Sorry to the people who don’t like this sort of drama? (and yes I threw in a bit about my obsession with urban planning lol – in my opinion, Corellia in-game has the perfect aesthetic for Corellia, it’s just how I imagined it… but from an immersion standpoint, it doesn’t look like a place I would want to live. BioWare is really, really bad with big maps and it’s particularly bothersome to me here. There’s no draw to exploring because every bit looks the same as every other bit. (the MMO with the best, most explorable maps, imo, is probably GW2.))
Part 35: Paradigm
The tunnels were dark and he’d lost all sense of direction. A full battalion of enemy soldiers led by Lord Kogni, a fraction of the attacking force but still enough to give him a bad day, had pursued him into the depths of Coronet City and were right behind him as he ran.
It was perfect. Many of them were surely even more lost than he was. Certainly, they had lights, but it was so difficult to light up every corner, of course. And yet he wasn’t entirely trying to hide. He had to keep their attention at least until his forces had passed fully into Selonian territory. Or even better, he could try to take out Thanaton’s lieutenant. He was feeling ambitious.
And so he whispered to them from the shadows, darted across their path, knocked over debris and scaffolding behind them… or onto them, when he could. Closing and locking gates and doors in the tunnel certainly helped split them up and slow them down, made it seem like he was anxious to get away. This inky black mechanical environment was really his preferred terrain. Kogni could sense him, and he let her, knowing that she wouldn’t leave as long as he was still there, as long as his movements seemed vulnerable, as long as his words seemed like empty bluster. The minute she realized he wasn’t uncomfortable down here, she would retreat, and he’d lose his best chance to get even. “Haven’t you had enough of this? You won’t find me.” The echoes bounced his voice so they had no idea where he was.
“If you come out of hiding, I’ll grant you an honourable death,” Kogni said, with amusement in her voice. “It’s a better deal than I ought to give you. Better than my master would give you.”
She was very confident in her skill, trusting it to carry her through any tricks he might try on her. “Not yet, I think. Dying honourably is so useful to everyone involved, especially the dead person.”
“He’s never hated anyone more than you, in all my service to him,” she told him. “He desires to take you apart atom by atom, while preserving your mind so you can feel everything that happens to you. I only despise you; I’ll make it quick in a fair duel.”
Darkness welled up in him but he restrained it. “Oh, that’s quite inventive. But he’s always been creative with my demise. You know he tried to feed me to an angry ghost unprovoked, way back.”
“You scurry around so much like a rat,” she snapped. “A vicious, mean little creature, unworthy of attention except for your unprecedented capacity for wanton destruction and your bizarrely captivating charisma. It’s utterly embarrassing that you’ve defeated everyone before me.”
“I prefer to think of myself as a snake, actually,” he answered, leading them on from an overhead walkway. “Clever, venomous, hard to catch. Also I have fangs when I’m angry.”
“Do you really? You’re so vain as to get such cosmetic surgery?”
“Some sort of involuntary Force illusion. Maybe you’ll get to see it! I do owe you for blowing up my base. Thanks for that.”
“You’re welcome,” she said, matching his sarcastic tone. “Will you thank me when I finally put you down like the vermin you are?”
“No,” he said, and fell silent, jumping between girders and pipes until he was a corridor over and could drop to the floor. To run or to ambush? He still didn’t like his chances in this particular tunnel and chose to keep running.
He ran until he splashed down some stairs into a puddle before jumping to balance on a slim ledge half-way up the wall. Surely they’d heard that, and they had, entering the same chamber on high alert a few minutes later from another door. They’d all entered a wide, pillared open area, a confluence of giant pipes that left everyone knee-deep in stale rainwater. He saw Kogni frown at it all and sweep her arms to the sides, parting the waters and making a dry-ish path for herself and those who followed her. Despite the chase and their earlier brief clash in the remains of his base, her hair was still perfect and he had to admit she was rather pretty for a human.
Her soldiers shone their flashlights around the walls and he pressed back further into the meagre cover he’d found behind a box, his hood over his red hair, willing their attention away. Kogni had taken away one of his advantages with her move; now she only had to listen for his splashing over the boots of her men. And lightning could be debilitating if used wrongly here.
He just had to be very… very… careful. He reached up to the ceiling and pulled himself up into the smaller pipes up there… hoping none of them would creak and break under his weight, and began to make his way over to them, staying in the cover of support pillars and pieces of debris.
“You’ve gotten very quiet, Kallig,” Kogni said. “Don’t like it in here? I know you’re still here.”
Of course she could still sense him; he was letting his aura out in a cloying cloud, wrapping around all these minds in a blanket of dread and hopelessness. He reached out to all the entrances, concentrating… the controls were quite finicky… Every door into the chamber slammed shut and locked, cutting off the soldiers still outside. It would take them a few minutes to open them again, but in the meantime, Kogni only had about 40 soldiers with her. He felt like he could figure out something manageable with that.
