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"Direct confrontation in battle is the hallmark of a warrior, we must always be prepared to withstand a brutal assault by a superior foe, whether their superiority be in strength or firepower or numbers or skill. It is through resolve that we overcome their advantage, that we turn the tables on them and become victor instead of victim... Though... there is something to be said of subtlety... Humph, there is also something to be said of a big gun and lots of explosions. At any rate it makes life interesting to fight someone face to face, don't you think?"

Darth Revan to HK-47 shortly after the assassination of Senator Yuanis of the Echani

Chapter 24: A Shadow of His Former Self

Smoke rose slowly from a distant point in the desert and one figure moved quickly along the sand-dunes, a second across his shoulders as he stalked across the treacherous sand and scaled the edge of a high dune, tendrils of sand falling ever towards the abyss, swallowed by the shadows Tatooine's twin suns cast as they set in the distant horizon. Dust and sand rose in the air, a light wind creating a vortex of sand that obscured the retreating figure. Stopping, the figure turned, raising his arm and the pistol in his hands fired repetitively and with deadly precision, killing two Tusken Raiders as they charged headlong after him. Slipping and losing his footing, the figure and his burden rolled down the edge of the sand dune as a Tusken took a shot at them and Revan sneered to himself at the awkwardness of his burden, allowing the unconscious Jedi to continue her descent towards the ravine between the dunes while he used the Force to physically stop his descent and rolled into a crouch, taking careful aim with his modified pistol and squeezed off a single shot that struck the Tusken firing at him between the eyes.
Precisely four point two kilometers away, the Assassin Protocol Droid HK-47 marched steadily through the sand, one rust-colored hand clasped firmly on the arm of Griff Vao, practically dragging the Twi'lek on an efficient and sound trajectory towards the Meatbag settlement of Anchorhead. The Tusken Raiders within the village had chosen to respond to their presence with threats of violence, something the droid had taken as a literal threat to his new Master's life. Following protocol with glee, HK-47 had proceeded to annihilate precisely eighty-three percent of the Tusken Enclave's inhabitants before Master had ordered him to secure the Meatbag Griff Vao and take him back to Anchorhead unharmed. HK, disappointed to leave the slaughter he had just lain upon the Sandpeople had only protested for a moment before he found the concept of evading enraged Tusken Meatbags with the added burden of a pathetic and cowering Meatbag an intriguing challenge. Man-handling the fragile Twi'lek Meatbag was an added bonus and the Hunter-Killer droid took extra pleasure in the darkened bruises on the Twi'lek's body that he was responsible for.

Madness was a part of life, Revan had mused once upon a time. The chaos, the anarchy of the free will of each individual sentient being was all a simple madness, a cacophony of voices screaming at one another for dominance where only the strongest, the most tenacious of individuals dominated the others. The voices were there to be dominated, not reasoned with. Reasoning with something, seeking a camaraderie was to accept that the being was an equal. Revan had no equals, not yet at least. Only those who were weaker, and those who were stronger. Strength was all that mattered, the strong rule and the weak perish, it was not only the primary law of nature, but also the supreme truth of the galaxy. There was no peace, there was no justice, there was only strength. As a Mandalorian it had been a teaching he had taken to heart, as the only Mandalorian to have touched the Force, thanks to his unique parentage, it was what kept him going, kept him on his feet when he should have collapsed in pain or exhaustion or delirium.
The air was cold, freezing and a mist came from Revan's mouth as he moved through the unstable sand of Tatooine's desert, puffs of fog lingering in the dry, cool air before they dispersed into the greedy desert. A faint blue shadowed the former Mandalorian and Revan Qel-Droma, the last of the Mandalorian Bloodraven Clan by his mother and the last of the Qel-Droma family by his father, Ulic, struggled on, sweat causing tendrils of steam to escape his body in the chilled nighttime air of Tatooine's desert. Relentlessly, with a stamina that would have put even his dead mother to shame, Revan endured the pain, endured the exhaustion as he moved on, forty kilometers from the destroyed Tusken camp and nearly thirty from the only civilized settlement on Tatooine's surface. In a fire-man's carry, an unconscious Jedi rested across Revan's shoulders, a bruise on her forehead telling of the reason for her state while a trail of blood leaked across her pale features and onto Revan's cloak, staining the already soiled brown a dark crimson as a small cloud of fog came from her nostrils, telling that she was at least alive.

