Rathios, Dark Lord of the Sith
Chapter 1: Dark Son of Malachor
Alerevan Mehl'an was born shortly after the Sith Emperor, Vitiate, turned the Jedi Knights Revan and Malak to the Dark Side, and sent them hurtling back towards Republic space to sow chaos and death. While those events shaped the core worlds, the young Red Sith spent his childhood on Ziost, the new home world of the Sith. Always he was taught that Ziost was not their true home, that Korriban was their birthplace, and that someday, they would reclaim it from the hated Jedi.
He was the only child that his father managed to have with his first wife, and because of that, his father became that much more determined to make his son into a Sith to be feared. His early years were filled with kindness, and even happiness. Peace, one could call it, and his father encouraged his son to enjoy it, for he needed to teach his boy the truth of the Sith.
Peace…is a lie.
Those first few years were spent learning the history of his race. From the coming of the Dark Jedi on Korriban, to the exile and hiding after the Great Hyperspace War. Though he learned, he never really understood that to be Sith was to live in the constant shadow of betrayal by someone eager to climb over your corpse to power. Those who trained him on Ziost were constantly telling his father that the boy was too innocent to be Sith. Alerevan was, at his core, naïve, even in the face of the backstabbing and betrayal that took place in the Ziost Academy.
He would, according to his instructors, be lured in by kind words from fellow students, or pretty eyes on a female, only to end up used, and tossed aside over and over. He persisted in trying to be good, in trusting others at their word. He accepted that the Sith used the Dark Side, were the Dark Side, that 'evil' by its' very nature was ingrained in their DNA, but he was not of the opinion that being touched by darkness had to mean he was a monster. That was when his father decided to break that innocence, and finish his son's training himself. He required a monster. On his sixteenth birthday, Alerevan's father began his son's training in earnest.
It was on that day that he forced his young son to murder their family pet with his own lightsaber. Naturally, the young and naïve Sith refused several times, only to be struck by his father's Force lightning. Pain unlike anything the boy had felt tore through his very being, and eventually, every instinct he had was screaming at him to kill, or be killed.
Eventually, the child gave in, and whatever innocence was left in him was effectively crushed as he was forced between gutting his innocent pet, or dying himself. It was then that the young Sith began to grasp what it meant to follow the Dark Side. He was Force Sensitive, of course. As most of the Red Sith are, but until that day, he had never hungered for power. Feeling the unbridled power of his father flowing into him was painful yes, but it awakened something inside him. A hunger for more, and a deep hatred for the man who had, through his own son, killed something Alerevan had loved and genuinely cared for, for no reason at all. On a whim.
He hadn't felt true hatred before that, but on that day, he got his first taste. It shone in his eyes as the image of his loyal pet's smoking corpse lying on the floor of their home burned itself into the young Sith's mind. Seeing this, his father left, feeling satisfied that he would, at last, have an heir who might prove to be worthy.
After that first trial, he was rebuilt. Psychologically scarred from murdering his own beloved pet, Alerevan's father taught him to use his emotions in harnessing the Force in ways he had never attempted before. He built a new lightsaber, double bladed, and was taught how to charge it and make it powerful. Without lightning of his own however, he was only half as effective as he could be. So his father made up for that weakness by training him in the arts of the Assassin.
Where he lacked power in the Force, he made up for it with his speed. Where he lacked the ability to overcharge his blade with lightning, he taught him to strike once, and effectively. Eventually he learned to use the Force to aid him in this, making him a blur of red and black death, taking out whoever or whatever he was ordered to. As the years passed, killing became meaningless to the young Sith. He was but a sword, and all attempts to get him to actually think were met with a cold, empty stare. The hatred he'd felt for his father slowly burned away in the cold dark of space. He often let his ship's heating systems rest after a mission, and floated sometimes for days in the chilling cold of the void.
He became a shell of his former self, his eyes lacked the spark they had once held, and any who looked upon him shivered at the cold, dead stare they got in return. For years this went on. He would kill, and his father would grow in power. Eventually, the killing became less frequent. A Sith can only rise so high through murder after all, and his son became a liability, an embarrassment that needed to be hidden. Nobody can say what exactly drove that Sith Lord to do what he did next, but he had no idea what would come of his desire to rid himself of a useful tool. He was powerful, he did not need to waste time on only one heir who couldn't even make lightning.
He would create others, worthy of his name. Alerevan was, at that moment in his father's mind, not even a being, but a tool to be used, and that too was eventually how his son saw himself. Though the years were long and dark, the young Sith had ever so slowly been building a new kind of rage against his father, that only grew every time they interacted.
It was not a passionate rage, nor did it burn with the fury of a sun. It was a cold rage, the type that only some are able to harbor, and even fewer are able to harness. It was the kind of fury that had propelled the Sith Lords of the past to their legendary brutality…and in his ignorance, the young Sith's father completely failed to sense it. Another took notice however, and began to form a plot, as Alerevan's father had become a leader of some import, and was, like most Sith of that era, bogging down the Empire with fruitless nonsense it did not need.
And so, this other, a legendary Sith in his own right, commanded the father to discard the son, not through murder, but through something that would either kill the child, or forge him into a weapon of truly terrifying power for their Empire.
