To Live By the Sword [COMPLETE]

[Rabbit]

---

As befitting his rank, Keelen had a private training room on board the Revenant. In fact, he and Astrid had a series of spaces on board that were theirs, and theirs alone. A room for him, one for her, a room that served as an office for Keelen, and an old training area that was no longer used by anyone else on board. The training room wasn't very big - at least, not compared to the others on the Revenant. But, it was big enough for Keelen's purposes this mid-afternoon.

It was time to teach Astrid how to use a lightsaber. He'd seen her attempt a time or two, and it had been cringe-worthy, to say the least. The peace between the Republic and the Empire was tenuous at best, and if his apprentice was to survive for any length of time, she needed to learn how to wield a weapon other than her fists. Not to mention, she was an apprentice of the Cult of Strife...proficiency was required, mastery vastly preferred.

The Chiss eyed the nearly empty training room. The only thing on the floor was a mannequin torso mounted on a thick pole that had been secured to the deck, per his orders earlier in the day. His enthusiastic and overly-energetic apprentice would probably not enjoy this first lesson - the basics were, if anything, dull. Her primary target - with a practice saber, no less - was going to be the mounted mannequin.

He would end the lesson by allowing her to exchange a few practice blows with him. But, standard lightsaber training began with what was called a pell - which was what the pole-mounted mannequin would properly called. Over time, he'd decrease her work on the pell and increase her work with him. But, for starters, Keelen preferred to let something else absorb her sure-to-be-awkward blows. Pain hardly bothered him much at this point, but he wasn't sure that could be said of Astrid just yet, and if they practiced one-on-one right from the start, he was fairly certain the young woman would hardly be able to move with all the bruises.

Satisfied with the pell and with the two practice sabers that he had acquired, Keelen lifted his wrist to his mouth and commed Astrid.

"Apprentice, meet me in the training room," his red eyes flickered over toward the pell and he couldn't help a brief, fierce smile. "You have ten minutes."

This would be, if nothing else, entertaining. Astrid, Keelen was beginning to realize, never failed to disappoint in that respect.

[tenkalus]

As sheer luck would have it, for once, Astrid was not terribly positioned to respond to her Master’s summons. Usually she’d be stuffing her face mercilessly in the galley, or just getting out of the shower from some previous workout. Either Keelen’s sense of timing was severely lacking, or more likely, Astrid was failing miserably at working around his schedule.

Today just happened to find Astrid sparring in one of the other training rooms with some female commando’s. While nearly all of the women on the Revenant were her seniors in age, few had as much combat experience as her. Or at the very least, they didn’t have the type of experience that she had. Commando’s were taught a variety of close quarters combat styles, but mostly relied on their weaponry to survive in battle. Astrid was showing the few who were interested, what it was like to be the weapon, instead of relying on technology and ammunition counters.

The grunting was low enough not to carry across the comlink, so Astrid took a breath and responded to her master with one hand, while the other calmly held the shaking fist of her opponent. Physically, the two women weren’t all that different. Similar height and weight. But a few years spent in bondage, mining gems in the dark with little more than your mind and body to keep you alive made Astrid hard in ways that a raw commando could never understand. It wasn’t that the woman was out of shape. It was just the fact that Atrid’s body was simply harder than hers. Her muscle was hard as steel and wouldn’t give way to the softer tissue trying to force it to break. It was like trying to shatter a rock with bath water.

“Yes Master. I’ll be right there.” She replied to her comlink evenly, not even struggling for breath as her opponent grunted harder, red in the face and sweating as her arm shook defiantly.

Astrid replaced her comlink in her pocket and returned attention to her opponent who was cursing to herself before turning her strained eyes and bared teeth. “What the hell are you made of girl?!”

The apprentice went from rigid stone to soft water, letting her arm give a few inches as she turned into the woman, pressing her back against the woman’s chest. At the same time as her pivot, she shifted her grip to her opponent’s wrist, snatching it up with both hands now and wrenched forward and down, yanking the surprised woman up over her shoulder and hurling her down to the mat.

Astrid stood smiling over top of her superior and offered a hand back up. “Sunshine, smiles, and good ole fashioned muscle!”

The commando laughed in exasperation and took the hand up, feeling for a moment as though she were flying in the split second that there was air between her feet and the training mat.

Astrid released her, took a step back and offered her personal martial salute. She brought both fists together in front of her chest, arms in a straight line horizontally across her body, and bowed her head. “Good session! I look forward to the next one!”

The commando awkwardly repeated the gesture, having not been accustomed to it, but nodded in return.

Astrid usually found training with others to be an object lesson in running for one’s life. But the female commando’s on the Revenant didn’t intimidate her. She had something they did not, and it wasn’t the Force. Astrid had been shaped by her trials, as most people would. The difference is that the women on board the ship all had a story. Some good, some bad. But all were survivors in one way or another. They respected Astrid’s strength and fed on it. Unlike a Sith acolyte, they didn’t try to kill her for it.

So she waved her goodbyes and packed up her gear, heading out of the training room and made her way to the nearest turbolift that would take her down to her and Lord Keelen’s private training area. She punched the call switch at the lift and waited.

One minute, then two.

Why wasn’t the turbolift, turbo-ing? She smashed the button again and looked up at the indicator, and her guts dropped along with the indicator’s indication. The lift was under maintenance…

“Oh… ohhhhhh are you KIDDING ME?!” she screamed at the lift, kicking it with the toe of her boot in frustration. She glanced down at her chrono. Lord Keelen had said ten minutes. She had 7 of those minutes left and a dozen levels down to go. She took off at a sprint for the stairs, heading left of the lift and cursing in Sy Bisti as she passed a couple of confused engineers.

…… only to sprint right back past them a second later cursing louder when she realized that the auxiliary stairs were to the right of the lift.

It was lucky for both of the engineers that she’d already disappeared down the stairwell, that the lift showed up as it was supposed to. The maintenance had been scheduled well in advance, had lasted exactly as long as the brief had indicated, and showed up only a few seconds later than it normally would given the ending time of the brief.

But Astrid rarely read maintenance briefs and didn’t plan that far ahead in advance. She just took it as a lifetime run of bad luck.

She rocketed down the stairs three at a time and finally burst through the door to the appropriate level, eyes wide in fear as she checked her chrono again. Time was running out, and this part of the corridor was crowded with various technicians and workers.

“Make a hole!!!” she screamed as she blew full tilt into the corridor. “Coming through!! MAKE A HOLE!!!”

Techs on both sides of the hallway looked up and immediately complied. Wouldn’t have mattered if she was a Sith or just some random person running down the hall. In a ship with tight hallways, when someone in a rush said make a hole, you made a freakin hole. Unfortunately, some of the crew were faster than others and were too slow to comply.

Astrid was about to run a gauntlet. But it wouldn’t be the first time, and she was fairly certain it wouldn’t be the last. She hopped over a crouching technician and jumped right back up as soon as her feet hit the ground, launching herself to the left side of the hallway. She planted her boots into the wall and pushed at a diagonal forward, diving into a shoulder roll past a duo of men crowding the right side.

Even at full speed, Astrid was a being of fluid motion and grace, courtesy of her martial training.

At exactly 15 seconds before her window expired, Astrid slid to a screeching halt past Keelen’s door, realized she’d passed her destination, and scrambled back to the door, stopping before her Master doubled over and panting.

But for once….

On time.

[Rabbit]

Oh, look...she was learning...

Keelen eyed his sweating, huffing apprentice with what would probably look to most to be a critical eye. In actuality, he was trying not to show amusement. Privately, he was rather glad that Astrid was his apprentice. She had so much strength, so much potential...

She would have never made it with another Sith Lord or Darth, that was for certain. Keelen was, in his own way, an anomaly.

For starters, the training sabers he held were normal, ordinary, typical practice blades. Not the sort that they had on Korriban...the kind with poisoned-tipped barbs. Keelen was a Sith, but that didn't mean he had to be a bloody barbarian. The way he saw himself, he was simply a Chiss with the Force.

Chiss coming first in his identity, of course.

So, he would train Astrid as he would a young Chiss soldier. The Force, or their allegiance to the Dark Side, did not mean that he had to twist her and break her.

"You progress," he said, as he twirled both sabers in lazy circles, and began to prowl around Astrid. "Your next task is to be on time without running a marathon to do so."

He stopped and tossed her one of the sabers.

"I suppose it can serve a purpose in this case, at least," one corner of his mouth twitched up, ever so slightly, as he eyed her from head to toe one more time. "We don't have to waste time for you to warm up."

He abruptly turned on his heel and pointed his saber toward the pell.

"This pell represents your opponent. Show me what you learned at the Academy."

Keelen reconsidered his characteristic pithiness before it could go on much longer than a few moments. Every time he placed a task in front of Astrid so far, he had felt a reaction from her that was not what he had expected. Each time, she seemed...puzzled, or disappointed, or upset, by his resulting commentary (or lack thereof) on the success (or failure) of her work. The Chiss was a little slow on the up-take, but interacting with Astrid had forced him to recall conversations he'd had with his wife, about raising daughters...or, even, just about life experienced as a young woman. Astid was more expressive than a whole planet of Chiss women...but there had to be similarities.

And one thing he'd quickly learned about women through his wife, was that women liked compliments. Come to think of it...the successes he'd ever had in training soldiers, had come from using positive reinforcements - or, at least, what counted as positive reinforcement to Chiss.

At the very least, maybe he didn't need to be so terse with his over-emotional apprentice. A little explanation went a long way. He knew she hadn't learned much at the Academy...but he also didn't want her to interpret his request through some dramatic teenage lens. He had no intention of embarrassing her.

"I need to know how much you know," he said gruffly, as if it physically pained him to explain himself. "There is no need to waste time teaching you things you may already know."

[tenkalus]

In surprise, Astrid reached up as the weapon soared through the air at her.

Her small fingers closed around the shaft of the spear as it slapped into her palm and she gripped it tightly. “No, little Sparrow.” Her father said as he paced around her, “Not that tight. You need to make that weapon a part of yourself. The spear is part of your body, an extension of your being. Can you move freely when you tense your body?”

Little Astrid shook her head and loosened her grip around the spear, “No, Papa.”

“Good. Now show me your best thrust!”

Astrid looked down at the lightsaber in her grip in wonder. It wasn’t smooth and contoured like the spear her father used to train her with. It was metal and cold, and deceptively heavy. Not as heavy as the training sword she’d been issued at the Academy, but you wouldn’t think such a small cylinder would carry such a heft to it. She turned the weapon over in her hands and examined every nook and cranny. She’d never seen one up close before, let alone held one.

Fear dripped into her core. She could break a training sword in half with her bare hands. Not an easy feat to accomplish, let alone duplicate, and not one to be done lightly, as the scar across her palm would attest to. But she could do it. She could break swords. She could break people with ease. When it came to the use of her body in combat, few could stand to her raw power.

But swordsmanship was not something she’d ever taken to. She was abysmal with footwork and grip. A spear was one thing, but her father had never shown her how to use a sword. And it wasn’t like a slaver would find it charming to teach their property how to use weaponry.

Now Keelen wanted her to show him what she knew. But what did she know?

In the absence of knowledge, start with the most basic and build, little Sparrow.

She closed her eyes and caught her breath, silently forcing calm upon herself. Okay, Papa.

Her thumb found the activation switch and she jumped slightly as the blade of pure energy sprang to life with a sickly snap-hiss. It wasn’t a real lightsaber, she realized quickly. It was truly a training saber, low powered and dull. Instead of a blood red blade, she was staring into a pale magenta shaft. It was so dull it was almost transparent. Astrid extended her arm and gave the weapon a couple of practice waves to gauge its weight and feel.

When she was satisfied that she wasn’t going to burn herself by twitching her elbow, she slowly approached the pell that was secured to the floor.

