Chapter 13: Zakayo

--Who are you, Dark Lord?--

--Show me light, in the abyss.--

--How do I prevail?--

Yoshirii's partially plundered freighter banked forcefully through the crimson-hued clouds of Ambria's contaminated atmospheric envelope, flanked on all sides by the stark obsidian facades of ruined automated mining platforms anchored to the planet's craggy surface.

A simple haven for the last vestiges of the Sith as shown by Bane, only the most ruthless even set foot on its desolate wastes even though it lay closer to the core than I had ever been, Dantooine barely registered on a star map much like this place but for many different reasons.

I knew this sanctum left a putrid taste in Cognus due to her own muddled history here and chose it specifically for this meeting with the Trandoshans. Yoshirii scuffled with the controls, features grim behind the smeared panels of the cockpit canopy as gouts of corrosive vapor swirled around us from the desert wastelands. "Pretty heavy industrial deadfall on the naviscan...any chance our 'venerable' lizards shared updated rendezvous coordinates?" she called back tersely.

I shook my head once, regarding the billowing chemical miasma with a neutral detachment as Kei hunched over the shimmering sensor panels beside me. "De'busk was not excited to involve his dear papa...But a name drop of the old witch had him running all the way from Dantooine's grassy little hills in a hurry."

Anxiety radiated off the older Rodian in droves as his meaty hands danced frantically across the communication matrix, no doubt plotting hasty escape vectors mentally should our prospective plans reveal too early. I couldn't quite suppress a subtle smirk at his fraying nerves backgrounded by the puffing green clouds of chemical smoke feeding the fear around me.

For a so-called freelance gun-for-hire with goring experience across the Outer Rim, he was exhibiting uncharacteristic agitation about this ever since I laid out the plan in its entirety...Well, virtually everything. Almost as if some long-buried premonition had finally risen to haunt him in the face of my grand machination’s wake. I pity those who trust too quickly...

Before I could ponder the matter further, a hollow chime issued from the pilot's scope as Yoshirii worked the ship into a tight circling pattern that jarred the cabin. "Think I've narrowed in on their ion trail...Single medium transport signature type,"

Beside her, Kei ejected a low whine laced with tangible dread. "A Trandoshan senator in a merchant skiff? Hopefully, that means they didn't turn us in...yet" I arched an inquisitive eyeridge at the burly Rodian's apprehensive words. "Secrecy is paramount when bargaining with the chaotic hierarchies of fate." My words did little to help with his emotions.

Yoshirii gestured toward a cluster of silhouetted industrial behemoths arrayed across the midground viewport. "Heat plumes from their auxiliary exhausts--Must be the rendezvous site up past those crags." Beside us, Kei appeared to sag further into his filthy couch he had dragged in from some backwater trade port as though the effort of the very words was sapping his typically blustery spirit.

"And once we set down, Filo if anything happens just know it's me and Yosh out there…" He released a sigh of dread resignation before clapping a loose hand upon my armored pauldron from his eye-leveled position. "The Trazzak clan would do anything to cover up their tracks...I wouldn't be surprised if they have us all shot for crimes against the Republic." His tone of begrudging deference was almost paternal.

I afforded him a measured slight nod of my chin, quickly reaching out through the Force to swathe the vicinity in a subtle sphere of protective Battle Meditation centered on bolstering them through my share of stolen force energy. "Have a little loyalty. This meeting represents far too pivotal a juncture for even the Trandoshans to not fall into my hand."

I turned an expectant gaze toward Yoshirii as I removed his smelly hand from my body; we found ourselves locking eyes in the reflective canopy surface. Musing momentarily, that shared moment of transcendental intimacy from the Tatooine wilderness flickering across both our facades now every chance we could get.

I was about to speak when the scrambled gale of encrypted communique burst from the overhead transceivers in a hail of staccato code. Yoshirii tore her eyes away from my consuming stare to fumble the audio reception online with a few slaps to make it come to life.

"-- craft, this is Da'duss Trazzak confirming your encoded signal amidst all this damned interference. I await your presence planetside for a formal parley to commence--I pray you make this worth my time."

A rapid trio of pulses heralded the channel severing abruptly, leaving me receiving grim looks from the Rodians siblings. Yoshirii's eyes narrowed in concentration as she veered us into a spiraling descent vector.

