The Weaving Force: Interlude- Sevrance Tann (Patreon)

Interlude- Sev'rance Tann

Sev’rance Tann

The Force, to her, had always been… an academic pursuit.

A tool.

A useful tool. Powerful, versatile. It enhanced her already considerable abilities beyond the capacity of mortals to keep up with.

But it had always been that. Just that.

She did not believe in the mysticism of the Force. She did not consider its will or philosophize about the higher mysteries like Jedi did.

She did not care.

There was this world. This life and what one could achieve in it.

And as such, the Force was useful. Nothing more, nothing less.

But even she had to acknowledge that what she’d sensed, what she felt… shook her. 

She’d felt it before.

And she knew someone who’d felt it with her.

She wouldn’t normally lower herself to descend to this world. Like the Force itself, it was useful for resources: manpower, industrial capacity, but little beyond that and she liked it that way.

But needs must when the devil drives.

And so, down she went, off her ship, into the dry dust, crags and valleys. Through the factories, the hives, and the endless oceans of droids.

Down, down, down, where the sun would never reach and black secrets were birthed in the unseen corners of this world, a world now teeming with the capacity for war.

It didn’t take long to find him… or the ones with him.

The dark side flowed and churned like a thick soup. It pooled in this place, sucked in by baleful ritual and desperate grasps for any scrap of power.

The white of her uniform stood out amidst the darkness.

The Witches of Dathomir, however, seemed right at home.

The red robed dark side wielders eyed her with eyes that reminded her of serpents, hidden smiles and better hidden daggers, flittering through oily shadows cast by torchlight.

She marched past them, her senses extended, wary of any threat. And they were threats, especially with this one standing beside them.

She cast her eyes about the room. Dark sorceries clawed at the bones and rotting flesh. The telltale signs of experiments and deep pursuits of alchemy, Sith alchemy, were visible even from here. A great, blood red spawning pool bubbled near the center of the chamber, mixtures and concoctions melding and fusing together within.

Something black shifted in the morass of it all, black and solid. Her senses brushed across it but the Force… died as it drew close.

It was the only way she could describe it.

She felt queasy, a disquiet in her body and spirit even as she turned away to finally look upon her target, hunched over a holocron, words in black speech slipping from its whispers and slithering into his ear.

“Jorus,” She called.

The fallen Jedi’s profile was pale, gaunt. He looked like he hadn’t eaten in days. His flesh was sallow and thin, his fingers long and gnarled. Nails yellow and rotting.

He looked half a corpse himself.

Sidious had told her, when she asked why he was not worried about Jorrus’ growing power in the black arts of necromancy, that ‘the fool will lose more than he gains’.

To her, the Force was a useful tool.

To Palpatine, Jorrus was the useful tool. The useful fool. Pursuing a short cut. A dead end to power.

It seemed her teacher was right.

As he turned to her, the man’s eyes glowed yellow in the gloom, the Dark Side sorcery left almost a mark on his very spirit. Her senses almost recoiled. Sickly and decaying. Like putrescent ooze. 

His power was growing, it was true. His arrogance with it.

But that same arrogance was blinding him to how much he was withering away. 

Even so. He’d been there. He’d sensed it too.

He must’ve sensed it now.

The man sucked in a breath

“Why are you here?” He breathed and the words carried the feel of corpse mold. Of bonemeal and tomb dust.

This thing was already lost.

The Force was a tool.

And this one had let the tool turn itself into the wielder.

Even so, for now, she could use him. Everyone else was it seemed.

She took a breath. 

“I take it you sensed it? That… upheaval in the force.”

“Don’t insult me.” The man sneered. “Of course I sensed it.” He turned away, back to his holocron and scrolls.. “You and that mongrel can trade notes yourselves. I already know its cause.”

“Komari isn’t on planet-” She clarified. The woman was unpleasant but she would have much preferred speaking with her. Near rabid the assassin might have been on most days with her hatred but she was at least more pleasant company than Jorus. And arguably more intelligent; given that her own ego didn’t get in the way. “-and the Master is occupied.”

He wasn’t answering his comms. Which was unusual. 

Jorrus scoffed.

But still, what he’d said all but confirmed her initial suspicions. “It was her, wasn’t it? Hebert?”

Corellia. What she’d sensed… it’d been just like Corellia. 

“Abomination” Jorrus’ voice and soul seethed with hate his yellow eyes burning like embers. “The Council should have killed her when she was nothing more than a frightened, useless mute. Fools”

Yes yes. It’s always someone else who made the error.

Wisely, she didn’t voice those thoughts. Clasping her hands behind her back  she did continue. “What’s done is done. The question now is how do we address this. If she’s grown powerful enough that we can sense such a thing while not even being within the same Star system… well… It presents a bit of a wrinkle in our plans.”

“It does not.” He insisted, voice cracking with an edge of… not quite hysteria. Not yet anyway. “Unlike you, playing with your tin soldiers, I’ve been preparing to destroy that little mistake.”

Those tin soldiers are the only thing that will allow your… pets to not be filled with Blaster Bolts before they’ve even had time to devour their first Force sensitive.

Again, she refrained from speaking aloud. 

“All I want to know-” She ventured instead. “Is what was she doing? What could have necessitated that much raw power?”

Jorrus snarled, turning his baleful eyes on her with bared teeth. “Why not ask your leash holder?”

“So you don’t know.” She sighed rolling her eyes. “Pointless waste of time.”

“What she was doing will not matter once she’s dead.” The fallen madman dismissed. “Leave me. I have work to do.”

She rolled her eyes, casting one more look over this… charnel house. The stink of madness and desperation almost feeling like it clung to her very clothes.

She turned and walked away, there was nothing more to be gained here.

Approaching her entri point, one of the red robed witches seemed to bleed out of the shadows. Sev’rance didn’t tense or draw her weapon, merely turned and gave a disdainful look towards the leering cultist, who smiled at her.

“A message” The woman whispered softly, her voice nearly lost amidst the strange stillness of this dead place. “For your master.”

Sev raised an eyebrow. “From whom?” She asked. “I’m not Jorrus’ messenger girl.”

But the witch shook her head. “No. Not the one who walks in death. From the mother.”

Mother Talzin.

In truth; Sev’rance knew very little about the head of the Witch cult. Though she knew that her master and the coven head were very powerful and were cooperating for mutual benefit… for now. 

As such, begrudging though it might have been, she was curious as to what exactly the red witch had to say.

“Speak then.” She demanded.

The woman’s smile grew.  “The mother warns. Your master must beware.”

The chiss woman let her eyes narrow. “Beware of what? Jorrus?”

Not good. Killing Jorrus was always a foregone conclusion at some point. But at the height of this conflict before they’d eliminated the most dangerous enemy pieces on the board, losing him so prematurely to his own idiotic betrayal would be a heavy wasteful blow to her strategies and Sidious’ plans.

But then, her fears were allayed, the witch shaking her head as she giggled.

“No. Not him. Never him. Your Master must beware. The Mother has foreseen it. Beware The One. The One who burns and does not die.”

(X)(X)(X)

The turnaround was very fast on this one, obviously because of the length. It is an interlude chapter, just touching base with the villains we haven't heard from in a while.

While I wont say the chapter was born out of whole cloth as some other ones were, I did enjoy making it exclusively from Sev'rance's POV rather than say Palpatines after he gets back from Ryloth. Giving her "on the ground" perspective I think adds a certain dynamic that Palpatine just can't grasp in the same way and I found it very fun to explore and write.

Anyway That's 2 chaps or one chap and a mini chap in 2 days so I'll catch you guys in the next one :)