Tenebrae 1.1

This is just a story for me to play around with and will be updated as it comes to me! It is a Worm/Swtor crossover featuring my Sith Inquisitor, a Rattataki named Nei'ira! Please Enjoy!

The Tomb of Tulak Hord was an endless wellspring of dark secrets even well over a millennium after his death. Nestled in the Valley of Lords and oft used as a rite of passage for young Sith initiates, many thought its secrets had been tapped.

​But Nei’ira knew better.

​The Sith Lord ran her hands along a section of dusty wall, orange eyes whispering past grooves in the stone in search of the secrets that lay beyond. It felt like ages since she walked these hallowed chambers---a time well before her ascension to the Dark Council, steeped in rage and a desire to climb well above her station. Now, she returned with a similar desire, though channeled in a much different way.

​The stone was cold beneath her fingertips, lifeless to the uninitiated. But Nei’ira had never been uninitiated. She had been touched by the dark side from the moment she drew breath on that wretched slave world, marked for greatness even as she scraped and bled beneath the whips of her masters.

​There.

​Her fingers caught on a groove imperceptible to the naked eye, and she pressed inward with the Force rather than her flesh. The wall shuddered, ancient mechanisms groaning to life with the protest of centuries of disuse. Dust cascaded from above as the stone split apart, revealing a passage beyond that breathed stale air steeped in dark power against her face.

​A lesser Sith would have hesitated when faced with such a passage, but Darth Nox merely smiled and stepped inside.

​The whispers had come to her three nights prior, invading her meditation with visions of this place. They promised power, a repository of dark energies far beyond any she had tapped into before. They spoke of an artifact left by the Sith of old, those lords whose names still echoed through the academy halls even now—masters of the dark who had shaped the very fabric of Korriban with their will.

​She had risen from her chambers immediately, leaving behind the intrigues of the Dark Council and the sycophantic posturing of her subordinates. Even Xalek, her apprentice, had been left without explanation. Some treasures demanded a solitary hand.

​The passage twisted downward, away from the tomb’s main chambers and into depths that no acolyte had ever breached. Nei’ira moved through the darkness with the ease of one long accustomed to shadows, her robes trailing behind her like a ghost’s whispers. The orange glow of her eyes provided what little light she required, illuminating carvings along the walls that predated the ancient Sith script.

​These are old, she recognized with a thrill. Older than Tulak Hord himself, perhaps.

​The power grew thicker as she descended, dousing her in a chill, and she drank it in, whetting her appetite for the main course that surely laid beyond.

​The passage opened into a cavern that stole her breath away as she beheld its magnificence

​The Sith Lord stopped at the threshold, orange eyes widening as they traced the impossible architecture before her. The chamber was vast—seemingly far too vast to fit below the tomb. It was as if the stone had been carved away into some other space entirely. The ceiling vanished into darkness above, lost to shadows that even her sight could not penetrate. And there, rising from the center of the cavern floor like a monument to madness itself, stood the monument she had been searching for.

​It was a pyramid of black stone that reached halfway to the vanished ceiling, its surfaces smooth as glass, seeming to drink in what little light existed. The air around it hummed with power so dense she could nearly taste it, bitter and sweet all at once, like a finely poisoned wine.

​Around the pyramid’s base stood statues, and Nei’ira descended the stone-hewn steps toward them, her boots treading paths that had not been touched in centuries . She studied the carved figures as she passed. She did not recognize a single one.

​Who were you? she wondered, running her fingers along the base of one statue. The stone seemed almost warm. Alive. What secrets did you keep that even the Sith of old did not know? Would you reveal them to me instead.

​The dias awaited her at the pyramid’s heart, a raised platform of the same black stone, circled by the unknown lords. Nei’ira ascended it without hesitation, her robes pooling around her as she knelt upon its surface. As she knelt, the whispers in the Force grew loud.

​She closed her eyes.

​The dark side swirled around her, through her, into her. It filled the hollow spaces where her humanity had once resided, stitched into her very being. She reached for the power the whispers promised, sinking her consciousness into the currents of energy that flowed beneath the stone.

​Yes, something seemed to say. Yes, take it. It is yours.

​Power flooded into her like a dam bursting, drowning her in its dark current. For one ecstatic moment, Nei’ira felt as though she might combust from the sheer volume of energy coursing through her veins. Every nerve alight. Every cell screaming with the ecstasy of the dark side’s embrace. She had never felt anything like it—not during her ascension, not during the ritual that bound the ghosts to her will, not even when she had crushed Thanaton’s defiance beneath her heel.

