It, Which Lives Below (A Tale Of Death And Of Resurrection)







It was a presence to be sure.

It existed, it was real, but it did not live in this dimension. It did not live at all, in fact.

He felt it roaming the halls. He felt it in his private chambers.

In the depths of the temple it moved like a wind, like a chilling breeze with no source. A haunting specter, a looming figure in the dark...

“You would be a ghost,” Silk spoke to the stillness. “Or a poltergeist.”

Nothingness answered him. It was here. He could feel it.

“Much has changed since you last walked these halls, since this was your home.”

In the force, a swelling void more accurately, he felt malice and death. With his eyes he saw nothing. His ears heard no sound nor did any scents touch his nose. With his mortal senses he detected nothing, less then nothing. Weak, objects of a mere three dimensional existence, his human senses left him deaf and blind to that which he knew existed.

These halls, unchanged, were just as they had been during the reign of the Sith Order. Spared the destruction that befell the upper levels and subsequent reconstruction these warren like depths were preserved, and would continue to be preserved, as they had been since the construction of the temple some thousand or more years prior. The ages were trapped in these corridors, the eons of the Sith and the ways of those who preceded them. That was not all, however; which lurked in the darkness.

There was a presence here and Silk aimed to know it.



Taken From “Homecoming”

The black gloved hand moved slightly, shifting the dirt and dust from around the blue squarish object lying on the stone tablet. The object began to shine, shimmering with a pulsating energy that caused the hand to shiver slightly.

Ahhh, this is a good find. thought the owner of the hand.

His cold blue eyes contemplating the unearthed holocron, Necros focused his energies upon the pint sized storehouse of ancient knowledge, wondering what secrets the Sith holocron had to give him.

Would it be new useful information, or just the recordings of another who only, in the end, became another failure?

He released the hold he had on the holocron, and it's shimmering energies went away, become a mere hunk of filthy glass once again.

But the buzzing at the back of his mind did not go away.

Frowning, Necros turned around and looking back up the stairway, towards the light that permeated the old collapsed temple before it was absorb by the black.

The sith knight again turned his eyes upon the holocron, realization entering into his mind that the buzzing sensation was not caused by it. Sighing in disgust, he threw the worthless hunk of glass on the floor and crushed it into a million pieces with his boot.

Whoever caused this interference will pay dearly. he thought with a small smile turning his frown upside down.

Necros put his death mask back into place, it's duraplastic features hiding his face from view. He re-attached his cloak, the cape swirling about him, a soft breeze blowing down the narrow confines of the tunnel from the planet above.

As he ascended the steps, his danger sense began to tingle, telling him that whatever it was that disturbed him from above may be of a danger to him. He considered drawing his lightsaber, but decided against it.

Then, the breeze carried to him, the smell of death.

And Necros knew what had happened.

He had brought with him from the temple, two apprentices of the Sith, to search for artifacts on the surface while he descended into the temple. And, should an ancient sith master's traps prove too formidable, to bring the grim news of his demise back to Master Viricus.

The fact that he could no longer sense their life forces, and could smell smoked human flesh, explained the force pulse he had sensed a few moments ago, and had thought had come in reaction to his touching what he had thought was a holocron.

But it was merely the life energies of his two apprentices leaving their bodies and ascending into the force, through his mind.

Necros's eye twitched. The apprentices had been too eager in their work to pay attention to their surroundings. They had paid for their mistake with their lives. But...it had still been his apprentices who had died, and therefore, it was his mistake, his error as well.

Necros did not like making errors.

He was nearly to the entrance to the stairs now, and at about the time he sensed their presence, he heard voices coming through comlinks, although they were muffled.

"'Two little ones eliminated. We suspect the presence of a third. Am setting up firing line around entryway.'" came the strong sounding male voice.

Necros stopped, just before reaching the top of the stairs, and becoming visible to the men, some twenty of them he sensed, line up in a row, their blasters trained on where he was walking torwards.

