Faded electric-blue, offset by the dark sclera, almost stripped down to a dull gray darted left and right, wary of beasts or roots slithering her way as he spoke. It took a moment to process his words. As little as there was left of the Black Hand, there was a tinge of passion on his tongue. The black-clad woman tensed her neck as she prepared to speak.
“What happened to you? And what is this place?” Her throat itched as she spoke with a raspy voice. A wheeze followed a cough she tried to hold back, followed by the hiss of her mask.
The Shadow twisted its neck, tilting its head one way then the other, almost bird-like as it studied her, a wicked smile upon its lips. The same smile she had witnessed on Velrhan. It remained silent for a moment, as it contemplated her questions. Finally, it shifted upon its throne of roots, its movements more fluid, strong, reinvigorated by her presence. It straightened as it took a long, rasped breath. Finally, it answered.
“I could tell you that this is the birthplace of the dark side. Yes. Yes. I could tell you that it is the source of your very life force, creature of darkness. Ah, yes.” It spoke with a grandeur belying its rotten form, its tone loud, haunting, reverberating across the glade with a rattling of bones. “In truth, it is so much more than that for it is here that the fate of a galaxy changed. This place represents far more than you or this insipid creature once Cyris Oscura can fathom. To know this place is to accept that within one’s heart, there is only the dark.”
It watched her a moment longer, reveling in the vileness of her electric gaze, the vileness of her own emotions. It longed to reach out and touch her, the tremor of desire upon its forlorn limbs, and yet, it was not quite time.
It spoke with ruthless amusement as it continued, its tone rising, a hunger in his words growling, “Ah but you wonder still what became of me? The so-called Black Hand came to this place, to me… For answers, for power. Much like you. He, no, we ascended. We are the dark side. We are the Force. We are everything.” It shifted its hand and in one snapping motion Aphotis flew forward the stopped as abruptly, a forceful pressure around her as she hung before the Shadow, her face hovering mere inches from its own grotesque visage beyond the helmet.
The Shadow sneered as its sour breath clouded upon her visor, this grotesque barrier between them.
There was a resounding crack as the weight of the galaxy bore down upon her and at long last, her helmet shattered in a shower of sparks and glass shards, many of which bit into its ruined face. It relished the jolt of pain that shot through its nerve receptors, a deep, shuttering sound not unlike a moan escaping from its putrid throat. Her blue eyes were wide, a wave of vulnerability rippling across her features as she gasped.
“Fear not, for you will need it no longer, not in this place.”
The mask’s nosecup ejected shards of transparisteel as it retreated from her face, seeping under the neck brace as Aphotis grimaced—it was made out of the same symbiotic material as the rest of her, able to feel pain, temperature and itch just as her porcelain skin would. It revealed her fully, exposing her face, dirty as it was.
The woman’s eyes soon turned into an intense glare, her short brows furrowing. The tail tried to lash out in vain, wringing itself against the mystical power that held her. There was a ringing in her ears as she willed the dark side to wrest her loose. The sudden loss of the last comfort and safety that she had left made her heart rage in her chest, beating like thunder, cornered like a womprat and held like a puppet.
“It is getting really difficult to ask quest-,” she spoke with gritted teeth,”-ions like this.” The glow of her eyes sputtered as she descended into an almost beastly fury.
The Shadow chuckled, a sickening grating of rocks. “Ask questions? How disappointing. This one repeats Oscura’s blunders.”
It sucked the rancid air of the glade through its rotten teeth, the odors of her body, a wrenching mixture of perfumes and pheromones and vomit, wafting upon the wasteland of its pustule-ridden tongue. The Shadow’s one remaining eye shimmered and flared, the cataracts dissipating, tentacles retracting from around a golden sun, revealing the yellow-red iris of one who’s fully given themselves over to the dark side of the Force.
“You wish to learn, child?” it whispered inquisitively.
Throughout all of the madness she had not forgotten why she walked this path. But she did not merely wish to learn, and she definitely never intended to ask. These were formal curiosities, sated by her eyes and other senses. It was time to dig deeper.
“I will experience,” the emphasis was placed on a singular word, but it encompassed how she evolved.
Wishing meant one would not grasp what was on their path. Everything was to be taken. Fears confronted. Passion serving as fuel. Wishes meant clinging to hope, for destiny to make the choice for you, to be lived and not to live.
She is ready.
The Shadow lunged forward with a snarl.
