Chapter 17: Once Dirt and Bones

39:6:11 GrS

Lettow, The Core Worlds

The loud whine of the speeder bike that even my helmet couldn't entirely keep out finally died away as I brought the bike to a stop. When I had started out the yellow-orange sun had been hanging high, now it was just about to start its dip below the western horizon. It had taken hours of searching, climbing up plateaus and taking reports from Zeffo about the status of the FOB, which would be complete by sundown; but I had what my Force given mental compass had been taking me to.

It sat on the lip of a basin, the gentle edges signaling that there had either been a lake or a gentle coastline once, to the back of it rose a tall ridge. It was a ruined ziggurat complex, a trio of the ruined structures dominated what would have been a large flat plane, before time shifted the dirt around. I peered at the slightly raised bump that surrounded the, ohhhh couple square miles large compound. It had been walled, once.

I was tempted to pull the binocs out from my pack and do some long range searching, but I was losing daylight and needed to get a camp set up before then. True exploration could begin with daylight. I clambered back onto the speeder bike and pulled back from the ruined complex by a kilometer. A very interesting structure saturated with the Dark Side or not, places like these had an extreme 'here be monsters' feeling that was not to be ignored. And things did go bump in the night, followed shortly by the unwary becoming a juicy snack for whatever beasties lurked in these places. So my camp had a number of mini motion sensors of ISB origin placed around the perimeters. A portable fire was ignited, and hot rations were placed on it to heat up. My bedroll was alongside the speeder bike.

As the food warmed, I looked upwards at the new night sky. Was there a star or constellation I recognized? Definitely not, but the practice of looking up at the stars and appreciating their beauty was universal among all the sentients of the galaxy. Frivolous matters done with, I quickly ate the rations and closed my eyes. In my life, the soldier's skill of falling asleep on command(and waking up in a split second) was essential to survival. Usually it was a dreamless sleep, my mental walls preventing the mind from projecting what it was processing of the day's events into my subliminal consciousness. Tonight was different, very different.

Murky...no, soupy fog surrounded me. The only feature in an otherwise featureless landscape. A droning ambient noise flowed around me, just loud enough to prevent me from falling off back to dreamless sleep. The noise gradually grew louder and louder, until the noise reached the level of a crowded megapolis. A loud megapolis. The mindless chattering cacophony assaulted my ears.

My thoughts raced. Was I under attack? Was this some half remembered Force imprint of the occupants of the complex?

I kept my face neutral, but the clenching of my fists as they grabbed at a non-existent lightsaber hilt gave away my mounting nervousness. That and the fast pace of my heartbeat.

Then, as quickly as it had built up, the chattering fell away, plunging my ears back into unnatural silence.

"Hello there." A voice greeted from behind me. I tensed up, wondering if I had truly been caught in a trap. Would moving to face the threat put me deeper in its grasp or allow me to escape before it was too late?

"It's been a while Andorak. I thought you'd be happier." The voice was more, allowing me to hear the nitty gritty of the person's voice. A woman was speaking to me, and the only remarkable quality of her voice was how unremarkable its pitch and tone was. The temptation to actually look at her, or whatever was aping her voice was too great to withstand, and so I pivoted.

Oh.

She looked just like she had before she died. The athletic body, honed from a lifetime of do-or-die Inquisitorius training. She still came up to just about my shoulders. Her face, well it wasn't supermodel tier but it had objectively been judged by the five of us to be an attractive face. Her brown hair was still in the angled bob it had always been in and her hazel eyes looked just as cool as they had been her entire life. Every sense I had at my disposal told me that Shan Beviroun was alive and well, and standing right in front of me.

For a few, just a few, breathtaking and heart aching moments, my friend, my oldest friend was back.

"Well at least you missed me." Then she smiles in a warm and open way that she had never done in life.

Then I become very, very angry. The anger struck with the force of a thunderbolt. I felt like I was breathing acid and that my body was melting from the inside out. Dimly, from beyond the fog, I could make out the noise metal makes when it's forcibly warped and deformed. But that barely registered to me. My friend was being desecrated by this thing! How Dare It!

I forcibly unlocked my jaw. "You have this one moment to leave with your existence intact." My voice wasn't anything close to how I normally sounded, it was shaky. Shaky with anger.

"Hmmm." The mockery tapped a stolen finger against stolen lips in a mocking gesture of thoughtfulness. "Since we're in this mental landscape that I control annnd since I'm the one in control, I'm going to have to pass on your generous offer, m'kay?"

The thing did a pirouette. "Besides, it's been so long since anyone or thing came to bother this place and activate me. Why would I give up the newest form I've gained in millennia because you're upset?"

"Could it be that the guilt is too much?" Seeing the mocking grin that she had used when lecturing us on academic matters again caused more pain in my heart, and even more rage. So I'd tripped an ancient defense, or been ensnared in a sorcerous trap eh? So fucking what. I hadn't gone anywhere, we were just stuck in my head and it was still my head.

I had control here, yep. I just need to assert it and then re-assert control of my mind. Don't think about failure, just focus on victory and the breaking of the chains thrown onto me.

