There were several checkpoints that we had to pass on our way to the Dark Temple. Darth Zash had given me official permission, so at each stop the soldiers examined our ID chits and consulted their datapads and then ushered us along. The guards grew progressively more suspicious, more on edge, and the terrain we passed grew less and less civilized. At the final outpost, I noted that several soldiers wore extra armor and carried large assault cannons. I nervously considered what kind of beasts would pose such a consistent threat as to necessitate such precautions.
"The path is not well maintained, my lady," warned the officer in charge of the checkpoint. "The stones at least prevent the trees from completely obscuring the road, but the other plants have completely overgrown it. Will you require an additional map?"
"I'll take whatever you have," I said gratefully. It was cloudy, and I didn't want to risk taking longer than I had to on this journey in case it began to rain again. "Do you have any other advice for me?"
"Only to be extra cautious, my lady," he said. "There are not many who pass this way and return unscathed. They say the Dark Temple changes a person."
"Wonderful." I drawled. "Come, monster." My Dashade was stomping around. He carried a small bag with a couple of rations and his sword-cleaning kit. I hadn't dared ask him to carry anything for me, so I reluctantly put my own large pack on my back and headed out through the gate into the forest beyond.
The remains of an ancient road stretched out beyond us. It was made of meter-wide slabs that had shifted and settled over the years, so grass and vines and even small bushes grew in the cracks and along the edges, but just as the soldier had assured me, I could still make out where I needed to go. I wondered why Zash hadn't ordered a speeder for me to go the final distance, but I was certainly not going to be stopped by a few kilometers now.
We didn't encounter many beasts along the path, but Khem was practically vibrating with the urge to explode into violence, so when a pair of some foolish quadrupedal carnivores came bounding out of the underbrush at me, he didn't hold back. He snarled a battle cry and leaped forward, unsheathing his blade in one quick motion and swiping a beast across the side as he kicked the other directly in the face. His clawed foot smashed the creature directly into the ground, and he stomped on it twice, savoring its panic, and its death. The other beast was trying to flee, but his broadsword was too quick for it.
Khem shook its body off of his blade, glaring at me. He didn't speak, but I didn't need him to. I knew what he thought. I was antsy enough as it was, heading to a challenge that very well might end up killing me; I desperately hoped that my master was right, that I was the correct person she needed. I wasn't laboring under any delusions-Zash had been very clear. She needed me for one purpose, and one purpose only. I knew that if I'd refused to go to the temple, if she had been unable to persuade me to obey, I wouldn't have lasted very long. No apprentice would survive long when her master had turned against her! No, my course had been set for me, and once again my only choice was to succeed or die.
Bitterness grew in my chest. Harkun, my former overseer at the Korriban Sith Academy, had repeatedly given me challenges meant to kill me. That I'd succeeded in spite of it all was a testament to my strength and determination and my "great destiny", and in the privacy of my own mind, I was terrified that my "luck", whatever blessing of the force that had "chosen" me to be the one capable of retrieving holocrons and opening doors, would run out and I would die a terrible, painful, awful death, quite possibly eaten by Khem Val.
I was fighting my hardest, trying to learn and grow in power and skill, but it seemed like no matter what I did, I was by far inadequate. Just once, I wanted my successes to be because of my own abilities, not because of some mysterious destiny or because an ancient warrior slaughtered my enemies for me. But here again, I was heading towards a challenge that was almost entirely out of my control. All other avenues were closed to me. And I didn't want to die.
I could sense the temple ahead of us. Khem and I had been walking for a few hours now, and it was almost like a subtle weight was settling more firmly around my shoulders with every step that we took. As we followed the unlit path, the jungle around us grew quieter, and the faintest whisper of voices began to speak in my mind. None of it was in Basic or Cathar or any language I spoke, but every word was laced with malice. Khem Val walked behind me. He still hadn't said a single word to me since we'd disembarked the speeder, and I didn't need the Force to sense the hatred and fury pouring off of him. His muscles flexed spasmodically, as though every second, he had to force himself to contain the killing blow he so desperately wanted to give me.
I knew that entering and disturbing Lord Kallig's tomb was pressing the very borders of the vow he had sworn. Khem viewed Lord Kallig as the rightful heir to Tulak Hord, and so the idea that I would trespass upon the temple, the grave, that Tulak Hord had built for his second-in-command, violated every instinct he possessed, and only his people's honor stayed his hand.
It was afternoon, but the trees were so thick around us that it was quite dark. I could see clearly, of course. My Cathar night vision was far better than that of a Human. Khem had a harder time of it, but with his heat-sensitive cones, I shone brightly to his gaze, so he could follow after me that way at least. We kept shoving our way through the undergrowth, following the overgrown trail straight towards the heart of the Dark Side convergence that I sensed ahead.
