Wrath is perhaps the most deadly of the four fatal flaws. It signifies a complete loss of control, as the will is subjugated by rage. When one is driven by anger, they are consumed by it. Balanced thought it no longer possible. To succumb to such a beast is to resign yourself to death, for it is the rational mind not the hot head that will win the battle. When you feel the clutches of wrath upon you throw down your guns, for you are no longer fit to carry them.

~ Tutor annals

***

With her first steps onto a long forgotten world, Vega recalled the words of the old man she had known only as Tutor. Fear, he had said, is a sly opponent. He moves in the dead of night, flitting from shadow to shadow, terrorizing any and all. Yet were you to shine a light upon this demon, it would cower and shrink away. For the Tutors metaphors could sometimes be tiresome, they rang with truth. A problem will not vanish of its own accord. It must be confronted head on. Such was the case with this, the last of the four fatal flaws – wrath. In her quest to complete the trials her now dead Master had set her many years ago, the girl had traveled to planets far and wide, but never had she been anywhere so dead.

The landscape that sprawled out before her was vast and yet appeared completely void of any life – sentient life, at least. The ground beneath her boots was dry as a Tatooine dune. It was riddled with cracks, as though tiny little earthquakes had cut across the earth. From her hill top vigil she could see what appeared to be a forest in the distance, though there was nothing lush or green about it. Leaving behind the stolen ship she had flown in on, the girl began her long walk towards the skeleton woodland.

Coming to this planet, much like the other three planets she had visited, had been a bizarre experience. Upon leaving the Tutors sanctuary, when she came of age, she had been gifted with a large wooden box. In it were a number of things, no least of all the twin pistols that hung at her hips. More curious, however, was the small metallic cube that the box also contained.

For the longest time she had thought it was little more than an ornamental trinket – of course, she should have known better. It turned out that the cube was a databank with a built in timer. Only her eighteenth birthday, the girl was gifted with insight into what information the cube held – only to be somewhat baffled. The data within appeared to a nonsensical string of numbers. Not to be outdone again, she eventually came to the conclusion that these numbers were the co-ordinates to various planets. There were five in total, of which she had visited three – this dead world being her fourth.

It all felt like something of a wild goose chase to begin with, but in time it had come to make sense. Even from beyond the grave, the Tutor was teaching her, offering her lessons in the form of trials that would test her to her very limits. Thus far she had been successful, however she couldn’t shake the feeling that this supposedly final test would be the toughest yet. After all, there isn’t anything more dangerous than wrath. Particularly given the Tutors choice of location for this final test. There was something overwhelming about the place, something … ominous. It made the hairs on the back of her neck prickle and set her teeth on edge.

It was upon reaching not more than twenty foot from the forests edge that the girl first became aware that she was not alone. The closer she got to the bone-white woods, the more she felt it would be best to turn away. The very sight of them filled her with an unfounded dread, an anxiety whose source she could not place and thus found even more unsettling. Yet, in spite of this, she pressed on…

A faint snap caused her to stop dead in her tracks. Unconsciously, both hands went for the greel-wood grips of her guns. Her eyes searched for the source. Ahead, amidst the decrepit tree trunks, dark shapes sloped back and forth. Amorphous, they seemed to move dependent entirely on where Vega looked – shifting to the very edge of her vision, as though to avoid being seen. Her eyes narrowed, as she felt her pulse begin to pick up pace. They were apparitions, she assured herself as she continued to walk onwards. Apparitions that the Tutor knew she would see. They were not the test. There was something else, beyond the forest, that would prove a great obstacle.

A pair of eyes snapped open.

Eyes filled with passion; seething with hatred. One could perhaps come to understand the true nature of the dark side, the essence of evil, merely by gazing into these vehement eyes.

The skies above were nearly as menacing. It was a dark morning; storming. The smoky-looking orange sky roiled and tumbled overhead, and the clouds, still stained by the newly risen sun, writhed in the sky above. The clouds themselves seemed to flinch and shudder as they lashed out with drunken lightning that staggered down through the murky air to strike savagely at the earth. A ferocious crackle of thunder could be heard as the gentle aftershocks rumbled through the heavens.

The Dark Warrior known as Azrakel had felt a presence in the Force. A sort of tremor he had experienced but once or twice throughout his years in the Outer Rim, both having been in the presence of those the galaxy referred to as Jedi.

