Chapter 13 - When Chains are Broken
Mordivai swept down the halls of Korriban Academy and acolytes stepped aside to let him pass. Dust clung to his robes, blood smeared his face and hands, and sand was caked in his hair. He was a ghost from the tombs come to life, strung with cobwebs that fluttered from his clothes as he walked. He moved with a singular purpose, his eyes fixed ahead, his fists clenching and unclenching spasmodically within the sleeves of his robe. He was a shadow. He was death. He was vengeance.
Behind him stalked the monster, the Dashade, a creature of legend made real. He was a nightmare, with a mouth full of fanged teeth, clawed hands and feet, and a body implanted with cybernetics. He followed obediently as if led by an invisible chain, always a few steps behind.
The last few hours were already a haze in Mordivai's mind. He recalled the feel of the vibroblade in his hand, its hilt sticky with sweat and sand, and the way it buzzed through the blackness, guided only by instinct and the Force itself. He was beyond terror by then. He was brimming with a wild fury. How dare you! his mind screamed at his unseen assailant. I refuse to die! A well of power had opened up inside him, one that he never knew existed, pouring forth a desperate stream of energy which he used to supplement what strength he had left. He had fought like he had never fought in his life. In the end, the Dashade had fallen at his feet, offering its service.
"I am Khem Val," the Dashade had answered, "and I will feast upon your enemies."
"Then I am your master now," Mordivai told him.
Mordivai entered the dormitory hallway and strode to one of the doors. He raised his hand and it blew open, smashing against the wall. The room was empty. Mordivai turned and saw a slack-jawed acolyte standing in the hall.
"Where's Wydr?"
"Wydr? He...he just left. Packed up. He's going home. He went out. That way."
Mordivai left the room and the acolyte jumped aside, craning his neck up at the Dashade.
Mordivai found Wydr alone in a small outer courtyard. All the blood drained from Wydr's face when he looked up. He began to stammer.
"Oh stars. I didn't mean to kill you. I didn't mean it!"
Using the Force, Mordivai threw him backward against a stone wall and held him there.
"I'm not dead, you idiot."
"Oh! Oh, thank goodness then. I knew you'd escape. I just went along-"
"You are a liar and a coward." Mordivai turned to the Dashade. "This one is yours, Khem."
Wydr crumpled to the ground when Mordivai released him. Khem lurched forward and snatched up Wydr by the neck in one of his clawed hands.
Mordivai turned and left the courtyard. Wydr's hysterical screams followed him out, but were soon cut off. A few minutes later, Khem caught up with him. He looked bigger now, fuller somehow and more robust.
Next, Mordivai located Rabinya in the training room. She lowered the training blade she had been holding, her mouth falling open.
"Impossible," she sputtered.
Mordivai paced across the room, drawing his vibroblade. He struck her down with one two-handed swing before she had even moved from her spot, her eyes following him blankly the whole while, her face registering incomprehension until the end.
Mordivai went last to Overseer Harkun's office.
He threw open the doors and swept inside. Ffon was there, leaning over Harkun's desk, in the midst of some heated discussion. They both jerked in surprise when Mordivai entered.
"You!" Harkun said. "And...the Dashade."
Mordivai slammed a holocron on the desk, and it kicked up a small cloud of dust when it landed.
"Here..." he said pointedly, "...is your map."
He held up his hand and used the Force to lift Ffon off his feet. Ffon kicked the air, his red eyes stark with surprise. Mordivai hurled him into the nearest wall. He fell and Mordivai picked him up again, suspending him in the air and choking him further. Ffon helplessness was more than satisfying, he discovered. It was exhilarating.
"What are you doing?" Harkun was yelling. "You can't...stop this!"
Ffon was growing ashen, his eyelids fluttering as his pupils rolled upwards.
"What is going on?" A female voice broke Mordivai's concentration and he dropped Ffon to the ground. Ffon blinked and gasped, rubbing his throat and looking dazed.
"Lord Zash!" Harkun's voice was practically a squeak. "What are you doing here?"
Mordivai turned to see an attractive blonde human entering the room. Even if it hadn't been for the blatant fear coming off of Harkun, Mordivai still would have been impressed with her commanding presence. She smiled pleasantly, but there was no kindness in her eyes.
"Overseer," she said. Her tone was falsely pleasant, yet scolding, the kind of voice a teacher might use to admonish an unruly pupil. "Are you saying that I, a lord of the Sith, should not go where I please here in the Academy of the Sith?"