Alaisy gasped as she found herself standing in a forested grove, ancient trees of an unknown species climbing high towards the heavens above. Shafts of sunlight filtered through its thick canopy, pinpricks of gold in the gloom of the forest. Great stone pillars stood erect around the grove, each one carved with runic symbols she remembered from the strange plane of existence where she had lost Malfearak.
Lost? No. I freed myself of the burden.
A waft of wind caused an unfamiliar ruffling upon her body. When she looked down, he realized she was dressed in robes, thick and loose, not unlike those worn by her own people on Tratlaum. Panic set upon her as she saw the porcelain skin of her hands and the short nails at the of each finger. She pulled her sleeves up, revealing white arms and strange tattoos she did not recognize. Robed figures appeared in the grove now, filing in from various paths. Tall figures brushed past her, taller than she was. Her tail… no. There was no tail. She realized it wasn’t that these newcomers were tall. She was short. This wasn’t her body.
What is this?
“The past,” Malfearak said as he appeared by her side. He offered a soft, knowing smirk, his silver hair glistening beneath a ray of sunlight. There was a kindness in his eyes that pulled at her heartstrings even now. Alaisy swallowed those emotions, instead drawing upon her hatred.
“You,” she hissed, but he raised a hand to show he meant no harm.
“I am, like this place, the past,” he answered.
She shook her head, then pinched the arm she saw before her—the ruffling of the robes would have been proof enough.
‘Pain, perhaps not mine, these eyes not mine either.’
“What role am I playing in this?” She was not sure if the sound of her voice matched, it was softer, kinder.
She scanned Malfaerak from head to toe, over and over again, reading that smirk.
He was the same as she had last seen him. She understood that he too was a guest in this vision.
“Mea'rhekla, iley tish arevenir Ossasdii chield,” a male figure ahead of Alaisy motioned to her as it spoke in a strange tongue. He wanted her to approach, as so she did, walking slowly, carefully, the ground beneath her bare feet, flat and white, alien, uneven. Malfearak walked at her side, hands crossed behind his back.
“Surely you understand now, where you are,” he stated.
“Where I met Cyris,” she answered, understanding.
“Aye. Quite the change,” he mused. He took a deep breath. “The air is sweeter. There is peace here.”
“I preferred the bog, this seems dressed up,” she wanted her own voice to be more bitter, more prideful.
Yet she could not help but try and see what Malfearak meant with the ‘sweeter air’. So she raised her nose in the air and filled the lungs that inhabited this recollected body.
‘Honeyed, indeed.’
The next moment she stood before the taller male figure. She expected her eye to twitch as she had to look up, but that did not happen.
‘Interesting speech pattern. Ancient perhaps?’
As Alaisy advanced through the grove to stand by this robed man, the others spread out around the area in a full circle and now stood arms outstretched at their sides. They began chanting, a deep, guttural sound, closer in nature to an animal’s baying than song, words uttered in the same strange tongue she did not comprehend. It was an eerie sound, one that cut through bone and chilled the blood. It would have caused the hair on her arms to stand if she had any. As they uttered their ritual, she found them leaving the ground, levitating upwards to float above the grove. Stones were swirling around the grove now. Alaisy realized that the pillars were coming apart piece by piece, peeling away like crust from the earth to join the rest in the air. They flitted and spun, then began settling in the center of the grove, before her, forming a mound. An altar. She saw slivers of blue energy flaring amongst the glyph lines as they came together in this new structure.
The man nodded and pressed an alien skull into her hands, larger than her own skull, elongated, fanged, almost canine in appearance. Then, the man stepped aside, one hand motioning her onward. She felt a tingling from the strange tattoos etched into her skin as she walked past him. Malfearak, for his part, stayed behind. She frowned, brows furrowed as she looked at him, to which he responded with a bow.
If it looks like a sacrificial ritual, it smells like one, it feels like one and someone bows you farewell. Then you are likely going to see a dagger in your stomach and witness the last sight as eyes are plucked from your skull.
Even in this foreign body, in a vision no doubt, Aphotis almost rolled her eyes. She had enacted countless sacrifices, even instructing others to follow her plans at times.
She tried to focus on every sensation. The skull was important, but easy to distinguish and remember. The pattern of the slivers of cerulean was perhaps the clue she needed. Visions were not unfamiliar to the Sith woman, she knew how to slow down time, sometimes even freeze it.