Revan moved on, ever towards the dark presence of the Starmap and its behemoth of a guardian, the Krayt Dragon was easily sensed in the distance, hunting in the night after spending most of the day sunning itself in Tatooine's mid-day heat before it became too much even for the lizard and it moved to rest in the cave before nightfall came. Now the dragon moved through the desert, tracking rogue Bantha with a stealth that was mind-boggling for its gargantuan size. A moan, small and feminine caught Revan's ears and the deposed Sith Lord stopped, kneeling to the ground and laying his burden down as he took a quick survey of his surroundings in through two brown, attentive eyes. Exhaustion, pain could wait. A gentle slap to the Jedi's face caused two blue eyes, bright with pain yet clouded a murky, pale blue with confusion and sickness to open. Groggily, Kaera Nurr sat up, resting her left hand on her forehead, where a Tusken Raider had brutally smashed a Gaffi stick into her skull. Only a precise shot from HK-47 into the Tusken Raider's back had saved the Jedi's life and Kaera wondered briefly how she came to be where she was when her last coherent memory was all Hell breaking loose within the Tusken Camp.

Peace had not been an option the Sandpeople were willing to broach. They simply wanted all things unnatural gone from their world. An anger, primal and so focused that it sickened her senses was directed at not her, but Revan and she remembered the slow, dangerous smile that crossed Revan's face before the Tusken Chieftain had whispered one word to the man, a word strangely understandable.

"Revanchist."

Living up to his namesake, Revan had effectively and brutally annihilated any Tusken warriors that had assaulted him, a slaughter the likes of which Kaera had never witnessed before had been unleashed as a blur of brown robes and a red blade twisted in a whirlwind of destruction, fires had started in the camp by the time she had found Griff Vao's cell and freed him as well as a group fo captured Jawa. Revan had chased off after a Tusken that had fled from him and Kaera was surprised when Griff Vao had backed away from her, cowering. She had turned and, through some stroke of luck killed the charging Tusken Raider before four more descended upon her, charging with suicidal abandon and knocking her to the ground before three more had come, two falling to blasterfire from a blood-soaked assassin droid before the third had charged at her, staggering as his Gaffi stick brutally clipped her skull.

She had been lucky, she knew, that it had been the blunted edge and not the jagged cutting edge that had struck her and she recalled a dazed effort to fight off the dead weight of four Tusken corpses literally piled on top of her before she had faded into oblivion, awakening only when a jarring pain had laced up her side, accompanied by another and another as Revan's effort to escape from the vicinity of the Tusken camp had jarred a bruised rib in her chest. Groaning, Kaera tried to find her center, the calm of the Force descending over her and muting the pain in her body slightly before everything around her focused into crystal clarity. Dazed, blue eyes widened slightly in surprise at how much distance Revan had covered in the desert and she glanced with a small amount of concern at the Mandalorian, seeing the only child fathered by the Dark Lord and Dark Jedi Ulic Qel-Droma.

Revan's heritage was forgotten, buried beneath falsified records that only a Jedi Librarian, the Jedi Knight Kreia to be precise; could alter and the parentage of Revan was never asked, his Mandalorian name being accepted as his own while only Kreia and the boy himself lived to know his father had once been a powerful Jedi and Dark Lord of the Sith. Had the Jedi known of Revan's father, they would have known where his astounding power had come from, but Kreia had hidden the facts well, using the Clan name of Revan's slain mother as the boy's surname. Qel-Droma was a name that was as cursed as it was revered within the Jedi Order and with the death of Duron Qel-Droma, Guun Han Saresh and Shaela Nurr at the conclusion of the Great Hunt, no Force-sensitive members of the Qel-Droma family had been considered for acceptance within the Jedi Order. Revan had never met his cousin Duron, just as Kaera had never met her aunt Shaela and while Revan knew from his mother the name of his father and understood the logic in keeping it hidden, he had resented the Jedi for their prejudice towards his family following his father's fall.

