This chapter is unofficially subtitled “Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!” lol. Also lol: so the ysalamiri take over the galaxy once Kreia gets her way? However, the stuff in it took so long this may go on ONE more extra chapter than I planned.
Random: did you guys know that there’s a ridiculously expensive and ridiculously gorgeous Sephiroth figurine out there? I know, I know, some of that is the photography and lighting. But still, pretty pretty.
I have had a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad idea: I should write Kotor 3. SWTOR just doesn’t satisfy my need for a direct sequel, wrapping up all the loose ends leftover from Kotor 2 (and 1). Then I had a WORSE idea: I should make Kotor 3 in RPGMaker. …WISH ME LUCK
Part 12: Time Rolling Backward
Kavar had said he would need some time to discuss matters with Vrook and Zez without her, so it was a few hours before she and Kreia made their way to the Jedi Enclave in his wake.
Vrook had been busy, or persuasive – the upper levels were showing signs of repair, and they could now enter. As they stepped into the first courtyard, the one with the garden, Kreia slowed, then stopped.
The place was covered in green; not the overwhelming green of Dxun, but a delicate pale green, that had crept slowly but surely over all of the interior. The fountains were still, and the ponds were full of weeds. The great tree in the centre was a blasted stump, but more trees had sprouted beside it, and were already quite tall, for only being a few years old. A few flutter-bys and fighter-flies meandered through the wide space, and she could hear the distant cooing of a Faahurdove.
“Kreia?”
“It… is different. It has been some time.” Slowly, Kreia made her way to a vine-draped bench by the great tree’s stump, and sat with a sigh, the sun shining on her hand resting loosely in her lap. “Forgive me, but I need to rest. Go on… the Council awaits you.”
“Are you all right?” Selyn asked anxiously, although truth be told, she wouldn’t have minded sitting beside Kreia and just basking in the gentle Dantooine sun, closing her eyes and letting the scent of warm moss fill her nose.
“Yes, I only need to centre myself. Go on. Whatever answers the Council have are for your ears alone.”
Selyn nodded and walked away, but she still heard Kreia’s voice in her mind: “Know that much may happen here, but above all, do not forget this: you may trust in me. We cradle each other’s lives, and what threatens one of us, threatens us both.” Selyn paused, half-turning – did Kreia know something she didn’t? But the bowed, hooded head revealed nothing. “And if you find you cannot trust me, trust in your training. Trust in yourself. Never doubt what you have done. All your decisions have brought you to this point.”
She nodded and walked into the dark hallway through to the Council chamber.
“Thank you for coming,” Kavar greeted her as she entered into daylight again. He, Zez, and Vrook, dressed in Jedi robes, were gathered at one side of the circular courtyard and she approached them. Their formation with her was not quite that of a circle, and not quite that of Masters and Knight, somewhere in between; there was still distance of rank between them, but not as much as there had been in the past. This wasn’t really the time for formalities.
“This moment has taken some time to reach us, and I imagine you still have many questions,” Zez said.
“Unless you are only here for revenge,” Vrook grumbled. She was wearing her armour. She couldn’t really blame him for misunderstanding.
“No, I’m here as I said at the beginning,” she said. “Have you come up with a plan to stop the Sith?”
“No,” Vrook said. “We will do as we have done. We will wait. There is nothing else we can do.”
She started in surprise, took a step back. “What!? But- the Sith are attacking the Republic! I’ve fought them!” Her serenity was already shaken. Not good. She had to stay calm. She was a Knight, even if nominally exiled.
Vrook shook his head. “No, the true threat has yet to show itself. It is waiting for something – perhaps for us to enter the war. We have seen their soldiers, the remnants of their fleet, but those are symptoms of a disease. It is more bait to attempt to draw us out.”
Kavar nodded too. “The actual battle is being fought through the Force, not with weapons or armies. It isn’t about the Republic anymore. The attack on Onderon… something was attempting to use the planet itself, to feed on it, to draw on the power there. You prevented it, but it was a stalling measure. The next time will be critical.”
“But if we do nothing, the next Onderon will fall! I may not have Revan’s tactical mastery, but waiting for an opportune time can only last so long.” She swept an arm around at all of them. “We have gathered all the forces we can, there is no point in waiting longer that I can see.”
“If Jedi gather, if we wage war against these… shadows now, then Jedi will die, and we will die for nothing!” Vrook thundered. “Whatever this thing is, it must be fought by those strong in the Force – it cannot be fought in any other way. It knows this, and that is why it is assassinating us. If we die, then it will win, no matter what fleet or weapons are brought against it.”
“You say if we fight, we will be destroyed, but if we do nothing, then we are even more certain to be destroyed,” she argued. “If the Sith are certain to destroy us either way, I want to fight them to the end. They cannot do as they please unchecked. Otherwise, they have certainly already won.”
“You don’t know what we felt,” Kavar said. “When we felt Katarr die, there was something, something we’d felt once before. An echo in the Force. We’d felt it before when you stood before us. Whatever this threat, whatever this hunger is, it is something tied to you, something you have experienced directly.”
