Star Wars: Slave Of Darkness

The first day passed without further incident, giving way to night. The storm continued to rage without a sign of stopping anytime soon.

With all that had happened, it was easy to forget that it had only been a few days since my encounter with Graush. I had yet to heal completely from that thrashing, much less what I had experienced on Corbos so far.

I didn't sleep…not that I would have been able to anyways. Instead, I placed myself into a meditative trance to focus myself as I worked to mitigate the worst of the damage.

Now, Sith didn't make much use of what was referred to as a "healing trance," though they understood the concept. From what writings I've found in the archives, most Sith found it too peaceful to implement it with any kind of success. 

The ones that did manage it somehow found that their connection to the Dark Side weakened their attempts and produced substandard results, to the point where it simply wasn't worth the effort they had to put in.

Many of those same writers described their passive feel of the Dark Side as either an inherent restlessness that drove them to act or a constant, hyper-charged awareness of their surroundings. Because of that, they said that it did not do well with periods of rest. 

If they weren't moving, they were either asleep or dead. For that reason, insomnia was a relatively common affliction among Darksiders, which was likely a cause for at least some of the mental instability inherent in many Sith and Dark Jedi.

The fact that XoXaan still managed to accrue a reputation as a healer despite that spoke volumes of how freakishly skilled she was. Her only known student, Darth Krayt, was able to auto-resurrect, potentially infinitly, without all the drawbacks that Darth Sion faced. 

It was a pity she was so picky about who she'd teach or I would have put in the time to look for her tomb months ago.

For people who weren't XoXaan, they had to figure out work-arounds. Jedi Healing was focused around subtly directing the flow of the Force to accelerate the body's natural healing ability, like slowly shifting the banks of a river. "Sith Healing," on the other hand, was much more of a…brute force method and had considerably more steps involved.

Contrary to the expectations of many, the archives actually held a great deal of information on these methods, most of which were some form of Alchemy or Sorcery. 

The former generally focused around creating temporary, or not-so-temporary, mutations to forcibly accelerate the body's healing or to outright cause the subject to regenerate. The latter was sheer applied bullshit, something about warping time around the wounds or something.

That book had made my head hurt just by looking at it. Gaarurra told me later that I had also lost two hours worth of memories, so I was fairly certain there had been a trap on the tome that I very narrowly avoided getting the full brunt of.

All I really got out of that research day was that the possibility of giving myself super-cancer was the safer option compared to whatever the hell the various Sorcery methods would have done if I managed to screw them up. Also that whoever handled that book last was an ass.

I'd never really experienced the restlessness those writers had described and didn't have trouble sitting and meditating. The Dark was aggressive, of that, there was no doubt at all. But it was also patient.

I certainly felt anger, constantly simmering in the back of my mind, but it was content to stay there until I needed it. Even before I ended up here and started training to become a Sith, I had never lost control of my temper, no matter how mad I got.

The Dark was patient and it was simply…there. Waiting for me to need it, to call for it. It didn't need to tempt me with promises of power. It knew that I would need it, that I would use it. I had made my choice nearly two years ago.

In the darkness of the cortosis mines, I had made my choice. I would use it, but on my terms and mine alone.

I reached for the Force and got to work repairing my body. My injuries were extensive and, for some of them, debilitating if left untreated.

I had torn the hamstrings and the Achilles Tendons in both legs and both of my limbs were sporting ugly splotches of red under the skin from where blood vessels had burst. The likely cause was probably my hours long Force-imbued run earlier in the day, compounded by the Pit Horror chasing me across the ship. 

The only reason I had been able to walk, much less run, after that was solely because of adrenaline and the Force. Now that the former had run its course and I had finally relaxed, I couldn't even stand or straighten my legs.

Left alone, it would take at least a month to recover from.

This was the biggest obstacle between me and survival. If I couldn't stand, I couldn't fight. If I couldn't fight, I couldn't escape Corbos. If I couldn't escape Corbos, I couldn't survive.

Those injuries would be the first to go.

The first step would be to reattach the muscles to their anchoring point. Using Crucitorn on myself to dull the pain, I grasped a torn hamstring with my power and I forced it to move against gravity's pull.

A shiver went down my spine as my brain registered a slithering sensation below my skin as the muscle moved. I shoved it aside to prevent it from distracting me. The next part would be delicate.

In my mind's eye, I mentally projected my awareness into my own skin. Grasping the blood slowly leaking out of the burst vessels in my right leg, a spark of power and will converted the red blood cells into stem cells. 

It wasn't nearly as complex as it sounded. Red blood cells, along with bone marrow and fat, were the one of the sources of stem cells in an adult human body and played an important role in the healing process. I simply accelerated their production.

After I had converted enough, I guided them into the space between the torn muscle and the bone before forcing them to transform yet again. This time, the cells reformed into the building blocks of the connective tissue that held muscle to bone.

In truth, all I was doing was using Alchemy to mimic what the Jedi did with their own method…only much, much faster. However, it came with some downsides. Namely that I needed complete and utter focus on the entire process or the stem cells could mutate into cancerous cells, bone, or something else.