The legendary tales spoken of on Ziost told of an ancient Sith temple on a planet that was so strong in the Dark Side, it could even turn Jedi from the path of the Light, no matter their conviction. Supposedly, the young Sith's family had played a part in making that very temple, though where it was, and the true nature of it, was something only a few knew or cared to remember. Alerevan's father, at the apparent suggestion of another, decided that such a place would be perfect for his useless son to fade away and die quietly.
The temple on that planet housed many wayward spirits of Sith who came long before. He would add another one to their ranks. Not once however, did it ever occur to the Sith Lord that his son might survive his exile. Not once did he even contemplate what would come back from such a place. It was with this ignorance that he headed towards the farthest reaches of Imperial space, very easily risking discovery by the Republic should they be caught. There were other eyes on the pair however, and so the secret journey remained that way as both father and son headed for Malachor V.
Alerevan had thus far had a pretty easy life, for a Sith. His family was nobility, at the top of the racial bloodlines of the Empire, strong in the Force, and best of all: rich. He enjoyed the finest robes, the best lightsaber crystals, a bed as soft as a Nerf's belly, and three-square meals a day. Thus, when his father landed on Malachor V, or rather, what remained of it, he was in no way prepared for the true harshness of life that only total poverty can bring. He was nobility, a Red Sith, poverty was for humans and slaves.
"I will return in five years." His father had said, before tossing him out of the ship with a wave of his hand. The young Sith simply stared in awe as his only family in the galaxy flew away, leaving him stranded on a handful of barren asteroids that, somehow, still maintained an atmosphere with breathable air.
The 'planet' itself felt wrong to his finer senses, but he knew that his father valued his legacy too much to simply leave him to die in the middle of nowhere with no chance of survival, so he began to explore. In his blind, almost deafened state he did not realize that he could and would be replaced. He did not think like a Sith yet. His dead, emotionless eyes surveyed everything Malachor had to offer...which was not much.
Several hours later, the young Sith had tired of exploring, as all he had found were rocks, lightning, and the ever-growing feeling of unease that followed him everywhere in this hellish place. Still he traveled on, becoming more and more aware of the fact that his body was dragging him towards something.
Something in his blood was reacting to the 'planet', and as he crested the next ridge, he saw it, and began to understand. His father had always listed the 'Temple of Malachor' as one of the family's great accomplishments, but the young Sith had never bothered to learn what Malachor was. Now at least, he had a chance to find out, as his bright red eyes fell upon what remained of the Trayus Academy.
He didn't know that name however, as to him it was just an old Sith temple that his family had apparently helped construct at some point in the past, long before it had been abandoned and renamed. Still, it was the closest thing to civilization he had seen thus far, and he began heading for it.
Then, the closer he got, the more he heard the softer, fleeting voices that began to whisper to him. He welcomed them at first, for he knew that such a temple must house many Sith Lords of the past, as most of their temples tended to do. They welcomed him with praise, and kind remarks towards his lineage, they encouraged him onward, into the temple. Down he went, following them, confident in his naiveté that they would show him the power they whispered of.
Eventually, he entered a large chamber, filled with the Dark Side. Something powerful had once been here, something darker than he had ever felt, but now all that remained was the barest trace of its essence, which was still capable of suffusing the Force itself with the darkness that wielders referred to as the Dark Side. Anger, hate, jealousy, passion, these emotions swirled here in this place, and the young Sith embraced them…for he had not felt that kind of emotion since he was sixteen.
The chamber's platform was suspended over a giant gap in the asteroid that showed only open space below it. The bottom of it had, apparently, been blown out at some point. It was incredible that this room had survived at all, let alone the temple. There was no way it was structurally sound…and yet it continued to stand. Just as he decided he had had enough of examining an interesting but ultimately empty chamber, he felt the Force surge, and the whispers returned, louder, insistent. They spoke of betrayal, of someone called 'Revan', of Mandalorian customs, of the Force, of so many things that he soon lost track of what they were saying. More and more joined in, swelling in their shouting now, as they demanded to be heard by the only living being that was naïve enough to come to this cursed place willingly.
The very air itself began to swirl with physical clouds of darkness, but the young Sith didn't notice. He clawed at his head, shouting as loud as he could. It echoed through the empty temple, but was lost to the many other thousands of shouting incoherent voices reverberating in his skull. The spirits of the Sith who had died in this place took advantage of the other's shouting and this weak and malleable vessel's state of pain to try and dominate him for their own.
Alerevan fought back as hard as he could, curling on the ground now as darkness and bits of dark red and black lightning sparked over his form. For hours he sat there, curled into a ball, unable to do anything else for fear of being taking over by the dead. He knew if they got a hold on his mind, he would never be able to break it alone. He waited for hours and hours until finally, they seemed to give up.
Time passed, that much he knew, but Alerevan, or what was left of him, no longer knew how much had passed. Certainly not five years. Not yet. It was far too soon for that. The voices swelled with his every thought, but as time flowed on, their words had less of an effect. He rose.
The power of the Force ghosts surged into his form, suffusing it with the Dark Side, and yet he withstood it. He shouted again then, as the ghosts fought for control of his body, in both his mind and with his mouth, daring them to give him more. He knew he could handle it, or so he thought. He had to, or he would die.
The voices had revealed through their incessant whispers that there was no food on in this place, no fertile ground, no life. Only the Dark Side of the Force. So, he had challenged them, daring them to face him for control of his body, and a chance, though slim, for escape back into civilization and out of the Galaxy's equivalent of Hell. The cold rage that had been building for well over four decades now surged, and for the first time since his sixteenth year, the young Sith smirked.
