Chapter Two
The woman of the Kashi Mer Talisman's chamber stood in awe of the destruction she had caused in her awakening. And as she did so, she examined herself to make sure there were no signs of time's effects on her skin and her clothes. Who knows how long she had been in her trance that wasn't already dead by her hand? She smiled when she realized that her light-green robes were not damaged and the skirt that went from her waist to her ankles was intact.
Her clothes were extravagant when she had first obtained them and she was not about to ruin them now. As she admired her restoration and speculated on what might have happened while she was knocked out, she heard a masculine groan emanate from in the chamber. She immediately figured out where it was from based on how she heard it and marched to the source of it. Grabbing him by the collar, she demanded to know what was currently going on in the galaxy.
"The Jedi and their Republic are fighting the Sith and their Separatists. Don't you know about the Clone Wars?" the man asked. "My name is Arden Lyn and I've been in a non-sentient trance since the Schism! How am I supposed to know what you're talking about when that's the case?" she answered.
"Arden Lyn... of the First Great Schism? Well then, welcome to the future: twenty-five millenniums after your time to be precise," he said. "You're lying!" she screamed. "Consult the Talisman and see if I am, Ms. Lyn or are you the one lying about your identity?" he replied.
In her anger, Arden snapped his neck but came to regret it as she decided to consult the Talisman. What it showed frightened her beyond all belief: several wars had happened since her time. After she was put into the trance, another Schism took place along with the rise and fall of several Empires ruled by beings known as the Sith. So this is the legacy of the Schism, these Sith characters she said.
Not only did she learn of a Second Great Schism that took place after her time, she learned of several other less significant wars but also of the Great Hyperspace Wars. She saw the expansion of the Hyperspace War in the form of Darth Vitiates Sith Empire as well as a Third Schism that took place thousands of years afterward. The Jedi haven't changed their ways much since my time, have they? she asked herself silently. Last but most certainly not least, she learned of the Jedi-Sith conflict that had occurred a thousand years before; besides that, there was the current Clone Wars.
The struggle between the Darkness and the Light had modified while she had remained in a trance begun in primitive times. When she asked the Talisman how much time had passed for all these wars to be fought, it confirmed what the dead man had stated of twenty-five thousand years passing. Defeated by the overwhelming gap between her time and this one, Arden fell to her knees and began to cry. All she had fought for, everyone she had fought with and come to love... all of it had long since been reduced to ash and dust easily blown away in the winds of time.
She was all the remained of the struggles that ignited a revolution that accumulated to this theater of the feud between the Jedi and their enemies. What had begun as a diplomatic attempt to achieve a revision of ancient principle had become the beginning of a twenty-five thousand year old reign of violence. It was a reign that knew few gaps of peace that many of the veterans of the preceding war lived through before fighting and dying in the next one. And what did she get out of all this bloodshed, misery, and death that she had helped start?
Her family was gone, her friends had long since been killed by either old age or by Jedi, and she was all alone in an alien universe. There was nothing she could do except sit next to the pedestal on which the Talisman laid and weep for her loss. As she wept, her heart began to feel the hatred she once had for the Jedi and vow silently to itself that Arden Lyn would carry out her revenge on the new Jedi. After all, her nemeses were all long dead and who but those who succeeded them could be the recipient of Arden Lyn's terrible and eminent wrath now that she had been revived?
Darth Maul and his brother Savage Opress were surrounded by Polis Massans armed with pistols and primitive rifles. "Brother, if we're going to get out of this one with our current conditions we're going to need to do a lot of spinning so that our blades can act like a disc. Yours will be spun around on your side while mine hacks and slashes at those in its reach," he whispered. Savage nodded and decided that he would initiate their plan by charging right into the Polis Massans nearest to them.
He spun his blade and cut several of the small aliens to pieces and spun around so that his brother could do the same. They repeated this cycle again and again, each one clearing most of the Massans both behind and in front of them as they pushed their way to the ship they needed. At one point, there was a massive clearing in their path and Savage bolted for it immediately. Meanwhile, his brother made sure that any Massan guards behind them were killed by their own bolts deflected at them with his lightsaber.
