Chapter 8: Warning: Hitchhikers May Be Crazed Acolytes

Korriban

The Acolyte

"And so the prodigal supplicant returns, fragments in hand, for one final test."

These were the words that greeted Emron as he walked into Baras' office, to the sight of Baras standing at the feet of the steps that led to his desk, with Vemrin waiting less-than-patiently to the left.

"You have done exceedingly well, acolyte, and have dashed Vemrin's hopes in the process. He thought he was the only acolyte to have survived the trial. As it stands, only the two of you now remain."

"He may have made it this far, but there's still plenty of time for an accident to occur," Vemrin practically snarled.

"Oh, my apologies my good man, I hadn't known you've been wanting me dead, what with all your interactions with me up to this point being so amazingly polite and helpful. I'll try not to disappoint you next time," Emron said, adopting an incredibly patronizing tone.

"Vemrin is more than a little peeved by the fact that you apparently set a number of acolytes upon him, even if they were relatively untrained," Baras explained.

"Is he?" Emron said, eyebrow arching. "Odd, he certainly had no compunctions about unleashing his own dog on me."

"You'll pay for your actions dearly, fool," Vemrin hissed at him.

Baras was managing to do an impressive job of looking extremely smug beneath his faceless mask. "Such tension between the two of you. I can practically taste the hate roiling in the air," he said, before inhaling deeply and loudly. "Yes, yes, I wonder what it will be like, when your emotions finally boil over and you come to blows. But," and he sounded extremely put out at this, "that is not why I you two are here right now. No, you two are here now because you are both on the very brink of becoming true Sith." Emron found himself unconsciously inching towards Baras as he spoke, noticing out of the corner of his eye that Vemrin was doing the same. "One final task lays before the pair of you, the retrieval of an ancient and custom-made lightsaber. I had once thought you were the one who would succeed in this task Vemrin, but I no longer make the mistake of thinking so."

Emron struggled to prevent himself from bursting out in laughter at the sight of Vemrin's face as he processed that last sentence of Baras'. First his eyes bugged out, followed by his jaw flapping open and shut, looking all the galaxy like a most ridiculous fish. Finally he managed to push out a simple "W-what?" with his voice cracking and reaching very impressive heights for a grown man.

"Did I stutter, acolyte? I believe I did not," Baras snapped, his genteel disposition vanishing faster than the thought of warmth on Hoth. "I also do not believe you are entitled to demand explanations from me."

"B-but my Lord, I have worked so hard, for so long! I deserve this! I have fought, trained, killed for this honor! And you give your favor to him?! He only just arrived the other day, some spoiled brat who's been given everything!"

"My apologies for my friend here," Emron said dryly. "His world seems to have suddenly come crashing down around and upon him. He is not himself, and is thus, most uncharacteristically rude at the moment."

"Vemrin, take your squeaking, and your complaining, and leave, before I kill you myself for being so disgustingly pathetic. Wait in my antechamber for when I call for you, now!" Baras growled.

Vemrin turned and shuffled off at a remarkable speed, but not before spearing Emron with a singularly impressive hate-filled glare.

"And that is one of the reasons why I chose you over him," Baras said, turning back to Emron after he had chased Vemrin out with the force of his glare. "You are also stronger in the Force than him, and will only become stronger. There is a power sleeping deep inside you, just waiting to be tapped. And when you do tap it…"

"You honor me with your choice and insight, my Lord," Emron said, bowing slightly at the waist.

"Of course I do, but I wonder, do you understand just how honored you should feel? Should you survive to become my apprentice, then the galaxy will bend before you. You will become one of the most powerful individuals not just in the Empire, but also in the Republic and beyond."

"Then grant me my task, and unleash me upon the galaxy," Emron said with relish.

"You are eager, good. You will be delving deep into the tomb of Naga Sadow for this final trial. Inside the deepest and utmost-forbidden chamber is his final resting place, and within his sarcophagus you will find his most valued possession: his custom-built lightsaber. However, entering this chamber will be no simple task, as it is concealed by an extremely well-hidden set of locking mechanisms. You are in luck, though. Imperial troopers caught a Twi'lek, an impudent little thing, who was attempting to enter the chamber and succeeding. I had them take her to the cells and placed under the supervision of Jailor Knash. I am aware that you two know each other already through a now-deceased mutual acquaintance."