Kei seemed to wince at her piloting as the freighter's armored underbelly groaned against the thick atmospheric frictions, streaking us down towards the hazy chasm between hulking industrial edifices in a controlled drop that rattled Malgus' mask upon my face.

By the time we finally set down on scorched granite near the designated berth, my mental shields were at their utmost--every parsec of my consciousness stretched to anticipate any hint of betrayal or double-cross from our prospected allies against Cognus, even the two I shared this rickety starship were beneath my gaze through the Force.

Though the mercurial banks of effluent haze, the warped outlines of a lone boxy Trandoshan shuttle grew distinct. Its olive green hull bristled with enough ordnance to qualify it as an armed privateer frigate rather than civilian merchant transport by any means. Yoshirii met my calm look with tightened eyes as she angled our boarding ramp's terminus towards the other craft with forced nonchalance. "Merchant ship my ass."

Her remark was laced with the barest hint of sardonic mockery, but somehow I sensed no real bravado behind it--merely a show of poise to steady herself for the moment to fade. "I do not sense any others inside, steady yourselves." I cautioned them both in a deceptively dispassionate tone. "The Force favors the decisive."

I followed her to the depressurized hatch, black cape swirling as Kei brought up the rear with what sounded like a barrage of muttered expletives on his breath. I waited a moment for them to dawn their exo-suits, the need for such things would only weaken me, so I left my attire to shine under Ambria's abrasive rays and toxins.

The smog outside was like a miasma of boiled mercury vapors stinging every exposed patch of dermis plating, but I welcomed the discomfort with pragmatic endurance as we crossed the cracked grounds with Kei trailing cautiously.

Armed bravado belied the nervousness skittering through both the Rodians like field mice, though I did my utmost to project an outward pall of supreme calm defiance through the Force in their stead. Compounded vibrations up my cybernetic foot soothed me as we neared the green unmarked transport's hydraulic rampway in front of us.

Within moments, the rampway descended with the humid chuff of hydraulics to reveal a looming silhouette of reptilian menace--staunch proportions draped head to talon in swaths of archaic armored scale trimmed in colors of status and ornate birthrights. Even from this distance, I could detect the cold, appraising gaze flickering over my ensemble with ruthless acuity.

The Trandoshan's cunning and warrior guile wafted off his form in droves like a cloud of contempt, even though his own gaudy enviro-suit. Yoshirii's posture permuted into a guarded stance, an almost instinctive one. At the edge of my vision, shades of the deepest umbra began to undulate from the shuttle's shadowed interior like mist, slowly coalescing into another yet more familiar towering bipedal mass of brooding disdain and aristocratic poise...The Dark Side pervades anything this world touched, it seemed.

"I give you greetings, bounty seekers, and young Filo..." the large reptilian drawled in a guttural baritone flanged with subtle vocal distortion. "I am Senator Da'duss Trazzack of the Trazzack arm's and the Trandoshan High-clans, authorized representative of my people to the galactic Senate." His manicured accent dripped with elite privilege and disdain as the figure moved to stand beside his son, presenting him like a trophy before us "And you know my son, De'busk Trazzack--commander of the Rim's Republican Naval Armada."

As if on cue, the De'busk wormed his slimy mouth into words barely passable as galactic basic. "Ssso...What do you 3 want? I did not come all the way from Dantooine to congregate with my father and Cognusss' lackeysss." De'busk's voice was utterly devoid of inflection, mechanical and chilling in its lack of any emotional effect. "How is the old monssster anywaysss?."

I felt Kei tense to the point of convulsion at the dreaded name's invoking, though he maintained a stoic silence with admirable willpower. Da'duss seemed to swell perceptibly with gravid import, gauging our different reactions through soulless photo-receptors.

"Indeed, my son. This scruffy band of misfits seems a paltry hire by any strategist's measure. Then again, Cognus always did gravitate towards the unorthodox and violently precipitous..." His armored railings resettled into a brutal facsimile of rancor's undulating gait as he closed the gap between us with slow and mannered strides.

