Though one were strong as seven,
He too with death shall dwell,
Nor wake with wings in heaven,
Nor weep for pains in hell;
Though one were fair as roses,
His beauty clouds and closes;
And well though love reposes,
In the end it is not well.
— Excerpt from The Garden of Proserpine by A. Swinburne
The Waste Places
The sun arrives over the horizon, though it's difficult to notice. It takes several hours for its light to thread its way through the clouds, the trees, the mist; by the time it arrives at the forest floor and swamp it is gray, diffused.
But still light nevertheless.
I sit upon a fallen tree, feeling the cool morning air whisper against my face, slowly moving along despite the closeness of the trees. It will be another two hours or so before the pungent smells of rotting vegetation rise to permeate the air, lending it a heated, moist feeling.
I awoke to find Master Yoda gone. Where, I cannot guess. Safe enough to assume he wandered off for purposes known only to him. Meditation or something like it? Perhaps. Either way, it's to a place I cannot follow.
I briefly toy with the idea of asking him to take on the rule of this Empire of mine. It's tempting, indeed. He would do a much better job of it than I with his far surpassing wisdom and experience.
But asking such a thing of him would be completely unfair. I couldn't possibly.
I smile wryly. Besides the fact that he seems to view all this as one big lesson for me. I wouldn't want to disappoint him by removing the opportunities to watch me squirm.
The swamp remains silent except for the occasional guttural croak from one of the winged lizards flying by overhead, turning in slow, gliding wheels before veering off elsewhere. The feeling of isolation here is incredible. Perhaps enjoyable, after all that's transpired in the past little while.
I rub my hand over my face in a world-weary gesture I never used to use. Little while, indeed. I wonder how much Master Yoda actually knows about these missing years of mine. Would it necessarily be a better thing if he did, or if he didn't? I seem to be having more and more difficulty being conclusive, of late. And is that the result of a lasting effect, or merely how events have been going just now? It could be either.
And again I'm inconclusive, this time about my indecision itself. Not entirely unpredictable.
A small splash catches my attention, and I turn my head to the right to see Harat slowly stalking along at the shore of a pool of murky water. She pauses, then labours a few flaps to get herself airborne. Circling back over the water, she watches it carefully, and makes a dive without warning, apparently unaware that I watch her in turn; her talons briefly disappear beneath the surface, shooting up hundreds of minuscule droplets of spray. She retracts her wetted feet with a disappointed whistle and swoops up to perch on a nearby limb, sinking the needlepoints of her talons into the wood as she leans forward, scanning the waters again in lethal earnest with her keen eye.
It's evident enough she believes there's something there worth catching, though I'd never have guessed so. Perhaps she can't smell the vile miasma rising from the pool, at least not to the same extent that I can. What sort of prey would be in that water that she'd wish to catch?
Unless she's desperately hungry. But I fed her just last night. Deciding I won't be able to interpret her actions quite so well as I might have hoped, my attention lingers on her movements a moment longer, until I quickly discover another fact:
She's not the only one being watched.
The idea of him startling me so badly is startling in itself. I nearly fall off my seat upon the dead tree, and reflect on the idea that Master Yoda's been developing a wonderful tendency to physically displace me, at the very least.
The grave humour I see in his eyes as I regain my severely upset balance is an enigma I can puzzle out later.
"How long were you there?" I ask him, righting myself back to a sitting position.
"Here, was I, since you woke," he tells me matter-of-factly.
That long? I think in disbelief. "Were you hiding yourself?"
"Hah! Think you that all you cannot see is in hiding? That observant, are you? See everything to be seen?" With a grunt, he clambers up to sit beside me.
I'm not sure what to say to that. I silently clamour to myself in frustration for what an answer might be to such a question. Of course I cannot see everything. Of course I'm less experienced. Obviously, though, that was a reprimand for my behaviour, for my expectancy of omniscience.
Master Yoda ignores my silence and takes his time in choosing his words, like a carpenter selecting the right tools, or a weaver first examining the choices of colour before picking up his threads and establishing the design. Confident and deliberate.
