![[-]](https://www.horuset.com/images/igame/collapse.png "[-]")
1 hour ago
A Chronicle of Krassus Horuset in the Days Before the Death of Ahandra Horuset
I - THE WANING FIRE
Krassus read the message for the fourth time that night since he had received it.
To those who share my blood,
The results of the blood test taken last week have been confirmed. There is no ambiguity. No margin for dispute. No room for doubt. You are all Horusets of the Purest lineage.
Do not mistake this revelation for affection. Blood may establish lineage; it does not earn loyalty. I have tolerated enough weakness from this family to know the distinction. However, the test has also established something far more important.
Among all of you, only Sith Narazri and I possess the required genetic sequence for the ritual that will bind the spirit of Eroi Wisosûtira. Our blood is not merely Pure—it is suitable. It is the key. The line of my predecessor and his chosen wife has produced the most suitable blood.
This does not surprise me. It reaffirms that it will be me who secures the future of the Pureblooded race.
As for the rest of you: your usefulness has not been entirely exhausted.
Though your blood cannot serve as the binding essence, you may still serve as siphons. If you are willing to surrender your strength to the ritual, you may contribute what little value you possess to the restoration of our race. Consider this your opportunity to be useful.
You will receive further instructions when I deem them necessary. Do not question the procedure. Do not interfere. Do not attempt to substitute your judgment for mine. And above all, do not mistake your participation for equality.
Narazri and I carry the blood that can bind Eroi Wisosûtira.
The rest of you will either assist me or remain irrelevant. I have no interest in your approval. I require only your obedience. The Sith have waited long enough for someone worthy to act.
I will be that someone. Await my summons in the coming days.
— Darth Horuset
He considered reading through it a fifth time, but he knew that such was an exercise in futility. It would not change the words. It would not change their meaning. It would not change the inevitability of what he knew was to come.
Nor would it change the spark of madness behind the Dark Lord's eyes that he had first scene when she described how she sacrificed his father in the throne room, he hair falling wildly before her crazed eyes...
The spark that had, in recent months, blazed out into an inferno of insanity.
Krassus lowered the datapad. For several seconds he simply stared at the darkened screen. The chamber around him was silent.
Beyond the narrow window, the Horuset Estate stretched through the valley beneath the perpetual snowy storm. Lightning crawled across the clouds above the mountains, illuminating far away peaks, lightning rod towers and distant settlements in brief flashes of blueish white. Rain and slush ran down the glass in crooked paths, turning the estate grounds below into a sludge of crimson lights and black stone.
Kaasian born, he had spent his entire life surrounded by storms. He had always understood them. Yet the one brewing with him was different. While not a sorcerer by any stretch of the imagination, he recognized the maddening pull of the Dark Side when he saw it. He knew the Dark Lord had perhaps at last embarked on a journey that would require too much of her to master.
He had seen how the others had reacted. He had scene the calculus behind Trakaton’s eyes when he had last spoken with him about the war and the future of his House. He knew the calculus. The Kalkorans. Their numbers. Their strength. He knew how they were likely to proceed… And he knew what would happen should the Dark Lord indeed succumb to this ritual of hers.
Krassus rose. He knew what the coming days would hold. Never had he seen a future laid out so cleanly before him. Like a military campaign already concluded, its victors already chosen, and its casualties already accounted for. He knew that if he would challenge the rise of the Kalkorans that he know thought inevitable, he would stand little to gain but a swift, brutal death. Yet he was not afraid. He told himself that twice.Then a third time.
He crossed the room to the window.
The reflection staring back at him looked as it always had. Broad shoulders. Heavy brow ridges. Red hair pulled away from his face. Vibrant Crimson eyes that had become harder with every year. Scars that crossed his flesh in pale and ugly reminders of old violence. The three deep trench like scars running diagonally across his dour visage a grim sight. Pulling at the corner of his lips where they pulled the skin tight.
The face of a Sith. The face of a Warrior. The face of his Father. The Face of a Horuset… His.
