I woke up in unexplainable anger. I was in the bed in the Jedi Temple. I looked around to see how I got here. Then I saw him, as the door slowly opened. Rakine walked over to the end of the bed with his red lightsaber drawn, he Force pulled my darksaber to his other hand and he Force kicked me against the wall. As I land back on my knees, in the middle of the bed, Rakine has placed both red and black blades, crossed, over my shoulders. And with a simple scissor-like motions, the blades become parallel and slice my head off my shoulders.
I suddenly woke up screaming in a flush of anger and fear, and I felt my neck, sighing in sheer relief. I am still alive. I looked around and thought everything was all a dream. I am back in my bed, in the Warrior's hut back on Zant. My darksaber was right beside me. But then I gasped and felt the back of my head. My head was all bandaged up but I felt the base of my antlers cut all the way down to my head. I removed the blanket from over me and saw my abdomen and chest all bandaged up too. I reached for my loincloth and tied it over me, just when Rooda stepped in, with a sense of relief when she sees me.
"Eyt. Good to see you back on your hooves." She lost her look of happiness and motioned me to her, her expression growing more sad. "Chief Tzano requests your immediate council."
I stood up straight, still with the electrical pain in my body, and I Force pulled my darksaber to me as I walked out, to follow Rooda to the Chief Hall. Right as I entered the Chief Hall, I knew exactly what was going to happen.
"Eyt," the chief motioned me to him and pointed at the ground. Two Zan-Deer bucks come up from behind me and grab my darksaber from my hand and hold my arms, preventing me from moving. Rooda stood by Tzano's side, holding her lightspear, and looking to me and mouthing the words, "I'm sorry" with a tear running down her left cheek.
"Eyt S. Pezymn." A voice came for the room behind Tzano. When she pulled the curtain of leather and walked in, I knew I was in trouble.
"Ma, I can explain-"
"Eyt," Tzano folded his arms and shook his head, clicking his tongue. "You have a lot of nerve being back here." My mother walked in front of Tzano and began to kneel down in front of me.
"You had sworn an oath to the Zan-Deer of this village. When you first became a Warrior you promised to keep all aspects of Zan-Deer tradition from leaving your mental sight. You were to be honest, fierce, and courageous. You were to keep the one thing that Warriors do not ever lose." He groaned and rubbed his head, and started shaking his head. "You were to keep your antlers. Your manliness. Your promise to keep Randin safe. You have failed us, Eyt." He sighed. "And you said you were going to Coruscant with Rooda and Rakine to learn new aspects of combative defense, to protect this village, and you have lost your antlers in battle."
My mother shook her head and grew a look of disappointment.
"It wasn't his fault," Rooda called out. "Rakine was-"
"Be quiet, Rooda," the chief snapped at her.
"My opponent was much stronger than I," I tried to explain to him, anger rising in my tone.
"And that is why I hereby remove your title as "Zan-Deer Warrior". Lady Pezymn," he looked to my mother, "Remove his power."
My mother reached around my waist and grabbed the knot in my loincloth, slowly untying it, and taking the Warrior's loincloth from my body, exposing my failure. With that loincloth my pride, my position as Warrior, my dignity was gone from me. A tear ran down her face as she held it in the air, showing the rest of Randin.
"My son, Eyt, has brought a great embarrassment to us all, and especially to the Pezymn family name. You father would've been most disappointed in you, my son." She lowered the loincloth and folded it into a small square, turning to Tzano and giving the loincloth to him. She sighed loudly and rubbed her stomach in circular motions, comforting the fawn in her body.
"Eyt," Tzano pointed to me and motioned me to the door, "Leave the Chief Hall immediately." The bucks let me go and tossed me my darksaber. I glanced at Rooda, who started weeping in her spot, tightly holding her spear.
"I'm so sorry," she whispered to me.
I felt my anger grow stronger until I couldn't contain it. I Force pushed the weak and old, Chief Tzano, off his hovering chair and onto the floor. Then I turned to the curtain that lead to the outside, and sliced it down on the way straight out.
That was the end of my career as a warrior. Now I was a fool. An antler absent, Force using, naked fool. I ran through the village to the outskirts and started mercilessly slicing at the ground with my black blade. I screamed in an unholy rage when I reached the cliff where Rakine first trained me. I saw the Zan-Deer villagers down at Karariko leave their huts and look up to the cliff, having heard me. I started heavily breathing and I looked around for the ship the Rooda took from the Jedi Temple. It was perched just on the outskirts of Randin. I ran into it and started up the engines, and as the engines began, I saw Rooda and my mother run out of the Chief Hall. Rooda catches my mother from falling, panting and holding her large bump, as I sat in the pilot seat and started the ship, closed the door, and flew away from Randin. Rooda and my mother, then Randin itself shrank in the distance as I headed off, still carrying tears of anger in my eyes.
"I've done it. I've failed them. I can't show my face back there." I could only stare ahead in a wave of rage as the ship left Zant's atmosphere. I was now on my own. Rakine has betrayed me. Rooda is now against me. Randin is against me. I can only move on by myself. I am flushed in my own anger, fear, aggression, hate. The characteristics of the Dark Side.