“Well,” she said meekly, setting herself a little beyond arm’s length to the training dummy. “The swordmaster at the academy ran us through the first three forms and the velocities for them. I uh… never really got the first one…”

The Sith academy wasn’t like normal learning institutions. Those with natural talent in any aspect of training would be doted on, while those who had to work to catch up were all but ignored. She’d been punished often for accidentally hitting other students with her barbed training sword as they went through saber velocities in the dojo. Her grip had been so wrong, she’d been made an example of. Astrid knew intimately, the cutting burn of the poison tipped barbs of a Sith training sword. A lot of times, that burn had been dished out by instructors.

The problem, she’d found later as she reflected on her time with Keelen, was that the other trainees at the academy had already touched the Force. They were able to meld their senses with their training. Astrid had only recently discovered her relationship with the Force and so until that point, she’d been a blind and wingless avian trying to learn how to fly. But it was different now. She knew the Force and its pull.

She thought back to the lessons, dissecting the moves in her mind, pushing the trauma aside and actually looking at hand placements and footing in her mind. She slipped her hands apart, as they were bunched at the bottom of the hilt in her hands. Immediately she felt more in control of the weapon in her grip.

Without another thought, she attacked the dummy. She brought the weapon down hard, knowing the saber would cleave the pell in half as she dragged the blade from collar to hip.

But instead of of cutting through the material, the saber bounced off and dragged, torquing her wrist awkwardly and forcing her to release her grip in one hand. She almost dropped the weapon to the floor, but was sure to keep a solid grip in her off hand.

She stepped back from the dummy and shook out her right wrist, looking at her Master tentatively for the judgement that surely lived in his features.

[Rabbit]

There was no judgment. Astrid was exactly where Keelen suspected she was. He'd observed her for some time at the Academy - about a week or two longer than she realized. Her hand-to-hand combat skills were unparalleled and the Sith Lord felt little need to really train her further in that regard (though, he had a mind to teach her a few new forms, perhaps, like the one favored by the Colonial Phalanxes). But, he had suspected from the start that she was woefully under-educated on the light saber. For one, he'd immediately noticed how she seemed to avoid them and had yet to ask him about one of her own. From what Keelen had managed to gather from observing other Lords, Sith apprentices seemed to almost instinctively inclined to beg their masters for a light saber as soon as they could (the word "beg" being subjective, since Keelen was also well aware that most Sith Lords wouldn't tolerate much in the way of requests from their apprentices).

The point being...Astrid had never shown any interest in light sabers - not Keelen's, nor anyone else's. And watching the poor girl burn herself with a practice blade proved his suspicion.

However, Keelen was not given to humiliation or degradation. He saw no need to crush the spirit of a perfectly capable apprentice, just to bolster his own ego. His self assurance was just fine, without having to make Astrid constantly question hers. So, unlike many Lords in his same position, Keelen showed no displeasure, amusement, derision, or judgment. He simply stepped forward and took a stance next to Astrid, his feet shoulder-width apart from each other, his left leg in front of his right leg, and the side of his body angled slightly to the pell.

"Don't worry about trying to reach the Force in these beginning stages," he instructed calmly as he brought his own practice saber up into a defensive in front of his face, angled at a diagonal slant to his right shoulder. "That will come naturally, with time and practice. Your focus for now, is simply the basics."

He swung the saber almost casually toward the pell; it hit the padded wooden pole with a dull, and satisfying, thwack. The fabric around the pell smoked lightly from where the saber's energy blade had scored it. The smell was a familiar one to Keelen - almost comforting in a way.

"Did you see what I did?" Keelen paused for a moment, but he hardly expected Astrid's untrained eye to catch the difference he was about to point out. "The art of sword-fighting does not lie in the strength of your arm, or your shoulder. You do not gain your momentum or strength from either. Watch my hips."

He whacked the pell again, this time moving slower. The Chiss exaggerated the way he lightly twisted his hips as he swung the blade toward their imaginary opponent.

"You want your strike to snap," Keelen demonstrated once again. "The base of your power is in your hips. The strength of your blow lies in your wrist."

The training room was filled with a steady staccato of thwacks and the lightly acrid scent of charring cloth. Keelen hit the pell on it's "right" side, then alternated to its "left", and then back to the side where he had started. After about six strikes total, he lowered the blade and stepped back.

"Your turn," he motioned toward the pell with a flick of his wrist, which lifted the tip of his blade up just slightly. "Remember: you are not hammering the pell. The sword is not a mallet. You want to strike it with force - to cut, however, not to crush. There is a difference."

[tenkalus]

Astrid did as she was bidden. She stood back and watched with a keen eye. Foot placement, hip rotation, hand placement and grip. She silently mimicked Keelen’s stance off to the side and imitated his movements so she could get used to the feel.

The nostalgia of the moment was unreal. This is how she had learned from her own father when she was small. He’d show her through repetition how to strike a target with whatever weapon she was training with at the time, and she would copy each movement until it became natural in her own body.

This would be a trial of the ages for Astrid though. Standard weaponry such as knives, swords and spears were natural to her. They were simple. Like your own body, with any of those weapons you had to learn how to throw the weight around properly. Each different weapon had a different balance point, a different fulcrum to pivot from. Lightsabers were so dramatically different in that regard physically that it wasn’t as simple as just picking it up and swinging it around. While the hilt itself might carry some weight to it, the blade had no tangible mass. And so if a master swordsman tried to utilize one, they’d likely end up lopping their own head off in the first flourish, due to the unfamiliarity thrown at them.

It was a deceptive weapon in its simplicity and design. But insanely tricky to master without the Force. Astrid had watched Masters at the academy whirl sabers around like they were juggling fruit. It was careless and easy for them. But she had absolutely no doubt as to whether they were drawing on the Force itself to monitor the blade’s location through augmented senses.

But her Master was right. She didn’t need to worry about that right now. The Force work would come later. Right now was the time for basics.

She could see the snap that her Master was referring to in his own movement. At the apex of each swing, his wrists flexed and pulled the weapon down just after contact. She saw the power it added to the strikes.

“Remember: you are not hammering the pell. The sword is not a mallet. You want to strike it with force - to cut, however, not to crush. There is a difference.”

Had she really been trying to hammer the target? Yes, she had. Her initial strike, she’d intended to cut the thing into two sections. She was so used to brute force that she’d neglected to see that a lightsaber was a weapon that required finesse. Finesse that she’d not had to call on for years. Her life had been survival of the fittest for so long… she’d forgotten to be light on her feet.

But it wasn’t that way anymore. Yes, her life was still in danger every day. If she said the wrong thing to the wrong person, she could be killed on the spot. But Astrid had changed in a fundamental way when she’d been taken from the academy. Her core had shifted and she’d become lighter, and found that should could smile again without staring death in the face.

Yes, she was in danger. She was a soldier after all. She was strong. But she’d been working so hard to smash through the barriers of adversity in her life, she’d forgotten to work on everything else. She’d been too afraid to show weakness in front of anyone…. But she had Keelen now. Lord Keelen would protect her while she trained to strengthen her weak points.

It was finally okay to let go and become graceful again. She realized in that moment that she no longer had to keep walls up around her Master. His purpose was to teach. Hers was to learn.

“Yes, Master.” She said with a wistful breath filled with a calm she hadn’t known still lived within her.

Astrid took her place before the dummy and relaxed. She had to find her balance within this weapon. The training saber still felt out of place in her hands, but she chalked that up to the fact that this exact weapon had not been built with her big hands in mind. Her fingers were longer than a standard humans. Not that one could tell by looking, but a couple of centimeters made a world of difference on the hilt of a sword and how it was held.

With great care, Astrid opened up the saber again and held it at the low ready position. She mimicked the stance that Keelen had used, setting her feet shoulder width apart, and put her dominant foot slightly behind the other. Then, with a slow deliberate swing, she brought the saber up and around, and gently let it come into contact with the dummies shoulder, then flicked her wrist in an accentuated movement that launched the tip of her weapon to the floor, dragging the rest of the way across the chest of the pell.

She repeated the exercise with the other side, over and over again. Slowly, she began to increase the speed of each slash until she got comfortable with it.

Keelen walked across the room and retrieved a wooden practice sword and used it like a directors baton. Tapping her forearms gently to either heighten or lower her stance. He hovered around her, noticing every hole in her technique and showing her the proper way.

She was far from a virtuoso, but she was definitely picking things up.

[Rabbit]

One Week Later...


He had to admit, he was impressed with his apprentice's progress. Astrid was a quick study, at least as far as Keelen was concerned. He'd trained enough troops in his days as a Phalanx Commander, to know raw talent when he saw it...and Astrid Blackspyre had a lot of raw talent.

She still seemed apprehensive with the training saber, though. Keelen couldn't quite figure out why. He had been closely studying the way her body seemed to want to move, too, when she had the saber in hand. She was definitely used to using her body as a weapon. She applied herself diligently every day on the pell - they trained about two hours daily, on sword-work alone - but, there was still a sense of clumsiness in the way she held the saber, in the way she swung it. Finesse would take time, that Keelen knew only too well. And it wasn't the Force, either. Astrid had seemed reluctant to reach out to it at first, but she had surprised him repeatedly with her ability to connect to it and to control it...at least when it came to anything except wielding a light saber. There seemed to be a sort of...hesitation...on Astrid's part, in channeling the Force through, or in, a blade.

Really, Keelen hadn't quite been able to put his finger on it. But, there was something holding his apprentice back and after a week, he was ready to get to the bottom of the mystery.

And for that, he was going to test her off of the pell.

To that effect, he was in the training room first (which, really, with Astrid's sense of time, wasn't that unusual) and dressed in a style that his apprentice would have never seen before. Today, in a move that was quite bold even for him, Keelen had forgone his shirt. He would have preferred to make a bit less of a statement with a sleeveless top, but since he didn't own anything that didn't have full-sleeves, there was no middle ground to be had. Today, Astrid would see, in its full truth, what had forged her master into a weapon all his own.

Keelen's entire upper body was criss-crossed with scars. Some were from his battles as a gladiator; most were from a cruel assortment of different whips. He had never said anything about his past to Astrid - as far as the young Epicanthix was concerned, he had always been a man of power. Nothing could really be further from the truth. Keelen hadn't known power, hadn't known anything of true freedom, until his own master had saved him from an inglorious death on Nar Shaddaa.

Astrid didn't know a single personal thing about her master, as it turned out. Keelen simply hadn't ever thought to share anything of himself with her; that, and he was a particularly private person, simply as a product of the culture that had raised him. But, after watching his apprentice struggling with her training, the Chiss had decided that maybe it was time to show her that her past was nothing to be ashamed of. He knew she had been a slave - the file gathered on her that he had obtained from the Academy on Korriban had told him that much. But, he'd also suspected for some time that she hid the scar of her slave's collar with her hair. He'd learned to know the signs of a Sith trying to hide physical clues to their past, and one as young and inexperienced at Astrid had hardly fooled him.

She hadn't yet connected, fully, with her anger. She thought she had, Keelen could sense that much...but not truly. She thought she was doing well with her training, too - at least, insomuch that nothing except experience was holding her back. But, there was a cautiousness in his young apprentice that Keelen recognized only too well, a hidden well of shame that she kept locked away. Any emotion, good or bad, could fuel a Sith's connection to the Dark Side, but in Keelen's opinion, shame and guilt were two that inhibited, more often than not, a full connection to the Force. They certainly inhibited a Sith from channeling their power, from connecting in the way they needed to be one with the weapons they wielded.

Keelen glanced at the chrono above the door of the training room. He expected her to be a bit late this time around - he had sent her instructions via datapad to stop by his office and retrieve something from his desk. It was the hilt to a double-bladed light saber. Not a training saber...but an actual light saber. He had decided to test her with a double-bladed one, since there was something about the way she had originally held the training saber that suggested to him that she may have previous experience with a staff or lance of some sort. He might be wrong...but it was a hunch he was willing to test.

He held his two light sabers in his own hands, as he waited for her to approach. He could feel her close by, coming down the passageway toward him. Keelen's intention was to pounce on her the moment she stepped into the training room, to catch her unaware and see what she did with the weapon he had given her. The Chiss' plan was to force her to defend herself - he wouldn't so much as singe a hair on her head, but she wouldn't necessarily realize that. He wanted to force her to fall back on her instincts, to think she was fighting for survival. He wanted put her under distress, if only for a few minutes, to drive home the point that she was limited only by her own fears, her own shame, and not by her past.

