Author's Note: Story begins following the events of The Clone Wars, Season Five, Episode 1: Revival
Galactic history speaks of the Dark Age of the Republic, a one hundred-year-long period over a thousand years ago where the Republic itself nearly ceased to exist and much of the galaxy was thrust into anarchy and chaos. Given the sheer volume of historical records lost and archives destroyed during this time, much of the details surrounding this period remain unclear; the exact nature of most of the crises that led to and caused the Dark Age are largely a mystery to modern galactic historians—as is the possibility of whether or not they could return.
Take my advice and live for a long, long time. Because the maddest thing a man can do in this life is to let himself die.
-Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
See the glow. Hear the hum. The lightsaber: The will of the Jedi alive and alight.
The blue blade cuts through metal with ease. A door fails, falls, crashes to the marble floor. Echoes cascading about the spotless foyer of the empty manor. A silent peace shattered in one thrust, one action. Rushing to answer this force and violence is only more silence.
Anakin Skywalker steps forth with weapon drawn, eyes flashing. No enemies come to meet him. No blaster bolts, no shouts. Just the absence. The shadows. Gilded statuettes still on their mantles, paintings and sconces frozen on the white stone walls. Stale, tasteless air. Particles of dust twist and twirl in what few beams of light dare enter. Will and force met with yawning emptiness. It is just a home with no one to call it such.
"Ah, so much for all my planning. What happened to all the security?" gripes a thin, lithe figure sidling up to Anakin from behind. "Guess everyone up and left."
"Or they knew we were coming," Anakin murmurs, scowling, deactivating his saber and replacing it on his belt hook. "Don't let your guard down too quickly, though, Ahsoka."
His apprentice steps past him into the silence, the shadow. There's a reservation to her now, a half-pause in her step as she appraises the vacant foyer. The toll of the Clone Wars taking its toll after three years of fighting. She is not just the carefree Snips she was back when they first met on Christophsis. Not just a mere Padawan learner. Anakin will never admit it out loud, but there is a part of him, a vulnerable slice of his heart hidden away, that understands that look he sees on Obi-Wan's face whenever they reunite after months apart. It's hard for him to put it to words. Not simple contentment. Nor plain old happiness. Maybe—a feeling like home. "Look, if you want battle droids, we can go out somewhere and make a scene. This is a Separatist planet, after all."
A slight smile. "Maybe next time." She never would have said that back on Christophsis. "I don't feel anyone around. There was supposed to be a whole family living here."
There was, and more. This is Cinnagar, capital of the Deep Core ecumenpolis of Empress Teta, one of the oldest and most politically and culturally formidable planets in the galaxy. The Confederacy of Independent Systems's societal nexus in the galactic heart. Home to over a trillion beings. Yet here in this extravagant manor tucked away in the heart of the most luxurious paradise sector in the city that spans half the planet, it feels as if no one lives here at all. Yet when Anakin reaches out with his feelings, he senses something—something faint. A touch beyond the physical. A sight-shy hand reaching back through the Force.
"Let's split up," he tells his Padawan. "Take this floor and the grounds out back. I'll cover the upper floors. You see anything you call for me, got it?"
"Worried the gardeners are gonna get me?" Ahsoka says.
"Hey, this guy's supposed to be the paranoid type. It wouldn't surprise me if he subcontracts General Grievous to do his landscaping," Anakin jokes. "Let's get to it. We don't have all day."
"We might. No one's even shown up to check us for ID so far."
"How about we pretend we don't have all day so we don't actually waste all day here?"
Ahsoka chuckles. "You're starting to sound like Master Kenobi."
Of course she knows just where to hit him. Anakin shakes his head, doing his best to suppress a wry smile, and tromps up the glossy, bronzium-banistered spiral staircase without another word. Sounding like Obi-Wan. As if.
He has barely made it onto the second-floor landing when his wrist comlink sparks to life. "Rex. Talk to me," he says without delay.
"I've finished my sweep of the perimeter, general," the third member of their party, the veteran ARC clone trooper Rex, reports over the link.
"And?"
"And there's nothing. No droids. No guards. No personnel. Nobody here except for us."
Anakin grits his teeth. Frustrating. Did they really come all this way for nothing while a war is raging across the galaxy? He could be so many more interesting places right now. "Keep your eyes open out there," he says, "but there's nothing in here, either."
"Think someone gave them the heads-up we were coming?"
"Maybe. Let's do all our jumping to conclusions after we've had a good look around first. Stay sharp."
"On it."
