A Standup Philosopher
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Crown of Slaves 24
🕑 Added 2025-06-20 17:12:02 +0000 UTCThis was it. My final trial had begun. The trial that would solidify my place as Zash’s apprentice, though at this point it was essentially a formality. The rest of my pool was dead, missing, or were Kory, and Zash hadn’t been subtle in our conversation that she favoured me taking the post. Which was exactly as expected and as it should be, of course, but -despite knowing why she was doing it, what her motivations and intentions were- I still found it to be incredibly gratifying. It did nice things for the ego, honestly, and Force knew that my desire for praise and recognition was definitely more Sithly than Jedi.
It was a pity Malora had been transferred off world as quickly as she had, once Renning’s insanity had been confirmed, though it must be said that our ‘break-up sex’ (for a given value of breaking up, of course) was nothing short of spectacular. It was a pity I didn’t know where she was being sent or who she was going to be serving now, mostly because she didn’t know yet, but if I was going to be honest with myself, I had never really intended to keep her around long term. She might end up being a useful ally, and she would certainly be a fun visitor to have in bed sometime in the future, but she didn’t have the temperament to be in a submissive position -sexually or otherwise- for very long, and things would have likely gotten quite bloody in a distinctly non-fun way eventually as a result. Still, I had picked up more than a few things from her, skills that would come in handy and, hopefully, make up for the fact that I hadn’t been permitted to keep ‘my’ lightsaber.
Evidently, no matter who I had killed to get my hands on it or what I had managed to accomplish wielding it, acolytes were not permitted to wield lightsabers. Only apprentices, and only when their master deemed it appropriate. Which was a shame, a real shame, because it would have been very useful for when I inevitably ran into the Warrior inside the tombs. And I would run into him, whether by chance or by design, and I was pretty damn sure it would be by design. That prick really didn’t like me, especially after I had humiliated him in front of Vette and Shan, so I had no doubt he would try and kill me at some point. Which I was fine with, honestly, because I had sworn to myself that I wouldn’t leave this goddamn planet until he was dead and Vette was, if not safe, than at least safer.
Of course, now I had to worry about my own safety. Delving into The Tomb of Naga Sadow was going to be dangerous enough as it was, without any of the ‘cheats’ that the game provided…though, if I was going to be honest, I probably counted as ‘over-leveled’ under the circumstances. Previously, that would have made me quite a bit more confident, even with the prospect of facing down a very angry ancient dashade. After the not-so-little reality check that I had endured with the Red Engine and the ambush that the twins had arranged, I wasn’t feeling particularly bold or foolish.
Which is why I had done a few, hmm, ‘farming runs’ in various places, killing Tomb Raiders and escaped slaves and traitorous troopers in the copious free time I had possessed while Zash had done her translations to provide the guidance I ‘required’ in order to succeed in the trial. As a result, I now had a very large collection of explosives in my possession. Explosives I had every intention of using as liberally as necessary to make sure that I wasn’t an injured, exhausted wreck when Khem Val and I had our little throw down. I had also been able to acquire, thanks to a few other ‘creative’ activities, a proper set of standard Imperial battle-plate armor. It would inhibit my movement a bit, but I was a Sorcerer, for all my determination to be a skillful duelist as well. Flexibility and speed were less important for myself than for an Assassin or a Marauder, and I was positive that the armor’s durability would be worth it’s weight in gold -or, rather more poignantly, in blood- by the time I left this planet.
So now, here I stood, the entrance to the tomb looming above me, dark and foreboding in a way that surpassed the merely physical. Oh, Ancient Sith architecture had a way of making you feel insignificant and small, like you were being judged by the stones of the temple-tombs themselves, never mind the way that the statues seemed to watch you, following you with eyes that didn’t exist, but it was more than that. In the Force, I could feel the Darkness that seeped from every grain of sand and every inch of stone. Over a thousand years of pain and suffering and malice had drenched this complex, as surely as the blood that had been spilled at the same time, and I could feel the Dark Side watching me with palpable intent.