"Find, you will," he says after a long pause, "many thoughts and feelings to be alien. In the beginning, know you may not how they came to be." He fixes his indomitable stare on me. "Learn, we will, at the end, when all the pieces are present. Ask questions along the way, but expect no answers."
I nod once, immediately feeling that for all my preconceived notions of the brutality that might have gone on, I hadn't nearly been anticipating enough.
The point of the gimer stick rises once again to prod me. "Most importantly: remember who is Obi-Wan. All else, a parasite."
And so we begin.
There was a goal, a vision that all initiates shared. The entire purpose to the existence of the younglings hinged upon what their future might hold, what role they might come to fill in the galaxy. Necessary to their development, of course, was the care received from their Masters, their own role models, especially the ones on the Council.
Those were considered by one mind to be the most dangerous of all, and therefore the first to be sought out for elimination. This mind didn't care exactly what the consequences would be upon the others in the Temple. Their fate would wind up the same as that of the Council members. Some might die quickly; others might present more of a challenge. It mattered not. This mind had brought traitor troops in to take care of the smaller difficulties. This mind—Xiian—would handle the rest.
It was a day of invasion, of fire, debris, and the smell of battle that cannot penetrate fighter canopies. Blood is not noticeable from up in the skies. Coruscant's spectacular buildings were mere needles toppling slowly, ever so slowly over as if mired in a thick fluid. The damage was not a desired effect, of course; preservation is a credit-saver. It would be expensive, after all, to start an Empire.
Planetary defences were penetrated and nullified. Confusion and consequent death took place everywhere and often. It was therefore no large undertaking to direct one's approach vector to the Jedi Temple; the fear of possible pursuit was immaterial. The Republic pilots were too pitifully small in number to see nearly everything.
Xiian landed first, his backup bare moments behind. Emerging from the one-man starfighter, he stared up at the colossal Temple, absorbing the sight of something that should have been in his memory, by all rights. According to the thoughts within Sidious, it was the fault of the Jedi in the first place. He had had little trouble believing that. They hadn't known how to harness him properly; they sent him down a catastrophic trail that wound around the waycourses of his nightmares, and eventually doubled back here.
He burst into the Temple. Most of the Knights and Masters were out in combat. They'd be taken care of that way, for the most part. For now, he could concentrate his attention on those not so suited to fight while he searched for his targets of highest priority. The ones who got in his way would be dealt with as he passed; healers, the old, the young—
I break off. I break away! I can hardly help it.
"Wish for a friend, to help you through difficult times?" Master Yoda's level voice registers. "Dead, are they. Press on, you must."
I choke on my own words: "But I killed them—"
"Excuse, is that? Told you, I did! Reason for fear, yes. Now Yoda suspects you were not listening."
An inhuman rage rises within me, and I fight to quell it. There is a reason he's saying these things. There must be a reason. If I do not always have faith in Master Yoda's amiability, at least I may have faith in his instruction. Besides, it's nearly inconceivable for a sentient being to pass through more than eight hundred years of the Order and not absorb a single worthwhile thing.
"Good," he says. "Regain control, you must. Now, we go back in."
A shudder passes involuntarily over my body. "So quickly?"
"No time to waste," he reprimands. "Continue, we must. Ask yourself: wish for healing, do you?"
I grit my teeth, and prepare for the continuation of this process. There is still so much dross to be burnt away.
—but he became distracted by the sudden appearance of a monster.
She smiled her pernicious, crooked smile as she kept pace with him, seeming to glide along. "Greetings to the pottery. Such a refreshing thing, seeing a work of art put himself to pragmatic use."
While the rest of his face remained set and cold, a conflagration of rage flared up in his eyes; he raised his blade and slashed at her head.
It might as well have passed through a cloud of smoke. Her posture remained unflinching as her gaze swept across the Temple mezzanine they stood upon. "I knew it would happen. All along, I did. Defending the peace, such a useless waste of time!" She leaned closer to him as if confiding a wonderful little secret. "The universe is chaos—that's what these Jedi fools don't seem to realise. You're swimming along nicely, however." With a disarming wink, she was no longer there.
