Part 11: Vemrin
Fighting was a lot easier when you had five other people fighting with you. It made Caressa wonder why her parents had never bothered taking more than one of their crew members with them at a time. She'd asked about it once, when she was young and still scared of Khem Val, but her mother kept insisting on leaving him behind in order to bring Ashara on her missions. The only response she'd gotten was something about it being difficult to talk to people when you traveled in a mob. But Caressa was convinced the greater combat effectiveness far outweighed social concerns.
There weren't as many beasts in this tomb, but those that there were got slaughtered with ease. Surprisingly, there were a lot of other acolytes in the tomb, however, and they looked murderous. The tomb was apparently a popular destination for trials, and many of them must have thought killing rivals in the tombs achieved their goals. But while the party occasionally heard the sounds of battle in faraway chambers as the acolytes fought with one another, none of the acolytes were stupid enough to strike at a party as large as Caressa's. They made their way through the tomb's stone tunnels with little incident, then, and it wasn't long before Vette, who'd been guiding the group, announced that they stood in the room with the secret entrance.
"Just let me get my bearings," she said, looking around the high-vaulted room. "It should be on the other side of this statue…"
Just then, Caressa felt something in the Force. She was being watched. Then, she felt movement behind her.
"Look out!" Klemral called, but Caressa was already whirling around and raising her sword to block Vemrin's heavy slash. Presumably realizing there were too many people to try to sneak up close, he'd jumped from across the whole room, hoping to strike Caressa down before anyone could react. When that failed and Vemrin was pushed away from Caressa, Vemrin spat out angrily, "How dare you bring these others here! This trial is for you and me alone."
"If it'll make you feel better," replied Caressa coolly. "I'll take you down all by myself." Then, not taking her eyes off Vemrin, she said to those behind her, "Don't help."
Vemrin smiled a wicked grin. "A duel, then. It ends now. Tell these others to disperse once I kill you, if they know what's good for them. Except the slave girl. She will show me the way into the cave, and I will claim the lightsaber and my rightful place as Baras' apprentice."
"In the extraordinarily unlikely event that you defeat me, each of these others will do whatever they wish. And you will have a hard time convincing the 'slave girl' to do anything, I think. Take a look at her neck. She's not a slave anymore."
Vemrin glanced at Vette, and his eyebrows furrowed as he noticed the lack of a collar. "What? You freed her? And she still follows you?" He gripped the hilt of his warblade tighter. "Well, no matter. There are other means of persuasion."
"I don't know…" said Caressa, "I kinda think she could beat you in a fight."
Vemrin scoffed at that, and Caressa could feel a flash of surprise and gratitude from Vette.
"Enough talk!" Vemrin shouted. "My passions run deeper than yours! I am the true essence of what it is to be Sith! After today, you will be forgotten! It ends here and now."
Vemrin raised his sword and swung it. Caressa met it with her own blade, and the battle begun.
Caressa realized she hadn't thought quite accurately when she'd compared Vemrin's threats to those of a gizka. Vemrin fought with a ferocity closer to that of the monstrous rakghoul than that of the common pest. Caressa had to work hard to defend herself, her weapon flying to one spot after another. Still, she never took a step backward. She used her Echani training, and learned about Vemrin. She discovered why she'd so underestimated him: his strength flowed not from the Force, but from a purely physical skill with his warblade. He was always caught off-guard by Caressa's pushes and pulls on him through the Force, and Caressa was able to divert many an attack simply by tugging on his weapon at the right time.
Still, if he was taken purely as a martial artist, Vemrin was astounding. His speed, strength, and strategy were all such that Caressa suspected that if she were to suddenly lose her connection to the Force and have to fight him as swordsman to swordsman, he would win. But she did have a connection to the Force, and a strong enough one to break Vemrin's hold when he tried the one Force move he did try: Force choke.
After a few rounds of frustrating failure, Vemrin held up his hand and lifted Caressa into the air, choking her. Caressa didn't even grab at her throat, despite the pain that erupted there – instead she closed her eyes and focused, reaching out with the Force to meet Vemrin's force with a force of her own, and blasted him backward. She rubbed her throat briefly with her non-sword hand, and then leapt back onto the battered opponent.
Vemrin fought with increasing desperation and frustration, his frenzy surpassing that of any other opponent Caressa had faced. Though I suspect my parents could do even better, if they decide to truly fight when they spar with me. Still, Vemrin's passions are indeed making him strong. Let's show him what happens when I, too, fight with passion.
