Trigger Warning : Erebus. Just ... Erebus. There isn't anything too explicit shown on-screen, but the implications are there. This chapter is a massive shift in tone from the rest of the story, and if you want, you can skip it and it shouldn't impact your enjoyment of the rest of Darth Cain's adventure. I didn't even intend to write it, but people kept asking for a look at Cain's apprenticeship and how it ended, and the Muse answered.
Still here ? Well. You have been warned.
Here we go.
Hello, sibling.
To understand the present, you need must understand the past. So follow us, sibling. Let us swim against the temporal currents, to an age of war and despair, of atrocity and heroism : to the time of the Old Republic – though all things are old from the future's perspective, and young from the past's.
All is one in the Force : what was, is, and what will be, waits. Come and see, sibling.
See the Republic, wounded, bleeding, yet still standing, proud and defiant. It is stronger than it knows, then and always. For all its flaws, for all the hiccups and mistakes along the way, democracy remains the best way sentients have figured out to live in community. It is an ideal, a promise made in the aftermath of the darkest days, when the chains that held the entire galaxy in thrall were broken, in a war none now remember but us.
See the Empire, prouder still, yet hollow and crumbling, kept standing only through the sacrifice of its own future on War's scarlet altars. It screams its strength at the void like a child waving a stick in the faces of other children at the daycare, because here it is strong, here it doesn't have to be afraid of the abusive father figure waiting for it at home. Evil begets evil begets evil, and few can see the chains binding them to the one, monstrous will holding it all together.
The Empire is a cycle of violence and cruelty, sibling, birthed in lies, war and attempted genocide by those who should have known better, perpetuated by the schemes of a would-be god. It leaves its mark on all who dwell in its shadow, even those lucky, cunning few who manage to get out.
Follow us; let us look deeper.
Our gaze turns to Dromund Kaas. Stormy, wrathful, terrible Dromund Kaas, where the twin thrones of the Hungering Dark lie, one occupied above and one empty below.
See the great cities, born of the labor of the brave souls who were saved from extinction only so that they might serve. See the great temples, built through the suffering of countless slaves. The Empire pursues greatness in all things, looking to a distant, glorious future even as it idolizes the past – and the present is naught but a bloody sacrifice.
See the Imperial citizens, working hard, bound together by common purpose. Their lives, their dreams, their hopes, their loves and ambitions are not so different from those of any Republic citizen. The flow of propaganda cannot drown someone's base nature completely, no matter how hard hollow-souled men try to make it so.
See the Sith Lords ! See how they strut about, so insecure in their power, so hungry for more influence, more wealth, more prestige, more, always more. They can never be satisfied with what they already have, like sharks who will die if they stop moving – except, that is not a universal truth, and neither is this. They could stop : the Dark Side is not so cruel. It is only their fear that holds them back from knowing any semblance of peace. Their fear, and the knives of their peers, for they are all trapped inside the same rat race, running through a maze with only one exit, all for the entertainment of a bored demigod who not once saw other people as anything more than tools. See how they dance around the empty throne, casting fearful glances in its direction over their shoulders all the while.
We look away from the great cities and deep into the jungles, following roads which are kept clear of vegetation and beasts only through ceaseless struggle. See how these great woods are hostile to sentient life, haunted by monsters leftover from the first time the Sith walked this land, before they learned of the Republic and were tricked into declaring war on the rest of the universe to serve the ambitions of one most wicked soul. See how the ambitious and the foolish walk into the darkness in search of lost secrets, and how few of them ever return, the rest feeding the jungles of Dromund Kaas with their blood – keeping them satiated, keeping them from attacking the cities to find the prey they desire, in an unknown rite of appeasement through bloody sacrifice.
Yet, this ancient darkness pales compared to a more recent one.
We shiver. We tremble. There are things even we fear, sibling, places whose horror transcends time and leaves a bloody handprint onto eternity. Yet we must go on. You must see this, sibling. You must learn, and understand.
Follow us, and prepare yourself, though no preparations could arm you for what lies ahead.
See Sicarus, the domain of the Vile One. Do you know what it takes for a Sith to earn such a name in so bloody an age ?