How easily dozens of generations of loyal and honorable Qel-Droma were forgotten in the wake of a single fall. The Council was fearful, distrustful of the name after Ulic's fall and was partially responsible for Duron's death on Korriban because of their hypocritical fears. Not reinforcing Duron, Shaela and Guun had been due to the fears of the Council in the nephew of Ulic following in his uncles footsteps. Revan had not wanted to tempt the same prejudice as the son of a deposed Dark Lord and for a time he had believed in the Jedi, at least until his people had invaded the Republic and the Jedi had hidden away in their temples and enclaves, hiding and waiting out the war they should have fought, would have, had the Council not been ruled by fear. When he'd taken on the mantle of Dark Lord of the Sith, Revan had found it fitting, though he never spoke of his parentage to anyone other than Kreia. Ever. The Jedi would only use the confirmation of their fears as a way of oppressing others, of keeping others from their full potential. Life was the pursuit of strength, the fulfillment of one's full potential and Revan saw it was a great crime to restrict one's self to a narrow-minded and dogmatic practice of a dying and weakened Jedi Order.

Revan smirked faintly in his exhausted state as his thoughts dwelled on family. Bastila's mother and Mission's brother had brought up memories of his own twisted little family and he found the whole state of affairs amusing, if not a little ironic. His father had been the Dark Lord of the Sith before him, the one to survive after Exar Kun's destruction on Yavin IV and Revan and his former Jedi Master Kreia had had a good, long laugh at that. Glancing down at the semi-alert Jedi, Revan deemed them safe for the moment as he holstered his pistol, glad he had brought a ranged weapon and not just his lightsabers. It would have been much more troublesome evading the Tusken patrols and survivors had there not been a brief, fairly weak sandstorm just before dusk and Revan was aware he was covered, quite completely in sand. Shifting slightly, the deposed Dark Lord slowly removed his cloak, shaking out the sand before he calmly brushed off what he could of his robes, grooming himself of all things in the middle of a desert under a clear, freezing sky.

Turning her attention from Revan's ineffective effort to rid himself of sand, Kaera Nurr slowly blinked at the dark fluid covering her palm as she removed it from her head. Blood, caked with sand was visible in the vibrant blue cast by the stars above and the Jedi Knight shifted uncomfortably, glancing back at Revan as the deposed Dark Lord frowned at his gloves, his fingers flicking at nearly invisible particles of sand as annoyance set over his aura. Resisting the urge to find amusement in the ridiculous display, Kaera glanced off towards the lights cast far on the horizon from Anchorhead, her blue eyes glowing faintly in the starlight. The view of the stars was incredible, almost breathtaking from the desert but Kaera focused on the here and the now. They had escaped from the Tusken Camp, Revan carrying her most of the way and she was silent a moment, staring off towards Anchorhead in complete silence before speaking to Revan. He had saved her life, not a simple task as they were outnumbered by close to a thousand and Kaera knew Revan could have easily left her behind. He should have, as a Dark Lord of the Sith, he would have but something about him was different, changed from what she had expected of a Sith Lord and she found it an unpleasant reality that invaded on her preconceptions and the resentment she had felt for the Dark Jedi and Sith.
"Thank you..."
Revan froze a moment at the soft voice, glancing towards the still-sitting Jedi Knight with a single raised brow before he shrugged it off, returning his attention to his soiled gloves.

