he could, and in the morning… he would see her again, and everything would be right.
In the great obsidian floor of the throne room, Viren could see the star-strewn night sky reflected perfectly; the great glass windows behind the throne showed the wan purple scenery of Serenno in full relief, beautiful as the sun rose over a moonless pitch-black night sky.
Stood before the throne was Darth Sekker, regal and beautiful even though he could not see her face; turned to the side so that her hood covered it, she beckoned him closer with a raised hand - which he saw now was strangely white…
As he approached, she turned to face him - and where there ought to have been a face, slender and beautiful, there was only a grinning fleshless skull.
“Cousin…” the skull hissed at him in Nalda Sekker’s voice, its jaw working open and closed, “Why didn’t you save me cousin?”
“I couldn’t!” Viren yelled, reaching for her, trying to make his feet move but finding them rooted to the floor. “Nalda please! I wasn’t there– I was too far! I shouldn’t have gone but I had to-”
From the throne, a figure suddenly emerged - literally pouring forth from the black obsidian as it turned to liquid, flowing away to reveal the bald head and undulating tattoos of Kitsana Sekker.
“Cousin…” he growled, raising a massive hammer in both hands and bringing it down on the crown of Nalda Sekker’s head. The sheet-white bone disintegrated instantly, shattering into a billion fragments that rained down on the steps of the dias towards Viren’s feet.
“NO!” he screamed, trying to summon the Dark Side to strike down Kitsana - to electrocute him, to make him feel pain, to suffocate the air from his lungs and rip his body apart through sheer force of will!
Nothing happened.
Coldness started seeping up his ankles, over his shin - and Viren looked down to find that it was not just the throne that had turned to liquid, but the glittering obsidian floor as well - and now he was sinking into it, faster and faster even as he thrashed, trying to pull himself free, and Kitsana Sekker was laughing, laughing at Viren’s weakness, at his stupidity, at having come to face him unprepared, at the death of his family, and now the black liquid was at his neck and Viren took one final breath of cold air as the obsidian rose to cover his face and he was drowning and–
With a huge gasp, Viren sat bolt upright, screaming and tearing the sleeping-bag from around his shoulders.
It was some time in the very early morning, the sun just barely risen. Viren was drenched from head to toe in ice-cold sweat, breathing like he had just run a marathon. The ground around him was blasted and scorched, like he had been hurling bolts of Force Lightning in his sleep…
“Just a dream…” he told himself, repeating the words out loud to make them sink in. “Just a dream… nothing more.”
Knowing sleep would not come back to him, he began packing the camp away. By the time the sun was fully above the horizon, he had begun his trudge across the flatlands towards the mountains again; keeping the sun to his right as he traveled towards the mountains.
By the time the sun was directly overhead, he had reached the beginning of the cracked landscape that was the entrance to the Valley of the Dead.
As he walked, Viren let his mind wander - the simple trudge of one foot in front of the other allowing him plenty of time to get lost in his thoughts. The last few weeks felt like a blur of days rushing into one another, as though he’d lived a lifetime in only a few weeks; becoming Darth Horuset’s apprentice felt like so long ago, before Plooma, before the rush and exhilaration of battle by his master’s side - before discovering emotions he didn’t even think he had buried deep within him.
Stop, he told himself, don’t think about that. That’s why you’re out here, to take your mind from these things.
Unbidden, images floated to the surface of his thoughts; faces of Zartila, Temekel, Tse’kira and Vliriel; the hooded visage of Darth Sekker; the cruel grin of Lord Seq’kar from his dream…
When had his thoughts begun to feel like this - like something he couldn't control, something which discipline and fortitude held no sway over? Perhaps around the time he had found new depths of emotion; perhaps before.
Or perhaps there had never been any order to his mind at all… except that he imagined for it.
He tried to force the images from his mind, to stop them surfacing again - but the more he pushed, the more they returned, and the feeling of a band around his chest suffocating his heart began to intensify; gradually the images resolved into one amalgamation of all the people he wished not to think about, and only then did he realise the real root of all this.
As it so often did in times of crisis, he found himself dwelling on the images - what few of them were left in his memory - of his mother.