Perhaps you think you do. Perhaps you fancy yourself a wise soul, versed into the many faces of evil. If so, you are adorably mistaken, sibling. You cannot understand what Erebus did in this place. If you did, you would never stop screaming, just like there's a part of poor, dear Ciaphas who only stopped screaming when he met Amberley with their respective masks down and he found peace at last.
See the slaves being brought past the walls, from all species and worlds. Old and young, male and female and otherwise, criminals and innocent, it matters not to the Vile One, who cares only that they can suffer. See the looks on the faces of the slavemasters as they receive their payment from soul-broken servants : some of the harshest, cruellest men of the Empire, and yet they are uneasy, nauseous, guilty even, as generous amounts of coins change hands. They do not know what will happen to the slaves either, but they have the slightest inkling of the awful truth, and it torments their withered consciences relentlessly.
Erebus knows it. He doesn't worry about it : he enjoys it, in fact, delighting in how his evil disturbs even men such as these. Erebus enjoys a great many things, for he is the perfect Sith in many, equally horrible ways.
We look away from the days, months, years, decades of horror that occur in this place. Away, away, away. The past is written and cannot be changed, and there's little to be learned from witnessing such atrocities, when so many tears have already been shed. We search, instead, for the day everything changed. For the day it ended. For the day of death and salvation, of failure and mercy.
For the Day of Cain.
On the dawn of what he did not yet know would be his last day alive, Darth Erebus had three apprentices. It was an unusually high number : most Sith Lords only kept one, two at most in order to use rivalry to keep them at each other's throat. Any more than that, and there was the risk of the apprentices uniting to overthrow their Master, or they would simply kill each other until only one remained anyway.
Darth Erebus cared naught for these perils, however. The Vile One (for he bore that title, bestowed upon him by the Republic as a curse, with delighted pride) saw his apprentices as pieces of art, instruments of the Dark Side who would be shaped by his hands to reach their ultimate potential. He had collected potentials from all over the Empire and beyond, and in Sicarus, he'd broken them, one by one. Not all had withstood his cruelties : many had perished, either at his hands, at those of their fellows, or – far more often – at their own, until only three remained.
There was mad Konrad, who saw the future more clearly than any other in the galaxy, and wept bloody tears for the horrors he beheld whenever he closed his pitch-black eyes. The near-Human had been born to slaves in the pits of Dromund Kaas, and had only been four years old when Erebus' enforcers, guided by their Master's visions, had slaughtered the entire slave group and brought the pale-skinned infant to Sicarus.
There was beautiful Emeli, who had been made to murder all those she loved and so driven to madness and obsession, never able to escape her pain save for brief, stolen moments in the night. The pureblood Sith had once been the heiress to a powerful family, before Erebus had decided to have her as a student and engineered the downfall of her line before coming to her in her lowest moment, revealing everything was his doing, and forcing her to kill her parents and siblings.
And then there was fearful Ciaphas, who cowered from the Master's punishments, yet would not embrace the darkness even as tears of pain and fear ran down his cheeks. Of the three, he was the weakest, yet also the one Erebus spent the most time educating, something which Emeli and Konrad were jealous of and pitied him for at the same time.
Three Sith apprentices, three stolen children, three broken souls.
Three conspirators, united by their hate of their Master. Exactly as Darth Erebus had intended.
They came at him inside the Gallery of Silent Screams, just like Erebus had expected. The Gallery was something he was particularly proud of : it was a long corridor, whose walls were covered in carbonite prisons. Dozens of victims were frozen there, trapped at the very apex of pain after weeks of torture. His technical experts had worked hard to design a way they could still feel pain, even in this state.
The constant agony of over a hundred slaves, rivals and captured Jedi would have been enough to mask the three apprentices' killing intent, if not for the fact Erebus had already foreseen it. And so, when the three of them struck, the Vile One smiled.
Ciaphas was the one to attack first, using the Force to send a bunch of furniture flying in his direction. Together, the objects must have weighed over a ton, yet they moved through the corridor nearly as fast as a blaster bolt, propelled by the immense strength of the Sith Lord's favourite apprentice – and victim.
