-Part 1: Under Pressure-
Callista sighed to herself, poring over the same passage of the Temple’s archive materials for what must have been the thirtieth time. The stack of data cards, record files, and holocrons piled in her ship was tall enough to reach her knees – if she were to indeed stack them up together, which would be a terrible idea. All in all, it was enough information to keep one busy for several months.
It had been… just over five weeks, now, since Master Vrake had assigned it to her for study. She was expected to have a working knowledge of subjects contained in each of the provided materials. Force abilities, treatises on saber forms, historical records of numerous topics, academic studies, essays and articles on a variety of cultures and governments, technical manuals… she had only managed to successfully get through about a third of it that she could actually recall any of.
Unable to muster the will or focus to keep going, Callista pushed her datapad away with a groan of exhaustion.
“My brain is fried,” she complained aloud to K1T-7Y, who gave a robotic meow in response. “If I have to read about Rodian theater dramas or the differences between synox and dioxis poisoning symptoms one more time, I think I might literally-”
B’r’reep – M3-0w.
An exhale streamed between pursed lips, and Callista hung her head backwards over the back of her chair to look at the pink, cat-eared astromech. “Hush, you. I’m not whining. Just because you can process terabytes of data in the time it takes me to take a bathroom break…”
Pr’r’r’r’r.
The blonde Jedi Knight rolled her eyes with a faint smirk at Kit’s digitized purring. She rocked her head forward again and stood up. Speaking of breaks, she was hungry, and it was time to change her bandages.
The sound of the sink in the refresher was a constant, glistening shimmer of subtle brass in the upper right of her vision, contrasting with the cold water splashing over her bare skin and the sting of the burns as she stripped away old kolto patches and washed at the wounds to apply new ones. Morel and his Sith legion had left her with quite a few marks, but thanks to kolto and the Force, the scars would likely be minimal if any remained at all.
Her mind wandered as she re-dressed her injuries. To the methods Iradtoki had taught her for triage and treating burns and injuries before they rescued Damien. To the nights of recovery after being taken by Nephthyra - who was now missing again. There was so much strength she lacked, her conviction was not as firm as it should be. She was herself, but she needed still to improve.
Then, finally, she thought back to one of the first lessons she received from Vrake gave her…
Mood Music: There Are Scars in the Evening Sky
34 Days Ago
“Knight. Have you taken out the listed materials I assigned you?” Vrake’s harsh, staticky, filtered voice stabbed neon yellow spears inward from the edges of her vision. He was jumping straight to the point – that seemed to be his preference. He stared ahead at a large pile of rubble, standing with his back to Callista in the sewers of Veles Colony.
Callista looked around with a vaguely confused frown. She’d been to the sewers once before, looking into the murders that were later revealed to be orchestrated by Samuel Meyer and his band of radicalized Republic agents. The smell had not improved since then. Strangely enough, though, this part of the sewers didn’t have any obvious purpose that she could tell, and he hadn’t said why they were coming here. On top of that, something felt… wrong. The shadows creeped and shuddered, slinking and swelling more brazenly than elsewhere. By quite a bit, in fact. Any other time, it might have unnerved her.
“Yes, Master Vrake,” she said lowly, her voice even softer than usual and dulled by monotone. She had not yet recovered and moved on from the pain of breaking her engagement to Sandra. She wasn’t feeling herself yet, and as a result, pieces of Her were showing.
“You have noticed that something is odd about this location,” the Master noted. “Good. Your compromised state has not completely dulled your senses. We will address your lack of balance later – for now, it may serve to enhance this lesson.”
He lifted his gloved hands and thrust them loosely to his sides, prompting the debris ahead of him to be hurled aside to reveal a door behind it. A step forward, a businesslike series of taps at the panel beside the door, and it began to open. The passage beyond looked older, different in construction. The darkness was oily, oppressive.