Her mind and spirit attempted to memorise the patterns of speech she had heard. The route of the bright lights. The shape of the circle. The height of the participants. The colors of their robes. The phase of the star and direction of the trees. Even the tingling on her back was something she could potentially recall later. Each memory was associated with numbers, and then objects. She recalled them in order, out of order, backwards, and attached to shapes and colors.
“I am ready now.”
You are ready for nothing!
The voice inside her head was not her own. Sharp, cruel, merciless, it was a deathly whisper from across the eons, a voice of rattling bones and crumbling dust. Alaisy looked to Malfearak but found he was gone, much as she had feared, a wisp of memories floating upon the winds of time. He had walked only a short distance at her side and yet she now missed his presence like never before.
Fool! You are weak, the voice snarled, its anger a lance of pain through her brain, ripping a scream from her throat and doubling her over, nearly causing her to drop the skull. None of the robed figures seemed to notice, continuing their chant oblivious to her turmoil. She trembled as the voice continued, piercing her consciousness.
Child of Ossasdii, are you predator or prey?
Her fingers clamped down on the skull, trembling not from pain this time, but from the rush of anger and hatred that now fed her. She had walked alongside pain and suffering all her life, anguish itself as a constant companion, but she was no prey.
She was a predator.
She was anguish.
She would not be their sacrifice! She leapt onto the altar. The chants died as she did so and she turned to face the man who had ushered her forth, who had placed the skull into her care. Memories that were not her own flooded her mind and she saw a childhood beneath a great tree, she saw the tattoos etched into her skin by a mother not her own. She witnessed as she drew a chalice of blood to her lips and quenched her thirst before these robed cultists. She remembered the beatings, the flaying, the physical and mental torture. They had groomed her for this sacrifice. Hatred filled her heart, it consumed her soul, fueling her ire, her hands clenched so hard the skull began to crack between her fingers.
She realized she was growling. Her eyes met the robed man’s gaze and she knew what needed to be done. His eyes went wide with realization.
She would not be their sacrifice. This was her time of vengeance.
I am anguish!
She threw her hands skyward, brandishing the skull as she screamed the same words they had chanted. They rolled off her tongue, foreign and unintelligible, and yet she knew them. Electric blue light swirled from the glyphs in the altar’s surface then surged up into her body, the energy coursing through her veins into the skull. As she continued the ritual, her voice a vile shriek on the air, the tattoos on her arms became animated, black ink slithering up her limbs like twin nigthsnakes burrowing into the skull. The artifact in her hands pulsed with darkness.
The man lunged at her, a bone knife flashing in his hand, curved and deadly. He was the first to die.
Elation filled Alaisy as a torrent of darkness rolled off of her in waves. She could feel her own humanity draining away, ripped from her soul, but she did not care. She laughed as she watched the man with the knife crumble before her, black tendrils pouring from his eyes and mouth, drawn to the skull. It was only a matter of heartbeats before he was a husk, shrivelled up and empty. All around the grove it was much the same, screams of agony, of anguish as all of the robed figures were drained of the Living Force, their very essence devoured by the skull. She knew they never once believed she could betray them, they had groomed her, promised her an existence beyond the veil of the Force. She had never been fooled and soon, she would know true power.
When all were dead, she collapsed with a sigh of exertion, the skull clattering at her feet upon the altar. She pulled her legs up to her chest as she had done as a child and found herself sobbing. Alaisy knew deep inside that these weren’t her emotions, that this wasn’t her body, her life, but she felt every ounce of it.
She experienced all of it.
She sat there a moment, shivering, whimpering, as she looked about the grove. The vegetation had turned to lifeless shades of brown and already, leaves were falling from the trees. It was as if the sun itself had died. And from the mouth of the skull, a black fog seeped out, a blanket upon the forest floor.
There was a space in within her mind all of the sudden. As if a wave cleared away all the debris. The black fog kept flowing and swirling out of the skull, but it was on a loop, repeating endlessly.
Her body was no longer connected to the environment. She peered down upon the woman, seeing her age from a child to adult, over and over. There was little to hold onto her spirit. Aphotis tried to imagine squinting her eyes, flicking her tail, clenching her fist. Every portrayal moved her vision around in a different direction, much like an interactive holo-vid.
‘Good, I can think clearly again.’
Lining up her thoughts brought her this far. So she was going to do what worked previously. Recollect.
‘Predator, anguish, the skull, the tree, the emotions, the shock of those who would sacrifice, the grove, leaves falling, the black fog, vengeance, the tattoos and patterns, the foreign tongue and of course, electric-blue.’
