Star Wars: Slave Of Darkness

Sparks lit up the corridor as the circular saw cut through steel-like chitin with some difficulty. With the engineering section being relatively intact compared to the rest of the ship, their tools were also mostly intact, if in need of new batteries. 

Thankfully, power packs in Star Wars were universal, so all I had to do was unplug my lightsaber and plug in the saw.

While that meant cutting off my only light source, that wasn't exactly an insurmountable obstacle for me. Force Sight was proving to be worth its weight in gold.

From there, I started cutting through the Pit Horror's tough shell to get at the organs beneath. While it was durable, it wasn't any stronger than my armor and lacked any ability to shrug off a lightsaber. As such, it had quickly lost my interest and soon became little more than something in my way to my real prize.

When I had been hunting it, the creature had been hard to pinpoint in the Force. Unfortunately, it seemed that was a power it could invoke rather than something inherent to its physiology, similar to the Leviathan's psychic screams, so it vanished when the Pit Horror was killed.

Pity. That would have been useful for more than just killing the Leviathan. However, it wasn't a great loss as I could replicate it on my own. It would have merely been convenient.

Still, there were at least a few things that held my interest.

The chitin finally gave way with a crack that was only a little bit louder than the saw. Once that happened, I continued cutting in a straight line, splitting the armor around its thorax down the middle. Setting the saw aside, I slipped my fingers inside the cut, grasped the edges, and pulled.

With Force-assisted strength, the weakened shell snapped open with a long sickening crack, dripping more ichor onto the floor and exposing the soft flesh beneath. Quickly wiping my gloved hands on a towel, I picked up some surgical tools I'd raided from the medbay and got to work cutting away the unneeded bits.

I wasn't interested in its digestive system or respiratory organs, so most of its innards were ignored and left to rot. The particular one I was looking for wasn't hard to find. After all, the only thing I had to do was follow the fluid tube from its spinnerets.

Carefully, I cut away the connective tissues holding the Pit Horror's six pairs of spinnerets and the tube to its body. I slowly traced the tube's path into its mutilated thorax until I found my prize.

The silk organ was…not small. As I hefted the fleshy pink object, I realized that it was about the size of a dinner plate and weighed about ten pounds.

It wasn't huge, per say, but this was something I was considering incorporating into my armor. That meant I'd have to deal with the bulk and weight in addition to whatever else I was carrying.

I telekinetically unlatched the clasps and seals keeping my armor in place before floating the cuirass and the vambraces away from my body and laying it on the floor nearby.

Eyeing the scarred armor, I quickly noticed there was only one piece that could feasibly accommodate the large organ and not end up in the way.

The backplate was scooted a bit closer with a short burst of the Force before I placed the silk organ directly against the black metal. Holding it in place with one hand, I dipped a finger in the ichor that was now puddling on the ground and started drawing the arcane symbols needed for the ritual. It would take the place of my own blood as the sacrifice.

Blood was blood, and the ritual didn't care where it came from.

With as many times as I'd upgraded my armor by this point, I had the words for the complicated incantation memorized and as such easily muttered them under my breath as I wrote.

Power seeped out of my body bit by bit with every syllable, slowly being leeched into the armor to fuel the fusion. As before, it eagerly accepted my offering, like a hound taking a treat from its master.

Through my Force Sight, I could make out the process as it occurred. The organ sank into the metal slowly before stopping three quarters of the way, leaving a small piece and the tube still exposed to the air. Then, Force-enhanced durasteel began crawling up what was left…No, that wasn't what was happening.

The exposed portion of flesh was being transmuted into metal. Fascinating.

I blinked and quickly realized my mind was starting to wander. I'd navel-gaze later when I wasn't at risk of something going horribly wrong due to a lapse of concentration.

When the organ had been completely converted, the process continued as it snaked up the tubing towards the spinnerets. It took less time than before to complete, likely because of difference in the amount of matter to be converted.

Unlike the Terentatek claws, the tube was not drawn back up into the armor, leaving it to dangle from the backplate.

I hummed in thought as I looked at the other pieces. With a thought, my left vambrace slapped into my open hand while the other reeled in the tubing. Where before it had been…squishy, it was now more like a steel cable than flesh.

Combined, the six pairs of spinnerets were only about the size of my hand and were absolutely tiny compared to the massive creature it came from. If it was anything like a normal spider, each pair of spinnerets were dedicated to turning the silk fluid into a specific type of webbing.

I pressed the spinnerets onto the top of the vambrace, near the center of where my forearm would go. With a bit more power, the material fused together, though it was neither seamless nor complete. The vambrace was noticeably bulkier now and a few pounds heavier. The tips of the spinnerets wrapped around the armor and twitched occasionally. 

Through the tubing, it was now connected to the backplate. The loose tubing was a potential weakpoint, but it was one I could work around or even weaponize.

I carefully donned the armor, looking for any other changes before slipping my outer robe back on over top of it. Obviously, the curiass was now a little back-heavy, like I was wearing a bookbag. Like the vambraces had, it too now pulsed like there was a heartbeat beneath the metal.

For several minutes, I mimed going through combat maneuvres to see if the extra weight would throw me off balance. Thankfully, it didn't or at least not enough that I couldn't compensate for.

The next test would be the webbing.

Now, contrary to what Spider-man would have people believe, spiders didn't launch webbing. In fact, there wasn't even a biological mechanism to force webbing out of their bodies. Instead, they relied on gravity and the weight of their own bodies to pull it from the spinnerets.

I mentally ordered it to begin producing non-stick webbing. As the thought passed through my mind, the "claws" of the spinnerets clacked lightly against the vambrace as they worked to weave the fluid into a solid.