Reaching out his hands, he called. Through the force, he called to those whom he had put to sleep when they had first reached this area of the forest.

'Creatures of the night. Come to me, come to me, and gorge yourselves on those who would harm me, and your master.'

Several loud howls pierced the night air, and he could feel the men being distracted, just for a moment, by their calls.

Smiling now, he headed up the stairs, and emerged into the night air.

"'There he is!'" came the voice of one trooper.

"'Fire! Kill him dead!'" came another.

Necros let the energies of the dark side of the force enter into him, flooding his veins with power as he drew and ignited his lightsaber blade, the Hel-Hemarde, the weapon which feeds him power and strikes down his enemies without even cutting them.

A torrent of blaster bolts arced in towards him. He parried, dancing about, his blade twirling about his body in a beautiful dance as bolts of energy either missed him or were deflected in every direction.

This dance though went on for no more than a minute, before a cry pierced the air, and one of the soldiers in the line collapsed. The Kath hound that had bitten into his neck snarled, and proceeded to drink the man's blood.

The other soldiers ceased fire, twirling around to meet this new threat, and saw with sudden fear and apprehension, that hounds were all over and inside their landing shuttle. As they watched, they heard the screams of the pilots being slaughtered and devoured.

Necros felt their deaths, their pain, their suffering, their fear, their hatred. He basked while soaking in the emotions that flooded into and rejuevinated the dark side of the force, empowering him, making him happy.

The other hounds let loose howls, battle cries, and leapt torwards the soldiers.

The men raised their blaster rifles, preparing to blast the beasts.

And in doing so, ignored a very important lesson that they had been taught.

Never turn your back on an enemy.

A single force push sufficed in knocking the men down onto their bellies, their weapons clattering on the ground. The hounds passed the weapons by, heading straight torwards the down men.

As their screams pierced his ears, Necros looked torwards the sky, extending his awarness outwards, and around the planet. He heard the call of his masters, and smiled.

This was going to be a glorious night.




The rumors...

Amongst the superstitious Xa Fel stories, ghost stories, were beginning to circulate.

Menials, maids and cleaners, cooks and house servants told tales. The talked in the quiet hours about the thing roaming the halls of the rebuilt temple, about the apparition that seemed to appear at random menacing their every move. Of course, this was a place of great mystical energy. Strange happenings were commonplace. After all, the lord of the temple, Silk was himself a sorcerer and master of the dark arts. The staff spoke of his summonings, of his delving in to the depths of the dark side and bringing back with him the wisps of long dead Sith. Two such entities, ethereal outlines that shadowed his every move, we well known among the lower classes who made their homes in the temple, serving the dark lord. But these poltergeists were his, and his alone. They did not bother with the staff.

Those who dared venture in to those areas declared off limits by the lord of the temple often came back changed, terrorized, if they came back at all but this... this was different.

This thing, this ghostly haunter, moved freely about the temple. Its dark presence touched anyone, anywhere regardless of boundary or supposed safety.

It continued like this. Days turned to weeks and weeks to a month. Encounters with the being became more regular and more intense. Servants of the temple were found in dark corners, dead. Their bodies withered as if sucked dry of the very essence of life.

And then, one particularly gloomy night, while walking the halls of his temple the Lord Silk witnessed himself something that to lesser men would defy description.

What he saw, just the same, shocked him and he knew then not only who, but what this force personified.




Taken From “Homecoming”

He had barely entered into the temple before his danger senses tingled; yet none of the enemies near him seemed to be the source of it. Necros parried attacks from two of the Forsaken whom were in the process of rushing him. He motioned with his right hand, drawing his two enemies towards him with a force pull. With a single horizontal slash of his light saber blade, he cleaved both of his enemies in two, their bodies splattering onto the stone floor behind him.

The sith knight stepped over the fallen body of an apprentice, multiple puncture wounds on the youngling's body leaving his blood spilling over the floor. He stopped his advance when a line of enemy soldiers formed ranks several feet in front of him, their blaster rifles pointing at him. They loosed a single volley at him, which he parried easily with the Hel-Hemarde. With his one free hand, he snatched up the fallen apprentice's light saber blade and ignited it.

