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14

Namon sat and watched his two top generals, an uncharacteristically tall and lanky Kaleesh and a small but extremely tough Rodian, boxing barehanded in his large tent. Namon had cleared out all the foolish and vain pieces of art and furniture his predecessor had filled the area with. Now, all he had was his massive chair and the large wooden table he used for council meetings with his generals.

The two men were trading punch for punch, fighting to be named his second-in-command, a position known in this cult simply as The Hand. The Kaleesh was at least two meters tall and looked to weigh about seventy kilograms. He had long, lanky arms with compact, ropey muscles. He had dark reddish-brown skin with small, thin scales. The Kaleesh were technically a reptilian species but, in comparison to Barabels, the scales of the Kaleesh species were almost skin-like. Also, unlike Barabels but similar to many reptilian species they had four fingers instead of five. They had extremely long ears that had a sharp point rising up from their bald heads. One of the most distinguishing aspects of the species was their tusks. They had two, short, pointed tusks jutting down from their upper jaw, reaching a few centimeters below their chin. At almost all times Kaleesh wore a traditional mask to cover their face but, during the fight, his had already been blown off. The Kaleesh were known across the Galaxy to be an extremely aggressive species. They believed war was extremely spiritual and thus fighting among tribes was extremely common and seen as an essential part of life.

Rodians were also a reptilian species but had very few similarities to the Kaleesh. The majority of Rodians, including the one fighting before him, had dirty green skin and coal-black, bug-like, multifaceted eyes. They also had two small, thumb sized, saucer-shaped antennae protruding from the top of their heads that were used to detect subtle vibrations. They had long, tapir-like mouths that served as another olfactory sense, collecting and filtering air. Because of their large eyes, vibration sensing antennae and mouth that could taste the air around them, Rodians were said to have an almost sixth sense about them. Rodians were extremely violent and often found work in the Galaxy as bounty hunters, body guards and leaders of underworld organizations. Unlike the thin skin-like scales of the Kaleesh or the hard, thick scales of a Barabel, a Rodian's skin was rough and pebbly. Their hands were large, with five long fingers at the end. Unlike the rest of their skin, their hands were smooth and leathery. Their long, slender fingers were tipped with tiny suction cups. This man was just over one-and-a-half meters in height and looked to be about sixty kilograms, quite a bit smaller than the average Rodian. Namon had expected the fight to be over quickly, with the larger man easily pummeling the small green-skinned being, but he was surprised by the resilience of the Rodian. He had taken several devastating blows from the red-skinned reptile and every time he bounced back to deliver a solid punch of his own.

Besides his mask being knocked off, the skin around the Kaleesh's eye was bruised an even darker red than the rest of his skin. He was leaning to the side, damaged from a sharp kick from the Rodian and he was heavily favoring his left leg.

The small Rodian slipped a punch from the Kaleesh, moving under the man's strike and getting closer where his short range would be less of a disadvantage. Ducking down low, the Rodian delivered a quick flurry of punches into his opponent's side, knocking the air from him and jumping back before he could retaliate. The Rodian punched upwards, aiming for the man's exposed face. Before his fist could reach its target, he was slashed across the face by the Kaleesh's clawed hand, leaving four deep cuts in his rocky skin. The man jumped back quickly, holding his hand over his bleeding face. Besides these new angry cuts, the Rodian's nose was completely broken and it looked like his ankle was broken or at least sprained; he was hardly able to put any weight on it.

Instead of continuing to retreat as Namon had expected, the Rodian launched into the offensive, swinging hard at the Kaleesh's chin. The taller man easily leaned back out of man's short range. The Rodian continued moving forward, swinging wildly. The Kaleesh ducked under another cross from the Rodian and came up with a haymaker. The man's wild swing connected with the Rodian's temple, finally knocking the persistent Rodian to the ground.

"Yield," Namon called from his ornate wooden chair, stopping the Kaleesh from attacking his unconscious opponent. "You have won the right to be my Hand.

He addressed the hooded, masked guards just outside the tent who were pretending not to watch the fight. "Bring the fallen to the Bacta tank for healing. When he recovers, he will join Molph's troops as a private."

He turned again to his new Hand who had by now replaced his customary bone mask on his face. Namon had been studying the major species of the Galaxy and he knew it was extremely rare for outsiders to see a Kaleesh's uncovered face.

"Go to the medics and get yourself patched up. When you recover return and we will discuss your responsibilities as my second-in-command."

The man bowed low and spun on his heels, rushing out of the tent.

