Gray Tale, A Star Wars Rebels Story

SW Gray Tale 129- The Calling IV : Darkness Beneath

A/N: Sorry guys, i forgot to update here at right time (which was like 18 hours ago)

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Vitiate allowed the silence to stretch for a long moment.

Then, with the deliberate care of someone setting down a tool they had found inadequate, he abandoned the pretense.

"You are not what I expected," he said simply.

Ezra's eyebrow rose a fraction. It was the only acknowledgment he offered.

"I could continue this dance," Vitiate continued, his voice shedding the warm cadences, the careful intonations, and the layered implications. All of it. Leaving only the dry, ancient core of his attention. "I could probe and deflect. Offer and withdraw. We could spend the next several hours circling each other like two predators who have both recognized the other's teeth."

He drifted to a halt, standing square and still before Ezra.

"I suspect we would both find it tedious."

Ezra said nothing, but he allowed his grip on the lightsaber to loosen by a single degree. It was simply a necessary recalibration, completely devoid of any real trust.

"I will speak without falsehood," Vitiate said. "Not because I am incapable of deception — you would not believe that claim, and I would not expect you to. But because deception requires the deceived to participate in their own misdirection, and you have made it abundantly clear that you will not."

A heavy beat of quiet settled over the corridor.

"In exchange, I would have answers. Not all of them. Not even most. But some."

He fixed those depthless black eyes on Ezra's face.

"Will you hear me, before you decide whether to answer?"

Ezra regarded him for a long, measured moment.

He gave a single, shallow nod.

Vitiate's form seemed to settle slightly.

"Some days ago, the Force was disturbed," he said, his voice dropping into a low, resonant register. "In a way that I have never felt in my thousands of years of existence. I felt it even here, buried beneath stone and silence. I do not doubt that any being sensitive to the Force felt it too."

Ezra kept his face completely neutral through his heart threatened to burst.

"Look, things happen," he said, waving his free hand dismissively. "It's a big galaxy, and there's a Sith Lord currently ruling it. Who knows what kind of sinister experiments and rituals he does in his basement. Maybe he did another one of those. I don't exactly dare to pry into his secrets, and honestly, you should go ask him what he did if you're so curious."

He paused.

"Oh, wait. I forgot. You can't even leave this temple, can you?"

"No," Vitiate murmured, his tone cold and absolute. "It was not the doing of a Sith. You lie still."

Ezra shrugged, leaning slightly against his lightsaber hilt.

"Believe what you want. I'm not interested in that kind of stuff, and honestly, perhaps neither should you be."

"You speak nothing but lies," Vitiate rumbled, the sheer power of his voice causing the dust on the floor to vibrate. "You deflect. You obscure. You treat truth as if it were a weapon to be hidden."

"But hey, instead of chasing random Force disturbances," Ezra suggested, offering a small, easy shrug. "Why don't we talk about more tangible things? I'm sure that after so long, even the great Eternal Emperor grows weary of being trapped as a glowing specter in a damp tomb. I actually know a couple of things that could help you out. Of course, that depends on whether the price you pay is worth it."

Ezra prayed for the ancient bastard to take the bait. Surely a fragment trapped in a dying temple would jump at the chance of getting out.

But the ancient Sith Lord was entirely hyperfocused on the strange disturbance, brushing the offer aside without a second thought.

"You know about it," Vitiate insisted, his dark eyes locking onto Ezra with a terrifying intensity. "Do not lie to me."

He drifted closer.

The temperature in the corridor plummeted until Ezra's breath misted heavily in the air.

"You know of the rupture. I can feel it," Vitiate said, his voice dropping the benevolent act entirely as it took on a sharp, demanding edge. "The force that cracked the ancient seals of this world. You bear its traces. A power that belongs to neither the light nor the dark. Tell me what caused it. Tell me."

Ezra kept his expression locked down.

"I have no idea what you're talking about, old man," he said, his voice steady but cold. "Maybe your ancient systems are just senile."

His mental shields slammed down harder, forming an ironclad wall of static that even a Sith Lord would have trouble cracking.

