Black Shadow, Chill Wind.

[Miranda]

"There are dark places in the galaxy where few tread. Ancient centers of learning, of knowledge. But I did not walk alone. To be united by hatred is a fragile alliance at best. But my will was not law. There were disagreements, ambition… and hunger for power. There are techniques within the Force against which there is no defense. I was cast down, stripped of my power, exiled. I suffered indignities, and fell into darkness."​

- Darth Traya.


The darkness has many voices.
A whisper. A scream. A sepulchral dirge.
Sleep.
The one last breath that surges and ebbs.
Death.
The echoing abyss of starfall.
The universe.​

The voices could be so loud in one's head that it was like standing motionless in a sea of battle. But in the phantom-dusk of the caverns, it was pondlike. Small ghostly waves slithered around the subterranean grotto, then sluiced away with a rattling sound like vertebrae.

A shadow coiled. Shifted wraith-like through the deepest pitch of aphotic underground. Pushing through thick rock and corrupted shafts, through the irregular rooms of the below. This far into the caverns there were dead noises. She was a child of the darkness. For the whole of her existence she had been drawn, in her ultimate nature, to the shadow's element. To what, in all its many forms, as night, as shade, as lightless depths and nightmares, was shifting and insubstantial. To what accepted, in a moment of stillness, the obscurity of a face, a spectral haunt, but held nothing, and itself could never be held.

Now, in this deepest gutter of darkness, where things lay frozen like frightened creatures, she stalked its expanse. Through trails of dust and bone and rock, the bronchial rasps of her breath met the silence. She was in a world of ghosts, and haunted it. Moving like some graveworm through the labyrinth, beneath the Sith Temple, beneath Bastion's pocked surface. She was an underground humming.

At the edges of the forgotten undercroft, the air was cold enough to burn. There were ravines, and bottomless shafts of tunnel, and stagnant sluggish pools, necrotic and stinking. Stalagmites and granite and flint erupted from the ground like ravenous teeth, or like knuckled boney fingers raging at their burial. In the deepest of places, where reality collapsed under the crushing pressure, dust fell slowly through the dark. The world decayed on its long journey down, into nothing.

Liina Husska arrived at a vast hollow in the rock network. She was trying to find an escape. Or, rather, an entrance. For days she had scoured the complex maze of the subterranean and forgotten catacombs, searching for a way into the Sith Temple above. Staircases had collapsed, and passageways had fallen into absolute ruin. She felt buried. And still she hunted.
The woman had spent her life broken and outcast. Banished from her people and her world and sent out into the distant abandon of the galaxy. The Dark Side had beckoned to her. And so she had followed. After a liftime of searching for the most forsaken and occult places of the galaxy, where the Dark Side had called to her, had surged with infinite power and understanding, only then had she realised her destiny. Only then had she comprehended the absolute gift that had been bestowed upon her. She would be Sith. And so she hunted.

Bedrock spires converged and parted again, and slabs of quarry twisted like muscles and took the strain of Bastion's mantle above as the recesses broke, healed, broke. The nightscape below the surface was one of mountains and canyons and rock-forests, shuffling dunes, crystalline caves and graveyards. The air was dense with dust. Islands floated impossibly in the deeps, caught on tectonic rifts. Some like coffins, slivers of grey and charcoal. Others gnarled like fists half a mile long, suspended in the earth, moving on slow, sedimentary streams. It was a hidden kingdom.

At the edges of the geological shelves where cold, relentless air gave way to the creeping dark, the woman scrambled. There were abyssal clefts. There were places where the knife-like stone and muck fell away into vertical breaches that plummeted for miles, spilling into other planes. They spurted through the pores of the crust, seeping and renting back in dangerous ridges, leaving fissures through which furious rock could emerge. The caverns thronged. The darkness swarmed.

Completely worn by her hours of futile attempt she found her place in a ringed basin of stone. She built a crude fire to shut out the cold and then unwrapped a probe droid in anticipation of making a recording. The air was damp and desolate. By flamelight she watched the meted hours move. Sleep collected her and then let her go in anxious bursts. She was anguished. Sadness and anger and hatred washed over her. The Dark Side consumed her.

