The Myth of the Panther and the Snake [Alexia]

[Palara Iscandar]

The Darkness of Imperial Centre was like pollution. Oily, thick, cloying, like the smoke from diseased and infested wood and plastoid. It was everywhere. Inquisitor Iscandar wouldn't have been surprised if, when washing after the day, her washcloth came away from her skin stained with black.

"Beginning landing procedures," the pilot said. No answer was needed, so she gave none. Instead, she sat in the command chair of the Inquisitional corvette, and breathed.

Each breath was slow and measured, her eyes were open but she saw nothing; all her attention was focussed inward. She was preparing herself for immersion in the Coruscant night, and for meeting her mentor, Inquisitor Atrapes.

The inertial dampeners could not completely compensate for the shift of weight onto the landing pad, and the sound of the struts' hydraulics hissing could be heard, dimly, through the hull.

"Sergeant," Inquisitor Iscandar said as she stood, her fingers lightly pressed on the comm button set on the left arm of her seat, "prepare to collect ze prisoner."

"As you command, Inquisitor."

The walk to the cell was brief, and her Troopers, clad in their black armour, were waiting for her. The sergeant saluted, and she nodded. The door opened, and two Troopers entered the cell, their blaster rifles aimed at the Adept within. It was simply a precaution; the shackles on her wrists and ankles had been magnetized, and she was affixed to the wall. While her options were few in her position, she still could do some damage.

The procedure to bring her down went smoothly. The shackles were not undone, but the current running through them ceased, and the magnetic hold was released, spilling her onto her feet, where two Troopers grabbed each of her arms and pulled her to the middle of the cell, where a lit square had appeared in the otherwise featureless flooring and ceiling. Once they had positioned her in the midst of the square, the ray shielding activated, suddenly appearing before their eyes with a hiss that was both like and unlike the hydraulics of the landing struts. The square on the ceiling detached and lowered until it was an inch above the Adept's head; the square on the floor detached and the repulsors within activated silently. With a shudder, the entire cell began to drop from the ship, offering all of them the view of the Citadel, and the Inquisitors and Inquisitorial Troopers waiting by the door.

The Inquisitor gestured, and the three of them marched forward out from underneath the ship, the containment system for the Adept moving between the two Troopers and behind the Inquisitor. They stopped in front the waiting Inquisior, a human, who watched everything impassively.

"Inquisitor Atrapes," the twilek Inquisitor said, bowing. Inquisitor Atrapes nodded, and the twilek stepped to the side, allowing her superior and her captive the chance to see each other.

"What is your name, Adept?" Inquisitor Atrapes asked after a moment.

[Alexia Sturkov]

The trip offered her little luxury beyond the empty stares of the black armored troopers that stood watch over her. The walls of the cell were strangely claustrophobic and made her long for the open fields and cool breezes of Dantooine. The moment of reflection deepened until the pool of memories threatened to drown her. She remembered the razor blades of grass as she and Justin ran rolling and laughing barefoot and brazen while parents looked on from the edge of the prefabricated home's porch. She remembered the trip into the forbidden forest and the day all of her innocence was taken and the power of the force, and the true boundaries of the galaxy, was revealed to her.

But her memories were conflicted. She also remembered being kidnapped from her bed in her childhood and forced into slavery until she ended up in the hands of the Red Sisters and was forged through tough training and cruel punishment into being a living weapon capable of all manner of death. But those were not her true memories. Those were the memories of her host; the body of the assassin she had stolen. The memories became so tangled now it was impossible to tell them apart sometimes. She would forget them all together if she could.

Pale fingers traced across her belly, feeling for holes that were not there. Likewise moving across her chest and down to her hip. She remembered the blaster hits. The pain. She felt them as she woke from sleep; haunted by the memories of the death she experienced and the chaotic experience she endured as a detached spirit floating in space. Likely she was on her way to be executed. Perhaps she would be able to detach her soul again. She doubted it. Before she had the heat of combat to act as the catalyst that made her one with the force. She had not been afraid then. She faced her death with defiant courage.

This time she was terrified.

Everything she had accomplished, the routing of the sith, the cults in Coronet and Theed, they seemed so infinitesimal. She wanted to let the depression consume her, to let it smother her beneath it's waves. No. She would not go out like that. If this would be her end than she would make it such an end to be remembered.