Of course, he ran the risk of her falling entirely into her rage, which he had seen in person before and knew it bordered on something akin to some culture's berserker myths. In a way, Keelen wanted to pull that to the fore as well. In fact, he rather expected it. Because, Astrid's second lesson he hoped to impart, was that uncontrolled Force ability was just as self-limiting as shame. In her case, it would come from, or at least be primarily fueled by, by her shame. Keelen was confident in his ability to stop her, should her rage take over - though, he was also under no illusion that he could control her without a bruise or two to show for it. But, that would all right, even if she did hurt him. Because, then she would also see that the cruelty of one's past, when controlled and honed, when harnessed with the Force instead of wholly abandoned to it, created a power that was far harder to break.

Astrid was still fragile, in a way. Keelen could Sense it. He also Sensed that his apprentice would not have much time left to indulge in any sort of weakness. If he didn't force her into a crucible of sorts, then her weakness would kill her.

And he would have none of that. She was too talented, too powerful, to lose her life before it had even really begun.

The door hissed open. Keelen thumbed his sabers to life simultaneously and said nothing as his long legs devoured the distance between them at a flat run. As he moved into her striking range, he lifted both light sabers over his head and brought them down with only half of the force he would normally use. In fact, he hadn't moved at his full speed, either; his intent was to give Astrid long enough to recover from her surprise and to activate her own light saber. The opening move he had chosen to engage her in was a graceless one, almost amateurishly blunt, but if he didn't want to kill or maim his apprentice, her current level of skill would only defend her from direct attacks.

It was time to show his apprentice what she could really be...not through her own actions, but through his.

[tenkalus]

It wasn’t uncommon for Lord Keelen to send Astrid on errands, and she never minded obliging. After all, she was his student, and in times when education wasn’t in play, she shifted to servant. It wasn’t the kind of servitude that she’d been subjected to in captivity however. It was something that made her feel valuable. She was useful and needed.

So when she’d been ordered to go and retrieve an item from Keelen’s desk, she had taken it in stride. He hadn’t specified exactly what the item was per se. Just that it was in a specific drawer of his desk. It wasn’t the first time she’d been asked to rummage, though admittedly this time was different due to it being a different drawer than usual and she dared not invade privacy unbidden. Usually it was a small stack of credits that Keelen had seen fit to award her with. Spending money for satisfactory training. As an Apprentice, she didn’t make money unless it was given to her. And why would she need it? The Empire provided all she needed. Food, clothing, weapons, and now disposable income for the times she was away from Imperial supply lines. It wasn’t hers, she understood. They were discretionary funds, to be spent while on mission. But what Keelen had offered was from his own coffers. Something that was solely hers to do with as she wished. A reward for good work.

Strangely enough, Astrid had realized that not once had Keelen offered the money to her personally. Every time he’d seen fit to gift income, he’d simply told her to retrieve the little stack from his desk drawer. It was always neat, piled from high to low denominations and kept carefully organized in the drawer. Astrid always appreciated the professional nature that Keelen seemed to provide. It brought order to a formerly chaotic world. The Revenant was slowly becoming home. A place of safety and security.

And now, as Astrid opened the drawer in question, she went somewhat bug-eyed. It wasn’t money, and it most certainly was not hers. It was a lightsaber. But as she carefully picked it up out of the velveteen casing it was resting in, she realized it was wrong somehow. It was too long, and there wasn’t a butt cap on the pommel. This wasn’t just a lightsaber, she realized suddenly.

It was a double-bladed lightsaber.

Without thinking, Astrid plopped down in Keelen’s chair bodily and immediately took a fascinated interest in the weapon now in her grasp. No one had wielded one of these at the academy, and certainly none of the students had enough aptitude to try with even a training weapon. She bounced in the chair and begun spinning in it idly, as a child might, totally oblivious to the fact she was emotionally desecrating a place she thought of as a holy sanctum. Keelen’s office reminded her of her father’s office back on Panatha. She used to sit by his desk as he worked, when they weren’t out training.

The hilt rolled over her hands and she cooed slightly in fascination. It certainly wasn’t made by Keelen himself, as the lines were a bit harder than she’d come to know as common for her Chiss Master. They were more jagged, more violent. Keelen was much too controlled to make something so blatantly obvious and blunt. This was a weapon, a tool. Astrid had come to accept Keelen’s weapons as more of art, than tools. Functional art, but art all the same. He must have taken this particular weapon from someone, or been gifted the hilt by someone who respected him.

If that was the case, Astrid wondered how many other drawers held more lightsabers… There must have been a dozen stashed away here, surely.

On the fifth rotation of Keelen’s chair, Astrid’s eye caught the chronometer at the edge of his desk and blanched. She shouldn’t tarry too long, lest her master become upset with her. She jumped up in a hurry and brushed off the chair, then tried to arrange it exactly as she remembered it when she came in. It probably wasn’t right, she thought as she made for the door again, but it would have to suffice because she was short on time.

But a nagging feeling tugged her to a halt before she left her master’s office. She stared down at the weapon in her grip and slowly moved her thumb over the activation switch. With a nervous glance, she checked to see if anyone was watching. And of course they weren’t, it was an office with a closed door and she was alone. Did she dare activate a weapon that wasn’t hers? Keelen was very explicit with instructions, and he had not given her directive to switch the weapon on.

Quickly, she moved her thumb away from the switch and gulped noisily as she rushed from the office to meet her master for their daily training. That had been close…

A few minutes later, she was rounding the last turn and walking toward the training room. Astrid was twirling the hilt through her fingers as she walked, carefully transitioning from finger to finger and making sure she didn’t drop the hilt to the deck.

“Master, who gave this to-” she began absently as the door hissed open.

The back of her neck went cold. Usually it wasn’t so pronounced as to offer warning but she’d been paying attention to her feelings lately. Ever since she’d opened the gates to the Force, she’d noticed subtle feelings and shifts in minor interactions. Like a snake tasting the air with its tongue, she was slowly starting to understand what certain flavors meant.

This was not subtle, and was anything but minor. She was in serious danger. Her instincts told her one thing and one thing only.

~~MOVE ASTRID!!!~~

Someone with an hour or even a minute less of training in their lives might have found the message odd and had to take the fatal fraction of a second before death to contemplate its meaning. But Astrid had two sides to her. The hapless slave-girl playing Sith, and the deep seeded warrior that slept within her. The warrior was still sleeping in that moment, and usually took a round or two in the sparring circle to warm up. But even the hapless slave-girl knew not to ignore a warning so strong.

Astrid saw a blue blur driving humming light down at her. Time seemed to slow as she executed a combat roll fully into the room, dodging under the weapons as they came down to separate both arms from her shoulders. She lost her grip on the hilt and it dropped to the floor by her attackers feet.

But time slowed even further as her senses kicked in and the warrior woke up wide-eyed in her consciousness. Several things happened in the time it took her to tuck out of the roll and get her feet back under her.

She didn’t know who the attacker was, but Keelen was missing and she was in danger. Her first thought was that it was an assassination attempt. Perhaps her attacker was trying to off her to hurt Keelen. Perhaps they had already taken Keelen down and hoped to dispatch his apprentice as well, to complete their power play. All she knew was that the man was a Chiss.

So maybe someone from Keelen’s home had found him. Some old wound coming to be closed. A political rival who’d been slighted maybe, come to erase the wrong done to them by Keelen.

She didn’t see Keelen here, just blue skin and red eyes. Red eyes that had flashed too quickly for her to take recognition.

Astrid was halfway through the roll now, shoulders now making contact with the training mat, when the world went rigid. Her eyes saw that same hazy red mist erupting like a cloud of fire into her vision, canceling finer details of the room, now lost to her rage.

On Cerea it had been a slow trickle, a conscious effort. But now, the Force was with her en masse, and as her heels hit the floor and she began to shift her weight forward to pitch her body back to a standing position, the warrior was fully in control. She’d awoken and bodily shoved the slave-girl aside to protect her from harm, and the warrior was alive with strength and power. Power she didn’t fear, power she could use. Power, she could feel.

Her feet were planted and she twisted her body to face her attacker, still in a crouch in that moment, time still going at fractions of its normal rate for her mind, but leaving her fully aware and active. She could feel the room around her, feel its emptiness. She could feel her attacker physically standing there, several feet away now. This was her world now. She commanded its flow, and the usurper before her was trying to take her control.

She could feel everything in a ten foot radius, as if it were all touching her at the same time. It all belonged to her.

ALL OF IT.

Her right hand extended forward toward her attackers feet, and her mind closed tight around the long cylinder left behind only a half second prior.

~~TO ME!!!~~ Her power commanded, and her mind obliged by pulling on the weapon hard.

The hilt moved as if it had been launched from a cannon, and went soaring into the warrior’s waiting palm, slapping there noisily.

Astrid had been trained as a child to use her feet and hands in combat. She’d been trained how to use sword and spear, and was moderately good with both mundane types of weaponry. But she’d always felt at home and natural, with the quarterstaff. The weight of the hilt hitting her palm helped her gain balance as she used its momentum to pivot her dominant leg behind her. The hilt twirled end over end through her fingers fluidly as she brought it behind her, her grip landing dead center as the weapon righted itself.

The normal flow of time resumed but the haze in front of Astrid’s eyes only intensified as she grew angrier at the situation. There was a two second lull before the combat that the warrior filled with dual blades ripping through the air behind her. But all of a sudden, the haze met with the baritone thrum of her lightsaber and jerked to a higher level of clarity. It was as though the energy of her weapon was feeding off of her rage and funneling it back to her focus, shattering the cloud of red and shifting it to a digitized static variant, clearer than before but still muddled in it’s blanket of crimson.

This wasn’t the sickening dull drone of a training saber. The fully powered lightsaber was part of her, but at the same time, not. The heart, the crystal, she realized in that instant, was resonating with her. The Force was a cloud of shifting wavelengths to her, and when her power funneled through the crystal under her palm, the energy created a feedback loop that brought the two wavelengths of the warrior and the Force closer together. But it was an imperfect thing, incomplete.

Because this weapon didn’t belong to her.

But it would suffice for now. The blurred image of her attacker came at her, now an odd shade of purple to her perception.

His weapons flashed, but so did hers. Blades met blades as a second rudimentary attack came at her. Another overhanded double strike. The warrior met force with force and caught the strikes on either end of her own weapon, gritting her teeth into the bright flashing as the energy blades struggled to overtake each other. But she was in her element now. The double hilt she gripped was being held in place by only one hand in the center of its mass. Her opponent was physically strong, but the warrior was strong too.

She grunted and shoved the hilt forward, breaking the lock. Her leg shot out as her weapon swung wide of her body, and tried to drive her attacker back with a kick. But he sidestepped easily and swept his right handed weapon at her planted foot. Instead of having to take her saber and stab backward behind her head to catch the strike, the warrior simply twisted her torso and pivoted her wrist to sweep her opposing blade down around her back leg with enough finesse to shave stray threads off of her leggings. She caught the force of the attack on the end of her blade and pivoted again, two hands now on her hilt and using it as a fulcrum to lift the strike up and over her as she ducked underneath and stepped out.

The saber in her hands hissed and popped at the contact.

Two more strikes came at her, but the static in her eyes shifted, diverting into two men. A tangible enemy, and a shadow form of him. The shadow was closer so she blocked those strikes and backed away. The tangible mass was now where the shadow was. The Force was giving her a precognitive insight to possible strikes…

They traded blows, harder and harder against each other, the enemies face still nothing to her sight but a purplish blur, but it didn’t matter. He was an enemy and would therefore be defeated. The warrior dropped further into her combat sleep and the hilt no longer felt like a hilt in her hands. It was an extension of herself. She channeled her rage through it and it gave her power and clarity in return.