All the soldiers had jumped and looked around at the sound of the doors. She herself glanced back at the closed door they had come in by, hearing her other troops knocking on it. With a gesture from her, about a dozen men split off to go try to open it.
He twitched a finger and something fell at the far side of the chamber, startling them again. He dropped down behind the main group in the dry section while they were all looking away.
“Cheap distraction,” she told them. “Pull yourselves together! Those sounds aren’t where he is.”
“That just makes it worse,” muttered an officer, and she glared him into submission.
If he waited around the next pillar, they should move past him, and then he could attack… He held his breath as his hearts beat, one second, two seconds, three seconds, strike–
She ignited her lightsaber a fraction of a second before he connected, and their blades clashed with a sizzle of sparks, red-white on red-black. “Too slow, Kallig.” But she’d dropped her control of the water, and it sloshed back to cover the entire floor, splashing up against his boots and soaking his robes.
He didn’t answer, beating off her follow-up blows – she was good – and vanishing into the darkness again. Now there was a mass of splashes from everyone else to cover his tracks, and to compensate, she quietly sent her soldiers to the side of the chamber in a group and began counter-stalking him, moving through the space slowly. Her lightsaber was off again. Smart of her; waving a light source around willy-nilly was a good way to miss or lose a target. He could really only see her silhouette against the beams of light the soldiers shone into the spaces between the pillars, and it made his job a lot harder.
Harder was fine. He sent more distracting things flying around, drawing their attention, making waves in the water, creating cover for his footsteps sloshing towards his target; squeezed the fear of the Dark around them all harder. Even she looked more serious than she had previously, looking about carefully for him. He was a shadow, a breath in the blackness, even as she was a cold flame trying to burn it away.
He attacked again suddenly, swinging viciously towards her head and igniting at the last moment possible, and she ducked and parried, counterattacking and sending him stumbling back. Of course he ran again.
“You’re a pestilence,” she hissed, visibly getting annoyed.
He appeared in the light again for a moment and made a bow. “You’re too kind.”
“Rat!” But he was gone already.
With a roar, she began to chase him, and she was fast. He had to drop his stealth and run for it, calling on the Force to assist him against things like gravity, bouncing off pillars and walls, grabbing pipes to help him make sharper turns to stay ahead of her until he could loop around and-
“Did you just punch me in the stomach!?” Kogni said, reeling back in surprise, a look of incredulous amusement on her face. “Are you that desperate?”
He backed away, igniting his lightsaber again. “I’ll do anything to survive, don’t you know? I won’t die here to you.” He just needed to stay alive now. He didn’t know how long it would be before she noticed.
“You can try,” she said, and raised her lightsaber. He backed away, parrying, sidestepping, slipping always backwards as he defended himself. He snarled in exertion and she smirked as she saw the fangs manifest.
She sent him spinning into a pillar and followed up with a lunge that nearly impaled him against said pillar, if he hadn’t rolled away frantically, when the look on her face changed. “You…”
“Finally noticed, did you?” he said, drawing and twirling a knife with a flick of his wrist, the same knife he’d killed Mwi the mercenary with. It wasn’t even a vibroblade – if he’d hit armour, he would have failed entirely. But because it cut cleanly, adrenaline would keep her from feeling it until she noticed, and because it was entirely silent, she would quietly bleed out even as she fought until it was too late. It was an unconventional weapon, but just as effective as anything else if used properly.
She grasped at her side, fury and hatred crossing her face as she slipped to her knees, and she looked towards her soldiers. “Shoot him! Shoot him now!”
He flipped backwards into cover… and then blasted out from behind the pillar, intent on taking out all the soldiers before they could help her. Forty rifles came up and fired and he dodged, hitting them with disorientation and stasis, giving them a Force-push that threw the front rank into the back rank, letting him close enough to use lightning as he leaped, tearing through them ruthlessly. He had to stop when he landed back in the water, but by then it was enough to use his lightsaber on the screaming survivors. The knocking on the door behind them increased, and then he heard them trying to burn through it. He stabbed one end of his lightsaber through it and gave a partially-blind Force-pull, dragging the nearest life-form onto the blade. Everyone behind the door pulled back in fear. More screams, but he’d have a minute more to let Kogni bleed out.
Kogni was watching him, breathing heavily. “You think you’ve won, don’t you?”
“I’m going to be honest with you,” he said, turning towards her, at his full height and illuminated by his blade, letting his usual veiling fall away to reveal his strength, milking every ounce of intimidation he could get. “And I don’t do that often, not with my enemies. I still don’t know if I can win against Thanaton. But it’ll be a lot simpler without you there to enable his grand whininess.”
“You keep thinking that,” she spat at him, and clenched her fist up and towards herself. He had just enough time to take a startled breath before all the water in the room enveloped him.