"So inform me, bounty hunters...I understand you have retained the tome Cognus sought after, as per this Kel Dor is not frothing at our blatant treachery." Da'duss paused, allowing the significance of his words to hang heavily between us all like sentient pressure mines. "Choosing Ambria no less to hide from her sight...You are ambitious young Sith but I struggle to see the end game--Enlighten me, please." Da'duss expressed his words like lukewarm liquids as Yoshirii's arm twitched involuntarily at her side, no doubt aching to reach for one of her holstered pistols.

I stood utterly impassive, casting a cursory glance up at the two Trandoshan titans before calmly unhooking the clasps of my outer cloak to let it flutter aside to the wasted stone ground. Allowing them all to view fully my Beskar-weave armor and scarred visage in full light. "Your quick intellect signifies your involvement in the ruse may be worth MY time, esteemed Senator Da'duss..."

When I spoke again, my words took on a slight saber-like edge. "I will allow you two to live if help me...." De'busk surged forward with a feral snarl of outrage, talons already extending in an attempt at revenge for my humiliation on him when we first met. I simply held up one hand, blast-scored and calloused claws splayed in a subtle gesture of immobilization that was much more concentrated than that dark night by tenfold.

Both Trandoshans Immediately froze in place utterly, armor joints grinding fitfully against the unbreakable telekinetic stasis field I'd enveloped them in without so much as a twitch of effort in truth--The last time De'busk had faced me I was weak...No longer was that the case, Kei emitted a stunned blasphemy in his native Rodian as Yoshirii's unblinking gaze oscillated between our imperiled employer and the unfolding rite of dominion before her.

"You took me for a simple padawan, you are nothing in comparison to the power I wield...the depths of my capability-- You are word smiths with better biology than most but nothing more." I allowed my hand to arc down minutely, compelling the younger Trandoshan commander's armored bulk to gradually sink to one knee before me in subservience against his inwardly straining will.

"YOU are nothing more than your father Da'duss, cravenly professing fealty to the Senate and righteousness, while cloaking his plutocratic bloodline's generations-long pact with Cognus' subversive machinations in ever more opaque layers than your own father" With my other hand, I turned my invisible grasp on the elder senator, shearing away the coatings of the metal shielding of his outer layers to expose his skin to the acid-like air around us that had mixed with the chemical smoke.

"You resent being shunted into such profane, needlessly elaborate raven operations despite your dedication to forwarding your familial legacy within the Republic's governance structure. Just as you strive with every fiber to impress upon your son the martial philosophies and values you yourself have eroded these past years of exploitation of the Rim."

Da'duss, to his credit, manifested no exterior betrayal of terror or dismay at having his cognitive sanctum so brazenly violated as much as his autonomy and rough hide...Yet, I could feel the softest blossoming of dread taking embryo just beneath his stern facade at the implications of my probing words.

For his sake I indulged no further, letting my dissected revelations linger like burning embers primed to ignite at a mere exhalation. Instead, I turned my veiled gaze back upon his offspring, still held in rigid obeisance despite every straining sinew of warrior instinct pushing against my will's potency. "I have come not to take your wretched lives or force you into another generation of Sith servitude, I offer you freedom--at a simple cost."

I relished wallowing in the muck of his helpless frustration and frothing outrage, letting the Force weigh upon his body with merciless muscle as I felt the shifting veins in his body slightly begin to constrict. "Cognus had no plans of dying or leaving you, yet you think she is someone to heed?"

The realization that beneath my seemingly mundane scarred Kel Dor exterior lurked an entity beyond the imagining of his rapacious race's basest mythologies seemed to take root. The Jedi held back from the display of raw power and thus made themselves look weak...Foolish, I knew that in the face of fundamental supremacy, no one could deny me anything.

In that instant, De'busk became the ultimate heretic, even if he didn't yet recognize the profundity by which I had shattered his worldview, I did. Allowing that epiphany to settle in their consciousness for a moment like a fossil among extinction, I watched with no satisfaction at their nearly humbled heaps before me. "Your son fears me...you would do well to tread the same, senator."

After my words had ceased, I made double efforts to reshape my Telekinetic vice, electing instead to casually pace a tight noose around their large forms as Kei and Yoshirii tried not to show that they too were beginning to fear me. Da'duss remained utterly motionless in my punitive clasp, reptilian eyes glinting fathomless open even as De'busk thrashed fitfully against my invisible bonds after I stated the obvious to his father moments before.

