8: Into the Darkness
Princess Luna stood, along with the remainder of the class, outdoors under Korriban’s blistering sun. Even as the infernal red orb was sinking beneath the sky it burned those beneath it, as if it wished only to inflict as much pain as possible before surrendering to the frigid night. The sandstorms and howling winds had temporarily subsided that evening, and so Inquisitor Cia had dubbed it an appropriate time to practice another aspect of lightsaber combat – the deflecting of blaster bolts.
Each student stood ranged out on the dunes, faced by a trio of aging B-1 battle droid apiece, blaster rifles gripped in their mechanical fingers. For this exercise, the Inquisitor had assured them, those rifles would be set to stun. Just so they wouldn’t get “too complacent”, she also announced that the first to fall would be left to lie there in sands throughout the night, to be let back in only if they managed to survive it. To make it “fair”, she would also be participating, facing off against ten droids rather than three. Luna wasn’t sure if she was doing it because she thought it would stoke the pupils’ envy and ambition, or because she simply enjoyed humiliating those under her.
Probably both.
“Ready,” came Cia’s voice.
All around her, students were readying the practice swords they had been given and shifting into the defensive stances that the Chiss was currently modeling. Luna, not being bipedal like the rest of them, was forced to imitate as best she could. Her blade, still weakly held in the telekinetic grip she could muster up, hovered over her head.
“Aim.”
Cia’s own red lightsaber blade leapt from its hilt, covering her torso in what Luna recognized vaguely as a Soresu defensive position. Its glow brightened the slowly-dimming desert around them.
“Fire!”
Immediately, all of the B-1s burst into action, squeezing the triggers of their E-5 blaster rifles. Blue rings of energy shot out at high speeds towards the alicorn princess and all her fellows. Slower than regular blaster bolts but still far faster than even the quickest organic, the stun blasts were difficult to intercept. Luna caught one on the edge of her blade, whereupon it dissipated into a surging electrical charge. Three more she ducked.
Around her, the other students were finding success to varying degrees in defending themselves, though for most it seemed a challenge. The exception was, of course, the Inquisitor. Her red lightsaber flashed through the air in a blur, easily catching each and every blue ring that flew at her along its length. The Chiss even had one hand behind her back and confident smile on her face.
For some time – she did not know exactly how long – Luna’s only focus was on the hateful machines in front of her and their guns. As she focused on her loathing for her past failures, the dark side of Force flowed through her body, lending her split-second precognition of where the droids were to aim next. It was a small advantage, but it made all the difference as she struggled not to be the first to be shot down. One-by-one she caught the stun bursts as they came or else twisted her body so that they went around her. The effort was exhausting, but through the sweat Luna began to feel a sense of accomplishment. She was doing it! She was really doing it!
And then one of the blasts got through.
Luna shrieked as the blue ring clipped one of her extended wings. It immediately dissipated into a powerful charge that coursed through her body, overloading her nervous system. Her beaten body once more spasming out of her control, she lost her grip on the sword she had been given. Immediately, several more blue rings took the alicorn princess head-on. She tried to duck, but her muscles were clenching, her joints refusing to obey her commands. Luna managed to keep wobbly hooves for a number of seconds before collapsing onto her side in the sand.
Unable to move, barely able to breathe through her incredibly constricted chest muscles, the princess was reduced to glancing about with her blue eyes at the students around her. To the proud alicorn’s infinite chagrin, she saw that not a single other being had yet been overcome by the droids’ weaponry.
She was the first down.
The Harmony’s engines whined loudly as the freighter prepared to make the jump to hyperspace. Then, with a jolt, the ship left Yaga Minor and its fighter escorts behind. For only the second time in her entire life, Twilight Sparkle watched as the dark void of space was replaced with swirling streaks of blue. She felt a little nauseous at the sight.
“We have entered hyperspace,” FA-4Z7B announced mechanically. “Estimated travel time to Serenno: 16 galactic standard days.”
“Thank you, FA,” the alicorn princess responded as she unsteadily got to her feet. “Please keep the ship on course and alert me if anything new comes up.”
“Roger roger.”
Twilight paused before the cockpit’s rear door. “…And please don’t say that.”
“Yes, mistress.”
“Thank you,” Twilight said, slipping out the door.
As soon as the automated door sealed shut behind her, Twilight released her spell with a sigh of relief. Her human body shimmered and faded as she resumed her natural form. She hadn’t dared risk it while still in the system, but it felt so good to be back on four legs again. Human bodies felt so unnatural.
“Hey Twilight,” said Spike, who was seated atop a crate containing portable rations, munching on one of the nutrient bars contained within. “Want one?” he offered one to the alicorn. “They’re not bad.”
“Thanks Spike,” Twilight took the ration bar gratefully, peeling off the rapper and immediately biting in.
