Socorra had only been on the Fallen Spear a mere handful of times. As the shuttle settled into the hangar, she could see the black armored soldier step toward the ramp to escort her to him.
Him. The Lion. The Lord of the Krath. The Eater of Worlds. She hadn’t seen him in almost a decade before last week. Rumors said he was sometimes in Sadow space, but there wasn’t really any reason to go there. But there he was, showing up on Arx to a post war party like all that had never happened. Like they hadn’t just had two other Grand Masters vanish into the ether and leaving before succession was proper. Like nothing ever changed. She was his last Herald, and he treated her like she was still on the council. No, like she was on his council.
Two decks up, he could feel her arrival. The Force whispered to him, sang a chorus with a million voices into his heart, his mind. Tracing the lines back, he could tell it was her. Her pattern was familiar. Changed, but still the same. But then again, everything changes. He tapped the side of his chair with a finger, the dark leather warm to the touch. She had questions, and given how things had happened at the end there in the dust of Korriban, after Antei… he could indulge her with answers.
The door opened, her Nihilgenia escort stepping to the side as the light from his library bathed her. He stood up, surrounded by hundreds of finely detailed books, meticulously kept holocrons and artifacts from ancient tombs. His usual long coat replaced by one made of plush fabric instead of the usual leather, he was not dressed for war. Not here, in his private study.
He nodded at her, brandishing an arm at the pair of comfortable armchairs to the side, a table with a crystal decanter and two glasses between them. The word floated, mind to mind, the Keibatsu not even bothering with the pretense of verbal speech as he might have in public.
Welcome.
.
Ashen ruled the Iron Throne when Socorra had arrived as a brand new member to the Brotherhood. The Grand Master had released a bounty for Michael Halcyon at the time, and the independent information broker had come across some data in her vast contact network that might have been valuable enough to turn over for a credit or two. She never knew if it actually was, but the Brotherhood saw potential and admitted the Force fledgling in lieu of payment. A month later the Brotherhood went to war and invaded the planet where Halcyon was said to be, New Tython, so Socorra had taken that as a solid, canon win.
During that war she was promoted on the battlefield by Ashen, through Wuntila, twice–something everyone had said had never been done before. And yet the young woman had had no idea who Ashen was other than one of a dozen men ruling another shadowy patriarchal organization. The usual.
The little JM2 hadn’t bagged many Jedi on her own, but Wun had said it didn’t matter; she had their lightsaber trophies: One promotion each. And she was made the Consul’s magistrate for the war and beyond.
Upon Knighthood came the personal missions from the Grand Master. The Rite of Exultation. Apprenticeship to his deputy Raken, and Tribune. Her mentor when Orv was murdered, then Boss. Confidant. Friend? What do you consider someone that can read your memories farther back than your perfect memory can? Besides invader of privacy. He skipped that title.
But it wasn’t as if she didn’t do the exact same thing now to everyone around her. To spy. To know their members better than they did. Hypocrite, she unabashedly was.
It kept her employed, and alive. Although Evant only really cared for gossip like it was a holo opera. Thankfully the Brotherhood drama well never ran dry.
The Grand Master stood when she entered, and not before. That was different. Not the respect–he had rarely been in a seat, especially the throne. Before she was told of the chair’s curse it had been a long-standing inside joke with her younger self that he had certain…medical issues that kept him from sitting like all the other GMs had.
Of course it had been silly, and now a terrible thought that Ashen was most assuredly listening to as he made such a respectful gesture. She grimaced internally. Stop being awkward.
The Human female was dressed in more formal robes than remembered for. Not the urban gray streetwear spywear ages old, nor the Invicta robes also just as old, stemming all the way back to that tenth war victory. They were clan neutral, in fact, although Sith blood red. More colorful than she liked, but her Praetor had commissioned them on her behalf and they were nice. They were supposed to be more “presentable.”
A Herald that did not care if she wore custom robes. Oh, the huge manatee.
Was she trolling now?
A nod here seemed appropriate. Ashen could rest assured that Socorra was too sober for a hug at least. There were no depths to which she had cringed in hangover after that recent party.
Thank you, she finally replied and took a seat in the leather, one arctic blue eye peering around for anything new in the study.
After all, once upon a time she too had been a Krath.
Part of being powerful was the rumours. He had heard them all, some stranger than others. That he was physically incapable of sitting down was not even in the top three. Some had surmised that he derived his power from his hair, and that if cut he would be weak as an apprentice. Others had said that he just wasn’t real, an illusion created by either Kaine Mandaala or Trevarus Caerick, depending on who you asked, and who they hated more. Muz shook the thought from his head as he sat down, amused by them all.