Emron grit his teeth. Knash, now there was a name he had been hoping to not hear again any time soon. Preferably never again, if he had any say in the matter. Still, if he had to…

"Ah, I can tell by your expression that you do know him. Unsavory worm is he not?"

"He talks far too much for his own good, my Lord."

"I find myself hard-pressed to disagree with you, acolyte. However, it is he who you must secure the Twi'lek's release from. Once she is released, take her with you into the tomb and make her open the chamber. How you do so is, of course, entirely up to you."

"Yes, my Lord."

"Oh, and one more thing," Baras said as Emron turned to leave. "I will be sending Vemrin into the tomb after you, and he will know about the Twi'lek as well." Emron was sure there was a wicked smile under that mask. "I expect you will be alert and able to deal with him."

"Yes, my Lord," Emron said one last time, before making his way out of the office and towards the cells.


Emron glanced around the cells. Nothing remained from his last visit here, the cages had been hauled away, the blood and piss cleaned from the floor. Nothing, that is, except for the one thing that he wished had disappeared.

"Well well, look who it is, I heard you were comin', but I hardly expected you to be here so quick."

"Hello again, Jailor Knash," he replied, his voice full of blatantly obvious faux happiness. He was unsurprised when Knash failed to pick up on it.

"So, I understand you're taking this pain in the neck off my hands," he said while gesturing towards the caged Twi'lek.

"Hey, I'm the one wearing the shock collar, and I'm the pain in the neck?" protested said Twi'lek. Impudent thing indeed.

Knash did not even bother looking back at her, instead simply raising the shock trigger with his right hand and depressed the button. The Twi'lek fell to the ground writhing.

"I require her to be alive in order to complete my task, Jailor," Emron said as he watched her jerk around the floor of her cage in agony.

"Just getting some last few kicks in while I still can."

"Could we hurry up and do whatever it is that you two are planning on doing?" the Twi'lek said weakly from the floor. "Preferably before he fries my neck to a-" She let out an incomprehensible gurgle and flopped around some more as Knash depressed the button again.

"Enough! I came here for the Twi'lek, not to watch you entertain yourself Jailor! Unless," Emron's voice dropped dangerously low as he leaned into Knash's face, "you plan on explaining to Darth Baras just why his acolytes were unable to complete their Trials."

Knash's eyes expanded to the size of small moons. He quickly shoved the trigger towards Emron, as if he had been told the mechanism suddenly infected its holders with some dread plague or stole all their money. "O-of course not, my Lord! I was just…I mean…" With that, he hurried to unlock the cage, before practically sprinting out of the cells, clearly afraid he would end up making another mistake that would see him with his guts strewn about Baras' office. He disappeared so fast that Emron briefly thought he had been dealing with a compellingly realistic hologram rather than a person, with the term "person" used liberally in this case.

Emron let out a low chuckle as his mind finally caught up with what had just happened, while the Twi'lek pushed herself up off the floor.

"That was impressively quick," she commented.

"Indeed. Jailor Knash seems to be bent on redefining the phrase 'blink and you miss it.' But enough idle chatter, I require your services," Emron said.

"My…services?" She eyed him suspiciously, backing up slightly.

"I require access to the innermost chamber of the tomb of Naga Sadow. A chamber that, according to my understanding, you came close to entering yourself."

"Oh, those services." A slight relaxing of muscles. Odd, what had she meant by that? "I… suppose I can show you around that old tomb. Just a slight manner of manipulating the objects the switches are hidden inside. Did it once after all. Plus it beats hanging around in here."

"Excellent."

"Just one thing though: I'm officially on strike in regards to domestic duties."

"And here I was hoping that I'd finally found someone to clean all the dust I keep finding in these tombs. Oh well. Let's go."


"Do you have a name?" Emron asked.

"Why do you ask?" said the Twi'lek.

"I can call you Twi'lek if you prefer."

"Fair enough, calling you 'Big Bad Sith Lord' would get awkward after a while I suppose. You can call me Vette, everyone else does. I assume you have some sort of really weird Sithy name?"

