Night fell over the City of Vorus on the planet Zhyr. It was late and most of the business had been seen to for the day leaving the Republic Embassy largely emptied of all employees save for a few. Situated on the twenty fourth floor of Hecate Castle, was the office of Ardelia Moraine, Senator Elect of Zhyr. Scanning through reports regarding the state of the Republic, her features were pale and disturbed. Rumors had abounded for the half of a week that the Senator had been sick. Whether a trick of the florescent lights or not, Ardelia had gained a pasty hue to her features and seemed considerably weaker than usual. Still her physician had insisted that it was a case of food poisoning and nothing more.

Perhaps this state was why the figure outside had chosen this moment to further ingratiate himself to his dark master. Peering in through the duraglass of the window, a figure clung to some nylos wire slowly drifting down. Girt in black clothing the shape melded well to the and watched the Senator pen a document with a shaky hand. She was the new prey. His master had sent him away on the pain of death, and he had sensed as she did so that a overpowering stench of sickness was to blame. It was a sickness that was radiating from this office.

Learning of the "ailment" that had lately plagued the Senator, the figure had studied the entire matter earnestly and learned that the Senator was not.. normal. Perhaps the same cause of his master's desire to send him away. As long as Moraine existed his training would not move forward. This was a test clearly by the Sith Lord, and he, the secret Apprentice would rise to the challenge.

...But the challenge being a Senator of dubious origins? It seemed so.. beneath him that it revolted the apprentice, even as his eyes drank in her form from the window. It did not matter. Moraine had been sensed by his feelings as the cause of the discord between him and his master, and so he would eliminate her. His master could consider this another example of his ability to take the initiative when something stood between him and that which he desired. Anything he desired was his, he merely had to possess the strength to sieze it. And sieze it the Apprentice did.

He had tracked her for days and made every effort to introduce samocylic acid into her diet. This was but one of several weaknesses which Moraine tragically held. Induce enough into the system and the DNA (primarily that of certain types of clones) would reject itself, unravel, and exacerbate conditions of weakness and decay. The best part was that it dulled the mind, and in turn sedated the mind's resolve.

Judging from Senator Moraine's feverish and shakey state, flesh chalky white and dull gray veins faintly etched over her face, it appeared her new dietary supplement was not agreeing with her at all. A cold smile carved across the Apprentice's features as his crimson Lightsaber ignited. Repelling from the duraglass he slashed into the chamber, a explosion of air and duraglass heralding his arrival. Whirring around Moraine put up a assault fueled by what might once of been a great deal of her own strength in the Force, but with the samocylic acid in full effect, the Apprentice easily deflected the feeble attempt to thrust him out the window.

Moraine was Force Sensitive? The apprentice now felt he understood why his master had been thinking of her so much. Ardelia Moraine. Senator of Zhyr. SHE was interfering with the dominion and return of the Sith Empire. She was stealing his master's love for him. This was unacceptable and as he stalked forward like a rabid krayt dragon toward his prey, he found suprise as Moraine reached into the folds of her gown and withdrew what appeared to be a Lightwhip. The dying witch wanted to fight?! He would educate her and dominate her as he did all who dared challenge him. Then he would break her.

The battle began in earnest. He remembered the swift blows he delivered to her. He knew the style and for the first time in his life, the Apprentice grew sluggish. His expertise, his cruelty and his hatred was still there, as was his speed, but he was lacking his typical sense that evening - He was there out of vengeance for another, and that made his mind slower than it ought to have been. And yet as he traded blows a terrible fact grew in his mind which became apparent as he gripped Moraine's whip-hand in his and snapped the fragile wrist with ease. As the Senator gave a cry of pain, the apprentice grew quiet as his eyes bored into her with a terrible golden light pulsing in the depths.

"You.."

His lightsaber sliced into the statue behind her as the Force fueled strike broke through the stone and one of Moraine's many artifacts clattered out on to the polished stone floors. It was a polished face-mask of obsidian color. With a roar of dominance the Apprentice lowered his Lightsaber and deactivated it. Placing it on his belt, his eyes drank in her form again before both of his fists ground down at the same time on her skull. Another strike came from his knee as he sent it careening deep into the Senator's stomach. As she doubled over, his left hand gripped her throat, while his right lashed out in a harsh crack to the face. She dropped from the assault and the Apprentice repeated it again, and again until all consideration of fight had been torn from her. Her connection to the Force was torn, shredded and open; and he drank from the suffering as one would a opened wound. The wound then closed. And so the Apprentice learned his final lesson and his assault continued on the Senator as hamsized fists battered flesh repeatedly and tore the breach open again.

Lifting a crimson stained hand up, he dragged the form of the Senator to her feet by her throat. With a roar of laughter his fist clenched and his arm swung downward as one might hurl a baseball. The senator flew across the room as a shattering noise of duraglass and tearing sound of cloth was heard. Marching to where the woman laid on the fringes of unconsiousness, this act of primal dominance would continue for some time as the Senator while skilled in the Force, was truly no match in her current state for the Apprentice. And so atrocities were dealt and indignities were levied upon her as the Apprentice educated "her" in the language he had been educated in. Absolute dominance.

Physically and mentally in the name of the apprentice's own newly discovered bloodrage, he destroyed the woman and showed her what the final price of her weakness was. Did she die before the lesson was completed? Was it deserved? Such things were not the providence of man to decide, and yet the apprentice's rage christened him as the executor of such acts. Perhaps on some macabre and twisted level, this too was the will of the force.

As all things must finally end, even the debasing exercise in torture eventually ended, and with a feral snarl a Lightsaber's clipped snap-hiss was heard. Illuminating the sordid matter in a crimson glow of malevolence, this snap-hiss was in turn followed by the sound and smell of searing and burnt flesh. The apprentice left nothing to chance.

The Apprentice left the Senator of Zhyr in a better state than he had left his previous victim, the wife of former Admiral Parks; to be certain however. Perhaps it was due to the nature of what he had uncovered in her offices, or perhaps it was simply some tainted form of honor that drove him, but despite multiple broken bones. A elegant white robe now tattered and bloodstained was wrapped as a macabre funeral shround around her, and extreme respect seemed accorded to the corpse.

Perhaps it was a flair for or theatrics, or perhaps it was simply a final act of dominance to his counterpart, but Ardelia Moraine was spared the fate of Jocelyn Parks in that she was left with all of her ligaments attached. The Lightwhip's tattered and inactive cord used as a makeshift hangman's wire. A single Lightsaber puncture wound through the cavity where a heart resided, and the odd position her head laid in due to a snapped neck, would be the sole means by which the New Republic would know the cause of death and this murderer of this "noble" Senator.

That night the apprentice died too, and a being of greater cruelty was born.

But the Galaxy would know him soon enough. Taking the battle armor that had laid hidden inside of the statue of Lord Vortraus and all lingering relics that the Senator had kept in her private collection including the blueprints of a weapon that would one day be completed; the "former" apprentice left a elegantly penned letter clutched in the deceased Senator's hand.

It was addressed simply as being to a man named "Deimos" and it read as follows:

"I have done you the favor you needed done. Your welcome. -Atrocitus"

Also enclosed was a small black data crystal, which was carefully laid inside of the mouth of the deceased, almost like a funeral fee so that the departed could pay some Ferryman to cross the rivers of the Underworld. Inside said data crystal was a set of Hyperspace coordinates.

Was it a challenge?

...Or was it a trap?