The enemy soldiers began firing intermittently, and he parried their bolts using both of the light saber blades. The enemy blaster bolts were deflected back towards the enemy, and he began to fall, until only two or three of them were left standing. They fled, although from what he sensed, they were not retreating in fear of their lives so much as they were regrouping for another assault on him. Yet it wasn't this group of soldiers that was making his danger sense go crazy now.

Then, he felt it.

The essence of the dark side of the force formed into a powerful force storm, gathering its strength from the army of darkness, the crusaders who fought to overthrow the current Sith monarchy. It swept over the sith, sweeping away many of the apprentices, killing them on the spot. Others were luckier; a few who managed to flee, although they were pursued by the Forsaken and other crusader troops.

Necros himself used the Hel-Hemarde and the apprentice's light saber to parry a pitch-black lightning bolt. At first he thought he had succeeded in parrying it, then the bolt struck again, and blew past his defenses to hit Necros in the chest.

The sith knight went flying out of the temple, back into the forest where he had just come through earlier. Hissing in pain, Necros landed several tens of feet from the temple entrance, lying on his back, a nasty burn scar marking his chest. Electricity still ran through his body, and his heart stopped briefly, before starting to beat again. The two light sabers he had been holding were still in his hands, although both were de-activated. His body felt numb, and burned all over.

Necros closed his eyes as the pain in his body that wasn't numb threatened to consume him.

Am I going to die?

He coughed up blood, and his breathing was strained.

I will embrace death then.

A blinding light came to Necros's vision, even though his eyes were closed.

So this is death?

No...this is something different...

He saw a vision, a vision that was being presented to him by the force. Enemy soldiers were surrounding his body, easily two hundred of them, of all types, from the forsaken and crusaders, with even a few void knights in their mix. They did not approach him within five feet, although they held their weapons at the ready.

Either I will succumb to my injuries or they will finish me off...

Then his vision shifted, and he saw the apprentice, the girl that he had killed earlier, to ease her death. With it came another thought, a memory. He had made a promise to her that he would avenge her death. If he allowed to himself to die here, now, at the hands of the crusaders, he wouldn't carry out his promise, and her death would be for nothing.

No...

Necros's eyes opened, as the vision faded. A void knight was standing over him, raising it's light saber high in the air, it's tip pointed down, preparing to finish him off.

"NOOOO!" yelled Necros, unleashing a tidal wave of force energy upwards from his body. The void knight was thrown upwards and back, away from the circle of troops, landing against the temple wall several tens of meters away. The other crusaders raised their weapons, preparing to fire on him.

Necros jumped up onto his feet and began to spin rapidly, igniting both of his light sabers as he did so. With the force, he channeled oxygen around his light saber blades, and the air ignited, flames spreading away from his blades and into the ranks of troops forming a circle around him.

The forsaken and the crusaders alike howled in pain as the fire engulfed them. The ranks of troops around him fell back in shock and sudden fear, as a halo of fire surrounded Necros and burned their comrades.

He threw both of his light sabers to the ground, and stretched his hands out, ignoring the spasms of pain from his burned body. He began to draw in all of the force energy that he could, the pain, hatred, and fear emanating from the troops surrounding him, the dark side of the force from the temple, anything he could get his hands on. He continued until he felt full, like he could take no more force energy into his body.

With a savage yell, Necros released all of the stored up force energy he had harnessed into his body, an explosion of pure and raw force energy rushing out in all directions from his body. It was like being burned all over again as the force energy rushed out of his body.

The effects of the force explosion were immediate and catastrophic, to both the crusader troops and to the surrounding forest. Trees within a one kilometer radius were blown down, and leaves and foliage five kilometers from the epicenter of the explosion were ripped from the trees and ground and flung into the air, forming a mighty mushroom cloud of dust and smoke that rose high into the sky.