Like most Red Sith, he had been taught his people's history, of how they had lived on Korriban before the Jedi came. His ancestors had survived on the Dark Side before, and he knew he could do it now, even though his species had been tainted by the humans. The Force, he was discovering, did not discriminate by species, only by individual. Even that though, he suspected was not the case. Though he had no true idea of how to feed off of the Dark Side, he knew he had to figure it out, and so the young Sith focused.
He had learned Force rituals of course, but this was not a ritual. This was not even Sith Alchemy. This was the desire to survive on a world with no food of any kind, and no water. It was in this dire struggle that his primal desire to survive took over, and for the first time in centuries, a Red Sith discovered a practice that had been long thought lost, or impossible to all but the most powerful of lords, or the Emperor himself.
How to consume the power of a Force apparition, and make it his own. He used his cold, hardened rage against each spirit that came forth to possess him. The strong ones were first, but they had been dead for uncounted years. Whatever vitality they had in death was nowhere near able to match the cold fury that this young Sith brought against them. He consumed them, relying on his instincts to guide him in a practice that was as old as his race itself, encoded into his very genes. He merged with these ghosts of the past, forcing them to submit and be absorbed.
Their rage became his rage. Their pain, his pain. Their hopes, dreams, ideas, thoughts, their very essence merged with his as he focused upon them and drew from them as he drew from the Force. They surged into him, all but screaming in joy as they felt his comprehension. His body crackled once more with dark black and red lightning, and his eyes burned with dark fire.
Containing so many eager individuals was hard, but suddenly, as he felt his essence merge with the Sith of old, it became easier. His power swelled in ways he had never felt before, and he laughed. A dark, maniacal laugh that echoed throughout the empty broken wasteland that was Malachor, as the young, naïve Sith who had only ever been a tool absorbed the ancient wisdom of those who had died here, those who had wielded the Force in ways he hadn't even begun to grasp, or understand. Their knowledge became his knowledge…and with that knowledge, came power.
It was then that the young Sith began to understand, with help from those he had fed on of course. They were the Force itself, and only now could he feel the presence of not just the ghosts of the ancient temple, but the hundreds of thousands who had died here in the past, betrayed and angry, and now only existing as slight echoes of what they had been. The Sith spirits assaulting him were stronger only because this was a nexus of darkness, but in time he knew, he would find a way to consume them all and add their knowledge to his own.
He learned from the ghosts of the hated Jedi, that they had taught that the Force was alive, and that no emotion should be felt for those who left this life and joined it, but only by drawing in and essentially consuming these dead Jedi and Sith did the young Pureblood finally understand exactly what the Jedi had meant. The Force bound every living thing together. Those who died, became a part of it, and every sentient being, sensitive or not, could connect with this Force in some manner if they truly tried to. If they understood this basic truth, and listened, patiently, for the voice of the beings who generated the energy field.
The living were as much a part of the Force as the dead, and as the young Sith realized this, so too did the ghosts he was battling and consuming. Finally accepting their immortality by letting go of their past selves and joining the Force, they let themselves be fed upon one by one, and slowly, the growing hunger the young Sith had felt swelling within him for years grew larger with the addition of each ghost.
To call them that though, was a stretch. They were, at best, phantoms of weaker, inferior Sith, but they gave him the power he had sought after for years all the same. Even though he only consumed the barest of scraps from them, so similar had they been in life that he began to pull the scraps of information together. He knew what daily life in this temple had been like. He knew why the Jedi that had died here had come in the first place. And most importantly, he began to understand not only how to tap the strength of the Dark Side, but the Light as well, for though they claimed emotion played no part in it, that was not the truth. He smirked then, in the darkness of the abandoned temple on the remains of a dead planet. Five years of doing this would make him powerful, perhaps powerful enough to face the Emperor. Like all Sith before him, he now imagined leading an entire Empire, and began to crave that power. With the nexus of Dark Side energy surrounding him, he genuinely began to believe he could make it a reality.
Days passed, and the young Sith spent them absorbing and feeding upon more and more of the Dark Side. He noticed however, that not all of the vestiges of those who had died in this forsaken place had been like him. They had not all embraced the Dark Side, even in death, and some still clung to the Light. Even those however, had not been, by their own scattered recollection, recognized as true Jedi, having chosen to fight instead of preach peace and sit back as the Mandalorians conquered the core worlds.
Once more, his view of the Force expanded: Just as there were different shades of living people, be they light, gray, or dark, there were such variations within the Force, for the Force is the end destination of every living thing. True immortality, he realized, was a fantasy of an animalistic mind that refused to even conceptualize its own end. This revelation deeply upset the young Sith, despite his growing power. Everything that lived had an end, and he knew that even if he consumed billions of ghosts, or people, even if he fed on the Force for centuries at a time, it would still never stop the inevitable truth that the Jedi within him forced him to understand: that everything dies, and Balance always returns. Eventually.
For a Sith, the idea of accepting one's own mortality was nigh unheard of. Their power corrupted their minds far too often, and led many to believe that they could not be brought down. His own Emperor was said to believe the same thing, for his father was privy to many secrets of the Sith Empire, and Vitiate's hunger for living souls was not as well hidden as he thought. Not to those like him, anyways. Not to those who remembered how he had become so powerful in the first place. He vowed then, to accept the fact that he was, eventually, going to die. That did not however, mean that he wouldn't do all he could to live as long as possible. He would build a power base to rival Vitiate's empire, and then he would build a successor. Only when looking back would he recognize this new naiveté for what it was.
