A Servant Master

[Amun Seti]

The Sixth of Swords, continued.

Amun followed his new master as he forced questions about the past from his mind. There was no time in the present to be dwelling on the dead face he had worn in the reflection. The boy who he had intended as a sacrifice to Lord Raze was now his master through a cruel stroke of the Sith Lord's humor. He could feel the icy touch of the collar around his neck, as well as the missing weight of his sword and blades and other various weaponry that the castle guards had stripped from him quickly after his sentence.

"Nobody wins here but I, insect."

The Sith Lord's words echoed in his mind. They had been directed at the boy who he was now to serve, to wait on hand and foot, and to teach. But Amun knew he would do well to remember them. He had stepped into a dangerous game where there was only one true winner. The only attainable goal was to not be the loser. If he could manage to squeeze a draw out of the situation for himself so long as Raze still won. Was that the answer?

"What are you looking so thoughtful for dog?" The words broke Amun from his concentration and the young Sith glanced up at the boy, a simmering disdain lurking in his eyes. That didn't last long as the boy thumbed a button on a remote that had come to his hand at some point during their trek to the other wing of the castle. Amun's eyes widened as a surge of electricity nearly bowled him over, coursing through him from the collar around his neck. He gritted his teeth against the pain and remained standing, holding the boy's look in his own gaze. Amun was no stranger to pain.

That didn't mean it didn't hurt like hell though.

They remained locked like that for a few moments, Amun glaring at the boy as his body remained standing but otherwise twitched with the current. The boy's eyes started with a hard and hateful look that slowly transformed into a grimace as Amun didn't react appropriately to his anger. He let go of the trigger and Amun breathed again for the first time since the shock collar had seized his body. He gasped, but remained standing.

"A dog should be on his knees." The boy spat as Amun regained his breath, kicking him in the leg before triggering the shock collar once again. That did it. Amun's legs gave out from under him as electricity arced through him once again, it took everything he had to catch himself on his hands and remain on his knees instead of merely crumpling to the ground. The boy seemed satisfied however now that Amun was beneath him, releasing the button as he turned to enter the room that they had been granted.

"Follow." The boy said, looking back with a sneer. A mirroring of what had happened earlier when Amun had dragged him and his sister into the castle and before Raze. The similarities ended there however. They had followed Amun out of fear. He had held power over them, the power of life and death. The boy had felt a duty to protect his sister out of loyalty. The only loyalty Amun held was to himself. And the only power the boy held over Amun was a switch and a collar. Amun followed without a second word, crawling through the door on his hands and knees with a small, quiet smirk on his lips.

 

[Amun Seti]

Amun's smirk hadn't lasted long, quietened from his lips as his duties began. The boy was exhausted already from the rigors of the day, from being dragged bodily from his home, presented as an offering. The shock and fear felt in equal measures as he had been given everything yet had everything taken from him at a word from Lord Raze. Amun tended to his 'master's' needs. Fed him, drew him a bath. Quietly retired to the cage that awaited him several doors away before the boy left to find his slumber. It was only quietly because Amun hadn't been willing to scream or sob or beg for mercy as the boy played torturer before tiring of the silence that came from his victim.

The rage was still there on his face as he left and Amun crawled up into a sitting position, panting. His neck itches and hissed where he shock had burned him and he silently wondered to himself whether his heart would hold out for long. He looked around, finally taking in his surroundings. The room itself the boy had been accommodated to was posh and luxurious. Plucked from the slums to be deposited in luxury. It was still just a lavish cage however.

Amun's own accomodations were much more befitting of his current station. A small, cramped cage tucked well away from his master's own. Bowls of water and gruel lay on the ground where the boy had placed them, the water half gone where it had sloshed over the side to wet the floor as it slid into the cage with a kick. The room was cold and dark, the Hoth chill biting through the castle walls. It would do just fine for the time being. The boy would rest on silken sheets and downy pillows, his hatred towards Raze withering in comfort. Amun would remain strong here, stripped of bare human comforts and pride.