The alarms that blared as this violent massacre occurred were loud and high-pitched as was suiting to the Polis Massan ability to hear. "Attention, all security forces! Two wanted fugitives are making for hangar bay 3564-8B, stop them before they reach the ship!" a doctor stated on a microphone that carried his message through several speakers. It was at that point that Maul noticed something about Savage despite the good fight they were both putting up together.
His younger brother was beginning to grow tired, probably as a result of having fought Kenobi hours ago in combination to losing his arm and fighting the Polis Massans now. Neither brother had had any rest since they had escaped Florumm and Maul needed to make sure he and his brother made it to their new transport immediately. Luckily for Savage, their ship was only a couple dozen meters down the hall and once they overcame the seemingly endless horde of guards, they were free. "Draw upon the power inside of you Savage, it's the only way we'll make it out of this ring of rocks alive," Maul commanded from on his basket perch.
Savage knew what his brother meant and immediately took a deep breath before using the Dark Side to temporarily rejuvenate himself. Spinning around on one foot whenever it suited the need, Savage fought ferociously as his brother protected his back from those who would have shot him down had he been by himself. "Do not let them reach the ship, if they do it will be all over for us!" a commanding officer shouted.
Drawing upon his own power, Maul sought out the officer who said that and immediately snapped his neck with the Force. After that, he proceeded to hack down the soldiers closest to him as his brother spun them around assuming he wasn't deflecting their fire first. Both men now relied on the true powers of the Sith to cut, hack, and slice their way through the ranks of their tiny enemies. They no longer fought as master and apprentice as had been the way they fought Kenobi on Florumm.
Rather, they fought as brothers just as they had on the duel at Raydonia and on the rampage that followed. They viewed each Polis Massan soldier who opposed them the same way they had viewed those they had killed during those earlier rampages which had been the view of mere obstacles. As a result, both were grateful that no Jedi was present amongst these people who fought to protect what they had from men who would forcibly take it. I will escape this mess with my brother before the Jedi learn about us; they will not live to tell Kenobi of our survival Maul thought to himself as he and Savage continued their slaughter.
Another pitiful thing that Maul had noticed about these people was that while their quantity was impressive, their quality was sloppy. They knew how to fire blasters at the brother but they knew nothing of getting out of the way when lightsabers came down on them. As a result, several were decapitated, bisected, or severely mutilated before the brothers were through. "Unbelieveable, they've already wiped out nearly half of our entire security force by themselves!" another commander stated.
Maul smiled, sensing the fear that was mounting in the survivors and preying on it to fuel himself and his brother with power. He relied on one of Sidious' earliest teachings which was that fear attracted the fearful and should be used as an ally, not an enemy. "Danger is real, my apprentice but fear is a thought you choose to create when faced with danger. It is by overcoming fear and demanding that it'd be your ally that you have won half the battle against any opponent," Sidious had once said to him on the matter.
Maul knew that he and Savage had the skillful half of this same battle covered but now that he had converted his enemy's fear into an ally, victory was theirs for sure. And it was when Maul began using the fear to strengthen himself and Savage, that the former noticed the latter regaining both momentum and strength. Now, Savage and Maul were both weapons of mass destruction that could not be stopped even when one was legless and the other was missing an arm. "Our wrath upon you all is imminent!" Maul shouted to further boost the fear and the quantity of fuel they had to use.
When they weren't being cut down, the remaining security guards began making a hasty retreat from the brothers. Their fear had amounted too greatly and too quickly for them to keep the fighting going for more than a few seconds at best. "Is this the best Polis Massa has to offer me? The pirates of Florumm were much better fighters than you all!" Maul mocked, again preying on the fears and anxieties of his tiny new enemies.
"Stand and fight you cowards! Stay where you are!" several officers shouted repeatedly. "You don't get it do you? We are Sith Lords!" Maul told them before he cut them down while Savage dealt with more retreating troops.
