Bastila awoke to a hand shaking her shoulder gently, starting her upright to look upon Belaya, a fellow Padawan and, she remembered, Juhani's friend and rumoured lover. Bastila looked down at the holopad she was reading from, and groaned in dismay when she realised she was reading from a complete register of all known Sith Lords. She remembered vaguely that she had not found so much as a passing mention of Darth Sion, and yet the less she found on the Sith, the more she came to believe Revan's fantastical tale to be true. After all, despite the Force spirit he spoke of defying all of the known rules concerning entities corrupted by the Dark Side, there was a nagging sensation that tugged at her through her connection to the Force that made her lend credence to his story with each passing hour.
Regardless, she sighed and stood from her studies, noticing that the Dantooine sun was climbing its way forth from the horizon, and lethargically returned the files to where they belonged in the archives before walking back to the mess hall. There, she sat in the corner of the large chamber, eating alone—for who amongst the Padawans would approach the only Jedi to sit in with Darth Revan and live to tell the tale?
The whisperings about the room tugged at her connection to the Force, and when she surreptitiously looked up every so often, she could identify a significant portion of Learners who stared at her as she ate, exchanging gossip and rumours that seemed to increasingly concern her and her relationship with the captive Sith Lord. Eventually, sufficiently irked, she stood, gathered food for Revan, and left the mess hall behind her, descending once more to the cell where the Dark Lord of the Sith in exile sat, a stylus in hand as he seemed to…draw something upon the surface of the holopad he held—likely a concession of the Jedi Council as a reward for having yet to kill Bastila.
Bastila stood there, not wanting to disturb Revan as his hands worked away at what he was drawing, but she was not subtle enough, it seemed. "Bastila, dear, you know that it's rude to stare, correct?" he asked, exasperation in his tone, which was devoid of its usual playfulness. "Come and sit. I'm almost done."
"I…brought you food," Bastila replied carefully, moving slowly to do as her charge bade. "I've already eaten, after all, and…"
"And you did not once ask yourself whether or not the Jedi Council had someone else bring food to me when they brought the holopad?" Bastila stilled, speechless, until Revan sighed. "Not to worry, they did no such thing. The Council is made up of idiots, one and all, but even they know not to interfere with a rapport between an interrogator and their captive."
Bastila flinched, her mind reeling in shock as she tried to discern what had changed between the previous day and the current one that had him acting so churlishly towards her, not at all the charming, joking man she had come to know. What else do I not know about this man? she asked herself as she did finally sit and surrender the tray of food to the distracted Sith Lord.
Reaching out with the Force as her curiosity overrode her sense of propriety, she took in his aura, and while he was as much a nexus of Dark Side Force energy as ever, his personality read as being exhausted, and regretful, with sorrow choking his every breath. This was not the brash, cocky Padawan that came to be called the Revanchist, and nor was it the cold, violent Sith Lord that had tried to kill her twice now. This was new, the veteran general, the acclaimed war hero, the sleep-deprived man that had been torn asunder by war, leaving gaping wounds in his psyche that were plugged and knit shut by tendrils of the Dark Side. It seemed to her as though that was what was keeping him from dropping dead from all of the weight he was carrying on his shoulders. The fact that anyone could become so intimately linked with the Dark Side of the Force that they felt comfortable relying on it to the extent that Revan did was a terrifying prospect.
"It's rude to go poking about in people's Force aura, but I'll let it slide at the moment," Revan remarked absently, making Bastila freeze up. "It's Meetra, by the way."
"Pardon?" Bastila asked as she quickly made to compose herself once more.
"Meetra Surik. Her birthday would have been today. Her twenty-seventh," Revan replied by way of explanation. "The death of a loved one often leaves only a temporary pain, and in time, the memories that once brought so much joy and sorrow begin to fade. And so, on this day, every year since the Council murdered her, I draw her face so that I might never forget what she looked like."
"Dwelling on the past brings only pain and misery," Bastila objected gently.