Vitiate could feel the lie vibrating through the ambient dark side energy of the room. The child knew exactly what had caused the disturbance, yet he was treating the knowledge like a toxic plague that could not be allowed to escape his own skull.

"You cower before the secret," Vitiate hissed, his spectral robes beginning to writhe with agitated crimson static. "You guard it like a cowardly Jedi hoarding their useless texts. Why do you shrink from the very power that touched you? Tell me its name. Tell me where to find the source of that hunger."

The phantom drifted faster, his movements becoming erratic and frantic. The fragment's sanity, already frayed by eons of dormancy and isolation, was beginning to splinter under the sudden, desperate thirst for a power he had never encountered before.

"If a power of that magnitude exists, it is meant to be claimed," Vitiate continued, his voice beginning to overlap with the chaotic, echoing tones of his past hosts. "To be devoured. To be bent to a supreme will. Tell me what it is!"

Ezra watched the phantom's escalating frenzy with growing disgust.

It was clear to him that this ancient Sith was entirely beyond reason. Eons of rotting in a damp tomb had done absolutely nothing to cure his universe-consuming god-complex. If this lunatic ever managed to get even a speck of information about Abeloth, he would undoubtedly go poking around, try to consume her, and end up freeing her to doom the entire galaxy.

There was no negotiating with a madman. There were no secrets or benefits to be gained from a rabid dog that wanted to consume everything just to become a god.

Had the specter not poked at that one specific topic, there could perhaps have been some room for negotiations. The ancient Sith had far too many secrets that Ezra would have liked to know — techniques, history, forgotten lore. But now, any potential benefits were vastly outweighed by the sheer, existential risk the monster brought.

There were plenty of other ancient Sith ruins in the galaxy, and there would be other opportunities to plunder them.

First, however, Ezra had to figure out how this decrepit ghost had even caught the traces of the Mother on him in the first place. He had been so sure he had burned every trace of that black sludge out of his system during the Daiyu incident.

But right now, the phantom was merely a weak spiritual fragment whose manifestation here was draining what little power he had left, much like any other localized spirit bound to their tomb.

Then the boy moved.

Without a word of warning, the child stepped forward and swung Hett's lightsaber in a brutal, horizontal arc.

The crimson plasma blade sliced clean through the phantom's chest.

Vitiate felt the blade pass through him the way one might feel a warm breeze through an open window. The spectral form parted like smoke, scattering into the dark corridor before snapping back together a few feet to the left.

He let out a dry laugh.

"Useless," the apparition said, the word dripping with genuine amusement. "A physical strike against an echo? You lash out because you are terrif—"

The boy was already moving.

The lightsaber swept upward in a vicious diagonal arc, catching the reconstituting form before it had fully solidified. Vitiate's torso separated from his legs and dissolved into wisps of crimson smoke.

He reformed again, higher this time, near the ceiling.

"—because you are terrified," Vitiate finished, his tone carrying the patient indulgence of a parent correcting a toddler who had thrown a tantrum. "You fear the very power you carry, yet you bear its unmistakable taint."

The boy didn't respond.

He simply stepped into range and swung again.

A clean horizontal cut through the midsection. Vitiate dispersed. Reform. Swing. Disperse. Reform.

Each attack came faster than the last. Not wild. Not desperate. The child was moving with a mechanical, almost bored efficiency that was genuinely starting to—

Vitiate reformed near a stone pillar.

"—too blind to see it. You have no choice. What lies below is your only path to sur—"

The lightsaber carved through his neck.

His head separated from his shoulders and both halves dissolved into wisps before either could finish the word.

He reformed three feet back.

"—vival," Vitiate completed, and for the first time, a sliver of genuine irritation crept into his voice. "Will you stop that?"

"No," the boy said flatly, already closing the distance.

The crimson blade swept through Vitiate's midsection again. Disperse. Reform. Swing. Disperse. Reform. Swing.

It was becoming annoying.

Not painful. Not dangerous. The boy could swing that lightsaber until his arms fell off and it would not do a single thing to Vitiate's spiritual form. The plasma blade was physical energy interacting with physical matter. A spirit was neither. Every dispersion cost him nothing more than the half-second it took to reconstitute.

But the boy refused to let him finish a single sentence.

"I am attempting—" Disperse.