"Ohhh~ are you mad, little force user?" The mockery grinned. "I was created to defend this academy by true visionaries and masters of the Bogan you ignorantly dapple in. You, and the pathetic life forms that were once your 'friends', couldn't even challenge me on your collective best day. Not that they'll ever have a best day again, right Andorak? You made sure of that, didn't you?" A giggle punctuated her continued mockery.

Words caught in my throat, robbing me of a release for my rage. Oh how I wanted to scream at this thing. Oh God, why did this thing have to be in my head?

We'd made a pact damn it! The promise among the only friends the five of us had ever had in our entire hell lives on Prakith, when the final trial for ascension had come for our cohort: no hesitation and no remorse. An honest to Force blood pact, promising that one of us would live to show the world that we had existed and beat out the rest of the fuckers in the cohort. The conjoined legacy of a decade and a half of life lived by five friends carried on by one person.

The Force had decreed that me, by virtue of strength of arms and force, would become the Ninth Brother. A bloody, drug induced brawl between the twenty strong cohort had seen me as the sole survivor. I hadn't wasted the chance to further myself and I sure as hell wouldn't backslide, get stuck in old grief and hate, because a poltergeist wanted me to.

"My head creature." I snarled, finally managing words. "You forget that this is my head, my memories you try to fling at me. But here's a secret for you to chew on."

I thrust a hand forward and impose my will on the visitor in my head. The pure form of Sha flickered away and the actual last image of her that I had was superimposed instead. The once intact face now marred by a deep furrow that cut away the eyes and nose, the result of a backhanded mace blow I had struck. The rest of her body was similarly ruined, bones sticking out of arms and legs from a force push that had sent Shar careening away from the general melee us five had broken into after the drugs had hit our system. I had killed her, good as, but hadn't struck a death blow. Her death must have been so painful. I had killed Sha, Varic and Kol. Isha and Corin had died in the later melee. But the thought of any possible wounds I had inflicted on the two being the reason for their deaths haunted me.

"You can't make me hate myself for doing what I did more than I already do. So GET THE HELL OUT OF MY HEAD!" Then I raised up my left hand and splayed my fingers wide, and cerulean lightning was spat out of my fingertips. Since it was my head, I wasn't actually bound my the limits of my real world ability, so this fucker got to taste the lightning.

The false spectre of my friend was torn away from the creature by the concentrated assault of sith lightning, reducing the creature to a shadowy, featureless figure in the arena it had put me into. I ended the barrage of faux sith lightning and raised my right hand high, palm facing the floor.

"You better hope that your creators hid whatever artifact that sustains you someplace so obscure that no living creature could ever find it. Because if they didn't, then I'm going to find you and I'm going to make you feel pain." The raised hand feel and the poltergeist let out a reedy, piercing cry as I forced it out of my head and sent it flying back to the ruined temple complex it had crawled out of.

Then I woke myself up, and opened my physical eyes to ruin. Twisted and warped scraps of metal surrounded my campsite. A handful of small fires burned away, the result of hte portable fire being squeezed into a ball by my telekinetic rage. I lurched to my feet and patted myself down. The only intact items left was what had been on my person when I fell asleep. Not even my helmet had escaped, it's battered self laying the middle of what looked like the speeder bikes engine block. Above me the night sky continued to twinkle with foreign stars, not a sign of daybreak anywhere to be seen.

I'd been ambushed completely and held hostage by an outside power. The exact thing that drove my desire to climb the ladder of power, so that I couldn't be forced by anyone to do anything I didn't want to do, had happened again. This insult couldn't go unpunished, my pride alone wouldn't permit it and the rest of my wasn't inclined to disagree.

The saccarhine sweet whispers of the Dark Side hummed their agreement.

I looked down at the temple complex and saw a sight that made my fury spike. A giant hole had been unearthed, or opened judging by the stone door laying to the side. A honor guard of floating willow wisps where at the entrance.

Someone had orchestrated this. Someone was playing with me right now.

My fury crystalized itself into a single, all consuming thought.

"Someone is going to die tonight." I announced to myself. I was never going to be played for the fool again and anyone who dared to try would suffer my wrath.

Then I moved to go make my promise a reality.

A/N - So making backstory is hard, especially when you're trying to not make it so that your dark side user comes off like an edgelord. Think I managed to not overstate the backstory to the point where it took away from the other beats in the chapter, it is a pretty plot focused chapter so I wonder if that's even possible. Also would like feedback on how Andorak falling back on Earth metaphors and phrases when he's panic came off. The inclusion of Andorak's friends from his training years wasn't something that I had planned to begin with, I'd had him as a lone wolf in training but realized that was super edgy and kinda made him a sociopath. Humans are social creatures no matter the environment, and even in a death training camp like the Citadel Inquisitorious, you're going to make friends. If you didn't like the mention of dead friends, not to worry, they're not going to be all that relevant(they're dead after all).

Next time, we delve into that most joyous of subjects for every Star Wars fan: The Lore. See ya then.