​More, she thought wildly. More, give me MORE—

​And then it stopped.

​The power ripped away from her so violently that her body seized, back arching as every muscle spasmed in protest. Her eyes snapped open—

​And the cavern was gone.

​Nei’ira’s knees struck something hard and uneven. Pavement. Cracked and stained pavement that smelled of refuse and chemicals she could not identify, and she couldn’t instantly tell she was no longer in Korriban. The sky was blue rather than rust red, and the whispers of the dark side that bloomed from every stone upon Korriban’s surface were nowhere to be found.

​The Sith Lord pushed herself to her feet, her arm settling around her as she took in her surroundings.

​She found herself on the side of a street lined with structures of metal and glass that reached toward a grey sky. Terrestrial vehicles rumbled past on blackened roads on wheels rather than repulsors. Dozens of humans of all shapes and size stood frozen along the sidewalks, all directing their attention toward her.

​Humans, she noted. Only humans. And their technology...

​Their technology was frightfully primitive, though not in its early stages. Industrialism had clearly taken hold on this planet, though how far it stretched remained to be seen. One thing was for certain, despite being humans, these people were not part of the greater galaxy.

​Nei’ira reached into the folds of her robes and retrieved her personal holocommunicator, attempting to contact Xelek. The Kaleesh had been idling on Dromund Kaas when she made her journey to Korriban and undoubtedly sensed her absence.

​Her holocom flashed blue, but no projection came from the device. Nei’ira frowned, switching frequencies and retrying. Nothing.

​Perhaps she was too far. She tried another frequency, this one belonging to her erstwhile companion, Andronikos. The piratical fool was on the other side of the galaxy, near Hoth, last they spoke. If she couldn’t reach Xelek, perhaps she could reach him.

​Nothing. Not even a flicker of transmission.

​Nei’ira’s jaw tightened. She cycled through several imperial channels, but not a single one returned a readable signal. Either she was being jammed, or...

​I’ve been marooned beyond known space, she thought. Either that, or there is an exceptionally powerful quasar between the empire’s fleet and my current location.

​Either way, she wouldn’t be able to produce a transmission strong enough for her allies to come rescue her.

​Nei’ira pocketed the holocom, anger stewing in her chest. She did not panic; panic was for the weak, and she had not survived the academy, Zash, Thanaton, and every other fool who had tried to put her in her place by being weak.

​She needed to assess her situation. An unknown planet, far beyond the reach of the Empire or even the Republic, with no ship to steal her away to safety. The Force was her only ally.

​The dark side might not saturate this place as it did Korriban, but it was not absent. She turned her attention outward, stretching her senses across the unfamiliar cityscape to get familiar with her new environment.

​It was then, that she felt it. A spike of raw, unfiltered power, laced through with such absolute rage and despair that it made her breath catch. It was uncontrolled but incredibly potent, and filled with the emotions she had trained her entire life to harness.

​Intrigued, Nei’ira turned in the direction of this source of misery.

​The humans parted before her out of sheer instinct as the deeper part of their primitive brains recognized the predator in their midst, the coiled tension of something far more dangerous than they could comprehend. Those who didn’t move quickly enough found themselves shoved aside by invisible hands, stumbling into one another with cries of alarm. She paid them no mind. Her attention was fixed entirely on the beacon of suffering that called to her across the urban sprawl.

​The building rose before her, a large, squat structure with a flat roof. Words were emblazoned across a nearby sign in the local script that she didn’t bother to try and translate. The place was steeped in misery, and she knew at a glance that her quarry laid inside.

​The Sith Lord strode to the doors, and found them locked. Curling her lip, she raised a hand and with a flick of her wrist, and the doors tore free from their hinges and flew backward into the building’s interior.

​As she strode inside, Alarms began to shriek immediately around her. The pathetic wail echoed through the halls, accompanied by a spike of fear that stuck out to her senses.

​So much noise over a door.

​She strode inside, her boots clicking against linoleum floors. The place smelled sterile, but there was a rot on the wind that reminded her of the tombs she had been forced to explore as an initiate. Decay and death mingled hand and hand somewhere nearby.

​The dark presence grew stronger with every step, pulling her deeper into the building like a current. She passed through hallways that twisted and turned, ignoring the few humans who scattered or screamed at her approach. One fool tried to step into her path in some vague act of heroism, but a flick of her wrist sent him tumbling into a wall, where he slumped and did not move again.