"We had a deal. My word would have little to no meaning if I had left you to your fate in that camp and I do not break oaths lightly."
This, Kaera knew. Revan had taken an oath as a Jedi Knight to follow the will of the Force and protect the Republic and while it seemed as if Revan had done the opposite, the Jedi Masters had always told them to trust in their feelings and Revan had, as a Dark Lord of the Sith, followed his feelings to the extreme. Frowning, Kaera wondered as to the Mandalorian's motives before she decided she could do with a more level view of their situation and forced herself to stand, studiously ignoring the lack of help Revan offered her. Part of her was pleased he made no move to help her to her feet while another was concerned. It could mean he simply had no cares for her comfort, or bad manners, but Kaera doubted that. Likely, Revan was playing some psychological game with her, letting her think she was in control of the situation when he had literally carried her across an unknown expanse of desert, on foot in an amazing amount of time.

Revan ignored the Jedi as she stood to her feet, content to remove the flask tied to his belt as he took in a small mouthful of water, sloshed it around his mouth before spitting it out into the sand. Wasteful, perhaps, but his mouth had been filled with particles of sand and he was in no mood to be drinking sandy water. Brushing off his beard carefully, Revan took a small, calculated drink from the water container, offering the flask to Kaera as she eyed him with suspicion.

"You're wasting water."
Kaera chastised, taking a drink and immediately coughing as she tried to swallow the combination of sand, blood and water in her throat. Most of the water ended up in the sand and Revan said nothing, merely staring at the darkened sand, where the mixture of water, sand and Kaera's blood had ended up before looking to Kaera. The Jedi sighed, following Revan's previous example and took a short, satisfying drink of the surprisingly chilled water. Apparently the flask was not too greatly shielded to the elements and Kaera took another, liberal drink of the flask, considering her options while Revan stared through narrowed brown eyes at her forehead, a small frown on his lips before he blinked and the expression melted away no nothing. There had been concern for a brief moment, but Revan decided against feeling it an instant later. Kaera was a Jedi, an enemy and he had no assurances aside from her foolish commitment to the Jedi ways that she would not stab him in the back once they reached the Starmap. Deciding they had wasted enough time, Revan marched over to Kaera, snagging the flask of water from her hands as she attempted to take another drink and replaced the cap before tying the container to his belt.

"Don't drink it all, we might need it."
Kaera glanced at her own belt, her own flask of water conspicuously absent and she sighed, silently agreeing with the deposed Sith Lord before following in his wake as he moved through the darkened desert, puffs of vapor hanging suspended in the air as he passed, the atmosphere of Tatooine greedily devouring every microbe of water that was left behind by the two Force-users.

Hours passed before Kaera Nurr worked up the courage and the clarity to speak to Revan. The man had been a Dark Lord of the Sith, the unrepentant and purest of evil that could exist in the galaxy, the polar opposite of a Jedi and the Light and Kaera wondered briefly what insanity had gripper her that she could form a truce, let alone co-exist with such a dark being for any period of time. She's respected Revan and the Revanchists of the Mandalorian Wars. Jedi who had chosen Exile to protect the Republic, had turned their backs on the safety and comfort of the Order to save lives, only... it had cost more lives than anyone could have guessed.

"How do you live with yourself?"
Revan may have been a Mandalorian, but he was human and Kaera knew that humans felt, it was only natural. As a Jedi, she suppressed, moved beyond her personal feelings and sought only balance, only serenity and peace while the Sith embraced their baser emotions, becoming nothing more than madmen and murderers when they fully gave in to darkness. Revan all but stopped in place, his breath fogging the air in front of him and the mist hanging eerily still in the dry, dark air of Tatooine. A slight breeze caused the fog to disperse before it was replaced by another and Kaera noticed the way Revan's hands clenched as he honestly considered her question.

"I don't."
Revan muttered, almost offhandedly with a slightly confused expression. He did not feel, did not allow himself to feel what he was doing. There was only logic, only the Force and he did what was needed, completed the task as a droid would and he separated his anger, his hatred, his resentment and his guilt from those actions. He felt nothing, nothing real anyways. Annoyance, disgust, those were always there, phantoms of a disillusioned servant of the Force that had lost his way and Revan had fallen back on the Mandalorian ways, the ways of the Sith, followed the path his parentage demanded and he found himself relieved to feel nothing.