Of the crusader troops that had been surrounding him, the ones that were thrown in the direction of the temple suffered an immediate death upon impact. The others were thrown into the forest, those unlucky enough to survive landing being unable to move with their broken and battered bodies.

Nothing but scorched earth was around Necros, where earlier had resided the troops, trees, and even grass, and all of that was now gone.

The sith knight made a croaking sound, the sound of a sigh coming through a dry throat and parched lips, as he telescoped to the ground, and lay still.

He had fulfilled the promise he made to the sith apprentice.

Now, I may die in peace.

With that final thought, he closed his eyes, and lay still.

Moments later, he stopped breathing, and his physical body dissolved, leaving behind the death mask, cape, and his battered and torn clothes lying on the ground.

With a bluish flash of force energy, Necros was gone.




Silk stood in silence watching as the images, like the blue-gray holograms used for long distance communication, slowly dissolved in to nothingness. Swallowed up by the void, the force-inspired hallucination gone, Silk remained alone in the quiet that followed.

All around him the tingling sensation of the force gathered.

And then, all at once, he knew he was not alone and to the darkness, his voice an projection in to the mystic, he called...

“Darth Necros, I summon you!”

Agony, then pain. Or was it the other way around?

All he knew, all he used to know, revolved around those two words, the very essence that was the last of his life.

Life?

He was still alive, he presumed himself to be.

Sure, by the definition of most, he was dead, but really, if he was dead, would he still be aware?

He no longer inhabited breathing, living flesh, that is true. If dead was defined as the leaving of such a corporeal being behind and passing into the next age, then perhaps yes, he did die.

But if death went under the standard definition of ceasing to exist, then no, Darth Necros was not dead.

Physical feelings had long ago passed into oblivion.

Emotional feelings, those he still very much had.

Hate, Anger, Envy chief amongst them. Those that would make a dark side force wielder stronger, perhaps gave some testament about why he was still able to tour the temple, almost at will, although he wondered if it was just the emotions, or perhaps some greater purpose that had him lingering.

Perhaps he was meant to be like the others that he had once viewed in the holocrons, a teacher or mentor to the force students of the future.

He had no regrets worth mentioning.

No, scratch that, plenty of regretting, just not much he could do about it. And like hell he would tell other people to avoid his fate. He was bitter...if they went down the same path as he had, then he would stand, watch, and laugh bitterly when they succumbed. No, he would not teach others the error of his ways.

His emotions boiled through him, like steam rising from a kettle. Hate, he hated that he had died such a vain and worthless death. A paltry number of enemy warriors slain, more than a score of people and warriors would be able to do in their lifetimes, but something any sith worth his salt could have accomplished within a standard day. To avenge a fallen apprentice, too? Sure, her death fueled his powers, but damn, what the hell was he thinking? He was not one for emotional attachements.

Anger, he felt anger torwards his former masters of the Sith Order. That and combined with envy for the invading armies. Long had he felt the need and longing to command such vast and superior armies, leading them on a destructive rampage across much of the galaxy. No treaties, no talk, no negotiations, parlay, surrender. Only death and destruction.

His thoughts and memories were leaking into the force, but he did not care. Who would? He was an abysmal failure to everything that he had set himself out to be.

If only...he had a second chance...at life.

As if slicing through that thought, a loud voice echoed through the force, shattering the cocoon of thoughts Necros had embedded within his essence.

"Darth Necros, I summon you!"

'Summon me? Who dares to disturb my slumber?' Necros thought to himself as his spirit glided through the hallways. He came upon the person who had spoken, and let his essence within the force mix with his, feeling the man's power.

Oh. Oh.

Yes, he would most certainly answer this summons.

The air around him shimmered and turned crimson red as the visage of the fallen Sith Knight materialized. Unlike light sided users of the force, those who fell when they were dark had not blue light to illuminate themselves, but usually bore the colors of blood red.

"Who...summons...me?" Necros projected into the air from his spirit.

“Who summons me?”

