Perhaps I should explain how it was that I, who never had much of a talent for the force beyond my premonitions, learned force lightning. I do not mean to describe here all my days at the Sith academy, for many things happened in the years I was there, and those require a separate tale. But this story happens to be a very short one.

It happened about four months after I the day I first set foot within those dark halls. While the others progressed quickly, I had been unable to learn more than an inkling of the powers the instructors taught the other acolytes. Their seemingly effortless progress, compared with my floundering and failures, had drawn a lot of jeers from students and masters alike.

All the same, I had done quite well on all the tests. The acolytes were often asked to go into the ancient tombs to retrieve some artifacts of interest or perform dangerous tasks, such as hunting the tukatas that wondered the sandy plains or clear out the caves of Korriban from corrupted beasts. Many acolytes perished attempting these tasks, which bothered neither the instructors nor the students, who simply accepted a certain casualty rate as natural.

But I always found the tests quite easy. I used my premonitions to find a shortcut, a path that would lead me past the horde of enemies without combat. When combat was unavoidable, I relied on droids. The valley of the dark lords was chock-full of droid carcasses and parts, discarded from all the battles this place had seen over the millenia. I had a lot of practice tending to droids from the years I helped out on my family's estate. I spent a good portion of my time building functional machines out of these parts and upgrading them as best I could. For everything I had faced by that point, this turned out to be more than sufficient.

It was a strange situation to say the least. The same acolytes who had taunted me mercilessly for my failures with the force burned with jealousy when they saw me come back from some test with nary a scratch, themselves full of scars and often permanent injuries from the same battles.

As might be expected, I became the target of much humiliation and assault by the other students, most prominently from Lashowe, whose anger burned brighter each day. But none of that had maimed me or harmed me irreparably, for it was widely understood in the academy that while bullying was accepted, even encouraged, inflicting permanent harm was the sole province of the academy's leaders.

Reader, I will not burden you with an account of all that transpired, for it has a certain monotonous quality that will bore you. Shall I tell you of the time I had pulled aside my bedroll and was about to turn in for the night when I saw that my bed teemed with spiders? Will I tell you of the day swhen Lashowe, flanked by several of her hangers-on, waited for me by the entrance to my room, shock prods in their hands, forcing me to spend the night out in the sands of Korriban? Best I skip all that and move forward to the day when one of the overseers, a cold and beautiful Twilek, fetched me from my room and bade me to follow her.

"I speak for all the overseers," she said, looking straight ahead, "when I say that we grow tired of your pitiful progress."

I said nothing. She had taken me outside and was leading me to the animal pens off the side of the academy.

"You will either be Sith," she continued, "or you will not be at all. That is the bargain you made when you walked through the gates of this place."

She led me to a cage and, opening the door, motioned me inside. I knew better than to resist. Inside a kath hound roused herself, her eyes gleaming with hunger.

"This diseased specimen," the Twilek said, "is a rather weak exemplar of the species. But it is still quicker and faster than you." Did I detect a note of sadness in her voice?

The kath hound growled and began to creep closer.

"You cannot escape this battle," she went on. Her voice was rich with emotion, but I could no longer tell what it was. Glee? Sadness? Happiness? "If you want to live, then a single strike of force lightning would do it. You will either prevail or you will be food. This is our way."

The hound let out a loud roar and suddenly leaped at me from halfway across the cage. I felt as if the time had slowed, as if the hound was frozen in the air. Were these going to be my last moments? Was I about to fade away into nothingness? I recalled everything the instructors here had ever taught me. I closed my eyes, shut out the present, and concentrated as hard as I could. I pulled on every bad memory, poured every ounce of concentration into my hands - and nothing, nothing came out.

On top of me now, the hound had sunk her teeth into my shoulder.

I screamed in pain.

I was going to die here; my premonitions, which earlier seemed to indicate otherwise, had failed for the first time. The universe was a cold and indifferent place. It cared not one bit for whether I lived or died. I screamed again, first from the pain as the hound's sharp teeth tore our chunks of flesh from my shoulder; then from the anger; then from despair, which hurt most of all. I screamed and screamed again. What was the point of my life, what purpose was there to having been born into this world and working so hard to my way to this terrible place, only to die here and now?

And then I smelt the fried flesh and felt the small shocks in my fingers as tendrils of lightning emerged from my hands. Besides me, the Twilek was laughing, her voice beautiful and rich with pleasure.