​The source of the power was close now, so close she could nearly taste it. It was a heady cocktail of rage and despair, of suffering so pure it was almost beautiful. And beneath it, lurked something incredibly vast.

​Her search led her to a hallway just the same as the ones she had journeyed through so far. Near the back of the hall, among a dozen others just like it, was a standing locker. The dark side emanated from it like heat from a dying star, and with it came a stench that made her nose wrinkle in distaste. She recognized it, the reek of biological decay and filth, so thick she could taste it on the back of her tongue.

​Someone has been placed into that stew, she realized. What a cruel prank. It might have been easier to kill them and just be done with.

​Nei’ira approached the locker, ignoring the stench as it got even stronger. The metal door was dented from within as  the one inside tried for their own escape. The suffering that leaked through the cracks was palpable, yet the one withing had yet to be rescued. How curious.

​The Sith Lord reached out with the Force. The door crumpled into a ball and then flew down the hall with a flick of her wrist. Waste and insects came tumbling out, alongside a slip of a girl who couldn’t have been more than sixteen. She flopped out, arms flailing uselessly, and would have cracked her skull upon the floor if not for the Sith Lord’s intervention.

​Nei’ira caught her with the Force before she could hit the ground, lowering her gently to the floor instead. The girl was barely conscious, her eyes flickering open to reveal hazy, unfocused pupils that stared up at Nei’ira without truly seeing her. She was covered in the waste and refuse that had been stuffed into the locker along with her, smeared across her skin and soaked into her dark hair. The stench was appalling, and the Sith Lord’s lip curled in revulsion.

​But beneath the stink and the grime, beneath the frailty of her underdeveloped form, lay the reservoir of power that Nei’ira had been searching for. The dark side radiated from this girl with the potency of a fully realized Sith. It was untrained and unfocused, but its potency couldn’t be denied. This girl was a wellspring of untutored fury and despair channeled into nothing, wasted on nothing. A furnace burning to heat an empty room.

​What’s this?

​Nei’ira’s eyes narrowed. The power was was being siphoned away by some unseen force. She could see it now, the faint tendrils of energy that leaked from the girl’s very soul, flowing outward toward... something. Something vast.

​She reached out with the Force, wrapping tendrils of her own power around the girl’s trembling form. She lifted her from the floor, suspending her in the air like a marionette on invisible strings. The girl let out a weak groan but did not struggle—she lacked the strength for it, and perhaps the will.

​Nei’ira’s consciousness sank deeper, past the surface of the girl’s mind and into the very fabric of her being. There, she found a tendril of energy that pulsed with foreign intent, woven into her soul like a parasite wrapped around its host,. It led somewhere beyond the girl, stretching across an impossible distance.

​She followed it with her senses, tracing the thread back toward its source, and the sheer scope of what she found nearly stole her breath.

​It was enormous... A well of power so vast that it seemed to stretch into infinity, an ocean compared to the puddles she had waded through her entire life. The Dark Council in its entirety couldn’t hold a candle to the sheer amount of power that she found waiting for her on the other side of that thread.

​Nei’ira couldn’t help herself. Faced with such potential, what Sith could? She reached out to the being, seeking to understand it so that she could subsume it just as she had all other sources before it.

​The moment her will grazed the source, it reacted in a violent manner. The thread lurched, a vast consciousness turning its attention towards her with the sudden awareness of a leviathan disturbed from its slumber. Nei’ira felt a foreign presence whisper against her mind, seeking entry. She refused it, and that only seemed to make it even more intent on getting in.

​Its will crashed against hers like a tidal wave, seeking to subsume her just as she had it. It was power beyond anything she had ever touched—power that could have unmade lesser minds with a passing thought.

​But Darth Nox was not a lesser mind, and she had played these games before. Compared to the might and skill of ancient Sith Lords seeking to subsume her, this was as a child playing at a god.

​She had broken the will of Lord Ergast, had shattered the spirit of Vodal Kressh and bent the ancient Horak-mul to her purpose. They had tried to claim her body as their own, and each had failed.

​You think yourself my better? she projected into the void between them. You are powerful, but your creativity is sorely lacking.

​She twisted her consciousness around the tendril, following it back toward its source even as it tried to devour her. The entity roared and redoubled its assault. Waves of alien thought crashed against her mind, fragments of memories and notions that meant little to her. Finding the source once more, Nei’ira seized the connection and pulled.