I allowed the tension to crest precipitously before finally unclenching my fist, letting the senator's armored-peeled bulk slump back against the floor with a rough collision. "You endeavor to disgrace us through intimidation and parlor mysticisms?" Da'duss spoke at last, granite tones brittle with disdain despite his undeniable physical burden. "My son and I are Trandoshan soldiers of the highest echelons sworn to the Republic's service. Empty threats and mind games will avail you nothing, Sith Padawan."

Beneath my mask, I permitted subtle enjoyment to take hold at the taunting brinkmanship he was so transparently deploying. With coiled fists, I diverted my focus from the telekinetic force cradling them both into a localized erumpent of kinetic flux. Their armored forms rattled loudly, driven back several yards by the punishing blast as I advanced toward them with no break in pace.

"Such selfless piety rings utterly hollow when your duplicitous bloodline's been in the service of Cognus for generations without issue, Trazzack," I sneered in a voice slithering with contempt. "And if you think for an instant that your wholly inconsequential charade means anything to me beyond you requiring mere modification in your unfavorable behavior...you are mistaken."

Squatting down so that Malgus' sinister mask was scant inches from Da'duss' craned visage, I let my words hiss with the menacing weight of inevitability. "Before our business concludes this cycle, you will grant me an official summit and private audience with Supreme Chancellor Vosk herself under the pretense of an emergency session between Rim world representatives and the Senate."

De'busk gave a low, scornful tisk from where he recoiled nearby, sharp talons scraping impotently against the still force field restraining his limbs for safekeeping. "You ssspeak of 'granting audiencesss' with sssuch casssual presssumptuousssnesssss... Yet you clearly lack even a rudimentary grasssp of proper Republic legissslative protocolsss or sssecurity credentialing--"

"Quiet." My invocation carried the subtle metaphysical weight of the Dark Side itself, reverberating through De'busk's scales like a shockwave, seen even from a distance. He flinched visibly as if physically struck, armored fangs clacking in a rictus of shock and rage. "Your obstructive self-righteousness bears as little sway over me as your misguided notions of class superiority."

Turning my scorching gaze back to Da'duss, I allowed the implied threat to linger like a dagger's point before conceding certain details. "Provided your duplicitous bloodline upholds its reputational excellence, you should have minimal difficulty transmitting fraudulent bio scans and credentials registering me as a far-flung Rim emperor with Yoshirii as my designated interpreter and bodyguard...obviously due to my world's traditions my flesh will need to stay hidden by religious rite."

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From the periphery of my vision, I caught the subtle dip of Yoshirii's slender cranial ridges in a barely perceptible action of agreement. No doubt she was intrigued to finally learn the specifics of her pivotal role in my magnific stratagem after all this time. With a subtle gesture, I finally released De'busk from my telekinetic stasis and rose to my full, towering height once more before them.

"Of course, to completely validate our ostensible legislature summit cover integrated into the highest Republic security architecture..." I paused for dramatic effect, relishing the hateful rictus carved across the senator's squared jawline. "You will also covertly transmit credibly coded communique to the Jedi Council detailing supposed intelligence of an imminent Hutt cartel strike force massing to attack Coruscant itself soon after my arrival."

De'busk began to choke loudly, rasping groans of shock rattling from his armored chassis. "That isss utter madnessss! To contrive a threat ssscenario like that would provoke nothing lessss than a full preemptive Jedi-Republic blockade and denial of cccivilian accesssss to the entire sssystem! Have you lost your sssensssesss?"

Rather than deign to acknowledge his outrage with a response, I simply turned a conspiratorial look towards Da'duss who stared back at me with fruitless loathing visible through the scowls he cast at me. For several prolonged heartbeats, we silently stared one another down in a battle of silent wills amid the choking Ambria winds.

Finally, Da'duss let out a disparaging snort of relinquished capitulation, waving a clawed hand imperiously towards his son as he gathered himself to his taloned feet once more. "Enough insubordination, De'busk! We find ourselves... reluctantly conscripted into aiding this Kel Dor's freedom whether out of pragmatism or abject survival."

