Bright Shadow Chapter 3

Previous Chapter: ***Chapter 2 - Plume of Smoke***

***Chapter 3 - Nihility of Purpose***

*Three years later.*

Same dream. Same place. Same feeling. Only three years later. A teenage Vycerant woke to end of the same dream. Being with his family once again back in Malcivum. Despite his loneliness, he desperately tried to rid himself of these dreams. He had come to terms with his parent’s deaths long ago and now the dreams were only holding him back.

The town of Vortem had grown to accommodate over one hundred-thousand people, a significant number considering the casualties endured during the battle that was now three years prior. An aura of confusion still loomed over the Imperials and one question still bugged them: Why did the Republic stop attacking the Sith after so many years of unrelenting murder and destruction? This question was answered as a teenage Vycerant walked down the main street of Vortem.

Now matured into something that resembled a cross between a hermit and a travelling warrior, Vycerant wore a brown robe with a hood that covered his face. The facial features of the Sith species had grown over the years; the bone spurs that sprouted from his temple and chin had finally begun developing more, leaving an intimidating expression on his face. His hair had grown longer, but stayed just as black as it was when he was younger. Although he had aged into a true survivor, he was still short, even for his age. Most people towered above him, which gave him the advantage when navigating the dense streets and crowded marketplaces.

He had managed to steal some boots from a marketplace stall and a utilities belt from an off-duty Imperial soldier. Vycerant’s skills were building day by day and he grew from his experiences from the rough life of homelessness in the Empire.

Vycerant came across an energetic street preacher who had just received the latest news that was approved by the Empire’s propaganda artists. and many were willing to believe the half-truths they were told by their Sith overlords.

“Latest news from the front!” the man announced to the curious crowd. “Published in the Republic’s official news outlets… 'Shame on the Republic for the Sith Genocide: Republic generals conduct mass killings of Korriban citizens.' According to our sources, several journalists had stumbled upon the bombing that occurred several years ago, since then there have been massive campaigns to, quote, “demilitarise the Republic in the wake of the abuse of power from the generals”. What’s more, Chancellor Nil’ron has been forced to resign after a vote of no confidence. The Republic is defenceless and leaderless!”

A great wave of cheers erupted from the crowd as the preacher was showered in credits from the enthusiastic onlookers. There were many patriots within the Sith Empire, but Vycerant had learned a thing or two about the street preachers; this man was no patriot. Vycerant could feel it as he watched the man bathe in the money that was thrown upon him.

He couldn’t explain it, but it was as if by just looking at him, he could tell the preacher’s true motivations; not the truth or nationalism: money. He had no love of the Empire, just pure gluttony. Vycerant felt his rage grow again. He may have been several years older, but he still had no idea how to control his anger. He had no reason to. In his mind he had every right to be angry, both at the Republic and the Empire. Vycerant felt his fists clench, his hood hiding his scowling face and his burning red eyes.

Suddenly, the preacher clutched his chest with a panicked look on his face. The man staggered from his platform and collapsed onto the floor, his face buried in a pile of Imperial credits. The crowd went silent, shocked and confused. Even Vycerant’s rage was interrupted by the man’s sudden fall. A group of soldiers led by a Sith Lady pushed through the crowd of onlookers; the people parted for her as if it was rehearsed action. She knelt down to the preacher’s body as her guard set up a perimeter around her. As the people watched eagerly behind the black-armoured guards, the Sith Lady placed her hand on the man. Unusually, she felt nothing. She turned his body over, seeing his face had turned to a clammy pale and his eyes had rolled back into his skull. Confused, she placed her head on his chest. She heard nothing.

Satisfied with her own evaluation she turned to her chief guardsman. “Heart attack," she said; cold and straight to the point.

The guard nodded and signalled two of the others to bag the body and dispose of it. The Empire was growing in power every day and could not afford a sudden drop in morale due to the death of a well-known preacher.

Vycerant fled from the scene, knowing that somehow his uncontrollable rage had something to do with the death of the preacher. He always knew there was something in him, but he could never explain it. Now he finally had a thesis. And it troubled him greatly. *Could I really be Force-sensitive?* he asked himself in his head. If he was, it would mean nothing good for him, whether he was in the Republic or the Empire. If he was found out he would be drafted into the ranks of the gruelling Sith war machine. It would mean the same if he was found by the Jedi; conscripted into the life of a monk against his will. Vycerant did not like the notion of either prospects.

The fifteen-year-old boy ran from the scene of the preacher’s death and hid in an alleyway. He peaked around the corner to see the Sith Lady walking down the street with her personal guard. This time Vycerant got a good look at her. He immediately felt a Force-induced flashback flicker before his eyes to when he found his parent’s bodies. He remembered when he was about to be crushed by the falling debris of a collapsing building only to be saved by a red-skinned Sith Lady. It was her. She was the one!