"It does not matter to me. Indeed, if the pain and misery are all I have left of her, then I will treasure and cherish them until my dying day," he replied quietly. He then swung his head around and stared into her, yellow glowing eyes penetrating through her flesh and seemingly into her very soul. "I don't ever want to forget her as everyone else has. I don't want to wake up one morning only to find that I have forgotten why I fight in the first place."
And in a flash of comprehension, Bastila understood. "She is what keeps you from falling even further into the Dark Side—what keeps you from losing control of yourself."
Revan nodded and turned back to his drawing. "My love for her is undying. It fuels my rage, my hatred, but love stays my hand when I look over the precipice and prepare to trade what little humanity I have left for power. Alek—Malak—has made that trade, and his is not a condition I wish to adopt anytime in the near future." He chuckled. "It's almost funny. The Jedi tell you to forsake attachments, for they lead to the Dark Side. As with much of their more lucid foolishness, while not entirely false, it is not entirely true, either. Love is fuel. Love is power. Love is the lifeline that keeps us from falling haplessly into the abyss that would otherwise consume anyone who has ever dabbled in the Dark Side, anyone who has ever succumbed to its seductive allure. Know this, Bastila. There is only one thing that the Jedi and I agree on, and it is that the Dark Side is dangerous. Without a grounding force, you will lose yourself to it."
Bastila reflexively made to contest that point, but thought better of it. She was not an idiot to believe something when overwhelming evidence to the contrary presented itself. Revan was a prime example of the success of his grounding force, as he called it, and before she could think to understand, she found herself wondering how things might work for her.
"I genuinely have no idea," said Revan, and Bastila found to her shock that she had uttered the query aloud. Revan set the holopad down and turned to her, his piercing gaze focused on her with undivided attention. "So tell me about yourself, Bastila, and perhaps we might find the answer together."
So she told him. Told him about her father, and about her mother, and about her life as a child before the Jedi Order had come to collect her, Force-sensitive as she was. Told him about the arguments, and the endless search for greater and greater treasures, spurred on by her mother and her avarice such that time ran out for her before she had ever really gotten to know her father, and Revan sat, listening carefully to every word that passed from her lips and nodding at times to show that he was still listening, still paying more attention to her than the other Jedi she knew, even those she considered friends. Bastila even found herself searching her brain for other things to tell him, things she had never told anyone else before and likely never will again. She trusted Revan for some reason, believed that he would keep her secrets, even if nobody else would. He had shared so much of himself, after all, that it seemed only right that she would likewise unburden herself onto an ear lent by someone she was coming to the realisation that she trusted, if not a friend in and of himself, as a confidante.
"I would caution you against playing such memories so close to the chest," Revan replied after a short while. "Such things are poison to the soul. Hatred is one thing. It is necessary to conduct the Dark Side through one's body. Resentment is quite another. It clouds the judgement and the mind more completely than the Dark Side ever could, and blinds one to differing points of view. So many of these newly fallen Jedi don't understand this, and they become some of the most vile creatures to attend the Sith Academy. That's no small feat."
"If you acknowledge them as vile, then why do you surround yourself with them?" Bastila asked.
"The weak cull themselves and the strong are too useful to be ignored. Yes, even the most vile of creatures have their uses. You will learn this."
"When?" she asked, leaning forward. This was a once in a lifetime opportunity to learn from one of the most gifted, if misguided, Force users in the galaxy. The childlike desire for knowledge she squashed around the Jedi masters resurfaced.
"Very soon, when we go to ground," the Sith Lord replied. "You see, Bastila, I know how these things work even if you don't. In a little while, your lack of progress will be recognised by the Jedi Council. Never mind that these things take time. The more time this takes, the more likely it is that things don't go their way. So they will pull the plug, so to speak, on this whole grand experiment, and turn me over to the Republic so that I can stand trial in the court of public opinion and face a firing squad. It'll be all niceties and pageantry, the senators posturing and preening in attempting to make this a whole pro-Republic propaganda stunt, and I, quite frankly, am rather tired of standing around and letting vermin talk about me like I'm not here."