Those were the keys, yet something was missing.
‘The Kessurian, Malfearak Asvraal. Where did he go?’
The Sith knew for sure that the Black Hand set the scene in motion. The way he did that amused her. The stinging pain lingered, and it was what she yearned once more. It set forth the establishment of memory, so she could not forget.
Yet, one factor was missing. ‘Asvraal’. His aura was the same, like a whisper, a figment of time passed. Why did she, Aphotis, care about his path. There was only one reason she ever cared about others.
Suffering .
A wave of melancholy hit her soul as if all of the air in her lungs was kicked out. Malfearak was suffering something worse than death and it felt so familiar, yet she had bony arms resting on her shoulders. He was there, not in consciousness, but as an unwilling participant. To relive the anguish of others and himself.
‘Fascinating’
The Kessurian was not a rival deserving of such a fate. Yet, when she thought of what happened to the souls that she locked within her Garden of Trepidations, she knew that this Black Hand likely did the same with all of his enemies, and perhaps even friends. As if possessed himself. There had always been two versions, one rotten, one prestigious, but neither felt complete.
A devious sensation crept over her, like eels swimming over her skin.
‘The Garden. Unleash a torrent of nightmares. A gift from the darkest corner of my mind. An equal exchange.’
The witch had created small pockets spread over spots in the Galaxy where there was a vergence, if only she could locate this place, and channel them here.
‘Perhaps this exchange can happen later.’
There were many tangents between this experience and her own as Alaisy Tir'eivra, before both the Bleeding Willow of Osasdii were swallowed and fused.
‘Little girls and trees, where have I seen that before?’
Understanding was the key. She was not the first of Osasdii’s children to carry the Bleeding Willow’s essence beyond their homeworld. Much like the nightsisters had evolved beyond Dathomir, so too had splinters of her own tribe, and they had carried with them the blood of the great tree, a substance that had fueled a great disaster in this place. As sure as Tratlaum would die without it, here, in this hallowed grove, it had killed a planet.
As comprehension filled her mind, the vision around her shuddered and the world closed in around her,, the loop severed by an ear-rigging, cracking noise, the sound of the planet’s crust coming apart. She was this strange witch once again. The world shuddered, as if it had jumped. It was followed by a heartbeat of silence and quiet, before the grove was wracking by a violent earthquake. The world heaved around Alaisy even as she felt the bones of her body shatter. She cried out in agony as she fell, her legs pulped, knowing nothing but pain and suffering. All around her the grove collapsed inward, at its center the fog-bleeding skull. She was thrown down to it, more bones breaking, more cries from her lips. Alaisy tried to crawl, but the violence wracking the world was too much. She was going to die.
Lucid, she heard and recognized Oscura’s voice as it reverberated across her mind.
All are sacrifice, their bones paving the way to power. Your power. MY power.
She rolled to her back as the root-locked, grotesque form of the Black Hand lunged at her.
Then there was darkness.
—–
Alaisy woke up to searing pain, a long, ear-splitting scream of anguish torn from her lips. She barely registered the fog-swallowed murk that surrounded her. Barely realized she was back in the Black Hand’s deathly lair. There was too much pain, like flames licking at her body. She vomited bile and black spittle, nearly drowning on it through her whinging cries. Despite the pain, she climbed into her Ivory Tower, desperate to wrest control from chaos. Shaking from exertion she craned her neck. She was prone, floating some was above the dead land of bones and roots, the glade where she had met the haunting remnant of Cyris Oscura. None of it quite registered beyond notice, her eyes drawn downwards to her own body. She shrieked, eyes bulging, her jaw nearly snapping from the sheer terror she felt.
Obsidian and ivory.
Oscura’s sharp-clawed hand hovered outstretched over her paralyzed form. Black, glistening tendrils rose up from her body, black skin peeling away in layers revealing raw porcelain skin underneath. Like black veins her second skin criss-crossed the putrid air a link between her and Oscura’s fingers linking them, unclear where she began and he ended. The black veins slithered over his hand, his arm, a web covering his own skin. Then her eyes locked his. Wide eyes bleeding madness. Electric blue. Two of them. One physical, the other pure energy. Rotten teeth were replaced by sharp black fangs glistening with her blood. He was smiling at her. A wild smile. Demented.
Through the dark side, she felt his hunger, his lust, his madness.
MY POWER his voice screamed in her mind, MINE!
Then there was only laughter. Evil. Ruthless. Hungry.