Namon was extremely happy with how his mission was progressing. In just a few short months, he had transformed a group of dozens of separate cults, banded together in the tenuous grasp of their leader, into a uniform order, The Bogan. It was the ancient name the first Force sensitives had for the Dark side before they had split into the Sith and Jedi factions. Now, instead of an argumentative council of leaders from heads of each cult, Namon had chosen generals to lead his army. These generals weren't all leaders of old cults, but rather, they were simply the people he had seen as the strongest and wisest leaders.

There were eleven generals; each was in charge of specific Battalions, each Battalion with about one hundred troops split into three Platoons. Each Platoon consisted of about thirty troops and one leading Commander. The platoons were then split again into three; these Squads had ten troops led by a lieutenant. This way, everyone was accountable to someone else; with these small groups it was harder for the soldiers to get away with anything than it had been when it was just one leader looking after hundreds of people.

In each battalion there was an equal mixture of lightsaber experts and people who specialized more in Force combat. He'd chosen to split up and mix the cults, since each cult usually focused on a specific style of combat and keeping them together would be unbalanced.

His Hand, whom he had just dismissed, would become more than just his second in command, he would be his councilor on all matters pertaining to the troops and he would become head of the Elites, a group of about forty of the best from among his army. They were constantly garbed in the dark grey hoods and a flat black mask. They doubled as sort of army police and the first on the ground strike team. A small number of this group had served Grif as bodyguards. Namon had had rejected the suggestion that he continued to keep this small personal guard to protect from assassinations, trusting instead in his own skill to protect himself.

Despite the assurance he had given his Master, he had to admit that, over the last few months, he had to remind himself multiple times that this war was not his end goal. That the Jedi would slaughter them all, everyone from his newly-appointed Hand to his lowest private. They'd all be dead in a few months and he would be moving on, leaving them as nothing but a memory, nothing but a stepping stone in his ascent to greatness. He'd realized some time ago that this was more than just a mission to keep the Jedi under control and destroy a dangerous cult; it was a test, a test to see if Namon was truly loyal, not only to the Dark side but to the true Sith. As tempting as the idea of lording over a thousand loyal Dark-side Adepts had become, he knew he had no future with this cult. While he encouraged them, telling them they were the strongest beings in the Galaxy, that the Dark side inherently made them stronger than the Jedi, he knew it wasn't true.

Even after their devastating war with the Brotherhood, Darth Cognus' spies reported there were about eight hundred Jedi Knights and Masters, not to mention almost double that in Padawans and Initiates; many of the former would be a match for his average soldier. The Jedi order had apparently become extremely bottom-heavy, recruiting rapidly in an effort to replace the lost Masters and Knights. The Jedi were simply more organized, more numerous and, most importantly, better trained than his army; it would be a slaughter. And Namon would watch it all, studying the Jedi's specific war tactics, watching for their strengths and weaknesses; Darth Cognus' spies could only tell her so much during a time of peace.

Cognus ground her teeth with frustration and nervousness as she rocketed from yet another planet, her ship groaning to escape the gravity trying to pull it back. Her instruments were blacked out and all she could see through the windows of her cockpit was the orange flames burning up around her ship. She'd always hated the moment of uncertainty when entering or exiting a planet's atmosphere: she could hardly control her ship and she had no idea what surrounded her or what would be there when she left the barrier. The lack of control over her own fate always made her uncomfortable. Her ship bounced slightly with turbulence and Cognus gripped the yoke even tighter, her thick, red fingers turning white.

This time, however, her fear of uncertainty was almost drowned out by her sea of rage. She had been going for who knows how many months, hopping from planet to planet, chasing the elusive Set Harth.

When she had arrived at the cave on Russan she found nothing but dripping walls covered in moss; the Holocron was nowhere to be found. She searched the large, winding network of caves for days, hoping Quordis had been mistaken about his exact placement of the artifact. Eventually, she'd had to accept that it was gone. Before leaving, she'd tried meditating in the space, looking through the cave's history to see what had happened to Quordis' artifact. After quickly flying past the years, the cave had remained empty and abandoned, she finally saw the one who had come before her. Rage had boiled up within her as she saw Set Harth stroll lazily into the cave and casually grab the Holocron as if it were a mere toy. After seeing the vision, she had set off to find the Dark Jedi and decided to finally finish what she had started a lifetime ago. For years after becoming a Master, she'd been putting it off, spending her time on furthering the Sith goals and training her apprentices. Now, however, Namon was busy on a mission of his own and she had nothing pressing to do.