It was not long after he made that vow that he realized he had brought down many rival Sith who had believed that their power would sustain them forever. But it had not. He had been his father's assassin for years, and had taken down many power bases, and the Sith who led them. They had been strong, true, sometimes stronger than him, but despite their influence they had been brought down in single combat. That is when he began to practice his manipulation of both lightsaber and Force powers for combat within the temple.
Those strong with the Force had been recorded as living for centuries longer than they should have naturally, and he knew if he wanted to do the same, he had to become very good at deflecting mortal wounds. He had the time to learn, and with a bit of exploring, he found he had the tools to practice with as well. The temple had been well equipped for such things.
With some experimentation, he found he was able to animate the training dummies in what must have passed as a 'workout room' through the Force to make them move, jump, and attack. He practiced then, becoming adept at small manipulations. He learned every way they could move, and eventually, managed to infuse them with part of his power, temporarily giving them something that resembled sentience. They were challenging, and as his strength and skill grew, so did theirs. They were no real substitute for a genuine, living being however. No matter how hard he tried to detach himself, he was, at the end of the day, the one controlling them still. It took what must have been many weeks, but eventually, he finally mastered the subtle art of infusing an object with the Force. These were not Khyber crystals however, and so his infusions never lasted long. Every so often, a ghostly vestige would possess one at a bad moment during his training, to try to end him, but even that was easy enough for him to deflect, and then devour.
Time passed, and for seemingly endless, timeless galactic standard day after galactic standard day, the young Sith practiced. Until, one day, he accidentally injured himself with his lightsaber. As he examined the wound in his arm, a thought came to him. The Force surrounded everything. Living things with vitality and life, made it stronger, living cells made it able function, and Midichlorians lived amongst those cells, according to their scientific knowledge of the Force.
What then would happen if he manipulated the Force producing beings to multiply his cells, and seal up and repair his wounds through rapid replication and regeneration? As he experimented, he slowly began to understand how the great Sorcerers of the Empire healed the wounds of those they tended to with only the Force, and the occasional help from medicine and machine. Armed with this new knowledge, and an eagerness to master it, the young Sith mutilated himself daily, and then healed his wounds. He did this in addition to his combat training, and eventually, he no longer even felt the pain of the lightsaber burn.
He hardened his mind to pain, inflicted wounds that would have killed lesser Sith, and that he himself had inflicted on lesser Sith to kill them. He invented several new forms and strikes, making them deadly but simple, hard to block, and most importantly, too damaging for them to be healed in time to prolong survival. How effective they would be remained to be seen of course, as he only had training dummies to practice on, and there was only so far he could really go in mutilating himself before being genuinely and mortally wounded.
Time continued to flow, but by now Alerevan could scarcely remember what it felt like. So long had he been in this quiet, dark place he had forgotten how to keep track of it. What little technology that remained working in the temple had since been re-activated by him for training purposes. The machines began to run out of power however, but he knew a good lightning burst would charge most of them. It worked on his lightsaber, which he occasionally brought to the peak nearest the temple to absorb the plasma energy rich in the atmosphere that constantly sparked over the ruins of Malachor.
That was when he remembered that he had not yet mastered lightning. In his zeal to heal and learn mastery of the saber, he had forgotten the deadliest tool of the Sith, one that most people could not shield against, unless they too had a lightsaber, or mastery of the Force. He decided then, that he had more than enough of failure in this aspect of the Sith Arts. He would dominate lightning as he dominated the souls within the Force. It would not be the same lightning as every other Sith used however. No, he would find a way to make his stronger. He had the time to do it. He wasn't going anywhere, and with the knowledge of past Sith who had used it and Jedi who had deflected it, he knew he could make his own as deadly as his blade was.
The only problem was that he had long since forgotten how his father had taught him to harness the power. Just thinking of his father, who had abandoned him here so long ago, caused a deep rage to ignite within the young Sith. He fed that rage from the core of his expanded consciousness, letting it build, and as he did, he felt his fingers tingle. Power. Rage. Hatred. The lust for conquest. That was what fueled a Sith's lightning. It was the ultimate expression of dark emotions, made physical by way of the Force.
He focused, and then realized he needed a target. But his dummies were too weak for Force attacks, as he had discovered the hard way, and he didn't want to damage the only structure protecting him from Malachor's harsh elements. Thinking of the elements, he headed outside, and noticed the old statues of faceless Sith lords, long dead, made of stone. They would do nicely. He raised his hands, and focused his rage, building it, feeding it with dark thoughts that did not originate from just his experiences, but the faded memories of those he consumed to survive as well. He felt their rage from their own memories of using and feeling Force lightning, and it had been full of blind anger, hate, and aggression. He stopped then, looking at his hands.
"No…" he murmured to himself in a hoarse whisper, for he rarely spoke anymore. He would not use the same easily manipulated attacks that he had felt and blocked numerous times, both as himself and in the numerous memories that haunted his waking four-hour-long rest periods. He would power his lightning with the cold fury that only those who understand true hate could fathom.
He raised his hands towards the closest stone statue, and once more, dark red and black lightning sparked over him, and coalesced in his hands. They felt alive, and burned with power. He directed it then, out of his fingertips, and with an explosive crack, struck the statue down with one blast. A smirk formed on his sunken face then.