He looked toward the estate. To where the ruins would be He could not see it from here. Not through the dark of night and the snow, slush and rain of the storm.
But he knew exactly where it was. He knew Ahandra would summon her cultists there. He knew that it would be there where the future of his house… And Perhaps the Pureblood race would be decided.
And then suddenly, without warning, he saw it. The Horuset Estate. Not as it was. As it would be. The vision lasted perhaps a second. Perhaps an hour.
He was flung through time and space like a wraith, a shadow, a presence neither felt nor noticed, unable to interfere as he was cast down into the central hall. The Horuset estate stood beneath a sky without stars. The great emblem of the Blazing Sun in stained glass reigning over the main hall, judging all who stood before its radiant gaze. Then something passed before it. A shadow. The sun dimmed. Horuset Guards collapsed into dust and the sigil of the blazing sun burst into flames as black banners appeared upon the walls.
The stained glass burst into splinters and from behind him through the main entrance, a column of soldiers marched through the gates. Not Horuset soldiers of the 142nd, no. Different armour, different insignias. He knew them, recognized them. Kalkoran soldiers. He had seen them on the ship he had met Trakaton. He recognized their march, their motives...
They marched in disciplined columns through the estate's hallways. The sound of marching feet echoing through the complex as boots struck stone and marble. Striking the floors upon which all the generations of Horusets had only so recently walked to attend the summons of the Dark Lord. Then a voice called out for Krassus. He recognized it. His master’s his matriarch’s, Ahandra Horusets. He saw standing upon the dais of the throne, even as the Kalkoran soldiers moved in position besides her, and the last of the Horuset Banners burned. She did not move. She simply watched. Even as the throne behind her began to crack. She simply turned towards him. ‘’Never Waver, never Relent’’. Was all she said, a devious smile on her thin lips. The same she had given him when he had stared at her after she spoke the words to Darth Kalkoran.
Krassus blinked and te vision vanished. He remained standing at the window. His jaw worked.
Somewhere deep within him he knew this was an inevitability, that in some way, what was yet to occur had already happened, and that there was nothing he could do to stop it. The Dark Lord could not be swayed from her chosen path… Even if it was like to claim her life. There was not enough time to prepare for Trakaton’s ascent, not enough strength to muster against him.
Krassus knew that he could fight. He could Kill. He could defy. But he could not stop what was to come. And so, before dawn, he donned his armor, packed his supplies, disconnected his communicator, and he left. He did not announce his departure, he did not ask permission, he simply removed himself from the estate. None would stop him.
II - PENUMBRAL DESCENT
The nightmare that had plagued him for so long as a child returned on the first night he had spent away. It had not visited him in years. Only for a short period on Anx Minor. He had thought it dead, buried, another relic of childhood and the misgivings of a younger Sith, locked away beneath enough years of realizing his own potential and strength, that such childish notions of gods ordained destiny had at last made way for the utter belief in his own abilities.
He had been wrong.
Krassus was lost in time and space. There was no ground. No sky. No direction. No sound. He floated alone between the stars.
He was young again. Too young. His body was smaller. His armour lighter. His face lacked the scars that would later become its defining feature. Yet he knew what he was. A Horuset. A warrior. A son. A servant.
He tried to move, yet nothing happened. He tried to breathe, but there was no air to fill his lungs. Nothing to quench the fire burning within them that threatened to consume him.H tried to scream but there was no voice.
Then the darkness ahead ignited. The Horuset Sun appeared before him. Not as a symbol or an emblem, but as the manifestation of the gods. Alive. Ancient beyond measure.
A colossal sphere of crimson and gold fire, hanging in the void like a face wreathed in holy flame
Krassus stared at it and the Sun stared back. Gods… It saw him. Looked at him. Judged him. Knew him… And he knew it. Knew its fury, its pride, its hunger, its terrible and ancient majesty.
And then it spoke. Not with words. With knowledge, imparted within his very soul Too much. Too quickly a jumble of a thousand and one conversations all flooding through his mind at once. I know you.
