Anakin breathed in deeply and waited, in perfect stillness so as to not to alert his prey. He slowed the beating of his heart with the power of the force and relaxed his muscles. The massive form of a snarling Krayt dragon lumbered by with its huge snout outstretched sniffing idly the air around it. Eventually Anakin knew, the creature would tire of his hunt and then lean back on its hindlegs and let off the ear piercing scream its kind was so famous for, a sort of dominance display which would alert all creatures in the area that this was its territory.
It was what Anakin was waiting for. When the creature reared up, his undefended belly and neck would be exposed and easy to pierce through with his lightsaber. He just had to wait a few more seconds, he could practically feel the creature's impatience. That's it just a few more. And then abruptly, the creature sniffed the air, coiled into an aggressive stance keeping all 4 feet firmly planted on the ground and instead of screaming, exploded forward exactly to where Anakin was hiding. Somehow it had detected his presence.
"So much for that idea." He thought ruefully, as he exploded into motion leaping backwards and to the side, just as the enormous form of a snarling Krayt dragon pounced at the space where he had just been.
With a nimbleness born of his jedi reflexes Anakin rolled under a fallen tree as the Dragon exploded forward again, but this time with the power of the force, Anakin lifted the tree and hurled it towards the Krayt dragon's vulnerable snout.
The huge beast recoiled and screamed out an ungodly cry of rage and pain before snarling forward again, but Anakin didn't give it the chance. With the creatures soft skinned belly and neck exposed, he hurled his glowing blue lightsaber in a backhanded toss which took the beasts head clean off, killing it instantly.
Breathing deeply he called the lightsaber back to his outstretched right hand and grinned ruefully, he was getting better at hunting these things at least. Krayt dragons were dangerous beasts and never hunted alone, even by experienced warriors, it gave him a sense of pride that he could do it.
Nevertheless, he got to work, cutting up the prime cuts of meat from the fallen creature, and placing them on his rigged up wagon, when he was done he pushed the wagon back towards the encampment that had become his home, with enough food to last him another week at least, and placed it in the refrigeration unit.
Another week, he thought sourly, feeling familiar resentment bottle up inside him, another week on top of the three he'd already been stuck out here. Wherever here was.
When he'd finally come to after his duel with Dooku he'd found himself in an abandoned home of some sort surrounded by a forest, with no technology or communication devices of any kind, save the one refrigeration unit, which he could use to store food. He'd spent weeks searching through the forests and the land outside it, and meditating seeing if he could detect any form of sentient life or technology anywhere on the planet.
But it eventually became clear that there was nothing, nothing he could use to send a transmission, nothing he could use to escape. He was trapped on this tiny little world, which may in fact not even be a world just a moon. He gritted his teeth as the rage returned, he didn't even know if he was on a planet, never mind where he was.
He walked to the large bed which had been placed by his captors and sank into, closing his eyes and forcing himself to push his rage away. It was harder here, where the dark side was somehow stronger than anywhere he had ever been, perhaps ever stronger than on Mortis.
It whispered to him constantly, it spoke of his friends abandoning him, of his weaknesses, of their deaths, of his failure. It haunted his waking moments and his dream.
Well, perhaps it was not all just the place. The last thing he remembered before he had succumbed to unconsciousness and woken up on this isolated world that was his prison, was being tortured by Dooku's magna guards, while a trade was proposed to his wife, him in exchange for grievous. A trade which it appeared she had refused.
At that thought the dark side rose up again around him, undoing the meditation he had sunk himself into, and his attempts to release his anger and rage into the force. Sighing with increasing frustration he gave up the futile attempt and leaned back against the bed clenching his fist and teeth, enraged at the uncertainty and at his own suspicions
Had she refused? Had she let her husband be tortured and perhaps executed by the Sith rather than exchange prisoners? Why? Why would she betray him like that?
She loved the Republic, perhaps more than she loved him. Anakin knew, and perhaps she thought this was the right thing to do for the Republic, for peace. The thought of it, even a month removed and uncertain never failed to draw his rage.
