Author's Note: Well, it's been almost three years since I posted my first story (I can't believe the way time flies), and now here I'm back with a novella sequel. I don't know where this will go, or what will come of it, but I'm going to just throw caution to the wind and post it. We'll see what happens. The usual disclaimer about not owning anything follows. So, without any further ado…


The Mirror

"Battle not with monsters, lest you become a monster; and if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." – Frederick Nietzsche

Picking Up the Pieces

Crystal blue waves lapped quietly against the idyllic shore. Smooth yellow sand was made a hardened brown by the rising tide. Two children, a boy and girl, dashed into the water, heaving their bodies against the current and then laughing wildly as it leisurely flung them back onto the solid ground.

A woman watched from afar, arms crossed, perched on a gardened veranda. She thought nothing of the misty ocean air or the crash of the waves—sounds and smells both unusual and exciting to a visitor.

The man inside her cabana was one such visitor. Having never seen the ocean, he was particularly awed by its beauty. Any such feelings, however, were not evident on his face. He sat quietly at a table, so still he could almost be mistaken for a statue. Despite the peaceful surroundings, he was uneasy. The delight he took in seeing the beach was offset by the horror of the impending conversation. He could neither focus on his objective nor appreciate the lovely setting.

The woman came and sat down at his table. Though she was unremarkable, she had a sort of indiscernible likeability that made it even harder to tell her what needed to be said. Even stranger, she was surprisingly calm.

"You really want to take my daughter away?"

"No," answered the man.

A long silence followed.

"Then what about everything you've said?"

The man sighed deeply and tried to collect his thoughts. Normally a sharp wit, he knew this was not the time for anything other than the utmost seriousness. It was not the first time he had ever tried to do this, but he secretly hoped it would be his last, though he knew otherwise.

He leaned forward and put his elbows on the table, said, "It isn't a matter of what anyone wants to do, miss. It's about what's best for your daughter."

"You think taking her away from her family is best?"

"Given the circumstances?" he asked in a somewhat lilting accent. "Yes…I believe it's the best thing."

He unfolded his arms and put his hand on his chin. Obscuring his rather experimental facial hair with his hand, he tried to delay long enough to find the words for his next comment.

"Your daughter," he continued, "has exhibited some strange behavior. Right?"

The woman said nothing.

"You told me that last week she vaulted her brother across the hall without so much as lifting a finger. Such…things cannot be ignored."

"But to take her away? Forever?"

"I didn't say forever. I mean only to take her away for as long as necessary. To teach her about her abilities. To teach her about the best way to live. To show her how we can help."

"To make her a warrior?" asked the woman.

"Some of us are fighters, yes. But we are foremost helpers, guardians, and philosophers. We do not seek battle."

"I see."

After another pause the woman turned to look back out at the children still playing in the sand. She slowly stood up, asked, "Would you like some more tea?"

"Yes, thank you."

She poured him a cup of steaming herbal tea that actually helped his nerves a great deal. He breathed deeply after taking a sip from it.

"They're to start kindergarten next week," she said a bit distantly. After a brief pause she turned and looked at him and asked, "You won't take both of them?"

"They boy…he does not have the same…"

"Ability?"

The man gave a conciliatory nod.

The woman thought for a moment then said, "I don't want to break them up. They're twins. They were born together. They should live together. I can't split them in half."

"They are not…one," he replied. "And your daughter has the potential to be…greater…" His words came out awkwardly. He did not know how to do this. How could he tenderly say that which no mother ever could bear to hear?

"Do you have kids?" she asked abruptly.

He was taken aback by the question. After a short silence he muttered quietly, "N-no. No I don't."

"Then you could not possibly understand."

"You're right," he admitted, "I don't. But I do not believe you fully understand what's at stake. If you keep your daughter here…she'll be stifled forever. And more than that, such untamed…power…could result in disaster."

"So you've said."

"It has happened," he replied.

They fell into quiet. The woman did not oblige his last comment with a response. There was nothing he could do now but just wait and listen.

Several minutes passed. She got up, looked about again. She turned off the whistling kettle. The man waited as wind wafted through the cabana and rustled his mildly long brown hair.