Erebus stopped them dead in the air with a gesture. He took a moment to savour the expression of shock on Ciaphas' face, before sending him flying across the Gallery with another desultory motion of his hand. None of the very expensive pieces had got even close to him, but of course, that hadn't been the point – Ciaphas was only a distraction.
Darth Erebus turned, calling his lightsaber to his hand, and ignited it just in time to illuminate Konrad's descending form. The seer had hidden in the rafters, and used his own oracular abilities to perfectly calculate his plunge so that the first strike of crimson blade would have sliced Erebus' head in two if it had connected.
Instead, Erebus parried the blow with the lightsaber he held in one hand and let loose a torrent of Force Lightning with the other. Konrad screamed in agony as he was held in the air by the sheer strength of the onslaught, right until Erebus plunged his blade into his heart.
For a moment, he held Konrad up like this, skewered on his lightsaber like a pig. Slowly, twitching with agony, Konrad raised his head and looked at his killer, eyes burning with pain and hate.
"Did you not foresee this, my apprentice ?" mocked Erebus.
"I … did," spat Konrad. The Vile One frowned at the mad pupil's lack of despair, and finished him off by ripping his lightsaber out of his chest, incinerating even more of his vital organs on the way out and throwing the smoking corpse to the ground.
He had no time to reflect on the meaning of Konrad's last words, as he now had to parry Emeli's furious flurry of blows, all while blocking the sound of her screams as she tried to break his mind by hammering it with her own projected madness.
In some ways, it was a shame that she had to die : with enough time to develop her abilities, Emeli had the potential to drown entire worlds into insanity. But hers was a necessary sacrifice, and besides, he could always find a replacement for her in the next batch of apprentices, once he'd proven his method worked.
Left, right, up, right, and – there. With a swift sweep, he cut off both of the young pureblood girl's hands, before ramming his blade into her throat and silencing her scream of horrified pain.
Erebus looked at the corpse, then up to where Ciaphas was staring at Erebus, at the corpses of his two fellow Apprentices. Then he turned and ran, chased by the sound of Erebus' laughter, and the echo of slow, deliberate footsteps.
As he walked, Erebus could see the path to the future, clear and obvious. He was going to cut off Cain's right hand, sever it at the wrist and deprive him of his lightsaber. The appendage would be replaced later, but the loss – and the associated pain, which would never truly fade, Erebus would make sure of that – would forever remind his last apprentice that he couldn't defy his Master, that all he had managed to achieve today was to get his fellow students killed due to his weakness and cowardice, and the realization would well and truly break him. He would accept his place as Erebus' slave, and the Vile One would unleash him upon the galaxy, using him to further his cause, all while continuing to shape him into an even more perfect instrument.
Erebus could see it, clear as day, just like he had seen a thousand paths before, Destiny shaped by his will to serve the glory of the Dark Side. Ciaphas would only be the first. He'd make more like him, and together, they would crush the Republic, exterminate the Jedi, and usher in a new age of eternal Darkness, under the rule of the Undying Emperor.
He followed Ciaphas out of the Gallery of Silent Screams, past the Hall of Horrors and the gate of the Basilica of Darkness. There was nowhere for the apprentice to escape : Erebus had made sure the entire complex was sealed, and Ciaphas didn't have the required access codes to undo the lockdown.
The more Ciaphas tried to escape, the greater his despair as he realized there was nowhere to run, and the sweetest Erebus' victory would be. Eventually, Erebus found him laying on the ground in front of a tall statue of the Emperor, panting with exhaustion. Usually, he could've run for hours by drawing on the Force, but Erebus had been harassing him from afar with psychic nudges ever since he'd fled the Gallery, stopping him from concentrating.
"There is no point in running, Ciaphas," said the Vile One as he crossed the last few meters separating him from his final apprentice, his masterpiece, and raised his lightsaber. "This … this was always inevitable."
Then fear, cold and immense, struck him like a hammer-blow, poured into his veins like ice water and tightened around his heart, freezing him in place. It'd been decades since Darth Erebus had felt anything like this, and it caught him completely off-guard.
