"Master! Can't we rest? The Clones must have lost our trail by now!"
Master Khertmy turned his insectoid head to his apprentice, his mandibles chittering in contemplation.
The boy was doubled over, panting and leading against the wet stone wall of the old temple.
He sighed, carefully lifting a claw to scratch at his chiten.
"Very well, but we cannot stay here for long."
The boy nodded in exhausted understanding, flopping to the ground and drinking deeply from his canteen.
The Verpine Jedi Master pulled his cloak tighter around his lithe form, shuddering slightly.
He could never understand how the mammals could tolerate these temperatures; in his quarters and in the Roash system, he and his people all kept their dwellings pleasantly warm, although the others would often call the temperature 'sweltering'.
Khertmy again looked to his Padawan learner, the Pantoran now leading back to breathe after his deep drink.
It could, of course, just be his own species that was used to the cold.
Yes, that could be it.
The pair of them had been fleeing across the planet for the greater part of the year - or had it been longer? - fleeing from their old soldiers. And in that time they had needed to stay in small locations and cramped hideaways. It was just as well that fortune would lead them to a cold, wet hole like this one; if fate was kind, that meant that a warm dry place would be not far down the line -
His thoughts stopped, as he felt the instinct to bundle himself came back.
The cold.
"Master..?" Kemtu said nervously, worry clearly written on his face.
"I sense it too. Something is out there."
The temple shook lightly as a muted explosion echoed from the other side of the temple.
"They must have seen our tracks before the rain set in," Khertmy chattered with frustration.
"Come, there should be another exit that opens out deeper into the jungle."
"But what if there isn't, Master?"
He clicked his mandibles in a way that he noted sounded like the noises a human made when tutting.
"Have faith, my young Padawan. If there is not a path made for us…"
"We will make one!" His Padawan said enthusiastically, understanding the lesson as he ignited his lightsaber.
Khertmy splayed his mouth in a way that the two of them had come to know as a smile as the pair made their way into the temple, the two lightsabers of blue igniting the way.
Kemtu took the lead as they moved into the chambers, passing ancient tombs and old inscriptions long since worn away by the uncaring advance of water.
But Master Khertmy did sense the fear in his apprentice as they entered what must have been either a central burial chamber or a place where a cult would do their rituals, filled with a full platoon of battle droids.
He saw his apprentice immediately drop into a defensive stance, but then stand confused as the droid's inaction.
Khertmy hummed slightly in amusement.
"The droids have all been deactivated. It seems that the war is over."
He approached one, and turned his head slightly in an inquisitive manor.
"Over for years, it seems. These droids have moss and mold growing over them."
"This one has had water drip its way through the metal, Master!" Kemtu said, pointing to one droid who was nearly doubled over from the water collected in its ruined chasie.
Khertmy could not help but wonder at this lost force. Held in reserve by the separatist aligned natives - or perhaps left as a garrison - not at all long ago. But the vices of nature made these droids of war and death seem like relics of an ancient civilization, fitting in with the urns and forsaken stone coffins that were all around them.
He felt the chill again, and this time he was definitely sure it was not the cold of the rain soaked temple.
And with his advanced hearing, he could hear the vibrations and sonic waves of the Clone's footfalls and their radio chatter as they approached where they had rested.
Khertmy noticed with slight disappointment that Kemtu had left behind his water canteen.
A trail for them to follow.
"We should keep moving." He said, holding his lightsaber high to illuminate the room.
"The other entrance shouldn't be too far now, only a few more passages."
His estimate was correct in theory. The exit was indeed only a few passages away. However, time had clearly claimed more of the temple than they had previously thought.
The broken pillar and pile of rubble alone was evidence of that, but the vines and roots ensnaring the rocks like a wall of life and stone made it painfully clear.
"What now, Master?" Kemtu said nervously.
"We… We double back, cut our way out through one of the walls. The edge of the Pyramid shouldn't be too far-"
He felt his fists clench, and heard his apprentice gasp.
The Cold.
The two whirled, blades pointing to the darkness of the corridor they had just come from, where they heard it.
Footsteps.
Not a dozen, not two dozen, not even two people.
One set of footsteps, clicking along on the stones of the floor with the distinct noise of plastic on stone.
A lone trooper? That was unusual.
As the figure approached from the shadows, the Jedi saw their quarry.
A Clone, wearing the mud stained white armor with black ornamentation that he had come to know, wearing a cloak and wielding…
The green blade ignited, the figure holding themselves in an aggressive stance.
Whoever this was, this was no Clone.
The figure leaped forward, swinging the saber in a wide ark that slashed the walls to the attacker's left, leaving a hissing scar in the stone where the saber had passed.
Master Khertmy held his blade with both hands as he made a powerful overhead strike to cleave the dark warrior in two, but he was quick and alert enough to leap to the side as he swiped his lightsaber at Kemtu.
The Padawan only just rebuffed the attack and took a powerful swing at his assailant's legs, causing the armored figure to leap backwards from the pair of them and land hunched over on the ground like a loping beast.
The warrior lunged forward again, but Khertmy shoved him back with a powerful push of the Force.
The figure moved as if he ran into a solid object, but it did not force him back enough.
He tried again, this time with both of his hands as his apprentice pushed as well.
The armored stranger was pushed backwards, and he would have crashed into the temple wall as well if it weren't for him keeping himself from toppling over like a leaf in a storm by stabbing his lightsaber into the temple floor to keep himself upright.
With inhuman speed, the figure sprinted forward in a spinning leap, slashing at the Padawan before jabbing at Master Khertmy.
He hissed slightly as the blade narrowly grazed the chitin of his midriff, pulling the figure away as he stepped backwards; his clawed hand clutching his side.
"Master!"