I will find it...

The woman let out a piercing, rage-fuelled scream that quaked and trembled through the endless caverns.

The darkness had many voices. And the voice that this dark woman found herself listening to then, was the voice of the Force.
The fire gusted painfully and died. A harrowing wind swept through the earthen chamber and consumed the very void itself. There was no life, save her own. There was nothing. Only absolute and primal shadow.
Somewhere, beyond the darkness, there was a soft percussion of rocks. A chill not carried by any air-current crept across her skin.
Something menacing was emerging in the deeps, at the edge of the dark.
There was an ominous vibration. A sinister rhythm. A malignant pulse.
The Force surged and swelled inside her.
The voice ascended to infinite power.
Darkness itself was commanded.

And then she knew, through the Force and through the darkness.
She was alone no more...

 

[Jaqen H'ghar]

Darth Atrox had been in his lab working on a new creation when he felt it. Far off, like a pinpricked star in the night he could sense someone capable of wielding the force. Someone with anger, hatred...someone with the qualities of a sith. "Lights off..." he said in a quiet tone, the lab shutting itself down near instantly. The next thing he did was to pick up his lightsabers, and head out to investigate himself. It felt cold, angry, but weak. Like a trapped rat...not strong enough to be a sith lord...no not quite. Not a marauder either, were his thoughts as he winded through the twisting tunnels towards the source of the intrusion.

An acolyte then, one who stumbled down here blindly perhaps looking for a way to gain access to a special part of the temple above...but there were no more entrances here. He had seen to that himself personally and the acolyte whoever they were would have to be seen to as well. None could know of his chambers. The very reason he built it here was so the darkside presence within would simply blend in with the temple above.

He followed onward for many paces, slowly taking his time. He did not seek to cloak himself, he would allow fear to spread at his approach, fear of the unknown fear of the powerful. As he grew closer he summoned to his will an illusion, several in fact, opposite to him. They would appear as the zombies of korriban and they would appear opposite her so that she would have to turn her back to him...then he just waited. More panic, yes...more to fuel the darkside nexus he had built in this place....

 

[Miranda]

Liina gazed into the depths. She did not flee or cower or back into a corner. She embraced the sweeping darkness. And the thirst inside her grew. It was a wild and untamed hatred that clawed its way out of her soul. She needed a mentor, to show her how to tame that darkness, to rein it in and feed it and bend it to her will. The Sith could show her. This much she knew.

There was the darkest, most menacing eclipse that bordered and shaded over the already eternal black that was the caverns. What was this place that she had stumbled upon? The Dark Side had led her into the maw of the abyss, and she stood at its precipice. Longing to become one with it.

Then suddenly, at the edge of that eternity, figures loomed and rose from the shadows. Horrible, nightmarish visions, plagued and gruesome and terrifying... they ascended from the darkness and confronted her, surrounded her. She did not flee. Her anger rose to meet the challenge and she drew her twin scimitars. Steel which she had crafted during her exile, during her aching years spent on Dathomir. Before the witches had also expelled her from their world. The hilts were black as onyx, the blades shimmering silver.

Liina embraced the fire within her and lunged forward with an echoing cry, slicing and darting at the spectral intruders. The zombies laughed and advanced towards her, malignant and festering beings that they were, her swords danced through the illusory things and never bit.

"Be gone demons! I will not suffer your vengeance!"

She continued to hack and rend at the ghastly forms but they only kept advancing. Liina backed slowly away, back into the darkness behind her. She had no sense of what was lurking behind her, watching her from the depths of the dark...

 

[Jaqen H'ghar]

He spread his wings, a metalic scraping sound echoing through the chamber as the tips of them moved across the rock floor. "Demons?" he chuckled, breaking passed the defenses in her mind with relative ease in her frantic state and instilling greater fear, the kind that paralyzes, that quenches rage and blocks out all other thoughts.

