Chapter 23: Rituals

When an acolyte is killed in the academy under suspicious circumstances, an Inquisitor is called in to investigate. If the murderer managed to conceal the evidence or intimidate any witnesses into silence, they usually wouldn't have any problems getting away with it since the Inquisitors would only be making a token effort.

The two exceptions to that were if there was irrefutable evidence of the crime or if either party was the future apprentice of someone with considerable influence. Otherwise, they didn't bother wasting their time with the Sith equivalent to schoolyard rough-housing.

However, it was a Sith Lord that had been the victim this time, not an acolyte, which should have been a totally different ball game. Because of that, the last two months of silence had been nerve-wracking. Sure, the Inquisitors had asked some questions in the first week, but they were mostly asking to confirm the story given by Maklan and his men.

An acolyte murdering a Sith Lord was considered so ludicrously unbelievable that I wasn't even being viewed as a suspect. After I gave my version of the same story, they had left me alone.

Nevertheless, I couldn't completely shake the feeling that I was being watched. Every shadow seemed to contain eyes, every question I was asked loaded with second meanings. Every morning I woke up not strapped to a slab with a grinning Inquisitor looming over me, I breathed a sigh of relief.

I had made certain to hide any possible evidence, though that mostly boiled down to Renning's lightsaber and some of his more sensitive documents. Thankfully, I had a relatively secure hiding place. After downloading the documents onto some datachips, I hid both them and the lightsaber on my hidden ship.

However, my unease persisted. I had skimmed the documents before locking them away.

Renning had mentioned an assistant, that being me, by name. If someone wanted to dive down deeper, they would know who to go to first. I couldn't do anything about that since they were official reports that had already been submitted.

The others had returned from their trials within the first week, if bearing a few more scars. I managed to hide my apprehension from the others, locking down my worries while any of them were around. Because of that, none of them noticed anything out of place aside from my replacement parts.

Garsh had given my cybernetics a strange look before going about his business. It was probably just curiosity, but his facial expressions had always been hard to read.

Still, with the others around, I started to feel more comfortable. Of course, I didn't let down my guard. In a place like the Korriban Academy, that was pure suicide. Instead, I started to calm down. I had to suppress my urge to jump at shadows less and less. My dreams stopped featuring yellow eyes and lightning.

If there was one benefit to that period of hyperactivity, it was that it gave me more energy for practice. About half of those two months were spent in the training halls, working on my swordsmanship. It was my main weakness, one that had been pointed out in my fight with Castor.

Against mundane opponents or monsters, my wild "style" worked perfectly well. Shii-Cho was suited for fighting multiple opponents in a battlefield setting and I had excelled in such situations.

Put me up against a single, more sophisticated duelist that I couldn't directly affect with my Force powers and suddenly I had a problem.

My first fight with an opposing Force User had nearly gone very badly and I had the scars to show it. That I survived had been pure luck. If my danger sense hadn't warned me at just the right moment, the lightsaber would have been right on target and I would have lost more than one cheek.

I needed to make sure it didn't happen again.

I needed something more than Shii-Cho, but I also didn't want something predictable. Anyone that had trained in lightsaber combat could recognize the hallmarks of particular styles, particularly with the opening stance.

While I spent most of the first week refining Shii-Cho, I also watched my fight with Castor over and over again, watching for my unconscious actions so I could take them into account when retooling my style. My tendency to go berserk was already known to me, but there was something that wasn't.

When I had been injured, I had immediately switched to unarmed combat, disregarding my sword entirely.

It made some sense. If you have ever taken a sword to an unarmed combatant, it's more difficult than it seems on paper. Well, a trained unarmed combatant. They weren't going to be blocking your sword, but rather getting out of the way or targeting your ability to swing the weapon by immobilizing or breaking your wrists or elbows.

With a twist and enough strength, a swordsman can suddenly find themselves without a weapon, replaced with distracting pain and a suddenly useless limb.

Swordsmen are usually trained to fight other weapon-wielding opponents, not someone that operates on a completely different set of rules. Teräs Käsi practitioners were considered threats to Force Users for good reason.

However, I was a very strength-oriented combatant, lacking the sheer finesse or flexibility to make a pure unarmed style work against a lightsaber-wielding opponent. For that same reason, Form II was an ill-fit as well. The acrobatics of Form IV were also not to my liking.

Form VI had been calling to me since the beginning. The jack-of-all-trades style. Traditionally, it incorporated bits from Forms I, II, and III to counter the innate aggressiveness of Forms IV and V. Ironically named the Diplomat's Style, it was usually seen as the form that was used when you didn't want to dedicate too much time to practicing lightsaber combat.

In the hands of a master however, it was ludicrously dangerous. Exar Kun springs to mind.

I'm not sure if what I cobbled together actually counted as Niman. From Shii-Cho, I took its wildness and its wide sweeping strikes. From Soresu, I took its cautious opening stances and defensive movements.

From Ataru, I took its philosophy, that the entire body was a weapon. From Djem So, I took the mindset that every defense should be followed by an immediate, brutal counterattack. On top of it all, I threw in liberal amounts of Force usage, as per traditional Niman, and a blaster or three.

I would not let physical combat become my weakness. I knew that I was far from being able to defeat dedicated warriors or Force users in their chosen fields, but the mindset of Niman would give me a broader range of tools to use against them. There was always the risk that I would spread myself too thin, but I would consider true specialization at a later date.

