The path to evil may bring great power, but not loyalty.
The pirates, as pirates tended to do, were carousing.
They seemed very impressed with Obi-Wan's exploits on Corellia, as well as the considerable loot they'd gained from the capital city while its residents were otherwise occupied.
They had taken off into hyperspace as soon as possible— they, like Obi-Wan, knew the value of a good exit. Now they were drinking.
Hondo had hemmed Obi-Wan in on one of the half-moon benches in the crew lounge, Hondo on one side, Reva and another pirate called Mentir on the other.
"That was kind of a lot of fun!" Hondo said. "Like we were the good guys!"
"Maybe they'll build statues of us," Reva said. She took a swig of alcohol that looked and smelled like hyperfuel. "We saved a planet!"
Technically, they had helped Obi-Wan save a planet, but he was willing to let that slide for the moment.
"Hondo-land," Hondo said, looking dreamy. "I think that is what they will call my amusement park."
Obi-Wan hid a grin behind his hand.
"What was that crazy thing anyway?" Hondo asked. "It was really weird. And I cannot believe you sent us to get the other ones! What if we had turned into those zombie things?"
"You wouldn't have," Obi-Wan said, putting his chin thoughtfully on his fist. "It's getting worse. They're gathering more power." He frowned. "Just finding them might not be enough any more."
Reva filled another dubiously clean glass with booze and slid it over to Obi-Wan. "Here, kid," she said. "You earned it. That was actually pretty entertaining. That city would have been completely dead without us."
"Getting paid to do the right thing!" Hondo said. "No wonder you Jedi are all high and mighty all the time."
"Jedi don't get paid," Obi-Wan said.
All the pirates gasped, dismayed and shocked.
"Then you really do need a drink," Reva said.
This was a common prank on the Outer Rim— get someone unsuspecting and naive from the Core to drink their incredibly high alcohol-content fare and laugh as they spluttered. But Obi-Wan was no novice; he looked them directly in the eye and took the whole thing in one swig.
"A good vintage," Obi-Wan said, carefully not coughing, his best placid Negotiator face in play.
"We have to get him on our crew," whined one of the pirates drunkenly.
Obi-Wan grinned and put the glass down. "Do you have a comms booth I can use?"
"Oh, sure, sure," Hondo said, getting up, a wobble to his step. "Come, come, this way." He led Obi-Wan into the cockpit, which was large enough that at least Obi-Wan wouldn't be overheard by the poor pirate who'd drawn the short straw in terms of designated driving.
Hondo brought up the comms and Obi-Wan punched in a frequency. "Freedom?" he asked when someone picked up. "This is Obi-Wan Kenobi."
Hondo shuddered. "The Freed? Ugh, I do not tangle with the Liberator." And he wobbled off in the opposite direction, back to the party.
It was not enough to seek out the vessels one by one, especially when this was the chaos that just one of them could wreak. He needed to go straight to the source— he needed all of the information. Obi-Wan didn't like not knowing.
"Who do you need to speak with?" asked whoever was answering the comms.
"Ziala, please," Obi-Wan said.
There was a brief pause, as things were shuffled around, and then Ziala's voice came over the comms. Obi-Wan pressed the button that would allow her hologram to pop up, which was probably a mistake because then he was looking her in the eye when she crossed her arms and gave him a disapproving look.
"Obi-Wan Kenobi," she said. "I thought you got kidnapped."
"Did I?" Obi-Wan asked innocently.
Ziala was a reddish Zabrak, though it was hard to tell over the holo. She had decorated some of her horns with golden charms and chains, and her vambraces were Mandalorian in nature, though she preferred not to wear any armor elsewhere. She gave Obi-Wan an unimpressed stare.
"Anyway," Obi-Wan said, "You still have contacts on Dathomir, right?"
"Yeah," Ziala said. "You need to get someone out?"
"In, actually," Obi-Wan said. "I was wondering if you could get me an audience with Mother Talzin."
"If you felt like committing suicide, sure I could," Ziala said.