There is something primal and satisfying about utterly demolishing something with your own hands. He continued to practice, the sick, manic feeling of destruction flowing through him as he blasted statue after statue, and even their smaller pieces to nothing but tan colored dust and smoke. He had the basics down, he knew, and now all he had to do was master control. Accuracy would be vital in a duel, so he began to refine his bolts together, and before long, his lightning seemed to strike as one bolt, but was in reality several, shot together from each fingertip. With five per shot, he knew that even a lightsaber would have trouble blocking all of them. He must have practiced shooting his lightning for days, weeks, months, even. But as usual, time had no meaning. There were plenty of dead Mandalorians out here to keep him fed, and he vowed not to return until he was sure he could zap the temple's batteries, and not fry them to a crisp.
He measured time instead by his prowess, and when he could blast apart rock and stone with accuracy at a moment's notice, namely by practicing on the rapidly orbiting and numerous asteroids in what passed for Malachor's atmosphere, he finally stopped, and looked for ways to make it even stronger. It was said that the strongest Sith's lightning was fearsome to feel, and that when one received such a strike from a Darth, death was almost always the result, even if it was not intentional. He grinned for a moment, as he realized he didn't remember where he had heard that, or if it had even been him who had.
Those he had absorbed were assimilating nicely. He had no way to know how painful his lightning was however, as nothing lived on Malachor anymore, as far as he knew. He returned then to the temple, and powered it with enough energy to run for a century. Finally, his training could advance beyond the basics, for the temple had many things that needed electricity to run, and what was not connected to the generators could be powered himself.
His lightsaber never ran out of power now, as each time he drew it he forced himself to make a habit of charging it in his palm. The battery however, did not like being charged in this manner. Technology, he soon realized, was finicky. Luckily, with the lights on, he had managed to find several large tech manuals on all sorts of machines. He made time to read them as well, for rarely did he sleep anymore, and eventually he found a battery schematic that had been specifically designed to be charged by Sith lightning.
Making it was tricky, however, but the young Sith persevered, scouring the temple for random mechanical parts, and reading up on other appliances that he couldn't even use to scavenge parts from them. These primarily consisted of the machines that had been used in prepping food. Although they were older, he realized that the Empire's own tech was only a few generations ahead. It gave him a rough estimate of when the temple had been furnished. Eventually, his saber's battery was completed, and recharged with little problems. He made a note to refine his modified design if he ever got back to civilization.
Eventually, growing bored of the temple and its machines, he began to shoot his focused blasts of electrical power into the already charged atmosphere. To his surprise however, the much stronger lightning from the remains of the planet followed his own bolts of plasma down to his body, and filled him with so much energy he thought he would explode right there. He felt himself dying, burning from the sheer amount of electricity running through him that only a planetoid could naturally produce, but then he focused on the Force, drawing on it, feeding off of it, healing his burning organ's very cells until he knew his body would survive if he stopped, and the enrgy finally faded.
Thus, a routine began to develop for the lone Sith. A routine he followed for far longer than five years, by the count of the temple's newly powered, but inaccurate chronometer. It only measured how many days had passed since turning it on, not the actual year. Thinking it useless, he eventually stopped bothering to power it, and scavenged parts from it for his other projects. He mastered fighting the practice 'droids', and constantly made up new ways to counter them. He read every Holobook he could, and the history of the Sith Empire became much clearer.
The classrooms and teaching droids on Ziost had left out much. He learned how the petty squabbles of his race had in fact led to their downfall. He learned a thousand things from those holobooks, committing them to memory. There were only so many, and he re-read them at least a hundred times. Even the manuals for the machinery were re-read several times, out of sheer boredom. He also made use of the Holocrons in the deepest parts of the temple, and learned from the ancient Sith within.
Opening the Holocrons was always a challenge, like a puzzle, but eventually he figured it out. If he ever made one, he decided, he would make it so complex that getting into it would be nigh impossible. He would make sure only someone as clever as he was could access the secrets he himself had now learned. That seemed to be, after all, the point of making one. But that was all far, far in the future.
At the end of his sometimes days long sessions of training, mind and body exhausted, he would go out before the temple, and let the unbridled power of Malachor run through him. Dangerous though it was, he could control where the lightning's ferocity struck him. As long as he kept it away from the vital organs, he found he would need less healing afterwards, and by receiving such power multiple times, he became used to commanding such as well.
Thus, when he drew heavily from the Force, he drew more than he knew his body ever could have before. Once, he kept drawing. The ferocity of Malachor's atmosphere flowed into his palm, and then, he guided it outward again. To call it a Force Storm is to insult its size. Sorcerers in the Empire could make similar storms, but this was on a much larger scale. From the mountain he stood on, his massive bolts of barely controlled lightning struck the peaks around him with a ferocity that surprised him. He repeated this tactic once a day, until the peaks around his were complete dust.
Little did he know however, that these massive storms on a near planetary scale were sending out ripples through the Force in all directions. The Emperor in his hidden palace felt them, and watched on, intrigued that the young Sith he had assumed dead had in fact survived, and seemed to be turning into the weapon the Emperor had wanted him to be. The Jedi in the far reaches of the Republic felt them as well, and when they determined where they were coming from, they did their best not to feel fear.
