I drank deeply from my ceramic mug full of hot, milky caf. It was one of the only keepsakes I was allowed from my childhood before I was stolen away to Korriban and enrolled into the Sith Academy. I set the pale blue mug down beside my book easel that was currently displaying a dusty tome of Naga Sadow's. The dark and spooky lords around here all praised Naga Sadow for his military prowess–but I knew better. Sadow was a master of alchemy before he was a sith warlord, and his writings on the alchemy of flesh were simply fascinating.

Around me were the writings of generations of sith masters, eons of research and history bound in flimsy writing and ancient datapads. Most sith acolytes didn't see the value in the siths teachings. It's was a part of our curriculum, but the others usually sat through historical lectures just long enough to pass the exams. Not like me. I soaked up every word, every written sentence, every idea.

The library was one of the only parts of the academy I would have called beautiful. The walls were made of thick red stone that extended to carved pillars worn over time and intricate trim surrounding every window. The ceiling was unbelievably tall, and the works of the ancient masters extended from floor to ceiling. The windows high above my head shone the morning light down upon me, dust particles glittered through the rays and made the entire room look untouched, undisturbed.

I spent most mornings cooped up in the academy's library with a mug of caf and a thick, ancient book. While my masters would prefer me to meditate or practice saber technique this early in the morning, this was my one moment of respite. There were no sneering, boastful apprentices, no growling masters. Just me, my caffeine, and the teachings of great minds.

"Astra!"

Oh, and Darth Lynk.

The master librarian came storming around the corner, black robes billowing behind him and a frown on his wrinkled, green face. Darth Lynk was one of the oldest masters in the academy, but because of his preference for knowledge and status as an alien, he was banished to library duty. Not that he disliked it, Darth Lynk liked hiding away with a textbook as much as I did. He would never admit that, of course. He was as grumpy as sith came.

The Twi'lek came to a stop right in front of me and crossed his arms over his broad chest. For an academic, Darth Lynk was built like a tank. From the way he carried himself I had come to the conclusion years ago that Lynk was once a great warrior, but the physical toll the dark side takes on mortal flesh was an obstacle few overcame. Lynk had a tremor in both hands and was always massaging his muscled neck, though the physical aches were most likely the least devastating mark left from decades of channeling the dark side of the force. This was one of the many costs of being sith.

I craned my neck up to look into his daunting yellow eyes and permanent frown. "Yes, master?" I said softly, not wanting to draw attention to us if any other sith happened to be lurking around the stacks.

"How did you get in here?" He said flatly.

I chewed on my bottom lip, "What do you mean?"

He rolled his eyes, seeing straight through my clueless act. "I mean, the library isn't open at this hour and I had spell-locked the doors before I left last night."

I fidgeted under his steely stare, feeling a flicker of fear bloom in my chest. Anyone in their right mind would be nervous in the presence of a master of the dark side. I was used to their presence, but it was a natural, human response to such intensity.

"I broke through the spell," I murmured. No use lying to sith.

Lynk stared at me a moment before sighing and taking a seat on the bench across from me in a swift wave of black cloth and green lekku. "You know, Astra, if you put half as much effort into your training as you did sneaking around, you might just make it as a Sith."

I ignored the way he basically said I won't make it as Sith and took a turn at rolling my own eyes. While rolling your eyes at a dark lord would get any acolyte in this academy choked on sight, Darth Lynk and I had an unspoken truce. He lets me be myself around him, and I help him catalog books on the weekend. I wasn't technically a librarian assistant–they had droids for that–but no one seemed to care about my unpaid labor. And besides, Darth Lynk liked my company, no one else bothers to come talk to him in this dungeon of a library anyways.

"I do put effort into my training," I said haphazardly.

"You have failed adept saber technique twice, acolyte," he snapped.

I frowned. Low blow, old man. "Well sneaking around is a skill in and of itself," I defended, "and as you can see, I'm getting rather good at it."