The so-called Sith settled into a seated meditation as the cold bit at his robes. He had perhaps been foolish to come here, his lot cast low so quickly. But it was transformation and change he had sought, and found it he had, though in an unexpected guide. Change did not come without suffering. Transformation without hardship. He would accept it gladly and be made stronger for it.

His eyes closed and he let the cold deep into him. The dark enveloped around him as the lightless room grew to swallow up his mind. He let his spirit wander within it's shackles, the skin he wore, the cage he was barred in, the room that held them all. He could feel a cold simmering anger welling deep within the pit of his stomach, like bile threatening to rise up and spill out of him. He grasped onto it, clung to it, stoked it to fuel his lightless thoughts. Beyond the room he could feel the boy, restless in his slumber, yet asleep nonetheless. Amun wondered if he had pondered at his sister's fate before he had allowed fitful sleep to consume him. Would it be easy? To reach out from the dark cage and strangle the sleeping boy in his gilded one from Amun's meditation? Not likely. And it would serve no purpose except to sever his own lifeline within this place.

Perhaps Raze would approve of such an immediate lashing out for revenge, but Amun was doubtful. Better to bide his time, do as he was told. He would teach the boy, mold him into something worthy of being trained… or break him utterly in the process. It was the only true course to be charted from where he now sat. Amun had sacrificed his freedom, truly, since he had set his current course on the path that brought him to Raze. He could only play his cards to his best to gain something greater. He set his mind on the boy, plotting how best to fulfill his purpose as he set it. To train him. To teach him. To mold him. To break him. The boy would break no matter what… it was up to him whether he came through the other side.

Amun let his consciousness flit further after some time, his mind searching the castle for the other presence that was familiar to the one sleeping in the other room. He wasn't sure how long he spent searching, but he never found her. A small smile tugged at the corner of his lips as he filed away the information. It would be useful. Would the boy wonder if his sister still lived when he woke, or would he already have given into his hatred for his captor and slave. A tool tucked away for the following day.

"You disgust me, Sith."

The words shook Amun to his core. Not for what they were, but for whose voice carried them, for where they carried from. From within him.

 

[Amun Seti]

Amun returned to himself. Not completely, hovering just outside, gazing in. There he sat, seemingly peaceful if not for the slight twitching of his mouth and fidgeting of his brow. The hot anger that fueled his meditation visible in the silent quivers on his otherwise still features. His pale, cold face framed with jet black hair. It took a few moments as he sat before himself for the image of another to resolve over himself. The features were strikingly familiar, both in memory and likeness to the ones he bore. Shoulder length jet black hair and a fair fleshed face. The silvers of his own eyes reflected in the cool light gray-blues that stared back at him.

Amun said nothing as he examined the form that overlapped with his own body, his mind's eye open to seeing the other inhabiting him. The moments passed in gritting silence as he cooley regarded the simmering, disgusted eyes that glared back at him. It took him those moments to identify the shimmering, tenuous link that bound their energies together. He remained in silence as he observed the spirit of one long dead until her own silence broke.

"You hear me. You see me. You killed me. Do you have anything to say for yourself, Sith?" The venom with which she spat that title almost made a small smile crack at his lips. Instead he remained cool and impassive, regarding her open eyes laying over his closed ones for a moment.

"Why should I spare any words for the dead, you are just a parasite, sucking at my soul."He said impassively and regarded the tenuous link between them, his finger reaching out for it.

"I killed you before. Why should I not just cut this cord and be done with you for good?" He asked, his finger caressing the immaterial link between them, tugging at it slightly.

"No!"The spirit shouted, looking as if she would lunge for him if she could as his finger pulled at the link between them before letting it slip free once again.

"No?" Amun asked as he considered the question out loud. He let a small taunting smile grace his lips. "Do you find my spirit so accommodating? Does the dark I wallow in sustain you such that you would rather not depart onto the next life like you should have?" He chuckled slightly. He knew the path he walked and the forces he entangled with. There was no light there for the dead spirit to survive off, merely scraps of darkness that would be foul and bitter to the Jedi she had once been.

