Chapter 6
Legend tells us of an ancient Sith, called sun-touched, who was so powerful in battle that he destroyed enormous creatures with his bare hands. Once, he slew a thousand great warriors armed only with the talon of a large beast. His name, though forgotten today, was feared far and wide. Yet even the strongest of fighters can fall prey to trickery. He took unto himself a bride whose beauty far outshone any of his own kind, but her loyalty to her people remained and was his undoing. She discovered the secret of his power and betrayed him to her people, remanding him into his enemies hands.
The sun-touched languished in prison, tormented and kept from the light of the star that provided him his strength, until one night when his captors grew bold and arrogant. They chained him to a great temple on his homeworld to exult in their triumph, but their feasting and revelling extended into the dawn. As the first light of the sun struck the sith, his strength in the Force returned, and with a mighty shout, he tore the pillars from the walls where he had been restrained and used them as a weapon to slaughter everyone inside. None escaped his wrath. He destroyed the temple and shattered his chains with a single, crushing blow.
--The Holocron of Darth Dalida, a treasure of the Korriban Sith Academy
I got to the jail at the preappointed hour, an anxious knot in my stomach. Inquisitor Zyn hadn't wanted me to arrive any earlier, in case Quorian somehow managed to sense my presence. I wasn't sure what to expect. I knew what Lord Myon had been able to achieve on a bad day, but the master of the jails was much more experienced.
I was relieved to see that it wasn't as bad as I'd imagined. Sure, the Jedi lay curled on his side, and his skin was much too pale, but at least he wasn't lying in a pool of blood, nor was he missing any obvious body parts. He was trembling, the obvious aftereffects of torture by lightning, but he didn't appear too badly burned either.
"Quorian!" I said, but unlike other times, he ignored me, continuing to mumble the Jedi code over and over. "Come on, Quorian, focus on me." I pulled a medpac out of my bag, but he wasn't responding. The room was deserted, so I only hesitated a second before I deactivated the force cage. He didn't seem to be in any state to flee.
"Come on, Jedi, I need you to sit up," I said, trying to lift him off the ground. He keened a little, and I realized that all of the skin on his left hand had been removed, almost to the elbow. For one long moment I couldn't tear my eyes away. This was my fault.
"Quorian, this will hurt, but I can help you," I said. I placed one palm over his mouth and let the other hover near his damaged limb. Summoning the dark side of the force was easy with the guilt I felt. It rose in waves around us; the Jedi jerked away from me, but I was practically sitting on him, so he didn't manage to ruin things. I deadened the nerves with one quick burst of power. I'd never done something that big before, but I knew how much it had hurt me to just deaden the nerves in a small cut, so it didn't surprise me when he cried out. I glanced around, but nobody came in to check on us. After all, screams weren't exactly uncommon in the jail.
"Shhhh, it's done, I'm sorry, it's over!" I said. His breathing evened out as he realized that he could no longer feel his wound. He still retched as the cold touch of the dark side entered his body. I couldn't heal him all the way, but I could at least force it to scab over. Quorian watched me tiredly as I pulled out a medpac and delicately applied kolto salve to his wound. "Can you sit up?"
"If you help me," he slurred. Clearly, he'd been drugged very recently. "What did you do?"
"I did what I could," I said. "You won't feel it for at least a few hours, anyways. It's not healed, but the kolto will help, so don't move it." I gave him another ration bar. He leaned against me as he ate.
"Thank you," he whispered. I felt sick.
"I want to help you get out of here," I said, keeping my voice low as I glanced around to make sure we were alone. He stared at me, his head wobbling a little.
"You mean that," he said slowly. "You want to help me escape? Why should I trust you?"
"What have you got to lose?" I asked defensively. But that thought was too much for his addled brain. He closed his eyes and began muttering his Jedi code again.
"Quorian!" I snapped, and he blinked, focusing on me. "I can help you escape," I said. "Do you want my help?"
"It's so hard to think," he said. "I..."
"I'm here, helping you," I said again.
"You're helping me," he repeated. "Why do you care?"
"You need to trust me," I said. "I can get you out of here."
"Why would you betray the Sith?" he asked.
"You didn't deserve thisI" I said bitterly.
"If you want to help me escape, I'll need my belongings: my comlink, and my lightsaber," he said finally. Exultation filled my mind. Finally we were getting somewhere! "Before I was captured, I hid my things in an urn, hoping they'd mistake me for a smuggler, but they grabbed me, and, and they..." His voice was getting high and his breathing was speeding up again. This time he was losing himself to panic.
"No, Quorian, focus, Quorian, tell me where!" I said. He wasn't listening. I pinched him, hard. "Quorian, think! There is no emotion, there is peace. Say it with me!" He began to shake a little, and for a second I thought he was having a fit. Then I realized he was laughing.
"Look at you, learning the code," he chuckled. I considered elbowing him, but he'd been hurt enough.
"There are a lot of urns on Korriban," I said. "Where is this urn?"
"About 100 klicks southwest of the academy, there's a new excavation site," he said tiredly. "They've uncovered the entrances to two tombs. Between them there are the legs of a massive ancient statue, broken off above the knees, and at its feet is a cracked urn on its side. I buried my things in the sand inside."
"I'll find them," I said.
"Will you come back?"
"Of course I will," I said.
"You promise?" He asked desperately.
"I promise." I eased him back down to lay on the floor; he stared at his hand, unseeing, as I reactivated the cage.
"Listen, Quorian, Inquisitor Zyn has treated me better than most," I said. Quorian waited for me to continue. "But he...likes it when you scream. He enjoys a challenge. If he comes for you again, cry, don't scream. Beg. He'll grow tired quickly."
