Part 1
Garrid stormed out of the durasteel bunker and into the rain, his black cape flowing angrily behind him. His face was twisted with emotion, and he covered his forehead as he came to the sick realization of what he'd just done in anger. It had been necessary, but deep down, he burned with the sense of great loss.
From the landing pad that he stood on, he could still smell the stench of charred flesh. Garrid ran his hand through his wet hair, pulling it back off his forehead, and he sank to his knees as a slow, gentle sob ran through his body.
As the rain continued to pour down on him, he began to focus his mind, clearing his head of any emotion that would betray him, and conquered his sadness, filling the void with rage. With his head clear and his emotions honed, he reached out into the depth of the force, looking for a familiar connection. As quickly as he tapped into it, the voice of his master rang clear in his mind.
"You have completed your task?"
The voice in his head was like sandpaper grating against gravel. Knowing full well that Lord Malice could read the thoughts that he made available, Garrid simply conjured images of the young men and women he'd left slumped over chairs, tables and against walls with fresh lightsaber cuts across their bodies. He felt his master's smile from across the galaxy.
"You have done well, my apprentice. Soon you will join me here and - "
Garrid felt the door to the bunker behind him slide open before he heard it. His stomach sank as he heard the footsteps of the young Jedi, and before he could refocus his anger, a surge of bitter sadness coursed through him. His master's disapproval washed over him like a hot wave, striking fear into his heart.
"It appears your work isn't done," Lord Malice snarled. "Finish your task and report to me immediately."
"Yes, my lord," Garrid said aloud. It was the first thing he'd said in hours, and his voice cracked with effort.
There was a snap and a hiss as a man in short beige robes ignited his ice blue weapon. "What have you done?" The young man screamed, but held his ground as Garrid reached for his own lightsaber.
"Vengeance is not the Jedi way, young one," the Sith Lord whispered just loud enough for the boy to hear. He was easily a foot and a half taller than the Jedi, and Garrid could feel his opponent's fear as his own saber sprang to life, bathing the ground around him in a deep red glow. The thin man seemed to shrink dramatically as Garrid advanced.
"I don't think that matters anymore," the Jedi responded, his own voice wavering.
"You're right," Garrid replied as he continued towards the lone survivor. "Soon you'll be dead, just like the others."
"Master… you were one of us. How could you?"
Garrid grit his teeth and took pause for a moment, cringing under the weight of his words. It was true, and another short burst of emotion tread upon his thinly veiled layer of anger. But he only paused for a moment, thinking of his master's painful disapproval, and began his advance once more.
The young Jedi dropped into a defensive crouch as the towering dark lord approached, but as Garrid drew nearer, the boy began to shake with fear, subconsciously letting his own lightsaber drop to the ground, where the metal clattered against the wet duracrete. Garrid stopped again and snarled.
"Pick it up," he said.
But the boy dropped to his knees, mirroring Garrid's own meditation just moments before. The Sith could feel pulses of calm radiating through the force as the boy attempted to ease his terror.
"Pick. It. Up." He repeated himself.
But the boy could not hear him. He was gone, one with the force. Garrid stepped up to the young man, looming over him like a skyscraper.
"I studied the Sith," the boy said after a moment of silence.
Garrid leaned away from the boy, and tightened his brows in confusion as the Jedi stood up, bolstered in confidence. A radiant speck in the force, nearly engulfed by his own dark grasp.
"Do you know what the great Sith Lords have always had?" He continued, drawing a curious expression from the dark lord before him.
"I thought not," he continued. "Bane, Plagueis, Maul, Palpatine… they all had dedication. Not only to their masters before them, but to the idea that the Dark Side was the path to power, and that power would give them control. They defended that ideal, stood by it until their dying breath."
Garrid tightened his grip on his lightsaber. "Why are you telling me this?"
"Because you don't have it in you." The boy finally opened his eyes. "Because you let me live. I watched you slaughter my... my friends. But you didn't have the strength to kill your own Padawan."
The two stood in terse silence for what felt like a century, until the boy approached Garrid, and gently placed a hand on the man's sword arm.
"But you left me alive. Why?"
Garrid stared at his feet, unsure of himself and his decisions. He could feel the darkness swallowing him whole, or maybe not? There was a tug; a bright light at the end of a tunnel in the form of his padawan's hand on his arm. Calm, yet infuriating, he chose to ignore it.