Between the curse he was sure inhabited it, ready to wreak havoc on any who deigned to sit there, and the hard medical science that sitting in an uncomfortable cold hunk of iron probably wasn’t particularly good for your posterior, there was myriad reasons to not use the Iron Throne as so many other Lords had. Nevermind the tactical limitations. It would be harder to engage his blades, to defend or attack from a seated position. And in that viper’s den, among the Sith? It was always a possibility. But these seats, these were custom built for him by masters on Kyataru, who put their generational strive for perfection to the task, knowing full well that they were to be used by their emperor. The carved wood emulated the coils of a dragon, scenes from ancient stories evoked in their handiwork. Soft leather cushions seemed to mold to the touch, their comfort an abject opposite from what he’d imagined the Iron Throne to be.
He was glad to be rid of it, even if the years after had varied wildly. Pravus pulled the brotherhood from the ancient empire’s worlds unceremoniously, ignoring the clan’s cries for recompense, the worlds that they were promised. They just did not matter to him, as the One Sith did not matter to him. Officially, they were defeated, but that was not near the truth. The final battle on Korriban didn’t involve a single member of that faction. Too concerned with the very petty squabbling Muz had railed against for years, Korriban was the site of yet another Civil War.
A civil war that the One Sith was more than willing to sit back and watch, wounded as they were.
Never leave an enemy in a way that you need ever fear their reprisal. It was sound wisdom a thousand years past, and it was good now. The One Sith would recover, rally more to their cause, replace their losses, and eventually come for the Brotherhood again. For the architects of their loss of empire.
Newly freed from obligation to the petty politics of the council, of the clans, empowered by the death throes of a dark star and two worlds full of countless dead, Muz would not let that happen.
The remaining lords of the One Sith, scattered and bruised already by the Brotherhood’s Crusade were unprepared for the Keibatsu. He had rallied his brothers, and they tore their support structures apart, absorbing their holdings and their finances bit by bit until they had to come up for air from their hiding spaces. And when they did, they were there, waiting.
Some of their relics passed beneath Socorra’s frost-touched eye as she dragged her gaze across his library. A sith dagger, the ur-Kittat runes seeming to glow on their own. A crystal matrix, the hand carved adegan meant to eventually serve as a holocron but left incomplete, the voices of the spirits raging from inside against the inequity of that fact. A heavy golden bracelet, fine chains linking to finger rings, large stones seeming to swirl the colors of blood and space. A dozen more artifacts lay in repose across the room now, merely trophies among the miles of tomes and holocrons accrued from a lifetime of hunting.
Muz had to expand the room twice already in the last several years. In another hundred years, how much larger would it be? In a thousand? He turned his head as if he could turn away from the idea. It wasn’t important now.
He motioned at the glasses, his mind wrapping around the stoppered decanter, then the bottle as he poured a few drams into each glass, the liquor a rich and deep amber hue as it splashed.
You have questions. It was a statement. He knew she hated not knowing everything, and she was always more effective when aware of the particulars. He let the decanter settle back down, then lifted the glasses, sending one her way before taking one himself.
Ask.
Socorra accepted the drink but ironically was unable to sit for long. The woman took quickly to the artifacts, her organic burn-scarred hand reaching for them like a moth to flame.
I remember some of these, she said, or thought, or both. Her mind peered over all of them, her Force sense stretching and working out in the mental gym. Her hands itched to physically touch every one of them to read their secrets but the Sith knew better. She quickly stepped back from the one crystal, the voices screaming at her in particular when she was near.
Ooh they are pissed. Her hands raised and noped out of that one. They been in there for what, at least a decade? Did they tell you to get a haircut?
Socorra’s thoughts were in Olys Corellisi, the Old Corellian language that went extinct some thousand years ago. It was now known by very few scholars, spacers, and of course, mainly used by the long-forgotten Socorran natives. The Jedi Academy and Imperial Mission were destroyed during the civil war and the planet was nothing more than a shadowport now, and heat and sand. After all, Socorro itself meant “scorched earth.”
The woman’s name was certainly not her given, and merely a play on her homeworld. Her mother tongue in thought translated to nearly perfect Basic. It was in the Bharhulai dialect, the mostly uncivilized nomadic desert tribe. It was also the oldest one, considered by some to have been stranded Corellian colonists thousands of years ago who became savages to survive in the unforgiving Doaba wasteland.
It was no wonder why the desert-born Korunnai-Kyataran Tsainetomo and Socorra had gotten along so well. They had been two rare desert dragons from different worlds.
I knew what this one said, once. The Sith turned to another artifact and dared not attempt to read aloud, in broken Basic or otherwise. I knew what planets they came from. But not now.
Socorra turned back to him, a shock of unnaturally silver-white hair covering the missing eye. The mostly raven mane, now extremely long, was a canon occurrence in most of the variances. Her life force was bled and drained a decade ago in the arena, after boldly, stupidly, fighting Timeros in one semifinal, after trampling on the tabletops and shattering glasses in the Council VIP box. Technically she still owed Ashen a drink.