The voice, ethereal and inhuman, echoed throughout the subterranean labyrinth like warren which spread out beneath the former Sith Temple. Carried with it was a sense of foreboding anger that Silk determined as being a residual sense of the once Knight, Necros.

This, he realized, had been the key to his salvation – his passion. Necros had been undone but, unlike so many who had fallen that day, he had been strong enough in the force that, twinned with the mystical energies that imbued the temple with its palatable sense of magic, his spirit had not simply faded. Instead his energy pattern, what some might call a soul, had been imprinted on the walls of the temple itself. That infusion of life energy had kept a part of Necros from vanishing all together.

Silk, having only studied the ghosts of the Sith in books and familiar with them in the flesh (so to speak) in the form of Lords Maim and Xion, was unsure what aspects of that Knight had been preserved. Could it be that all of the man remained? Somehow bottled up in the depths of the temple, was it possible that Necros had somehow survived intact? Or, and this he considered more likely, were the parts of Necros most vile and inhuman those which had been preserved since the attack?

Regardless, he would not know until he managed to communicate with the being properly.

“I am the Lord Dioan Silk,” he spoke to the darkness. “Conqueror of Xa Fel and master of this temple.”

His voice carried far. Spurned on by the dark side of the force his words transcended the physical world and were translated in to the mystical realm of the force itself.

In the shifting shadows he glimpsed what seemed to be a face. As quickly as it had come, it was gone.

Ever twisting, the ethereal world of the force transected the world of the real in places which the Sith and Jedi alike had come to refer to as nexus points. These junctions lay at the cross roads between ley lines, thread-like manifestations of the force which connected one aspect-rich locale with another. Areas, such as the temple, ripe with the Dark Side reached out across time and space to one another forming a web of evil, malicious intention. So too did the Light Side of the Force form its own web. Infrequently these two webs, both light and dark, crossed paths forming a force-neutral pocket which could provide a sufficiently talented student with a boost of magical energies unlike anything else. On Fangol Silk had first discovered one of these pockets and it was from this pocket that the Unspoken operated. Many practitioners of the art from both schools considered these junctions as purely theoretical.

Along the web-like strands that permeated the temple, Necros had been surviving after a fashion.

The eyes in the darkness seemed to be watching him.

“I bring you a gift,” he offered, his onyx eyes locking with the intangible shadows. “I bring you the gift of life renewed.”

Those eyes, flashing, seemed skeptical to Silk.

“Nothing is free,” he continued. “And you will repay this gift in time.”

“But for now, I offer you a body to inhabit. I offer you the chance to join me on a quest to a distant, frozen world where, by the power of a God, you can be properly rebuilt.”

“You need only agree to serve me, to serve my cause, until such time as your debt is repaid and I, the Lord Silk, will give you everything you need, everything you want.”

“Answer me!” He commanded sharply.




High in the temple, far from the power below, two ethereal beings sat in high backed chairs contemplating the ways of the dark side. They mocked the living; the way they sat in seats as through they needed to, or even could sit. They mocked the living with their intangible manifestations, bodies woven of glimmering crimson and inky black. They mocked the living, pretending as though anything they did would preserve their living memories.

Between them, sprawling and unconscious, was the body of a the crimson brother Nocturnal.

Their spectral eyes were locked on the supine form and there seemed to be a visible aura, a corona of radiance, wrapped around the still softly breathing body.

An empty shell, observed one.

Their words, unspoken, were none-the-less shared.

Bring back any memories? The other mockingly inquired.

No memories, it replied, only a dream.

A dream, repeated the partner.

Yes, it intoned. A dream of revenge.

Sneering, the second astral projection ignored the threat.

The body is ready.

It will hold the energy of another, this lesser Knight.

It will, confirmed the other.

For a time.

Silk will have to act swiftly to get this conjuring to the nexus in time.

They shared a knowing look.

They shared so much more.

Answer him?

Should Necros provide an answer for what he thought was an impossible task?

