"Menakh… Mor ri rim nah mor reh…"
Nightmares. Each and every day they spelled something new, something horrible that had plagued that Jedi Council in ages past. Ulic Qel Droma, Exar Kun, Revan - students that had betrayed their masters, and their teachings, causing echoes that still warped and morphed the galaxy today.
A historian's job was not easy, Atris found. The longer she stared at ancient tomes and holo-records, the more she came to find the failures of Jedi. The wars, the students, and dare she utter it, the teachers. She still remembered, 10 years after, the defiance, the arrogance, and the confidence of the Exile as she stood trial. As the Exile presented herself - a singular repentant soul in a sea of converted defilers - Atris had doubted herself. The Exile brought to her a light which she had never seen, a new point of view.
The master, after that brief moment of doubt, became enraged. She knew the others could see it - a lifetime's worth of training reduced to nothing in the span of seconds, all because of a look. A stance that made her regret chronicling the history of their Order whilst billions were slaughtered by the Mandalorians. A stance that forsook everything their dogma stood for.
Though, she thought to herself, if she had gone with them, taken up arms, then she would be a part of the nightmare she found herself under. A component in the cyclical annihilation the galaxy seemed to find itself under, century after century. It was always the Sith and the Jedi - two sides to the Force, battling over it's supremacy.
She found them in her nightmares - amidst a sea of subconscious imagery and make-belief situations - fighting again. Faceless hordes spilling blood in the name of an angry, vengeful god, who demanded sacrifice. Crackling bolts of lightning flashing past her face, a gentle, repelling push that soon levelled a cliffside, a dark cloud of fury invigorating one side, and a pure rain healing the wounds of the other…
Her view changed as she tried to focus on a wounded warrior's features - finding nothing but the fabric of her mind obscuring them. Atris then found herself whisked away from that warring planet, to find others in the galaxy reduced to atoms. Where once the proud enclave on Dantooine stood, now there rested only fragments, the tectonic plates of that gentle planet torn asunder.
Three things made themselves known in the galaxy - a sonorous wail, flurrying about in a maelstrom of pure energy, a void, cold and parasitic, and another, red, dominating and encroaching. The void and the maelstrom seemed to scream as the moving presence absorbed them into its mass, expanding its reach exponentially. It pained her to see this, even in her sleep, and she couldn't tell why.
The screaming didn't stop. And soon other voices came to be heard - adding to the wail of the maelstrom, rendered lifeless and hollow by the encroaching presence. Atris felt herself moving - soaring to the centre of that red, pulsing mass, finding something there, a figure. She couldn't tell the distance between them, but felt it's cold grip around her heart - as if strangling her connection to the Force.
It stood, unmoving, hating, as the tendrils of its mass secured the galaxy at large, ceasing all war. Then, without provocation, without noise or movement, it turned to her. It looked at her as if it knew her.
Then, she woke up, finding her hands clenched around her lightsaber, it's blue glow illuminating her chambers. Atris calmed herself. Took a moment to reflect on the teachings, and dismissed the nightmare like any other. Word had spread through the chambers about Revan's defeat, and it was all but confirmed by the Council what had happened to him; a loss of memory caused by an attack by Darth Malak had rendered him vulnerable; open to a rewrite of personal history, so that the Council may have delved into the secrets of his mind.
The Jedi did not kill, but Atris felt uncomfortable with the act of brainwashing - she would've spoken out, as well, had Revan not defied them. Had he not gone against the teachings of his masters. Yet before he was to be paraded to a new generation of padawans, there was a delay. Darth Malak had no doubt caught sight of the fledgling, Bastila, seeking to use her Battle Meditation to augment the Sith fleet - and had ordered a boarding of the Endar Spire.
The holo-vids that had managed to leak from the planetside of Taris provided a sliver of hope that the escape pods had made it out, but beyond that, the future was grim for the Order. Once more, Atris reaffirmed her faith in the Force, assuring herself that all would be right - and wandered the halls of the Enclave.
She found her way to the interplanetary news streams coming in from the farthest reaches of the Republic, and felt herself almost faint at the sight before her. The vid was grainy, it's recording barely making it through the data-scrambling of the Sith blockade, but she knew him. Revan. Gallivanting about. Showing his face, to a recorder, in broad daylight.
With Bastila alongside him.
(Elsewhere…)
And, as Atris witnessed the birth of a new nightmare - a logistical and tactical nightmare, so too did another shuffle from their slumber. Another cast away by society, thrown into the heart of battle to be used, then locked away - cut off.
Exile.
It was Temera's title, and now, a life she lived. Severed brutally from the Force, deaf to the life around her, nearly void of emotion, the Exile persisted in a masquerade of her former existence. Staying far away from the galaxy at large, she cut herself from contact with any and all sentient life, passing the time with droids, tinkering as her body atrophied.
It had been nearly 5 years since the end of the Mandalorian Wars, 5 years since judgement had been passed on her. 5 years since the severance to those around her.
At times, she missed it, the universe as she knew it then. The Exile missed the unification she felt against a common threat, the purpose of which she and all those under Revan's command were empowered by. She missed the thrill of the defiance against the Council, finding herself revelling in slaughter as much as the liberation of a planet.
At other times, the Exile reflected on why she did what she did, whether or not the command to activate the Mass Shadow Generator was worth it. She continued to question, time and time again, why Revan turmed. Why he didn't return to the Council as she did.
She hated him. Despised what he became - what he turned her friends and comrades into, but knew she was so close to the pull of the Dark Side. Had she not witnessed her own troops die by her hands, she would never have stopped. She would've descended like the others did, to the Sith.
The Exile was brought to reality by the screams of the Mandalorians. Made to realise that they suffered as her allies did, and echoed a wound through the Force that would have, should have killed her. She was brought to reality as the horrors of war manifested through the cracks of Malachor V. As friends and foe alike were torn apart by gravity, crushed to death in the hulls of their own ships.
She didn't know how she made it out alive, but she knew she could not continue in a world where she was allowed to walk free. To hide from the Jedi and the Sith. So, she accepted her judgement. As an excuse, and as recompense for the fallen. And so, she would stay.
The Exile would stay, for a time, until the winds called her name - until a horrid nightmare would curse her sleep. She would stay with her droids, in a shack on a nowhere-planet, until she was summoned.