Young Writers Society

Damien felt Varius become one with the force. Apparently, this was no ordinary intruder. He hadn't sensed the usual force radiations that usually came with living creatures. Some how, it felt like a void in the force. He thought at first that it was just Evgrisa's ysalamari-lined cell, but it seems his senses weren't fooling him.
"Whether you know it or not, this is my game. We play by my rules," Damien said to Evgrisa as he searched one of his inside pockets. Pulling out a comlink, he spoke into it.
"What's our status?" he asked. A voice spoke on the other end of the comlink.
"Nothing so far, mi lord. We have watches on the perimeter, and none have reported anything unusual."
Damien let out a scowl. "Send Darth Carok and Darth Arcanix by swoop bike to intercept the jedi. We will make the curse the day they set foot on my planet..."

Suddenly, a memory was brought up at his words.
'This is my game. We play by my rules.' Darth Vengence had said it to her. Then she'd poisoned him with the Shak T'kai. Darth Nekre had said it to her. Then she had escaped him. She could recall three other Sith, all not important enough for her to remember their names. They had died by their rules.
She did not laugh, but she smiled.
"As you wish."
But be warned. She thought.

Ashana strolled casually along the corridor. Between the cloaking device in her belt and her special "abilities"...or lack thereof...as long as she didn't make any noise she was virtually invisible. It was funny, really, how her enemies had provided her with the tools she needed to defeat them. So the punishment for stealing on Tatooine was to lose one's right hand. So what? Goodbye normal hand, hello mini blaster that can never be confiscated.

The other advantage was a bit more complicated. Once, there had been a deranged sort of cult that believed the force was evil. These people were violently opposed to both Sith and Jedi (yes, I'm making this up.). Both their name and their culture had been lost, but before they dissapeared they had recruited some of the galaxy's most prominent geneticists. These geneticists had worked for years to decode the DNA of Ysalamari, to discover how it was that they were immune to the force. At last they had found the key. Just as they were about to begin a dangerous, experimental process to modify human DNA to have that same force-denying factor, somebody just had to realise they were being spied on.

Six spies were captured. All were used as the guinea pigs for the DNA experiment, and two had died. The four that remained had little memory of the following days. Ashana personally could only recall a faint image of what must have been the only battle in history when Sith and Jedi fought on the same side. Others refused to acknowledge that it had ever happened, and even now, a year and a half later, she wasn't quite sure if it was real.


Ashana paused for a moment in the hall to listen to the transmissions from the room where Eclipse was still talking to his prisoner. "...by swoop bike to intercept the jedi." Jedi? Cool. Better warn them via Landu.

Alanah Jenx:

Now he was beyond lost....."*****n hell he cursed under his breath."

He had never been good as a navigator, he decided to meditate on this matter.

When he heard a noise.....

It had been five minutes since the two sith masters departed. Damien had ordered every apprentice and master to search high and low for any spies or intruders hiding in the long halls of the sith base. His patience was running thin. Another minute passed and he had had enough. He gathered all his power to himself as he closed his eyes. After a second of closed lids, his eyes opened, once again revealing pure black voids. Sparks of electricity jumped from random areas of his body as he calmly walked through the endless halls. As he went by the storage rooms, he stopped in front of one of the many doors. He could hear whispering. Though to most it would be totally inaudable, his heightened state of being allowed him to ascend higher than any other. His eyes sharpened as the intruder noticed his presence outside of the door, and stopped whispering. Damien opened the door casually and walked in, the only sound in the room was of his metal boots clinking on the durasteel floor as he locked the door behind him.

"Come out, come out, wherever you are..." Damien said musingly, in almost a disembodied voice as he walked further into the room.

Evgrisa was left almost completely alone, except for a single guard in the corner next to the door leading outside. Shaking her head, she sat on the bed. He was a fool to leave any living guard within her reach. There was one spot she could access the force, but she'd have to jump to get to it, and even then, she had only a split-second.
But she didn't need to do it. Not yet. And besides, she'd need her strength for when Vengence came.
A memory came up, of a man she'd mentally tortured to death. It was vivid, to the point where she felt as she had then. All the sickening please she'd harbored...Two days of begging for an end. Then she'd waited until the third night to slowly tear his mind to death, like ripping the threads of a loose tooth... She snapped back to reality, back to the white room. "Oh, Sith spit. How am I to deal with this? How am I to forgive myself?" Holding her head in her hands, she tried to gain control of herself. Don't cry. Don't cry...
Suddenly, she felt a draft. The door was open. But the footsteps were too quiet to be Damien's. Who...? The guard she'd seen earlier. His voice was rough when he spoke, "You're coming with me."
She didn't need the force to read his emotion. Her gut tightened apprehensively. She recognized his voice from somewhere...Degobah. She had left him to die.
"You don't want me to go with you. You want me dead, either by your own hand, or your masters." Her voice was strong.
"You know me well, Evinggale." He said, and she heard a lightsaber activate. He approached the bed... She jumped up, into the center of the room, where she had access to the force. During this split-second, she sent out a message to Damien. An image of what was happening.
Then she was out of that section, rolling across the floor. Her leg and cheek were burned from light contact with the lightsaber. As long as she stayed in here, he couldn't use the force either. But he was still armed... She recalled her training with Orith, before she learned to listen to the force. How long would she manage?
Struggling to avoid his quick reflexes, she felt the dragging pull of the overdose again.