The second floor is tomb-like. Deathly stillness in the air. As if Anakin's mere presence is an affront to the preservation of some moment frozen in time. Paintings in the Alsakan pre-modernist style stare down at him from the arching walls: Flora and fauna and bearded men with names kept secret by paint and painter. He stops before one of the paintings, a desolate, barren landscape of red-rock cliffs dusted with frost. Some alien wasteland. Boring. Probably worth a fortune, given that particular kind of insanity held by connoisseurs of fine art.
He peers into one room after another, each more ornate than the last, each as empty, each as lifeless. At last, just before he reaches a staircase to the third floor, he opens the wroshyr-wood double doors of the master bedroom and looks into the eyes of a corpse.
"Figures," he mutters before stepping inside, fingers pawing at his lightsaber but resisting the urge to grab the weapon and light up the room. There is still no movement, no life. Master bedroom-turned-sarcophagus, the dead man before him sitting upright on a couch with eyes wide and tongue lolling out of his mouth.
Anakin recognizes him immediately: Their target, Ternon Tath, an Arkanian scientist and controller of a vast fortune based on cutting-edge industrial holdings on the Outer Rim city-world of Taris. According to Master Windu's briefing, he is a secret benefactor of the Intergalactic Banking Clan, and a man who privately had the ear of Count Dooku—even if his public face was little more than a bored and obscenely rich corporate head. Now nothing more than a dead man. His expression is pain, agony. Surprise. As if the last thing he expected was to end up dead. Who does? Grumbling, Anakin looks the corpse over. Classic bleach-white hair of the Arkanians. Tall, maybe seven foot. White, pupiless eyes. It's the first time he's seen one of these reclusive people so close—so much like an average human in many ways, and yet those colorless eyes stare into the deep, the hidden. Unsettling.
There. He sees it: Long, red, rough lines around the Arkanian's neck. Garroted. His killer took him from behind when he thought he was safe to relax. Then a cord around the neck, a need for breath that never comes, and life fades. So easy.
Pale light filters through slitted windows. Anakin presses his fingers to his temple. Think. Master Windu sent him here to interrogate Tath, learn his connections, and find a way into the Banking Clan's inner circle—and by proxy, close the distance to Dooku and eliminate one of his wealthiest supporters in one stroke. Is this the Count's work? Clearly someone knew of the Jedi plan to come here ahead of time. But why leave the body? Why leave no traps to surprise the Jedi if Dooku knew they were coming? It feels sloppy, inattentive.
A shout. "Master?"
Ahsoka.
Anakin leaps out of the room, lightsaber already in hand, blue blade flashing. He sprints down the hallway, vaults down the staircase like a boulder crashing downhill. No finesse, no grace, all power and strength. Yet when he finds his Padawan she is no danger at all, merely standing in, of all places, the kitchens, in front of a great gap in the wall. She startles when he appears with weapon drawn, reaching for her own saber as he stops, opens his mouth to speak, thinks better of it, and then shrugs. "Okay, got a little ahead of myself. What'd you find?"
"Don't let me stop you from the heroics," Ahsoka says before motioning towards the hole in the wall. "There was a series of buttons that opened up the pantry to this hole."
"Trying to get a snack?"
"Uh, no. Trying to find our man."
Anakin points his thumb over his shoulder. "Found him already."
"What? Then—"
"He's dead. At least a day, maybe longer."
Ahsoka slumps her shoulders. "Great. So someone set us up."
"We don't know that just yet. Come on, let's—" Anakin begins, but his voice leaves him abruptly. There it is again—a touch. A finger on his mind. A breeze on his thoughts. As if some midnight-ghost whisper is calling him from parts unknown. No: From the hole Ahsoka has opened. "Hold on."
"What is it?"
"Just hold on. I want to see what's in this secret place you opened up."
He steps past Ahsoka and up to the lip of the hole. Go forth into the unknown. Where demons and ghosts might beckon you to answer. Where darkness holds secrets beyond imagination. Then he descends down the cold stone stairs before him.
It is chilly here, so far removed from the dry, hot air of the Tetan summer outside. Anakin ignites his lightsaber once more, if only to provide light amid the impenetrable dark. The stillness is even more fervent than in the rest of the manor. When he swings his blade around he sees only stone walls. A spiderweb. What looks like womp rat droppings litter a lonely corner (do they even have womp rats on Empress Teta? He has no idea—xenozoology is something the other Jedi can handle). "It's a vault of some sort," he calls up to Ahsoka, "or a safe room maybe, but someone's ransacked the place."
"You think looters killed our guy?" his apprentice calls from the entrance.
"No. I doubt it's something that simple," he says. He turns, blade humming before him. Nothing. Nothing. Only silence. Only stillness.