He rose, casting off his cloak, and stood tall. His garb was drawn tight around him, his combat boots caked with the dried blood of dozens of victims like snow that never melts.

Azrakel had come to this planet researching a rumor that had been shared with him by his last employer, a man weak of body and in the force, but wise in the ways of the galaxy. It was said that the remote planet was home to a site incredibly strong in the dark side. Lake Krul was it's name, the setting of some great struggle many years ago that left the land warped forever by the powers of the dark side. Twisted and evil, the land and even the creatues surrounding the lake were doomed to the same fate of those who had perished here - consumed forever by darkness.

And so Azrakel came in hopes of perhaps discovering some secrets of the nature of the dark side. Truly he had never anticipated that he might encounter one of the Jedi kind here. It must be the will of the force to bring him a victim so conveniently, for his strongest desire would be fulfilled if the opportunity to unleash his wrath upon an opponent truly worthy were to present itself. He had not yet had the chance to fully employ his skills upon one of the fabled Jedi.

Much like the lake and surrounding lands, Azrakel was a being of darkness, indeed of pure hatred. The product of some twisted experiment by the late Emperor Palpatine gone awry, his body and mind were left a dark shell filled with nothing but raw hatred and anger, the dark side personified. He had been nursed back to health and trained by the Dark Prophet Kadann, but his hatred consumed him as it always did, and in time he came to loathe even his Master. When Kadann had gone into hiding after the destruction of Palpatine's Empire, Azrakel fled to wild space, where he had hidden for decades, living as a mercenary.

Certainly his wrath was unmatched by any being in the galaxy, and indeed it was this wrath that fueled him. Such emotions would overcome most beings, driving them mad, making them irrational, ineffective. But to a disciple of the dark side, such wrath was pure power, harnessed emotions that provided such strength as to be almost unmatchable.

Turning to face the sickly woods behind him, he stretched himself out in the force, locating the source of this presence. It was making it's way in his direction, through the woods. The victim was coming right to him.

Azrakel's eyes gleamed in anticipation.

Forestland, to the girl, was alien. She was a child of the concrete jungle. While her upbringing had been on a backwater planet, hidden away in the crags of hills, her life had been spent in spaceports, bursting metropolises, places filled with metal and machinery. Yet although she had never known the true beauty of nature, she knew enough to understand the perversion that the forest had undergone. There was something wholly unnatural about it all. Not alien, unnatural.

Traveling through the forest, she noted the distinct absence of wildlife – life being the key word. Now and then, she would come across the lifeless husk of something that had once called the forest home. Strange creatures, things that defied her knowledge of the animal world. Some flesh, some bones, yet one thing bound them all together. They all clearly belonged on this twisted planet. She crouched by one ashen pile of remains and casually lifted one bone for inspection. It appeared as though whatever had killed the creatures had done so a long time ago. Laying the bone back to rest, Vega surmised that it too must have passed on into the world beyond.

There were no further stops on her trek through the forest. Somewhere in her subconscious, a voice was calling her onward. She found herself compelled to move more quickly and picked up pace to a brisk stalk. At last, she emerged from the forests edge. Stopping, she paused to gather her thoughts. With a glance over her shoulder, Vega wondered how long it had taken to cross the forest. Her mind felt unfocused and the fact that the sky did not appear to have changed unnerved her. Not as much, however, as what she then found herself faced with.

During the last leg of her walk through the forest, she had become aware of the presence of an unusual smell. At first she had thought it little more than the byproduct of so much organic decay, yet if this was the case then it made little sense that it grew stronger the more she walked. Her imagination getting the better of her, she imagined that she would come across the lair of whatever thing had devastated the woodland population. In actual fact, it was something far worse.

“This must be the place.”

Lake Krul.

Though she did not know its name or its history, looking at its black waters was enough to know that there was something unearthly at play beneath the surface. Unshaken by the loud rumbling of thunder, she began to walk towards the water. Humankind has been forever fascinated by the morbid and the macabre, unable to turn its eyes away in spite of the horror it might see. For all her skin crawled, she could not turn away from Lake Krul. Transfixed, her mind wheeled back and forth as she tried to ascertain what the Tutor had envisaged she would find here. Perhaps he had intended her to see this world before it had become so consumed by darkness? No, the dead bones of the animals told her it had been many years beyond her life time since Lake Krul and its surroundings had become as such.

Standing some twenty feet from the waters edge, she waited and wondered.