This Silk felt that it was, but then, there have been many Sith through the centuries that have thought to do what they could, in the end, not accomplish. And there were those sith that attempted to use such promise of powers to sway others under their control, the example of Sidious and Vader drifting through what would pass as Necro's mind in the other world.

It really came down to two simple and basic cause and effects.

One, Necros could decline Silk's proposal, still remain dead, and still remain attached to the temple for an unknown period of time before eventually presumably either fading into the force or finding another manner to move on, or perhaps the temple would be demolished, again with unknown consequences.

Two, Necros could accept Silk's proposal. Whatever of a million or easily more possibilities acceptance contained, even if failure to come to back to life was in there, it would serve to distract Necros from the...stasis of boredom he seemed to find himself in currently. Really, it was starting to get boring spooking the same people day in and day out, even if he could and did manage to drive some of them into insanity or comitting suicide, only to have them leer at him as their spirits rose into the force and they discovered what had actually happened.

A single word whispered amongst the essence of the force served as Necros's reply.

"Yesssssss"

Open your eyes...

Silk, awakening from his meditation greets, for lack of a better term, the real world.

The motley visage of Xoverus, pressed too close, greets him.

“It is done,” the priest, his breath like the stale stench of death frozen over, hisses. “All is in readiness.”

With a sneer Silk pushes the other away.

“Waking to that smell and that face, I would sooner be dead and dreaming forever. When next you deem to get so close, Xoverus... do not.”

Smirking, gnarled teeth and jagged lips, Xoverus recoils dramatically as if mocking him. Freed of that pock-marked horizon the rest of the world slowly comes in to focus. The vaulted ceiling of the temple with its ghastly tapestries resides high above him. Entrenched in shadow due the vastness of the chamber, the piecemeal statues of long dead Sith, reassembled by the workers of Xa Fel in the aftermath of the temples destruction, gaze down upon him with their varied expressions of anger, loathing, and gloating. Upon a dais, the body supine, lay Nocturnal naked and exposed. A small cadre of adepts, witches and Unspoken converts, ringed the wide berthed chamber with their heads bowed in meditation. Visible only to the Lord Silk, their projections almost imperceptible even to the Sith master and distinguished only by a soft, yellow radiance, the spirit guides of Lords Maim and Xion stood impassive.

“The assembly is complete,” spoke Xoverus. “The apparatus in position.”

“All is in readiness,” he repeated.

Silk, legs crossed upon the cold stone floor, rose slowly and gathered his robe around himself.

“Well then,” Silk said. “We need only summon the guest of honor.”

Towards the dais he strode, purpose in his strides. Towards the prone, slumbering form of his brother in arms. Nocturnal, his loyal partner lo these many years, lay upon his back. He, ever trusting in the decree of his sovereign, had given himself willingly to the force-founded sleep placed upon him by the spectral ghosts of Xion and of Maim. Soon he would be host to an energy so dangerous that, with time of the essence, the trip to Fangol would have to be undertaken with haste. The danger, however; was not only to Nocturnal...

A hand, cool to the touch, reached out towards Nocturnal. Silk, indoctrinated in the ways of the dark side, felt a lingering compassion for the other. Throughout years of exile, through their glory years, and now with the rise of the crusade and the possession of the temple, Nocturnal had stood by his side never doubting, never disputing.

Silk had asked him, ordered him, to fulfill a task. This was the task and though the risk was high he had entered in to it without question or complaint.

For all this, Silk considered, Necros would have to prove himself worthy.

Retracting his hand, Silk spoke.

“Let us begin.”

With his words, three simple syllables, a low thrumming filled the chamber. From all around the men and women hummed. Their humming, an ancient incantation, was a chant not heard for many hundreds of years. This, a long dead spell of summoning, had not been cast so far as Silk could glean for at least three hundred years. Each voice, each contributor had been carefully instructed in the words and tones which the spell demanded. Discipline had to be strictly enforced for any deviation could ruin the casting and have disastrous results.