Krassus tried to look away. He could not. The Sun burned brighter, its blazing flames licking at his skin with such fiery fury that his flesh blackened before crackling as his eyes boiled within their sockets and his bones seemed to cook within him beneath his skin.
He died a thousand and one deaths. Each more horrible and painful than the last.
Yet he continued to see. He could not die, not truly, not fade away, not end this suffering. He could not look away. Then the Sun began to change. Its fire faltered. Its surface cracked. The enormous sphere contracted upon itself.
Its brilliance became red. Then orange. Then black. The Sun began to die. And within the ruins of the husk of its face, flashed recognition. Ahandra’s face. Teius’ face… His own face.
He was lost in the void once more.
III EMBERS OF DESPAIR
Krassus woke with a start, his chest heaving, sweat glistening on his features, his crimson locks sticking to his face. His hand reached instinctively for a weapon that was not there. For several seconds he did not know where he was. The ceiling above him was unfamiliar. The room was unfamiliar. The sheets beneath him were a crimson satin he did not recognise. His breathing came heavily as his heart hammered against his ribs.
Then something moved behind him, his head pivoted like a stone idol turning on its axis as he set his vibrant gaze upon it… On her. A human woman turned beneath the bedding. Pale shoulder, black hair, bare back.
She murmured something he did not understand before she once again fell to sleep. Krassus stared at her. Not knowing who she was at first.
Then he remembered, vaguely. A nobleman's daughter he knew, one of the Kaas City nobility.
Comely, no doubt, by human standards, but it did not interest Krassus.
He had never bothered to learn her name. She was blind to the Force. Accepted into the higher circles of society only because of her family’s history. Obsessed with the glories of the Sith her kind could never reach. Shad been one of the many sycophants who orbited the Sith, offering obedience disguised as admiration.
She was meek. Pliable. Eager.
And therefore, in Krassus' estimation, profoundly uninteresting. He had been disgusted by her as she had approached him in the capital. Or perhaps he had been disgusted by himself.
Yet she had provided something.
A few hours of warmth. A few hours in which he had been wanted, desired, needed. A few hours in which he did not have to rehearse his strategies. In which he would not plan his fight against the inevitable. A few hours in which he was not plagued by visions of the end of his House. Where the beast did not stir at the fringes of his mind, gnawing, gnashing, biting, clawing at its restraints, demanding the release of the shadow. There had only been this… Woman. This plaything. This meaningless morsel.
And that had been enough to silence the shadow within him for a little while.
He looked away, and as he took a deep breath, he could feel it wake again. Vast and violent clawing at the edges of his consciousness, pulling at is restraints. A pressure behind his eyes. He could feel it scratching at the inside of his skull.
He sat up on the side of the bed as his hands cupped his face in his palms before he looked down at his body. Scars covered him like trenches cross a battlefield. Some had healed neatly, most had not. Ugly things, ruins of raised ridges of damaged flesh stitched together in haste and sealed with Bacta. His body was a history written by violence. A canvas of wars, duels, punishments, victories and failures.
He rolled his left shoulder. The cybernetic limb responded with a low mechanical whirr. He remembered when he had lost it. He had been younger. Still an apprentice. Still learning what loyalty actually meant as he sought to exchange Lord Saltaeon for the Dark Lord. Without a second thought he had pledged himself to Ahandra then. She had been as a goddess to him. A crimson manifestation of all that his family could achieve… But an ailing goddess perhaps. One in need of him. That had been the point. He had promised her unbiased counsel, to be her eyes, her voice, her sword and shield as she assumed different roles at the Citadal. He would serve as her last link to the future of the Horuset bloodline. He would tell her what she needed to hear rather than what she wished to hear. Or so he thought.
He knew now that Ahandra had never cared for the Horuset Bloodline. For their family. Their legacy. She had only cared for herself, her own story, her own rise. She willingly invited this. The rise of the Kalkorans. All because it suited her own needs and desires. She sacrificed Teius for her own ambitions, just as she would sacrifice us all.