It wasn’t particularly tasty, but according to her research was the most efficient way of getting the necessary nutrients to both herself and her dragon friend without undue risk. They could hardly hope to save their planet if both dropped dead from some alien food that wound up being poisonous to them, after all.
As both gnawed on their first meal in the Harmony, Twilight reflected on her choice of destination. Serenno was the homeworld of the deceased Count Dooku and a major Separatist bastion during the Clone Wars. After the mysterious shutdown of the droid army, however, the planet had surrendered peacefully to the new Galactic Empire. That, combined with its immense wealth and the fact that its populace was almost entirely human, meant that it had been treated more gently than most former CIS worlds. What data she had indicated the Imperial occupation force was not particularly large.
Twilight did not know where, if anywhere, other disgruntled worlds could be found – it wasn’t as though the Empire told the galaxy where it was facing insurrection. But starting with a world that had fought a bitter war with the Republic and yet remained relatively intact seemed a decent idea to her. That Serenno was located in the Outer Rim, far from the Core Worlds where the bulk of the Imperial Fleet resided, only added weight to the idea. Twilight was virtually certain that she could find dissenters there, even if they were nothing more than Separatist diehards.
After all, she reflected, an old ally had become a new enemy. Why couldn’t an old enemy become a new ally?
Korriban’s night cycle was, in its own way, as brutal as its day. While the sun overhead had been a raging ball of fiery hate, the seven moons that circled the planet were icy-cold incarnations of cold anger. They seemed to desire nothing more than to drain the life and heat from anything caught under their blue-white rays. The sensation they invoked in Luna reminded her very uncomfortably of the feel of Nightmare Moon on her soul.
As temperature dropped around her, the dark blue alicorn slowly found that she could once again move. At first it was just a twitch of her leg, but soon it was moving the leg, then her other legs, then her wings, and then her entire body. By that time, three of the moons were high overhead, chilling the very sands of the desert world below. The alicorn princess soon took to outright burying herself in the sands, even her fur coat unable to protect her from the sheer supernatural chill of Korriban’s night. Even shielded from the winds in her improvised burrow, Luna shivered endlessly in the cold. Unsurprisingly, that night she got no sleep at all.
After several frigid, miserable hours in the hole in the ground, Luna was even ready to welcome back Korribam’s horrible reddish sun.
The fiery orb’s return to the sky marked the immediate end of the chill, banished as if it were never there. In its place came the all too familiar sensation of baking heat, the sands of Luna’s hole perceptibly beginning to warm beneath her hooves. At first it was almost pleasant, banishing the goosebumps that had crept across the alicorn’s skin, but very soon it grew too hot to remain underground. The fact that this seemed completely counterintuitive – Luna knew many desert creatures on her homeworld survived the day by hiding beneath the sands – did not prevent it from being so. Cursing the star that seemed determined to drive her out into the open, the alicorn princess emerged from the sands dirty, bruised, and feeling angry.
The doors of the Imperial facility were closed, and remained so for some time, leaving Luna with nothing to do but bake and simmer. By the time that the double durasteel doors trundled open, she felt ready to punch somepony’s lights out.
“So,” said Inquisitor Cia, looking as nonplussed as she usually did. “You survived.”
“Didst thou ever doubt?” Luna huffed.
“Yes,” she answered.
“Well, now thou knowest better!”
“We shall see. You displayed potential, but…” she frowned. “You have been my worst student, and I am not certain why. I would advise you to do better in the future.”
Luna simply gritted her teeth and snarled.
Cia smirked. “A good attitude to take. Now come.”
The Chiss turned her back on the alicorn and led her straight back into the climate-controlled building, the doors sealing shut behind them. Without a further world the Inquisitor led the princess down a series of corridors, past rows of motionless droids, and down a long hallway with twin rows of identical sealed doors. From behind some of them, Luna thought she could hear faint sounds of sobbing or screaming.
“Here we are,” said Cia, stopping at one of the many featureless durasteel doors. It opened with a wave of her hand. “In you go.”
Suspiciously, Princess Luna stepped through the portal. The room inside was a rather featureless grey box resembling greatly the room she slept in, with faint red ceiling strips providing the only light. What immediately caught her attention, however, was the metal table in the center.
Shaped in manner vaguely reminiscent of a coffin, the slab of durasteel was connected to twin mechanical limbs bolted to the floor on either side. They could obviously raise and lower the table at will, adjusting the angle to whatever their controller wished. Around the centerpiece were smaller tables bearing ominous-looking implements and devices whose purpose Luna did not know, but could guess easily enough.
Strapped to a table was a man.
“This,” said Cia, stepping into the room after Luna. “Is former Staff Sergeant Alton Drech, once of the Confederacy of Independent Systems.”
Luna let out an involuntary hiss at that name. Cia nodded approvingly.