"You don't have more faith in me than that?" Obi-Wan asked.
"I do not," Ziala said. "Are you actually serious? Why in the frip would you want to talk to that witch?"
"I have some questions," Obi-Wan said. "Can you do it or not?"
Ziala sighed gustily. "I can call in enough favors, probably. I think it'll be enough to get you in the room with the Clan Mother, but there's no guarantee that she'd let you back out again."
"Let me worry about that," Obi-Wan said.
"There's something wrong with you," Ziala said. "You don't worry about anything."
"Trust me," Obi-Wan said. "I do."
Hondo had shuddered dramatically and muttered something about witches, so Obi-Wan was unsurprised to find himself dropped off on Dathomir's surface while the pirates waited in orbit.
Well, they promised to wait in orbit— Obi-Wan would have to see whether or not they actually stuck around.
Obi-Wan was still a little ways away from the Nightsisters' village. Everything was swirled unpleasantly with Dathomir's signature red mist, a little thicker than regular fog and definitely harder to see through. Even the trees and rocks were an unpleasant ruddy brown.
He frowned, trying not to let himself get nervous. The last time he was here he at least had Anakin at his back, dubiously helpful as his padawan may have been. The Nightsisters were not to be trifled with— and Obi-Wan was about to walk into their home.
There was a rustling in the underbrush, and Obi-Wan turned, drawing his lightsaber but not yet turning it on.
Out from the brush emerged…
"Artoo?" Obi-Wan asked, bewildered.
Artoo bweeped an excited sound, and rolled towards him at top speed. Obi-Wan kneeled down to say hello and R2 bumped him with such force he nearly fell over. What was he—? "Oh," Obi-Wan said aloud. "Uh-oh."
"Uh-oh is right," came Qui-Gon's voice, and Obi-Wan looked up, abashed, to find his Master coming out of the shadows as well.
"By the Force!" Obi-Wan said. "You saved me!"
"Don't try it," Qui-Gon said.
Obi-Wan winced. "It was worth a shot." He gave Artoo a greeting pat and then stood up. "Hello, Master."
"Obi-Wan," Qui-Gon said, folding his arms.
"How did you find me?"
"Shmi called," Qui-Gon said. "Something about getting yourself killed."
"I wouldn't have gotten killed," Obi-Wan said, offended. He saw the look on Qui-Gon's face. "I am sorry, Master. I didn't mean to worry you."
"I wasn't worried," Qui-Gon said, and finally breached the distance between them so that he could give Obi-Wan a rather hard tug on his padawan braid and crush him into a sideways hug.
"Sure, Master."
"I knew you wouldn't ever let yourself get kidnapped in such an embarrassing way," Qui-Gon continued.
"Wha— hey! It was not embarrassing!"
"It was," Qui-Gon said. "So embarrassing. Plus there was the fact that your friends kept giving me guilty looks, and that Quinlan Vos said he recognized the pirate who kidnapped you. He said you didn't think the guy was dangerous— that you liked him."
"Terrible accomplices," Obi-Wan said, fondly.
He had suspected— hoped, really— that Qui-Gon would be able to see through the ruse. But Obi-Wan had always been willing to make personal sacrifices for the greater good, and if Qui-Gon had been angry at him, at least it would have been a small price to pay in terms of the greater galaxy.
"No, it was a terrible plan, in general," Qui-Gon said. "The Senate may have believed your little ruse for now, but I don't think the Jedi Order did. Not anyone who's ever met you, anyway. They all know what a troublemaker you are."
"Only as much as I need to be," Obi-Wan said. Qui-Gon rolled his eyes. Obi-Wan pursed his lips. "Master, I'm serious," he said. "The Senate's decision on this… it is not going to end well." Corellia had been in chaos. And there were hundreds more of those vessels; they had gotten lucky with getting the reports from Corellia. What about the planets that weren't big enough to make the news, familiar enough with the Republic to ask for help? Sidious would, again, be causing the deaths of thousands.