Before long, the warrior was bodily batting attacks away like they were nothing and advancing on her enemy, her saber spinning like a top of death in front of her, around her and behind her as if she’d been born with it in hand. Her opponent parried harder than she’d expected and shoved her weapon away from her. But the warrior dropped into a three point stance, catlike in nature with her legs scissored and wide and pressed her left hand against the mat to keep her upright as the double bladed weapon spun wildly from her grip.

But it didn’t. Her fingers released the hilt as she ducked the followup strike, but the weapon still spun in a crimson blur an inch above her palm, and remained there as if held by a magnetic force, even though it was being held diagonally to the floor and should have fallen away as common physics demanded.

The warrior was using an ability Astrid had shown no affinity for previously. She was manipulating the saber unconsciously with telekinesis, and she’d done it twice now.

She was back on her feet and spinning away from her attacker now, the saber slammed back into her palm and her fingers closed around it. The warrior deflected two more strikes and avoided a third entirely by kicking her legs out from under her and executing an aerial, unassisted by her hands, that could be described in only one word.

Graceful.

She tilted her blade in such a way that the strike passed under it, at the same time as her head became the closest part of her to the floor. Her legs went wide and she tightened her thigh muscles in the air as she flew, and was rewarded by a surprised grunt as her trailing heel made contact with her enemy’s chin.

Her feet hit the ground again and that was when she knew she was in trouble. The blow must have sparked her opponent to be serious, because after she landed, her movements seemed sluggish by comparison. He was speeding up and moving with such precision that she could barely keep up. Her hold on the Force wasn’t strong enough to give her solid impressions anymore of where he would be. And now, the impressions morphed from one shadow, to three, offering too many possible avenues of attack to block.

She moved to kick him again, but her foot barely left the ground before an elbow fell on her rising thigh, forcing her foot back to the mat.

It made her angrier. He was countering all of her moves!

She screamed in rage and lost herself completely. The berserker bled out or her and she dropped her lightsaber. She was well within the man’s lightsaber defense ring at this range, so she grabbed both of his wrists as they came in and lunged forward with her head. Her skull rammed into his, hard.

The warrior felt the pain and disorientation, but it was a distant thing. The static had been replaced with the total haze from before, but it was thick and unreadable now that the saber was gone from her grip. She swung at the smoky figure but kept hitting nothing. Again she screamed as her fists met nothing. The chaos had returned to the world. It was an uncontrollable chaos. The chaos of shackles being thrown around her. The chaos of trying to escape slavery. It was pointless. All of it was pointless. She didn’t want to feel that way again and she fought tooth and nail to regain her control of the world.

This was her world!

HER WORLD!!!

[Rabbit]

His apprentice was kriffing magnificent.

A feral sort of smile brightened Keelen's face for the first few exchanges of their light sabers. He had read her body right, after all. She did have experience with a staff or a lance. None of Astrid's previous hesitation was evident in the way she handled her new weapon. It was if she had been born with it in her hand.

Granted...she sorely lacked finesse and she still had a long way to go before she could truly hold her own in a serious fight with a fully fledged Sith Lord. But, the double-bladed light saber was as right in her hand, as Keelen's dual sabers were in both of his. With time and training, his apprentice would be a force to be reckoned with.

Although, as the fight went on...Keelen was beginning to realize that his apprentice was a force to be reckoned with now. It was crystal clear that before her time as a slave, she had had professional training, and not just with her fists. Keelen found himself wondering, as he parried her blows, who had taught her. A parent, perhaps? Both, even? Astrid was an Epicanthix, after all. The path of the warrior was the warp and weft of her peoples' culture. They were not unlike the Chiss in that regard, or the Mandalorians.

While Keelen was hardly worried about his ability to keep up with his apprentice, he quickly realized that Astrid was working him enough for him to break out in a light sweat. His powerful chest was rising and falling much more quickly than he had anticipated; a familiar burn was beginning to set into his biceps and forearms, with the strength of her blows, and of his own. Wild and untrained, she was still a sight to behold...and something of a force of nature to contend with.

She was like a wild animal...and becoming more and more crazed as they went on. Keelen had anticipated her anger, had expected it to take over her. But, not like this...not anything close to this. It would seem that by putting a weapon she was comfortable with in her hands, Astrid has practically transformed. It was not entirely unexpected, that. But, she gave no quarter and that was quite impressive.

So changed was she, that Keelen was actually surprised when her heel connected abruptly with his chin. He grunted loudly and took two swift steps back from her. His teeth clicked together hard and he was at least thankful that he didn't bite down through his tongue. Having teeth jar together like that, though, was enough to make him scowl in disapproval. Not necessarily of Astrid, but of himself. He had grossly underestimated his apprentice's skills and former training.

Granted, he had no clue what her former training was...but coupled now, as it was, with her awareness of the Force...

The Sith Lord was jarred from his thoughts a second time, as her hands wrapped around his wrists like iron shackles, and her head crashed purposefully into his. This time, Keelen hissed a curse loudly in Cheunh. This had gone on far enough; time to bring his apprentice back to herself.

Despite the pain and momentary sense of overwhelming dizziness that danced black at the edges of his vision for a few seconds, Keelen instinctively swiveled his hands in, then out, twisting his wrists out of her grasp. As he took a few swift steps back again, Keelen's crimson eyes gauged the situation. He could see into the infrared spectrum and Astrid was practically ablaze with heat and energy. The Chiss kept moving, sweeping to the side and flanking his apprentice as she jabbed wildly into the air with her fists. She had abandoned her light saber - her first mistake - and her calculations were becoming erratic and instinctive.

Logic triumphed over instinct. Always.

Keelen was precise, wasting nothing in his movements. He waited patiently for her to swing at him again; the Sith Lord then deactivated one light saber as he stepped slightly in toward her and blocked her forearm with his. At the same time, he deactivated the other saber and then rammed his fist straight into the inside curve of her shoulder, where a pressure point lay hidden.

The calculated punch did exactly what he wanted - it made Astrid's knees buckle from the sudden shock of pain that blasted down through her arm. As she fell, Keelen swiftly hooked his light sabers back on his belt, reached out and cupped her cheeks with his large hands, and knelt down with her. As soon as his skin met hers, he shouted, amplifying the strength of his voice with the Force, so that his one single word would practically vibrate through her.

"Apprentice!"

[tenkalus]

Pain erupted in the warriors shoulder and dropped her to a knee.

Deep inside of of the conscious mind, the slave stirred. That was Keelen’s move. She murmured.

The warrior was helpless and she hated it. The rage was building to a boiling point and threatened to overtake the edges of her very loose control. The Force was building in her chest and all she could do was scream to let it out.

But the slave frowned. From very far away, she heard a voice, yelling “Apprentice”. Warrior wait… that was Keelen’s voice…

The words fell on deaf ears. The slave was rising to her feet in the blackness of her mind, and ran forward to the spectre of rage currently in control of the world around them. She placed a gentle hand on the warrior’s shoulder and the woman spun on her.

The slave blanched. The normally calm and collected warrior had fissures opening on her face. Her eyes were corrupted and yellowed. Black veins were arcing across her face and she had lost so much control of herself, that she was dribbling saliva out of the corner of her mouth when she bared her teeth.

You… You have to stop! She pleaded. It’s Keelen! Please stop!

But the power kept building and building. Soon she wouldn’t be able to damp it back down. She was new to the Force but she at least knew her own limits. It was getting too large for her control. She could feel it burning in her.

And the warrior… the woman who protected the slave for so long, she was lost. She’d abandoned control and jumped into the fiery lake that had promised strength. She was gone now, replaced entirely by this unintelligent rage monster whose only purpose was to kill or destroy. As the slave cried for her to back down, the monster within only raged and grunted and thrashed.

Please! Please look! It’s Master Keelen! Don’t hurt him! The slave continued to no avail.

Anger and fear were building in the slave now too. But it was colder than the heat coming off of the warrior. The warrior felt the shift and came after her, she was a threat to the power building up. The enemy must be destroyed!

Her clawed hands wrapped around the slaves throat. She would crush the life out of the weakling and take control for good!

No… p-p-please. L-look….

Two more breaths and the power would be overflowing.

The slave narrowed her eyes, iron and willpower now fortifying her spine and overwriting the fear inside of her. She knew in that moment if she didn’t stop the warrior, Keelen would die.

She reached up and clamped a hand on the warriors wrist, and squeezed. This wasn’t the warriors world. It was hers too, and here, she was just as strong!

That’s… ENOUGH!!!!!

The slave reared back and slung her right fist as hard as she could. Her knuckles connected with enough impact to send a shockwave pulsing through the warrior’s skull. She felt bone shatter before her might and the warrior’s head turned to dust, the impact of her blow echoed across the black abyss they shared.

The warrior was dead. Now the slave was the warrior. She could only rely on herself from now on.

Astrid’s eyes dilated as the world became clear and she regained control of her own body. Keelen was four inches in front of her and she was on her second breath. Tears streamed down her cheeks as she began to shake.

At the very bottom of her second breath, she squeeked out quickly. “....Master.....I’m sorry….!”

She slipped her hands over Keelen’s ears and used her strength to clamp down to kill as much sound as possible, she pulled his face down and away from hers as she sucked in a big breath, no longer able to contain the Force burning to get out. And as soon as her Master’s face and ears were behind the blast zone…

...Astrid Blacksypre screamed…

The rage that the warrior had built up mixed in the Force and sent a blend of sound and telekinetic energy propelling toward the wall of training equipment that Astrid was facing. She clamped her eyes shut and wailed in that single breath trying desperately to get the energy out of her before it burned her to ash. The high pitched scream hit the wall and splintered weapon frames, bent steel and peeled panels from surfaces. Debris flew in every direction and the very air in front of her rippled as her power blew through it.

And then it was over.

Astrid released Keelen’s ears and tipped over onto the mat, curling up in the fetal position. She tried and failed very quickly to catch her breath. Her whole body was trembling uncontrollably from the power and adrenaline that had just occupied her, and her hands shook like a being who hadn’t eaten in weeks.

It was all over now. Keelen was so much stronger than her, but she knew for absolute certain that she had almost extinguished the flame of his life in the few moments she’d lost control. He would have no use for an apprentice who had so little control. She’d be discarded, killed if she was lucky.

Everything was cold, and she felt hollow inside. So she lay there and shivered, silent tears streaming down her face as her life came to an unceremonious end.

[Rabbit]

The rage in Astrid was practically awe-inspiring. Keelen could feel her emotions almost viscerally - once he laid his hands on her cheeks, the connection between them became almost electrical. The Chiss had never encountered someone who had such uninhibited emotions.

It frightened him, that Chiss part of him that had been trained from a very early age to fear his own emotions. His own repression went above and beyond that of most Chiss, even. He had been forced into medical "interventions" at a very early age, in order to keep his Force abilities under careful control. Those "interventions" had dulled his emotions, to the point where he had spent all of his childhood and most of his early adulthood feeling absolutely nothing.

Love had been the only thing to break through. Love for his now long-lost wife, and the desire he had shared with her to have a child.

They'd had a little girl. She'd be 11 now, going almost on 12; by Chiss standards and physiology, she'd be at the same developmental stage as Astrid. Keelen would never forget the one moment when he had felt emotions almost as strongly as his apprentice did now...except his had been of love. Love so overwhelming, that when he had first held his daughter, he had cried for the first time in his life. He had given all he was for his daughter, had sacrificed his life as a member of his House, a protector of his people. When the moment had come to prove what was stronger - his fear or his love - his love had won out. He'd saved his daughter's life...and lost his own, as a Chiss.

Because of her, he was now this - a Sith master kneeling on the floor of an alien ship's training room. He was now more powerful than he would have ever been in his old life. He had wealth that far surpassed anything his father would have had passed on to him, or that he would have been able to gain in the Colonial Phalanx. He had prestige and dignity; he had freedom.

And now he had a daughter again. There was no doubt in his mind, now, what the nature of his relationship with Astrid was going to be - the two couldn't fight it if they tried. She had lost a father she had adored - he had intuitively picked up on that rather quickly, in the way she had emotionally latched herself to him. He had lost a daughter he had given up his whole way of life for - he was only now accepting that Astrid had somehow stepped into that void.