It wasn't as efficient as other methods I'd read about, but it was arguably the safest. Or rather, the one with the least risks. While it was insufficient to deal with extreme injuries like amputation, it worked for smaller stuff like accelerating the healing of internal injuries.

When that was done, the swelling and pain in my right thigh started to recede as I directed more blood down my leg to be converted and repair my Achilles tendon. The unused excess was absorbed back into my bloodstream after I fixed the tiny blood vessels.

I released the mediation and Crucitorn and let out a breath as the pain from my combined injuries flooded back in. Slowly, I straightened out my right leg to test the repairs. Though it was a little stiff as the new tissue stretched, the pain was minimal. I could work with it. 

After a quick check to make sure I hadn't grown a mutant eye on the back of my knee, I got repeated the process on the other leg.

The rest of my injuries were not as serious and were more easily healed. I had the remnants of a concussion and a goose egg on my head, a few bruised ribs on both sides, and bruises up and down my left arm.

As I pulled blood away and filled in the microfractures in my bruised ribs, a thought occurred.

Why simply heal the injuries when I could also enhance my body to ensure it wouldn't happen again?

It couldn't be anything extreme, per se, as more serious modifications would require significant preparation and exotic materials, not to mention extensive testing on subjects that weren't me. But there were a few minor enhancements I could try with power alone…

I stopped my healing session for a few minutes and levitated an MRE from my pack to my waiting hand. As I cracked it open and ate, I started to seriously consider the idea. It wasn't like this was the first time it had popped into my head. On the day I started learning Sith Alchemy, it had been present. I had hesitated then because of my inexperience.

But I wasn't inexperienced anymore, was I? I had been at the academy for nearly nine months. It hadn't all been blood, death, ghosts, and horror. More often than not, I had simply spent many a quiet day reading some tome in the archives or experimenting in my lair with samples taken from wild beasts.

I wasn't arrogant enough to think I was a master of the craft, but neither was I ignorantly fumbling at power I didn't understand. I think it was time to risk it.

Through the Force and my Alchemy training, I understood my own body on a level that was hard to describe with words. I knew its weaknesses and where it could be improved.

I looked down at my left arm and flexed my fingers. The spider spinnarets clacked lightly in response. Ignoring it, my eyes trailed up my arm, focusing on the joints.

My body, minus my left arm, likely weighed somewhere around a hundred and sixty pounds. If I tried to use my newest addition to maneuvere in mid-air in full armor, there was a decent chance of my shoulder being wrenched out of place by the sudden change in direction.

If I wanted to make full use of my new toy, that needed to be compensated for.

Grasping the ligaments holding the ball of my shoulder in its socket, I slowly poured power in, strengthening them until they were like little steel cables. I rotated my shoulder at varying speeds to check the flexibility and was pleased to find that I still had full mobility. Theoretically, it should make dislocating my shoulder much more difficult.

However, that left me lopsided, so I worked on the other shoulder as well. Then I moved on to the other ligaments and tendons in my arms, followed by my hips and knees. By the time I was done, I would be capable of swinging around like Spider Man.

Next stop, the cardiovascular system.

Physical combat was limited by how much oxygen the body could carry to the muscles. The longer you fought, the more energy you burned. The more you exerted yourself, the more your heart beat to keep up and circulate blood.

But as the heart beat faster and blood rushed, the oxygenation process became proportionally less efficient as the lungs had less time to imbue red blood cells with oxygen to feed the muscles. As the muscles got progressively less and less oxygen, less lactic acid was broken down before it could do damage. 

Lactic acid build-up led to muscle soreness, what was usually referred to as exhaustion.

I breathed in and held it for a moment, watching through the Force as my lungs imbued the blood running through my veins and arteries with fresh oxygen. I observed where the oxygen was absorbed. As I breathed out, I saw how much was wasted.

So I improved it, increasing my lung capacity and the efficiency with which they absorbed oxygen. Then I sped up their ability to oxygenate blood.

With my next breath, I felt a brief rush of energy, almost like a sugar high as the hyper-oxygenated blood hit my muscles. But at the same time, I felt my heart begin to slow. Not enough to be dangerous, but enough that it was noticeable.

I frowned as I considered what to do with it before settling on simply overriding the change. There was a pain in my chest as it stuttered before returning to its normal pace. As it did, the energy rush resumed.

I thought about toying with my nervous system to give me faster reflexes, but I decided against it. I was confident in my powers, but not enough to want to risk completely screwing up my brain's ability to move my body.

Cracking open my eyes, I looked out the cave mouth to find that beams of dim light had broken through the dense cloud cover. The rain had stopped for the moment, but the ugly dark clouds overhead told me that the storm wasn't yet finished.

Hours had passed since I started fixing myself, and now, it was the second day of my task.

I had quite the challenge to prepare myself for. I had seen the Leviathan in its full glory before I ventured into the ship and I doubted it had gotten any smaller.

Flexing the fingers of my left hand, I glanced down at the spinnarets again. I had the beginnings of a plan. However, the plan wouldn't work if I didn't have the means to protect my mind. Which mean spending what time I could spare perfecting my defense.

But first, I needed to get out of this damn cave and start setting up the groundwork. This would take time. I just hoped I had enough…and that it would be enough to do the job.

After all, it would happen tomorrow. Whether I was ready or not.

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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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