“Acolyte, may I speak with you?” a soft, sweet voice asked, and I blinked out of my contemplative reverie to look over at one of the cutest little troopers I had ever seen. I had completely forgotten about Yashia, the sentry posted outside of the tomb that wanted you to recover the Red Guard’s deceased son. I’d always wished it was possible to grab her and bring her along for your adventures, in a Light Side playthrough. Mind you, I wished quite a few characters could be more than the one-offs that they were, and most of my interest in her was because she screamed ‘sweet and soft submissive’, combined with ‘she deserves better than what she has’.
“Of course you can, love.” I responded with a grin, enjoying the way she blushed and bowed, stammering her thanks. As expected, she went on to describe the situation and what she was asking of me, and I made a show of considering it carefully before finally nodding in decisive agreement. “Alright then, I’ll go in and find him. In the meantime, see about getting someone else to cover your post and procure a hover-sled, on my authority. I’m not going to haul the poor man’s body through the entire Academy like he’s a sack of flour. After that, you will owe me a favor. Never fear, it won’t be long before you have to deliver, and it’s nothing too terrible.”
“Oh…I…very well, acolyte, as you wish. I am at your service.” she stuttered and stumbled and surrendered, bowing more deeply, her blush gone from fetching to something resembling a particularly ripe tomato, and it occurred to me that she probably knew my reputation and thought I wanted to fuck her.
Which I did, to be clear and fair.
But that wasn’t the point, nor was it currently the goal. I had other plans for the favor that she owed me, something I might not be able to persuade her to involve herself in otherwise, and as much as I was freshly humbled in the field of battle, I was still quite confident of my abilities in the field of seduction. If I wanted to take Yashia to bed, as I very well might, I rather imagined that I could have her there without something so banal as quid pro quo.
“I’ll be back in a bit, love, so go ahead and make your calls. As happy as I am to help, I don’t want to keep Lord Zash waiting on me for too long.” I told her, turning away and waving idly over my shoulder as I started to stroll towards the shadowed entrance to the tomb, hearing her fumble her comm-link out of her utility belt as I crossed the threshold into the blessed relief -purely physical, unfortunately, as the oppressive spiritual atmosphere only grew worse- that awaited me on the far side. Of course, as pleasant as that was, I had to spend the next two minutes awkwardly standing there doing not much of anything as I waited for my eyes to adjust to the considerably darker interior of the complex, and I was idly glad that there wasn’t some enterprising individual waiting to ambush still-half-blind acolytes in their moment of vulnerability.
Shaking my head wryly, acknowledging once again that I would probably make a very good Sith if it wasn’t for the fact that I maintained some sanity and emotional regulation, thinking viciously cunning thoughts like that, I took a moment to get my bearings. From the looks of things, the tomb looked quite a bit like it did at the game, at least this portion of it did. Statues carved into the walls held glowing crystals the size of my torso, their dim shine the only real light that illuminated this place, and I knew the larger rooms deeper in would have them hanging from the ceilings as well. Still, this wasn’t -and wouldn’t be- a well-lit place, and that meant plenty of ambush opportunities for me. Both as the ambusher and the ambushee, which I would have to keep my eyes open for, because the Force was so thick and Dark in this place, I wasn’t sure that I would be able to sense danger or violent intent with enough warning to avoid something by those means alone. At least the Guard’s sone shouldn’t be too deeply within…
I turned a corner, stepping into a larger chamber, and my eyes widened as I saw the deceased form of the acolyte, lying on the stone floor in between two crystal-bearing spires, exactly where I had expected him. The issue was, he was currently being fed upon by a certain Abyssian. I had completely forgotten about Sehrun, after his questline was mostly removed to ‘trim the fat’ in the game, not that it had been particularly long or memorable to begin with. Either he had killed the boy or was feeding on him after his fellow acolytes had killed him, but either option meant he wouldn’t be an easy kill…unless I could sneak up on him while he was distracted. He had been starving, thanks to his Overseer ‘friend’ sending him away, and so his situational awareness probably wasn’t the greatest at the moment…
Drawing on the Force to muffle my footsteps, I crept forward with my ‘procured’ blaster drawn, intent on killing him instantly rather than risking a longer fight with a species known for their brutal strength. Sehrun was hunched over the corpse, his long fingers digging into the dead acolyte's flesh with desperate hunger. The sight was grotesque, but I couldn't deny feeling a certain professional appreciation for his efficiency.