He had not known it then. Or atleast had not wished to see it.
And so, on that day, Joslae had come for him.
He remembered the power radiating from her as the elevator doors opened and he saw her standing in the corridor. The Force hit him before he could react, he remembers how his body flew backward as stone struck his spine and the air left his lungs with such force he thought he might heave up the organs themselves. The taste of blood in his mouth. A ringing in his ears.
A lightsaber ignited, the scream of flesh and blood evaporating. The smell of Sulphur. Then pain. His left arm suddenly somewhere it should not have been. Before him, detached, separate. His vision was blurry as dark blood spread across the floor.
Krassus flexed his metal fingers.
He remembered his vow to the Dark Lord… And yet her most recent decree returned to him.
Do not question the procedure. Do not interfere. Do not attempt to substitute your judgment for mine. And above all, do not mistake your participation for equality.
His jaw worked, he stared at his mechanical hand.
Then at the woman in his bed. He stood.
The woman stirred. "You're leaving?" She murmured with her thick Kaasian accent.
Krassus looked at her and almost laughed. Almost. He considered speaking, he considered smashing her head in with his fist. Imagined the feeling of her blood and pulp through his fingers.
The thought rousing the violence at the fringes of his mind with excitement. He shook his head. Dressed and left without another word. Left without ever learning her name.
IV PARTIAL SHADOW
Korriban was silent. It had always been silent.
Even when the wind screamed between the tombs, there was something beneath it.
A silence older than language.Older than the Republic. Older than the Empire that had reclaimed the planet. Older even than the spirits Ahandra would now seek to bind to her will.
No one stopped Krassus at the Horuset tombs, no one would have dared.
The guards merely lowered their heads as he passed as he entered alone, his features obscured by the cowl of his robes. The ancient corridors descended into darknes as his footsteps echoed against stone.
The dead of House Horuset watched him pass. Warriors. Lords. Darths. Children. Generations of the supposedly chosen blood of the blazing sun arranged beneath Korriban's sands.
He passed by each of his ancestors without stopping until he reached his father's tomb. Teius Horuset rested within. Embalmed. Preserved. Sleeping the long sleep beneath carved stone.
His sarcophagus bore his likeness. Krassus stood before it and for a long time he said nothing.
Then he raised his cybernetic left hand over the stoney image of his Father’s wrathful scowl. Metal fingers clenched into a fist mere inches above the stone face as he considered.
He could break it. One strike would do it… The thought was strangely comforting.
He imagined the crack, the splitting of his father’s face, the collapse of the stone, his father’s visage shattering beneath his fist.
Yet he did not strike.
Because he heard the voice, his father's voice.
The Crack of a wooden practice blade striking his face. Then a thunderous bellow. KRASSUS! Stand, Worm!
Krassus' hand tightened. No son of mine will yield so meekly!
Another memory. His father's clawed fist, the crack of cartilage, the swelling of his face, the taste of blood in his mouth.
No would-be Sith Warrior of the Horuset blood!
Another strike.
You will fight until you no longer can.
Another.
You do not stop until I say you are done!
Krassus' breathing became slow.
GET. UP.
His fist lowered as he looked back to the stoney visage of his father one last time, then he turned away.
He summoned the groundskeeper at once, the frail man sank to a knee before him, awaiting Krassus’ word.
"The tomb complex requires preparation." Krassus demanded. The old custodian bowed. "Of course, Lord Atas., for what purpose My Lord?"
"A new entry." Krassus said as he looked out towards the tombs. The man hesitated.
"… For whom, My Lord?"
Krassus looked back towards him. His gaze hardening. "For the Dark Lord of Horuset." The groundskeeper's face went pale. Both knew the Dark Lord had not yet died…
The man was hesitant. Krassus noticed. He said nothing. Then the man swallowed.
"As you decree, My Lord." Krassus watched the man for some time then waved his hand dismissively his head and then began to walk away…
But his strides halted and he turned around. “Perhaps prepare another."