The band tightened again, and he had to stifle an cry of physical pain, but Viren did not stop walking.
Soon, he thought as he passed from the flat desert into the shade of a deep riverbed, I will see her again. Soon I will speak with my mother and she will tell me what to do, how to move forward.
The last time he had walked this route to his family’s tomb, near the end of his journey, he had heard her voice calling to him - calling his name, singing to him as she had done when he was but a boy.
It stood to reason, or so Viren felt, that as his powers had increased more than double since then… so too would the strength of this vision. He would hear her truly speak again, see her face - perhaps even be able to touch her!
The thought of that alone was enough to loosen the band around his heart.
If only for a while.
That night as he made his camp in a wider gulley filled with sandstone gravel, he became aware he was no longer alone. Something - or someone? - watched him from above the stone edge, a shadowy shape silhouetted against one of the larger moons.
Viren rose to his feet, gathering the Force to him. The black shape was indistinct, and Viren could not tell if it was humanoid or an animal - a grave robber who would try to shoot him, or something worse…
The sudden prickling of Danger-Sense gave him barely a second’s warning to avoid the attack that came from behind.
Diving forwards, Viren rolled on the ground and came up with his lightsaber in his hand, red blade illuminating the scene before him - Tuk’ata, an entire pack of them, their eyes reflecting the red light of his lightsaber back at him demonically.
“Come on then!” he roared, relishing the chance to clear his mind in the heat of battle. The strange sense of clarity that always came with battle rolled over him, the adrenaline hyper-awareness that made the night brighter and everything seem to move in slow motion.
He brought his glowing blade up in a Djem-So defensive ready just as the first of them dived at him; with their element of surprise gone, the hungry fanged beasts would try to rush him, to pull him down and gorge him with their knife-like claws.
The first of them fell with a quick thrust of the blade, the Dark Side lending strength and precision to the movement that a normal being could never hope to accomplish; the creature slid aside, dead before it hit the floor.
The rest of the pack would not be so easy; they were wary now, communicating with one another with intense flicks of their tails and tensings of their bodies.
When they came again, it was two at once - seeking to take him with greater numbers, or catch him unawares from opposite angles - and Viren gathered the Force into himself to spring straight upwards in the air out of their way, spinning as he came back down to slide the horns from one and cut deep into the skull of the other, wounding both but not yet killing them.
No sooner had his boots touched the gravel again, then another of the beasts charged him from behind and he had to twist to avoid being gored by its horns - one cutting through his tunic and just grazing the skin of his stomach.
Pain flared and he let out a low, animalistic growl to match the one in the back of every Tuk’ata’s throat. In the brief second before the next attack, he counted them - one dead at his feet, two injured, three more untouched.
Last time he’d been here he’d killed only one, and that had been a challenge in and of itself.
Rolling his shoulders and squaring his feet, Viren let his mind sink… into Djem-So.
The fifth form of lightsaber combat did not seem, on paper, to be suited to Viren - he was educated in classical swordplay, was a capable acrobat, a tactician and generally favoured the Force over a blade in a true fight - traits one usually expected in a Makashii duellist, Ataru gymnast or Niman stylist.
But in the raw aggression and power of Djem-So, Viren managed to take all of these things… and make them inconsequential. He moved with the rapid fluidity of a dancer, the speed and precision of a duellist, as his blade carved elegant arcs thorough the air around him - cutting furrows into one massive Tuk’ata even as his blade moved to ward off another, its glowing heat enough to deter an attack if not block it.
In response to his act of carnal violence, the Dark Side rose like a pitch-black tide within him, feeding his muscles strength and endurance a normal being couldn’t match; allowing him to feel for just the right moment to extend a foot in a kick that cracked Tuk’ata ribs, or a hand to grasp a proximal horn and wrench jaws away from his leg.
Even with his skill, he felt the battle slipping; these were wild creatures, saturated in the Dark Side, born of the hunt and death itself. A sword alone would not kill them.
What the sword could not accomplish, the Dark Side surely would.
The air was suddenly split by an almighty crack of blue-white energy as a thundering bolt of Force Lightning threw two of the Tuk’ata back at once; the other three backed away a little at the display, letting out frustrated snarls, but Viren would not let them flee.