With shaky legs she stood up in her cell and endured the rest of the trip on her feet, glaring back at the lifeless helmets of her captors. Her entire body ached but she endured the rest of the trip, and when the ship had set down and the Inquisitor returned, looking so proud of herself, Alexia only stared back and smiled. It was a wicked, cruel smile. Their transportation method was genius and while she would have liked to stage some kind of resistance, the ray shielding all but squashed any plans. She could only continue her show of integrity as best she could as she was pinned against the wall again before being manhandled into the center of the cell for those ray shields to activate.

As her little floating prison was dragged out of the ship a quick glance around proved that she was on Coruscant. Quite possibly the worst place to be. A question called her attention back as she looked out through the ray shields at her captor and another Inquisitor.

For a moment the words of her true name almost slipped from her mouth before she collected herself. "Alexia Sturkov." She mustered finally trying to stand as tall as she could while being completely at the mercy of all of those around her. She hardly felt magnificent, what with her grubby, torn clothing and dirt smeared flesh. She had become incredibly self conscience since the flesh around her mouth started cracking and scarring and the other signs of darkside corruption began appearing all over her body. She had arrived on Naboo feeling like a Queen, and now she was tossed before the guard a peasant.

How the mighty fall.

[Rossos Atrapes]

"Sturkov," he murmured lowly, looking at the woman intently. He turned and looked at the twilek Inquisitor.

"You failed to take the Jedi." He said it as a statement, but there was a question laced in his tone as well. The twilek nodded. "Report."

He turned, seemingly done with Sturkov, and gestured for the group to move into the imposing structure of the Citadel. The twilek drew to the right and behind the man, giving her account of the events that led up to her capture of Alexia, and the Jedi's escape from the planet as they entered into darkness.

Alexia's first sight would be of black. A glossy black dominated the color scheme of the Citadel's interior, only broken in some places by thin white lines which provided some ambient lighting in concert with the overhead panels interspersed regularly.

Each corridor they went through looked almost exactly the same, even down to the number of doors and their positions in the wall, save for a good number of halls which had no visible doorways whatsoever.

The turbolifts were a dull white, which seemed glaring in contrast to the dark halls.

"'E is exceedingly skilled in lightsaber combat, Inquisitor," she said, finishing up her report. "I am fortunate to 'ave survived as many times as I 'ave."

"Perhaps another approach then is needed," Atrapes responded. standing aside and allowing the cage and its guard to enter the lift first. "Your continued failure disappoints me. But that you engaged a Jedi and a trained Dark Side Adept and lived is commendable."

Inquisitor Iscandar nodded and pressed a button on the display to the left of the door.

As they descended (though in truth there was no way to tell the direction they were going) into the Citadel, the feeling of darkness and cold multiplied, though there was no tell-tale gusts of breath from the two Inquisitors; this was a chill of the Force.

The doors opened and they were treated to another corridor. This one was unlike the others, in that it had sturdy, durasteel doors with thick panels of transparisteel acting as viewports into each cell. While quiet, as they passed each cell, some small muffled sounds could be heard; the third door betrayed a barely comprehensible murmur of speech, tremulous and carrying the taint of psychosis. Through the sixth door on the left hand side a man was screaming. The Force roiled, a sudden feeling as if there were a black hole, drawing all warmth and energy from the area permeated, and it suddenly stopped, along with the man's screams, leaving a stifling silence. A door, invisible to the naked eye some five feet from the sturdy cell door opened, allowing some differently clothed humans through, many of whom writing on datapads. They nodded to Atrapes and Iscandar and watched Alexia pass with interest.

The small group left the hallway and entered another, this one much more quiet, with deeply recessed doors leading to more regular cells like one would find in a Star Destroyer, with nothing but a toilet and a receding cot for furnishings. The ray-shield cage was carefully directed inside, and settled in the center of the room. Two squares appeared in the roof and ceiling, and the top and bottom of Alexia's cage rose and dropped into each small recess.

Atrapes, Iscandar, and the two troopers left, the door to the cell slid swiftly closed, and only then did the ray-shielding deactivate.

