The freighter shook and durasteel creaked. This was the sixth one under assault. Aphotis had not been able to save all of the cargo so far, so the pressure was on. Severian Principate weaponry was being looted en-masse by the Tenixir Revenants—almost as if they had their escape integrated within the vessels themselves. Three of them had been scuttled by the scum.
Heels clicked on the metal graters, deft enough to not get trapped, fast enough to catch up to the rustling sounds in the cargo hold. The Sith halted as she heard blaster-fire and the distinct crack-hiss of a lightsaber. Someone else was on board trying to keep the goods safe.
Aphotis had not agreed to a team-up prior to the mission…
“You guys really picked a bad day to come to work,” said Bril Teg Erinos, Fort Blindshot’s Virtuous Blade, as he ignited his lightsaber. Fetter was the most recent of his three new saber constructions, sporting an icy blue blade that cast his surroundings in a pale glow.
“You think you’re the first person swingin’ around one of those little glowbats that we’ve killed?” one of the pirates, a burly looking pantoran man with a head of messy hair and a long scar running down the middle of a milky-white eye.
“Yeah! Hope you’ve got a good life insurance policy, Brotherhood sc–OOF!”
Bril had heard enough of all the chest puffing and idle threats; instead, he cut the second Revenant’s words short by stepping forward and thrusting the flat of his boot into the center of his chest, throwing him into an open crate of supplies. His accomplices, a group of five not counting him, turned an opened fire.
Every flash of supercharged tibanna painted the room red. The drumbeat of the Force pounded loudly in the back of Bril’s mind, warning him of danger so he could deflect the initial volley of blaster bolts with practiced ease. And that likely would have continued to be the case were it not for the familiar dark presence, albeit much stronger in the Force than he remembered, threw the Force into a discordant rhythm.
It was just enough of a distraction to make him stumble – just enough for one of the Revenants to hurl a thermal detonator his way.
“Are you crazy?! You could frakkin’ kill us all!”
But it was too late. The explosive ignited, and for a fleeting moment, everything went quiet … only for the deafening KRACHOOM of superheated air and roaring flame to tear through the area.
The only thing Bril managed was a hasty Force push to hurl the detonator and the ensuing blast wave upward into the rafters, but not enough to completely shield him from its effects. The explosion knocked him and the Revenants off their feet, throwing them backward.
-c-
The objects and people in the room bled into a dizzying mess of hazy blobs. His ears rang so loudly that he, even in his daze, instinctively clutched them with both hands; something warm and wet spilled out onto his trembling fingertips.
He hadn’t even noticed that same dark presence creeping closer and closer to him until it was practically on top of him, threatening to crush him beneath its oppressive weight. A blackened silhouette stepped forward as more bodies, more scoundrels, stormed into the room. The click, click, click of something hard against the metal floors came to an abrupt halt.
“Recompose yourself, Zabrak!” A dark, modulated voice commanded as a clawed, latex-covered hand brushed over Bril’s shoulder.
Dark side energy flowed into him with that gentle touch. Feelings of anger, pain, suffering, and finally, passion accompanied it. A tall black-clad woman weaved damaged tissue together as if she was wringing out wet clothes and stitched them together with pure strength. The Force enacted her every thought, scared to disobey her.
The trepidation radiated towards everyone in the space as if death itself approached them, its tendrils reaching for their limbs, filling them with doubt, remorse and dread.
Crack-hum
Crimson plasma burst out of her hilt, elongated by the dual-phase emitter to accommodate the sheer height of the Sith.
“No way out for you Revenants, I will have a taste of your fears before you die.”
Although he’d been healed before, both by his own hands and allies, he’d hitherto never experience Dark Side healing himself. It felt wrong. It was as if the threads of the Force, like the threads of damaged tissue, were being yanked and haphazardly strung together instead of gently coaxed into new shapes and bundles as was the case with the Light Side. But, healing was healing, and Bril soon felt even better than he had prior to engaging his assailants. Pulling himself to his feet, he gave Aphotis a cutting glance.
“Hate to say it, but it looks like I owe you one,” he said while calling Fetter’s hilt to his hand with the Force, “but you need to control yourself. They may have valuable intel on future raiding plans, so I need a few of them left alive, Understood?”
It seemed that the towering woman’s intimidating aura had bought them a few precious moments to discuss how they would proceed. The pirates, now all standing in greater number, slackened their grips on their weapons as trepidation crept into their minds like a vile disease.
The Sith scoffed, letting a sharp hiss escape her mask as Arga asserted himself over the objective, “Everything I do carries thought, rationality and is completely controlled, please, do not insult my intelligence.”
Aphotis shot forward with steps empowered by bursts from her jet-boots.