"So, what are you going to do?" Bastila asked, terrified.
The Sith Lord gave her a flat look in the shadows of his hood. "It's bad manners to ask questions to which you already know the answer. I'm going to escape. And I'm giving you a chance, here, a once in a lifetime chance. Come with me. I'll teach you everything the Jedi refuse to. Help me out of here, or I escape by force. Either way, you'll live, at least at first, but if I have to escape by force, I refuse to take a hostage, and even more so do I refuse to teach that hostage things I would otherwise be inclined to. But if you help me out of here, I will teach you things beyond your wildest imagination, feats that would allow you to dwarf even your masters in power. You have such potential, Bastila, and I despise letting such potential go to waste. Please don't make me do something I despise."
Bastila looked on in shock. Did she just hear what she thought she did? Revan was going to escape! But… Why would he tell her this? The answer was obvious—to make his offer, his single offer, to teach her to reach her potential. Something none of the Jedi were willing to do, because they feared her. Feared her power. And once, she would have agreed with him. But talk of his past and the trust she had placed in him led her to one inescapable conclusion: there were things in the galaxy that she would not, could not be able to face if she were not to accept this offer. Darth Sion was only one of them, and if what Revan said was true, he was still out there. Not to mention…
Not to mention, she might be able to see her father again.
She reached over to the control panel and deactivated the force field containing him. How she knew the code was beyond her, but when she needed it, there it was, whispered into the back of her mind. It was the will of the Force that she should do this, but more importantly, it was her will, her choice that she had made.
The cell powered down, and Revan looked at her, mirth in his eyes. "We'd best be going, then, little Jedi."
Suddenly, Bastila was overtaken with a wave of wrongness. Of misgivings. Was she right to do this? Was it too late to go back?
The answer, of course, was yes.
When Revan stepped out of his cell, each of his footfalls resounded throughout the basement of the enclave, and his stance radiated power. No, all of him radiated power, and the Dark Side pulsed as a necrotic heart throughout the gathering place of the Jedi. "Come, Bastila. I need to retrieve my lightsabers and then we're off this Force-forsaken lump of rock. We have work to do if we're going to be able to put Vitiate's defeat into motion. Starting with finding and retrieving my Shadow Hand."
Bastila did not protest. She did not even try. Still… "Vitiate? Who in the Force's name is Vitiate? You never mentioned them!"
"Him, albeit loosely," replied Revan. "He is the true enemy, Boga's usurper, the puppet master I must conquer the Republic in order to defeat. I'll continue telling my story on the way, if you like? I imagine we'll be spending quite some time in hyperspace, enough for me to continue, perhaps even to the present day."
"I… I would like that," said Bastila. "But why?"
"You are of infinitely more value as an ally than a servant, and admiration is the emotion furthest from understanding. You must understand why I do what I do, and why it is necessary," he replied. Then, he turned away, and took a deep, shuddering breath. "For Meetra."
A pulse of almighty sorrow, rage and pain rippled through the Force, a wave of the most powerful Dark Side Force energy she had ever felt, and instinctively she braced herself. Using the Force, he wrenched the dead-bolted doors open, off of their sliding hinges, and walked out, visibly on the warpath. Bastila followed quickly in an attempt not to be left behind.
On the other side of the door, she saw that the three masters present were assembled in front of a small horde of Padawans, all with their lightsabers drawn.
Revan chuckled. "All this time and you're still so afraid of me that you need to put an army in my way to stem my advance?"
Vrook spoke first. "We do not fear you!"
"Then you will die braver than most," Revan replied wryly. "Tell you what, Vrook, since you like your little games so much."
Vrook winced at that.
"Let's play a game. That game is called 'how much of your flock must I cull before you stand aside and let me and my lovely assistant go,'" said Revan affably. "I kill your Padawans until you come to your senses and realise that letting me go is not the worst thing you could possibly do, or until they're all dead. Whichever comes first."
"You are a vile murderer and we shall not let you past!" cried Master Lamar. Suddenly, Vrook grasped at his throat as he began to rise into the air.