She was actively trying to force it down his throat, not just to drown him passively, and for a moment, he almost panicked. But he managed to make a shielding mnemonic, and it pushed the water away from his body. It thrashed and sloshed around the inside of the bubble he’d created for himself, trying to break through again, but he raised his lightsaber – which had not been extinguished, thank goodness for quality heirloom tech – and cut through it, boiling away the water until she couldn’t hold it any longer and let it fall.
She followed up with a Force-push that only ruffled his hair, and he stalked towards her, shaking out his wet sleeves – there was a skreek of metal and a surprised noise from her direction and he braced himself, only to see her disappear into the water and her Force-sense vanish with her. No, the water was disappearing too, swirling around him and towards the spot where she had been sitting. She had been resting on some kind of hatch that had fallen open from the extra weight.
Cautiously, he went to the edge of the hatchway to look in as the water poured through past his legs. It took a few minutes for his line of sight to clear, but her body was lying at the bottom of a pit a few stories below. She was still, and he couldn’t sense her.
He exhaled, and that triggered coughing that he’d held back while she was still alive, brought on by the water getting into his sinuses. It was kriffing uncomfortable and for a moment, he just heaved with coughs and pawed at his nose, trying to alleviate it. That had been more difficult than he cared for, with his assassination attempt on Thanaton coming up, but at least Thanaton had been deprived of his last useful apprentice. He walked past the hole and embarked on the tedious procedure of finding a way back to the surface. Behind him, the door finally opened for the enemy forces, but he had already vanished into the shadows.
It was a frustrating realization when he arrived at his new base, under a skyscraper ostensibly dedicated to the Ministry of Transport. Thanaton had thrown several punches at him in the past couple weeks, and each one a little closer to hitting him directly. Despite his survival, and even his success in taking out Kogni in retaliation, he hadn’t been able to make any major moves of his own, conserving everything he could for his final operation. He needed everything to be perfect, or else his meagre military force would be worse than useless. And yet it was extremely irritating, having to weather these blows without seemingly doing anything in return.
“It’ll be really anticlimactic if I get killed at the end of this,” he joked to Ashara the next day, after he’d rested and recovered some perspective on the situation. “But I never expected to get this far, so I’m doing pretty good, really.”
He had forgotten how much she didn’t like that kind of black, self-deprecating humour, and it seemed like she liked it less than ever judging from the look on her face and the turmoil in her aura. “Why work so hard if you think you’re going to die?” she asked sadly.
He still couldn’t answer seriously. “It’s something to pass the time…” She folded her arms at him and he tried again with a tired huff and sarcastic shrug. “We’re all waiting to die.”
She glared, so full of indignant, vibrant life that he almost took it back just by looking at her. “That’s the most pessimistic thing I ever heard in my life. You’ve fought incredibly hard to keep living, to find a life worth living. Why do you pretend you’re not looking for happiness, like everyone else? Is it too hard to acknowledge?”
“What are you talking about?” he said. “How do you think I’ve done the insane things I’ve done to stay alive, if I were really afraid of death?”
“You are afraid of death! The way you screamed when the ghosts took over-”
“I was afraid of being used like a puppet,” he snarled, unwelcome memories assaulting his mind. “I’m not above being what you might see as a desperate debased degenerate. I like this thing called ‘dignity’ that you free-born people prize so highly, but that doesn’t mean I don’t know how to do without it.”
She flinched. “Okay. And yes, you’ve done crazy, risky things that seem to imply you don’t fear death. Well, Jedi aren’t supposed to fear death either. Death is part of the Force, when we lay down our living burdens – mostly, usually – and pass into true peace. Though since we’re also living beings, we get fear reactions just like everyone else.”
“That’s different,” he said. “I lie awake and think about it sometimes. What it will mean for my consciousness to end. If it does. Maybe my body will end and my consciousness go on. Which would be very strange. I’ve been tortured to unconsciousness so many times I feel it must be like dying. I’m sure when it actually comes it will be pretty similar.”
He’d felt pity from her before, but nothing like this. “Murlesson… that’s…”
He turned to glare at her full on. “Don’t. Do not start. You can’t change my past.”
She squared her shoulders and met his glare. “I refuse to accept your nihilism. It’s a lie. You wouldn’t have fought this hard to get this far if you didn’t want to live – and I don’t mean survive, I mean live. And I wish your past didn’t strangle your perception of yourself until you lie to yourself like this.”
He snorted. “Even the godless end up believing in something?”
“Yes!” she said with so much conviction. “Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe all you believe in is power and revenge. But I don’t believe you believe only in death, for your enemies and yourself. I still have hope that what you believe in, ultimately, is life.” She turned away and her shoulders slumped. “Though I’m having less hope of it the longer this all goes on.”
“…I’m sorry,” he said softly. She was so close but he couldn’t reach out to her. “I’m almost there.”
“I know,” she said. “Three days. I believe you can do it.”
“Thank you.” He paused. “I love you.”
“…I love you,” she said, but her glance at him was quick and she left the room after she said it.