She sat down again and finally enjoyed the one he poured, surprisingly a bourbon.
I have a perfect memory here, Socorra started, her eye turning to the glass. I remember every single thing, with every sense, every moment of my existence that I perceived. I remember all of those of everyone else whose heads I have been inside. I am a very *skilled mentalist here, one of very few Elders with the discipline and training. But I was rendered fully brain dead for several years, up until two years ago. The memories of the former timelines are fragments. I barely recall anything after Korriban.
So…what happened there in that one, why and how did I get here, why can I not leave and why are you here now?*
Her free hand flapped in the air. Or some question combination thereof.
Why wouldn’t I be here now? He let the thought hang, watching her struggle with the thought. No, with her memory.
Muz took a sip, letting the alcohol dance along his tongue before swallowing. The bourbon got almost all of its flavor from the barrel. There was the grain it was formed from, of course. The fire and yeast that gave it power, to be sure. The concentration, the distillation that made it all the more potent, too… But all that strength would temper in the oak, losing volume and potency over time. So much so that when opened, the cask might only be half full, so many liters sacrificed to evaporation in exchange for the rich flavor in every drop that remained.
It was an apt metaphor.
Some distillers decanted their product, changing the barrels after an initial aging to add complexity. Still others would reuse casks that other spirits had aged in, bringing entirely new profiles to bear, to create something more than the sum of its parts. And those, complex as they were, often took an expert to discern correctly. Did the whisky know that it had aged in a bourbon cask? A sherry cask?
He set the glass down gently, leaning forward. She had agreed to this before, begged for it even, but the part of her that did was gone now. They had walked across the threshold, in the space between seconds, between thought and memory. She thought him maddeningly insane at first, then she saw. With wide eyes she saw. And there was no coming back.
He shouldn’t have shown her.
As she looked down threads of life closed off to her, into possibilities that she should never had seen, she had asked of him. Raw emotion, fear, loathing, loss, wrath, they all coiled within her, a tempest without outlet. The path that she was on then only had one end. They both knew it.
Some pain just had no amelioration.
His work meant that they would have been sitting here either way. A different vintage, different questions, a different time. There was no other way.
Muz watched her, wondering how many of his thoughts she was following. Between how quickly his mind raced through possibilities and how he constantly cross-referenced experiences that danced on the edge between impossible and insane, he wasn’t sure. He’d long given up caring about what surface thoughts he guarded. The depth of things confounded most who dared to look, and those who pried deeper… well, he had something for that.
Socorra, for her part, seemed to just unblinkingly stare at him over the top of her glass.
“Some pain just had no amelioration.” She mouthed the words, and Muz had his answer. He gently nodded at her, letting her process the thought. What it actually meant in fullness. He watched her, a glimmer of concern floating through his mind as he took a long sip.
She pried her single eye away and stared at her glass, then the burn-scarred hand that held it.
Can you blame me? For wanting choose my destiny. For choosing happiness over everything.
She flapped the other hand in the air.
*No happy ending in this one. At least I could suffer this had I left legacy. I have been trying to build one for years now, to make sure there is one this time, but here, I am bound in chain. Constantly, forever ruled over by men in dark robes, my ambition lead nowhere but futility. What good is all my knowledge and intelligence if I can do nothing with it? What good is being smartest person in room if no one listens, and I too powerless to force them to?
Karkin’ Raken. Converting to Sith made me impatient and impetuous. I grow old now, and angry. And angry because I grow old.*
At least she didn’t have to pronounce impetuous out loud. It was twisting her tongue even mentally.
Muz blinked slowly at the thought, trying to correspond her thoughts to what he saw. To his vision. Of course she couldn’t see things the way that he did, and yet he had trouble understanding why in the moment. She was right to want to choose. He couldn’t begrudge her that, for who wouldn’t want to be able to edit their own lot in life? Especially after what had happened to her after he left that damnable throne.
Still, he had wondered if it was the right thing to do even back then, as they watched the echoes unfold in front of them, the scent of ritual incense thick in the air. The versions of her that played out all shared one key difference, as he had explained. That she would survive. He had warned her that the cost would be heavy, the blending of the Somas and by proxy, their memories would be a brutal cost for one so reliant on them. She was too eager in her acceptance, and he should have known.
The chains that bind us the tightest are the ones we’ve made. He paused, setting his glass down. Your past was pain, and all you’ve done is reach for it. He turned to focus his eyes on her, the nightmare pools of slick black boring into her. There is another way.
Socorra nodded.
