Chapter 6: To Make It Bleed

The Acolyte was ready.

He assumed a kneeling position in front of the holotable in the center of the communications center inside their fortress and lay prostrate, waiting for his master to call.

He did not have to wait long. Within seconds of kneeling he heard the familiar warble of a holotransmission starting up and looked up briefly and saw a picture of a robbed figure sitting on a chair before snapping his head back down.

"Yes, my acolyte?" asked a voice, deceptively soft but dripping with lethality and evil intent.

"I bring news from Coruscant, my master." the Acolyte said, still bowed low.

"And?"

"I have succeeded, far better than I ever could have imagined. Padme Amidala is dead, and her death allowed us to wipe out almost all of the Republic's government and high command. I hope that my efforts have pleased you and furthered the Rule of One."

"I am impressed, Acolyte." the voice said, delight evident in its tone. "Many of my other students did not think you would succeed. Indeed, one of them even brought forward a better plan for how to triumph where you had failed."

The Acolyte didn't need to know who it was. He'd had suspicions for a while as to his opponent's identity. His master knew that too, which could only mean that his master wished to pit his students against one another, to see which was stronger and who could better serve him in the conflicts ahead.

This was the way of the Rule of One.

"By virtue of your training, I did not fail." the Acolyte said, his head still bowed low. There would be time to gloat later, especially in front of the other acolytes. But this was his master, and if the Acolyte played this situation correctly, he could find himself rewarded beyond his wildest dreams.

"A good answer, my acolyte. A very good answer indeed." the voice said, clapping softly. "Rise, and let me take a good look at you."

No matter how many times the Acolyte saw Lord Maul's face, he felt a small pit of fear in his stomach. The Sith tribal tattoos framed his face and his eyes glowed with evil power. As always he wore a slightly aloof expression which missed nothing that he observed. He was grinning ever so slightly, a sign of how pleased he was with the mission's success.

"I sense your power, acolyte." Maul continued. "It is growing, stronger and stronger every day. There is much that we could do together, do you not agree?"

"I do, my master." the Acolyte responded. He could feel his heart start to race and did his best to calm it down. It would not do to lose his composure at the moment. Maul might be pleased with what he had done, but the Sith Lord was notoriously fickle and would look upon any emotional outbursts as a sign of weakness that he could exploit.

"Master… Master indeed." Maul mused. "A name I have earned, through blood and labor, and you have never once failed to call me by that title. But it does tend to ring a little hollow, don't you agree?"

He thought he knew what Maul was getting at, but any assumptions right now could have disastrous consequences. Better to play it safe and let his master have his fun.

"I don't understand."

"I am a master. A master with many acolytes, but no apprentices." Maul said. "Twenty years I have trained and mentored you and your new brothers and sisters. But none have proven worthy of the higher mysteries of the Sith yet. Do you think you are the first?"

There it was. The news that the Acolyte had been hoping for. He was so close to it now he could almost taste it.

"I do not just think so, my Master. I know it." the Acolyte said "I have proven myself both cunning and competent. Make me your apprentice, show me the ways of the Dark Side and I will not fail you."

"Perhaps… Perhaps…" Maul mused. He held out his hand and his lightsaber flew towards his outstretched palm. The Sith Lord ignited his lightsaber, its red hue casting an ominous light upon the Zabrak's face.

"If you are to be my apprentice, you must arm yourself like one," he continued. "You have gotten by with your knives. I have seen how quick and clever you can be with them, but that won't do for your apprenticeship. No, if you are to be Sith, you should have a Sith's weapon. A lightsaber of your own."

The Acolyte could feel his heart racing, but did his best to keep his face calm and disinterested.

"Thank you, my Master." he said, bowing low as he did so. "We have many lightsabers from captured and fallen Jedi in the armory. I shall pick the one that speaks to me."

"Oh no, you misunderstand me."

The red double bladed lightsaber swung lazily back and forth in front of Maul's face as he admired the crimson blade.

"Fascinating things, kyber crystals." the Sith continued. "One of the rarest materials in the galaxy, and no two are exactly alike. They come in all sorts of colors. Blue, green, yellow, even the occasional amethyst. But never red. No, the Sith have… other ways of creating our blades."

Maul stood up from his throne, pointing the holographic lightsaber right at the Acolyte's chest.

"If you wish to be Sith, you will undergo an ancient Sith rite that has been performed since the founding of the Republic." Maul said. "Find and kill a Jedi, take their lightsaber, and bring the crystal back to the fortress where you are at now. At the altar of the Dark Side, make it bleed. Pour out your hate, your anger, your suffering, and make that crystal truly yours. A beautiful, deep shade of red. When you have done this, only then will you be my apprentice."

"As you wish, my master." the Acolyte said, bowing for what felt like the hundredth time as Maul nodded approvingly.

"To not take too long, my future apprentice." Maul cautioned. "You are not the only acolyte that has caught my eye, and if you do not act quickly you may find yourself looking at another who has my favor and calls themselves my apprentice. Such is the way of the Rule of One."

The Acolyte said nothing, merely staring at his master until Maul's image flickered and the holotransmission ended.