At length she turned and glared intently at him. "No," she stated with a mother's subtle force. "You can't take my daughter away."

He closed his green eyes and gestured with his hands that he had no rebuttal. "Very well," he said, standing up, "It is your choice alone." She stood still as he moved towards the step and out towards the sand. "Thank you for your hospitality, miss." He tried to force a smile as he left. She simply nodded as he walked out.

The man trudged through the sand towards a concrete path that streaked towards the grass. Sand peppered his face as he walked. He followed the path until he got to a group of palm trees shading a solitary figure next to a large vehicle.

"Hey, Nantaris. How'd it go?" asked the figure under the tree. Technically a man, he was actually closer to a boy, though he would undoubtedly claim otherwise.

"I can't do it, Dustil," he answered bitterly. "I just can't. Damn it all. How are we supposed to look a woman in the eyes and tell her we want to take her kid? How is it that we've ever done that? Is it even possible?

"Apparently."

"I'm beginning to think that rebuilding the Order is even more difficult than defending it."

Nantaris moved to get into the speeder. Dustil swung the other door open and commented, "I think that those are two sides of the same coin."

"I sure as hell don't want to rebuild it," said Nantaris. "You want to? You can go do it."

"I'm not the Grand Master. This is your job," said Dustil as he sat down.

"Why do I even keep you around?"

"Because Atton annoys you?"

"Aye—good point. I'm bringing Mira with me next time."


It had been a few months since the great battle raged over Coruscant. A strong and terrible empire, led by a vicious and bloodthirsty leader—the Emperor Ardashir—had violently thrust its way to the capital world. The Republic no sooner learned of the existence of this malevolent force than did its supposedly impregnable homeworld come under siege.

Only the heroic sacrifices of the Jedi Revan and Bastila prevented the wholesale destruction of the planet at the hands of the Sith invaders. As they gave their lives to destroy the Emperor, the ships bound to his life were exposed to counterattack. The last second reinforcements of the Mandalorians provided just enough force to repel the invaders. The Republic survived to limp onwards for another day.

Shattered and broken, the Jedi Order was all but extinct. Once an almost omnipotent force of justice and hope, only five now remained, and of those five, only two—the Exile Caius Lucullus and the Grand Master Valiens Nantaris—had actually been trained from childhood. Of the other three, two were once Sith, now reformed, and one was a bounty hunter for most of her young life. The long arduous project of rebuilding now fell to them.

It was not something Nantaris wanted to do. He had no experience, and thus far hated every second of it. He had not been able to recruit one new child, and he doubted he ever would. Not even the tremendous fame he was awarded after the battle gave him the edge to recruit anyone new. He did morph into something of a celebrity, but only against his own wishes.

He and Caius had been elevated to near celestial status for their roles in saving the Republic. Caius for his odds-defying slaying of Ardashir, and Nantaris for his determined and courageous defense of the Jedi Temple and all the refugees within it.

But in spite of this honor, this ubiquitous reverence that showed him wherever he went, he could not start rebuilding properly. He hated it. He wondered if this were some sort of sign that he should not continue.

"Is it even worth trying?" he asked Mira. She stood beside him as he looked out from his perch in the disturbingly vacant Jedi Temple. He was watching the speeders skim by like disks slicing through the air.

"Yes," she stated emphatically. "It is."

"Why?"

"Why wouldn't it be?"

"I don't know."

Quiet.

"Lass," he began, "I do not know how to do it. I don't even know where to begin. Say we even found some children to train. Should we? Who would do it? Me? You? Should we discard the old teachings that built and then allowed the Order to be destroyed?"

"There isn't anyone else to do it. You can't just swing back and forth. If you want to rebuild the order then you have to do it. It's really pretty simple."

"That doesn't answer my question."

"You already know the answer, I think."

"I know, lass. I wish you weren't right all the time. But I just don't know if I can recruit any of these kids. I've tried eight times now and we haven't gotten a single Force sensitive child."

Nantaris turned around, letting his back face the incredible panoramic view of Coruscant that the Councilroom offered. Lost in thought for only a moment, the door opened and a Mandalorian officer, clad head to toe in red armor, marched in with a distinct air of superiority.