Despite making the decision months ago, she had failed to capture the Dark Jedi. Normally, she had no trouble in finding a target. She simply concentrated on the being and, when she slept, the Force would let her see through their eyes. She would figure out what planet they were on based on what she had seen, then go and collect them; the ability had served her extremely well during her time as an assassin. The problem was her visions didn't show her where a person would be, but simply where they were at the time and Set never stayed on a planet long enough for her to catch him. She didn't understand how anyone could live like that, staying in a place for such a short period of time before moving on. There was a chance he knew she was following him but she doubted it. An underworld worm like Set would no doubt have connections that he would have sent her way to try and stop her pursuit.

The comforting blackness of space enveloped her as she blasted through the atmosphere; she breathed a sigh of relief as her instruments blinked back to life. She turned her thrusters off, settling into a comfortable slow orbit around the planet. She reclined her seat and tried to fall asleep, keeping Set in the front of her mind.

Set could feel the spirit following behind him, chasing, waiting for the time to pounce. He had been jumping from planet to planet, hoping that whoever was following him would search the planets and he could get away, but so far, it wasn't working. He was going crazy, spending all his time in cheap hotels or his cramped ship. He needed to figure out a way to get this mysterious hunter off his trail.

"I have a mission for you Zeeth." Namon told his Hand suddenly, interrupting a council meeting between him and his twelve generals.

"Anything, Lord Marshal," the Kaleesh said from behind his bone mask, now with a red stripe on the top right coming to just above the eye hole, matching the stripe the other elites wore on their masks.

Lord Marshall - Namon was still slightly uncomfortable with the title. It was the customary name for the leader of this cult, but Namon would still rather they simply called him by his name. He stood up from his elegant, sturdy wooden chair and walked aimlessly away from the council table, letting the questioning silence build for a moment.

"I need you to be my voice," he told the man, turning back around and facing him. "The time has come for us to contact the Jedi and issue our challenge. However, I am already known to some members of their order and I want to give them as little information as possible about the specifics of our army. When we send the Holo-message, I will stand behind you, hooded and obscured. I want you to deliver my words to them."

Zeeth nodded firmly without hesitation. "I would be honoured to be your voice Lord Marshal."

Lord Marshal, Namon thought to himself again: what a foolish title.

The silence felt deafening as Kinsa lay alone in her ship, trying to work through the specifics of her last few missions. She knew she had to deal with this but, at the same time, she yearned for something, anything, to distract her from this moment of self-reflection. Ever since she had learned about the Grey Jedi and after she had slaughtered those women in the desert, she felt as if she had been infected by some sort of virus. With each consecutive mission, she was becoming more and more violent in her encounters. She was calling in for less prisoner transport and leaving more bodies behind her. She had started reaching for her lightsaber more often than the stun baton. She wasn't fully sure what had happened; in the moments after the fights, she had always been able to explain away and justify her decisions, but she knew the truth. She simply had less sympathy and love for the followers of the Dark side. She had been taught as a Jedi that the Dark side corrupted people, that all beings were born pure and all could be redeemed, but she just didn't believe it anymore, and after seeing Master Liftling's hypocrisy with the children she had rescued, she didn't think the Jedi actually believed it either.

After seeing firsthand the works of these people, she truly believed they were evil, not that the Dark side within them was evil or the things they did were evil, but that, at the core of their being, some people were simply evil. She tried to pretend she didn't believe this, repeating the words of the Jedi doctrine in her head, but those were just words and, after seeing the actions of such people in person, those words seemed empty.

She understood now why not every Jedi could be a Shadow. She'd been doing it for less than two years and she could feel herself hardening: she could feel the light being slowly squeezed out of her. She wasn't sure how to stop it. She'd stopped reading the philosophy of the Grey Jedi; even if she believed it she could tell it was having a negative effect on her.

A high-pitched beeping broke out and interrupted her thoughts. She turned to her side and stared at her blinking communicator with dread. She wasn't ready for another mission yet. She wasn't sure if Jedi, especially Shadows, were allowed to take breaks, but she knew she couldn't continue on. It would be letting down the Galaxy: who knows all the destruction that would take place while she was gone? But if she continued on she would be no help to anyone, this path led to the Dark side. She needed some time to bathe in the light before she was forced down into the darkness again. Her entire life now was either drowning in darkness or suffocating in isolation, and the isolation was itself becoming all too dark. She would tell the council she needed some time back at the temple before she went back into the field. Strange, she thought to herself, how a place she had begun to despise was now looked at as a sanctuary. How foolish she had been.

Kinsa swung her legs over the side of the bed and sat up slowly, her head pounding from the sudden change and from the unceasing thoughts bouncing around. She took a calming breath and answered the call.

Master Sifu's face appeared in the transparent blue flickering hologram. She smiled for a moment, happy to see a familiar face, before realizing something was wrong. He looked frantic and instead of his customary calmness he seemed to be exploding with panic.