Alaisy realized that she wasn’t the Child of Osasdii.
Tir’eivra felt it from him, the hunger, lust and madness. But it was so vile and misshapen. And yet, she had done this countless of times and knew she would enact it upon others endlessly more.
She was still processing the grandness of Osasdii’s many pilgrimages, never having imagined that it could spread so far across the Galaxy. The destruction was magnificent. Fire burning the weakness out of it. It was so good to experience these cataclysms. Now she truly could call herself a herald of the apocalypse, because she had witnessed it. But in this man’s hands, it felt so wrong.
He was monstrous, devoid of rationality, of control.
‘Such blind greed.’ The thought hurt her more than anything.
It would sate him, for a time. But there was no bond, there was no lust or fulfilment. Seeing the pulchritudinous black be abused was a melancholic suffering she could not bare to experience. .
Thoughts flooded her like waves of thick ink that foamed as they crashed down.
She had rarely struggled with the symbiote, at most times their paths intertwined. She respected the great spirit’s power, and Osasdii admired her intelligence.
The Clan did not see that. The Mother hoped for it, she was closest to the truth. But perhaps the Clan did not abide by Osasdii’s wishes as well as Alaisy herself did. The witches always had an air of jealousy that stung her like nettle. They did abide by traditions built on falsehoods, no matter how well intended they were, or how meticulously curated they may have been. Their Clan flourished from Osasdii’s power, but it always took it back in the end.
Aphotis wondered if these Osasdii Nightsisters even remembered Dathomir, the seed of where it all began, the font of this power. Her symbiote sure did, they were engraved in her own memory.
‘How the mighty have fallen, what a sad sight.’ .
She wanted to see if she could do it. Tempt the Bleeding Willow to this body, to merge with this one again. Pull the black strings back, even through the agony.
Often neglected beyond pain, passion, vexation, strength and freedom, there was beauty. Beauty was something Osasdii and Tir'eivra never disagreed on. It was dangerous, tempting and melancholic. Everything this monster was not.
Alaisy summoned thoughts from the well of her creative mind, ideas still to be brought to fruition. A rapid evolution that was possible with her, and not this Black Hand. She avoided his real name, because names grant power and, instead, repeated her own real name. One fit for a dark lady of the Sith. The dark side had chosen her, Osasdii had chosen her, the Nightsisters admired it, worshipped it, but did not truly understand.
‘Aphotis, the darkest reaches, reflecting star-light, one sees their own death in her skin. Aphotis, the name made Osasdii yearn. Aphotis, the name that Alaisy Tir’eivra grasped together with the Bleeding Willow and became one with.’
These witches had tried for millennia, but true evolution had been out of their hands, they did not die for their merging. Aphotis had died for this, lived for it, suffered for it, enjoyed its path. They could never be separated again.
Black veins retracted if only by an infinitesimal fraction but the Shadow was greedy, no, starved. It wailed, convulsing, enraged, black spittled erupting from its gouged lips. It hissed at his victim, eyes devoid of humanity, its clutched hand trembling, but it held on. It would not let go so easily for it was fate that moved its hand. If the symbiote wouldn’t submit of its own volition, it would be made to submit. It would obey.
If the girl had to die, so be it.
The Shadow drew from the dark side and in this place, in this dark vergence in the Force, it was all powerful, a cosmic entity unparalleled. It gasped as reality itself opened to its mind. It saw everything, the intricate silver threads of existence branching before it, the paths and decisions and questions from which reality was constructed. It knew all. In the depths of the Force from whence it had snatched her as she fell, it saw her former companion falling still, Asvraal’s lifeforce fading now. It peered beyond this insignificant speck, scouring time end space for the world of Tratlaum, Osasdii by its ancient name, desperate for answers. Once again, it witnessed the birth of the girl, Alaisy, the trials she had endured, her sickness, the death of the Bleeding Willow, the birth of her Garden of Trepidations. It understood the depth of the bond between symbiote and child, a bond forged in darkness.
Comprehension dawned on the Shadow and it discovered the Child of Osasdii to be quite resilient. Indeed, it understood now that the symbiote would never abandon its host willingly, not without being flailed from her very bones. Two made one. Two of consciousness, one of thought. One mind, one stronghold.
Could one exist without the other?