“This echo travels in the places where death has walked, where planets have died. Massacres fuel its power, the death of life fuels it,” Zez said.
“So it is me?” she asked softly, unbelieving. Kavar had said it was not, and she knew it was not, she had never been to Katarr, had never tried to kill Jedi…
“No, it is not,” Kavar reassured her. “As I said before, it is not you. But it is connected to you somehow. I felt it on Dxun.”
“And it echoes in the souls of Nar Shaddaa,” Zez said.
“It is in the ground here on Dantooine,” Vrook said. “We must wait a little longer, until its source truly appears.”
So they still didn’t know what it was. If Atton were here, he would say something appropriately sarcastic, make her smile. But he was not, so she had to stifle the feeling of frustrated anxiety that sprouted within her, take some calming breaths. Dantooine was calming, even with the wounds Vrook felt in it. It was healing, slowly.
“Why did you cast me out of the Order?” she asked. “I thought I knew, I thought I figured it out, but I am wrong in my thoughts, it seems.”
“We cast you out of the Order because you followed Revan to war. There was no other reason,” Vrook grunted with a set to his jaw.
“No, there was another,” Zez soothed them both. “You had become different somehow, changed. The war had changed you.”
“The war changed everyone,” she said. “But I had no choice. Kavar, you said much harm was done when so many lives were lost on both sides. But if I had not fought, if I hadn’t tried with all my will to save as many as could be saved, how many more would have died? How much more suffering would there be in the galaxy right now? Even though I killed thousands, hundreds of thousands… even though I sold my soul to war and became a monster, I saved many more. And… and that was how it was with Revan too.” It wasn’t really an epiphany anymore. But she believed it more easily now. “The Sith may have risen at Malachor, but the Jedi did not die there.”
“The Jedi may not have died at Malachor, but Malachor was the beginning of our end, an end which is now upon us,” Vrook said. “That is the problem, not that you saved the Republic, but that you doomed the Jedi. The end does not justify the means, and the consequences are worse.”
“What would you have done, when the Mandalorians came to Coruscant? Would you have retreated before them? You’d save your honour, your virtue, but what would you say to the billions dead whom you could have saved? Would those echoes not have haunted us all more deeply? Is life worth living with that sole justification?” She tried not to sound accusing, but she’d been wanting to say it for ten years.
“It must be,” Zez said. “If every Jedi had gone to war, every Jedi would have fallen, and then the lives of all would have been in danger.”
“As you said, the Light can never truly be defeated,” Kavar said. “If even one Jedi stands firm somewhere, the Light will live on.”
He hadn’t understood what she meant when she said that, but Zez interrupted.“Besides, such what-ifs are irrelevant.”
“I agree,” she said, refinding her centre, her serenity. She’d said what she wanted to say, and if they wanted to talk about it later, they could. There were more important things to deal with than the past, now. “Which is why we need to come up with a plan to stop the Sith.”
“Please listen to the rest of what we have to say,” Kavar said, gentle but troubled. “You were no longer a Jedi. But we could not tell you why – some explanations mean nothing unless the one who suffers comes to the answer on their own. What had happened to you was punishment enough… and the Jedi do not kill their prisoners.”
“And if you had stayed, you would have changed us,” Zez said. “And that we could not allow.”
He’d said on Nar Shaddaa that seeing her Forceless state had frightened him. It seemed he was afraid of more than that. But… “I don’t understand,” Selyn said.
“You already know the answer,” Vrook said. “You’ve noticed it in those who travel with you.”
“Have you noticed that when you act, others follow?” Zez said. “Those that travel with you… they follow you, without question, without hesitation.”
“Against their instincts, and sometimes against their sense,” Vrook said.
“It is because you are a leader… but that still fails to grasp the meaning of what I am getting at,” Kavar said, frowning in concentration.
“The General is a part of my past, but she is not who I am,” Selyn objected.
“Perhaps,” Vrook said. “But it is not that to which I am referring. Surely you are familiar with Force bonds. It is the bond that develops between apprentice and Master, when one truly understands another. It is developed over time, through understanding of each other. Yet you do it so easily, and we do not know why.”
“You make connections through the Force, and it resonates with those who travel with you,” Kavar said. “The resonance is even greater when they, too, are Force Sensitive.”
“Your actions affect others more than you know,” Zez said. “You draw others to you, especially those strong in the Force.”
“This bond – it travels both ways. When you suffer, their spirit echoes it,” Kavar said. “And when they are in pain, their pain becomes yours. When you feel pain, or strong emotion, it resonates within you. ”
“And that is why the Mandalorian Wars echo within you still,” Zez said.
“We did not cut you off from the Force,” Vrook said. “You were merely deafened to it, because of that last battle of the Mandalorian Wars.”
“The screams of countless thousands, Jedi, Republic, and Mandalorians, crushed by the planet’s gravity, annihilated,” Zez said.
“Their lives still scream across the surface of that dead planet – and within you,” Kavar said. “To hear the Force over such pain… it is not possible. It was too much for any Jedi to endure… and it is a wonder that you did not die there when thousands perished, all those you had fought with and struggled with. You cut yourself off, because you had to if you were to survive. It began within you on Dxun. Malachor was simply the final blow.”
