Star Wars: Lodestar
Shattered Souls
CHAPTER 1
Coruscant, New Republic City-41 ABY
Darth Caedus reached out again and again through the Force, pushing the limits of his power in the Darkside, probing the future, trying desperately to see beyond the never ending stream of visions that portended danger and disaster that all ended with the Grand Master of the Jedi. Luke Skywalker. Jacen Solo's uncle. But no matter how hard he tried, how dispassionately or intently he focused he could not see past it, to Skywalker coming for him, to destroy him—to the path to the future he wanted so intensely.
Order.
There must be order! Without it, the galaxy was doomed to reel into eternal darkness from which it would never return. He had seen it before, knew it to be true as the galaxy spun ever closer to disaster and no one else would see it. There was only him between utter galactic ruin and every sentient being in existence. And so, standing alone, vilified and cast out, he had made the ultimate sacrifice. Destroying all that he cared about, the family he had once had, the bonds that had bound them, the naïve man, Jacen Solo, that he had been, everything, for this one goal. Order instead of chaos.
The path to the Darkside they had said. Fools! There was no Darkside, no Lightside. Only the Force. He had been One with the Force and seen the truth when he had defeated Omini during the final battle of the Yuuzhan Vong War. It was a state he knew he would never achieve again but it had been enough.
He was not Darth Vader, riddled with the faults that had rendered the Sith incapable of succeeding where Caedus would not fail. No matter the cost. Vader had been hindered by the fear of loss, a trait that Caedus did not share. No, Caedus had deliberately rid himself of all that he could lose so that he could—under the guidance of Lumiya his former Sith Master-become truly Sith. Truly powerful enough to save the galaxy from its fate. From the Dark Man in his visions that he could no longer see for Skywalker. It could not fall, for if it did so too would his daughter, Allana.
Lumiya was dead now, slain by Skywalker- but it no longer mattered. She had simply been one of the last bonds—the last sacrifices-Caedus had to rid himself of to reach his full power and Skywalker had done it for him. He was strong enough now; he held the infinitely stronger power of the Darkside in the palm of his hand.
Why then could he not see beyond Skywalker?! In frustration, Caedus withdrew from his probing of the Force, rising from his kneeling position to furiously hurtle the closest thing nearby… a small table…across the sleeping quarters of his simple but once luxurious Coruscant apartment with a vicious flick of his wrist.
The table slammed into the opposite wall and splintered into pieces. Caedus set his jaw, made his mind still and his anger calm. He must not lose sight of his goal. He must not stop. He had planned for this, obviously, but something must be done…now. Before Skywalker came for him and ruined everything. He would not risk failure, not now.
Before Caedus could consider anything else, he heard the high-pitched rhythmic beep of the comm. station in the living area notifying him he had an incoming communication from someone. Annoyed at the interruption he went to answer it, passing from his minimally furnished sleep quarters to the only slightly more appointed living area. Whatever attachment Caedus had once had for material pleasures he had eradicated as viciously as he had any other attachment in his life.
"What?" he barked as he touched the comm. panel to receive the call. The viewscreen flickered as an image of the caller resolved itself. It was a medical droid—a modified GH-7 model that hovered back and forth on the view screen as it kept itself aloft on miniature repulsor lifts. Caedus felt a combined twinge of dread and hope.
"Lord Caedus, you wished to be notified when your…project…had reached the next stage," the droid explained in a soft, abased voice, careful not to say specifically what the project was over a comm. channel…just as Caedus had programmed it to do. He preferred using droids to run things. Droids you could ensure the loyalty of, they didn't possess the unfortunate tendency to develop a misguided conscience.
"All of it?" he asked.
"Yes, my Lord."
"I am on my way. Prepare things for my arrival," Caedus said shortly, curbing the bloom of triumph in his chest but feeling a confident rush that the timely notification was no simple stroke of luck and bolstering his convictions. There was no luck, there was the Force. Caedus clicked off the call, giving the droid no time to make further comment and strode purposefully from the room, yellow eyes rimmed with red that were once brown nearly glowing with anticipation, his black Galactic Alliance Guard armor glinting and his black cape flaring behind him…unintentionally evoking the remembered shadow of the past…Darth Vader.
The controls of his StealthX moved smoothly under Darth Caedus' hands, sending the starfighter gliding through space toward Coruscant's sterile second moon Centax-2. He could have taken a shuttle up for the short trip but he did not wish for anyone to know where he was going, slipping out of dock without anyone noticing with ease. As the fighter moved into the atmosphere of the moon, Caedus passed over the former Jedi Starfighter Training base that resided on the side of the moon closest to Coruscant.
The base was empty now since the Jedi had fled Coruscant in the wake of the Second Galactic Civil War, abandoning the Galactic Alliance mid battle and turning against Caedus—then Jacen Solo—to fight the war alone as they withdrew all Jedi first to Endor and then…after Caedus had found them again…to parts unknown.