"—to have a conversation—" Disperse.

"—you insufferable—" Disperse.

"—child."

He reformed behind the boy, out of immediate lightsaber range, and let the irritation sharpen his voice to a razor's edge. "Do you truly believe that repeated physical attacks will—"

The boy spun without turning around. His body twisted with a Force-enhanced pivot that brought the blade sweeping backward in a blind, perfectly aimed arc that sliced through Vitiate's reformed torso before the sentence could complete.

Disperse.

Reform.

"You are out of luck, Emperor," the boy sneered, keeping the lightsaber held high and tracking Vitiate's position with those unsettlingly steady eyes. "What you think you see, it has been burned to ashes long ago."

Vitiate felt the laugh building again, louder and far more unhinged than before. The sound echoed off the ancient walls like a chorus of mocking demons. Let the child swing. Let him exhaust himself. The futility was almost—

"Burned?" Vitiate cackled, drifting lower, allowing his form to solidify into something more distinct. His black eyes widened, practically luminous with manic delight. "You truly believe that? You delude yourself to sleep at night, child. You did not wash it away. You absorbed it. You are a seed. A seed of hunger that will burn this entire galaxy to ash, and you are too blind to—"

The blade came for him again.

Vitiate didn't bother dispersing. He simply let it pass through.

"—see it. Delude yourself to whatever you desire, the truth cares none for—"

Again.

"—that. And you have no—"

Again.

"—choice. What lies below is your only—"

The boy was relentless.

Each swing came with a half-step forward, a micro-adjustment of angle, a slight shift of weight. Not one of them was wasted. Not one of them was wild. The child was moving through them like a machine, and every single time the blade passed through Vitiate's form, it carved through exactly the same region of his chest.

That was when the irritation stopped being irritation.

And became something else entirely.

Vitiate reformed near the far wall, putting a full ten meters between himself and the child. For the first time since the exchange had begun, he didn't immediately drift back into conversation range.

He simply watched.

The boy stood in the center of the corridor, lightsaber held in a loose but ready grip, breathing slightly elevated but controlled. 

Vitiate ran the last forty-five seconds back through his memory with the clinical precision of a being who had spent millennia analyzing every interaction for layers of meaning.

The blade had passed through him eleven times.

All eleven had struck the same region.

Not the same physical region — that concept was meaningless against a spectral form. The same structural region. The same point where three threads of remnant Living Force crossed and held the outer layers of his manifestation together.

Vitiate's laughter died.

It simply stopped, as if someone had reached into his throat and severed the sound at the root.

He looked down at his own translucent chest.

It was... thin. Thinner than it should have been. The threads of living force that bound his self... loosened. Like a knot that someone had patiently, methodically picked at until its structural integrity was compromised.

It was at that moment did the eternal emperor realized that the boy had not been swinging randomly in frustration.

Vitiate's form rippled with something that had not touched him since the Hero of Tython had brought the temple crashing down around his original host.

"Impossible," the word escaped before he could stop it.

He surged backward, his translucent form flickering as he put every remaining meter of corridor between himself and the child. His spectral robes flared outward, trailing wisps of agitated crimson smoke.

"How could you touch—" His voice cracked. Actually cracked. The overlapping chorus of his tone fractured into dissonance. "How could you even perceive the shatterpoints? It's—"

He stopped himself.

Forced the voice back under control.

But the black eyes were wide now. Wider than they had been throughout the entire conversation. And they were locked on the boy with an intensity that had nothing to do with curiosity or hunger or predatory assessment.

For the first time during this whole exchange, he felt the danger that threatened him in those blue eyes.

"Oh, that's what they're called?" the boy said, tilting his head with an expression of mild, genuine interest. He rotated the lightsaber lazily, the crimson blade painting slow circles in the stale air. "Good to know. Thanks for that."

He smiled.

It was not a kind smile.

"Blame yourself for being like an open sieve," the child continued, his tone conversational. Almost friendly. "Otherwise I wouldn't have had anything to work with."

Vitiate said nothing.

Truly, some people are favored by The Force too much. 

And he also realized that the boy had been observing him from the very moment he had appeared, just like he had been observing him.