Malachor was their equivalent of Hell, and a bitter memory to boot. Now it was, to their blinded eyes, active. They needed to stop it. All of this was unknown to the young Sith however. All he cared about was expanding his power. Eventually he stopped calling the storms and moved on to other techniques in manipulating Force lightning. Shields, sparks, jolts, blasts so powerful they could reduce whatever they struck to atoms, and even a Sage technique that one performed with two hands, though his versions was more like a ball of sparky death.
He'd tried condensing the lightning into a sphere, but as it usually exploded in his face, he eventually gave up, and settled for various sized death balls of electricity, similar to his shield. He manipulated his new abilities in thousands of ways. It was, he discovered, his favorite power. It sparked his desire for conquest like nothing else, and the thrill of expending even a little of it made him smirk.
Another lesson he learned from the temple, was how to enhance his ability to drain a lifeform's Force essence. The Holocrons made reference to creatures that lived off the plasma in Malachor's atmosphere, and the young Sith made a note to hunt them, if any had survived whatever calamity had torn the planet apart a second time.
He had only rarely ventured onto the other asteroid chunks by way of Force jumping a few times, and had not sensed any life. Nor could he practice the technique completely, but he did use it to enhance his ability to drain the remnant of the disquieted souls in the space around Malachor. They were easy enough to reach out to and hunt from the ruined chamber he had discovered his first day there. They screamed out through the Netherworld of the Force as he found them, but nothing ever came to their aid.
He continued this regimen of lightsaber techniques, lightning manipulation, and Force consumption for what seemed like an age. He had fixed and powered the clock on and let it die several times, eventually reducing it to a ruined wreck after it counted out fifty years. He had no way of knowing whether or not it was an accurate clock, but as he continued to exist in this state of not eating or drinking, he knew it could not last forever. Eventually he would run out of dead Jedi and Mandalorians to consume, and surviving on just the energy of the Force Nexus alone would be a full-time meditation effort. If he ever reached that point, he would be too weak to escape unless whoever eventually came to this wasteland forcibly took him with them.
Then, finally, it ended.
Alerevan was reading a history of the tactics used by Tulak Hord when he single-handedly broke sieges made by the ancient Jedi, for the hundredth time, tactics that were similar to his Force consumption no less, when he heard the sound of a ship. He had long since learned to tune out the hum of the temple's machines and the roar of the lightning outside, so when something new entered his ears, he noticed it.
Making his way to the front of the temple, he became aware for the first time since his arrival that he hadn't bathed or changed clothes. Such things were never important during his time training in the forgotten temple. Thus, as it was, he appeared as a red-skinned man with long unkempt black hair, and tattered black robes covered in burn marks and slashes, along with the occasional blaster hole. His nails were long and sharp, to keep from breaking during training, but his shoes had long since worn away to nothing.
Walking barefoot on the asteroid's surface was no problem for him anymore however. His face was a thin mask of skin over bones, his facial tendrils had lengthened far past the beginnings of youth, and his ribs were visible. The muscles on the rest of him were very developed however, but even the Force could not feed them properly, something he had begun to notice.
Without food, real food with real nutrients, he would eventually die. As ragged and evil as he looked physically, nothing matched his eyes. They were dull, dark red, and emotionless. Unreadable, even to those skilled in such things, they gave nothing away, and seemed to suck in all they looked at with their sheer emptiness. Until now, however, he had not seen or felt another living thing in his many, many years on Malachor.
As he looked up at the ship, he raised one tentacle eyebrow from under his mane of black hair as he felt something in the Force that he needed a moment to recognize. The Light Side. It had been ages since he had devoured something that had once been so blithely good, and wholesome. But this presence was different from what he usually consumed. It burned with the fire of life and youthful vitality. This was not a mere ghost, a vestige of a being that had once existed. These midichlorians pulsed with life.
He could almost feel it, even from several hundred feet below. He drooled as he sensed it, and his hunger became very real for the first time in…ever, surging as he sensed a veritable feast of power. He was like a starved predator, glaring up at a large, juicy steak still warm from a kill. As the ship came closer, a model he had never seen and knew was in no way Imperial, he verified what he sensed. It had to be, and he almost shouted with joy. Jedi.
He'd always wanted to meet one, to try to break one, to see in person what had broken the old Empire and made even the most composed of his old Sith Lord masters seethe with rage at the mere mention of them. The ship hovered for a moment, and suddenly, Alerevan realized his malice had seeped out. His desire for blood was obvious, but he quickly hid it using one of the many techniques his Holobooks and ancient Holocrons had outlined and taught him.
Still, the ship hovered, and as it began to ascend, as if in fear, the young Sith threw deception to the wind. He was tired of being on Malachor. He was tired of living off the Force alone, of smelling terrible, of living like a hermit. This was his chance. The Sith Lords of old had always enjoyed a measure of comfort with their power, as a sign of status, and now he craved it as well, for he knew he must have become powerful in his uncounted years away from the Empire.
Raising a clawed hand towards the ship, he held it in place, and dragged it down. The engines squealed, and he frowned. Too much wasted fuel, and he'd never get home. He cut them off by blocking the fuel lines to the engines, not by having them back up, but by simply freezing the entire system in place, all at once, and seconds later, they went silent.