Click
Clack
She peered into the soul of her first victim. Plasteel rattled on the floor as two swipes cut off their arms and legs, leaving them screaming limbless with but a head on a torso.
“Observe!” Her voice was bolstered by the vocal modulation.
Pirates that were already shaken watched in abject horror.
“And don’t forget, overkill,” he replied, grimacing at the vicious attack she levied upon the pirate. She hadn’t killed him, as he advised, but she might as well have. “The pleasure you take in watching others suffer holds you back,” he paused to duck beneath a vibroknife aimed at his face, rapidly spinning in place to send the back of his elbow crashing into the Revenants’ nose, “It’s why I beat you on Kasiya … because I care more about efficiency in combat than hedonism.”
And that showed in the way Bril dispatched of two more pirates that advanced; he swatted away several blaster bolts before knocking the first off his feet with a blistering low sweep to the legs, only to spring forward with his free hand outstretched to grip the remaining mook’s face, which he slammed into a support beam behind him hard enough to leave the man a drooling mess on the floor.
One Revenant remained, now – a young rodian girl who was barely holding onto her weapon, darting her eyes back and forth between the two Force users standing before her.
Upon sensing Aphotis’ intention to maim her in the same way she had the others, Bril stepped between them, keeping his back turned to the Sith in a way meant to signify his lack of concern for her attacking him. Keeping his eyes on the rodian girl, he slowly lifted his free hand and said, “You don’t have to fight. We mean you no harm.”
Her eyes widened a bit and her jaw hung open as she repeated the words. “I don’t have to fight … you mean me no harm.”
“See how simple that is?” said Bril while glancing to Aphotis from over his shoulder.
“You would not understand passion if it hit you in the face, there is so much more to it than mere pleasure—tsk, tsk—what a pity,” she made a disapproving clicking sound, “and it appears that you still hold a grudge, it was Draca who saved you on Kasiya, I taught him a lesson.”
The Sith’s inky tendrils were sated, the trepidation complete—a new hunger arose. Electric-blue eyes studied Bril as he, with condescending pride, dug into the Rodian’s mind and forced lies upon her.
Aphotis raised her shoulders in a shrug and walked up to the dismembered Revenant. She placed a claw on his forehead and siphoned away what little life remained of him. Her long, spindly fingers played with the man’s shrivelled-up jaw as it slacked and atrophied, much like how Bril made the Rodian his puppet.
The sheer desperation and searing pain he had experienced left a prickle on her tongue. Thoughts of the man’s regretful decisions raced through the witch’s mind as she contemplated them. With the melange of flavors came clues that comprised the pirate’s plans and motivations. In truth, she aimed to learn something much deeper, but this was neither the victim nor the time to go hunting for it.
“This was a brave, foolish man. It reminds me of someone.”
“I’m not holding a grudge, just calling it how I see it. And I understand passion, Aphotis,” he countered, “I have a life. Family, someone whom I love. Not to mention my passion for my work. For helping people. But your particular brand of it is antithetical to everything I stand for.”
Now that the rodian woman had been sufficiently pacified and disarmed, he took a step forward a placed two fingers on her forehead. It only took him a moment to tap into her mind, sifting through memories in search of meaningful information regarding the Revenant’s plans. Once he found what he needed, he placed a hand on her shoulder and looked at her with a gentle expression. “What’s your name?”
“Ulri,” she said sheepishly. Her gaze drifted to the floor.
“It’s nice to meet you, Ulri. I’m Bril,” he dipped his head a bit to recapture her gaze, “Now, i need you to hear me. And I mean really hear me. This is not the line of work you want to continue in. Trust me when i say that things could have ended up a lot worse for you if it was someone else other than me, like her,” he gestured to the tall Sith looming behind him, “standing here.
"Go home, Ulri. Your parents miss you. It’s not too late to make things better. Consider how much more it’ll hurt them if they found out that you died while running with the wrong crowd. Can you do that for me?”
Ulri’s eyes widened in realization when he spoke such intimate details. “O-Okay. I can do that, yeah,” she said while nodding weakly.
With a smile, Bril patted her on the shoulder before reaching into his pack and pulling out a few credits, more than enough for her to secure transport back to her home. He placed them in her hand. “Now, go.”
Ulri wasted no time. She quickly rose to her feet and hurried toward the door, tip-toeing past the unconscious (and in some cases, deceased) Revenants lying about the cargo hold floor.
Once she was gone, Bril turned to look at Aphotis. “Yeah? Who does it remind you of?”
“You truly are insufferable and blind. What do you hope to gain with this pretence? Until you or me are dead, our spirits ground to dust, our legacies forgotten, there is no victor. Besides, who are you to lecture me on these made up conditions?” The black-clad woman’s tail swept back and forth in long arcs and her voice was composed and melodic.