The Shadow snarled at the thought. It could not risk losing the child now for its own lifeforce was spent, maintained by the dark side for its will superceded even death, but even this drew to an end, a well dry. It had devoured every molecule, every wisp of power, every strand of the dark energy which had been absorbed in eons past by the skull which now resided in the rock beneath its rooted feet. The seed of darkness that had created this vergence, the seed that would drench the galaxy in pestilence and rot.
Its clutched hand trembled, wavered only momentarily, black filaments snapping and falling away from its fingers. It cried out as it drew into the very limits of its power and further still, a growl in its throat. Again, the black matter peeled away from the girl. Again, her agony filled the rotten glade with her screams, a symphony that bolstered its efforts.
“Why do you resist, child? Is it not your desire to spread pain, darkness, to instill your own will upon the galaxy? Child of anguish, let your pain engulf me so that together we may bring about a new age of darkness,” the Shadow begged, its voice twisted by desperation, by desire, by lust, by hunger.
Between the shrill death-shrieks, a strength rose up that had lingered within the depths of her depravity. Like a worm that crawling up from the girl’s throat, a laughter surfaced like water that began to boil.
“The pain itself sustains me, do you not see that? This is the pain I so desire. Why would you wish me to let it happen, without a fight? It would be fruitless. Or are you afraid? desperate?” Her voice sounded unpleasantly rough, like sand rubbing against durasteel. “Weak?”
Aphotis knew she was playing with fire here. Even potentially being disrespectful towards a gift. But this was fun. This was like clawing and tearing at the fabric of the universe itself!
Her mind imagined a strand of brilliant black, transforming into a razorsharp needle, prodding the Black Hand’s eye.
“You wish for pain? You shall receive.” The laughter echoed darkly in the decrepit swamp.
Without mercy, the Shadow lashed at her stomach, peeling away a swath of her second skin as one ripped way old crusted bandages, his new, symbiote-fashioned claws carving oozing gashes in her flesh, flesh that had not been touched by the light of day in years. There was a snap-hiss of energy and both Aphotis and the Shadow were bathed anew in sanguine light, augmenting the contrast between the void that was her ravaged, black skin and the ivory of her porcelain flesh. She watched the cerulean blue energy in the Black Hand’s eyes shift to a baleful red and then her gaze travelled upward to the ancient, rusted lightsaber hanging in the air above her, its blazing crimson blade angled down, a spear hovering a handspan from her stomach. She squirmed, fought back, but she was paralyzed by the Shadow’s will. It began to lower at an agonizing pace, and she could feel the heat against her exposed skin. Then, there was the stench of molten flesh as plasma kissed her stomach, burning away the first layer. The Shadow laughed and sneered, black drool dripping and spraying from its clenched teeth, eyes wild, savage.
Mine, mine, mine! it howled in the Force.
The heat radiated and bit into her, gnawing. Tissue broke down and curled in on itself, burnt to crisp.
But there was no such thing as retreat or defense for a true Sith—only offence. This vile monster would fight for every cell. And every cell would cost him equal to what he thought to gain in pain.
Electricity began to run back and forth over every streak of black and her alabaster skin. It crackled and snapped, cooking everything around it. First it was cerulean, incredibly chaotic, then violet, intentional and controlled, then crimson and primal. It danced and flickered and thundered. Even the Shadow’s black drool was not spared, serving as a violent conductor.
“Feel it!”
The Shadow howled as the raw embrace of the dark side rippled along the black membrane, up its spittle, coursing through the remains of Cyris Oscura, a torrent flooding his veins. His connection to the Force slipped and his grip on her faltered, but not before the crimson blade lanced through her, its red tip searing the stone beneath. The lightning, born of her hatred, boiled his blood as sure as it boiled his skin, cascading from organ to organ until it finally reached his black heart. The damage was immediate and violent, gruesome and without mercy. There was only a short grasp and the Black Hand slumped. Aphotis crashed to the ground. As Cyris pushed out one final sigh, the last of his lifeforce leaving his rotten corpse, and so too did the lightsaber die, the blade retracting, leaving a glowing, orange, cauterized wound in the Sith witch’s abdomen.
There was a moment of silence, as if the world had come to a stand still.
Then Alaisy shifted, groaning, one shaking hand working its way to her stomach. The pain was excrutiating, and she hung to it, clung to the hatred, the agony, allowing it to bridge her connection to the dark side, let it fuel her as she rolled to her side and began the long climb back to her feet. She moaned and whimpered as she did so though she was relieved to be free despite the toll this ordeal had taken on her, all of her. She nearly made it up, but stumbled to her knees, her energy faltering, threatening to abandon her, for she was spent.
