Viren Sekker - Old Works Thread

[CAIN]

AUTHOR'S NOTE:
These works are not entirely or necessarily in order. I have tried my best to make them so. 
- Cain. 

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A LONG TIME AGO....
IN A GALAXY FAR, FAR AWAY...

Distant thunder rumbled over the rain-swept landscape of Dromund Kaas. Here and there, the dark clouds were illuminated by brief flashes of lightning grounding themselves in one of the dozens of storm-generators which litter the planet’s surface.

The Sekker estate glittered under these flashes, its harsh durasteel edges turning into jagged formations like daggers amidst the jungle; seen from above the harsh structures, already uninviting by design, were made nothing short of fearsome - just as the architect had designed them.

At the top of the tallest of the slanted towers, the Dark Lord Sekker looked out upon her empire. She was dressed in her customary red and black silk robes, the hood pulled back from her face slightly and her mask set to one side for the time being.

“May I help you, Lord Hesei?” she asked the apparently empty room.

From the depths of a black shadow in the office’s corner, the insidious figure of Lord Hesei emerged as though he were materialising from the depths of the darkness itself.

Lowering himself to a bow, he intoned in his deep voice, “Dark Lord - a shuttle approaches bearing the crest of House Horuset. It requests permission to land.”

The Dark Lord’s crimson eyes narrowed slightly. “Grant it permission. Have the servants open and ready the second chambers for Viren’s arrival.”

“It is your cousin, then?”

“Oh, yes it is him…” A hint of a smile curled the Dark Lord’s thin lips. “I can sense his anticipation already. Have him shown to his chambers… allow him to change, prepare himself however he sees fit. I shall greet him in the audience chambers.”

Lord Hesei bowed once more. “As you command, Dark Lord.”

*  *  *

“Young master Sekker, how nice to see you again.”

“Enough prattle. Where is my cousin? Where is the Dark Lord?”

The servant, dressed in the customary black formal jacket and pants, faltered for a moment under the young Sith’s abruptness. “She has instructed that you be shown to your chambers, young master, to change and dry yourself before greeting her in the audience chambers…”

There was a moment of tense silence as Viren considered killing the man. He was a snivelling, pathetic thing - drenched to the skin from the rain, just as he himself was, but shivering almost continuously from the cold. Viren barely felt the chill.

“Very well,” Viren growled eventually. “Show me to my chambers. Have fresh towels brought - and food.”

“Yes, young master,” the servant bowed and began leading him through the corridors. The cheap letharis of their boots - both the Acolyte’s and the servants - squelched wetly as they went.

Viren’s chambers were just as he had remembered them when he left them nearly a decade before to go to the Academy on Korriban. The floors were panelled in a dark ochre wood from Serenno, while the walls and surfaces were carved from an even darker wood from the jungles of Kaas itself.

At the room’s center, a four-poster bed with grey satin sheets and black semi-transparent curtains dominated the space; to one side, a simple writing desk and chair stood next to a chest of drawers… there were no other decorations, no portraits or posters, not even a holograph or statuette.

Viren found a selection of clothes had been laid on the foot of the bed - two sets of day robes, one in deep crimson and the other in black, and a suit in the style commonly worn on Serenno. He selected the crimson robe and started to change… then caught sight of the shower in the ensuite.

“It has been too long since I enjoyed any kind of luxury…” he mused, leaving the robe on the bed and stepping instead into the refresher.

A short while later, he emerged from behind a cloud of steam feeling cleaner and more refreshed than he had in a very long time. The basic showers at Korriban’s academy were little more than lukewarm jets of water - and the Acolyte Showers offered at House Horuset were similarly spartan… he had missed the necessity of a real hot water shower more than he cared to admit.

Dressed at last in crimson robes, Viren admired his reflection in the floor-to-ceiling mirror set into one wall. He had aged since he last saw himself in this mirror… Where once his face had been smooth, there were now lines at the corners of his eyes.

These robes, at least, were properly fitted; the simple sizing scale of the Horuset Acolytes robes had left much to be desired. The black material was scratchy and rough, adorned with cheap synthetic letharis for both the chest and gloves; not to mention the way the ill-fitting robes had hung from Viren’s  slender frame.

His personal robes were properly tailored - fitted to his exact measurements. He noted with some surprise that these must have been altered since last he wore them, and wondered how his cousin had acquired his new measurements.

With one hand, Viren smoothed his moustache against his lip, taking care to make sure not a hair on either it or his head were out of place.

He turned to leave, but at the last moment stopped and retrieved both his old Acolyte robes - still somewhat damp from the rain - and his training foil.

The halls were deathly quiet as Viren stalked down them. With each step, he let his emotions swell inside him like an invisible tide of boiling ocean. It built and built until he could feel heat rising at his collar.

At his approach, a ripple of the Dark Side blew the double doors to his cousin’s audience chambers open, nearly knocking down a slave stood attentively to one side.

“My Lord!” Viren called loudly, his voice echoing through the chamber accompanied by a rumble of distant thunder. “I return home.”

“You are welcomed, cousin Viren,” the Dark Lord Sekker’s smooth, modulated voice replied as she rose from her throne and descended from the stone dias at the rear of the room.

The floor of this hall, like the dias and the throne which sat upon it, were carved from black obsidian; there were no seams, no discernable pattern to any of them, giving the place the impression it had been hewn from a single behemoth block or outcropping of the stone. Polished and shined over and over, the floor was almost perfectly reflective, giving Viren the impression he was walking over open space itself.

“Such vim,” the Dark Lord continued as he reached her, “Such vigor and emotion. I love to see you in such empowered spirits… but whatever are you clutching those rags for?”

With a flourish, Viren tossed the robes to one side. They landed on the floor with a wet slap, but he paid them no mind and dropped to one knee, proffering up the training foil with both palms upwards.

“Nuyuk Jen’ari,” he began, speaking in the common Sith tongue, “I present to you the first of my chains to be broken: my time serving as an Acolyte to House Horuset and the Academy of Korriban are both concluded. Thus begins my apprenticeship under Sith Narazri, and my tutelage under the true ways of the Sith.”

For a moment, there was deadly silence, broken only by the patter of rain on the windows behind the throne and the rumblings of yet more thunder.

Just when Viren began to think his cousin wouldn’t speak, the room was illuminated by a bright flash of lightning and the Dark Lord began to laugh.

It was not the laugh of someone genuinely amused, or in good spirits. It was a cruel, mirthless laugh that sent a cold shiver to the base of Viren’s spine.

“The true ways of the Sith?” the Dark Lord laughed. “Oh forgive me, young Apprentice, for I was unaware I stood in the presence of a master of the true ways of the Sith.”

She snapped her fingers. “Kill him.”

From behind the throne, two figures in grey robes emerged. Viren recognised the cut of their clothes immediately - members of the mysterious cult presided over by his cousin.

He recognised also the vibroblades each of them pulled from their sleeves as they approached him and his cousin stepped towards her throne.

With a hum, Viren brought up the training foil; it was far from a lethal weapon, but better to be armed with something than nothing.

The first cultist lunged at him with a wild overarm swing that Viren dodged easily - nearly bringing himself into the path of the second cultist’s upward stab.

He brought the training foil down to bat the stab to one side and slammed an elbow into the cultist’s jaw, forcing him to recoil and giving himself breathing space.

“Cousin, I don’t understand,” Viren started to say, but was cut off by another wild swing from one of the Cultists. He caught the blow before it sliced through his neck with the edge of the foil, retaliating with a powerful Force-Push that sent the cultist tumbling backwards.

“You do not need to understand,” the Dark Lord said from her throne. “Merely survive.”

Very well then, Viren thought. If she wishes me to survive, I shall do better than that…

When the next Cultist came at him he grabbed him by the wrist and twisted until he felt the hold on his blade loosen. Viren twisted, and the blade came free and fell towards the floor.

With a quick motion, his speed enhanced by the preternatural might of the Dark Side, the blade was in his hand - then buried in the Cultist’s neck.

They fought fiercely, but were barely more than marginally Force-Sensitive; they lacked formal training with even the weapons they carried, and were more symbols of status than true bodyguards.

The second cultist barely seemed to register the death of his companion; he circled Viren slowly, made wary by the vibroblade he now held in his left hand.