Vycerant returned to the present after his flashback and looked at the Sith Lady again. Lord Dulcia strolled along the marketplace path with her troops. An exquisite specimen to behold, Dulcia was the same species as Vycerant, and of the same red complexion as him. Her crimson skin was neatly laced with the trademark spines and bone spurs that ran from her temple, along her jawline and all the way down to her chin. She was decked out in thin black armour that covered her entire body, apart from her stomach which was exposed from the lowest rib to her hips.

Vycerant had never seen such a beautiful woman. Even with her black hood up he was still utterly encapsulated by the look of her as she walked past the ally where he was hiding. Vycerant felt his eyes run up and down her body but quickly shook his head and regained focus. His father had taught him to respect the women of his species for they were amongst some of the toughest and most resilient creatures in a galaxy. He would not have afforded much attention to any other woman of any other species, but a female Sith with pure, red complexion was a delicious rarity.

Vycerant watched closely as Dulcia and her guards inspected new crates of food that had arrived from the overground to help supply the town. He looked down to Dulcia’s hips to see two extremely deadly lightsabers hanging off the edge of her belt, each one made out of the same material and sporting the same design. Vycerant would usually not be much of a risk-taker but he saw it as an opportunity to push his boundaries and, if successful, sell the weapon of a Sith to the markets for some good credits.

Vycerant still had not yet come to terms with the fact he was Force-sensitive, but the boy knew enough about Sith culture and practices to try a bold move. Standing in a thick crowd, Vycerant got within about ten metres of Dulcia and her guards before he reached out with his hands. He felt a wave of energy course through his veins. It felt unnatural yet natural at the same time. He shivered as the energy flowed up his spine, through his arms and up to his fingertips. Closing his eyes, he could almost feel the hilt of Dulcia’s lightsaber, in his mind he grabbed the hilt and slowly unhinged it from the hook on her belt. He smiled and opened his eyes and was amazed to realise he had done exactly what he did in his mind; the lightsaber had been removed from Dulcia’s hip and was levitating towards him.

Excited, Vycerant closed his eyes again and saw the lightsaber in his mind once more. He commanded the invisible hand to bring it to him. The lightsaber was heavy, weighed down by the alterations Dulcia had made; three long spikes surrounded the tip of the primary vent where the blade of plasma would emanate when turned on. To the sides of the blade were two secondary vents that would have emitted their own miniature blades when the weapon was ignited, acting as a sort of crossguard to protect the wielder’s hands. Vycerant had nearly gotten the blade half way between him and Dulcia when one of her guard’s spotted the child levitating the weapon and pointed it out to Dulcia.

With reactions faster than a sand-speeder, Dulcia spun around and grasped the levitating lightsaber and yanked it out of Vycerant’s hold. Vycerant was too slow to realise the Sith Lady’s reaction and was pulled forward by the hold of the Force on the lightsaber. As the weapon returned to Duclia’s possession, Vycerant face-planted the floor, feeling dirt and sand enter his mouth and making him cough and spit up the ground in his mouth. Looking up, Vycerant saw the cold face of Dulcia looking down on him, her troops aiming this blaster rifles at the small boy.

“Trying to steal from me are you, child?” she said to the terrified boy. “Bring him to me!”

Enacting their orders with blind obedience, Dulcia’s soldiers walked over to the boy, preparing his punishment for trying to steal from a Sith Lord. But Vycerant was quick on his feet and began fleeing through the thick crowd that laid before him.

“After him!” Dulcia shouted to her men. She would not allow her reputation to be tarnished by a mere child.

Vycerant used his small size to his advantage and wove in and out of the thick crowd like water permeating a cracked rock. While he flowed through the sea of people, Dulcia’s troops had a hard time getting past the amount of Imperials in their way. Without a second thought, Dulcia called upon the power of the force and opened a pathway through the mass of civilians, sending perhaps a hundred people tumbling in either direction. Vycerant was knew he was in trouble now; the agents of evil had a clear shot at him. He knew he would either be killed or captured and sent to the Grand Sith Temple to become a zealot of darkness. Another cog in the Sith war contraption.

Vycerant was certainly motivated to stay un-enslaved and so took a surprise turn into the alleyway that he hid in earlier. The pursuing troopers looked at each other in confusion as they ran. They knew that path was a dead end and only led to a thick concrete wall. Their target would be trapped behind five feet of brick with nowhere to run.

Vycerant knew this was a battle of brains versus brawn. No matter how many times those soldiers had patrolled the streets of Vortem, no one knew the ins and outs of the town better than him.

He sprinted down the alleyway and he saw it: the small hole right in the centre of the concrete wall that he created a year prior. In a town where Vycerant had to steal food to survive, a quick escape route was always helpful to escape the angry shop owners who could chase him through the street with knives.