Caressa dropped barriers in her mind, barriers she constructed to keep control of her emotions as she pleased, and she let the rage that always lurked behind some of them pour throughout her mind and body. This man must die! she yelled within herself, as she thrust more and more forcefully. Strike, strike, strike. Strike, strike, strike. Over and over, her blade a mere blur, charged with speed and power. She could feel Vemrin's rage start to cool and be replaced by fear, as he recognized for the first time the true power of his opponent. Strike, strike, strike. Vemrin struggled to keep up, now playing entirely defensively. He raised his free hand in some last desperate attempt to perform another Force move, and Caressa brought her sword down on it, severing it in one clean stroke and a spray of blood. Huh. That's the second time a battle's ended that way for me, she thought to herself, raising her mental barriers again and letting her rage cool off as Vemrin screamed in pain.
Dropping his weapon to clutch at his destroyed stump with his good hand, he cried incoherently for a moment, before spitting out, "Becoming Baras' apprentice was my destiny."
"Maybe it was," agreed Caressa. "You certainly got closer than anyone else, since I was never truly interested in the job."
"What?" Vemrin asked angrily through clenched teeth.
"You see, Vemrin, you don't even have the honor of being my nemesis. That honor belongs to Darth Baras himself. I'm not going to serve him – I'm going to kill him. You're nothing more than a gnat who got in my way."
"You're… insane," Vemrin breathed out, his face going pale from blood loss.
Caressa smiled. "We'll see. You won't, though. Make your peace with the Force - it's time for you to die," she said gleefully, and swung her sword through his head, severing that as well.
. . .
Several of her allies burst into applause when she turned back to them. Only Dolgis and Phyne did not, the latter electing only to smile at her, and the former looking sadly at the remains of his former leader. Vette clapped loudest of all, and then made a show of gesturing to a large hole that had mysteriously appeared in the wall. "The secret entrance," she said, bowing as she introduced it.
Caressa smiled, tucked away her saber, and strode towards the opening.
"Uh, you're welcome!" said Vette sarcastically.
"Thank you, Vette," replied Caressa, still smiling. "You've been most helpful."
"It's nice to be acknowledged," Vette half-whispered to herself as she turned towards the opening and led the party through it.
Behind Caressa, the rest of the party was buzzing about the conflict they'd just witnessed, and the new power they'd just seen their leader demonstrate. Caressa herself ignored them, and gave terse answers to any questions asked of her. Her attention was on the cavern they now found themselves in. It sprawled spider-like in every direction.
"Which way?" Caressa asked the Twi'lek beside her.
"Let's see…" Vette answered, scanning the various tunnels. "This is the part of the tomb I never got to, so I can't be certain, but I think the lightsaber you're looking for should be in the burial chamber, which ought to be…" her eyes alit on some markings Caressa didn't recognize on the walls of one of the passages, "That way!" Vette marched down the tunnel, and the party followed, until a minute or two later the tunnel erupted into a large decorated chamber. There were pillars and statues and the like, but the most interesting feature was the sarcophagus in the middle of the room.
Caressa walked up to the sarcophagus and used the Force to levitate its heavy stone cover into the air. Inside was a skeleton, one bony hand clutching a lightsaber hilt. This confused Caressa. "Wasn't Naga Sadow actually buried in the Yavin sytem?" she muttered to herself. "I thought this tomb was just ceremonial."
"Could be someone else, I guess," Vette replied beside her.
"I guess," Caressa agreed. Then she lifted the lightsaber out of the sarcophagus and dropped the lid back into place. She deftly picked the lightsaber out of the air and ignited it. Her face lit up with its red glow – though the red was of a darker hue than usual – and she gave it a couple of swings to listen to its wonderful humming.
"Feels so good to wield one of these again," she said to herself as she extinguished it and hooked it to her belt. "I was getting tired of that mandatory training warblade."
"Seems like you're less likely to slice yourself with a blaster," Vette, who had been eying the saber nervously, replied.
Caressa laughed. "Maybe so, if you don't have the Force. It's even worse if you have one of the double-bladed varieties – you can barely move for fear of impaling yourself. But once you train yourself to feel its presence in the Force, things get a lot easier."
"I suppose that's why I only ever see Jedi and Sith using them, and not every thug who's stolen enough money to buy one."
"Suppose so," Caressa agreed, and then led the group out of the chamber.
There were some sort of zombie things, likely tomb guardians awakened by the opening of the sarcophagus, that tried to stop them as they left, but Caressa didn't even need to activate her new saber again before Phyne, Teeno, Dolgis, and Klemral had cut them all to pieces.
"Now, Vette," Caressa said when they returned to the spider-like chamber. "Where would you have gone looking for Revan's cache?"
"This way," said Vette immediately, walking down another tunnel. "It looks the most natural. Not marked up or decorated by your slaves."
Caressa nodded, and followed her, and the rest of the group followed Caressa.