"Oh no girl...there are no demons here." He spread his wings slightly as, with a snap his of his blade a red light flooded out into the caverns and the illusion dissipated. "I'm much worse..." he said with a chuckle. "Now...who are you? And more importantly who sent you? Was it another master seeking my secrets?" The words were more command than question, the blood red light playing off the metalic cover of his wings in odd and menacing ways. He slowly warped her mind so that it looked as if the room was bathed in blood, dripping off of his wings, the rocks walls, everywhere. As though a fresh slaughter was done by the avian man infront of her on a daily basis.

 

[Miranda]

The young hooded woman, eyes as blue as ice, a face clamped with an eerily decorated vocaliser mask, turned acutely as she heard the arc of massive wings unfold and glanced for the first time upon the baleful form, the mighty and powerful and terrifying form of a Sith Lord.

The cavern erupted in a wave of violent crimson. The illusions vanished.

There was only her meagre and pitiful self, and the dreaded mantle of the beautifully frightening dark master. The air was struck from her. Her bones shook with awe and terror and fascination all at once.
Liina crumpled into an obsequious bow before the magnitude of the malevolent Force. He was a fountain of absolute darkness, a conduit of the Dark Side.

"My...my Lord. I have not come from above... I have come from far flung worlds. I have journeyed across the stars so that I might find a place in the darkness. I am no acolyte. I wished to break my way in to the Temple, and infilitrate its ranks."

Her voice was shucking and harsh through the vocaliser. She dared not gaze upon the winged form of the Sith Lord before her. She both feared and idolised him all at once. The fear in her turned to anger and hate and bloodlust. She dropped her swords in submission.

Her fear grew and swelled and fed her anger as the cavern's walls seemed to bleed, to pour and weep out nightmarish and sanguinous liquid all about her. Blood flowed and flowed and she could have screamed. But she did not.

"My name is Liina Husska. I am an exile. I have been searching for so long...my Lord. I have wracked the galaxy for its most sacred and darkest places. The Dark Side is with me always. I have been searching...for so long now...for you my Lord."

Her hands met the freezing and slimey ground of the caverns. She could have wept at the coming of this dark master. She could have screamed in victory. But she held herself, tight and subservient and bowed. The darkness had found her, had nurtured her, and had guided her along destiny's path.
She had finally found the source through which her hunger could be sated.

 

[Jaqen H'ghar]

He could sense within her a swell of energies. She had potential. She wasn't a sith, but apparently sought out various darkside places in order to learn...for all intents and purposes no training. Someone to be shaped like clay. He pondered this as he looked at her collapsed form. She was a slave to the darkside, that much was obvious. Most try to exert some kind of control on it but...how different she was.

He listened through the force, searching for any visions, any possibilities and direction, willing the force to allow him to see what might be. Slowly his mind opened up, and he saw within her the potential to be the one he had sought, the force had brought her to him, a dark gift to use. It was decided then...

"Very well...I will train you, completely. You will do as I say without question. You will learn, you will break and I will rebuild you as I see fit. If you fail me, you die. If you disappoint me, you die. I tolerate nothing less but the very best and as such no one has survived my training with their mind or body in tact yet...is this understood?" He asked, allowing all illusions to fade, the lightsaber now the only source of illumination in the cavern.

 

[Miranda]

For a brief moment Liina had almost gasped. She had almost given away that yearning that was deep inside her. Countless years of wandering the galaxy, in search of truth and darkness and peace. She had finally found it. Or, more correctly, it had found her.

She lifted her gaze for a moment and met the shadowy eyes of her new Master. It was done then. After all the years of torment and anguish at not understanding what she was, of never comprehending her own twisted arts. All those dark places in the galaxy and she had never come to learn anything more, about the hunger, about the hatred, about the struggle. Now it was all beginning to take shape. Now was the beginning of her destiny.

"Yes, my Lord. I am your vessel...I am your instrument. Do with me as you will. I shall know fear, I shall know pain, I shall know hatred, I shall know anger. And with these I shall rise from the ashes and become what I am destined to become. My life is yours, my Master..."

As the illusion of blood faded from the cavern, Liina glanced upon the Sith Lord's saber and something stirred within her. She could feel her destiny being met. Her presentiments of the future were now wholly in the hands of her mentor. Darth Atroxus. She had devoted herself to him, forever. She would survive his brutal lessons, she would harness his power, she would become his weapon, she would be reborn as Sith.