Ciaphas was doing this, he realized. His last apprentice was making him feel the same terror he felt right now – but Erebus wasn't used to it, while Ciaphas had spent his entire time in Sicarus suffering it, and he didn't freeze. Instead, he rose, a mad, feral desperation in his eyes – the look of a wounded, cornered beast lashing out at its hunter – and ignited his own lightsaber.
The crimson blade swung, a simple strike that bit deep into Erebus' torso, ravaging his internal organs before erupting out of his back.
The shocked disbelief Erebus felt drowned out the agony of the wound. He had not anticipated this, not at all. Never, not even in fragmentary glimpses had he foreseen this possibility, that Ciaphas, whose fear he'd so enjoyed over the years time and time again, would find a way to turn that very fear against him, without first turning it to anger and to hate. In all the thousands of times he had seen this moment play out, not once had he seen this particular outcome.
It had been so, so long since one of his visions had been wrong, and now he was going to die because of it. There was no questioning it : the blow was a lethal one. Already he could feel the cold hand of death drawing him in, feel his connection to the Force desert him as punishment for his failure. The Dark Side rewarded triumph and punished defeat, and Erebus could feel its gaze turn away from him and toward his killer, evaluating Ciaphas, judging him just like Erebus had judged the boy when he'd first arrived to Sicarus.
There was still something he could do, Erebus realized. One last offering to the Dark Side, one last seed of ruin planted before he passed into the embrace of the Void, to atone for his failure to forge Ciaphas into the perfect instrument of torment he could have been – and might yet become, if the gambit that had come to Erebus in one final flash of dark inspiration came to pass.
He smiled at Ciaphas, blood pouring between his lips. The barely suppressed flinch of recoil in his last apprentice at the sight pleased the Vile One greatly. Even here, at the end, his apprentice was afraid of him, scared that this was some trick, that Erebus would somehow survive this and punish him as he'd punished him countless times before, for wrongs both real and imagined.
But no. What Erebus had in mind was much worse than any merely physical torment.
"You … will be … magnificent," he breathed out, making sure to articulate the words clearly so that Ciaphas couldn't miss their meaning.
A curse, to plant a seed of doubt in Ciaphas' heart – that perhaps he hadn't escaped Erebus' plans for him after all. Perhaps his Master had been willing to sacrifice everything, including his very life, to make Ciaphas into an even better servant of the Dark Side than he.
And as the darkness took Erebus into its embrace, Erebus knew that might still happen, and he found it good.
I stood over the corpse of my Master for what felt like an eternity. All the while, I kept expecting him to get back up, to laugh in my face, to reveal it had all been another trick. But he didn't move. He was dead, and his last words kept repeating in my head – but they couldn't drown out the image of my fellow apprentices' corpses – the corpses of my friends.
I had held Emeli in my arms as she cried silently in the night, when the madness she used to fight others had no other victim than her to torment. I had held Konrad down while his body seized and spasmed in the throes of his visions, to keep him from hurting himself. As more and more of our fellow students died, we had become closer and closer, unable to stop ourselves, even though we knew it was a trap of Erebus, a way to hurt us even more.
Now they were dead, and I was alone.
I screamed, in grief, in pain, I knew not and did not care, and the Dark Side answered. A storm of kinetic energy raged across the entire castle, ripping apart priceless artwork and morbid trophies alike. My mind brushed against the trapped souls of the Gallery of Silent Screams, and I ripped the life supports and sorcerous bindings which kept them locked in perpetual torment with telekinesis.
One by one, I felt the spark of their lives go dark, their spirits finally released from their awful fate. This, at least, I knew was a good thing. This, at least, was mine.
I raged on. Without moving from where I sat, I tore the monuments to Erebus' past triumphs to pieces. I smashed statues to dust, shattered ancient crystals ripped from the earth of distant worlds, ripped paintings and tapestries to shreds. I felt the Force in me, stronger than ever before, and knew that I wasn't doing this entirely alone – that all of Erebus' past victims were helping me, reaching out from the grave to assist me in this act.
I longed to join them, to die and no longer have to endure this miserable life of mine. But even now, I couldn't do it. Even now, I was too much of a coward to do the one thing that would ensure Erebus' last curse would never come to pass.