He returned to the cult early the next day to give them their final assignment for the day after – some of them would lure out Thanaton’s forces with confusing and conflicting reports of Murlesson’s tiny army causing havoc many blocks away from Thanaton’s base, and some of them would inform the Republic to get in position to engage them and keep them tied up for as long as possible. Now of all times was not a great time to spend in transit, even if the intercity bullet train was very fast, but they needed to hear it from him directly and personally.
“Hello, everyone!” he greeted them as he entered the common room. “How are you all?”
“Pretty good,” was the consensus, and he nodded with artificial cheer as he pulled out a datapad.
“Glad to hear it. Now, I’ve got one last operation, and it’s going to be pretty tricky, but it’s absolutely vital for getting me close enough to shank Thanaton-“ He stopped as a feeling of wrongness rose up and kicked him in the gut.
“Hey?” someone asked hesitantly. “Uh, Lord Kallig? You okay?”
“Everywhere I go,” he hissed to himself. “Everyone-!“
The bombs he’d just sensed under the building detonated. He put out his hands, willing the energy down, to stay put, not to demolish the support pillars – not to blow through the basement – not to blow through the entire building-
That was where he managed to hold it, quelling the physical forces and flames that had ripped apart the entire foundation for the building. The sound of the explosion was enough to knock down half the people there. The floor wobbled violently, and the walls creaked and shook; in a handful of seconds they were going to come crashing down. And the explosion’s energy still boiled – he was holding it back, not dissipating it. If he let go, it would continue its natural course.
He could get himself out. He could run and hold enough of the building up that he’d be able to escape… although he’d be the only one…
Reaching out even further, with all the fury and frustration of being attacked yet again, he extended his grip from the force and fire below and took hold of the building itself, telling it to hold the frak still. “Everyone…” he grated between his teeth, “…get out now!” He’d torn down buildings larger than this with only his mind, but holding one up… was pushing him to his limit.
He couldn’t see what happened next, shutting his eyes to concentrate; the world was a torrent of force and flame and debris and he held it until his arms ached, until he lost his grip and could only channel it up, past him, away from him. Then there was falling, sliding, crashing down into the hellish cavity where there used to be a basement…
He came back to his senses a minute or two later. There was not much resting directly on him, which was great, and he didn’t think he’d been impaled on anything, which was even better, but there was basically nothing left of the building overhead and he could hear fire crackling furiously nearby, saw a pillar of smoke rising into the sky over him. There was a crowd of people across the street, he could sense, and most of them were his followers – some of them were passers-by come to gawk. They felt shocked, upset… especially Effie and Nycks, as he became sharp enough to discern them individually.
Wouldn’t they be awed to see him. He pushed upwards, bursting through the wreckage that had settled over him, jumping high enough to land on the street before them. For all that had happened, his burns were minor – it was his bruises that were going to bother him. And he was really getting sick of his precognition having to warn him about things bare moments before they happened. It would be nice if the feelings came with memos in advance, or better yet, didn’t have to happen at all.
A shocked gasp rose from the crowd, and then they all began to talk at once. Effie and Nycks rushed at him, stopping just short of him. “Master! Are you hurt? Can we help you?”
“I’m fine,” he told them, putting on a little smile and brushing ash from his clothes, though he really just wanted to go back to bed and collapse for a bit. “Did everyone make it out safely?”
“I think so,” Effie said. “I’m not completely sure who was in the building at that exact moment. You were incredible, Master! How is it even possible to hold back an explosion like that?”
“With ridiculous amounts of power and great difficulty,” he said, and looked over the crowd. Even if the passers-by were not dispersing, instead offering help and comfort to the stunned victims, he did appear to have the same number of life forms now as he’d had a minute ago, including his administrators and Kephriad Erat, who was supposed to still be bed-ridden but who had managed to limp out in time. “We need to get under cover before Thanaton realizes that that was completely ineffective and sends bombers to finish the job. There’s a small shopping centre nearby with some empty spaces. We’ll talk there.”
He looked around suspiciously. Surely Thanaton’s agent, or agents, wouldn’t just plant a bomb and then leave entirely. They’d want to see the results. Unless it was someone among his followers… Erat, for instance. But if it wasn’t Erat, he would be leaving his people basically unguarded… He cursed internally and made his choice. “Effie, if no one’s injured, lead these people to the shopping centre and get them something to eat. Erat and I will meet you there.” And it didn’t seem like anyone was injured. Nycks was already reassuring the onlookers that everything was fine. Fire services and CorSec would undoubtedly be showing up soon.
“Yes, Master, as you say,” she said, though not without a concerned glance at Erat, who probably shouldn’t have been standing yet. Gut-stab wounds needed a lot of time and kolto to heal. “Come on, while the Master’s investigating, we’ll all get some caf and goodies! You know there’s a fantastic cookie outlet there, right…?”
He led Erat down the street, eyes half-closed as he reached out to look for suspicious minds. “You’re… sure Thanaton didn’t follow you, Erat?”