She would not see Inquisitor Atrapes, or anyone else for that matter, again for a galactic standard week.

[Alexia Sturkov]

The parade continued into the building and she was forced to listen to the back and forth rabble between the two Inquisitors as they discussed the Jedi that Alexia and the Twi'lek had encountered on Naboo. The discussion only managed to fuel her increasingly souring attitude. Alexia was certain that she could have not only bested the Jedi in combat but killed him and mounted his head on a spike in her new monastery. Great praise and worship would have been hers but instead that glory was stolen from her hands when the Inquisitor interrupted. By the Lords of the Sith she promised she would make the Twi'lek bitch pay. Someday. Somehow.

The scenery inside the structure was most drab, and Alexia caught herself thinking about what a few vivid banners or curtains here and there would do to brighten the place up. A night royal purple or coagulated blood red perhaps? It was while he was internally decorating the place that she noticed how each hallways, each door, every room was structured the same and appeared almost identical. She had not bothered to map the place on her way in, and felt like a fool for not doing so and then felt like the bigger fool for not realizing that it would be impossible to navigate this place if everything looked the same. She was beginning to panic again.

Finally the trip was over and she was dumped in a cell with the door shut behind her. "NO!" She screamed, throwing up her hands and blasting the door with all the force energy she could muster as she howled but all she managed was to blast herself off her feet and into the opposing wall in the backlash. Growling, she rose from the floor and looked at her drab accomodations. She had been a queen, a pontifex, a goddess even. Now she was reduced to a prisoner living in a rubbish cell. It was not fair. It was all that Jedi's fault. He would pay. Again; somehow and someday.

The cot her new throne as she waited for the Inquisition to come and finish her off. When they did not come for what felt like an entire day she began to worry. Would they just leave her in here to rot away and die? Was she to be a prisoner for life? It seemed hardly a fitting end, but she was not going to let it take her. Instead she built her strength as best she could living in the darkness. When the soreness began to wane from her arms and legs she took to pacing her cell or exercising as little as she could manage in the small space. When that failed to captivate her she took to using her telekinetics to manipulate the bedsheet into a puppet or make lost strands of her hair dance in the air. It was a bleak existence. Sometimes she would reach out with her telepathy, but every mind felt so far away, with minds like steel traps that she could not twist.

Finally she took to banging her head against the walls. Pain brought a small comfort in this new world of sensory deprivation. It was an old friend. A sure constant in her life. As her strength continue to grow she began to push at the door with the force, trying to bend it backwards off it's hinges or twist or damage it in any way but it resisted her. It was just too strong and too thick. She had gotten soft in her personal training and it was showing now.

Sometimes she thought of the cult on Naboo, and wondered if the Empire had gone back to wipe it out or if Alexander had managed to get everyone to safety. Fat chance. Alexander was a psychopath. A figure head and nothing more. He could no more lead the cult than he could fly.

[Rossos Atrapes]

"It appears she's been training herself in some ways," the Inquisitorial Agent said, glancing down at the screens. "Preparing herself for when the interrogation comes."

Atrapes nodded.

"Gas the room," he commanded. The Agent nodded and entered the protocols. The room became clouded and murky as several ejectors sprayed their special gas into the room. "Keep the concentration high, and do not allow the oxygen to gas ratio to go beyond three to one. Activate the scrubbers after fifteen minutes. Then run scans. We shall continue as necessary afterwards."

The Agent deftly worked the gas into the parameters the Inquisitor had set.

"Are you sure the gas will work as it has been designed?" the Agent asked.

"I am unsure. We are testing out the doses on less trained and dangerous prisoners, but if it is to be used in the future, it must be effective against a trained Adept. The current parameters should incapacitate her and put her to sleep for three hours, given that she is trained." Inquisitor Atrapes frowned.

"These measurements were tested on a reasonably fit, two hundred pound male human. Given enough time, there should be no reason LX-1313 should not take effect."

Both watched the readouts on the terminal, making note of the oxygen and nitrogen levels, coupled with the heat and amount of gas in the room, and remote scans on her heart rate, breathing, and brain activity. The remote scans were not quite so accurate as to give a completely confident assessment of an Adept's condition, but until she was sedated, and able to be moved safely and scanned with the proper equipment, they would have to do.

