"Again!" The human spat as she fired Sith lightning at her apprentice the woman fought against her in a wide arc as their lightsabers hummed. The Mirialan woman met her attack despite screaming under the strain of the lightning attack, but she pushed it aside and used the rage and hatred she felt fuelled by the strength of the dark side of this planet to not only meet her Master's attack but launch one of her own. The two women were training in an ancient Sith training temple; the roof was cracked like a rock egg, exposing the dark sky with lightning flashing all around.
Darth Spectre snarled as she parried the next move with her twin lightsabers; her rage made her Master smirk in pride and amusement.
"Good, my apprentice, good," Darth Suspiria drawled, each word dripping off her tongue in contempt and delight that was designed to infuriate the younger Sith apprentice. "But you can do better!" She added as she swung her lightsaber at Spectre in a flash of movements that would make any non-Force sensitive's eyes ache at the motion.
Spectre was already more than used to her Sith Master's interminable training routine, and only just managed to match her Master's movements. Suspiria was a master of Makashi and Juyo and Niman, while her apprentice was a master of Juyo and Ja'Kai, and both of them were good at using the ambient dark side energy which had permeated Korrbian for aeons over numerous generations of the Sith's existence to help them fuel their strikes.
As they attacked each other, switching their techniques over and over again, the two Sith struggled to find a way past their opponent's defences. Spectre was a promising student under the empire of Darth Krayt. She had not only reached the top through merit or her sheer strength but because, like a true Sith student who studied at the Academy here on Korriban, Spectre had clawed her way to the top by killing several of the competition through the use of her lightsaber, or through the kind of subtle cunning the Sith had used under the Rule of Two. She had been a massive believer in the philosophy of survival of the fittest, and here the Nexu den of the Korriban academy had only shaped her into a truly vicious combatant.
As the agile Sith apprentice backflipped away before coming back at her Master, Suspiria met her apprentice's attack with a vicious snarl. "Sloppy, my apprentice. That was sloppy!"
Spectre ground her teeth together as she wondered what she had done wrong, or if it was an example of her Master's psychological warfare methods. The relationship between Sith Master and Sith apprentice was a complex war, with the Master continually undermining or plotting against the apprentice, while they looked for somebody new in order to replace them. In return, the young Mirialan looked for new ways of shortening the gap between herself and the other Sith Lords of Darth Krayt's Empire because Spectre knew if she could defeat Suspiria then she would likely become a target of the other members of the One Sith.
Darth Suspiria was no different from Sith Lords of the past, but Spectre had always felt that her Master was more encouraging than the other Sith Masters under the control of the One Sith. For a start, Suspiria went out of her way to push Spectre to develop her skills on her own, harkening back to the tradition of Sith training where Sith Masters would have sent their apprentices to go off on their own with just enough knowledge to make them develop on their own. If they came back, the Sith Master wouldn't need to train a new apprentice.
But Suspiria was in between the two traditions where Sith would be trained in the same things again and again and would send them off to develop on their own. Suspiria did that because she knew where Spectre had come from. The young Mirialan had been a scientist, gifted in genetics, cybernetics, xenobiology and chemistry, but she had also become a daring young thief and smuggler after she was expelled from university for a number of offences, who had committed so many crimes in her life her record was embarrassing to others.
She had stolen from people and banks both in person and through computer hacking, murdered those who got in her way without any kind of mercy through poisons, while she smuggled rare goods and trafficked drugs and spices and people to various worlds while trying to avoid the Sith Empire. During her youth, she had been working with various gangs, but she had quickly discovered even though she had found so many skills that benefited her, Spectre preferred being in the shadows alone.
And that trend had followed her throughout her life; if there was one thing she had learnt, you were more likely to be stabbed in the back by your team than you were face to face. And on this planet, it was a painful and vicious reality.
The young Mirialan woman was also Force-sensitive, which helped her commit many of her crimes, and she was one of those who had missed the Jedi's screening process and had grown stronger in the meantime, her darker impulses grew over that time until she came to the attention of the Sith, and she sacrificed a child, and with that, she was knighted as a Sith apprentice, and brought to Korriban where she was educated in the dark side of the Force, and indoctrinated to revere and adhere to the Rule of the One Sith under Darth Krayt.
Except Darth Spectre didn't like submitting to the Emperor. In her previous life, she had worked for numerous criminal syndicates and organisations that usually fell apart because the leader had made some short-sighted mistake which had long-term consequences for everyone and everything else.
When she became a Sith, she received a vision that showed she was destined for so much more than being just yet another cog in the One Sith. Or lackey.
At the Academy, she had been trained in the Force and learnt the arts of torture, and she had become a proficient and agile lightsaber combatant, but she had always had a great intellect and foresight which had allowed her to become a powerful seer, but she had shown a gift with Sith sorcery.