Her disappearance did little to quell the furious tempest that scorched on within him. It blazed on through the red fire that emanated so precisely from his lightsaber hilt as an extension of his own seething mood, funnelled into a structure that was so meticulously created for the express purpose of destruction.
The irony, of course, has always been entirely lost upon the Sith.
He made his way through various hallways, colonnades, even the archetypal structure of the library, housing untold amounts of information in its archives. Without researchers to make use of it, however, it would soon be rendered purposeless. He hewed down Padawans, younglings, even the occasional Knight or Master that had stayed behind for administration interests. Those were mostly, of course, the sorts of Jedi that had never placed particular emphasis on battle, now to their loss. Now to their death.
The young ones were everywhere. He found he had to continue this process of extermination into a wide area of the Temple, even up to the Council chamber where some had ineffectually hid behind the various chairs, directed there by the librarian Jocasta Nu before he'd stabbed her through the heart. It was little more than an nuisance, however. He was not the only one left to pursue them; the troops he'd brought were putting themselves to very good use. There were many of his men killed, of course, but that was all right. They were clones, and therefore could be replaced quite easily.
Long before this first stage of the Purges had been completed, the evidence of the conflagration that ascended from the Temple could be seen for hundreds of kilometres, sending up a thick, billowing pillar of stifling-dark smoke, staining the atmosphere with a blot of ruin.
"My master is most displeased with your apparent lack of progress."
The low-pitched voice resounded well in the cavernous chamber, echoing dimly in the recesses far behind where the bionic general stood, no one else to hear it.
Grievous shifted his stance ever so slightly to the side, well-aware that he was being meticulously observed even if the Sith lord's back was turned. Force-users had an uncanny way of discovering things when one least wished them to. "The situation in the Outer Rim has become less stable, my lord," he rasped, his metallic speech sounding out harsher as the acoustics of the chamber seized it and hurled it back at his audio receptors. "I require more troops—"
Xiian made a half-turn, cutting him off. "You have received troops, and in excessive numbers, I might add. This speaks of incompetence on your part, General. I remind you that you were sent to win battles, not drain resources uselessly."
Somewhere within his globular, transparent gut, Grievous held a deep resentment for that young face which coldly carried its massive weight of authority behind it. Xiian's was not a practical façade, and that irked the general. He felt almost slighted that a boy like this might attain such a sought-after position within the ranks of the Separatists. Surely Lord Sidious must have seen some talent hidden farther within that others would initially miss…?
Xiian slowly strode to the opposite side of the platform he stood upon at his end of the room, the throne-like chair positioned in the middle for when its master deigned to sit upon it. He paused, then his voice carried forth again. "Redouble your efforts where necessary. I will send Vader to administrate any changes in strategy that may be required. You will heed his word, or I shall be forced to reconsider your position of leadership."
General Grievous bowed, his lanky alloyed form bending gracefully. "As my lord wishes."
Xiian finally turned to look at him, pale eyes sending a simple but dreadful message that had been imprinted into Grievous' mind so many times before: Do not underestimate the power of the Force.
Grievous supposed it was just another one of those things that a sentient had to live with.
"…charges against you."
The same chamber, again isolated except for the master and his guest. Echoes carried the sound throughout the room once again: you-you-you-you-you…
The slight form was crumpled face-down, half upon the floor, half upon the top few steps to the raised dais of sorts, hardly daring to move let alone look up to this captor's face.
He slowly paced closer, lowering his voice enough to prevent the echoes. "I repeat. You have been faced with charges of conspiracy against the ruling body of the Separatist movement. How do you respond?"
Sola Naberrie worked her fists underneath her, elbows bent so that her hands rested upon the floor underneath her neck, feeling the heavy binders about her wrists. She was a criminal for supporting the Republic? She was a convict for opposing the Separatist factions that had taken Naboo by storm? And yet while these denials echoed through her mind, the dryness of her mouth made it nearly impossible to speak. What a mockery of the Courts he was making. She ran her tongue over parched lips. How would she respond? With her mind hazed over from days of starvation and hardly enough water, with threats of interrogation looming upon her at all times, the bright lights intruding upon her sleep… It was hard enough to think, hard enough to begin putting words together in an effort to placate this roused storm. "That allegation is groundless," she tried, remembering the phrase from the days where she would occasionally watch her little sister participate in the Senate.