Guilt, pain, sorrow. It had been a constant companion during the Mandalorian wars, when he watched the others that had followed him, the Revanchists; slaughtered and tortured, mutilated and maimed as the war dragged on. Wounds inflicted by his own people upon the brothers and sisters he'd grown alongside. It was only a matter of time before the weight of causing the death of his own people, in either case, Jedi or Mandalorian; came crashing down on his psyche and Revan had gone mad for a short time, had given in to the weakness his humanity left him and he became a monster, unfeeling and uncaring of the world around him. Until Malak's betrayal. Until a Jedi Padawan had so foolishly saved his worthless life and bound herself to him, likely for eternity.

"I have not been myself, Kaera Nurr, since the moment Bastila Shan saved my life on the bridge of my flagship. The... emotions I feel are hers, not mine. She bonded with my mind, my essence to save my life, at such a great cost to herself and it awakened... is awakening parts of myself I never fully explored until Taris. I am not Darth Revan, nor am I Revan Bloodraven, or Revan Qel-Droma, or even that pawn, Tauryn Katarn. I'm none of them, yet all of them. A son of the Mandalorians, a Jedi Knight, the successor in blood and by acts of the Mantle of Dark Lord of the Sith and a soldiers, living long-past his own time."
Revan frowned, not sure why he had revealed so much about himself, turning, the deposed Dark Lord saw the look of shock in Kaera's face and knew she was thinking along similar lines.

"I fought from necessity, because I did not know what else to do. I fought, not because it was the right thing to do, but because it was the necessary thing to do. I coated the galaxy in a darkness that even the Sith find hard... find impossible to control and now I find myself without a purpose. I don't live with what I've done, Kara, because I do not feel, do not associate with my actions... at least, not until that bloody Padawan- No, I won't blame her for this infection upon my mind, my thoughts. She had no idea what she was doing and now I see myself through her eyes, I see the monster and the man, I see what I've done and feel how she feels, yet I, Revan, feel nothing. It is through Bastila Shan that I gain a semblance of compassion. Her nature has infected me because of this bond and I find it difficult to block her thoughts, block the horror she feels at what I am. Yet... she is an incredibly compassionate person, I cannot even begin to fathom through logic or emotions why she feels compassion for me, but I know if this bond were broken, if she were to no longer feel as she does that I would reclaim the man I was."
A chill passed through the Jedi Knight and she realized just how fragile the civility, the neutral and reasonable Revan that had surfaced on Taris was and she realized that Bastila Shan was the key to all this. As a Sith Lord, Revan had turned off his capacity to feel and only when Bastila Shan had combined the essence of her mind and soul to his, did it become necessary, possible for him to feel anything at any real level. He'd surrendered himself to his fate beforehand but a glimpse of Bastila's compassion, of her capacity to forgive, had given him a brief hope of redemption. A confused, almost disgusted look crossed Revan's features as he considered these thoughts, his hands clenched into fists as he fixed dark, brown eyes onto the Jedi before him.

"I am not a good man, I am not a moral man. I have limits to the depths of darkness and evil and depravity I will practice, or allow to be practiced in my midst and so I will not force Bastila Shan to remove this bond, I will not violate her mind and remove this... thing that weakens me. But I will also not abide the foolish notion of redemption when I feel no remorse, no guilt... no peace. Until there is peace, I cannot think of redemption and peace, my dear, is something that none of us will ever see. It is the way of the universe to make war upon itself and there will be no peace, no redemption for me. I can only hope to- I can only try to limit the damage I have done and this thing, this being you see before you is not Revan. I am merely an echo of him, a fragment of a much larger individual, torn apart and put back together, incomplete, tainted by Jedi tampering and I will not rape another's mind as mine was raped, I will not force such a violation upon the very essence of a being. Open your eyes to my Force-aura, Jedi. See what cannot be changed."
Kaera did so, without hesitation and knew in that instant, after listening to Revan's detached voice and the subtle disgust in his tones that he would never force himself on anyone, regardless of the situation. It was a baser instinct within the man, one drilled into him since before he could remember that abhorred him to no end. The Jedi had no such qualms with violating Revan's mind and trying to change him, but his aura in the Force was too clouded- too dark for the process to remain intact and it was in that moment that the Jedi Knight in Kaera Nurr understood the Dark Lord in Revan.

