Two Months Later
Leon stared at the hilt of the training saber that sat on his open palm. As with everything else in the academy, they had told him how to make a lightsaber, but not what form it should take. The eight Councilors who had taken students encouraged their students to do what came naturally, not what came easily. Lightsabers were the weapons that had been used for millennia in the wars between Jedi, Sith, and whatever else there has ever been. The Central Academy was built upon the idea of building the greatest warrior one could be. For some students, this meant crafting unique emitter matrices, upgrading specialized power cells, and bringing into being a weapon that no one else would be able to use to the extent that its creator could. In his short time at the Academy, Leon had been exposed to the ideas of lightwhips, shield-like emitter gauntlets, twin daggers, and more. The Councilors wanted desperately to create a new, incredibly powerful warrior of the type the galaxy had yet to see.
Even when the student crafted only a normal saber, they were encouraged to develop their own style. Leon, at first, had felt like the odd one out when he saw other students using doublesabers or telekinesis to use three blades at once. Leon's hand closed around the grooves fit to his fingers and thumb, a rough black plasteel that increased the strength of his grip on the saber when he used it. The bottom of the handle had a slight bend, allowing the new Knight to switch his grip quickly and to get extra leverage on his attacks whether using a forehand or backhand grip. He had even been teaching himself dual saber techniques when he could, though what he did seemed tame compared to the incredibly specialized movements of his peers.
Leon flicked the saber into existence. Like all other crystals used to power the training sabers, which could not carve through even flesh, it was a dull gray. Leon's personal mentor, Lord Var, had told him that the color was meant to symbolize what each person saw. A gray could become a shade of black or white depending on who was looking at it, though Leon only saw gray. The same gray as the robes they had supplied him with.
The robes... Leon did not like them. They felt too loose, like a mass of cloth that was going to cause him to trip at any moment and tumble into the wrong end of a training saber. He desperately wanted to be rid of the robes, to wear the second skin of his under armor, but that had been destroyed as soon as the first trial had ended.
The young man sighed and pushed himself up to his feet, opening his hand and levitating the lightsaber an inch or two away from his outstretched palm, spinning it quickly as he did. A circular wall of gray appeared before Leon, driving his mind back yet again. Var had said he would only teach Leon the basics, and he had held true to that. How to extend his perceptions – barely – how to levitate things – barely – how to resist mind tricks – barely. Var badly wanted Leon to discover his own bounds for himself. "Though never forget that I am a resource you may always look towards," the man had told Leon a few days after taking him as an apprentice. He had placed his hand on Leon's shoulder and smiled. "It is important for you to fight, to use the Force in a way that makes you the strongest you can be. If you can survive, it will show you are learning. But if you are worried that you are not learning quickly enough, come to me and I will happily help."
Var had been pleased that Leon had even survived this far into the training, which worried him. It was obvious that the Council not only expected death amongst their students, but they were waiting for the first one to fall. Training was difficult, and Leon knew that this expectation was deserved. He himself had barely survived in many cases, saved every time by his increasing skill in his own lightsaber technique. It didn't seem that anyone else used anything similar, so when he had stumbled upon this manner of dueling and blaster deflection, he had been quick to keep it to himself. For the time being, at least. It took a lot of concentration to subtly move someone's weapon while they were attacking you, and Leon was astounded he was even able to do it. Var had noticed, it was obvious, and the old man was incredibly impressed. That said much, as he hadn't even been impressed when one student learned how to use three sabers at once.
Leon growled to himself and deactivated the training saber, throwing it onto his cot. He still hadn't been allowed to see Mari, and Var had even cut off his communications with Deranis and Erea. It had been some time since Leon had felt this isolated, and it hurt how familiar it seemed. Like an ache that fit into his mind perfectly. His thoughts were interrupted by a voice from near the doorway. "Well, looks like you made it," a familiar voice said. Leon looked up at the silhouette leaning against the wall, a man in black robes with his hood obscuring his every feature. The man pushed off of the wall and took a step towards Leon.
"I was wondering when you would show up again," Leon said, narrowing his eyes at the man. He held his hand out and his training saber flew to his hand. The Black Robed Man stopped and stared at the deactivated hilt in Leon's hand. The young man clipped the weapon to his belt and sighed. "What do you want?"
"You aren't going to ask me who I am?" the visitor asked, surprised.
"Why bother, you've never answered before anyways," Leon sighed. He walked past the man and opened the door.
"Heading out to your test. The last big one?" the Black Robed Man asked.
"Yep. The last one," the former soldier said, stepping out of his room. The other man followed him out. "Why?"
Leon waited, not hearing any footsteps behind him. "Do you understand?" the man finally asked. Leon flinched, nearly in surprise. He noticed that the man's feet clacked in time with his own, a single noise that echoed down the hall. "Do you know what you've gotten yourself into?"