Then he feels it again, much closer, so near it is as if some specter is breathing down his neck. He turns, holds out his lightsaber, and squints. There. At the far wall. "Maybe they didn't get everything," he mutters.
"What was that?"
He leaves Ahsoka's question hanging and treads closer. It's something large, huge, so tall that it almost reaches the ceiling, so wide that it spans half this wall. Old stone and iron. Black and silver, shine and gloss that lights up before the glow of the lightsaber. As if the dust that covers all else fears to breach this final pristine redoubt. An artifact? Maybe a monument, or a statue: It is a rocky monstrosity, like a conical spiral with metal spokes arching downward from its midsection. A million possibilities flit through Anakin's mind. An altar. A conduit. Something Sith-related. Anything.
Once more the hand reaches out through the Force. A subtle touch. And this time, subconsciously, Anakin reaches back.
He does not think. He does not attempt. It is two hands joining in the Force, fingers interlinked. Feelings brushing up. A meeting of two inner eyes. As soon as Anakin realizes that something is happening it is gone, fading, the moment lost.
Then the artifact shudders.
The foremost tendrils moves of its own accord, inhabited by some phantasmagoric sprite that shifts metal and rock like plastic. It reaches out to Anakin like a hand in greeting, bending down as if in fealty. Then the room comes alight.
It is stars and clouds and the galaxy, a whole light show erupting all around. Anakin holds his blade up as if to counter a threat but there is none, only the artifact unveiling itself to his eyes. Images flashing and fading, too quick for him to understand. People and places. Weapons fire. Then one that he sees clearly, so clearly it as like the man stands before him.
A tall, powerful-looking old spirit of a man clad in garish, extravagant ankle-length robes. No, not a man—some sort of other race, fleshy tendrils and bone spurs dotting his face. A sword—not a lightsaber, but a true, metal blade—on his hip. "Hide it," the image says, barely louder than a whisper. "Hide it well. The Republic will come for it, and should they find it, they will destroy us forever."
"And from our brothers? Our sisters?" some unseen voice adds from the illuminated ether.
"Hide it from them, too. With it they will tear this galaxy apart with one stroke."
Anakin does not know the old man. But as soon as the image finishes speaking it is gone, only the stars and clouds all around remaining, the light touching every corner of this abandoned vault. Yet in the Force, with his feelings, Anakin feels it—that hand is still there. That touch. He can grab it again, should he so wish.
"Master?" Ahsoka calls from the entrance. "What is going on in there?"
"Get in here," Anakin says at once. He jams his finger to his comlink. "Rex, get back here, now."
As Ahsoka runs into the room and halts abruptly, wide-eyed at the illusion erupting all around them, Anakin narrows his eyes. Reaches back out through the Force. There is no way they can carry this massive relic out of here, let alone get it off-world on a Separatist planet. But they can record this. Bring it before the Jedi High Council.
And there is something else, too. A strange feeling in his gut. In his thoughts. As if no matter what he takes with him now, he will not leave here empty-handed. Something has taken root in his mind.
Adi Gallia. One of the Jedi Order's most respected masters. Holder of a seat on the High Council. Dead at the hands of the beast named Savage Oppress. Her body lies peacefully in the Jedi Temple upon the mantle where it was laid a day prior, just retrieved from Florrum. Robed Jedi pass to pay respects. Silence. Reverence. Mourning for one of their own.
One robed figure stands apart from the others. She stands statue-still beside a great pillar here in the Tython Mezzanine, a wide-open, column-lined, sunlit space allowing for the orange sunset glow of Coruscant to spill into every shadowy corner and hallway. Her hood hides her eyes, casts her face into darkess. And there she stands, watching Adi Gallia's lifeless body, the two of them unmoving, one alive, one dead.
As the sun falls below the horizon, another robed figure joins her. "She fought hard, all the way to the end," he murmurs. The soft, subtle voice of Obi-Wan Kenobi in mourning. "Maul and Savage were on us in a hurry on Florrum. But Master Gallia fought well."
"Not well enough," the robed figure says. Flat voice. The absence of emotion.
Obi-Wan purses his lips. "The hate that was coming from them. The Nightbrothers," he says, "it was more than either of us could've expected."
