"I welcome you to my chamber."
"It is here that I administer the rite of blood and bones. A ritual performed beyond this doorway," Ragate introduced, pointing at the old rusty door covered in ancient Sith symbols at the back of the room.
"It is a rite acolytes have participated in for ten thousand years," the old woman continued, "and today, it will be you who completes this ritual to prove yourself to the Force, and to Korriban."
"The rite of blood and bones? Never heard of it." Saryn tried to recall if he'd ever heard of it. But not even his family's archives kept any records.
"It isn't unusual for it to be the case, child."
"It is, after all, a ritual introduced only to those powerful and gifted in the Force."
"Back when your father, Lord Seake, was on Korriban a few decades ago, he was deemed unworthy of learning about this ritual." The old woman seemed to remember something funny as a smirk appeared on her face. "So it doesn't surprise me that your family has no record of it."
"You, on the other hand, are more than worthy of undergoing the ritual."
"I felt it, the dark side permeating Korriban sang to me in joy the moment your feet touched its sandy ground." A hint of craziness had manifested in the old lady's eyes.
'It doesn't surprise me that the old man was too weak to even learn of the existence of such a place.'
'If he hadn't pledged himself as a servant to Darth Vowran, he would probably still just be an Inquisitor.' Saryn didn't hate his father.
But he had great disdain for the man who, despite his apparent weakness, wasn't even able to work hard to overcome his limits.
The only reason his mother had remained by his side for so long was due to both the Nobility it brought her, and the existence of his elder sister and himself.
"I will now introduce the Rite of Blood and Bones to you, child." The old woman kept talking without a stop.
"This ritual serves as a proving ground for talented Acolytes of the Sith Academy." As if she had felt Saryn's annoyance, the old Overseer started to introduce the process.
"It is, in fact, quite a simple ritual, so much so that even someone with minimal knowledge of Sith Sorcery could undergo it."
"Behind the doorway is an ancient cave that dates back ten thousand years."
"Inside, there is a colony of shyracks. My leather-winged, razor-taloned children and their brood." A gentle smile appeared on Ragate's face as she spoke of her shyracks.
"They guard a mountain of skulls. An altar to the Academy's failures."
"You must reach the bones before proceeding."
"And then what?" Saryn listened attentively,
"You must claim a skull from the mountain and return to the antechamber. Soak the skull in the blood pool and return back to me."
"Once the bone has turned red, I will look and see your nature written in the crimson stains. And possibly a glimpse of your future." After having said that, she stopped speaking and locked eyes with Saryn.
"Glimpse at my future?" Knowing his own future was something Saryn was interested in.
"If it is possible, I must complete this ritual." He didn't hesitate and stepped toward the ancient rusty doorway, ready to go through the ritual.
"Don't forget, child. To complete the rite is to accept one's death."
"To steal one's own mortality and drown it in the fluid of life. That is the symbolic purpose." The ancient voice of the Overseer was the last thing Saryn heard before the ancient doorway closed behind him.
"Blood?" The air inside was thick, metallic, and warm, and the dark side seemed to suffocate the ritual chamber, its ominous whispers echoing throughout the stone-carved room.
With a quick scan of the room, Saryn determined where the smell was coming from.
In the center of the room, an altar stood a few meters above ground level, and directly under it, a deep pool of crimson blood bubbled every so often.
"So this, I suppose, is the Blood Pool." Saryn inspected the altar above the blood pool. It was made entirely out of black stone. Sith symbols were carved across its surface, leaving no spot untouched.
As if to prove how much time it had endured, the pool emitted an ancient or even decaying aura that one could feel without effort.
"From what Ragate said, the colony of shyracks should be further inside."
"I guess this is the path then." Looking at the doorway at the back of the room that led to a place where light could barely reach, Saryn bent the Force to his will and let it flow through his body.
With his focus sharpened and his instincts ready to react at a moment's notice, Saryn stepped confidently through the doorway leading to the depths of the ritual chamber.
The moment he passed the doorway, his instinct screamed, and without hesitation, he struck his Warblade to his left. The warblade pierced a mouth filled with razor-like teeth, and a loud shriek echoed from Saryn's left.
"Would you look at that? An animal thought it could ambush a Sith." Saryn grabbed the shyrack on his warblade by the head and extracted the blade from its mouth.