Feeling the sudden shift in the force, and with a frightened look in his eyes, Garrid's Padawan called his lightsaber to his hand, and activated it just in time to stop a heavy-handed strike that would have cleaved him from head to toe.
"You trembled like a coward!" Garrid's voiced ripped free from his throat. There was no longer any indecision in his voice. "You kept your back turned... let them die. You're pathetic!"
With aggravated precision, Garrid pushed in against his apprentice, swinging hard to knock the Jed'is sword out to one side, and diving in to impale him, but the boy was quick, and his sword arm well honed.
The two danced around the landing pad for some time, Garrid on the assault and his Padawan back pedaling, attempting to avoid his fallen master's onslaught. Sparks of red, and yellow flew everywhere as their blades clashed and bounced against each other's, until Garrid managed to score a glancing strike against the young man's leg.
The Padawan crumpled like a paper bag and his saber skidded across the duracrete landing pad as his master once again stood over him, his cape tearing at the wind. He could feel Garrid's sword point just an inch from his neck, but he propped himself up as much as he could.
"You couldn't kill me then, master," he shouted as much in defiance as in hope. "You won't kill me now!"
The Sith Lord didn't move for a moment, but with casual precision, summoned the boy's saber into his own, outstretched hand. Garrid stared at the weapon, lost in his own swirl of rage and resentment, grappling with what he should do next.
"You said you'd studied the Sith, Kass'dan," he said after a long while. He opened up the saber's control panel with the force, snapping the side plating off like it was a stale cracker. The Jedi's crystal ripped out of the internal housing chamber, and floated freely in front of the Sith lord, spinning slowly, suspended in midair.
"Tell me… do you know of our rituals?"
Realizing what was about to happen, the boy extended his hand, violently, and the crystal shifted slightly towards it, until Garrid removed the boy's appendage at the elbow with his lightsaber. Kass'dan screamed and violently clutched at his stump of an arm as the other half of it bounced to the floor, smelling of burnt tar.
"The Sith have made a tradition of taking crystals, and coercing them to the dark side, much like we've done with Jedi in the past." As Garrid spoke and his Padawan writhed on the ground looking up at his master with tears in his eyes, the suspended crystal began to whine and hiss. Slowly, all the color drained from it, and eventually the crystal began to splinter against the exertion of the dark lord's will. Kass'dan's mouth fell open in surprise as the crystal began to take on a violent red gleam.
"Don't!" The boy shouted, fighting against the pain of his cauterized arm. "This isn't you… this isn't natural!"
Garrid kept his focus on the crystal, warping it through his sheer indomitable might until suddenly, the crystal faltered and relented, allowing itself to fully cross over to the dark side. Garrid's eyes burned with a white-hot intensity as he replaced the crystal where it belonged, in the weapon he had taken from his Padawan; a mockery of what it once was.
The Sith Lord activated the boy's weapon, and the saber crackled to life, flickering with slight instability, and screaming with intensity, as if it pained the crystal inside to activate.
"You sick bastard," Kass'dan muttered under his breath as Garrid crossed the two sabers, as if to take the boy's head. "Kill me then. You've taken everything from us… from me."
"Not everything," Garrid said, a ring of triumph in his voice. Garrid deactivated the boy's lightsaber, and set it, gingerly at Kass'dan's feet.
"Take it," he said.
Kass'dan stared blankly at the weapon, and then at his old master. He slowly shook his head and said, "it's not mine anymore."
"It could be. I could teach you to tap into your fullest potential. You could be more than this… broken, beaten version of you."
The Jedi shoved his old lightsaber away with his foot, and closed his eyes. "I've made my decision," he lamented.
Garrid sighed, and extended an arm towards his Padawan. "We will see," he said. Kass'dan shot backwards, like he'd been struck across the face with a bat, and collapsed onto his back as Garrid shut his mind off with the force. In the Jedi's weakened state, it was quite simple to do; like flicking off a light switch.
The Sith lord belted his Padawan's lightsaber, and dialed a few buttons on his wrist communicator. In moments, his small 'L' shaped starship came into view, and landed itself. The boarding ramp slid open with a hiss, and a long, slender droid with thick metal arms and a circular head came walking quickly down to meet it's master.
"Take the boy and put him in my quarters," Garrid said without looking at the droid. The bot nodded, and swept the Jedi up over his shoulder. The pair walked quickly up the boarding ramp and vanished into the ship. Within moments, it took to the skies, yellow engines burning away as the ship lurched violently into hyperspace.