"Vile murd…! I say, how rude you've become in your dotage, Vrook," replied Revan, lifting a hand into the air in tandem with Vrook's levitation. "Everyone dies. I as a soldier know that better than most. Honestly, I only choose the time and place for a few. Like you. Right here. Right now."
With that, Revan closed his grip and Vrook's body just seemed to crumple in on itself. Revan then cast his hand to the side, and Vrook flew into the wall with a sickening crunch. The Sith Lord brought Vrook's lightsaber to him. "Excellent work, Vrook. The balance could use some adjustment, and the craftsmanship leaves much to be desired, but for a Jedi's lightsaber that is built to prioritise function over form, it really is a work of art in its own way. A shame, really, that it's come to this."
Revan touched the activation plate with a snap-hiss, igniting the lightsaber and causing it to rise into the air, before spearing itself through the centre of Vrook's head.
Immediately, a chorus of snap-hiss came to life as the Padawans and Zhar ignited their lightsabers. Revan turned to them dispassionately. "You could have stopped me. Any of you could have stopped me from killing him. But you didn't, and now one of the Jedi Masters is dead and gone—oh, sorry, 'one with the Force.' You teach divorcing yourselves from emotion, but really, all you insignificant children are is afraid. Even the great Master Vandar Tokare is so paralysed with fear of me that he didn't even attempt to stop his friend from dying. Not that it wouldn't have been funny to see him try. Funnier than any of his jokes, at any rate. Are these the cowards that I fought for, that Meetra fought for, and was murdered for?! You disgust me. All of you. Come, Bastila. They won't stop us. They haven't the temerity."
Revan walked forth briskly and parted the sea of Padawans, but one stopped him.
Belaya, with a battle cry, struck forward and slashed downwards at him from above with her blue Guardian lightsaber. Revan simply lifted a hand and her lightsaber halted its descent, but this was the call to action as the Jedi converged on him. He sighed, and spread out his arms as if parting a curtain, and they slammed into the wall, stuck there like insects on a windshield. All but Zhar Lestin and Vandar Tokare.
"Hasty, Vrook was. Like him, we are not," said Vandar. "Fighters, we are not. Suicide it would be, to stand in your way. Have need of us, the Jedi do."
"You're correct in that, at least," said Revan. "I believe Atris is still on her way, is she not? Zez-Kai Ell and Kavar still in hiding from my inquisitors dogging their every step? Vrook was the only hope you had, and in his arrogance, he signed his own death warrant."
Bastila was still in shock. The sheer power that Revan had, even diminished as he was, was staggering. She could feel it pulsating off of him. Then she sensed something. She looked up. "Revan!"
"Treachery?!" Revan roared as he looked up to see Master Dorak descending on him from above, his lightsaber ignited and ready to bifurcate the Sith Lord. Revan held a hand up and stopped him cold, and then held him there. Master Zhar ignited his lightsaber and Master Vandar followed suit, their green plasma blades glowing in the darkness of the corridor as they moved to engage the helpless Revan. Bastila was moving before she knew what she was doing, igniting her own double-bladed lightsaber and thrusting it upward to block both blades as they pressed in on her. She felt bound in their trap, and the Jedi immediately began to assail her mind with all the Force energy at their disposal.
Your legs are too wide. Parade rest. Revan's voice in the Force, from the back of her mind, calmed her disquiet. Relax your hands, and remember your hybrid form. Now!
Bastila spun her lightsaber and threw both the Jedi Masters off balance, thrusting her blade through one, and then the other. Neatly, cleanly. Like surgery.
Their eyes widened, and they staggered back, clutching their chests as identical expressions of horror crept across their faces. She spun her double-bladed lightsaber around her body and over her head, and then slashed across her body, beheading the paedophilic Zhar and then twisting it end-over-end to split Vandar's head in half.
Good, sent Revan, and Bastila went to her knees, deactivating her lightsaber and seeing nothing but terror in the eyes of those she had once called her friends, peers and colleagues. Tears began to sting in her eyes.
What have I done?!