As we finally emerged from the treeline, I smoothed back my fur and flexed my hands, giving in to the urge to allow my claws to extend. A perimeter had been created around the building, no doubt maintained by the occasional droid team, by cutting down most of the forest and burning away the vegetation, which had left large black char marks on the surrounding stone walls. The pathways were falling apart, crumbling into gravel, and that made the climb up rather challenging. My boots slipped more than once, but I managed to maintain my balance. The Dashade trooped behind me like a malevolent shadow.
Within the temple grounds proper, nothing grew, in spite of areas where dirt and soil had piled up in corners and cracks of the fallen stone walls. I wondered if some ancient sith alchemy had cursed the area to be devoid of life, or it was just regularly treated with poison. It was unsettling, regardless, to be entering an area on Drommund Kaas that didn't scream of life through the force. Rather, I was increasingly sure, the dead ruled this area of the Sith capital world. Occasionally on Korriban, particularly in the tombs or in the ancient city of Marka Ragnos, I'd felt this sense of peering eyes, of being surrounded and watched, but never had it been so prominent. Here, I could feel what seemed almost like echoes, as though a distant crowd observed and mocked my progress.
I passed by the silent surveillance droids that stood guard around the outside and entered through the enormous archway. I wondered if Khem would follow me inside or if this would be his limit, but he didn't hesitate at the threshold. A fine layer of dust and dirt covered the entrance hall, borne in by the wind that tugged at my robes and fur. It grew deeper and thicker, the farther in we went. I could see the traces of beings who had gone before, but there were no fresh footprints, either of man or of beast, which set my mind a bit more at ease. The carvings along the entrance had been worn away by the constant battering of wind and debris, so I could barely make out anything.
Once we were inside, we entered a great central hall where things were in much better condition. The thing about monolithic construction was that, broadly speaking, buildings lasted much longer than smaller, delicate ones. The stones were still smooth and in some places even rather polished, and while there was the occasional pillar that had suffered some damage to its ornate carvings, for the most part everything looked relatively untouched, in spite of the many years that had passed since its construction. The temple's ancient illumination orbs were long since extinguished; nothing in the entire building seemed to have any power at all. Light dimly filtered in from a complex system of skylights and mirrors in the ceiling. Carved stone figures flanked the pillars, very reminiscent of Korriban's ancient Sith statues, their heads respectfully bowed.
Khem Val was taking everything in; he had been in stasis before Lord Kallig's murder, and this entire construction had occurred years after that. The whole building was eerily still to my physical senses, but within the force there were voices speaking as though from a great distance, and I kept thinking I saw flickers of movement out of the corner of my eyes, only to find nothing there.
As we reached the far side of the main entry hall, the Dashade behind me stopped to stare up at the great statue that towered at least 50 m above us, dominating the entire hall. It wore great stone and metal robes and armor which were inlaid with a precious stone that looked greenish in the light. The face was completely concealed by a skull mask, and it wore a helmet with short, horn-like points that gave it an inhuman menace. It was mostly illuminated; I could make out large hearths at its feet, where fires for sacrifices could've burned.
"Do you recognize him?" I asked Khem. For a moment, I didn't think he would answer. "Is it Lord Kallig?"
"Yes," he said finally. "Lord Kallig was known for his prowess in battle, both with the lightsaber, as well as his abilities with the force. My Lord Tulak Hord drew many sith to him who sought my Lord's power, and Lord Kallig brought great glory to my master. He is deserving of this honor."
Lady Zash had provided me with a generalized floorplan, and so I headed towards the back, past the statue, to a great set of double doors inlaid with crystal designs that seemed familiar somehow. I drew Lady Zash's key from my satchel. It was a large metal cube, which slotted easily into the central mechanism of the door. Some mechanical mechanism must've been triggered, because the great doors split open and swung wide. I stared inside, wide-eyed, at the pile of broken bodies before me.
"Turn back! Do not disturb Lord Kallig," Khem burst out urgently behind me.
"I must obey my master," I protested, shaking my head.
"Then I will await your return," he said implacably, clearly implying that I would not return. I turned away from him and stepped through the door. I was in a small stairwell which reached the top of the temple. The stairs hugged the walls, leaving an open central space which housed a great twisted crystal-encrusted carving of a tendril, or a root, or something. The floor was littered with the bones and bodies of Sith Lords. They had fallen to their deaths, or been killed and then tossed down to the bottom, I observed, seeing the crumpled heaps in front of me. They had clearly failed to counter whatever threat, whatever test, the apparition had in store.