And yet, the only peace or joy he could ever find within himself in this haven of the dark side was when he thought of her. When he remembered their time on Naboo, and their rendezvous at the senate. When he remembered their night's together.
He needed to talk to her, he knew, no matter what. He needed to know why, and what had happened. Pushing aside his guilt he made his way out of his room and deeper into the compound, to the only other place in this world that held any interest.
The library.
Clearly it had been once been far grander than it was now, entire shelves and rows were empty, cases which had clearly contained holo discs, recordings and data cards, were now completely empty, leaving only a scarce few physical manuscripts and data cards. They were all ancient and they were all forbidden.
They were writings and histories of the ancient sith, forbidden to all but the highest-ranking masters to read in the Jedi temple and even then, sparingly and with great care. Anakin would almost certainly never be trusted to read something like that by the council, he thought with a twinge of bitterness, chosen one or not.
Briefly he hesitated, perhaps this wasn't the right choice, perhaps he should return to his room and wait, meditate maybe see if he could reach his master, or Ahsoka or anyone out here.
But he knew in his heart it was a waste of time, he wasn't powerful enough to reach them all the way out here, not in this place where the dark side dampened everything he tried to do and acted as a barrier to the light. If he ever wanted to leave, he'd have to play his captors game, and he knew that started by reading these texts.
They had very clearly been chosen and left for him specifically, and perhaps that should have been enough to warn him off, but he never shied away from a challenge. Besides, what harm could texts due to him, closing his eyes he forced himself to remember, to remember his mother's death and the aftermath.
He'd touched actual darkness before, and he had no desire ever to return to it's embrace. No words on paper would make him a Sith lord, to be one it took a conscious will, a choice by him. One he would never make. Slowly, his last inhibitions pushed away, Anakin began to read.
Nearly a month later Anakin had finished with nearly everything that had been placed in the small library. He found himself, surprised mostly, surprised and more than a little disappointed.
The material which he had assumed to had been chosen for him with great care, and which he had thought might contain deep dark Sith secrets, were in fact nothing more than a collection of damaged and partial reports of Sith missions. They focused on obscure details which Anakin had no reference point for, assassinations of 1000 year old government figures, and building up of small networks of informants and agents. Everything was incomplete and out of context, and it was all Anakin could do to understand what had happened, never mind why or how this related to any kind of plan or galactic events at the time, never mind the present.
And yet vexingly, somehow, he knew that the pieces here were important, that they meant something critical, something crucial. Something he just couldn't quite place, and he suspected he wouldn't be able to until he was back in the jedi temple and able to research this in the archive. Perhaps he should payed more attention in history lessons after all he thought wryly.
Only one piece of the library had truly drawn his interest. A copy of the sith code written in basic, words he had never seen before.
Peace is a lie. There is only Passion.
Through Passion I gain Strength.
Through Strength I gain Power.
Through Power I gain Victory.
Through Victory my chains are Broken.
The Force shall free me.
Words which rang uncomfortably true to the young jedi, and which he forced himself not to think on.
Walking, over to a shelf he placed the stack of pages relatively neatly back onto a shelf and moved towards what remained of the small library. Only a single manuscript, placed off to the side away from everything else he touched, a manuscript that he knew the moment he touched it would be important.
He paused briefly as he felt it. Something on this page mattered a great deal, either the events depicted or the events that it would cause, or perhaps both.
Briefly Anakin considered putting it back and forgetting about it, but perhaps it was his boredom at the tedium or the pull of the manuscript itself, but instead he walked back to an empty chair and began to read.
When he was done, it was all he could do not to stand up and shout.
The manuscript was a detailed account of the events leading up to last battle of the Old Sith Wars nearly 1000 years ago on Ruusan, written by Darth Bane and it conflicted with everything he'd been taught in the jedi temple.