"No. You disgust me and so does your spirit. You are vile. Revolting. Your spirit tastes of rot and acid. I should have seen you for what you were. Should have never listened to that silver tongue of yours. I should have killed you that day in the pit. You lied to me, betrayed me." Her eyes shone with a malice that he knew wasn't suited for her, or at least who she had been. So surviving off his own darkness had affected her after all.

 

[Amun Seti]

"Betrayed you?" Amun looked at her coldly, even now she seemed to grow more corporeal by the moment, as if his mere attention to her existence gave her spirit renewed vigor. She sure was talkative for someone who was dead.

"If anything, I saved you." Amun smiled, graciously this time as if revealing some grand present. "Saved you from becoming what I am today." He said as he gestured to himself and she grimaced.

"I wouldn't have." She started, but Amun cut her off.

"You wouldn't have what? Succumbed to temptation of the dark side? Been bent to serve it's will? Would you have killed me that day in the pit just to die the next out of defiance?" Amun's spirit laughed in her face. "You would have fallen just the same, walked the same path as I did… just to survive." A slight grimace formed on his face unbidden at that. It was true. Yet it wasn't.

"I wouldn't have wallowed in it, gleefully flinging myself to the dark as you did." She spat venom and he wondered just how much of his life after her death she had seen.

"And that is why you had to die, and I had to live." Amun said resolutely. He had been willing to walk the path she wasn't, to commit himself to the path of a Sith. Not just to survive, but because in it he saw an opportunity to thrive. She glowered at his words, perhaps sensing the truth in them.

"I should have killed you, I would have escaped, returned to the Jedi. I wouldn't have fallen." She said, spitting more venom and the wishful thinking of the dead. Amun scoffed at this as he grew tired of the conversation.

"You would have fallen the moment your blade pierced my heart." He declared, then paused, thoughtful. "No. You fell the moment you decided to try." He finished quickly with a dry smile as he examined her. The spirit had survived off his darkness, wallowed in disgust and hatred for her host. There was no light there either.

"If you would have stayed true to the light, then you would have stayed dead. Instead of… whatever this is." He said, gesturing to the spectral form that lay visible over his own corporeal one. "And yet you did not stay dead. And here you are, sustaining on the darkness of my spirit, just a parasite. Not a Jedi at all." He said with a finality. He was tired of conversing with the dead and she seemed to be at a loss for words as Amun's words struck true.

Amun reached forward, dismissing her form as he took his rightful place back, spirit settling back into his body. There was a quiet shriek of rage from within him as Amun put the spirit parasite back where it belonged at the bottom of the well of his mind. Slamming the lid shut on it to let it soak in his words in the dark recesses of his spirit. Another problem for another day.

 

[Amun Seti]

Amun wasn't sure when his meditation had slipped into restfulness, but he awoke with a cold start, gasping as icy water splashed over him. He sought his surroundings, eyes snapping open and hands reaching out toward his attacker. The hold never found purchase as a deep shock surged over his soaked form.

This time he cries out, gasping as he writhed on the floor of his cage. There was no defiant glare or cold indifference as the pain took him by surprise. He panted there on the floor as the pain ended, looking up to see a wicked grin on the boys lips as his thumb hovered over the remote.

"Get up dog. I'm hungry." The command was punctuated with a short burst of pain from the collar before the boy unlocked his cage. Amun fled the room as slowly as his pride would allow as he made his way to the kitchens, searching out a meal for his 'master'. He would never call that boy his master.

The kitchen was a quiet bustle, the castle staff going about their business with a chilling indifference within the luxurious castle. The oppressive presence of darkness lay thick, everywhere, but the cooks and maids seemed to pay it no mind. They seemed to pay little mind to much of anything as they went about their work and Amun was soon on his way back to the boys quarters with trays of food. A few bites of bread he had snagged were slowly settling into his own stomach.

Amun presented the food to his 'master', a lavish selection of meats, breads, vegetables and other well prepared dishes, all served up on platters to the boy who had just the day before lived his whole life in a space stations slums. Amun watched as his 'master' tore into the food with abandon, no sense of manner or propriety. Such things had been trained out of Amun during his youth as a Jedi, but he remembered a day when he might have acted the same, his own life so similar to the boys up until a certain point. There had been no Jedi for this boy.