The storm passed, the silent presence of the dead withdrew. I fell to the ground, exhausted, and wept. I do not know how long I stayed like this : Erebus had trained me out of the ability to feel thirst and hunger, forcing me to subsist entirely on the power of the Dark Side.
Eventually, however, my awareness of my surroundings returned as I felt a new presence walking through the ruins my loss of control had turned Sicarus into. Forcing my eyes open, I looked up, and saw a pureblood Sith in dark armor, radiating strength in the Force. I knew him, recognized him from Erebus' lessons regarding the Imperial hierarchy we'd been expected to serve into once we were let out of this dismal place, and knew I was doomed.
"Lord Scourge," I rasped out, and stretched out my arms to gesture at the devastated décor around us. "Welcome to Sicarus."
"Apprentice," he said, looking at my lightsaber, still clutched in my hand. "Darth Erebus is dead, then ?"
"Yes," I replied, my head twitching in the direction where the pieces of his corpse laid. In my crazed rampage, I had thoroughly dismembered the Vile One's remains : there'd be no coming back from this, even with the best cybernetic technology in the Empire.
Even in my current state, faced with one who was sure to kill me for what I'd done, I found this satisfying.
"And you were the one to kill him ?" asked Scourge.
Was I ? I could never have done it without the help of my fellow apprentices, but they were dead now, and mine had been the hands to wield the lightsaber which had delivered the final blow.
"Yes," I admitted, knowing that such a crime carried only one punishment, but finding myself unable to care at the moment.
"Then you will come with me," decreed the Emperor's Wrath. "The Emperor demands it."
It was then that I realized that I could, in fact, still care. For Erebus had been, as far as I could tell, loyal to the Emperor – not just loyal, but worshipful. And the thought of any being capable of earning my Master's loyalty was a terrifying one.
I followed Scourge without resistance, lost in a haze of shock and terror, as he took me outside of Sicarus for the first time in years. I thought he'd bring me to the Imperial Palace in the planetary capital, but instead our transport went up, past Dromund Kaas' atmosphere and into an orbital station. I sat insensate on the copilot's chair as Lord Scourge navigated us through the numberless defenses of the station, until we landed in a hangar and he almost had to drag me out of my chair before I snapped back into something approaching focus.
We walked through long corridors, passing by hooded figures which reminded me of the faceless thralls Erebus had kept in Sicarus, each of them cut apart and rebuilt with a mix of Imperial augmentations and Sith sorcery. I briefly wondered what had happened to the wretches after my Master's demise : I hadn't seen or heard any of them while laying on the ground, insensate. Had they all died with him, or had them been released from whatever control he held over them ? If it was the latter, I couldn't imagine many of them had been able to continue living, not with what I knew he'd made them do.
We passed crimson-clad members of the Imperial Guard and powerful Sith Lords, who looked at Scourge with a mix of awe and envy, and at me with one of curiosity and contempt. I cannot say what they saw when they looked at me, but I must have made quite the sight, having not washed myself in what must have been days at this point.
Scourge led me into an eight-sided room, at the center of which stood a throne atop a tiered pedestal. Upon that throne sat the Emperor of the Sith, and I fell to my knees, unable to stay standing before such power and malice as I could feel radiating from him.
"Tell me your name," said the Emperor, and the answer tore itself from my throat before I could even think about it :
"Ciaphas."
"You have slain your Master, and cost me a valuable servant." There was no emotion in his voice : no anger, no amusement, nothing. Somehow, that made it worse than all the times Erebus had taunted me before putting me through another 'test'. "For this, you will be put through a trial. Should you survive, you will have proven yourself of use."
He didn't say what would happen if I failed. He didn't need to. Death would be the kindest possible option in that case, and I knew better than to hope for it.
One of the weird, creepy-looking robed servants entered the room. It (for there was no sign of its gender visible, and I could tell, even at a glance, that whatever humanity it had once possessed had been ripped from it long ago) carried a crystal box within which rested something which resembled a cross between a crown of black metal and a giant spider. Even through the shroud of sheer malevolence which radiated from the Emperor like an unholy halo, I could feel the malign hunger of the object.