"Just Emron, if you please," Oh yes, this experience was promising to prove interesting at the very least. About as interesting and enjoyable as gutting a tuk'ata perhaps. Still, being somewhat respectful tended to be more effective than torturing someone constantly for the same results. Unless one was dealing with a person like Vemrin, or Knash, or an insufferably smug Jedi. Then pain practically becomes a duty.

"So how are you planning on doing this?"

"First I'm going to get you a weapon. Then you're going to open the chamber. Finally I grab the lightsaber I'm after and we get out of there as fast as possible. I've spent enough time in these tombs to not want to go into another."

"Aren't you worried I'll just shoot you and run?"

"There's a reason you'll be leading, and I'll be following."

"Of course."


Sergeant Tarsil was puzzled. Why had he ever wanted to deny such a reasonable person a blaster pistol? Of course this good man's reasoning made sense, whatever had he been thinking?

"Here you go my Lord. Good luck with your trials."

"Thank you Sergeant, you may resume your duties now," Emron said dismissively. "Here."

Vette cast a critical eye over the pistol before holstering it. "It'll do. What're you expecting inside the tomb?"

"Dark Side energy, living nightmares, gibbering madmen. The usual fare for Sith tombs. Academy rules are waived inside this tomb, so if you see something moving that isn't me, blast it."

"Got it."

"Oh, and my number one fan will be following us. Leave him to me."

"You Sith are weird," Vette said as the pair walked through the entrance of Naga Sadow's tomb.


The Tomb of Ajunta Pall had been a twisting, winding, expansive underground labyrinth. The Tomb of Marka Ragnos had been a large monument to the glory of the ancient Sith Empire and one of its greatest rulers. The Tomb of Tulak Hord had been partly a fortress, partly a resting place. All had been built similarly in the sense that each were designed to resist intrusions by the unwelcome by their intimidating size and the fearsome names attached to each. While the Tomb of Naga Sadow shared these charming qualities with the other, it added another factor into the equation. An all-consuming permeation by the Dark Side. Walking in with a mind unprepared for the sheer magnitude of the Force energies within was the equivalent of flying a starship directly into a black hole. One second your mind would be there, and the next it would be gone. Perhaps the most powerful Force users would be able to walk into the tomb without fear and see it for what it truly was, but for someone of Emron's skill level, it was a vast and unforgiving pit of malice and terror. It was not made any easier for Emron either by the fact that he also had to shield Vette's mind from this effect too, lest he find himself without a means of opening the burial chamber.

Emron grimaced. He was by no means a master at the art of mental shields, something he knew he desperately needed to train himself in further. His lack of training meant he had to strain himself to shield both of them, and as a result his focus was slipping. He would be slower to respond to any ambushes, and his reactions would be impeded in a fight. The only consolation he had was that Vemrin would suffer from a similar penalty, even if it was less severe than his. His lack of focus was playing havoc on his senses as well, the Dark Side slipping into the cracks and taking all the liberties that it could. Were there really skeletons of acolytes from multiple species scattered all over the floors and heaped in piles in the corners, or was it just an illusion, a trick of the Dark Side to see what it wanted him to see? In places as old and as steeped in evil as this, it was almost impossible to tell reality from the imaginary.

He glanced around, certain he had just seen the shadows taking form and watching them from the deepest crevices in the stone. They had already unlocked two of the mechanisms and Vette was currently working on the third. So far, so good. But Vemrin was out there, somewhere, along with far worse things, and all of them were simply waiting for the most opportune moment to strike. The worst part was that he probably would never see them strike, given how the total blackness was wrapping around him like a shroud, obscuring his vision. There were a few torches that burned with a sickly blue flame here and there, breaking up the monotony of darkness occasionally, but not nearly enough for Emron's taste.

"There, got it," Vette said as she pried her hands free from the locking mechanism. Emron heard the device let out an ominous series of clicks, which he had come to associate with the unlocking sequence.

"Just out of curiosity, how did you manage to do all this before? The only reason we haven't gone completely crazy so far is because I'm shielding us, and yet you've done all this once already. And you're clearly no Force user."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence," she replied dryly. "I actually was using some sort of amulet that blocked all Force energies in an area around it. Really old, supposed to be the only one left, or at least that's what the guy claimed before I stole it out from under his nose."