The three of them fell silent and watched her, and she stared back at them. She could feel the unrest in her spirit, feel her heart pounding in her chest, but it was not for the reasons they thought it was.
She began to laugh, bitterly, almost sobbing. The Masters drew back, startled, as her laugh echoed sharply around the Council chamber and up to the sky. “This was your big revelation? That my connection to the Force died with Malachor, that if it had not, I would have died? I came to that conclusion a long time ago.”
Atton’s words came to her, also from a long time ago: “You know why? Because Jedi lie. And they manipulate. And every act of ‘charity’ and ‘kindess’ they do, you can drag it out squirming into the light to see what it really is. The Jedi are pacifists… except in times of war. They’re teachers… except when it comes to telling their students the truth.”
They looked at her, Vrook affronted, Zez chagrined. Kavar was trying to hide his feelings, but she could see his unhappiness. He believed these things he told her, but he didn’t like telling her them. Even though that was cold comfort.
“No,” Vrook said, sternly, but he was trying to be gentle too. What was the point? “There is more. When you returned to us, we saw what had happened. You carry all those deaths at Malachor within you, and it has left a hole, a hunger that cannot be filled.”
“In you, we saw a… wound in the Force,” Kavar said softly.
“In you, we saw the end of the Force,” Zez corrected him.
“That was then. I feel it now,” she said.
“Yes, you can feel the Force,” Vrook said, “but you cannot feel yourself. You are a cipher, forming bonds, leeching the life of others, siphoning their will and dominating them. It is the teaching of these new Sith, to feed on others, on other Force Sensitives. They are symptomatic of the wound in the Force. You are a breach that must be closed. You transmit your pain, your suffering through the Force. Within you, we see something worse than merely the teachings of the Sith. You cling to the Light with your garbled reasonings and philosophies, you may not feel Sith, but what you carry may mean the death of the Force… and the death of the Jedi.”
“No… No! I feel it, and my students feel it, and they have grown strong!”
“So you think,” Vrook said. “It is not the strength of a Jedi you feel. It is their strength.”
“He’s right,” Zez said. “It’s… all the death you’ve caused to get here. You feed on it, and you grow stronger. You are like Malachor… it’s in you, it’s what you are now. You must have noticed as you’ve fought across all these planets, killing hundreds, only to become more and more powerful. Why do you think that was?”
“Because I was coming to accept myself as I was, to accept the Force into my life again, to challenge the pain of my past…” What they said, that couldn’t be true. She’d kill herself if that were true. No… she was certain it wasn’t true. Her power came from life, not death.
“What’s worse,” Kavar said softly, “is that bonding you have – it hasn’t gone away. It’s gotten stronger, and the more attachments you form, the more you draw others to you.”
He’d been so supportive and understanding when they’d talked in the dim light of the comm room, but now, his sense was withdrawn from her, shielded. So he’d felt this – the beginnings of a bond, and pulled away? He had said he wasn’t afraid of her now. He had lied. Even Kavar had lied to her. She looked at him, the first threads of heartbroken betrayal beginning to weave into her spirit. He glanced away.
“And that is why you are a threat to us all,” Vrook said gravely. “You are a conduit through which the Sith learned to prey on Force users. Through you, their hunger comes, and their power against the Jedi. But it is of no consequence. Your ability to make such connections, such bonds, so easily are why you cannot remain.”
Her eyes opened wide. They couldn’t mean-
“You are a threat to all living creatures, and all who feel the Force,” Zez said. “You will lead the Sith here. And that we cannot allow.”
“Our judgement before remains, Selyn Tekeri. You must leave this place… and you must leave without your tie to the Force.”
“No! I- I can help! If you’re wrong, I won’t- I can’t-” She knew she sounded as guilty, or as insane, as they thought she was, but she was desperate. Their resolve was fixed and there was no way out for her, not without irreparable damage to everything she had worked and fought and suffered so much for. I fought so hard to save you, I won’t hurt you now, but you will break me…
“Never doubt what you have done. All your decisions have brought you to this point.” She remember what Kreia had said. If she was cut off from the Force again, she would not be completely helpless. She would still be herself; the Force was only a part of her being. But right now, right here, she could do so much more when she had the Force.
“-I have to continue!”
Vrook raised his hand. “It is a punishment reserved for only a few – and then only when necessary, but we have the power to cut you off from the Force, from your Force bonds, and it must be done.”
Would it kill her this time? Would it kill Kreia? Would it hurt her friends?
“No! Please! Wait! K-Kavar-! Please-!” Tears trickled from her horror-stricken eyes. This couldn’t be happening. After everything…
“Forgive me,” Kavar said, shaky but visibly steeling himself. “Forgive us. It must be done.”
“Kavar!” Her voice broke. She could no longer move, held in a powerful Force stasis. She stared at him, and he turned away, unable to meet her gaze.
Vrook and Zez raised their hands, and Kavar reluctantly followed them, when a thundering shout echoed around the chamber. “Enough!!”
Kreia… Kreia had come to save her.
