Drew Karpyshyn - Darth Bane - Path of Destruction

Despite the heat in his room, a cold shiver ran down Bane's spine. How was it possible to contain or control a power that fed on itself? The more he, as an apprentice, learned to draw on the Force, the more his emotions would control him. The stronger a person became, the less rational he would be. It was inevitable.

No, Bane thought. He was missing something. He had to be. If this were true, the Masters would be teaching the students techniques to avoid this situation. They would be learning to distance themselves from their own emotions, even as they used them to draw upon the dark side. But there was nothing of this in their training, so Bane's analysis had to be wrong. It had to be!

Somewhat reassured, Bane let his thoughts drift into the comfort of sleep.

"You make me sick," his father spat. "Look how much you eat! You're worse than a kriffing zucca pig!"

Des tried to ignore him. He hunkered down in his seat at the dinner table and concentrated on the food on his plate, shoveling slow forkfuls into his mouth.

"Did you hear me, boy?" his father snapped. "You think that food in front of you is free? I gotta pay for that food, you know! I worked every day this week and I still owe more now than I did at the beginning of the blasted month!"

Hurst was drunk, as usual. His eyes were glassy, and he still reeked of the mines; he hadn't even bothered to shower before hitting the bottle he kept tucked away beneath the covers of his cot.

"You want me to start working double shifts to support you, boy?" he shouted.

Without looking up from his plate Des muttered, "I work just as many shifts as you do."

"What?" Hurst said, his voice dropping down to a menacing whisper. "What did you just say?"

Instead of biting his lip, Des looked up from his plate and right into his father's red, bleary eyes. "I said I work as many shifts as you do. And I'm only eighteen."

Hurst pushed his chair away from the table and rose. "Eighteen, and still too dumb to know when to keep your mouth shut." He shook his head from side to side in exaggerated disappointment. "Bloody bane of my existence is what you are."

Throwing his fork down on his plate, Des pushed his own chair back from the table and stood up to his full height. He was taller than his father now, and his frame was beginning to fill out with muscles earned in the tunnels.

"Are you going to beat me now?" he snarled at his father. "Going to teach me a lesson?"

Hurst's jaw dropped open. "What the brix is wrong with you, boy?"

"I'm sick of this," Des snapped. "You blame all your problems on me, but you're the one who's drinking away all our credits. Maybe if you sobered up we could get off this stinking world!"

"You smart-mouthed, mudcrutch whelp!" Hurst roared, flipping the table so it crashed against the wall. He leapt across the now empty space between them and grabbed Des by his wrists in a grip as unbreakable as a pair of durasteel binders. The young man tried to wrench free, but his father outweighed him by twenty-some kilos, almost half of which was muscle.

Knowing it was hopeless, Des stopped struggling after a few seconds. But he wasn't going to cower and cry. Not this time. "If you're going to beat me tonight," he said, "remember that it might be the last time, old man. You better make it a good one."

Hurst did. He lit into his son with the savage fury of a bitter, hopeless man. He broke his nose; he blackened both his eyes. He knocked out two of his teeth, split his lip, and cracked his ribs. But throughout it all Des never said a word, and he didn't shed a single tear.

That night, as Des lay in his bed too bruised and swollen to sleep, a single thought kept running through his mind, drowning out the loud drunken snores of Hurst passed out in the corner.

I hope you die. I hope you die. I hope you die.

He'd never hated his father as much as he did at that moment. He envisioned a giant hand squeezing his father's cruel heart.

I hope you die. I hope you die. I hope you die.

The words rolled over and over, an endless mantra, as if he could make them come true through sheer force of will.

I hope you die. I hope you die. I hope you die.

The tears he'd held back during the brutal thrashing finally came, hot drops streaming down his purple, swollen face.

I hope you die. I hope you die. I hope you?

Bane woke with a start, his heart pounding and his body bathed in terror sweat as he thrashed against the covers tangled around his legs. For a brief second he thought he was back on Apatros in the cramped room filled with Hurst and the overwhelming stench of booze. Then he realized where he was, and the nightmare began to fade. A horrible realization swept in to take its place.

Hurst had died that night. The authorities had ruled it a natural death. A heart attack, brought on by a combination of too much alcohol, a life working the mines, and the overexertion of nearly beating his own son to death with his bare hands. They never suspected the real cause. Neither had Bane. Not until now.

Trembling slightly; he rolled over, exhausted but knowing sleep wouldn't come again this night.

Fohargh wasn't the first person he had murdered with the Force. He probably wouldn't be the last. Bane was smart enough to understand that.

He shook his head to clear away the memory of Hurst's death. The man had deserved neither pity nor mercy. The weak would always be crushed by the strong. If Bane wanted to survive, he had to become one of the strong. That was why he was here at the Academy. That was his mission. That was the way of the dark side.

But the realization did nothing to quell the queasy feeling in his stomach, and when he closed his eyes he could still see father's face.

"No!" Kas'im barked, disdainfully slapping Bane's training saber aside with his own weapon. "Wrong! You're too slow on the first transition. You're leaving your left side wide open for a quick counter."

The Blademaster was teaching him a new sequence; he'd been teaching it to him for more than a week. But for some reason Bane couldn't seem to grasp the intricacies of the movements. His blade felt clumsy and awkward in his hand.

He stepped back and resumed the ready position. Kas'im studied him briefly, then dropped into a defensive stance in front of him. Bane took a deep breath to focus his mind before letting his body trigger the sequence once again.

His muscles moved instinctively, exploding into action. There was a hiss as the downstroke of his blade carved through the air in the first move, a blur of motion… but far too slow. Kas'im responded by slipping to the side and bringing his own double-bladed weapon around in a long, swift arc that struck Bane hard in the ribs.

The breath whooshed out of him and he felt the searing pain of the pelko barbs, followed by the all-too-familiar numbness spreading up through the left side of his torso. He staggered back, helpless, as Kas'im watched silently. Bane struggled to stay upright and failed, collapsing awkwardly to the floor. The Blademaster shook his head in disappointment.

Bane dragged himself to his feet, trying not to let his frustration show. It had been nearly three weeks since he had beaten Fohargh in the ring, and since that time he had been training with Kas'im in individual sessions to improve his lightsaber combat. But for some reason he wasn't making any progress.

"I'm sorry, Master. I will go practice the drills again," he said through gritted teeth.

"Drills?" the Twi'lek repeated, his voice cruel and mocking. "What good will that do?"

"I… I must learn the sequence better. To become faster."

Kas'im spat on the ground. "If you truly believe that, then you're a fool." Bane didn't know how to respond, so he kept silent.