"What happened to it?"

"Probably in some Sith's collection now, I reckon. Shame. I worked hard to steal that."

"I see. How many more locks?"

"One, it's further in. C'mon."

Emron would never admit it, but the absolute last thing he wanted to do at the moment was go any further into this place. He was sweating from the nervousness, and it was all he could do to keep his hands from shaking. His mouth was drier than the dust in the Valley of the Dark Lords. To hell with Baras, to hell with Vemrin, to hell with the trials, he just wanted out right now. But he had no choice. As afraid as he was, he was not about to lose to Vemrin, nor was he about to forfeit his life's dreams and plans because he could not control his fear when he needed to, or his life, period. So, steeling his mind once more, he set off in the gloomy darkness after Vette.

He just hoped he did not end up dribbling down his leg before this was all over.


They had done it. They had reached the last lock without incident. But Emron knew they needed to hurry up and finish this business quickly before his shields faltered and splintered into a million different pieces. That would prove to be ugly for both him and Vette. More so for him than her, what with him being deeply attuned to the energies that coursed through the walls and artifacts, though neither would leave the tomb alive should he fail.

"And…got it."

There was a deep rumbling further within the tomb as the final lock disengaged, not too far from where they stood.

This was it then, his destiny lay just outside his hands. One final effort and he would be the rightful apprentice to Baras. All he had to do was not trip in the last lap of the race.

"Let's go, we're almost done," Emron said.

"No sign of whoever is supposed to be tailing us…" Vette said as she glanced around nervously.

"He's in here, I know it. It's just a matter of timing."


A dead end. Or was it?

"Ok, the entrance is here in this chamber, give me a second to get my bearings and I'll have us in," Vette said as she began sizing up the statues of Naga Sadow that stood vigil in the shadowed corners.

"Just hurry it up," Emron said as he watched her. Vemrin was in here. He had to be. All other opportunities to ambush them had been passed up, and to delay now would let Emron lay has hands upon the lightsaber first. Emron guessed that Vemrin would never allow him to do such a thing, even if Baras only cared about who returned with it, rather than who touched it first. Vanity is an odd beast at times.

Sure enough, as he lowered his mental shields as low as he dared to, allowing him to focus more clearly on the almost complete silence that hung over the tomb, he heard it. An almost imperceptible crunch of footsteps on shattered pottery and stone behind him. Had he not been focusing as hard as he could upon listening, he never would have heard it.

The footsteps came closer. Still he waited, feigning obliviousness until the sounds had reached just behind him. Now the footsteps and been joined with the faint humming noise that accompanied an activated warblade. Definitely another acolyte and not some Dark Side horror come to erase him from existence then.

Emron pirouetted on his left heel as he brought his right leg up to strike. There was a satisfying crunching noise as he felt Vemrin's nose crumple beneath the assault, followed by an even more satisfying grunt of pain as he saw Vemrin fall backwards to the ground. He drew and activated his warblade as his foe pushed himself back up.

"Keep getting that door open slave, your fool master will be dead here in a moment," Vemrin growled at Vette, who had come running as soon as she heard sudden movement from Emron, as he wiped blood from his shattered nose. Emron grinned minutely at the sight.

"Really? Well then, I'm right here. Do you plan to act on that threat or are you just going to wait for me to shrivel up and die?" he returned.

Vemrin's eyes narrowed, before he dashed in to strike Emron. Emron easily parried the blow before lashing out with a blow of his own.

A minute passed. Two minutes passed. Moments in time punctuated by a thrust here, a slash there. Blocks, parries, ripostes. Emron slashed low after feinting high, almost catching Vemrin off-guard and nearly taking off one of his legs. Vemrin barely managed to block the strike, but was unable to react to the follow-up cut to his left arm.

Although up until now Emron had been given as good as he gave, Vemrin was beginning to slow and accumulate a number of nicks, scratches, and cuts here and there. This puzzled him. For a man who had climbed his way up to the position of alpha bastard of the Sith Academy, he had expected a harder challenge. Perhaps Vemrin had attained his position through blackmail and intimidation rather than force of arms, perhaps the newcomers had seen him in charge of a rather large clique and had instinctively avoided him rather than risk making moves against him.