~Grif Sylver~

The sound of speeder bikes was all the warning we needed. We ignited our lightsabers just in time to meet the new threat. Our foes jumped from the speeders and ignited their own lightsabers.

One foe concentrated on me. Our blades clashed.
"Fool! You think you can defeat me, Jedi filth!" my opponent yelled.
"What makes you think I can't?" I said back, blocking another slash.
"Because you Jedi all play nice," he said.
"Really?" I answered. He launched a set of attacks on me, fierce strikes that took lots of energy to attack, and little energy for me to defend. He suddenly force pushed me against the wall. I hit as my lightsaber went flying. My opponent stood over me.
"Now you see your end, Jedi." I needed time. Then I saw it, he had his legs spread out, in traditional stance. With all my force, I kicked up, hitting the Sith in the other dark side. I reached for my saber and activated it and sliced up, killing him.

Damien walked through the storage room, waving his lightsaber infront of himself. He stopped infront of a wall to reach out with the force and try to sense the anomoly that was the intruder. Meanwhile, Ashana held absolutely still, as the sith lord's face was about three inches from her's. She could see every feature of his pale face, all centralized around his black pitless eyes. Before Damien could gain sufficient concentration, a voice cried in his head. Evgrisa's voice. Like a beast who had just caught sent of another quarry, Damien raced out of the storage room like a shadow on the wall. Someone was tampering with his bait....

A lightsaber slashed and hit, scraping across her thigh. Her blood rushed with adrenaline. She couldn't stay in here.
She bolted, glad that the cut wasn't deep enough to severely hinder her ability to run. Not knowing the layout of this place, Evgrisa ran down random corridors...Suddenly, she ran into something hard and fell to the ground. There was nothing in front of her. So, her opponent had grown strong in the Force. Desperate, she stumbled to her feet...well, one foot, one knee and a hand actually. Her wounded leg refused to be lifted. She reached out to the Force...
Damien was still too far away to be of any help.
She needed time. With a cracking sound, she was thrown against a wall. It hurt to breathe; her ribs must have snapped... The guard came close and deactivated his lightsaber, "Didn't think I'd kill you with so little pain, did you?" He pulled out a forked knife; one that was meant to gut a person. But first he elbowed her sternum.
Her chest felt like it had exploded. Pain seared through her and she couldn't breathe...He was holding her throat, with two fingers near her juglar vein.
She closed her eyes and came closer to the Force, stopping her heart just as she'd stop breathing.

Damien raced through the halls to where he could feel Evgrisa. I started even faster as he felt her diminishing into the force. Finally, he turned a corner to find an acolyte pondering at Evgrisa as he held her up by her throat. Damien, almost out of reflex, threw a force shockwave at him, knocking the acolyte to his back. Damien's heart dropped as he say Evgrisa slump to the floor. An emotion flashed through him that he had not felt in almost a thousand years. His eyes reverted to there normal state as he stared at her limp form. Then, the anger took him again.
"You killed her," He said wrathfully as he raised his arms toward the acolyte, who had raised himself onto his knees.
"No! Master! I-," was all he managed to say before Damien let loose a storm of lightning from his fingertips, singing the acolyte to the bone, leaving only a smoldering carcass....

...Ten...fifteen...
She startled back into the world of the living. To a lot of pain... Coughs raked over her body, and she tasted blood. Her entire body was on fire; at least, it felt that way. Everything spun dizzily, pulsating with the beat of her heart. Exhausted. So exhausted. The effort to move her fingers...then an arm...she had to move. She had to regain circulation. Ah, the pains of playing dead, she thought. Clinically, she had been dead, Evgrisa realized through her sluggish mind, but dying for ten seconds somehow always managed to save her life.
Evgrisa heaved herself onto herr elbows, but the wall in front of her nose blacked out. Last time she'd done this, she hadn't had nearly as much of a problem. But last time she hadn't consumed a lethal overdose of spice only a short time before getting into two fights with two separate Siths.
Someone was with her. The force told her this much, but even that was vague.
"Fifteen seconds," she muttered. She always tried to resume by ten...eleven was too long for her to return by herself, and in her previously weakened state...someone had helped. If they knew it or not.
She had to get circulation to her legs. "Please. Help me stand." The vibration of her vocal chords felt alien. Her voice was raspy and barely audible. Oh, the pain...she didn't want to speak ever again. Every breath she drew was short and rattling; she could pinpoint where her ribs had snapped. Her ears rang mercilessly. Did she hear someone?

