Knights of the Old Republic: The True Sith
By rosso-bass
Chapter 10 – The Purge
AN: The character's in this story are not mine, nor is the Star Wars Universe.
Sorry for the late update. Been working a lot.
3 Months Later… Revan and Jolee have searched two planets extensively, finding nothing. Their elusive enemy has not made itself known, but another is about to.
It was all he could do to keep from running. Somewhere in his soul, human dignity still held a presence, but it was all he could to keep from running. As his leather-booted feet tapped across marble tiles, the hunger, maddening already, flared. It was overpowering. As the Force swirled about in currents and vectors, tantalizing him, he could hardly bear it.
Darth Nihilus had become a slave.
The Jedi Temple loomed ahead of him, pristine in its structure but pathetic in the aura of security it emanated. As he had walked, hundreds of Force-blind sentients walked by him. But as they fell into his proximity or so much as noticed him, their minds deteriorated where they stood, neurons being drained of their life. He had gone unnoticed, his threat unannounced. The passersby fell away, deprived of their intelligence, no more a threat to Nihilus than a gnat.
As he slowly ascended the gleaming endless stairway leading into the Jedi Temple, his hunger grew exponentially by the second as his proximity to Force-sensitives closed.
When he reached the top, he noticed a handful of Republic soldiers on guard at the mouth of the temple. And in the midst of them, a Jedi.
He could bear it no longer.
XxX
Darth Sion wanted them to feel pain as he felt pain. To relish it, as he relished it. They would not, he knew, so he would have to enjoy their pain for them.
Flanked by teams of Sith Assassins on either side, the force stealthily cut its way from the shuttle docks into Alderaan's "secret" Jedi Conclave. The assassins were trained in many different areas- not only the Force, but other skills such as computer slicing and security. These skills the assassins used flawlessly, freezing camera feeds, granting access to a restricted sector of the capital city, and easily bypassing doors requiring authorized access.
Within thirty minutes of their landing, Darth Sion and his assassins had cut through straight to the conclave. Darth Sion, cloaked in a stealth barrier along with his soldiers, Darth Sion shivered with anticipation as he noted the first Jedi they had seen: a young human woman with shoulder-length brown hair and a yellow-skinned Twi'lek female. His assassins crept closer, gathering around the pair in clusters and closing in.
"Wait-" The human girl said, her senses lighting up. Her hand moved to the saber at her hip, but it was too late. With a scream, holes were pierced all over her body by invisible weapons, each spurting out the life blood which passed through her arteries. She was dead in seconds. Before the Twi'lek could turn to ask her companion what she had said, she befell the same fate, being forced to her knees as a thin gash opened at the top of her skull, accompanied by another through the bottom of her jaw. Her eyes grew wide in wonderment and she toppled over dead. Mere seconds after the two Jedi had been killed, the door opened, revealing another trio, all human males.
The one on the left fell under a hail of assassin's knives, but the other two defended skillfully, retaliating quickly. Two Sith assassin's bodies crackled into focus, dead on the ground. It was time for Sion to enter the fray.
XxX
"K-Kreia? Is that you?" Aay'la Lestin asked in disbelief. A smile crossed her face, and Darth Traya noted with sickness that she so resembled her dull brother, Zhar, that was easy enough to see, even when using only the Force for vision. Traya remained carefully expressionless. She had verified the presence of Jedi on Ryloth, going so far as to find this woman in a deserted asylum.
"It is I," Traya said simply. Aay'la looked confused.
"Well… you were banished Kreia… I… Can I help you somehow?" She asked, fidgeting with her hands. Traya considered this a moment.
"I think you can," she said finally. A trio of Force-guided lightsabers leapt from her belt, igniting violet blades. Caught completely off-guard, Aay'la didn't stand a chance. The first of the lightsabers impaled her through her abdomen, the second through her sternum and the last through her left thigh. She fell to the ground, a sad sight when impaled in such a way. Her breathing came in short rasps and blood was audibly filling her lungs.
Traya acted fast, digging through the woman's shell-shocked mind, searching memories, following pathways and relating her thoughts to their current surrounding. And she found it, the Jedi outpost on this world.
"Thank you, Aay'la," Traya said as the woman simply gasped her last breaths of air. Calling the Force back to her, Kreia ripped the three lightsabers from the Twi'lek's body, and she fell limp, finally dead. Traya travelled quickly, making her way alone to the industrial sector of the city, following Aay'la's lingering memory of the place in mind.
When she arrived only a few minutes later, Traya unleashed her devastation. A Togruta female came to question Traya as she was noticeably walking to the outpost with a mission. Traya lifted the unsuspecting Jedi into the air and crushed her, bones piercing through her skin and veins exploding under the immense pressure. The woman was a crumple of lumpy skin when she finally fell to the ground.
