Chapter Twenty-Three

Dantius brought Morgause to the first of four worlds that he had put on his charts for Morgause. Each one was supposed to be darker and more twisted with the powers of evil than the last so that Morgause understood the true extent of how a Sith Lord's search for power could affect the galaxy for long periods of time. Yavin 4 was the first on his projection as the Republic had managed to secure a permanent foothold in the wake of the return of Vitiate to the galaxy. Ziost was claimed after the Sith were forced to abandon it and Korriban, the most recent addition, was still being met with pockets of resistance. The fourth world, however, would be one that had been forever tainted by Vitiate and his appetite for immortality.

Upon setting foot on Yavin 4, Dantius asked Morgause to describe to him what she felt. "There are... beacons. Beacons of black fire which call to me like a moth to a light: I know it's dangerous to me yet I am urged forward by my Sith training," she admitted. Dantius ensured that there was no way she could go forward, in part by restricting her to the immediate vicinity to their shuttle and occasional enforcement of this restriction.

"Millennia ago, a young Jedi named Exar Kun came to this world to explore the ancient knowledge of the Sith left behind. He discovered and took over the Massassi within the temples of this place, dominating them so that he could use them in his armies. When he was defeated, his physical body died but his spirit was tied to the temple in which he fell, his hope having been to free his identity and power from his body to wreak havoc on the cosmos. There is currently no way to destroy him, anymore than there is a way to eliminate the traces of the Sith Lord who seduced him known as Freedon Nadd," Dantius explained to her.

"It stinks of hate, anger, and destruction here. Did Kun get any followers with him? I mean, besides the Massassi," Morgause inquired.

"Do you know the story of Ulic Qel-Droma?" asked Dantius. She shook her head no and he told her that that would be the subject of their reading material while they traveled to their next destination. Ziost, a world consumed by Vitiate though less extensively than Nathema had been, was still a world of prominence in the Dark Side and still held much in the way of ancient evil. However, along the way, Morgause asked him the most critical question he had been expecting after he gave her the databank with the story of Qel-Droma.

"Do we truly need to go to other worlds after Ziost? I think I've seen enough to know why I should take the training of the Jedi into my own understanding of the Force. The Sith might have had the right idea about allowing the full extent of emotions to be felt but even the freedom of emotions is taken too far. They rely too much on the more passionate emotions for their own strength and think only to their own ambitions and desires. The Jedi may be wrong about suppressing emotions but at least they use their powers in service to a greater cause than themselves," Morgause confessed.

"And that is what I wanted you to understand before you could begin your training as a Jedi. It isn't that we Jedi cannot feel emotion but it is that we are often required to put their emotions aside to serve their duties to the greater galaxy and, usually, to the Republic itself. But a network of Jedi Sentinels known as the Sentience believes that the Jedi are limited by their alliance with the Republic in their struggle to suppress corruption throughout the galaxy," Dantius said.

"But you believe that unhinging the minds of the Sentience in their means will corrupt them as much as the enemies they intend to face down in the shadows. Therefore, you want to create a contingent that can stop them from completely unraveling what unity there is to be had in the galaxy with the war over," Morgause said. Dantius nodded and turned to her as he prepared to bring the ship out of hyperspace for the trip down to the surface of Ziost. Before they landed, he told her that she was finally understanding the true nature of the Dark Side on her own terms.

"You will become a grand Jedi Knight if it is taking you so little time to understand what it is the Order aspires to protect the citizenry from. Ultimately, we intend to save the people from themselves and the Sentience knows this which is precisely why we cannot let them back us into a contradiction that they know our Code can produce for us. You will be trained to mentor the one who will help us against the Sentience if they should ever turn into the very things they swore to destroy when they first took up arms against the Sith," Dantius confessed. He didn't tell her that his former master, Mathes Colunga, was calling the shots in the Sentience and it was Colunga's attempt at forming the Uriek Confederacy that worried him.

The failure of his attempt to create a balanced alliance that paid homage to the ancient Je'daii in its construction had left him largely unhinged. Though he accepted the offer to return to the Jedi Order and a pardon for his treason in return for serving the Republic as it needed him, Dantius' worry lied in the free rein he'd been given since. Would time reveal Mathes to truly be interested in stopping corruption or would it reveal that fanatic devotion to a vision of balance had consumed his every fiber to the point of madness? Kultram, his new right hand man, was already an unhinged and unbalanced mind without factoring the possibility that Mathes was possibly the same way now.

"I can already feel the intensity of the Dark Side here, it's stronger than it was on Yavin 4 yet the Sith Lords there were older. Why is that?" Morgause asked.

"Normally, you'd be right about the older spirits having a stronger Dark Side presence. But here, something unnatural happened, something so vile and despicable that even the Sith Empire rallied with the Republic to stop the threat its source became. This is the mark of the damage that Vitiate was willing to do in order to secure his immortality, to hold death off another century when the Hero of Tython had depleted him of much of his power in their first battle," Dantius told her. They stepped into nausea, dizziness, and an urge to vomit when they stepped out their ship and unto the scarred surface of Ziost which had been used in the same ritual which had consumed Nathema.

"By the Force... what is this?" Morgause asked, lurching over and falling to her knees.

"This is the true definition," Dantius told her, clutching his gut, "of oblivion."