He didn't even spare the abandoned facility a glance, all his attention focused on his destination on the other side of the moon. He sent the StealthX down , banking to the right as he curved over a ridge of barren rock that had not yet succumbed to time to become dust. As the ridge disappeared beneath him, the sterile and lifeless landscape of Centax-2 stretched out, save for a hatch large enough to fly a fighter through that lay embedded in the ground.
During the Clone Wars and later the First Galactic Civil War waged against the Empire, headed by Darth Sidious and Darth Vader the moon had served as, first, military staging and fleet maintenance for the Old Republic and then as the location for an Arkanian Microtechnologies' Spaarti Cloning Facility. While the structures that had once served the Old Republic had eventually become the now abandoned Jedi Starfighter Training Base, the Spaarti Cloning Facility had been destroyed or removed after the Old Republic Senate had passed Decree E49D139.41banning the non-military cloning of sentients and restricting even military cloning to licensed facilities approved by the Senate, exempting only specifically named medical cloning facilities. But some of the equipment remained.
Not used in more than 70 years it had remained forgotten until Caedus—then still Jacen Solo but already beginning his way down the path to the Darkside-had accidently stumbled upon it. His discovery had spurred an idea that at the time had been a ludicrous impossibility. But now, that idea was about to become a reality.
Caedus set the StealthX down a short distance from the large hatch and disembarked, dropping to the ground with an effortless leap. The fighter's cockpit hatch hissed shut unnoticed behind him as he swept toward the ground hatch.
With a touch, the hatch groaned opened, responding to him alone. He had taken a page from Luke Skywalker's book, rigging the hatch's locking mechanism to only respond to the Force so that all within and any without who tried to get in save himself would not be able to just as Skywalker and his now dead wife Mara Jade-Skywalker had done with Mara's ship The Jade Shadow. He did not wait for the hatch to creak its way completely open, instead as soon as there was enough room for him to pass he hopped through, armored feet clanging onto the durasteel ramp that lead to the corridor below.
The corridor was dimly lit, the facility reserving all its power for its true purpose. By the time he reached the laboratory within, the GH-7 medical droid was well aware of his approach, alerted by the clink of his armored feet on the durasteel floor. The facility wasn't pretty to look at, indeed it was an austere construction of bare durasteel plating, durasteel girders and equipment, but it was efficient as exhibited by the tanks that stood behind the medical droid as it waved its multi jointed limbs nervously.
The droid chattered something at him that Caedus ignored. He had eyes only for the Spaarti Cloning Cylinders beyond. He stepped around the droid, which followed still chattering placatudes and assurances. He approached as near as he dared and looked at the Cylinders and the nude clones within them that floated in stasis, without consciousness or life, breathing only because of the masks that were fitted to their mouths and nostrils in the same manner as a patient in a Bacta tank. In fact one could be forgiven for mistaking the Cylinders for exactly that, for the appearance of either showed little difference save that the fluid within a Bacta tank was a faint blue while the Spaarti Cylinders bore a greenish fluid.
No two of the clones were the same, each one the unique and solitary duplicate of their 'donors'. Each specially selected by Caedus after months of work. All were vital to his plan but one, the most uniquely acquired, held the greatest measure of his hopes and dreams.
Caedus had other no other Sith at his command. He had an apprentice in the former Jedi Tahiri Veila who showed great promise. But it was not enough.
Caedus had enough military force through the Galactic Alliance to win the war, of that he was certain. But he was the Last Sith Lord and was vastly outnumbered and out powered by the Jedi and his probing of the future only confirmed his fears that even if he won the war he would still lose. Skywalker would stop him if he did not do something.
Caedus' solution had been simple. What he needed were more Sith, Sith powerful enough to render the Jedi threat null and void. With access to the archives of the abandoned Jedi Temple on Coruscant he had begun digging through records and artifacts, searching for the most powerful Jedi that had come before who had for one reason or another sealed themselves to or been trapped in artifacts upon death. Finding those artifacts—or stealing them while the Jedi had still not realized that Jacen Solo had become Caedus—had been even harder. Finding those of that number that left behind some remnant of their physical bodies from which Caedus could garner enough DNA to clone them had been harder yet with the propensity for their bodies to simply disappear when they died—as they became one with the Force.
But he had managed to find a few.
Cloning them had been harder still. Cloning in itself was riddled with down falls that often rendered its use impractical in the short term. The Kamino method of cloning, though considered vastly superior to Spaarti technology, required that a clone be grown to young adult maturity over the course of a decade and then spend longer still in rapid learning. While it had made for superior troops during the Clone Wars it was not efficient for Caedus's plan. Kamino Clones tended to develop their own personalities and wills from the very beginning, making them ill suited for what Caedus wanted.