“What makes you think you have won anything at all, it confounds me that you think that.”
“Family, love, they can fuel your passion so long as they understand your ambitions and they raise you to new heights. Should that end, they will be the ball and chain, unless you are ready to cut them loose and let them fuel you in your memory.”
Seeing Bril guide this Rodian away from her path made it feel as if bile was rising up. Instead of enduring hardship, suffering, or learning a lesson, he permanently changed this one’s destiny to one of mundanity. Weakness bred weakness. There was no fight in that one.
“It reminded me of you.”
Aphotis walked by the containers and ran her thumb between the seals to double-check if they remained unopened. She relayed the information via her mask’s HUD.
Revenant attack neutralized, cargo intact. Ready for extraction. If you see a Rodian, take her into custody.
“We were interrupted, but leading up to that, I was winning,” he replied, “Which is fine, you know. We all take losses, eventually.” He lifted his shoulders in a shrug before clipping Fetter’s hilt to his belt.
“Surprisingly, I agree with you. But, I’m fortunate in that I have family, both blood and one’s I’ve found, who make me better rather than ahindering me. Some aren’t so lucky.” In his view, both the Jedi and the Sith had it wrong – attachments were a source of strength. He never would have gotten as far as he had without them.
When she named him as the person the now dead Revenant remind her of, he scoffed. “You must know me so well. I’ll bite. What makes me so foolish, in your view?”
“You speak of this as if this were a game of sports, tallying scores. I can assure you this is arrogance. One would have to drive the blade much deeper before the scales tip over. However, if you insist, we can certainly continue from where we left off and find out if this score keeping really matters when I trample your twin-hearts,” the tone of her modulated voice had shifted as she believed Bril was challenging her to a fight.
The crimson of her blade continued to illuminate her frame, the intent to kill was never in doubt.
“The comparison was simple, neither of you are trying very hard to stay out of harm’s way. Brave or foolish, it is a thin line. And then there is pride and arrogance.”
Bril’s eyes shifted from her the ominous glow of her saber, then to her. He didn’t seemed fazed by her threatening posture nor by the foreboding aura radiating from her latex clad form like a miasma. Long gone were the days where he feared the Dark Side’s icy grip. He remained silent for a moment to contemplate her challenge. Then, he shook his head.
“As tempting an offer as that is, I’m not interested in going home bruised and battered today,” he replied, his words carrying a slight aloofness alongside a matter-of-fact recognition of the danger she posed; yet, his words were undergirded by a confidence that were they to come to blows, one way or another, he would go home afterward. “I wasn’t trying to provoke you.”
He stepped to his right a bit, inspecting the contents of one of the open crates. Brotherhood issue weapons.
“Whether we like it or not, our allegiances are similar enough that this likely won’t be the last time we found ourselves in a tentative partnership. And it certainly won’t be the last time we see each other.
"I’d rather not worry about you trying to kill me when that time comes. I deal with that enough already.”
She had expected him to decline, that made it easier to process. Some nerves, mainly in her neck and shoulders caught fire and sizzled as he kept his arrogant intonation intact. One day, he would return to the soil of Dathomir, but she did not care much if it was by her hand. There were countless challenges awaiting her that were far out of the scope of this Zabrak.
Her path. The only one that counts.
“So it does appear that you have learned something,” Aphotis smiled behind the visor and her voice turned back to the usual judgmental tone, “fine, should you one day change your mind, I will be ready for that challenge.” There were no secondary thoughts behind her statement, except that she held back a comment about preparing his loved ones for the event.
“Then bury the notion about having bested me, I have taken a Sith title that I have to uphold, do not tarnish it and you shall not have a dagger in your back, from me at least,” her voice gained an echo as if each word uttered was a vow etched in stone.
The cargo hold turned back to its soulless white lighting as the crimson blade deactivated.
“Now, other than me, who would ever want you dead?” The sarcasm was palpable.
“Fine. We’ll call it a draw, then,” he replied with a light shrug, “and yeah, people tend to dislike it when you shake the mynock nest while trying to help people, especially if that hurts their flow of credits.”
It didn’t bother him much, though, and only did insofar as its ability to negatively affect his friends and family. It was why he tended to keep them far away from his casework.
“What does Aphotis mean, anyway?”
“Excellent, then a truce it is, my name means: That which the starlight does not reach, or otherwise known as, perpetual darkness,” there was no particular pride laced in her voice or body language, it merely was what both Osasdii’s spirit, the symbiote, and Alaisy Tir'eivra meant, merged together.
“These Revenants are rather opportunistic, but credits do not seem to be their sole motivator. Some even take the effort to not only research and target Brotherhood assets, but the prominent members themselves. Bold, indeed.” There was a hint of admiration for them in Aphotis’s voice, mainly due to the mysterious benefactor.