The stasis fell from her, but she fell to the grassy ground on her face, everything going dark. Embedded in her heart like shrapnel was the realization that the Masters weren’t wrong, and she could feel nothing… nothing but the silent scream…
Muffled words over her head. She couldn’t hear properly, couldn’t see, couldn’t feel, neither with her skin nor with her mind. But she could hear the words.
“Step away from her! I said step away! She has brought truth, and you condemn it? The arrogance! You will not harm her. You will not harm her ever again.”
“I thought you had died in the Mandalorian Wars…”
“Died? No. Become stronger, yes.”
“Is this your new Master, Selyn? If so, then you follow Revan’s path. Her teachings will cause you to fall as surely as she did.”
“We sought to lure the Sith out… and now they have come to us.”
“As you would pass judgement on her, I have come to pass judgement on you all. Do you wish to feel the teachings of the Mandalorian Wars? Of all wars, of all tragedies that scream across the galaxy? Did you not hear its call on Dantooine, Vrook, on its scarred surface and in the minds of the settlers? I have endured your corruption of my other students – you shall not have this one. And Zez-Kai Ell, to hide upon Nar Shaddaa, yet blind yourself to all that happens there. So close to understanding the Force… so close to giving it up. And you, Kavar, so close to the call of Dxun – tell me you did not feel what poured from the moon, what had taken place there. Let me show you – you, who have forever seen the galaxy through the Force. See it through the eyes of the Exile.”
If she could have, she would have gotten up, ready to fight. Something terrible was going to happen…
There should have been a louder sound. There was almost nothing, only a faint sigh and heavy things falling on soft grass.
“How could you ever hope to know the threat you face, when you have never walked in the dark places of the galaxy, or faced war and death on such a scale? If you had traveled far enough, rather than waiting for the echo to reach you, perhaps you would have seen it for what it was. There is a place in the galaxy where the dark side of the Force runs strong. It is something of the Sith, but it was fueled by war. It corrupts all that walks on its surface, drowns them in the power of the dark side – it corrupts all life. And it feeds on death. Revan knew the power of such places… and the power in making them. They can be used to break the will of others… of Jedi, promising them power, and turning them to the Dark Side. Did you never wonder how Revan corrupted so many of the Jedi, so much of the Republic, so quickly? The Mandalorian Wars were a series of massacres that masked another war, a war of conversion. Culminating in a final atrocity that no Jedi could walk away from… save one. And that is what I sought to understand. How one could turn away from such power, give up the Force… and still live. But I see what happened now.”
The final whisper, just before she lost consciousness again, was almost in her ear. “It is because you were afraid.”
He was counting cards, not just to keep the Jedi Masters over in the Enclave, or his companions, out of his head, but because he was bored, terribly bored, sitting on the edge of an old crater just outside the Enclave. It was a beautiful day, but that honestly meant very little to him – only that it wasn’t as depressing as Korriban. It was so quiet here. On other planets, like Nar Shaddaa, quiet meant that shit was about to go down. But here, it was quiet because there wasn’t anything around to potentially go down in the first place. Only a few mostly-harmless critters and a slowly collapsing building, in the middle of wide plains where the wind hissed through the grass.
The others were around, no one too close to each other, also waiting.
And waiting.
And waiting.
It was taking too long. How long were Jedi councils supposed to be? Kreia had gone in with her, right? Was she also still in there?
Making sure none of the others noticed, he slipped in through the door, reaching out ahead of him to find where the Jedi all were.
And found nothing.
Not even Kreia’s usual subtle whisper in the Force, which was almost impossible to detect unless he was really looking for it, but Selyn should have been a bright star, and even the other Masters should have had some kind of glowy effect. There was nothing. Something was horribly wrong.
He jogged through the crumbling courtyards, unwilling to call out, only moving faster and faster, his heart pounding in fear. At the end of a twisty passage, another courtyard – there! Blue armour, crumpled face-down on the ground. Brown robes lying behind her. But she was all he cared about, and he skidded to a stop on his knees in the grass, breathing hard, reaching out to her gently, rolling her over.
What had happened – what had they done to her? She was still alive, still breathing, but there wasn’t a hint of Force about her. Nothing. Nada. Like she was dead, she felt dead, she couldn’t be dead, she was breathing- “Selyn. Selyn? Selyn!” Please wake up please wake up-
She took a deeper breath, then opened her eyes. Tear-stained eyes in a white face. What had they done to her!? “A-Atton?” Her eyes were wide and lost and afraid, nothing like her normal self-control. She was trying to sit up and he hitched her higher so her head leaned against his shoulder, wrapping his arms around her in an effort to be comforting. Now that he was a little less afraid for her, he felt anger rising, anger at the Jedi who’d obviously hurt her so deeply. No. Anger is bad. Breathe.
“What did they do to you?”
She said nothing, only breathed, carefully, trying to conquer her feelings. He gently reached out to touch the desolate, agonized emptiness in the Force where her bright spirit had once been, and was surprised and gratified to feel a spark kindle there.
And suddenly she pushed him away, so hard that he fell head over heels, and when he righted himself again, she was at least a metre farther away than she had been. “What!? What’s wrong?”