Spaarti technology had sought to remedy the problem by developing a method of cloning that allowed the production of a fully mature clone in a year, circumventing the long learning process of the Kamino method by copying the personality and memories of the donor onto the unconscious mind of the clone through a process called 'flash memory'. The result was a copy of the donor who often had no idea that they were not in fact the donor they had been cloned from.
However, Spaarti clones would often succumb to the problem of being slightly different than their donor, developing their own strengths and weaknesses and ultimately being nothing more than a genetically identical copy that was not for all intents and purposes its donor but it's own individual despite sharing its donors memories up to the time of creation.
It had been this method, minus the process of Flash Memory, that Darth Sidious had used to evade death, growing entire armies of himself that remained unconscious blank states until the Sith's current vessel deteriorated to the point of uselessness. At which point he would transfer his essence to a fresh clone. However, Sidious had had the luxury of time, growing his clones in secret over the course of years and held against need.
Caedus did not have a year. But speeding up a Spaarti clones' growth to produce one in less than that time inevitably resulted in the clone going stark raving insane. It had been the Chiss Grand Admiral Thrawn that had discovered an answer to Caedus's problem years before. He had discovered that a Spaarti clone could be grown to maturity in fifteen to twenty one days without the side effect of insanity if one enveloped the clone in Ysalamiri bubbles—the Force repelling shields produced by the small furry lizards native to Myrkr to protect themselves from their Force-Sensitive predator the vornskrs-during development, solved the issue by cutting off the clones' connection to the Force and giving one the option of producing mass quantities of stable flash memory clones or blank slates for essence transfer at will.
But Thrawn had never had the breadth of vision that Caedus had. He had used his discovery only to grow clones of himself for his own use, as soldiers and one as a way of guaranteeing his continued legacy. Caedus however was uninterested in extending his own lifespan as Sidious had or in constructing a non-Force-Sensitive clone army to fight for him as Thrawn and the Old Republic had. No Caedus had far more lofty goals.
He would have an army of Sith the power of which had not been seen in centuries. One already deeply versed in the Force and strong enough to defeat the Jedi Order that stood against him and not consumed by the desire to gain power but to create order from chaos.
Powerful Sith who bound themselves in disembodied forms through the Darkside had the nasty habit of going insane during their incorporeal existence however, as Caedus well knew after Jacen's experience with Exar Kun, rendering them useless for his plans. So Caedus had chosen Jedi instead. Nothing he had ever discovered suggested that resurrected Jedi, of which there were very, very few, lost their holds on reality perhaps because, like those Caedus had gathered, none had been resurrected by choice. Disembodied Sith Lords tended to desire resurrection just so they could regain their power at any cost, the precise situation Caedus was trying to avoid.
These disembodied Jedi would be the birth of a new Sith. One dedicated to enforcing order and peace with no desire for the power for its own sake. He would use the same methods as Sidious, pulling the Jedi spirits from the artifacts and transferring them to their blank clones, then before they had taken their first voluntary breath, he would turn them to his path, the true path of the Force. Not dark or light just…the Force.
Caedus reached out as if to touch one of the cylinders. There were ten others but this one contained his most prized clone. His fingers hesitated just beyond the reach of the Ysalamri bubble produced in response to any Force-sensitive nearby, by the half meter long lizard whose cage hung directly over the cylinder, encasing it in a ten square meter bubble in which the Force was powerless.
The clone was a human female, her hair some shade of blonde though the green tint of the cylinder's fluid prevented Caedus from telling more, never touched or shorn during the clone's growth, streamed out like seaweed, long enough to have served as cloak. Her eyes that had never yet seen the world were closed firmly as her limbs floated limply, her head turned upward in the grasp of the breathing apparatus that kept the clone from drowning. She was slim and long of limb and approximately the same age Caedus himself was—32-for he had wanted his clones aged to the prime of their lives. This one was his prize and it had been the finding of both the necessary physical remnants and the artifact to which she was bound that had confirmed to him that his plan was not just a wild idea but the will of the Force.
The first part he had found, stashed away in the cache of artifacts in the Jedi's keeping. It had been a seemingly insignificant pendant that had been rumored to once belong to a powerful ancient Jedi. Nothing more had been known about it. None of the ancient holocrons the Jedi had found since the Order had been reborn had mentioned anything about it. Who the Jedi had been or why they were considered so powerful was lost to the fickle whims of time. But when Lumiya had given him a rock-a plain rock that might have been found kicked from any dirt path on any planet in the galaxy and indeed he had no idea where Lumiya had found it-just before she had been slain by Skywalker, taking the blame for his murder of Jacen Solo's Aunt, Mara Jade Skywalker so that Caedus might have the time he needed to consolidate his power-he had recognized the spirit bound to it, one of immense power with incredible potential for both light and dark as having the same 'feel' as the faint signature that belonged to the pendant.