He held every other part of the ship as well, keeping it from moving on its own, holding it in place, and marveling at his mastery of control. Vanity, he discovered, felt good. He felt another Force user attempt to remove his blockage, and gained a sadistic smirk. It was a pathetic attempt. Futile, hopeless. He could almost smell the fear. It was intoxicating. Eventually, the ship was forced to land, pulled down to the lifeless rock by a being of pure evil. The ship itself was utterly dead, and the Sith gestured at the doors as it touched down. He had his escape. His way back to power.
The craving was almost undeniable, and the vestiges of the souls he had initially devoured so long ago all but screamed at him to take his chance to escape this hell. And he did. From out of the doors came a flash of blue and green, one that was easily met by red seconds later. The Jedi landed on the ramp to their strange ship, as Alerevan blocked each of the blazing Lightsabers with one hand holding his own, double-bladed saber. The other flexed with electricity, but he held off. He wanted to enjoy this.
He took a moment to examine his prey, and his dark smirk widened. The younger of the pair, and clearly the Padawan, recoiled. The fear was strong in her. The master, though…he was pensive. Like an undisturbed lake surrounded by the tumultuous chaos that was Malachor, and the Sith who had grown to learn to wield its corrupting power. He licked his cracked lips, and bared his fangs at the Jedi in a grin. It earned him a look of disgust as they struggled to break his lock. He was going to savor every minute of shattering that pensive lake of Light and good. He'd earned it. The Jedi gasped as he stared at the creature before him. "Sith…you will die here…make peace with your gods."
A hiss escaped from the drooling mouth of the pureblooded Sith, "Not…to…day…" the first words he had spoken in…who knew how long. They were soft, hard to hear, which only made them that much more important to be listened to. With his free hand, Alerevan gestured at the master, and yanked him off the ramp, and onto the cold black surface of the asteroid. For a Light user, this was as good as a death sentence, and the young Sith felt his sad resignation as he knew the Jedi understood that too. Already the Dark Side was tainting him.
All three knew that the fight was already over. Gesturing towards the Padawan, Alerevan held her in the air through a Force choke, or rather, a variation of it. She dangled by her neck, but she did not choke, and the Sith was free to fight as he left her there to watch helplessly as her master fell to the darkness, and his inevitable death. She was another toy, the first part of his power base. She would serve him well.
Appearance wise, the master was nothing special. Brown hair and eyes to match his cloak, tan undershirt and pants, and a sickeningly bland lightsaber hilt with an equally boring green crystal. He was every bit the stereotypical Jedi that the histories had painted, but imagining a whole order, thousands and thousands of beings like him, was hard. Surely no order could truly be that bland. His apprentice was little better, she was a Twi'lek at least, and attractive enough, for an alien. Her skin was a reddish pink color, marking her as a Lethan, and a rare find. There were few Twi'leks in the Empire, which only made them even more desirable and exotic.
The Jedi lunged as he futilely resisted the temptation to draw upon Malachor's darkness, and in him Alerevan sensed the same cockiness he had felt in his father when they had last dueled. With a cold, but tempered rage, the Sith raised a hand to the sky, and lightning coursed down into his palm. He let the energy surge through him as he had done countless times before, but this time he channeled it into a strike at a specific target. It was strange at first, as he had always let it go where it wanted in the past, but it obeyed his command just as his own lightning did. The Jedi was struck full force by a bolt of dark red and black lightning.
To his credit, the Jedi caught the bolt of power, and deflected most of it, but in doing so left himself open. He was tiring, and his thoughts were an ever-expanding swirl of emotion. The Sith could no longer hold back. His clawed hand surged forward, and embedded itself in the lifeblood of the human. The Sith grinned, and his eyes flared with darkness as he pulled at the very essence of the master. He inhaled, and his eyes shone as they absorbed the vitality of true life for the first time, rather than some long-dead ghost.
His Padawan let out a cry of horror as she saw her master literally drained of anything resembling life. When the Sith was done, all that remained of the Jedi Knight was bones, and even those turned to ash not long after. Turning now to the girl, Alerevan eyed her appealing figure. From what he gained of the Jedi's memory, he had not indulged in having such a lovely apprentice. As usual, the universe gave, and the Jedi ignored. This was yet another urge he had not satisfied in his exile, and now, the needs of his body began to surface once more. But he had to control them. Too much indulgence would lead to his demise.
As if reading his thoughts, the Padawan squirmed in the invisible, iron choke hold, snarling, "Don't you da-" She never finished her sentence, as the hold vanished, and sent her collapsing onto the surface of the broken world in a heap of pink skin and bland clothes.
Alerevan stood over her, keeping the Dark Side at bay for but a moment before it consumed and turned her. He let it swell around him, and as it built up, it physically manifested as a writhing cloud of darkness. This surprised the young Sith, as it seemed the planet itself was as eager to defile her as he was, and the young Jedi shivered, no doubt sensing this. "Go ahead…do it."
She closed her eyes, expecting death…and that, was truly funny to the young Sith. He cackled loudly as he let the planet's nature resume its' natural course of corruption. She struggled to stand, and was managing to fight it off. She had natural strength, he realized, but it was unrefined, and buried under what he could only sense was belief of some kind. In the Republic. In peace. He realized that his refinement of control extended to the mental state of his enemies as well. He was so very tempted then to toy with her perception of reality, but breaking her would not do. He needed a tool, not a mindless, albeit generously proportioned, toy.
