Disclaimer: Whatever text in this fic that isn't mine belongs to Troy Denning from his novel, Star Wars: Fate of the Jedi: Vortex.
In his hunt for the maleficent monster known as Abeloth, exiled Jedi Grand Master Luke Skywalker had trailed his quarry down to the Almanian moon of Pydyr. And here, in this subterranean cavern, just as the hunt for Abeloth had reunited Luke with women from his past - women like Callista, and his lost wife Mara - he now found himself reunited with the Fallanassi who once claimed to know who his mother was.
Luke only hoped, for her sake, that Akanah Norand Goss Pell had not yet been taken over by Abeloth, like Callista had.
"There's someone new among you and the Fallanassi," Luke told Akanah gravely. "Someone very dangerous."
"There is no need to worry about her, Luke," Akanah replied. "We have the epidemic under control." She was referring to the illusory plague that had swept all of Pydyr, which made almost the entire population sick of various ills.
"There is no epidemic," Luke said, putting an edge to his voice. "And we both know it."
"Then why are you here?" Akanah asked. "Surely, you are not arrogant enough to believe that the Fallanassi need Jedi protection-or that we desire it?"
"Then you are hiding Abeloth," Luke concluded after a moment's contemplation from Akanah's tone.
"You knew that when you came to Pydyr," Akanah replied gently. "You also know that you are wrong to be here."
"Looking for Abeloth?" Luke shook his head. "You only believe that because you don't know what she is."
"I know that you are playing with the White Current," Akanah countered. "I know that your Jedi arrogance is what cost you your wife and nephews, never mind all of the other Jedi who have died under your leadership."
"My Jedi arrogance?" Luke fought to keep his emotions under control. The Akanah he remembered would never hurt him out of spite; if she was saying such things, it was either because she had changed, or because she believed them and thought he needed to hear the truth. "We've made some mistakes, yes-I have made mistakes. But the Jedi aren't like the Fallanassi. We don't hide from the galaxy, we embrace it and live in it-and that means we must sometimes fight to defend it."
"Defend, you say?" Akanah asked. "Just as you defended the galaxy from the wrath of the Yuuzhan Vong? You failed in that; you allowed the invaders to sweep through the stars, claiming many worlds, including your very own Coruscant, and it was only after that world belonged to them did you ever decide to reclaim it and defeat them. But that, to me, does not sound like defense, Luke; that sounds like something that the invaders themselves would do. In defeating them, you had to attack instead of defend. And I have known about the phrase, 'The best defense is a good offense;' but what good is that tactic when it requires the countless deaths of so many, and allowing your enemies to claim, even if it was temporary, what you had sworn to defend in the first place?"
"The Yuuzhan Vong were simply too powerful," Luke countered. "The Jedi were too few, and we didn't have the support of the New Republic behind us then. Even if we were to have aided Kyp Durron's strike operations against the Vong, we still wouldn't have-"
"And therein lies the problem," Akanah interrupted. "What possible justification do you have for the claim that you could properly defend this galaxy when you lack any true support, Luke? Like the Jedi of old, you swore to be keepers of the peace, yet you ended up being warriors-warriors who proved to be ineffectual against the threats that they faced, regardless of whatever minor victories they attained in the meantime. It is amazing, I must admit, that your Jedi Order didn't fall at the end of the Yuuzhan Vong War just as Yoda's did at the end of the Clone Wars."
"Yoda's Order fell because they failed to see the threat from within as well as from without," Luke pointed out. "Palpatine deceived Yoda's Order through and through even as my father and his fellow Jedi fought on the battlefields of the Clone Wars; my Order was able to flush out internal threats like Fyor Rodan so that they couldn't bring us down even as the Vong were ravaging the galaxy."
"I speak not of the dangers posed by the Jedi's own supposed allies," Akanah stated. "I speak of the Jedi Orders themselves. Yoda's Order fell because it failed to look past its own dogma, its own rules and ethics, to the point that someone like Palpatine was able to destroy them from without. Yoda's Order had been degraded from within for so long, having fallen into complacency after nearly a thousand years. I fear, however, your Order will not last even that long, Luke, considering that you and everyone else in the Jedi's ranks fail to look past your own dogma.
