Chapter 13: Matters Mystic
39:4:22 GrS
The Volkori Nebula, The Deep Core
Imperial-I Class Star Destroyer: Adamant
The main contingent of my fleet was currently hurtling through hyperspace towards rally point Jenth, from which we will then jump to rally point Dorn. These rally points were collectively a pre-calculated set of jump coordinates saved onto the hyperdrives of my fleet, all of which were close enough together that the jump could be quickly chained together in order to conduct attacks, withdrawals, and large scale hyperspace maneuvers. I'd taken inspiration from the utterly ancient Tionese system of hyperspace beacons, only with the benefit of modern technological and astro-cartographical innovations; along access to the sizable reservoir of Imperial databanks on the Deep Core. Aside from the tactical benefits the rally point system allowed the creation of a rough map of viable routes across the Volkori Nebula, giving my fleet an advantage. It had served us well in hunting Harrsk's forces across the Nebula.
The system would be perfect for the fight I have been shanghaied into if for the little problem that Harrsk wasn't solely moving his forces through the Nebula and the core worlds of his breakaway state where a good number of lightyears away from the western most edge of the nebula. With Harrsk now stymied in advancing through the Nebula, I needed to continue the offensive, keep pressure on Harrsk's limited supply lines. Apply enough pressure and I might be able to grind his offensive to a halt, or at least force the majority of his forces to double back into friendly space to come looking for my fleet.
To accomplish my goal of burn, sink and destroy, I needed a location to hit once we jumped out of the Volkori Nebula. Unfortunately, finding a planet to raid would not be as easy as it once was. Harrsk's people had gotten smart once they realized an enemy force was engaging them, they had, for all intents and purposes, erased the location of their core planets from the Imperial Military HoloNet. It wasn't true deletion of the planetary hyperspace coordinates, that would be suicide, rather they had, according to the reports from the intel department onboard the Adamant, they had pulled the local HoloNet onto a closed server and flooded the 'open' HoloNet with thousands of fake jump coordinates, making it so that Harrsk's ships, and Harrsk's ships alone, knew how to navigate his expanding fiefdom.
It would be an easy fix, just pull the fleet back then jump to a naval depot and get the backup coordinates straight from the source. And I was reasonably sure that was what everyone else was doing when their own HoloNet monitor programs had detected the move by Harrsk's people. Unfortunately I had very strict standing orders to not depart from the front unless specifically directed otherwise. So the easy way was out.
But the Dark Side of the Force is a pathway to many abilities some would consider unnatural, as Sidious once put it. It was just a matter of using the right ability to get what you wanted.
So I was back in my meditation chambers, preparing for my first real Sith ritual. I'd cleared a space in the middle, all my moving meditation gear now placed against the room's walls. The artificial lights were dimmed, the only strong source of light being the fire blazing away in an ad hoc brazier I constructed out of a wide durasteel bowl, originally from the officer's mess hall, and futuristic bunsen burner that had adjustable flame output. Not quite true to the rustic setting this ritual would have been originally used in but the text only called for a flame and a basin to set the flame in.
My Sith primer, from which I had uncovered this ritual, was held in my hands as I ran over the relevant section of the text for one final review, making sure my translation hadn't suddenly changed after coming back to it.
Nope, looks like nothing had changed. I let out a large breath and floated the primer over to a training dummy, placing it on the dummy's head. Time to get the show started, I had put it off long enough. Kneeling on the carpeted floor, I cleared my throat, readying my vocal cords for the ordeal. Sith was not a gentle tongue for one whose vocal cords had not invented the tongue.
I focused my attention on the flame in front of me and began to call upon the Dark Side in the manner of the ancient Kissai priests.