But Viren wasn’t going to wait for him to come for him again.

A simple over-arm throw, enhanced again by the Force, and the blade went from his hand to the Cultist’s chest.

With a final sweeping blow from his training foil, he knocked the cultist over. “Have I passed your test, cousin?” he called, looking up towards the throne.

A voice from behind Viren growled, “Not yet,” and the snap-hiss of an igniting lightsaber split the air.

He turned just in time to catch the purple-white blade on his training foil, but nearly crumpled under the force of the blow.

The blade pulled up away from him - and a second caught him across the thigh, cutting through his robe and searing his skin.

The imposing figure of Lord Hesei swept his burning purple dualsaber around him in an impressive flourish before launching himself at Viren again; the swirling purple blades moved almost too fast to see, certainly too fast for Viren to counter.

With each blow, he lost more ground, retreating under the onslaught of upward and downward blows - yet, no matter how poorly he was already losing this duel, Viren knew in his heart of hearts that he was being toyed with.

“Finish this,” the Dark Lord’s voice cut above the almost deafening roar of the dualsaber.

With impossible speed Lord Hesei was behind Viren, his boot planted firmly on the small of Viren’s back and kicking him to the ground.

Viren hit the floor with his hands out, barely stopping his nose from cracking into the floor. His training foil clattered away from his hand, the safety circuits ceasing the blade’s hum before it had finished rolling.

Lord Hesei’s boot stepped into Viren’s field of vision towards the training foil.

With a single stamp,the weapon broke in half.

“Shall I end him now?” Lord Hesei asked, glaring down at Viren with an unsettling glee glinting in his sulphurous orange eyes.

There was a long pause before the Dark Lord said, “Of course not. Help young Apprentice Sekker to his feet.”

The roaring hum of Hesei’s blade died away, and Viren felt himself hauled up from under his shoulder by a strong metal hand.

“Why, cousin?” he asked, frowning up at the Dark Lord Sekker. From within the shadow of her throne and hood, only her eyes - burning bright crimson in the darkness - could be seen.

“To teach you,” she mused, “that there is more to being Sith than ascending in rank. You may be an Apprentice now, boy, but you are not a true Sith. Not yet. Don’t worry too much…”

She descended the steps of the dias towards him and took his right hand in hers - the hand not stained with fresh blood.

“You are right that you have broken your first chain, however. You have taken your first step into a wider world… and have earned the right to be called Sith. Not true Sith… but Sith nonetheless.”

She clapped her hands together, and the high double-doors at the far end of the chamber opened again.

Two Pureblood Sith females entered, side-by-side, wearing the red tunic and black trouser of Korriban Academy uniforms.

Each of them looked Viren and the Dark Lord over critically before bowing - one of them a little stiffly.

“Ki Ari,” they said in unison.

Viren cast a puzzled glance towards his cousin.

“These,” she explained, “are your younger cousins. I present to you Rehara and Gitce of the Vassal House Qel-Sekker. They are each interred at the Academy on Korriban for the time being, but I thought it prudent you meet each of them in person now. Furthermore… I have an announcement to give.”

The Dark Lord swept back to her throne, standing before it and adjusting her robe momentarily.

From some unseen alcove, a hovering holocamera floated down towards her, centering itself just ahead of Viren’s shoulder.

“This message is to be broadcast across all channels used by me and my allies in the Galaxy. Hear my voice and rejoice! These past years have great rewards to House Sekker. The scion of my house, Viren Sekker, now rises in the public eye - an Apprentice to the great House Horuset, with the eyes of the Sith upon him. The youngest daughter of my house, Rehara Qel-Sekker, also rises in the public eye - courting marriage and seeking an alliance with another House. For a long time, House Sekker has remained hidden in shadows… now is the time for rebirth in the light of the Empire. As such…” the Dark Lord paused then, breathing in deeply. “As such, from this day until my death, I shall be known as Darth Sekker, first of her name to bear the title since it was relinquished by my great-grandfather Dinoosh. Glory to the Empire!”

There was a moment of silence as her proclamation rang in Viren’s ears.

Darth Sekker.

And she was right, too - she would be the first to take the title in decades, centuries even, and this would not go unnoticed.

“Long live Darth Sekker,” Lord Hesei raised a fist in an ancient warrior’s salute.

“Long live Darth Sekker!” Rehara and Gitce Qel-Sekker said in unison, falling to one knee before her.

Viren turned his gaze up towards his cousin, and felt a smile curl his lip before he too fell to one knee. “Long live Darth Sekker,” he said, his voice just loud enough to be heard.

“And long may she reign.”

[CAIN]

VIREN SEKKER IN: PATH OF WOE

EPISODE I

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Nightfall - Sekker Mansion on Serenno - One week ago.