“Is this what I think it is…?” She asked aloud. “I’ve heard people talk about some kind of Sith ruins under the colony…”
“Correct, Knight,” Vrake said, walking forward undaunted. The ephemeral, inky blackness seemed to shrink away from him in fear, as if the Dark Side itself were unwilling to stand in his way. Some tendrils reached out, only to be motionlessly cast aside, or to seemingly disintegrate into passive grey and blue and rejoin the rest of the Flow. “The Force Nexus of Viscara is commonly assumed to originate from the caves. This is not entirely so. It is also in part centered upon these chambers. Inside was the lair of a Sith spirit of old – centuries old, in fact. You may have heard the name from Mana, or Knight Althea…”
As she followed Vrake inside, the darkness seemed to hiss inward at her, licking at her feet. Her face didn’t change despite the dread chill running through her. “…Alchemus.”
Vrake gave no response, instead marching deeper into the depths of the ruined sewer tunnels. The stench of waste gave way to dust and the staleness of years. It was almost as if the Force itself was stagnant. The signs of ritualistic, Sith-influenced architecture began to show, and further still Vrake led her. By the end, they came to what seemed to be a tomb of sorts. Silently, Vrake walked around the central dais and stood on the opposite side, still facing away from Callista.
She stood, uncertain, across from him, looking around at all of the darkness surrounding her. It writhed hungrily… invitingly. Callista couldn’t help but gulp. Her thoughts turned to the Forge, a process she was sure she could not properly execute right now-
“Cease. Focus.” The masked Jedi’s words snapped her attention back to him. “Mornstrider’s ‘Forge’ technique is effective, but useless when you lack the empathetic grounding he so valued in you. You must use a different method. Apply your own Pressure in counter. Stand resolute, with the determination of a Jedi – something I know you have – and fight back against the darkness with your Light.”
“You… you want me to learn the Shadow’s method of conversion?” Callista asked. “But I’m not a Shad-”
“Neither am I, Knight,” Vrake interjected, turning around. “I serve the Council of First Knowledge, but I am not a Shadow as Mana was, or Mornstrider, or Artemis. The opposite, in fact. That is beside the point, however. Our agreement was that I would give you training to prepare you, set you on the path to become a Master yourself, for as of now you are far from suitable for such a title.”
“This is the method of a Shadow – but it is valid for others, nonetheless. Now, exert yourself. Commune with the Force, center yourself, and push back. You will fail. When you do, try again.”
Callista’s eyes turned downward a moment, and she did as instructed. Doing her best to cast aside her pain and whispers of apathy, she shut her eyes and focused. Sandra had shown her the beginnings of this method, but it hadn’t gone well even then when she was more herself…
…And two hours later, that pattern held true. She pressed and fought against the creeping darkness, the agony and hate roiling in the tomb around her, but she made little headway. Vrake stood still, silent, certainly taking note of her performance.
He finally turned around as she stopped to take a breath, clutching her arms around herself in the unnatural chill of the tomb. His visor focused on her.
“The path to mastery is long and arduous, Knight. To struggle is natural. What have you noticed about this place during your efforts?”
“It’s… it’s like the darkness is just… residual. Whatever was here creating it is gone, isn’t it?”
The helmet nodded. “Alchemus is long gone, purged from this place. Part of him remained, for a time, in the one called ‘Lanari’. Consider yourself fortunate to have never been caught in that one’s web. But you must have detected something else?”
She hesitated, looking around. Vrake was right, there was something off, even for how off this place already was. It felt… “Familiar…?”
A grim growl of a hum of acknowledgment reverberated through the chamber, and Vrake produced an object from within a bag at his waist - red in color, shaped like a triangular prism.
“A Sith holocron?” Callista’s grey hazel eyes widened, staring at the device before flitting back up to Vrake’s visor.
“One of three. That familiarity you detect - can you piece together where you have felt so before?”
She thought back. “…Another Sith tomb. On Dxun. Freedon Nadd’s.”
“A successor of this Sith. You have been studying the historical texts, I trust. You must know his true name, then.”
The shivering blonde gave Vrake an incredulous look, trying to piece together in her mind what she had read. Her head shook, and she struggled to focus against the darkness encroaching in towards her, especially the now growing whispers from the holocron as Vrake set it down. It seemed to glow, speaking promises and temptations directly to her mind. Offering knowledge and skill, power greater than the minor abilities Sandra’s training artifact had to give. As she shuddered and tried to shield her mind from it, the name came to her.
Fear gripped at her, and her eyes showed it for just a moment before she could banish it from herself.
“Naga Sadow.”
