Chapter Twenty-Six

In finally disbursing his mother's ashes, Menelaus remembered to do it with the hand that held the Prison Ring, awakening the specter to her homecoming. "Specter of the Ring, I hereby name you Talzin and release you from your prison. Rise free and powerful from the ashes of my mother to be born anew," he said. Several moments later, a green mist materialized and formed on the ashes of Menelaus' dead mother.

Whenever he threw some ashes across the sky, the green mist levitated above the ground as the ashes were carried across the air. "Thank you, my boy, for releasing me from my prison. Allow me then to reveal your story and the plan that your mother had concocted for this day," Talzin told him. Then Menelaus' perspective melted from the present day, showing him an eye he knew originated within his mind and allowed him to look into the past.

Menelaus saw a figure he recognized as his pregnant mother walking to the cave where the specter had been imprisoned. "Great spirit of the mountain, tell me what my child is so that I may please my lord," she asked.

"There is a price for such knowledge," said the specter.

"No price is too great, please tell me!" she begged.

"If you but instruct that your ashes be disbursed on Dathomir when you are dead, I will take care of the rest. Swear an inviolable oath that you will lend your ashes to my cause and I will tell you what you need to know about your child," the specter told her. Menelaus' mother swore a blood oath that she would offer her ashes to whatever cause the specter needed of them. The vision then skipped over to Menelaus' birth and the eyes of his father bearing down upon him as if in recognition of something about him before he was even born.

Then a flash and his mother was fleeing his father with baby Menelaus in tow, the ship crashing and Hyperion collecting him when she was dead. Everything was adding up nicely as to how he even ended up in Hyperion's care but not why he was called Surik. It sounded like the Jedi knew something but he continued to contemplate what the hell the hieroglyphs meant to anyone. He finished dispensing his mother's ashes among the currents when the vision parted, the specter being thanked for what it had given him before it disappeared upon the wind.

On the one hand, Menelaus was glad that she would be free but on the other he was going to miss the power she clearly had at her disposal. He cast the sack which had carried his mother's ashes over the edge of the mountain, his business done on Dathomir. After all, he knew about his birth, who his father was, and had a rough guess as to why he had been brought to Ando Prime. There was just one thing left and that was to mull over what the specter could've revealed to his mother that made her take flight from Verrin when she recovered from the act of childbirth.

The Jedi seemed to know something and when Menelaus came back, he asked if he had made any headway in deciphering them. "I'll have to come back with a team of archaeologists in order to know anything for certain. But I'm confident I have correctly interpreted what they mean to the best of my abilities. I can't tell you anything until I know for certain lest I cause premature fright in you or something similar," Inoy confessed to him. Clearly, he was hiding something but Menelaus knew better to push it, not when Inoy was sensing approaching entities.

The ignition of red lightsaber blades confirmed that they were trained Sith Lords and Inoy had his T7 ready for the ship for a quick getaway. Then he turned on a holocam he had to record the Sith that were about to attack himself and Menelaus. Igniting his own blade, he greeted them with the characteristic opening stance of Form III Soresu. "Jedi, you are trespassing on Imperial Sith grounds and are therefore in violation of intergalactic ordinance. State your name and your business in this part of Dathomir or we'll enjoy chopping you and your Padawan asunder," said one, a Cathar with a saberstaff.

"My name is my own business and this boy is not my Padawan. Merely a guest from a dear friend of mine who will be needing a place of his own soon," Inoy told them. The Cathar then smiled before leaping in, closing the space between them with a Force-imbued forward jump. Inoy intercepted the first strike of her blade long before she had a chance to slice his throat with it then intercepted the other end just before it could lacerate his right thigh.

When she tried to bash her hilt into him, he countered by feinting then slicing in a diagonal motion to cut her blade in half but he'd also sliced her throat in similar fashion. She was dead before she had even hit the ground while her Bothan friend made a run for Inoy with his traditional blade. Since he was several dozen meters away from the Cathar even before she made the leap, he had hoped to leap above Inoy and strike down to cut the duo in two. Instead, Inoy sliced his blade arm with his lightsaber then horizontally bisected him at the waist, leaving him for dead when his upper torso rolled to his right and nearly over the edge of the cliffside.