That in itself had not been enough to give him what he wanted however. A pendant could not give him the bodily sample he needed for a clone even if the little rock held the most powerful Jedi in the universe…until he had accidently discovered that the pendant wasn't solid and wasn't just a simple pendant. It was a micro-sized stasis unit and within the simple but elegantly engraved silver teardrop had been a single lock of perfectly preserved molten gold hair. Then Caedus had known. It was not a crazed idea nor was it the 'stroke of luck' Han Solo would have deemed it. It was the will of the Force.
That the small brownish gray rock, worn smooth over centuries, seemed to draw him, call to him, had only cemented the fact. All the other Jedi imbued artifacts Caedus had kept safely tucked away here until the clones were ready but the small rock, small enough that he could close his hand over it completely, he carried with him in much the same way others carried luck charms. He often fondled it, feeling the ancient spirit within with such power and potential for light and dark. He had, on occasion tried to coax the spirit within to respond to his presence the way disembodied Sith Lords or the gatekeepers of holocrons did but to no avail. Instead, despite the pull he felt for the small thing, it had seemed to tighten in on itself as if recoiling from the disturbance to its sleep. Caedus had not fretted, he would meet the Jedi soon enough.
He pulled his hand back to tuck it beneath his robe and caress the rock, safely ensconced in one of his belt pouches. It was warm to his touch and without trying it felt more 'alive' than it ever had, more active, thrumming with the Force…the spirit within tightening in on itself and unfurling in turns as though it knew what was coming. He spared a glance for the other ten clones, eyes flitting over each of them with scrutiny, appraising his soon-to-be followers. Each was as perfect as the first, though none met the potential of his prize, they were powerful. Caedus would succeed.
"They have all reached the desired stage of growth you requested, my Lord Master," the medical droid simpered behind them.
Caedus dragged his eyes away from the cylinders and looked back over his shoulder, dark hair slipping forward to shadow his yellow eyes.
"And the preparations are complete?" he asked.
"Of course my Lord Master," the droid assured, multi-jointed arms waving nervously. "The chamber is just as you specified."
"Then," Caedus said, fingers curling unconsciously around the stone in his belt pouch as his eyes were drawn back to the female clone that would be the strongest of his new Sith. He would begin with her. It would take several days to complete the transference for all of the clones. Caedus would have to rest between each he knew, for it would take a great deal of power and skill to accomplish even one. "Prepare this one and move it to the chamber immediately."
"Right away sir!" the droid squeaked and bobbled off through the air rapidly to do Caedus's bidding…just as his prize would.
Caedus tore his eyes away from the clone and swept from the room to prepare himself for the procedure. Soon his prize's power would be his own.
The room was devoid of all but the most necessary items. The Spaarti cylinder was positioned upright on his right, the ysalamiri and its bubble that had kept the clone cut off from the Force no longer present and to his left on the floor next to him lay the stone. The only other thing present save Darth Caedus himself, the stone and the clone, was the small power unit that kept the Spaarto cylinder active between transports whirring softly. All else was durasteel plate, above, below and beneath. Even the lights had been shut off, to facilitate the state of quiet Caedus desired. The power unit giving only a faintly green hue to an approximately one meter circle around itself. The room had perhaps been a laboratory from the discarded equipment that Caedus had had removed from it and its proximity adjacent to the actual room of Spaarti cyclinders.
Caedus knelt, deep in meditation, all but his goal excised from his mind. He would need absolute focus to accomplish his task. He forced away and shielded himself against any chance of the errant visions of doom and disaster he had been plagued with and worked to draw as much of his hatred to his hand as possible For it was his hatred that he would pour into the re-ensouled body while the Jedi spirit was at its absolute weakest.
As he understood it, the process would be exhausting for himself, pushing him to the limits of his considerable power, but for the Jedi's spirit it would be excruciating. The process was so corrupting, so violent on the one on which is was wrought that the very vessel, living or not, from which the spirit was torn would be utterly destroyed. All to the better. Pain he could use to feed his corruption of the newly implanted spirit to the Dark Side.
He would have exactly one chance to accomplish this for if he faltered for even an instant he would lose his control on the spirit and it would be lost to him forever, consigned to the Void for all eternity or perhaps, since the spirit was Jedi and not Sith, to the Netherworld of the Force. In either case, he would lose his prize.
Time ceased to be of consequence for Darth Caedus. How long he knelt on the cold durasteel floor of the empty room could have been minutes or years. But eventually he had drawn to himself every micron of power he could without risking Force Exhaustion, filling his personal reservoir of power to bursting. It was time to begin.