Turning his inscrutable regard back towards me, he gave a curt dip of his horned cranium marred only slightly by obvious disdain. "Your terms are excessive, but not wholly unsound from a tactical philosophy. I will transmit the necessary clearances and background dockets to grant you an audience with the Chancellor, but I need time...and when my son gets back to Dantooine he will spread the word of what you say--is that not correct?"

"Thisss isss."--Da'duss held up a restraining foreclaw as De'busk made to loudly protest once more and allowed him to settle. "But I warn you--should you ever contact me again or implicate my son and I..." For the first time, I allowed him to feel in charge once again. Taking a break to sup on the rivers of anxiety coming from his son.

"Then the consequences shall be so utterly ruinous and substantial, you will bemoan the very instant your miserable existence began." His voice lowered to a sibilant rasp completely devoid of mercy or nuance. "Make no mistake...the entirety of my culture's undying fanaticism swears eternal enmity to any who dare cross us. Am I transcendently clear?"

I allowed the bravura display to dissipate, bowing once in respectful acknowledgment of his own perceived threat versus my own. "Perfectly. You have purchased a temporary reprieve from oblivion with your cooperation...I thank you kindly."

With that, I turned on my beskar foot and gestured for Yoshirii to follow me back toward our idling freighter. De'busk and Da'duss watched us depart in seething silence, only the younger commander's warning sub-vocals audibly slithering in a trail behind us like winding contempt. Kei stood for a moment as if he wanted to say more but simply turned after spitting a few feet in front of him, showing his resignation from them as well.

-------------------------------

After leaving the Trandoshans behind, our freighter lifted off from the polluted surface of Ambria's only abandoned mining facility among the wastelands. While Yoshirii piloted us to a more remote region of the industrialized planet for a respite and to make plans for fuel, I retreated to the small cargo hold to begin restoring my force wells in soundlessness.

Kei eyed me warily as I moved some crates aside to clear a space in the center of the bay's dented panels. "Hey...uh, I know I was saying all that stuff about leaving you'n all but..." I ignored the Rodian's fussy tone, instead removing my cloak and outer armor pieces until I stood in just my meditation attire. Settling into a lotus position on the deck plating, I initiated breathing deeply to enter a meditative condition.

"I must journey into one of the dark nexuses of Force energy that permeates this blighted world, Lake Natth. A simple rite of passage so to speak," I explained between focused exhalations, attempting to seek its whereabouts amid the surface of the arid planet. "There I will be able to delve into the depths of my ability and marshal every facet of my mastery of the Dark Side. The confrontation with Cognus fast approaches-- I cannot meet my Master as anything less than the perfect vessel of Sith prominence, in many ways I am still a padawan..."

Kei shook his head skeptically but knew better than to argue with the winds. As I let my consciousness expand outwards, I could feel the harmonious eddies of the Force linking all around us. The potent taint of decades of Sith rule and ecological abuse had rendered Ambria's Force presence turbulent and unstable-- the perfect nebula in which to immerse myself, like so many others before me...Bane, Zannah, Cognus even, and now I, Filo make my presence known on its storied wastes.

With a final mental exertion, I fully surrendered my physical form and projected my essence. In that formless state, I could perceive the nexus as an immense cyclonic vortex of crackling force energy undulating with the rhythm of living blight. I relinquished all hesitation and let myself be drawn into the abyssal core, sinking into total darkness...the distance almost meant nothing in its gaping maw.

...Only to find myself coalescing in a shaded meadow amid the knotted trunks of petrified, blackened Blba trees. White phosphoric brume asphyxiated the air with its sickly luminescence, endowing everything with a sallow, decomposing element.

As my vision adjusted in churning standpoints, I could faintly make out overlooking profiles contorted into unnatural configurations--the Force shades and haunting specters pulled from the subconscious resonations bled into the dark side nexus over eons of festered hatred.

A shrieking, keening outcry shattered the gloom ahead as a skeletal flying entity flared through the fog trailing streamers of strained twilight. It shrieked again, deviating directly toward me with desiccated ebony wings outstretched and famished mouth agape. Instinctively, I thrust out one hand to unleash a torrent of lightning that coalesced into a singularity and violently lashed the creature back into the dismal overgrowth as it moaned in angst...The energy here was powerful but starved, weakly grasping at anything that dared answer its beckoning hollers into the Force's expanse.