Lynk huffed out a laugh as he read down the spine of my textbook. "Your talent as a shadow is probably the only reason you haven't been kicked out of this academy."

The silence that followed his completely true statement was painful. While he and I both joked about it, disappointing the sith was not a laughing matter. I was truthfully falling behind in all of my physical studies. Lightsaber Combat, Force Sense, Telekinesis... I had barely skated by in the introductory courses and as they grew more vigorous I fell more and more behind. Lynk was probably right, if not for my success in my other classes, Sith Philosophy, Sith History, Meditation, I would have been removed from the academy a year ago.

I cleared my throat, "Are you going to report me for breaking in." I said weakly. I flicked my eyes up a moment to see him studying me closely before dropping my gaze again.

"No." He said firmly. "But I am going to ask you again to take your training more seriously. You have great, dark power within you, Astra." He stood slowly, his ancient stare still glued to me, "You must learn to unleash yourself before it is too late."

Lynk walked away to finish opening the library and activating the droid assistants, leaving me to stew in his words. It wasn't that I was actively sabotaging my training, I was trying. But no matter how hard I tried I could not harness the force the way the other acolytes did. I never felt power course through my veins and surface as crackling blue lightning or unimaginably fast reflexes. I felt the force around me, but it was like sand slipping through my fingertips.

Spellcasting and sorcery came easier to me. I could whisper dead languages and draw runes in blood better than I could hold a lightsaber. Sorcery was more about directing and manipulating the force; something that came more naturally to me than harnessing the force and wielding it. No matter my skill for feeling the force, if I couldn't shoot lightning out of my fingertips then I wouldn't make it as a sorceress anyways.

I brought my mug back to my lips and drank deeply. I felt it in my bones that my days at the sith academy were numbered if I didn't have a breakthrough soon. If I didn't catch up to my classmates soon, they would be ordered to murder me, and I had no way to fight back.

***

I stumbled into my quarters and fell face-first onto my bed. It was only four in the afternoon but my limbs felt like they were going to fall off. I had just come just Lightsaber Combat and my body was soaked in sweat. I needed a shower, and then a nap.

Darth Lynk's words had been replaying in my mind over and over again throughout the entire lesson. My whole life I had felt like I was running. Running away from something, running towards something, it didn't matter. I was an orphaned human girl barreling through space on a crash course to nowhere.

Right now I was running to keep up with my classmates so they don't kill me; when I was a child I was running away from those who would have sold me into slavery. It was a tough life for an orphan on Nar Shadda, it's an ever tougher life for a shitty sith acolyte on Korriban.

I stood from my uncomfortable bed with a hiss. I had truly tried harder today, and it had made me marginally more successful in the drills, but at the cost of whacking myself in the face with my vibroblade. They weren't armed, so I didn't temporarily paralyze the right side of my head, but it still hurt like a bitch.

I shuffled to the mirror I had propped on my dresser. Staring back at me was a pathetic excuse for a sith acolyte, a big purple bruise forming under my eye, and a busted lip I didn't notice until just now. I wasn't normally so harsh on myself, but the dread of my impending failure as a sith was really getting to me today.

I sighed and leaned closer to the mirror, analyzing every detail about me. I saw pale, yellow-toned skin. I saw large blue eyes with permanent bags under them. I saw thick, wavy black hair and angular eyebrows. I saw a too-thin, sullen face with too-high cheekbones. I saw a narrow, aquiline nose that was too long for my face. I saw a permanent frown on my plump lips. I saw sadness. Deep, dark sadness in my eyes. I saw a girl who didn't belong to anything... to anyone. Just stardust drifting through the universe.

"ASTRA!"

The pounding on the stone door to my quarters interrupted my pity party. I drifted over to the door and pressed my hand against the pad beside it. The door hissed open. My roommate, Serena, brushed past me with a groan. I was lucky enough to be paired with a human roommate–so we both fell second in the racial pecking order–but being human is where our similarities ended. She was everything I wasn't, and everything I wanted to be.