[Alexia Sturkov]

The hissing sound jarred her blank stare from the wall, and to her horror the room was beginning to fill up with a unidentifiable substance. Jumping into action Alexia swung herself off the cot and into the center of the cell. Her arms rotated in the air like the blades of a windmill as she pulled a bubble of air around herself. However, the gas did not relent and eventually her little bubble of air ran out of oxygen and she was forced to release it or suffocate.

As she lost consciousness she could only think of this as the most unglorified way to die.

The world slipped away and darkness consumed her. She felt like she was falling. There were no boundaries. Just infinite nothing. She continued to fall; slowly tumbling through the air until suddenly she landed. The ground hit her with all the force in the galaxy but she felt no pain. Just impact. Fingers reached for purchase and felt nothing but the soft blades of grass. Looking up, she stood in an open field surrounded by never ending ranks upon ranks of tall and twisted trees petrified by time. Through the limbs and trunks she could glimpse a deeper darkness in which she spied the blur of movement and the glow of red eyes. Monsters lurked there, afraid to step into this field. The field itself was a bright bastion of sunlight and joy. A complete opposite to the forest it sat inside of. She recognized the forest. It was Lazarus' forest. This field, though, she was not so familiar with. It felt wrong.

"It's not real, thief. It's a fabrication. Just another sign of your deteriorating mind." The voice that was her own came from behind her, forcing her to climb to her feet and look across the field to the form of pale, black and red clad Alexia Sturkov. But, if Alexia was here and then who was... Looking down at herself she saw small, fragile hands smoothing out the plain white dress she was wearing. The same hands reached up hesitantly and shaking to find long tresses of cyan died hair.

"You've grown weak. Disgusting. I want my body back." Alexia called again. From the air a sword appeared in her hand; a long, elegant thing that was as deadly as it was beautiful. She screamed and charged. Jezreal, yes, that was what she had been called once upon a time. She could not respond. It was all too shocking. Never had she felt so vulnerable during these mind battles with Alexia. Each time the mind of her host rose up again she smacked it down again. Never had she ever assumed her original form in this dream world. She'd always appeared as a shadowy monster or deadly behemoth. Always an image of power. Now she felt so small and insignificant. Alexia was coming. Her heavy, rushed footfalls scattering dandelions. She came close, she was almost on top of her. "No." Jezreal whispered, raising her hands in one fluid motion and in between them the air crackled and from the air materialized a mighty lance. She dropped to a knee, soiling her dress as she dug the mighty spear into the earth and closed her eyes. There was the sensation of impact and the lance quivered in her hands. Opening just a single eye, she looked up and saw Alexia skewed straight through her middle on the pole. She was not dead, and tried to reach out and cut with her sword; the lance pierced through her stomach and out the other end. The field turned red from the gore.

The whole world fell away and she tumbled in darkness again. As she fell, she looked at herself, and she saw the strong hands and red hair.

"I....am.... the real.... Alexia..."

[Rossos Atrapes]

"Scans indicate she is unconscious," the Agent said, sitting up. "Brain activity is normal, but her REM states are particularly chaotic."

"Will it pose a problem?" Atrapes asked. The Agent stared at the readouts for a few more moments and finally shook his head.

"No, Inquisitor."

Atrapes nodded and raised himself from where he had been bent, watching the security camera screen.

"Send in a team to move her into an interrogation chamber. We will need an interrogation droid with..." he paused, thinking. "Five series of injections, in increasing strength.

"I do not think there will be a need to use any of the more esoteric means, but bring out one of the Sith torture masks, should we need it."

The Agent nodded.

"Who will be performing the interrogation, sir?"

Atrapes' brow rose.

"I will."

-------------------------------------------

She had been set up in an interrogation room, strapped to a chair with the same sort of magnetic binders used to subdue her on the ship. The chair was not meant for comfort at all, composed of durasteel and bolted to the flooring beneath a seamlessly joined plate around the base of the thick support beam. All its lines were harsh and straight, making an elongated hexagon around her. The magnetic binders had been placed over her forehead, each wrist and bicep, and each thigh and ankle. They glowed, almost ironically, a soft and comforting blue.

The interrogation droid, one of the standard models in use before the battle of Yavin, was prepared with the five drug series and was powered down in a sconce outside the room.

