Star Wars: The Soul of a Sith

Chapter 01

Ren gazed through the folds of his hood at a small, gray skinned lizard-like creature crawling up the vertical side of a large jagged rock. Ren could feel its simple mind concentrating entirely on the surface in front of it. The small creature—no bigger than his foot—was displaying remarkable physical strength to climb up through Tessar's nearly three times galactic standard gravity. The slow tremble of its muscles reminded him of his own struggles. Like him, the small creature had to work incredibly hard to stay alive. Like him, it had evolved to develop the strength to meet the harsh demands of its existence.

The lizard could not see Ren, he knew. Ren was hiding, perched under an arch of rock. He was still and silent in the arid heat, and shrouded very heavily within the Force. Light bent and shifted around his form, as did heat and many other forms of energy. This was among the more advanced Sith abilities he had begun mastering in the last few years as his powers had begun to truly flourish. He was a ghost on the desert world. He could fool the naked eyes of most people unless they were very close to him, and even advanced droid sensors had difficulty locating him. The technique had saved his life more than a few times since he had attained it. He practiced it now out of habit. The old woman had taught him to develop his abilities at all times and, in her particular style of training, slacking off even a little would mean his death.

Maintaining his cloaking field, Ren held up his wrist computer and aimed its three-dimensional camera at the lizard and took a holographic image for his collection. Then he tapped the screen and initiated a voice recording.

"It is day seventy-four on planet Tessar," he said, hearing his voice crack in the dry air. "No one has attempted to kill me in thirty-four days." He eyed the lizard as he spoke, watching it move ever so slowly higher. "I wonder what that means, master. Have you forgotten about me?"

Ren tapped the screen, ending his recording. The sun was starting to set, which meant movement would be easier. He summoned the Force through his body and rose to his feet on the rough sand. Tessar, like so many other planets his master had deposited him onto to survive, had severe environmental challenges. Ren had to constantly focus the Force in order to counter the massive gravity field that was always pulling downward on every bone and sinew in his body. If he failed, even for a few minutes, he would tumble to the ground hard enough to crack his own bones or, barring that, his heart and lungs would fail under the enormous strain the planet placed on them. He had not failed at this anymore than he had failed to survive in any of the environments that should have killed him. The old woman had thrown onto worlds with temperatures cold enough to freeze the blood in his veins or hot enough to burn him to ash or worlds where the air had less than a tenth of a percent of oxygen in its atmosphere and he had to constantly filter toxic gas from his blood stream. Always he had persevered.

Ren moved silently over the sand, his taught legs carrying him one step at a time. Ren was not a heavily muscled young man as he sometimes supposed his master wished he were. Over his twenty years of life as a Sith apprentice and all its constant physical challenge he had developed his body into a mass of tight, chorded sinew. His training and discipline were written all over his body, from the scars that littered his tanned skin to the neatly shaven stubble on his scalp to the way he moved: lithe, graceful, and perfectly silent.

Physiologically, Ren had been something of a gamble, half-human, half-miralukia. His mother had told him once she had not been certain whether he would develop eyes. He had: a pair with deep green irises flecked with gold. He saw with them, and yet saw as the miralukai see as well. Alwayshis mind sent waves out with the Force and formed a perfect and precise mental image of his surroundings, often seeing things his human eyes missed. It did this even when he slept. That was his gift from the old woman, and one that had helped keep him stay alive.