Serena excelled in all aspects of being sith, from physical combat to force wielding, she could do it. I was jealous of her, being sith was as easy as breathing to her, something I would never experience. She was perfect in all other aspects of being sith too–right down to being gorgeous as hell. With her deep brown skin and black, braided hair, and glowing yellow eyes.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" She said with a crooked expression.

I shook myself and looked away, locking the door behind her. "Sorry. I was somewhere else."

"Clearly." She chuckled and laid back on her bed, the sunlight from Korriban's orange sky painting her like artwork. "I had the worst day."

"Yeah?" I prompted, sinking down on my bed opposite hers.

"Yeah." She paused, "Though from the looks of your busted face, maybe yours was worse."

I laughed. If I told her about what happened in class she'd probably make fun of me, but she'd also probably help me figure out where I went wrong. "You go first," I offered.

Serena broke into an extremely long-winded story about how she had accidentally set fire to a Lord's robes in Expert Force Sense and subsequently had to grovel for forgiveness on her hands and knees so the Lord didn't report her. The Lords around here act like tough shit, always tattling on us acolytes and threatening us. The truth is, Serena probably could have kicked the Lord's ass, but she would have found herself in deep shit with a Darth. The sith were all about their dammed hierarchy.

"Anyways. I told the jerk I'd bring him new robes tomorrow." She let out a sigh and finally sat up, giving me her attention, "So what happened to your face?"

I flushed and pulled at my fraying comforter. "Vibroblade accident," I murmured.

Serena gave me a goofy smile, the kind you give a baby when they fall over while learning to walk. "Adept Lightsaber Combat, right?"

"Mhmm..." I replied. Of course, it was the adept class. The classes for upper-level acolytes went in order of Novice, Adept, Expert, Advanced. I was in the adept classes mostly, save for history and philosophy–I was in the expert classes for those. Of course, Serena was in all the advanced classes.

Adept Lightsaber Combat is the last class that uses vibroblades, Expert uses the real deal. Which meant Serena had her very first lightsaber hanging from her belt at all times.

"What form were you studying today?" Serena asked sincerely. She was always trying to help me, no matter what the sith code teaches us. The sith aren't supposed to forgive ineptitude and aren't supposed to worry about their peers. If you fall behind, you die. No remorse.

But behind this closed door, Serena and I were just two girls trying to survive the sith.

"Three," I replied.

"Ah," Serena nodded and considered our teachings, "you know the goal is to protect yourself in that form, not hit yourself, right?"

I groaned and looked at the ceiling, too embarrassed to look her in the eyes.

"I'm kidding, I'm kidding!" She laughed, "Now stand up, show me how you hit yourself."

And with that, Serena spent the next hour going over the motions with me. You would think the Master's would be the ones to do this sort of training, but one-on-one training was strictly forbidden between acolyte and teacher for two reasons. The first being that all acolytes should be trained the exact same way as to weed out the weakest. No special treatment or extra attention for the womp rats–womp rats like me. The second reason is that one-on-one training is reserved for Master and Apprentice. We acolytes haven't been chosen as an Apprentice yet–that's why we are here.

We go through the Sith Academy learning from all kinds of different Masters, all to prepare us for the day we are taken as an Apprentice for some willing Darth. The Darths come through the academy at their own leisure, showing up with no warning and picking an acolyte after a couple of hours of inspection. Usually, Darth's pick from the Advanced students, though there have been a few lucky Expert students chosen as well.

From there, your new dark overlord whisks you away to gods-know-where to do gods-know-what.

I honestly didn't know what would happen when I was chosen–if I was chosen. But I tried not to think about what would happen in two years if I wasn't chosen for an apprenticeship.

Usually, if an Advanced student isn't picked after one year of taking the Advanced courses, they're either chosen to be a servant to the Academy or are sent on a mission into the Valley of the Dark Lords. A desolate, desert wasteland that houses unimaginably powerful artifacts and secrets. Those students almost never make it back... and if they do, they're not right. Something out there changes them. They go mad after a few days and are swiftly executed.

