Star Wars: Slave Of Darkness

Up. Down. Up. Down. Up. Down.

Sweat was pouring down my face as I hauled all two hundred pounds of me into the air until my chin passed the pull-up bar.

Darth Rictus' training wasn't all just about my lightsaber skills or lack of them, but also involved bringing my base physical fitness in line with what was expected. While Korriban had been good for keeping me in base minimum fighting shape, there was no denying that it had done a poor job of keeping me healthy.

When I left the dusty planet, I had been severely underweight through a combination of both the year on Apatros and my own poor self-care at the academy. Until the manor's chef had started me on a calorie-dense meal plan, I hadn't realized just how much I had been relying on the Force just to keep going.

Through both decent eating and regular exercise, I was swiftly putting on weight again. And because of the absolutely brutal regimen Darth Rictus insisted on, most of that was quickly becoming muscle.

Speaking of, as I finished with the pull-ups, I moved on to the next step of the day.

While he was otherwise occupied with his duties as a member of the Dark Council, I was expected to fill the time with a stupidly precise schedule, timed down to the half minute. I wasn't even a third of the way through the one for today and everything already hurt.

Unsurprising for a man that was still built like a brick house into his seventies, Darth Rictus had an entire professional gym complex in the basement of the manor, complete with an indoor running track. I recognized some of the machines, if only because the function was obvious. However, there were plenty that were some techno-crap that I still had no idea what they did, just that they did it effectively.

Hell, there were even coaching droids down here.

"Apprentice Tesser. Use this device next for four sets of ten."

As I settled into the next machine, my commlink chimed. Plucking it from my belt, I set it on the nearest flat surface and hit accept. After all, there were only so many people with the code and if Darth Rictus wanted to talk, he would just find me.

"Milord," Cormun's voice replied. As I glanced towards the comm, the tiny image of the soldier gave a short bow, "I hope I am not interrupting."

"I can multi-task. Proceed." Settling back, I started on the next exercise.

"Very well." He coughed lightly into his hand, "I just wanted to report that there have been several…incidents over the past week."

I raised an eyebrow, but didn't stop, "Incidents?"

"Nothing that requires intervention on your part, milord. They have already been resolved." Ah, just a heads-up that something has happened.

"Anything damaging to our operations?" I asked.

"Quite the contrary, we may have stumbled into several boons…"

...

"Crystal" felt her right cheekbone cave in under the man's fist before the force behind the blow knocked her into the wall, briefly crushing her lekku between her body and the wall.

As she slumped to the floor, stars dotted her vision and the excruciating pain started to set in. She could barely think, let alone move. All she could do was sit and stare at her attacker in a daze.

She hadn't thought much of anything when he had brought her to the room. It was the same as the rest of her "clients" that picked her up on the street. No names had been exchanged, just an agreement on price and what was expected.

After the door had locked, she had barely started to disrobe before the first blow landed. Dully, she remembered thinking that she was fortunate to have not eaten anything because the punch to the gut would have sent it right back up.

The human's mouth was moving, but she couldn't hear what he was saying. Probably from the hit to her lekku. She wasn't missing much, since it was likely just slurs and other abuse.

"Crystal" slowly considered just closing her eyes and letting it play out. She had had clients like this before. Bastards that like to hire aliens just to beat the tar out of them. To "remind" them that they were trash to the Empire.

But doing that meant that she wouldn't be working for potentially weeks. After all, nobody would want to buy battered goods.

As a kick landed in her ribs and she felt rather than heard a snap, she amended that to months instead.

The next blow rolled her onto her side, where she felt something hard press into her leg.

'My commlink.' The Twi'lek thought dully.

They had "protection" now, but she hadn't seen any of them nearby when she went up. Stupid mistake on her part, she supposed. Maybe if she called, they would get there in time to find him over her body.

It was a nice fantasy.

A spark of something lit in her gut. Maybe it was anger or a tiny bit of defiance.

Slowly, a hand inched towards her pocket, gingerly grasping the device. "Crystal" pressed the call button three times. Supposedly, that was the emergency signal.

She barely managed the third click before the client noticed and a boot stomped down on her fingers. She felt them breaking, but she was too out of it to notice more pain.

He was shouting again, red in the face from anger. Maybe he was demanding to know what she was doing.

Her lips, hampered by her sagging cheekbone, quirked up in what little of a smile she could manage. That only seemed to piss him off more.

'Good.'

The beating continued for what seemed like an eternity. It was probably less than that, but time stretched in her haze of pain and disorientation.

Abruptly, the client looked up towards the door, just in time to watch the cheap thing buckle and break open. From the wreckage, a large man with a pair of cyber-arms charged into the room. The cyborg only took a brief glance to appraise the situation before immediately grabbing the bastard by the throat with his metal hand and throwing him into the opposite wall with enough force to put cracks in the plaster.

As the cyborg continued to brutalize the man, three more rushed in with blasters drawn. One of them, a woman, approached her and knelt down, pulling a bag from her belt. With the beating stopped, "Crystal's" hearing slowly started to return, though it was muffled like she was underwater.

"-not looking good." The woman muttered as she worked, pulling medical supplies from the bag. Something was injected into her veins and the pain started to subside slightly.

The woman, part of the "protection" she supposed, turned her head to the men, "Vorn, Caldwell, take him to the boss. Fingers, with me. She needs more than I can do here."

The cyborgs looked at each other before the named ones started hauling the thoroughly beaten man out of the room like a sack of potatoes, making sure to smack his head on the doorframe on the way out. The third joined the woman on the floor next to her.

As the painkillers started to work, "Crystal" looked at the man's hands, both organic, and slurred drowsily, "Why are you called Fingers?"

It seemed like an important question in her semi-conscious and now-drugged mind.

The man gave a strained chuckle, "Let's just say there were good painkillers involved and I was glad to still have all of mine."

"Crystal" let out a drunken giggle. It wasn't that funny, but she couldn't help herself.

"Why?"

There was more to the question, but she couldn't voice it. Too tired or something.

The voices started to fade out along with her vision as the answer came, so she wasn't sure who it came from.

"You're one of ours."

When she woke up at the clinic, she found credit chits worth ten times her usual fee in her pocket.

====================

The first book of this fanfic has been completed on Patreon, you can look it up in the collection alongside the second book. You can visit Patreon if you want to read in Advance.

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