The groundskeeper stared.
"For whom?"
Krassus looked back. His expression had become unreadable.
Krassus read the message for the fourth time that night since he had received it.
To those who share my blood,
The results of the blood test taken last week have been confirmed. There is no ambiguity. No margin for dispute. No room for doubt. You are all Horusets of the Purest lineage.
Do not mistake this revelation for affection. Blood may establish lineage; it does not earn loyalty. I have tolerated enough weakness from this family to know the distinction. However, the test has also established something far more important.
Among all of you, only Sith Narazri and I possess the required genetic sequence for the ritual that will bind the spirit of Eroi Wisosûtira. Our blood is not merely Pure—it is suitable. It is the key. The line of my predecessor and his chosen wife has produced the most suitable blood.
This does not surprise me. It reaffirms that it will be me who secures the future of the Pureblooded race.
As for the rest of you: your usefulness has not been entirely exhausted.
Though your blood cannot serve as the binding essence, you may still serve as siphons. If you are willing to surrender your strength to the ritual, you may contribute what little value you possess to the restoration of our race. Consider this your opportunity to be useful.
You will receive further instructions when I deem them necessary. Do not question the procedure. Do not interfere. Do not attempt to substitute your judgment for mine. And above all, do not mistake your participation for equality.
Narazri and I carry the blood that can bind Eroi Wisosûtira.
The rest of you will either assist me or remain irrelevant. I have no interest in your approval. I require only your obedience. The Sith have waited long enough for someone worthy to act.
I will be that someone. Await my summons in the coming days.
— Darth Horuset
He considered reading through it a fifth time, but he knew that such was an exercise in futility. It would not change the words. It would not change their meaning. It would not change the inevitability of what he knew was to come.
Nor would it change the spark of madness behind the Dark Lord's eyes that he had first scene when she described how she sacrificed his father in the throne room, he hair falling wildly before her crazed eyes...
The spark that had, in recent months, blazed out into an inferno of insanity.
Krassus lowered the datapad. For several seconds he simply stared at the darkened screen. The chamber around him was silent.
Beyond the narrow window, the Horuset Estate stretched through the valley beneath the perpetual snowy storm. Lightning crawled across the clouds above the mountains, illuminating far away peaks, lightning rod towers and distant settlements in brief flashes of blueish white. Rain and slush ran down the glass in crooked paths, turning the estate grounds below into a sludge of crimson lights and black stone.
Kaasian born, he had spent his entire life surrounded by storms. He had always understood them. Yet the one brewing with him was different. While not a sorcerer by any stretch of the imagination, he recognized the maddening pull of the Dark Side when he saw it. He knew the Dark Lord had perhaps at last embarked on a journey that would require too much of her to master.
He had seen how the others had reacted. He had scene the calculus behind Trakaton’s eyes when he had last spoken with him about the war and the future of his House. He knew the calculus. The Kalkorans. Their numbers. Their strength. He knew how they were likely to proceed… And he knew what would happen should the Dark Lord indeed succumb to this ritual of hers.
Krassus rose. He knew what the coming days would hold. Never had he seen a future laid out so cleanly before him. Like a military campaign already concluded, its victors already chosen, and its casualties already accounted for. He knew that if he would challenge the rise of the Kalkorans that he know thought inevitable, he would stand little to gain but a swift, brutal death. Yet he was not afraid. He told himself that twice.Then a third time.
He crossed the room to the window.
The reflection staring back at him looked as it always had. Broad shoulders. Heavy brow ridges. Red hair pulled away from his face. Vibrant Crimson eyes that had become harder with every year. Scars that crossed his flesh in pale and ugly reminders of old violence. The three deep trench like scars running diagonally across his dour visage a grim sight. Pulling at the corner of his lips where they pulled the skin tight.
The face of a Sith. The face of a Warrior. The face of his Father. The Face of a Horuset… His.
He looked toward the estate. To where the ruins would be He could not see it from here. Not through the dark of night and the snow, slush and rain of the storm.