Erat nodded anxiously. “Yes, Master, I didn’t leave the building. I had no visitors or external contact. I haven’t betrayed you!”
Erat was… actually, upon reflection, probably innocent even without his protestations. Thanaton wouldn’t be so obvious as to use a Sith for infiltration, would he?
“Oh my stars, what happened?” There was an exclamation and running feet, and Jor Canmon came hurrying up to them, staring past them at the smoking wreckage of the building. “Is everyone all right? Oh, no, what happened to you?”
“Awfully convenient timing, Jor,” Murlesson drawled, fixing him with a hard stare. “Do you know anything about this?”
“About… Did the building explode-“ Sudden realization passed over Jor’s face, and then he blanched, glancing over his shoulder and flinching hard. “No! I didn’t- Druk!”
“You’d do better speaking in complete sentences,” Murlesson said with soft menace, moving closer to him. “Do you know why my building is in ruins?”
Jor stammered. “No, but… my… friend was really interested in your organization the other day and asked a whole bunch of questions. He sounded real interested in helping out, and he was right behind me until a minute ago-”
“Your ‘friend’ is probably an agent of Thanaton. Watch him, Erat,” Murlesson said, pushing past him to jog down the street. He almost thought the hesitation was from lying, but probing the man’s consciousness didn’t reveal massive amounts of deception. But Thanaton’s man couldn’t be far, if he’d been with Jor up until a minute ago.
Yet he sensed nothing. Either the agent was a well-trained professional, or had already fled, or Murlesson just wasn’t looking for the right sensations to pick him up. Perhaps all of the above. It was frustrating, but there was nothing he could do about it and he wasn’t going to waste time on it now. At least he could more or less rule out the people who had been in the building.
He looped back around to Jor and Erat. “This is why you let Effie run background checks before handing out invitations, remember?” Logically speaking, it was no big deal if he didn’t identify the agent here and now. If he managed to kill Thanaton, he would take over his resources and records. And it would be even foolish to punish or kill the agent; he had proof that this agent had experience in bombing Sith and getting away with it.
Not that it stopped him from being furious about it.
“Are you going to kill me?” Jor said in a small voice. “Sith kill people who screw up, right?”
He huffed. “And make this war worse? No. But I have no use for disobedient people. Go home and never speak to me again.”
“Th-thank you,” Jor said, and ran.
“I owe you my life again,” Erat said, bowing to him. “You did an impossible thing. Thank you.”
Murlesson blinked at him for a minute. Of course, Sith didn’t just save people, especially if it cost them effort. “I did what was necessary,” he said coldly, turning and walking swiftly in the direction of the mall, handwaving CorSec’s eyes away from them. “Do not mistake my pragmatism for kindness. You are not well enough to fight yet. I can’t make use of you until you are.”
“Of course, Master,” Erat said, but he didn’t sound upset about it.
Everything was in place by the afternoon, that minor, tiring setback aside. It was time to outline the plan for his officers, and then allow everything to play out.
He was running low on… Ashara would hate that he called them resources. Not that he had an overabundance of them in the first place. He only had about 3000 troops left, with a couple squadrons of starfighters and bombers from the fleet to support them, and could only add to that Jeik’s Mandalorians, the tattered and demoralized remnants of the Silverfist Gang, about 50-75 civilians, and his personal companions. Though he’d been careful and clever and almost always managed to bleed Thanaton for every soldier Murlesson lost, Thanaton still had at least 30,000 troops, posted to three bases around the district, even if he had few effective lieutenants left, and another 10-15,000 elsewhere in the city that could be summoned at about an hour’s notice. Murlesson was powerful, but even he couldn’t sneak past 10,000 alert sentries. At least not without risking wearing himself out too much.
Some of his pieces were already in their final positions: he’d established a false base to the north and sent Khem and the Mandalorians there to create the ruse that it was his main base. They’d been instructed to act secretive but to allow themselves to be spotted. Meanwhile, at his real main base only a few blocks from Thanaton’s, a set number of soldiers had been instructed to be careless about being seen, as if they were to be seen on purpose – as if they were the decoys. Thanaton would probably go for both rather than gamble on one or the other, and that meant sending out twice as many soldiers as otherwise.
Most of Murlesson’s military strength, with all his apprentices, would be congregated at the main base. Khem’s base would only be doing their best to escape and pull away enemies, but the main base would be defending with all their might. With the civilians helping to draw yet more armies within the Republic’s reach, all these separate battlefields ought to dilute Thanaton’s numbers enough that Murlesson could slip into the Museum of Industry. He would have to be very fast, to get it done before he lost what little he had left, before any armies returned and tried to gun him down in the middle of his fight.
Thanaton would be expecting something. He certainly would not be surprised by Murlesson breaking in again to try to duel him one-on-one. He would be trying to avoid that at all costs, to pin Murlesson in the open and smash him with overwhelming force. And that was what Murlesson wanted to avoid at all costs. Fun!