"Kinsa." He practically yelled at her. "We need you to come back to the Jedi temple immediately. We've received a declaration of war."

A moment of stunned silence followed; Kinsa was unable to take in the information: another war so soon after being devastated by the Sith Empire. How would the Republic stand? So many planets were hardly held by the Republics grasp; another war would cost the Republic almost a third of the worlds in the alliance.

"Who?" she blurted out suddenly. "Who would attack the Republic?"

Was it a group of separatists within the Republic or some strange unknown enemy from beyond the Outer-Rim territories?

"It's not the Republic they've declared war on; it's us, it's the Jedi. A large cult of Dark-side followers has issued war. Come to Coruscant immediately; we can discuss it there in person. And mention this to know one," he added. "Very few outside of the council are privileged to this information."

Master Sifu's panicked face blinked out of existence and Kinsa was once again alone in her ship, floating through space.

War. On the Jedi. The Sith had been destroyed; how could there be a coalition of Dark-siders large enough to challenge the Jedi without anyone knowing about it until now? Kinsa was a Shadow; it was her job to hunt down and destroy cults like this, and she could have nipped this in the bud. She brushed aside the pang of guilt; even if she had encountered the cult, she couldn't have stopped them all by herself. She moved to her cockpit and set a course for Coruscant; there was no point wasting time beating herself up about things she couldn't change. The council must have had a reason to bring her in on this information. She would do everything she could now.

"Try harder!" Darth Millennial screamed at his cowering apprentices, his voice rising above the cracking lightning. They were all cramped in his meditation chamber, him and ten of his most promising students. Streams of electricity exploded from his fingertips and soared above the heads of his kneeling acolytes. He was trying to encourage them, trying in vain to unlock something within them.

He had always believed divination was the greatest of the Force's gifts, and so he had always trained his followers in the subtle art. Now, in his time of need, he was testing them; the Force was testing them. The Great Force had taken his gift away from him so these lucky acolytes would have a true test: a test they were failing miserably. So far they had only managed to divine insignificant prophesies, nothing he wanted and nothing the Force wanted. She had not taken his gift from him for these pointless prophesies. He shot another bout of lightning; one of his younger followers screamed as a bolt arced by her, frightening her and making her hair stand straight. The rest of his loyal followers ignored her and continued chanting under their breath.

No matter how hopeless it seemed now, he would not doubt. Soon they would tap into the Force's endless wisdom, sip from the cup he had drunk from so deeply on countless occasions. Soon this would all be over and he could get on with his life.

Namon was relaxing on his ornate, wooden seat, attempting to will the pounding in his temples to stop, organizing this was taking its toll. No matter how many people he placed beneath him to deal with problems, everyone's complaints somehow managed to find their way to him. He had just dismissed his attendants; he would deal with it all tomorrow.

This wasn't the kind of work Namon was used to. He had been a warrior on Barab 1, spending his time hunting and fighting to protect the borders of his forest. When he left his tribe, all he had to do was take care himself; he hunted to survive and fought other Barabel's when he had to. On Aargonar, he had spent all his time with Darth Cognus learning and training. He had always taken care of himself, always working to hone his skills and become smarter. Here, he just sat on his seat of power and dealt with the problems of other people; he felt tired and worn out, yet stagnant at the same time. When he came here to take over the cult, he'd assumed all he would need to do is tell his members what to do and bide his time until the war. Instead, he had to weigh options and make decisions; no-one ever seemed happy with him.

A sudden tingling at the edge of his perception interrupted his train of thought and blocked out his pounding headache. He focused on the feeling, certain it represented some kind of danger. He stood slowly to his feet and grabbed his sword up from where it was leaning against his chair. Three beings, their faces obscured by hoods and featureless masks, filed into his tent and stood before him in a triangle formation.

"You don't deserve to lead," the man in the middle practically yelled at him.

All three of them drew their lightsabers and ignited them simultaneously. The being on the left had a large double bladed lightsaber while the others had a standard lightsaber design.

"You three take time planning that?" he taunted them.

He could practically see their angry faces as they crouched down, ready to strike.

While he was good with his new weapon, Namon's defences were still weak; he was certain if he battled them all at once he would fall.

He launched at them before they could coordinate an attack. He came down in the middle of them, slamming the ground with his fist and sending out a shockwave of Force, knocking all three beings off their feet and onto their backs.

He grabbed his sword with his left hand and swung out, aiming to cut down the man with the double bladed lightsaber. The man brought his weapon up and blocked the attack with the right blade of his weapon. The masked man shifted to the left and swung the left side of his lightsaber up, aiming for Namon's arm. Namon shifted his sword to block, then kicked the man in the side, cracking multiple ribs and forcing him to drop his weapon.