Qui-Gon frowned. "I know. The Council and I have been trying to get them to change their minds. They won't budge. They're being very stubborn, even for politicians."
Obi-Wan was unsurprised. "Master—" he said.
"So," Qui-Gon interrupted, "What are we doing?"
Obi-Wan gave him a skeptical look.
"You can use some backup, I assume," Qui-Gon said.
"The Council—"
"Have I ever cared about the Council?" Qui-Gon said.
Obi-Wan grinned, a weight that he did not know had been there lifted suddenly off his shoulders. "Perhaps we can get a two-for-one deal on the kidnapping."
"So not funny," Qui-Gon said.
"A little bit," Obi-Wan said.
"Nope."
Obi-Wan gave Artoo the Mortis dagger for safekeeping. The idea of letting the Nightsisters see it did not sit well with him. The droid himself stayed behind with the shuttle he and Qui-Gon had taken down to the planet's surface.
"If Mother Talzin was the one to set Palpatine's plan up, she should know what the end goal is," Obi-Wan explained quietly as they climbed the rocky terrain up into the Nightsister village.
"The end goal is not to kill people when the vessels emerge?" Qui-Gon asked.
Obi-Wan shook his head. "I don't think so. If Sidious just wanted to cause death, there are a hundred other ways he could have done so— and whatever method he chose probably wouldn't have taken so long after his death."
Qui-Gon made an agreeing noise. "Well, then—" he was cut off, startled, by a plasma bolt slamming into a rock by their heads. Obi-Wan was not surprised, for he had seen the faint pinkish glow of an energy bow just a second before.
He looked up in time to see several Nightsidsters emerging out of the shadows, their red hoods and cloaks blending in with the mists.
"Hello," Obi-Wan said pleasantly, with a short but polite bow. "We don't mean to intrude. We have a meeting with your Clan Mother."
One of the group of pale women stepped forward. "Yes," she said. "You are expected. Come."
Dathomir gave Obi-Wan the shivers, not that he would ever admit it. Too many ghosts, too much strange Nightsister magick. But he kept his face neutral, a little polite. The famed Jedi Master face.
They followed after the group of women. Some of them looked very similar to Ventress; Obi-Wan wondered if any of them were related to her.
"That girl Master Nerec rescued— Asajj?" Qui-Gon asked Obi-Wan in a murmur, clearly thinking along the same lines.
"A Nightsister," Obi-Wan said. "Yes. But I wouldn't mention it in front of Mother Talzin."
"Don't whisper back there," one of the sisters warned, holding the point of her dagger towards them threateningly. Obi-Wan gave her a friendly smile back, and she scowled.
"Must you antagonize everyone?" Qui-Gon asked.
"I am the teachings of my Master," Obi-Wan said, and was just able to dodge the foot that Qui-Gon stuck out to try to trip him. One of the Nghtsisters looked back and Obi-Wan distinctly saw her suppressing an amused smile.
They reached one of the stony caves where the Nightsisters made their dwellings. Carved faces of witches past stared at them from the entryways, designed to intimidate. In his time, Dathomir had been forever cursed after the slaughter of the Nightsisters, and more or less left alone even by the Empire. Obi-Wan thought perhaps they too feared the magick of the Nightsisters— they did not forget their grudges.
One of the Nightsisters drew the red mask off the bottom of her face. "Mother Talzin expects you. But know this, Jedi. We will be watching." With that, she and her sisters melted backwards into the shadows once more.
"Force," Qui-Gon muttered. "You take me to all the best places."
Obi-Wan grinned at him, and they ducked their way into the shadows of Mother Talzin's lair. The mist in here was less red and more greenish, which made even Obi-Wan with his limited experience with the Nightsisters nervous.
Talzin was sitting at a long stone table in the middle of the room.
She looked the same as she had when Obi-Wan had met her during the search for Savage Opress, which was more than a little disturbing considering it was almost twenty years in his future.
"My lady," Obi-Wan said, bowing again. "Thank you for agreeing to see us."