"This is a Phobis device," the Emperor said. "One of three such engines, the study of which led the Dread Masters to the heights of power they now enjoy."
I knew of the Dread Masters. Erebus had taught me everything about them : he was a great admirer of their work, and had fought alongside them on several campaigns before their disappearance. One time, he'd brought a bunch of their victims to Sicarus, civilians and soldiers from the Republic and Empire both, to study the effects of the Dread Masters' powers.
"This is your test," continued the master of all Sith. "Your goal is simple : endure. If you survive with enough of your mind intact to serve me as the Dread Masters do, then you shall live."
The idea of becoming like these nightmarish lords was horrifying, but the thought of disobeying the Emperor was even more so. So I stayed on my knees as the servant took the Phobis device out of its container. I felt the power that bled from it, and knew then that the servant wouldn't live another day, for the energies of the Phobis device were already ravaging its body, having found its mind too empty to be worth breaking.
It took every bit of self-control I possessed not to lash out and try escaping. It would be pointless, I kept repeating to myself : Scourge was still in the room, and what hope did a mere apprentice like myself have of evading both the Emperor's Wrath and the Emperor himself ? No, my best chance of making it through this, tenuous as it was, was to go through this trial and hope against hope I made it through while still being myself.
Then the Phobis device slipped over my head, and there was no more time to think, no more time to do anything but endure. I felt fear, greater than anything I'd ever known in all my years in Sicarus, amplified and sent back at me by the device, again and again, in a loop that kept going further and further. Reason and sanity deserted me, leaving naught but stark, raving madness in their place. I distantly felt my body collapse, felt the touch of the cold metal deck against my cheek as I twitched in an undignified pile of gibbering flesh.
But I knew fear. I had known it for years, for all of my life that I remembered. I had used it to keep me alive, and then, at the hour of blackest despair, I had wielded it as a weapon to kill my Master. And so, even as my mind crumbled, a core of my self endured, protected by my self-preservation instincts.
An eternity passed, and my torment receded. Slowly, agonizingly slowly, my thoughts began to piece themselves together.
"You have survived. Good."
I twitched at the sound of the Emperor's voice. Somehow, I'd forgotten he was there.
"Rise," he commanded.
I wanted nothing more than to remain on the ground, but I knew that if I did so, I would die. So I buried my fear, pushed it away and into the Force. Ice spread around me in every direction but the Emperor's throne as I forced myself to my feet, using the Force to keep myself from collapsing.
I looked up at where the Emperor sat, and was relieved to see that he wasn't smiling. I didn't think I could have survived the sight of him smiling, after everything.
"You have passed your trial, and proven yourself worthy of all that you have usurped from your fallen Master. Henceforth, you shall be known as Darth Cain," he proclaimed. "All that belonged to Erebus is now yours : his title, his servants, and his duties. You will serve me as he did : a leader of my armies, to crush my enemies."
Me, a Darth ? And replacing Erebus ? The very idea was ridiculous. I'd spent years as an apprentice – a slave, in truth. And now, just like that, the Emperor had elevated me to the very heights of Sith authority. I could already feel the target this would paint on my back.
"Yes, your Imperial Majesty," I replied, ignoring the pain in my throat as I forced the words out.
"Go," he said – the first and last of the elder monster's orders I would ever follow gladly.
I walked out of the throne room, not believing that I'd somehow made it, expecting a lightsaber or bolt of lightning to the back with every step. Scourge followed me, and once we were out and the pressure of the Emperor's presence had diminished (but not completely faded : in that moment, I didn't believe it would ever completely leave me), led me back through the station's corridors.
Now, the Sith Lords who dwelled in the space station looked at me with the eyes burning with jealousy, wondering how a wretch such as I could have survived an audience with their Master. I didn't give them so much as a glance, knowing that to show weakness would see me dead. The perception of the Emperor's favor would not protect me, for if any of them could kill me, then clearly I had been unworthy of it in the first place.
Scourge took me to a different hangar than the one we'd landed in, and led me to a ship that, even to my inexperienced eyes looked top-of-the-line, all black metal and sharp angles.