Those who did not stand around and get cut down dispersed like the cowards they truly were after that. Glorious slaughter combined with the retreat of cowards into the darkness awaiting them. Now this is the true means by which Sith must win their battles, not through the hiding and toying of bureaucracies of my former Master's ways Maul thought to himself as he took in the scent of the slaughter. Victory was near now, he could feel it in the air and see it in the sight of their means of escape of Polis Massa's largest asteroid (the placeholder of the medical facilities).
"Savage, run to the ship while the coast is clear and get us in. I will take over the controls once we're in and you can recover your strength. After we're in lightspeed, I will join you in doing that same thing," he ordered. Savage did just that despite having to use the Force to throw crates at several security guards who still stood to fight.
And while he did that, Maul deflected the last of any fire that came from behind his brother or to the sides of them. He even aimed his blade so that the bolts reflected back at those who fired them and burned deep holes into their heads, killing them instantly. And when Savage finally ran up the hatch and onto the inside of the shuttle, Maul deactivated his blade and waited for his brother to close the ramp before climbing out of the basket. On Maul's order, Savage threw his brother into the pilot seat where he punched in the coordinates for Irkalla and set the ship to jump to lightspeed upon clearance to do so.
Then Maul piloted them out of the hangar bay and back into the deep void of space that stood between them and Irkalla. It was just before the jump that Maul noticed a problem that compromised future use of this ship. The hyperspace engine had not been finished and the explosion that would come once they were out would destroy the rest of the ship's engines. With this in mind, they would be stranded on Irkalla unless they could find yet another ship that had better capacity for travel.
Better that than not having any means by which to escape these crazed little dwarves Maul thought to himself. He didn't bother to tell Savage, who would guess that they had been hit by the security guards or whoever ran Irkalla upon arrival anyhow. Besides that, he didn't want to give his brother a reason not to recover his strength while he could anyway. And now that they were on their way to the planet of their choice, Maul decided it wouldn't be a bad idea to join him in that rest.
For a long time, Thrawn had been deliberating how he would acquire someone who could hold their own against the woman in the caverns. He couldn't go himself since he would die upon being sighted by her but he couldn't sit and do nothing either. Then a fellow officer came up to him and informed him that a ship was just coming out of hyperspace with its engines blown out. He knew that unless the passengers were Force-sensitive, they would never survive a crash to the surface.
"Order a rescue team to be on standby until they land and act immediately. Whoever is inside will be needing our help once the ship crashes down on this planet," Thrawn ordered immediately. Perhaps this was his omen from the stars, the arrival of the one who would solve his dilemma with the woman in the cave who would not surrender the Talisman. He had to have its power for himself and perhaps the solution to his dilemma had fallen from the skies of Irkalla.
When he received the signal that the rescue team was on standby, he told them to wait until they had crashed down and not a moment sooner. "The passengers and the pilot will need to be extracted as soon as they land so that we may best save their lives," he added. Then he sat and waited to see how this little event would play out. After all, it was not everyday that ships dropped out of hyperspace into Irkalla let alone crash into it the way this one did.
Arden Lyn felt the disturbance in the Force as deeply as the Talisman did. The latter symbolized the disturbance by letting it's lime-green light flash sporadically. Arden felt the disturbance as a pain in her heart and she knew it could only mean one thing. That at least one other bearer of the power of the Dark Side had landed on Irkalla even if the means by which they did was abnormal.
Perhaps they would serve well as an ally that I can rely on in this new age of war and misery. The Jedi would not expecting one of their nemeses to conjure a twenty-five thousand year old being such as myself she thought to herself. From behind a small crater in the caverns, she hid herself in, Arden could see that it was storming outside and could see the puddle that formed from the rains pouring in. And it was during a flash of lightning that shone through that she noticed something directly beneath the hole, erected against the wall that held it above the ground.