The room itself was bare and glaringly white, like her cell, and the only furniture in the room was the chair to which she was strapped. There were no panels of any kind that could be made out. The room seemed entirely cut off.

Inquisitor Atrapes was standing beside her, wearing the same dark uniform from before, only this time he was not wearing the dark red cape. His slate grey uniform was sharply pressed and nearly featureless. There were pins on the banded collar of his jacket: two small imperial logos, completely black.

He was inserting an IV into her arm, and adjusting something on a panel that jutted out from the chair. His movements were gentle, and almost careful despite their surgical precision. A strip of gauze was placed on the entrance of the tube, and he looked her in the eye.

"We will begin," he said without preamble. "What is your name?"

[Alexia Sturkov]

The dream faded, but the memory remained. She would come again. She always did. The true Alexia's identity would be forever buried in the back of the mind she had stolen. Reality returned as her eyes fluttered open. The oddly comfortable floor of her cell had been replaced with a discomfort like she had never known. Her blue eyes darted around, trying to find something. Anything. A key to her freedom, a window to escape from. There was nothing. Just the glaringly white surface of the wall and the contrasting black uniform of her captor.

She struggled at first, attempting to pull out of her bindings. When that failed she tried to crush him with the force, but without the full motion of her arms channeling the necessary power was almost impossible. She did not need her arms. They were merely a focus to ease the process, but she was hardly in the condition to bend a man in half with just the will of her mind. Her fingers attempted to compensate, but were having difficultly finding the range of motion necessary to carry anything of power in the direction of her captor. All that she managed was a few gusts of energy, like a light breeze, that did more less than tousle his hair.

Her anger rose at her inability to move. Her mouth opened, gritted teeth exposed. The scars at the sides of her mouth were aggravated by the expression as it pulled at the hardened flesh. It gave it the appearance that her face might rip if she strained any harder. Her entire body was rigid as she continued to pull at her restraints. Unwilling to give up. She did not want to cooperate. Give him anything. She wanted to be mad. To fight. To tear him in half.

"Alexia Sturkov." She replied finally, as coldly as she could manage through her gritted teeth.

[Rossos Atrapes]

"I can feel your anger," he said conversationally. "It is all rooted in fear. Why do you fear? Is not the Force your weapon? Are your chains not broken through it?"

His face was largely impassive, but still conveyed a condescending curiosity to his prisoner.

[Alexia Sturkov]

"My chains are broken. My chains." She argued, still pulling at her restraints despite the fruitlessness of it. If her anger was brute strength should would have torn through these restraints like a hot vibroblade through fresh nerf butter. "It's your chains I could do without." She was calming down. Accepting her fate. The pulls at the restraints lessened, but her anger hardly simmered. It just boiled under the surface. Biding her time was incredibly difficult when she wanted nothing more than to reach out and push her fingers through the soft tissue of his eyes.

[Rossos Atrapes]

"Chains are chains," the Inquisitor said in return. "Whether I placed them on you is moot - they are your burden, and yet the Force has not set you free."

He took a few steps and gestured. The door slid open and an interrogation droid hovered in, a large syringe dripping a clear liquid pointed directly at her. It pressed the needle to her arm, and injected the chemical into Alexia's bloodstream.

"This is a pain inducer. It is meant to make all your nerve endings more sensitive by multiples of twenty. I'm told that it is difficult to concentrate past the pain itself; the Force is simply too elusive to hold. But you've been having trouble with that regardless, haven't you?"

He went silent for a few moments.

"Answer me truthfully, and I'll administer the counterdrug. How many did you lure to yourself on Naboo?"

[Alexia Sturkov]

Her eyes moved away, looking everywhere in the room but in his face. She felt free, on a spiritual level. There was nothing he could do to take that away from her. Killing her would only make her that much free again. Death was an old friend, and one that she had met before and conquered. Doing so again, in this situation, was unlikely. Regardless, his physical chains would never tie down her soul.

The door opened with a swish and her eyes became locked on the droid as it entered with it's needle pointed toward her. It reminded her of Zanon's lab, and how she had collected specimens for him to experiment on. People she plucked straight off the streets of Corellia and fed to that mad scientist. She watched too, with great delight, as he savaged their bodies. How different things were on the other side.