"Grand Master," bellowed the soldier curtly.

"What is it?" Nantaris responded in kind.

"Jaeger's brigade finally smashed through that hotel with the Sith in it. They've secured the area and I've been instructed to tell you that there were no Sith survivors."

"And so the last one falls."

"Yes…sir."

Several pockets of Sith, stranded in their planet-wide invasion once the battle swung in favor of the Republic, took refuge in many of the decrepit or unused buildings in Coruscant. Some of the Mandalorians—those who did not pursue the enemy into the depths of space—stayed on planet to eradicate them. It took weeks to find some of the groups that were particularly well hidden. They stood no chance for survival, and yet they fought as tenaciously as they did when on the cusp of victory. The public lived in fear of them, despite their almost total destruction.

"Through the elevator then?" asked Nantaris.

"No, sir. Too risky. We blew through the ceiling and dumped a full dropship inside. Our men handled it from there."

"How many Sith?"

There was a quarter rest on common time. "…Twelve, sir."

"Twelve? Twelve held out for that long? Bloody hell!"

The officer said nothing.

"Sorry," added Nantaris. "Good work, soldier. Thank you for the message. You're dismissed."

The Mandalorian dropped his head in respect and then marched back out.

Nantaris turned around to Mira. "Twelve? Can you believe it? Damn those things."

Mira changed topics abruptly. "I'll never get used to seeing those Mandalorians in the Temple."

Nantaris shrugged, said, "It is what it is, lass. No stranger than anything else that's happened in the last five years."

"I don't care. The sooner they're out of here the better."

Nantaris knew about Mira's past with the Mandalorians and wisely chose not to press the issue. But indeed the sight was odd. Once the scourge of the Republic, the Mandalorians now stationed their Coruscanti forces within the Jedi Temple. The would-be conquerors were now stalwart protectors. Mandalore would have nothing less. And considering that the Temple was completely devoid of life, it made sense to house the troops there instead of forcing them somewhere with no space.

They were a rowdy bunch. Nantaris did not bother with them anymore. He simply let them do what they would, and let their own officers manage them. He was technically in charge of them as Grand Master of the defunct building in which they were squatting, but he knew it was only superficial status. He ignored their drinking, yelling, and fighting. He got irritated when they dragged whores into the dorms once occupied by deceased Jedi, but there was nothing he could do about it.

"We'll get the next one," Mira assured him, changing the conversation again.

"I hope so, lass. Then maybe we'll get rid of these Mandalorians."

"Then let's move sooner rather than later."


A dreaded mouth opened before him. Fanged and bloody, it shrieked with rage at him. He was suspended helplessly before this screaming death. He tried to move, but he had no body. He tried to run, but managed nothing. The demon's maw stretched open wider and wider, engulfing his vision. He was plunged into the dark.

He found himself standing still, a vast expanse in front of him. There was a pathway. The light had long since vanished, and the road led nowhere. Here he stood, looking out over the darkling plain, a faint red glow in the distance.

He started to walk.

Caius Lucullus shot awake, sweat dripped down his forehead and back. He was hyperventilating. A more unsettling dream he did not recall having.

He ran his hand over his shaved head and his dark brown eyes tried to blink out sleep. He was of average height and build, and would probably be totally unremarkable were it not for his fame. His face was rigid and jaw square. He had a slight mark of short facial hair for a soul patch, and a small scar over his right eye, but those were the only real distinguishable physical qualities of his. On top of this, however, he had a propensity for glaring somewhat darkly even when he did not mean to, and this habit tended to ward off people who would otherwise be pestering him. In truth, Caius considered himself the quintessential normal fellow—all these other things; fame, notoriety, power, and the like, were not really part of his self-identity.

It was just past the sunrise, and Caius decided avoiding sleep was now the best policy. He slipped on his robes—now the light brown of a Jedi—and walked out of his tent. He arched his back and felt a few blessed cracks as it worked into shape. Three wretched weeks sleeping on a cot, and on Malacandra of all places. This was the one planet he never wanted to see again, and yet here he was—almost a permanent resident.