Damien looked down on Evgrisa.
"Did you try to escape?" he asked. The only response he got was of Evgrisa letting off a horrible, rattling cough. Out of sympathy (which alarmed him, for he had not felt it in a while), he scooped Evgrisa's trembling form into his arms, carrying her back to the cell like a sick child. The apprentices and masters gave him strange looks as he passed them by. When they arrived at the cell, he layed her on a bed that he had extended from the wall from the control panel outside the cell. As soon as he layed her down, she coughed up a little blood. Damien walked quickl back to the control panel, entered the password, after which his hand hovered over a button hesistantly.
"If I retract the ysalamari lining, will you behave?" he asked in a soft voice. Evgrisa just let out another cough. Taking the hint, he pushed the button. A sound inside the walls signaled that the ysalamari lining had gone. Now she could use the force to help heal herself. Damien walked back over to her side. Reaching down with his pale hand he grabbed the neckless around her neck. After extracting a small container from one of his coat pockets, he sealed the neckless within it.
Evgrisa started to shiver. Damien's sympathy seemed to know no bounds as he pulled a syringe filled with a blue substance from his pocket. He removed it's cap and squirted a little out to make sure no air was in it.
"It's kolto. It's what we used before bacta. Hold still," he said as he grabbed Evgrisa's arm. Lifting up her sleeve, he injected into her veins. Her shivering instantly stopped, and her breathing sounded better. As he started out of the room, he took a glance back.
"Don't die," he said as he sealed the cell once more....

Evgrisa rested for a time, letting the kolto spread through her. Only after her breathing had steadied slightly and the room had held still did she reach out to the force again. Healing was slow and her control over the force was clumsy. Evgrisa knew better than to try to move.
She focused on her physical pain, on recovering. She didn't want to think. She didn't want to sleep. After she had brought herself back, all of her surpressed memories had become as easily accessed as her name. These thoughts would torment her.
In spite of her efforts, she dozed and dreamed.
She was on Lord Vengence's ship. Behind her lay the dying sentinels. They could do nothing to her: She had sliced off their arms and legs. She wore a long, black cloak. Before her was Vengence.
"I see you have decided to join me, Sister."
She did not respond to his greetings. He continued, "Together, we will bring the Sith united under one ruler. The Jedi will cease to be."
"Who might that one ruler be?"
His face displayed surprise. It was fake. But he spoke evenly, "A detail to be decided later. But, I am pleased that you have embraced the dark side. You see how love has brought both of us here."
"Yes, Brother. I will join you." A lie. But she knew how to get away with them.
He looked happy. Evilly happy. "We are attacking the renegade faction now. Join me with your forces on the other side of the planet."
She nodded.

While aboard her new ship, she turned on "her" crew. They were few enough and fell quickly. Fell, but didn't die. At least, not until she left the ship abandoned in a distant port. She heard the news: Vengence had won, but the casualties suffered were extreme. Now he had only his money and his most loyal of supporters. His sister's failure to come to his aid had eliminated almost all of his man power.
In the silence of her room, she burned the cloak but held onto her lightsaber. The seal on her necklace had broken and needed to be re-done. She washed off the single drop of poison in a pan. It was this that would come close to ending her brother's life.

She woke and passed her hand over her eyes. She could remember when they were black...so black that they were nothing but endless pits... She had sought revenge and found it unpleasing. Now, she remembered why she lived. Why she wanted to be on good terms with the Jedi. She had started and ended her dark reign because of Kyul. Vengence wanted her to be a Sith. That's why Kyul died.

Damien leaned in the chair as he watched over Evgrisa. His thoughts turned to the oncoming confrontations.
Two very resiliant jedi, and one sith lord and his entourage. As for himself, he had over thirty lightsabers under his command. That alone was enough to take on armies. But there were ten select individuals, titled "Unbreakables", all of them meticulously hand-trained by Darth Eclipse himself. They had been learned in his ways, that of the Sith that ruled the galaxy centuries before. Damien sighed. The glory that had been the Sith Empire was gone now. His empire had crumbled long ago...

Damien snapped to reality when he noticed Evgrisa sturring.
"I'll ask again. Did you try to escape?"

Suddenly realizing he was there, she opened her eyes.
"No, no. Not trying to escape. Just losing a battle to an old mistake."
Her voice sounded better, she thought. Evgrisa didn't try to sit up. Vaugely, she remembered him asking her the question before. And something else...
"I'm not going to, either. Even if I were healthy." She touched her bare neck and remembered him taking the Shak T'kai, "Got it in a secure place?"