"This ship has been programmed to take you to the current location of Darth Erebus' forces," said Scourge. "You'll learn more about his assignment once you arrive."
He paused briefly, as if hesitating, then added :
"Good luck, Darth Cain. May the Force serve you well."
I wanted to laugh. I wanted to cry. I wanted to scream. I wanted to draw my lightsaber and cut him down, or be cut down in turn, just so that this would end.
But I didn't. Instead, I poured my fear into the Force again, causing a layer of ice to form on every other ship in the hangar. In the distance, the workers who'd been tending to another vessel slipped and scrambled away from us, no doubt scared of getting caught in whatever the two Sith Lords (for I was one such being now, Force help me) were up to.
"May it serve you as well, Lord Scourge," I replied, and turned to walk up the ramp, into the ship and whatever awaited me next. "Until we next meet."
Though I didn't know it at the time, we would indeed meet again, several times – although our final meeting would take place in circumstances neither of us could ever have imagined at the time.
Now we borrow the voice of the wise grandmothers. We speak in the tongue of the slaves who dare dream of freedom, now delivered by those who knew the heaviest chains of all. We speak through the medium of old legends, to deliver an older truth.
Listen, sibling, and listen well. We tell you this story to save your life.
Long, long ago, there lived the Dark One. His cruelty had no limit, his hunger for suffering and corruption no bound. Where he walked, rivers of tears flowed, and he drank deep from the torment he caused, growing strong from it, strong enough to break all those who sought to stop his evil.
For many, many years, the Dark One wandered the stars, inflicting unspeakable horrors upon all who crossed his path. His name was feared and reviled in equal measure, but the Dark One was not satisfied, for despite all his power, he could only be in one place at once to perpetrate his evil.
Then, one day, the Dark One had a terrible idea : if he could only be in one place at a time, then he would make more of himself. And the Dark One wouldn't make when he could steal, and so he stole children and brought them to his castle of torments to make them into copies of himself.
"Rejoice, children," he told them all. "For you shall grow strong, and one of you shall be made perfect."
The children shuddered and wept, for they recognized the Dark One's evil. But they were only children, and there was nothing they could do against the Dark One and his enslaved, broken minions.
And so the children were hurt, and hurt, and hurt, to break them so that they would become as hollow as the Dark One had always been. They were fed poison distilled from the Dark One's vile blood, and lies and truths mixed to bring as much pain as possible as they passed through their guts. But truly breaking them in the way the Dark One desired was hard, because people were not, are not, and will never be like him, not unless all light in the universe has died.
But the Dark One didn't care. To him, it only meant he had more time to torment the children before they joined him in tormenting everyone else.
In the dark of the night, the children cried, and prayed that someone would come to save them. And people came, sibling. Heroes from distant lands, and even the Dark One's own kin, who couldn't abide his evil.
They came to slay the Dark One and free the ones he tormented, but the Dark One was cunning and powerful, and so they died instead, or were broken and remade to serve the Dark One's cruel desires as he wanted to break and remake the children. And the children lost hope, and one by one, they died from the poison the Dark One was pouring down their throats, until only three remained.
One was an oracle who could only see the worst possible future, blinded to anything else by the poison that had gathered in his eyes. The second was a songstress whose every word cursed those who heard them, for her tongue had been blackened by the Dark One's blood. And the third was Ekkreth, the Dark One's favorite, who had drunk the poison but hadn't broken, even as it burned away everything they had been.
In desperation, the three chose to defy the Dark One. They had learned many tricks from him, and grown a twisted strength from surviving his cruel tests. But evil cannot defeat evil, not truly. And so two of them fell, leaving only Ekkreth.
"Ah, Ekkreth," said the Dark One, his smile darker than the void between stars. "I see you are the last, in the end. Congratulations on passing my final test. Now it is time for you take your rightful place at my side."
Ekkreth was afraid, for they knew how strong the Dark One was better than anyone. But they were cunning, too, and a spark burned in their heart that all the tortures of the Dark One hadn't been able to extinguish.