"Obviously not," Leon replied. He sighed and cracked his gloved knuckles. "Why? Do you plan on actually helping me for once?"
The Black Robed Man was silent. "So, no, then?" Leon asked while he continued to walk.
"I'd be careful," the man finally replied. Leon frowned, starting to get worried. "I've been watching you. You've come a long way from the dumb kid fighting with a Vong Shaper. Now you're just a stupid kid who doesn't know anything about the things he's getting himself into."
"Hey," Leon warned. He turned and glared at the faceless individual. Leon sighed and turned back to the hall, the clacking of his boots seeming to quiet with the dimming of the lights. "I already know. No one's died yet, which means..."
"They most likely expect you to kill each other," the Black Robed Man finished. "As they should."
Leon turned, horrified and angry. "How can you say that!?" he hissed. He snarled and glared at the man. "Th... Killing them – kriff, any of us – is pointless. We're soldiers. They should put us in the war!"
"This place is not about making a thousand good fighters, Leon. This academy is about sacrificing the potential of thousands to make just a single, perfect soldier in exchange. And to create a perfect soldier, you must sacrifice great ones," the anonymous teacher told his pupil. The hood shifted from side to side; he was shaking his head. "And I don't know if you'll be that one."
"Thanks for the vote of confidence," Leon grumbled. He turned away from the hooded man and marched towards the swoop hangar. "I can handle myself."
"But can you handle whomever it is they throw at you?" the man asked. Leon ignored him. "Pity. I guess I will have to wait and see."
Leon slammed his fist onto the door controls, tired of hearing all this from the Black Robed Man. He was not going to let this... this competition change his mind. "Anyone that would kill, or betray their allies doesn't deserve power," Leon whispered to himself, assuring himself to reject this. There was no way that this is what Lord Revan would have wanted. Leon wasn't sure, but he didn't believe that Lord Var would approve either. Though... perhaps he did not know the man as well as he had hoped.
Var held himself with a quiet, deeply contained rage. Shame hung upon his shoulders like a deadly, soul crushing weight. At times, the quiet, calm man seemed a thinning, fractured mask ready to expose some maniacal killer. Perhaps that was why he sat at the center of the council, the only one capable of understanding the mania inherent in the Dark and the strenuous order of the Light. Leon more and more understood that Var was truly an Embodiment of the Gray, or at least one way it could be viewed.
Leon stopped when he saw his Master and two black-robed individuals in the room. One of them was a woman with gray skin and bored, yellow eyes that failed to communicate the presence of a soul. She had the facial structure of a model, with high cheek bones and a natural, bored smile. The other figure had a feminine body shape, but any defining features were concealed beneath a black mask with dull, red eyes.
Lord Var smiled at his apprentice. "You're late," the old man said. Var was wearing his hair in a ponytail high on his head, strands of black and gray drifting loose around his face. "Ah, no matter. This girl will be your ally for your last test. Her last one, too."
Leon frowned. Did this mean that a fight to the death was not the intended test? "And what is the test?" Leon asked with a frown.
"The two of you," the bored woman began, her voice dry and quiet, "will take this speeder across the planet's surface to an ancient Gray Nexus of the Force. There you will find a crystal cavern. When you walk through it, your energies will be cast about into space to imprint on one. A crystal connected with you through the Force. You will be a sieve through which the water of the Force flows, and the crystal is the bowl that will collect what you let go."
"How very... poetic," Var noted. He smiled nervously at his student. "But correct nonetheless. Oh, and if one of you dies on the way to the crystals, the other one shouldn't bother coming back."
Leon frowned. "You've never expected us to work together with anyone else before," he noted. He looked over at his new partner. "Though, I suppose that's better than what I expected."
Var chuckled. "Good. Now, get going," he replied. He gestured at the landspeeder. "Follow the preprogrammed route, it'll get you there as quickly as possible."
SWSWSWSWSW
"Ah, remember when that was us?" Var asked the woman at his side. "Kind of."
"I have told you a thousand times, Var. I am Vallen," the woman muttered. She looked over at the man with a bored glare. "And I remember. Ilum, I believe."
"Yeah," Var said. "Yeah, it was karking freezing the entire time. Oh, the good old days, before this crazy war, assassinations, all that other stuff that we've had to deal with. Your disappearance... You had me worried back then."
Vallen ignored the comment. "So, do you believe that this boy is everything that you wanted?" she inquired. "Could you possibly have created another Revan? Or did you, yet again, fail miserably?"
"And what makes you think that girl is the creature you've wanted to create? That she could destroy another Revan?" Var asked, his jovial tone gone, replaced by cold, indignant anger. "What makes you think that this girl is the future?"
Vallen, for the first time, showed emotion. She smiled triumphantly and let her eyes settle on the speeder in the distance, the black dot ever shrinking over the horizon. "You created this same weapon once, didn't you? Think about it, Doron: what killed Theron Fel? What killed Revan?"