A hand shot out in a clawed gesture and one of the Tuk’ata went suddenly stiff, taken up in an invisible grip that rendered it helpless as it was hurled bodily across the space to slam into the gulley wall with a sickening, final crack.
Two down, Viren thought.
Another bolt of jagged lightning finished one of the two he had struck before, the powerful current hitting its twitching body and stopping its heart instantly - before he could do the same to the one beside it, a pair of jaws closed around his leg and he felt pain erupt below his knee.
With a feral scream of rage, Viren rounded on the offending creature, hacking at it with his lightsaber in a frenzy of pain and rage, not stopping until the beast lay bloody and smoking in a heap before him.
Freeing his leg, Viren rounded on the only two that remained - to find them running away.
“Cowards!” he screamed after them, voice cracking with the pain. “Come back here! Come back and die!”
The Tuk’ata did not listen, and kept running until they disappeared around a bend in the gulley ahead.
Silence followed, the kind of deep silence that falls on a place when predators come hunting.
His breath heaving in his chest, blood trickling freely down his leg and belly, Viren staggered back to the fire.
“Hah… ha.. Of all the times to need a medic…” he growled to himself as he fished the emergency medical kit from the recesses of the hover-sled’s storage. Inside were more than enough bandages and disinfectant, but the few vials of kolto did little more than stop the bleeding in his leg after he injected them over the wound.
Tearing back the remains of his trouser-leg, he examined the damage.
The jaws of an adult Tuk’ata are designed to rip and tear almost instantly on contact, razor-sharp and long-toothed as they are - in part an advantage granted by the meddling of Sorcerers,but a natural advantage to hunt their typical prey of Shyraks, whose leathery wings would be torn by the jaws to prevent flight and escape.
What those jaws had done to his leg was similar in effect; the skin had been cut clean through to the red muscle underneath, though he was fortunate no major blood vessels had been cut, nor were any cuts deep enough to reach bone.
“What would… Temekel say if she saw me now…” he said out loud, still regaining his breath. “Probably… tell me not to be reckless… hah. Kari’da, on the other hand… now she’d call me an idiot… ask if I want to go a few rounds with a rancor…”
He winced as he sinched the bandage tighter around his leg, fastening down a handful of gauze to stem the already slowing bleeding.
“And mother… she would say…” he closed his eyes, casting his mind back to find some trace of her voice in his memory. He found… nothing. In her place was only the stern voice of Darth Sekker.
‘You’re a foolish boy’ she would have said, ‘And just like your father. You rush to battle because that’s what you enjoy - you’d rather spend all day with your sword than your books, but what did that ever get you? Injured, Viren. It got you injured.’
There were no words of comfort to be found there. He couldn’t remember if his mother had ever said anything to him comforting, though some part of his mind was sure she had. He could recall his father’s sternness, the look of disapproval he would have given to see his son flailing in the yard with a training sword, trying to imitate him.
He remembered his mother though. Comfort or not, she was alive in his memory; he felt the warmth of her hand around his, heard the gentle lilt of her voice as she spoke.
‘What do you know of this art?’ she would ask him, pointing at some obscure piece from her own collection. ‘You don’t know where it’s from, nor the artist who made it… you may not even know their species or culture. But you can feel the emotion that went into it, the passion of the artist. Great art takes more than just skill and talent to make, Viren, great art is a work of love.’
‘Love, mother?’ he had asked, looking up at her with confusion. ‘But isn’t love a weakness? Something to get you hurt? That’s what cousin Nalda says.’
And she had knelt down on the floor in front of him and taken his face in both her hands, looking right into his yellow eyes with her own deep gold.
‘Love,’ she said, ‘Is our greatest strength. The Jedi shun love because they do not understand it. Love will make you fight stronger, give you a cause to champion. It will turn your art from mere pastimes into things of beauty. I love you, my little one, and I love your father.
‘One day you will love too, my child, and you will understand. Cousin Nalda will try to take it from you, to make you like she is… but cousin Nalda is not infallible, Viren. She makes mistakes. And this is one of them.’