Two figures strode quickly down deserted hallways of the manor house, their footsteps muffled against velvet red carpet. The first figure, leading by the shadow of a pace, was a tall heavy-set man in grey panelled armour and a respirator mask, adorned with weapons across his back and hanging from his belt.
“She went into the chamber and has refused to leave for the last two days,” he was saying to his companion, “Then yesterday, she called for you. Asked that I reach out and send transportation at once.”
The second figure remained silent. He was shorter than the first man by a good head, and drenched in a pitch black hooded cloak that left his face in shadow and concealed the form of his body beneath it.
“Of course, Viren, you understand what’s happening,” Lord Hesei went on, casting a yellow-eyed glance at the cloaked figure. “Years of practising dark magic, alchemy… corrupted her body. But her body was crippled to begin with. I never knew the story of how, or why, but you know as well as I that she was reconstructed from… basically nothing. Near enough every bone in her body shattered, repaired with science and durasteel pins and alchemy… and now the corruption is undoing all of that. She’s holding on by threads. Painkillers have no effect.”
The hood turned towards the Lord, a glimmer of deep orange eye visible somewhere within its shadows, but still said nothing. Lord Hesei, sensing perhaps that his companion didn’t feel like discussing the matter, walked on in silence.
Together, they came to the vast entrance doors to the grand audience chamber. Inside, their footsteps rang suddenly loud against the solid black obsidian floor, a steady tattoo beat by four boots.
To either side of them, stationed at regular intervals, grey-hooded cultists of the Seven stood carrying small torches in silent vigil over their lord and master. Hidden in deeper shadows still, servants and slaves in grey uniforms of their own stood meekly waiting for orders.
“Darth Sekker,” Lord Hesei enunciated, sinking to a knee as he approached the throne. “I have brought your cousin as you asked.”
The obsidian throne reached high into the air, blocking what little pale evening sunlight filtered in through the vast windows behind it, leaving the seat of the great stone chair wreathed in shadows… rendering the occupant, if indeed there was one, invisible. To one side of the throne, a sickening concoction of medical monitors and paraphernalia cluttered the great obsidian dais from which the throne protruded, as though hewn from a single solid piece of the black stone.
From the edge of the shadows, a skeletal white hand formed itself out of the nothingness and made a dismissive gesture, while a voice like ice water running off a glacier bled from the shadows.
“Leave us.”
There was a sudden susurration of motion as the servants made quiet exits through side doors, and some of the cultists - though not all - vanished along with them. Lord Hesei rose, bowed once, and exited the way he had come, closing the great doors to the audience chamber behind him.
The throne room seemed suddenly muted, deprived of life. All that was left were two shadows; the one cast by the throne, and the one stood before it like darkness given unholy life.
“Step closer cousin,” the voice spoke again, and the skeletal hand turned itself over to beckon the second shadow to it. “Let me look on your face.”
The shadow took a few measured steps closer, stopping with one rain-slicked boot on the highest step of the dais, but made no effort to lean closer to the throne. From here, the creature sat in it became more visible… the last rays of sunlight faded from the sky, and diffuse light from the torch-bearers lent fresh perspective to the figure on the throne.
Once, Nalda Variel Sekker had been beautiful. She had prided herself on excellent genetics, human and Sith ancestry; her face had been angular, symmetrical, expressive; her skin smooth and her body shapely.
That was the past.
The figure in the throne resembled the corpse of Nalda Variel Sekker. Her once soft cheeks were now sunken pits through which the outline of teeth were visible; her eyes, once vibrant, were pale amber and dulled as though blind, with milky cataract pupils swimming in them, searching with difficulty to see the shadow two metres before her. Her body was no longer shapely, but angular and jagged, a plastic sack of bones with the air sucked out of it; where there were scars, and there were many, they showed up bruise-purple against skin so white and papery it could have been punctured with the press of a finger.
Her voice, once melodious, now sounded ancient beyond belief, cracked and papery like her skin.
“Finally the flesh reflects the madness within,” she rasped, making a half-hearted effort to rise somewhat in the throne and failing. “I understand this may be a shock to you… or it may not, you are an observant boy… Sorcery can do so much to hide one’s appearance, and for many years corruption’s touch on me was little more than an aesthetic concern–”
She broke off, coughing violently, and to one side a machine beeped a shrill note. One of the servants rushed forward with a cloth and a glass of water, but the Dark Lord shattered the glass with a gesture and snatched the rag, coughing black blood into it while the machine continued to wail.
The shadow before the throne straightened, turned towards the machine; an ungloved hand, strong and healthy, emerged and made a fist. The machine crumpled suddenly as though in an invisible vice, and went silent.
“Time… grows short Viren…” the corpse inhaled with a sound like a death rattle. “My body… is held on by mere thought. I have trained you to be my successor. Given you my wisdom, and now you have the wisdom of the Horusets as well. You must… take my place when you are ready. You must.”
The robed figure turned back towards the dying Darth, expressionless within shadow.
“For so many years… I wore the Force Mask… hiding my fragility, the curse of my Sorcery and Alchemy… but beware!” A skeletal hand trembled forth, clawing desperately at the air. “Beware… the Hammer! Your uncle… Kitsana Sekker… the one they call the Hammer of the Sith… I have forseen a great conflict between you my boy-”
Again she was racked by spasming coughs, but there was no machine to warn them this time. Still, the shadow before the throne was silent, still as a statue.
“Say something boy!” Darth Sekker snapped, her voice like a whip’s  crack. “Speak! That I would know you understand!”
“Oh, Nalda…” the soft voice that came from beneath the robe was hushed, but carried across the entire throne room. “I am afraid…. It is you who does not understand…”
At last the shadow leaned closer to the Dark Lord, close enough that her searching hand could grasp at the lapel of his cloak. Feeling, the cold fingers found his neck, then his jaw… feeling spurs and tendrils where none ought to be.
“You– you are not Viren–” and there was fear in the voice now.
"No, I am not," said the figure. His own hand reached out again, wrapping unstoppably about her spindly throat. “Young Viren is still deployed many light-years away, on Pollus… but I found the shuttle you offered to him. The guardsman aboard took no issue with my taking his place…”
“No! You! No!” the cracked voice almost became shrill before it was cut off as the hand about her throat squeezed slowly.
“Yes,” whispered Kitsana Sekker, the Hammer of the Sith. “Me.”
With a sudden violent twist, sharpened black claws tore into soft flesh, and in a single motion Kitsana Sekker ripped what was left of Nalda Variel Sekker’s trachea from her throat.
There was a terrible, gory splattering noise as blood and thin tendrils that had once been tendons and vocal muscles slopped to the floor. In a single shrugging motion, the shadow freed itself of its cloak and straightened.
For every part of Nalda Sekker that had been decaying and falling apart, Kitsana Sekker emanated strength. Stripped to the waist, his broad chest, arms, neck and bald head were adorned with millions of lines of spider-thin writing, a tattoo in Sith script of his devotion to the Old Gods; no lightsaber hung by his side, but hanging from his un-soiled hand was a magnificent hammer wrought in Sith Steel. Like its owner, the hammer was adorned in runes and etchings, and a depiction of a fearsome Sith-Beast across the sides of the flat striking face and wickedly hooked spike.
Throwing back his hairless head, Kitsana let loose a sudden primal scream at the ceiling, a Force Bellow audible throughout the entire complex.  From the sidelines, stunned cultists were pulling weapons from beneath their robes - some carrying wicked looking vibroknives, others simple metallic cudgels, and a pair of them (dressed in robes of dark crimson instead of the usual grey) even drew pale orange lightsabers.
Kitsana strode down the steps of the dais, raising his blood-stained hand to his face and dragging his fingers across his forehead and cheeks to leave bloody smears there. “In the name of my ancestors, I commit your deaths to the Gods.”
The head of the hammer hit the floor with a ringing metallic clang and stayed perfectly still, its elongated handle standing like a pillar as its owner strode towards the oncoming Cultists.
The first of them, he didn’t give a chance to attack - simply slamming his fist into the centre of their chest with Dark augmentation driving knuckles through bone, turning ribs into shards of shrapnel that pierced their owner’s heart. The cultist dropped to the floor, instantly dead, even as the second took a swing with his sword.
Each of them came for him, swinging their weapons with wild abandon; their training was basic, crude. Most of their duties were little more than factorums and decoration, their weapons for show and ritual more than actual use; it was easy, without weapons or armour, to take each of them down.
Some he killed as he had the first; with precisely-delivered blows of his fists that killed nearly instantly. Others, he grappled to the ground and snapped their necks or spines. Still others, he turned their own weapons against them, slitting throat or breaking skulls with their cudgels.
The two with the lightsabers hung back - he could feel the Force in them, too weak to be true Sith, but enough that they could access the barest metric of Sorcery, enough that they could participate in rituals for their master… the blasphemy of it all filled him with white-hot rage, and the rage gave him strength.
A call of the Force brought his hammer to his hand, singing as it flew through the air; he turned it over in both hands as though the heavy weapon was weightless, blocking both the strike the cultists sent at him at once with the long handle; their blades failing to cut the steel, made holy by Alchemy.
He responded with incredible speed for a man of his size, slamming the handle of the hammer into the stomach of one, lashing out at the other a second later with a kick that instantly deadened the leg it made contact with.
The hammer made a singing noise as the head flew through the air, orbiting in a Djem-So arc behind his head, then split the leftmost assailant’s skull open like an overripe melon. The second cultist had time to make one final swing, moving as though in slow motion compared to the Hammer, whose pick arced suddenly back along the reverse path to rip through the cultist’s knee. The lightsaber tumbled from his slackening grip as he screamed in agony, tumbling over as Kitsana Sekker wrenched the pick free.
Up went the head of the hammer… then back down again in an arc that ended with finality on the cultist’s screaming head, silencing him instantly with a pulpy splat.
At the chamber’s far end, the doors flew open - revealing Lord Hesei stood framed between them. In the Force, his rage was a shining, blistering scalpel of molten heat, like a man made of ignited thermite.
“What have you done!?” he roared, purple dualsaber crackling to life in his hands. “Kitsana! What have you done!?” 
Kitsana Sekker let out a soft, mirthless laugh.
“I have claimed my birthright,” he hissed, “I have killed your Dark Lord and now I shall become the new Darth Sekker. Do you oppose  me?”
“I must,” Hesei said, leaping toward him with the Force rising with him, unleashing dark powers the like of which few could withstand.
Instantly, Kitsana felt his strength and muscles begin to weaken, even with the resistance of a powerful Force Barrier; the hammer came up to defend from the blurred motion of the dualsaber’s blades as Hesei launched into an attack.
Without consciously thinking about it, Kitsana analysed every motion he made, every blow he struck. He saw the influence of the forms he was using; the all-out acrobatic assault of Ataru, the staccato rhythm of Juyo, Djem-So’s brute force. This Hessei was not one to be trifled with,  a true Sith. But he had his weaknesses.
With a snaking motion, Kitsana’s left hand reached under Hesei’s guard as he raised the dualsaber to strike again, winding his fingers into the gap between the exposed piston’s of the man’s mechanical right arm.  There, they found a wire…
Lightning coursed through Kitsana’s arm and into the prosthetic, ignoring the dampening technology that usually protected the arm from such energy discharges by simply feeding power into the circuits; the hand spasmed, and suddenly the dualsaber tumbled from Hesei’s grip.
The Sith’s head cracked forward into Hesei’s face, slamming into his temple; such was the force of the blow, Hesei staggered backwards, exposing himself to a sudden kick from Kitsana that sent him sprawling back onto the floor.
“Stay down, Hesei,” the Sith snarled, levelling the hammer at him one-handed, feeling its weight vanish as strength coursed back into him. “My quarrel is not with you. I do not care for you nor the servants of Nalda Sekker. Leave, go… do whatever it is with your pathetic life you did before my weak family took pity on you.”
Hesei’s yellow eyes burned up at him, unwavering, as he dragged himself to his feet. “My loyalty was always to her,” he spat, jerking his chin towards the throne. “Fuck your family. Fuck you.”
“That’s the spirit!” Kitsana gasped faintly. “Yes! Now get out.”
Hesei cast one final look to the broken remains of what had once been Darth Sekker upon the obsidian throne. Without another word, he turned his back to the new Lord of the family, and departed.