Vycerant timed his jump perfectly and contorted his body into a shape small enough to fit through the hole, slipped through the gap and landed with an almost professional safety-role. The soldiers halted their chase, baffled that a child could outwit them. As one of them looked through the hole in the wall, Vycerant made use of his wolf-like stamina and ran down the street he had jumped to, escaping the guard’s sight.

The Imperial troopers turned to see Dulcia walking towards them menacingly. She pushed one of them aside and raised both of her hands towards the wall of brick and mortar. Channelling her fury and her hatred, she thrusted her hands down to the ground and the thick wall of red concrete came crashing down at her feet. She was walking through the new path even before all the bricks had hit the ground.

Vycerant fled through the streets as if he was being chased by a bloodthirsty predator. It was not too far from the truth. Dulcia was a true horror to be chased by, wielding dual lightsabers and sprinting through a dense crowd of panicked bystanders.

Vycerant ran around the corner of an old temple, hoping to lose the pursuing Imperials in the crowded marketplace. He briefly felt a wave of confidence before slamming into the back of a massive man. The boy fell to the floor dazed and in pain. He looked up to the man who stopped his escape and was instilled with great fear: it was Zhen.

The man appeared to be a giant from the boy's perspective; his cape swung as he turned around to face the tiny person that had ran into him. Vycerant was paralysed by the sight of the massive Sith Lord who looked back down at him with indifferent confusion. He had one eyebrow raised as he stared down at the little boy, displacing the crimson tattoos that ran down both his eyes. His robes were made of a thick leather taken from a Fel’xat raven’s wing. His battle armour bore the darkest shade of black Vycerant had ever seen; darker than the endless abyss of space.

Still, his armour reflected the light that emitted from sources all around him. A strange factor considering all other Sith he had seen wore armour that was dull and dented from years of used. Vycerant assumed it must have been new armour. The boy’s panicked mind was still curious as ever and he assumed the armour was fashioned from a special type of obsidian.

Zhen had been promoted to the rank of Darth after his exceptional contribution during the defence of Korriban three years prior. He had the prestige he had been waiting for. Still, after all the fame and glory swept over him, the shadow of Darth Kysus’ death still loomed over him. Whether he was proud of his master’s murder or not, he was to be haunted forever by the assassination of the man who had taught him almost everything. The haunting feeling Zhen had to live with for the past three years was not born out of guilt or remorse. Rather it was the worry that someone would discover it was him that had stabbed Kysus in the back and not killed in the glory of battle. a highly skilled Jedi Master. He was eternally concerned that someone with greater power and influence would find out her had slaughtered his own master and defied the will of Emperor Kalluux. Still, no one had yet discovered the truth behind Kysus’ death; Zhen had been offered a place upon the Dark Council. Zhen, however, was no fool. He knew the great dangers of becoming second only to the Emperor in an Empire constantly on the verge of war. In the years that had followed the final invasion of Korriban he had kept to himself mostly, only trusting his personal squadron of Imperial soldiers. The four men he had recruited after Kysus’ demise had become a small army of followers including Sith minions who pledged their allegiances to him and obeyed his every command like zealous members of a deadly cult.

Not wasting any more time on his curiosity, Vycerant scrambled to his feet and began to flee away from Zhen, only to nearly impale himself on the ignited blade of Lord Dulcia. She held her lightsaber to the boy’s throat and walked towards him, forcing the young Sith to step back carefully away from the searing hot plasma of the blade. Dulcia’s soldiers were in a similar position, their blaster rifles were aimed squarely at the young boy and still they were still panting after their chase through the streets. Vycerant felt himself back up into the muscular legs of the Zhen who curiously analyses the extent of the situation. Trapped between two wielders of the dark side, Vycerant’s chances of survival were exponentially growing slim.

While most Imperials, soldier and Sith alike, feared Zhen, Lord Dulcia was unafraid of her superior. The two Sith Lords had trained alongside each other during their acolyte years and each had helped the other rise through the Sith ranks. However, as the Empire often decrees it, personal attachments were forbidden in the complex Sith hierarchies; they were not friends. Their relationship was strictly professional, and it had served them both well for years.

Zhen looked back and forth between the frightened teenage boy and his female acquaintance, still analysing the situation.

“What appears to be the problem Lord Dulica?” the giant man said to the Sith woman.

“The little Koth-rat tried to steal my sabers from me!” Dulcia said menacingly.

“Is that so little one?” Zhen said to Vycerant as he kneeled before the boy. He still towered above Vycerant but became much less intimidating. “Did you try to steal from a Sith Lord?” he asked the red-skinned child in a calm and almost whisper-like manner.