"Before your nephew, Jacen, left Pydyr years ago, I had chastised him for believing that he was beyond the bounds of good and evil, and I was right to do so. But where he lacked the guidance necessary to lead him to the path of rightness, you and your Order restrict yourselves only to what your code of rules and ethics dictate, without deviation, and that is just as dangerous, if not more so, because then you have a guiding hand for destruction and chaos."
"Jacen ended up having a strict code of rules and ethics," Luke pointed out, "when he ruled the Galactic Alliance as Darth Caedus."
"Precisely my point," Akanah agreed. "Just as he developed his own code of rules and ethics, which led to the inevitable disaster that it became, so you, too, have developed your own rules and ethics for your Order, which will also one day lead to its doom."
"The rules and ethics that my Jedi Order have were what came from the past, from other Jedi Masters and Grand Masters before me; they were not solely my own."
"Nor were Jacen's rules and ethics solely his own either," Akanah replied. "They came from what he learned from the Sith."
"A foolish decision, obviously," Luke said.
"Yet you fail to see how obviously foolish your decision is to follow the dogma of the Jedi Order of the past," Akanah said, "when its decisions led to its own downfall."
"My Jedi Order has followed our rules and ethics for much longer than Jacen did when he followed the Sith ways," Luke said, "and we're still here."
"Yet the Old Jedi Order followed those decrees for far longer than your Order did, and they are gone now," Akanah countered. "Regardless of how much time destruction takes, it will happen one way or another if followed in the wrong ways."
"You say that as if destruction is avoidable," Luke said. "Even the universe will one day die, Akanah, and that has nothing to do with whether or not it follows a proper path; it is something that will just happen. Death comes to us all eventually, so the same thing can be said of organizations like my Jedi Order."
"True," Akanah said. "But you delude yourself if you think that your Order will simply die off through no fault of its own; I swear to you, Luke, whether you will be leading it or not, your Order will fall of its own accord, and not through any inevitable processes that were unavoidable to begin with. One way or another, your Order will destroy itself, but not as if it were cellular degeneration in an elderly person, but like a healthy, fit person who ends up taking addictive drugs that he will eventually die from via fatal overdose."
"And you believe that the Fallanassi as an organization will simply die a natural death, through no fault of its own?" Luke asked.
"Do not shift focus away from your Jedi Order, Luke," Akanah said softly.
"Oh, but I think I have to when you're harboring Abeloth," Luke said worriedly.
A multitude of voices echoed through the cavern, and Luke whirled around in a frenzy when he heard the multitude say, "Then let us keep on track."
Abeloth stood there in all of her horrifying glory as a grey tentacled monster with wide fangs and deep, well-like eyes.
Luke activated his lightsaber, but was stopped short of rushing Abeloth when Akanah stepped in his way, her arms outspread to protect the monster.
"No!" the Fallanassi shouted.
Luke prevented himself from accidentally killing or maiming Akanah, and looked past her to glower at the entity behind her.
"Now, Luke," Abeloth said, not moving from her spot, "would you please continue your conversation with Akanah? I find it quite fascinating."
Luke was wary; what was Abeloth planning? If he did exactly as she asked, he would obviously doing what she wanted, which would only further whatever insidious plans that she had in store. And he could hardly trust the aura of non-aggression that Abeloth was radiating through the Force; this was an entity who was so much more powerful than he could possibly imagine. Why should he be humoring her at all?
But whether it was through his own will, or if it was from whatever warped effects that came from Abeloth's dark powers, Luke extinguished his lightsaber, placed it on his belt, and Akanah lowered her arms to either side, signifying that she was calm now.
After a moment of appraising Akanah, Luke asked her, "How do you think my Jedi Order will die?"
"Specifically? I cannot see details like that from the ever-changing future, Luke," Akanah said. "But I predict that the Order will die of its own foibles in time."
"And that's based less on what the Force-or rather, the White Current-tells you, Akanah, or through what you think will happen because of the Jedi's history?" Luke inquired.