I decided to look at a holographic mapping of the whole galaxy. I looked at all the systems that are known. From Coruscant in the middle, to Mandalore in the galactic northeast, Tatooine in the southwest. Zant is but a speck in the outer rim of the galactic west, the "unknown regions of the galaxy." I looked at all the outer rim systems and I found one that I think I could settle in. I zoomed in on a system known as "Hoth", a "frozen icy mass", a barren, empty, cold environment.
"That's where I'll go." I grabbed the ship's throttle and pushed the ship into lightspeed, toward the desolate, frozen world of Hoth.
I scanned the galaxy, locating my ship's path to Hoth through lightspeed. As it neared the system, I slowed the ship back down and the white lines in space turned back into stars. Once I saw the icy planet in the distance, I wiped the tears off my face, I looked at the darksaber on the counter and I said to myself.
"The lone life of Eyt Pezymn," I took a deep breath and the ship neared in on Hoth, "begins today." Hoth was getting closer and closer by the second and once the ship had reached the atmosphere I was reminded of the mountain tundra in the north of my former home. I growled quietly and resumed my flight, now reaching the snowy surface and scanning it for any signs of intelligent life.
"Nothing but snow and tauntauns." I sighed in relief. "I'm alone." I recognize tauntauns because they thrive in the mountainous tundra. They can be either used as transportation or hunted for food back on Zant. But here, I don't have a whole village to feed.
Right when I felt a tremor in the Force during the flight, I stopped and landed the ship near a large snowy cave entrance, thinking it was where the Force was coming from. I grabbed my darksaber from the counter as a precaution. When the door opened and I stepped out of my ship, onto the ice mass of Hoth, I remembered the torturous cold of snow. The atmosphere of Hoth turned out to be much colder than the tundra. And the worst part is I didn't have an inch of clothing to protect me, not like the loincloth would help anyway. I trudged through the snow toward the cave and held myself, shivering.
"Maybe this was a bad idea."
Just then I saw a black hooded figure emerge from the shadows of the cave and beckon me in. I followed the figure and a large metallic door opened in the wall of the cave. The figure waited for me to come in, but I fell in the snow, almost frozen. He ran closer toward me and held both his hands out to me and picked me up off the snowy ground and pulled me into the underground base that he had hidden under the snow. He closed the doors and set me down by a large fire pit. Immediately I was warmed up by the fire and I felt the man using the Force on me with an outstretched hand. I'm not sure what he was doing, but I know one thing. It stopped me from dying. I looked at the hooded figure as he pulled the black hood off of his head. He was an old human, with a strong jaw and a bald head, except for some white hair above the ears and his white goatee. He stared right down at me.
"No wonder you're all freezing and shivering. Youve no clothes to protect your fragile body." The man looked down at me. "What brings you out this far, fellow Zan-Deer?"
I looked up at him and I tried to speak.
"I was- betrayed, disrespected, and my own master had tried to kill me." I sat up and angrily stared into the fire.
"I see. I can feel your anger. Your hate. Your aggression. It makes you stronger than before. You are focused with your anger." He smirked. "You seek revenge."
"How do you know all of this?"
"I am Darth Sorin, the lost Sith Lord from Naboo. I came out here in exile. It's a long story."
"I have nowhere to go." I sighed, upset. "Tell me what happened."
"Very well," Sorin nodded. "I was friends with an older Sith Lord who was once known as Darth Plagueis the Wise. We both knew so much about the Force, we learned to stop people from dying. It is how you haven't frozen to death out there."
I was rescued by a Sith Lord, and now I think of everything that Rakine has taught me. Are the Sith really evil? Was Rakine lying to me about the Sith? I can only be grateful to this one Sith Lord for saving me.
"Thank you, Lord Sorin."
He nodded.
"Don't worry, we both escaped from the past. Me and Plageuis both learned the same aspects of the Dark Side. Eventually he taught his apprentice what he knew. Then his apprentice, Darth Sidious, killed him in his sleep. After that I was worried about Sidious, who's become one of the most powerful Sith in the galaxy, I thought he would kill me next. So I fled the Republic and came here, to this abandoned hangar left behind by the Republic long ago. This is my home now. I have stayed here for at least thirty years, waiting for someone to come here, to find me, to be my own apprentice."
I have been saved by Sorin to soon become his Sith apprentice. That's why he saved me. After what happened so far, I am left with one alternative choice.
"I will join you Lord Sorin, as your apprentice." I knelt down to him.
"Will you really join me?" He almost grinned.
"Yes. And for good reasons. The Republic has been broken down from what I know. The Galactic Empire has risen and the Sith rule the galaxy. The Jedi have fallen and rebels now fight the Empire." I grow into greater anger. "They have chopped off my antlers. I lost my whole Zan-Deer manhood, my job, my friends, my life. I want to exact my revenge on my former master. He has ruined everything for me. He is the reason for all of this." I am blind in my own rage. "It's all his fault!" I Force throw an entire metal container across the large hall and I watch a smile grow on Sorin's face.
"The Force is very strong with you," he felt all my angry emotions through the Force. "You will rise as a powerful Sith apprentice. I will become your master, and you shall be known as the Sith Lord, Darth-" he thought for a second, "Darth Venison." He smirked.
I bowed my head down to my new master, with little to no care of what else happened now.
"Thank you, Master Sorin."