My humility will pacify the apparition, I repeated in my mind. As a former slave, I knew humility. My old master, Lord Myon, hadn't demanded much obsequious subserviance, but other sith visiting his household certainly had, and other slaves had told their own harrowing tales. Resigned, I set my satchel down by the stairs and gazed upward, looking for traps or any clues to what might be in store, but the darkness around me felt cloying. I removed my cloak and folded it neatly on my bag, and then removed my outer robe and set it aside also. In my tabards, tunic, and leggings, I knelt before the stairs. The force felt quieter, but my sense of being watched hadn't subsided; rather, there was a greater sense of anticipation and malice which did nothing to set me at ease.
"Lord Kallig?" I called in a clear voice, reaching out with the force again to try to gain a greater picture of what I might face. It seemed to be nothing but an empty stairwell. The actual chamber of the tomb was at the top. "Lord Kallig, may I approach?" Nothing answered, and I felt silly for expecting a response. Still, I waited a very long time, just in case. "Lord Kallig, your servant approaches."
I took the stairs very slowly, one at a time, on my hands and knees. My hololight attached to the back of my gauntlet, so I examined each step before advancing. I hugged the wall, keeping myself far away from the central precipice. I couldn't hear or see anything dangerous, and I felt ridiculous taking such precautions, but the pile of corpses at the bottom of the stairwell reminded me of the price of failure. Step by treacherous step, I crept upwards.
"Lord Kallig?" I called, pressing my face into the stone to keep my eyes averted. The whisperings in the force were almost entirely silent now, and an awful sense of doom and dread had settled upon me. My pace had grown slower and slower as I sank deeper into my ruminations. "Lord Kallig?"
I was a couple hundred steps up now, and my hands, face, fur, and clothes were covered in the dust of the temple. Remembering Lady Zash's description of her own encounter with the ghost, I realized that I was experiencing something similar. My humility will pacify the apparition, I repeated again. I kept my body low and small, despising every moment, and drew on the indignity of it all and fed it to the Dark Side of the Force, using it to steel myself against the despair that was no doubt part of his attack on me.
Finally I came to the small landing at the top of the stairwell. An archway on one side opened up to the great hall of the temple again, featuring a view of the ornate and bejeweled shoulders and head of the statue of Lord Kallig. Opposite it, a similar archway led to a small dark antechamber-my destination. I could see that the thick layer of dust near the edge of the central pillar was disturbed; this place was dangerous. My fur stood on end as I edged towards Lord Kallig's tomb. There was something almost solid in the force there, waiting for me.
"You DARE disturb me!" The raging voice was suddenly all I could hear, and I clutched my ears in pain, trying to block it out. "You will DIE!" A foreign something poured into my head, filling me with despair and self-hatred. Almost before I realized, I flung myself towards the central pillar and the 50 meter drop, for death was preferable to continuing on like this.
What saved me was the fact that I was on my hands and knees, pressed up against the wall like a slave. My desperate leap was more like an awkward lunge, and as I slammed into the ground, the pain flared and cleared my thoughts for a fraction. Something was pressing on my mind, clouding my thoughts as I had done to the creatures of Dromund Kaas. The urge to jump was not my own. The urge to stand and run was not my own. I dug my claws into my palms and bit my lips, tasting my own blood, and found even more clarity. The Dark Side around us was filled with howling, screaming rage, and I was screaming too.
I sent a powerful blast of lightning directly at the place where I could sense the darkest concentration of malice, but it passed through the spot as though nothing was there and bounced off of the crystals of the pillar, reflecting and illuminating the area. Raising myself to my knees had been a dangerous mistake though. The malevolent force inside my mind redoubled its efforts to get me to jump, and I found myself lunging again towards the edge. I dug my claws into the ground and pressed my face against the stone, painfully digging into my bones. For an infinitely long moment, I both wanted to die and wanted to live, wanted to jump and wanted to freeze, wanted to flee and wanted to fight. My mind was both mine and not my own, and I thought I might shatter from the compulsion. Every part of my being strained against my enemy; I could picture my thoughts bucking and writhing under the slimy coating of despair that crushed me.
"Yes, yes!" Abruptly the pressure disappeared from my mind, and I gasped for air, sobbing in my sudden freedom. The dark malice in the force coalesced into a shining human form wearing the same skull mask and horned helmet as the grand statue. Lord Kallig stood before me. I realized that he was speaking ancient Cathar, just as Khem did. "I have been waiting for you," he said.
"I have come to humble myself in your presence, Great One!" I stuttered, trying to get my breath to stop hitching. I was seeing and hearing him through the force, but I didn't know how to communicate back in the same way, so I hoped that speaking aloud would be enough.