Reinforcing figures began accepting form out of the ether all around. Shambling Kath Hounds, ululating stalker lizards, and other Dantari beasts manifested from my latent psychic residue imprinted on the Force here.

My shoto lightsaber materialized in my grasp with a dull hum of focus, the unstable golden blade casting a hellish sun-like radiance across the small grotto. Twisting into a whirling cyclone of blades and dark rage, I surged forward into the converging tide of Force phantoms with a feral scream torn from the depths of my own blackened hatred...

The shades fell before my pitiless onslaught, rent asunder by the ceaseless maelstrom of my blade unleashed at the full extent in my mind's eye. Yet for every hostile wraith I eradicated, three more seemed to consolidate from the murk, their feeble forms birthed from the nexus's tumultuous vibrance. I battled with the fury of one possessed, but their numbers threatened to overwhelm me in a short time.

Suddenly, two lofty presences manifested amidst the rampant horde of wild beasts of the field. Their forms were indistinct, but I could make out the obsidian robes and all too similar tubed mask of Darth Malgus alongside the shrouded, eyeless visage of the Lord of Hunger, Darth Nihilus. "You oppose our will admirably, but with wasted struggle,"

Nihilus' hollow voice seemed to reverberate from every shadow of the glade's endless reach into the horizon. "Let go of your concept of self. Become an aperture through which our power may flow unimpeded."

"Open yourself to us, and we shall be the singularity mirrored through infinite planes," Malgus echoed almost in tune with his partner's ending, presenting one gloved fist that unfurled with eldritch fire that emitted deeply with his spirit. "Abandon all hesitance and subjugate your existence." They ended the last expression in unison that raked the surrounding area into their towering visages.

I had no chance to protest before Nihilus made a grasping motion with one outstretched skeletal hand. An unbreakable force constricted around my throat, hauling me towards the twin spectral lords as Arms of grasping shadow lashed around my limbs to immobilize me without a moment's notice. Malgus stepped forward, his armored bulk dwarfing me as he reached out to remove my heirloom mask in one abrupt motion that sent white-hot agony all through the now missing bottom half of my face.

Hot blood began to slick my entire body as my throat was constricted ever tighter by Nihilus. "Know me. See through my eyes and relinquish your crude physical form," his disembodied voice seemed to reverberate from the calling gyrating nexus of dark power. "Let us pour our unified purpose into you, and become the harbinger we have sought for eons..."

Before I could cry out in protest, Nihilus added his own vampiric grasp to their imprisoning shadows that supplemented his force choke. A numbing chill seeped through my struggles as the Lord of Hunger began to siphon away my individual presence, hollowing out my spirit with the very gift we shared for taking life. Both boons of my heroes were violently stripped from me and used to torture my very soul...

Every agonized vestige of free will fought against this metaphysical violation that I had unexpectantly stumbled upon, but their crushing might held me inexorably until I tasted but the faintest lingerings of my former identity pulsing within my heaving chest cavity. I was being unmade as a distinct being, only to be remade as the embodiment of the transcendental source of the Sith'ari pedagogy without the stain of Cognus.

Misery wracked what little self I had left as they scoured away any lingering attachments to what once I called Filo. Ambitions of freedom, Fear of losing my life before truly living, and the spark of affection shared between Yoshirii and me...Nothing existed but the all-consuming wrath, the insatiable desire to dominate and exterminate all who would defy the Dark Side's ultimate supremacy over the galaxy's limitless roiling Force well.

Just as I teetered on the brink of utter dissolution, Nihilus and Malgus released their shadowed grasp just as I had done to the Trandoshans. Distantly, I discerned myself begin to plummet away from their spectral over-presences high into the lightless atmospheres of the Force nexus's blighted mindscape being poured into my psyche. Yet simply rather than experiencing the descent with trepidation, I at last understood what it meant to surrender to the Force's will.

Malgus and Nihilus hadn't unmade me at all, even Cognus in actuality-- they had deconstructed every last amorphous vestige of what made Filo...a grotesquely feeble and finite being bound to the physical world. It was truly the most free I have ever felt in my entire life until then....

I no longer perceived my body hurtling through that void in a singular sense, but rather as an infinite array of unfurling causality cascading across planes of possibilities. In those moments, even my interactions with Cognus across the stars were made infinitesimally insignificant compared to the galactic enormity of my new unbounded comprehension of the cosmos at large's energies.