“He is a traitor to the Empire, and a coward. He fled into the wilds of the galaxy after the end of the Clone Wars,” Cia took a few steps forward and grasped the human’s chin in one blue hand. “But the Imperial Security Bureau always gets its man, doesn’t it?”
“Please,” Drech said, his green eyes looking up into Cia’s red. “I’m innocent! I swear! You have the wrong-”
Cia slapped him across the face. “Do not lie to me! You are Alton Drech of Ruusan, former member of the Republic’s Judicial Corps, defected to the Separatist Alliance, fought in the Clone Wars, fled after the collapse of the CIS, captured two standard months ago on Ord Mantell,” she leaned in close. “I have your entire history on record, from your service to the Republic to your years in the Separatist Alliance. So do not think you may lie here.”
The man looked down, saying nothing more.
“Now,” Cia turned back to Luna, beckoning her forward. The alicorn approached cautiously. “We are going to try something different. I want you to break him.”
“W-What dost thou m-mean?’ Luna stammered, more to buy time that anything else. She had guessed the instant she had seen the cell.
Cia raised an eyebrow. “What do you think I mean? Probe his mind, torture him, whatever works. Wring the names and locations of his old contacts out of him.”
“But I don’t know anything!” protested Drech, earning him another slap in the face.
“Silence! You will speak when spoken to, worm, and not before!”
“But-”
Cia pressed a small button to the side of the table, unleashed a powerful electrical pulse across the metal surface. The man screamed and writhed against his restraints, to no effect. After a moment, the Chiss released the button and electric current ceased. Drech went limp, sobbing and smoking slightly.
“So,” Cia continued, ignoring the man’s soft moans. “This should easy enough. The man is a great coward. I imagine you’ll have no trouble interrogating him.” When all Luna did was stand motionless in place, appalled, the Inquisitor gestured. “Well, go on.”
“P-Please…” Drech managed between heavy breathes. “I w-was just… a q-quartermaster… I d-don’t k-know anything…”
“What did I tell you about speaking out of turn?” Cia’s finger gestured slightly, depressing the button again and triggering a longer round of electric shocks. Drech’s shrieks echoed throughout the confined space. Eventually, the Inquisitor relented and the flow halted once again. “Some people never learn,” she sighed. “Regardless, I shouldn’t be the one doing this. This is your lesson, after all, not mine. So, Luna, show me what you can do.”
“…No.”
The Inquisitor’s luminescent red eyes narrowed. “What?” she hissed dangerously.
“We said, no!” Luna repeated, stamping her foot down. “We will not be party to such barbarism!”
“Even after what the Confederacy did you homeworld?”
“…” Luna hesitated, looking down at her hooves.
“After all of your kind that those like this man killed? After all the cities razed, all the lives extinguished?” Cia smiled knowingly. “After all that, you say you won’t deliver justice to one of the guilty parties?”
Luna looked her in the eye. “Aye,” she declared. “Even one of them. We are not a monster! We will not torture a victim on thy behalf! We are better than that!”
“I see.”
Without warning, Luna was flung off her hooves. She slammed roughly into the durasteel door behind her, head first. Dazed, she could do little to respond as Cia slammed her telekinetically against walls, floor, and ceiling.
“You,” she said, punctuating each word by ramming Luna against something else. “Are. Weak! You. Are. Worthless! You. Are. Pathetic!”
Cia gestured again, and Luna tumbled to the floor in a pained heap. It felt as though a dozen tons of weight were atop her body, and she could not move. She could barely flick her eyes up to look at the Chiss looming over her.
“I see what your problem is now,” said Inquisitor Cia, frowning. “You refuse to give yourself fully over to the dark side. You want your power back, but you foolishly think to cling to your antiquated moral code at the same time. You haven’t the strength of will to be an Inquisitor,” she drew her lightsaber, the red blade illuminating the cell around her. “Perhaps I should just kill you now as an example to the rest.”
Still crushed under the alien woman’s telekinetic strength, the alicorn couldn’t even manage a snarl. After a moment, Cia raised the glowing red blade high above her head.
And then she hesitated.
The moment seemed to stretch on for an eternity. Time stood still as the Chiss regarded the prone alicorn, lightsaber held high for the final blow, merely awaiting her decision to deliver it. Luna tried to struggle, but found herself thoroughly unable to move so much as a single feather in her own defense.
At last, Cia deactivated the saber and returned it to her belt with a shake of her head. “No… you still have great potential… It would be a waste.”
The pressure on Luna loosened slightly, enough to allow her to speak.
“We will not,” she hissed through gritted teeth. “Be thy torturer.”
“Perhaps a lesson on the futility of heroics is in order, then,” Cia gestured with two fingers.