Keelen didn't think for a second that only negative emotions fueled the Sith. He knew that peace - what the Jedi always so dispassionately strove for - was a lie, but that didn't mean that the Dark Side had to exist solely in the realm of destructive emotions. Love had a place in creating power, too. From love, came loyalty, sacrifice, perseverance, and tenacity. There was no other emotion that could rival rage more fully, than love.

He could feel it in Astrid. Could feel it rise up and struggle with her rage, could feel it in the way that she held his ears and turned his face before unleashing a Force Scream that made all the fine hairs on his body stand straight up to attention.

When she was done, when she let go of his face with a whimper and fell to the floor to curl into a shivering fetal position, Keelen opened his eyes and looked around him in unmasked astonishment. Her Scream had destroyed the training room. There was even overhead damage, by the Force.

Astrid was powerful. But...that power could just as easily become the author of her fall, as well her ascension. Keelen suddenly realized that it was no mistake that the two of them had found each other - the Force had brought them to each other, sure as day. Astrid's power with any other Sith lord he could think of? They would have been intimated by it and would have either sought to stifle it, to control it, or to let it run completely uncontrolled until it consumed her.

He would do none of those things. So, that that end, he reigned in his own emotions and grasped her by her shoulders. Keelen pulled her up into a sitting position with relative ease. Then, he cupped her chin and pulled her head up so that she was forced to look him in the eye. For a long moment, he said nothing, as he let her search his crimson eyes for the control and strength of purpose he knew she would find there.

"Now you know how destructive the Dark Side can be, when it is not controlled. It will burn you alive," his voice was deep and firm. "Now, look at me, Apprentice."

Keelen let go of her chin and pushed himself to his feet. He took a step back, so he wasn't looming over her, and crossed his scarred arms over his even more scarred chest.

"The Force does not define you. Nor does your past. They are both tools, to forge your own destiny."

[tenkalus]

The moment arrived too soon, she thought. Strong hands hauled her up to a sitting position. It was time. She was about to die. Keelen would dispose of her and find another apprentice. One less dangerous and wild perhaps.

But death didn’t come for her. The hands didn’t squeeze her to death, didn’t crush her bones. Instead, a firm, steady voice met her ears.

"Now you know how destructive the Dark Side can be, when it is not controlled. It will burn you alive. Now, look at me, Apprentice."

With a healthy bout of hesitation, Astrid’s trembling jaw elevated so that she could do as commanded. Indeed, she was lost in the crimson orbs she gazed into. There was no beginning to them, no end. No visible pupils just red clarity gazing straight back at her. Keelen was still calm. He was still in control.

So too, did Astrid become controlled. She sapped his self confidence and fed off of the strength he exuded with his very aura. Keelen was a life raft in the tempest of her anger. His strength became her strength. His confidence became her confidence. She latched onto him emotionally for dear life. She knew in that moment that without this man, she would be dead a dozen times over. And somehow, he weathered it all in stride.

She would be like him, she vowed. A hard man, Keelen could be. But he also knew the power of compassion. He had not punished her when others would most certainly do so. Instead of discarding or maiming, he taught, and strengthened Astrid.

Somehow, through fighting with him, Astrid had lit their invisible bond on fire, and Keelen had in return coated it in steel. It was unbreakable, unshakable, unbendable. Separately, they were strong, but together?

Lord Keelen and Apprentice Blackspyre were indestructible. There was nothing they could not do together.

“The Force does not define you. Nor does your past. They are both tools, to forge your own destiny.”

It was then, that Astrid broke eye contact. And her own eyes went slightly wider as she took in the scars covering her Master. She hadn’t noticed them before. In truth, she’d never seen her Master without a shirt on. Astrid was strong for a woman, but Keelen was positively rippling with muscle. And almost all of those muscles had scars on them.

Left pectoral, diagonal slash. Long and thin. Likely from a blade of some kind. The slash tapered off and criss-crossed with another going in the opposite direction. This one was more jagged, angrier. The very edges of which were peeled back, the way flesh did when heated. A vibroblade maybe.

All along his torso, Astrid ticked off scars she’d seen on others.

Stab wounds, raised and jagged flesh where a whip had licked his skin. So many stabs and cuts, she lost count of them all. Astrid herself had been fortunate enough in her captivity to only have been beaten and electrocuted by her collar. The only permanent scars were the marks from her collar and the permanent damage left in her mind. She’d taken to hardening core, strengthening her muscles so that when she was beaten, her captors would suffer too.

What had Keelen been through? How had he come out so balanced?

She wanted to run to him, to wrap her arms around him in adoration and love and thanks. His lessons were constantly changing her. She was being molded into a well rounded individual. She was strong but uncontrolled right now. But Keelen and Astrid both had survived this unexpected test. Internally, Astrid was different. She’d killed the dark warrior within her. The slave had taken control. But now, looking at Keelen, Astrid finally realized.

The slave girl was dead now too.

The only one left was Astrid Blackspyre. Panathan Warrior, Sith, Student, Woman, and daughter. All rolled into one. She wasn’t hollow or empty at all. Everything she needed to survive was already within her.

Keelen had just shown her where to dig. He introduced her to the battles, and she would continue to win them all. But as she looked around the devastation of the training room, she realized she still had a long way to go before control could be hers to claim. There was a lot of raw power residing within her, she knew. But prior to that moment she’d only assumed it was power that she funnelled through her muscles to pummel enemies. Now she saw that her strength came to much, much more than raw mass.

She didn’t trust herself to speak in that moment. Adrenaline was still pumping through her body, and she was still trembling. But she called on that reservoir of willpower and pushed herself shakily back to her feet. Slowly and deliberately, Astrid brought her fists together in front of her. She placed her knuckles firmly against each other in the gesture she’d adopted upon the first time she’d felt the Force in the woods on Cerea. It was very symbolic to her. It represented strength, and clarity, and defiance, but also respect.

Her eyes never left Keelen’s as she moved. Damp with tears though they might be. And the tears were still silently streaming down her face though she uttered not a word nor offered a whimper. But her eyes were no longer sad or pitiful. They were hard. They were full of perseverance. Her eyes said one thing and one thing only.

Astrid understood

[tenkalus]

For an entire week following, the training room remained a mess. Keelen’s unexpected training methods had equally unexpected results. Astrid spent most of her time off duty in the center of the mat, looking over every splinter of shattered equipment and racking, every crack in the wall that was now missing sections and was curved in from the force of her scream. She could now see bulkhead and girders beyond the holes. Astrid had literally wounded the Revenant. She’d blasted a hole straight to it’s bones. It was just fortunate for her that the training room was near the center of the ship and not facing an outside barrier. If that had been the case, she might have ended up compromising the ships seal against vacuum. But that might have been giving her a little bit too much credit. To think someone of her age and strength could scream a hole through a ship and into the void was laughable.

Even to her.

But this room now served as a shining example of what she could do untrained, and it scared her. Astrid had known she was strong physically, but to see the actual physical destruction of something built to be strong, having been taken down with nothing more than her voice, was causing her no small amount of discomfort. It had been an instinctual thing, and all it had taken was less than three minutes of surprise combat.

She’d never had to deal with the fallout of metaphysical power before. And was this even considered “metaphysical”? There were so many unknowns about who she was now. Somehow, the discovery of such untapped strength had thrown her identity into question. She was no longer a slave, though she did serve. She was no longer a warrior, but she did fight. Hell, she wasn’t even a real Sith. A fact that she now reflected on and grimaced at the memory of her actions at the Unification Day celebration. If Keelen had not been an umbrella to her outspoken nature, Astrid would have been killed on the spot.

It was the devastation of the place she’d come to call home, that had forced Astrid to take a step back and actually look at her circumstances. She usually had a very bubbly disposition. But that was a mentality born of repression. She’d been that way around her father, when she was six. She'd never had a real chance to be a kid.

But her father was dead now, and she was almost twenty. Spirits of Panatha, she couldn’t even remember what her birthday was anymore. For the last decade, she’d been in a struggle for her life. There hadn’t been a lot of time to reflect on what day it was. For all she knew, she might have already turned twenty. Not that the number mattered to any Sith worth their spit.

Eventually, Keelen had ordered her to clean up the room that she’d destroyed. She’d sat in contemplation long enough by his estimation, and it was time to learn the lesson and move on.

Alone, it had taken the better part of an additional three days before the room was clear enough for the droids to come in and affect repairs. Astrid was there every moment she could be, so she could watch as the droids erased the evidence of her lack of control and put things back to how they should be. Astrid reminded herself that this had been a ship, and was repairable. But it would not always be so. Someday, if she didn’t learn how to control herself, she was going to do irreparable damage to someone or something. And she wouldn’t have Keelen there to protect her forever.

Somehow, Astrid needed to learn how to come to terms with her emotions. She needed to figure out how to channel them properly, and she had to do it soon. Her instincts were screaming that a defining moment was rapidly approaching in her life. It would make or break her, and there was going to be a reckoning afterwards regardless.

That moment came two weeks after the training room incident.

The Revenant had returned to Dromund Kaas because Lord Keelen had been recalled for an important meeting of his peers regarding some new threat that faced the Empire. Ordinarily, he would have simply taken a shuttle back to Kaas City, but since they were in a neighboring system and the Revenant was due for a resupply anyway, Keelen had ordered his ship back to dock. It was a tactical decision, Astrid realized. Few of the marines aboard the ship had a chance for some R&R in the capital. A little bit of measured goodwill from Keelen would deepen their loyalty to him. Astrid respected him for that foresight and knowledge, and took notes on every decision he made in front of her.

Keelen had Astrid accompany him to the meeting in Kaas City, but naturally, mere acolytes were not permitted within the meeting itself. Her master gave Astrid leave until the meeting was over, citing that she should walk the city some and get a feel for what it meant to be a Sith. Walking the capital with some of the Revenant soldiers she trained with might offer her a new perspective on what they all fought for.

Through their training, Astrid had begun to build a report with many of the hardened female veterans, and a few of the younger male marines who very obviously thought she was prime material for a girlfriend. They were all older than she was but all respected her strength in the training room, and some of the veteran staff had taken a shine to her on more of a fraternal sense.

So it was early afternoon in the capital when Sergeant Breena Omahri and her squad were carrying on and cutting up in the market district, having just finished a meal together and enjoying a their brief shore leave while the ship was taking on supplies. Astrid was in a bit more of a thoughtful mood and was absently browsing wares at a few stalls nearby, but was mostly fixated on the sky. It was nearly always dark and misty on Dromund Kaas, as the others told her. Astrid’s introduction to the Sith had been on Korriban, and she’d not seen most of Kaas City during their brief stay for Unification Day.

But the city fascinated her. It was oddly calming to her she found, as she watched the lightning roll across the sky. It was as though the entire planet was a force of nature. Untamed jungle met the civilized hand of the Empire, and it was almost as if Kaas City dared the jungle to enter. It was a powerful place.

“Dung-Tower?” Came a voice from behind her.

Astrid lost all sense of feeling except for dread. The voice crept up her back and laced it’s fingers around her spine, turning her whole body cold and rigid. Fear erupted from her stomach and gripped at her very heart. It was the voice of a man she had hoped she would never see again.

Acolyte Armin Polce had been the ringleader of the group of initiates who had tormented Astrid at the academy. Coming straight from slavery and into the academy had done Astrid no favors at all, as she was still fairly timid back then. And while her martial skills had earned her the monicker “Steel Hand” upon her departure, her ineptitude up to that point with a training sword had earned her the less flattering title of Dung-Tower for most of her stay. A nickname that lacked both finesse and cleverness.