From the corner of his eye, he saw another attacker beginning to rise to his feet. He spun quickly to address him, his sword outstretched and aiming for the attacker's torso. The would-be assassin was completely unprepared and Namon's sword sliced through his side and was buried deep in the man's chest. Namon suddenly felt an alarm of danger. He could practically see the third assassin's lightsaber as it moved to bore into his lower back.

His sword was stuck in the man's chest and he didn't have time to turn and block what was sure to be a killing blow. On an impulse he didn't understand or question, Namon stayed still and used the Force to create a barrier between him and his assailant's weapon. It felt similar to the act of creating a Force cushion around oneself to protect from a fall or a crash,. but thicker and in a specific location as opposed to a thin layer of protection all over.

He felt a searing pain on the small of his back that spread quickly to the rest of his back and he feared his improvised defence had failed him; instinctively, he jumped forward to get away from the pain. He whirled around, using the momentum of the spin to yank his sword from the middle of the dead man's chest, and faced his assassin. He was surprised to find he could still stand and move; his defences must have at least partially worked. He quickly swung his sword up and over his head, then pulled it down with all his strength onto the hooded man.

The failed assassin was clearly surprised that Namon hadn't died from his last stab. He scrambled to bring his lightsaber up over his head to block Namon's terrible, over handed chop. He managed to get a sloppy, two-handed reverse grip block up before Namon's blade connected with the beam of energy. It made a strange clang-clack sound that Namon had gotten used to. The strength of Namon's blow overpowered the man's rushed guard and forced his arms to buckle under the weight, still holding on to the lightsaber. Both Namon's blade and the mysterious man's lightsaber were pressed down by Namon's strength until the lightsaber cut into the man's collarbone. He screamed out in pain as the beam of light burned a line through his chest, followed quickly by Namon's blade. The man's arms bent back unnaturally and he released his lightsaber; it extinguished as the hilt dropped to the ground. Namon's sword continued carving into the man until it stopped just above his abdomen; the man's pained screams had ceased.

Namon lifted his foot and placed it on the man's still twitching chest, kicking forward slowly and forcing the man to slide off his hungry blade and drop unceremoniously to the ground. Namon moved slowly towards the last living attacker. He stabbed his sword into the ground and stared down, looming over the man who was still writhing around on the ground, moaning in pain. Apparently, Namon's kick had done more damage than he'd first thought. Namon used the Force to rip the man's mask off, exposing a familiar face. It was one of the former cult leaders he had demoted, resulting in the man and a dozen other former members to flee. Namon had been planning to torture this survivor to find out who had sent them, but now that was unnecessary. Clearly, some of the former cult leaders couldn't handle their loss of power and so were planning to come back and steal his followers from him.

Namon almost smiled as he stood over the dying man; obviously, he had made the correct choice by not making these three men generals in his army. Their amazingly quick failure proved them unworthy. He reached out to the man with the Force and grabbed him, bringing him to his feet. The man was either too hurt or too afraid to speak; all that came from his mouth were whimpers and moans of pain. Namon stared at the man, his stare boring into the man's quivering, begging eyes.

"Failure," he whispered harshly.

For a moment, Namon considered leaving the man to die painfully and slowly, or even to torture him for daring to attack the Lord Marshall, but he quickly dismissed the idea. The man was defeated and to continue this would be a waste of his time and would bring him down to the level of these failures.

He reached behind him and called his sword to the hand with the Force. He wrapped his hand around the long hilt and slashed at the man floating centimeters above the ground. His swords cut into the man's neck, slicing through the vertebrae and leaving his head hanging backwards, dangling by the smallest amount of flesh.

He wasn't sure how, but he knew he'd have to get rid of the three mutilated bodies. If any of the elites found out about the assassination attempt, they would insist on giving him a personal guard to protect against future attempts. Namon, however, needed time to himself; if there were people around him at all times, the chances of them finding out what he truly was increased exponentially.

He bent down slowly to pick up one of the bodies, but stopped when he felt a sharp stab of pain in his lower back. He reached behind him and felt for the small of his back to see what had happened. There was a sticky circular hole surrounded by his hard scales. His scales were melted away into a strange soupy-like material; he stuck his finger into it and found the squishy mess only went about three centimeters deep before reaching the thick skin beneath his scales.

Apparently his Force defence had been enough to save his life but not quite enough to block out the attack completely. This was an exciting prospect. His defence had always been the least effective part of his fighting, his sword being so much heavier than a lightsaber. If he could find a way to stop a lightsaber completely with only his body, he would be unstoppable.