"I am alright, Kemtu, he only scratched me!"
But what was done was done. Kemtu lunged forward with a bitter yell, his tattoos stretched taut or else crinkled by his rage filled face as he slashed and swung at the assailant.
And in doing so, Khertmy saw something strange.
His apprentice, in his blind rage and anguish, left his defense open nearly every time he attacked, yet the figure did not act on it, only deflecting the attacks with amateur blocks.
Until Kemtu swung his lightsaber downwards to cut off the right hand of the attacker, and swiping upwards at an angle to cut the assailant down.
"Padawan!" Khertny called out in worry and in righteous disappointment.
His apprentice had just killed a man in anger.
He stomped forward and spun his bewildered Padawan around, grasping both shoulders as his unmoving black eyes bore into his apprentice's yellow ones.
"A Jedi does not use anger or rage as a tool! Those are the ways of the Dark Side! Fear, Anger, Aggression, Rage, Hate, those are all things a Jedi is to never use!"
"But, Master-"
"But nothing! You must break off from this path before it consumes you as it did Master Dooku-"
"Master! It wasn't a person! Look!"
The Verpine turned to follow his apprentice's pointing, to the body of the attacker.
An empty suit of Clone armor and an old cloak. All sense of the shadow was gone, the lightsaber held in the now flattened hand of the empty glove. It was not even controlled by a droid, no sparks or electronic sputtering of destroyed motors and servos met his anteni; it was a simple, empty suit of armor with a lightsaber in it's glove, the empty fingers wrapped around it as if it were hand.
That is, before it leapt into the air and whipped back into the darkness where the armor had come from, where it made the distinct sound of a lightsaber smacking into an open palm.
"I should congratulate you, Jedi. Almost all of the others I have faced were slain by the armor. I have rarely needed to face a Jedi directly, and a Padawan! Rare are they in these dark times!" A mechanized voice called out, echoing slightly from the stone walls around them.
The electronic buzzing of electro staves sputtered to life as dark armored Clones emerged, standing as a vanguard by the edge of the darkness.
And in the shuddering light of the coursing purple electric currents, the figure appeared. Wearing armor not too different than that of a clone, but darker and… lighter, in a way. As if it were meant for dueling, rather than war.
And as he stepped into view the lightsabers ignited. The room was blinding, sabers of blue and green shining all around and circling the walls like sentient lanterns, crawling on the walls like insects.
That is, until they leapt from the walls one by one, trying to cut them apart as if they were held by invisible duelists.
But there was no one to cut, no one to disarm. Just a lightsaber that bent and would spin like a wheel in ways that would kill a normal dualist.
Khertmy did not see his apprentice fall, only heard the scream and the sabers assaulting him deactivate and return to the wall.
And all the while the three stood silent. The black Clones with their staves standing guard, watching, while the dark warrior between them let the blades clash and whirl.
Until, suddenly, they stopped.
The blades retreated to their places on the wall and circled, like predatory birds.
And the Clones parted, allowing for their dark master to approach, a blue lightsaber ignited in his hands
Kemtu's lightsaber.
The Rage, the anger, it all came in a shameful blur as he fought off the Dark warrior, fighting furiously and without mercy, swinging and chopping and slicing but no matter what he did, he was always blocked.
Using the Force, he summoned one of the sabers off of the wall, and attacked him with two blades, intent on killing his Padawan's murderer.
This was enough to arouse the attention of the black armored Clones, who lunged with a flourish of their electrostaves.
Khertmy made short work of them, leaving their pieces in a pile before he attacked again only to see his two blades blocked again by the lightsaber his Padawan created. The saber he had trained the boy with, watched him grow with.
The Sorrow, the Anger, the Rage, flowed from him freely.
Why would he care? He had to be one of the only Jedi left in the Galaxy. Who cares if he broke the code to avenge his Padawan.
With a yell he pushed away the killer before advancing aggressively forward with a harsh battlecry.
And as his blades connected to his apprentice's saber for one final time, he saw what he had done.
His anger, his rage, his suffering over the loss of his Padawan, had seeped from him like sap from a tree.
And the darkside bled every crystal of every saber in the passage crimson red, the color of the Sith.
Khertmy was too shocked to react as the warrior leapt back, wrenching the pair of lightsabers from his claws with the Force.
And he could do nothing but watch as the blades all turned towards him and impaled him in a thousand mortal blows, all but removing his lungs and cracking his chitin as if he were crushed by a rock.
His one undamaged eye cast one final look on the savaged and mutilated body of his apprentice, and saw his expression.
That of shock and fear.
He had lived long enough to see his master consumed by the darkside.
And with that final horror, he felt the darkness take him.
The holoprojector flickered to life as the Inquisitor pulled the tattered cloak around him, his thirty five lightsabers - now thirty seven - rattling from hooks all over his waist and chest as he pulled up the hood against the wind on the exposed summit of the temple's pyramid.
"First Brother, have you completed your mission?"
"I have. The Jedi on Mimban are no more."
"Good. The Purge Troopers?"
"Dead."
"I see. See if you can command a few of the more elite Clones of the forces there to replace them. Then, you must return to Nur at once. Lord Vader wishes to speak to all of us directly."
"Understood, Grand Inquisitor. I will leave immediately."
He flicked off the holoprojector and attached it to his belt as he slid down the face of the pyramid to the Clone basecamp below, approaching the commander as he saluted.
"Inquisitor, we have secured the perimeter and have begun excavation. Project Divination should begin short-"
"Good, Commander. But right now I need two of your best men."
The Commander nodded, motioning for two mud caked troopers to approach.
"This is Waxer, the other is Trudge. They've served since Ryloth, and have served the Empire well."
"Good. You two, with me. The Inquisitorious has need of you on Nur."