"Ah, you don't know me," he observed. "Has our family fallen so low that the daughter of my daughters does not know the name of Kallig?" He paced away from me, rubbing his brow sorrowfully. I took a chance and shifted my body so that I was less lying on the floor and more crouched before him. He didn't seem to notice or care.
"You are my descendent, by how many generations I do not know!" he said abruptly, striding towards me and gesturing with his hand as though he could lift me. He couldn't, of course. He was incorporeal. But I obeyed and raised myself to sit on my haunches, still kneeling before him. He flicked his fingers at me impatiently, and I hesitantly rose to my feet, intimately aware that if he chose to try to possess me again, I might not be able to resist flinging myself to my death. But he seemed completely beyond that now, and the force was no longer screaming a warning at me. "But know this. I felt your movements in the force, and they stirred me from my nightmare. Your strength in the force has awakened me from my stupor."
"What do you mean, my Lord?" I asked, clasping my hands behind me to discreetly hide how I was digging my claws into my palms, just in case.
"When the weaklings of this planet trespassed my tomb, I rose and was once more a Lord of the Sith!" he proclaimed, spreading his arms wide in an eerie facsimile of the statue outside. "But now I see that my hour is come and gone. Now I see that it is your strength, not mine, that will lead our family to glory once more!"
"How can I be your descendent?" I blurted. "I'm a former slave!"
"That is my shame," he said. "If I had been wiser, I could have secured my family's greatness. But I let down my guard. I was betrayed by a man called Tulak Hord, whom I trusted as a friend."
"History says that you died in a trap meant for him," I said.
"LIES!" the sith apparition bellowed. I flinched ever so slightly towards the wall. "He poisoned me and then murdered me in my weakness! I was his heir, his most trusted general, and I mistakenly thought that he would behave with honor. But he was a coward." I was grateful that Khem downstairs was unable to hear the apparition's words through the force. He wouldn't tolerate any slight against his master Tulak Hord, dead or not.
"In restoring our bloodline to glory, you must not make the same mistake," he warned me. "Treachery is the Sith's endless game, and you must win it." He paced away from me, deeper into the darkness of the antechamber of his tomb, and although his force body glowed bright blueish white to my sight, it was clear by the way that nothing else was illuminated that it was yet another force illusion. I followed him to the stone box where his body lay, my flashlight helping me pick my path past another two dead Sith Lords.
"The Sith throw flesh endlessly at what they cannot control," he said offhandedly. "I knew if I made myself enough of a nuisance, you would eventually come to me."
"I am honored, my Lord," I said, sketching a proper respectful bow of an apprentice to a Darth. I couldn't make out his expression, but he felt pleased through the force.
"Blood of my Blood, you shall restore the power of the name of Kallig," he said. He indicated the sarcophagus, and I gathered the force to me to smoothly slide the lid away. Lord Kallig stood over his body; the bones had long since crumbled into dust, but the man's armor remained. "Take my mask and my saber and show it to those who would deny your heritage. Resume the honor that is rightfully mine and make it your own."
"Thank you, honored Lord," I said humbly. The apparition gestured again, and I took the mask and the saber from where they lay in the tomb. The weapon required cleaning and a new power source, but it was inlaid with more of the crystals that seemed to be everywhere in this temple, and I could imagine how they would shine when the blade was ignited. The mask was patterned after a skull, a thin layer of a matte metal that seemed human on the outside but was definitely formed to fit a cathar face on the inside, if the broad, flat nose was any indication. I tentatively slipped it over my head, fastening the straps behind my neck and head and noting where it could attach to a helmet. I expected it to limit my vision, but the material forming gaping eyes of the mask, although appearing black and empty from the outside, did not noticeably impede my sight. I assumed that a human would struggle to see, but I was a Cathar-yet more proof that Kallig had indeed been my ancestor.
"Yes!" said Kallig, his satisfaction echoing through the force. "You will be a worthy heir. Beware your master. Beware your apprentice. Never be taken by surprise. Do these things, and you will be unstoppable."
"My master sent me here to find an artefact that Tulak Hord hid in your tomb," I said, suddenly remembering Darth Zash's mission.
"The great betrayer left a piece of the artefact hidden beneath my sarcophagus," the ghost said. At his direction, I pressed against a small square of stone, which popped out to reveal a tiny chest. I was curious, but the chest was locked. My curiosity would have to wait. "Take it, but be careful. I know not what it does, only that betrayal follows it everywhere." I struggled a little to replace the sarcophagus lid, but eventually I managed it.
"Don't worry about me," I said, perhaps more confidently than was warranted, if the skeptical tilt of the ghost's head was any indication. "I can take care of myself."
It was that moment that we heard Khem Val's voice.