The lower half of the Bothan was sent flying over the cliff before Inoy had even registered that he'd killed his first two Sith lords since before the war ended. They reached the ship in time for Inoy to sense a much darker void like presence that made even Menelaus double over in nausea. There was only one Dark Lord that Inoy could think of who would have such a revolting presence, one of the last people he ever hoped to see in the galaxy. "Punch it, T7, we're getting out of here and headed Ord Cestus and then Dantooine from there!" Inoy ordered.

The droid wasted no time in arguing and catapulted them into the atmosphere before there was any chance of the Sith Master stopping them. However, they were pursued by Sith buzzards until they broke the atmosphere of the planet, Inoy taking to arms to shoot down one or two just before the void of space greeted them. Then hyperspace took over, transporting them back to Bandomeer where they would then return to the Hydian Way. He knew that once they were there the Sith wouldn't dare follow for fear of revealing their existence to the Republic.

But the fact that Inoy already had all the proof the Council could need that the Sith were still alive meant that they were found anyway. The reason he had chosen Ord Cestus for his next destination was a simple strategic one as well as geographical one. As well as being the nearest one at the angle of exit that his ship had chosen, it was also along the Celanon Spur which could then transport them back to Dantooine without a hitch. From there, he could then return to Dantooine, talk to the Council about his discoveries, then see to a course for Coruscant plotted for Menelaus' new home at the K'tani residence.

His ship was plotted for Ord Cestus as his first destination and he plotted about four or five other words. Agamar, Garqi, Mygeeto, and then Dantooine or so was the plan when he had arrived in Ord Cestus. Unfortunately, the Sith lord he had run from, the one Sith he hoped never to face again, already knew excellent where Inoy was going. It didn't take much for Inoy to realize that and it didn't take him much for him to realize that he was probably going to send someone after them.

When Lord Verrin heard about a Jedi Knight intruding upon the monument to his lost love with a Zabrak child, he was livid. He knew that now the Jedi would relay the existence of the Sith back to the Council and then Dathomir would no longer be safe for the Empire. Already, they'd risked losing Balmorra and now this preposterous incompetence on the part of two of his acolytes. When he saw the ship take off, he had half a mind to rip it out of the sky with the Force and bring everything crashing down.

But when he reached out with the Force, he saw something familiar and not because he knew the Jedi. Could it be that there was someone he knew on that ship, the boy perhaps? But how could he have known who it was if he had never even looked on the face of the boy before? "Master, something wrong?" interjected an acolyte. Verrin shook his head to return his mind to the present and turned to the acolyte speaking to him on the matter.

"Are there any coordinates derived from that ship that left?" Verrin asked.

"Yes, for Ord Cestus. Likely to get back onto a trade route and return to Dantooine, shall I provide you with them?" asked the acolyte.

"No, plug them into my apprentice's ship. Instruct him to hunt down that ship, find the boy accompanying Jedi Knight Inoy Llimetch and bring him to me alive. No exceptions," Verrin ordered. The acolyte nodded and marched off to deliver the instructions that Lord Verrin had conjured for his apprentice, Darth Khonsu.

Contemplating what could be awaiting him in sending his apprentice, he turned to the panel he had been constructing for his concubine and his son. He looked specifically at the panel with the birth of his son and the void that had been painted around his child. The Zabrak Sith Lord raised a curious eyebrow in the direction of the depiction of his son being taken by his love. Could it be that the boy was Surik, his long lost son returned to him at last?

If so, why had he come after all this time and why was it that he was in the company of a Jedi Knight? He respected Inoy, one of the few Jedi he could actually say that about, but he wasn't sure how the Nautolan could've found the kid. There were questions aplenty awaiting if the boy could somehow be captured and brought in for interrogation. But he knew his apprentice alone would not be enough to bring him in, he needed secondary resources that he could expend to bringing him back. So the first order of business was simple: get a physical description than impose a bounty for his safe delivery back to Dathomir if Darth Khonsu failed in his assigned mission.