She kissed his forehead then –
And Viren jerked awake in the sands of Korriban.
Alone.
Despite the time he’d been dreaming, Viren didn’t feel rested; the pain in his leg had turned into a dull throb with every beat of his heart, though at least the bleeding had completely stopped. Thanks to the Kolto, the wound was pink and sore, but no longer open.
Limping heavily and now leaning on the hover-sled for support, he carried on his journey, unwilling to turn back when he knew he was so close. The pain drove him on, and he wondered if this was what it had been like for others of his ancestors making this same pilgrimage as he had done; armed with nothing but a knife and a waterskin.
He was so close now he could practically feel the thrum of power of the Sekker Tomb. The pain in his leg had risen from his calf up past his knee and into his thigh, and he felt it throbbing in the back of his mind. What few painkillers had been in the medkit had worn off after a day’s walking, and he was reluctant to take more incase they dulled his Force perception.
He was navigating by feel alone at this point - his vision swimming in and out of focus from exhaustion - dragging his left hand along the wall of the fissure while his right gripped the guide-rail of the hover sled.
At times he felt eyes on him again, as though somebody was following him from high above the fissure’s edge, and every now and then he almost swore he caught a flash of shadow as something darted away from the edge and out of the sunlight.
Soon he would be near enough to hear her, as he had done last time.
The sound of her voice would be like cool water on his mind, washing away the pain and the anguish he felt…
He strained his ears, listening for any sound, for any sign that the visions might come again - for the lilting song he’d heard before, for a whisper of his name, anything!
Anger started to rise in the pit of his stomach, black acid that burned at the bands tightening around his heart. Why couldn’t he hear her yet? Was she waiting, testing him!?
He sped up, walking faster - ahead must be the pyramid by now, and he would see it in its glory - the illusory banners of his house, the glow of the torches and the gleaming golden capstone, and stood beneath all of them he would see his mother, he had to see her, she would be there!
At the next bend he saw it.
Dilapidated and in ruins, the pyramid was barely visible against the stone of the valley walls in the fading light.
There were no banners, no golden capstone. No figure haloed in torchlight waiting for him.
Forgetting the pain in his leg Viren ran, the sled whining to keep up with him as he did, until he was at the base of the pyramid. Panic filled him from somewhere deep within, his breath coming in jagged rasping gasps.
“Where are you!?” his voice echoed back to him off the valley walls as he yelled.
“I’m here! I came back! I came back to find you again!”
The pain in his leg was too much, and he fell to the floor, pounding his fists against it.
“Why won’t you show yourself!? Why!? Why!? You were here before - I know it! I felt your presence, I felt you here– please! I have gone so far. Done so much… Please, mother…”
Viren curled over until his forehead rested in the sand, his hands splayed before him as though in an act of prayer - as though begging.
“Please, mother… It’s not fair… please…”
His voice faded to little more than a whimper as he cried into the dust.
When at last Viren pulled himself up from the floor, his eyes were dry again and his expression carved from stone. He strode into the pyramid, leaving the sled outside; the interior was cool and still, as though he’d stepped into a frozen piece of the past.
The twin sarcophagi of his parents were gone now - secreted away into the deeper chambers to be interred more permanently among his dead kin - and the chamber seemed oddly empty without them. There was no sarcophagus laid out for Nalda Sekker, last of the second line of Dinosh Sekker.
Viren found his attention drawn to the one sarcophagus on permanent display in the wide chamber; a huge almost crystalline thing whose amber surface was clouded by years of built up dust.
Reaching forward, Viren touched a hand to the orange glass, finding it just faintly electric to the touch. He brushed some of the dust from its surface gently - finding that beneath, the amber glass case was entirely transparent.
With enough of the dust removed, he saw the contents - a pureblooded man, sharp-featured and haughty even in repose, lay as though sleeping upright in the sarcophagus, his clawed hands resting across his chest.
The corpse was dressed in fine red robes that hung from a thick golden shoulder-adornment, the color of them nearly the same as the man’s skin; sealed as he was in the sarcophagus, decay had not even begun to touch his features and he lay as though in a deep, endless slumber rather than in true death.