“D-don’t,” she stammered, hugging herself. She was crying again. “Don’t touch me. Not in the Force, not at all.”
“B-but-”
“Listen. You said I was bright in the Force. It’s because… It’s because I steal it from you – from all of you, through the bonds I form so easily. That’s why you follow me, because I manipulate everyone into following me, I coerce them unconsciously, because my dead spirit wants their power.” Her head fell, her hair falling loose from her clips messily. “What Malachor did to me… it turned me into this. I am not a Jedi. I am nothing. And if you follow me, you will die because of me.” The end of her words was almost lost in heartbroken sobs, and it almost broke his heart, too.
Not heeding her words, he scooted over until he could put his arms around her again and pull her close against his chest. “No. No, sweetheart. They’re wrong. That’s what they told you? Those lying schutta, lying out their asses. Even if they weren’t lying schutta, you’re not forcing anyone to do anything. You know why we follow you? Because-” The words almost stuck in his throat. It had been a long time since he’d had to say anything this intimate. “Because we love you. Because I love you. I mean, I follow you because I love you, and I’m pretty sure the others do too. We want to. We choose to.” He felt another flash of anger against those vaunted, revered Jedi Masters. “If those cowardly morons had bothered to follow you, instead of hiding like the ‘great leaders’ they are, they’d have understood, too. I’m no wise Jedi, but I know it, Selyn. It’s true.”
“But I still absorb the Force from you-”
“Not that I’ve noticed. Yeah, you feel a little weird right now, but when you were shining, I felt just as strong as now. I don’t feel any different. You’re not taking anything from us – at least, anything that matters. You’re not like Visas’s master, the one who eats planets in the Force. You’re… a mirror, or something, you reflect our strength.” He stroked her face with a finger, trying to get her to look up at him, to believe him. “And you can shine again. C’mon. It’s all right.”
He wished desperately that he was better with words. There were a million different things he could have said that would be more convincing, but he didn’t know any of them right now, only that she wasn’t… herself while she was hollow and empty. He took her face in his hands and kissed her, and did the scariest thing he had probably ever done. He reached out with the Force again, carefully dropping his barriers, making himself completely vulnerable, and this time she didn’t push him away. Instead, she accepted the energy he offered, as delicately as if it were made of cobweb, weaving it back into her emptiness until it was no longer empty.
And then it seemed her connections kicked in, or something, because her spirit brightened exponentially until she was blazing, blinding, dazzling in his arms. Her face was still streaked with tears, her hair sticking every which way, but her face had colour in it again, her heart was beating, her eyes were sparkling, and he needed to kiss her again. And again, holding her tightly, pressing her against him, until all that he could sense was her warmth against him, her mouth wet and willing against his, her hands on his back, the rapidity of her breathing, and most of all the brilliance of her radiance, flooding his mind’s senses.
If she hadn’t been exactly who she was, and if the situation wasn’t so weird, he would have definitely suggested getting horizontal in the immediate future. Or whatever position she liked. But she was, and it was, and he loved her too much to ruin it with that. So for now he only clung to her and she to him. He caught a word from her mind, ‘resonance’, and agreed with it whole-heartedly. But instead of the pain he knew she carried somewhere deep inside, the wound he’d just seen laid bare, all that resonated between them were their feelings for each other, his love reflecting her love reflecting his love, and it was gloriously overwhelming, too much to bear, too sweet to hold.
He let her go, and they were both gasping for air. “You believe me yet?” he asked, hoarsely.
She nodded and stumbled back a little from him, overwhelmed by… everything, probably. She turned a little, and her gaze fell on the three Jedi Masters, sprawled limp on the ground.
Oh, fantastic. They’d been making out in front of corpses. If that wasn’t inappropriate, and unromantic, and kind of gross, he didn’t know what was. And the mood was instantly dead, and he was feeling pretty chagrined they’d had such an amazing moment in such an awful place. What the hell had happened here again, anyway?
“Oh, Kavar,” she said, her voice moving towards breaking again, and he stepped towards her quickly, in case she needed him. “Kreia… I think Kreia cut them off from the Force, to show them what it was like to be me after Malachor. And they couldn’t take it. Their worst fears came true. Oh, I am so sorry…” She bent and closed their eyes, one after another, and the tears were flowing again.
If she kept this up, she was going to make him cry too, and he didn’t even like those Jedi. “So they called you in, told you a whole lot of bullshit, tried to cut you off from the Force, and then Kreia came running in to put them in their place, as she does, and… then what?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I was unconscious at that point.”
“Wonderful. Let’s get back to the others, maybe they know-”
Footsteps interrupted him, and they turned to see Visas hurrying towards them. “Kreia’s been taken by Atris’s handmaidens!”
“Ohhh, frak.” He could see where that hyperspace route went. “Atris will think she’s a Sith, and she’ll do what she does to anyone she thinks is a Sith…” How’d they know where they were? How did they know to take Kreia?
“But our bond… if Kriea dies…”
He gave her an unhappy look. “Yeah. I know.”