Except she was not allowed anywhere near the holocron vault to develop her skills there to be sure if she was a Sith sorceress. Spectre wasn't stupid, she knew Krayt did not want anybody more powerful than himself taking control.
And she had seen it so many times that Spectre had found it was usually better if she was in smaller outfits, and she had discovered they usually lasted longer although she had discovered criminal networks with some big honcho running the whole shebang through proxies lasted longer since they never really revealed their true identities and ensured they never got caught out. When she had begun her education in the Academy, Spectre had learnt of the Rule of Two, and while Krayt was biased against it because of its drawbacks and failings, Spectre could see that the Rule of Two was more logical. She had lost count of the number of times members of the One Sith had lashed out against each other, with differing ideas of how to lead and how to subjugate the galaxy while the remaining Jedi struggled under the onslaught.
One night, Spectre accessed the holocron vault while Krayt and many of his inner circle were away using her skills she had broken into the holocron vault and she had found the holocron of Darth Bane, the founder of the Rule of Two, the one who had created the Grand Plan which had been a thousand years in the making and one of the foundations the One Sith was built on. The ancient Sith Lord was positively embarrassed and furious with Krayt's views and he was delighted Spectre agreed with him and he had told her of the benefits of the Rule of Two, but she was unsure how she could deal with so many Sith at the same time, but it had awakened the young Sith's ambitious nature.
Bane had told her that he had wiped out the Sith of his era with a mind bomb because the Sith had spread the dark side's power too thinly and their conflicts with each other threatened to tip the scales of their greatest victory. Only for Bane to realise they would not win and that the Sith were more likely to be destroyed from within, and Spectre saw the same signs now from his tales.
It was certainly happening again, with Krayt dying and the Sith falling apart because they couldn't govern themselves before he had returned thanks to his spirit, although Spectre hadn't heard the full story. The empire was falling apart, and the Sith were desperate. That was why Sith apprentices were being trained. The Sith were desperate, and they were losing more and more members and they were being defeated.
Fortunately for her own sake, Spectre was not stupid enough to let her views be known.
Spectre and Suspiria got ready to launch another round, and they waited to collect enough of the dark side when they felt a shockwave that staggered them.
Spectre gasped, feeling Krayt's burning black hole presence in the Force rimmed with rage vanish. "Master, he's gone!"
"I know," Suspiria whispered.
At that moment, Spectre received a brief vision, this was her moment, her way of rebuilding the Sith.
At that moment Spectre struck while her Master was preoccupied; she blasted her Master with lightning and while Suspiria screamed in surprise at the onslaught, the Mirialan Sith closed in, tearing the lightsaber away from Suspiria before she moved into the kill. Spectre submerged herself in the dark side, creating a tsunami in the shockwave. She tapped into her rage, picturing her parents who'd been so embarrassed by her and had disowned her, to the betrayals she had faced on the streets before she tapped into the things that happened as a Sith, and her resentment towards several other Sith, and the hatred she felt for the Jedi who left a nasty slash across her face with a lightsaber and mixed it with the frustration she felt towards Darth Krayt, her jealousy towards Talon and so many other Sith, but last of all she poured her loathing for her Sith Master.
Suspiria screeched in agony as her body began smoking before her skin began to burn under the onslaught. She tried to stop the attack with her own power, but Spectre's attack was too strong and she was too shaken by the loss of Krayt and other Sith that she was vulnerable. Finally, Darth Suspiria became one with the Force.
Spectre continued the onslaught even after her Master died before she stopped, and she lowered her hands and let out a deep breath as she gazed down at her Master's charred remains. For a moment as he could not believe what she had just done, and Spectre realised she could use this to her advantage.
The One Sith had failed, and it was only a matter of time before the others fell, and this would mean the Rule of Two would need to be brought back in to ensure the survival of the Sith, but after a few moments of realising just what she had done, the Sith apprentice realised she had just become a Sith Master, under the rules of the Rule of Two, not the Rule of One.
"I am sorry, my Master," Spectre's musical voice uttered coldly as she gazed down at the remains of Suspiria as she realised what this meant for her. "But your death means a new age for the Sith on the whole."
With that, Spectre walked over to her long cloak and she pulled it on over her sweaty body after a quick wipe down, and as she walked out, she took off her lightsabers. She would need to get to the Holocron vault and escape quickly, using the chaos as a cover. But if she moved quickly, and played her cards right, then she could leave this dead world before anything else happened.
Without a look back at Suspiria's body, Darth Spectre left as a member of the new Rule of Two.
Author's Note - And there you have it! The first of a new one-shot series, depicting a Sith Lord who survived the destruction of Darth Krayt's galactic empire, and like Darth Wredd, who had the same idea, decided to set about rebuilding the Rule of Two, but Darth Spectre's ideas are far more different from Wredd.