It had only been two months since the battle over Coruscant. Only two months since he had fled from Malacandra with the Sith in pursuit. Only two months since Xristos Karianis gave his life to save them.

He walked through the camp, part of a larger base of operations on Malacandra. Having cleansed almost the entire planet of Sith, the Republic was in firm control. They planned to use the Sith capital world as a springboard to the rest of the Unknown Regions. They would, from its vantage point, scour the surroundings and purge the few remnants of Sith that persisted.

The main city on the planet was bombed into oblivion. Pockets of resistance continued in the outskirts, with many Sith still holding out in the nooks and crannies of the network of canyons that surrounded the metropolis.

With the shattered city under Republic control, the ground forces bivouacked in the dusty streets between the burned out buildings. The camp was bleak, but it was safe.

Carth Onasi's word was law. Now the acting Fleet Admiral as everyone ahead of him was either incapable of service or dead, he commanded the Republic Expeditionary Force and all that that entailed. He kept counsel with his "friendly enemy"—Mandalore—who oversaw his own people.

These days, Caius stayed on the ground, providing a lightning rod of a morale boost for the soldiers. Some considered him the greatest war hero of the era, having even surpassed Revan. He had single-handedly slain the Sith Triumvirate, and had brought down Ardashir himself. His mere presence almost guaranteed victory against the nearly vanquished Sith. But despite this reverence, Caius was beginning to feel more and more detached from what was going around him. He felt aloof, but he could not exactly discern why. These were heady days for the Republic, but Caius had never had more cause to be at peace than now. That he felt so conflicted—and about nothing in particular—was a source of great frustration.

He struggled to shake off the fog of sleep as he walked. He went over to the makeshift mess and made a terrifyingly bad pot of coffee, which was enough to perk him up. He definitely needed to be alert, as he knew that the Republic offensive against the last major Sith stronghold on the planet was to commence shortly. Perhaps even that day or the next. After that, not even Mandalore knew the plan.

On his way outside, he was stopped in his tracks by a familiar cotton candy voice: "Morning!"

A barely perceptible smirk crept onto Caius's face before he suppressed it. He turned to face his doe-eyed assailant. "Good morning, Allie," he said. "Come to have some of my coffee?"

The familiar sound of whirring gears approached and Caius heard small treads grind up the dirt behind him. Never far from her side, the little droid T3-M4 rolled up next to Allie. They were, ever since midway through their adventures in the unknown regions, near constant companions. But Caius never saw them really communicate with each other or anything. It was simply a matter of wherever Allie went, T3 would be with her. He supposed this was a good thing, as he had rarely ever had anything for the droid to do.

"Er…no, thank you though," she said as nicely as possible. "I was just going to get…something. Care to join me?"

"Sure."

Here now was the woman that now meant so much to him. Allessandra Marlowe was literally the last person in whom he would have guessed he would have developed a romantic interest, but somehow the two of them were swept up together during their adventures. It may not have made much sense, but reality often did not. This irony flashed about his mind as he followed her through the mess. T3, in turn, followed him, humming quietly.

During his life as an exile, Caius had thought he had hardened himself to personal attachments. Some of those he met during those years thought him nearly inhuman, or perhaps subhuman, for his casual disregard for other people. He was simply shut off from people in those years. But once his adventures began, his walls were slowly broken down.

First, Atton—sarcastic, two-faced Atton—somehow befriended him. That was the first step, and the first connection that he had formed in years. Then came his almost fatherly determination to watch over Mira. He gained more friends, people he would have previously thought would only forsake him. He joined up with Bastila and the others for his journey to the Unknown Regions, and he even grew to appreciate them. He came to trust Bastila as he would a sister, and he loved her dearly. Her loss devastated him, and he knew he would never recover from it.

But even after all of that, he never anticipated the allure that such an unassuming woman like Allie would cast over him.