When Oscura’s steaming carcass twitched and straightened itself, his molten face all but peeling off his skull, she felt fear.
The Shadow wasn’t yet the done with her for death was meaningless to the dark side.
It cackled, a sound born of evil itself.
There was a wet slap, then another, as roots fell away from the monster’s body. Alaisy nearly fainted from overwhelming exhaustion as it pulled itself up on Oscura’s athrophied legs and advanced towards her, slowly, each step a slurping drag. It reached out with its gnarled hands, showing bone where the skin had fused with the symbiote before finally being ripped away.
Come, Child, we have work to do. The voice of rattling bones echoed through Aphotis’ psyche for Oscura could no longer speak. Take my mantle, take the mantle of the Black Hand. Strike out across the galaxy.
It fell to its knees before her, then straightened itself to sit back on its legs, its pulped hands coming to rest on her knees. Aphotis stared back into burnt out eye sockets and disfigured features of a once powerful Sith.
Spread our darkness.
Her trembling hand reached for her neck brace. With a gentle tap the crystal on her chest opened up like a locket. The dim crimson light pulsated with electric-blue at the rhythm of the Sith woman’s heartbeat.
Aphotis began to chant in ur-Kittât. A cold wind struck the area as she opened the gate to her Garden. The vergence fragment hungered as the Shadow did before. Souls stored within cried out for justice, relief and guidance. Ghostly hands that reached out felt the despair in this bog, crawling back inside.
Between the blood and grime, the witch grinned. Her free arm left her knee and reached out toward the mantle. Durasteel nails grasped the Black Hand’s possession.
A wave of pure darkness crashed over her, pressing Tir'eivra to the ground. Her wounds crying out. The Shadow’s voice was faint at first, then became louder, until it was pulled into the amulet and became silent.
He would meet her council of seven. To see every death she had ever imagined, every fear, every nightmare, every victim of Osasdii and that of Aphotis.
This would make their darkness so much easier to spread. The next objective was finding a way out of this madness, and then flesh to bind the soul to. This one was not going to be satisfied with the limited space in her Garden for long.
She felt it when she finally closed the gates to the Garden, the shift in the world around her. The pressure drop was palpable, the wind lashed at her skin as if it had been freed, unleashed from its cage, the fog receding before its breath. The ground vibrated against her knees. She watched the dead husk that once was Cyris Oscura crumble to dust before her, his skull detaching and rolling away from his body in a clatter of bone and stone, the rest of him toppling like kindling in the next heartbeat. It would have been a relief if she wasn’t so sickened by the retreat of the dark side in the Force.
And yet, as the darkness withdrew from the Force, she realized how it had permeated her own ability to truly reach and control the Force, dulling her ability to sense and feel much like peering through a veil, as if the Shadow had wrested all control for itself. She relished it, relished her own control of the dark side returning. Then she sensed it, another presence in this ancient glade. Another shadow. A signature now intrinsically familiar to her for she had locked it away but a mere moment earlier.
A crunch of boots behind her and she veered on hands and knees to meet it, the sudden movement causing her to feel lightheaded, nausea welling up in her chest. It was too much for her, for the experience of the last… how long had it been since she and Malfearak had landed on Velrahn? Days? Weeks? An eternity. The world spun around her, her vision blurred, the darkness lapping at the edges of her consciousness as she spewed the emptiness of her gut, bile and blood and little else. Then she toppled to her side, the last of her strength abandoning her. She had just enough to look up and watch the man approach.
“So he is dead,” this newcomer said, his voice deep with gravitas as it articulated each word.
Black pauldrons were unclasped and discarded, kicking up a plume of dust as they clattered on the ground. A black silhouette approached her, armored, a black cape sweeping behind him. As he drew closer, she could make out the features of his face, handsome, high cheekbones, black hair and beard with bones braided throughout. He had eyes of ice. She watched as he bent down to one armored knee at her side and reached for her.
Cyris.
She gasped as darkness took her.
—–
He cradled her up in his arms as one would a sleeping child, her unconscious frame surprisingly light for its giant size. She had been through quite the ordeal, this once pristine goddess-like creature now tainted by a myriad of scars and bruises and grime, by crusts of dried vomit and blood, black and crimson intermingled. She reeked of death in every sense of the word. Ah, how the Shadow had yearned for her, a desire he himself understood the moment she had stepped into his throne room in the spire. It wasn’t her appearance, bordering perfection, oh-so-alluring he had to admit. No. It had been her aura, for she was as close to a vergence in the Force as a singular being could be. When this realization had dawned on him, so too did he understand why this Shadow, this madness-ridden version of himself had clutched him from the sands of time so that he may bring her to him.