Together, Master and Apprentice, they would make the Dark Side stronger. They would rise together and cause quakes in the Force. They would fulfill the commands of the Sith, and together hold the throat of the galaxy in their clutches.

He would break her, teach her everything, and remake her in his image. And then, their legacy would be wrought...they would ascend through the darkness, and engulf the light itself.

 

[Jaqen H'ghar]

With that same noise of snap-hiss his lightsaber deactivated leaving them engulfed in darkness once more. "Use the force to follow me back, there are a couple of rough falls, try not to die before training begins in earnest..." He said and began to walk back to his own little temple. The passed a few corpses along the way, decayed experiments that had outlived their uselessness twisted creatures of sith alchemy with blades grafted to their skin or bones sharpened to points and sticking out as weapons and armor simultaneously.

He could see perfectly however, through the force the darkside lit like a cold fire these caves. He had made it so himself. Upon entering his lab he walked briskly instructing his new apprentice. "You will tell no one of this place. There are worse things than death, and I can do all of them. Should you break that command, I will do all of them. The Sith are treacherous even to themselves, it is the way of the darkside. This is my sanctuary and this room..." he said approaching two large durasteel doors which he swung open with the force. "Is my meditation and training chamber..."

The darkside flooded out from it so powerful after the torture and death of literally hundreds taking place within it's desecrated walls. On the floor there was a circle, there were markings of ancient sith writings, all sprawled out used to aid in the self teaching process that was the only way a sith lord could progress. Training was never done, the only thing reaching the level Atroxus had proven was that only he could further himself now.

"Now listen...
Peace is a lie, there is only passion.
Through passion, I gain strength.
Through strength, I gain power.
Through power, I gain victory.
Through victory, my chains are broken.
The Force shall free me.

This is the code of the Sith, from time immemorial it has stayed basically the same. To memorize it is not enough, you will not be able to progress until you show proper understanding of the code. Is that clear? I hope so..." he said not even waiting for her to respond.

"Now, you are a beast at the moment. A slave to the darkside and that is not the way. Understand the code, and you will tame your beast. It will be your strongest and most valuable weapon..."

 

[Miranda]

What little light there was, emanating from the blood-red lightsaber, was soon snuffed out and so enveloped by the shadows and darkness Liina was once again. For those many years where she had skulked the obscure recesses of the galaxy, seeking out the Dark Side, searching for it in the most nebulous and black of places, her eyes had grown accustomed to the infinite pitch.

She did as her Master instructed and followed him through the shadows, feeling her way with the Dark Side of the Force...she left her onyxian blades on the floor of the cavern, knowing that she no longer needed them.

Darth Atroxus led her to his undercroft and secret lair, a place that he seemed to covet above all else. For him to share this location with her so soon marked the introduction of her link with him, as his apprentice, as his servant, as his weapon. She would become his other hand, and carry out all that he wished, all that he commanded.

She could feel the absolute strength and power that radiated from the place. She would never disclose its secret to anyone, for as long as she still held breath. It would be their place, forever.

"Yes...my Master."

She uttered in response to his decrees. She would obey out of utter duty, and respect, and would tame her fire, would temper it, and with his guidance, would become stronger than she could ever imagine.

"Peace is a lie, there is only passion.
Through passion, I gain strength.
Through strength, I gain power.
Through power, I gain victory.
Through victory, my chains are broken.
The Force shall free me."

The words razed through her vocaliser. She took a deep breath. The Sith Code resonated with her deeply. Deeper than anything she had ever found or read or heard before. Her life would never be the same. She was a soul of the Sith now, and forever more.

"My Lord, am I to understand that we are but prisoners? That through the Force...our bonds are shattered? That through the Force we shall know strength, and power, and victory all? I am a prisoner to this darkness inside of me...but you, my Lord... shall teach me how to control it. The Force shall break the shackles of my fire. I am eternally yours Master...I will never betray you to another. They will fear us, Master. They will all fear us."

Liina knelt down into another oath-binding bow of obeisance, soaking in the dread and magnitude and dark presence of her Master. It had begun.