But he knew exactly where it was. He knew Ahandra would summon her cultists there. He knew that it would be there where the future of his house… And Perhaps the Pureblood race would be decided.
And then suddenly, without warning, he saw it. The Horuset Estate. Not as it was. As it would be. The vision lasted perhaps a second. Perhaps an hour.
He was flung through time and space like a wraith, a shadow, a presence neither felt nor noticed, unable to interfere as he was cast down into the central hall. The Horuset estate stood beneath a sky without stars. The great emblem of the Blazing Sun in stained glass reigning over the main hall, judging all who stood before its radiant gaze. Then something passed before it. A shadow. The sun dimmed. Horuset Guards collapsed into dust and the sigil of the blazing sun burst into flames as black banners appeared upon the walls.
The stained glass burst into splinters and from behind him through the main entrance, a column of soldiers marched through the gates. Not Horuset soldiers of the 142nd, no. Different armour, different insignias. He knew them, recognized them. Kalkoran soldiers. He had seen them on the ship he had met Trakaton. He recognized their march, their motives...
They marched in disciplined columns through the estate's hallways. The sound of marching feet echoing through the complex as boots struck stone and marble. Striking the floors upon which all the generations of Horusets had only so recently walked to attend the summons of the Dark Lord. Then a voice called out for Krassus. He recognized it. His master’s his matriarch’s, Ahandra Horusets. He saw standing upon the dais of the throne, even as the Kalkoran soldiers moved in position besides her, and the last of the Horuset Banners burned. She did not move. She simply watched. Even as the throne behind her began to crack. She simply turned towards him. ‘’Never Waver, never Relent’’. Was all she said, a devious smile on her thin lips. The same she had given him when he had stared at her after she spoke the words to Darth Kalkoran.
Krassus blinked and te vision vanished. He remained standing at the window. His jaw worked.
Somewhere deep within him he knew this was an inevitability, that in some way, what was yet to occur had already happened, and that there was nothing he could do to stop it. The Dark Lord could not be swayed from her chosen path… Even if it was like to claim her life. There was not enough time to prepare for Trakaton’s ascent, not enough strength to muster against him.
Krassus knew that he could fight. He could Kill. He could defy. But he could not stop what was to come. And so, before dawn, he donned his armor, packed his supplies, disconnected his communicator, and he left. He did not announce his departure, he did not ask permission, he simply removed himself from the estate. None would stop him.
II - PENUMBRAL DESCENT
The nightmare that had plagued him for so long as a child returned on the first night he had spent away. It had not visited him in years. Only for a short period on Anx Minor. He had thought it dead, buried, another relic of childhood and the misgivings of a younger Sith, locked away beneath enough years of realizing his own potential and strength, that such childish notions of gods ordained destiny had at last made way for the utter belief in his own abilities.
He had been wrong.
Krassus was lost in time and space. There was no ground. No sky. No direction. No sound. He floated alone between the stars.
He was young again. Too young. His body was smaller. His armour lighter. His face lacked the scars that would later become its defining feature. Yet he knew what he was. A Horuset. A warrior. A son. A servant.
He tried to move, yet nothing happened. He tried to breathe, but there was no air to fill his lungs. Nothing to quench the fire burning within them that threatened to consume him.H tried to scream but there was no voice.
Then the darkness ahead ignited. The Horuset Sun appeared before him. Not as a symbol or an emblem, but as the manifestation of the gods. Alive. Ancient beyond measure.
A colossal sphere of crimson and gold fire, hanging in the void like a face wreathed in holy flame
Krassus stared at it and the Sun stared back. Gods… It saw him. Looked at him. Judged him. Knew him… And he knew it. Knew its fury, its pride, its hunger, its terrible and ancient majesty.
And then it spoke. Not with words. With knowledge, imparted within his very soul Too much. Too quickly a jumble of a thousand and one conversations all flooding through his mind at once. I know you.