No one knew where Padmé was now. Sola could easily suppose that she would soon follow her sister's path into whatever that unknown held.
"You have memories still of your first capture by the Trade Federation, I presume."
That brought her back. His words triggered the startlement of coming out of hibernation, the charmingly earnest Jedi Padawan that had done what he could to get them both off the ship, the sudden meeting with Senator Palpatine and that smile of his, and then the darkness…
Sola involuntarily gasped. The Padawan.
"Good," Xiian murmured. "You recall it. Now you may see what sort of a danger you might present."
She was still wondering why she hadn't realised it before. The voice was similar despite having more of a mechanical ring to it. There had been no holos she or anyone else could find with this Separatist leader's face, however, and now she was beginning to see why. Her head spun mercilessly, making it so difficult to think, so difficult to… to…
The toes of his immaculately polished boots ranged within her view. Her head rose automatically at the movement, and she caught the distorted reflection of her own features on those mirror-boots, her face wan, looking as if she'd gone countless days without sleep.
Which wasn't entirely far from the truth.
"Please, milord," she rasped. "I've told nothing of it before now. I can keep my secrets."
"I have nothing to ensure that."
Somewhere in the recesses of her mind, Sola came to the dull realisation that her life was about to come to an end. She imagined pleading to be returned to her family would do her little good; besides, she had no desire to reveal the existence or whereabouts of her two daughters to Xiian, though he would likely find that out sooner than later if he was truly bent on this vendetta.
Though she did not see it from her position, he regarded her with narrowed eyes. "It always seems a poor decision to raise a family when one has so many influential political ties."
She clenched her fists.
"That was one of few things the Jedi truly understood," he continued in a voice that was sharp, though low-pitched. "While the principle of non-attachment was a reasonable one, why did the Republic support a cadre of powerful abnormalities whose greatest strength and most terrible weakness simultaneously lay upon a concept based on unstable emotion?" Xiian tapped his foot once, twice, thrice before her face, as if demanding an answer. "You supported the Jedi—perhaps you have an idea of why?"
Sola knew she had to respond. Force knew what would happen if she refused. She'd heard tell of a few stories that had leaked out which described what this man had done to some who had failed to please him. Neither did she want to take the risk of labelling those tales as simple fear propaganda. "No one can… can be expected to reach perfection. Mortals are fallible," she stated, her voice slowly dropping to a whisper.
"Mortals?" His tone held a hint of incredulity. "You are such a fool as to think I speak of mortals?"
Perhaps that word aggravates him, she thought, a little too late.
"Have you witnessed the power that a Force-user naturally possesses over a mere mortal? Have you witnessed our lasting strength? The Jedi only limit themselves to a taste of immortality in the mistaken belief that they are the Force's servants."
An unseen hand closed around Sola's throat, hauling her up bodily until she came face-to-face with his hard, impartial expression.
His hands clasped behind his back, posture military-straight, he watched her struggle against the invisible hold and said: "The Sith know the nature of the Force. We are the masters: we are the ones who have claimed the control that the Jedi relinquished. While you might pray that the galaxy comes to see this quickly, I am afraid this lesson has come rather late for you, Sola." Xiian gave a dismissive wave of his hand; that single motion launched her backwards, hurtling infeasibly through the air until she came into hard contact with the back wall, nearly fifty metres distant, a snapping noise echoing back to his ears like forewarning thunder. The Force hold released, and her broken, lifeless body crumpled to the floor below.
It was akin to playing dolls, playing marionettes, his puppet over and against all else who were foolhardy enough to make themselves a part of the story. And now came the time to test how well he could breathe physical action into his enslaved chancellor, how well he could turn this corrupted old human into a living lightsaber of sorts, even if he was lightyears distant.
Rather handy, Xiian reflected, that he could absorb Sidious' energy, his power and focus, and make it his own to add to the devastating equation.
