Chapter 28
He had experienced enough of these to know that this was no ordinary dream. It was indeed a vision, a vision of the future. From the looks of it, it was in the very near future. The Room of a Thousand Fountains in the Coruscant Jedi Temple was battle scared and heavily damaged. The harmony and balance that hundreds of generations of Jedi had invested in it gone instantly and Revan felt a pang at his heart. One of the truly most beautiful sights in the Galaxy, destroyed.
But as he turned to look at the center of the room, his sadness was instantly replaced with astonishment and fear. There was the clashing and banging of lightsabers and the grunts and groans of the Jedi Council going up against the unnatural stillness and ease of Arenna Kai. She was holding her own against the five most powerful Jedi in the entire Galaxy.
Revan knew that he was sleeping, he knew what he was seeing was in no way happening right now, but what if this was the for certain future? What if she dismantled the entire Jedi Order from the inside out? And if she could take on the entire council, how would he fair against her in open combat. He had to know, he just had to know now and there was nothing that was going to stop him. It was possible to foresee scenarios if one tried hard enough and if one was extremely in tune with the force. The ability to do it at will was usually reserved for the Jedi Grand Master and the Dark Lord of the Sith respectively. Luckily he currently held one of those titles.
It took an awful amount of focus to push his force awareness into the future. The complexity of time was fairly easy to unravel with the power of a master of the force. And when the vision finally came to him, he found himself standing on a simple stone floor in an enclosed space. It took him a little while to realize that he was standing in the heart of the Rakatan Temple on Rakata. The temple served as the headquarters for the General Staff of the Sith Navy and Military. A duel with Arenna there had the potential to cause serious damage to the Military Infrastructure that had been meticulously built.
He heard the discharge of lightening behind him and with that he jumped around.
Revan was met with the sight of perhaps dozens of Dark Jedi. They were separated to the left and right and in between the two large groups was Arenna, himself and Bastila. However, the sight of Bastila's position on the ground, breathing heavily, sent his blood boiling and his heart racing with fear and anger. Bastila must have tried to duel Arenna herself and her current predicament confirmed his fear of Bastila meeting Arenna in combat. But with what he did next, that was what he expected himself to do.
Arenna positioned herself in her combat stance, ready to strike, but she wasn't accounting on what the Dark Lord would did next. He stood there, snarling and panting deeply at the sight of his apprentice and lover struggling to catch her breath and visibly trying ignore the pain of the large gash on her left arm. Revan then looked up and glared holes at Arenna. Revan knew how to fight and he knew how Arenna had an aptitude for reading people and their next moves, and that's why he needed to do what he was going to do quickly.
In blink of an eye, both of his hands shot up and massive, crackling waves of blue lightening shot out of his fingers. Everyone in close proximity, including Revan, who was merely seeing this as a vision of the future, felt the overbearing and all powerful discharge of pure and uncensored hate in the force. Revan knew that once he was angered, it generally built up, but this was a new level of anger that he was seeing. He watched as Arenna visibly struggled against the unending wave of force lighting and how his future self bared down on her with ease. Revan lowered his left hand and while keeping the right up, he used the force with his left to pick Arenna up in the force, "You thought that you could defeat me? There's a reason that I'm Lord of the Sith Arenna, I didn't claim the Mantle of Dark Lord for being passive or for being foolish."
With a large extortion in the force, he clenched his fist as tightly as possible and with the power of the force weighing down on every bone in her body, Arenna Kai's Spinal Colum shattered quite literally into a million fragmented, rugged pieces.
With that image in his mind's eye, Revan found himself tossed back into the present and back into consciousness. He began to breathe heavily as he realized that his entire body was now being scanned by large equipment that was attached to the ceiling of the medical bay. But he soon began to take deep breaths again and his muscles loosened up.
Was that the future?
Was he going to give a grandiose show of power in front of his Dark Jedi by snapping Arenna Kai in half like a twig? That would be an option that he would have to seriously consider. If they met in combat before this supposed event on Rakata took place and he failed to kill her. That had the ability to lower his standing in the Dark Jedi Corp. But if everything happened as he had foreseen it, no one would question him again and his most powerful rivals would be considered incredibly foolish to try and steal power from him.
"Three more minutes Revan and it should be finished then," Doctor Van reported.
Revan nodded, "Take your time, I'm feeling much better."
"I still need to run this to make sure that your back hasn't begun to fail," Van insisted.
He turned his head and looked at the doctor. He was laying on his stomach on the medical bed while the scanner went through him and it struck him heavily that in that very moment, he was at his most vulnerable, "And what would happen if the repaired bone and tissue begun to fail."
"Well," Van said, studying the instruments deeply, "I'd have to operate to repair the damage, but that would be a temporary measure. You'd need to have full on surgery to repair your back."
Revan sighed deeply, the painkillers must have been kicking in because he didn't feel at all apprehensive about it, "So is someone going to donate their spine to the Dark Lord?"
"You know how we'll have to procure the transplanted disks," Van commented, "We'd need to do it within two hours of the actual death of the 'donor' for the actual procured disks to take. I can see no other option, other than having me repair the damage to your back every single year."
The Dark Lord chuckled, "As much as I have faith in your ability to survive into old age, I can't have you at my side constantly for the rest of my life to repair my failing back. So it appears that I'll have to kill some unsuspecting person and take their spinal cord. Never thought I would ever say something like that, I've said morbid things in the past, but that was a true first."
"Well it's what you'll have to do," Van commented and then the medical equipment began to beep, a confirmation that it's scan was completed, "It looks like everything is okay now, those astronomically high stats that I took when you first came in are all down. That's a good sign, but there is an unusually high amount of stress in your repaired tissue in your back. I'll start running through the ships database the people that match your spinal structure, until then, you're going to need to have a numbing injection every two days. Are you prepared to do that?"
Revan swallowed, he hated having injections right into his back, but he had no other choice but to go through it. He simply sighed heavily and nodded, "Do your worst, Doc."
And before he had time to prepare himself, he felt the large needle penetrate his back and then he began to feel the injection taking effect on his weakened spinal muscles. He clenched his teeth as Doctor Van withdrew the injection from him, "Kriff that hurts, one of those every two days."
"I might have a donor for you tomorrow if you're lucky," Van snickered, "I'm your personal physician and a majority of my time is devoted to your health alone. I can have my attendants take over Medical Duty for the rest of the crew if you want me to focus full time on this."
He turned and smiled weakly at his doctor of a little nine years now, "Would you?"
"Of course," Van smiled, "Now I'm ordering you to go meditate, rest or whatever you do."
Authors Note:/ I am so sorry for the long wait, I've just have a lot of my plate right now. My work and my other stories have taken a little bit of precedent over this. But I'm going to try and update it every two weeks or so to get back on track. I have to admit though, I re-wrote the first half of this chapter about three times, and this one was the one I wanted to go with, though I wasn't happy with it. Just so you know, I'm planning to end this near the end of January of next year. I've been working on this for about a year, and I think that I can finish it up in the time frame that I've laid out. Just so you know, I want to stress that the first part of the chapter that is written in italics is not the ending, I didn't give it away, just remember that!