Not that it matters now, Emron through as he smashed the pommel of his warblade into Vemrin's already-ruined nose, no more shadow games, no lies and intimidation. Just the thrill of the adrenaline rush and the clash of blades.

Two minutes later and the inevitable occurred. Vemrin fumbled a parry and ended up losing his right forearm for his troubles. As he stared in shock at the bloody stump left behind by his opponent's swipe, Emron took the opportunity to bury his warblade through his eye socket all the way up to the hilt, the tip poking out of the other side of the skull. Vemrin's body stood upright for another moment or two, as if taking the time to process its death, before toppling over.

Emron reached down and yanked his weapon out, flicking bits of bone and gray matter off it as he did, before turning to a silent Vette, who had been silently watching the whole fight.

"Now then," he panted, "Shall we continue?"


It had been a short walk down another corridor and the burial chamber of Naga Sadow was now laid out before them. Rows upon rows of stone statues lined a pathway that led to a raised platform, upon which rested a sarcophagus, flanked by two torches enkindled by ever burning fires. The final resting place of Naga Sadow. It was, all told, an impressive and intimidating sight. One that none had ever laid eyes upon since its completion. Until now.

The weight of the Dark Side was crushingly oppressive in here, and Emron feared his mental shields would break with just the slightest of prods from an outside factor. Best to open the sarcophagus and run as fast as possible.

Emron set off down the gauntlet of impassive stone faces, Vette right behind him, all of them singularly unimpressed by their being among them. They had stood a silent vigil for over a thousand years, and would last another thousand. What was an aspiring acolyte and a slave before them?

That was when he saw them, though it was only the briefest of flickers out the corner of his eye. As if the shadows that clung to everything in the tomb had twitched momentarily. But that was just another illusion, another manifestation of the Dark Side, another attempt to further weaken his shields. Right?

They had reached the casket now. Emron tried to push the lid off but found it sealed fast. Annoyed, and more than a little anxious, he settled for quickly blasting the top off with a Force push. He paid it no mind as it went careening off into the darkness beyond the torchlight, eventually smashing into the back wall. Inside the sarcophagus the skull of Naga Sadow grinned back at him with a handful of teeth. A few musty old rags covered the rest of the remaining bones, and at the foot of the coffin sat the lightsaber he had come to retrieve.

He had just wrapped his hand around the grip when the torches suddenly snuffed out.

Suddenly he realized that the flickering he had been glimpsing since he had entered the tomb were not figments of his imagination. Instead, they were nightmares given form, horrors from the other side come to torment mortals. And they were coming for him.

He grabbed the lightsaber out of the sarcophagus and whipped around as fast as he could, activating it as he spun. Vette barely had time to avoid being sliced in half by the blood red beam of plasma, stumbling backwards with an indignant squawk.

"What was that all about?" she demanded. "And what happened to the light?"

He ignored her, squinting into the darkness in an attempt to discern where the attack he knew was coming from. A useless endeavor, some small and primal part of his mind was screaming at him. He should just run, abandon the slave. Maybe they would go for her and ignore him long enough to escape. The rest of his brain was doing its best to try to silence the rogue sector by shouting about how Sith never ran from their foes. Emron was leaning more towards the former than the latter at this point, but he stood his ground.

There. He could somewhat discern shapes flitting around in the darkness, as if the abominations coming for them were somehow darker than the shadows surrounding them. The temperature inside the tomb, actively chilly beforehand, now dropped to near glacial, as if the figures were absorbing all the heat they came into contact with. The void given form, the tiny part of Emron's mind that was not engaged in a war of words with itself.

Vette saw them too, and nervously drew her pistol. He figured he would have to try to keep her alive as well, given how useful she had proven so far. It was only right, after all, payment for services rendered.

Then the figures rushed them. There were about half a dozen of them, possibly more that he had not seen behind the statues. The first one died easily enough, dissipating as Emron's new lightsaber slashed through its midsection. Three stopped short and began to circle around him, while the other two headed for Vette. She blasted one once with her pistol, then twice, before setting it to fully automatic and unloading the rest of her power pack into the creature. Finally it disappeared, leaving four of its brethren behind.