It was an animalistic growl that rose from deep within the chancellor's throat. "Are you threatening me, Master Jedi?"
The rest of the exchange was irrelevant to the outcome. An impossible red-tinged whirlwind erupted from behind the stately desk, hurtling over to directly meet the four Jedi grouped on the other side.
Intruders. Deceivers. Xiian allowed a cold smile to curl his lips. Traitors.
Agen Kolar, Saesee Tiin, Kit Fisto. One after the other, methodically dispatched until there was only one remaining: Master Windu, who despite his incredible control was shocked to the core at the revelation that had just played itself out before his eyes.
Xiian's glazed eyes narrowed where he sat; Sidious' eyes narrowed accordingly.
Jung. Balestra, lunge. Tierce-riposte. Shun…
Windu truly was a Master of the Jedi arts, having effectively based his technique upon his practice of Vaapad. It was a sub-form of the most difficult of lightsaber combat styles, emotion fuelling the movements of the blade. Only a Jedi Master who knew his stand in the light well could attempt to master Vaapad without turning dark; indeed, Master Windu was the only known Jedi who would remain in the light all his life while employing it.
The duel carried them on its current to the other room of the office area, the walls closing in blood-red in the lighting. A power flux crashed like a wave into the broad window, shattering it outwards, leaving only a few jagged, irregular teeth in the gaping mouth where the combatants stood.
Despite his advantages at being able to access Sidious' skill and energy as well as his own, Xiian was finding this duel to present a ponderous challenge. Windu's use of Vaapad was beginning to drain Xiian's own resources, perhaps unwittingly siphoning the strength of the puppet strings away, and the Sith knew he would have to resort to exploitation of the precarious knife-edge that the Jedi Master balanced deftly upon. Xiian was finding it more and more difficult to keep solid control.
Which, of course, was why he allowed himself a flicker of satisfaction for his foresight. Windu and many others believed young Skywalker to be dead; perhaps seeing him come to thwart the Jedi's purposes would tip things back into Xiian's favour.
In a manner, though, Skywalker was dead. It was frivolous to imagine him rebounding back to the side of his old Masters in the Temple. Anakin Skywalker's mentor had paid the price for his incompetence in his own blood, and Xiian had found Vader after the awakening.
The boy's ostensible return from the dead, then, was enough to cause something of a stir. Only Master Windu remained to notice it, unfortunately enough for him as he was rather engaged at the moment.
Retaining young Skywalker to one's side had its advantages. The problem with him, or at least within the Order, Xiian had surmised, was not that he was disloyal. Far from it; in fact, Skywalker could rank completely at the opposite end of the spectrum when it came to devotion, and that was from where the true difficulties with the Order had risen. So dedicated was the Chosen One that he would remain in staunch support of whatever he held fast to, and to the exclusion of all else if necessary.
The Jedi have never truly liked absolutes. Especially when it came down to the fact that Skywalker had been absolutely dedicated not to the Force, not even to the Order, but personal connections, and two in particular. His mother, and then his wife.
Peculiar, Xiian thought, how Skywalker's unwavering loyalty for Senator Amidala had ultimately reversed upon him and caused her untimely termination at his hands. But such was the way of things, and the lad had chosen the tail of a very dangerous beast to seize onto. Now there was nothing left for him, nothing remaining on which to declare his allegiance.
And so, lacking any other grip, he was loyal now to the void his life had become. It gripped him in turn, made him its servant, and advised him that the raw pain that had welled within from these scars he had worn all these long years would be best put to use at the moment in the interest of the removal of the theoretical second-in-command of the Jedi Order.
In the end, it was unimportant that Master Windu had kept his head above water for so long, unimportant how calculated his strikes had been, how precise his defense. In the end, no one cared how valiant his struggle had been against the dark. It was useless to search out any one last shatterpoint. Now Vader's red blade severed his hands at the wrists, now Palpatine's fingertips crackled with an electric surge of energy, and it was over.
From distances nearly unfathomable by the sapient mind to the ravaging flames of this very planet, Mace felt ten thousand deaths not his own before he came to his lone end as he fell through the depths of the black-turned skies of Imperial Center.