The jedi taught that The Brotherhood of Darkness had been brought down by Lord Hoth's army of light, that when defeat became inevitable, Lord Kaan had gathered all of the dark lords, acolytes and assassins into one ceremony in order to unleash a thought-bomb, a bomb of dark side energies, onto their enemies. Further, the jedi's account explained how Kaan was driven mad by the power of the dark side, and his fear of losing his power, which drove him to believe not only would the thought-bomb spare him, but he would in fact grow stronger after it was deployed.
To put it simply, the Jedi recorded that they had defeated the Brotherhood of darkness and then it had simply imploded in on itself as a final act of defiance.
Darth Bane told a different tale. He spoke of his own disillusionment of the brotherhood and how the Brotherhood represented a diversion from the dark side of the force, a perversion of the natural order of the Sith, and how he had engineered it's destruction in order to conceal his new line of Sith who followed the rule of two.
To be sure the differences in accounts were subtle, but of extraordinary importance. The apparent victory over the Brotherhood of Darkness by the Jedi had led to tremendous change in both the jedi order and the Republic.
In the ensuing centuries when some evidence emerged that the Sith had concealed themselves and decreased their numbers the Jedi chalked it up to dregs of the brotherhood who had passed on their teachings or perhaps force users who had chanced upon Sith artifacts, not a real threat to either the Jedi or the Republic.
It was why Jedi training, promotions and indeed philosophy had long ago stopped valuing power in the force and martial skill. Jedi training nowadays emphasized philosophy, diplomacy, political skill and knowledge of jedi traditions even at the highest levels of the order. Of the Jedi high council only two members were truly strong in the force compared to their predecessors of ages past, Masters Yoda and Windu. Other Masters like Obi Wan and Kit Fisto were by no means weak, but against the Jedi masters of the old republic or the time of the Ruusan Reformation there was no comparison. Only Windu and Yoda had truly advanced in power and knowledge of the force compared to those jedi.
Their justification was the Jedi were peacekeepers not soldiers and that their enemies, the Sith, had been vanquished, the only dangers that existed now required more wisdom and political instinct than they did brute force. In fact, the Jedi now viewed power in the force and interest in improving as a warrior as a grave danger.
Taken at face value there was some logic behind their stance, Anakin knew, the most dangerous woes the Republic had faced in the decade's past could almost all be traced back to fallen Jedi. From Count Dooku's Seperatist Alliance and the ensuing galactic civil war, to the Bipfashi Dark Jedi and the crisis he created, to Assaj Ventress, all the way back to Qui Gon Jinn's fallen apprentice Xanatos and Dooku's other fallen apprentice Komari Vosa who led the Bando Gora. Those were the extreme examples, every day the war created more fallen jedi, more jedi who lost sight of what it was they were truly fighting for.
But, the jedi's suspicion and distrust of anyone who wanted to grow stronger, to learn more about the force, and to become a better general for the republic, was perhaps even more dangerous in Anakin's view. They were allowing the Republic to lose worlds and lives because of their own fears.
He had had this argument with the council and different masters more times than he could count but to no avail, nothing could pierce their arrogant belief that the Jedi did not need to grow stronger in the force, to become better warriors.
Anakin had never bought into that theory, but now he had incontrovertible proof that it was wrong. It originated from a false premise, the Sith had never been defeated at all, they had merely adapted, gone to ground so to speak. The hadn't given up, or had the mantle taken up by some untrained fools who found artifacts. The legacy of the old sith lived on, they were just still hidden.
Anakin paused as he considered that. The rest of the order wouldn't consider this incontrovertible he realized. They would look at it as biased account by a self-proclaimed dark lord who was barely mentioned in any other sources about the war, hardly a chief figure in the Brotherhood of Darkness.
Perhaps they were right Anakin conceded leaning back in his chair as self-doubt began to intrude. There was some evidence that the Sith that remained were nothing but dregs, or pretenders, the same that had appeared since Lord Kaan's final defeat. Assaj Ventress was a skilled assassin, but when she faced Yoda she couldn't even hold onto her lightsaber. Darth Maul had died to his master when Obi-Wan was still a padawan, and the only truly powerful Sith currently alive, Count Dooku, had been nearly as powerful as a Jedi.