"It is based mostly on your history," Akanah admitted. "I have not received any visions from the Current to tell me otherwise."
"Then all you have is conjecture," Luke pointed out. "And conjecture isn't the most reliable source of information, Akanah."
"Not always, no," Abeloth chimed in. "But, sometimes, it can be."
"But if all you have is conjecture, then why should I be listening to you at all?" Luke asked.
"You're right, why should you?" Akanah retorted. "In fact, why should you or Jacen have ever listened to the conjectures of someone like Vergere or Lumiya?"
Luke looked at Akanah in surprise. "How do you know about Vergere and Lumiya?"
"Jacen had told me about Vergere during his stay here," Akanah explained. "As for Lumiya, Abeloth told me about her."
"Lumiya died as an indirect result of Jacen's actions, which led to my eventual freedom," Abeloth supplied before transforming into the dead Sith Lady.
"And because of that, after I died by your hand, Luke," Abeloth's Lumiya form said, "I was absorbed into Abeloth, because unlike Mara, I accepted her once I entered the afterlife."
Lumiya then changed into Callista. "Just as I did, even though I died long before the Second Galactic Civil War. And like me, Lumiya's memories were granted to Abeloth."
Callista then turned into Abeloth, and Luke returned his attention to Akanah as the Fallanassi continued.
"While you and your Order did shed Vergere and Lumiya's rhetoric," Akanah said, "you still believed in it, if only for a brief time, just as Jacen had."
"The views that Jacen adopted after the Vong War were never integrated into Jedi canon," Luke protested. "Vergere, a Sith infiltrator, attempted to corrupt our beliefs."
Abeloth became Lumiya again. "What makes you think Vergere was a Sith, Luke?" she asked.
This time, Luke looked at Abeloth's Lumiya form in askance. "What do you mean? It was because of Vergere's teachings that allowed Jacen to fall for the rhetoric of there being no light or dark sides, and you, Lumiya, used that to further corrupt Jacen-"
"Just because I used what Vergere taught Jacen to convince him to wage war with the factions that were going against the Galactic Alliance," Lumiya interrupted, "didn't mean that Vergere's teachings were only act one of Jacen's ascension to Sithhood. He fell for my rhetoric, Luke."
Luke's eyes widened. "You mean, you and Vergere were never partners?"
"Oh, we knew each other," Lumiya said. "She and I had even encountered another group of Sith. They're extinct now, of course-" Luke couldn't help but detect a faint hint of a lie coming from Lumiya's ghostly presence "-but while she was listening to what the Sith had to offer, I honestly never felt that Vergere was truly a Sith. She was quite an enigmatic character; I couldn't quite place her. Half the time, I felt as if she were only listening to me to see what the Sith had to offer her in terms of Force ideology."
Luke did recall from personal experience that Vergere was someone who couldn't be pinpointed on any set gradient in the Force. If what Lumiya said was true - which was doubtful to Luke - then Vergere was a Sith just as much as Jacen was a Baran Do Sage since he had spent time among that Force sect.
"So, Luke," Akanah said, "I suggest that you leave Abeloth with us, and no further harm will come. We, the Fallanassi, do not wish to wage war against you and your Sith allies."
"I'm afraid I can't do that, Akanah," Luke said grimly. "You have no idea what kind of monster you're dealing with."
"On the contrary, Luke," Akanah said even as Abeloth, who had changed back into her true form, reached her tentacles out from behind the Fallanassi. "I know exactly what Abeloth is."
Luke activated his lightsaber again, but before he could do anything more, Abeloth's tentacles wrapped themselves around Akanah's limbs and pulled her in toward the entity; and all the while, Akanah had a look of complete acceptance on her face.
"Akanah!" Luke screamed.
"Even if you think me a fool for joining Abeloth, Luke," Akanah said as the entity's tentacles continued to enfold the Fallanassi, "please, take into consideration the path that your Order is taking; that when it is not too weak to defend the galaxy, it is prone to the same foibles that Sith are fallible to."
And with that, one of Abeloth's tentacles snaked up into Akanah's mouth, and she began to bond with Abeloth.