A sacrifice. A gift in exchange for his own freedom.
Ah, but she will not be my sacrifice, he thought to himself.
This goddess, this new Black Hand, she would spread darkness across the galaxy, much as the Shadow had desired. A dark path lay before her as it always had and he would be her ally. He would help her walk it. Serve her in his own way. For there was no going back for him. He knew now the fate that awaited him should he cross the World Between Worlds back to his own time. His fall at the hands of his brother Agart Kiltho on Velrahn, the centuries of slumber only to be discovered by this so-called Brotherhood. The treachery. The nineteen years of exile and the descent into madness.
He would cut a new path forward for himself.
He would use her, as she would use him.
And so, he carried her for the first few steps of that journey.
43 ABY, Months After Velrahn. Asog Temple, Aphotis’s Personal Quarters. Kasiya.
Aphotis had never seen anyone else rise from the dead, yet he had been there, Cyris Oscura in the flesh. She could still feel his arms on her back. It was an image she could not erase. His grimace slipping off, the body crumbling. Now he was pristine and had ascended, so different and yet just like her.
Silver bridges of starlight fractured
The depths eternal
Mouth of hate
Face of disdain
Slow decay
Ashes
This man, this Cyris, she could now say his name without causing her own heart to skip a beat, without granting the Black Hand more power. As if the collar fell off her neck and was clicked onto his now. He was an instrument of destruction, chaos, transformation and evolution, just as Aphotis herself was. She had but to direct it at a target worthy enough. She had extended an invitation to visit the Asog Temple at his leisure, so that he could stay in range, but also feel welcome. Between the fear and hatred, she harbored respect for the raven-haired man and his Shadow. Not just for his power, but for embracing his monstrous nature, his downfall, his rebirth. Despite the corruption, there was strength of will in that skull of his, not one fabricated and walled off with thoughts—even Aphotis herself was guilty of doing such, using numbers and words like shields, her Ivory Tower, instead she could also lean into the cleansing terrors of her Garden. .
‘Ironic.’ The ancient ship Asvraal so admired, piloted by the ghost he was so keen to find more about.
The Kessurian still served a purpose as a guide and motivator, a source of strength even in the oblivion that devoured him.
Her long, slick tail caressed her waist, clicking and snapping as it slid over the black skin, until it reached the spot on her abdomen which had plasma burnt through it. The phantom pain was still there, but the hole was closed, porcelain underneath the symbiotic layer had healed entirely. She moaned, the sheer sensitivity overwhelming her.
Droplets of water poured over her, bouncing off the essential oil-covered shine. The shower had no practical use, but it let the thoughts flow, and with it, her emotions. The Sith had cried over the millennia of sacrifice, feelings from Osasdii itself, catching up to her still, months later. The Children and the worlds that were obliterated. The suffering culminated within her heart, the harvester of sorrow that she was. They were all part of her, every fiber of their being, etched into her memory. Sometimes her own eyes flickered a brighter blue, much like a brimming flame, but cold, filtering the environment, showing no other tone when she reminisced. .
Then there was Ashvroth on Velrahn and the Glade on Vanir III, both containing vergences of immense power. Perhaps she could link her newly acquired moon, Orth, with Velrahn, Vanir III and Tratlaum. She would need to seek out the Osasdii Clan. Perhaps give them a new purpose. This was dangerous and brazen. Their destroyer and lifegiver returning to demand more.
She understood all those nightmares now, past and present. Every night another life’s story told, with an inevitable ending marinated in agony and despair. There was beauty in that kind of loss. The dark side placed its hand on one shoulder when she would wake and the Shadow a claw on the other, her tail in the air, her new mask hissing sharply. But there were whispers of warnings, from the Nightsisters, both Osasdii and Dathomiri, their magick-soaked daggers thrust into her chest—images of Bane Back Spider venom spewing from her mouth. Illusions that were dreams within dreams.
‘They should revere me, I am all of the Osasdii.’
Glass shattered. The intensity of her thoughts destroyed the shower enclosure and every mirror in the room. Boots crunched on the shards. A black transparisteel dome, hanging on the wall, greeted her and the black tendrils devoured it as her reconstructed mask sealed onto the Sith’s face.
Hiss.