Mother Talzin smiled, showing off disturbingly sharp teeth. "I was curious. What drives a Jedi to seek out the help of the Nightsisters?" Her voice echoed on itself, a rather unpleasant reverberation. She gestured. "Please, sit."
Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon did, on one of the many hard stone chairs across from her.
"I'm Jedi Knight Qui-Gon Jinn, and this is my apprentice, Padawan Obi-Wan Kenobi," Qui-Gon said, settling down and still looking very wary.
"You seek information about the Sith," Talzin said. She examined Obi-Wan closely. "You have been having dreams."
"You've been getting these visions as well?" Qui-Gon asked, and finally her attention turned away from Obi-Wan and towards him.
"Some of us," Talzin said, looking pleased. "It is no hardship. We are used to dreaming of far darker things."
"You were contracted some years ago to do a favor for a Sith Lord," Qui-Gon said. "We need to know what."
"We request that you share your information with us," Obi-Wan said hurriedly. "If it pleases you."
She smiled again, which strangely enough was not reassuring. "We are no friends to the Jedi."
"I believe everyone can make friends eventually," Obi-Wan said.
"Jedi optimism," decided Talzin. The fabric on her cloak floated around her eerily, seemingly unaffected by the way she sat forward to look at them. "A Sith Lord did ask me to do him a favor, many years ago. I did it. That is all I shall tell you."
Something of that rang of falsehood; Obi-Wan tilted his head. "Asked you? In my experience, the Sith so rarely ask politely."
The green mist around her flared brighter for a moment, and her voice echoed in a deeper timbre. "I owed that fool a favor. He collected."
"Whether you wanted him to or not," Obi-Wan said. This was good news. Whatever deal Talzin had made with Palpatine, it had been begrudging. She would not forgive easily.
"We defeated him by the will of the Force," Qui-Gon said. "Darth Sidious is dead. Whatever you did for him then is coming into play now. Surely you don't want the deaths that this will cause on your hands."
Talzin scoffed. "I don't care what happens to outsiders."
"And your people?" Obi-Wan asked. "If the Sith return to power, do you think they would be kind to the Nightsisters?"
"Little Jedi with a gilded tongue," Mother Talzin said, sharply. "You speak prettily."
"How do we stop the Dark vessels?" Obi-Wan asked firmly. "What is their purpose?"
She considered this. "Very well. I will tell you. But nothing is free. Information comes at a price."
"What price?" Qui-Gon asked, warily.
Talzin smiled airly. "A lock of that pretty red hair of your apprentice will do."
Obi-Wan pressed his mouth into a wry smile. "Excuse me, Clan Mother, but I do not believe I was born yesterday."
"No," she said, giving him an intrigued look. "It seems you really were not." She leaned back. "What do you have to offer?"
"Hmm," Obi-Wan said. "Information for information? A peek into your future?"
She narrowed her eyes. "A Seer Jedi? Rare indeed."
"Perhaps," Obi-Wan said. "Here is my information. If the Sith rise to power they will not spare your people, just as they will not spare mine. I know this."
Mother Talzin hissed. "The might of the Sith is no match for the Nightsisters."
"Yes," Obi-Wan said. "It is."
She stared at him. Then she said something in the Nightsister language, and a shadow detached itself from the wall, revealing a young woman who nodded and scurried away. "If this is true, you will have your information." The girl returned, and put down a crystalline globe that glowed green. "If you can prove that what you say is true, I will tell you what you wish to know."
Talzin flicked out a hand and the globe rolled across the table towards Obi-Wan. "Put your hand on the orb, and I will see this future."
Obi-Wan glanced at Qui-Gon, suddenly uncertain, but Qui-Gon gave him a minute shrug.
Obi-Wan touched the crystal ball.
It felt like Obi-Wan's hand was stuck to the globe, electric and vaguely unpleasant. His eyes clouded over a little, but he could see that his memories were flashing by on the surface of the orb.