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TO BE CONTINUED...

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EPISODE II

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Morning - the Sekker Mansion - The next day…

The first rays of morning sun never touch the interior of the throne room of Sekker Manor; the windows are oriented, intentionally, to face west so that when the Lord of the house receives visitors, they can remain hidden in shadow.

The shadow that lurked in the obsidian throne waited, passive and patient as the dark itself.

What adornment there had been before was now gone; the elegant red draperies lining the hall, the black satin curtains with their gold trim, even the sparse side-tables and paintings that had hung from the walls were gone. The place seemed oddly naked without them, stone bared in a display of brutalist confidence.

The  same was true of the rest of the house now; paintings, busts, statuary, rare plants that had adorned the luxuriant halls… what wasn’t worth saving was burning in a great bonfire in the central courtyard, and whatever was of value was… elsewhere.

From the far end of the hall, the great doors were levered open by a pair of slaves, dressed far more appropriately now in rags with chains about their necks that fastened them to the doors by means of newly-welded iron rings.

The Sith that poured through - less than a dozen in total, accompanied by various… lesser members - were instantly recognisable as relatives. They all had a certain weight of brow, angularity of face and quick, darting eyes that could only be due to common genetics.

Kitsana remained veiled in the shadow of the obsidian throne, watching them come closer and squint through pale orange sunlight to pierce the shadow. With his presence dampened from their sight, they could not tell who sat in the throne… him, or his recent predecessor.

“Welcome, family,” he said, his voice hissing across the bare obsidian floor. Several of the lesser Sith visibly tensed, recognising his voice; a few even put their hands to their lightsabers, and Kitsana had to hold back a laugh.

“Kitsana!” a loud voice retorted from the front of the crowd. “What is the meaning of this? We were summoned by Darth Sekker-”

He stopped as Kitsana rose from the throne, stepping down so the light haloed his bald head and glinted off the hammer held before him.

“I have summoned you all here to make an announcement,” Kitsana said, setting the hammer down beside him. With a wave of his hand, a trio of probe droids descended from unseen alcoves above, coming to hover over the heads of the assembled Sekker Family.

Two of them projected images of yet more Sith, those too far or too busy to be present in person; after a few exchanged looks of uncertainty, the attention of the room was drawn inexorably back to Kitsana as his hand rested atop the pommel of his hammer.

“Gathered before me are the collected representatives of all of House Sekker; Sith of my Household. Representatives of every branch, even House Qel-Sekker, save for one; the line of Dinosh Sekker. It is here and now that I say to you that this line… is forever broken. I have killed Darth Sekker, and by right of conquest I declare myself Patriarch of this house forevermore. I shall bear the title until my death, and my heirs after me.”

Here he paused, letting the weight of those words sink in. Watching as yellow eyes widened, as a hush so deep and total fell over the family it was as though he was stood before an assembly of the dead.

“There will be changes now. The days of… progressivity that have led us to bow to the impure, the human and near-human, are gone. Henceforth.. To bear the name of this great family you must be pure of blood!”

Now the silence was broken, as a wave of angry murmuring and even shouts came from the Sith - denial, rage, as the Sithblooded humans and Halfbreeds raised their voices to protest.

“BE SILENT!” his raised voice cut through the chatter like a blaster bolt. Now instead of looks of confusion and distrust… the expression on some faces was of pure hatred. Good.

“Nalda Sekker was weak! Weakness perpetuated by Dinosh and his line! This house was once great, and it can be - WILL be again. First we must cut the chaff from ourselves. All those whose blood is not pure enough to show the glory of Sith ancestry, are hereby excommunicated… those who have married humans, those who have purjored our way of life: you have no place among the true House Sekker.”

“This is madness,” a voice cut in from one side– and Kitsana was shocked to see it was a pureblood who spoke.

“Eivar Qel-Sekker,” he greeted him with a contemptuous smile. “You wish to speak?”

The hologram of Eivar Qel-Sekker trembled with visible rage, his fists clenched by his sides.

“I will not abandon the strength of my family for hollow promises of the greatness of the ancient ways. You aren’t excommunicating the half-breeds because you wish to be pure - you’re doing it because you wish to be rid of Viren Sekker!”

Another weighty silence followed that as eyes tracked from the hologram back to Kitsana - some tensing in expectation of an outburst of rage that could be felt like a wave of heat from the throne.

“Viren Sekker… does not frighten me. The little boy, so far from home… where was he when his adored cousin fell? His mother chose to forego her Purity in favour of human weakness, for the same sentimentality that caused the fall of Dinosh. That mired Variel Sekker, his daughter, a half-blood as well!

“You think I am afraid, Eivar? Very well. Viren Sekker I speak to you, now, wherever you are: I challenge you. I challenge you by the ancient rights of blood that bind us. Face me. FACE ME! If I die then the throne will be yours. If you dare.”

There were more ripples of conversation now, the rhythm of silence-and-muttering now becoming apparent; but again Eivar spoke.

“House Qel-Sekker will not stand with you, Kitsana, Hammer of Sekker. Our loyalty is to the true line of Sovernus and Quortez. You betray the very bond of brotherhood that brought our houses together.”

“I stand with you, Sith Eivar!” said a female voice as a half-blood woman stepped forward, lowering her hood. “You wish to see me excommunicated? So be it! I stand with Viren Sekker!”

Kitsana’s red eyes burned like dying stars in the shadow cast by the obsidian throne, his rage incalculable at this…. Inexplicable turn of events.

“...Very well. You wish to keep your loyalties to the whelp? To the weak? So be it. From this day forward you may call yourself Sekker - for the pure who follow me will have a new name, a name that I shall bear as the title of my Lordhood. Let it be known as my first act as Lord and Patriarch of this house: that no longer shall this great house bear the impure, bastardised name of Sekker. We shall be known as we were before the great hyperspace war: As House Seq’kar!”

A roar of approval came at that - but not from the entire crowd. One by one, some of the Sith - mostly halfbreeds or near humans - turned to walk away or simply cut their transmissions, until all that was left… were red, pure, glorious faces looking up at him in rapture.

Kitsana grinned. More than half had remained, more than three quarters. Let Viren Sekker take the refugees, those whose purity or conscience prevented them being perfect Sith.

“Let Viren Sekker come to me if he dares…” Kitsana hissed, taking his hammer in his hand and raising it high. “House Sekker falls! So that House Seq’kar shall RISE! And our first act… shall be to burn this temple of profanity to the very ground.”


THE END... FOR NOW.

[CAIN]

SEKKER ALONEA VIREN SEKKER STORY

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Spoiler: Recomended ambience

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4eLaDkWKuHEkIYSxB7xqmc

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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.

[CAIN]

Viren Sekker in:
MINDING YOUR BUSINESS

---

In the rain-drenched alleys of Kaas City, a solitary figure wound its way through thin crowds of people. Red robes as dark as blood, their hood and shoulders turned even darker by rain, hid his features - but even in these crowds, Viren Sekker stood out.

For one, he was somewhat taller than most of the people he passed. For another, the crowd approaching him parted instinctively as he walked, jostling into one another in haste to make way when they saw the dim glow of orange eyes beneath his hood. The people of Dromund Kaas are accustomed to living alongside Sith; that accustomization comes, of course, in the form of ingrained fear.

He had traipsed for several hours now, walking from alley to alley, taking airtaxis here and there, winding a complex - yet random - pattern through the streets. Yet despite this pattern, Viren could not shake the vague prickling of his sense that told him he was being followed - that something out in the crowds of docile, subjugated Imperial Citizens was tracking him like a vine-cat, though he could neither see nor sense their intent in the Force.

Along one of the narrow alleys he found what he had been making his way towards so slowly - a small shop, horrendously lit from within by bare white lighting strips that made the interior seem incredibly artificial, doing little to enhance the wares there.