"I don't have time to play with you." Saryn clenched his gloved hand, and the head of the shyrack instantly exploded.
"Disgusting." Shyraks, like the beasts they were, at the end of the day, were extremely weak. They needed to rely on swarms just to hunt their prey, so a single one rushing at him could do nothing except die pathetically.
As the scent of iron became even stronger throughout the chamber due to the now crushed shyrack, the Force allowed Saryn to assess the situation in the darkness surrounding him.
"Well, what are you waiting for, beasts?" With a flick of his hand, the corpse of the shyrack whose head he had just crushed was thrown toward the darkest part of the room, right at the foot of the shyraks' nest.
The shyraks, as highly territorial beasts, having been provoked, instantly started shrieking.
"Come, beasts. Let's get this over with." A malicious grin appeared on Saryn as he assumed the opening stance of Makashi with a simple flourish of his warblade.
Tens of shyraks instantly flew straight at Saryn, trying to bite his head off his body furiously.
The moment the first shyrak arrived in range of Saryn, his warblade came alive. The first shyrak dove, Saryn twisted, his warblade tracing a thin line of silver through the dark. With one last shriek, the creature hit the ground in two steaming halves.
Then, it started. Saryn entered a flow state, cutting down the shyraks one by one.
Screech after screech, more and more of the shyraks ended up as corpses on the ground, some split in half, others having had their head pierced through with deadly precision.
Saryn looked as if he was executing a macabre dance in the middle of the shyraks' swarm. Smooth, elegant, and deadly.
"Is that all?" With a smirk, he cut down his eleventh shyrak. He looked at the rest of the colony, which had retreated fearfully in the darkness toward their nest while keeping their eyeless head cautiously in Saryn's direction as if to sense his intentions.
'This hasn't even been a proper workout… How disappointing.' Saryn was used to it being the case. He had yet to have the chance to encounter a worthy opponent.
With a shake of his head, Saryn sheathed his warblade with a simple flourish to shake off the blood and went deeper in the room until he finally found the mountain of skulls the Overseer had previously mentioned.
Looking at the few skulls piled over each other with disdain, Saryn took the one atop the macabre sculpture and went back to the Blood Pool.
Back at the blood pool, Saryn prepared the ritual.
"How some 'Talented' Acolytes manage to die under such disgusting creatures' assault is truly beyond my understanding." With a sneer, Saryn looked at the gray skull he held in his gloved hand for a moment before tossing it directly in the center of the blood pool.
A scream echoed from the blood pool as the skull began to sink, and a loud rumbling echoed from the depths of the chamber as a blood-red light illuminated the entire room.
Large blood bubbles began to form around the skull as it sank, slowly turning red. The metallic smell in the ritual chambers grew stronger, and something seemed to be awakening from the depths of the pool.
The blood in the pool erupted upward in a crimson geyser, drenching the pool's surroundings.
An ancient shriek echoed throughout the chamber as something massive uncoiled from the depths of the blood pool.
"Hmm?!" The head of a giant k'lor'slug emerged from the depths, quickly followed by the entire body.
The k'lor'slug that had just emerged from the blood pool was at least three times larger than the matriarch Saryn had killed back in the egg chambers of the Tomb of Ajunta Pall.
"I understand now. You are the true keeper of this ritual, aren't you?" Realization flashed through Saryn's eyes.
"I need to thank you, insect. I was really starting to get worried about the future of the Empire." A haughty smile once again adorned Saryn's face as he unsheathed his warblade. "But now, I can understand why so many acolytes fell here."
"Well, even if unintentionally, you did a great service to the Empire, beast."
"What right do weaklings not able to even kill an insect have to become Sith?" Saryn's lips curled in a disdainful smirk.
"You don't need to worry."
"Since you did such a good job culling the weak, you will die quickly. You see, I'm quite used to dealing with your kind already." This time, Saryn didn't use Makashi. Against larger enemies like the one in front of him, it wouldn't be as helpful as using Form VII: Juyo.
He stood in the opening stance of the Juyo form, a one-handed high guard, with the blade held horizontally above his head and pointed to the side.
The giant blood-red k'lor'slug, still dripping in blood, seemed to have understood Saryn's provocation and directly lunged with its maw wide open. Rows of sharp teeth reflected in Saryn's eyes as he looked on with his usual focused but disdainful look.