Krassus tried to look away. He could not. The Sun burned brighter, its blazing flames licking at his skin with such fiery fury that his flesh blackened before crackling as his eyes boiled within their sockets and his bones seemed to cook within him beneath his skin.
He died a thousand and one deaths. Each more horrible and painful than the last.
Yet he continued to see. He could not die, not truly, not fade away, not end this suffering. He could not look away. Then the Sun began to change. Its fire faltered. Its surface cracked. The enormous sphere contracted upon itself.
Its brilliance became red. Then orange. Then black. The Sun began to die. And within the ruins of the husk of its face, flashed recognition. Ahandra’s face. Teius’ face… His own face.
He was lost in the void once more.
III EMBERS OF DESPAIR
Krassus woke with a start, his chest heaving, sweat glistening on his features, his crimson locks sticking to his face. His hand reached instinctively for a weapon that was not there. For several seconds he did not know where he was. The ceiling above him was unfamiliar. The room was unfamiliar. The sheets beneath him were a crimson satin he did not recognise. His breathing came heavily as his heart hammered against his ribs.
Then something moved behind him, his head pivoted like a stone idol turning on its axis as he set his vibrant gaze upon it… On her. A human woman turned beneath the bedding. Pale shoulder, black hair, bare back.
She murmured something he did not understand before she once again fell to sleep. Krassus stared at her. Not knowing who she was at first.
Then he remembered, vaguely. A nobleman's daughter he knew, one of the Kaas City nobility.
Comely, no doubt, by human standards, but it did not interest Krassus.
He had never bothered to learn her name. She was blind to the Force. Accepted into the higher circles of society only because of her family’s history. Obsessed with the glories of the Sith her kind could never reach. Shad been one of the many sycophants who orbited the Sith, offering obedience disguised as admiration.
She was meek. Pliable. Eager.
And therefore, in Krassus' estimation, profoundly uninteresting. He had been disgusted by her as she had approached him in the capital. Or perhaps he had been disgusted by himself.
Yet she had provided something.
A few hours of warmth. A few hours in which he had been wanted, desired, needed. A few hours in which he did not have to rehearse his strategies. In which he would not plan his fight against the inevitable. A few hours in which he was not plagued by visions of the end of his House. Where the beast did not stir at the fringes of his mind, gnawing, gnashing, biting, clawing at its restraints, demanding the release of the shadow. There had only been this… Woman. This plaything. This meaningless morsel.
And that had been enough to silence the shadow within him for a little while.
He looked away, and as he took a deep breath, he could feel it wake again. Vast and violent clawing at the edges of his consciousness, pulling at is restraints. A pressure behind his eyes. He could feel it scratching at the inside of his skull.
He sat up on the side of the bed as his hands cupped his face in his palms before he looked down at his body. Scars covered him like trenches cross a battlefield. Some had healed neatly, most had not. Ugly things, ruins of raised ridges of damaged flesh stitched together in haste and sealed with Bacta. His body was a history written by violence. A canvas of wars, duels, punishments, victories and failures.
He rolled his left shoulder. The cybernetic limb responded with a low mechanical whirr. He remembered when he had lost it. He had been younger. Still an apprentice. Still learning what loyalty actually meant as he sought to exchange Lord Saltaeon for the Dark Lord. Without a second thought he had pledged himself to Ahandra then. She had been as a goddess to him. A crimson manifestation of all that his family could achieve… But an ailing goddess perhaps. One in need of him. That had been the point. He had promised her unbiased counsel, to be her eyes, her voice, her sword and shield as she assumed different roles at the Citadal. He would serve as her last link to the future of the Horuset bloodline. He would tell her what she needed to hear rather than what she wished to hear. Or so he thought.
He knew now that Ahandra had never cared for the Horuset Bloodline. For their family. Their legacy. She had only cared for herself, her own story, her own rise. She willingly invited this. The rise of the Kalkorans. All because it suited her own needs and desires. She sacrificed Teius for her own ambitions, just as she would sacrifice us all.
He had not known it then. Or atleast had not wished to see it.