He was in the middle of explaining everything to his officers when the locked door opened and Ashara walked in, looking upset, even on the verge of tears. “We need to talk.”
He gestured to the officers, who were trying to pretend that nothing about this was unusual even though the room was suddenly full of electric tension and she’d just basically given away that she was his girlfriend. She knew it was a trope, so why? “Ashara.”
“It’s important.”
“So is strategy.” He stood straighter, more intimidating. “Can it wait an hour.”
“No. Now.”
She was selfish, he thought savagely as he pointed towards the door and the officers got up and left in a hurry. He locked the door behind them. “What is it?” She’d broken in to a highest-level meeting, and he suddenly regretted he’d given her such restricted access even though she’d never abused it before.
She took a deep breath and clenched her hands, giving herself strength. “You’re going to have to run your final showdown without me. I’m leaving.”
He stared, and for the first time in a long time, his mind was completely blank. Just like that, she had stopped him cold in his mental tracks.
“I tried, I really did,” she said, wringing her hands now. His silence seemed to be unnerving her, but he really couldn’t say anything. “But I can’t take what you’re turning into, and… look, our entire relationship was born of a lie. There’s nothing I can trust between us. I need to go.” When he was still silent, she burst out: “Are you going to kill me?”
That jolted him out of it. “No! I…” It felt like she’d stabbed him, with this hollowness, this spreading pain and desperation. But he wasn’t going to stab her in return in real life, how irredeemably evil did she think he was?? “No. But… I…” He didn’t understand, but he did understand, but he still had to ask. “Why? Why now? Why this instant?”
She began to pace, her hands flexing restlessly at her sides. “I thought I was okay with it, before. You know all those things the ghosts said? Actually, you know specifically the part where you spied on me and lied your face off when you came to save me? And I said it was okay? I even said it was okay recently?”
“You’re not okay with it.”
“I’m not okay with it! I just can’t… It… Everything we have is built on a lie that was never properly addressed!”
“I said I was sorry, and that I wouldn’t do it again.”
“Are you making fun of me!?”
“No. But what do you want from me!? What do you want me to do? Tell me, and I’ll do it.” He needed her, and not because of strategy – though yes, that too – but he was suddenly struck with cold panic at the thought that she really was leaving. And without her, he…
“Will you? Will you, though? You’re so focused on Thanaton that everything else is thrown to the winds. Everything.”
“Not you.” He still restrained himself for her sake, he went out of his way to help people for her sake, because she would want it that way…
“Yes, even me! Sure, you go to such lengths to keep me alive – is that all you want, that I be alive?”
Thoughts of Aristheron talking about Vany flashed through his head. “What do you mean?”
“If all you want is for me to have a pulse, that’s not love, that’s possession. You keep saying you’ll be better for me right after you do one more atrocity that will somehow get you closer to the freedom to – not do atrocities? That’s what abusers do.” The table was between them, and suddenly it felt like a barrier.
“I’ve been abused,” he snarled back. “That’s kind of what being a slave is.”
“I know that! You know something Master Cyman told me in the thirty seconds I interacted with him?” she asked, eyes flashing. “He said that you were a victim and a perpetrator of the same pain that scarred you.”
He bared his teeth defiantly. “I’m shocked. He’s actually correct about something.”
“But it doesn’t have to be that way!” she cried, rounding the table to face him, pleading. “You don’t have to spend your life for this! You can break the cycle! You can kill Thanaton without resorting to cruelty along the way!”
Darkness rose around him. He laughed bitterly, wildly. “Break the cycle? As if I don’t want to rip Thanaton’s throat out with my bare hands. As if I care who gets in my way!”
She stared at him in angry incredulity. “Why are you lying to me!? Again!?”
“What!?”
“You act like I can’t hear your heart crying out in the Force! You can fool anyone else, you can fool people who can’t feel the Force, you can fool people with your great acting, but I know you. You’re lying. I can’t trust you except to trust that you lie and you lie and you lie about everything, especially the things that are most important to you!”
She was almost crying – she was crying! But it was angry tears, and he was fully on the defensive. She wasn’t wrong – but whether she understood why he did it anyway or not, he wasn’t changing course. Hadn’t they already had this fight, on Salvara? But it hadn’t ended conclusively. “Fine, so I’m lying! It doesn’t change a thing! It doesn’t matter! Nothing matters!”
“You’re not even consistent with your stupid Sith-y philosophy! I liked being with you because you got things done and didn’t just talk about them, like the Jedi, but you can’t throw away all your ideals just because you’re trying to kill one person!”
“Yes, I can,” he said. “Peace is a lie, the Force shall free me. Are you trying to ‘save’ me again? I never asked to be saved. I don’t want to be saved! I want… to be left… alone!”
“Who are you!?” she cried, wiping her eyes and stepping closer to him. “Who is it you’re trying to be? Who do you want to be? Who do your people who need you need you to be?”