Behind her, Alton Drech screamed once again as more electricity coursed through his body. His screams grew louder and louder by the second, his body’s wild thrashing enough to even shake the table somewhat. But the electricity did not stop – on the contrary, if anything it grew in intensity. One of the man’s sleeves caught fire under the barrage, which quickly spread itself to the rest of his clothing. Burning and shrieking with agony, the one-time soldier of the Confederacy of Independent Systems was tortured to death as Luna looked on.
At last, when the mercy of death had claimed her victim, Cia made another gesture to shut off the flow of electricity. The human’s limp corpse hung there, the smoke flowing upwards into the ventilation shaft overheard.
“You know,” Cia commented idly. “He really didn’t know anything. I just wanted to see what you would do,” she glanced down at Luna. “You failed the test.”
Luna spat at her feet.
“Yes, well,” the Inquisitor looked distastefully down at the smudge on her jackboot. “The question remains: what to do with you? Hmm…” she tapped her chin thoughtfully, the other hand behind her back. Then she smiled. “I have it.”
“We will not do thy bidding,” Luna growled.
“You will,” replied the Chiss, kneeling down to better look the alicorn in the eye. “Or it will be you on that table next.”
Luna’s ears folded back. Cia smirked.
“I have your attention now, do I? Very good,” she resumed her full height. “I am sending you on… a little expedition. You will follow my directions exactly, and when you return you will have either fully embraced the dark side of the Force… or you will be another set of bleached bones in the sand.”
“Where,” Luna managed. “Are we going?”
“The heart of the darkness on Korriban,” Cia answered. “The ancient burial ground of the Sith. The Valley of the Dark Lords.”
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DUN DUN DUNNNNNNN
First thing i noticed about this story is a spelling error in the description. not a good first impression :(
I would love to read this, but at the end of the last story you destroyed luna's horn. Unless it is replaced this may make me too sad to read it. Putting it in read later for now
Sounds lovely! I'll pack the picnic.
The question is, how far will Luna be truly ready to go to become more powerful and able to protect her people?
Nice. I'm glad to see that Luna is finally going to the VotDL.
5694046 Don't forget the cookies. The dark sides's motto clearly states ''Come to the dark side. We have cookies!''
Heh. She's totally getting possessed.
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All aboard the hype train!
Nice place to nap
5695218 I just want that old pony's tale to come back and rip that Inquisitor limb from limb.
Is it bad that I felt instantly that he'd done nothing due to he way it was addressed by Cia?
I just wanna see her get her powers back and wreck some face XD
Darth Bane is going to have FUN with her...
5694590
Choo choo, mofo, choo choo.
I am curious of whether Luna will end up evil(again) OR she makes use of her connection with the force to wipe the floor with Cia and then proceed to slaughter the empire's soldiers wherever she meets them. Personally I hope for the latter, I mean, it's pretty much bound to happen as the dark side of the force runs on negative emotions such as hate, it's actually remarkably similar to dark magic now that I think of it.
Anyways my point is that the dark side of the force is not bound to a side, in other words it is quite a high chance that you will end up with suddenly having a batch of lightsaber-wielding force-using persons coming from the planet and proceeding to wreck face all over the empire. Sure they probably have the stronger sith in Darth Vader BUT he is only one person, I have a feeling Luna will be quite the force though.
yes......
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Yay, the Valley of the Dark Lords remind me of the good old KOTOR days
Sadly we come to the inevitable thing about the Sith of lower class, they're so boringly evil it just makes everything go slowly. Palpatine can sway an entire world with a speech, Vader can intimidate the room by simply walking into it and breathing, Dooku could duel the best of them to death and reanimation then death again and Ventress was an interesting character who had a character arc. Cia will eventually just die to that good old karma that's loitering overhead like an overprotective parent. On a side note Twilights plan is depressingly silly. The droids have all been shut down and their command ships decommissioned and no doubt melted down for Star Destroyers. She's gonna be disappointed when everyone on Serreno tells her "it's all gone you idiot!" XD well it's still got that good writing that makes me want to keep reading no matter how much the regular Star Wars spoils it's plot to me!
5694457 Considering what's happened to that poor place it should've been called "Valley of the Dark Lords, the place where all those bloody looters nicked all the cool stuff." XD we all did it in KOTOR
That is one very un-Chissy Chiss.
Awesome chapter! :D loving this!
Then again I just love a lotta stuff.
Hehehe, Looks like Luna is in for one hell of a time!
hehehehe.
Nice job!
You know, I need to brush up on my Star Wars stuff. Because then lines like "Valley of the Sith" would mean something to me.
HEE HEE HEE HEEEE!!!! Time for the Valley of the Dark Lords!!
For once I'll be "visiting" it outside of the poor representation of it from a videogame! This gunna be AWESOME!!!
Twilight took the ration bar gratefully, peeling off the rapper and immediately
1. Wrapper.
Cia is Principal Skinner.
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In the Clone Wars The Lost Missions Yoda went there and met the ghost of Darth Bane will Luna meet him too?