He would murder, maim, destroy and torture, but he would not assault an individual in such an intimate matter as shattering their mind, would not physically do the same. The Jedi realized it was a Mandalorian virtue, one that conflicted with the Sith ways but which Revan would never release. Juhani, what had been done to her, Revan saw as a weakness of body and mind, a depraved act of a coward who tainted, destroyed utterly those weaker then them. Revan would kill himself to save his honor before he would do such a thing and Kaera found the entire ordeal disturbing. The Jedi had violated Revan in much the same way the slaver Xor had violated Juhani. They had taken away his choice, taken away his will and Forced his body to respond to their demands and she was disgusted with the thought, one that had idly passed through her mind but had lacked the clarity that the expression on Revan's face forced her to see.

"Bastila Shan is... I suppose you could say, my conscience and it is not I who feels, but her. I am... a parasite, leeching off of her emotions and her aura to survive, there is no other comparison in my mind. But the relationship of symbiotic. She keeps me alive and forces me to feel as she does, but I make her stronger as she delves ever deeper into the powers this bond opens between us. I cannot understand how it is possible, but... things are changing and I cannot be the man I was, be the Jedi, Sith or Mandalorian. I am the sum of all of my parts, the end of those men's lives and all you see before you is a phantom, a ghost of the past. A man who should have died long ago..."
A pointless existence, that was all that was left. There was no fate, no destiny laid out before him, only the promise of more violence, of more pain and more guilt and sorrow and Revan wondered why the Jedi had gone through the trouble to save him. He had not wanted to die, had not wanted to cease to exist in this realm, but he had also not cared to his fate, not cared where his actions would lead him so long as the galaxy as a whole survived the coming storm that the True Sith were sure to unleash.

It left him in a very gray area, neutral, neither Jedi not Sith, but both. A memory of a great SIth Lord and a great Jedi Knight but not quite the same. He was weaker than he was as Darth Revan, but stronger than he was as the Revanchist, as the General Revan and Revan knew his powers would only grow, but then, so to would his connection with Bastila Shan and he wondered if his fragile sanity, what remained of who he had been so long ago, could survive the continued connection with the Jedi Padawan. She had breathed life into him, saved him but in doing so had also damned him to a fate worse than death. He would find no peace when her thoughts, her morals, so different from his own would assault him at every turn. The bond was growing stronger and with it, the Padawan's emotional responses to the memories in Revan's mind plagued the former Jedi Knight and he was left with only the fragments of who he was to hold any semblance of sanity.

It never occurred to Revan that Bastila was in a similar state of distress. As Bastila's emotions became Revan's, so to did his powers, his focus became hers and Bastila found the world that was opened up to her Force-senses, strengthened to crystal clarity by Revan's power; a terrifying thing. The galaxy through Revan's eyes was a dark place and while Bastila and many other Jedi had been disheartened by the Jedi Civil War, none had guessed as to the scale with which Revan used the Darkside as a weapon, used it to shape the very nature of the Force and of the galaxy.

"Revan.. Qel-Droma?"

Revan frowned, pulling away from his morbid thoughts. The thoughts of a dead man, lingering because of a Jedi Padawan and he stared impassively at Kaera Nurr, raising a brow slowly in silent acknowledgment. Kaera's features were pale, though a look of surprise and wariness was clear.
"As in Ulic Qel-Droma?"
Revan nodded slowly, allowing the Jedi to study his features. He's gotten many of his father's features, the hair and the eyes, but his facial structure was mostly his mother's, angled and sharp, cold and slightly oppressive. Ulic's features had been worn, aged unnaturally by the time of his death and the records of Ulic's image had been from his time as a Jedi Knight and Sith Lord. It was a bit ironic to Kaera that she, the last of the Nurr family in the Jedi Order would be traveling with the last of the Qel-Droma line, just as her aunt Shaela had with Duron before they'd disappeared during the Great Hunt.