"No! I meant so such thing."
Zash's attention had already dropped away, her gaze falling to Harkun's desk. She brightened.
"I see someone brought me the map from Naga Sadow's tomb. How wonderful."
"Yes," Harkun said quickly. "Yes, here it is." He picked it up and held it out for Zash. She took it, smiling graciously.
"You said Ffon would have something for me by the end of today. Is Ffon responsible for this gift?" She turned her chilling smile on Ffon, but he just stared at her from his spot on the floor, the lump in his throat bobbing sporadically.
"Ffon?" Zash prompted again, stronger this time.
"No, Lord Zash," Ffon croaked.
Harkun spoke up. "It was...it was him, my lord." He gestured in Mordivai's direction, unwilling, Mordivai noticed, to even speak his name.
"Splendid." Zash directed an approving nod at Mordivai. "Fine work, my apprentice." She reached for her belt, drew out a lightsaber and held it out to him.
"Ffon has disgraced himself and is not worthy," she said. "Finish him."
Mordivai took the weapon, feeling the sleek hilt settle comfortably against his palm as if it belonged there. He was only vaguely aware that Zash had called him "apprentice" and not "acolyte," but had little time to dwell on it, for the he was already calling the blade to life in his hand. Its humming was like music.
Ffon deserves to die, he thought. It is justice.
Mordivai pivoted sharply, and before Ffon could throw up his hands in defense, he stabbed Ffon clear through the chest with one swift stroke.
"Good," Zash said sweetly. "You may keep the weapon. It is my gift to you."
Mordivai sheathed it on his belt.
"Thank you, Master," he answered.
00o00
A few days later, Mordivai stood in Overseer Harkun's office for the last time. He felt strangely numb and distant, as if he were watching the scene unfold before him from the screen of a holovid. It was someone's else life, his old life, a life he no longer recognized.
He stood face to face with his parents.
"Mordivai." His mother rushed at him first and clutched him in a fierce embrace. Behind her, Mordivai spotted his father, dressed in uniform as always. His black hair had gone stark white since he had last seen him. In fact, he looked much like he had in Mordivai's vision in the ruins of Kaleth. You will be Sith, his father had told him. Praven had said such visions were not to be taken literally. Praven was wrong.
His mother, he saw when she pulled away, still looked much as he remembered her, her red eyes bright with a restless intensity, although there were lines at their corners now.
"You are so different," she said. Her hand brushed aside his hair, exposing the rippled scar that covered half his face. She held him by the shoulders and studied him some more. "You are Sith." There was approval in her voice.
Mordivai nodded and said nothing.
"Harkun says you did well and are apprenticed to a Sith lord already. I am proud of you."
"Thank you."
"So much has happened...we have searched for you for so long." She pulled a datapad from a pouch on her belt. "There's something you need to see." She held it out to him and he took it.
On it was a copy of an official government document, a death certificate. Mordivai was startled to see his own name printed at the top. It had been signed by two witnesses. The first was a medic whose name Mordivai did not recognize, but the other name was one he did know. Gatten Riel.
"That Jedi," his mother said, her voice laden now with malice, "kidnapped you. Stole you from us. Lied to Empire, to us and to you. He knew who you were. He meant to use you against us."
"He failed," Mordivai said quietly. He looked up. His mother's face was dark with the kind of rancor which only comes from years of nurturing.
"He needs to die," she said.
Mordivai held the datapad out to her. "He is already dead."
"I see." She sounded disappointed. She was quiet for a moment, but then her face cleared and she met Mordivai's eyes again. "I knew you had not died in that explosion. We would have never stopped searching for you. Never."
"How did you find me?"
She turned to his father. "Tell him, Malavai."
Admiral Quinn came forward. "All the recent graduates of the Academy are publicly listed, along with their mentor assignments and their family lineage, on the official government roster. Over the years, I have followed every lead I could, and so when I saw that a Mordivai Riel had recently completed training, I sent in a request for your bioscan read-out. It listed you as fifty-three point eight percent human and forty-six point two percent Pureblood. I requested a more detailed analysis and had it compared with each of ours. You were a genetic match. That was three days ago."
"Mordivai," his mother asked, "Why didn't you tell anyone who you were?"