​It was like trying to uproot a mountain with nothing but her fingertips. The entity behind this power was larger than any she had encountered, a wellspring of near infinite energy that would be impossible to move in its entirety. Luckily, she did not need to move it at all. She merely needed to redirect it.

​Her will carved through the connection like a lightsaber through flesh, severing the tendril at its source and reconstituting it around herself. The entity shrieked, but it was drowned out by the power that filled Nei’ira moments after

​The cataract of energy dwarfed anything she had ever experienced. The ghosts within her stirred in alarm as the foreign force cascaded through her being, filling every hollow space, saturating every cell. She could feel it settling into her bones, weaving itself into the fabric of her existence, binding to her will as surely as the spirits she had claimed.

​Nei’ira fought the urge to laugh. She had delved into the depths of  Korriban’s darkest tombs looking for a new source of power, and it seemed she had found one.

​Even as whatever entity was on the other side finally severed three connection, the Sith Lord was more than satisfied as she had more than drank her fill. Trembling with the aftershocks of jubilant power, she turned her attention back to the girl on the floor, and paused as she sensed a connection between them that wasn’t there before.

​It was miniscule, thin as a thread and seemingly just as frail, yet it was there, linking the two of them. The Sith Lord could feel her own power trailing along that thread, feeding into the girl before her. It was as if she had taken the place of the entity, and now the girl was feeding on her strength instead.

​Curious, Nei’ira probed the connection further. The girl drew upon her power instinctively, using it to bolster her own waning strength. It was but a trickle in an endless well, but for an untrained child who likely couldn’t comprehend the powers at large, it was enough.

​Nei’ira found herself surprisingly fascinated by the arrangement. The connection was unlike anything she had encountered in her studies. The ghosts she had bound to her will were spirits of the dead, echoes of former power lashed to her soul through an ancient ritual. Yet this child had accomplished something similar while completely incognizant.

​How intriguing...

​Making a decision, the Sith Lord reached down and gathered the girl into her arms The filth soaked into her robes immediately, pressing wet and foul against her chest, and Nei’ira’s lip curled in disgust but she did not drop her, turning and striding away from the pile of filth with purpose.

​Nei’ira carried the girl through the hallways with care not to soil oneself any further than necessary. The girl’s head lolled against her shoulder, her breathing shallow. Whatever the child had endured in that locker had pushed her to the brink of consciousness, and only the thin thread of power connecting them seemed to keep her from slipping away entirely.

​What is your story, I wonder? Nei’ira mused, glancing down at the girl’s filth-crusted face. Not that it matters. You’ll tell me soon enough.

​The alarms continued to wail behind her as she stepped out of the building. She intended to continue into the city, but was forced to stop in her tracks as she was met with an interesting reception.

​The street had been transformed into a theater of flashing lights. Vehicles flashing red and blue lights sat parked at haphazard angles. Groups of humans in matching uniforms had arranged  themselves behind the vehicles, clutching primitive blasters which they kept trained on her. Civilians had gathered at the edges of the standoff, held back by barriers.

​There were perhaps a dozen in total, Nei’ira estimated. She could feel their fear bubbling in the Force, bitter and potent.

​All of them, except one. Nei’ira’s eyes were drawn to this figure who stood at the fore of this assembly, separate from the rest.

​He was taller than the others, armored in a suit of technology clearly designed for battle. Blue-silver plate covered his torso and limbs, segmented to allow for movement. His helmet was more of a visor, exposing a square-jawed face framed by dark hair and an impeccably trimmed beard.

​“Is that a halberd?” The Sith Lord asked, amusement painting her tone as she saw the weapon the man was so brazenly pointing her way.

​The man’s jaw tightened, his grip shifting on the weapon’s shaft. “Unidentified Parahuman! You will put the girl down and surrender yourself into custody!”

​Nei’ira’s eyebrows rose at the audacity. It had been quite a while since anyone had been willing to talk to her like that.

​“Will I now?” she said. “I don’t recall having any intention of doing that.”

​The armored man took a step forward. “You are surrounded and more are on the way. You will comply, or we will be forced to take action.”

​A slow, cold smile spread across Nei’ira’s face. The girl in her arms stirred slightly, a weak sound escaping her lips. The men around her shifted uneasily, their fear spiking in the Force like a symphony of dread.