Amun took a seat on the floor and waited idly as the food began to disappear. The dark haired man was in no rush to find some other use of his time. The sounds of gluttonous, ravished eating diminished, and then ended. Amun looked up, to see the boy staring down at him with cold, hard eyes. Grease smeared the boys face, crumbs littering his fine silken pajamas. Amun returned the stare blankly, as if almost unseeing. After a few tense moments, the boy seemed to deflate a little and he gestured to the nearly empty trays.

"Get rid of this mess." He said before turning from the room and leaving. Amun watched his back as he went, his eyes narrowing on the boy as he discerned a slight shudder within the boys shoulders. A gentle weeping issued from the door before it closed. Amun smiled. He set about gathering up platters and silverware, sweeping away crumbs and picking up discarded scraps. They all returned to the platters and Amun bore them away, back to the servant hall where they would be cleaned for the next meal.

 

[Amun Seti]

Amun's cheer would not last long. Upon his return to the quarters he found the boy waiting, dressed... switch in hand. Amun let the boy get in a few short shocks, staring defiant for the first few before playing the role of servile dog that he had been assigned. Whatever unspoken emotion had broken the boy's spirit earlier had not lasted the hour.

Amun was expecting the other half of his job to come into effect now, but the boy did not insist on training. Instead he seemed to relish in ordering Amun around, having him move to and fro, crawling on his hands and knees like a whipped pup. The shock was a quick reminder for Amun as to who was in charge of the situation here. That was to say anyone but the boy who wielded it's switch.

After several hours, Amun's neck was beginning to go numb and he was growing inured to pain of the collar's electric shock. He wondered idly if the boy realized that he was acclimating Amun to it's presence, lessening the impact of it's sting with each shock sent scorching through Amun's nerves. Perhaps the boy was already losing his mind.

There was a moment of idleness in which Amun sat on the floor, staring blankly into space in a vague imitation of the idle staff he had seen about the castle when there was nothing else for them to do. The boy sat lazily upon a large chair as he watched Amun, seeming to be waiting for... something, anything from the Sith who had brought him to this place. Amun was however content to continue biding his time, drawing on the boy's patience with his own seemingly inexhaustible supply of the stuff. It was midday before the boy finally broke first.

"Well, dog. Aren't you supposed to be training me? Not the other way around." The boy spat, glaring hatred at the seemingly servile Sith that he had been yoked to. Surely the boy realized that he was just as chained to Amun as Amun was to him. Unless he was just that daft.

Amun let his eyes remain unfocused, staring at the wall for another few moments before blinking. His cool, silver eyes slid across the room to settle on the boy. The boy flinched as their eyes met. Amun let a faint smile tug at the corner of his lips at this. After the torment that the boy had put him through, the casual reaction did a good job of unnerving the kid from the slums. He was a teenager of course, not just some kid. But the difference was irrelevant in Amun's perception. The boy was older than he had been when he was taken by the Sith, but as far as Amun was concerned. He was just some dumb kid who had managed to get lucky on the whim of a tyrant.

 

[Amun Seti]

"I will train you, when you wish it. Just as Lord Raze commanded." Amun said coldly from his seat there on the floor. The boy seemed to be under a false assumption that Amun felt any sort of desire to train him, as if Amun's life depended on it and not the other way around. Amun would not hop to, jump up and start training the boy at the slightest hint of a wish. Words mattered when they were spoken, and Lord Raze's words had been very clear.

“He will train you when you wish it.”

They echoed in Amun's mind and he continued to hold the boy's gaze. Waiting. Amun would let the boy come to him, let him say the words. Whatever amusement or fleeting feeling of power that the boy had held over Amun as he had commanded him through the rounds he had just been doing seemed to flee from the boy's face. Already Amun could tell, the dynamic had shifted as he sat there with his cold and calculating gaze piercing into the boy, so vastly different from the stupor his eyes had held but a moment prior.

The choice, of course, lay in the boy's hands. He could of course return to the rod, torturing Amun from morning to night to satisfy the sadism that grew within him. Or he could speak. He could ask. Three words were all it would take, and yet within them the boy would be handing Amun something that he had only just began to taste. Power.