Mordivai had spent years dreaming of being reconciled with his parents, and years more dreading it. Now that they were here he didn't know how to feel. How could he explain all his shame and confusion? He was Sith now. He had nothing to hide anymore. Why did he feel so guilty and conflicted? He decided to stick to the simplest facts.
"I did speak up, when I first arrived in Imperial space. But no one believed me. Guess I was officially dead anyway."
His mother clenched a fist and shook her head. "Outrageous. I heard what happened to you, Mordivai. My son, captured and sold as a common slave. We tracked down your buyer. That Lord Shastine will pay dearly."
"I will take care of it," Mordivai said quietly.
"Good. You deserve that much." She sighed. "Harkun didn't give us much time. I understand you have a shuttle to catch to Dromund Kaas."
His father glanced at the chrono and then back at his mother. "I would like a moment more, Morda."
"Of course." She went to the doorway and Mordivai spotted Harkun waiting in the hallway, looking stiff and uncomfortable. She engaged him in conversation and Mordivai turned his attention back his father.
For a moment, he had a flashback from Kaleth, and he waited for his father to start saying the same words to him that he had then. However, Admiral Quinn drew him into an unexpected hug instead.
He couldn't remember the last time he had been hugged by his father. Quinn had expressed his approval with a nod or the flash of a smile, or more rarely, in Mordivai's younger years, a fond pat on the head. Mordivai didn't know what to do at first, but finally he returned the embrace.
"That first year," Quinn said, his voice unusually rough, "we were lost. Your mother was frantic, and I had so many regrets."
"It's over now." Mordivai didn't know what else to say and had never been in the position to offer comfort to one of his parents before.
Quinn let go and stepped back. "We don't know you anymore. All those years, stolen from us. I've wondered, what did the Jedi tell you when they took you? What reason did they give for not returning you to us?"
"I was told that I was a prisoner of war. I had a choice of going to prison or going with the Jedi."
"That is a lie." Quinn's voice was calm as always, but his blue eyes were cold and angry. "You were a child and a civilian. They had no right to keep you."
Had Master Gatten truly deceived him all this time? He found it hard to imagine that Gatten, so gentle and earnest, could plot so coldly to keep a child from his family. He knew that what his father said was true, however. It made sense. How had he never thought of that before? Gatten was trying to save you from becoming Sith, he reminded himself. That is why he acted as he did. He would need more time to think on this.
At that moment, his mother stepped back into the room. "It's time for you to go." She sounded reluctant. "Mordivai." She leaned close, and lowered her voice. "Be wary of Lord Zash. She is a dangerous Sith. I only hope the Academy has prepared you well."
"I will remember that. Thank you."
She touched his hair one last time, ruffling it gently across his forehead. It was such an old, familiar gesture, and one that Mordivai associated with his childhood, that for a moment he felt a painful ache welling in his chest and his eyes stung. He took a slow, careful breath.
"Goodbye for now, Mordivai," Morda said.
"Bye."
Mordivai watched his parents leave. After they had gone, Harkun returned. Mordivai could sense the naked fear on him and suddenly he felt his emotions returning in a flood of anger. Such wanton hate the Jedi would have never condoned, yet it roared to life within him, and Mordivai, for once, did not try to rein it in. Through passion I gain strength. Harkun's trial had not killed him. It had shown him the origin of true power.
"If we ever meet again outside this Academy," Mordivai said, "I will kill you."
A/N: This was an important chapter (along with the one before it), because it represents a culmination of everything the story had been working towards up until this point. I've been both excited and nervous about posting it. It marks the end of Mordivai's life as a Jedi and the beginning of his journey as a Sith. My goal was to build this up in a believable way, so that when Mord "snaps" you feel that moment of breaking as well and get it. (And maybe even feel a bit of justified triumph as well.) I hope I succeeded. Mordivai is still Mordivai...his personality is not going to radically change or do a 180. But he's learning how to harness his anger and how to use it to fight back when needed. He's also, (poor guy,) about to go through a bit of an identity crisis, as if he hadn't already been teetering on the edge to begin with.
Deep down, this story is about defining who you are and not allowing others do that for you. Society is really good at putting us all in boxes, isn't it? Mordivai still has a ways to go.
Thank you for reading and for reviewing! I really appreciate hearing your thoughts. I love writing stories and I love sharing them with other people. Let's have fun and escape to a galaxy far, far away (and who hasn't wanted to Force choke someone once in a while?)