Vycerant was young but he was no fool. He knew that if he lied, he would face greater consequences for his actions. He also knew if he tried to defend himself or offer up a reason for trying to steal from a Sith, it would fall on deaf ears. No one wanted to get in the way of a Sith Lord and their business. So, instinctively, Vycerant kept his mouth shut and simply nodded at the Dark Lord’s question. A wise decision in the face of impending doom.

“I see," Zhen said quietly. Vycerant was still terrified, however he was not as afraid of Darth Zhen. His intimidating appearances was nullified by his calm and collected demeanour, and Vycerant found himself becoming calmer around him.

Zhen’s attention turned to Dulcia, her lightsaber still ignited and itching for some child murder. Her soldier’s however had stood down. Waiting for the situation to end and hoping they won’t be dragged into any Sith business.

“And how is it that a mere child was able to steal a lightsaber from a Sith Lord like you?” Zhen asked his associate. If Dulcia’s face was not naturally red she would be blushing with humiliation. With a small crowd of people watching and listening in on the encounter, the question threw her whole reputation into question. Embarrassed and almost shamed, Dulcia had to defend herself. This was the core difference between Vycerant and the Sith and was the main reason he never wanted to join their ranks: Vycerant was able to defend himself without saying a word. Dulcia tried to use excuses and a lightsaber to do so.

“The child used the Force, Darth Zhen”, Dulcia said as she extinguished her lightsaber. Her head was bowed slightly, and her shoulders slumped with a lack of confidence.

Zhen turned around to look at the boy. With the Dark Lord’s attention turned back to him, Vycerant froze, dreading whatever words would come from his mouth.

“Did he now? … interesting," Zhen said inquisitively. “You two," he said to Dulcia’s guardsmen. Their attention snapped up to the Dark Lord and listened carefully as Zhen relayed his orders to them. His calm demeanour remained but Vycerant felt that something had changed. The man had an objective now, a mission to complete. And Vycerant was part of it. He knew what Zhen was about to say. He was just waiting for him to say it.

“Take him to the Academy."

Vycerant tried to run again, this time fuelled by fear and instinct. However, he was swiftly caught by Zhen’s troops, who grabbed and held him by his thin arms. The group of soldiers marched off into the distance, headed for Vortem’s exit borehole as Vycerant struggled and screamed for his freedom. Confused onlookers watched the situation briefly but quickly returned to their daily routines. None of them would have the courage or conviction to intervene and do what was right.

As Vycerant’s screams echoed throughout the underground city, Zhen turned back to see Dulcia. A smug smile had spread across his face as Dulcia folded her arms in disapproval and confusion.

“Why?” she said, once again being straight to the point.

“Why not?” Zhen said with a grin, mocking the Sith Lady for the point of a good laugh.

“You’ve failed to uphold our laws. There are people watching," she replied as she pointed out the small crowd of Imperials still observing the curious scenario. "What message will this send to the civilians? You’ve now made it clear to them that we are no longer tough on crime.”

“On the contrary Dulcia," retorted Zhen. "You are the one who has been weak on crime. I merely made the situation into something that will benefit the whole Empire. If I had not been here to stop the boy, he would have escaped you. A far worse humiliation that I could ever do to you. In fact, I reckon I’ve saved your neck from a much worse public spectacle."

Dulcia looked down at the floor and to the people that were still listening in on their conversation. She let his words sink and begrudgingly accepted them. “So, what now?”, she asked.

“Now we wait… the boy will be drafted into the acolyte training program and I have a feeling that he will be morphed into a deadly warrior,” Zhen said confidently.

“How can you be so sure?”, asked Dulcia. “What makes you think he won’t become just another cog in the system? Just another expendable minion sent to die on the battlefield with no honour and no one to remember him?”

“Can you not feel it?”, Zhen asked her, expecting Dulcia to sense the same thing he felt, “there is something unique in that boy. An unusual concentration of the Force. It’s almost unnatural. I sense the boy has a great future ahead of himself."

“If he survives the trials," Dulcia said coldly.

“Ah yes. The trials will test him. But I have confidence in the child. He may turn into something special for the Empire," said Zhen, his confidence slowly turning into ego as he put his hand on Dulcia’s shoulder. “Let us hope he’ll pass with flying colours," Zhen walked past Dulcia and headed towards the Sith Academy, her eyes still fixed on him with disbelief.

“You wish for much when there is little hope. The boy will die in the trials and you know it," Dulcia called to Zhen as he walked away from her. Zhen never turned to face her.

“Have faith Dulcia! The Empire needs faith these days," Zhen replied as he set off out the city and headed for the Sith Academy in the dreaded Valley of the Dark Lords.

Next Chapter: ***Chapter 4 - Neophytes of Darkness***

Copyright Jacob Burbidge 2019