Jace Kintain stood outside the Sith temple and stared across the red wastes of Korriban. The dust stung against his face as the hot wind carried it through the air, but Jace ignored it. He closed his eyes and he felt. He reached out with his senses, with the force, and he felt the dark side pulsating through the world. It was like a beast, thriving, powerful, flowing through everyone and everything that lived here, twisting it to its image, corrupting it.<br/><br/>Unless you could bend it to your own will.<br/><br/>Jace had never had trouble controlling the dark side. He had mastered it from a young age. He knew because of the seething hatred and jealousy he felt from the other padawans. The weak ones especially. Most of them were gone now, failing in their weakness. The Sith do not accept failure.<br/><br/>He let the dark side surround him and encase him. It was going to be the last time he could do it for a while. Jace didn't get long. He heard the call of his Master, even though he was on the other side of the academy. In a wave of power, it reached his mind, a familiar, unbending jolt like a spark of electricity inside his skull. It meant only one thing:<br/><br/><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 150%; line-height: 116%;">COME TO ME. NOW.</span></div><br/><br/>Jace didn't waste an instant. He gathered what few belongings he had, attached his lightsaber to his belt and set of towards the location of the call: the docking bay.<br/><br/>He walked quickly, stepping swiftly out of the way of anyone approaching from the other direction so that his movement was not impeded, his progress not slowed. Jace had learned not to make his Master wait for too long. He had the scars on his body still from the last time his was not prompt enough in his arrival.<br/><br/>But he knew he was taking too long.<br/><br/>While he had been listening to the force,<span style="font-style: italic">she</span>would probably have been training with her saber, half the distance from the docking bay that he was.<br/><br/>If she arrived first...<br/><br/>The doors to the bay hissed open, Jace was momentarily taken back by the size of the ship that swamped the bay, making everything else look miniscule in comparison. It suddenly occurred to him that he was leaving his home, the one place he had lived for most of his life. He had never been off-planet since he arrived here.<br/><br/>Something twisted in his stomach? Was it fear?<br/><br/>He pushed it down, crushing it with the dark side. Fear had no room in his life.<br/><br/>But it was all too clear that he had already failed the first test of the mission. His Master stood by the ramp leading up into the ship and at his feet knelt the other apprentice: Lyric. She had beaten him here.<br/><br/>With a silent curse, he crossed the bay in a few steps and knelt down next to her. “Master,” he said. “Command me.”