“You have what I came for?” Viren asked the shopkeeper without preamble.

“You– ah,” the portly, sweating man stopped when he saw Viren’s face, the intensity of his eyes. “M-m’lord. You’re the one who called?”

Viren nodded. The call had been placed from a public holoterminal halfway across the city after another rambling walk through streets.

The shopkeeper disappeared behind the counter into a back-room, pushing aside a dilapidated bead curtain as he went. After a moment he returned with a small object glinting between stubby fingers, which Viren snatched from him the moment he came near.

“Fully authenticated,” the shopkeep said proudly, puffing out his chest. “Gen-u-ine gold, as owned by–”

“Be quiet,” Viren snapped, emphasising his words with the Dark Side to make them an irresistible command. The man’s mouth snapped shut so fast he nearly bit his tongue. Viren held the shining object up to the light, examining it closely in the harsh light; around the interior of the band, faint words could be read.

“How did you come upon it? Speak.”

The man spoke in a dull monotone, unable to stop his words at Viren’s urging. “It was given me by a man, who says he got it from his sister who worked for a Sith. Says it was taken from a hand cut off of someone else and was kept as a trophy.”

Viren nodded slowly, pocketing whatever the trinket was in a fold of his robe. He took a bundle of credits from a pouch on his belt and placed them firmly on the countertop.

“My name,” he enunciated clearly, “Is Lord Vaslo. I purchased this thing from you because I intend to melt it down to spite my rival. Do you understand?”

Nodding dully, the shopkeeper repeated in a monotone, “Your name is Lord Vaslo…”

A moment later, Viren was stood back out in the rain drawing his hood higher over his head. The shopkeep was still visible through the rain-streaked window, staring at a wall. Viren turned away, patting gently over the pouch that contained his purchase.

High above, perched unseen on a rooftop that overlooked the alley, a hooded figure flitted in the night to pursue Viren. The shadow moved with the lithe grace of a vine-cat, lingering in the darkest shadows cast by rooftop ventilation units or the towering pillars of lightning conducting towers.

The shadow waited until Viren was walking through a narrower alley, one devoid of people, and slipped down from the rooftops to street level; blocking the street light behind him and casting a long shadow over Viren at the foot of a set of concrete steps.

The young Sith turned, left hand raising instinctively to start hurling bolts of lightning… but stopped as his Force Sense reached the figure now stood above him. “Hesei?” he said softly, frowning deeply beneath his hood. “What are you…?”

Lord Hesei, dressed head to toe in slender matte-black armour, moved quickly down the steps and pressed Viren firmly into a shadow.

“What are you doing in this part of the city, boy?” he growled, metal fingers digging into Viren’s shoulder. “Did your cousin never tell you there are parts of even the Empire dangerous to Sith?”

Viren straightened his back and pushed Hesei’s hand away, looking the Lord in the eye. Hesei took a half-step back. The last time he’d met Viren was a few years ago now, when he was still barely out of his late teens and the beginning of his career as an Apprentice. No longer was he looking at a boy, but a young man in truth now, with an intense glare in his eyes that told Hesei he was no longer interested in being scolded by him.

“I tried to contact you after Darth Sekker… after what happened,” Viren said, straightening the front of his tunic with a tug. “Where the hell have you been?”

“Do not presume you can speak to me like your cousin did,” Hesei growled, his deep voice resonant behind the respirator that covered his lower face. “I owed her a blood-debt, Viren Sekker, one that ended with her death and most certainly does not extend to serving you.”

Viren’s lip curled defiantly. “Then why are you here?” he demanded.

Hesei glanced up and down the alley, checking no others were listening, and lowered his tone. “I came to tell you not to bother searching for me any more. My debt is paid and I intend to go back to doing what I did before I was loyal to Nalda Sekker.”

“Which is?”

“None of your business, boy. You deserve, however, to know the truth. I cannot tell you everything, in part because I do not know it all and in part because you would not believe me. Nalda kept a great many things from you, Viren Sekker, and if you wish to be the Patriarch she envisioned you to be, you shall have to learn them. Start by asking the right questions. No,” he added as Viren inhaled to speak, “Not by asking me. Seek out the things left behind by your parents and by Nalda. You will find answers through that. And, Viren…”

Hesei paused a long moment then, his sulphurous yellow eyes searching Viren’s face for something. At last, he said, “When you kill Kitsana Sekker… make the bastard suffer for what he did to Nalda.”

He drew back, checking the alley again as though worried someone might have snuck up on them. Viren relaxed fractionally as the Sith Lord moved out of his personal space, taking deep breaths of cold Kaasian air.

“I shall… listen to your advice,” he said after a moment. “Thank you, Hesei. I know you served my cousin well for a long time.”

Hesei let out a grunt from behind his mask. “I did what I had to. I did try to kill her a long time ago after all.” He turned as though to depart the way he had come, then stopped with one booted foot on the base of the stairs. “Answer me one question, young Sekker.”

“Hm?”

“...what were you buying under such secrecy?”

Viren allowed a long pause there, absently touching a hand over the trinket beneath his robe once again. “...None of your business, Hesei.”

The Sith Lord turned to stare at him - his expression unreadable beneath the mask… then, he let out a low chuckle. Saying nothing further, he leapt up the stairs in a single bound, then in a second was high up on a rooftop above them. A moment later he was gone from sight, leaving no trace he had been there at all.

Viren began his long, meandering walk back to the small apartment that he now called home. Meeting Hesei had been unexpected, but useful… and now he had an idea where to start looking for the answers Hesei had told him to seek. Somewhere out there were belongings of his parents that had been scattered throughout the galaxy after their deaths. Collecting them would take time, years even, but in the end… it would be worth it.

[CAIN]

Viren Sekker in:
Echoes of the Past

---

---

This is how it feels to be Viren Sekker - Right Now.

You feel the hum of the distant engines through the cold durasteel deck-plates beneath your boots. The gentle hum of home reverberating up from your feet into your very bones.

You barely notice the hubbub of Imperials moving back and forth around the crowded parking hanger. The ship that stands in front of you is as much a part of your childhood as the scars running like lines of tension across the skin of your forearms as you clench your hands into fists. The leather of your gloves creaks, the sound seeming unnaturally loud against the dull roaring of blood in your ears.

“Deck officer.”

Your own voice sounds muted, distant. You feel a man in a grey uniform stop by your side, clipboard in hand.

“Will any of your men be boarding this ship for the rest of the day?”

“No, my Lord. All the modifications ordered by Lord Saltaeon are complete, other than that there’s nothing on the docket but refuel. Is there something you needed, my Lord?”

You wave him off with a small shake of your head, not bothering to reply as you move up the ramp into the ship. The entryway feels oddly claustrophobic around you, and for a second you are greeted with the unbidden mental image of jaws looming wide around you - before you push it from your mind.

The inside of the ship is cool and dark as the ramp closes behind you. The lighting takes a moment to warm up after not being on, the decades-old lighting pannels flickering and humming in their housings.

The ship’s entryway is little more than storage - lockers set into walls, likely containing rations and other mundanities. You decide you can come back to them later, and walk up the short stairs into the main corridor; through that, passing the sparse bunks and refresher retrofitted in place of crash seating, to the cockpit.

With your eyes closed you can still almost feel traces of them in this place. The cracked leather of the seats hasn’t been changed for a decade. Your hands brush over controls you haven’t seen since you were a child and another thought swims to the surface of your mind:

The last time I touched these consoles, they seemed impossibly large. Now they seem… strangely small.

The comm station is the only part of the entire ship that seems new. The gleaming console was put in to replace the outdated equipment that had sat there before, up to regulation with Horuset’s automated defenses and communication systems.

You sit in the pilot’s chair - what you had always thought of as your father’s chair, and now struggle to wrap your head around calling it your chair. You daren’t touch the control yolk in front of you. It doesn’t feel right.

Something moves in the corner of your eye. You turn towards her seat, half expecting that she will be there smiling at you, reaching to throw a switch and deactivate the engines you had accidentally spun up when you were a teenager.

The seat is empty. Silent.