Revan used the Force to rip Dorak in half, his blood spraying across the corridor and falling on Bastila like an anointing rain. He walked past her, and looked over his shoulder, saying, "When you're ready to be an adult again, and take me up on my offer, there is a planet not far from here. It is called Taris. I have a few old enemies, and so I really ought to start out on my journey on that world. Should you find yourself there, well… You know what to do."
With that, Revan turned away and walked toward the open sky, leaving Bastila behind him, with only the portrait of a dead woman to mark that his time on Dantooine had ever been anything but bloodshed and death.
The woman took a deep breath, shaking herself limber one more time. Garbed in rags, she was nonetheless covered enough to survive the harsh Tatooine suns high above, the heat beating down on the blood-sands and giving the illusion of flowing water. As a gladiatrix, she never needed for water or food; after all, a half-starved gladiator could not fight. She stepped out onto the blood-sands in her wrapped boots, the sand getting everywhere between her toes everywhere her feet stepped. There was a Gamorrean on the opposite side of the arena, the classic gladiatorial combatant for the Hutts' sick games, and he heaved a massive battle-axe into his hands, ready to take her on. The gladiadrix was unarmed, because everyone there knew how dangerous she was armed. The poor dumb swine across the way wouldn't stand a chance against her were she armed, and that would make for poor sport indeed. There had been a small stint where she had managed to kill Bendak Starkiller, a Mandalorian on loan from the Tarisian gladiatorial ring, with a vibroknife, and that had caused quite the uproar, so this was more or less a routine match.
This was her one chance to try and reconnect to the Force. She knew that she risked her beloved finding her every time she tried this, but with word of her death, she knew that he wouldn't look for her. He believed her long dead, and one doesn't search for a dead woman.
The Gamorrean squealed and charged, and she sidestepped the goring tusks that were aimed directly at her. That's one. She felt something like an Alderaanian matador in what she was doing, dodging a tusked creature with the power to pulverise her body so much that not even her beloved would recognise her corpse were she to make a misstep. So she didn't, and with her unwillingness to make mistakes, she had made her employer, Dodoga the Hutt, a great deal of capital, both political and financial. Bendak Starkiller really had been a bit of a coup, the best fighter in recent memory from a trade centre and Exchange hotbed like Taris taken down by a relative unknown from a backwater world like Tatooine.
She was so distracted thinking of Bendak Starkiller that she nearly killed the Gamorrean as it came at her again. She managed to swing off of its tusks and to its other side without hurting it, but that was a close call. That's two. The idea of good sport in gladiatorial combat revolved around playing with one's opponent. It wasn't a fight so much as a carefully choreographed dance, a despicable practise for despicable creatures with despicable tastes—so it came as no surprise that the Hutts had invented it. Still, it paid the bills and kept her skills sharp, so she had very few complaints about her current occupation.
All the same, it was becoming time to leave. She was beginning to feel the Force again, a whisper of a whisper of a whisper of her former power, but it was returning to her. News had reached even distant Tatooine that Darth Revan had survived his captivity at the hands of the Jedi Order and was now at large, and she could picture the right panic that Malak would be in at the idea that Revan was coming for him.
Poor Alek, she thought to herself as she caught the Gamorrean's axe in her hands, forcing it to the side and letting it impact into the ground hard enough to kick up quite the plume of sand. What happened to you? You and Revan both? What did you find in the Unknown Reaches that changed you both so very much?
The Gamorrean went to head-butt her, so she jabbed it in the throat, causing it to wheeze as its air flow suddenly went haywire. She then closed its solar plexus with a well-placed strike, and then kneed it in the chest, causing it to bend over, whereupon she slammed both interlocked hands into the back of its neck. The Gamorreans were known for having strong spines, so she was in no danger of killing it, but it still hurt.