"Ana..."
"Well, she definitely killed Theron Fel," Vallen said with a knowing smile. "And even assuming she was the one that killed Revan as well, does that not tell you why this girl is going to kill your current student? What was Ana to Revan?"
Var shut his eyes and let his head fall to his chest. He ran a hand along his hair, trying to deal with his burning desire to break something. "A friend. A traitor..." For a moment, the Gray Lord began to doubt in the young man. Var sighed and looked up at Vallen with a sad smile. "I suppose we'll have to see, then, just who wins. Two hundred credits on Leon, Horn."
The woman sneered. "It is Darth Vallen. And make it two thousand – or are you afraid to play sabacc at the main table?"
"Ah, there she is! Okay, but only if you don't be angry when you're out two grand," Var responded. He patted his peer on her shoulder, a move that was tinged with both condescension and the vestiges of their old friendship.
"Don't be angry when you are out an apprentice," Vallen responded, the remains of who she had been hidden once again. "Doron."
"Kaireinia, neither of them are going to die," the man responded. He glanced over his shoulder at the horizon; the speeder was invisible by this point. "You don't know him like I do."
SWSWSWSWSW
Leon carefully followed the directions that the speeder's guidance system was feeding him, making his way closer and closer towards the crystal cave that Var had directed him towards. Well, Var and the master of Leon's quiet, kind of scary new friend. He glanced nervously over at her to see the unblinking red eyes of the mask fixed on him as they had been since leaving the Central Academy. "So... I'm Leon," he said. The masked woman didn't respond. Leon made a face to himself and shook his head before looking out of the speeder's viewport again. "And... you are?"
The mask hissed, re-pressurizing as if a breath that had been held in for some time had been released, but that was it. Leon nodded and and pursed his lips. Well, this is getting weirder and weirder, he thought to himself. The silence – especially with whoever this was just... staring at him – was starting to make him itch. "So what's your master's name? Is she Darth Vallen?"
The mask bobbed up and down. "Oh. Okay, so you aren't one of the ones I fought then," Leon noted. He glanced over at the mask again. "Are you mute? Because you haven't said a word since I've met you, and I'm starting to worry that I'm talking to a droid.
"I'm not a droid, Leon," a distorted voice came. "This is part of my training. The darkness of those you care about never recognizing you."
"Well, sounds... like a psychotic break waiting to happen," he noted. He glanced back down at the guidance system. "We'll be there in two minutes. Three, if nothing unexpected – and why did I say that!?"
The speeder lurched and began to slow. "Of course. Of course, I said it. Of course it happened," Leon groaned. He slapped himself, both physically and mentally, then leaned back as the speeder's thrusters began to deactivate, causing the high speed transport to slow to a stop. "And we're still a good ten kilometers from where we need to be." Leon growled in exasperation and tore his crash webbing off.
"What are you doing? We should set off our signaling beacon," his partner urged, not moving from her chair.
Leon laughed and shook his head. "This was their plan," he said, still laughing. "This is to see if we can play nice under frustrating circumstances, otherwise it would be easy. Sith don't like easy, or giving up: if we signal, we lose."
The masked woman looked down, then back up at Leon. "You're probably right," she said. She undid her crash webbing and looked towards Leon with an expectant look that gazed through even the dark mask. "What first?"
"Me?" he asked. The woman nodded. He sighed. "Um... the guidance system. I'll try to take it out of the main console, and we're going to need a few power cells if I can pull it off."
"What about wild animals?" the woman asked as she moved to the back of the speeder to collect the power cells. She pulled out a hydrospanner and tossed it to Leon, who caught it in one hand and turned to work on getting the guidance system out of the speeder. "Ruusan may not be Korriban, but it has its share of predators."
"Yeah, but it's still early. If we hurry, we can make it to the cave long before nightfall. We won't have to worry about any carnivores, then," he replied. He cut through the outer casing of the interface and began to carefully cut the unnecessary wires from the screen. The two worked quietly for a while. "So where you from? Big city? Rural?"
"An ecumenopolis," the woman replied. She continued to quietly take out the power cells. "You?"
"A little nowhere, really. Imperial Space, haven't gone back since... well, since my parents died," Leon said. He cut another wire. "You got any family back home?"
"No. I was adopted, so I don't even know if my parents are alive or not. And the people that raised me... they were murdered in front of me."
Leon stopped working and turned around. "Oh... I... I'm so sorry," he said. He glanced at the ground, then back up at the emotionless mask. The woman's body language told him enough, anyways. "It doesn't get better, does it?"
The woman didn't answer, instead walking towards him with three or four power cells. "Are you done yet?"
Leon smiled and yanked on the screen, tearing another unnecessary wire from the system and pulling the receiver and screen from their socket. "I was waiting on you."