Ten paces away. Eight. Five.
I raised my blaster, aiming for the base of his skull. Abyssian regeneration was insanely powerful, the damn things were known to regenerate entire limbs and organs, and their long limbs and powerful bulk would certainly give him an advantage over me the longer, and closer in range, the fight got. If I was lucky, the first shot would incapacitate him enough for another half-dozen shots or so to put him down for good.
But luck wasn't with me, or at least not as I had planned and hoped for it to be. A small piece of rubble shifted under my boot with a barely audible scrape. Barely audible to me, that is, but to a predatory beast like Sehrun, already down on the ground and so much closer to the sound’s origin, it was more than loud enough to catch his attention.
He whirled, gore-drenched hands spreading wide as he snarled at me with bloody, viscera coated teeth, and I swore even as I pulled the trigger. Fortunately for me, one of his greatest vulnerabilities was at exactly the same point on his head, laterally, as the point I had been aiming for, which meant that my first bolt caught him directly in his cyclopean eye. The results were…nauseating, to say the least, but the shot did it’s job even better than my planned target would have. He reeled back, hands going to his ruined face as he wailed in agony, and I drew a second blaster even as I kept shooting any part of him I could see with the first.
By the time I tossed the pair of pistols aside, their barrels red-hot and ruined from the continuous volley of high-powered bolts I had poured throw them, his head and torso resembled little more than skeletal chunks of charcoal. I stared down at him for a long moment, probing him with both my eyes and with the Force in the hopes of confirming his dead, before stepping forward and reaching for his legs. I paused, eyes narrowing slightly, and stepped back again even as I drew my vibrosword, then reached out with a telekinetic grip to grasp his legs and slowly pull him away from the acolyte’s body. When he didn’t react in any perceivable way, I heaved a quiet sigh of relief and stepped forward. As I moved past his corpse, I made a point of stabbing him several times in the chest -I couldn’t remember where Abyssian hearts were, and I was a big supporter of the ‘better safe than sorry’ school of thought- before reholstering my weapon and gathering what was left of the acolyte into my arms.
“Right then. Time to see about getting you outside.” I muttered, settling his weight and turning towards the doorway, making a mental note to have Yashia send for a second litter. If the Guard was going to be lied to about his son’s fate for the sake of his heart and pride in his son, having the creature that had been devouring him -and, therefore, had attacked him- as ‘proof’ would go a long way to selling the illusion.
Besides, I still wasn’t sure that Sehrun was properly dead. I’d rather let a grieving father chop him to bits an incinerate him than risk coming across him on my way out of the tomb, doubtlessly injured and exhausted from completing my trial. It would be just my luck, and I wasn’t stupid enough to bank on my ability to win that fight in that sort of condition.
I sighed softly to myself, wryly wondering what my silently watching ancestor would have to say about this particular good deed once my trials were over and he was ‘debriefing’ me.
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Two hours later, and I was in an…ambivalent mood. On the one hand, I was doing quite nicely with my trial, having collected three of the four rods I required and only being forced to kill a dozen or so failed, desperate acolytes in order to do it. Honestly, they were -unlike the game- considerably less dangerous than fighting through the slave rebellion outside Tulak Hord’s tomb had been, and the droids that they had hacked and reprogrammed were so old that they were, likewise, far less of a threat than they had been in the game as well.
