The Most Difficult Discipline

by Jest'lyn Tal

Sequel to Things Left Behind and Remnants: “Once you start down the Dark Path, forever will it dominate your destiny.” Revan has escaped this fate but what of Bastila? As new Sith power rises on Korriban her choices are made. Bastila-crentric, B/Cand

Disclaimer: This is the long delayed sequel to Things Left Behind and Remnants. It picks up directly after/during so may not make the smoothest sense unless that is read first. Quick Summary of other stories: Revan's gotten her mind wiped again so she doesn't have to remain a Jedi and forgo a relationship with Carth. Of course, the wiped mind mean she doesn't remember him anyway, but there are modest hopes that the two, reunited by chance, may have something of their former relationship. Meanwhile, Yuthura Ban has taken up a new Apprentice in her scheme to return the Sith to former glory: Bastila Shan!

None of the characters belong to me but belong to George Lucas and Bioware.

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Prologue:

The acrid winds on Korriban never stopped. The fragile grains of sand carried by them could have easily been aloft and circling for hundreds if not thousands of years, and there was no reason to think they wouldn't be driven across the planet's surface for hundreds more. A world of motion, signifying and changing nothing.

A Jedi might have waxed philosophical on how it was physical reminder of the loss, pain, and barrenness that was what the Dark Side held at its core. That Jedi might have continued and extolled the virtues of steadiness and deliberation believing it to be a natural opposite of such sound and fury.

Bastila simply kept walking, however. She ignored the wind's tug on her clothing and the soft almost heard poignancy of its cry through the mountain crevasses. Instead she strode towards a particular black crack in the stone of the cliff face ahead of her. The cave entrance led down into the planet's bones, into the hot skin-tightening depths where the wind couldn't follow and the sun didn't dare.

If she caught her breath slightly as she crossed the threshold, losing her shadow silhouetted in sharp contrast on the ground in favor of a world of shadows, it was a sound easily lost.

All that mattered was that she did not let her steps falter as she let the darkness swallow her whole.