Eyes shut in concentration, he reached out to the inert clone, establishing the simplest link first. He sought its existence through the Force and seized on it with ease wielding the wealth of power he had drawn to him and the clone's mindless, will-less existence.
Then he opened himself fully to the spirit bound to the stone. It writhed within its deceivingly mundane confines. Turning and twisting with power like a nest of agitated amphistaffs so violently that it felt as though it were tying itself in knots in response to Caedus's questing probes. It writhed with such ferocity that any attempt Caedus made to seize upon the bound spirit failed, for each time he thought he had it within grasp, each time it seemed that the spirit reached toward his seeking presence, it would wrench itself away savagely.
Caedus refused to be dissuaded or discouraged. He remained focused, calm. He would succeed. The spirit within still called to him, drew him like a moth to a flame despite its contrary evasion of his grasp.
Eventually the spirit seemed to unknot to some degree when Caedus' unrelenting attempts seemed to prove to it that though it was successfully evading his attempts to seize control of it, it was not stopping him from his efforts. Instead, the spirit changed tactics seeming to invert itself, shoving the dark part of itself as far away as it possibly could and pushing against Caedus's own power as though it meant to use the light part of itself as a bulwark or shield against his machinations.
But so intense was Caedus's determination, so profound had its call to him become, that he battered at it and its own dark half pummeled from within drawn to Caedus's return call, that the light part began to falter, torn between containing it's dark half from within and Caedus' assault from without.
It was a battle the spirit could not win. Indeed, it was Caedus' belief that it was not one it wanted to win, for the dark half reached for him as eagerly as a love-starved child. It was simply that the spirit was so old, for now Caedus could feel its tremendous age, and so entrenched in the stone to which it was bound that it fought out of habit to return to the place it had resided longest, the way a diverted river will return to its bed if allowed to. It wanted out; the silent call had become almost an audible whisper now, a fervent conflicted plea to both be left alone and to be freed.
At last, the spirit's dark half managed to batter its way past the light, a single minute thread slipping past the light's attempts to contain it. Caedus seized the ephemeral thread with a vengeance and pulled with every bit of his power, attempted to wrench the spirit free of its vessel by sheer force.
The light half of the spirit responded by abandoning all attempts to shield Caedus' attempts to reach it and instead attempted to withdraw as it had done before he had sought to yank it from its vessel. It fled almost frantically away as though if it could withdraw itself deep enough that it would bury part of itself so far within its vessel it could not be rooted out. But its two sided battle against itself and Caedus had weakened it too far. It's dark half reached hungrily for what Caedus offered despite the agony the transference process must have been causing the spirit, refusing to remain bound.
But still the light half would not give up its battle. It took everything Caedus could muster to hold on to the eager dark half. Yes, the spirit was powerful, incredibly so. Pleased that he had been right about the spirit's sheer power Caedus exerted everything, risking utter Force Exhaustion, to wrench the spirit free, pulling the tenuous tether he held within his grasp toward the sure gripe he possessed on the vacant clone. If he could only anchor the spirit, the eager dark half would do the rest.
But no matter how fiercely Caedus strove he could not quite succeed. With a roar of frustration, he fed all of his pooled hatred into his efforts, feeding the weak tendril of the spirits dark half to strengthen it, to corrupt the spirit to his will.
Everything happened at once. The dark half of the spirit swelled like a megalith of power and reached for the clone vessel it so craved. Caedus, having exhausted his reserves of power was left with only dregs. The small, plain, stone that had contained the spirit for thousands of years, yes thousands, of that Caedus was certain, exploded with an underwhelming pop, scattering into dust on the durasteel floor. But most awesome of all, the light half of the spirit surged to awakefulness with a sheer raw power that left Caedus breathless and plunged toward the waiting clone body it had formerly fought so valiantly not to be forced into dragging the dark half behind it helplessly.
Caedus wanted to cheer with triumph as the spirit plunged within the clone but his triumph was incredibly short lived as the light half of the spirit suddenly lashed out at its dark half, unleashing a blast wave of Force Energy so intense Caedus could physically hear the spirit rip apart. The shockwave rippled out like a star going nova, sending Caedus flying across the room to slam into the opposite wall like the table he had thrown earlier and casting the dark half of itself away, leaving it to ricochet around the room with a palpable scream of thwarted rage. The shockwave rippled out and away, sweeping through the hidden cloning facility, through the moon itself and out into the galaxy. Caedus felt the uncontrolled power of it wreck havoc on the moon's surface, stirring to life a maelstrom on the dead moon like a Tatooine sand storm of epic proportions.