On the other hand, I had yet to find the Warrior and Vette, though I had found plenty of evidence of their passing, and I still had to suffer the pain of the test to reach Khem Val and actually fight the bloody thing. The man? Could I even call him that? Hell, I didn’t even know if dashades had sexes the way most other species did! They were reptilian, technically, but this was fucking Star Wars, so God only knew that I couldn’t make any real assumptions based on that information.
Ugh. I was getting sidetracked again to distract myself from the creeping sense of unease and anxiety that had been steadily encroaching on me the longer, and deeper, I was in this fucking place. I needed to find and kill the Warrior, get the last Rod, and…
The sound of fighting ahead of me drew my attention, the familiar sound of Vette’s voice catching my ear, and I broke into a quick jog towards the source. It seemed things might be coming to a head between the Warrior and Vemrin, and that posed an opportunity for me. There was something to be said for doing to them what I did to Sehrun, though I was rather less than confident that I would be able to pull off a similar sort of ambush on two well-trained, focused acolytes, even if they were focused on eachother.
Though I did have quite a few grenades, and there was something to be said for expediency. Hmm…
I heard a crackle, followed by Vette’s scream, just before I rounded the corner. A very familiar crackle, the crackle of a slave collar on a very high setting, and I felt my anger billow out like a fog, wrapping around me like a stormcloud. An appropriate metaphor, given the lightning that started to crackle up and down my arms and crawl between my fingers. I ignored the doorway before me, ignored the sight of Khem Val hanging in his stasis across the chasm, and took a sharp right into the antechamber that lay there.
I could see Vette off to one side, barely conscious on the ground beside the hiding place of the final button, trembling from the most recent -the latest in many, I was sure- shock from her collar. There were a pair of dead bodies a few feet away from her, blasters by their sides, and I realized that Vemrin had been smart enough to bring back-up to this particular fight, unlike in canon. For their own part, the Warrior and Vemrin were currently raging back and forth, blades flashing and spinning and swirling as they spat insults and invectives at one another near-ceaslessly. To my pleasure, unkind though it might make me, Vemrin was more than holding his own, and the two swordsmen were raging back and forth across the stones in a blur of violence. With a spike of anticipation I palmed a pair of thermal detonators, arming them and tossing them underhand towards the two fighters.
There was a blur of motion, and by the time they landed, only Vemrin was there to be caught in the blast. The Warrior was on the far side of the room, now, and as Vemrin went tumbling across the stone, a silent ragdoll killed and thrown by the twin explosions.
“Damn.” I complained mildly, far more mildly than the situation really called for, as I drew my vibroblade and activate it, the crackling hum filling the sudden, still silence of the room as the Warrior turned to look at me. “I was hoping that you would be too distracted fighting Vemrin to notice those.”
“Oh, this is rich. I was afraid I would have to hunt you down at some point, but here you are.” he chuckled, more amused than anything by my attempt at killing him, and the excitement that I felt wafting off of him was genuinely sickening. Bearing his teeth at me in something that could only be superficially called a smile, he continued with a leer. “I’ve been looking forward to putting you back in your place, slave. I was considering breaking you and cutting that mutation of yours off so I could use you properly, but I’ve been thinking about it since we played the Inquisitor’s little game, and I’d really rather just kill you and rape the twi’lek over your corpse.”
“…well, you’re just a completely depraved psychopath, aren’t you? I knew that you were one hell of a sadist, and not the fun kind either, from watching you torture The Beast to death in Marka Ragnos’ tomb, but this just takes the cake. If I hadn’t decided to kill you already, that little speech of yours would have settled that particular decision for me real quick.” I whistled, shaking my head, far more disturbed by the calm, almost matter-of-fact way that he had spoken, none of the barely-restrained rage or rabid slavering I had expected from him.