Soon, I could see the tip of a strand of silk ready to go, so the organ was definitely still functioning. Using the Force to pull on it, a thin strand of webbing shot out of the left spinneret pair towards the wall, the "claws" blurring as they prepared more.

The end easily stuck to the ancient durasteel and held fast when I grabbed the webbing and tugged.

Just to make sure it worked, I tried the other kind of webbing, then attempted to make the invisible webbing. Like the Terentatek claws, they responded to mental commands, only this time, the results were visible.

Or invisible, as was the case.

I grinned. This was definitely worth the extra weight.

That said, while the normal threads were produced without issue, it seemed that the invisible threads had to be imbued with Force energy as they were spun. So basically it was a neat trick, but I probably shouldn't use it in large amounts unless I had time to recover afterwards. Still, trapping a hallway or doorway shouldn't tire me too much.

A few more trials showed that I was able to vary the thickness of the strands, making them stronger at the cost of greater visibility and production time. Maybe once I got off this rock, I could have a pneumatic mechanism made. But for now, I could make do by "launching" it with the Force.

A plan was starting to form in my head for how to deal with the Leviathan. However, I didn't have all the pieces yet, the largest and most concerning of which was a method with which to protect myself against the creature's mental attacks. 

Unfortunately, mental defenses hadn't been as intuitive for me as my other powers and what little I had cobbled together had been broken into on multiple occasions if Darth Scar-Face was any indication.

Regardless, I needed to figure it out if I had any hope of getting off this planet alive.

Wiping off the last of the ichor on the now-filthy towel, I gathered my weapons and assorted gear. I didn't bother gathering the various tools I'd scavenged from the ship. It wasn't like I was able to carry them all anyways or have much of a use for them after this.

...

It took nearly half an hour of navigating crushed corridors and empty turbolift shafts to work my way out of the bowels of the ship and return to my cave. Pulling the helmet off my head, I was greeted with my first breath of fresh-ish air in hours.

Outside, the storm that had started before I descended was raging even stronger now and now heavy rain was pounding against the side of the not-mountain. Though the wind blew into the cave, the entrance was sloped down, meaning it wouldn't flood.

Ignoring the howling gale and how it tugged incessantly at my outer robe, I checked on the wards and made sure they were still functioning as they should. I was confident in my work, but it never hurt to double-check. 

Still, the lack of a migraine was a good a sign as any that the Leviathan nearby hadn't noticed anything out of the ordinary.

Satisfied that my hideaway was still hidden, I settled down in the center of the cave, my legs crossed under me. I tried to suppress a yawn, but it escaped uncaring of my complaints.

The panic of being hunted by Leviathans, the millions of screams in my head, running…no…sprinting at vehicular speeds for what had to have been dozens of miles, the near miss…and then having to go scrambling around the ship and fighting the Pit Horror.

I'd come down from most of it, but it was still physically exhausting and it all hit at once as the last of the adrenaline wore off. My legs hurt in a way that indicated they'd violently protest any attempt to stand up again, a notion that much of the rest of my body seemed to also be considering.

That was fine. I didn't plan on moving from this spot for a while.

Drawing on the Force, I eased it into my aching muscles to soothe my discomfort and revitalize my body, if only to keep it from distracting me from what I planned to do. I was tired, but I needed to keep working, at least for a little while yet.

That done, I settled into meditation. The roar of wind, thunder, and rain dimmed to a whisper as I dove into my own mind, but nevertheless remained at the edges of my perception.

I was not weak-willed, but neither dams, nor canals, nor walls had kept my enemies out of my mind. Ragnos had brushed all attempts aside with contemptuous ease and brute strength. Darth Scar-Face had slipped around them as though they hadn't been there. The Leviathans had simply flowed over them through sheer number of attacks.

I needed something that couldn't be broken. I needed something that couldn't be avoided. I needed something that wouldn't buckle under weight of numbers.

I was sitting on Corbos. The battlefield of the Hundred Year Darkness, where Leviathans had been deployed by the hundreds alongside their dark masters…and the Jedi had met the assault head on and had won.

How? How did they build up shields strong enough to keep them out? Some inner peace bullshit?

My first thought was some kind of communal meditation, but it couldn't have been Battle Meditation. That hadn't been invented until Odan Urr's time. Maybe a precursor to it?

Unbidden, the last phrase of the Code of Ruin came to mind.

'There is nothing. Only me.'

I found it ironically appropriate in my current situation. I was the only person on this world. Alone.

It was also a goal I could strive for. To be the only thing in my own mind. No masters, no intruders. My mind was my domain, my fortress.

It had been breached too often. I wouldn't let it happen again.

I would not be broken again. I would not be tricked again.

And I would be damned if I lost my mind, my life to some…feral animal! A relic from a bygone era! The forgotten scraps of a dead woman!

Walls, dams, and canals had not worked. I grasped at the rage and indignation burning in my gut, stoked by my past failures. It would be the fire with which I forged a new construct and my will the hammer.

This one would not break. This one would not be subverted. This one would not be overwhelmed.

It would simply…be.

Deep in my own mind, I set to work. The first would not be perfect, of course. The first attempt never was. Neither would the second, nor even the third.

There would be countless failures, each scrapped and recycled into the next attempt. A thousand failures for a single success.

I knew I would not succeed today. Perhaps not even tomorrow.

But here and now as I worked, I knew with certainty that I would succeed before my time was up. I would be ready before the third day ended.

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The first book of this fanfic has been completed on Patreon, you can look it up in the collection alongside the second book. You can visit Patreon if you want to read in Advance.

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