The clone body came to full life. It's eyes snapped open, green eyes like verdant leaves and it screamed despite the breathing apparatus affixed to its head and mouth, the force of it exploding the Spaarti cylinder and sending a storm of transparisteel shards rocketing across the room. That scream was the single most pained sound Caedus had ever heard in his or Jacen Solo's lifetime. And in that instant, as Caedus shielded himself from the flying shards and the dark half wailed in fury and pain raging around him with enough power to decimate anything within its reach but unable to use its full potential in it's disembodied, wounded state, Caedus realized the horrifying magnitude of his error.
The stone had not contained one spirit with unimaginable power for light and dark. It had held two spirits, one dark, one light-each equally as powerful as the other, and bound irrevocably to one another. A state the lightsided spirit had forcefully negated by ripping them apart and seizing the clone body before the dark one could.
Caedus had been wrong and…he was afraid.
Pain. There was nothing but inconceivable, unimaginable pain. Her very soul felt sundered, torn and bleeding like a severed limb as her body collapsed out of the shattered cylinder that had held it onto to the cold hard durasteel floor to lie in the transparisteel littered pool of greenish fluid that had gushed forth upon the cylinder's destruction. She feebly tore at the mask attached to her head with her hands desperate to breathe free air, the action both familiar and foreign. Vaguely, distantly, she—she was certain of that she was 'she'—that once she had a body like this with hands and arms and legs but she had been apart from that for so long that how to operate those body parts required effort. Everything else was a burned blur of pain. She felt, as she fought to control the body she now found herself in, that she had known why she was here, who or what she was and how she'd gotten there only moments before. But now it was all gone, swallowed by the miasma of pain and chaos that raged within and without.
The only purpose that remained to her with any clarity was that the dark spirit that raged around her in fury, seeking enough power to lash out, must be stopped. It would seek a vessel, any vessel. And the person…he, it was a he and somehow she felt as though she should know him in some fashion, that was struggling to rise to his feet, clad in black armor was woefully ill equipped to stop it. He was injured and weakened despite the astounding ability she could feel he held, a prime target for the spirit the moment it regained enough control of itself to realize it.
Fight the spirit. Protect the person. The spirit was about to strike.
She could feel the spirit's intent as strongly as she felt her own and she instinctively knew that it—no he, it too was a he-could feel hers. Why she didn't know, not anymore, it simply was.
She felt as though she should be able to communicate a warning to the person who had regained his feet, his hand going automatically to the lightsaber hilt (she recognized what it was implicitly) at his hip but she couldn't find a way. She was too pained and too wounded to remember what it was to form words, or even that words could be spoken and not only thought.
Incapable of communicating she instead, acted. Ceasing any attempt to maneuver her recalcitrant body which was—unbeknowst to her- as unused to movement as she was to willing it to move, she reached for the Force and it respond to her seeking readily, it had always been with her, always would be but now the act of calling the power of the Force to her was pure agony. But she must. Fighting through the pain, she gathered as much power as she could manage, though it railed wildly out of true control and caused her untold agony to wield, hurling it at the spirit. Forcing it away from the person even as the spirit made a mad play to seize the person for themselves.
The person—his expression one of utter surprise-dodged the onslaught of barely directed energy and the seeking spirit, igniting his lightsaber, the glowing, eye searing, length of it blood red. Dismay shook her and she consciously caught the person's eyes for the first time, yellow red-rimmed eyes. Darkside. For no understandable reason to her, it caused her a great deal of upset to realize this. Upset that shook her tenuous control enough that the spirit made another play for the person.
Now she willed her body to move, suffusing its limbs with the Force until it obeyed her and then she exerted control over what had been the body's cocoon, the shattered cylinder and telekinetically picked it up, sending it hurtling in the direction of the spirit…and the person it hovered over. The person would survive the physical assault; he would not survive the grasp of the spirit.
The spirit—no more substantial than a purplish black cloud of hate, anger and above all fear made manifest too wounded by the sundering to take a more recognizable form-turned in on itself, raging and furious at her continued battle against it, a battle she felt certain had been going on…and would go on… for eternity.
The person managed to repel the physical assault, sending the shattered cylinder back the way it had come with great effort and at her. Somehow, she summoned the will to move, narrowly avoiding being crushed by it. The person glared at her, furious. Obviously not grasping the danger he was in and mistaking the assault as an attack against him.
"Don't make me destroy you," he growled at her, lightsaber held menacingly before him. Words. She understood them but didn't know how to respond, to answer, to explain. He raised the lightsaber as though to come at her in an attack of his own but the spirit took his distraction as an opening, again making a dive for the heedless person.
She reached out and pushed, sending the person flying to the side and away from the spirit, then attempted to solidify the excruciatingly gained power into a shield between person and spirit. It failed. Struck down by the very person it was meant to protect as both her and the spirit roared with fury. She looked at the person wide eyed with appall. Surely, he could not be so blind as to not see the danger he was in? That, she was certain of this to her very core, the galaxy was in if the spirit succeeded….or escaped.