“Then we need to follow them to Telos, as quickly as we can,” Selyn said, moving purposefully towards Visas. For a moment, she paused, looking back towards the dead Masters. “I’m sorry, Kavar. I don’t have time to bury you. But I will keep fighting. I’ll defeat the Sith, without becoming one. You’ll see.”
He took her hand, urging her on, and they ran together towards the exit.
The empty Jedi Academy at Telos’s pole was as stark and cold as it had always been. Five of the handmaidens had challenged her, and she had knocked them back with the Force, almost effortlessly incapacitating them.
She didn’t want to kill them. Atris might be falling, but there was still a chance for them. Maybe there was even a chance for Atris.
All she knew was that Kreia wasn’t dead yet. She was still alive, and that meant Kreia was still alive. Somewhere.
But apparently, not here.
And her inner state was a distraction, as she relearned it for the fourth time in her life, though she was coming to accept it and move through it yet again. She could feel her hollowness, that her core was devoid of the Force, a window into hellish nothing. But she could also feel the Force surrounding her, encasing her in power, power borrowed from her friends, but given to her willingly and taken gratefully. But it was no wonder she hadn’t felt it before, nor any wonder her students hadn’t seen it. Kreia had surely seen it, the other Masters had seen it. Was this finally her true self?
Whatever it was, she would not abandon her friends even though she drew on them. Perhaps this was the most important lesson they had for her, to trust them enough to let them support her like this.
She entered Atris’s inner sanctum and stopped short.
It was a circular chamber like an amphitheater, but instead of seats, there were dozens on dozens of holocrons – all glowing red, all emitting a low, menacing hiss. Atris stood in the centre of the dark room, a single light falling on her white hair and robes dramatically. “She said you would come here, to this place. If you think you can defeat me here, you are wrong. All this collected knowledge, all these teachings of combat and the Force – they are mine to command. And if I must use it to end you, I will. Surrender… you need not die.”
“Atris, I don’t want to fight you. You’ve fallen, but you cannot beat me. Please don’t fight.” The others are already dead. You are truly the only one left. Don’t follow them.
“Atris…” The woman’s voice became dreamy, contemplative. “That is not who I am, not any longer. She has not existed for some time, I think. There was always something else within me – it just took time for its voice to be heard.”
“What happened?” But she had her suspicions.
“The old woman you traveled with, finally made me… listen to myself, to the galaxy. She said that you would come here, and that you would face me in battle.”
“That doesn’t mean we have to.”
“She said you were the last obstacle to my enlightenment. If I wished to truly face the Sith, to see their heart, then that meant facing you, this last time. She has set many things in motion, it is she that ordered the extermination of all Jedi, so long ago. She will answer for her crimes, in time. She is Sith… just as you are, just as all who followed Revan were.”
Atris hadn’t fallen; she was lost, lost in her own mind.
“I am not Sith, but we need to work together to stop them. The other Masters are dead. We are all that’s left to fight the Sith. Work with me, Atris.”
Atris swayed once, subtly, as if she wasn’t aware of it. “Yes, the Sith are here at last – you have brought them to this place, as I had foreseen. It has all been part of my plans for you. And when I defeat you and the forces you have brought to Telos, I shall take the battle to the heart of the Sith, and wipe them out – forever.”
“What are you talking about? What plans?” Selyn asked, suddenly alert, bracing herself for more unpleasant revelations.
Atris smiled, a gleeful smile that did not suit her. “These Sith are cowards, striking from the shadows to kill Jedi. I needed a target to draw them out – but I could not risk my own life, all that remained of the Jedi. So I arranged for you to return to the Republic, leaked information of your past, and then waited for the Sith to come. And they did. And you have come to Telos, and they have followed you, like they came to Katarr. I can finally face this enemy and defeat them.” She laughed, and Selyn shivered.
“You… it was you who let the Sith know where I was? You placed everyone around me in terrible danger! And now you hide here with your Sith holocrons and speak nonsense about fighting them alone, when you have never seen true battle! Supposing you win, Atris, what happens? What then?”
Atris drew herself up proudly. “When the Sith are destroyed, then I shall rebuild the Jedi Order again. They shall have none of the weaknesses of before, they shall be strong, willing to take battle to any who oppose them and weaken the Republic. They shall not train those who are easily corrupted – no more students that will bring war and hate to the galaxy.”
Selyn spread her hands. “That is exactly what they will bring, Atris! You would make the Jedi into the Sith!”
“The Sith are the Jedi, the Jedi are the Sith,” Atris chanted. “What matters is that they be preserved, all the lore, all the teachings, brought to a new generation. I am the last of the Jedi… and I will show them this truth, bring it to the galaxy.”
She didn’t want to hear about Atris’s mad future anymore. “You mentioned Katarr. What happened there?”
“It was I who leaked knowledge of its presence in the hopes of drawing the Sith out. I will not deceive you… I knew what could happen there, but it had to be done to make the Sith reveal themselves. But I did not know the extent of their power – and what that meant for the Jedi. I will not underestimate them again.”
She was so proud of what she had done. “You are responsible for the murder of an entire planet.”