It was a chant designed to transcend the boundaries of the physical realm and extend to the astral, the place where the energies of the dead remained tied to the force. Here, in the temple with its grand acoustics, it grew to a thunderous roar which Silk reckoned would shake the collums and make the stone-work floor tremble. It mingled with the dark powers instilled in the very temple stones themselves and tapped the ancient power of the Sith who had originally laid the foundations of the temple on Xa Fel.

In the very depth of his being Silk felt the power rising.

Over Nocturnal he extended his hands, palms up.

“Darth Necros, I summon you!”

“Darth Necros,” he repeated. “I demand you attend.”

“This vessel has been prepared for you. This body will host your energies, your memories and your being, as we set out upon a journey towards your reincarnation.”

“Darth Necros,” he repeated again. “Attend me.”

And then, subtly at first, the power of the ancient casting began to twist and turn like a miniature tornado. It gathered, widely at first, spinning tighter and tighter. Smaller and more focused, the torrent of energy clustered opposite Silk beyond the dais and in its epicenter the outline of the dead Sith Knight formed. Immaterial at first, it began to coalesce and gain substance until, set upon a tortured face, a pair of eyes looked out.

Below those eyes formed lips and in turn they struggled form words yet no sounds would manifest.

“Welcome, Darth Necros.”

Silk gestured, his palms turned down towards the body upon the dais. With a clattering sound, the grating scrape of metal on stone, a large chamber moved forward, seemingly under its own momentum and of its own volition, until it thundered down around the whirling dervish encapsulating it entirely. At its top was a collaboration of steel tubing, glass piping and wooden carvings all of which began to pump, choke and groan in earnest.

The body of the chamber, crafted of tempered glass, allowed Silk to watch the twisting cyclone as it suddenly began to tremble and fight for escape.

With a grin that was not entirely undeserved, Silk added, “This is going to hurt.”

Suddenly tangible, suddenly visible, the apparitions of Xion and Maim came forward. With hands outstretched they placed one palm each upon Nocturnal and one palm each upon the glass of the chamber.

Then, pressing his eyes shut, Silk surrendered to the dark side.

In the abyssal darkness of the dark side stood two figures.

Silk, to one side, gazed upon the memory of how Necros had once appeared.

“Greetings, Necros. You know who I am. You know what I offer and what I demand in reply. The choice is now yours...”

“... accept my offering and the debt it entails and I will complete casting the spell which will give you a body, temporary though it may be. Accept this and we can begin the journey towards your full reincarnation.”

“Decline my offer if you will and return to the purgatory between existence and nothingness, but know this; should you decline my kindness you will no longer be welcome here, within the walls of my temple. Whatever residual energies may remain, should you spurn my kindness, will be purged from these halls and cast out leaving you to find whatever refuge you may. But know this, as I am master of this temple, as I am a master of the Sith, I will be also your master until such time as you have repaid this debt.”

“So, Darth Necros... what say you?”

For the first time since his death, Necros did not have control over where he went. True, he couldn't leave the temple, but he could still travel anywhere within the temple that he pleased. Until...

Until those strange words, chanting voices, had invaded his sanctum, the sanctuary of those trapped between the worlds of the living and of the dead. Voices of the living, chanting, reaching out to him, the words turning into tentacles, ropes, cables, vines, wrapping, snaring him in their grasp.

He found himself being dragged away from the plane of his existance, and back towards that which he had forsaken in a previous life to come here.

Much of himself welcomed the change. However, he could not help but feel a tiny bit of fear, of remorse, of guilt, for leaving so soon the place that he had just started to call 'home'.

Although where he had been had been quiet, it was not totally quiet. There had been others, as it turned out, who were just like him. Former, well, perhaps still they were, Sith he had met within the stone temple walls. One was called Xion, the other he had met, Maim.

He was able to quash his fear and reservations as what they had foretold about his future was seemingly coming to pass. In mere moments of his letting go of his slight struggle, he found himself bound to the center of a room.

Trapped! They had tricked him!