Of course, Gaarurra and Garsh had joined me during this time. The former helped me out with the bits of Djem So I was using, though it had taken a lot of frustration and pantomiming before we finally just got a datapad for him to type on.

Through that, I found out that he had been smuggled onto Hsskhor, the Trandoshan homeworld, where he had been instructed to slaughter a village. While he had been eager to kill Trandoshans, he knew doing so might spark a war between his people and them.

But when he had arrived, the sight of Wookiee pelts drying in the sun had sent him into a blind rage. He said little else, but his expression said more about what had happened than he did.

Garsh, on the other hand, was about as silent as he usually was whenever he was glued to our shadows. Still, he broke his silence after I used my nickname for the male Zabrak in front of him. It seemed he was trying to cultivate an alliance of his own with Terrak and his sister Ianna.

I kept my peace on the matter, but I would be keeping an eye on them from now on. Just because they might become allies of my ally, didn't mean they'd be my allies.

My allies and I were growing stronger and none of my rivals had pulled anything daring when I wasn't looking. Yellow Eyes was spending more and more time out in the desert, though she did pop back in now and again for supplies.

Tails was usually with her, though I had spied her talking with Ianna. Concerning, but not something I could act on just yet.

All told, everything had gone well through the months. Of course, that was when things got…interesting.

...

During my ventures into the training hall, I had grudgingly admitted that my unconscious habit of blocking with my forearms would come back to bite me if I didn't do something about it, especially when lightsabers were part of the equation.

Instead of trying to train the habit out of myself, I went looking for a solution that made it viable. Unsurprisingly, I found it in Ajunta Pall's treatise.

During his lifetime, Ajunta Pall had used a steel sword, into which he had poured all his creative effort. By this time, lightsabers had long since been created, meaning he had likely figured out a way to strengthen his comparatively simple weapon to resist them.

Fortunately, he had recorded that ritual, rather than hide it away. It wouldn't be quite the same as the Sith Swords that would be developed later, lacking their cortosis-like properties. 

Those rituals were hidden away from acolytes. This would simply resist the damage in the same way that phrik did, though it would not have the alloy's ability to disperse electricity.

I was going to apply it to my vambraces. If the ritual worked well, I would do the same to my breastplate.

The ritual was a surprisingly simple application of Sith Alchemy and required few material components, though it was tedious and annoying to carry out. Blood was the primary component, mainly to allow easier Force manipulation of the metal by making a "part of myself."

I couldn't just stick an IV in my arm and suck out enough for the ritual beforehand. No, I had to sit there during the ritual and jab my hand with a knife multiple times to get it fresh. While chanting without missing a beat.

I'm not sure I want to know what Ajunta Pall was going to try if this one didn't happen to get the desired result.

Overall, it took five hours to finish the ritual for both vambraces. My right hand stung uncomfortably from the dozens of small cuts that marked my palm and fingers. I could have easily healed it with Alchemy, but that would mean starting and stopping every time I had to make a new cut. It would save time and energy if I just waited until the end.

Thankfully, I hadn't needed much space for the ritual, so I was able to do it on the desk in my quarters.

As I was inspecting the finished product, the door behind me swished open as a shadow fell over me. I froze.

I had locked the door behind me while I worked to prevent distractions from the cleaning droid or another acolyte. Only Gaarurra or someone with administrative access should be able to get in and the shadow was too small for my Wookiee accomplice.

The vambrace in my hand shook for a split second before flying out of my grasp, slapping into the palm of a very human hand. I kept very still as they looked over the vambrace.

"Interesting," A voice hummed after a moment, "This almost resembles the early variants of Dark Armor, though it lacks the hallmarks of protective enchantments. A purely Alchemical creation, then.

I presume you are using Ajunta Pall's original method? I recall that it was not as efficient as his later work."

As my guest seemed to want to speak, I took a chance and slowly turned around. The first things I saw were the armor-weave robes and the lightsaber on his belt. When my eyes panned up, I saw a very distinctive tattoo on his face. I knew precisely who I was facing.

Darth Thanaton looked...younger than I remembered him being. His hair wasn't salt and pepper gray, but a uniform brown. Though his eyes were still a blazing yellow-orange, there were fewer lines around his eyes and mouth.

Actually, was he a Darth at this point? I wouldn't know until after he introduced himself, if he deigned to.

"Yes, my lord. I have yet to work my way through the rest of his work, but I needed something for the meantime," I stood and bowed. If there's one thing Thanaton hated, it was someone of lower standing being disrespectful to him.

"Although in truth, I was more inspired by Warb Null's armor than modern Dark Armor."

"Ah," The Sith Lord smiled, though I couldn't tell if he was being genuine or patronizing, "A student of history, I see." His eyes wandered to the cybernetics on my face, likely easily recognizing the signs of a lightsaber wound, before returning to the object in his hands.

"And one that works to learn from his mistakes, as well."

"Thank you for the compliments, my lord," I accepted them as both genuine and as a warning, "If I may, was there something I could assist you with?"

"Yes, there is," He replied, running a finger over the scratches etched into the vambrace from countless hours in the training hall, "I would like to discuss your work with Lord Renning…and how it came to an end."

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