 

[Jaqen H'ghar]

It had been several weeks, and he had at the end of every training session, some of which lasted days on end, locked her in the meditation chamber. He had allowed her food and water, enough to survive on to keep her strength up, but nothing more. Sometimes less. His priority wasn't in her well being, if she could not keep up she would fail. But she had kept up, in the relatively short span of time, she had learned to feel the force, and control it, hurl rocks. Crush the throats of people. And, even to a lesser extent wield lightening. The main focus however was on her masters strength. He was a master at illusions, a master of fear, at breaking minds and bodies. She had started on generating horrors in the mind, on gaining access through distraction to the darkest secrets of others.

The Sith Lord had brought other acolytes, masterless and unmissed when they eventually died. By two months end, his apprentice had a meager understanding of what power she might attain. Though still only capable of such feats as befitting her rank, it had pleased Darth Atroxus well enough...and as such, she was rewarded for her efforts in mastering the force. No focus on lightsaber combat had started, prefering her to gain footing in one, and she was after all, lacking the weapon of the Sith...the Sith Lightsaber.

That would change today however...in his lab, a place she had only minorly been allowed to see during an instruction on what sith alchemy was, he had set up a table. On this table were many parts, none of which held an explanation. Crystals, power converters, cores, hilts...it was all there.

As the doors opened via the force, as was Atroxus's habit he spoke. "You have done incredibly well Apprentice. Today I give you a gift for that dedication. In my lab, are all the tools needed to make your own lightsaber. You will recieve no instruction, as that is our way. Search through the force, make it give it's secrets as to how your lightsaber should be constructed because each one is different. Each one unique as a Sith should be. There are no guides for this except within yourself."

 

[Miranda]

Some months had passed since Liina's first encounter with the Sith Lord - Darth Atroxus, in the deep and hallowed caverns beneath the Temple on Bastion. They had been grueling, arduous, soulbreaking, demanding, and punishing weeks, since the inception of her rank as acolyte into the Sith Order.
Her venerable and powerful Master had destroyed her every day, had broken her, had bent her to his will and command. She had been consumed and defeated time and time again, until finally she had risen from the darkness and made claim to the place that she so rightly deserved. She had learnt to tame the wild fire that tortured her for so many years before coming here, she had learnt to control the Dark Side of the Force, and manipulate it to her bidding.
Her wise and powerful Master had taught her so much, in such a small amount of time. But through his punishments and his agonising lessons, where she was brutalised and crushed over and over, she had come to learn a great many things about the Force.
He had divulged his sciences upon her, Sith Alchemy as it was know, had taught her how to move things...through the Force, throw objects, how to slowly and painfully clench a person's windpipe until they choked to death.
He had schooled her in his various masteries of interrogation and torture. She was to become a Sith alchemist like him, an interrogator and torturer and intelligence agent. She had read copious volumes of the Sith histories, had discovered the ancients - Darth Plagueis the Wise, Darth Sidious, Darth Vader, Darth Bane, Darth Krayt...and the countless other Sith Lords who had held the galaxy by its throat.
Liina had taken a particular liking and interest in Darth Maladi, a member of Krayt's 'One Sith' who had been an exceptional scientist, alchemist, and interrogator as a lady of the Sith. Liina would emulate this powerful woman...would follow in her footsteps, under the esteemed guidance and teachings of her Master - Darth Atroxus.

The day had eventually arrived when the lore and histories and knowledge of the Dark Side of the Force was temporarily put aside for one final test. The construction of her weapon...her Sith lightsaber.
Atroxus had summoned her from the meditation chamber, that had become her dark cell, and then instructed her to create a new instrument of death and combat from the segmented parts.

"Yes, my Lord. I shall do as you command...I shall succeed, and with it construct a weapon deserving of your power. With it, I shall serve you all the more."

Liina then was left to her own devices within the lab of her Master, an inner sanctum that had been rarely visited by her before. She felt utterly privileged.
Slowly, she glanced and inspected all the separate parts of weaponry that were spread out before her.
She closed her eyes and opened herself up to the Force. The Dark Side pulsed with focused energy around her. She let it decide, through her, which parts she would take to construct her new weapon.
As she meditated, each segment was collected from amidst the countless parts until she had each component she needed.
..........
The meted hours slipped away, as she built her new weapon. The hilt was a deep black, with bronzium trimmings, simple and understated, but with a dark focus.
She emerged from the chamber and faced her Master with something completely malevolent and transformed about her.