Two of said brethren charged Emron from opposite directions. Emron responded by rolling to his left, the only angle not covered by a shadow, forcing the pair to come at him dead on. The one that had been rushing his back reached him first, and was cut in twain for its troubles. The second one reached him a heartbeat after and Emron stabbed that one through its chest.

Glancing around, he saw Vette had just finished off her second one and was reloading. Then he realized how stupid he had just been by letting his guard down, moments before he felt an icy chill permeate his right shoulder and travel swiftly upwards towards his mind. The contact shattered his mental shields.

Suddenly all he could see were countless worlds burning, stars being plunged into eternal night, cities filled with drained husks of corpses, and shattered fleets. He saw the destruction of not just the Empire and the Republic, but the entire galaxy itself.

The contact only lasted a second, but it felt like an eternity. Emron would have screamed as he was yanked out of his nightmare and back into reality, had the mental assault not drained him of his breath. He collapsed to the ground, the shadow standing triumphant above him, ready to finish him off, when suddenly it was punctured was dozens of beams of light. It vanished with a faint sighing noise, as if disappointed it could not finish the work it had started.

He was vaguely aware of Vette hauling him to his feet. All he knew was that they needed to leave before the demons of the night returned.

"Run," he whispered hoarsely.

And so they did.


"Wait here," he said to Vette as they stood just outside the entrance to Baras' office, turning towards her slightly. They had made their way back to the Academy in silence, an unspoken agreement passing between the two of them to never discuss what had happened back within the tomb to another soul, not even to each other. Now came the presenting of the lightsaber to Baras, the end of Emron's Sith Trials, and an uncertain future.

"And if I don't?" she asked, the slightest hint of defiance in her tone.

"Well," he replied, turning to face her fully now, pulling out the shock trigger out of his pocket. "The thing about shock collars, you see, is that their transmitters have an impressively long range. And should I return from this meeting to find you not where I left you standing…" He made a show of cranking the voltage setting all the way to the maximum. "I suppose I'll just have to hold down this button here until I get bored."

"Gotcha, won't move a muscle then."

"I thought you'd see things my way," he said as he entered Baras' office.


Baras stood in the middle of his office, looking as if he had not moved an inch since Emron had left. Emron would not have been surprised one bit if that was the case.

"You to return to me alone, with Naga Sadow's lightsaber in your hand. This truly is your hour of triumph. Revel in it! You have conquered all who opposed you, and proven yourself worthy of being called Sith!"

Emron knelt down before Baras. He could not, for the life of him, explain why he suddenly felt the urge to do so, but it felt right when he did it.

"In this hour I take you as my apprentice, and as the executor of my will. You will help reshape the Empire in ways you never dreamed possible, and reach never before heard heights of power by doing so. Now rise, Sith Apprentice Emron, and claim your destiny!"

"Command me, my master," Emron said as he rose, having regained enough control over his jaw to muster up a single sentence.

"Good," Baras said, as if satisfied that he had effectively stupefied his apprentice. "You recall the shards you recovered from Tulak Hord's tomb, yes? I did not have you and the other acolytes gather them on a whim. They are supposedly pieces of a much larger puzzle regarding the ancient Sith, and there is currently a xenoarcheologist on Vaiken Spacedock who is interested in these shards. You will take the fragments to him, and then make your way to Dromund Kaas. After you have concluded your business, there is a Gage-class transport docked at Vaiken named Black Talon that I will secure you passage on. Board it, and it will take you to Dromund faster than any shuttle."

"Yes, master."

"Speed is of the utmost necessity in this endeavor. There are plans afoot to ruin me, and I need you by my side as fast as you can get there. Do not dawdle."

"I will not fail you, Lord."

"Now go forth, my new apprentice, and carry out my will, but never forget this…" Baras said, before leaning in, his voice dropping. "You are mine now. Body and soul. Every act that you commit, every word that you speak, every thought that you think is laid bare before me. You are my creature now, and you exist only as long as I deign to allow you. Burn this fact into your mind Emron, so that you never forget."

Emron shivered slightly. No, he most certainly would not forget this day, no matter how hard he tried.

A/N: And that's that, the end of the Korriban arc. About time. I'm really looking forward to writing the next arc, and I hope you're all enjoying the story so far. Thanks to all who have read, reviewed, followed, and favorited!