Anakin felt his excitement dim and his confidence wane. He could hear Obi-Wan's gentle rebuke from a million miles away, that he was getting ahead of himself, that he was focusing on himself too much, chasing power for powers sake. Or worse, that he'd allowed himself to feel the allure of Sith knowledge and artifacts and nearly won over by their deceptions.
Dejectedly he headed back up to the bed and resolved not to return to the library. There was nothing useful for him in it anyway. Anger came back at that and rage and impotence at being stuck here while force knows what happened all across the galaxy and he was forced to play these games with his captor. He shook off the thoughts before they really took root, anger wouldn't get him anywhere and besides he needed to get his rest, now that he'd finished reading through everything in the library, dancing to his captor's tune as it were, something might finally happen. Something that would let him get off this miserable rock and back to his wife.
He closed his eyes and thought of his her, of her smile and laugh, he pushed aside the feelings of betrayal and focused on his happier memories. Of their marriage, and the honeymoon on Naboo, and felt the old joy return to him and push away the darkness that had been hanging over him like a cloud and he drifted off to sleep.
He didn't stay asleep for long; the hum of a starship landing woke him up in the early hours of twilight and in an instant, he was fully alert. He could only hear the one ship, which was both a good and a bad sign. It meant fewer adversaries he'd need to face to get off this rock. But conversely, if his enemies knew what they were doing, and it was always best to presume they did, then his adversaries would also likely be far more skilled. Dooku he figured and perhaps
Ventress with him and perhaps a few more magna guards. Anakin only hoped that this time he could bait the old aristocrat into fighting fair, perhaps if he meant to make Anakin his student, as the library suggested, he could be goaded into fighting him one on one and give Anakin a chance to end this war once and for all.
He called the lightsaber to his hand and stretched out with the force towards the ship, and what he felt froze him in place. It wasn't Dooku, that was for sure. What he felt was almost indescribable, a black hole in the force, a nexus of dark side energy which allowed no light to escape. It was beyond what he had ever felt before as if he was staring into the dark side itself.
Steeling his resolve, he headed down to face this new Sith. It occurred to Anakin that the words of Darth Bane wouldn't be a theory after today, he was about to find out just what kind of power the Sith of the modern galaxy had, for he was certainly not fighting another apprentice or assassin but a true Sith Master.
By the time he reached the ship, it had already landed, and its sole passenger stood alone at the end of the ramp, hooded and almost totally shrouded by darkness in a way that was almost certainly not natural. He had landed the ship in a circular clearing with no predators in sight, or indeed animals of any kind.
Anakin frowned at that and reached out to the forest around him not wanting to be surprised during the inevitable fight. The Sith master laughed, more of a mad cackle really.
"Don't trouble yourself. The lesser beasts have all fled. We are the only hunters in these woods tonight."
Anakin shook off his rough spun cloak and allowed the force to flow through him as he steeled his resolve for the fight of his life. But first, the pleasantries had to be observed. "Lesser? Even the weakest predator has more courage than you do, Sith. At least they don't hide who they are."
The Sith cackled again and stretched out his hands. "What I am known as to lesser beings is irrelevant. The truth of me is in the force, I am Darth Sidious, the last Dark Lord of the Sith. The Sith'ari. Destined to bring the Republic and the Jedi Order to its knees and the Sith Imperative to fruition."
"Dooku's master and Mauls." He growled. It was not a question. "You're behind the war, behind everything." He felt his anger rise, this was his chance to end it all. To fullfill his destiny and bring peace to the galaxy.
Sidious cackled again. "What has happened is nothing compared to what is coming."
Anakin could feel his heart pounding in his chest, the force surging through him. "Nothing is coming," He spoke with all the confidence of destiny at his back. He was the chosen one. He was born for this. "Your manipulations are at an end and you're going to pay for everything you've done."
Anakin had a feeling if he could see Sidious's face, the dark lord would be laughing. "Then come, Anakin. Consider this your last chance to stop me."
A crimson blade found its way into his hand and Anakin ignited his blue lightsaber and the duel of his life began.