She was a rather odd person, too—not very much like him. Rather idiosyncratic in behavior, she was actually pretty awkward in social situations, as she'd spent much of her life as a bit of a recluse. She generally betrayed this fact with her appearance. But that did not mean much to Caius. For someone so conditioned by the self-denying ways of the Jedi, such superficial trivialities were very easily dispensed with. He did not mind that her face perpetually lacked cosmetics, or that her shoulder length brown hair was frayed at the edges. He did not even mind her abysmal fashion sense. That was just who she was. He knew that if she had wanted to be beautiful in the objective sense all she had to do was put in a little effort, but she did not and that was okay with him. Such is the side effect of a Jedi upbringing.

She shuffled along ahead of him, gathering up some things to eat for breakfast. Despite her lack of concern for appearances, Allie was nevertheless very self-conscious of her height. She was not abnormally tall, but she seemed to feel otherwise. She only wore the flattest shoes she could find, and Caius noticed how she always slouched her shoulders, trying to shrink herself. Almost exactly six feet tall, she essentially matched him, but she was skilled enough to shave almost an inch and a half off of that.

He followed her to a table. He swept the crumbs left by its previous occupants to the ground and they sat down opposite each other.

Allie ate slowly, and Caius did not say anything. Eventually she asked, "Is something wrong?"

She was good at that, he found out rather quickly after meeting her. He knew she was smart—she was, after all, a technician—but it was hard, exactly, to gauge just how intelligent she was. Almost as if she masked it on purpose. "No, nothing," he lied, "I just had a strange dream…"

"Oh," she said, "okay. Everything all right?"

"Yeah—I'm fine. Thanks."

She took another bite.

"How long do you think we're going to stay here on Malacandra?" she asked.

"Until Carth thinks the Sith are completely annihilated. Then he wants to spread outwards to other planets. Once we can find out which worlds they've inhabited."

"But we don't even know where they are."

"Well, isn't that your job?"

"Hey! I've done all I can," she protested, "I don't know what's going on."

Truthfully it was her job. She was the only hacker in the Republic who had had any success in the past or present decrypting the Sith technology and code. No one else could even come close to decrypting it. She was even given an honorary rank in the Republic navy—Lietuenant—for her efforts. Allie had a special knack for technology, but the source of her gift, and the actual capacity of her intelligence, eluded just about everybody, even Caius.

"I don't doubt that you have," he said, "but, well, why is it that none of the other techies can make any progress? Why does this fall only to you?"

She shrugged with surprising quickness and said, "I don't know. I guess I'm the only one that can do it."

Here was another opportunity to try to vet her on her talents, so Caius took it, asked, "But why? How are you so good with machines and computers and hacking?"

"I don't know," she said, "I just always have been. I told you, I grew up around droids and stuff—my first summer jobs were with repair shops, so I've just always worked with those kinds of things."

"It has to be more than that—I've worked with machines most of my life and I still get mixed up with 'righty-tighty, lefty-loosey.' I'd guess you have some kind natural aptitude. I mean, out of the entire Republic, you're the only one who was able to crack the Sith's code. Just you."

She crooked her mouth and did not seem particularly flattered.

"I mean you're gifted," he clarified.

"No, no," she answered quickly, "I'm not gifted. No. It's just a…why do you have to ask about this? Is it so surprising?"

Now he had to be careful, "No—it's not. Just curious is all. I was only trying to complement you. Didn't think you'd get so defensive."

"I'm not being defensive!"

"Relax," he assured her, "I was just joking. Don't worry, I get it. You're good with machines, not really sure why. Some people have talents like that."

She smiled with some relief.

"You'll get it eventually," he assured her, referring to the decryption. "At least we have time on our side now."

The conversation meandered a bit until, after another short period of silence, Allie asked, "When do you think we'll go to Scythia?"

"I don't know," he answered. "I really don't."

"Hopefully soon."

"Yeah," he said.

"And you still owe me that dinner there," she said with a wry smile.

Note: Well, that's the first segment. I don't really know where I'm going with this story, but I feel that there's still a tale to tell here for Caius and Nantaris. I've stalled out lately and have been experiencing some extended writer's block, but maybe finally posting it will help get the creative juices flowing. I can't promise regular updates (if anyone actually reads this), but I'll see what comes. Maybe I'll even be surprised.