"I..." Amun watched coolly as the boy began to speak, his gaze unchanging, unflinching. His eyes bore into the window's of the boy's soul, savoring the uncertainty there as he mustered up the courage to continue.

"I wish it." The boy breathed at last. Amun regarded him with a subtle shift of his face, the vaguest tensing of his lips. The faintest image of dissatisfaction as if the words were a disappointing conclusion to the exchange. A look of doubt crept over the boy's face as Amun nodded, giving him a small smile that crept nowhere near his eyes.

"As you wish it." Amun said wryly. He took a moment to compose himself, standing easily as if the aches and pains of crawling around on all fours had not effected him in the least. His dirtying black robes that he still wore were smoothed out by his hands as he took to his feet to stand over the boy in his chair.

Amun looked down on his student who seemed to shrink back into the chair a little in fear, though he kept a brave face on. He eyed the remote disdainfully that the boy seemed to toy with the thought of pressing at it, to attempt to send the suddenly transformed Sith back to his knees. He stood there for a moment, then another. The boy's finger eased off the trigger as he seemed to realize he wasn't in any sort of immediate danger. After a few more moments, Amun nodded, and began to speak.

"You wish to learn the ways of the force." Amun stated obviously, his voice drawling contempt as he continued to look down on his student. The boy had no grasp of any concept of the force or how to use it. No thought as to the philosophies of the Jedi and the Sith. He was raw, rough clay still to be dug from the ground, yet alone molded and shaped. Simply put... he was clueless. In this arena it was Amun who held all of the power.

 

[Amun Seti]

Amun's words echoed still in the luxurious air of the room, the only noise that followed the gentle crackling of heat from the furnace unit that sat near them. He continued looking down on the boy, who fidgeted slightly as he seemed to realize he had just lost at something. The boy's hand gripped the remote just a little bit tighter, drawing a discerning look and a small frown from Amun. His mind was calculating. The balance of power was a tenuous thing, and though in reality Amun wielded all that he needed... could take all that he wanted in any moment he desired... It would be better to play things out, let them seem as something other than what they were to the boy.

Amun turned his back on the boy, walking over to the heating unit and squatting down in front of it as he let show a visible chill in his body. He shivered slightly as he held out his palms towards the unit. He paid the boy no mind for a moment, letting his body language show the boy that he was no threat to Amun. Yet he watched him through the reflection of the heater. He sat straighter, gripped the shock remote more confidently now that he wasn't staring down the Sith that had stood above him only moments before. Good. Amun would let him have his security, if only to make it all the sweeter as he stripped away ignorant layers of safety the boy felt. One by one.

"What do you know of the Jedi?" Amun asked suddenly before turning his head to glance sidelong at the boy, one silver eye peering past it's lids to pierce with it's gaze. It took the boy off guard and he stumbled for a moment, not quite sure how to answer.

"The Jedi?" He asked, almost hesitantly as he tried to remember everything he had ever heard about the mystical warrior monks growing up on Omega Station. "They are warriors... No, peacekeepers. They use the force, and lightsabers... usually blue ones. They can lift rocks and other heavy objects with nothing but their minds. Religious zealots who fight dark things in the night. They're the good guys, or so I've heard." The boy said with a bit of uncertainty. It was as good a summary as any ignoramus could give Amun supposed.

"The good guys." Amun said with a slight sigh, chuckling as he returned his eyes to the mirrored image in front of him, watching the boy. Watching himself. "From a certain perspective." The perspective of many certainly. "A basic understanding, but good enough for now." He said with a slight frown, not at the boys understanding, but at his own reflection. Even with the new knowledge he possessed about his unwilling guest... It was jarring to look at his face and see another's, even if only in faint flickers of the light. "And..." His eyes turned back to the boy, more intently as he asked the next question. "What of the Sith?"