As the needle pressed into her arm she found comfort in the pain, and then the world changed. She felt different. Not more pain. Not yet. Very uncomfortable. It made her heart rate rise as she tensed for the real pain.

"How many?" She asked, confused at first. "I had only just recently arrived on Naboo. Just a few weak minded civilians and a handful of Korgan monks that converted" And that was the truth, but she neglected to make any mention of the cultists she had brought from her original church on Corellia. Her handmaidens, for example. A Queen needed her servants, after all.

[Rossos Atrapes]

"Stage two," Inquisitor Atrapes murmured, writing down some notes on a screen nearby. 'Subject uncooperative at stage one of LX-1313. Progressing to stage two.'

The droid bobbed forward and injected Sturkov again.

"We can do many things here, Sturkov," he said conversationally. "We have had so much time to study the Force and how to break those who wield it. Lord Vader preferred brute force, you know. He would tear apart a prisoner mentally, sifting through memories and inclinations and personality until he found what he was looking for. Often, the prisoners would be useless and unresponsive afterwards, comatose."

He continued to write on the datapad, jotting down notes on her heart-rate, eye dilation, and blood pressure. Stage Two of LX-1313 continued enhancing the capabilities of the pain receptors in the brain and nervous system.

"But there are other ways we've discovered as well," he said, his stylus and eyes never leaving the pad. "We've discovered a way to shut down the areas in the brain responsible for hate and anger, to shut down the processes used when a subject lies, to completely lock a prisoner within their own mind, aware that they exist but able to feel no external stimuli. Not much better than a computer. Unfortunately we've not perfected a complete reversal of the effects, making it somewhat cumbersome, if still an exceptionally elegant way of removing the threat of an adept. Can you imagine the Inquisition turning you loose after removing your ability to wield the Dark side of the Force? Imagine it for me, if you would. Would your acolytes still revere your strength of will? Your illusions? Your ability to inflict pain?"

[Alexia Sturkov]

"Augh!" She screamed through her teeth as the second needle pressed into her arm. Her self control was fading. She would have never cried out in pain if not for the present circumstances. And that was the worst part; knowing that she was losing control. It was not something she relinquished easily. She turned and looked at the droid, wishing it to explode. But concentration was getting harder the fuzzier her head became.

She'd try anyways. Narrowing her eyes and focusing on the droid, her hands contorting toward it as best they could in their bindings as Alexia employed every ounce of willpower she had, and when that was not enough, when the droid refused to react, she pushed harder. Past the safe limitation of the mind. She was darkness. She was Queen, a priestess. No mere mortal limitations could stop her. All her fear and anger and self loathing and rage fed into this one task. She could feel the force welling up inside her, lighting her up like a beacon, but for all her bang and bluster she could not release it. The harder she pushed the more her mind wandered and her concentration blurred.

Then there was pain, as more blood vessels in her face; around her mouth and eyes, burst leaving red dots just underneath the skin. Finally he ceased, lying back into her prison; heavy breathing and sweaty forehead. Turning back to the Inquisitor she looked at him with a far less rebellious look in her eyes. Defeat was on her tongue now and it tasted ever so bitter.

"What do you want from me Inquisitor. I have nothing to give you. I just wanted to rule a little city..."

[Rossos Atrapes]

"A city ruled by another, more powerful, and a very jealous Empress. She suffers no pretenders," Atrapes set the pad down and met Sturkov's eyes.

"Information, Sturkov. Information. Anything. Everything."

Atrapes leaned down to whisper in her ear.

"You tell me everything about your cabal on Naboo. Tell me everything about where you came from. Tell me everything about your parents, or whomever raised you as a child. Confess your sins to me, Sturkov. And I will make this pain stop. Cooperate more, and you may end up living. The Inquisition has much to teach, to those whom are willing to learn."

[Alexia Sturkov]

No. That would be wrong. She would never tell anyone that information, much less as Inquisitor. The more she resisted the urge to speak her mind the harder it was to resist. His words were just so soothing, so enticing. How could resist this silver tongued fiend? She tried to find loopholes in his questions, any way to force herself to release more information than she absolutely had to. But his question was too perfect; too all encompassing.