The heat and oppressive darkness of Mustafar made it one of the most intolerable planets in the entire galaxy. That fact alone would have made it an excellent location for one of Maul's many hidden fortresses, but the planet was also home to one of the most potent sources of Dark Side energy still in existence. The fortress he had built, or more accurately renovated from the original Black Suns hideout, housed his burgeoning Acolyte program, as well as something far worse that the Black Suns who guarded the place had only heard rumors of. It was a veritable wellspring of darkness, and he had made good use of it for the past two decades.

When not out on assignment from his master, the Acolyte often found himself wandering the balconies looking out onto the lava flows, meditating on whatever was troubling him. At the moment, what preoccupied his thoughts was the latest offer from his master.

An apprentice. Not merely an acolyte of high standing, but a true apprentice! It had been the Acolyte's dream for as long as he knew about the Dark Side of the Force.

He remembered the day that Maul rescued him quite well. His family had been on one of the many Outer Rim worlds that fell to chaos at the end of the Clone Wars. Gangsters had taken over their planet, and his parents had created a hidden resistance network to spread information and resist the gangsters' harsh rule.

It had done them little good in the end. They had been killed, and the Acolyte would most likely had followed them if he had not hidden so well. For months after that he'd been living on the streets, using an intuition he'd one day found that he possessed to trick vendors into looking the other way as he stole fruit. He'd been almost half wild back then, barely surviving as he slowly drew closer and closer to death every day.

That is when Maul had found him. The Acolyte had tried to pick the Sith Lord's pocket, only to discover that the powers he had been mastering weren't so unique after all. Instead of being angry at the boy, Maul had taken him in, giving him the training that he'd needed to bring order to his life and hone his skills to perfect lethality. He grew to know the Dark Side of the Force, to love it for what it brought to him. He became an extremely competent servant, always one of the very best of the children. In time, the children would become Maul's acolytes, and the once small boy from the Outer Rim grew to become one of the very best.

Now, after all these years, the Acolyte was about to move on. He was going to learn about the true secrets of the Dark Side, not just the basics that Maul taught them in order to give them a fighting chance. He was so close he could almost see the lightsaber in his hand.

The only problem was the Jedi. It would be hard to find a Jedi, and even harder to kill them in order to get the kyber crystal.

Luckily the Acolyte had a plan. He'd always known this could be a possibility. He was one of the top students at this place after all, and there were very few people in Maul's organization who could pull off the operation he just had.

The chance of being offered an apprenticeship had been somewhat high, so the Acolyte had prepared months in advance, planting seeds all over the Republic to see which ones grew when given the nourishment that only a Republic in crisis could give. A Jedi would go to one of them eventually, and when they did, they would find a surprise waiting for them.

A flashing light on his own personal comlink told him that one of those seeds was bearing fruit already, and the Acolyte had to wipe a grin off his face before answering.

Garm Bel Iblis' face appeared before him, sweating so profusely that the Acolyte could see it over the holo, and wringing his hands in anxiety.

"By the Force, I'm glad you finally answered." the Corellian snapped, his fear making him more irritable than he knew. "It happened just like you said it would. Amidala was killed, almost every other Senator was killed at her funeral, and I would have joined them if I hadn't followed your advice to leave. How did you know that would happen?"

"I didn't, Chancellor." the Acolyte replied, adopting a much airier tone than he had normally in order to give off the proper aura of mysticism. "I merely read the web of fate as it appears before me."

"That's all well and good, but the Jedi won't buy that!" Iblis wailed. "They think I know more than I do, probably think I left Coruscant because I knew what was coming. They won't believe me when I say it was just your visions!"

The Acolyte said nothing, preferring to let Iblis stew in silence. Even with his own master, the Acolyte found that silence was a formidable weapon in helping a person get what they want, but only if they had the patience to see it through.

His patience was rewarded just seconds later as the former Supreme Chancellor started spouting off all sorts of useful information.

"They have no leads and so they're coming here!" he screamed. "What do I even say? That I've been getting information for years from a fortune teller? They'll think I'm crazy, but I'm not. You've never been wrong, not once. Can… can you come here and show them? That way they might believe me?"

"So you're taking the bait on Corellia." the Acolyte murmured. "How interesting. Oh yes, this should be fun indeed."

"What was that? I didn't hear what you said. Hello?"

"My apologies, Chancellor, I was thinking out loud to myself." the Acolyte said with a dismissive wave of his head. "I just looked into the future, you see. And trust me, everything is fine."

"It is?"

"Trust me, Chancellor. You won't be worrying about the Jedi anymore very soon."

The Acolyte ended the connection and immediately began making his way towards the armory. Though he was certain that he could take on any Jedi with his Force powers and knives, he was also certain that there was no sense in taking any chances. A couple of minutes later, and he walked out towards the landing pad flanked by two HK model assassination droids. They would be more than enough to help him get a kyber crystal.

He took one of the stealthier ships in the fortresses' arsenal and punched in the coordinates for Corellia the moment they were out of Mustatar's oppressive atmosphere. As realspace around them warped and became the blue, everswirling complexity that was hyperspace, the Acolyte flipped on the autopilot, made sure the two HK droids were fully charged, and went to go meditate. The Force was feeling darker and darker as of late, no doubt thanks to what he had helped do on Coruscant. This was good. He would need all the darkness he could get his hands on.

For he was going to go hunt a Jedi, and he would make their lightsaber bleed.