The primer stated that this ritual originated in the time before Korriban had been turned into a tomb world, when water and greenery and life still flowed across its surface. Before Adas had united the Sith to face the Rakata threat, when there were many groups of Red Sith competing for habitable territory, i.e. oases. Oases were tricky things to locate it seemed, and the primer explained that the priest caste of the Red Sith, the Kissai, had created this ritual to, in essence, bribe the Dark Side to favor their warbands whenever a raid was prepared against a rival oasis settlement. Give the Dark Side that which it valued, as the Sith culture understood it, and it would show the warband the path it needed to take to reach the targeted oasis. The ritual had fallen out of use following the unification of Korriban to fight the Infinite Empire of the Rakata, and then into obscurity when the Sith population migrated off Korriban during the species early expansion phase.
The primer's section on this ritual ended with that tidbit but I could fill in the blanks. Low population meant that there was no need to fight over what sparse natural resources remained in the wake of the planetary bombardment. So the purpose of the ritual was no more, so nobody used it. I thought whoever had started that trend was an idiot and an unimaginative hack most likely. What is space but a giant desert, with the planets that dotted its vast empty expanse filling the role of the desert's oases.
So Harrsk's faction decided to hide their planet's hyperspace coordinates. Fine, let them. I'll just pull them out of thin air with a power they'll never even hope to understand. Confidence rushed through me, finally I was growing in power. This was only the beginning, I swore to myself, soon I would outstrip every being to ever hold the title of Inquisitor. Jerec, Malorum, Yiaso, nobody would remember them after their time passed. When the end came for me, the galaxy would remember me for millennia.
"Nu visita sh'jatau tave Jen' Garthaz kia storsajuri nun le ausis, tegu nun imyeja je'as le tnoa iv midwan ir ziur tave uiba iv nuyak drastâona." The tongue of red Korriban issued out of my mouth, the very words of the most infamous desert planet seeming to suck the moisture from it. The presence of the Dark Side started to swell in front of me, slowly starting to concentrate around the flame in front of me.
"Nu visita sh'jatau tave Jen' Garthaz kia storsajuri nun le ausis, tegu nun imyeja je'as le tnoa iv midwan ir ziur tave uiba iv nuyak drastâona." Drier still became my mouth and faint wisps of blackness started to circle the basin. The wisps moved with agitation, back and forth, side to side like hungry predators. An intangible pressure was starting to coalesce around my shoulders.
"Nu visita sh'jatau tave Jen' Garthaz kia storsajuri nun le ausis, tegu nun imyeja je'as le tnoa iv midwan ir ziur tave uiba iv nuyak drastâona." For the final time, I uttered the incantation. Three was a sacred number to the Red Sith. They had three fingers, three toes, three social castes, three face tentacles(only among elders it seemed) and so forth and so on. Any Sith ritual that originated from the time of the Red Sith would have this fixation with threes incorporated into its structure.
I had awakened the Dark Side with my efforts. A dark miasma surrounded the brazier, its flame, and myself. It's presence felt older than what I was used to, but it was the Dark Side of the Force and one didn't call upon it then waste time thinking about extraneous tangents.
"Nu niant kraujas iv nuyak ikuny vi tave aukotis." I withdrew a knife from my belt, firmly grasped it in my left hand, then made a cut on my right palm. Ruby red blood started to flow down my arm but the flow was quickly redirected into the yellow flame before me. The instant my blood made contact with the flame, the color the flame changed, turning a neon red. The presence of the Dark Side around me ebbed for a moment before resurging twice as strong as it had been before. The Dark Side felt hungry now, like my blood had been the first meal it had enjoyed in years. The dark miasma that my opening incantations had summoned now moved around me, propelled by a silent wind.
"Nu niant rostia iv nuyak savas vi naviza." Next a plate of fresh Corellian fruit was fed to the flame one by one, making the flame's color move to a neon green. Fresh produce called back to the scarcity of food in a desert planet, the offering of it showing the dedication of the priests to the Dark Side.
"Nu niant pergaleas prie nuyak laikas vi viza." The final plate was empty, meant to represent the spoils of war that would be offered to the Dark Side once the raid was complete. In my case I'd probably be offering some parts of a starship instead of what was alluded to be sentient sacrifices in the original texts. Regardless of the contents of the final offering, it was meant to be the enticement, the hook for the ritual to complete itself.
