The sound of waves lapping against the shore entered the Umbaran’s ears, his eyes gazing lazily upon the horizon. The golden sun kissed the blue sky with amber lips, pink clouds shifting slowly as the ball of flame descended below the ocean tides. The subtle sounds of birds echoed in the distance and were it not for them, Samael might think he was completely alone on the island. The sticky presence of a former dark sider, however, continued to scream in the back of his mind. A Duro, one the Krath had heard about from hushed voices and whispers in the Arca Praxeum. He had chanced a sight of him when he had arrived, sensed the scars and blemishes that dotted his history, but actually speak to the fallen Jedi? Not yet.
Samael drew a small alchemical formula in the sand with a piece of driftwood, a triangle resting inside a circle with tendrils and dots snaking this way and that. He would occasionally stop and stare at his work, eventually crossing out the whole thing and returning his gaze to the sunset.
“Not like it?” said an unfamiliar voice.
Samael looked behind him and saw Xantros, the Duro’s red eyes gazing at the disheveled sand. Samael grunted but said nothing more.
“Never seen alchemy like that, did you learn that in your trav---”
Samael looked up at the Duro, his crystal eye glowing with curiosity and anger. It wasn’t anger at the questions, or even his contempt for a creature like Xantros who turned his back on his inner darkness. It was that feeling of anger one gets when they are caught in the act of doing something they shouldn’t. The anger that comes with disappointment.
“Yes, yes I did.” said Samael quietly, itching his beard as saliva ran into it, “Alchemy and necromancy, slaughtering the innocent, bathing in their blood. These are things I carry with me and need to survive. These are the dark things that besmirch whatever light was once inside me. I’m forever shackled to the things you claim to have turned away from. I heard you like knowledge, well sit comfortably in the knowledge that there will never be a day where I stand by your side as long as you deny that there is still darkness inside of you.”
“D-deny? Who said I deny anything like that?” replied Xantros, his voice filled with emotions.
Samael sniffed the air, sensed his comrade’s mind and saw the internal struggle. Years of doing what he wished, doing what he needed to do to excel at any cost, it was not something one could easily turn away from. The Krath sat comfortably with the Duro, knowing that the two were not so different after all. Whatever reason Xantros had joined the Jedi in Odan-Urr, Samael did not care. Darkness still lay somewhere in the Consular, and Samael would do whatever he could to entice it out. For now, he would call Xantros ally and wait.
“If you find the light so contemptible, why are you with Odan-Urr? Why still cling to the trappings of a Krath amidst a school of Consulars?” asked Xantros.
“Where does the moon go when the sun rises?” asked Samael, lifting himself up from the sand and walking away.
Xantros remained sitting, confused, as he watched the Umbaran depart from his gaze. The former Tarenti was an enigma, one that he would most likely struggle to figure out.