Running on instinct, she was unable to grasp in return the effects of her actions or his perception of it. All there was, was stopping the spirit. The spirit who in a blind rage hurled itself at the person in a desperate bid to regain a physical form. The person swung at it uselessly, lightsaber humming and sizzling through incorporeal darkness to accomplish nothing.
She raced toward the spirit and the person, imbuing the already Force willed limbs of her body to move faster, respond quicker than naturally came to them and placing herself between them as she attempted to erect an energy ward around them a second time while using the Force to push the person back and away from the spirit to relative safety, ignoring the immense pain the act caused her.
The spirit roared in renewed fury, too weak to batter past the wildly fluctuating shield. It swirled and twisted like aerosolized poison. Stoked into absolute rage the spirit flew at them, intending to consume what it could not break to accomplish its goal. She fought against it, willing every micron of power she could garner into a blast of power to force the spirit back and physically fumbling to grasp the person to drag him away.
But the person roared with his own rage and struck out with his lightsaber. She tried to dodge, missing the brunt of the unexpected whirling attack but the saber still caught her, sliding with a sickening sizzle against the bare flesh of her body's ribcage, slicing through skin, muscle and bone to gash into her lungs. Suddenly she couldn't breathe properly, feeling an entirely different sort of pain, one she hadn't felt since beyond memory. She flailed, physically and in the Force in confusion, stumbling away from the person, as she grasped the wound in her side. She knew that the Force could heal the wound but what grip she had over it had fled, violently leaving her…and the person she had been trying to protect completely exposed.
But this time the person, his expression one of astonishment that she had managed to dodge the strike at all, seemed to have regained enough of his own control to push back as the spirit tried again to force its way inside him and take possession. She could feel the person's deep fear of the spirit fueling the gout of power he flung at the darkside entity. The spirit was repelled once again to swirl and writhe above them in undefinable fury at being thwarted by not just her but him as well but she felt that even in his attack that the person's fear had strengthened the specter, feeding its power however minutely.
She could do little now but try to stay alive, to even draw breath, too wounded body and spirit and too Force Exhausted to even attempt any sort of offensive. The person, apparently satisfied that the spirit was held at bay for the moment turned back, raised his red bladed lightsaber to deliver a killing blow to her. A blow she was far to weakened to avoid. Though it mattered little, she could feel the eminent coming of death from her ravaged state and the wound he had already inflicted. She would die soon anyway without outside intervention.
But the angered spirit cared little for either of their intentions.
It pulsed with rage, and gathered what power it could muster causing purple streaks of Force Lightning to snap and crackle like whips through its bulk for a final devastating strike.
I will not be denied! It railed with telepathic fury in a 'voice' that she somehow knew she was all too well acquainted with as it rained a storm of purple Force lightning down on them both with abandon. All either of them could do was dodge and attempt to deflect the assault. I will not die. I will not be your trophy. I will not be contained. I will not be controlled. I will have what I desire. You will not stop me.
Fearful but quicker than she, the person avoided the onslaught, both narrowly saving himself and feeding the entity further as he struck back with a lash of blue Force Lightning of his own that the roiling cloud of miasmic darkside simply absorbed into itself. She desperately wanted to communicate with the person, to tell them they were only feeding the being, making it stronger but not as fortunate as he, the Force Lightning being hurled like javelins from the entity found her.
They raked over her, wracking her already battered body and spirit with renewed, if intimately familiar convulsive pain, leaving her silently screaming, stunned into a near stupor and sending her heart into an erratic thump. She had suffered such torture before she knew instinctively, at the mercy of this same entity, had learned to use it herself once, could have blocked the attack had she not been utterly incapable of using the Force at the moment. Though how she knew it or why she could not have said.
"You are nothing more than the forgotten remnant of a lost age," the person railed back at the entity. "A shadow, a ghost incapable of true power."
The entity laughed at him as she painfully and slowly attempted to regain some sort of motor control, to regain the faint sense of reason she possessed. The very foundation of the facility began to tremble and shake.
My life spans millennia. My ascendance is inevitable. A day, a year, a millennium. It matters not. I have the patience of stone and the will of stars. Your striving is insignificant. You will submit, the entity placidly commented, seemingly not at all fazed by its continued rebuttal of its goal despite her knowing differently. It was as terrified as the person was. Or die.
Abruptly the entire structure around them began to tear itself apart. Rended from the bedrock by the entity. The entire thing was going to collapse in on them. The entity rushed at the person, disregarding her as too broken to worry about…or too afraid she would rally despite her impending death to stop him. The action was sufficient to send the person reeling to avoid the assumed attack, which was really a feint, a distraction to give the entity an opportunity to escape at the same moment that the ceiling began to give way, casting durasteel plating down on them.