Unerringly, it pulled out the memory Obi-Wan was looking for; the holo-images brought back from Dathomir— from a scouting party of clones and from Quinlan's extended undercover mission that had taken him there for a spell.
The landscape had been ravaged almost as much as the Nighstisters trying to defend their homes had been. Huge parts of their temples had been totally collapsed in on themselves, faces chipped away from the statues of their elders.
The sisters themselves had lain where they had fallen, looking as if they could stand up for battle again at any moment. To be fair, that was always a possibility with the Nightsisters. Some of them had clearly been killed by droids, but many had been felled by Grievous' lightsabers.
Obi-Wan had not understood then, what it must have been like for Ventress. What it was like to be functionally the last of your kind; to know that all of your people's traditions and stories and culture would die with you.
Obi-Wan jerked, surprised, when he heard Talzin's angry growl. He had almost forgotten she was there.
"Lies!" Talzin said. "Those are saber marks—"
Obi-Wan had later heard, distantly, that the Jedi had been blamed for the scouring of Dathomir— why not, after everything else? They had become the Empire's boogeyman.
He pulled his memories again, and called up a covert meeting from the later days of the war. Possibly Ventress had been attempting to catch him wrong-footed by asking for their meeting place in one of the seediest bars Coruscant had to offer, but Obi-Wan had been skirting the edges of polite society since he was a very small padawan. A little grime didn't scare him.
He slid into the booth across from Ventress and shed his helmet— the Rako Hardeen one. In return, Ventress took off her own mask and dropped it onto the table.
Discretion paid, especially in these times. The war was getting more dangerous every day, the shadows of the Sith feeling closer and closer.
With her mask off, Ventress was clearly a Nightsister— the traditional tattoos, shaved head, and pale countenance gave that away rather unmistakably. The memory swirled.
She had had information for him; actually, Obi-Wan remembered now that they had been trading information. A bounty hunting job for her, information on Ahsoka for him. As she had stood up to go, Obi-Wan stopped her.
"I heard about Dathomir," he said. "Your sisters. I am sorry. Truly."
Ventress got a strange look in her eye. Sadness, maybe. Obi-Wan had never seen it on her before. "If I ever figure out who that damned Sith Lord is that gave the order to Grievous, maybe I'll send their head your way, Jedi. As a present."
"I'll check my inbox religiously, my dear," Obi-Wan said.
Ventress flashed him a sharp grin. "You know you still owe me one for my rescue when the Brothers Zabrak beat the kark out of you."
"I had it handled," Obi-Wan said imperiously.
Then he shook it off— he was getting too deep into the memory. This was all Talzin needed to see; confirmation of Dathomir's destruction from a fellow Nightsister. With effort, Obi-Wan wrenched his hand off the orb.
It hurt a little, and when Obi-Wan looked at his palm it was red like he had gotten a low-grade burn. Qui-Gon shifted so that his broad shoulders were a little in front of Obi-Wan even as they stayed tensely seated.
Talzin was growling, panting like an animal. "Sith— traitor! My planet! My clan!" The green mist started swirling alarmingly, forming things a little too much like faces for Obi-Wan's taste. "This MUST NOT HAPPEN!" Her volume rose, and Obi-Wan decided it was probably time for them to make a discreet exit.
But then Talzin turned to look angrily at him.
"So much future for such a young man," she said. "So much more to see." Then, with startling speed, she lunged forward and slammed Obi-Wan's hand against the orb once more.
Lava. Plunging towards Coruscant in the Invisible Hand. Smoke from the Temple. He twitched.
For obvious reasons, Obi-Wan wasn't thrilled about these parts of his future passing by. Instead of fighting it, he pushed his memories into the crystal ball, roughly and indelicate. The thing, overloaded, shattered.
At the same time, Qui-Gon yanked Obi-Wan away from Talzin, pulling his hand away from hers. Qui-Gon stood, dragging Obi-Wan back with him.
They stared warily at Talzin from some distance away.
She looked at the remains of her globe, which was bleeding green smoke. Then she looked at them, and her face cracked into a smile. The shadows around the room receded.