The thing never intended to talk.

Vitiate felt a strange, foreign warmth bloom in his chest.

It took him a moment to recognize the sensation. It was joy.

A cold, sharp delight he had not experienced in centuries.

In his long existence, he had encountered countless beings. Emperor, conqueror, god—he had looked down upon them all and seen only insects. Some were slightly larger, some possessed sharper mandibles, but they were all fundamentally the same. They were weak, fragile creatures deserving of nothing more than to be crushed and used to fuel his ascension.

Yet today, he stood before a child who saw the universe exactly as he did.

The potential was staggering. The boy's mind was a raw gemstone, a piece of folded steel waiting to be forged into the sharpest blade. Vitiate could feel the sudden, intoxicating urge to take this child under his wing. He wanted to teach him, to carve him into a weapon that would make the galaxy weep.

Imagine the blood that would flow.

It was an incredibly tempting prospect.

But it was also entirely impossible.

As capable as the boy's mind was, it simply paled in comparison to the power slumbering within his flesh. The alien pulse, the seed of hunger—that was the key to everything Vitiate needed to rebuild his empire. One does not train a weapon when one can simply consume the source of its strength.

There was no choosing between the two. The child had to be harvested.

Vitiate allowed the crimson aura to settle, his spectral features smoothing out into an expression of quiet appreciation.

"You are a remarkable creature," Vitiate said, his voice returning to its smooth, melodic cadence. "To dissect a spirit with such surgical precision. Your attempts at claiming my life have been highly commendable."

He drifted back another inch, his spectral robes trailing off into the cold air.

"But this is as far as our little game goes. I have no interest in letting you play the butcher any longer. If you will not go to your calling willingly, then you will simply be forced."

A low, heavy vibration rumbled through the ancient stone beneath their feet.

The vibration originated from somewhere far beyond the shifting walls of the temple. From the swamp outside, a chorus of guttural, blood-curdling roars tore through the storm. The sound was deafening, accompanied by the rhythmic, heavy thudding of massive limbs moving in unison.

The terentateks had finally closed the distance, running in a tight, aggressive pack, guided by the unmistakable resonance of the living Force.

Vitiate's form began to dim, his outline blurring as he prepared to dissolve back into the dark side reservoir deep within the temple's foundation.

"I knew it," the boy said, his voice dropping into a flat, dangerous register. "You bastard. You woke them up."

Vitiate merely offered a small, chilling smile.

"You aren't leaving so soon, old man," the child muttered.

The boy raised his left hand, his fingers curling slightly.

The manipulation bypassed physical boundaries entirely, locking the ambient Force with sudden, violent pressure.

Vitiate felt his fading consciousness halt mid-dissolution. The threads of his spirit, which had been ready to scatter into the cosmic tide, were suddenly seized by thousands of microscopic, invisible fingers.

A cage of resonant frequencies snapped shut around him, severing his connection to the temple's nexus.

He was pulled backward, his form snapping back into solid, luminous focus in the center of the corridor.

To say that Vitiate wasn't surprised beyond measure would be a lie. If before, he had attributed the boy's abilities to simply gifts of the Force, now, he had to reassess that statement.

That level of control and mastery over the Force was something that should not exist inside a body that young. A mind that functioned at a level that violated every principle of cognitive development he had ever observed.

"Extraordinary," Vitiate said quietly, his voice carrying genuine appreciation. "You continue to violate my understanding of what a child should be capable of."

"Glad I could expand your horizons, old man," Ezra said dryly. His left hand remained outstretched, fingers spread wide to maintain the cage's integrity. "Now I'd appreciate it if you'd kindly take your affairs to the afterlife."

The cage began to shrink.

Vitiate's spectral form flickered at the edges.

"Do you know how many have attempted this over the millennia?" Vitiate asked, his tone conversational despite the pressure mounting around him. "Jedi. Sith. Spirits older than civilizations themselves."

The crimson cage groaned as Ezra's fingers curled tighter.

"They all believed they had found the weakness. The flaw. The precise angle of spiritual architecture that would unmake me."

Ezra raised an eyebrow. "And?"

"They failed., and carried their failure to death."

"Yeah, well." Ezra's smile was sharp. "Say hi to them for me when you meet them."