She struggled to rise, to move before she was crushed as the entity whisked past the person who had to devote his attention to deflecting falling debris to avoid the same fate. But he was not quick enough, was still too weak from his previous exertions with the Force to successfully deflect them all. A particularly larger piece of ceiling fell from directly and unavoidably above him. He would be killed on impact.
Somewhere, somehow fueled by pure desperation to survive and protect the person—despite his obvious affinity with the darkside, one she did not know if had been chosen or wrought upon him—she managed to seize a dreg of power, sending it coursing like lava through mind and body and burning all it touched in its wake to push the falling chunk of durasteel and rock. It was barely enough but the debris fell just short of its intended destination, missing the person by a hairs-breadth.
However, her all consuming effort to save the person made her fail to notice another hunk of falling debris that came crashing down on her with a reverberating boom. It missed most of her body but it crushed her left leg. She screamed, pain blind.
The person saw it happen, turned to flee, to save himself only to have an unnoticed skull sized lump of rock, careen off the side of his head. He slumped to the ground, instantly unconscious from the blow.
The end seemed inevitable.
She would not die here. She could not. Even now she could feel the entity growing more distant, fleeing to who knew where so that he might recoup his strength. The galaxy was in terrible danger. He must not regain his power. Nothing would survive. She must not die.
Somehow, she must find a way.
A distant, comfortingly familiar echo of a voice lost to time and memory seemed to speak to her. The Force is with you, always.
The Force was with her. Even if she could not reach it, it was there. There was no death, there was the Force.
Working on innate instinct, on training engrained so deep that it was as much a part of her as breathing, she ignored the collapsing confines of what was intended to be their tomb and reached not out….but in. Seeking a place of calm and balance, one impervious to the pain of body or spirit, devoid of fear and beyond death itself. It came, painfully and fitfully—but that did not matter—all that mattered was that it had. It would not last, the power of the Force had no bounds but her body did…but it would be enough.
With it, she suffused herself with the Force, drawing on it to sustain what remained of her life, ignoring the agony wrought on body and spirit, and to give her the strength required. She willed the unbearable weight of rock and durasteel to move and it lifted, rising as effortlessly as a feather off of her broken body to be brushed aside. She willed that broken body to move, to function beyond its capability, to rise and walk on shattered bone, to breath air through gashed and seared lung, to see past double vision and micro-spasms left in the wake of Force Lightning, to wield the Force despite a spirit that felt torn and bleeding.
Slowly, with great effort, she shuffled up and toward the unconscious form of the person. Used the Force to heave his weight upright and throw one arm around her neck. To bare the burden and seek escape from the crumbling tomb for them both. She would not leave him. Darkside or not he was defenseless and wounded, even as she was. And… there was something about him that called to her.
With deliberate movement, gained inch by excruciating inch, she dragged them both from the room into the corridor beyond, traversing past and over fallen debris as required to reach the next room and hopefully the exit. What she found there horrified her in ways she would never be able to describe, threatened to shatter her tenuous and hard won control of power. Shattered cylinders like her own, dead bodies of other sentients cast out of them, some few cylinders still intact, inert forms drifting within that were utterly non-existent to her Force Perception. Blank holes that denied what her eyes saw, even as the area of the room in which they were contained collapsed. It was only then, as their lives were extinguished and their deaths buffeted sickeningly against her senses that she knew with any certainty that they had ever been alive at all…whatever held them apart from the Force destroyed along with them.
Horrified, stretched too thin, too late to save them and waning quickly she pressed on, breathless in mind and body, for an exit. Blindly, guided only by the Force, she found it, struggling with her burden up the ramp and out onto the surface of a dead moon whose atmosphere raged with out of control Force energy subjecting her and her charge to its mercy even as the ground beneath quaked and the facility behind finally succumbed, collapsing in on itself entirely.
Out of immediate danger, she felt some of her grasp flee her again. She would collapse herself soon. Seeing what she knew was a ship, that resonated a faint familiarity to her despite not meeting any configuration she would have recalled had she been able to recall it in the first place, she struggled against the raging storm toward it.
There she gently released her burden, tucking the person she had dragged from the now collapsed facility under one long angular wing so that he would be shielded from the worst of the storm. He would survive now. He was injured, weak but not dying. When he woke, he might attempt to find her again, to finish what he had attempted below. She could not stay. Must not. She must survive. The entity was out there and he too would return, and there was no doubt he would kill her. She must not die, the galaxy was in danger.
She must find her own shelter, must hide and somehow seek help.
She stumbled, naked and wounded, moving only because the Force sustained her, out into the raging storm. She found what shelter she could, barricaded herself behind all the protection she could, wound what healing she could through dying cells, pushed back what agony she could manage, tried to hide herself within the Force and then expended everything else in one last desperate pulse of need. Then she succumbed to oblivion, to await aid or death…as the Force willed.