"Still running your mouth, hmm?" he replied, twirling his vibroblade in his hand, the humming buzz rising and falling in time with the movement. "Letting your success get to you, as if being the last one standing out of a pool of slaves, the dregs of slaves, gave you any sort of value. Giving you confidence you don’t deserve and courage you can’t follow through on. But don't worry - I'll make sure your death is slow enough for the both of us to really savor the experience."
I could feel the Dark Side flowing through him like a torrent, feeding his hatred and bloodlust in a way that was both intoxicating and terrifying. His natural power was, if not equal to mine, than not far below, and he was willing -eager- to be far less restrained with it than I was. This was the power that, within a handful of weeks from his arrival to Korriban, had allowed him to kill an ancient terentatek alone. I wasn’t inclined to let his display go unanswered, though, and loosened my own leash more than I ever had. I could see him give a slight start as my own presence poured out into the world around us, and I felt -dimly, at the edge of my perception- the presences of several other acolytes thrum with fear and uncertainty before they retreated physically and spiritually alike.
"You know what your problem is?" I asked conversationally, and rhetorically if I was going to be honest, beginning to circle him while keeping my blade at the ready. "You think power is about domination through brutality. About breaking people. About rising up by crushing those around you. But real power..." I let lightning dance between the fingers of my free hand, "real power is about control, about comprehension and understanding and forethought. About knowing when to crush, when to spare, when to cultivate, when to befriend. You are so very eager to prove your ‘strength’ that you miss every opportunity to gain real, lasting power.”
He sneered, mirroring my circling motion, his eyes never leaving mine. "Philosophy from a slave? Next you'll be giving me etiquette lessons."
I laughed, the sound echoing unnaturally in the tomb's confines, and he seemed almost offended by it. "If you'd listened to some philosophy, you might not have wasted so much energy on petty displays. You've been burning yourself out trying to intimidate everyone around you, while I've been building alliances, gathering knowledge. The heiress to a dynasty and three future Sith owe me their lives. I earned my way here, you were brought here early and underprepared because one old man just couldn’t bare to see someone with talent and skill become Sith because they were of ‘lower status’. Tell me, did you cry yourself to sleep when Baras humiliated you for your ignorance? Did your face burn with shame when you couldn’t recite the Code and explain it’s tenets for him?"
The Warrior's face twisted with rage, and a touch of confused discomfort, and I knew I'd struck a nerve with my display of knowledge that I shouldn’t be remotely aware of. Perfect. Anger and confusion were poor emotions to possess in a fight. It was funny, really, how quickly he had oscillated from calm control to heavy emotion, and I wondered if I hadn’t touched a more sensative nerve than I had even intended. Or he was genuinely in possession of some…emotional dysregulation issues, that was a distinct possibility as well, not that it would matter in the end.
"Enough talk!" he snarled furiously, leaping at me in a Force-enhanced jump that brought his body -and his vibrosword- hurtling down from above in a vicious plunging strike.
I flickered into movement, the Force giving me speed, his blade scything through the air where I had been standing, only to come back up and around to bat away a blast of Lightning that leapt from my fingers at his back, what few sparks that actually struck him easily ignored, not that I expected them to drop him to the floor. No matter how nice exactly that happening would be.
"Baras chose me because he recognized true power!" he spat, eyes hawkish as he considered me, starting to circle once again. "Not the pathetic imitation you display."
"Is that what he told you? I don’t think so. He said that Vemrin had passed every test with skill and talent, but you surpassed him in power." I laughed again, keeping my movements fluid, controlled. "Don’t you get it? Vemrin was smarter than you, better trained than you, cleverer than you. So why did he pick you?”
The Warrior attacked again, a flurry of strikes that I parried or evaded deftly, not stupid enough to try and get myself into a contest of pure physical strength with someone whose everything centered around it. The Force was a great equalizer, but why tempt fate? And yet I continued to talk, to pick him apart word by word.