"And so it is done...as you have asked, my Lord."

Liina ignited the fiery crimson blade, it sung a vibrant cacophony, as if thousands of future voices were screaming at the rent of its blade. It would fell many in the years to come. Would destroy and claim many.
The path had been difficult...to reach this point. She had been shattered completely, and remade. Born anew. Born as Sith.
Her destiny had continued to unfold.

 

[Jaqen H'ghar]

"Very good..." he outstretched his hand deactivating the saber and calling it to him through the force. He changed the settings on it in order to make it less deadly. It would instead numb the arm of the victim, rather than cut it off. He then sent it back to her through the force, delicately with respect to the item in question.

"I've altered it so that you don't slice off your own head. I'll do the same to mine, so that way I don't end you prematurely." He said as he did much the same to his lightsaber. He drew it up to a vapaad stance, he would use the form he was less knowledgeable of to increase his knowledge and so as not to completely dominate the girl. Lightsaber combat, unlike the force was something you had to learn by doing. It would be pointless to strike her down countless times within a mere few seconds...

"Now, attack me."

 

[Miranda]

The acolyte watched as her Master altered her lightsaber setting and her eyes narrowed to icy-slits as she held the hilt in her hand once more. He had commanded her to attack...and attack she would.
Liina had been trained to use her dual onyxian swords, and had felled many an opponent with them over the years. She knew the fundamentals of blade practice and combat. But, as she learned very quickly, lightsaber combat was something entirely different. There was a grace and finesse about it that she had yet to learn and master.

She advanced quickly at her Master and lunged with her new crimson saber, it hissed as it snapped to meet his, striking like a snake she danced across the atrium. The front of her right foot moved first, beginning by lifting her toes. She straightened her leg at the knee, pushing the heel out in front. Then landed on her heel, and then brought her back foot up to en garde stance, shifting and lunging again as she moved into an arc close to her Master.

She was naturally acrobatic, there was an unrefined agility about her that she had acquired from the water-dancers and sword-thugs of Saleucami, only hers was gaited by the Dark Side of the Force. She disengaged, back up a little, knowing she was too close to his vertical line, leaving a wide opening for him to strike at her legs. She feinted and riposted, barraging him with several rather sluggish slashes - the new weapon still felt somewhat new and alien in her grip, its weight was unlike her heavy onyxian blades. She had always fought with two blades, but now she would learn to fight with one. And later she would request her master to educate her in the ways of double-lightsaber combat, and she would join another saber to her current one. But for the fundamentals she would be satisfied with a single hilt, for the time being. Until she mastered the ways of Sith combat.

"I can feel your energy my Lord...fight me! Do not hold back! Strike me down!"

Her anger and rage and hatred continued to fuel the fire that was in her, that darkness that over the previous few weeks she had learned to control, to master, and to unleash when the time was right. She was growing. She was becoming Sith, as her Master had so promised.

 

[Jaqen H'ghar]

He brought his own blade up, clashing against hers and with a quick sweeping motion of his wings blocked the next oncoming assault with ease, due to the cortosis weave armor. After that it was now his turn to attack, which he did by creating 3 illusions of himself, one of which was real. Using the force to bring his selves in quicker he brought down his blade, though which was real would be harder to tell, one swung for her thigh, another for her arm, and the last against her chest.

 

[Miranda]

The intense preparations that the Sith Lord, her Master, had brutally dragged her through for the course of the previous weeks could never have prepared her for a Force battle like this. It was true, she had much still to learn. Lightsaber combat was utterly a unique and different thing.
As the illusory spectres of her Master, and one of them her actual physical Master, struck out at her simultaneously, her instinct went into overdrive and she dodged each oncoming assault, she Force leaped high into the atrium's dome, above the three attacks, and landed out of the path of the blades - real or no. Once she landed, she intuitively swelled her hand forward into a Force Push at the group of her Master, deciding that with a physical Force move - the physical form and lightsaber of her Master would be revealed amidst the illusions as the corporeal met the corporeal.