His companion says nothing. The trailing ends of her long black hair sticking out from her hood stir in a slight breeze that passes through the mezzanine. She is Sae Tristess, Adi Gallia's former Padawan, now a Jedi Knight of her own. She was once a fellow youngling alongside Obi-Wan in better days, a member of the same hawk-bat clan when the galaxy seemed infinite and the future even greater. Days like old bones. Memories better left in the past. She has lost three close friends among the Jedi in the Clone Wars so far, not to mention a clone commander and several Republic naval captains she considered personal allies, and now she has lost her own master, to boot. The closest, the only, person who acted like a parent to her. "It's," she begins, but her words flee her tongue. How can she voice her feelings to Obi-Wan? He lost his own master, Qui-Gon Jinn, thirteen years ago on Naboo, after all—and to the blade of this same Maul who attacked them on Florrum, nonetheless. Whatever he might say to her now, it will ring hollow. They were friends as children, as younglings, but as full-fledged members of the Jedi Order they have walked their separate paths. Gone their separate ways. "It's nothing anyone can do now," she says at last. "We can't get attached."
Obi-Wan frets. "No," he says, "but ignoring what you must be feeling won't solve anything."
"There's nothing to solve," Sae says curtly. It's not about ignoring anything, either. She knows what her feelings are. She might say out loud that attachment isn't the Jedi way, that master and apprentice have long since diverged—but in her chest roils the truth, something she will guard, hide, veil, from the others. There are many truths in the world, some of which to express to all, some to only those one trusts completely. And some that never should leave one's own heart. Not even for a friend like Obi-Wan.
"When Qui-Gon fell," Obi-Wan begins, but he quiets when he sees Sae's brown eyes narrowing. "If Maul and Savage survived, we will find them," he assures her. "They won't get far on their own."
"They are Sith."
"Sith pretenders. And they are alone."
"For now," Sae says. She turns. "Master Gallia wouldn't want us going for revenge, Obi-Wan. We still have a war to win."
Obi-Wan lowers his head. "If you need anything—"
"I'll be in the meditation rooms if you need me."
She leaves Obi-Wan without a look back, without giving him a chance to stop her. She does not want company. She does not want consolation. She does not want to hear that Adi Gallia fought bravely, that she is an exemplar of the Jedi, a model for all to look up to, and that her loss will be dear. Sae knows these things. All she wants to do now is dwell in that void in her chest, that hole that grows deeper and wider with every day, every death, every blaster shot and lightsaber swung in the name of the Clone Wars.
There are few meditation rooms in use when she arrives, and she finds the closest, an empty room save for a pair of cushions and a slitted window letting in the last light of Coruscanti sunset. Red and orange streaks veiling the first blinking stars of the evening. Blood-tipped brush on setting-sky canvas.
Sae closes the shutters, bathing the room in a dusky dark. The air is still, without scent, without smell. A peace that should urge her to connect with her feelings, reach into the Force, touch that field that flows throughout each and every living being. The Living Force, she once heard Obi-Wan's master Qui-Gon recite, holds true in us all. It is here, now, tying us together. But Master Gallia is dead. Her other fallen friends are dead. The Force leaves her alone, isolated, squared away to face her mounting losses alone.
She holds up her lightsaber, twists it in the air, and thumbs the emitter switch. Her yellow blade erupts from the end, energy humming and sizzling in the air. It has cut through countless droids. Ended dozens of lives. Furthered the Republic's aims in a war that no one seems to be winning. Is this what her saber crystal intended when it called for her on Ilum, back when she was just a little girl with big dreams and bigger ideas? Did it entice a youngling to become a killer, a survivor with ripples of dead names hanging off her back like flayed skin? Or is it just as much a victim as she is, equally caught up in this galaxy-spanning conflict ripping apart everything decent and worthy in the world?
Again she thumbs the emitter switch, and the yellow blade snakes back into the handle. Holding the hilt up at eye-level, she stares into the now-dormant emitter. How easy it would be. Thumb the switch once more. A flash of light and then comes the darkness. Forever. An end to the killing, the pain. This barbaric cycle, closing for good. Perhaps this is why the crystal called for her.
A knock on the door rouses her and she hooks her saber once more on her belt. "Yes?"
A thin, short girl opens the door and pokes her head in. Blonde hair tied back neatly. Blue eyes wide. "Master?"
Sae closes her eyes and sighs. "What is it, Tam?"
"Master Kenobi said you were here."
Of course he told her. She looks over her shoulder at her apprentice. Tamri Dallin, seventeen. A good friend of Skywalker's apprentice, Tano, and yet Tamri seems such a stark opposite: Quiet, almost mouse-like at times, so often caught up in playing the engineer with a desk full of tools and gadgets, the rebelliousness and recklessness of youth never taking hold in her. Sometimes Sae wonders if that is just her Padawan's nature, or that is her doing, rubbing off on the girl. Unlike the gifted Ahsoka, Tamri scarcely passed her Initiate Trials at all; she has an average, at best, connection with the Force, and only her aptitude for skills more academic Jedi might scoff at—electronics, mechanics, signals intelligence, and other soft knowledge—led to Sae selecting her as an apprentice when all of her contemporaries had passed on the girl. Had Sae not been around, she likely would've ended up in the Jedi Service Corps, rather than continuing on the path towards knighthood. Maybe it would've been for the better. But, like Master Gallia, like years of younglings and little girls with big dreams, that is the past. "Do you need something?"