Turning away before the empty seat can see the tears threatening to spill over your eyes, you notice there’s a section of the bulkhead that doesn’t lie flat at just above your eye level. There’s a slight lip to it, like the panel is coming loose. When you pry at it, something shifts; there is a box concealed there, no more than a hand’s breadth long and wide.

A cracked lightsaber crystal is the first thing that catches your eye in the hidden box. It’s clearly useless, devoid of the faint glow that would show the crystal was alive - deep red in colour, you wonder which of your parents it had belonged to before it had been damaged, why it had been kept. The box is filled with other trinkets like it, fragments and pieces that themselves don’t seem to have any value; ticket stubs for chartered transports, a scrap of red cloth, a bracelet made of woven leather.

A flimsiplast picture is tucked against one side of the box; you almost don’t notice it until you shift aside a wooden figurine, and it falls face down. Something makes you hesitate when you reach for it… some feeling deep inside that tells you there is something important on this tiny square. Your hands tremble as you reach for it - turn the picture over - yet for a moment you aren’t sure what you’re looking at.

The picture is dark, black-and-white filtered slightly grey from age. A small child peers out curiously at you, a slight frown creasing angular brows together in a look that could be concentration or irritation. It takes you a moment to realise this child - who couldn’t be more than two or three years old - is you.

Beside you is a more familiar face, but contorted in a way that makes it unfamiliar.

For what feels like the first time in your entire life you see your father smile at you from the square of flimsiplast. His hand rests on your shoulder - not holding you back or remanding you, but the gentle touch of a parent.

The picture blurs and you feel hot tears spilling down your cheek. Alone, you simply let them come, feeling no need to hide here; they are tears of sadness, yes, but there’s anger in them as well… anger that you have seen this now, anger that this one act of retrospective love doesn’t make up for years of… everything else.

You clench your hands into fists again until you can feel the scars, not just on your arms but across your back, your chest, every part of you until it feels like there are ropes tied around your body, until it feels like you can’t breathe–

You draw in a shuddering breath you hadn’t realised you were holding. Red fades from the corners of your vision and you deliberately put the picture back down, unwilling to look at the smile on your father’s face, unable to face the scarless child you had been.

The box is left on the seat, to be returned to later. The tiny fractured gem of the lightsaber crystal stays with you though, rolled between forefinger and thumb as you leave the cockpit.

The sleeping quarters are even more familiar than the cockpit had been. You can sense the tremors of the Force here, imbued in the very metal plates, faint enough to be felt but not interpreted.

You can already tell there is going to be more to go through here than in the cockpit. Here would be where all the possessions that had been precious were kept. The shallow bunk where you had slept sometimes after dull dinner parties seems cramped as you lower yourself onto it.

In a drawer beneath the bunk, you find your mother’s possessions. A set of pencils and a drawing pad, a few replacement parts for a lightsaber, sets of clothing in black and deep red that feels innately familiar as you run your hands over it. The material feels smooth and cool against the callouses worn into your hands by years of duelling, sparring and practice.

Steeling yourself you open the drawing pad. You can’t help but brace yourself as you expect a visceral reaction - as though seeing the art she had created herself would conjure up more images of her… but you’re a little disappointed when the few sketches of flowers and elegant sleeves provoke little more than a dull pang in your heart.

Her art is more detailed than the few attempts at painting you have made. The attention paid to the subtle curves of a petal that make them spring to life on the page - or the precise roll of a length of fabric as it drapes over a feminine arm, its body left to the imagination - or the outline of a dancer in motion… these things only show you how different you are from her.

You decide to turn over one last page before you close the pad; you can feel the weight of this last page, the ripples of it caused by a heavier hand, repetition of line after line with the pencil that has warped the dense paper just slightly.

On the other side is a portrait in close-up of your father. This is more as you are used to seeing him; austere, with his chin held high, jaw set and square and eyes aflame with… wait. No.

The fire in his eyes seems different somehow; you can’t quite put your finger on it as you literally put your finger to the page, tracing the outline of one eye and cursing as you smudge the powdery graphite. If there is fire in those eyes, it isn’t hate or contempt, but something else; the set of the square jaw isn’t perfect, either, the shape of his lip… upturned, not down.

This is your father as you are used to seeing him. But somehow this image of quiet intensity, of focused… emotion… feels wrong.

He looks out from the page as though the emotion setting fire behind his eyes is not hate, but passion. Love.

You slam the pad closed, feeling anger rise within you again. What was this? You had come seeking your family, come looking for some sign they were like you - but you had expected to find nothing. You had expected they would still be alien and distant, foreign and unknowable. That they weren’t somehow hurt so much more - because you feel like you hadn’t known them to begin with. As though you had forgotten.

You throw the pad back into the drawer it had come from and wrench open another, tossing the belongings inside more roughly than is necessary you know, but you need to be doing something with your hands, and throwing robes against a wall is somehow better than slamming your knuckles into the bulkhead.

Something solid touches your hand, and you stop yourself from throwing it too when you realise what you’re holding is a book.

No - not a book… a journal. Loose leaf paper bound together with leather, written by hand in a looping aurebesh script you have never seen before. Of all the writings you had ever seen produced by your parents, all had been digitised save a few, and you don’t recognise the handwriting at once.


[indent]In these pages, find recorded the journal of the Sith Lucien Sekker, written in the years following the Treaty of Coruscant.[/indent]

The words echo in your head as you stare at them on the page. Your father had kept journals? You had never known of them, even as a child, had never been told of them by your cousin or your mother, nor any other of the multitude of useless relatives who had told you their deaths had been ‘noble’ and ‘honorable’.

You feel like your parents have become strangers in a matter of minutes.

It is with a sense of mounting dread that you pry open the leather binding and let the journal fall open at a random page. The book feels disproportionately heavy in your hands, leaden with expectation - or perhaps with chains that will soon burden you instead of the one who wrote it.


[indent]22nd day of the 10th month.
Corellia is an unwelcoming place. Amanda and I have been stationed in the wreckage of what was once some kind of museum, the defenses are adequate enough and supplies… [/indent]

You feel your attention drifting as the neat, squared-off handwriting goes into pointless detail about the quality of food and the morale of soldiers you instinctively presume to be long dead. Your eyes drift down the page. A word catches your eye, and it takes you a second to find again near the bottom of the entry - your own name.


[indent]…Viren remains in my thoughts. The boy does not yet know the turmoil of war, though he has come to know pain. I regretted my anger the last time we spoke, though I can never show that to him. I caught him playing - yes, as children will do - with one of the weapons from my study. I was angry. Not because he had stolen, nor that he had dented a steel blade made for display rather than use, but angry because of all things the boy wanted to emulate me. When I asked him why he had taken it he said, “Father if I wish to be a great swordsman, and I do, then I must practice every day from now until I am grown, like you did. So I can be like you.”
So he could be like me. When I heard those words I couldn’t stop myself from striking him in my anger.
The boy has so much to learn about the world. I could never ask him to be like me; to forsake family, to live as I have, on the edge and on the battlefield rather than for himself. I have devoted my life to my empire - what did it earn me? No titles, not even a name of my own. My own father, dead by my hand; my brother, dead by my own hand.
I would not have the same fate for my son.
He must learn to be better than I was. Amanda knows my feelings on this, wishes that I could be less hard on the boy - but my way with him is out of love, and she knows this too. Amanda is the only one who sees to the truth of me. I pray one day that my son may understand too.[/indent]

You read the words over a second time, a third. There is no word for the emotions that rise within you, potent and toxic, choking you from the inside; it is like you are feeling him die afresh for a second time, clinging to the harness of an evacuation shuttle as it streaks away from Korriban.

The time he wrote of is fresh in your memory, the burning of your cheeks in shame as your father bears down on you, the agony as he drew his lightsaber and all but cut you in half from hip to shoulder with a single stroke of the violet blade.

How can that have been love?

How can the years of scorn, of contempt and rage that he had shown for you, have been anything but hatred? Yet the words are right there on the page in front of you, in plain black ink on yellowed paper.

Anger such as you have never felt boils inside you, threatening to spill out in a torrent of the Dark Side - or maybe just threatening to make you sick, your stomach twisting over and over inside you like a wounded serpent.

A wordless, guttural sound reaches your ears… and it takes a moment for you to register that this sound has come from your own lips. You struggle to draw a breath in, gripping the journal in your hands until the leather creaks, the pages crumple, and you know that you wouldn’t need to draw on the Dark Side to tear it in half with your hands… but something stays you from it, something tells you that you should keep reading and not destroy the book.