 

[Jaqen H'ghar]

Out of the three rushing to catch her, only one was knocked back, knowing his illusions to be pointless in terms of energy cost now he droped them. "Good my apprentice...your learning." he said as he drove forward, a quick burst of force speed coupled with a leap bringing him high into the air catching up with her before she even hit the ground, again sending a flurry of attacks her way.

 

[Miranda]

Liina had succeeded in her first defensive strategy. Her Master had taught her well, and the natural instinct she held from her extensive training in wind-dancing with her onyxian blades had aided her somewhat. But her Master was no fool. He was a Sith Lord. He could crush her with one move if he so wished. Liina knew this, above all else.

The next attack had taken her completely by surprise, she could sense, before she landed, that her Master had shifted like a flash and sought to cut her down upon her descent. She thought fast, she had only split seconds to react, and so she reached out through the Force and thrusted herself backwards with a heavy Force push again. The inertia of the push sending her backwards and out of the trajectory of her Master's blade.

"You have taught me well Master...perhaps too well!", she arced forward and took the offensive now, slamming her foot down in a loud crack on the stone floor she attempted to distract her Master as she lunged forward and sliced her lightsaber through the air in a diagonal line from low to high aiming for the Sith Lord's left ribcage.

 

[Jaqen H'ghar]

Atroxus brought his wing up, allowing the armor to take the brunt of the attack and let it slide harmlessly across the surface, he then put his strength into a push with the wing, ideally knocking her backwards as he circled around his right hand extended, blue streams of lightening issuing out of his fingertips heading directly for her.

"Months of training to my decades? I think not..." He said in response to her questions of how well he was training her. He was curious to see how she would react, his wings were an entirely different form of combat, unique amongst the sith as far as he knew, no one else of his species implied such tactics...

 

[Miranda]

The Sith Acolyte was confounded as her Master's wing extended forth and swept its armored potency to deflect her attack. Liina's newly forged crimson lightsaber sparked and hissed as it contacted fortified metal; it must have been made of some unique and rarefied substance for her blade did not bite but instead bounced from its surface.

She was then sent flailing backwards at the wing's sudden striking buffet and she spiralled in the air, gained her compass and then like an acrobat she twisted and somersaulted backwards, kicking off the hard dark stone of the wall and landing in a crouched position a few metres from where Darth Atroxus still stood.

And then, with an enormous surge in the Force, the Sith Lord arced his hand towards her and an eruption of lightning burst from his fingertips and palm, coruscating and tempestuous, with the full fury of the Dark Side. Liina's icy blue eyes had only a moment to register the impending assault and widened in dismay. She did not know what to do against such mighty power and she pushed out her hand as a natural reflex and the conflagrant lightning struck her with furious velocity and violence. Her entire core exploded in agony and she wanted to scream. But she did not. She staggered to her knees, and with all her anger and hatred held her place. Never faltering or falling. The pain ripped throughout her body as the Force lightning amplified and surged through every fiber and nerve. She finally dropped her saber and her hands fell to the floor, she gasped heavily, hoping it would all be over soon.

 

[Jaqen H'ghar]

He stopped the lightening a few moments after the lightsaber dropped from her hand, allowing the pain and agony to continue for a few seconds more than needed. Suffering was a path to the darkside, he knew, and it would give her strength later...

Once done he deactivated his lightsaber, and placed it back within his robes. "Sith Lightening...the attack our order has been most known for over the mellenia..." He said. "There is nothing electrical about it, it merely resembles lightening and thus gained the name. In truth it is a crippling attack of pure darkside energy. Not lethal except in exceptionally large doses, but as you can see..." He said watching her struggle to breath and get to her feet. "Effective none the less."


The winged alien looked at his apprentice and continued to speak. "It can be absorbed, through proper skill...skill which you lack. It can also be, for a short, short period of time routed into certain lightsabers that will create a feedback loop, your saber I believe, has such a device though I don't think you knew what it was when you put it in there...still your instincts served you well, it was your knowledge that failed you...now would be the time to question, should you have them."