“As are you,” Atris said, suddenly cold. “You, who brought the screams of Malachor to the galaxy… do not preach to me. You lead by example. You always have. You knew what was necessary at Malachor V, and the stakes in this war are higher than you know – it is a war of extermination, of total annihilation.”
“Katarr was not necessary!” Selyn took a deep breath. Insanity could not be reasoned with. There was only one more thing she wanted to know, and then she would leave. “What were the Jedi doing on Katarr?”
“They hoped to gather, to use their combined knowledge of the Force to see, to listen to the currents of the galaxy. They hoped to find out what was happening to the Jedi, why they were dying. And they discovered it. It revolved around you, as it always has. It is you who’ve tried to end us. From the destruction of Katarr, a vision emerged – it is the last act the Jedi were able to perform before the planet was destroyed. And look, you have come to battle me, Sith vs. Jedi, as was intended.”
“I am not Sith,” Selyn said coldly. She couldn’t be completely calm right now… but cold was close enough. “If that was a vision of the future, it was only one possibility.”
“Yes, it was one such possibility. The others were only darkness, a galaxy devoid of the Force… but always there was an echo. The Jedi on Katarr did not realize the significance of this – they had not stood in judgment of you, so long ago. They had not heard the same echo I did when you stood before us… and when we cast you into exile. That sound of life in agony – it is a wound in the Force that has yet to close. War… destruction… these events leave wounds in the galaxy, in all life. The death of one can send echoes through hundreds… even thousands, across many planets. If not checked, then it spreads, until nothing is left. Something that you had done in the past has caused this new threat, this death of all Jedi – and you were responsible for it. It was only proper that you be brought back to face your crime. You had killed countless Jedi once – the deaths of more Jedi were not beyond you.”
Selyn paused, then turned to the door. It wasn’t worth arguing about right now, not with Atris’s mind like this. “If the Sith are gathering, I must go to fight them. Come with me. It’s not too late to fight them together.”
Instead, she heard the hiss-hum of a lightsaber igniting. “You dare turn your back on me, Sith?” Atris asked in a low voice.
Selyn turned to see Atris charging at her with the silver lightsaber, and flipped out of the way, her violet one springing to life in her hands.
She hadn’t saved any of the others. But as long as Atris lived, maybe she could save her.
Atris had been practicing, that much was clear – she was faster, more fluid than Selyn remembered her being ten years ago. But her movements were a jumbled mess of over-executed kata fragments, mixed with instinctual, emotion-driven flailing.
Calm. She had to stay calm. The more emotional Atris got, the calmer she had to be, more controlled, more precise. If she got caught up in the other’s hate and rage and despair and not-so-secret self-loathing, she would kill her, and that was exactly what she didn’t want.
If she destroyed the holocrons, would their grip on Atris’s mind loosen? She slipped sideways and flung her lightsaber towards the closest one; it sliced through with a crack and the holocron fell in half, the cut edges glowing red.
“No! Do not touch them!” Atris shrieked. “They are irreplaceable!”
“Good!” Selyn said, going for another one. “Then no one can be poisoned by their influence again!”
But Atris screamed like she was in terrible pain, so Selyn stopped. She didn’t want to break her mind further. And the other’s attacks were becoming even wilder, more desperate, threatening to break past her defenses. She struck Selyn in the arm and Selyn grunted and pulled back, pulling the Force to her to dull the pain.
Selyn parried, and retreated, and parried, letting Atris wear herself out on her. Their places had somehow become reversed – Selyn was the master, patient and yielding, and Atris the wayward apprentice who was struggling to find their way. But Atris had the endurance and strength of a master, for all that she had never fought in war, and Selyn had to counsel herself to patience.
Only when Atris showed signs of wearying did Selyn move back on the attack, batter aside her defenses, and strike her in the leg. Atris cried out and fell to one knee, but still held the silver lightsaber high, bringing it around for one last, desperate strike. Selyn flicked her saber around it, nicking the hilt and sending it spinning away from Atris’s grasp in two sparking pieces.
“No!” Atris screamed, reaching for it, but although it returned to her grasp, it was irreparably shattered. Good. It will never again be an object of obsession.
Atris wailed dejectedly over the broken hilt as Selyn lowered her own lightsaber and waited. It wasn’t long until Atris let the pieces fall from her hands and gave a deep, resigned sigh, before looking up at Selyn with tragic eyes. “Kill me. End this.”
“I will not kill a helpless opponent, Atris.” Selyn powered off her lightsaber and offered her a hand, but Atris did not take it.
“I did not expect mercy from you… here, at the end. After all that has happened between us.”
Selyn’s face lightened a little. “You are yourself again. No, Atris. We have bigger problems, and there has been enough killing in the galaxy already.”
“I…” Atris tried to say something, but the Sith holocrons suddenly blared out in unintelligible howling; Atris flinched and even Selyn started. “Once, I was a historian, the chronicler of the Jedi. This knowledge of the Sith… and the Jedi… this is what I am. But when both wars passed me by, I was determined that I would not forsake battle again. In some part of me… I knew I had made choices, compromises, but always for the sake of the Republic, of the galaxy. To do what you had done… at times, did not seem so wrong.” Her voice was little more than a choked whisper now. “To fight such a threat… sometimes, one’s choices seem narrower than they are, until it seems there is no solid foundation on which to stand. I feel… I felt that I understand what drove you to battle, to fight the Mandalorians. It was something you could not turn away from.”