But that is the voice of sentiment and weakness. You recognise its whisper in the back of your mind and hurl the book against the wall so hard that the entire ship seems to reverberate with the sound of its impact.

“If you were aiming for me…” a gentle voice says from the doorway, “You missed.”

You hadn’t even noticed her arrive. So caught up in your own emotions and feelings you had been blinded to the world around you - sloppy, you tell yourself, stupid.

With a rustle of shifting robes, your wife sits just beside you on the bunk, resting her head against your shoulder. You breathe in the scent of her dark hair and feel the knot of anger in the centre of your chest loosen just fractionally. Her presence washes over you like a breath of cold mountain air after a month in the desert.

She doesn’t need to ask you what is in the book, what it was you read. She simply sits with you until the rage passes, basking in the afterglow of your presence, letting your anger come to you and observing it without judgement. If anything she seems pleased by your rage, the feeling of power it brings.

Right now you don’t feel powerful. You feel like a ten year old boy clutching at a wound whose scar will never heal.

“My father…” you start to say, but your voice comes out as a hoarse croak and you have to bite back tears before you can say anything else. “He left behind journals.”

“How dull…” she says, turning her lips towards you and nestling closer against your neck. “What do they say?”

“That he wasn’t the person I thought he was,” is the only truthful answer you can give her. She hums, knowing there is more to say - feeling it in the link between you that has become as much a part of your mind as any other. She does not need to ask; she knows you will tell her eventually.

Amanda is the only one who sees the truth of me.

You are suddenly struck by how true these words feel for you and Tse’kira. Without question or reservation she has looked into the blackest pit within you and decided to love you anyway. Just as you have seen the fathomless lust for death in her heart too.

“Burn it all?” she offers, lifting her head from your shoulder and touching a soft hand over the scars atop the back of your own. “It would make a wonderful bonfire…”

You shake your head and take her hand in your own. “I will go through every piece on this ship. Every scrap of paper, every picture, every journal page by page… no matter how much pain it may cause me, is nothing to the pain I have already endured. Then when I have wrung every scrap of pain that I can from this place… then I will make it my own and start anew with my true family.”

The dawn breaks for your world as she turns a smile on you. Golden eyes like pools of liquid fire sparkle at you in the low lighting.

“Your true family and I will be waiting for you when you are done. Do not be gone too long, husband.”

“I won’t.”

She rises, the tips of her fingers brushing your cheek as she turns to depart.

Her footsteps retreat away down the boarding ramp. You are left alone in the ship that still belongs, in your heart, to your father. The ghosts of their lives dancing before your eyes.

You sigh. Resigning yourself to the work as it must be done, you bring the journal back to your hand; this time starting at the beginning… and settle in to discover for the first time who your father really was.


This is how it feels to be Viren Sekker… For now.

[CAIN]

Viren Sekker in: Parchment and Flames

Viren could not sleep.
This was, by and large, not unusual for the Sith; since childhood, nightmares had always been the norm of his nights, twisting through his head like tormented visions of futures that could be, or pasts that still plagued him. Tonight was no different… and he knew sleep would not come back for some hours, not until the racing heart in his chest had slowed.
Rising from the soft silk sheets, he was careful not to disturb Tse’kira - not that it would have mattered. She slept like a clubbed seal, his polar opposite in that regard, and stirred only slightly as his weight left the mattress.
He didn’t bother dressing, but stepped light-footed through the corridor of their shared apartment; the only sound was the white-noise whoosh of rain against the windows from Dromund Kaas’ perpetual storms.
Viren knew what it was that had woken him, knew what memories were even now gnawing deep at the back of his head.
Karsija.
The single word rose to the surface of Viren’s consciousness, a bright shard of pain that embedded itself into every thought. At the time he had first spoken it, the word had simply been a matter of practicality; a term of address for one senior, yet not truly above. A placeholder. Somehow now that meaning was forever lost beneath the others that had accumulated on it. 
His feet carried him without thinking into his study, past the half-finished painting set against its eazel, past the rows of leather-bound books whose petrichor scent filled the room. Seating himself behind the desk, he slid the top drawer open. Nestled within were his Collection - not ‘collection’, always ‘Collection’, the capitalisation earned by its value. Four lightsabers, laid out in neat formation, and several lightsaber-crystals wrapped in cloth, each faintly glowing with inner colours.
Viren knew which of them was calling to him, why he had opened the drawer. Of all the four weapons, the first was the simplest; an almost nondescript black metal cylinder with a single activator switch, etched faintly with criss-crossed stylised lines. Taking it in his hands, Viren felt the oh-so-familiar weight and heft of it… letting it sit in his palm, he slowly turned it this way and that.
“This was given to me by my Master upon my ascension. I now give it to you, Apprentice. You have earned it.”
Whether these were the actual words he had spoken, Viren could no longer recall; but the memory of his voice remained firm in his mind, eloquent and well-spoken, menacing in its playfulness.
At one time Viren had thought to give this weapon to an apprentice of his own. Now he had two, and the weapon remained his… perhaps now it would be forever. Handed down from Sith Soti to… him. And then to Viren. The weapon was a part of a legacy that was… broken.
Suddenly he could no longer look at the hilt. Its ice-cold surface felt unbearable on his skin, its weight monumental, and he thrust it back into the desk so roughly he felt the drawer’s bearings come loose from the force of its sudden closure. Something to fix later.
Viren knew he would not sleep. It was the middle of the night, he was exhausted, his limbs heavy and mind tired, but his emotions gave him energy in the same way they gave him power. Resigned… he drew a sheet of paper towards himself, uncapped a pen, and set the nib against the white sheet to write.

Valeus Vexal Horuset is dead. He is dead and writing this will not bring him back. So why am I writing this? Why do I even care?

He paused, nib hovering over the page. He could simply stop there. Something urged him not to.

It is impossible to deny the attraction between a master and an apprentice. I have seen it myself now that I have my own; I see the devotion with which my own apprentices serve me, fresh though I may be, and I recognise the devotion which I had to my first master there too. I pledged myself to him far too early. Before the trials, before he was ready and before I was either. It was the best decision I could have made at the time. Others had more experience, more power and influence to offer… Valeus was closer to my own station than that of any of them, of any of the others who courted me as their Apprentice. I could have waited, changed my mind; I considered Sith Sarias, I was viewed by Sith Soti, and at one time I could have changed my allegiance and stayed with Sith Narazri. I did none of these things. At the time I convinced myself that it was to my benefit, that my reasoning was in aid of greater goals. Apprentice to a Horuset, to fulfil the promise I had made to my cousin. Apprentice to a Sith too inexperienced to see if he was leading me, or if I was leading him. It was a poor fit, of course. Looking back there was no way it could have been anything else. The betrayal he dealt to me on Dubrillion still stings in my mind, still raises within me the desire for revenge that I have nurtured so long now; to have been set aside by one that I respected so much for the sake of one I still have no respect for at all. The maligning suffered by Zartilda and I then has shaped us into better Sith than we might have been otherwise. So maybe that is what I am writing about? What I owe to the dead? A tally list of all the things Tarimra - Values - Karsija - did that turned me into the Sith I am today. From him I learned the value of debts. The power that can come of making a deal and seeing that people keep their word. I have accumulated as many of these debts as Valeus did while he was alive, and though I have chosen to create them and use them differently, each time I strike a deal I am reminded of the one who taught me how. The first step I ever took as a Sorcerer, looking out over a wasted battle-ground on Plooma, was with Valeus watching. I could have died. He could have simply stood by and watched as I, a stupid Acolyte, immolated myself with the Dark Side because of a mistake; but he showed me how to control it, how to direct the power and keep myself from dying. His death is now a memory I will draw that power from, the pain of loss. It’s strange to think that I think of it as a loss. I have contemplated the death of Valeus Vexal Tarimra Horuset over and over in my mind. He branded my wife on Dubrillion, he spurned me as an Apprentice, he held me back and belittled and punished me, he has been a thorn in my side for years! SO WHY NOT KILL HIM? WHY AM I NOT HAPPY HE’S DEAD? BECAUSE I WANTED TO KILL HIM? OR SOMETHING ELSE? I keep returning to these questions. I nearly tear the parchment as I write them, pen to paper, archaic like he was. Could I have killed Tarimra? With assistance, yes. Would I have benefitted? As recent events have shown, yes. But in the end I have come to realise that the emotions blazing within me like the phoenix’s final moments are nothing more than my own feelings of inadequacy reflected back at me!!! I could no more kill him than I could my own father. My father died when I was fifteen years old and since that day I have seen him everywhere. He is in the way I hold my lightsaber, he is in the way I speak to Acolytes, he is in my reflection at the centre of my daughter’s eyes. And now also, he is in the words ‘All Magic Has A Price’. Now he is in the preparations I make before I go to battle, he is in the ink and parchment I keep in my desk, and the lightsaber I will never give to an apprentice. I hated my father. I hated Valeus Vexal Horuset. Perhaps that is why the two are somehow the same in my mind. What else could you call someone who pushes you to be better? Who will not accept you at your weakest? I recently had to confront the fact that there are those within Horuset who think of me as a father, too. Apprentices, Acolytes. Perhaps soon, even Sith. Perhaps it is a cycle we are doomed to repeat? To become our fathers? So which shall I become? The man who raised me or the man who made me? The Butcher, or the Lorekeeper? Perhaps neither. Perhaps both. In the end the last thought is the only one that matters. Valeus, my mentor, Karsija iv nuyak Qo. You died as you lived: Trying to outshine the Horuset Sun. For a brief moment, old friend, you succeeded. The greatest sorrow is that the moment was your last.