***

After Serena and I practiced form three for an hour, our grumbling stomachs were enough to push us towards the cafeteria. We lived in the girl's dormitory so we had to pass our truly charming bunch of fellow female acolytes. And by charming, I mean this group is just about the nastiest, most conniving bunch of teenagers you'd ever meet.

Our ages ranged from 17 to 23, anything older than that was usually considered too old to be trained in the ways of the force. Serena and I were both 20, both brought in when we were 14. While I was brought in by a Lord that caught me stealing in a cantina on Nar Shadaa, Serena was brought in from slavery.

There were a lot of slaves in the Empire, it's just the way things were in our part of the galaxy. If you wanted to do something about it, you were better off deserting to the Republic. Though you'd be lucky to make it to the edge of Republic space before being blown to particle dust by an Empirical patrol.

Surprisingly, the sith accepted a lot of slaves into their order. Unsurprisingly, a lot of slave owners were high-ranking sith, so when they noticed dark powers manifesting in a child they would often bring them to Korriban. I asked Serena how she felt about it all once, she had told me that she missed her family, but thought becoming sith was just about the best case scenario for a slave. She was given an opportunity for something greater: for power. She intended to take it.

Serena and I pulled our hoods up once outside the girl's dormitory common area. We didn't have any enemies in the Academy per se, but as acolytes, it was better if we faded into the background. Only Lords and Darths walked around with their shoulders back and heads held high. The rest of us kept our eyes glued to the floors.

The cafeteria was bustling as usual at this hour. It only served acolytes, so we were allowed to speak relatively freely here; that meant things got pretty rowdy. There were guards at every exit, and there were no doubt cameras on us too, so that kept the acolytes from getting into fistfights at least.

Serena and I narrowly dodged bumping into a crew of male Zabrak acolytes before getting into line to be served by the serving droids. It was typical for groups to be formed according to species among the acolytes. The Zabraks were one of the most secluded cliques in the Academy–they were all about brotherhood and camaraderie, even though sith tradition dictated we should have very little camraderie. Besides them, the Sith Purebloods obviously stuck together. According to the Empire, Purebloods were the most elite species, putting them high above humans and any other non-force adept species.

Sith Purebloods had the dark side coursing through their blood. They were darkness personified. Being sith came easy to them, and almost all of them came from prestigious sith bloodlines. If you weren't one of them, it was better to avoid them.

"Carnivore, pescatarian, or herbivore?" the serving droid chimed out to me once I held out my tray to it.

"Pescatarian, please," I said. I wasn't exclusively a fish-eater, but I had caught sight of this evening's carnivorous option and wasn't interested in meat-slop.

"Herbivore," Serena said after me. She also didn't have any dietary restrictions, but she apparently didn't like the mysterious soup that now sat on my tray.

We made our way to our usual table and sat down opposite each other. The table was empty when we sat but was promptly filled in by our three acquaintances. The Twi'lek novice, Sienn, the human adept, Drake, and the Zabrak advanced student, Krudak. I wouldn't call any of them my friend–besides Serena–but they were the bunch I had gotten stuck with before any of us started our formal training. We all arrived about the same time and therefore saw each other often. There's respect between us all, but not friendship.

Sienn, the novice Twi'lek, was the most timid of us all. She came from slavery–just like Serena–but from the way Sienn carried herself, it was obvious. Sienn was short for a Twi'lek and had pale yellow skin, along with faded black markings along her short lekku. She was shy and quiet, but clever. She did well in all of her classes but excelled the most in Telekinesis. Apparently, she was noticed by her slave master for levitating another slave by his ankle and dangling him over a cliff. Sienn swore he deserved it.

Drake, the adept human, was goofy and a bit of a smart-ass, but trained with deadly seriousness. Despite being an adept-level student, he was already in the Advanced Lightsaber class. He had wounded his classmates in the lower rank so severely they had no choice but to move him up. Drake was tall and strong, without the force he could easily best any of the students in hand-to-hand combat. His tanned skin and dark, messy hair made him eye-candy to the students as well, though when it came to romance, Drake was perfectly aloof.