Amun watched carefully for a reaction as he said the words. He was not disappointed. The boy had already been dragged into this world of darkness of course, unwillingly, by Amun's hand. That their roles were as they were now was merely a stroke of fortune on the boy's part. For better or worse was yet to be said. The chilling aura of menace that lingered in the air of the castle penetrated even there in the luxurious sanctuary where the boy need not give too much acknowledgement to what fate lay ahead of him. But still, he flinched as he inhaled at the sound of the word.

Sith.

It was a word that was rank with fear, dripping of the menace of millennia. Soaked in the blood of untold billions throughout the annals of history. It was only the most ignorant of the galaxy that didn't cringe a little at the mention of the word. Amun could sense the boy's fear. He savored it.

 

[Amun Seti]

"The umm, they-" The boy started to stutter out his no doubt ignorant understanding of the Sith, but Amun interrupted him sharply. "The what? Say it." He glared cooly as he turned his head to look headlong at the boy from his crouched position next to the heater. "The... the Sith." He said with a gulp, glancing away from the man who in this moment represented every anxiety and fear that came with the word. He didn't look away long though, the events of the morning had done much to undercut whatever fear the boy felt at the sight of Amun's visage. He stared at Amun, his eyes turning hard for a moment as his fist tightened on the shock remote, though he left the button alone.

"What do you know of the Sith?" He asked as he shot an amused look at the remote the boy clung to so tightly, discomforting him ever so little more to the safety he thought he held in hand. Amun preached patience to himself as he awaited the boy's answer, watched the words forming behind his eyes before they travelled out his lips.

"The Sith..." He started slowly, gulping. "Dark sorcerers who rip children from their homes to bathe in their blood." He started, anger leaking into his voice as he recalled his own abrupt kidnapping by Amun. "Red blades and black robes." He glared pointedly at the dirty black robes that Amun still wore. The boy's eyes went cold with distance for a moment as he remembered the day before, the encounter with Lord Raze. "Monsters..." The word came out as a frightened whisper. Almost a whimper.

Monsters.

Amun held the boy's angry, frightened eyes for a moment without letting any of his thoughts or emotions slip through the silver window's out of which he stared. Then he nodded.

"Monsters." He spoke with a detached firmness to his voice, as if he weren't just painting himself with that same brush as he said the word in agreement. Better to cast himself in a more sympathetic light, at least for the time being. It seemed to put the boy on the back foot as he looked at Amun, slightly startled, as if he had expected the Sith to argue against the term. Amun continued his questioning along that same line of thought instead, much to the boy's surprise.

"And what makes a monster?" Amun asked. He continued to watch the boy, letting his eyes bore uncomfortably into him as he tried to think of what exactly made a monster, or what made a Sith so monstrous.

"They're... evil?" The boy finally said, returning Amun's now disappointed stare before shaking his head. "No... Yes, they are evil... but." He strained for the words to put to thoughts for a moment, grasping. "Because they are... people, but... they choose to do evil." It seemed difficult for the boy to look at Amun and call the Sith a person at the same time. Amun smiled faintly at this answer, which seemed to unsettle the boy ever so slightly. If only he knew the depths of it. He would, one day. Or maybe he wouldn't. That would all depend on him.

"Evil is subjective. Define these 'so called' evils that the Sith do." Amun said in a flippant tone. The boy flinched at this, his eyes narrowing angrily. Amun merely cocked his head at the reaction, waiting. He didn't have to wait too long as the anger grew within the boy, having a few very near at hand examples to spit in Amun's face.

"Dragging people from their homes and marching them through the snow, to force them into a castle and face down a monster." The boy's words flew with spittle as he nearly launched himself out of his seat, teetering at the edge instead as he clutched the shock remote. "Murder, torture, kidnapping, slavery." He spat a few more examples as his thumb crept towards the shock remote. Amun took it all in calmly, dispassionately.

"Harm." Amun summarized it up simply for the boy, eyeing the remote and raising an eyebrow as he continued. "Harming the unwilling, thats what makes a monster?" He asked pointedly as he watched the boy almost press the remote to send a surge of shock through Amun, only to stop himself short as he put what Amun was implying together.