​“I’ll preempt you in that regard,” the Sith Lord said as she shifted the girl’s weight to one arm and raised her free hand. The dark side flowed through her, reacting to her desire as she imposed her will upon the world.

​At her gesture, the armored man moved to charge, but he never got the chance to close the distance. Invisible hands seized him mid-stride, locking his limbs in place.

​He struggled well; she would give him that much. The man had willpower and made an astonishing go of breaking free of her mental grip. But willpower alone was insufficient when matched against the unfettered power at her fingertips. His body rose from the ground, boots leaving the pavement as she lifted him into the air with all the effort it took her to draw breath.

​The others fared little better. One by one, the uniformed humans were plucked from their feet, their weapons torn from their grips by invisible hands and crumpled into scrap. Just to add insult to injury, the Sith Lord lifted their vehicles and gave them the same treatment as well. Their frames groaned and gasped as the Force compressed them, metal shrieking as it buckled inward, windows shattering and engines crushing into themselves until each vehicle was little more than a twisted lump of salvage.

​She made sure to leave the men alive. It would have been simple to crush them just as easily, but where was the fun in that? Their lives were inconsequential, but their fear fueled her exquisitely. She could feel every racing heart, every shallow gasp, every instinct screaming at them to run. The armored man’s jaw was clenched so tight she could hear his teeth grinding, his exposed face pale beneath his beard as he hung suspended and helpless.

​She held them there, letting the silence stretch, letting the fear marinade. The civilians at the barriers had gone utterly silent, their earlier shouts and screams dying in their throats as they watched the impossible unfold before them. Even the alarms from the building behind her seemed to fade into insignificance.

​“Mark this moment well, humans,” She intoned, her voice carrying across the distance with ease. “This is what it means to stand against the might of Darth Nox.”

​Her message given, she sent them away with a wave of her hand.

​The armored man and his subordinates tumbled backward down the street, their bodies launched by an invisible force that sent them sprawling across the pavement and into the crushed remnants of their vehicles. She gave extra care to the armored man, ensuring his fall would be particularly rough as punishment for attempting to stand up to her as he had.

​This was a world of primitives, but disrespect could not go unpunished.

​Gathering the girl carefully in both arms, the Sith Lord strode past the destruction she had wrought and into the city at large. Her new companion groaned in her arms, eyes opening to reveal brown pupils dilated by terror and pain.

​“Rest now, child,” Nei’ira soothed, sending a notion of comfort along the link they shared. “You are safe.”

​The girl’s eyes fluttered, the hazy brown orbs struggling to focus on Nei’ira’s face. For a moment, there was only confusion, likely at seeing a Rattataki for the first time. Then, the words seemed to register and the tension bled from her small frame.

​“Safe,” the girl murmured, the word barely more than a breath. Her head lolled back against Nei’ira’s shoulder, and her eyes drifted shut once more.

​Nei’ira adjusted her grip, shifting the girl’s weight so that her filthy head rested in the crook of her neck rather than against her robes. The stench was still rather appalling, but she bore with it more for her own comfort than the girl’s.

​As Nei’ira strode through the city, her attention drifted inward, exploring the changes that had taken root within her since seizing that vast well of power. She had long since learned that just because a ritual was complete, didn’t mean there would be no side effects.

​Keying into her new state, the energy she stole from the entity remained dormant within her. No consciousness had been stolen, so the power seemed to be added to her own reserves of strength rather that simply waiting to be used. It was indiscernible from her own.

​The connection to the girl hummed in the back of her mind, a thin thread that fed a trickle of her newfound strength into the frail body in her arms. Nei’ira could feel the girl drawing on it instinctively, using it to knit her exhausted body and mind back together.

​The girl stirred again, a low whimper escaping her chapped lips. Nightmares, most likely. The dark side radiated from her in erratic bursts, fueled by trauma and pain that hadn’t yet found its proper outlet. She was untrained, untutored, and utterly wasted on this backwater world.

​I will remedy that, Nei’ira decided. Once she’s recovered, I’ll begin her instruction. Discarding a power this potent would be a waste.

​She had trained Xalek, after all. The Kaleesh had been headstrong and violent, but he had learned. This girl would be no different. The Force had clearly chosen this child for something grand. It was only fitting that Darth Nox be the one to shape that destiny.

​This world knows nothing of the powers that lie beyond its reach, she mused, staring down at the gem in her arms, but soon enough, they will learn. And you will be there alongside me to guide them into the Empire’s embrace...

​My Apprentice.