A half dozen Jedi streamed out as the Togruta woman died, and Traya slew them all quickly, dispatching them with her telekinetic use of the lightsabers, which the Jedi seemed too disoriented to defend against. She entered the outpost, slaying recklessly, annihilating the hapless Jedi with lightning. The sabers darted about, cutting Jedi down. Within minutes, two dozen Jedi littered the small complex while younglings cried over their masters' bodies.
Without a word, Traya turned and left.
XxX
"Revan…" Mission called quietly, watching as dozens of Jedi closed in on the evil-looking Sith. "Where are you?" The Sith Lord was far more intimidating than any she had ever seen, even the holo-vids of Revan when he was still a Sith Lord. Though Master Lestin had counseled her not to dwell on attachments any longer, she was silently wishing for Zalbaar, who had returned to Kashyyyk for a time while Mission trained.
Though she was only faintly attuned to the Force so far, Mission felt a strange stirring that seemed to extend beyond the planet. Looking at the other Jedi who waited to engage the Sith Lord, several of them exchanged looks with each other. They had felt it too then.
Turning her attention down below again, she watched as four Jedi Knights engaged the Sith Lord. The Sith, though tall and encumbered under several layers of clothing, moved gracefully and with precision, defending perfectly against the Jedi's saber strokes. Mission realized she had not seen anybody so skilled with a lightsaber since Revan himself.
When the Sith stepped back, kneeling low and swinging his saber behind, he reached out his free hand and a stream of golden-orange energy left from the palm of his gloved hand. It connected with one of the Jedi, who convulsed sporadically. After only a second, the energy disappeared and the Jedi crumpled to the ground, unconscious or dead.
"Revan," Mission called again. "Where are you? We need you."
XxX
It was not enough, it was not enough. While some part of Darth Nihilus enjoyed the sparring with the Jedi, when he had devoured the Force energy of the first, it had only made it worse, spurring his addiction. He threw his hand forward again, pulling the Force essence out of his remaining three opponents, and they fell to the floor.
It was not enough.
Now Jedi leapt from all levels of the Temple, landing on the ground level to attack him directly. He devoured them as they came, fed on them mercilessly. It was obscene gluttony, and yet, it was not enough. His hunger edged back only slightly, a small victory, but he could not stave it off.
He sparred with the Jedi as his Force powers grew exhausted, and devoured their energy whenever he could. He was faced with a hundred Jedi, and while any other would have feared for his life, his only thought was of his infinite hunger.
And then, amongst his assailants, he sensed the strengthened aura of a Jedi Master. Free will abandoned Nihilus, nearly resulting in unconsciousness. Beams of Force energy erupted from his body, raking across the mob of Jedi like a lightning storm. Their essence was pulled into him forcefully, and he felt ecstatic satisfaction.
He stood in place for several minutes, allowing himself to feel one of the rare moments where his hunger for the Force was not omnipresent within him. And slowly, it began to ebb its way back in. Resigning to it, Nihilus looked about. Over a hundred Jedi had fallen dead in a perfect circle around him, dead to the world, and now dead to the Force.
As he began to leave, he sensed more creatures through the Force, one more powerful than the rest. And his hunger would not allow him to ignore it. The stronger creature's terror acted as a beacon through the Force, and as Darth Nihilus mounted set after set of stairs, he came to a doorway. He opened it.
He noticed the creature he had followed to be a blue-skinned, female Twi'lek. The twi'lek was older than the dozens of tiny younglings in the room, but likely still only a child.
He searched the little younglings, looking into their terrified eyes. Humans, Twi'leks, Togruta, an Aqualish, a little wookie. It was a diverse little group, all with a flicker of the Force within them. He raised his hand to rip it out of them, but the Twi'lek jumped forward.
"No you don't!" she shouted, running headlong with a blue lightsaber enclosed in her hands. Nihilus pointed at her and drained the life from her. She died on the spot, crumpling to the ground in a twisted posture.
Nihilus turned to the younglings, who had cowered in a great mass against the far wall. Standing in the doorway, he extended his arm towards them and pointed his fingers.
XxX
Darth Sion looked down at the yellow lightsaber protruding from his chest. He looked back up to the young human, who grasped his lightsaber stubbornly. Sion's hand shot out, gripping the Jedi by the throat. Waves of Force energy pushed against Sion, trying to topple him as the Jedi struggled for his life. Sion lifted the man up high off the ground, and he kicked out blindly with his legs. Reaching down with his other hand, Sion pulled the burning lightsaber from his chest. He raised it so the Jedi could see, and the man began to kick harder and began tearing the flesh off Sion's arms with his fingernails.
Sion shoved the lightsaber through the man's face and dropped him to the ground. His assassins carried out their work eagerly, and while there were casualties, it was easy enough to see that the Jedi had been overwhelmed. By the end of the assault, some 50 Jedi had been slain, his job was finished.
XxX
Revan and Jolee exchanged looks when they felt the disturbance in the Force.