Desperatly he clawed around inside the glass chamber, but to no avail. After several moments, he calmed down, settling for just staring...staring....and staring some more at Silk, who was now speaking to him.

At that precise moment, there was no one in the entire Universe, all of the Universes, that Necros hated more than Silk. What had amounted to a frown slowly curved upwards into a smile as the Sith finished speaking his proposal.

For who should a Sith hate more, want to kill more, and despise more than their own master? No one, for that is the way of the Sith.

Necros would let his actions dictate his response. In a true sign of acceptance, he let go of his control completely, the cyclone of dust and wind settling into a fine calm, save for his own outline.

“So peaceful,” mocked Silk, his abyssal gaze moving across the supine figure of his once loyal servant, Nocturnal.

“So serene,” placing his palm on the slowly rising chest, he added.

“As for you,” Silk scowled, craning his neck around to take in the ghostly, trapped spirit of Necros. “I do not believe you ever knew such peaceful serenity, even in death.”

Inside his chamber, its glass walls enchanted to encase and entrap its occupant, Necros looked out upon Silk with his hateful, spiteful glare. Roiling, boiling inside that glass tube like some sort of confined, contained thunder storm only his eyes and his jagged smile retained any cohesiveness while whatever else remained of his body had lost its connection to the physical world. In his long life Silk had encountered few force-borne spirits but those he had were much the same and, as he understood it, only with intense focus could the aspects of their former selves be brought in to unison for any length of time. Those spirits, however; had an advantage which Necros did not – they had been the ghosts of powerful Masters. In fact, he had discovered in his research that only the very powerful and very wise could attach their energies after death to the mortal plane and that attempting to resurrect anything less was bound to be rife with problems.

“Ah,” he moved closer, pressing his finger tips against the glass. “But hold on to your anger and your rage, dear Knight. They may be the only parts of yourself which I am able to bring back, focus on your emotions for they may be all that saves you.”

Retreating, Silk moved towards the door of the dungeon chamber and, brushing the activator panel lightly, sealed the chamber.

For the rest of the journey, he reflected, it may serve Necros well to spend some time with his future host.




The frozen wastes of Fangol stretched out before them. The small landing party consisted of Silk, three of his large robots (two to bear the weight of the containment chamber and another to support the death-like body of Nocturnal) and Necros himself, trapped inside the ponderous chamber. Sheltered from the extreme atmosphere by a portable generator, strapped to the back of one of the robots, their progress was painstakingly slow. They had been forced to abandon their shuttle some time ago to allow Silk to better trace the lines of mystical energy which crisscrossed the frozen planet. Their oxygen would not last forever though and so Silk had delved deeper, focusing with such intensity he was forced to shut out the rest of the world and deny all his senses save his sixth.

Fortunately the terrain over which they travelled was not particularly perilous and eventually they reached their destination.

Ahead of them the mouth of a cave, neither large nor imposing, opened.

“Take the chamber inside,” Silk directed the mechanical servants. “Take the body as well.”

“You,” he commanded the metal-man strapped with the shelter generator. “Set the generator to seal the mouth of the cave and keep watch.”

With that Silk himself vanished inside.

Due to the recent animosity between Silk and Xoverus and not wishing to lend upon the favors of the Unspoken he had opted instead to conduct the rite himself. The risks were greater, he supposed, but even in the event of a total disaster it would be Silk himself who would suffer... only his formerly loyal servant and the spirit of Necros.

And so, with a shrug, Silk opened himself to the dark side and, tapping the power of the planet below, began the resurrection ceremony.



From orbit, the storm could be seen.

It gathered with such intensity, with such ferocity, it seemed as though the rest of the planet became momentarily calm while all its energy and focus clustered in one small area. Lightning flashed, thunder roared and, the planet itself seemed to tremble and quake. The poles, frozen sheets of ice, cracked. The ground itself shifted.

This riot of nature, this war dance, went on for hours until, at last, it calmed.



“Rise,” Silk commanded. “Rise Necros!”

And to the twitching, slowly rousing vessel, he shouted, “You are reborn!”