"I just wanted to say I'm sorry about Master Gallia. She…" Tamri trails off when Sae looks away. "I don't—"
"It's fine. I'm fine. Master Gallia wouldn't want us to get caught up in it."
Tamri fidgets. "What're you doing here?"
"Meditating."
"You don't usually come to the rooms here. In fact, I haven't seen you here in over a year."
"No," says Sae. "I guess not."
An uncomfortable silence settles over them for a minute, master and apprentice so close and yet without words that will ameliorate the pain. "Can I—" Tamri begins, stumbling over her words— "If you want to—"
"I don't."
"But—"
"Why don't you go find your friends, Tam?" Sae suggests. "I just want to meditate right now. You have the night off. If anyone who isn't on the High Council says otherwise, send them to me."
The girl hesitates. "Okay," she says, "but…are you sure you're all right, Master?'
"I am sure. Now please. And have a good night."
Tamri waits by the door for a moment, as if her master might have more to add—a word, advice, even an admission. Something that will sound normal. But when nothing comes she bows her head and closes the door, leaving the shadows to close around Sae once more.
Again Sae raises her lightsaber hilt. Presses the emitter to her forehead. So easy. If only it were so easy.
Count Dooku is the dreamer.
He twists and turns in his sleep, slaloming through the somnolent mists. Is this a vision of the Force? It is bizarre, disconnected, as if he wades through some otherworldly fog that threatens to consume him. His slumbering mind cannot make sense: Such is the nature of the dream, warping, shifting, tossing the dreamer near and far like a sailor upon storm-wrought tides. As if Dooku is nothing but a victim to the waves of his sleeping mind.
He can, however, make out the mists. It is not metaphor: He pushes through a fog, a grey-green slurry that veils his knees, laps at his waist. And with every step it grows a shade greener, viler, as if some great evil lurking within is growing stronger the longer Dooku sleeps. It intensifies to the point that he thinks he can hear someone calling from the fog. Calling his name. Calling for him to listen.
Dooku.
He turns. The dream twists. Now he is on a red-rock world of snow-kissed cliffs and lifeless valleys. And he is not alone.
What is the way of the Sith? The fog remains, and now it asks a question. It is so thick now that it may as well be a soup, swallowing up stone, cliffs, dreamer. What is the way of your kind?
"Reveal yourself," he says. But is it really him saying it?
A familiar voice answers. One he thought he would never hear again. "Do you think you will remain Sidious's apprentice forever, Dooku? What is the way of the Sith? The apprentice strikes down the master. An apprentice who cannot do so is unworthy, and must be killed. Are you Sith?"
Dooku reaches for his lightsaber but grasps only air. He looks down at his belt, and with one look the dream shifts again. Shatters kaleidoscope-like, rocks and stone and mist splintering into myriad colors and infinite shapes, like stars, like dust in the light. "Where does your path end, Dooku? Do you imagine you will rule the galaxy at Sidious's side?"
That voice. A name in the mists that return just as soon as they vanished.
Mother Talzin.
"You have had years to strike Sidious down. You have failed. Do you not think he has your replacement ready? Do you not think he will strike you down when you again have failed to act? Are you Sith? Or are you just a man?"
Dooku grits his teeth, twists in the air as the broken shapes and splintered stones spiral around him. "I will bring about an empire—"
"You will bring about nothing. Sidious will kill you. Already he schemes for your end. His future apprentice thirsts to take your head. You are nothing, nothing more than a man before the Lord of the Sith. Unless you claim that mantle for your own, you will always be nothing."
Visions. Images in the green mists. A blue lightsaber. A red. Blades crossed, with a head between them.
His head.
Flash and silence.
Then Dooku awakens. The Serenno autumn morning peers through the floor-to-ceiling window behind him, golden light setting his room aglow. He rises from his bed, gripping his forehead. Fading dream, half-remembered voices. He learned something. Knew something while he slept. What was it?
He stumbles over to his desk, but before he can do anything more, the holotransmitter at the center of his room whirs to life. Inbound message. And already Dooku knows it his from his master.
Darth Sidious.
And, for once, so alien, doubt creeps into Dooku's mind.