With a final fluid gesture, Viren signed his full name to the page, and beneath it, Zevasa. He sat in silence for a long while, watching the ink dry across the several pages he had written, reading his words over again; the parts crossed out, the parts where the shaking of his hands had flecked ink across the words, the parts where the sharp nib of the pen had nearly torn its way through the page in his rage and frustration.
Methodically he gathered up every page, shuffling them together, and took them to the mantle. With one final exhalation, he let the pages slide from his hand into the open fireplace - and ignited it with a touch of lightning from his fingertips.
The words burned away into nothing, never to be read or seen by another. As they burned… Viren felt a curious weight lift itself from his chest. It was not gone completely, he still felt the lingering gravity of its power, but no longer would it control him.
A soft flutter in the Force and a tiny sound made him turn. Amanda had awoken.
It was time for him to set aside being a son. That had never truly suited Viren. Now he had to be a father; he had to do for others what Valeus had done for him, in life and one day in death.
He left, not bothering to turn back to look at the pages - the flame spread gradually to encompass them completely, burning its way through the dry parchment until all that remained was ash.

*    *    *

In Memory of Sith Valeus Vexal Tarimra Horuset

2019-2022

‘All Magic Has Its Price.’

[CAIN]

City of Soldiers

Th’asidra - Years Ago…

Two Neophytes and an Apprentice stood looking out through the wide viewport. In orbit beneath them, Dubrillion burned with the nuclear fire of multiple orbital strikes. The three were an odd collection - two of average height for Sith, the third stood between them far taller.
“All those people…” the tallest said - her voice is not sad exactly, but heavy with the weight of what was happening below.
“They deserved it,” the man to her left said; his own voice is cold, flat with anger.
The third didn’t say anything for the time being, simply winding a finger through a lock of long and silky black hair by his shoulder - his corrupted yellow eyes peering unflinchingly at the devastation playing out below them.
“Could you do it, do you think?” the woman asked again, glancing right then left at the two.
“Do what?” asked the one to her right; his tone is light and conversational, unbothered.
The woman heaves out a sigh, chewing her lower lip as she finds the words. “Could you press the button? Annihilate an entire planet like that?”
“Yes,” said the man to her right.
“Without hesitation,” said the man to her left.
Beneath them, Dubrillion burned…

---

Anx Minor - Now…

“Control, stat one, confirm?”

“Stat one confirmed, batch in position.”

“In position, confirmed. Control, stat two, confirm?”

“Stat two confirmed, squad is primed.”

“Squad primed, confirmed. Awaiting go/no-go.”

There was a pregnant pause. The cramped control room fell to a deathly quiet as the handful of Imperial officers waited for the final signal to proceed. Only the sound of humming machinery and occasional chimes from their equipment broke the quiet, like every officer was holding their breath at once.

From the doorway, booted footsteps drew them to attention as a Sith entered the room; clad in black armour and a red cape, his crimson eyes swept around the room until he found the control console he was looking for.

Sat at the station was a young female officer, her gaze fixed straight ahead and trying to ignore the sweat pouring down from beneath her fitted cap.

“Awaiting order to proceed, my Lord,” she said, hating the way her voice cracked under the weight of her responsibilities. Directly in front of her, under a glass cover, was a single illuminated button.

“The order is given. Begin the executions.” His voice was cold, devoid of any feeling one way or the other towards what they were about to do. Somehow that lack of passion made it so much worse - if there had been anger, even, it would have at least made sense.

The officer swallowed and nodded, not trusting her voice to respond as she opened the glass case that covered the activation button. Her hand hovered over that single red key, trembling visibly.

She felt like there was a hand slowly constricting around her heart. Every breath becoming more and more difficult; as though it were her in the execution chamber. As though pushing that button would kill some small, vital part of her.

“The order is given,” the Sith repeated, leaning forward slightly. She could see his bearded face in the corner of her vision now, but couldn’t take her eyes away from the button beneath her trembling hand.

“M-my Lord,” she swallowed, fighting back tears threatening to seep from between her eyes. “I don’t know that I can. I- I’m sorry.”

Sith Zevasa looked down at her coldly. He knew this woman; she was one of the Propaganda Officers, clad in their signature grey uniform. She looked so young, though he had to remind himself that she was only a few years younger than he himself was. She was freshly graduated from the Kaas Imperial Academy. She had majored in communications sciences and minored in Propaganda. She was an excellent officer.

Slowly, Zevasa reached past her without hesitation to the button.

Click.

The microphone turned on.

“Open fire.”

Somewhere unseen by the control room, a group of Anx died.

“You are relieved of duty, Officer,” Sith Zevasa said, his voice still icy cold. “Someone more capable, take her post. We have a schedule to meet.”

Without waiting to see if his orders were followed through - knowing that even in his absence, they would be - the Envoy swept from the room in a fluttering motion of his crimson cape.

In ten days, Mosila would be a city of soldiers.

Only soldiers.

[CAIN]

Th’asidra - Years Ago…

The words sounded stupid to her as soon as they left her mouth. The Neophyte had endured scars and hardship for asking things like this, but she was genuinely curious. She could feel it in the Sith around, the very Force - so many lives being lost, affecting even those attuned to the Dark Side, as the balance of life and death shifted so swiftly.

It was the speed of the answer, though, that gave her pause. How quickly they stated they would do so. Being so young, and not in front of the button when it had happened. How easy it was, despite how they were feeling, to say they would do so when ordered. These had been people that they'd known, even saved at some points.

And yet, there was that burning at her core. That despite all that they had tried, the interaction, that those very people had turned on them in their hour of victory. What should have been a completed campaign ended in fire, all their efforts for... what?


Anx Minor - Now…

Sitting in a hospital bed, a replacement belt fitted with her sabers over medical robes, mismatched red eyes peer at her datapad. One of a mask, and one of her own, getting reports, going over them. Accommodating to the respirator, and typing with one hand, the other in a sling.

Between Dubrillion and Anx Minor, her ideals and aspirations had been broken down and built up repeatedly. The spark of a question still remaining. But even her younger self could come to the conclusions she had, seeing kids holding guns and killing soldiers. That the force they were facing is the lowest of the low. Scum. Garbage.

But being who she was now, they were simply filth. Numbers, even. Whatever right they had to call themselves "righteous" or "true" went out the window when they stooped so low. Or maybe that didn't even matter, and she was kidding herself about her motivations. It was much simpler than that, they were a waste of worry and resources. A hundred and twenty thousand ingrates.

A good start, to catch up on Dubrillion's millions. Ingrates that would litter the dirt either by choice as slaves, or as horrified corpses. Neither much mattered so far as the Dark Side was concerned. So much as she was concerned.

And the only button she would need to press would be on the hilt of a saber, enforcing the will of the Conservancy and the House.