"I can see it now..."
Kaera muttered, eyeing Revan's features closely. He was Mandalorian, of that she had no doubt but he was not as tall, not as burly as most of his people, more... compact, she would say. He was still a tall man, standing just over two meters, but he was not a solid wall of muscle or a solid and towering mass of man like Malak. No, Revan was just built enough to have strength, but also mobility, agility. A carefully sculpted body to suit his fighting style, one unique to himself. A mixture of Jedi, Sith, Mandalorian and Echani fighting styles. One he had developed over the course of his life to make him one of the most deadly men in the galaxy.
"Do not forget who I am. I do not seek redemption because I believe it cannot be for me. I know what I did, chose to act as I did and for that I will be lost to oblivion when I pass on from this realm, but I... do not wish to be an enemy of the Order or the Republic... or even Malak."

The surprise on Revan's face as he said Malak's name was also on Kaera's and the Jedi frowned, tensing suddenly as a warning pulsed through the Force. Revan did not seem to notice, his eyes focused skyward, staring no doubt in the direction Malak would have been and Kaera blinked away the fog in her mind, searching the desert warily. Something was wrong, something was-

"Oh Bloody Hell."
Revan snapped his gaze from the stars to Kaera's face, eyeing the Jedi's horrified expression for only a second before he turned, looking up again and laughing mirthlessly as the gargantuan form of a Krayt Dragon's head looked down on them, its forked tongue flicking from its mouth and tasting the air, trying to sense the prey it had smelled moments before. Kaera glanced at Revan, the deposed Sith Lord's face a mixture of amusement and a bit of caution as he absently brushed his forehead. Kaera, unconsciously repeating the gesture felt the dull ache of the gash on her forehead and she wince as the Krayt Dragon looked down, directly at her and gave a low, rumbling growl. Blue and red blades snapped to life in the same moment, the Krayt Dragon's poor eyesight picking up the bright blades standing out against the darkness and it turned its head from side to side, uncertain of which prey to stalk before the blue beam slashed across its massive leg. Howling in pain, the Krayt Dragon thrashed violently as more searing wounds struck its flesh and it howled long into the night, its cries causing the Tusken Raiders that had been stalking Revan and Kaera to stop their pursuit, their brown-clad forms turning and running into the night in terror.

Kaera managed to strike the killing blow to the massive Krayt Dragon, having climbed into its back after Revan had tried, and failed to sever its spinal column and was thrown off by the beast's thrashing. Kaera had managed to scale the thrashing creature's side and drive her azure blade into its brain, a violent spasm shuddered along the Krayt before it fell still, letting out a long, final breath. A muffled curse and the hissing of a lightsaber drew the Jedi Knight's attention to Revan as the deposed Dark Lord sliced away a chunk of the Krayt Dragon's leg, the smell of burnt animal flesh lingering in the air. Dropping from the Krayt's back, Kaera approached Revan warily, seeing that he was trying to cut away the beast's forward left leg with his lightsaber. A closer inspection showed that Revan's left arm was buried beneath the creature's mass and Kaera winced in sympathy, moving to Revan's side and motioning for him to cease his efforts. A look of disgust crossed Revan's face at being helped by a Jedi before he flicked off the switch to his lightsaber, the faint blue glow of Kaera's blade glowing in his eyes as he watched her quickly and quietly cut away the creature's thick scales and flesh.