I could hear the faint beat of primitive war drums, though their cacophony was quickly growing closer. The Dark Side, at least the parts of it the Kissai would call upon, was fully present. It was time to finish this.
"Tegu nun Ziur!" I shouted, throwing my arms up.
The response was immediate. The dark miasma that had surrounded me rushed to my side and pressed down, hard. My arms were forced down to my sides, the knife I had been holding clattering to the floor as it too was forced away from me. My jaw was clacked close and I barely avoided my teeth slamming down on my tongue. My midsection was grabbed, or hooked, and I was slowly starting to inch closer to the burning flame, which had now turned a void black.
I was in trouble, I had gotten something wrong. All evidence of past failed works with the Dark Side pointed to me suffering a violent internal explosion. Shit shit shit. I reached deep inside and drew up every drop of the Force I could command.
The Dark Side I had summoned reared backwards, gathering its strength for a blink of an eye before striking. A feeling of perverse satisfaction bombarding my mental shields as it did so. I had failed, and it would take its pound of flesh for that failure.
Whump. A bolt of shadows collided against my hastily erected shield. The breath in my lungs shot out, it felt like I had just been suckerpunched by a speeder. I pulled at the Dark Side, drawing more of it to add to my defenses.
Whump. Another strike, another rattling blow to my body as kinetic force leaked past my shield. A clear division between the dark miasma I had summoned and the Force I wielded, whatever I had called up having lost its total command of the present Dark Side when I had weathered its first strike.
Whump. I tasted iron as blood dripped down from my nose. My gut felt like I had gone twenty rounds with a KX-series droid. But I was still standing and the hostile shadows too weakened to make another strike. We were at a stalemate now that I had recovered my mental footing and was braced against any more attacks.
Well, might as well go for broke.
"Tegu nun Ziur!" Let me see, I commanded the dark miasma, projecting to it that a deal could still be brokered if it gave me what I wanted.
The miasma shimmered back and forth over the void black flame it seemed to have claimed as its own. Just when I thought it would reject my deal, it slammed against me again but this time it didn't bring telekinetic force but rather knowledge that it rammed through my shields.
Two planets spinning through the void of space appeared in my mind. One was to the far east of my position, the other much closer. The miasma prodded the image of the closer planet. I suddenly knew that was where I would find Harrsk's forces. Then the miasma prodded the planet far away. It wanted me to go here after I had gone to the first planet. A modified deal for a modified bargain, it whispered.
It's not like I had much of a choice, knowledge given could just as easily been taken away. Either I went where it wanted, or the location of this target would be lost to me.
"Deal." I wheezed out past my aching ribs.
The mental image of two hands clasping together in agreement was presented to me before the force holding me in place, and the miasma that I had summoned vanished. Gone just like that.
I fell to the floor in an ungraceful manner, limbs askew, body aching and the blood from my nose starting to stain my pants. I coughed roughly as I clambered to my feet and overlooked my meditation chambers. The flame that had burned just a second ago was completely gone despite its chemical nature, the brazier that had been holding was covered in soot. Mannequins and incense burners that had been spotted at the edges of the chamber now lay haphazardly on the floor, having been tossed around during my telekinetic exchanges with whatever I had summoned.
Everything was a mess.
With only the sound of my harsh panting to fill my ears, I reflected that maybe it was best to put a stop to performing old rituals for the time being.
The brazier chose that moment to not collapse or break, but to dissolve into ash.
Yep, time for a break from rituals.
A/N: So ends another chapter. I hope you all enjoyed it, I certainly enjoyed doing some more star wars writing. If you have feedback on my handling of the more esoteric parts of Force use, let me know. The exact translation of the ritual will be provided below. The next chapter will probably have more naval combat as the forces of Harrsk once more have a run in with the plucky squadron of Andorak. On that note, I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas and wish you all a good night.
Credit to Coruscant Translator at :
«Spoken in Sith: I call upon the Dark Side to lend me its ear, let me glimpse into its currents of power and see the oasis of my foe. I offer blood of my body as the sacrifice, I offer food of my own as tribute, I offer victory over my enemies as payment. Let me See »