He took her proximity and turned it against her, crowding her until she had to back away. “I am the voice of every tormented slave who wanted revenge on their owner and never had the strength to take it! I’m the monster created by the Sith to be their worst nightmare! You told me even monsters could be loved. You knew what I am. I told you. I wasn’t lying about that.”
“You are,” she denied it, breathlessly, looking like she was about to cry again. “You don’t have to be. No one has to be.”
He backed her right into the wall. He didn’t touch her, though he did put out both arms to trap her there. This close, he couldn’t miss how she looked at him. “You like me this way. Admit it. You have a thing for Dark Lords.”
“I do,” she said, and that made his hearts jump; he hadn’t been expecting her to agree. “But not ones who deny their own feelings. And that’s why I’m leaving.”
“What?”
She took a calming breath. “Master Cyman said I can’t be your friend and your therapist. Maybe I can’t be either right now. I can’t help you anymore, Murlesson. For my own sanity, I have to go. I need to figure out who I am and what I really want to be, and so do you. And I’m sorry that it’s now when you’re under the most tension, but-”
“Yes, there’s no convenient time to break up with a Sith Lord,” he said sarcastically, backing up, “so you just chose the time most likely to get him killed, too.”
“No! I… I don’t want you to die-“ Tears welled up in her eyes again and in a moment he was going to cry too-
He couldn’t stand any more and reached up, tearing the ceiling open and jumping through it, fleeing as absolute despair crushed anything that was left of his soul.
Ashara ran down the street, paying absolutely no attention to where she was going, just that she was going ‘away’. Her breath was shaky and she was trying not to cry again some more – though whether it was from grief or relief now, she didn’t know. All she knew was that she had to keep her arms and legs moving, as fast as she could sustainably keep up.
How could he stand there and say those things? His mind and body were well and whole compared to the utter mess he’d been under the ghosts but his heart… his hearts? His soul was fractured and he saw it breaking with every passing moment, and he ignored it. She had been afraid of this when he started the kaggath.
She’d believed in him so hard, hoping that her belief would be his lifeline. He was brilliant, and charismatic, and confident. He was also… she didn’t want to say a ‘bad person’, but he wasn’t a good person, and he never had been. She was sure of that now. He had it in him – she believed everyone did, really – but until he believed that himself, she had to stay away for her own safety and sanity, because it wouldn’t come true just from wishing.
She could feel him still – he’d gone to the top of the skyscraper, and there was no subtlety in him right now. Every Force-sensitive in the city would be feeling uneasy, and anyone trained would sense him – a dark raging storm somewhere up high, full of wild, uncontrolled… teenage angst? But in him, teenage angst was deadly, and she flinched as she felt it discharge somewhere briefly in a flash of lightning before building again, heard the thunder that followed the lightning a couple seconds later. “This is not an appropriate coping mechanism!” she yelled at the sky, and kept running.
After a few more minutes, she began to glance around at her surroundings. The buildings in the government district, the ones that hadn’t been bombed yet, were ostentatious but boring; there were only so many grand porticoes and facades one really needed, wasn’t there? The only people here were here to work; no one lived in this part of the city. Things that resembled restaurants or shops were rare, and hardly anyone walked when they could use a speeder. She was the only person she could see on foot. It was lonely and depressing, despite the beautiful but boring buildings and the evenly spaced, carefully groomed trees.
She really didn’t like cities in general. She wanted to be outdoors in nature, tramping up mountains and fording rivers. She’d read of other planets in the enclave on Yavin 4, studied their flora and fauna, hoping to someday travel all over the galaxy and see their wild places.
Where was she going right now? She should probably figure that out. She was too Jedi to survive in the Empire without him, but would the Republic take her back without finding out everything she’d done? She was stuck in the middle without a hyperdrive.
Sabran. She’d seen a military report that mentioned Sabran recently. They were on Corellia; if she could find them, they would help her, at least help her figure out what to do. She slowed to a walk on the sidewalk and felt for her commlink in her pocket.
Which was when three speeders full of Imperial troops landed around her, and a smirking Sith disembarked. “Ashara Zavros?”
Drat. She’d been so focused on getting out that she hadn’t paid any attention to where she was going, or who might see her. Though it did seem by chance she hadn’t been heading towards Thanaton’s base, that would have been dumb even for her… “Who?”
“Don’t play dumb, girl,” said the Sith. She might have tried to take him on if he were alone, but he also had fifty soldiers with him – way too many for her to handle by herself, especially without cover. “We know who you are. You can struggle or not, but you’ll be coming with us.”
Definitely one of Thanaton’s minor lackeys. Murlesson had taken out the most important apprentices, but of course Thanaton would have tons more to do little things… like capture stupid Padawans who ran off without thinking. Drat! She put her back to the wall, though she didn’t draw her sabers yet. “I’m not going. I’m not part of this fight anymore. Thanaton and Murlesson can both go suck it, I just want out.”