And so, on that day, Joslae had come for him.
He remembered the power radiating from her as the elevator doors opened and he saw her standing in the corridor. The Force hit him before he could react, he remembers how his body flew backward as stone struck his spine and the air left his lungs with such force he thought he might heave up the organs themselves. The taste of blood in his mouth. A ringing in his ears.
A lightsaber ignited, the scream of flesh and blood evaporating. The smell of Sulphur. Then pain. His left arm suddenly somewhere it should not have been. Before him, detached, separate. His vision was blurry as dark blood spread across the floor.
Krassus flexed his metal fingers.
He remembered his vow to the Dark Lord… And yet her most recent decree returned to him.
Do not question the procedure. Do not interfere. Do not attempt to substitute your judgment for mine. And above all, do not mistake your participation for equality.
His jaw worked, he stared at his mechanical hand.
Then at the woman in his bed. He stood.
The woman stirred. "You're leaving?" She murmured with her thick Kaasian accent.
Krassus looked at her and almost laughed. Almost. He considered speaking, he considered smashing her head in with his fist. Imagined the feeling of her blood and pulp through his fingers.
The thought rousing the violence at the fringes of his mind with excitement. He shook his head. Dressed and left without another word. Left without ever learning her name.
IV PARTIAL SHADOW
Korriban was silent. It had always been silent.
Even when the wind screamed between the tombs, there was something beneath it.
A silence older than language.Older than the Republic. Older than the Empire that had reclaimed the planet. Older even than the spirits Ahandra would now seek to bind to her will.
No one stopped Krassus at the Horuset tombs, no one would have dared.
The guards merely lowered their heads as he passed as he entered alone, his features obscured by the cowl of his robes. The ancient corridors descended into darknes as his footsteps echoed against stone.
The dead of House Horuset watched him pass. Warriors. Lords. Darths. Children. Generations of the supposedly chosen blood of the blazing sun arranged beneath Korriban's sands.
He passed by each of his ancestors without stopping until he reached his father's tomb. Teius Horuset rested within. Embalmed. Preserved. Sleeping the long sleep beneath carved stone.
His sarcophagus bore his likeness. Krassus stood before it and for a long time he said nothing.
Then he raised his cybernetic left hand over the stoney image of his Father’s wrathful scowl. Metal fingers clenched into a fist mere inches above the stone face as he considered.
He could break it. One strike would do it… The thought was strangely comforting.
He imagined the crack, the splitting of his father’s face, the collapse of the stone, his father’s visage shattering beneath his fist.
Yet he did not strike.
Because he heard the voice, his father's voice.
The Crack of a wooden practice blade striking his face. Then a thunderous bellow. KRASSUS! Stand, Worm!
Krassus' hand tightened. No son of mine will yield so meekly!
Another memory. His father's clawed fist, the crack of cartilage, the swelling of his face, the taste of blood in his mouth.
No would-be Sith Warrior of the Horuset blood!
Another strike.
You will fight until you no longer can.
Another.
You do not stop until I say you are done!
Krassus' breathing became slow.
GET. UP.
His fist lowered as he looked back to the stoney visage of his father one last time, then he turned away.
He summoned the groundskeeper at once, the frail man sank to a knee before him, awaiting Krassus’ word.
"The tomb complex requires preparation." Krassus demanded. The old custodian bowed. "Of course, Lord Atas., for what purpose My Lord?"
"A new entry." Krassus said as he looked out towards the tombs. The man hesitated.
"… For whom, My Lord?"
Krassus looked back towards him. His gaze hardening. "For the Dark Lord of Horuset." The groundskeeper's face went pale. Both knew the Dark Lord had not yet died…
The man was hesitant. Krassus noticed. He said nothing. Then the man swallowed.
"As you decree, My Lord." Krassus watched the man for some time then waved his hand dismissively his head and then began to walk away…
But his strides halted and he turned around. “Perhaps prepare another."
The groundskeeper stared.
"For whom?"
Krassus looked back. His expression had become unreadable.