I could see the Force not just as a mystic field that we toyed with in times of need, but as potentiality itself just waiting to be harnessed as a raw toil of pure will against the corporeal universe's control of what is and what is not. My eyes blinked back to the moment of subjugation from before under Malgus and Nihilus' hold upon me.

This time though, I could feel the core of motivation behind my struggle shifting profoundly. The proximate anger and thirst for dominance that had propelled me to such heights was being subsumed by a more profound revelatory understanding of the Force.

I did not come to this sacred truth because of wanton lust for dominance like Malgus or the never-sated hunger for draining Force of Nihilus, but because I needed to find who I was among the Sith.

A complete detachment from any fear of losing the self to what that may bring--could I truly master existence without the limitations of those before me. This was not a battle of supremacy, but a chrysalis of dark transcendence of my own design before the path ahead fueled by Lake Natth's touch over the planet.

It was this moment of realization that shifted the tide against Malgus and Nihilus's spirit avatars. My body blurred with the preternatural speed of that epiphany, becoming a boundless commodity of lightsaber strokes and force-quakes that collapsed the area altogether. With a final explosion of energized hatred, I severed their constructs in twain before annealing the breaches in my own armor through sheer focus.

Striding through the settling ashes of their remains and the facade around us, I emerged into a clearing at the heart of a temple complex. There, a spectral outline awaited amidst swirling discharges of static Force energy. The ghostly echo of a female human figure wreathed in robes of darkness with eyes blazing like sickly crimson supernovae.

"Well youngling, you have succeeded where so many have failed the Sith'ari and the pure blood of our kind," an ethereal, yet strangely melodious voice issued forth sweetly into my mind. "I thought it might take another generation before one arose capable of overcoming my former padawans legacies at last."

Despite the aberrant abnormality's matronly tone, I could perceive the untold reservoirs of darkness and sheer malignancy disturbing within her from the small distance between us. This was the spirit of Darth Zannah-- Bane's successor who helped shepherd the Sith Order through decades of shadow culling and reigniting. Even with this, there seemed to be no belligerence or treachery framing her remarks, only...delight?

"You will find your path is still far from complete, Zakayo," she continued softly, using a name I had never heard before. "I appear before you now not as some tribulation or gatekeeper of dark art, but as a harbinger of what inevitably awaits should you best Cognus's own ambitions for transcendental release into what lies in the coming era."

With a wave of her ephemeral hand in a small circle, Zannah's spectral shape shifted to project a disturbing new vista around us. We now stood among the fetid, gangrenous wastes of a dying world blistered by weapons of mass destruction. Flashing pyres of immolation seared the horizon as the burnt corpses of countless Jedi littered the landscape like macabre pebbles in a small sand garden.

"This is the future Darth Cognus covets, using your gift of taking other's essence. An apocalyptic rebirth through extinguishing swathes of the living Force at will until only the ascendant Lord remains to choose who can even dare to draw breath," Zannah's sibilant tones grew heavier with the palpable weariness of what seemed like awaited epochs. "My sweet apprentice needs to rest...A new leader of the Sith must awaken."

I felt the weight of her words reverberate through my very manifested being. It was difficult to perceive any emotion but the barest glimmers of what could almost resemble motherly concern crossing her dispassionate features. And yet, I knew Zannah spoke true. Cognus's ambitions needed to be reined before they set the galaxy asunder, I could not simply run from her forever until she found the perfect body to take under her control!

"Then it seems our destinies are intertwined evermore," I replied at last while making a customary bow of respect toward the former Dark Lord of the Sith. "Should I successfully draw Cognus' profane goals into the open, do you believe I will prevail where others have not?"

A pasty smile appeared to dart across Zannah's ghostly countenance at that pointed query. "There has been enough contention, castration, and lordly self-annihilation these past centuries to demonstrate only the strongest can hope to uphold Bane's legacy as it was truly intended, my dear. Take heart that your journey has not been in vain, and complete the fratricidal cycle once more."

With those parting words, Zannah dissipated in a final cascade of force static and drifting discharges. I was left alone standing in the epicenter of the mock Dantari-desecrated temple grounds. My apotheosis into Darth Zakayo was now complete, all that remained was to lure Cognus into the open and sever her from the cycle of perpetual darkness when the time was most juicily ripe.