Armin had been the premier student in his rotation. He was what everyone else wished they could be when joining the Sith. He was handsome and strong in all aspects of his training, both in Force ability and skill with a blade. He had been away, the day that Keelen had set Astrid the task of retrieving his crystal from the trainees that were tormenting her. If he had been there, Astrid had no doubt that she would not be alive today. She had seen him in training sessions. Armin had taken on four other students at the same time and come out on top. He’d also fought an instructor in a sparring session and they’d gone to a standstill, neither able to land a hit on the other. By all accounts, Armin Polce was a Sith prodigy.

“It couldn’t be! Dung-Tower that is you! Master, look! It’s the reject I told you about when I was at the academy!”

Astrid turned slowly and confirmed her worst nightmare. Armin was there with a senior ranking Sith. He was clearly a Lord, robed and sulking. Astrid’s heart sunk when she saw that both Armin and his master both wore the garb of members in the Cult of Strife.

If this Lord were free of the meetings, surely Keelen was to? Where was he?

“Ah yes,” Armin’s master commented dryly, “I recall you mentioning.”

“What luck!” Polce said, voice full of excitement. “I saw my friends after that alien whisked you away. Heard you broke Lo-Rahn’s sword with your bare hands and proceeded to nearly beat him to death with it. He lost an eye, by the way.”

He deserved to lose his life...

Lo-Rahn had been another of the group who tried to get handsy with Astrid. He’d been a natural loser with girls and thought that because she’d been a slave, that he could do whatever he wanted with her, and take whatever he wanted as well. Under Armin’s wing, he was untouchable at the academy. Lo-Rahn had gotten his share of karma that day she’d finally cut loose, but not before breaking a layer of Astrid’s will and pride.

Despair filled her and mingled with the fear toiling around in her body and limbs, paralyzing her further. The only thing on her that worked, was her eyes. And those eyes saw the lightsaber hanging at Armin’s belt. With the mark of Strife upon him and a lightsaber in plain view, she knew it meant one thing.

He was a Sith Knight, now.

She looked around eyes wide, trying desperately to find a way out, but Armin could easily step into her path and block her escape from where he was.

“You alright Kid?”

Astrid’s head snapped to her right and took in the angelic form of Sergeant Omahri. She’d apparently heard the commotion and the entire squad had followed her up. All of them looked ready to defend one of their own.

“This doesn’t concern you soldier.” Armin said dismissively, “Go back to your business.” He turned his attention back to Astrid, who was now looking to Breena like the sergeant was a lifeline.

Breena didn’t move. Her eyes didn’t leave Astrid’s face. “Kid?”

“Did you not hear me? I said-”

“Understood Sir.” Breena interrupted calmly, finally looking at Polce and his Master, who for his part was simply watching with growing interest. Maybe this was shaping up to be a fine test of authority for his younger protege. “Were we Sith regular army, your authority would be enough. Unfortunately my squad and I are special forces and answer to our commander alone. Chain of command is of course respected, but respectfully sir, I think we should collect our companion here and be on our way.”

Armin’s attention was now firmly on Sergeant Omhari, and he was very obviously getting angry. “What’s your name and rank soldier? Who do you report to?!”

Breena didn’t flinch. She held her ground like the strong leader she was. “Squad leader, Sergeant Breena Omahri serial number 2085203413, 316th Marine Battalion - Special Operations division, stationed aboard Imperial destroyer Revenant under command of Lord Invictus, Sir.”

Astrid’s eyes went wide. Breena didn’t know how dangerous Armin was. Military ranks didn’t mean anything to this kind of Sith unless his was being ignored. Which it now was. All the same, Astrid heard a sharp exhale of breath from Armin’s master at her own mentor’s mention. At least one of them had enough sense to recognize that they were outgunned on military authority. Armin regarded his Master with a look over his shoulder.

Things were going to be alright. Breena had disarm-

“This is ridiculous!” Armin yelled and extended his hand. Breena and her entire squad were knocked off of their feet and went crashing through the tables behind them. Astrid moved to help them, but was yanked back by her elbow, and when she turned to protest, she was dropped to her knees with a swift backhand to the face.

The blow stunned her and when she opened her eyes again, she was looking at the dark grey stone floor of the Korriban academy. Her cheek stung awfully, Lo-Rahn wore rings on his fingers and she was bleeding now.

“Now there’s a familiar pose!” Lo-Rahn taunted and the rest of them crooned in laughter at Astrid on her knees.

Another blow landed against her cheek, only this time it was curled knuckles against the side of her face. She was jerked back to the present as the second blow made her vision spin.

“Come back to me now, Dung-Tower, we aren’t done yet!” Armin crowed as he grabbed a handful of her hair and began to drag her out into the market square. Her legs kicked, but she couldn’t get them under her. She wanted to scream for help, but her lungs were so seized with terror that she could barely draw breath.

Breena and the squad were back on their feet and about to rush Armin, but his master stepped in front of them and sneered, “Go after her, and share her fate,” he warned. And Breena was stopped hard. She knew it wasn’t an idle threat. All the same, she snatched her comlink from her belt and dialed up to the Revenant. “This is Sergeant Omarhi. Patch me through to Lord Invictus immediately, priority one!”

The operator on the Revenant was fast. But not fast enough to get Keelen on the line before an invisible hand seemed to cut off Breena’s airway. Polce’s master cackled and held his hand out before her, choking her without even touching her.

Armin had dragged Astrid into the square where the public could watch him. He required an audience. He always had. He stopped and swiftly kicked her in the stomach, driving the air from her lungs and forcing her to keel over into the fetal position.

If she attacked, she’d die. At least she’d live if she just curled up and let him take out his frustration on her. She might get maimed, but maybe she’d get off easy with a few broken bones. The terror was too much for her to act through. She was losing control.

Is that it? Do you write yourself off so easily? A voice asked in her head. She looked around and saw no one. She was back in the blackness of her consciousness, watching herself get beaten publicly as Armin laughed. You’re just going to give up?

Again, she looked around, but this time there were two shadows standing beside each other, watching out of her eyes. You’re better than this, Astrid. We taught you better.

They both turned around and Astrid gasped in surprise. It was Lord Keelen, standing beside her father.

Back in the square, she’d somehow either managed to move, or had been pulled to a kneeling position as Armin continued punching her in the face, glee written on his features. He knew he was about to get away with murder.

The Force does not define you. Nor does your past… Keelen’s voice echoed through her mind.

Her head snapped to the side and she got another glimpse at Breena. She was kneeling now too, apparently the Sith had released her and was now focused on something else Astrid couldn't see.

“ON YOUR FEET SOLDIER!” Came Sergeant Omahri’s booming voice across the square.

Was she a soldier? Astrid wasn’t even a Sith yet. She was just an acolyte, a hopeful.

“GET UP AND FIGHT!” Breena yelled, pouring authority into her voice.

Dromund Kaas was like Astrid. She remembered. Or was it that she was like Dromund Kaas? It was powerful.

She. Was powerful.

...Nor does your past…

Lightning struck and split the sky, and the thunder clap shook across Dromund Kaas. Astrid muttered something through the curtain of hair separating her from her attacker.

Breena’s eyes narrowed dangerously and her teeth emerged in a feral grin.

Armin’s fist was clamped in a vice grip of Astrid’s gauntlet-heavy left palm. “What was that Dung-Tower?!” He said, suddenly struggling for breath himself as somehow his muscle wasn’t enough to overpower the helpless girl before him. Both arms struggled against the force of the other and both his fist and Astrid’s palm shook between them in a contest of strength.

“I said…” Astrid said louder, looking up slowly through her hair, now streaked with sweat and blood. She was bleeding from a half dozen gashes on her forehead, nose and mouth. But there was a fire in her eyes that was previously gone. “My name… is Astrid. Blackspyre. Asshole…”

There was a black hole within her chest now. A center of massive energy that sucked her emotions into it. Only the strongest could survive its gargantuan pull. Fear, and terror were sucked into its depths immediately. But anger? Oh anger was strong, and refused to be forgotten.

Control. Astrid. Remember your control. It was as if Keelen were in her mind now, she could hear his voice clear as day, but she knew it was just her own instincts speaking in his tone.

Astrid sprang to her feet, dragging her right fist slightly and used a considerable portion of her muscle mass to rocket that fist straight into Armin’s gut. The uppercut had enough force behind it to fold Armin like a piece of bread, and took him two inches off the ground.

He was lucky that he was wearing a new set of armor, presumably a gift for his ascension to the ranks of Strife. But now it was a new set of armor with a very identifiable outline of four knuckles in the chest plate. Somewhere very distantly, the emotion that Astrid used to have that governed fear knew that she was assaulting a full fledged Sith. But she wasn’t going to just sit back and watch herself get beaten to a pulp anymore. She wasn’t anyone’s slave anymore. Even if she died in the process, she didn't care. She wasn't a slave anymore and no one would treat her as one ever again.

This time, Armin caught a bit of blood himself. His feet hit the ground again and his head jerked to the side as he immediately took a left hook to the cheek, staggering him backwards. He swiped a hand at his cheek and his eyes went wide when it came back red.

“You, BITCH!!”

Astrid stood poised, arms high in defensive posture with fists clenched. Her shoulders were slightly hunched and her head was tucked a little into her guard, with her weight on her back leg and her front leg bent slightly and held light on the ball of her foot. “At least we moved passed Dung-Tower. Let’s see how much more progress we can get out of you. Gimme a few minutes and I’ll have you calling me Steel Hand…”

The snap-hiss of a lightsaber brought her out of her smug mental state. That hit had been a little too satisfying. But now things were getting real. Armin had just been beating her before. Now he had a weapon that would in fact main and/or kill her.

And yet the fear stayed devoured in the her calm center. The power of her internal willpower was holding it down while her strength flowed from more potent emotions.

The lightsaber came in at her, a single crimson blade. And when it came down on her head, Astrid had the extreme pleasure of watching the look of astonishment on Armin’s face when the blade didn’t cleave through her arm. Astrid backhanded the beam with the plate on her gauntlet. The cortosis weave that Keelen had gifted her did it’s job and held against the lightsaber. It was far from a foolproof defense but it suited her combat style. She knew she wouldn’t be able to take many strikes that way, eventually the cortosis would melt and the blade would cut through. So she had until then to end the fight or disarm him.

In the meantime, Astrid rewarded the stupid face with a full helping of knuckle sandwich.

When Armin recovered from the second hit, he came at Astrid in earnest. He wasn’t looking at her like a former slave girl now. His gaze had changed from triumphant predator to cautious fighter. His form improved and his control enhanced to the point that Astrid was on her heels deflecting the blade with her gauntlets and bracers, or dodging the strikes altogether.

She got a few hits in, but nothing to deal serious damage. And suddenly, Armin gained the upper hand. One more strike to her gauntlets and Astrid would lose an arm, and then her life.

Armin came in with a flourish and planted a boot in Astrid’s chest, launching her back to the ground. She was rolling backwards, absorbing the hit but knew when she came full circle to a kneeling position, she’d be skewered in the face by the beam that was trailing her.

It was over.

[Rabbit]

Several Weeks Later


The meeting had been uneventful - unfruitful, too. No one knew what was going on in the space around Teth. Until more intel came in, Keelen really hadn't found much use in attending said meeting. But, he wasn't Praetor Magnus...so, when he was called, he went. Even if he thought the gathering of Strife's senior Lords to be quite a bit premature, considering the staggering lack of information available to any of them...

Thankfully, the meeting concluded after only a few hours. A number of Lords continued to mingle with each other afterwards, but the Chiss made himself scarce as soon as he could. Politicking and hobnobbing with the others had never really been his cup of tea to begin with, but he had been feeling an strange undercurrent in the Force. Keelen could hardly say what was causing it, or what it meant, but the restlessness that accompanied the Feeling made him eager to find his apprentice and return to the Revenant.

Finding Astrid was easy, even in a place the size of Kaas City. The two had forged a strong bond with one another and Keelen was beginning to discover that he could Sense Astrid with almost pinpoint accuracy, as long as she was within a several mile radius of him. The Praetor suspected that they might be able to Sense each other even farther away from each other than that, but they hadn't yet been in a situation where the distance of their connection could be pushed to its limits. For now, he was simply pleased to know that he could find his apprentice without undue difficulty...