Krudak, the advanced Zabrak was... determined. For a Zabrak, he had no interest in brotherhood with his peers. He stayed firmly away from the other Zabraks and was never caught socializing with anyone. He fell in with us by chance. We don't push him to talk, so I hardly know anything about the guy. He skin was as red as fresh blood and harsh black tattoos covered every piece of exposed skin. I assumed he came from a prominent sith family, given how talented he is. But beyond that, he's a mystery.

"So did you all hear about the news?" Sienn said in her mousy, feminine voice. My eyes shot up to her sweet face, I hadn't heard about any news.

"Sure did," Drake responded with a mouthful of carnivore slop. I felt Serena tense beside me, she hadn't heard any news either. Krudak was just nodding slowly. He knew everything.

"What news?" Serena asked.

"What do you think he wants with us?" Sienn murmured to Drake. She was more than a little in love with the guy, so she probably didn't even hear Serena's question.

"An apprentice, no doubt," Drake said.

"Hey!" Serena smacked her hand on the table and made everyone–save Krudak–jump. "What. News." She demanded.

Sienn blushed and looked at my friend with her big eyes, "Some hot-shot Darth is arriving tomorrow at midday."

"What's so special about him?" I asked. A Darth arriving for an apprentice is not really big news around here, it happens a couple of times a month.

"They say he came back from the unknown regions a year or two ago with all these special powers. Once he came back he rose to power really quickly... like, too quickly." Sienn said in a hushed voice like she was gossiping about a crush and not a Darth who most likely murdered his way to power. Not like the sith didn't all do that, though.

"He's basically top-dog in the Empire right now," Drake said smugly. From the look on his face, I knew he was imagining what it would be like to be his apprentice.

I glanced over to Serena and she was suppressing a mischievous grin. I knew she wanted to start her apprenticeship early. I silently hoped they both got their wishes, the longer you stay at the academy, the shorter your life expectancy got. Not that traveling the galaxy with a Darth is much safer, though.

"What kind of powers?" I asked.

Sienn and Drake both shrugged. They clearly didn't have any concrete details, just acolyte gossip which was notoriously unreliable.

"He can absorb light energy and corrupt it," Krudak said darkly.

The four of us froze and stared at him. He was leaning back in his chair and had his tattooed arms crossed over his chest. We knew he spoke, he just didn't do it often. Serena was the one brave enough to break the silence.

"What does that mean, Krudak? Absorb light?"

Krudak exhaled through his nose and paused for slightly too long, like he was planning exactly what he wanted to say before he said it. Every movement he made was with perfect precision, that conviction apparently extended to speaking as well.

"There was a holocast news report on him a few months ago. He was engaged in a fight with two jedi and a padawan on Taris. The report said that he grabbed the padawans lightsaber blade with his bare hand and absorbed its power, destroying the crystal in the process. Then he turned the absorbed power into dark energy and disintegrated all three of them."

We were all in stunned silence following Krudaks longest spout of talking ever. My skin felt clammy and I had to stop myself from fidgeting. Absorbed the lightsaber's power? I had never heard of such a technique, I didn't know if it even existed. To take on three jedi and walk away with your life was a feat, to disintegrate them was legendary.

"Fuck," Drake murmured, "maybe I don't want to be his apprentice."

"I do!" Serena said, standing in determination, "If I am to be sith, I will learn from the best. If he is the best, I want him as my master."

The look in Krudak's glowing, yellow eyes told me he also had that dream. I wished both of them the best of luck.

As for myself, there was no chance of him choosing me. Hell, I didn't want him to choose me. He'd realize how inept I am and return me or something, or just kill me. Most likely the latter. There were dark and terrible people in the galaxy, and every time I was reminded of that I feared how I could possibly fit in with them. I would need to learn how to, and soon.