"Oh, very good," she said. "Your information is true. You do not lie." She gave Obi-Wan another uncomfortably piercing look. "Not on this, anyway. I will tell you what you need to know."
"No offense," Qui-Gon said, looking at how Obi-Wan had his singed hand tucked into his chest. "But that little display was not very reassuring."
Mother Talzin folded her arms, no trace of her previous ire in the expression. Her fickle whims had apparently changed direction. She looked slightly amused. "I will honor our deal. Come, sit."
Hesitantly, they did.
She drew up her hands and swirled through the mist on the table, creating tiny, lifelike creatures controlled by her magick. "The Sith Lord did send to me Julis. He wanted a failsafe, in case something were to happen to him."
"The Sith obsess with extending life," Obi-Wan said. Each one Obi-Wan had known had clung to life with an iron grip, even when letting go was the right thing to do. Sometimes death was not the worst fate.
"Disastrously so," Talzin agreed. "He needed someone to activate the temple, and to set up a protection for it."
"That would be you," Qui-Gon guessed.
"Yes," Talzin said. "He provided the materials. Something made by one of his kind some time ago— containers for the Sithspawn." In the mist, she drew first a facsimile of the vessels, then of the creature Obi-Wan had spoken to in his most recent dream. "Sithspawn. Nasty little abominations. There are many different types."
"Which are trapped in the vessels?" Obi-Wan said.
"All of them," Talzin said, and the mist swirled from one creature into an army of them. Even in noncorporeal miniature, they made for a fearsome and daunting group. They were of varying sizes and shapes, some with wings and some with sets of teeth. "Many different types of Sithspawn will emerge from the vessels when the time is right. They each have their own interesting abilities."
"How do we stop them?" Qui-Gon asked.
Talzin shrugged. "They are mortal. They can be killed, to great cost." In the mist, a scene of a figure that looked like an ancient Jedi, coming from above to jam a lightstaff through the head of one of the beasts. The Sithspawn lashed out and the Knight caught a barbed tail to her chest. The two figures died at the same time.
Talzin waved her hand through the picture and the mists dissipated. "They are not the only thing the vessels hold, however."
"The Sith," Obi-Wan said. In the back of his head, he had been expecting as much. The souls of the Sithspawn could be trapped inside the vessels— why couldn't a piece of Palpatine's soul be contained inside one in much the same way? A failsafe, Talzin had said. A way to bring Darth Sidious back to life should he ever fall.
"Indeed," Mother Talzin said. "The Sith Lord who contracted me secreted away a bit of his power, a bit of his soul, into one of the vessels." And it had been under Obi-Wan's nose for years— for it had to be the one that had disappeared from the Senate. He scowled.
The figures coalesced again, into scenes of Sithspawn tearing through villages, stalking through streets. "The purpose of his little pets would be to sow the darkness he needs in the galaxy— the darkness to rise once again." The image became a small army. "They will spread throughout the galaxy, drawing up the power he needs. But most of them will be there to protect their new master when he rises once more."
"And where is that?" Qui-Gon asked.
"I do not know," Talzin said. "This is something you will have to figure out on your own. But what I can give you is this— the Sith Lord needs a place of significance to make his return. He will be in the end, and the beginning."
"Tatooine," Obi-Wan said.
She laughed, much crueler and more condescending than the Daughter's had been. "Not your end and beginning," she said. "But someone's. Something's." She waved her hands. "Now begone. I'm finished with you. Find yourselves lucky that I let you leave. This is a privilege not allowed to many men."
They stood. Obi-Wan did not have a desire to overstay his welcome here. In fact if he never had to return here again he would be a very happy man. Qui-Gon clearly agreed with him, and started hustling him towards the door.
"Oh," Talzin said, and they both turned to look. "One more thing."
She caught their guarded expressions and grinned. "The Sith Lord who hired me. It was not Lord Sidious. It was Lord Plagueis."
Chapter header from TCW - 3X14 Witches of the Mist