"Argh!"
Revan snarled, pulling his hand free of the much lighter weight, before he stared down at his smashed fingers and ruined hand. It could be repaired in a matter of a day or so with a boneknitter and his Force-powers, but Revan knew his own Force-healing had already kicked in and the bones were mending back together, incorrectly. With a wordless growl, Revan kicked the side of the Krayt Dragon's corpse, clipping his lightsaber to his belt as he took his right hand and clasped his left, straightening the bones and fractures slowly, shivering in pain as he set them and held them in place. Kaera, checking the medkit she had with her knew it lacked the equipment necessary to repair Revan's injury, but she found several splints and with a nod of confirmation from Revan went about setting the delicate bones in his hand. Revan was breathing heavily through the entire process, his left eye twitching in a spasm as Kaera set his shattered digits. By the time the task was complete, Revan's skin had become fairly pale, though he remained alert and thoroughly annoyed as he delivered another kick to the Krayt Dragon's corpse for good measure.

"Bloody creature."
Revan snarled, pulling his blaster pistol free and knowing he wouldn't be using his lightsaber again until his hand healed properly. Taking off the gunbelt, Revan allowed Kaera to fashion a makeshift sling and adjusted his injured arm while the Jedi checked its position and subtly sent out a small pulse of Force-energy to ease the pain and help heal the injury. They'd still need a boneknitter, but Revan's hand was set as properly as it could be and Kaera had a sneaking suspicion that his forearm was damaged as well. Even if he were wearing Mandalorian gauntlets, the pressure from the Krayt's massive weight would still be damaging.

Injuries taken care of, Revan and Kaera made their way into the Krayt Dragon's lair, the pitch black of the cavern so oppressive in Tatooine's night that Kaera drew her lightsaber, using the blue beam to cast a glow of her surroundings. A flickering through the Force drew the Jedi Knight's attention to a reflection in the distance, obsidian reflecting the glowing of her blade right back at her. Approaching the ancient relic cautiously, Kaera deactivated her lightsaber, pulling a datapad from her belt and recording the Starmap's information before she allowed her eyes to linger on the relic in silent thought. The darkside of the Force emanated from the relic, confusing the Jedi as she approached the device, touching it with her hand and giving it more attention than she had the one on Dantooine. Nemo's death had effected her at the time and she had little interest in studying the Starmap there on Dantooine, but here, in this cavern, the Starmap was so ancient, so utterly out of place that she wondered how it could have survived. Unconsciously voicing her thoughts, the Jedi started slightly as Revan's voice answered her.

"The Starmaps, the Star Forge itself, even the Temple that was the seat of power for the Infinite Empire are all machines, built through similar means to Sith Alchemy. You recall that ship Exar Kun used to destroy the Cron Star Cluster and Ossus? Naga Sadow's ancient battleship. It was basically a giant Force-battery that allowed the Force-users in control of it to harness their energy and destroy entire stars by creating subspace tears within them. The Rakatan technology is similar, each is Force-sensitive, though its purpose is for regeneration and not destruction. They infused the Force in their ships, buildings, weapons, everything... It somehow allowed the technology to survive for tens of thousands of years... to slowly rebuilt itself despite the damage time had done to it. This device looks brand new simply because it has the ability to restore itself to its programmed parameters, though the information that was stored within it has long since been lost to time, physically destroyed despite the device's restored functions. It cannot recover lost information, but it can restore itself. Fascinating technology, really."

Jedi often used lightsabers in a much more mundane way, bonding with their weapons and giving the lightsabers a small presence within the Force, simply from their maker's care. It was interesting, but also disturbing and Kaera turned away from the device, spotting Revan moving through the darkened cavern, using the light cast by the Starmap's hologram to locate the remains of Bastila Shan's father. Kneeling slowly beside the maimed body, Revan removed his sling before following suit with his cloak and slowly wrapped the remains, resetting his arm in the make-shift sling and pocketing the holocron the man had been carrying. It was damaged, but only slightly and the information would be intact. With some difficulty, Revan managed to lift the body and set it across his shoulders, though it took Kaera's help for that and the two vacated the cave, moving sedately towards Anchorhead. Revan cursed Czerka Corporation for not allowing air traffic outside of atmospheric entry and landing within the settlement. Any unofficial air or spacecraft would be intercepted by the orbiting Czerka security cruisers and Revan wondered why he didn't bother with bringing his swoop bike, sweat forming on his brow despite the chill of Tatooine's night. Next time he'd plan ahead.