And, without undue delay. As Keelen came closer and closer to where he Sensed his apprentice, the stronger and stronger the sense of foreboding grew. Then, without warning, an familiar voice spoke into his ear -

"Lord Invictus, sir? This is Lieutenant Marcer."

Keelen's stride didn't skip a beat, but his dark brows furrowed together in mild concern. If the Revenant's Communications Officer was contacting him, something had gone very, very wrong...

"Go ahead, Lieutenant," Keelen pressed a finger to the center of the comlink that curled around the outside of his ear.

"Sergeant Omahri just requested a priority one call to you," Marcer's tone was clipped, a sure sign of the man's concern. "But, her link dropped before I could patch her through to you."

"Something's wrong", was what Marcer wasn't saying. Keelen understood, nevertheless. He knew all of his senior officers well - their individual body languages, the many tones of their voices, and many of their unconscious, subtle cues.

"I understand, Lieutenant. Her last known location?"

There was a brief pause as Marcer was, no doubt, consulting another one of his many computer screens. Keelen imagined him leaning over the shoulder of one of his enlisted sailors, as the slightly near-sighted officer scanned a screen for the information he needed.

"Ragnos Plaza, my Lord," the good lieutenant answered after only a few seconds' pause. "With Acolyte Blackspyre."

"I'm on my way," Keelen kept his voice smooth and level, though his own anxiety kicked it up a notch.

He disconnected the call and lengthened his stride. He was only two blocks away from the plaza; the Chiss was quite familiar with Kaas City and Ragnos Plaza was a popular spot for shopping and dining. He'd frequented the place quite a bit over the years - one of his favorite restaurants in the whole city was there, as well as an excellent armorer's shop. It also didn't surprise him that Marcer had told him to head toward Ragnos Plaza - Keelen had already figured that that was where Astrid was, based on the Sense of her that he had been following for the past fifteen minutes.

The Sith Lords didn't run about in public, but Keelen had perfected the art of the speed walk years ago, as a young cadet at the Chiss Academy. It took him about barely two more minutes to make his way to the plaza and through the crowd that had gathered at the edge of it. The Chiss' presence was commanding and even those who weren't Force Sensitive could usually feel his presence. The crowd was uneasy...but people stepped out of the Praetor's way without him even having to open his mouth.

Once Keelen saw what was at the center of the plaza...at what was making the bystanders so uncomfortable...at what had made Sergeant Omahri attempt a priority one call to him...

Incandescent anger blazed through Keelen's veins.

Astrid was on the ground in front of a young Lord who's profile the Chiss immediately recognized as his apprentice's chief adversary on Korriban - Armin Polce. Keelen's lips curled back from his teeth in a snarl - a snarl that turned into a deadly hiss of fury when he saw that Polce wasn't alone.

Lord Saevus, who he had seen just a half hour earlier in the meeting that they had both been required to attend. Saevus hadn't spoken a word to Keelen then - the human man never did, if he could help it. The two of them had been at odds with each other from the moment the Chiss had ascended from acolyte to knight. Saevus, who came from a wealthy Dromund Kaas family, was about as xenophobic as the entire Chiss culture. Unlike Chiss society, however, Saevus believed that aliens deserved lives of no greater consequence than that of slaves. As it happened, Saevus had no clue that Keelen had been a slave at one point...and even if he had, Keelen doubted that would have never stopped the man from trying to treat him as one. The two had never come to blows - such petty acts were deeply frowned upon by the social rules that the Empress had enforced upon her own ascension to the supreme leader and lawmaker of the Empire. But, Saevus and Keelen had no love lost between them; thankfully, their encounters with one another had been few since they had both ascended to Praetor, and those rare meetings had always coincided with very public social obligations.

This encounter, however, was about to become painfully personal - painful for Saevus, at least. Four humans nearly fell over each other trying to get out of Keelen's way, as he finally stepped free of the crowd. Rage practically rolled off of the Chiss in waves that, while invisible, could be felt by anyone within arms reach of him. The Praetor's red eyes blazed even brighter than they usually did, as he took in the sight of Omahri on the ground, her hands clawing at her throat as an invisible force choked her.

Keelen didn't say a word, and barely made a noise, as he moved on sure, silent feet toward Saevus. The Lord had his back to the Chiss, so it was a simple matter indeed for Keelen to simply grab the man by his shoulder. Keelen pinched a spot high on Saevos' shoulder, near the neck, and the man's knees buckled with a sharp exhale of breath. That broke his concentration and Omahri coughed a few times as her lungs flooded with air.

"Move, and you die," Keelen hissed into Saevos' ear.

The man looked up at him, eyes wide first with fear, then with pure hatred. Keelen could have cared less - his attention was now fixed on Polce and Astrid. For a moment, he hung back, as he waited to see what his apprentice would do in response to Polce's audacity and arrogance. Fierce pride flooded him as Omahri shouted to Astrid, and as the young woman responded with a solid punch to her enemy's solar plexus. The two exchanged a few more blows, but then Polce realized that he wasn't going to win a hand-to-hand fight with Astrid Blackspyre. That's when he finally pulled his lightsaber -

And yet, Keelen held back, just a few seconds more. This was a proving ground for Astrid and he wasn't going to interfere unless it became clear to him that she couldn't win. Which, admittedly, didn't take long. She blocked one hit from the light saber with the gauntlets that Keelen had gifted her just a weeks before, but it was readily apparent to the Chiss that she wasn't going to hold her own against a light saber for long.

Not to mention, the longer he watched, the more furious he became. Keelen decided that Polce had been allowed to bully an unarmed apprentice long enough. The young knight raised his saber...and froze, as Keelen locked his entire body in place with the Force.

Holding Polce in place with what would look to any observer as casual ease, Keelen finally stepped forward into Astrid's line of vision. He reached into a pouch he kept on the left side of his belt, just behind his own light saber hilt, and pulled out a longer, larger hilt.

The sound of another light saber activating came from behind him, but Keelen didn't even bat so much as a single eyelash. He continued to move forward, until he was almost standing between Astrid and Polce, the later who was still frozen in face, though he was very obviously trying to fight the stronger Sith's hold on him. The young man's face was turning red and he was starting to sweat with the strain of his struggle.

Then, without warning and with a smooth, practiced ease that look completely natural, Keelen grabbed the hilt hanging against his right hip, flipped it so that the business end of it was facing behind him, and activated it. There was a startled garble, as Saevus - who was rushing up behind Keelen, his own light saber drawn - impaled himself on the Chiss' yellow blade.

Keelen paused long enough to glance over his shoulder and snarl at his old adversary. Saevus' eyes were wide and there was a hiss and clatter as he dropped his light saber to the ground at his feet. Without saying a word, Keelen thumbed his own light saber and retracted the blade; Saevus wavered for a few seconds, then crumpled into a heap. The Chiss just lifted a single eyebrow, as if to say, "I warned you."

He then turned toward Polce and Astrid for the last time. He stared hard at Polce, who's face was now almost purple with rage and exertion. The Chiss narrowed his eyes to slits and practically spat at the young knight as he said -

"There is no place in the Empire for fools like you, boy. You have publicly dishonored the Empress and the Cult of Strife. Now," he paused and thumbed the light saber in his left hand; two blades shimmered into being and Keelen gave a sharp flick of his wrist, so that one of the blades was pointed straight at Polce's face and just inches away from his nose.

Then, and only then, did Keelen finally turn to Astrid. He considered his bloodied apprentice for a moment, before addressing her next.

"Show this Knight what happens when a subject of the Empire usurps the rules that govern him, Apprentice."

Keelen held the blade steady in Polce's face, until Astrid's own hand curled around the cool metal hilt. Then, with a slight tilt of his head, he stepped back and gave his apprentice the full protection of his approval. Keelen stepped over Saevus' dead body and released his hold on Polce's body.

It was now all up to Astrid - who Keelen knew, with a double-bladed light saber and the Force under her control, would now be unstoppable. He felt no pity whatsoever for either Saevus or Polce. As far as the Chiss was concerned, the two had sealed their fate the moment they broke the unspoken rule - yet, rule all the same - among the Sith to set aside their more lethal bids for power, and when they had picked a fight with Lord Invictus' apprentice...and therefore, with Lord Invictus himself.

[tenkalus]

But death didn’t come. The lance of burning energy did not skewer her eye as she’d imagined. And then Keelen was there.

Astrid blinked in surprise and suddenly found that the anger surrounding her center of focus had ebbed just enough for her to start feeling the damage that had been done to her body. Her left eye was swelling shut, her nose was definitely broken and still bleeding, and her lips were puffy and lined with abrasions. As she did a quick mental diagnostic of herself, she also felt deep bruises forming on her cheeks and abdomen, where she’d been punched and kicked. And to top it off, her forearms were slightly burned. Her bracers had done their job, but apparently they’d worn faster than she realized, and her enemy’s lightsaber might have gotten just deep enough to either kiss her skin, or melt the metal on top of her skin and burned it that way.

Either way, she was in bad shape. But she was whole.

And her master was there.

She glanced between Armin and Keelen, whose back was to her. Armin was grunting, veins popping out on his forehead and neck in a physical struggle against Lord Invictus’ ironclad will. Astrid had no idea Keelen was that strong. And on top of it, she glanced a few feet behind her mentor and saw the corpse of Armin’s own master.

Keelen had killed for her. He’d risked life and rank for her. He’d defended her very life.

In that moment, Astrid Blackspyre loved her Master every bit as much as she’d loved her own father. This man had sacrificed himself for her.

“There is no place in the Empire for fools like you, boy. You have publicly dishonored the Empress and the Cult of Strife. Now,”

Astrid blinked in surprise as that same double bladed lightsaber she’d used in their sparring session sprang to life mere inches from Armin’s nose and Keelen turned to regard her. She could see something she didn’t know was there before. But now it was distinctive. Most would probably miss it at a glance with Keelen, but she’d been around him enough to know that she was seeing pride in his gaze when he looked at her. “Show this Knight what happens when a subject of the Empire usurps the rules that govern him, Apprentice.”

As with most emotions passing between Keelen and Astrid, she fed off of what was given to her. The pride of her master was sucked into her center of being and burned brighter than even her own anger. The pride intermingled with the crimson hate of Armin Polce and began to pulse in her veins, mixing its mystical strength with the chemical adrenaline filling her back up. Her heart rate picked up, shoving that powerful intoxicant through her veins at a higher speed, and sent it to all of her body and filled her up with the Force on a whole new level. Only this time, when she was a conduit for the Force, she remained true to her real nickname, and kept control over the power with a steel hand in her mind.

The first time she’d touched the Force consciously on Cerea, it had been like learning how to run again. A rush of emotions and exhilaration. Since then, her interaction with it had been touch and go, but when she was backed into a corner, it was there and it filled her up, showing she was not only able to run, but that she could also fly. But now? With the pride of her master behind her, Astrid was no longer flying in the sky. She’d become the sky. And as she looked back to the struggling Armin, the forecast was starting to look like pissed off with a 100% chance of earth shattering hurricane.

Astrid reached up to her nose and placed both hands on either side tenderly. She found the broken angle and closed her eyes as she braced herself mentally. With a quick tug and an audible pop, she set her nose back to proper form. Instead of a whimper, Astrid clenched her teeth and hissed. It was like sniffing fire and jagged glass straight into her face and eyes for the pain that followed.

Still, Keelen waited.

The acolyte shrugged out of her tattered black robe and tossed it aside. She wanted her arms free for this. Then she reached behind her and secured her long hair by rolling it up quickly and shoving a metal pin through it, procured from her belt. Her mane would not be a weapon for this man again.

Only then did she step forward and carefully wrap her long fingers around that familiar hilt again, looking Keelen dead in the eye. She took a noseful of fire and said one thing to him.

“Yes, my Master...”

Her master. Hers.

Keelen nodded to her and stepped away. A silent message passed between them in that slight nod. He was giving her permission to cut loose.