"I come from a ship, the Dreamscape. My parents were merchants for a time. Darkan and Jorgana Darkshard. We settled on Dantooine. My Brother and I discovered a renegade Sith in the woods. Lazarus, he called himself. Taught us the force. Taught us how to become immortal. The Empire killed him. Killed my brother, Justin, and then they killed me. I destroyed the Sith Order with the help of Doctor Zanon O'Hara. He made a mutant army. We searched all of Korriban until all the sith were dead.

Then I began my cult. I selected the criminal psychopath Alexander Bane as my high priest and together we created the Cult of the Dark Ascension. When Coronet was not enough anymore I moved to Theed. Jedi showed up during the festival. I tried to kill him. Inquisition intervened. Now I am here." At first her voice came out forced, through her teeth, and then as the drugs pushed deeper into her system her voice mellowed and her eyes unfocused until she was speaking slowly and staring into the distance. She was aware she was spilling her darkest secrets, but for whatever reason she just did not care anymore.

[Rossos Atrapes]

"Administer antidote," Inquisitor Atrapes said, standing up completely again and making more notes on his datatab. The droid hovered closer to the writhing adept and injected another substance into her.

"Your cooperation at Stage 2 has been noted, Miss Sturkov," Atrapes said, moving away from the table, which started moving. It angled up, moving her gaze from the ceiling to the wall, and Inquisitor Atrapes.

"There will be more questions, Miss Sturkov," he said, regarding the shivering adept with veiled eyes. "But I will let you know now the two ends you face here. Ultimately, you face death, or you will consent to indoctrination and become a member of the Inquisitorius. Death is far easier."

[Alexia Sturkov]

She gritted her teeth now as the needle drove into her arm once again. Looking to the side she saw the metal pull itself free of her arm, leaving behind a third puncture hole. If those so much as scarred she would be livid. Keeping herself beautiful was difficult enough without forces beyond her corruption marring her body.

The blur of motion marked the moving of the table, but the dizziness that resulted forced her to squeeze her eyes shut until she felt herself come to a stop. Only then did she open them to once again look into the uncaring face of her captor. Once again she wanted to squeeze the life out of him again.

"Death? Ha!" She laughed, but it was a hollow, mirthless thing. "I've died before. It's easy. I'd much rather try it the hard way, if you don't mind. Give me. Your. Best. Shot."

[Rossos Atrapes]

Atrapes looked her in the eye, but saw her continued scorn and disdain. She would be broken of her pride before long.

"There will be no attempt, Sturkov," Atrapes answered. "Either you will take, or you will die. And we will make sure you stay dead."

He gestured, and the manacles holding her down came undone, spilling her from the table and onto the floor.

"First there will be questions. You must answer them all, and honestly. We will know if you lie. Second, will be indoctrination, which will continue until we are satisfied that you not only know our beliefs and strictures, but that you believe them. Then shall come training."

He paused, and looked at her intently for a moment.

"There is a myth originating from a planet in the Atravis sector, in which a deity sends a panther to hunt and bring him a snake who defies him and does not heed his commands. I am the panther, Sturkov, and you are the snake. I have hunted you, and you will be brought to the Empress. Whether I drop your head at her feet or you bend your knees at her feet, it matters not. The Empire's order brooks no rivals.

"Do you understand?"

[Alexia Sturkov]

No. It was not what she wanted. Not anything remotely close. She wanted to be a Queen, she wanted to rule and be worshiped. Her cults had promised her as much and she had conquered the Korgan monastery like a monarch taking back what was hers. When the monks said no she ripped the flesh from their defiant bodies one by one until, finally, they learned true fear and converted. She had never felt so powerful in her life.

It was all gone. If there was even the slightest chance that she could ever recover what was lost she would defy this man till her last breath. There was no way to escape. She had finally met the monster greater than herself, and he was terrifying. While he brushed off the notion of death it truly terrified her. She had burned so bright and hot with the force when she perished and her soul had risen like a phoenix. However, she doubted that the Inquisitor would allow her to die in the heat of battle. No. Poison and needles was his style. She could never risk that.

"I don't have much of a choice." She said from her position on the floor, pulling her legs up to herself; her body too shaky to stand. "I understand."