She walked around the wheezing Gamorrean, watching as the crowd chanted, somehow in unison despite the wide variety of languages they all spoke. She looked to Dodoga, and the crowd gasped as the Gamorrean charged her from behind, but she kept her eyes focused on Dodoga until she saw him smile and nod. It was not a nice smile, not that it ever was with Hutts, but all the same it was what she needed. She backflipped at the last second, grabbing the Gamorrean by the tusks and then swinging her body around its throat, her momentum twisting its neck and snapping its spine with a sickening crack that was audible throughout the suddenly silent colosseum.
The squealing boar-man went to the ground with flailing, twitching death throes, but it was dead. It was done.
The crowd at once broke into uproarious cheering.
Later, when she was beneath the blood-sands, washing herself off in a bathtub filled with cold water and imported ice, a luxury almost to the point of being gauche on Tatooine (but then again, what were the Hutts if not extraordinarily gauche), her lover approached her. Visas Marr was her name, a Miraluka slave girl who idolised the woman's every move, everything about her. The woman thought little and less of her; there was one and only one being, after all, in all the galaxy, indeed, in all the universe whom she would ever love, and he was nowhere near Tatooine at the moment. Not that the woman did not take advantage of Visas and indulge in the pleasures of her flesh, of which Visas was only too eager to give, but it was empty, physical, the pure exertion of her will upon an admittedly beautiful and supple young girl, willing almost to a manic degree of desperation to feel the woman's touch upon her.
Visas, like all Miraluka, was entirely open to the Force, and so was drawn into her spider's web like the most exquisitely boring fly. The woman leeched carefully from her through sex, cautiously restoring her own connection to the Force by way of cannibalising it from the young, impressionable slave girl. But she was resting, so Visas's intrusion was already irritating her, and it was soon time to go. Revan was out there, and she had to find him; and in order to do that, she would need to finally finish reestablishing her connection to the Force.
"Mistress, may I wash your back?" Visas asked innocently, fidgeting as her proximity to the woman's nudity began to cause her naked body to show signs of arousal, from the slickness of her thighs to the blush on her cheeks. How Visas saw her was always a mystery to the woman, seeing as she knew full well that she was a wound in the Force, and the Miraluka saw through the Force, but the woman found she didn't rightly care to unravel that particular mystery right now. Her departure was much more important at this juncture.
"You may," said the woman as Visas reached for the sponge, reaching up and brushing the woman's long hair back. She had used to wear it short during her days as a Jedi, just as she had once been a blonde. Both had been fixed, as keeping her natural appearance would have drawn too much attention to herself. Now her hair was, as stated, long, and it had been dyed a dark brown, far from the lustre of her natural pale golden blonde, but it kept her from being recognised, and so she considered it a success, much to the chagrin of her vanity. Her skin was tanned from the years she had spent in Dodoga the Hutt's employ, but nothing could be done to hide the vibrant blue of her eyes, the blue that Revan had loved so much.
Back when he was Kylo, and she Meetra.
Back when she was not the Exile and he was not the Dark Lord of the Sith.
Back in those halcyon days when things were simple and they were in love, and not embroiled in a war that would change them both in ways neither of them fully understood once they had embarked, along with Alek, on that dark path to the war that claimed the life of the woman she had once hoped would be her mother-in-law. The war that claimed her beloved's innocence, breaking him beyond what she could fix. Of all the casualties of that war, those two were what caused her to shed tears still when she thought of them.
"Mistress, is there something wrong?" Visas asked, and Meetra realised that she was crying. Again. The night they shared after Cathar, when Kylo had come to her so completely broken and wanting her, needing her, was probably the saddest night of her life. That was the night the boy she knew and loved so very deeply had died, and the inhuman symbol of "Revan" had taken his place, but ever since that night, Cassus Fett's Cathar Massacre always brought her to tears. It was there that her beloved had found that damnable mask, behind which he had hidden, more than simply his face, his very heart, becoming hard, cold and callous, driven by a lust for revenge to acts of untold destruction.
And she had followed him as he fell further and further, until Malachor V and her exile.
And then he had disappeared. Him and Alek both.