As the boy's fingers curled tighter, Vitiate saw it.

A fleeting streak of yellow ignited within one blue iris.

Gone before he could be certain it had ever existed.

The pressure grew immense. Vitiate could feel the threads of his existence beginning to fray, his connection to the physical plane slipping like sand through ethereal fingers.

The boy had woven a trap that could very well end him. It cut off every path to dissipate back into the Temple, trapping him like an animal in a cage to be slaughtered.

For the first time since the Hero of Tython had brought the temple crashing down around his original host, Vitiate felt genuine uncertainty cross his mind.

He could not break the cage directly.

Any lesser spirit would have been extinguished under the pressure already.

"I had hoped to avoid this," Vitiate said quietly.

Something in the Emperor's tone made the boy's instincts scream.

Vitiate's spectral form stopped struggling against the cage. Instead, he simply... stilled.

"For what you are worth, child," Vitiate said, his voice carrying a strange resignation. "This is a small price."

"What are you doing?" Ezra demanded.

Vitiate smiled.

"Surviving."

The answer sent a bolt of instinctive dread down Ezra's spine.

Then Vitiate let go.

The prison was meant to trap his spirit inside, but nothing could stop the flow of Cosmic Force itself. He was but an aggregation of dark side energies given form by his consciousness.

So he severed a part of himself—an accumulation of millennia—and let it dissolve back into the Cosmic Force that surrounded the Temple.

But that part of him carried his intent, and that allowed him to bypass the cage as he gained control over the structural anchors of the temple itself.

The price was no less, for his existence was certain no more. Already a thing brought back from death, he was yet again thrown on the road that led to the same.

Weeks perhaps. That was all it would take for his existence to wither out due to the wounds left by the Severance. But it mattered not for the Eternal Emperor, for his sacrifice had achieved what he wanted.

Deep in the foundations, ancient machinery, dormant for millennia, groaned and shuddered to life. Stone shrieked as pathways long collapsed were forced open through sheer telekinetic pressure.

The floor beneath Ezra's feet trembled.

Hairline cracks spread across the ancient stone tiles.

"What the—" Ezra's eyes widened. "Are you killing yourself?"

He felt the shift in the Force. Felt the way Vitiate's presence suddenly dimmed, like a candle whose wick had been cut in half.

"You absolute lunatic—"

The floor gave way completely.

Ezra snarled and swung his free hand toward the shadows, using a precise telekinetic pull to yank the trembling spider-droid from the floorboards. Arachnae let out a startled, vibrating squeak as she soared through the air, clutched securely against his chest.

The crimson blade again blazed to life.

"You think a little demolition is going to save you, old man?" Ezra barked, his voice straining under the immense effort.

But he refused to yield.

With a desperate snarl, Ezra reached out to a protruding stone ledge, his telekinetic grip locking onto the ancient masonry. Using the momentum, he swung his body upward, aiming to hurl himself directly at Vitiate's flickering form for one last final strike.

The lightsaber carved through the air in a vicious arc.

Vitiate knew he could not allow that blade to touch him now.

With a final, desperate exertion, Vitiate unleashed the dark side tempest. The energy that had been pooling in the lower vaults suddenly erupted upward like a violent geyser.

The concentrated torrent of raw malice slammed into Ezra's senses with overwhelming force.

The sensory overload was immediate. Ezra's concentration shattered, his telekinetic grip on the ledge slipping as his mind struggled to process the sheer volume of dark side energy. The crushing cage around Vitiate dissolved instantly.

Vitiate felt the pressure release, his spirit expanding back into the temple's dark architecture.

He looked down, watching the child tumble backward into the pitch-black abyss, still clutching the small, metallic droid to his chest.

"FUCKING SITHHHHHHHH...."

Vitiate's gaze lingered on the spot where the boy had vanished while he felt his form beginning to flicker at the edges. The severance was taking its toll faster than anticipated.

"Pray for your success, child," Vitiate's voice whispered as the threads of his spirit began unraveling into the Cosmic Force, dissolving like mist in sunlight. "For both our sakes. The seed must bloom. One way... or another..."

[TO BE CONTINUED]