The girl thinks she’s a krayyt dragon, but she’s only a dewback,” said the Sith, and gestured to his men. “Take her into custody.”
“Excuse me!?” It was easy to get angry for petty reasons, and somewhere in her unphilosophical mind, she figured that it was better for the Jedi code than getting angry for big reasons. “Did you just call me fat!?”
The Sith looked confused, and that was when she ran, sprinting for all she was worth to the nearest gap between the buildings, tense for the stun bolts that would surely be coming after her. She made it to the gap, but drat again! She didn’t get very far into the alley before she found it was a dead end; she wouldn’t be getting away through here. But then again, her saber skills would give her a fighting chance in the narrow space; no one would be able to surround her. She turned and drew her sabers and set her stance. “Well, here goes nothing.”
He crouched halfway up the girders of the building’s antenna, far higher than it was safe for any ordinary person to go, and felt the absolute total numbness in his soul. He didn’t even remember climbing to this point, only knowing that he had to get as far away as physically possible from every other being on the planet. He felt absolutely nothing, and could not even appreciate it though he know it was only shock and as soon as the pain struck he would be in the worst agony since his mind was seized by ghosts. He didn’t even notice the clouds gathering above him, black and chaotic yet dropping no rain.
She’s gone, echoed through him, repeatedly. She’s gone, she’s gone, she’s gone, she’s gone… And every repetition brought him closer to confronting why and he mentally dug in his heels and tried not to think about it. But the harder he tried, the more he spiralled, harsh reality dragging him through his past and his memories until he was full-on screaming with guilt and self-loathing. Every single thing he’d ever done that ever resulted in pain for another being – he was a Sith Lord, he shouldn’t be affected by this, this was what they did – but he never asked to be a Sith, they had forced him into it – no, the truth was, even before he killed his first Sith, before he had a word of training, he was manipulating and using the people around him, causing them pain for his benefit. It was no wonder she left. The only wonder was that she had stayed as long as she had… and that he’d ever thought he could be the most ruthless, effective Sith in the galaxy and still keep her happy.
He howled, scraping his palms painfully against his horns, and lightning struck nearby, deafening him so he couldn’t hear himself. The Dark Side was so thick about him he could almost see it with his eyes, could barely sense through it to the world outside.
Distantly, he felt her reach out to him from somewhere to the east, upset, angry. Of course she could feel him… he had lost all control. Probably everyone could feel him. He didn’t really care right now. He could kill himself, he had a thousand ways to kill himself, and it would rid the galaxy of the cancer they had told him he was. Ashara would be free. Aristheron wouldn’t be burdened with him. The other Sith would be happy – and alive, since he wouldn’t be around to plot the death of every last one of them.
How does she feel about this really? intruded into his brain, and though he physically reeled to avoid thinking about it, it came back more and more insistently until he accidentally smacked his head on a durasteel girder.
That snapped him out of his madness, if not his pain and the Darkness that swirled about him lovingly. He was in full-blown despair but he still had almost everything he had built up since gaining his own agency. What did she have? She wanted and needed nothing he had to offer. He’d taken her future from her and she’d given up what she had left to follow him. She’d come for him even in his most desperate moment when any normal person would have said there was no hope left, and she had nearly died there for him. He raised his left hand before his face and rubbed his artificial fingertips together.
Anything in him that was still sane, he owed to her. Those despised flecks of light in his soul were suddenly very precious because they were hers in a way. Even if in this moment, they were almost dead.
More than that, if she wanted to keep her own light, keep her hope and love alive, by getting as far away from him as she could run, he couldn’t stop her even if he wanted to. Those things were what he loved about her, and he had to support her leaving and remaining Ashara, over her staying and being miserable. Even if it meant he was miserable.
His hearts ached, physically ached in his chest, and his throat and eyes were burning, and he would never get over her, but this was reality now. His time and energy would be best turned towards figuring out how he was going to finish his goal. If he lived… he would have the time to decide what to do in a galaxy suddenly bereft of meaning. He would finally have the true, absolute freedom he’d been pursuing since he was old enough to understand the concept; perfect agency, complete Choice. Or as close as he could get without being the actual Emperor. Or a literal god. And his mind could not be idle for long; already its gears and cogs were whirring, mentally reformulating his strategy since he was down one of his strongest-
There was movement below him in the street – Thanaton was moving his forces early…?
Ashara had run off publicly, without any attempt to conceal herself or her movements-
He’d been wrong – again. He had Choice, right here, right now. He could use Ashara’s distraction to trigger his own traps early, sacrifice her to capitalize on the disruption she would cause Thanaton- He was almost sick, but it was a possibility.
The thing was, she was so vulnerable where she was, how she was, that he didn’t know how to stop them from capturing or killing her without…
Without giving up everything he’d fought so hard for. All his schemes, strategies, power, his life… if he went to help her, it would cost him everything.