She set her jaw firmly. That wouldn't be her. She would find Revan and find out what happened in undiscovered space that had affected him so profoundly. Then she would do her best to save him and Alek both. She wouldn't let her beloved fall into the dark oblivion that awaited him at the end of his path—while she could live apart from him, she could not, would not, live without him. She refused.
"No, Visas," she replied with a huff of resolution. "No, I'm quite alright."
"If there's anything I can do for you, Mistress, anything at all…" the Miraluka girl began.
A smirk crossed Meetra's face. "Well, Visas, actually, there is one thing you can do for me."
"Name it!" she cried eagerly, dropping the sponge into the icy bathwater.
"There is something I must do," Meetra said gravely as she turned around in the bath, reaching up and grabbing the Miraluka by the chin and lifting her sightless eyes to meet her own—a purely symbolic gesture, but by the way Visas's breath caught, she knew that it did not go unnoticed. "And I know not if I have the strength to do it. Will you help me?"
"Of course!" Visas replied.
Meetra took her hand and placed it over Visas's breast, where her heart was located, and she could feel it beating, fluttering like a hummingbird's, but strong. Meetra felt Visas's hand close over her own, holding it there. She sighed, took a breath in, and said in a quavering voice, "Thank you, Visas."
With that, she reached deep inside herself, the part of her that had been an insatiable void ever since Malachor V, and she pulled.
She left Visas there, on the ground, breathing shallowly as the last of her life force ebbed out of her, her strong heartbeat fading fast. Meetra got out of the bath, her ability to use the Force restored, and she walked over to the wardrobe, garbing herself in her old, threadbare Jedi robes, and gathering her effects. She took the credit chit with all of her winnings on it, and packed it into her bag, before leaving the colosseum's dormitories for Anchorage, where she knew she would find something of Revan's, and perhaps clues as to find something of her own that was taken from her when she was expelled from the Order—the whereabouts of the doomed woman who loved her, the Jedi Master Atris, and thus, her lightsaber. Then and only then could she storm the fortress her beloved had built around his heart; then and only then could she find if the man she loved was even still alive.
Thus did Meetra Surik leave Dodoga the Hutt's colosseum, his employ, and his service.
Bastila Shan paced in her cell in the Republic capital ship's prison hold. Even treacherous Jedi were afforded adequate quarters, after all, an insistence of the Jedi Order against the increasing corruption of the Galactic Senate. After all, the one thing the Jedi feared above all else was the perception of their own obsolescence. This was one of the conclusions Bastila had reached through her meditations, given that there was little and less to do in her cell as they made the long and perilous journey through Sith-controlled hyperlanes to Coruscant, the galactic seat of power itself; one of the conclusions she reached since her lightsaber was kept in a secure safe across the room from her. Granted, very few things could truly stop a Force user save for another Force user, but she let her saberstaff rest there. She needed to think, and this was as good a time as any, and, to be honest, a sight better than most.
The one thing she thought of most of all, however, was the most perplexing thing she had seen throughout the entirety of the journey, which was, of course, the small pyramid that sat on the floor, untouched and unopened, in front of her. It was black and inscribed with scarlet markings, obviously Sith in origin, but how it had come into her possession and why was a mystery to her. Even more mysterious was how none of the guards seemed to notice it, as though their attention slid completely off of it and to something else, as though something deep in their subconscious minds didn't want to notice it. This only continued to reinforce her idea that the pyramid was something she had only ever heard of, in the form of a Sith holocron.
Unlike Jedi holocrons, which only ever held massive amounts of information on any given topic, Sith holocrons were created through Sith alchemy, and thus served as anchors for the souls of their creators. It was a form of immortality, and many an ancient Sith Lord had found a way to return themselves to life by way of possessing the bodies of those poor unwary souls unfortunate enough to come across them and foolish enough to open them. And so she kept her hands and the Force away from it as much as she could, simply examining the pyramid from the outside. It didn't take long, forever, for her to grow frustrated with the lack of progress she was making in deciphering the Sith runes. She had never learned the notation used by the kind of Sith alchemist canny enough in their art to create a Dark Side holocron, and now she was kicking herself for never asking for access to Master Kreia's notes on such things, or even Master Atris's writings on the dangers of holocrons that she had written before fleeing for the secret facility at Telos. Then she might be having some headway in deciphering the meaning of the inscriptions on the holocron.