"Wh- Ye- No. Yes, but not. Not like." Amun could see it on the boy's face, the contradiction that went against his own core beliefs. The cognitive dissonance swirling in his mind as Amun equated the boy's actions of torturing him to Amun's own greater 'evils'. Amun watched as the boy tried to justify himself, reason away why one thing was wrong but his own actions were right, why his own actions were just.

 

[Amun Seti]

"But not like what you're doing." Amun finished for him before letting out a light and breathy laugh. It hurt to laugh, hurt to talk so much after his throat had been shocked so many times, but the Sith didn't let it get to him. Instead he forged ahead, hopefully delaying the shock that might come in response to his mockery.

"Because it's justified. Because I hurt you, so it's okay for you to hurt me, right?" He asked with a slight scoff before letting his cold and serious eyes settle on the boy once again, clicking his tongue in disapproval. "It's the reasons that make an action, a harm, evil. And reasoning like that, not very good, not very Jedi-like." He finished with a cold, knowing smile.

The color drained from the boy's face. For whatever desire for command over the force he had wanted, it wasn't an easy thing to accept that ones own self wasn't the 'good guy' in their own story. He could justify it all he wanted, that Amun deserved to be tortured and beaten like a dog for what he had done. For what Amun had done to him. A cascade of emotions tumbled out of the boy, roaring across his expressive face as Amun watched with vague amusement. It had been easy to unsettle the boy, poking and prodding at his ignorance and weakness.

It was like playing shah-tezh with a child who had never played, who did not understand the demense, who was ignorant of the roles and maneuvers that each piece could play out. The boy did not understand power, vulnerability, pacing. All the easier to exploit. Amun would have to be careful in this game though, push too hard and the boy might just flip the board for lack of options.

"I understand that you want me to teach you how to utilize the force as I do." Amun pressed while his opponent, perhaps his student, was at the disadvantage. Disoriented. "The path I walk is not an easy one." He let a little sympathy leak into his tone as the boy glanced up at him, a false sympathy, for he felt none for the boy nor for his circumstances. He had whipped such useless feelings from his bones long since, but the charade was useful.

Amun stood, stretching slightly as he glanced about the room, noting the time that had passed. The boy was morose in his thoughts, the remote that had so recently been grasped tightly now hung loose in his hand. It would be so easy to snatch it from him, to put an end to this game. But it wasn't the time for that yet. The opportunity had not yet ripened. The fruits of his labor had not yet sweetened. The thought had his stomach growling.

"You must be hungry, I will fetch your meal." Amun said with a gentler smile than he had shown to the boy before, slipping easily back into the mask of a servant, switching roles. He let the teacher peak out from behind as the boy watched him begin to leave, eyes glinting for a moment to startle the boy at the easy switch. "You must know though, if my path is the one you choose to walk, the path of a Sith..." Amun trailed off for a moment as if lost in thought, thoughts of his own past. "It is a path that will change you. You will not be the same person as you are now when you emerge on the other side."

Amun lingered for a moment to let that knowledge sink in. It was a small gift he presented to his would be student, one that had never been offered to him. Knowledge, specifically the knowledge of knowing. That with knowing came change. He had seen it of course, off in the distance when the choices had lay in front of him. But Amun had always been observant, always possessed the ability to look several steps beyond. The boy's transformation had already begun of course, Raze had seen to that. Raze had given the boy a taste of power, a taste of pain. And he had taken to it with liking. Now it was Amun's job to guide that. He would of course, have his fun.

"We can't know what we will become when we commit to this path. A commitment you will have to make if you are to walk it. A lack of commitment on the path of a Sith often means death." Amun said as he reached the door. Commitment was the word, for to walk the path of a Sith, one had to commit to it wholly. Body, mind, and soul. There were no half measures on the path of a Sith. Only success, or death. Raze's words echoed in Amun's mind at that moment and the Sith couldn't find a more fitting use for them than this.

"Remember - Death is often a kind of mercy." Amun gave the boy a somber, sympathetic smile as he let the words ease from his lips to worm their way into the boy's mind. He left the boy with those words, closing the door behind him as he made his escape for the kitchen, leaving the boy with his thoughts. The smile that Amun wore as he walked the melancholy halls of Castle Raze was a real one.