Astrid took a step back from Armin and at the instant Keelen released his struggling body, she batted his lightsaber away casually with her own. Armin danced back out of her range lest she follow up with an attack. But she didn’t. Astrid stood there, eyeing him with death in her gaze and waiting for him to set himself.

Her tormentor glanced between the lightsaber and Astrid, and a grin creased his lips. “You even know how to use that thing, slave? It’s only been a few months since that filthy kriffing alien took you from my reach. You didn’t even know how to hold a weapon. But you know what, that’s fine, I missed my chance on Korriban. Now I’ll show everyone what a failure you are. You don’t deserve to be he-”

“You should start fighting like your life depends on it, Armin.” Astrid interrupted. “Because it does.”

She saw his gaze flick over to the body of his dead master and Armin’s face reacted in disgust. He wasn’t protected anymore.

“You don’t even care, do you?” She called out. “That he’s dead.”

Armin spit on the ground and began to circle with Astrid. Astrid followed suit, so as not to let him get behind her. “He was a weak fool! He was using me to further his own agenda’s, using my strength like a crutch. He got what he deserved.”

A new emotion bloomed inside of Astrid Blackspyre. One she did not expect to find in this situation.

It was pity.

She shouldn’t show mercy with this man, she knew. Armin was top of his class and an expert swordsman. He could take anyone. He was a prodigy.

But with the Force flowing through her and honed to clarity through the heart of her borrowed weapon, Astrid lost her rage, and she began laughing. It took Armin off guard with its light heartedness. It was a girls laugh. The sound of a girl totally at ease with the universe. There was no danger here.

Because she realized, she was a prodigy too. People believed in her. People she cared about.

“What’s so funny slave? Have you resigned yourself to death?”

The mirth was hurting her bruised and beaten body. But she managed to stop just long enough to say, “No. I just realized, you can’t hurt me anymore. Not you, or Lo-Rahn, or anyone else.” She sighed in relief and looked him dead in the eyes. “Unlike you, I have people who care about me. Now I’m going to make an example out of you, Armin, for hurting them.”

He didn’t like that. Not one bit. He ran at Astrid, flourishing his weapon as he came. But Astrid didn’t run to meet him. She walked, blade tucked behind her and running the length of her arm. Only, it wasn’t actually a casual walk. It was a walk that she’d seen only the most confident, and controlled women adopt. Women who stood tall and feared no man before them. Astrid actually sauntered forward, one foot in front of the other, her hips swaying with the movement as her shoulders dropped and her eyes became mere shadows to Armin.

Armin was raging as their blades met. The double-image of his combat decisions were dancing across her vision and Astrid saw them all before it was time to react. Her weapon was in the right position, high or low, every time to pick off his attacks. They went at full speed with each other, and Armin was getting more and more frustrated that he couldn’t just sweep her aside anymore. Who was this woman in front of him? A moment before she’d been helpless, and now she was going toe to toe with him? With a lightsaber?

She was looking at the iteration of herself that she feared, in Armin, Astrid realized. This was the blind rage and lack of self control that had been used against Keelen in the training room. It was wild, dangerous even, but mostly to the user.

He was elevated before he was ready.

Things amped up further as Armin kicked his strikes into overdrive. He finally muscled her away from his defensive zone and blasted her with a Force push. She flew backwards but rolled again and was back on her feet instantly. Armin was standing in place, panting. He tried to blast her again as she got back to her feet and stalked forward. This time, she crossed her arms over her face and took the blast head on. It pushed her back again but she planted her feet this time, so it just made her boots slide against the ground. And forward she went again.

Another blast. They were getting weaker now and Astrid shouldered through it without breaking stride, though the force of it shredded what remained of the sleeves of her combat suit, already in tatters from the blocked saber hits on her gauntlets earlier.

Astrid walked right through his defensive ring, she swept his weapon wide and made three pivots with her dual blades singing through the air. Her lightsaber was nothing but a crimson blur for a full 3 seconds as she danced through his sword arm, ended up behind him, then pivoted two more times and ended with her head down and her saber wide of her own body.

“You’re replaceable, Armin.” She whispered with her back still to him. “No one loved you, no one will miss you. You’re a relic of the past, and we are the future, Keelen and I. You’re nothing. Now die as nothing….”

Dual blades retracted and Sith Knight Armin Polce fell to the ground in six pieces. Two legs, two arms (one still gripping his hilt), a torso and a head separated from it’s shoulders.

She took a moment to steady herself as the stench of scorched meat filled her nostrils. When she was sure she wasn’t going to fall over from exhaustion, Astrid turned and retrieved his weapon, prying his fingers away from it. “You didn’t deserve this.” She said to the severed head.

It was starting to rain now in Kaas City. The water stung her broken face but she welcomed this pain. It reminded her she was alive. She closed her good eye and tilted her chin up to the sky. And as the rain fell, Astrid Blackspyre’s soul was washed clean of the filth and grime that had coated it since losing her family. She limped happily back toward her master, stopping briefly at the Lord that Keelen had dropped, whose name she still didn’t know and didn’t care about. When she got close, she saw his fingers curling and shaking. “Fil...thy… Chissssss… Keel-” he gasped.

The saber staff ignited again and Astrid drove the blade through his back and into the ground below, straight to the hilt. Astrid dropped to a knee beside the fallen Lord to shove the blade all the way down. “You aren’t worthy of uttering, his, name! Now shut your mouth, and die quietly!,” She hissed through clenched teeth. When she ripped the blade free, she saw that the hole she’d made was right next to Keelen’s. Where it belonged.

Where she belonged.

She picked up the Lord’s weapon as well and limped back to Keelen and Breena. Now that her body was burning off the adrenaline, she found that she was actually hurt pretty badly. Nothing life threatening, but she’d need some time in the healing tank to recover.

Though even hurt as she was, Astrid still felt like running to Keelen. She wanted to throw the weapons to the ground and wrap her arms around him and let her master know that she understood. She wanted to hold her new father and tell him she loved him, for all of the years and missed opportunities she’d lost with her own. She wanted to let the rain mask her tears and just sob, having finally found herself again through his good graces. She was complete again, and alive to know it. And it was only because of his continued intervention.

Instead, Astrid limped back to Lord Invictus, chin held high and shoulders straight in chiss-like professional posture, even though her abs screamed at the angle they were being held at. And she quietly presented all three lightsabers to her Master. Two in one hand and the double bladed saber in the other. She was returning his property, and the spoils of his power.

But try as she might, she couldn’t hold all of her emotions in check. Her lip quivered as her jaw threatened to unlock. Her eyes remained stoic though, as she presented the weapons back to their owner. “I b-brought these, back f-for you, Master.” Silent tears streaked down her blood soaked face, but they were lost to the rain.

[Rabbit]

Keelen was filled with pride, though it didn't show even the slightest on his face. His apprentice was a whirlwind of deadly force with a double-bladed lightsaber in her hand - she was a joy to watch.

Although...he lifted a single eyebrow in mild amusement. Astrid did indeed have a flair for the dramatic that she certainly didn't get from him. It was enough to just behead Polce, or maybe drive one of the ends of her lightsaber through his solar plexus. Cutting him up in six different pieces?

Definitely not a Chiss move. But...that was his apprentice. She had a certain way about her that was unique to herself, and herself alone. As long as she got the job done, he wasn't going to cramp her style. It was, after all, rather satisfying to see her make mincemeat of the idiot.

And oh, the triumph on her face. This was a turning point for his apprentice, a watershed moment. As Astrid turned to him and made her way toward him, Keelen finally saw the Knight she could become.

Kriff, the Lord she could become.

She walked with dignity, her back straight and her chin held high. She limped a little, but Keelen noted that she did her best to hide that. She walked toward him with an air as close to a Chiss as he could ever hope to see outside of Ascendancy space.

Ahh, I have taught you well, apprentice, he thought to himself approvingly, as he straightened his own back and clasped his hands behind him as he waited for her to finish making her away across the slight distance between them. You will be a Red Flame, yet, young one.

She carried within her all the promise of the great Chiss virtues - cunning, courage, discipline, and preparedness for any and all eventualities. Keelen would have never thought he'd find someone outside of his own race who could embody those virtues with such potent potential...but then, he shouldn't be surprised that the Force brought him the one apprentice who could.

It would be difficult for any apprentice coming after Astrid - she had set the bar high and her Master's expectations even higher. Would he ever be able to take another apprentice, he wondered absently. It almost seemed unfair to anyone who would come after Astrid, really.

He watched with dispassionate eyes as she finished putting Saevus in his place. The Lord had been trying to say something, but Keelen hadn't really caught it, as he'd been watching Astrid make her triumphant - if clearly painful - march back to him. Whatever it was, it had infuriated her - the Chiss felt the spike of his apprentice's anger, pure and hot, like the very flame she was becoming. He rocked back slightly on his heels and fought to keep a slight smile from curving up the corners of her mouth.

She walked even straighter, even prouder, if such was even possible. Keelen had years of experience in schooling his face to a perfect, disciplined mask, but oh! What a fierce young warrior he had found! His nostrils flared in a long, steadying breath in, as Astrid finally limped to a stop in front him. She held out two lightsabers to her and it took Keelen a moment to catch up, as all he heard was the bravery in her faltering voice. All he saw was courage. All he heard was iron-willed determination.

Keelen looked down at his apprentice's trembling hands, as she held out the fallen Knight's and Lord's lightsabers, along with the double-bladed lightsaber he had brought to her. With a gentleness that he hadn't displayed since his daughter was born, the Chiss reached out with his right hand and took only the double-bladed lightsaber back. He wrapped his left hand around Astrid's own trembling hands.

"You defeated a Knight in your own right, and you finished retribution against a Lord that I had been arrogant enough to turn my back on. These are yours, rightfully earned..." he paused for a moment and then, in a voice almost so soft as to be lost in the sound of the falling rain, he added: "K'eten."

Again, he didn't smile - not even the hint of it around his lips. But, it was in his eyes, for one who had come to know him well might catch. He squeezed Astrid's hands before letting his own drop to his side; for a moment, they stood there in the rain, Master gazing approving down on his battered, but victorious, apprentice. And, Keelen smiled inwardly to himself, knowing that Astrid wouldn't have missed that single Cheunh word that he had spoken to her. In time, he was certain, she would figure out what it meant. But...in time and on her own. The weight of such a word was hers to discover and to embrace in a place far hidden from public eyes.

And speaking of public eyes, Keelen remained aware of the crowd that had gathered around them - him, Astrid, Polce, and Saevus. A Lord of the Sith could not be seen exhibiting gentleness in public - such would be seen as a weakness. That did not stop Keelen, however, from recognizing the severity of the beating Astrid had taken.

"Sergeant Omahri," he turned slightly toward the soldier, who had long gotten to her feet and had been hovering at a respectful distance to his left.

"Yes, m'lord," Omahri snapped immediately to attention and saluted briefly, before stepping forward and gently taking Astrid's left arm, lifting it, and placing her own shoulder beneath the young apprentice's arm, so she could lean on the older woman as they walked.

"Help Apprentice Blackspyre back to my shuttle. It's time we returned to the line."

And with that, Keelen titled his head in a slight nod to Astrid, his only truly outward sign of his approval.

"Report to me for debriefing when you are able, Apprentice." You have done well were the words he didn't say, but he knew that she would feel them lingering in the air between them all the same.

Lord Invictus turned crisply on his heel and the crowd parted completely for him without a single murmured word. He strode through the throng of gawking pedestrians, his head held as high as it ever was, his back straight with pride and a life-time of meticulously-honed discipline. He was quite sure that he would be called to answer for what had happened, for what both he and Astrid had done. But, Keelen was a man of deep conviction and he never acted unless he believed in the rightness of what he did.

What had befallen Polce and Saevus was right. They had challenged stronger powers, and paid the price for their foolishness. For that, he would not be ashamed.

And never, from this day forward, would he shamed for the actions of his apprentice. In that, Keelen put his faith, as he had never done for anyone or anything ever before. A bond had been forged this day - a bond like one he had once had for his daughter, a bond that he privately prayed to the Force would never be broken again.

- FIN -