“You understand, but not enough,” Selyn said, kneeling beside her on one ready knee. “I did what had to be done for the sake of the Republic, yes, for peace and life in the galaxy. But everything that occurred at Malachor, or in that war at all, was because there was no other choice. I did horrible things… but if I had not done them, worse would have happened. Kavar and the others believed, I think, that I was blind to the further consequences of my actions. They’re not wrong, in certain ways, but they’re not right, either. That was why I came back. I did only what I had to, and no more.”
Atris hung her head.
“Will they tell us where the Sith are striking from?” Selyn asked, looking around at the holocrons, which blared malevolently at her.
“You always knew where they were striking from. You always knew.” Atris rocked back and forth a little. She still wasn’t stable. Selyn had to get her away from this room. “These Sith are spawned of you, spawned by the Mandalorian Wars… all those deaths, all those Jedi. Their power is to feed on life, until nothing is left except a hollow galaxy, echoing with the screams of the Jedi lost to us.”
“Is that where Kreia has gone?”
“Yes. I had thought she was awaiting me at that place, but I see now that she lied. It was not meant for me… but for you. She has gone there. She is waiting for you to return, to finish what you started. You are an echo in the Force, a hollow space where it has been wounded. It takes a great act of destruction to create such emptiness, but it can be done. It creates places where the Force is difficult to hear, and difficult to find one’s way. And you carry it with you, always.”
“Do you know what she will do there?”
“She seeks to create another echo, another wound in the Force, greater than the first – greater than the one you caused. It will deafen all touched by the Force, until no life is left. You were strong enough to withstand it once – but few have your strength in such matters, especially if they are unprepared. If you choose not to follow, she will murder herself at the heart of that place, and you will die along with her. She seeks the death of all Jedi, all Sith… and the death of the Force. It is madness, it is impossible – but she believes you are the key. There are places in the galaxy dead to the Force, where nothing lives – where the echoes travel forever and do not reach their destination. And these places may be created, even from the simplest of events, the slightest of motions. One person, at the right place, at the right time, can change the face of the galaxy – or end it. You are important to her. But I…”
The holocrons snarled at her.
“…but I do not know for certain.”
“…Please, tell me.”
Atris was silent a moment. “She is willing to sacrifice herself at the heart of that graveyard world for you… a choice others have made in the past. A choice I wished to make. It is because I care for you.” Shakily, Atris reached out and touched her hand, and Selyn took it in her own. “And I suspect that you alone hold that place in her heart, where nothing else lives. And that is why you are the only one who can stop the destruction to come.”
“Atris… who is Kreia?”
Atris’s silver eyes blinked up at her hopelessly. “She was a teacher once… and every student that she trained has been a failure, and brought death to the galaxy. She is one of the Lords of the Sith, one of those who murdered the Jedi, and she holds the death of the galaxy in her hands. Though she proclaims to no longer follow the Sith. That she is something else, something that seeks ‘balance’… through destruction.”
Kreia was neither Sith nor Jedi, and yet both; she loved her, and she used her, and now she was going to kill them both. “Because she will kill herself.”
“She is waiting for you there. But you will not survive Telos. Nothing will. The greatest of her apprentices is coming to Telos. And he will destroy everything, just as he destroyed Katarr and all the Jedi gathered there.”
Selyn inhaled, her fight-or-flight instinct rising. “Visas’s master.” She wanted to rush down to the hangar, tell Atton to put the ship in gear and enlist the Republic’s aid in searching out and destroying Visas’s master before he arrived at Telos. But she stayed. Atris needed her.
“What will you do with me?” Atris asked. “Abandon me here on this dead world, or end my life, as I wished to end yours?”
“No,” Selyn said. “I am sorry you were hurt when I went to war. I am sorry for everything you suffered because of me. But all I want now is for you to turn away from the Sith.”
“I tied my life, my decisions to the Jedi. Perhaps only in separating myself from the Jedi can I become myself again, learn who I am.” Selyn nodded encouragingly. “Perhaps exile is what I deserve… even though it is many years too late, and you have already returned.”
Selyn stood and reached out again to help Atris up, but the holocrons howled again, and Atris shrank back. She looked up at Selyn with helpless eyes. “Leave now, while you can. Save Telos. Save the galaxy.” She rolled into a little ball on the cold floor. “Save yourself.”
The last of Atris’s handmaidens met her in the replica of the Jedi Council room, as she hurried back to the Ebon Hawk. “What have you done with her!?”
Selyn stopped, but did not raise her weapon. “She’s alive. You must go to her, get her out of that room. And then shut its doors, seal it – no one must enter that room again.” This handmaiden was Force-sensitive, and her eyes were bright and keen, even as they were restless with anxiety and distrust. Perhaps someday… she could be trained to be a Jedi. “Go to her. She needs much time to heal.”