He gestured with a loose hand, and the images flew through his mind as he shared with her the snippets of the visions he’d had. He had spent days meditating after the rite, sorting out his own path, aligning his plans with the new reality he had forced. Socorra’s path had struck out harshly from the original trajectory like lightning, her power amplified by the movement. Was it the impatience that drove her? Was it confidence in herself born out of events that she would not remember?
Socorra’s spirit screamed for some sort of outlet, like a champion caged and forbidden to fight.
Furious at the prison, delirious at the quiet, and enraged at what she had become as the taste of victory soured on her tongue.
Her own thoughts roiled beneath the surface as she grasped at his visions for more detail, clawing at ephemeral tastes of what the future held. He watched the images from his vision play out in her eye, her mind tracing the lightning as he had, looking for the point where it finally found the ground. Not in the past, but in the future. Recognition seemed to bloom as she saw what he had seen, her expression changing ever so subtly.
Muz nodded.
.
He was right of course. She lived in the past, constantly reaching for what was or could have been. What should have been. Things that felt impossible now, including what Ashen was showing here.
“Bantha osik,” she said challenged out loud. “That make no sense, is not even Arcona.”
More attachment, more reaching out to pain. Muz paused, watching her as memory swarmed behind black eyes. He had a fondness for the Shadow Clan, reaching back decades now. The Alliances of old had placed Arcona, Tarentum and Sadow together, arrayed against the predations of… well, that was then. Tarentum was nothing more but an old name now, devastated during Pravus’ Reign, their refugees filtering across Arcona and Sadow mostly, but some finding new places elsewhere. Even during his own time, those three could be counted upon for support. It marked a dramatic change in the winds for the Brotherhood, finally wresting dominance from the Taldrya, Arcona taking their place at the top of the pecking order. In response, their wrath came bubbling to the surface during the Crusade and Korriban. Always Korriban.
Yet Arcona had brought her misery.
Pain.
Death, in all too many shells.
And that last was not acceptable. Not for his plans. Muz tilted his head, craning his neck to watch his Herald move along the stacks, fingers tracing the tomes in her inability to hold still. He held his eyes still for a moment, and she glanced at him for a moment before looking away. He didn’t need to repeat himself. She understood her attachment all too well. Reluctance to lose whatever connection she still harbored, willing to take the pain of the splinter if it meant she could keep the sliver.
What instead? He slowly rose to his feet, watching her as he posed the next obvious question.
The chains that bind us the tightest are the ones we forge ourselves.
Socorra stared at the burn scars on her free hand, contemplating the Lion’s words.
Tattooine. The Ascendency. Sojourn.
Death and pain. Death and pain. Death and pain.
The cycle repeated endlessly, across a thousand different scenarios, a thousand different timelines. Was that what she reached for when she looked back? He seemed to think so. But that wasn’t the whole truth. Something deeper was stirring in her mind, a realization forming as quickly as a droid patched into a mainframe. A pattern emerged—subtle, lurking just beneath the surface of consciousness. One she had never dared to acknowledge.
He knew that.
Socorra’s pale eye flicked up to meet his empty, hollow gaze, a spark of understanding flashing behind her sudden awareness. A curse slipped from her ruby lips in her mother tongue. Ashen nodded, slowly, deliberately. She finally saw it. Finally knew. For all her vast intelligence, she had still let the cycle repeat because of one unyielding truth—something she had always known, but had refused to accept. She’d buried it. Deaded it.
The question repeated. What then?
Her lips tightened. The realization was already long over. Now came the reckoning. In deference she stood as well, matching his pace—respectful, but not submissive. She held his gaze.
“Break the wheel,” Socorra said aloud, her voice carrying the weight of an archaic accent, as harsh as life in the Black Sands itself. Her upper lip curled ever so slightly. It might have been confused for a wry smirk if it wasn’t so feral. And do what all good Sith do…
His eyebrow raised a hair. Die?
“What?” she blinked. “No, the.. the other ting.”
A shadow of a smile crossed his face. The answer, of course, was multifaceted and not merely one thing—plans within plans within plans. It would be interesting to watch her try.
Muz smiled.
There was a warmth that reached the corners of his eyes as he nodded, watching her nod back and turn to leave, leaving a spider of bourbon in a glass on the table as she left the library with footsteps that started heavy, laden with purpose, then grew lighter as she realized the path. Her path, convoluted and complicated as it might become, but hers none the less. Obscured for years from her observant eye, yet right in front of her, just waiting for this moment of painful clarity.
It was what he came here for, after all. She had to understand. Fully understand, beyond the empty prayers and spilled blood, past the nightmares and sleepless wrath. Every apprentice had repeated the words by rote, beaten into them by zealous masters and jealous lords, but prize few understood the truth.
That victory was over yourself.
That was the victory that breaks the chains. The chains we forge ourselves.
That was what set you free.