Finally, she gave up, and she levitated the holocron and turned it over to look on its bottom, to see if the key was there. And on the bottom, in Galactic Basic, were the words "Touch Me." She sighed, put the holocron down, and touched the tip of it gingerly. She hissed as her finger was pricked, and the runes on the holocron lit up as her blood was taken into it. The pyramid split apart, and in the centre there was a little dome that began to glow a vibrant scarlet, before a small hologram of Revan stood from it.
"Ah, Bastila. It is good to see you have developed a healthy suspicion of Jedi and their incessant warnings. Though I ought to caveat that by saying that you really should not have done what you did. Jedi are wrong about many things, but they are correct in saying that Sith artefacts are inherently dangerous. There are no end to the things that the Sith will do to maintain their power and safeguard their knowledge," said Revan as he began to pace. "But yes, where were we… Ah! We were on our way back from the cave on the other side of Dantooine, weren't we? But before we do that, I see I have a rather captive audience. I'm not too fond of those, so why don't we liven things up a bit? Escape and head to Korriban. That's where I'm really headed. Let the Jedi and their underlings scour Taris for a while. That cesspit ought to be destroyed in my personal opinion. But yes, escape even if you have to kill all that stand in your way. That is your first trial, my new apprentice. Then I will continue our story on the way to the Sith homeworld. Well, the first one, anyway. I'd have to be an idiot to direct you to Dromund Kaas."
Bastila nodded as the hologram went away, flickering off. The holocron closed and sealed itself shut as she got up and focused, concentrating on finding the control panel. It was fingerprint-locked, but that didn't matter. She focused on her lightsaber, ignited it, and then instantaneously sent it flying towards the control board. She had to catch up with Revan. She was no longer a Jedi, after all, and that meant that the Dark Side would soon come to claim her. She might as well become a Sith in the vein of Revan instead of becoming a raging monster that was hell-bent on a course towards unknown self-destruction.
The container overloaded and powered down, and she could sense numerous Force signatures headed directly for her. The guards. She pocketed the holocron and went directly for her lightsaber, extinguishing it and then reigniting it into her guard stance. Sensing danger, she looked up and indeed saw that gas was beginning to get pumped into the area. She strode forth towards the door and stuck her ignited lightsaber into it, beginning to cut a human-sized hole in the bulkhead before her lungs were inundated with sleeping gas, or even worse, poison gas. She didn't know if they intended to kill her, but a strange calm settled over her as she cut her way through the door, kicking through the bulkhead's cut section as it fell over and she walked out.
"Open fire!" cried the man she assumed to be the guard captain. Trask, she remembered was his name, and this ship was the Endar Spire. Well, she wanted out. "Open fire, you—!"
He clutched his throat as he could no longer breathe, Bastila's hand closing from afar as she Force-choked him until he fell to the ground in a heap. She looked around the room and asked a simple question. "Anyone else want to try dying today?"
The Republic troopers lifted their blaster rifles and began to fire. They only got one volley off as Bastila went into Shii-Cho to deflect the bolts of hard-light that were going to slam into her, and then let loose a Force wave to knock them all into the walls hard enough to knock them out. She wasn't Sith enough to kill them all yet.
That done, she walked out of the initial threshold and towards the hangar bay, looking for a hyperspace-capable shuttle. It seemed that all of the troops on the ship, a platoon by the size of them, had all been in the initial wave; that, or the stragglers were making themselves scarce against the rampaging Jedi. She didn't blame them. She'd be scared of her, too, if she wasn't a Jedi. Or, well, former-Jedi now.
Shortly thereafter, she was out of the hangar bay with a stolen shuttle carrying her towards the nearest hyperspace beacon. Setting the shuttle to autopilot, she sat down and pulled the holocron out of her bag, opening it once more and listening as Revan came forth and began to speak.
To be continued…