Chapter Text
Ner Manda tra, ner Ka’rta kyorar
Ni Ekur dha tal, naas al
Vi kar’taylir nu Kyr’am
It starts off as fatigue. An unending exhaustion that seeps into bone marrow and runs through the blood. Hardly anyone notices it at this stage, Mandalore being in constant warfare one way or another, who could blame a warrior for being quieter than usual, sleeping through blaster fire or tripping over one’s boots after a hard-fought battle? How many times has someone come home from battles to be not quite themselves anymore? Anyone would find it hard pressed to put the sole blame of such fatigue on a single weapon, even if it be the darksaber itself.
But that is what it is counting on. To be in the hands of the next great ruler of Mandalore, is the darksaber’s goal, and if a warrior falls to quickly-- reacts too slowly, misses an important shot, can’t rise out of the muddy barracks quick enough— then, they weren’t meant to feel the hilt of the mythic sword in their hands.
The second manifestation is the nightmares. Dark things where shadow and ichor creep in and distort familiar faces and play their screams over and over in one’s ears until they swear they hear it within Mandalore’s earth itself. But who would bat an eyelash at a soldier waking up screaming? They wouldn’t be the first in the long night, and they wouldn’t be the last.
This manifestation is less sinister than the first culling, though it works just the same. Warriors have nightmares, it is as simple as that, and as such when the broken minds with all their hopes, dreams and dreads brush up on someone’s unconscious imagination… dark things tend to fill the spaces.
The Mand’alore of the past weren’t cruel by nature, ruthless, yes, but they still had their honor and those they chose to love and hold. Ones to pass down their armor to and whisper sweet nothings to as it rained, but souls aren’t meant to be kept in the physical world, and even less so tied to a weapon that knows very little that can match its power. Distortion and stress twist and wring and writhe until very little remains. So no, individually they would not choose to torment another vod, a fellow warrior in arms, but still the nightmares drive the wielder of the darksaber to insomnia.
The soft intrusions felt only in the deepest nights soon drag themselves into the daylight. Voices, memories, thoughts and spoken words of all Mand’alore in the past slur together with the one in the present. And while all Mand’alore want the best for their people and worlds, how they do it is what most likely ended their reign. The same spectral hand that holds a trembling one steady may be the same that cuts an innocent woman and babe down. One sweet voice that whispers tales of great mythosaurs and hum tunes long forgotten may order the destruction of entire continents. Ego battles for control within the blade and if the one who wields it thus far hasn’t lost their head, then they will be consumed if not careful. Succumbed to insanity, suicide or deemed unfit by the next victim of the colorless blade.
But still there is more.
What is the worse fate? To be loathed by the ones residing amongst the saber, or to be loved by them? Its love is black ink-- putrid ooze of rot and pus that chokes and clogs every orifice if the will of the many is not followed to the letter. Its love is control and decisions made in the host’s stead, it is thousands dead to save one deemed worthy of courtship, it is prairies razed and forests burnt in order to drive out the last of the mythosaurs or other great beasts and prove one’s greatness to everyone but themselves. The darksaber’s love is survival and The Way of Mandalore, until the voices turn on themselves and rip apart whatever seams hold fragile reality together until they decide on how to proceed, but by then leaving a corpse lying face down in the oil-slick mud, covered in self-inflicted scratches and tears.
From the first hands to wrap around the newly-minted hilt, sage and powerful as they were, to the blasphemous control of a self-proclaimed pacifist, all sing with the hum of the black and white blade. As much as they thrive with the passing of hands, they all long for momentary stagnation that only comes when one true ruler comes in possession of the vessel. They all turn their focus on a hunter, clad in the metals of Mandalore’s core, who wins the sword with only the goal of saving his son.