It was a pedestal that, though similar in design, was shorter than the one that held the Kashi Mer Talisman but unlike it held a sword from her days. The blade was trapped in a scabbard much like how she remembered the weapons being designed and she recognized the stamps on the hilt to be her own. Smiling, she walked toward it, glad that she had obtained something that was familiar from her past beside the dark artifact that kept her alive and had rejuvenated her body upon shining on her. Savoring the moment, she slowly extended her hand outward until it clasped the scabbard and her fingers wrapped around its cold wooden skin.
After ceremoniously raising it from its stand on the pedestal, she brought it close to herself and admired how much the art remained intact despite years of dust and erosion. Then came the ultimate test of her memory of how to use the blade when she took her free hand and let it rest on the hilt of the blade. When she did that, both holding the hilt and the scabbard felt as familiar to her now as it had been when she last held one in battle against the Jedi. It was at this moment that, with great enthusiasm, she pulled on the hilt and withdrew the blade from the scabbard as easily as she had twenty-five millenniums before.
The feeling of the blade coming out and reviving its faint orange glow was like a gulley of peace washing over the dry riverbanks that Arden Lyn had become. With this weapon, she felt invincible once again and knew that with it and the powers of the Dark Side, she could fare in this new universe after all. It may have forgotten her and allowed her deeds to fall into history but she would make sure that they were remembered once more. At last, revenge on the descendants of those who imprisoned her would come delivered at the edge of a glorious weapon of untold power.
Maul and Savage knew they weren't going to last too much longer in the ship now that they had crashed landed. So while fitting himself into the basket, Maul directed Savage to cut them an opening by which they can escape out of their deathtrap. Savage did exactly that and even stepped outside the ship to see where they had landed on Irkalla. "Brother, there's a civilization in the distance and a few lights that are growing bigger and bigger," he said when he came back in.
Rescue shuttles at the likeliest if there's someone who's seen us crashing onto the surface of the planet Maul thought to himself. "Very good Savage, that means we don't have long to wait before we can get assistance," he said aloud. He laid back and decided it was best for Savage to drag the basket out with him in it before getting himself back out of the ship as well. And that was precisely what they did on Maul's command which occurred after he had a chance to see the outline of rescue vehicles approaching through the ship's window port.
For their sakes, Maul hoped that whoever the people were that lived on Irkalla were nothing like the Polis Massans in the hostility. He would've included the weakness of the Polis Massan security force, of which nearly half of the four thousand officers were killed by the brothers, were it not that they were rare. With few exceptions, there was no security force in the galaxy that didn't put up a valiant fight even when their ability to fight was weakened significantly for any reason. His train of thought was confirmed when he recognized the people coming aboard their ship as members of the military branch of the Chiss Ascendancy, a powerful military force in the Unknown Regions.
And unlike Savage, Maul had seen the power of the Chiss Ascendancy firsthand when Sidious sent him to persuade two Chiss nobleman to war with each other. The evidence he had used that would justify it had not only ignited the war but had ignited so quickly that Maul actually found himself on one of the battlefields merely days afterward. Though he had survived with many scars and rips in his robes, he knew that the Chiss Ascendancy was not to be trifled with as far as their military was concerned. "We're going to get you two to safety, this ship's going to blow any second!" said a Chiss soldier who was probably the commanding officer according to the medals he bore on his chest.
Maul couldn't argue with that, in fact, he agreed wholeheartedly that the ship would explode and that the Chiss would get them out of there. First, the rescue team took Maul in his basket and placed him in a comfortable seat on one of their speeders. Next, they placed Savage next to him in a manner that would allow him to rest his strength and his severed arm until they could get him help. After that, they brought a few hoses and tried to dose out the fire to almost no avail.
When everyone was seated in the speeders, the machines were immediately turned around and directed back to the city. It was during this time that Maul decided to make his request for an audience with their leader (or leaders if they had more than one). "All in good time sir but for now, you two have to rest and gather your strength," their officer stated as he drove. Though Maul wanted to argue, his body reacted to the word 'rest' by near instantly shutting down into a state of hibernation that healed.