Were it not for the glass between them, Viren felt that he could reach out and touch his face and feel the warmth of his skin…
Written in curving, archaic runes above the man’s head was a name in the ancient Sith tongue.
“Qortez Sekker…” Viren whispered, gazing in fresh awe at his ancestor. “So distant… a thousand years separate us, Tzirji Ari, and yet you’re right here…”
In that moment, Viren felt a profound connection with the being before him - a link of family and lineage which went beyond the emotional all the way down into pure species instinct.
He saw in this man’s high cheek bones, his mother’s face. In the angularity of his brow, he saw Darth Sekker’s scowl. In every facet or feature he saw distant family, cousins and uncles and aunts, a thousand years of Sekker history written like a tapestry across one face.
And, at last, he saw something else - something perhaps in the slight upturn of the lips, the shape of the jaw, the sharpness of the teeth behind thin lips…
Viren saw himself, reflected back at him in the amber’s clear surface; and in the face of a man who had been dead for one thousand years or more.
“Tzirji Ari…” he whispered softly. “I came here seeking family… and that is what I have found. Thank you.”
Viren stepped away from the sarcophagus, closing his eyes as he bathed in its light for a moment longer; the pain deep in his chest had lessened somewhat, the grief he felt weighed… a little less.
With a twist of the Force, he found the secret switch - shown to him so long ago by Nalda Sekker - that opened one of the alcoves into a doorway that led down a flight of stairs into the deeper catacomb hidden beneath the pyramid.
Within, there were rows upon rows of sarcophagi planted upright against twisting walls - relatives dating back to before even the time of Sovern and Quortez. The original Sekkers - perhaps, even, Seq’kar.
Finding an empty alcove usually reserved for cremated remains, Viren drew something from within the folds of his cloak.
It was the hilt of a slender, slightly curved lightsaber - the black metal and letharis wrapping on the handle beaten and battered from where he had found it among the wreckage of the Sekker Mansion.
He had stopped there, briefly, before journeying back to Korriban; to see what was left, what might be salvageable. The main building had been burned completely to the ground by Kitsana Seq’kar, no doubt using some chemical accelerant to ensure the work was final, and the chambers beneath it had been torn open and stripped bare.
Darth Sekker’s once prestigious library - the teachings of generations of Sith, the ancient weapons and ceremonial artefacts of his people, even the holocron of Sovern Sekker himself - was now in the hands of Kitsana Sekker… who no doubt even now was trading artefacts for power or favour, trying desperately to unlock the secrets within the holocron.
Yet, buried in the rubble that had once been the throne room, he had found the remains of the great obsidian throne itself - and, concealed in a compartment which none but Darth Sekker must have known the existence of… he had found her lightsaber.
Gently he prized open the casing and drew out the crystal from within - glowing faintly with inner fiery orange light - and tucked it into his robe. The rest of the device he laid carefully in the alcove, the exposed metal seeming at odds with the rustic surroundings.
“I am sorry you couldn’t get the burial you deserved, cousin,” Viren whispered softly to the stone. “You ought to be laid here with our ancestors, with Quortez. Instead your remains are on Serenno… but I swear to you, in your name. I will have revenge for what was taken from us. And when I do, I will return here, myself, to bury you alongside our ancestors.”
He touched two fingers to the lightsaber hilt in a final act of reverence, and turned to depart the tomb.
He had come to Korriban seeking… comfort and answers. But that wasn’t the way of the Sith, and so it wasn’t the way of Korriban; instead of comfort he had found violence, and instead of answers… purpose.
The bond between Viren and his family had felt severed, lost forever after Kitsana Seq’kar excommunicated him and reinvented the family. Yet, in seeing his ancestors… Viren knew now that those bonds were not so easily broken; that it was more than a name which made a family, more than a man that made a house.
Kitsana Seq’kar might have numbers and power on his side for now, but Viren had faith; he had the strength of will and of blood; and the might of House Horuset to propel him forward. While Kitsana stagnated trying to rule over a powerbase used to being governed, Viren would hone his mind… his body… and his very soul until he was ready.
And when he was ready? Kitsana Seq’kar would die.
END.