They let the Dark One see their fear, let him think they had finally succeeded in breaking Ekkreth, and as the Dark One loomed over Ekkreth to gloat, as he always did, Ekkreth struck with a knife made of a shard of their own fractured soul. In that single blow, they poured all of their grief, all of their pain, all of their anger and all of their fear, and the Dark One fell.
But the Dark One was cunning too, and even as he fell, he cast a curse with his last breath, so that a piece of him would escape, and burrow its way into the heart of every soul to ever live. There, it would fester and feed and grow, so that, one day, the Dark One would rise again.
Only Ekkreth was spared from this curse, for they knew the Dark One well, and shielded themselves from it. Then, they walked out of the castle of the Dark One, lost and afraid still. They had learned all of the Dark One's tricks, and in their pain and terror, they vowed that they would never become what their master had wanted for them; swore to oppose him in every way they could, for, hurt and scared as they were, they could not imagine a worse doom than that.
And because Ekkreth had lost who they were to the Dark One's poison, they were no one. And so, ever since then, anyone can be Ekkreth if they choose to; can rise against the Dark One's evil, even if it hurts, even if they are afraid, even if they are alone.
This is the truth of it, sibling. There is a seed of the Dark One in you, just like there is one in everyone. And if you feed it cruelty, if you choose selfishness over kindness, apathy over compassion, it will grow and consume you from within, until you are Depur, an echo of the Dark One's evil. And you will live a miserable existence, for you will know, in your heart of hearts, that you have lost something important, and no amount of feeding the seed of ruin will fill the void.
But, and this is important, sibling, you can also become Ekkreth, and bring freedom to yourself and others instead. You can cultivate kindness, compassion, courage and wisdom.
And so the struggle between Ekkreth and Depur continues, and will continue until all are Free and the seeds of the Dark One are pried out from all hearts, everywhere. None who fight this struggle will see its end, sibling, but it must be fought, because the alternative is to let the Dark One return in a new guise, with a new name and a new voice.
And this must not, must never be. Do you hear us, sibling ? Do you understand us ? THIS MUST NOT BE. The Dark One must never return, or the circle of stars shall be sundered, and the lifeblood of all people shall become his nourishment, until another Ekkreth rises – but for all their cunning, all their tricks and disguises, Ekkreth cannot undo Depur's evil.
We tell you this story to save your life.
Yoda gasped as the vision ended. He blinked as his surroundings came back into focus, his small heart beating far faster than was healthy for someone his age.
He was in his meditation room in the Jedi Temple, where he'd retired after receiving Obi-Wan's report on the Savareen situation. He had come here to think, to consider what had happened and consult the Force on what the best course of action might be, now that an already unstable situation had escalated beyond all but their wildest expectations.
Already, the details of the vision were fading away, but Yoda remembered enough. Too much, even. Over his centuries of life, Yoda had seen many tragedies, many horrors, for even a galaxy free of the depredations of the Sith was still capable of much evil. But nothing like this.
Later, there would be time to consider the implications of what he had seen. Time to call Knight Vail to meet with him in private; time to speak with his friends, time to unpack the vision's meaning, time to discuss the best course for the Jedi Order and the Republic.
But for now, there was only one thing on Yoda's mind.
Slowly, feeling the weight of every one of his many years, the Grand Master of the Jedi Order set up a trio of mourning candles and lit them up. Once he was done, alone, with no one to look strong and wise for, he wept for three brave children no one had been able to save.
AN : There were many people who suggested that Erebus die a ludicrous death, like slipping on a banana peel or from a food allergy. But while these make for great Omake ideas, I don't think they'd have fit with the actual story.
Because Erebus' sole narrative purpose is to make everything worse : he is a kind of grimdark singularity, bending the setting around him to make it a worse place than if he didn't exist in it. If you came to this story from the Star Wars side of things and aren't familiar with Warhammer 40000 lore at all, know that I'm not exaggerating when I say that the Vile One's only function in any story in which he appears is to make things worse for everybody.
Don't worry : we'll get back to wacky adventures, zany misunderstandings, and impostor syndrome in the next chapter. I expect there'll be a short hiatus before it comes out, as I need to smooth out the details of the next story arc before I can properly start writing it.
In the meantime, I look forward to your thoughts on this unique chapter.
Zahariel out.