Gathering the threads of my will once more, I let the cold vacuum of detachment envelope me as I focused inwards like a black hole's ingress. With a final exhalation into the void within, I opened my transcendent consciousness to receive the full clarity of violence yet to come. The die was cast - now I awaited my summons to the false summit that would finally draw my reckoning with Cognus...

--------

"Filo! Kriff, Filo! Can you hear me?!" Yoshirii's frantic voice pierced the void I had been drifting through in my meditative trance. My consciousness slowly reassembled into my physical form lying on the deck plating, every molecule feeling charged with a newfound potency knowing that I must visit the lake before leaving this planet.

As my eyes flickered open, I could sense the depth of the Rodian's distress and worry shooting from her like the bullets she loved to sling. She knelt at my side, one hand placed gingerly on my chest while the other hovered uncertainly over Malgus' mask. "Take it easy, you were catatonic for almost two cycles..."

She declared with a quiver in her voice, visible relief flooding her turquoise features as I stirred. "Kei said we couldn't move you until you came around, but now he's taken us to...well, the only place on this trash heap of a world that will take our credits..."

Pulling myself upright, I felt an unnatural clarity regarding the galaxy's currents despite my prolonged trance state's grasp. The Force Nexus's torrent of primal darkness still resonated through every fiber of my being like a supernova's echoing gravity well. Looking down at my hands, I could almost see the strands of energy coiling in my grasp awaiting my commands.

I finally understood the true extent of my purpose and the staggering challenges yet to come once I forged my own lightsaber and gained more clarity at Lake Natth. "I am...remade," I spoke in a voice raked with quiet awe. "No longer merely a paltry wielder of these abilities we call the Force, but an embodiment given permanence through sheer strength of will."

Yoshirii's Blue galaxy-sparkled eyes widened slightly at the subtle timbre of authority now edging my baritone with her as I rose to my full, elevated height. "Filo...what happened during your...uh, spirit journey or whatever? You seem...." She tried to find the right words as she searched my eyes for a moment.

"Changed?" I finished the thought for her, allowing the barest hint of a smirk to play across my cheeks beneath the mask's churlish exterior. "Indeed. The Kel Dor welp you once knew as a former Sith apprentice is no more...." Turning away from her confused countenance, I strode across the curved bulkhead towards the cockpit entry.

Inside, Kei was hunched over the controls cyclically manipulating thruster outputs to compensate for Ambria's mercurial air pressure fluctuations. "About time you decided to rejoin us, little freak..." The grizzled and bulky Rodian remarked in a tone laced with weary sarcasm. "I was beginning to think I'd have to find us some carbon-frozen cargo to stow your senseless carcass in just to be--"

His mocking diatribe broke off as I leveled my impassive stare directly at the nape of his brawny neck. "It would do you well to save your jokes for another time." Straightening from his hunched posture, Kei shot me a questioning look over one massively sloped shoulder. Then only to recoil visibly at the sheer malevolence he found staring back at his large form.

Even through the filters of my ancestral breathing mask, I'm sure the sense of overpowering Force saturation bored into his squalid spirit like a searing branding iron as I barely contained my draining effects from taking hold of him. "Wh-what in the...you okay there, Filo?" he rasped in his native Rodese gutter cant that grated my ears. "You look like you just ate a star cluster and shit out another 4 after..."

"Do not address me as Filo any longer," I said barely above a whisper yet retaining his full attention. Yoshirii's voice rang out as she entered the compartment, having taken a moment to gather her composure. "I think...We should maybe take a break from Ambria."

"No, until I have what I need--we are not leaving this place," I pronounced the words with measured clarity as I turned my impassive full-face regard towards her. "The incomplete enterprise is much more significant than your understanding of my well-being..."

Moving to stand over the instrumentation panels, I gestured out towards the mustard-choked atmospheric murk visible through the canopy. "Out there on Ambria's surface, I found the darkness and energies that suffuse that place to be so intrinsically saturated that they comprised an entire lost landscape of my predecessors' teachings. When I surrender to its profane beckoning, the final key to standing as the Dark Lord will be fulfilled.."