The young Sith spat, and raised a clawed hand. The Dark Side surged as he called it into him, and he poured it into her mind, every crevice of it. As he had done with her ship, he entered the structure of her mental consciousness, and examined each of her petty beliefs. One by one, he revealed to her, usually by images conjured from his vastly increased memory, the terrible truth or reality that every ghost had come to accept.
Peace was a lie, there would always passion. Through passionate emotions, a Force user became strong. With that strength, they could acquire real power, minions to fear and obey them. With that power, they could dominate their rivals, and achieve victory undisputed. Through that victory, they would be free to do as they wished with their power, ever expanding, ever growing, ever conquering in an endless cycle of hunger and expansion.
Through the Dark Side, one could achieve true freedom, but not if they clung to a notion as silly as lasting peace. Sentients would always fight, and creatures like him would always take advantage of their simple minds. This he impressed upon the deepest part of her mind, and eventually, he felt her acceptance, her understanding of the way things were had shifted, and now where once there was laughable attempts to control her emotions, she let them free, and hungered for power. A true Sith in the making if ever there was one. He sighed then, sad that he would not have the chance to break her worldview piece by piece and Then make her his servant, but he needed to escape, and she would help him. Satisfied, he withdrew.
When her eyes were finally yellow-orange, and her emotions an untempered whirlwind of sadness, rage, and hatred for him, he nodded. "You shall be my first apprentice…the first of many. Your name."
"S-sinya" was the only response she gave, but it was enough.
He pointed at the temple, and said "Go." And she went.
He was glad his power had been made obvious, but impressing a young Jedi Padawan was easy. The true test would be matching his power against a Sith. With the Jedi dealt with, the young Sith examined his new ship, and took the opportunity to clean up. He found spare brown robes, boots, cut his hair with help from his saber, and even had a hot shower in the one cubicle the ship had. Once he was done, he scowled, as he looked far too much like a Jedi for his taste, but it would have to do. There was nothing that could make dye out on this rock.
At least they were a dark brown. He eyed the food stores hungrily, and opened a pack, hydrating it, and devouring it. As he reached for another, he paused. He would need this food in the long run, and since he had just devoured a truly potent life, as well as real food, he held back. He knew the Jedi rations were as nutritional as a soldiers, which meant extremely they were the best thing for him at this stage. He could subsist…for now. The first chance he got however, he planned to eat and eat until the burning hunger he had become used to, and had all but been driven mad by in the long, long years on this rock, finally was sated.
As he stepped back into the temple, getting used to wearing boots for the first time in who knew how many years, he noticed that he was surrounded by darkness. Unnatural darkness. His new apprentice sought to challenge him already, and he relished it. Droids could only be so hard to fight, after all, and her master had proven to be a pathetic match. Twin lightsabers, blue and green, came at him from the darkness, and he noticed she had retrieved her master's as well. Clever.
He blocked her strikes easily enough, using only one side of his blade, but the shadows hid her well. Still, she was but a half-baked Jedi. Her presence was obvious in the Force, and he homed in on it as soon as she felt a surge of hope and pride in her abilities, as she had so far kept his own saber occupied. The Sith clenched his free hand, and the darkness dissipated.
He held his new apprentice in a choke grip with ease, glaring at her. "You cannot over power me." He snarled. He then focused his full pent up rage on her mind. "You will never beat me. You will serve me. And if you disobey, I will hunt down every single person you have ever loved, and give them the same painful end I'll give to you. But only after you watch. I know where your parents live Sinya. I can get to Ryloth easily. I could devour your entire planet if I was so inclined…I am…genuinely…ravenous."
He pushed into her mind, filling it with the ever-present darkness of the cold, unfeeling rage that now lived within him constantly. He pushed her mind to near its breaking point before he relented, making sure his message was clear. Defiance would lead to the slaughter of her kin. Though she'd left them as a baby, ignoring her 'cultural heritage' so very prominently displayed on Coruscant was impossible. Learning about her people had been just as impossible to ignore, but the Jedi had ultimately encouraged a connection to heritage. After all, many masters were influenced by their home, despite having not really grown up there.
She glared at him after he dropped her to the floor, panting, but behind her orange eyes he could sense…something new. Something he recognized, but could not put a name to. He felt it as well, especially when he met her gaze. Lust, perhaps? It was easy enough to ignore, but as always, hers would serve him well, and perhaps make her beholden to him in ways he had never considered. Pleasure, after all, was just as effective as fear. When used correctly.
Another lesson of the past, no doubt from one of the Sith. "We have much training to do, apprentice…" He hissed at her, his voiced soft like a snake slithering on the ground, and dry from lack of use and water. He eyed her expectantly, and she powered her sabers down.
"Yes…Master." His feral grin returned. He felt her lust rising again as she spoke the words. Apparently the sheer wrongness of it appealed to her newly awakened emotions and shifted perspective. He had forced her to resign to her fate now. Her master was gone, and one way or another, she would serve him. Might as well enjoy it, and keep him happy at the same time.
The connection between her new emotions and her new master was one he was aware he had to reinforce. His two clawed pointer fingers on his right hand made a subtle 'come hither' motion that extended into the Force. He enjoyed watching her look of confusion, understanding, and then pleasure as she felt the effects. He stopped then, staring her down. "Training…and then perhaps I shall reward you again. Come." He knew he had her now. She'd had an unfulfilled taste of unfamiliar pleasure, and as her newfound unbound emotions surged, he knew she would want more, and he would give it. But not yet. The chase was part of the fun, after all.