"I will," he said quietly. I gave him a quick nod and set off.
"Well, Acolyte?" asked Inquisitor Zyn as I entered his office. I buried my unease and guilt deep inside me, focusing on the part of me that was triumphant that I was finally making progress.
"Success, my lord," I said proudly. "He believes I'm betraying the Sith to help him escape. He wants his lightsaber and comlink first; I assume that's how he's going to get off planet. He said he hid them right before he was captured."
"I believe he was seized just south of the new excavation commonly known as the Valley of Tulak Hord," said Zyn. "Perhaps you should begin your search there."
"I will, Inquisitor," I said. I bowed deeply to him. "Thank you for your assistance, my Lord. I only wish I could've been there to watch you work. The results...took my breath away."
"There will be other days, Acolyte," he said. Through the force I could sense he was flattered. "You are dismissed. Good luck."
All that night, I had restless dreams of searching in the desert and the sand, checking urn after urn but never finding what I was searching for. When I woke up from a nightmare where I was helping Zyn peel Quorian's face off, I gave up on sleep entirely and got up and headed to the cafeteria for some rations. I killed time working in the archives, and as soon as sunrise approached, I took a taxi back out to the Valley of Tulak Hord. I needed a map, and I knew where I could get it.
"Slavemaster," I said to a man crouched diligently over a datapad. He sat near the entrance to the valley, flanked by a couple sith soldiers. I was a student of the academy, I reminded myself. I was allowed to approach this man now.
"Acolyte," he responded. I took a little courage and stood taller.
"I need a map of the valley and surrounding area that includes all tomb entrances, statues, and obelisks," I said. At the sound of my lower-class accent, he looked a little closer; he saw that I was a Cathar with a brand on my forehead and scarring on my neck. That was all he needed.
"Guards, seize that slave!" he thundered. They raised their weapons as they bolted towards me.
"Don't touch me!" I snarled, raising a force barrier. Good thing, too. When the soldiers saw my vibroblade, one shouted at me to drop it and get down on the ground; the other simply fired. The bolt struck my torso and absorbed, leaving me unscathed. But by then I had summoned lightning to retaliate. The guard's armor didn't seem to protect her at all; she crumpled and cried out, writhing at the sudden, brief shock. The other guard backed up, immediately jumping to attention, but that wouldn't save him. The slavemaster had gone as white as bone, dropping to his knees before me.
"Forgive me, my lady, it was an accident! A Mistake!" He sniveled. "Please!"
"Get up and get me what I need!" I growled, sending a second electric blast at the other soldier. The slavemaster stumbled to his feet and hurried to his seat. He tried very hard to ignore the way his guards died screaming in the dirt as he transferred the information to my datapad.
"Please, my lady!" I was ready to murder him where he stood for daring to make me fear, even for an instant, that I would be thrown back into slavery, but my self interest kicked in. I took a deep, calming breath, feeling my claws retract back into my fingers.
"You're in charge of this entire excavation, aren't you?" I demanded. "You direct the slaves?"
"I ensure that the academy's orders are carried out," he agreed, cautious hope creeping into his voice.
"You attacked a sith, " I said flatly. "However, I am merciful and I would hate to kill you for an understandable mistake if you could prove useful to me in the future."
"Anything I can do to assist you, my lady, you need only command," he assured me. "Anything that is within my power is yours."
"I may require your cooperation in the future," I said. "See that you remember my charity."
"I will, my lady. Thank you, my lady!" He groveled as I headed into the Valley of Tulak Hord.
The map was worth every bit of panic and terror and then some. I seated myself near the valley's entrance and spent the better part of an hour scanning the meticulously labeled charts of each artifact and statue and tomb entrance. I noted with satisfaction that the list was self-updating; as a slave located something of value or unburied something of historic significance, it was logged and tagged.
There were many broken statues and many half-buried urns, but in conjunction with tomb entrances, I was able to eliminate most of them. Eventually I identified a few locations that might be Quorian's statue and urn. They were all at the farthest edges of the dig site, which made sense to me.
It took me almost two hours to walk to the first one. The loose sands shifted under my feet as I took each step, and I had long since given up emptying my boots, which were just slightly too big for me. Now I just focused on how much I hated the feeling of sand rubbing between my toes and in my fur and let the dark side fester in me, filling my skin and buffeting my soul as the instructors had taught me. Immersed in the force as I was, I savored how everything seemed sharper and clearer; as I passed other sentients, I could even gather a sense of what they felt or thought. The slaves generally feared or hated me, although many were too apathetic to do more than notice my presence. The soldiers were a combination of bored and wary, careful to stay out of my (and the other acolytes') way, but not necessarily afraid. Other sith were maelstroms in the dark wind of the force around us, suspicious or desperate or eager or even just mildly disgusted. I wondered what I felt like to them; as I'd learned from the Academy holocrons, I focused on being less interesting, trying to pull my own vortex of the force tighter around my body and cause less of a ripple as I passed. I wasn't sure how successful I was, but nobody paid me any attention as I trudged through the dunes.
For once, luck was on my side. At the second urn I checked, I carefully dug through the sand inside and uncovered a comlink. Beneath it, I felt the cold cylindrical durasteel of a lightsaber casing. I was briefly tempted to keep it and tell Quorian that I couldn't find it, but I knew he would probably see through my lies, and I didn't dare risk that Inquisitors Zyn and Urinth would be unhappy with my performance. I left it off, concealed in my satchel, as I returned to the Academy. I would earn my own weapon when I became Lady Zash' apprentice.
