14-- Farsight
Red dust, kicked up once by armies, once by Sith Academy students, again by Revan, again today, blew across the cragged landscape, and Darth Maul and Darth Sidious blinked it away. They stood before the mouth of a tomb on this dusty world Korriban, listening to the howling wind, but more to the low growls and whispers of the Force's latent (but oh so ready here, mewling for release --) darker side.
Sidious' reedy voice wormed into the silence. "Darth Revan walked here once. The records she made tell of a weapon forged by Sith alchemy, a knife which could cut time as well as skin. You will retrieve this artifact from the tomb for me."
"Yes, my master."
The apprentice walked out of the cave some hours later. In one hand he held a disk of silver, an ornament made to fit the hand and ringed with four swept-back blades. The folds of his cloak over his right shoulder were shiny with blood, and his Force sense roiled with memories of ambushes, of turbulence in the cave-quiet depths heralding the approach of creatures bearing unknown poisons, demigorgons he had slain.
He presented the weapon to Sidious.
The Force flowed around the artifact as soon as the Sith Master touched it. He sensed a flare of power, a beacon as if the Jedi Order were all dim night. Then he saw a battle, Darth Maul against a young Jedi, and he saw the outcome, his apprentice cast down into a pit, the Jedi taking none of the dark power that he had been so close to receiving from his pride and anger but rushing to his weak and dying mentor's side instead.
This meshed with other visions Sidious had experienced before. Maul would die, the Sith Lord knew, by a Jedi's hand, after serving his purpose—after disrupting the comfortable, material worldview of the noble Republic versus the greedy Trade Federation with the subtle, supernatural third party of the Sith. These visions were not all that the artifact would grant, though—simply a side effect of interest.
He asked his apprentice, "And what did you see?"
Maul replied, "A confidant Jedi Master, hewn by a red lightsaber." The thin lips quirked in a quiet, savored smile that burst more strongly in the Force than even in his bright eyes. Sidious smiled too, at the coming triumph and at his apprentice's delusion, and let a laugh escape him to cackle among the rocks.