“He chose you because you're malleable. Predictable. A blunt instrument he can point at his enemies. Don’t you understand? You’re a tool to him, and if you lived long enough he would inevitably betray you." I shook my head, a swipe of my hand sending dust and pebble-sized debris flying towards his face, where it slammed into a telekinetic shield and dropped to the floor. Idiot. You never stopped something head on, absorbing the full force and expending the energy required to ‘eat it’, when you could deflect it away for a fraction of the cost.
The Warrior's face twisted with barely contained fury. "You know nothing about me or my master!"
"I know more than you think. After all, I’ve seen what would have been your future." I replied, ducking under another wild swing and countering with a quick slash that caught his arm. Not deep, but enough to draw blood. "I know Baras is a manipulator who surrounds himself with pawns he can sacrifice. I know he collects apprentices like trinkets and discards them just as easily. I know that he would use you to destroy his master and his network, before having you destroyed in turn."
The Warrior roared, channeling his rage into a powerful Force push that sent me skidding backward. I managed to keep my footing, my armored boots scraping against stone, hissing as his vibrosword went spinning past me, scouring a faint line on my left forearm as I threw myself aside.
"And what are you?" he snarled, catching his weapon by the hilt as it returned to his hand, and fuck me wasn’t it pleasant that he could already throw and recall his sword. "Zash's perfect little pet, her experiment? You think she won't use you the same way? You think she’s brought you out of slavery out of the goodness of her heart?!"
I chuckled a bit breathlessly, ducking under his next attack and countering with a thrust that forced him to back off with a pained hiss of his own as I scored a touch across his hip. A flicker of movement out of the corner of my eye drew my attention, and I quickly lashed out at him with a blast of lightning before he could notice my attention stray, even as I responded. "Oh, I know exactly what Zash wants from me. The difference is, I know the game we're playing, she and I. And I acknowledge it. You're just a pawn who thinks he's a king, shortsighted and so obsessed with your own strength that you can’t even recognize those ‘beneath you’ as threats."
He sensed the danger a moment to late, spinning around and lashing out with the Force as Vette reached one of the blasters and aimed it at him. She cried out as she was thrown across the room and slammed into the wall, injured and unconscious, but the distraction was enough. I darted forward and punched my blade through his chest and channeled lightning through it, frying him alive from the inside out. An ignominious end, for someone as powerful as he was, and a surprising lapse given the way that he had so easily avoided the grenades I had thrown at him. But then again, the entire point of the Warrior’s background was that he was a poorly prepared, half-trained, in-over-his-head power play on Tremel’s part that managed to succeed more through brute force than anything else. Inconsistent results in ability was par for the course, under the circumstances, and brute strength didn’t provide much assistance in defending oneself from multiple threats in multiple directions. In fact, his ability to quickly recognize and react to threats was probably the only reason he had survived my grenade attack, even if it was what had gotten him killed when he tried to react to a threat from Vette.
Thank the Force for that. If he had learned to actually control his reaction to threats, learned how to maintain control of an evolving situation and leverage that kind of combat precognition properly, he would have become…well, he would have become the Emperor’s Wrath, and a complete monster on the battlefield. Thank God, and I can’t believe I was thinking something as villainous as this, but thank God that I had been given the opportunity to kill him now, before he was too strong to be beaten without significant casualties. Besides, as nice as a good, throw-down, epic fight with the Warrior would have been, I had a fucking dashade shadow assassin to worry about.
Not to mention Vette.
Who was still unconscious.
And definitely injured.
Fuck.
I couldn’t exactly leave her out here, something would eat her or someone would kill her or something like that. Nor could I afford to spend the time or the strength carrying her all the way out to the entrance. So what could I do to solve this situation?
“Alright, new plan. Carry the girl deeper into the tomb, beat the shit out of the ancient cannibal alien, then make him carry the unconcious, gorgeous red-skinned alien babe out of the creepy evil tomb.” I sighed to myself, heading over to the slumped-over form of Vette and slinging her over my shoulders.
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Comments
TheDarkLord
Awesome! A fine new chapter for the collection!
heh
Great chappie!
